Roxana Improves Her Rheumatoid Arthritis, Hashimotos and Entire Life With The Paddison Program.
Disclaimer -the information on this site is not medical advice. Before making any changes to your lifestyle, diet, exercise, drug or supplement routines you must first discuss the changes with a licensed professional.
In this energy-rich interview you will discover Roxana’s total transformation and life overhaul:
- Roxana lived a pain free life in Lima, Peru before moving to the States and adopting the terrible American diet
- Diagnosis of Hashimotos
- Diagnosis of RA
- How one autoimmune can lead to another (it’s usually Hashimotos then RA in that order, rarely the other way around)
- The Paddison Program early days, challenges and massive progress
- How changing her lifestyle has improved her life in immense ways
- “Don’t overdose on drugs, overdose on nutrition”
- Happiness, growth, inspiration and how Roxana wants to now help others
- Pain free is better than anything else on earth
Clint: Good day and thanks for joining me today. We’ve got a fabulous, very energetic, and passionate guest today. Her name is Roxana, and she is on Skype with me right now to speak about both Hashimoto’s and rheumatoid arthritis. Good day, Roxana.
Roxana: Hi. I’m so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Clint: You’re very welcome. Now, we’re gonna cover a lot today. You have got so much to share. You’ve had quite the transformation. I’m very excited. Now, normally before we record these episodes I ask our guests to give me a summary of their progress and give me an idea of the key milestones and so forth. Now, we have not done that on this call because I want to hear it all fresh. I want to be surprised for the first time on the recording. So I’m about to hear about your story for the very first time, all the things that you’ve done. All I know I that it’s been very, very good. So let’s talk about what you were diagnosed with. You got Hashimoto’s first, didn’t you? Start somewhere in the past when things weren’t so good and you were getting diagnosed with Hashimoto’s.
Roxana: Okay, yeah. My name is Roxana. I’m from Lima, Peru, to start with. So English is not my first language. So bear with me and my accent. After having my second son I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, and then they never checked my antibodies, and then I gained a lot of weight and I used to feel so tired all the time, cranky, and then no energy, no motivation. I was just living, going through the flow, basically, and trying to survive in a day. You know, two little ones, and you know how hard it is. You have two kids.
Clint: Very hard when you’ve got kids trying to handle a health condition.
Roxana: Everything is difficult. I thought it was normal to feel like that. I thought I’m getting old and it’s normal to feel this way, and then I started having issues with my lower back, too. Then I went to my primary doctor, an orthopedic doctor, and when he checked me he ordered some x-rays, some blood work and stuff, and he said, “You have a degenerative disease.” So I was in my thirties and I had a degenerative disease in my lower back. I had hypothyroidism, and I was feeling depressed, but I didn’t change a thing. I’m from South America and I used to eat a lot of rice, potatoes, quinoa, and food from the Andes, from Lima. Like you have in your program, the Andes are in Peru, and then we used to eat at fresh markets and organic and everything. But when I moved here in 2004 I started going like everybody else in this country, in the United States eating the standard American diet. So everything is convenient, in boxes, everything is processed and artificial, chemicals, and I changed my life. I mean, I started eating a lot of cheese and drinking every weekend, you know, and I didn’t take care of myself.
I started working out in the gym just to have some me time, and then I started feeling better, but then I started having tingling in my hands, and then every time I would try to lift I was like, this is not normal. My legs started being stiff and then I felt pressure and pain in my leg, and I was like, something is going on, but it was like a problem six months to a year. I was like, maybe I worked out too hard this time, but I used to get like every month sinus infections. Sick all the time, every month, and I used to go to my primary to get antibiotics and steroids to get my sinus infection out from my system as quick as I can. I was so ignorant. I didn’t know what I was putting in my body. The last steroid shot in part of my fat in my gluts and also muscle gave me dents. I noticed after a couple months. I was so worried. I said, “What is this?” I went to the doctor and they told me it’s some side effects of the steroid that sometimes when it’s applied incorrectly it can eat your fat or muscle, but it’s permanent. They were like, “I’m sorry.” Anyway, I went back to the orthopedic doctor. He ran some blood work and the rheumatoid factor was high, and I didn’t know what is a rheumatoid factor about. So he sent me to the rheumatologist. It was summer 2014.
It was probably two or three months after I saw the rheumatologist, and when I went to see him, my first rheumatologist, he said, “Yeah, you have rheumatoid arthritis.” I was like, rheumatoid arthritis, what is that? I hear arthritis, it’s for old people, not for me. I started reading about it and I started crying. My husband thought what’s with me, and I felt so depressed and said this can’t be happening to me. He said, “You just got lucky like that,” because doctor, why? Why do I have this disease? Nobody in my family has it. In Peru, in South America you don’t hear that kind of autoimmune disease. So I don’t know, you just got lucky like that, and I didn’t like him. Anyway, so he put me on the immunosuppressants like methotrexate, and then he told me, “You need to take these medications for the rest of your life.” You know, like everybody else. I was like, okay. So I told my husband I want to see a different rheumatologist because I don’t like him. I want a second opinion. So we went to a second opinion after a couple months. So it took like four to five months. Anyway, so he saw me and he said, “Yeah, you have rheumatoid arthritis.
