Clint welcomes back John, who has been battling inflammatory arthritis for 46 years. We delve into his journey, exploring the pathways he took that were less beneficial and offering valuable insights for others facing similar health challenges.

We discuss in this interview:

• John’s experience over four decades with inflammatory arthritis, starting from his teenage years.
• The evolving understanding of the microbiome’s role in immune health
• Low dose antibiotic therapy and the potential effects of such treatments on gut health
• John’s transition from using long-term medications like steroids and the complications that arose from their use.
• Strategies for rebalancing the microbiome and the immune system through lifestyle changes and dietary choices.
• The connection between physical health and mental well-being in managing autoimmune diseases
• Practical dietary suggestions from John, including his favorite nutrient-packed meal that supports gut health
• The importance of prioritizing health and lifestyle adjustments to prevent severe joint damage and maintain quality of life
• Hope, knowledge, and community support as vital components of managing the disease

Clint – Welcome back to the Rheumatoid Solutions podcast. My guest today is John, and this isn’t the first time I’ve met John. Around ten years ago or thereabouts, and we’re trying to recall. I hosted an event in Anaheim, in Los Angeles. At the time, John and I got together for a little 1 to 1 afterwards. We spoke about his situation and we built a nice rapport during that session. All these years later, John has still been watching from a distance, I guess you’d say, our social media, our webinars, and all the things that we’re putting out online. He had reached out and said, Let’s have another chat. This time, let’s do a podcast together, and we want to go through John’s story. John’s had inflammatory arthritis for 46 years, and what we felt would be super helpful. It would be to talk today about a lot of the directions that he went in that weren’t helpful. Some of those are lifestyle, and some of those are other than lifestyle. Thus, it can serve as a warning to those of you who have not had that duration of time with this condition to be able to interpret some better ways forward. We wanted to refer to this interview in advance here is how to succeed the hard way. Okay. What we’re going to go through today with John is a wonderful, very sharp, and intelligent man, 46 years of inflammatory arthritis, with so many lessons to be able to share with us. John, thanks so much for coming on today.

John – Thanks for having me. Clint, what you are presenting through the Paddison program is so vital for so many, and I want to come in and support what you’re presenting.

Clint – Amazing. Take us back to when you were a teenager. We’ll get into your story and go through some of these hard knocks that you went through. Was it originally rheumatoid? Was it ankylosing spondylitis? What sort of variation of this condition do you have or were diagnosed with?

John – I was never fully diagnosed, over the years, I came to my conclusion. I was an athlete and a bodybuilder. I wrestled in junior college and taught back then. I had a carnivore diet was a lot of protein, like too much protein. I remember eating just massive amounts of chicken meat, like 20 eggs a day. They said that would raise testosterone levels. It’s just absurd what I was doing to my body. I believe that through the eggs that were maybe not cooked properly, I got a staphylococcus infection, and that caused food poisoning. I had diarrhea for a month, which triggered my arthritis. I’m convinced that it was a reactive arthritis often found in men, and that was triggered by that initial food poisoning.

Clint – When people hear reactive arthritis in the medical community, they shift towards thinking that it’s something that may be able to be cured as quickly as it came on. That was not your disease at all. You noticed, decade after decade of progression, right? I don’t know about disqualifying reactive arthritis, but certainly there is a morphing away from that into more of a classic rheumatoid sort of situation. It is because your disease just went on and on for decades, correct?

John – It did, and it’s hard to say. I just know that it was after that episode of food poisoning that I learned about my body. There was something off, you know. I know this too, and it’s really interesting. I’d love to talk to you more about this. My body always responded well to minocycline. I know that you’re not an advocate of minocycline at all, but I know that minocycline can work well in certain cases of reactive arthritis. Again, your teaching has convinced me that it’s not the way you want to obtain a happy microbiome. Not not alter it through any type of antibiotics.

