We explore five essential tactics to face Rheumatoid Arthritis, that have helped many to lead a healthier, happier, and pain-free life.

• Medications play a crucial role in RA treatment. However, certain drugs can negatively impact gut health, which is vital for managing RA symptoms.
• Lifestyle must be impeccably aligned to combat RA effectively. This includes following a plant-based diet and embracing comprehensive wellness practices
• Consistency is key in managing rheumatoid arthritis, implementing our strategy diligently every day without exception
• The importance of staying committed and avoiding distractions
• Physical strength is fundamental, as building muscle around inflamed joints can alleviate pain and improve functionality

You’re trying your hardest to get out of pain with rheumatoid arthritis and it’s not working. I’m going to show you why. In this video, I’m going to go through the five essential strategies that you need to put in place to be able to reverse joint pain with rheumatoid arthritis. These are the exact same strategies that I used myself back when I was raging with inflammation, with C-reactive protein of 50, with pain in my fingers, wrists, left knee, both ankles, feet. I couldn’t even take my hat off my head. And I went from that to be able to get my crp back to 0.6 and be pain free, and one of the best at pull ups and monkey bars at the gym. I’m going to share with you these strategies, which are the same again, that I’ve used to help people over the past 13 years to be able to reverse their joint pains and be able to live a normal, healthy, happy life again.

So what are these five strategies? Well, my favorite one is the last one, but we’ll get to that in a moment. The first one that we’re going to go through is actually medications. Medications are nearly always prescribed to rheumatoid arthritis patients. In fact, 97% of people with RA at some point are put onto methotrexate, which is a low dose chemotherapy drug which has taken either in a tablet or injectable form. That’s the one that I was on. However, there’s so many different types of medications. These range from steroids and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to, disease modifying antirheumatic drugs or DMARDS, and even biologic drugs and infusions. These different range of drugs have a different impact on the body and a different potential set of side effects. There is a degree of algorithm that’s being followed when the rheumatologist prescribes these drugs to you. They’re following typically something like the American College of Rheumatology guidelines, where patients with a certain condition and symptom level are given this sort of drug and then their progress through a sequence. If they fail this, then add this, fail this, add this. Doing well on this, then keep this, etc.. These medications are administered in the format of treating the particular patient and their symptoms and requirements. But what is less focused upon is their impact on gut health. Where we specialize in and what we help people through our coaching services is to restore gut health. Because the studies are very clear now that the degree of pathogens or problematic particles getting into the bloodstream correlates with the amount of disease activity in RA patients. One particular illustration of this is something called lipopolysaccharide. This is a substance that’s normally in the membranes of bacteria that live in your bowel. What’s been found very definitively is that the amount of this substance that enters the bloodstream correlates to the amount of symptoms that patients have. And therefore, if we can stop the amount of this stuff coming from the bowel and getting into the bloodstream, we can then dramatically lower symptoms.

Now, some medications actually disrupt the microbiome or the collection of bacteria in the bowel, and therefore even tend to exacerbate this problem instead of aiming to help it. There are some medications that do not help in the gut area. One is nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. So these are your painkiller anti-inflammatories. You’ll know these as common brands that you can pick up at your pharmacy, and they are often prescribed on a regular basis whenever there is some pain, take one of these anti-inflammatory drugs. So these medications can cause more of what we call leaky gut. Leaky gut being the migration of the particles into the bloodstream. So I’m not saying just like the rest of this video, that this is any kind of instruction, none of this is medical advice. I’m just suggesting that if you’re taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications to manage your pain, that science shows us that there is a good chance that this may be exacerbating the area of your body that actually needs healing when you’re trying to get out of symptoms using lifestyle strategies. So have a chat to your doctor about the use of these medications. Maybe there is something more suitable long term that you can use that’s not going to have any contra indicative effects on the gut or counterproductive impact.

