We discuss how:
– Marcel is 11 years old and has been diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis
– Symptoms started about a year prior to his diagnosis with some pain in his jaw and his foot
– Then pain spread to his finger joints and came to a point he couldn’t hold a pen and write
– He began the Paddison Program and after the initial cleanse, the very next day fingers felt a lot better
– His mother Anna assisted him constantly and carefully prepared every step of the Program adjusting it for her child
– This version of the Program tuned for children got results in a very short time with Marcel
– After starting the Program inflammation hasn’t come back at all
– Now Marcel is pain-free and is doing a lot of sports, even more than before
Clint Today we have a heartwarming story about Marcel and his journey with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. His mum Anna joins him on this recording, and I’ve been working with her in the last 12 months on Paddison Program support platform. And hearing of Marcel’s ups and downs and eventual massive progress with his condition. So welcome to the both of you on this episode.
Anna Hello Clint.
Clint Now for those of you who are listening to this and they’re not watching this online, Marcel he’s 11 years old, he’s got a huge grin on his face very handsome young man, and his mum Anna is sitting with him together. So we’re going to go through this as a group and I have a couple of notes that I took before we started here. Marcel’s symptoms began about a year prior to his diagnosis with some jaw pain, and then later it sort of began with pain in his foot and then he got a diagnosis, and things were pretty bad. So Marcel tell us what did it feel like when you started getting foot pain?
Marcel I felt weird because I didn’t really know what it was, I thought it was just ordinary foot pain because at the time I was doing a lot of sports and I didn’t really know what was going on.
Clint Yeah. And then where did it go from there? After it started in your feet did it start to hurt in some other joints?
Marcel Yeah in my finger joints.
Clint And did they hurt a lot when you woke up in the morning?
Marcel They didn’t hurt when I woke up, it’s just when I moved them. When making a fist it hurt.
Clint Yes. Now your mum and I have chatted and she said that when it got really bad for you at one point it was hard for you to walk from the car to the entrance to your school. I know it’s not nice to think about, but can you talk about what that was like in that experience with the pain in the body?
Marcel It just hurt like every time I took a step it hurt, and it wasn’t really pleasant.
Clint And you were going through some exams as well you had to get some assistance to help you with your writing. Could you not hold a pen properly?
Marcel No it’s just that when I hold the pen, it didn’t hurt but it felt stiff. I think it felt stiff.
Anna So he couldn’t write, and you know when you have limited amount of time to do it so it would not be possible. So (inaudible).
Clint Absolutely. So someone else had to write for you during your exams so. Yeah. What did you do, did you actually have to like tell them what to write down?
Marcel Yeah.
Anna It wouldn’t work with mathematics so he’d have to do it himself. Well I guess it’s just too complicated so he did it himself but the reading tests and the grammar that was it is in it you needed help.
Clint And what about before we talk about what you did about it and the program you’ve been following and the success that you’ve had. What other sort of issues were you facing? You had the sore fingers, you had sore feet. Was there anything else going on?
Marcel Not really. It was just the jaw apart from that.
Clint Jaw as well, Okay. As something separate to this you mentioned with headaches as well I believe you’ve had some pretty rough migraines.
Marcel Yeah. So what did sports and I like overheated and then I would usually have a migraine and not feel well.
Clint Yeah. Okay, all right. So with all those things that you were going through how are you now?
Marcel Just really good now I’m doing a lot of sports even more than I was before. It just like nothing really hurts now.
Clint It’s amazing isn’t it? So let’s talk about, Yeah. What’s that??
Marcel I don’t have the migraines anymore.
Clint As well, it’s fantastic. So tell us what did you do? Obviously I know my side of the program that we put together that your mum introduced you to. But how did that begin? Did you start with some Buckwheat-Quinoa? Did Mum make that for you? Did you start with some green smoothies. Tell me what this whole process felt like.
Marcel So the first day it was just juices, celery juices and salads.
Anna Cos we’ve done the one day cleanse. This is the thing I really wanted to do this cleanse, let me just say something about this because I know that a lot of friends they would skip the 2-day cleanse. I wouldn’t do it for two days but I really wanted to kind of. I really wanted to know if you know if it’s going to work. Okay so I just absolutely have to do this one day because I need to see you know the results you were talking about in your book and in the program. So this would give me like extra motivation to you know to start the program and keep going. And surely enough the following day. You went to bed on that day when you were having the juices and the salads really early.
Marcel The next day my fingers already felt better (inaudible)
Anna The following day the foot was completely fine, the swelling went completely went down from his foot and we couldn’t do anything with it for the three months. So the foot was absolutely fine, his fingers and he was able to run the following day. So I said that’s it, this gave me a lot of you know enough confidence to start the program and just stick to it. And I said that’s it, this is definitely working.