Clint – Yeah. Let’s chat about that for a second. The low-dose antibiotic therapy, or the Brown protocol that you’re talking about, went out of favor maybe a decade and a half ago in terms of the rheumatology clinics. When I was first diagnosed in 2006, there was even my rheumatologist was saying that he might put me on low-dose antibiotics in parallel to methotrexate. I was dumbfounded because it was antibiotics that I had recently taken on my trip to the Middle East as an entertainer. I believe that, in hindsight, belief brought on the disease. At the time, even with my naivete, I said, I’ve actually been taking the exact drug that he recommended, which was doxycycline. I said, I’ve actually been taking that. A few months ago, I took that for 3 or 4 months because I went to the Middle East, and neither of us drew any conclusions from that. I was taking that same drug for five years for acne as a teenager. Going back to the low-dose brown protocol antibiotic, the feeling was that the doctor at the time told me, he said we don’t know why the antibiotic may help, but it may help. I believe what’s going on is that the antibiotic may be taking out some of our good bacteria and some of the bad bacteria, even though it’s a very selective and low-dose antibiotic. We’re still going to have some collateral damage to the good guys. If it’s some of the pathogens are proving to be quite problematic, then you may have a net benefit of slight improvement to the patient.

John – Yeah, I remember your analogy, it’s a monkey with a machine gun. Yeah. If it’s killing the good bacteria as well, where is that ultimately going to take us? It’s fascinating the whole discussion of what is actually triggering this disease in our body, when immunology is such a complex topic. Could it be a mycoplasma that is fascinating? I believe maybe that was a part where, whatever it’s getting inside our cells, or reprogramming of our cells. Here’s the point I’m sure you agree on, regardless. This is the question I have. It’s our only hope is to rebalance that microbiome in our bodies. That is what’s so essential, and also to avoid toxins that will overload our systems. More research is coming out now that says that 70%. Doctors, scientists at Johns Hopkins they’re admitting that fully advocating the concept that 70% of our immune system is found in our gut. They call it the second brain. My question to you is, if that’s the case, why is it that in rheumatology or any autoimmune disease, they’re still not addressing this aspect of immunology? I don’t understand.

Clint – It will come and keep in mind how expensive it is to develop drug treatments and to run clinical trials. It’s absolutely, phenomenally expensive. Therefore, it takes time for the research to undergo the extent that it’s not only produced the first time. Then, reproduced by another research group by a third group. Then, they do pilot studies and then a full clinical trial, double blind and placebo-controlled. I mean, it takes years and years for where we are today to become something that, down the track, can be then administered by a rheumatologist in a clinic on the corner of where you live, and where it becomes a little bit more interesting. Is that what that thing would look like that’s administering to you, if it actually can be done with food?

John – Can I share with you? My dream is that in 20 years, you’ll go to a rheumatologist, he’ll take a fecal sample, and he’ll determine the imbalances in the species of your microbiome. Then, suggest the specific food or supplements that would reestablish that balance. I believe that’s what’s ultimately going to happen. But I just wish things would hurry up because I know people are suffering. I have another question for you, because I really just want to learn from you. But I’ll share my story as well. Do you believe that someone can find full healing from this spectrum of diseases of rheumatology by using only Western medicine? Without implementing lifestyle changes?

Clint – Sometimes. Yes. The word healing, though I would substitute with asymptomatic Automatic status, right? We’ve had people on our podcast, people we’ve helped inside our coaching program, who’ve described that prior to working with us. They felt fine in terms of their symptoms, but they were taking the allopathic meds. They’re taking a Humira or an Enbrel, or a methotrexate to a lesser extent. Mostly, it’s the biologics that can enable people to become really symptom-free. Then, they want to rely less on this and find out how they can put things into their lifestyle to be able to put pillars in place to be able to support their health when the drug is tapered. To specifically answer your question, are there people who are asymptomatic, living normal lives, happy without any kind of feeling like they have RA, with medications alone? Yes, it does happen, but I tend to feel, and this is my personal opinion, that it happens more when people are taking the more advanced technology kind of drugs. Your biologics or infusions and stuff. There was a study back around 2008, I think, where they had people on all sorts of different disease-modifying drugs, including steroids and painkillers, Maalox, and ibuprofen. The study followed the pathway over a few years of people who were on all different combinations of disease-modifying drugs, steroids, and painkillers. The research, and I remember the exact quote, proved difficult to suppress inflammatory markers in patients. This is with all of those drugs. This is why I feel that the predominant sample of the community who are doing well, Unwell on medications alone, who are carefree about their lifestyle, are on more of a biologic infusion kind of treatment plan.

John – The question is long-term, five to ten years down the line, I’m not sure if they have enough studies to reveal, but will there be side effects that will ultimately occur with these biologics? Will the disease just find another way of manifesting because you’re not treating the imbalance? These are kinds of unknowns. You’re not getting to the root cause, again, what I believe is a very strong imbalance of the microbiome. Do you agree?

