Eleanor shares her incredible journey of overcoming rheumatoid arthritis with natural methods, turned her health around and regained a life full of joy and activity.

We discuss in this interview:

• How Eleanor was diagnosed 25 years ago but only began feeling symptoms seriously last year, leading to a transformative health journey
• Her switch to a vegan and oil-free diet, strictly following the Paddison Program for Rheumatoid Arthritis
• The role of intense physical activity, particularly Bikram yoga, in her recovery, reducing inflammation and healing her body in general
• How she managed to stop using a daily antihistamine after experiencing challenging withdrawal, leading to diminished inflammation and skin reactions
• Insurance and natural treatments for RA
• Her current lifestyle includes regular physical activities like chin-ups and pull-ups as well as a deeply personal meditation practice, leading to a dramatic reduction in overall pain and improved mobility
• The importance of discipline and consistency in diet and exercise

Clint – Welcome to this episode of the Rheumatoid Solutions podcast. My name is Clint, and on this podcast, over the years, we’ve interviewed hundreds of people who’ve shared their journey with rheumatoid arthritis, sharing dramatic improvements. That’s reducing inflammation, reducing morning stiffness, normalizing CRP, SED rate, often reducing or getting off medications, building strength, eliminating fatigue, just getting their life back. Today we’ve got another wonderful story, I’m interviewing Eleanor, and she’s from Illinois in the United States. This is going to be fun. Eleanor, welcome to this episode.

Eleanor – Hello, Clint. Thank you so much. I’m so thrilled to be here talking to you.

Clint – I’m so excited as well because so everyone’s on the same page as I am. I don’t know anything about Eleanor’s progress here. The only thing I know is she’s from Illinois, she’s really excited to share. And my staff have arranged and set up this interview for us because they’ve heard that she’s done really, really well. So why don’t you illuminate the situation here? What’s the before and after for you, Eleanor?

Eleanor – So first, I’ll tell you, um, just a little bit about my lifestyle. In America, there are a lot of people who are underinsured, and I am one of those people. A doctor told me, oh, about 25 years ago that I had rheumatoid arthritis. I was a young woman then, and I thought the doctor was insane. I didn’t have any pain at that time that I was willing to admit. Well, I didn’t tell him he was crazy, but I definitely thought it. And I never gave it another thought until last year when I was feeling completely laid up. I couldn’t sleep nights because of the pain I was in. It took me half of the day just to get out of the pain. Um, even following a healthy lifestyle and what I thought was a healthy diet. And then finally I discovered your program, and it was just revolutionary. I’m a very busy person, and I was afraid that it was going to be hard to follow your program because I have two jobs. I’m in two bands, I teach yoga, and I’m a dairy farmer’s wife as well, he’s a dairy farmer. My husband and I run a little bit of a cat sanctuary as well, so I’ve got my hands full every day. But I was able to get through the whole program and follow it to a tee. Even with as busy as I am.

Clint – Amazing. Yes. And to complete newbies to this channel, we’re talking about the Paddison Program for rheumatoid arthritis. Um, we’ve had a do it yourself program running now for about, I want to say about ten years, something like that. And we’ve recently, well, recently in the last year or so, moved across to a full supportive coaching model where we have physical therapy, a medical doctor. We’ve got psychology now on the coaching team, we’ve got myself, of course. We just have a full end to end service to help people through this. But you did this before that, and you went through on your own with the materials and videos and things like what kind of before and after are we talking about here?

Eleanor – Yeah. So, um, like I said, I’ve been real health conscious and little things that would come up in my life. Little injuries here and there like, oh, I’ve got tennis elbow again. Or um, gosh, this my back is thrown out again. Things just started happening more frequently, these injuries and, um, it started affecting larger joints. My shoulders began to be a big problem after I turned 50. And then my hips, and then the last thing that happened a year ago, my hands started to go. And I just couldn’t believe it because I was trying so hard at that point to figure out what the problem was, troubleshoot my body, go through all these things on the internet terrified to start with my doctor because I knew it would be all the money I had to get to the bottom of it. I didn’t want to lose all my money chasing whatever road a doctor deemed right for me. So I just was so happy to find your program. And I went from trying things like, uh, avoiding FODMAPs and the whole 30 diet, had been gluten free for ten years, and then, um, it just wasn’t helping.

Eleanor – And when I started having it where it hurt to bend my fingers, I realized I had to do something because I was going to have to give up my livelihood. I can’t do my jobs if I can’t use my hands. And also guitar playing, which is my passion. I’m in 2 bands and it’s it’s what I live for, it’s what I work for, and to have to give that up was too much. I finally came to terms with that, that doctor told me I had rheumatoid arthritis. I was having all these pains and injuries. I had these strange lumps on my leg on both of my shins, and he said, that’s the beginning of rheumatoid arthritis. I said, I’m not even going there. So last year I finally said, I think that’s really what this is, and I found your product first, and I just jumped right in and I followed it to a tee, and I couldn’t believe the results. I couldn’t believe how fast I started feeling better, getting my motion back, getting my sleep back energy, everything. And it’s just been revolutionary for me.