You need to start right away.” He put me on 6.5 a week milligrams. So it was the lower dose. So I started taking it and I was having cold sores in my mouth. Then my husband found your program and he started researching, and then he saw your TED talk and he was very impressed by what you were saying, and you were young, from Australia, and he said, “I want to buy you this program.” At the moment I was so blank. I felt like I didn’t have any solutions for my life, like hopeless, and I was so in my own depression, you know? Like whatever, do whatever you want. So he bought me the program and I was so determined. When I started reading your books, your eBooks, because you gave me the eBooks right away, so he bought it and I started reading. When I started reading it felt like for the first time in my life my eyes were opened and I started knowing all of those things I had never realized, like nutrition and how important it is, and then how important it is to put good food in our bodies, good nutrition, and then I started juicing and exactly what you say. The first time I didn’t like the juice. I mean, I was like I can’t drink this.
This is the most difficult thing in my life. It was so difficult. So this path and this healing journey for me wasn’t easy, but I’m glad I have the willpower to do it. I did it, and you opened, like I told you in the email, you opened the doors for wellness, because I just discovered all those wonderful things about life and about healing your body, everything, the whole body. Then I started your program, and after six months I said to my rheumatologist, “I stopped taking the medication after six weeks,” because I said, “I feel like I need to overdose in nutrition, not overdose in drugs that are gonna poison my body.” So I said instead of poisoning my body, why don’t I help my body, help my immune system, reset my immune system, build my immune system? My immune system is not working properly, obviously. So I need to help my body, not suppress it with drugs. So it doesn’t make sense to me.
I won’t do that. So I stopped taking the medication without telling anybody. It was a decision. It was my body and I decided with my intuition, my heart. I was feeling my gut. I told my husband and he said, “Are you sure what you’re doing?” and I said, “Yes, I’m sure.” He supported me, but he was like, “I don’t know.” The medication is always gonna be there. I’m very [inaudible 00:10:40] by this time, we have options, we have medication. They desist progress, but I’m gonna try this alternative first, trying to help my body with foods, you know? With organic food, with food like god put in nature for us to heal our bodies. So I want to try that route. I want to take responsibility for my life. I don’t want to delegate to my doctor and not know anything. I need to educate myself. So I’m a person who’s very obsessive with things like, I’m very passionate. When I have passion for something I will do anything. So I started studying, researching, I started reading. The last year in my journey I’ve been reading many articles that I [inaudible 00:11:40] doctors, health gurus, and all the right people, because you need to create a network, like you have this positive mindset. You don’t want to follow people, they’re complaining about everything.
They’re not even sick, but they complain. You know what I mean? You have a different outlook on life. I feel like my view on life or what I appreciate is totally different than before. My mind is clear, I have more gratitude. I wake up every day and say, “Thank god. My joints are moving. I’m walking, I’m active, I have this energy to do whatever it takes, because I’m just here and I’m alive and breathing.” So I’m very thankful and I learned how to be like that. Before, I wasn’t. I wasn’t thankful for anything. I took for granted, like everybody else. Oh my god, I need to go back to what I was saying. That was a very interesting journey, and then I was being on my own. My priority was me. So I started saying no to things. Before I was a person who pleased everybody else. “You want to do this?” And even though I don’t want to do it, but okay, because you want to do that? I want to do it to make you happy. No, this time it was me, and I didn’t care who was blocking me or in my way. I needed to take care of myself. So I started taking care of myself and loving myself, respecting my body, and loving my body.
The first thing I would say to everybody who listens, you need to figure out who you are and what you want to be, because if you don’t have those things clear, you won’t do anything. Everything’s gonna be harder. You need to know where you’re going. I didn’t email you my updates because I want to make sure I’m in the moment, like I know and feel it was the moment to say, yes, now I can say I’m fine, I’m okay, and the bad moments are in the past, because I have ups and downs. Some moments I was crying and I was so depressed, and then I was in the shower and saying, “Why me? What has happened to me? Why can’t I have a normal life like everybody else?” But I finally understand that this didn’t happen to me. This happened for me, to change my life, to change my life to be a better person. I wouldn’t be this person if I didn’t have those diseases. So it’s up to you. It’s your perception of the bad situation. You either can complain and cry and not do anything about it or you can say, “What is this challenge gonna teach me? What can I learn? What can I change?” This can be a blessing for you. So it’s my attitude.
Clint: It’s amazing.
Roxana: It’s what I took. My health challenges give me the motivation for learning, for searching, for changing my life. Not only did I take away the toxic food from my life, I took from my life the toxic people, toxic souls, you know? Everything. So everything changed because we are whole, and then one thing can work without the other parts. So my diet was taken care of, my rheumatoid arthritis, but then when you have two autoimmune diseases, Hashimoto’s…And then I was thinking what else? Something is wrong with me. Something I’m not doing well. I have too much stress on my body, and stress is pro-inflammation.
