We discuss how:
- At a point in his life, Pat literally started to ‘slow down’
- He couldn’t even close the car door, and struggled to move without significant pain
- He eventually got diagnosed with RA and put on medications
- The drugs brought some relief initially, but the improvements weren’t enough
- He started with prednisolone and methotrexate and then added Arava to the mix
- Pat then started to do his own research and came across the Paddison Program
- With it, he managed to get to a stage where he was ‘functioning again’ and then constantly improve on it
- He found the mix of diet, exercise and stress avoidance was the key to his recovery
- It’s more than one year now that Pat is completely drug-free and symptom-free
Clint Today I’ve got a guest from Perth which is in Western Australia, and it’s late at night for him but he’s been very kind and set up a time that was convenient for me so I’ve got Morning Sunshine and he’s got late at night fluorescent lights. But Pat thank you so much for coming on this episode to share your transformation with your rheumatoid arthritis.
Pat Absolute My pleasure. Happy to be here.
Clint Yes. You sent through a document to me that was really detailed of all the ups and downs and the pitfalls and the successes and ultimately the position that you’ve got into now which is really an incredible transformation as I mentioned. But can you in your own words just give us this brief summary of what we’re about to listen to or watch here for the next sort of 45 minutes or so.
Pat Yeah. Sure. So basically I was going along just fine in life, and got to a stage where I started to just slow down. And that slow down just got more and more rapid and significant. And before I was actually diagnosed those getting to the stage where I was struggling to get off the floor, I really couldn’t even literally close the car door, and having to get people to take me into work, and just struggling to move without significant pain. Struggling to sleep and just spiralling down with sort of a lack of movement and pain that just sort of went from head to foot throughout my body. And basically having got diagnosed and then started on some medications saw some improvements. Those improvements got me so far but not where I wanted to be. And that’s when I came across the Paddison Program and along with some additional research that I was doing gradually managed to get to the stage where first of all I could get myself functioning again. And then was having had a reasonable medication program in place have been able to wean myself off that, and with combination of diet and exercise I’ve now having been in a fairly grim stage in my life. I think being able to turn that around and I’m now completely drug free, completely symptom-free, and have been for well over a year now, and feeling absolutely fantastic and enjoying life.
Clint What would you say to doctors that say that lifestyle interventions play no part in rheumatoid arthritis?
Pat Ah there’s absolutely no doubt about it that the combination of everything from the diet which you just you end up having to embrace, and the amount and style of exercise that you go through becomes just part of the medicine in itself. And it’s for me, I mean there are lots of choices and sacrifices that you feel you’re making. And a lot of people have asked me, well isn’t what you’re doing difficult? And at the end of the day, I actually really don’t think it’s difficult at all in that it’s a choice. You’re choosing between a diet and exercise program and feeling fantastic or you choosing to eat what you were eating before, you may or may not have a reasonable exercise program in place. But it’s really very simple choice, do you want to eat like this and feel like this? Or do you want to eat like that and feel like absolute rubbish? So it’s a very for me it still takes a lot of sacrifice, a lot of effort but the choice itself is not difficult. It’s a very simple lifestyle and healthy choice.
Clint Now something that’s been happening a little bit recently is I’ve been getting feedback from some of my clients both some who I coach and also just people who have following our program are themselves and then send emails to our helpdesk. That sometimes they get a little bit upset when they hear people’s success stories for want of a better phrase because they themselves haven’t had as much progress or haven’t had the same amount of emphatic results as what they’ve heard from some of our guests on our podcast. Now what I want to do with you in this episode is I want to really break down all the things that you did. I don’t want to spend too much time on your story. What we’ll do is we’ll just gather a couple of basics first, I just want to know what drugs you’re on, what order you came off them. Which ones worked for you, which ones didn’t, what side effects you got from them. Just to build the knowledge base for our community on those particular medications. But then I just wanted to just drill down, just tell us what did you do when you got up in the morning and how much did you green juice or did you not. And what foods did, let’s just let’s just use you as a case study of someone who went through this and did it diligently and I want all the little details. But first let’s let’s talk about your medications, what was the sequence of meds? Tell us what the experience was like on these meds and which ones you got off? And then we’ll launch into all of your Paddison Program experience.