Clint – For those people listening who aren’t watching this, you just held your hands up. You close them into a fist. Really, like effortlessly.

Eleanor – Yeah, there’s no pain.

Clint – Let’s get into the details and of course, we’re going to share all the things that have worked most for you, like your most highest recommendations that everyone should do, whether or not they want to, you reach out and have our help or not, just on your own at home. Things people can do, uh, that have worked best for you. We’ll get into that. And we’ll also talk in depth about the sort of evolution from pain to joy, I guess you’d say. But how is life today when you get out of bed in the morning? What things feel like today?

Eleanor – It’s great. I will be honest, this is my really busy, busy time of year. This is my maximum stress time of year. If I wanted to be completely pain free and as good as I felt over the winter when I’m not as stressed, um, I would have to make some sacrifices. Quit a band, stop with the kittens. I’ve got a lot of kittens, I play with these cats. Uh, maybe go to half time at one of my jobs, which I can’t afford. But I don’t want to make any of these sacrifices, so a tiny little bit of pain is worth it to me. The reason why I have a tiny little bit of pain is because A, stress, and B, I’m not getting the exercise that I really need. You said in your book that diet is 60%, exercise 40%. I found that to be completely true. So what is it like to get out of bed now compared to how it was? I mean, I couldn’t sleep at night, it was so painful. There was no way I could lay in my bed without pain, waking up, you know, every 45 minutes. It was so demoralizing to, um, to be 50 and to have these problems was just so depressing and disheartening. And now I’m so inspired every day because I don’t live with pain. Um, it just seems like anything that I want to do in my life, I could, I could achieve. The little tiny bit of soreness that I feel in my head doesn’t hold me back. I can do things now that I couldn’t do a year ago. I never thought I would be able to run again. I never thought I’d be able to jump again. I could jump and jump, I could do jumping jacks. I could jump out of the bed of a truck, I can dance, I can do anything without injury now. It is important to get enough exercise, though, to keep the muscles strong enough to be able to do that, though, and I do. I do get just enough exercise to keep the muscles strong.

Clint – Absolutely awesome. So many questions, I’m just wondering where to go from here next. Perhaps this is a good way to go. What has the rheumatologist said throughout this process? Did you ever go on drugs? Did you have you come off drugs? What was recommended to you in terms of medication? Anything to help us fill in some blanks around drugs?

Eleanor – Like I said, I’m one of these underinsured people. And so the healthcare situation in Illinois, I’m sorry to say it is dire. And there’s people like me in a certain income bracket Hackett not getting health insurance from their job. Making just enough money that health insurance would be really, really expensive. Like to have great health insurance where if I wanted to go to a rheumatologist and go through all this testing, it would really be tens of thousands of dollars and it would be all my income. I wouldn’t have anything left for enjoyment at all. Um, so I never went to a rheumatologist, that doctor telling me that I had rheumatoid arthritis, and I just put up my hand like, I’m just not going to spend my resources on that. Um, yeah.

Clint – So you’ve just said okay, I’ve got the diagnosis, and then I’m going to do everything in my power that I can do because of the challenges navigating the costs of the healthcare system.

Eleanor – Yeah.

Clint – Yeah. Sometimes we just need a huge stick. You know, if it’s the carrot and stick and the donkey. For me it was all about the carrot. It was getting off medication so that I could start a family. Okay, but sometimes it’s the stick. It’s like if you don’t sort this out, you are just going to have no options because of the limited health insurance coverage that you have. Okay. Either way they both work. Yeah. And so what it does is it feels massive action, we need massive action. Let’s talk about that massive action. Obviously, you’ve made changes to your diet, you’ve made changes to your physical therapy, stress reduction, some supplementation, all this sort of stuff. So walk us through how the body responded and what levers you used to get the best results.