Stress increases cortisol levels, hormones, adrenaline, and everything is fine when you have a reaction one time a week or a month, but when you’re constantly stressed and you have those negative thoughts running in your mind like you’re an idiot or so stupid, or why are you so fat, and you look so old and you don’t look like that, that person we don’t treat very well, our own self. We need to start loving our self. Jealousy, envy, guilt, and bitterness, all these bad emotions are going to harm your body. Then if you don’t take care of that, you won’t be able to heal because, I think both things for me, at least helping my body through putting the good food, good nutrients my body needed, my body was starving for nutrients. I was eating just half a cup of vegetables a day, maybe. Maybe. Maybe some cooked vegetables. I changed that to 20 servings per day, like I’m eating now a day. Tell me if that won’t make a difference in your health, right?
Clint: Yeah, exactly.
Roxana: I think about the family salads at Olive Garden. I don’t know if you have Olive Garden in Australia.
Clint: I know, it’s a store, yeah.
Roxana: Yeah, it’s an Italian restaurant. Those big salads are what I eat by myself. I didn’t eat anything before, I didn’t eat any vegetables, and now I’m eating food I didn’t even know exists. I just eat good things. Every time I eat I say, “Thank you god for putting all these wonderful food,” because I know and think they’re gonna go into my body and help my body to heal. They’re healing foods, you know? It’s amazing how my mind now works like never before. I’m so happy right now where I am, and I know this is a lot of dedication, effort, and I’m in the kitchen cooking all the time. I’m doing my own fermented foods like everybody else, kimchi, sauerkraut, and I’m doing my master tonic with a natural antibiotic. I chopped turmeric, onion, garlic, a whole radish, what else, and all these powerful foods, organic of course, and then I pour in a mason jar apple cider vinegar and let it aside in a dark room for probably two weeks to a month, and then when I strain it and get the liquid, it’s what I drink in the mornings. That’s powerful, and I don’t know what virus or bacteria I have going down my body, but that thing was killing everything.
Clint: Yeah, I think it’s like your personal rocket fuel because you’re just absolutely pumped on life right now, and I think I could let you go for hours and you could just teach us for hours, and I don’t need to be here. You’ve covered so many awesome things. Potentially what we might do is I might just get you to email me this master tonic. I’d like to hear more about this particular fermented mix that you’ve got going on that you put into the dark cupboard because it sounds a little bit than some of the other ones that I’ve come across in the past. So it sounds like it’s doing some wonderful things.
Roxana: It’s anti-candida, anti-peroxide, antimicrobial, antifungal. It’s what the ancestors used to use. Also it’s good for colds, allergies, flu. My husband is taking it now. So we’re both taking it and I feel like it helps with digestion, because if you separate the ingredients, what is kohl radish? It’s anticancer. Then ginger and turmeric and all these wonderful spices, herbs, all of that together is powerful. So yeah, definitely I’m gonna send you that.
Clint: Yeah, please. I would like to, let’s call it the Roxana Rocket Fuel.
Roxana: When I strain the liquid and put it in another mason jar, whatever I would chop in pieces, you know, there are pieces of everything, and I started eating it with my salads because I say why do I want to waste that? I don’t want to waste that. I want to eat it because it’s good things. So I don’t want to waste anything. So I started eating it, and then I think when I added that and probiotics, my own probiotics, I also started taking probiotics tablets. I think that makes so much difference. The microbiome is balancing now and giving me the energy, the good moods and everything because they’re the bosses. They decide everything.
Clint: Yeah, 100%. How often do you take the probiotics supplements? And when do you take them? Because people like the specifics.
Roxana: Well, I used to take it first thing in the morning, but then I was reading and searching, and they say it’s better when you take it after meals. So the acids in the stomach, I don’t know. They say many things, but I’m taking it now at nights.
Clint: Yeah, that’s what I like to recommend as well. I think just before bedtime is the best time to take them because there’s not much stomach activity going on and they don’t have to compete with hydrochloric acid or anything.
Roxana: Yeah, that’s when I’m taking those. I read also, it was Dr. Mercola articles, he had a study about half a cup of kimchi or sauerkraut, homemade probiotics has much more, like 10 trillion bacteria than the whole bottle of a good brand of probiotics.
Clint: That’s right.
Roxana: So how true is that? But he’s researching it and he got some kind of test. I don’t know.
Clint: Yes, I was just talking about this recently with another guest on another podcast, and definitely my feeling without doing any of the studies is that the most important part of the probiotics journey is to eat the probiotic foods. For me that’s always been the miso paste. I just talk about it all the time.
Roxana: Your body can absorb it better than the tablets.
Clint: I think so.
Roxana: When he says that, it motivates me more to make my own probiotics. Now I’m like, tonight I’m gonna make my own probiotics. I have two cabbages, and I love the red cabbage. I feel like the color has more antioxidants and stuff like that. I really like that. Yeah. It’s just amazing that things we can change just for $3.
