Ellen shares her inspiring journey of managing rheumatoid arthritis for 27 years, significantly reducing her medication intake and living a vibrant, healthier life.

We discuss in this interview:

• How Ellen was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis 27 years ago and endured numerous challenges, including severe pain and medication side effects.
• Initial treatments like prednisone, Plaquenil, and methotrexate injections.
• Ellen faced difficulties at work due to her condition and maintained compliance with ADA protections for necessary work adjustments.
• Transitioning to a plant-based diet in 2010 and adhering to it strictly led to significant health improvements.
• She embraced Bikram Yoga for increased flexibility and strength, contributing to her overall well-being.
• Ellen started EMDR therapy with Dr. Andrew Leeds to address traumatic childhood memories, improving her mental health and rheumatoid arthritis symptoms.
• Over 11 years, Ellen slowly tapered her methotrexate from a higher dose to just two pills, with hopes of completely discontinuing it soon.
• Her husband has been a supportive partner throughout her journey, despite not fully adopting her diet.
• Ellen’s rigorous exercise routine, including strength training with the guidance of strength coach Carl Reader.
• The progress in Ellen’s health journey is remarkable, especially achieving a state with no rheumatoid arthritis symptoms and the goal of stopping her medication altogether in the near future.
  

Clint – Good day, it’s Clint here. Welcome to another episode of the Rheumatoid Solutions podcast, my guest today is Ellen. Ellen and I have known each other for 11 years, so she and I originally communicated when we were running simple communication software for our program which has since evolved into much bigger and better things. But we’ve known each other from way back then. And then we met in person in 2017 when I was presenting at True North, which is a Health Center in Santa Rosa, California. And she’s been part of our community ever since. And Ellen is going to share today how she’s now on a continual reduction plan with her methotrexate, how she lives with no pain from her rheumatoid arthritis. And despite having this condition for 27 years, she has managed to continually grind out slow, small but consistent improvements with her rheumatoid and tell us today how she’s doing it. So good to see you, Ellen. You look amazing.

Ellen – Good to see you too. You look good too.

Clint – Now, Ellen, you’re sprightly, 72 years old. Take us back to 27 years ago. Give us the bullet points of what life was like in the early RA years before we spend the majority of our call talking about what you’re doing at the moment to taper medications. But wind back the clock, and what did things look like in those early days?

Ellen – Well, I was on some kind of spiral going downhill. I felt sick all the time. I was fatigued, and the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. So I finally got an appointment with a rheumatologist, but it took six weeks to get in and the office manager would not get me in. So my husband went down there and glared at her and said, you got to get my wife in here. And when I got in there, the rheumatologist said, we don’t do this to people. And she said, I almost died. So I was so sick, I even dreamed that I died. And so anyway, I got put on shots and I had to be, I had to do the shot in my arm, according to this office manager. And I fell off the chair when I at home when I did, I, I was just so freaked out and scared of having RA. I cannot even tell. I was like an emotional basket case. So I just, you know, started. I had to start prednisone because I had terrible pain in my shoulder, which had started like maybe a couple months before this terrible pain in my shoulder. And it just so I, it’s, it’s just a lot of evolution of different rheumatologists and just my blood pressure went up when I was 55 and somehow I found you Clint Paddison on the internet. Back in the days when you were just starting it pretty much, I think.

Clint – Yeah, yeah, we’ve been at this for 16 years, so we’d have been only yeah, like three, 4 or 5 maximum years into, into what we, what we began back then. And so can you rattle off just off memory, sort of the treatments that you’ve been on in the past and how it was.

Ellen – Yeah. I started with prednisone because it was excruciating in my shoulder and I couldn’t lift my arms. I had to get therapy in the pool, and I was able to gain that back, the range of motion back. And I got TMJ, which was horrible, I had to get go to this therapy and the therapist was weird, that finally went away. I had swelling in my knees and I almost got, I tell you, so much swelling everywhere. Every once in a while I’d have to do a prednisone burst, which is like 1 or 2 weeks of starting with a higher number of prednisone and then just going down and, and waiting for the methotrexate to start. So I started with I think Plaquenil, which made my heart kind of go crazy. It just made it just kind of went, really, it was an irregular heartbeat. That’s what happened with that drug. So I got off of that, and then I got on a sulfasalazine and I had to get on the encoded one because it hurt my abdomen so much. And of course, I was on methotrexate shots and I didn’t want to do the shots, so I’d go to a friend’s house who knew how to do shots, and it took me 20 minutes to do a shot each time I just and we’d laugh. I mean, I was like, I mean, it’s like a pretty pathetic existence, you know, for a while there, when I was first starting out with RA.