Another one, steroids. Now, steroids, when used in conjunction with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, exacerbate gut health issues. So if you’re using both of those, then this could be a platform to go and have a discussion with your rheumatologist. Again, I’m not saying here that you cannot use steroids, you shouldn’t use steroids. Is it the best long term medication for rheumatoid arthritis? Again, the American College of Rheumatology guidelines suggest that steroids should be used for the lowest length of time in the lowest dose possible. So have a chat with your rheumatologist. Because what we do when we work with people and a lot of them are on steroids, we work with them in the rheumatologist as a nice group of three to work on a plan to have them where rheumatologists degrees migrate away from that steroid using a combination of lifestyle strategies predominantly, and sometimes an adjustment with regards to their other medications that they’re taking. There are other medications which aren’t classic RA medications, such as proton pump inhibitors; these are antacids. These medications can have a terrible impact on the balance of the microbiome. This is the diversity and the healthy species of bacteria that live in your colon. They can also be associated with an increase in small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Again a different part of the bowel or a different part of the digestive tract, but again an area that is associated with RA symptoms.

So proton pump inhibitors, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and steroids are ones that are not in an ideal group of medications. If we want to have an ideal beautiful digestive tract and a healthy microbiome within that digestive tract. Getting the meds right is crucial. All the lifestyle work that you’re doing at the moment to trying to get well can be undermined by the wrong medications. And so this is something that we really help our clients with.

Number two is the lifestyle strategy that you currently have in place. This of course includes diet and your physical therapy, vitamin D, omega three, HRV. It includes your oral health microbiome, and it includes stress reduction strategies. All of this stuff has to be absolutely perfect. So if you’re banging your head against a wall thinking, why aren’t I getting better? Your plan is very likely off. And if your plan is off by only 1%, this is not only going to result in unfavorable outcomes in the long term, but they might be significantly unpleasing. If you get on an airplane that’s 1% off its direction. When you’re leaving from Los Angeles to go to London, you won’t only miss the airport, you’re probably going to miss the whole city. And so the lifestyle strategy has to be perfect. The path up the mountain to success is very, very narrow. And so just to give you some insights here, so that you get a little bit of a grasp as to what’s necessary based on the science and based on the feedback we’ve received and the work that we’ve refined for 13 years. You need to be on a plant based diet. Okay. If you’re not eating a plant based diet or close to a plant based diet, you’re wasting your time. Your bacteria in your bowel they thrive on fiber. If you’re eating a diet that doesn’t contain mostly, mostly fiber containing foods, then you’re not adequately feeding and restoring your desperately fiber seeking bacteria in your bowel. Okay, so that’s a start. And then within this topic, there are so many additional breakdown categories from an elimination process to eliminate food sensitivities. In addition to that, you’ve got food combining the timing of foods, the quantity of foods, which foods, of course, and the whole sequence of how to put all this together. So just the sort of the headline topic here, given we’ve got so much to get through in this video, is at least be on a plant based diet. All right. So that’s the start of it.

Next, you must optimize all those other strategies within the lifestyle category to get this right. If you are only doing diet, for example, and you’re missing all these other bits and bobs that need to be optimized, you’re just not going to improve. This is the Godzilla of diseases. This isn’t high blood pressure. This isn’t high cholesterol. This isn’t type two diabetes, which comparatively are a walk in the park. This is rheumatoid arthritis. And so we’ve got to have a multifaceted 360-degree approach to achieve maximum health, not just health in one area. Okay. So you’ve got to get your lifestyle right. So if you’re not improving and you are on the right medications, being that it’s one that is designed for long term use and you’re not relying on short term mopping up kind of medications like painkillers, steroids and taking antacids and stuff like that. So if your medications are okay and you’re not improving, then a huge likelihood is you’re just on the wrong plan. I’m sorry. You’re just not doing the right things or enough of them.