Clint: Yeah. The thing is, even myself, for all the things that I’ve learned over the years, I have still not learned the skill of fermenting my own foods. So I’ve got to basically lift my game. If you send through that, I’ll have a go at using your rocket fuel. It’ll be a good reintroduction for me because it’s been several years since I’ve tried to make any fermented foods. It wasn’t easy for us back where we used to live. We’ve moved a couple of times in the last few years, and we used to live in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in the city that was super-hot inside.
Roxana: I was gonna mention that. I’m the person who is simple. I don’t have time for fancy and decorating my plate with flowers and everything else. I appreciate that some people do, you know? It looks lovely and nice and I want to eat it, but for me, no. I don’t have time for that. I have two kids. I need to take care of myself. I make big pots of beans, put them in the refrigerator, and if I’m hungry I have it there. A lot of basmati rice. Always you’re gonna find my refrigerator and fridge, I have big salads. You know, salads are easy to make. Just chop, chop, and then lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, some salt, and that’s it. I mean, I’m simple. I eat things that are easy and fast to do because if I’m gonna be like, I need to eat fancy and I’m gonna put…I’m never gonna do it, you know? You need to take care of your health first. I’m juicing too. Now I’m juicing every other day. I don’t juice like I used to, but I get a bunch of the celery and then I put dandelions, because those are great for your livre, you know? It detoxes your liver. Amazing. I put whatever I have, red beets, tomato roots, ginger. I juice cabbage. You can do that. It’s great for my stomach. It’s great for you. So I don’t care. And now I have different bad tastes. That’s something that my body’s asking now.
Clint: Think about how different . . .
Roxana: [inaudible 00:26:39] this is disgusting, and now it’s just, come to me. This is my medicine. You know? It’s amazing how your life can change. I’m very thankful to god because he put me to the right direction and found your program, and maybe sometimes people can find the right things in life, and I did, and I’m very thankful for that. I do miso paste too. I put some rice, and I do sometimes like mushrooms with sprouts, bean sprouts, or stuff like that, and I do that. I do fancy things too sometimes. I do my quinoa ceviche, because I’m from Lima, so we have ceviche with fish. It’s from my country. So ceviche is lemon and something like a peach dish. So I do quinoa, some cucumbers, some limes, some cilantro and avocado, and it’s wonderful. For me, my oatmeal in the morning with hemp seeds and goji berries and [inaudible 00:27:56] all that stuff. And raw honey for me is so wonderful, how it tastes. It’s just amazing. I feel like I’m enjoying more food now than before.
Clint: Yeah, exactly.
Roxana: I mean my kids here and there have some fast food, like pizza and fried stuff, and I don’t crave it. I don’t. I just don’t crave anything like that anymore.
Clint: It’s incredible, isn’t it?
Roxana: [inaudible 00:28:29]
Clint: To think that when you first started this you could barely drink a celery and cucumber juice and now you’re downing cabbage juice, which is the most difficult of all.
Roxana: No, now it’s easy. Like I said, I can eat horseradish by itself.
Clint: Yeah, that’s amazing.
Roxana: [inaudible 00:28:55]
Clint: I just have to interrupt you sometimes, I’m sorry, but if I don’t interrupt you I won’t ask any questions. How do your rheumatologists, do you still see them, what’s going on with that? I just want to hear about the outcome of stopping the methotrexate as well, and of course I just need to state to people, because we’ve got a large audience now and some people, we just need to remind those who haven’t heard the message before, we don’t encourage people stopping their medications without consulting their doctor. I know that we both know that, but we’ve just got to make that clear to everyone, but what was the consequence of that? You’re obviously looking fantastic. It doesn’t look like any part of you isn’t at an optimum state, but how did your rheumatoid arthritis improve with time after you made all of these health changes, and also your Hashimoto’s? So could you update us where you’re at with both of those?
Roxana: Well, I kept my rheumatologist because I want to have my inflammatory marker checked every three months, like CRP and sed rate like everybody else, because I don’t want to be like, oh, I’m feeling okay but I don’t care anymore to check my bloodwork. I’m gonna be checking my joints probably with x-rays every year because I want to make sure I’m fine. I just don’t want to be trusting everything. I mean I trust what I’m doing, but I want to be . . .
Clint: Yeah, you want it to be clear.
Roxana: Yes. So my last appointment, I was supposed to see him like six months ago and I didn’t go because I was so busy moving because my husband and I just bought a new house.
Clint: Oh, well done.
Roxana: Thank you, yeah. We love it here. It’s a new house. Anyway, so I said I want to make an appointment to see this man because he’s cool. He’s a nice man. Like every doctor, he’s on his own. He doesn’t believe in other things besides what they learn in medical school. So I went to see him, and he saw my last CRP, and it was 0.4 and my sed rate was 11, and it’s been like that for months. So I wasn’t surprised. He said, “What’s going on?” I said, “Nothing. I’m good. I’m feeling great.” I was with my sport Nike clothes, like workout clothes. He said, “You look great.” I was like, “Yeah, feeling awesome.” I’m biking every day, every morning, 30, an hour a day. He said, “Okay, good. So I think you’re due for ultrasounds.” I was like, “Okay.” So he took ultrasounds on my hands.