Eleanor – Sure. Things started getting pretty squishy for me in the spring of last year, when I started having really debilitating pain that was cutting into my mobility and my productivity in the day. I went and I got my blood screened and I found that I was anemic. So I started reading all about that. Like, what causes anemia? And I read about caffeine and tea, and I would drink tea all day. And I loved caffeine, so I just cut it cold turkey. And it went through this awful, awful withdrawal. And the worst part of it was this amazing wave of pain that came over me and then wouldn’t go away. And I really think it’s because tea is anti-inflammatory. So without that, suddenly I had all this inflammation, um, and just, you know, joints on both sides of my body, just like, nope, we’re done. It’s like, oh, great. So I tried the whole 30 diet, I tried avoiding FODMAPs, no peppers, no tomatoes, no beans, all this stuff. And I just wasn’t getting any improvement until I started your diet. Full vegan, no oils of any kind, and my favorite thing that you say drink water like an obsessed person. Um, and. Yeah, it just started to change overnight. Like, every day my pain was better and better and about, you know, in a week, my pain was so reduced, my inflammation dropped those first two days when you’re just drinking the cucumber juice and, um. Gosh, what else was it? I think celery, spinach. You could juice all those things. Um, it was amazing how much the pain and inflammation reduced, and then just starting to introduce one food at a time every day. Just one more thing. The ancient grains were wonderful, the sweet potatoes were wonderful. I just did it exactly like it is in your program. Just one fruit, one vegetable every other day, adding it back in. Um, the first week I started those exercises, and I used a power tower so I could build up my shoulder strength and my arm strength and my upper body strength. And I started resistance bands for my hips, and the shoulder pain immediately started getting better. Just with that strength and support from the rest of my frame, the hip pain, um, also started going away as I built my glutes and I built my quads and even like a week after the exercise. Also some aerobic exercise I added to. I was so afraid that it was going to throw me into injury, doing the stuff that felt so extreme, exercises like this. And um, it never did. I didn’t get a single injury from any of it. And every day the pain reduced more and more. I think my favorite thing that I added to the Power Tower, if you don’t know what a power tower is, do you know what that is?

Clint – I don’t. So go ahead.

Eleanor – So a power tower, it’s like, um, imagine a pull up bar and then it’s also got some other bars so you can do pull ups on it. And you can also like grab these grips and, um, do these leg lifts for your core. There’s also a bar going across the bottom so you can do things like, um, it’s not Brazilian, it’s not Scandinavian. They’re split squats.

Clint – Bulgarian.

Eleanor – Bulgarian squats, those are amazing yeah, those are amazing. Yeah, all that stuff, um. Chin ups, I can’t do that on my own. They make these, um, bungees that you can attach to the pull up bar and the hang down, and you can slip your feet in them, and they help you do the chin ups and pull ups and you’re still really getting that workout. Um, so pull ups don’t have to be something that, you know, if you did them once and you haven’t done them in 30 or 40 years. Try the bungees because they’ll help you get up there and you’re really going to get that workout.

Clint – So it turns out I do know the Power Tower. I just have never called it that. They have them at most gyms and so forth. And so, um, I knew exactly what you’re talking about, so, um. Fantastic. I don’t want to interrupt you. I’ve made mental note of a few things that I want to comment on. I want to comment on anemia. I want to comment on FODMAPs, and then we can talk about chin ups and pull ups as well. So I’m making notes here to, to sort of add some insights to everyone else.

Eleanor – There’s one more I want you to add. The Bikram yoga was huge. I added the Bikram yoga and that was above and beyond for me too.

Clint – Okay, so you’ve started to do like, had you ever done pull ups and chin ups before?

Eleanor – Not since junior high.

Clint – Amazing. Like everyone. Right. So we’re bringing those things back. Fantastic. So did you notice that when you did these things, there was a quite significant amount of pain reduction first, followed by strength and muscle development?

Eleanor – I don’t know that there was a first or a second. They seemed to be happening at the same time for me, but it wasn’t. I was amazed by it. Yeah, I never thought I would feel this kind of healing.

Clint – Okay, what happened next? So this is in the early stages. We’re only two weeks in. So then did you continue to apply that discipline in the daily habits? What happened?

Eleanor – Absolutely. But there was one monkey wrench in it all. And that was so with supplements you advised like about dropping what supplements you can. Um, for example, certainly if you’re taking fish oil, get rid of the fish oil that’s not vegan. Um, so I did I dropped supplements, and I realized, well, I take a daily antihistamine and I have for years. So I was like, let’s get rid of that daily antihistamine. I had amazingly horrible withdrawal. It was so miserable, I was going online, looking it up like, what’s going on? What’s happening to my body? I just feel just edgy and itchy. My whole body is itchy and it won’t go away. There’s no relief for it. And that was what I read. You can expect with antihistamine withdrawal. Some people likened it to, um, opioid withdrawal. It was miserable, but it was worth it. And the strange thing about that was I felt like my autoimmune response throughout my whole adult life has been very tied to, um, Itchiness, the inflammation and the itchiness seem to kind of go hand in hand. And just like I wouldn’t say I had eczema, but just skin rashes that would come out of nowhere and go away. I used an antihistamine to control that, and without the antihistamine, it was just a nonstop itch and rash that lasted for, like, a solid week, miserable like that. And then slowly but surely, a little bit starting to go away every day. But after that first five days of it not getting better, I said, there’s one thing I haven’t done, and that’s the Bikram yoga. And I had watched videos of yours interviewing people who had done the Bikram yoga. And I’m sorry I forget this woman’s name, but she was someone who did Bikram yoga like four days a week for maybe six weeks or maybe a month, maybe it was just a month and she had such great Benefits from that. So Bikram Yoga studio is a whole hour away, I live in the country. So that was when I told my bosses that both of my jobs, look, I’m on a healing journey and you’re going to have to understand I have to give up mornings right now because I’m not going to be able to do the work at the quality you’re used to. I’m going to have to go do this Bikram yoga if I’m going to really heal. And I felt like if my jobs were worth it, and if my relationships with my bosses were as good as I thought they were, they should support me because they both know that they’re not giving me health insurance and that health is on my time and my expenditure. And they were my bosses were really supportive.