Pat OK. So I started off initially with a diagnosis. I was put onto the steroids, prednisone and the methotrexate. And initially the steroids were for about six, seven weeks, and methotrexate was the 20 mg.
Clint So straight off the bat you went prednisone and 20 mg methotrexate.
Pat Well the methotrexate was probably built up over two weeks yeah but then up to 20 mg on that.
Clint Before you move on, I love that detail, I like the detail with the comes the drugs because some people are sitting on the edge of do I go on the drug do I not. And now I really value the information here. Yes, what dosage of steroids? How did you actually get off at the time at which you’re meant to or did it last longer? And how long did it take for you to feel like the methotrexate was effective?
Pat So the steroids I think kicked in almost straight away, started feeling pretty good seeing improvement over that week sort of two weeks. And the methotrexate I think probably I’m guessing sort of took four or five weeks to really sort of build in, and then really that progress sort of continued with methotrexate just a little bit of improvement each week. And then that probably levelled off after two or three months probably. And then I stuck with that for about six months on the 20 milligrams of the methotrexate.
Clint And successfully got off the prednisolone at the time you were told.
Pat Correct, yes. And the only deviation from that I found traveling quite difficult. And so if there was a flight over east or anything then I ended up going back on the steroids for that week or two weeks or whatever the length of that trip was.
Clint Okay, And any noticeable change of any kind after a little two week usage of the steroid?
Pat I definitely felt better for taking the steroids and if I did the trip without the steroids I would just start to feel a lot more fatigued and general sort of sore body aches in all manner of places sort of shoulders hips all those sorts of things.
Clint All the common offenders. Okay, alright, and what was the next drug sequence?
Pat So at that point when I got back see my specialist, he was pleased with the progress but we felt (inaudible) felt that I’d taken a good step but I was nowhere near where I thought I should be. And in my own estimate I view that as about 70 percent of where I thought I should be. And so at that point we went up to 25 milligrams of the methotrexate, and that we tried for about six months and with all the sort of monthly or quarterly blood tests. And fought fortunately the rest of the tests were all clear in terms of impact on the function and those sorts of issues. That was helpful but it still didn’t get me quite where I thought I should be. And again it’s hard to estimate it but if I was at 70 percent before I felt I was probably up to about 80 percent or so and still had I felt a way to go before I got back so full ability and sort of completely symptom-free.
Clint Interesting you make the sort of the same, you use the same numbers that I use. I also felt that methotrexate around sort of 15 to 20 mg got rid of like 70 percent of my symptoms that’s what I say when I present on stage. And I agree, I think there is diminishing returns as you go from sort of 15 to 20 and then going especially from 20 to 25, I agree. You kind of get from 70 to maybe 80 percent in my case, I had exactly the same experience as you. And presumably during this time you were still pushing forward with your previous diet and your previous approach to exercise whatever that was right?
Pat Correct. Yes, that’s correct. Yes.
Clint Okay so let’s roll into the next part.
Pat Yeah. Okay, so the next stage was looking for that extra amount that we were missing. And so I was introduced to (inaudible) which was reasonably effective and I think it did actually help to the point where I would probably say I was pretty much symptom-free. But unfortunately the side effects were just incompatible with daily life. And just on the digestive system it was and I’ve always had a very very good constitution. But these little tablets did not agree with my system at all. And I’ve found very very restrictive. So doing anything whether it’s you know going to work or exercise or traveling or anything. It was a bit of a logistical and planning nightmare. You never felt comfortable going too far away from such facilities and that sort of thing.
Clint Right. We’re talking about the colloquial brand name of Arava.
Pat Yes.
Clint For those people who may have missed the drug name because you said it very quickly. And so this is interesting and that is compatible with some feedback that I’ve received from some people obviously it ran as a different experience. But I guess if you would have it seems to me that needing to use the bathroom a lot was the main issue with it. Okay. Which is a huge inconvenience isn’t it when you’ve got to live your life.