Clint – I’m picturing you guys laughing, doing the shots. It’s almost like, it’s like the RA version of teenagers doing some recreational drugs and can’t stop laughing at each other. And you guys are off to the side doing methotrexate shots and laughing. So it’s sort of dark humor. And then you took those shots for methotrexate for years, right?

Ellen – A couple of years, then I got into pills because they ran out of the shot formula or whatever I had, I went on to pills. And I had to work, I took one year off work, then I had to work and I was surrounded by coworkers that would complain about me and just made my life and the manager. I had to get my union involved to show, to tell the manager and my supervisor that there’s a law, ADA to protect me, so they backed off. But it’s like it’s hard to work, it was hard working with RA, I worked for Superior Court where I live. And it’s like some of those people were really difficult, made my life really difficult, you know, like, because I’d have to take this little nap. When I had a break back then and 2000 or whatever, I had to, like lie on this futon for for 15 minutes so I could get back up and do the work again. Yes. Very pathetic.

Clint – Methotrexate can do that.

Ellen – And I used to have a lot more pain. Sometimes I get into these terrible flares where I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t walk more than, you know. I just couldn’t do it, it was really hard to walk, you know, just a little bit at a time. And I, and I knew that I was just had to get help. I had to get that prednisone burst again. And then eventually I got on prednisone, a low dose where I couldn’t get off of it for like 18 months or something, 12 months. And it took me so long, I got down to like one milligram or half a milligram or a quarter of a milligram, had to go back up to two and then back down. Finally took everything I had in my mind and soul and body just to get off of that truck. And then I found you and changed my diet. And I actually changed my diet to plant based in 2010, I did it then. So in 2015 is when I started your program, which was great. And Doctor Klaper was there right with me because I was Dr. Klapper’s patient. He was my GP back then and Dr. McDougall. I did his ten-day program in 2013.

Clint – It’s good you’ve brought in the big guns.

Ellen – Gone through hell. Okay. Yeah.

Clint – But it’s paid off. Right. So since let’s say since 2015, the first period of time after that, walk us through that period of time in just a few minutes, and then we’ll concentrate on the more recent stuff. Okay. So from 2015 until, say, when you started tapering the methotrexate, talk us through that.

Ellen – 2015 I was following like Dr. Klapper and Dr. McDougall. It wasn’t enough, I was still flaring, I was having a hard time. And so I got onto your program, and I stayed in my journal, and I kept writing in my journal. I kept asking question after question after question. Could I have herbs or could I have onion, blah, blah, blah. And I would just and you’d always answer me every single time. So I developed some trust with you regarding getting well. The whole thing back then. I’m going to get well. I’m going to get off the methotrexate, I started with that back in 2015. And then you said, why don’t you try Bikram yoga? And I thought, what you know, I don’t want to do that. You know, I’m so, you know, stiff. And I tried to ride a bike and I could hardly do it, and I was a mess and walking, you know, and I also had osteopenia going on back then too. I mean, I had that going on and so, but I stuck to your food program. I never went off it, I have not gone off it in 11 years, not once, maybe had some strawberry jam with sugar. Well that’s not really going off because that was a mistake.

Clint – You need to have a most compliant badge.

Ellen – Yeah. One time I ate some chips by accident and I spit them out. I just couldn’t handle it. I thought, what? No, no, what am I doing? You know, I freaked out and just guy went into the other room. I was at a party and just spit him out and I was okay after that. That freaked me out.

Clint – Have you been able to make it work? Do you does your husband eat the same way? Do you eat at restaurants? Like. How are you?