So they let me take my mornings and they let me, you know, drive an hour to the city, take an hour. It was a power 60, not the 90 minute, though I did do the 90 minute. I’ll get into that in a second. But I did that power 60 in Saint Louis. It was so wonderful, I loved the community, the teachers were amazing. I had no idea how cool Bikram yoga is because I’m a yoga teacher. But, um, just. I teach a couple times a week. Um, but my hatha yoga isn’t anything like Bikram yoga. I thought it was so fun. I loved the sweating. Drinking a ton of water when they would let me. Um. And I always had this feeling when I was in there like, this is this was my chemotherapy. I just felt every single session like, this is my cells squeezing out whatever weird junk is stuck in there. And the itch, this whole like, itchy response. The reason why I took the antihistamines is squeezing out with this sweat and these positions, the postures like it’s ringing out all this garbage that’s been inside my body, down to the cellular level. That’s what it always felt like to me. And every day that I would get out of that Bikram yoga, I would be less itchy, noticeably less itchy. That and the drinking water like an obsessed person that really made the itch start to go away. I’m not 100% itch free, but the little bit of itch I still get once in a while is totally tolerable, and I don’t even notice it sometimes.

Clint – How many classes did you go to a week and do you still go? Or do you feel like you’ve sort of broken the back of this and now you just go occasionally?

Eleanor – So my goal was 60 days and to go as much as possible. I started out wanting to do the four days a week, just like the woman I saw in your video. And that first week I was like, you know what, let’s take it up to five because this is too good. And then I, you know, I’m in a couple of bands and one of the bands I’m in is in Chicago which is a 4.5 hour drive for me every other week for rehearsal. It was like, well, what am I going to do? I’ve gone like two and three days when I’m in Chicago, maybe I’ll check out the Bikram yoga scene in Chicago. So I found this amazing Bikram yoga studio, they did the 90 minute classes I was so intimidated. It was such a beautiful studio. Um, and the 90 minutes. It was funny because there was this guy and I think he was maybe Norwegian, and he was in the classroom first, and then I was there, and it was just me and him in this hot room waiting for other people to show up. And he’s wearing like a speedo and nothing else. And he looked amazing, like his body was incredible. And I was watching him do the poses. He was amazing. Like, I guess he’s a guy that travels all over the world. And he said any city he went to, he’d find a Bikram yoga studio and he hated power 60. He said power 60 made him mad because if he was in it, he was in it for the investment. He wanted the full 90 minutes and his poses were amazing, he was amazing, and he was an inspiration. So that 90 minute, school was great. Um, and how did it end up? Did I keep going? I went as many days as I could. I just some days would be five days. One. One week I went every single day. Maybe my max was. Maybe I did, like, nine days in a row. I just felt so much better every day.

Eleanor – And then at the end of the 60 days, it was really hard to say goodbye. Um, but I did, I said goodbye because I decided we have a room in the basement that was supposed to be a bathroom, and it never got finished. I said, we’re building a Bikram yoga studio just for me in the basement. And my husband said, okay. So that took a long time. That took all winter. And I didn’t get in the finished yoga studio, the finished hot yoga studio until April, and it was just ridiculously amazing, I couldn’t believe how it turned out. I couldn’t believe how hot and steamy it got in there, and I couldn’t believe the level of the quality of healing. And even I’m going to go there spiritual healing that I get when I’m in my hot yoga studio. I haven’t been in there in several weeks because my work schedule right now is really relentless, but I will get back in there.