Pat Yes very much so. Yes.
Clint So how long did you persevere until you pulled the pin on Arava?
Pat So we probably went about three, four maybe five months and I was hoping it would stabilize or my system would get used to it and manage. But that didn’t eventuate and came back to see my specialist felt. Yeah. I mean unfortunately some people do react in certain ways and I was one of the ones that reacted in that particular way. So he saw no benefit in persevering with that and so we switched over to the sulfasalazine and that was pretty effective. That that worked pretty pretty well, I think it was 500 mg dosages of that and that was absolutely fine. Things settle down very quickly from a digestive point of view and I started feeling pretty reasonable. And I was using the steroids less and less if I was to travel.
Clint Good.
Pat At that point I thought well okay maybe this is just my just my loss in life and you know I have to accept where I am and I’m you know enjoying everything I can but I just have this little packet of tablets or a little case with lots of tablets and that was traveling around with whenever I went everywhere. And so that’s one I thought I was in pretty reasonable shape. But I did not like the idea of just being on all these different tablets and having never been on any medication in my entire life. It just struck me one day, I was just traveling around with an awful a lot of things. And that’s when I started doing a little bit of research and came across a few different things one of which was your program, and so started investigating. It wasn’t with yours, initially I was going through a couple of other some books and things that time and playing a few different things. So that all became part of the pattern that I was investigating. And so yeah got into that. But there’s a couple of things going on there at the same time, one was I had started to experience (inaudible) made much of his combative side effects of all the drugs but my mental state was not where I think it would like to have been. And suffering with a little bit of you know sort of brain fog and a general sort of levels of concentration, fatigue, and sometimes degrees of anxiety and things which started to build up every now and again. And I don’t know it’s just a cumulative wearing (inaudible) condition or came to the effect of drugs or both of them together. But that was a little bit of an awakening to me that I really didn’t like where things were potentially going and felt I was always just a walking a very very fine line between being between just about okay and then potentially sort of falling off the tight rope a little bit and starting to pick up the other side effects and mental issues and things.
Clint Okay. Well we’ve got quite the bridge to cross between that moment in your life and where you are today.
Pat Yes it is.
Clint Let’s do it, let’s go through now and include anything else that’s not compliant with my program. We want to know exactly what happened, we want the truth is what I’m saying. Walk us through it, walk us through your decisions, all the lifestyle things that you did in detail, and let’s hear about these improvements.
Pat Yeah. Okay so there’s three aspects I think we’re all so playing together. One is the diet, one is the exercise and the style and the amount of exercise. And the third one which I think it’s important at least in my case which was stress avoidance is as well. So on the diet side, I started off initially I’ve been reading one of the I think it’s.
Clint Amy Myers?
Amy Myers yes thank you. Amy Myers that written a book called The autoimmune solution, and one of the angles that she was following in on that was basically removing anything that’s not organic from her food choices. So in her case she would eat meat but it was only organic and so grass fed and rather than anything that had any sort of hormones or anything else in it. So my first starting point was taking out anything that wasn’t organic in the diet, and that that actually helped I think quite considerably. I mean I don’t think I eat a massive amount of meat but you know just a normal amount if you like. But other than having you know reasonable (inaudible) there were obviously not organic. And I think switching to organic did actually make a big difference. And over the course of some maybe two three four weeks I felt I could definitely feel the difference.
Clint I wonder how much the Australian beef industry is affected by things like antibiotic use and whether or not a lot feeding is quite as prevalent as what we witness with these really frightening documentaries that we see coming out of the US cattle farming system and so forth. I just don’t know how I should educate myself a little better on this because you would have been consuming Australian beef if it were cows and yeah we just we don’t have a feeling on that. And how much the antibiotic use again for example or other chemicals, drugs are being used on the animals and whether or not they are being for instance grain-fed which is incompatible with their particular digestive system. They’re not meant to eat grains, they’re meant to eat grass. But a lot fed animals can be grain-fed which may create a different chemical composition of their flesh. So you know. Interesting. All right, you made that change first.