Ellen – Well, at first he liked to have milk still on his coffee or his tea. You know, he drank black tea back then. So I shove it into the back of the fridge. I learned that from, I think, Mary McDougall. And then I got some kind of agreement with him where he would eat these foods that were not on the program outside the house. So he had a shed he kept like his treats in there, you know, or he’d eat, he’d go out every once in a while, he’d go out to eat with a friend or whatever. So he has been supportive this whole time.

Clint – Yeah.

Ellen – Pretty much. And he finally quit drinking milk. He’s like, got his own program going for himself I think. He’s like, he’s still like eats at the grandkids house, stuff that’s not on the program or goes out for breakfast and has, you know, breakfast foods that are not on the program.

Clint – But he’s supported throughout this whole time.

Ellen – Supported me the whole time. Yeah.

Clint – So you’ve had the support of your husband throughout this whole time, which is fantastic. And then talk about now when you started to taper the medications.

Ellen – Well, I tried water fasting with Dr. Klaper a couple of times, but the RA would come raging back and I tried, I did Bikram yoga for five years. That took the swelling down after like five times at Bikram yoga, that swelling in my knees started to go down. And I don’t do it anymore because of that Covid thing. But, um, I think in my future, I would like to go back to that someday.

Clint – Tapering down the methotrexate. And I know that it’s not as simple.

Ellen – Oh yes.

Clint – Yeah. It’s because it’s been going on for a long time. You, you started, you went back up a little bit I recall. Then you dropped again and then you built some steadiness. So what did that look like.

Ellen – Well I kept, I’ve always kept a little notebook otherwise because I used to forget when I took my methotrexate. And then that kind of was too hard for me to deal with. So I have kept a little book and I got down to four pills instead of five. And I did that for probably a whole year. So this is like a long period, 11 years. So I mean, at first I couldn’t go down on the methotrexate, all I could do was I got better in Bikram yoga. I mean, that was like huge, huge results in there from that. And I was able to tolerate it somehow where others would walk out of the room and know I was in it 125°F or whatever. I mean, I could only when the certain teacher would have it up that high though, but most of the time was, I think, 110, 108 or something. So yeah, so I just, I tried over and over to, to reduce my medication, and then I get a swollen knee and I’d have to go back up again. Like, I tried four pills one week and three pills the next week for a whole year, you know?

Ellen – And then I meanwhile, I was watching what at first things like pineapple would I get swelling, which was really kind of interesting or certain things like soy would, I felt really bad when I ate that. So I had certain food sensitivities at first, but then they were gone now I don’t seem to have any food sensitivities at all. You know, as far as your program and I was like eating some anyway, nuts and stuff, but now I’ve stopped that because my cholesterol went up to you know, it’s not it went to 169 instead of 159 or something 158. So now I’m back down to just your program, plus some flax seeds. Or I’m going to add chia seeds because the doctor doctor William Bruce Switzer. But anyway, now, you know, I was able to do 4343 and get the approval from my rheumatologist. And then I started eMDR therapy.

Clint – Yes. So you’re now down just to the one pill, right?

Ellen – I’m down to two pills that’s like five milligrams. I started with Doctor Andrew Leeds eMDR therapy in um 2020 3rd August. And it’s been almost three years, and I, this year I’ve been able to I got down to three pills and now I’m down to two pills. It’s like a, I can’t believe it, It’s just. And I have no symptoms whatsoever.

Clint – Is this the first time ever you’ve been this low with your methotrexate?

Ellen – No. In 2001 or 2002, I was like didn’t have any,I went into like, I don’t know if you used the word remission, I can’t remember, but for one year I didn’t have any symptoms. Of course, it came raging back.

Clint – And that was just for a year or two after you had.

Ellen – Mostly been, over all these 27 years. It’s a lot of raging. Not any more, though, no more raging. With RA anymore.

Clint – And do you feel a sense of relief or euphoria or because like how what’s the emotional state that you have around being able to come down off your methotrexate after all these years.