He said, “Everything looks perfect.” And then my knees, and my right knee, because the last x-ray I think showed…I have not bone erosion, but osteoarthritis, a little, but he said, “Everything looks great. Your joints and your knees look awesome. I need to take your ultrasound and x-rays to show to people, to my patients, how healthy and normal joints look like,” and I was like wow. So I said, “Doctor, what do you think happened here?” He said, “What do you mean?” I was like, “I had a major factor positive, I had the anti-CCP antibodies, and I’m supposed to be zero positive, which is a more aggressive heartrate than some people know,” and he said, “I don’t know. You maybe got lucky like that.” I was like, really? Well it’s a rare case, but maybe 3%.
He said something like that, 3% of people don’t present the symptoms or the disease doesn’t onset in the body, and maybe you are one of them. I was like wow. He wanted to put me after methotrexate to plaquenil, and then when I was reading the side effects it was something like I can’t have my eyes. So bad side effects. He told me, “Are you taking that?” I said, “No, I never took it,” and he said, “Why?” “Because I was reading about the side effects and I feel well. Why do I need to take that?” He started changing his face, and I was like, “I respect you. I’m so thankful we have these medication options for us, but if I don’t need it, I won’t take it. When I feel like I need it, I will be more than happy to take it.” He said, “Well, you should go on the internet and even aspirin has side effects.”
Clint: Even what?
Roxana: Aspirin or Advil has the highest effects. You know, Advil, ibuprofen.
Clint: Oh, Advil. Of course it does. Yeah.
Roxana: “Everything has side effects,” he said, and I told him, “Yes, of course every drug has effects. Not side effects. Effects.” He was looking at his computer and I was like, “Well, you don’t think because I changed my diet, I’m following this protocol and I started meditation and exercising and everything else. You don’t think that maybe helps with my body?” He just dismissed me and looked on his computer, started typing in, and he said, “I don’t know, but whatever you’re doing, just keep doing it.” Okay. So he was nice. He didn’t push me with the medication. He told the nurse, “She’s not taking anything, but I want to see you in six months.”
Clint: That’s perfect.
Roxana: To keep checking on your joints and stuff. I said, “Perfect.”
Clint: That’s absolutely perfect. You don’t want to lose touch with your medical care provider. You don’t want to lose the opportunity to get your bloodwork done on a regular basis, and it sounds like three to six months is pretty good. I mean, it sounds perfect. You can use his expertise to comment on your bloodwork and to make referrals for you to get future x-rays every six to 12 months. It sounds absolutely ideal, and look, we’re never gonna get what we want to hear from our rheumatologist. We’re never going to have them turn to you and say, “Oh my god, Roxana, you have proven that this is a digestive disorder. You have done everything it takes to reverse the disease from the inside. You are the idea patient and therefore you don’t require medications, and therefore you should be on a stage speaking to thousands of people around the world.”
Roxana: I want to help Spanish speakers. I want to help people who maybe don’t know, because we are advanced in the United States or countries like your country, but maybe my country the autoimmune diseases are increasing because they’re adopting the same kind of diet as us because everything is imported there. I want to be a motivational speaker because I have so much passion, and I do believe 100% that the body can heal itself if you give the body the right nutrients to repair, to regenerate, to heal, and to detoxify. I mean, it’s possible, but the problem is people’s minds, they don’t want to believe it. So it’s just something that we need to work on. Before I forget, I need to tell you my update with Hashimoto’s. You were asking.
Clint: Please.
Roxana: I had my last bloodwork last week, and my Hashimoto’s antibodies now are half, are decreasing. I feel like it’s gonna get better and better and it’s gonna motivate me to stay on this path, because I’m never gonna go back. I can’t go back to my bad habits anymore. I’m gonna keep this wellness and get healthier and healthier. People in my own personal Facebook, I’m taking selfies of myself all the time, because in my mind how powerful is your mind? I want to believe, and I’m believing. Like the person who’s taking the picture, if I look good and I love myself, my body is gonna heal because it’s gonna believe that it’s really happening to me. If I’m negative and I feel like I look bad, it’s very important to have that positive mindset. Then people are asking me, “What are you doing?” Everybody thinks I’m doing it just to look good and lose weight and stuff. But they don’t know what is behind all of this, you know?
Clint: Yeah, no one has the amount of determination to look good as someone who’s coming from pain.
Roxana: Exactly. So it’s amazing. You never will know, like somebody looks great and has a lot of energy, and they’re fighting for this time.
Clint: That’s right because most of the celebrities that we see or the people who have hundreds of thousands of fans on Instagram and so forth, they’re all just trying to look good. They all just want the ideal physical shape, and often they’ll even choose foods that aren’t healthy to maintain that physical shape. So I think that it’s absolutely fantastic that you are coming at it from a much more organic and much more real situation. You just want to be healthy, and your body looks incredible as a result of chasing health, not chasing physical beauty. You know what I mean?
