We discuss how:
– Before detoxing Julia was in a wheelchair and couldn’t walk
– After starting the Paddison Program she’s been able to come off methotrexate in a controlled manner
– She can now walk, bicycle and play tennis and this exercise helps her too
– Sweating has played a big role in her detoxification
– She has found ways to sweat even with a simple walk
– She found a huge help in her husband
– She’s now trying to set up an arthritis support group
Clint: What a pleasure it is to have another wonderful story today coming from Julia. She’s in Australia at the moment and it’s only 5:20 in the morning. She’s up early every day and we’ve scheduled this at this time because she feels fresh and sprightly at this hour. So good day Julia!
Julia: How are you doing?
Clint: I’m very I’m great as always. Always lovely to have another smiling guest on these episodes. Talk about improvements to chronic health conditions in this case and other rheumatoid arthritis situation. Tell us how far you’ve come and your improvements on the paddison program.
Julia: Oh wow. I mean I can walk now. I mean you know I was in a wheelchair while I couldn’t get off the ground by myself. And then I detoxed and then I started I could walk after that I started playing tennis after that. I couldn’t. When I was, first had it was terrible. You know like it started out with this day I was helping to dismantle tents at our church camp. And I just had a pain in my shoulder you know and umh I thought it was an incident. And from then on it was just pain and it was so you know I have no support then. I was with my ex husband then and I didn’t know about the program. I didn’t know how important health was and detoxing and all those kind of things. And so I just struggled.
Julia: And it took me six months to find out what it was. And I didn’t start the methotrexate right away. I try to avoid that but I had some flare ups I couldn’t do anything and no energy. Oh wow. I would sweep the floor in the kitchen for you know about 10 minutes and go to sleep for two hours. Yeah. And you know and I cried so much at night. But it didn’t help. So I stopped crying.
Clint: Wow. So you actually got to a point where you were in a wheelchair for a period of time. Was this one of these sort of just assisted sort of intermittent wheelchairs or were you actually like doing all of your movement around in a chair.
Julia: No no. It was kind of off and on like the one time I had to have it. When I went to the doctor I asked for a wheelchair so I could get out of the car and go in there. And I think my son took me to the doctor then and it was just you know pain, pain, pain you know.
Julia: And like all the energy and everything you know as bad as.
Clint: Yea we get that drop of energy not just from the methotrexate which is a notorious energy sapper but also from the condition where our body is trying to eliminate countless antigens that are entering our bloodstream via the gut wall, via this leaky gut process. And so the body’s in this absolute it’s just working overtime on the inside constantly. And so you add a drug to the mix on top of that that causes great fatigue and you know it really it’s like walking zombie kind of stuff. That was my experience. So tell us then. Did the methotrexate offer you some relief. Did it enable you to relieve some of the pain?
Julia: Yeah yeah it did. Yeah it was good. And I was only on that for quite a long time until we made the mistake of try and get off the methotrexate too quickly and that was a time I had to have a wheelchair and had to have help.
Julia: And it was just no relief. That was, it wasn’t a long period of time. Then I didn’t have to have a wheelchair and all that but I couldn’t do anything.
Julia: Yeah.
Clint: So the lesson there for people listening or watching this is we have to come off the medications under a very controlled manner. And I have a entire 52 minute video in our advanced package detailing in actually sorry, 30 minutes. And it goes through step by step. Every one of the milestones required to be able to reduce methotrexate and also covers a lot of surprising stuff regarding why we might not want to actually try and reduce methotrexate. If for instance we actually still have other drugs in our regime that are less friendly for the gut. For example if we’re on methotrexate and are on prednisone and are on some painkillers then the sequence in which we should start tapering or getting off those drugs in my personal opinion it would not be the start touch and the methotrexate. We should be looking at the first step. OK. All right. So at which point did you start to engage in our program and what results did you see and how quickly did you see results.
Julia: Yeah. Well to do it properly was when we moved from where we used to live and moved up to you know Mckay High Port and then I got on your forum I paid it I did it for one month. I didn’t do the two day of juicing and (inaudible) but I started that I did all of that then and that helped a lot but recently it has been more. Yes since I’ve been in town because when we moved in I did do a cleanse and I did it for about two or three days or something and then I went down to you know the quinoa and buckwheat I believe that is so good you know, so nutritious. And then I started doing all this walking.