Pat Yep. And then I was pleasantly surprised. (inaudible) how much of a difference it did make. And that was basically about the time that I came across your program, and given my family circumstances and all the rest of it with kids and the wife and everything I didn’t necessarily want to launch sort of full steam ahead as much that perhaps would have done if it had just been myself. So I started off initially just adding in the green juices and a few particular dishes. And that all or helped definitely get things moving in the right direction. So I think rather than if you like stripping everything out and starting with your cleansing, and then gradually sort of introduction of foods going through your elimination and reduction phases. I basically stepped into that sort of backwards if you like and with the exception of the green juices which I started with, I did gradually eliminate more and more things from the diet over the course of probably two three months or so. And then basically worked my way fairly close to your cleansing phase, and then having stuck with that for a few weeks then I started adding things back in a little bit more after that.
Clint You know I call this doing the program in reverse, and it’s what I suggest or it’s similar to what I suggest when mums are breastfeeding or you know you’ve got a someone who’s pregnant. So you cut out all of the bad things and you start towards the end of as you said the reintroduction process, so that you’ve got a diverse diet. You’ve got a diverse healthy plant-based diet that’s going to meet all your nutritional requirements. And especially the calorie requirements and the diversity that I believe is of higher importance when you got either a newborn baby or you’ve got one in the belly. So yeah okay well that’s cool. And how did things shift with your inflammation levels? And did you need to keep taking that steroid and anything else?
Pat Yeah. So at this point I was pretty much off the steroids. I think basically having gone onto the diet, I felt I was no longer needing the steroids for travel purposes, so that was pretty good. And my inflammation markers were all absolutely fine. So in fact from when I was on the sulfasalazine basically my inflammation markers were all absolutely normal, so no sign of inflammation at all. And sticking with the diet that helps to maintain that as well. And since at that time the inflammation has been reduced or down to normal amounts with one slight exception. So I have actually having been pretty good for a while and been on the diet and exercise program for a while. My specialist was very happy with how things were going. And although he was delighted to see the improvement in me but he said statistically from his point of view he was unable to say it was because of the diet. But he said he encouraged me to keep pursuing things but he wouldn’t necessarily say that was the clinical reason from his point of view. But he was happy for me to do it and I think he was also swayed by that it was reasonable to start cutting back on the medications. So we started dropping the sulfasalazine and that sort of manage though over the course of about three or four months we managed to two to drop that.
Pat And then after a little bit of a hiatus just to make sure he was happy with the change in medications, so gradually started reducing the methotrexate as well initially went back down to 20 and then the 15 milligrams. And then when I was on the 15 milligrams I ended up coming off my bike and breaking some bones. And so my inflammation markers went back up immediately after the injuries. So we took a sort of three, four-month plateau on the medications. And then when he was happy that everything was still stable then we gradually started cutting down the methotrexate to the point where we dropped down to 10 milligrams and then came off it completely. And so I’ve been then off of methotrexate now for just over a year, and absolutely no-no symptoms or anything at all.
Clint How does it feel?
Pat Absolutely fantastic, absolutely fantastic. And the other the other part in, as we were going through it all, I did mention before that I was struggling a little bit with just degrees of mental fog and spells of anxiety associated with everything. And that was actually quite disturbing. And in the end the only thing that actually brought that back in to line was yet another drug, Cymbalta as the common name here. And that was actually incredibly helpful but that got me back on an even keel. And I think it was sort of getting a lot more rigorous with the was the diet that allowed me to come off of those anxiety tablets I guess. And then gradually after that got stopped reducing the sulfasalazine as well. So since then, I say I feel physically fantastic, but also I think very importantly, I think mentally I’m so much stronger than I was when things were going downhill quite significantly. I felt ancient, I felt useless and it was just getting nowhere. And now physically I feel fantastic, I’m sleeping well, and mentally I’m a lot stronger than I have been for a long time.
Clint You look good and you also have this look about you that I want to use the word sharp, like you have a sharp look. Like a very very intellectual and wise and yeah and Sharp has that speed connotations about it to certainly no brain fog appearance of you know.