Number three is the daily implementation of the right plan. You can have the absolute most exquisite, perfect roadmap to get to the top of Mount Everest, every single foothold, every bit of equipment provided to you in your backpack. You can even have the Sherpa right next to you on the climb, telling you which part of the mountain requires which strategy. But if you’re not doing the right things every single day on repeat, you won’t get to the summit. In the case of rheumatoid arthritis, this means implementing the strategy every single day. The inflammation in the joints don’t take a day off. It’s not like on Monday rheumatoid arthritis gives your joints a break and you don’t have any pain. It is as relentless as you know the sun is going to come up the next day. You are going to wake up with that same cycle morning stiffness beginning around 3 or 4 a.m., an uncomfortable night’s sleep because of pain. Pain as you step out of the bed in the morning on either the feet, the ankles, or the knees or the hips. Struggling to do daily simple tasks like brushing your teeth, picking up a kettle, cutting vegetables because of wrists, whatever. Whatever it is, you’re running that routine every day, driven by inflammation because of particles getting into your bloodstream. Therefore, you cannot take a day off with rolling out the right strategy every single day in a way that is like a systematized project rather than some ad hoc or try a little bit of this, I’ll try a little bit of that. This disease requires the daily implementation. So you might like the metaphor of building one brick for the house of health every day lay a brick, lay a brick, lay a brick. You cannot not lay the brick. So that could be a factor, because if you have all the information but you’re not doing it every day, you’re not going to get well, and you must do the work to get the outcome.

Number four is giving up and chasing shiny objects without seeing this through. A lot of what you’re waiting for is just with patience, waiting on changes in your bowel. There’s a concept with microbes called quorum sensing, and this is a phenomenal concept in which bacteria often don’t do anything and act in the way that they Biomechanically can until there is enough of them around them to feel like they can win if they conduct some kind of event, to try and occupy space, or to take down their invaders or pathogens that are nearby. So what this means is that let’s say you have 40 million of a certain type of bacteria. They may sit idle and do nothing. And when I say do nothing, do nothing beneficial for you, which of the hierarchy of requests from these microbes is to receive the production of short chain fatty acids, which are substances that heal the gut wall. You can be waiting and waiting and waiting for weeks, sometimes months, for bacteria to assist in a collaborative way to build more short chain fatty acids and quorum sensing. Is this concept where finally there is enough bacteria. And like magic, literally like magic. The bacteria sense each other. They’re aware of their numbers because they’ve been fed well through your plant based diet for long enough. And then they go, boom! Let’s work some magic. They release this substance called antimicrobial peptides, which are like a toxin for pathogens around them. And they start working with other bacteria to produce short chain fatty acids. And when that day happens, your life changes. Because you wake up on that Monday morning and you feel a little bit better. It doesn’t hurt as much to get out of bed in the morning. Your feet don’t hurt as much. You walk a little bit more smoother and you think to yourself, what just happened? And the truth is, you can’t even see it. It’s going on on the inside. We need to allow enough time for things that we don’t control as a human being to occur within inside our body, to influence our lives positively.

So if you’re only one week into your lifestyle changes and you’re wondering, hey, how come I don’t feel better yet? Now, you know, some things just take a little longer than a week. And I’ll give you, by way of example, when we work closely with clients, one week the back foot is still on the starting line. Okay. So what we want to see is at least 1% improvement per week. That is our guideline. If we’re getting 1% improvement per week, we win this game because 1% compounds with 1% more compounds with 1% more. It’s not just adding, adding, adding. We’re building 1% on the cumulative improvements of the previous week. So set your expectations up to success. Let go of words like should. I should be better by tomorrow. I should be better by next week. All that’s going to do is create conflict inside you. The only should is that I should keep doing this for life. Because I know I’m on the right plan. Okay. Bullet point number two. And that if I continue to roll this out with discipline every single day, bullet point number three, then I am going to keep doing this for as long as it takes, because I know that this process will work for me. Okay. Which is bullet point number four. So don’t give up. There is no way that you can fail unless you give up. By way of example, I did 12 months going to Bikram yoga every single day just so that I could walk the next day. All right.