Clint – I do agree, and then I’ll also talk about the root cause in a minute. We’re going on interesting tangents here on this, and we’ll get to your story in a minute. Hope people are finding this interesting, irrespective of that. First of all, do the biologics ultimately have an expiry date, I guess? Are there reasons why only that alone shouldn’t be embraced? I’ve got a neutral opinion on the approach of the biologic pathway for people who are in pain. I mean, that just makes sense if you want to stop joint progression, joint degradation, and I have no qualms whatsoever. In fact, encourage people sometimes to go down a pathway to take sensible long-term medication. The question becomes, only when someone doesn’t want to do that, what are they doing? Instead, you’ve got to do something to stop the joint. Inflammation causes the heat and redness. Swelling in a joint that goes on month after month is leading to reduced spacing in the cartilage and in the joint. I should say reduced cartilage and permanent damage. We have the option these days that you didn’t have when you were going through your early years of inflammatory arthritis. We’ll talk about the treatments that you went through. You didn’t have access to the likes of these TNF alphas and interleukin-6 medication. You didn’t have access to that. People who do should be talking to their rheumatologist and finding out all of their treatment plan options. If they want to also look at lifestyle changes in parallel, they should be aware that that can be immensely helpful too.

John – Absolutely.

Clint – Now, in terms of the underlying cause, we’ve spent a bit of time talking microbiome, but there are three aspects to this microbiome. It’s only one microbiome system, which is the balance of microbes in your mouth and also in your colon. Both of these areas of the body need to be optimized. Then, there is the antioxidant system, which is driven primarily by glutathione, which is our master antioxidant. Then, the third part of this is our nervous system, which is the balance between when we spend most of our time. We are typically in a fight or flight, or are we in a parasympathetic nervous system, which is a rest and digest, and that is dictated by heart rate variability? We’ve got the microbiome and an antioxidant system in brackets, glutathione. We’ve got the nervous system in brackets, heart rate variability. When we’re talking about trying to get someone so well. I mean, they have to be so well that they can show up to their rheumatologist and say, hey, check it out. For example, doctor, with your permission, can we look at my blood markers? Can we look at maybe a drug taper? There’s just such good health, the rheumatologists can say, you know what? Why don’t we explore this a little bit at a time? We’ll keep an eye on your bloods, keep coming in regularly. Then, let’s just slowly go down this pathway together. Only after they’ve put in place these foundational pillars of health.

John – I need to lift you up because you can continue to learn the whole concept of the microbiome in the mouth is a new concept. I haven’t heard you teach. One of the teachings I heard on your YouTube videos is like, look, you’ve got to take charge of this disease. You cannot depend on the doctor. They’re too busy and overwhelmed, for whatever reason. You have to be the coach, leader, and initiator. Then, along those lines, we need to learn and see. I didn’t have access, and I’d have to go to the library and do microfiche. I was only 19 years old, overwhelmed, and scared to death. I trusted the doctors, and that’s all I knew. But nowadays, with this access to information, there’s empowerment in knowledge. For them, especially to learn from people like you who have done the work in the research, but always question and expand. Here’s my question about medications, because back to my story as well. I wasted a lot of time on gold shots, which just seems like witchcraft now. They lowered my hemoglobin, exhausted me, and did no good at all. Switched to penicillin, which again, just made me sick. Then, I was just kind of done. I was eating a lot of salad in the cafeteria, and I started feeling better. My knee swelled up again, so I started taking prednisone, ten milligrams only, which was prescribed. I knew as well that it was a toxic dose for me. I had also gotten a pulse earlier in the year, and it’s all cumulative. Again, similar to minocycline, you’ve mentioned. I know what happened is that my hips were destroyed. I had avascular necrosis of the femoral heads. Here we go in six months. I’m trying to get through college, and I was in a wheelchair. Then, I needed hip replacements. The journey just gets arduous from there. I don’t even want to share it all because it’s so devastating. But my question is, and this is my big concern now, you’ve mentioned the dangers of minocycline and how it can throw off the microbiome. You’ve mentioned the dangers of all of the NSAIDs and how they really can just tear up the gut. The big danger is prednisone, taking it long-term or any dose over ten milligrams. If you’re at five, it’s probably a little safer. But even then, they’re giving these packets of prednisone down where they blast you and then bring it down after a month. My big fear with that as well is that people might be getting addicted to it and not be able to decrease the dose. I’d like to hear your thoughts, and again, for the viewers to be aware that a lot. Isn’t it true that a lot of these medications that doctors are giving could perhaps be doing more harm than good?