Clint – Amazing. I’ve talked a lot on other episodes about Bikram, so if anyone’s more interested to learn more about that, check out some previous interviews, go through the podcasts and look for more discussions around that. But it’s unlike any other form of yoga. So when we think of yoga, it’s like a spectrum from, let’s say, 0 to 100 the range is so broad. You teach hatha yoga. Bikram is at one extreme and it’s extremely hot. The postures are very difficult the very first posture, you’re like, oh my God, this is just the first posture. And yeah, I mean it’s an absolute you get absolutely smashed physically. But you come out almost reborn, it’s just so dramatic. Anyway, in terms of our curriculum, I’ll just share this with the group, Eleanor, we don’t actually encourage or push people towards Bikram anymore when we work with them. It’s just because it’s become difficult to access. We’re the documentary that was obviously strongly negative towards the creator. And so it is what it is, we’re able to get incredible results without having to travel, without doing a hot room at home, just through the physical therapy that we’ve taken to sort of a really precision level now. So that includes the pull ups that you’re talking about. I love adding the bands to enable you to get through the full range of motion so that all angles of the muscles are engaged to get that full range, which is great. And then what about the diet? You mentioned earlier that you went in through the ancient grains. You did a couple of days of juicing also, which we don’t do anymore. By the way, I’ve found the results aren’t linked to whether or not people did the juicing or not. So we’ve made it easier. People skip the juicing, uh, but they add juices throughout steadily. How has your diet expanded? How does it look today?

Eleanor – Yes. So I still keep a very limited diet. And, you know, I’m very curious how your, uh, diet resource, what your diet resources say. Maybe there’s some other things I could start eating now that I eliminated, but I’ve gotten used to a very limited diet. My diet would be less limited if I had more time to make food for myself. So I’m sticking pretty close to like I said totally vegan. Oh, with the exception of honey, I do eat honey, and no oils at all, not a single vegetable oil of any kind. Of course, no fish oil or anything like that. What do I eat? I eat a lot of beans and rice, it’s so easy to make. The ancient grains, salads. I love to make a vegan sushi with nori. I eat a lot of seaweed. I am on the road a lot, and when I’m running out of food, I’m reaching for pumpkin seeds. Of course no flavoring on that, just light salt. Pistachios are good. I love these dried apples that have nothing on them. Dried fruit, dehydrated fruit. Anything you can make in the dehydrator is wonderful. I love silken tofu I can do a lot of things with silken tofu. I can make mayonnaise to put on a potato or dip some sweet potatoes in. Silken tofu, I added in, that was one of the as soon as I could. That was one of my really excited things I could add back in. I can’t remember if that was like in the second month, but it was whenever you said it was okay adding tofu.

Eleanor – And then finally, one thing that I eat every day, which is a big deal for me, is sourdough bread, homemade sourdough bread. And I eat hummus, no oil hummus. I make it all myself. And that was such a big deal for me, that was my big goal because I had to be gluten free since 2012. I don’t know if I already mentioned this, but I thought that my pain and I had also cystic acne in my 30s. So I went gluten free in my late 30s and it helped. It helped, it cleared up the acne and it helped with the pain. So the idea that I could start eating bread again after a hundred days, I followed your resources that talked about like, after 100 days, you can try things that might be inflammatory, like gluten free or like organic whole wheat sourdough bread. And I’m so happy that I can eat that, it’s delicious, it fills me up so well. And with the hummus, it’s delicious. But I do want to say that I feel like I have a weird reaction to mushrooms. Mushrooms when I introduce them, I felt like my pain was all coming back right away, so I quit the mushrooms. And I also feel I have a weird theory and there’s no science to back this up at all. It’s my spooky, weird theory. I have to use organic whole wheat flour. I find that when I use regular whole wheat flour I get each itchy. And I wonder because we are farmers and we grow wheat on our farm, and it’s conventional, it’s not organic. On rainy years and a lot of years, we have to spray a fungicide on the wheat to stop a fungus called, uh, alpha toxin I think it’s called. So it’s very common for farmers to spray a fungicide on their wheat, and it almost wonder if fungicide is an issue for me. So, um, that’s why I use organic whole wheat when I make my sourdough bread.

Clint – Let me connect a few dots here, and this is satisfying to say, but it might not be the issue, but it’s nice for us to, to sort of discuss these things. So if the itchiness of the skin was related to some kind of pesticide, toxin or so forth, and when you eat organic wheat, you don’t have as bad reaction. Plus, and this plus is crucial. When you sweat, you have less itch. Because we know that the best detoxification for pesticides is sweating. And in fact, some pesticides don’t get eliminated through any other bodily pathway like urine or defecation, but only get eliminated through sweating.

Eleanor – That’s interesting.