Clint: Aha OK. So walking has helped you as well as the dietary changes.
Julia: Yes, it’s awesome. The more exercise you do the more you can do,you know and I push myself. I didn’t push myself too much I had to you know slow down and I don’t try to do 38 kms in a week now.
Julia: But we actually walk or bicycle. And when I got it back i had to take it to to the shop and get me pay the big stuff, I did 7 kms Friday, 7 kms on Saturday and then on the other day I did 10 kms. And so my husband got one and that’s going to be oh so good!
Clint: Right.It’s interesting you mention that exercise enables you to do more exercise. That is true isn’t it. It’s kind of like a simple phenomenon of you’re not you don’t just get fitter but your body starts to anticipate that exercise each day and accommodate itself to be able to handle that and handle more. And it really does, it is a compound effect and so it’s so true and this is why just scheduling going to doing the exercise every day is as important as actually what the exercise is because we just need to get into a routine make it a habit and then that sort of a momentum situation that self perpetuates and we end up exercising all the time and we get the benefits from doing so. So your form of exercise walking you know for most people it’s not quite enough. But you found that just vast amounts of it has been really really beneficial.
Julia: Oh yeah. You know I was told before by a nurse you know I had (inaudible) you know years ago and he said you got to exercise more and it was until I married Michael and he pushed me. You know it was worth it and all that and I realized you know the more you do the better you can get.
Julia: And I had a flare and I went riding you know a couple of times in five kms and one day when I got to bike and I did it because well I thought I had the energy and I didn’t have the energy. But I had a flare up so I backed off you know and yeah I had the energy to do it you know but because I had that bad knee after that I stopped. And then I got desperate and I said I want to be able to feel good and think good when I’m going to talk to you, you know.
Julia: So I said you know because there’s a lot that has happened in my life all over this. I got on to Mike and I said look I got to do this program. He doesn’t believe in the oil 100%. But since I watched the video about, up on Google’s website of how your blood flows slows down so much after a meal of oil. I’m convinced that I can do without the oil. And I want to do anything so I can get out there and ride two hours a day you know in the morning or in the afternoon and I’ll do anything to do that.
Clint: Yeah. The oil thing is not negotiable. And once people look at the literature it’s very clear it’s not even something that is sort of a topic of debate. It’s like the one of well do you get enough protein on a plant based diet. There is no counterargument as it’s 100 percent as simple as it is and the same is are vegetable oils inflammatory to the gut. It’s like there’s the science done. Let’s move on. It’s as clear 100 percent whether it be on animal studies on rats, mice whatever the studies are there whether it be on animal studies and the response like Dr. McDougal talks about whether it be through the blood stream or actually for the inflammatory process. Again the studies have been done it’s inside our guide for rheumatologists downloadable on our website. I’ll put that on this on our episode here as well for people who want to look at that so these things may be a surprise to the general public but they’re not negotiable. These are black and white situations and so you must avoid those vegetable oils. And as we spoke about I think less than 90 seconds before we commenced our call you said that you know in the Garden of Eden there was no oil second from the tree, right?
Julia: That’s right. You know why do you need it. You know you have the whole food. But following your program, I mean I tried it you know. And then I tried using some olives you know on my salad. I don’t need that that’s so oily, you don’t need that either.
Julia: You know you get used to the salads and the way they are. And so I did it to the day and a half on your program the other day juicing. And I would have done it more but I had problems. I have a low plate and I had problems with my gums. I couldn’t choose the food. So I went on to the salad. So when I came off diggles just you know plain simple, lots of quinoa, lots of sweet potato and that I’m going to stick on that because I’m convinced about the olives, you don’t need that. They’re very oily.
Clint: Yeah. Well their fat content is still a little high when you’re on the early stages of the healing process. So if we are later on in sort of in a maintenance phase phase five as labeled it in our program then you can eat olives, you can eat avocados. In fact there’s an unrestriction on all things that are derived from plants and in unlimited quantities. And so it becomes really like an extraordinary diverse eating sort of lifestyle. And in fact there’s so much more that you’re actually eating than what you’re leaving out. It’s funny like there’s only so many ways you can use meat dairy and oils. But there is an infinite number of ways that we can put together a variety of different meals that are from plants. I mean it’s just extraordinary. And so you know one day people can eat the olives, they can eat avocados but the meat, dairy and oils are non-negotiable. We just don’t need them from a nutrition point of view and they can be harmful for us. So why. Why. Why put things at risk to our body when we’ve gone through so much to minimize pain and to get out of a bad situation.