Clint – I don’t want to get drawn into that specific answer. I think that generally, doctors want to help people get out of pain. They want to stop the radiographic evidence of progression in joints that you can see on X-rays. To achieve that, they have a spectrum of medications from which they can choose. Some of them I categorize as short-term medications. Those are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and proton pump inhibitors. These drugs tend to have a poor risk-to-benefit profile long term. The words long term are essential. This isn’t controversial if you look into the College of Rheumatology guidelines, which are put together by an expert panel of esteemed rheumatologists who get together every few years. I don’t know if they do it virtually. They sit around a big table, and what they do is they say, a few years have passed since we’ve recently put the guidelines together. What’s changed? What do we want to modify? Then, they come up with a refinement every few years of these guidelines. These guidelines clearly say that to speak of steroids, for example, steroids should be administered for the shortest possible time in the lowest possible dose. We take Clint out of this because it doesn’t matter what I think. What the rheumatology guidelines say is the shortest possible time and the lowest possible dose. However, there is a place for steroids when used in the guidelines for short-term, in certain conditions where we’re waiting on a disease-modifying drug to begin to work, or in between treatments, and the guidelines are where everyone can go and download. John and the audience can Google it themselves. Just type in American College of Rheumatology guidelines. I think the last one was done around 2021 or 2022. They’ll do another one probably in the coming year or two. They also, by the way, now have some American College of Rheumatology guidelines for lifestyle interventions. It’s the first time they’ve ever put this together. There is an A-plus, absolute highest priority recommendation around resistance training physical therapy for patients with RA. Now, coming from the medical community to put an AA plus plus recommendation around physical therapy and movement supports what we do in our coaching program, which is to prioritize this. Then, make sure that joints, when they’re inflamed and swollen and stiff, don’t just sit there in that un in uncontrolled state. We’ve got to get movement through anyway. Do the meds ever create more harm than good? I would say that we’re using short-term medications for long-term purposes. Then, you’ve got a mismatch between the intention for which the drug was prescribed. The rheumatologist should be consulted about whether or not steroids should be continued long-term at a low dose. There’s a lot of debate in the medical literature around whether five milligrams of steroid taken long term is beneficial versus not having it. It is because, on the one hand, it could help to prevent joint damage. But on the other hand, there are published side effects that we’re aware of with steroids that mean that the College of Rheumatology guidelines say the shortest possible time, the lowest possible dose. All I can say is there’s the science. What the studies are saying here are the guidelines. We all should be looking at that. My area of expertise is how we can do everything in our power to minimize symptoms. Thus, do we not need to show up with our tail between our legs to the rheumatologist? We can also not even need ten stupid supplements and all these other weird and wonderful things we need to be doing. Just to live the cleanest, healthiest, and simplest life we can with the least amount of external interventions required. The way that a healthy person does without an array.

John – Thank you for sharing all that, it encourages me. I haven’t been to a rheumatologist in years, but it’s nice to know that perhaps the collective consciousness of the medical community is evolving to accept more of your teachings. I can’t commend you enough. How much of an inspiration you’ve been, that you are the voice of the healthy lifestyle necessary for autoimmune diseases. You’re one of the few that I know, or the only one that’s suffered with the disease and found answers. Thus, it just makes you much more credible. I always think about your Cherrie incident and how that incident, in many ways, saved and altered the lives of so many. Without that, you wouldn’t have been able to see the correlation between food and arthritis, and then be able to find it. Can I eat, and where am I most inspired by you? I think you were ahead of your time, and you were the very first voice of fats or oils. It can be a bit of an oxymoron. Nowadays, even carnivores think that seed oils are no good. Whereas when you first came out with that ten years ago, you were the only one. I found that a very unique teaching, but very true. I don’t know if you’ve seen Jeff Novick’s lecture on olive oil. Olive oil? That’s healthy. It’s not, and it’s got nothing beneficial. All of these oils seem to be a problem, or let me put it this way. Minimizing the amount of oils that you consume goes a long way to helping you heal or stop the progression of rheumatoid arthritis. I’m sure you concur.