Clint – That this could be something that’s really going on. And maybe because you live on a farm, there has been exposure for some time to some toxins. Right. And so this is supported by studies coming out of China where they looked at the lifespan, or they looked at people of different ages and their accumulated toxins of heavy metals and pesticides and found that, that yes, with time, those living near, in polluted cities in China accumulate toxins with age of both categories. And those who exercise and sweat regularly have the least of those toxins in their body in the same city. So yeah. So that’s that’s fascinating. There’s two things I want to do, I want to go through real quick, just some sort of educational stuff for the audience. And then I want you to summarize the most important things everyone should be doing. If they’re still just on the sort of research phase before they want to work with us and just to make some improvements. So let’s talk about FODMAP, first of all. So Fodmap was actually an idea created I think it was Melbourne, but it was certainly in Australia. And the idea here is to take out of the diet some things that are really stimulatory for the bacteria in our bowel. So as to try to stop some symptoms related to that kind of stimulus. It was never intended for something to be done long term. It was only an investigatory FODMAP intervention, almost like a diagnostic tool. So it’s never a diet because we actually want to eat these foods like fruit diglycerides and resistant starch. We want to eat beta glucan and all of these other wonderful prebiotic fibers. It’s literally what we have had you do in the program, because when you do it very gently in micro amounts, those bacteria develop and that’s precisely what we’re aiming to achieve. So FODMAP, it’s just a diagnostic tool, it’s not a diet as such long term. And you’ll see on their website that they specifically say that themselves.

Clint – Anemia. When you stopped your tea and coffee in the attempt to try and get around the anemia, what you may have been experiencing is what used to be called anemia of chronic disease. They’ve recently changed the definition to anemia of inflammation, because then it’s a little bit more self-explanatory. The anemia comes from the inflammatory process. And the reason it does this, and is one of the first things I ever learned from my rheumatologist, is that when the body has high levels of C-reactive protein and SED rate, meaning elevated right inflammatory response. The body is so intelligent that it actually withholds iron from being released in the bloodstream, because any pathogen that’s circulating the bloodstream needs iron to be able to proliferate and thrive. So the body says, okay, I’m going to take one for the team so that we can help to diminish the chances of the pathogen that’s in the blood, that’s causing the inflammatory response to be able to thrive. And so it’s a self-induced anemia when we have high levels of inflammation. And I’m guessing that that’s all that you had okay. So if it’s now been resolved next time you get a blood test, if your anemia is resolved.

Eleanor – Oh it’s resolved.

Clint – It’s resolved? Okay. So that was probably what was going on. And because, this stuff’s kind of hidden, it’s hard to, like, get this information without listening to this podcast that you wouldn’t have known that. And then the histamine what we see is some people have histamine intolerance. They’re worried about oxalates, they’re worried about all sorts of things with regards to plants and how scary plants can be. If we’ve got these histamine oxalates kind of problem going on, it’s just another dimension of having dysbiosis, which is an imbalance of our microbiome. And our microbiome is meant to be singing like an orchestra with flutes and cellos. And we’ve maybe got some like percussions, we’ve got maybe the choir, and everything’s just so gorgeous and beautiful with all these different aspects to the microbiome, all synchronistic, creating beautiful sounds, which in the metaphor is short chain fatty acids, which then heal the gut lining. And in the metaphor it’s making beautiful music..

Clint – What happens is when some of that’s all out of whack and the drums are off beat and there’s the flutes haven’t shown up because they’re all running late. Things don’t sound right, we don’t get the short chain fatty acids and things start to go out of whack. We start to have trouble breaking down histamine, and as a result, we have too much histamine in the bowel which can relate to inflammation. And we can’t balance the oxalate creation and degradation that happens by bacteria in the bowel. It all comes back to a bowel problem, which we can solve by doing what you’ve done. Okay. And so I was surprised that you came off the histamine supplementation. You’ve successfully achieved it. Fantastic. Wonderful. So they were the checklists of things I’d made notes on to, to talk about, just to provide a little bit of like educational like interlude in our conversation here. And now I want to hand back to you. Tell us maybe like a top five or something, the things that are absolutely awesome for someone with RA to go away and do either small or big, that you would recommend someone as take away.

Eleanor – Okay, well, wait, what do you mean? So, um, things that I’ve recognized.

Clint – Things from your first hand experience of going through this that you would highly recommend that people would do, and it might be the pull ups, it might be it might be making sure that you start your day with this, or it might be, make sure you meditate or it might be whatever. Some real crucial things.