Ellen – Well, I feel confident at the moment because I have no symptoms, and something happened in eMDR where I’ve gone through all these. I had a very psychologically abusive father, so I went through every memory, and eMDR is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. So I look at lights that go back and forth for like 45 seconds at a time and work with the therapist and think of the bad, the disruptive memory, the disturbing memory, one at a time, one memory at a time, and then check in with how I’m feeling and then just look at these lights and just, it’s like I’m reprocessing this memory until I get down like he’ll ask me, where are you on this memory? How disturbing is it? Is it from 1 to 10? And I’ll say, well, it’s an eight because it still is disturbing after all these, you know, after being a little child, or a young adult or whatever. So after all this therapy, I cleared out my dad’s memories, and then I worked on other disturbing memories, and I feel different now, I don’t feel the same, i feel like the RA has left me. So let’s hope, I’m hoping, in five months. The rheumatologist said I could go down to zero methotrexate.

Clint – How’s that feel?

Ellen – Pretty exciting. it’s going to be a new territory for me, so I’ll just stay on your program for the rest of my life. That’s my plan.

Clint – Yeah. You’re on five milligrams methotrexate now. A lot of rheumatologists will just take someone off at that level because they consider it not a therapeutic dose. But if you found that the difference between four pills at the ten to the 7.5 to the five? You notice it, don’t you? Like for you that’s significant.

Ellen – Yeah. It’s pretty, it’s very remarkable because it’s like I’ve never been here before. This is what’s happening to me. And I’m becoming, this therapist teaches assertiveness, So there’s this book, how to, how to well, I can’t quite remember the name of them. When I, when I say no, I feel guilty that book. So I’m working, working with that book, learning all the assertiveness terms like broken record and things like that, and so I’m learning that I’m not a bad person for since a little child, I felt like I was a bad person. No, it was like in me so deep that. Part of my psyche or whatever. So so that’s gone. I mean, it’s, you know, it tries to rear its head a little bit, but I’d say most I don’t have any too many more disturbing memories left really at all. I think pretty much gone through them all.

Clint – So not that I want you to describe them or even think about them again in this moment. But through those sessions, if they were to in later sessions, talk about memories that you’d worked on previous sessions, do those memories then have less of a sting in the tail to them noticeably?

Ellen – Yeah, they go down to a zero.

Clint – Wow.

Ellen – Well, it takes sometimes two weeks with a memory. It’ll go from like an eight or a seven down to a zero. But the therapist is so good, doctor Andrew Leeds, he’s got he’s got books and things online. He says. Workshops and stuff. He’s an expert, so I’m really fortunate that he took me on. So yeah, so like some memories are hubs like some of my memories are like a hub for what was going on in that time period. So my father literally, I was 19 or something. He gave me a book on throwing up and it would lead to euphoria, and I went ahead and started doing that like a fool and for ten years I was doing that off and on, and I had to get therapy for that too. And I got out of that myself, I started my therapist at the time gave me a meditation practice, so this meditation practice that was like seven minutes. I started at age 25 and it was like, relaxing and just looking at just being you have basically just being with yourself, just sitting with yourself.at first I was like all nervous and but after a while, it’s like I just daily just sit with myself for like seven minutes and just look at my mind and notice what was going on, and that was the beginning of healing from the beginning of getting out of throwing up. And then soccer also played, played soccer from 25 to 40. And that got me out of throwing up because you couldn’t play. When you throw, you’d be too sick to play. Oh yeah, I have quite a history with my father.

Clint – If anyone’s listening to this and they’ve had what they would self-describe as a traumatic childhood or have had traumatic events, how strongly would you recommend the therapy, Which is the eMDR therapy that you’ve been through in the context for trying to help their rheumatoid arthritis.

Ellen – I recommend it 100%. It seems to be the one thing that’s pushed all this stuff. It’s gotten me healed up. It’s supposed to like it changes cells according to the doctor leads. It changes your cells, and I’m and he’s had other patients that have gotten. Well, I’m not the only one. I think it’s just a hypothesis right now that it can that it can work with autoimmune patients just of hypotheses but, somebody got that out there. I sent you that link.

Clint – Yeah.