Clint – It used to be that all we could find was very little. Back when I was suffering, I’ll be 20 years with this disease in a few months. That one was purely anecdotal when it began, but I knew that every time I would eat something stir-fried, I would suffer. The next day, that one came out extremely unique to my little world of trial and error. Then, I started to push forward because when I started working with others, I noticed the same thing. I quickly became very passionate about that because I was finding no exceptions. If you’re not seeing any exceptions at all, you start to develop confidence around it pretty quickly. It wasn’t until the last 4 or 5 years, I think, when I started to understand. This is where the antioxidant system comes in. It’s like glutathione versus cooked oils because of their ability to destroy the molecular structure of oils when they are heated. It means that they generate a vast amount of free radicals. What’s happening is that we’re consuming cooked oils is they have to find electrons from somewhere. The first point of contact they have is through the digestive tract. If you’re losing electrons from your digestive tract, they’re being taken from the cell membranes. If your cells are losing electrons, you’re losing cells. Your gut layer is only one cellular layer thick, one cellular layer thick. Unless you’ve got a large amount of antioxidant defenses, that’s not going to look good for your intestinal tract. Do I still promote absolutely no oils? No. It’s more of a refined and evolved understanding these days. What do we do these days? Do we want everyone to start with a low-fat diet? The body can just. Settle down a little bit in inflammation-wise and be able to digest some very simple, easy, low-fat, and plant-based foods. Then with time, the fat content goes up, and the fat content eventually can become quite substantial with people eating nuts, seeds, and avocados. We get there eventually, but we have to graduate to that by going through. It’s like year one of university, year two, or college if you like. You can’t jump straight to graduation because you’ve got to go through the process. Then, fat tolerance increases as we develop the ability to produce enzymes and bile acid. We develop the microbes to break down higher-fat foods. We develop the protective lining of mucus on our colon so that we aren’t migrating lipopolysaccharide, which is an endotoxin, into the bloodstream, which is fat-soluble. The endotoxin is fat-soluble, which means the fatty acids moving into the bloodstream can assist in the migration of that endotoxin. A little bit too scientific for us. I want to say that these days I take a little olive oil. It’s a blend with the omega-3 that I have. I don’t seek olive oil for olive oil. Olive oil has powerful lipid antioxidants that protect against oxidation. Therefore, they’re helpful to protect the omega-3 fats from oxidation when they enter our body. I use olive oil as a chaperone or a bodyguard for the omega-3 that I supplement to optimize my omega-6 to omega-3 ratio.

John – You’re quite the scientist, and you have evolved that way. I mean, very impressive. I’m sure you would agree that any cooked oil is one to avoid. 100% true.

Clint – Correct. The other argument, of course. Just because if anyone’s fascinated by this, the complete argument here is that people are also concerned about the balance of omega-6 to 3. When we’re talking seed oils, they’re only omega-6. All you’re doing is you’re then promoting not only pure oxidized fat, but you’re also then promoting an arachidonic pathway. Again, you get dropped quickly into the science here. It’s just not an anti-inflammatory strategy to do that. For people just trying to get a simple takeaway here. A little bit of unheated olive oil after you have rebalanced your health is okay.

John – Would you say that heated oils are probably one of the very worst things that anyone could ingest?

Clint – Absolutely. If I’m getting off an airplane and someone says I’ve got rheumatoid, and they want to know 2 or 3 things. I would say never consume cooked oils of any kind. It doesn’t matter if it’s a high heat temperature threshold of coconut oil, or whether or not it’s just a healthy perceived olive oil. Whatever you’re cooking the oil, you’re going to create free radicals. It’s the free radicals that we’re concerned about. Second, eat salad with your meals. Third, exercise and become stronger than you’ve been in ten years. Thus, those would be the three.