Pat Yeah. And I think I’m sort of awareness, that you have a mental awareness of what’s around you. And whereas before any of this happens you just (inaudible) and you did what you did, and your family, friends, and work, and everything, and you have you know whether it’s a focused view or a wide view where you just sort of processing what you what you’re processing. And then when things were going bad with arthritis, I mean people do talk about you know tunnel vision and things and you do find yourself just focussing right in on that very very small thing that you can concentrate on, and that’s the limits of your abilities. And I think we’re it where I am now things that basically opened up completely, and I’ve gone back to not only I think where I was before I was aware of the problems. But I think I’ve become a lot more aware of a lot more things around me. So you’re picking up things you know in a situation was (inaudible) or just scenarios. You’re just able to process more mentally and more logically I think than I was doing. before. And maybe you know it’s just me where I was, but I felt so much more in tune with what’s around me than I was before.
Clint I watched a presentation on Alzheimer’s and it’s linked to you know a high-fat Western diet. And they talk about when you strip away everything in the brain and what’s left if you move all of the other fluids and so on, is you’ve just got these pathways all through the brain which are like little mini highways where communication is maintained. And they can fill up with fat tiny you know deposits of fat that gets built up in the body from consuming a very high-fat diet for a very long period of time. And we may have not just a removal of the drugs relief from brain fog, but you may actually have a clearer thinking amount of activity between the years. So there might be actually literally a physical component to clear thinking, at least that’s what the Alzheimer’s science seems to suggest.
Clint So we now want to hear the details. Can you give me, did you tell us what it looked like during your most successful healing weeks and months? How you did it? What sort of, what did your diet look like? And what exercise looked like? How much did you exercise? Give us a snapshot into that period of time that most powerful healing period.
Pat So from a diet point of view there’s obviously no animal products, in their breakfasts were typically some form of gluten-free cereal with some almond milk or something of that nature. Some oats again with water or almond milk of some description. The green juice in there in the mornings as well. And then lunches and dinners are various combinations of rice, corn, potatoes. And all manner of green vegetables, lots of leafy green vegetables, loads of kale and Brussel sprouts and all these types of things and salads. And coupled with a fairly consistent exercise routine as well so I have a mixture of cycling, tennis, swimming, and gym work, and partly dependent on the weather. And particular days of the week, I would attempt to have some form of exercise every day. There may be one or two days where I see a bit less for whatever reason and that might involve you know just a little bit of walking or very gentle ride.
Pat But I would have in general say five days a week where I’ll be doing some cycling, and I mean (inaudible) the luxuries position of being able to cycle to work and back. And I can go a very direct route into work and I can take a devious path going through some (inaudible) or other roads and things (inaudible). So I’ll be cycling to work and back again say four days a week, and then with a longer ride usually on it on Sunday. I’ll be playing tennis on a Wednesday evening and Saturday afternoon, that’s a pretty regular thing. And then depending on my work schedule, I’ll swing between one and three times a week for sort of somewhere between 25 and 30 minutes a day for that. And I found all those things just incredibly helpful. The cycling and swimming obviously just sort of set in motion the whole time just keeping things moving. The gym I think is actually quite important for maintaining muscle mass, that is a bit of challenge with the diet. So being able to complement that with the exercise machine was very helpful. And I found that tennis just very very good from a not only exercise point of view but a very good social game as well. I think that’s an important aspect as well to maintain all your social contacts as indeed as the cycling things as well.
Clint How long, if you took the long route does it take you to get to or from work?
Pat Direct route is 9 kilometers, the indirect route is 19 kilometers. And if I’ve got the luxury of a little bit of slap time at work or a little bit longer evenings or whatever, then I can do twenty-five or thirty-five kilometers or so.
Clint Okay. So if I was to take a wild stab you probably you’re doing. Look if the let’s allow 20, 40 let’s say 40 minutes of cycling a day if you take it 20 minutes each way. And then twice a week you’re adding to that your swimming, and then you’ve got your tennis in there three times a week with this swimming. I mean you’re probably averaging close to an hour a day, if you average it right?