Eleanor – So I mean, one thing, it’s so simple, and you said it, but drinking water like an obsessed person. I just keep that in my mind. You said that in your book, and I have to think that it’s like a mantra. The more water I drink, the better I feel. And I’m not. Yeah, it’s like an obsessed person. This is my, i’ll show you what I. Oh, I just saw my messy desk because my camera’s following me. But this is what I keep with me. And if I drink this whole thing in a day, that’s a good start. I couldn’t drink two of these in a day, I’ll be honest. But if I finish this bad boy and maybe have another couple of glasses, I think that’s a good amount of water. Like, drink it like an obsessed person. That’s a really good one. I have to admit that Bikram yoga was a huge, huge deal. And I know, I know that we could say hot yoga or power 60, you know, because, yeah, there’s been some bad press on the Bikram yoga. But the moves that you do are efficient and they get the job done in that heat, the extreme heat, it gets the job done. That was such a big deal for me, and I don’t think I would have had these results without that. And it’s not a physical experience there’s been a spiritual experience for me with that. You mentioned meditation. Meditation is really a big part of it. And because I’m really busy, I don’t have time to do yoga and work on my flexibility and meditate. I have to combine them. So I did my hatha yoga background involved chakras. I don’t know if you ever talk about chakras.

Clint – My wife does. Yeah.

Eleanor – Pretty darn important stuff, actually. And it’s kind of sad to me that we don’t talk about it more. I even have some, you know, I’m a Christian and I have some friends who are, Christian, a couple preacher friends, and they’re my friends, but they think that yoga is evil. You know, it gets pretty extreme. Yeah, I don’t know, America’s kind of funny like that sometimes. You meet a lot of people on the country, but, um, that’s real important to me, energetic centers and how we can manipulate our energy and manage our energy by focusing and meditating on these energetic centers and be able to be open rather than clinging to all kinds of mental and emotional states that are less than happy, less than free. So being able to open up energetic centers and let things flow is really important. And that I combined with my yoga and that makes a big difference, that came so much later. But I think that it was a big part of my personal healing. So that’s one gosh, what was another one I was going to say was on the tip of my tongue.

Clint – While you’re thinking of that, I just want to say that’s actually a different category here that you’ve touched upon, which is releasing negative emotional states. Basically like it almost touched on like past trauma release, all these sort of things. We haven’t gone into it, with the time here, I don’t want to like go deep into that. But that is yet another category I think. That if you’re working on your chakras and you’re thinking about a release energy, yet another category beyond just stepping into meditation. So. Okay. Awesome. Have you thought of a couple more?

Eleanor – Yeah. Well, you know, and back to that. Just to add one thing to it, even without being so complex about it, uh, let’s say that you, like, don’t want to do a deep dive into energy centers and chakras, even just deep breath to that end of being able to release any negativity in the body, even if you just don’t want to think about emotion at all and just want to think about soreness and tension. Just a deep breath, and there’s something called ujjayi breath. That’s a that’s a big yogic, yogic breathing, yogic breath. Breathing down into the belly, taking a second before you exhale to think of like, what does it feel like in the body? Where is there tension? Where is there something that I don’t want to feel? And then I’m kind of hooking that onto the exhale as you let it go. And releasing that way, just taking that moment to be mindful and just mental cleansing, just as basic as and simple as that. Just taking a moment for yourself, and you can do it anywhere. You can do it at work, nobody even has to know. All it is, is a deep breath, and you’re the only one that knows what you’re thinking and what you’re releasing and relaxing. That is huge. Um, so that’s the tie that’s attached to the yoga. Um.

Clint – I like the simplicity of that.

Eleanor – Backsliding and being disciplined. It’s pretty important to remember that you got to just stick with it. You can’t give up, don’t backslide. It was really hard for me to become a vegan. I loved eating meat my whole life, and I thought that I needed it. I had been brainwashed to believe that people with type O blood have to have meat. Someone told me that my first time around trying to be a vegetarian, and I got that feeling one day like, oh, I just have to have it, I’m gonna go crazy. And so, you know, I would cave in. I’ve had that feeling being on this program. Like, I’m just going to go crazy if I don’t have some meat. And I just trusted you, and you’re writing, you’re wonderful writing. Meat tastes bad, it tastes bad. You have to load it up with all kinds of sauces and stuff to make it taste good. It’s true. It’s really true. Meat tastes bad. Um. And all these other foods. Vegetables and fruits and grains. They taste good. Um, so. Yeah, just. I thought my body would cave in on itself if I never ate meat. And now I have found out almost a year later, it’s not, it’s doing great. Like, I am stable. My weight is stable. My weight has been stable for like, ten months. I got down to 106lbs really quickly and I’ve stayed right there. I haven’t fluctuated a pound for ten months, just stays there. So that’s a big one. Just don’t backslide.

Eleanor – Another one. Don’t drink alcohol. That was a big one for me. I’m not going to go into my backslide story. It was Thanksgiving. I was like, let’s just eat some turkey and have a salad. It’s okay. And then there was a funeral. Okay. It’s alright. I’ll have a salad. I broke the diet for Thanksgiving. Here’s the funeral. I don’t want to be weird. I’ll eat this ham and I’ll eat this salad. And lo and behold, I got a brand new injury immediately in my knee. And I never had before. Both of my knees started hurting going up and down stairs, so I had to heal from that backsliding. It was pretty remarkable. That went away until February, when I was on top of the world feeling so strong and perfect, and I decided to have an ice skating party on the pond. Wow, that was really exciting. I never thought I’d ice skate again, but here I was completely strong. And what did I do at that ice skating party? I drank a rum and coke and lo and behold, my knee injury started coming back. So no alcohol. Gotta cut the alcohol. That’s what I believe.