Roxana: Right. I say all the time I was looking for health. I changed my life to be healthy, and this is the side effect of eating a plant-based diet. I mean I don’t even want to say diet, plant-based food, because I eat more than I used to eat before. I eat like four cups of brown rice or white basmati rice and I eat a lot of broccoli, huge salads, I eat like three or four sweet potatoes a day. Sometimes I make a banana, berries, dates, and almond milk. I do my own almond mild, too, and I make smoothies, very sweet with cacao nibs and stuff like that, and I drink like 32 ounces. I eat whatever I want, you know? Because this is organic and healthy.
Clint: It’s fantastic, yeah. You’re on all the superfoods as well as the healing foods, and you’re actually in quite a unique situation compared to a lot of the people I speak with, and that is that you’ve got all of the humble Peruvian foods that you love like quinoa and black beans and rice, all the humble healing foods, but then you’re also grabbing the best from the superfood trends where you’ve got cacao and hemp and all that sort of stuff, and then you’re doing smoothies and you’ve got your ideal breakfast which I believe is the ideal breakfast, and you’ve got your oatmeal and fruits with that. Really you’re like the ideal situation, the ideal end result for people who go through this process. So your diet is actually more rich and colorful than what mine is. I’ve got a very diverse diet, but yours is rich and more concentrated in superfoods and nutrients than mine is.
Roxana: Yeah, I mean it was hard when I took the gluten off of my diet, because with Hashimoto’s they say gluten can be something not good for you, for me in my case. So it was like, because I used to eat those many sourdough breads, and it was so yummy, and I love bread. That was so hard, but now I’m over it because I started replacing with avocadoes and coconut water. Sometimes in the beginning I couldn’t drink too much coconut water [inaudible 00:42:01] because too much. I don’t know. I think you mentioned about coconut water, sometimes it’s bad for the gut.
Clint: Well, in the real early stages if you’re in a real bad way with regard to your hypersensitivity to sugars, the small sugar content in the coconut water may upset some people. It’s a subtlety. It’s not a major thing to avoid, but if it upset you at the time, then you avoid it. It’s as simple as that. You don’t need to consult with everyone else. If it’s not working for you, then you’ve got to avoid it.
Roxana: I want to tell you I remember one of the crazy things I did. I started eating papaya seeds. I was eating the papaya, but I started eating the seeds because I heard they’re wonderful for you, and I was like, I didn’t like it. I did it for probably a couple weeks.
Clint: I’ve heard the same thing. I believe they are very good for you, but they’re disgusting. You know I’ve done everything as well. They kind of leave a bit of an aftertaste.
Roxana: Did you eat papaya seeds?
Clint: I did for a while. Not for long. I think maybe one or two meals. I gave it up. So let’s try and get a little bit of a summary going. I think what I want to make sure people don’t lose focus on in hearing all the wonderful things you’ve done and how far you’ve come, I want to make sure that we emphasize how much exercise you do. Can you tell us the sorts, you mentioned before, but can you be a bit more, elaborate a bit more on the sort of exercise that you do and how much of it?
Roxana: Okay, so I just do Stairmaster and elliptical machine all the time, but when I got sick I stopped doing it because I couldn’t move. I was so stiff, my legs, I couldn’t do it. So I started doing like you recommend, a slow bike and then doing some stretches here and there. Little by little I was building. So it took me like six months to go back. I mean, I used to be very active, and then I just stopped doing it, but little by little I started doing some bike. I think if I was waking up with the stiffness or some pressure in my legs I start moving my joints more. So I go to the gym, do like 30 minutes first of spinning. You need to go your own pace. You don’t have to go too crazy. Start a little slowly, and now I’m doing like an hour, but it’s something, like I don’t do it because I have to do it. I do it because I love that feeling. When I go there and I move my joints and all my body, for me it’s a celebration of how my body’s capable to do those types of exercises. You know what I mean?
Clint: Yes. It’s almost like you’re expressing your body in its full capacity.
Roxana: Absolutely. Then it was like I feel powerful. I feel like I can do it, I feel energetic, and I feel obviously endorphins and everything. You know it makes you more happy.
Clint: So true.
Roxana: So I would say if a day I don’t exercise, I will feel like I’m not the same. It’s part of my life now. I can’t live without it, and I started incorporating yoga two months ago. Like three times a week I learn how to breathe, because sometimes we don’t realize we don’t breathe well. [inaudible 00:45:57] because I’m always on the go. So sometimes I don’t breathe. You just start breathing, like you remember five times a day at least. It’s gonna make a lot of difference. So I started breathing better and meditating at nights. I’m a fan of Choprah, Deepak Choprah. I’m always enrolling in this free meditation, 21 days or whatever, and just clear my…I used to suffer insomnia. I couldn’t sleep before. My life was totally different. Now I sleep well. I don’t feel anxious anymore. I used to feel anxious. I used to feel like somebody’s gonna take my kid away from kindergarten. I have Hashimoto’s. So Hashimoto’s, it was a symptom. I was like, why do I have those bad thoughts in my mind? Sorry, it’s gonna storm here. So yeah, meditation and exercise is really good for you. You have yoga in your house or you can do it in the gym.