John – Along those lines, I wanted to share with you. I know we’re kind of winding down, but I wanted to give a shout-out to your viewers and to urge them to take this disease very seriously. I hope and pray you don’t have the kind of joint damage that I’ve had to undergo. It is because it does make life very, very urgent. If you don’t make it a priority, the disease will make it a priority for you. I know maybe some of your viewers. I’ve got family or I’ve got work. However, you’ve got to take care of your health. The desire of this disease is ultimately to turn us into a statue, and that would be the long-term result, which has largely happened to me. With your program, knowledge, discipline, and application of Western medicine. You can be victorious. If you’re not and you have been challenged, you can still come back. Like my SED rate now is 2, and I’m pain-free. My energy levels are fine. I’m independent, I feel great, but I can’t move around. I limp and I can’t walk long distances. My ankles are kind of fusing out. It’s just really hard to let the disease become advanced. But with you, you give hope. Can I show you something? To wind down a really good meal. I’d love for you to kind of discern it and see what you think, because this is kind of like my go-to meal now. I thought your viewers would enjoy this. I have my rice cooker, and at the bottom of my rice cooker, I put mixed beans, and I have a different type. Then, on top of that, I like to put brown rice, and that cooks well. Then, greens, you gotta push the greens. So I make this conglomerate, and I’ll show you. I have my beans and rice that come out of the rice cooker. I always add the greens, but this time I have cilantro. I’ve added a green onion. I throw some walnuts and raisins in there. When I’m ready to eat it, I’m going to put some organic cranberries. Usually, I like some type of tomatoes as well. Then, because I think so too, push the greens, but also push the variety to make sure that all the different microbiomes are represented. I don’t know if you have your go-to meal, but I could eat it. I often eat it every day, and I do I feel amazing. I feel energized, but not tired. I feel satiated, and I feel it’s almost like my microbiome is shouting out, Thank you. We can work with this. I wanted to share something practical with your viewers. Honestly, it only takes me about ten minutes to prepare. I can eat it hot or cold. The rice cooker makes it all very easy. Any thoughts on that? I imagine you love it.

Clint – I love it. As soon as you’re mixing beans and rice, you’ve got a phenomenal yin and yang combination of protein and all of the macronutrients that you could want. Then, you put on top of the leafy greens, you put on top some of your cranberries just to give it that nice and sweeter taste. I mean, you’ve got something there that I can see you could eat often. No wonder you said rates, too. If you could go back in time, what would be some of the things that you would change about how you went about your disease management? Of course, all of us can answer this question passionately. All of us wish we had done things differently. What would have been some of your different decisions?

John – As we discussed, more living food. Consuming only water and making sure I was getting sufficient rest. But the biggest one as well is not to try to live a normal life. As much as I needed to pull back and take care of myself. I was a teacher, and I know you studied physics. I studied mathematics and loved teaching, but it became too much. The stress level was killing, and it almost killed me. It destroyed my knees and I had to have never. To make your health and your rest. I would tell myself you gotta manage this and then make this disease your priority. For example, I’m left-handed and my elbow is similar. I know you had a left elbow. I always think of you, like, if you had gone down my path. We have similar journeys, but you obviously found healing, and my elbow is limited now. I can’t bend it, and it was destroyed because of teaching. Thus, it’s not worth it. My obvious inflammation, and then it attacks the areas that you’re using. I guess the biggest one would be to make your health a priority. You have to do that with this disease, and it’ll force you to do it yourself.

Clint – This comes up a lot when we’re talking about whether or not people want to work with us, or not, on some calls that we do. Some people are thinking about renovating their kitchen versus investing in six months of having our coaching team completely revolutionize their health and their approach to this disease. Sometimes it’s weird that, if you were teaching, you’re thinking. If I were going to make all these lifestyle changes, it might impact my momentum with my teaching, or it might slow me down, or what? The truth is that a short-term adjustment of allocation of priorities, which only has a steep learning curve for about a month, right? Only takes you a month to work out how to eat the right foods, and how to consistently allocate about 30 or 40 minutes a day to exercise. I mean, it’s easy to take a few supplements and to reduce your stress once you start to feel good. I mean, you’re motivated, you’re enthusiastic to do these things. It’s only a steep learning curve for a month. However, that can change the direction of the future so enormously that a little change of direction over that month can be phenomenal for your outcomes in the future.

John – The point is that people could live normally. I’ve had to just suffer and work through things a lot on my own. But to the point that you believe people can, with your program and combined with Western medicine, they can go on to live basically normal lives.

Clint – We see them regularly. I think the unfortunate history that you’ve experienced. How long did you do steroids for?

John – Gosh, about five years. It took me forever to get off of him.

Clint – Five years. When you came off them, what was next? Did you replace it with anything?

John – I didn’t know, and I was busy. I went back to school, and I’m just busy with life. I don’t even know how to access the information. Back then, there was no internet.