Clint: So tell us how much has stress played a part in your disease activity. And are there any tips you might have to other people in terms of reducing stress.
Julia: Yeah. Well stress was a huge thing because well since we came up here we were involved in a car wreck someone rear ended us. You know the story about the trailer and then I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder that comes back to my childhood. Yeah. I have to say yes I’ve given my life over to God you know.
Julia: You know my husband is a huge help. And since I’ve done that you know I don’t worry about things you know and all that stuff, it’s huge you know. And my thing is I believe in God you know and other people might think otherwise. But you got someone who loves, who’s gonna care for you. And you know so why worry about a future. Why worry about anything you know. So that’s huge.
Clint: Why worry about anything? I mean all of us regardless of whether or not we have faith or not can certainly enjoy a mindset of why worry about anything and worry has never really gotten us anywhere has it? And whenever I feel a concern or a pressure, mental pressure towards something my dad always says you know when you feel fear or you feel concern, act, just take an action. What action could we take right now that can minimize the outcome that we’re afraid of the most. And if the outcome is X Y and Z then take massive action to to avoid that. Now you know having faith which I do also gives you that little bit of comfort that those actions that you take will be the right ones and they will be effective. And it’s kind of almost like just it’s nice wrapping around everything that we do. To think it’s the right choice, it’s the right way, it’s going to help. It works. You feel this level of reassurance don’t you.
Julia: Oh yeah. Yeah. You know life is good. You know other people don’t have it. I don’t know how they live. Really you know, believing in God and believing that you can overcome your appetite you know. But you know the biggest thing, I’ve read, I watch your podcast. I don’t know, I haven’t seen anyone else who say that methotrexate has caused confusion.
Clint: Confusion? No one’s talked about it but it is something that has come up before. It’s called brain fog is the official term. So we developed this sense of I guess it’s pretty well described in its own sort of title and you just feel like a little bit of haziness and I’m just not sure about your own decisions and indecisiveness. I guess a feeling of worrisome. Yeah it definitely has that effect. I certainly had that feeling in myself and it’s been described frequently in our support forum. So absolutely.
Julia:Okay yeah. And then you don’t make the right decisions about your food. But you know now as I’m so confused about the greens and all that can and the quinoa and having a simple diet. Yeah. I just I just do it you know, I might pull this differently and I’m just doing the program.
Clint: So Michael is your husband?
Julia: Yeah Michael is my husband.
Clint: Right. Well if you know if he doesn’t have acute symptoms then I say well when people say for instance there was a question the other day inside our support group and the question was from a naturopath who is in our support group she said just in terms of talking with my clients in my clinic, it gets a little bit tricky for me if I’m trying to tell everyone they should do this process when they don’t have an autoimmune condition. And is that necessary. Absolutely not. So my take on this situation is that if people want to minimize their disease, if people want to have very low risk of getting any kind of chronic disease, then a low fat plant based diet is going to achieve that across the board. There is really one human diet for risk for disease risk minimization and that is a low fat plant based diet. Now if people adhere to that diet most of the time you can find that their bodies are extremely robust to eating other foods. For instance you know takes sometimes many decades for people on the worst Western diet to start to develop cancer and diabetes and heart disease, it can take multiple decades. Right.
Clint: But if people are on a plant based diet and again a whole food low fat plant based diet, then the occasional bit of deviation from that is going to have an almost negligible effect in terms of you know long term consequences because if you’re eating so well most of the time then you’re so healthy your gut bacteria are aligned in the right way to your health and you’re just in such an, you’re very well covered by insurance, your own health insurance. Okay. So for your husband Michael, it’s unnecessary to go down the elimination process of our program and to do all of the more restrictive components. And he can be operating on that phase 5 maintenance part which I live on which is the diverse very broad eating you know just anything but meat, dairy oils and happy days in any quantity and any combo. So I’d encourage him towards that. And it’s a little overkill if he hasn’t got autoimmune disease to be doing the early stages of our program. Now tell us you originally came about our program via your son who is a doctor. So tell us how that came about.