Ellen – I’m 100% because why not? Why not do it? You know, why suffer if you were like me, that you, i mean, it’s like you have these childhood things and then you just you do them because you’ve been doing them so long and you were a child, I didn’t get any guidance back then from my father. And there was nothing, I was nothing, it was like cruelty kind of from him all the time. So anyway, now I’m clear all that out, put it in the garbage down up at Spring Lake in the garbage can. The lake like near where I live.

Clint – You’ve also been working steadily on getting stronger. What is your workout Routine.

Ellen –

Clint – Look like at the moment?

Ellen – Yes, and well, I’ve had my bit with my problems with osteopenia starting at age 55, and they made such a big deal out of it back then, but.

Ellen –

Ellen – If, I look back and that was not a big deal, I was still okay at osteopenia a little bit, and I still have osteopenia in my back, but my spine, but it’s only -1.5 and it’s holding there. So I do this Meridian Live platform twice a day for ten minutes. And that I think is helping my back. I don’t think it’s helping my, it might be helping my hips a little bit, but it really must be helping my back, and then I walk five times a week, at least 1010 miles a week. And then started with Carl Reader back in, Discovery had a discovery call with Carl Reader, around April 27th, 2022.

Clint – Yeah. For our audience, Carl is our In-house strength building functional movement coach who takes everyone through physical therapy exercises when they join with us. So he becomes their right hand man for all things exercise related. So you found him extremely helpful, haven’t you?

Ellen – Oh he’s wonderful. He’s a nice guy. So we started and, back then I was, I think I was having some problems because of Covid and all that. I was like cooped up and my,I got osteoporosis, I think it was 2020 or something. So I got that diagnosis, and so I got, I asked him to help me with that, but he created a program for me, and first it was a discovery call. But then I see him every once in a while, for a whole hour with Carl Reader on Zoom, and then he’ll go over. He developed a program for me, different exercises and and now we I saw him this morning and I’m because I can he’s I can lift like 20lbs on a sitting in the chair squat, squat from a chair. I can do 20lbs. So yeah, last night I did five times seven, 35 times of that. So I’m looking for exercises that are going to build my, the top of my femur bone is where the problem is my hips are, hips are holding the same as two years ago. It’s my, top of my femur bone that’s like minus three on both hips.

Ellen – And for some reason, my left hip on the top of the femur bone got worse the last two years, which I don’t know why, but it looks like I’m going to be like this morning. Carl taught me how to do a deadlift from the top of a bar. I put my Husband had a, um, I think it’s a curl bar or whatever, 15Lbs, I started with that because I have a 20lbs bar too, but I don’t think I’m quite ready for the 20lbs bar. So he taught me how to lift the deadlift from with a 15lbs bar, and he said I had excellent form, so I’m, and then he helped me like I put the, put the bar on this box and he said, draw a line and you’re not going to, you’re not to put the bar over this line on top of the box. Just stay right. Put the bar back where that before the line and then, you stick your hips back and you keep kind of a straight back and then you get your feet close to the bar and you lift using your hips. Your bottoms of your feet and not your arms, because my arms are bent, my arms are bent since 2009 and I was on methotrexate then, so and I wasn’t on your food thing. Now that I’m been on your program the whole time I’ve been on your 11 years, your program 11 years, I don’t have any damage, which is pretty remarkable because I just eat plants. So anyway, Carl is a remarkable guy and he’s, and then I, he saw me this morning a little bit.

Clint – Have you, and have you noticed steady consistent strength gains with with your physical therapy over the years.

Ellen – Yeah, well, I got this pain in my back. So, I’ve gone to a different physical therapist than Carl Reader and that I have a kind of a back program I do on the bed and it’s like, so I do that, and so that I’ve developed strength and but yeah, I’m stronger than I, I’m stronger now than I probably when I was 55 years old. I’m stronger. I mean, we’re going back to when I played soccer, when I was I had strong legs back then. I mean, I was like, I had some injuries, but I was strong. It’s like I’m getting back to that again, and even though I’m 72, I believe that I can do it, and I was inspired last night, there’s a guy named Anatoli on YouTube and he does pranks at weightlifting gyms and he’s from the Ukraine, and he made me laugh so hard and that, but it’s like he’s just a little guy, a little guy compared these giant guys in the gym, and so I thought, God, I know I can just keep going.