Clint: Yeah, it’s the exact combination that I’m so passionate about. It’s getting the yoga in and getting your exercise in. I believe that we do need to have something beyond just yoga, and this is something that I found was very important for me. If I only did yoga, and you know the yoga that I like, which is the bikram yoga, even if I only did that, there were still other aspects of the healing path that wouldn’t have been addressed by just doing the yoga. Specifically I mean if you’ve got areas of the body that need to be loaded more, like elbows or knees, I had to go to the gym as well. So I had to go and use the cycle bike or I had to do specific weight bearing exercises that the yoga wasn’t providing. So I think you’ve got to find what exercise works for you, and when you find that exercise you’ve got to do it every day and you’ve got to do it a lot. Each day do you sweat each day and you get up a lot of cardiovascular?
Roxana: I have problems sweating because I don’t know if it’s my Hashimoto’s or stuff like that. I don’t know why. I was telling my husband I don’t sweat anymore. I think it’s not good. I need detox. But now I clean better. I start sweating and biking by doing more resistance, I guess, and-
Clint: More resistance. And you get a high heart rate? Does your heart rate go up high?
Roxana: Yeah, I do now. I also do weights because I want to build some muscle. I used to work out for the last four years. So now I lost like 30 pounds in the program, 30 pounds, and I feel like this is the body I’m meant to be. I feel like this is my ideal.
Clint: When you sent me photographs of yourself recently I seriously, it reminded me of these Instagram celebrities. You’ve got a sort of figure where you’re carrying no body fat, but you’re muscular and athletic.
Roxana: Thin, thinner.
Clint: You look like you could model yoga pants and sportswear.
Roxana: I’ll be 40 and I feel better than my 20s. It’s not amazing? I’m gonna be 40 the next year and I feel like the energy and everything is, even my body looks younger. I just never felt this way, and now I understand how I use to feel before is not the right feeling. The human body’s supposed to feel this way, energetic vibrant, and happy until, if you can, your 60’s or 70’s. There’s no way you have to feel another way. You need to feel alive. It’s what I feel. Lifestyle changes can change everything, because it’s what I was telling you about epigenetics. It’s the ability to change the expression of our genes through our daily choices, food, stress sleep, and exercise. We have control of our genes, you know? When I read this and I followed this [inaudible 00:50:38] doctor who was talking about it and I read the studies I was so happy to find that out because now it’s good news for us, because you can change in a positive way. If your dad or grandfather has cancer it doesn’t mean you’ve got to get it. You can probably turn on those genes if you don’t take care of yourself, but also for people like us, we can change our predisposition of genes just by changing our food and our bad habits to good ones.
Clint: So true.
Roxana: I totally believe it and I’m so happy taking the time maybe from my kids sometimes to read all these studies, because what they do is give me more motivation and confirmation that what I’m doing is the right thing to do. We need that. We need people, and I don’t feel…I was telling my husband yesterday I don’t fit anymore with the people I used to be with. I feel like I’m out there because I’m in a different stage of my life and I have a different vision of everything. One thing I try to believe is that love and gratitude are the greatest healers. You need to have love. Love motivates you. Love is powerful. It’s what I have, and I thank god for giving me a great husband who loves me and supports me through all of this, and my kids, because just seeing my two children so small who need me, I need to be there for them. There is not another choice for me. I will take whatever. If I need to eat papaya seeds for the rest of my life, I will do it.
Clint: So true. That’s right. Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes, we have to be as well as we possibly can because everything is easier when we’re healthier.
Roxana: Yes.
Clint: I think that’s a lovely way to kind of, I almost want to wrap up. I just want to say I love people from Peru. I just find that my wife and I have such a special place in our heart for Peru because that’s where we fell in love. We went…Well, it’s a long story, my wife and I. It’s a very fascinating one. We tell it a lot.
Roxana: Did you go on top of the mountain?
Clint: Yes. The part that’s relevant to this, or to you I should say, is that we hadn’t seen each other in about five or six years, and we had almost lost touch pretty much, and we had been exploring other parts of our lives on different parts of the earth, and we’d recently come out of different relationships, and I reached out to Melissa and said, “Hey, we haven’t seen each other in a very long time. How would you like to go on a trip together to Peru? It’s been something I’ve wanted to do since I was a child.” She said, “Yeah, sure. Let’s do it.” So we met up in Peru and went on a tour. Well, not a tour. We’d planned our own itinerary, but we went around Peru for 16 days and we stayed in tents together and hiked the Inca trail from start to finish together and spent a little bit of time in and around Cusco and other places. The people and the landscape and the history and everything about it was magical. It’s our favorite place in the world to visit.
Roxana: You feel the energy.
Clint: You feel the energy. Listeners, if you’ve never been to Peru, start packing your bags. You’ve got to get over there. It’s amazing. Machu Picchu was unbelievable. Let me just tell you one last thing about Peru. I know this isn’t a travel show, but listen to this for crazy. You have to believe this is true. How many people are there in Lima? Something like 8 million. It’s huge.