Julia: Oh well I just went to visit him one day when he was living like here in Queensland and he told me that one of his colleagues is using the program and I’m not sure what all her new diseases and she’s had huge improvements you know.
Julia: And so he gave me the basic program, the book. You know it was a few years ago. He’s taking all this time to get it knocked down and do it properly.
Julia: And yeah, he’s amazed at my progress you know I’ve been married to Michael now for four years and I couldn’t do anything like this you know before. It was like impossible. You know when we were living in (inaudible) I did nine days of juicing, I didn’t have I don’t think I had your program then. Because my bowel wasn’t working properly and my skin wasn’t working properly. So I did hydrotherapy 15 minutes in a hot bath and then with my calves sat around it and then you get out and pull a bucket of ice water with a lot of ice in it and then get back into it and then do that again. And then I used to wrap up and go and sweat in my bed for about an hour and then my skin started sweating. I got rid of my toxins. And then I had how much energy, and it was incredible.
Clint: That’s like a home little modification of Bikram yoga because in the bikram yoga we can go and sweat until the carpets are just soggy. And that also is great food detox for suffocation as well. So you worked out a little hot cold therapy there at home and managed to stimulate you know the sweat response in your body as well. It’s interesting the sweat response I used to try and I experiment at one time when I thought look this bikram yoga is so hard I wanted to isolate whether or not it was the sweating or whether or not it was you know I experimented a whole bunch of things because I thought is it the first sequence of postures on the stand. Is it the second sequence of postures when we’re lying down. Is it the length of time or is it the sweat. And I wanted to know all of these things independently and so I would test each one of them. And the most frustrating result of all was that it was all of them and you can’t just do it. For me I would just I tried just sweating in a sauna I did not get the results. I tried just doing like emphasizing my efforts in the first part of class not the efforts.
Clint: And so where I’m going with this which is a little bit of a deviation from from the train of thought you’re on is that I personally didn’t get tremendous results just from sitting in a sauna environment it wasn’t the hot cold that you’ve talked about but just sitting in a sauna and sweating for me that just didn’t do anything. However I’m pleased to hear that your you know your hot cold therapy and then followed by sweating was working for you.
Julia: Yeah yeah. It’s really good. Well what I do now is I have hot and cold showers. It’s because you live in a hot climate but water is not very cold. Then I rack up a real lot and try to sweat when I go out and walk or ride a bike.
Clint: Good, see there’s a little bit of detail that I’m glad you added so you actually really rug up. And so when you’re walking you’re sweating correct?
Julia: Yeah. When I do it at nothing. Yeah. Yeah.
Clint: See that’s really important I’m really glad that we kind of managed to squeeze that bit of information out of you because my guidance around exercise is that we need exercise to the point of sweating every day. The problem with walking most people when they walk they just doesn’t get the heart rate up enough to start sweating so you have done a really clever thing and you’ve covered yourself with additional clothing so that your body temperature raises more so that the exercise they’re doing the simple walking gets you to that point and that’s cool.
Julia: Yeah yeah. Because I don’t have a circulation but you need to do that and the more you can the better so you know I so I do that. I mean I look silly.
Julia: I mean the clothes are way I mean I wear long tights and long pants. And you know as well as everyone else is not doing that you know. But that doesn’t matter to me what people think about you know you go you go to a coffee shop you got to deal with it you know. So I’m all rugged up and I come home if I do enough of it. And then I come home sweating. You know you know put my clothes in the wash. And you feel better.
Clint: You feel tremendous better. You know in all the years I’ve been helping people I’ve never actually suggested if all people can do is walk that they should do that. I love that. This is my favourite thing to have to have learnt from you in this particular last 25 minutes or so. So that’s yeah yeah I’m pleased with that. And anyone who hasn’t tried this before. If you can’t get to Bikram yoga you do not have access to a stationary bike or you’re really really struggling and the only thing you can do is walk. That doesn’t cause pain. The next day then throw a whole bunch of warm clothes on your body and go out when it’s super warm in the middle of the day so that you get a big sweat up and try walking up some steps or walking safely up some steps if you need to hold the handrail or walk up hills. Come on let’s really get this get the bug plug pumpin, what do you think of that?