Pat Yes.
Clint Which I think is adequate, and not at all excessive but just adequate for us to get the result that we’re all aiming to achieve. So you know the biggest challenge I have when I’m working with people is not the diet. You know I can have people stick on the baseline for six months and then they say you know I’ve been doing the baseline diet for six months and I’ve kind of plateaued or something I just want to work on the rest of the inflammation. I’ve got still some in my fingers or something and I say well what’s the how’s the other 50 percent of your plan going and. It’s just that important it’s like this isn’t a diet this is a whole lifestyle approach.
Pat Yeah. Absolutely. And I think the easiest way for me to express that is if the methotrexate got me into 70 percent then I think the diet gets me the 70 percent, and then they the exercise is that 30 percent extra you need to get the full results. So that definitely the two combination and you can’t or I don’t think I could have got the results without both of those together.
Clint So far we’ve only had one guest who has claimed that they achieved you know to a situation that you’ve described for yourself without exercise. Only one guest, Sean. And he listens to this podcast, he did two podcasts with me. And he’s the only one that says he didn’t change, didn’t really do a much exercise which is he the anomaly.
Clint Well, let me gather my thoughts here because I was just thinking about Sean because he was tossing drugs over his shoulder. Now how’s the impact been for your family and your work colleagues, have you found that you now have this sense of I want to say mild enlightenment with your consumption of lighter foods and a lighter impact on earth obviously a tremendously lighter impact on your fellow animal species? And have you felt that this has had a knock on effect to people you come in contact with?
Pat Absolutely, no doubt about it. Our kids kind of all grown up and sort of out of the house at the moment. So it’s been a little bit easier from the flat point of view and that we didn’t have to battle with certain kids. But all the way through that they’ve actually been incredibly supportive and interested and there’s no doubt about it. There’s a lot more Greens on their plates than there were before. So that’s quite noticeable. But one of the really obvious things I’ve noticed that at work, the number of people who, I take my lunches into work just because it’s easier to control things. And you heat it something after or whatever and the number of times you go past with this bowl of you know a variety of things, and everyone says that looks good, oh that smells good. And people have also commented, I mean it’s a sign I think of how bad I looked before but people have been commenting, oh you look so much better that you did a while ago. And you know they can see a difference in me, in a quite clearly. And I don’t like to sort of go about things in it in an overt manner, so if we’re out at a restaurant or something you know I don’t ask for the vegan menu or anything. You know we just asked to have a look at what menus I’ve got and we’re just sort of pick something you know without sort of specifically saying you know why we’re picking it or anything.
Pat And it’s a little bit the same with colleagues at work, I mean you just say oh just got some leftovers today or something and without making a big deal about it. But people do notice, and they do ask and they do see what you’re having. And I’ve had a list of my books and list my recipes and things and as and when appropriate I’ve just sort of quietly put it on the desk to have a look at or given you know a few examples of a different sort of programs and things. And I do know people who are taking notice and it’s very satisfying. And also I also know a few people who unfortunately have had either rheumatoid arthritis or other autoimmune conditions, and so we have a lot of conversations and people are very interested and people do take it up. Although I still find it interesting that a lot of people even if they got rheumatoid arthritis and they can see the difference that’s made some people, they will still say I can’t do that. And they’re happy to go down the medical or the medication route and that’s their comfort zone. So while I will always encourage them I feel a little bit uncomfortable telling them that it’s necessarily the wrong thing to do. I think you know what’s worked for me and worked for many people is it’s fantastic I’ll promote it. But I feel a little bit uncomfortable so being too evangelical with other people and saying I should be definitely following this program or definitely doing that. But I think if I can illustrate it and demonstrate the impact this had on myself then that’s probably the best argument that I can put forward for them.