Let me give you another example. I did two different sessions of Bikram yoga sequence morning and afternoon, every day on our honeymoon, just so that I could continue to have a little few hours throughout the day with my wife. When we’re over in Hawaii to explore a little bit and then back to my workouts. I ate nothing but a raw food vegan diet for eight months at the exclusion of everything that I loved, just so that I could lower my C-reactive protein. Your level of expectation of what is required needs to be limitless. Have this mindset, I will do whatever it takes, and I’m willing to wait it out as long as possible, or as long as needed to be able to get the results that I want. Okay, so that’s bullet point number four. You can see I’m very passionate about this stuff. This is close to my heart.

The final strategy that you need to put in place is get stronger, get stronger. Why didn’t I just bundle this in with bullet point number two, which is the lifestyle strategies, which included physical therapy. It’s because this needs its own category. Nine out of ten people that we work with closely when we help them get out of pain are very, very weak when they start working with us. And so, yes, we get them onto the perfect diet, we get them onto the perfect strategies with all the other things from Harvey, Omega three, vitamin D, stress reduction strategies, oral health strategies, tips, tricks, nuances that we explain to them and put them in a community. Surround them by experts, coaches, medical doctors, physical therapists. We put everything around them. And you know what? My job is on our coaching calls that I run three times a week is get everyone to focus on their strength building. Because if you build more strength around joints that are inflamed, you will, with that strategy alone, reduce inflammation in that joint. The obstacle that always comes up is I don’t have enough energy or it hurts to move my joints. That’s everybody. That’s not special snowflake kind of situation. That’s every single person with this disease. So they avoid using the joint and it gets worse and worse and worse. I had a left elbow that was swollen so much the doctor told me, don’t use it if it hurts. What did I do? Didn’t use it, trusted the medical advice. What happened? Complete synovectomy in my left elbow. Total disaster of an approach with RA.

So when the right one started to hurt, I said there’s no way in the world I’m going to do what I did with the left one. The left one had the worst strategy known to human existence. So what I’m going to do, I’m going to move that right elbow more than I could ever imagine an elbow could be moved. And I was moving that through repetitions thousands of times per day. That elbow never ended up in surgery, even though the surgeon said, I’ll see you to operate on the right elbow, it never required surgery. And now I can use these elbows, both of them, in ways that are limitless, and my work that I do at the gym is as good as anyone my age on the monkey bars, pull ups and all with elbows that have damage because of inflammation. That was done years ago. Because I focus on strength. And even if you’ve never been to the gym, and even if you’ve never known how to use a resistance band or dumbbell in your life, you better learn. You better start getting this as part of your skill set, because you won’t solve inflammation with your joints even with the previous four strategies, unless you get this right. Because we’ve got an upstream problem right where things are starting that’s coming from our digestive or oral areas where stuff’s getting in the bloodstream, and then we’ve got our downstream problem, which is the effect it’s having on our joints. So we can’t only address upstream with these earlier strategies. There’s a consequence that needs to be mopped up, needs to be fixed from downstream, which are now the joint problems. So we’ve got to locally fix the joints because of what they’ve been through. Using strength building strategies.

If you need help with any of the stuff that I’ve gone through in this video, we can help you with that. We offer a discovery call, which is a way of getting a free plan to see what needs to happen to put the strategies into your life so that all of these things can be rolled into your life, and you can see how to get outcomes that you dream of, whether that be to reduce inflammation in the feet, the ankles, the knees, the hips, elbows, shoulders, wrists, hands, or even TMJ jaw pain some people have, or whether or not you want to go on a holiday or spend time with the grandkids and be able to lift up the grandkids or whatever it might be. We can show you on that call how that might be done. So if you’d like to speak to us, you can take action. Take a look around this video. You might be able to find a way of doing that. In the meantime, subscribe to the channel. I’m putting out a lot of content around how to reverse RA symptoms. If you like it, subscribe and I’ll see you in the next video.