Julia: Yeah. Yeah. Well that’s really good you know. I mean I can take in the next level I can wear a beany or wear a scarf. And because when you’re riding a bike you get cool and it’s cool here in the morning so it doesn’t matter you know people are going to ask me why. Well I like to tell them,you I like you you know.
Julia: Also the other thing I do is I get a bucket and put epsom salt in it and rug up a real lot and sit in that for about an hour.
Julia: And the other thing too you know you get another bucket of ice water and alternate three minutes in the hot, one minute in the cold and rug up at the same time. And that takes a lot (inaudible) has recommended me to have a bar three times a week in Epsom salts.
Julia: You know sitting and just doing it in a bucket and ruggin up and doing that you know that’ll take that pain any joints and also poultices when I use potato poultices on my knee on my foot you know I want to keep on walking and not stop the pain I do that and then they take the pain away the next day and people don’t know about that.
Clint: That’s interesting actually. The Epsom salts comes up all the time it seems that virtually creates relief for everyone every time they do it. And so it’s probably the only consistent one of these kind of old wives techniques so to speak that actually I hear works all the time. Now I never did it myself.
Clint: I travelled in various parts of the globe trying to hit mineral bars like in Moree in northern NSW and we went to these mineral rich mudbath in Fiji and I covered myself in mud so I’d been there done that trying to find ways to get sort of these topical reliefs through whether it be mineral baths or mudbath some things. But it comes up a lot. People seem to always get relief from the Epsom salts in the baths. And so you know again it’s just it’s excellent just to hear that reinforced from you.
Julia: And also poultices you know a lot of people don’t know now that this is a book I live with just like you travel around the world with her image and practical home healing. You know sauna baths,potato, charcoal anything has been recommended by doctors.
Julia: And yet another thing another thing in case I forget about it there’s also two doctors who were in our church who believe in no oil too. So I mean you know if people saw that video of how you know before and after a meal or when your blood slows down you know after eating oil, that will convince everybody you know you don’t need to have oil.
Clint: Well I like Dr. Mccdougal’s simple explanations surrounding this in one of his free online talks that he has on his website and he talks about it particularly easy to understand when you think of the concept of blood pressure. And so an elevated blood pressure is just your heart working a little bit harder. Trying to move more fatty or more oily or heavier blood through your body and the blood contains the portion of that oil that is is being consumed and so what you’ve got is a heavier, sluggier more sluggish I should say. And that is harder to push and when something is harder to push there is more pressure. And so we have higher blood pressure. And then when we remove a large portion of our fat from our diet whether it be from meat dairy or oils all of which are very high in fat obviously oils are 100 percent fat.
Clint: And then the dairy and the meat products are very high in fat. Even the low fat versions are high in fat. What your result what you’re resulting is that you’ve got a higher blood pressure because your blood and your heart are working harder to move. And my dad was a perfect little experiment with this. I told him this metaphor, I told him this explanation and he said okay I get that. That makes sense to me. I can picture it and it sounds like it’s plausible. And so when he then dramatically reduced his meat and dairy intake and stopped having oils his blood pressure is now perfect and it was high for many many years. And he attributes it 100 percent just from following that simple tip which is reducing the pressure in your bloodstream simply because we’re taking down taking our fat content way down and our blood is basically has less fat less resistance and therefore less pressure.
Julia: Yeah. Well and you need oxygen in your blood don’t you. That helps fight against cancer.You know it reduces the oxygen when you have the fat in your diet. So why do that. I mean if you live in an environment that’s not really healthy you need to do the best you can for your body.
Clint: Yeah I definitely agree on that.
Clint: So tell us then is there anything else that you’d like to share. I know one thing we haven’t yet talked about that we may be a good way to sort of close up. You’d be interested in trying to start an arthritis support group in your local area isn’t that right.
Julia: Oh yeah. I can do that one way or another. Yeah. And then also you know many people have arthritis but I’d like to target in on autoimmune diseases too you know but I guess you have to get you know the people interested in something you know arthritis people have told me people have arthritis.
Julia: So yeah I want to do that and my husband and I get my husband more involved and that will help. And yeah and I’d like you to be able to come up and talk to people about what you’ve done and give people hope you know really that is so good you know. Like what you’re doing is awesome. You know I don’t have the education you have. But I’d like to influence a lot of people in their health. You know the way they think and everything you know makes a big difference about the way you are, you know with other and people everything.