Clint – Without any drug, but you’d been on steroids for five years. It was probably another ten years before you and I met in Anaheim. Now, it’s another ten years later. There is like, when I see your hands. I believe that more improvements can be made. I always believe improvements are awaiting us and that we can create them. Then, carve out those improvements that are currently potential improvements and move them into reality. The elbow, as you said, that lost range of motion. I’d be working on a lot of strength-building activity through that elbow.

John – Swimming and that’s all I can do now. I want to thank you again for being the voice of hope for all of us, but also for lifting your program online. As you mentioned, this is a very lonely disease. Especially when you’re starting, talking to the forum that you created was so worth it to me. I met so many amazing people who understand that to be able to access your form and get direct answers. You’re always quick to respond, and to be able to ask you questions, get an immediate answer that was invaluable for me to build my knowledge. Knowledge is power. I wish I could go back and do things. I know you feel the same way in some areas, but we can only go forward. I’m grateful to at least be free of pain. We’ve got to count the blessings, and that’s why I wanted to share with you. It is because I really hope that I can inspire other people to really take this seriously and understand and find healing.

Clint – In terms of where you think you are now compared to where you have been in terms of struggling in the past. How would you describe those two extremes?

John – Well, I know there are people, I’m going to say it because I know how people feel. When I was at my worst, all I could think about was dying, you know? It’s like, I got things to do today, and I got to get out and go shopping. What can I do to have fun? I do have some enjoyment in my life. Who can I call? Whereas before, I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I mean, those are pretty strong extremes, but it’s hard not to feel that way when you’re completely exhausted and in pain. It doesn’t stop, and it feels kike shards of glass every day. That’s what you look like, and that’s what you have to deal with. That’s a hard way to live life

Clint – Which aspects of what you do right now do you feel are most beneficial for you to keep pain away again?

John – Your voice has always come into my head because it’s diet, isn’t it? Like the diet is the queen on the chessboard? Exercise, maybe like a rook. The king, I mean, that’s the disease itself. Maybe supplements are like a bishop or a rook or a horse. I don’t know could maybe getting well and resting is super important. Isn’t that another aspect to like? You’ve got to figure out how much sleep you need every night, and you’ve got to make time to get that. That’s another, and that’s probably another rook to use the chess analogy. However, it’s an 80%-90% diet to master this disease. Would you agree with that?

Clint – I used to think it was that. Now, I think it’s more of a combination of diet, physical therapy and nervous system optimization, which is it’s. It’s because the reason I say that is that if I were only allowed to pull the dietary lever with the people that we work with closely, I wouldn’t be able to look them in the face and say, we can get you out of this. I need to know that I can use those other levers to help them get their life back. That gives you an indication of how much I believe that these other factors need to be gotten right.

John – I’ve never heard you express or teach that, or do you have videos out on the neurological aspect of this disease?

Clint – Well, here’s a study that I like to talk about. Just through a time limit here, I’m going to have to love you and leave you. A study from 2008 looked at a whole bunch of people who were about to begin Enbrel and Humira. They measured their heart rate variability. After six months of the medications, they tested the outcomes of these patients on these medications and compared them to their heart rate variability again. They were able to do so by using computer analysis and predicting, based on the heart rate variability data at the beginning of the study as to whether or not those patients would or would not adequately respond to the biologic drugs. Thus, your heart rate variability data is a very high predictor as to whether or not TNF alpha medications are going to work for you. Now, heart rate variability ties directly into information about how stressed you are your nervous system is. If you’re trying to get well and your heart rate variability is in the toilet. We know from that study that those kinds of biologic drugs may not be a good fit for you. Well, what about the other meds? We don’t know because it was just done on those. Anyway, let’s leave it there, John. We went in a different direction. I felt like it became a bit of a science lesson today. I hope you feel like we got a good amount of sharing done on your side.

John – I love talking to you. I mean, thank you. Keep learning and keep being an advocate. You’re a voice of this disease and an inspiration for so many. Please feel free to edit any and all parts of the video. We could easily go on for a couple of hours, but I know that you’re busy.

Clint – I agree. What we might do if the audience is in the chat, if you’ve made it this far in this conversation on YouTube. If you’re in the chat and want to hear John ask me questions that he’s been curious about, just as he’s done on this episode, we can do another episode together. I’m sure many people have been wondering. Let us know in the comments. Thanks, everyone, for watching. Thank you, John, for being so awesome.

John – Thanks guys. Bye for now.