Roxana: [inaudible 00:55:05]
Clint: I got a taxi from the airport in Peru to the hotel I was staying at. It was about a 40 minute drive, and I accidentally left some travel documents in the glovebox of the taxi. Three days later when I was leaving that hotel, Melissa and I flagged down a random taxi on the street. We got in the cab, I looked at the guy, and I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” It was the same taxi driver I’d left my documents with after traveling from the airport three days earlier with the 8 million people in Lima, and he just happened to be driving past as I flagged him down. And it had my documents in there.
Roxana: [inaudible 00:56:00] God sent you the…You know? Because you couldn’t go back to the States, I mean to Australia.
Clint: Well, they weren’t critical. It wasn’t my passport and things. It was just things like local maps and some other bits and pieces like receipts for things that I’d paid for, but I couldn’t believe the chances of that.
Roxana: My gosh, yeah. That’s difficult [inaudible 00:56:28]
Clint: Crazy.
Roxana: I feel like I want to say this because I follow you on Facebook and every time I see your beautiful wife and your beautiful daughter, Angelina, and your new additional daughter, Ariel…You see I’m a stalker. No. It makes me feel happy, like you are doing great, because it makes me more hopeful. My hope gets huge and bigger seeing you have a very bad time with rheumatoid arthritis, and you’re doing absolutely great and you’re having this beautiful life. So there is hope. Then just seeing you and seeing how happy you guys are, it brings me so much energy, everything, like in my heart, I believe more and more and more that everything is possible in life. You just need to put your mind into it. So I’m so thankful to your family, and all the blessings, like gratitude, like people like me feeling towards you and your family, it makes you more blessed in your life.
Clint: Thank you.
Roxana: Yeah, because you’re helping and bringing hope. I feel so upset when people complain about, oh, how expensive is the program. I mean, how much money are you spending on things that don’t make anything to buy? This is your life, and I’m just upset when people are negative.
Clint: Yeah. And there’s a lot of it and people don’t understand. We’ve had such a positive podcast. I can address that at other times, but there are only so many ways you can spend as much time as I do in helping other people through these kinds of mechanisms, replying to customer support, helping people in the forum, giving talks, there’s only a few ways you can do it because we need to be able to pay for groceries ourselves and we need to be able to have…We have a mortgage. There are a few ways you can do it, and one way, we thought about starting a charity, but the thing is, all charities do is they ask for donations. You’ve got to raise money to put the time in to do things. So a small contribution by each person suffering from the disease to get the information seems to be the best way to do it.
Roxana: And it’s your time, because you reply to all my email, if it’s in hours or the next day.
Clint: You had quite a few emails at the start, I seem to remember.
Roxana: I emailed you like four times probably, total, but you’ve always been there explaining and taking the time. I bought another eBook for somebody else, and she never replied to me. She bought it, $19 or whatever it was, and then you see the difference of quality of people. You have a big heart, and you can tell that. You can feel it. We are talking, but I can feel that, and I’m very thankful for that and your wife and your family. I just wish you the best, and I’m so happy. I was lucky, or my husband was lucky to have found you.
Clint: Well, thank you, and I’m so pleased we’re able to chat like this. Have you got an Instagram or Facebook page, not personal, but where people can follow you? And if you haven’t, can you start one? Because . . .
Roxana: I actually create, because I’m very private with my personal Facebook, but I created an Instagram. I put just probably one picture, but I’m thinking maybe I will need it for the podcast or maybe people want to know more about me, and they’re interested because I’m kind of different and unique in some ways. I don’t feel like I’m better than other. I’m just different. I feel like I’m different and I love to help, but I just created an Instagram. I sent a link to you.
Clint: Yeah, we’ll put it on the show notes for this episode. So we’ll pop the transcription of our talk in this episode and also-
Roxana: You can do it, you can translate it, everything.
Clint: Yeah, no. Only in English. Not in Spanish. Then the final thing I will say is that potentially there might be, for you to fulfill a burning desire to help other people, particularly in your home country and other Latinos, let’s try to make that happen. You come back to me, tell me how you’d like to do that.
Roxana: I would love to do that. I was more into, for me and all this year, getting better. It was my only priority. It wasn’t to create a blog or do my YouTube videos. I was thinking, my husband has a GoPro camera and he said, “You could do it, your recipes and your master tonic,” and the natural cereals I made for my kids, but I’m always thinking no. Now I need to get myself better, and then it’s gonna be time for that, but right now it’s not a priority. But now I’m feeling much better and like I’m in a great place. I’m gonna start doing that, and you want to do that in Spanish, because there will be a lot even who live in the United States. There is a lot of Spanish community. We can do that. One of my dreams is to try to be, like I said, a motivational speaker and try to help and go and try to bring hope, because it’s what we need. I need somebody like me pushing me there. We need that. So we’d love to do anything. I’m open to anything and my kids are getting old, and my little one is gonna go to kindergarten. So I’m gonna have a lot of time now.
Clint: Good, all right. Well, I’ve got some ideas and we can talk about that another time.
Roxana: I have the energy.
Clint: Yeah, you’ve got plenty of energy. I’ll have to reel you in and hold you back. So thank you so much, Roxana. It’s been an absolute pleasure to spend this time with you.
Roxana: My pleasure. Thank you so much.