Julia: And you know they help a lot of people,that would be so awesome you know.
Clint: Yes it is. It is a good feeling when you’re able to help even one person. If I were in your position and I had that goal for myself then I would probably write down maybe 10 ways in which you can start helping other people. And one of those ways might be to just to create a little simple group of recipes that you can share with people you know you might just you might just create a little. It doesn’t need to be fancy. You can just print it out and create a word document and then have anyone who asks just say look I’ll post it to I’ll bring it to church next week and I’ll give it to you or whatever that might be one way. Another way might be to invite some friends over on one night of the week and say I’ll just show you how I can do is to cook one of my favourite plant based meals and we can talk about this and we can enjoy a night where we have a meat free night and then you know you create 10 different ways that you can start to create some change in your community and then maybe if there’s get togethers after church which there often is at church you can start to talk to some of the other catering people who bring things and just say hey why don’t we start to cater more plant based meals as opposed to these cupcakes or whatever it is that people are doing.
Clint: And just try and start to shift things towards a more of a gradual change in different areas come up with 10 ways and just roll them out and then once you start rolling them out then people will start to see you as the person who knows this and is passionate about this and opportunity present themselves.
Julia: Yeah yeah that would be good. I’m also guide to the Community Neighbourhood Centre too, I talk to the people there and yeah and get it on facebook, you know putting a lot of things on your Facebook you know. Yeah. Yeah. That would really help and get involved with someone else is doing something to help.
Julia: I met a lady when I was walking near (inaudible) and I wanna keep in contact with her. You know she’s in a plant based diet and all that and she wants to get meetings go together and yeah that kind of thing. You just got to get out there and do it.
Clint: Yeah absolutely. And you know, members of our support group we all meet each other around the world are meeting up when I go to Anaheim this Sunday just six days away. I’ll be catching up with my Los Angeles group and that will be exciting and fun to meet people from that part of the world and we’ve done that in Hawaii. We’re going to be doing that in Florida. I’ve done that in Melbourne, Adelaide Sydney. So everywhere we go I take the opportunity to meet up with support forum members and also they meet each other. So London, Andy is one of our big organizers of events in London. So if you’re listening to this and you are in the London area then certainly reach out and I can put in contact with Andy whether or not you’re part of our support group or not so good luck with organising all of those things and thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story so far. It’s really great that you’re making some wonderful progress and that you’ve got a lot of motivation to continue to improve and to help other people.
Julia: Yeah. Yeah. You keep up the good work. You know I pray for you and keep on helping people, educate people. That’s what it’s about.
Clint: Yeah. That’s right. Because our health is so precious. And I went to an Anthony Robbins seminar many years ago and we had to list all of our values and he said what we’re going to do is we’re going to completely transform your entire personality. And I thought that’s a big call. And he said it is a big deal because we operate on a hierarchy of values. And so he had everyone in the room there would have been three or four hundred of us and it was actually in the Gold Coast and a several day event. And it was called a date with destiny. One of his sort of premiere premium kind of offerings. And we wrote down all of our values and then he had people come up and give examples of their values and then he showed his list of values and his first one was health. And he asked everyone in the room to put up your hand if your number one value was health. And I want to say 5 percent of the room’s number one first priority was health. And it kind of shocked me. This was well before I got sick.
Clint: It shocked me that that we could be so kind of so naive that it wouldn’t be at the time. And it also shocked me that that he had his at the top because I thought come on the guys all about success and getting achievements and here he has health at the top. And he told everyone to completely, well basically he told everyone to put health as number one.
Clint: Why bother doing anything else unless your health is number one. And it was funny that you know that even after I went to that seminar and I did of course comply and and put health number one for the exercise that we went through. You know our health was still not my number one until I got sick. It’s crazy isn’t it? It’s crazy how we are so yeah we all need reminding even those of us who’ve paid thousands of dollars to attend expensive seminars and be told that health needs be number one even those of us still need reminding.
Clint: So it’s a it’s a good and powerful message that needs to be shared. So thanks for being part of that today and I look forward to chatting with you online and helping you further to hit all your health goals.
Julia: Yeah well it’s been excellent. Thank you so much and have a great day and we’ll just get the word out and help people you know.
Clint: Well thanks so much Julie.
Julia: OK. You have a great day.