Clint – Yeah. The guy who.

Ellen – Just by watching somebody like him.

Clint – In a janitor outfit with the blues.

Ellen – Yeah, yeah.

Ellen – He’s hilarious. Yeah, anyway, so yeah, I think, I think I’m getting stronger. I’m a little.

Clint – Stronger.

Ellen – A little I but now I’m going to see Doctor Keith, I’m going to see Doctor Keith McCormick. He’s the osteoporosis doctor. He’s a chiropractor, but he wrote I think great bones, and so I read that whole 500 page book and I saw him in 2024 in June, and now I’m going to see him again in a couple in a month to get back on track of why I’m, what happened with my left top of my femur bone here. So he’s going to help me, and I went on his supplements instead of the supplements I’ve been on to see if I’m going to test that, to see if two years of his supplements do anything. And, and then I went to True North a week ago and saw Peter Sultana, Doctor Peter. I see he’s my GP plant based guy. I see him once in a while and he said I could take that supplement because it has a little more calcium and it’s not plant based calcium, but he said it’s okay, it’s only 500mg if I spread it out, so I’m just I’m going to try that for like a couple of years.

Clint – And so just to sort of summarize then 27 years of rheumatoid arthritis, initially on higher doses of methotrexate and was stuck on steroids for a year and a half, that was exceptionally difficult for you eventually to get off. Once you’d got it down to two and then one milligram, you’d tried the Plaquenil, which gave you the giant heartbeats, you’d tried the sulfasalazine, but eventually it became a methotrexate standard treatment for you over a long time. Initially Injections, then back to pills. And you’ve been on pills for a long time. Never at an exceptionally high dose. But in recent five, six years, it was sort of like, around that ten, 12.5mg. But being able now slowly year after year and now down from the 12.5, ten, 7.5, and now your lowest that you’ve had it since 2001, and this coincides with a few key things. One adherence 11 years to the Paterson plant based style diet, steadily increasing strength with the help of Carl, and also implementing your own routines. Obviously, in between those sessions and also doing this eMDR therapy in conjunction with Doctor Andrew Leeds and in clearing out childhood trauma memories so that they don’t have a power over you. therefore, I imagine having a big impact on your nervous system or enabling you to bring your symptoms now to become non-existent on the lowest level of methotrexate that you’ve been on in, let’s say, 25 years. 20, 22 years, conservatively and going from strength to strength with the slight creep of the bone mineral density status. But you’re working closely with an expert to, to truncate that. So it’s a good story. Ellen 72 and coming off your drugs. It’s a good story.

Ellen – Yeah. I think doctor McDougall would be proud of me. Doctor Klaper too.

Clint – He would. You’re doing great, so your husband should be proud. Everyone. Everyone who knows your history should be high fiving you and say, keep up the amazing work.

Ellen – Oh, thank you so much. And then I drink celery juice in the morning when I get up two cups of celery juice. And that helps with the fatigue. Celery juice helps with the fatigue for me. Works. It works pretty well.

Ellen – Yeah.

Clint – I’ve always found that like a real pick me up fast too, and of course, once you, if the trend continues and you’re able to get off the methotrexate entirely, you will experience a step wise improvement to energy levels that feels almost like you’ve been handed back a little battery charger that’s been missing for since the day you started it.

Ellen – From a lot of my life yeah. Wow. That’ll be wonderful if that happens. Yeah, I’m kind of not sure about that, so I’ll have to wait and see.

Clint – Sure, yeah. There’s no rush, i mean, everything you’ve done, you’ve done steadily, slowly, and so why change things at this last, last hurdle, you know?

Clint – Ellen, congratulations. Thanks for sharing. I really appreciate it. Great to see you, and keep up the amazing work.

Ellen – Thank you. I’m so happy I was able to talk to you today, and I’m just so grateful. I’m always so grateful to you, even though I’m not on your program, posting too much, i’m always there pretty much in case somebody needs help.

Clint – And I’m very grateful for that. So thanks very much, Ellen. We’ll talk again in another 12 months or so, perhaps.

Ellen – That sounds good. Okay. Thank you. Bye bye.