Completely agree. I don’t see personally an issue if I put my personal views aside about wanting to live a cruelty-free life and live a life that’s good for future generations by not contributing to further global warming. If I put those personal views aside and we just look practically as if it’s the right in inverted commas the thing to do to take medications or not. Almost always my view is, what we want to do is we want to live as Inflammation free life as possible, and be as healthy as possible, with as few symptoms as possible. So if someone’s on one of the drugs that enables them to achieve that, then that’s obviously a wonderful thing. The risk from my viewpoint is that, the disease-modifying drugs do cause more oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is the underlying cause for the liver enzymes to get raised when the liver starts to become under Oxidative stress. Okay so. Same with sulfasalazine it also causes oxidative stress. So we’ve got one part of the disease underlying cause that’s being aggravated by a certain class of medication. And so what it all comes back to in my view of the world, is that we still need to eat right and exercise because that’s still what’s required to prevent the progression of the disease especially if we’re on a couple of meds or even one of those meds. That helps to exacerbate one aspect of the underlying cause. And so, every way that I look at this no matter how you cut the cake, you still have to have the right lifestyle or you will be forever trying to find the next medication that keeps symptoms at bay or being in a degree of inflammation irrespective of how many meds you’re taking. So I haven’t yet found a way of not having to ultimately still have everyone address their diet and lifestyle.
Clint So that’s what you’ve done. Well done Pat. First of all, I like issuing this little cautionary tale, remember that living with an autoimmune disease is like the movie The Life of Pi. You’ve got this incredibly dangerous ferocious animal that you’re in close proximity with, and as long as you choose how many and you do the right things you can avoid a terrible consequence. You know we see lion tamers in the news every couple of years a lion tamer gets complacent or just takes the risk too many times. And something awful happens even when there is that relationship with the wild animal. So we got to do the right things and when you’re out at restaurants that’s probably the one time when I want to emphasize you can be a little bit annoying to the serving or wait staff. And I never want you to consume industrial or restaurant-level oils. I just never ever do it because it can have serious consequences, and all your hard work can be threatened by one restaurant meal. So just be really careful for me I know you’ll be safe at home it’s when you go to restaurants and social events where you feel this sort of peer pressure that we slip up. So what’s the new and improved Pat 2.0 going to do over the next year or two?
Pat How well we got all manner of things. Taking part in a cycling event a bit later this year. It’s a 4-day mountain bike event and did the five days one a little while ago early this year this will be another one. So I’m definitely doing more specific events and things which I’ve had to shy away from in the previous 30 years so I’m glad to be back doing those. And we’ve also got some travel plans coming up so take advantage of those, and looking forward to making those trips without a separate little suitcase of medications. And with a sense of adventure rather than a little bit fearful for what might happen because, when things were bad traveling would just not me for six and take me a long long time to recover from. So having the sort of optimistic view of the world ahead of us and what all the opportunities around there are. Yeah, it’s just fantastic stuff.
Clint Correct. And just before we close any final remarks to people who may still be in the trenches and going through what you went through following the program you know as I said working hard. Any words of encouragement or anything you want to tell them to emphasize words of wisdom for want of a better phrase?
Pat I guess one aspect at least as it appears to me, I think where I was going before I had very little upside to it. There was a path that I was following and it was very restrictive for what may lie in that in front of me in the future. Whereas now I think I’ve got such a broad horizon in front of me with so many more opportunities for every aspect of life. And whatever aspect it is you might be looking forward to whether it’s for you, or your family, or friends, yourself, or your work, or whatever, it is, you just have all these doors open back up to you or new doors that are opening up for you. And that’s an opportunity that is so hard to to to build towards and get. And I think it would be such a shame to miss out on that opportunity. So I would just totally encourage anyone who’s struggling with any of these issues in any way whatsoever. It is so well worth the effort, and hopefully will get to the point where it’s a choice you’re making and what you’re choosing to do is well worth all the sacrifice and effort that goes into to achieve it.
Clint Beautiful. Thanks very much Pat appreciate that and really grateful that you took some time out especially late at night on a weeknight to share your story with us and give us some inspiration. And also some great insights into what to do when you’re struggling with an inflammatory arthritic condition, and the steps forward. Thanks very much.
Pat Pleasure. And thank you for all the support and guidance that we couldn’t do without. So thank you.