Clint – Thank you. Eleanor, this has been fantastic. I’m going to do something to wrap us up here. Um, let’s do a little game here. That’s just very impromptu. Let’s just give a score from 0 to 10. Ten being absolutely, 100% of just a whole bunch of different random thrown at you. Questions here, number one. How confident are you now on being able to control symptoms with rheumatoid arthritis? Should you have another backslide, as you call it, accident in the future?

Eleanor – Boy, I hope that never happens. Um, how confident am I that I can reverse that and get back to this when I’m living? Oh, gosh. I mean, I guess I’m going to go with 98.7 on that one. Yeah, because you never know what’s going to happen. And I’m so used to my life now I’m in my 50s. Like I can’t believe I’m suffering from this. So I don’t want to say 100% because what life can throw at you, you never know. But 98.7.

Clint – Love it. Okay. How much do you enjoy your lifestyle at the moment?

Eleanor – Oh so much. I’m so happy. I’m like, couldn’t be more fulfilled. I never thought my life could turn out like this. I’m able to do everything I ever wanted to do and more. And every day it just seems like every day is more beautiful. So that’s 100% 110%.

Clint – What likelihood do you think someone else who might go through this would succeed if they followed the same level of determination and commitment that you’ve had?

Eleanor – I’m not a doctor, so I don’t want to say 100%. And I’ve talked to so many people that have RA and they are so I don’t know, it just seems like I tell them about this and they instantly just sort of other me like, oh, that’s so good that worked for you. It’s like, I think this could work for anyone. Look what you’re eating right now, and look how you’re sitting in front of a TV, like try this stuff, try, try some exercise, try being a vegan, just try. But yeah, like I would say, like I would give that a 96. I really think, like if anything, it’s going to improve for people, even if they doubt it.

Clint – Yeah. And the last one of this little impromptu question, when you think of your future out of ten, how good do you think it’s going to be?

Eleanor – I think I’m going to be. I don’t want to be 100 years old, but I think I’ll be in my 90s still teaching yoga and I want to retire, can’t wait.

Clint – We just lost our internet, let us down on this last one. I might just wait till the internet catches up to.

Eleanor – The internet, my internet’s freezing.

Clint – Hang on. Once I see you again.

Eleanor – Maybe, I don’t know.

Clint – Yes. It’s back. So if you could just do that one again. So question is when you think about your future, out of ten, how good do you think it’s going to be?

Eleanor – It’s going to be a ten. It’s going to be a ten, I had a I don’t know, a little bit of a doomy, doomy, gloomy mindset as things were starting to fall apart. And now they’re they’re back together better than I ever thought they would be. And I don’t want to live to be 100, but I would be happy to live to be in my 90s, and I think I will. I’ve had friends who lived to be that age and were very active, and I think I’m going to get to be one of those people doing all the things I love playing music, hopefully staying active, teaching yoga, pollination, ecology, my work. But I’ll be retired hopefully 25 years by the time I’m 90. Live in life. So yeah, I give it a ten.

Clint – I love it. Thank you so much for sharing. I’m sort of hesitating. Do you want to share the name of your band in case someone in your area would like to watch? You don’t have to.

Eleanor – No, I will, I will, uh, there are labeled as a prog rock band called Cheer Accident, and they’ve been around for 40 years. So, big history Cheer Accident.

Clint – And what sort of music do you guys produce? And what do you do in the band?

Eleanor – So it’s it’s a very creative band. We’ll do anything from noise improv to prog rock covers. Like right now, we’re playing the band Chicago’s feeling stronger every day. I’m playing keyboards on that one. It’s, uh, you know, creative and sometimes heavy rock music, sometimes very melodic and pretty. Definitely inspired.

Clint – The internet let us down there. So why don’t we, I will just wrap up, wrap things up once the internet comes back. And I’ve got the next guest actually waiting in the room for the next call. So what we’ll do is I’ll. So it’s called what’s it called?

Eleanor – Cheer Accident.

Clint – It’s just going to hang in there while we say goodbye. Okay, let’s let’s just say our goodbyes while the internet’s got enough. Okay, go and check out Eleanor’s band. Thank you very much, Eleanor. It’s been very, very wonderful to have you on the episode today.

Eleanor – Thank you so much for everything you’ve done, Clint.