Clint Wow I can relate to that because I actually ran for the first time after I did my first cleanse. But the first cleanse I did was by accident because I had food poisoning and I had a bad experience where I had lots of vomiting and diarrhoea for like a long time. And then after that I also actually did a weird kind of hobbily run onto the city to see my at that time girlfriend and tell her how miraculous I had improved just from having that experience And so I can totally relate to the miraculous effect that not eating has for so many people, and it’s such a good sign for others who are listening to this. If they have a speedy result from the cleanse then it’s very positive signs for what’s about to follow. So that would have been a bit of a shock just to not eat for just a juice and cleanse, and then to get rid of your foot pain that you’ve had for months and months. Great isn’t it?
Anna We couldn’t believe it basically right, yeah it was like a shock.
Clint So now I think as you were alluding to Anna, the program was created for adults, and so as parents who are more and more frequently looking towards this program to apply to their children There needs to be a lot of modification, commonsense, and adjustments applied that fit with the child’s age, the child’s weight, the child’s interest level in actually adhering to the program, and a number of other factors that take into account maybe other medical conditions like migraines or and physical activity all sorts of things And so what I guess I’m saying here is that each parent needs to look at this and decide how they’re going to approach it. It’s not an out of the box approach for children, and what you’ve decided I think was excellent. We’ll do one day cleanse, we’ll get that sort of litmus test as to how that goes. The result was fantastic, you got the result you wanted, you got the confidence you wanted, and you went straight on. So how did you then proceed after that? And Marcel, how did you like eating these simple foods?
Marcel Not very much.
Anna Not in the beginning.
Marcel In the beginning, it was only Buckwheat and Quinoa, it was not the best.
Anna So he had bokchoy, buckwheat, quinoa we would sit down you know and it would look nothing like our usual Sunday breakfast. All of a sudden instead of bacon, baked beans, bagels, we would have all this green stuff on the table. So it took a while isn’t it? (inaudible) before we got used to it because we decided to do it all together. My husband, he wasn’t too convinced to start with but slowly he joined us and we we started doing it together. So basically we didn’t have any other type of food in the house so it was easy. There was no temptation whatsoever from ourselves. We just all started all together.
Clint Wow that’s fantastic. So you and your husband as well ate the baseline foods with Marcel. Is there anyone else in the family?
Anna Not living with us so there’s three of us doing it together.
Clint Okay. Wow what a hats off to to both of you as well. And then tell us how did the whole process feel Marcel in terms of the pain relief? And how long did it take and in your experience going through this?
Marcel I mean the experience was really amusing because like the more celery juices and smoothies I drank, the better it got. So like after 5 months I was like completely like no pain and I could do more like run and do everything.
Anna Sooner that that because he also got the joint injections. because it got you know so bad that on the 25th of May. So he was diagnosed in the 12th and then 25th of May he got the joint injections, and of course this helped a lot. But we found out soon that this joint injections they only lasts for like a month or maybe month and a half if you’re lucky. So and for myself you know he never felt the pain after that isn’t it? So the plane never came back because we started the diet on the 8th of May so it’s likely before even his injections.
Clint I remember this point of time when you and I were communicating privately in our support group. And you said to me Look I’m uncertain as to whether or not he feels so good because of the injections or because of all the things we’ve done. And I said Well the joint injections are significant, these shots are a very powerful intervention. And we won’t know until about two months after he’s had them, as to whether or not inflammation is going to return. Well we got the two months and you said can I celebrate yet? I said well look if we get the three months you can be high five and everyone you know, and then we got to three months and then four months and five months and it never come back.
Anna Never came back. So and to be honest with you we were going to the hospital on a monthly basis. So his blood was checked on a monthly basis and months after his injections he went back to the hospital and in a waiting room we met one of the mums, she had 10 month old baby, I think it was a10 month old girl. And she got injections at the same time as in her uncles because there were swollen. And she was already back after a month because the symptoms came back, and she was asking me how was Marcel and everything. So (inadible) great. And it was like you know the comparison you know but.
Clint Yeah it’s stark isn’t it. The comparison brings us quickly back to reality with the success and the joy that we can have in sharing this information and we just know that so many people who are watching this because they have a child who is affected not in a place of happiness or joy whatsoever. And really that’s why we’re doing this, is why we’re sharing this information, and why we’re providing this case study of Marcel and how well he’s done so that other people can say hey maybe maybe there’s some things that I can look at in what I’m eating. Especially when you’re that young it’s difficult, when you’re that young it’s obviously difficult and if that child was still being breastfed then the mum would have to look at what her diet looks like and so on. But anyway, this is why we’re doing this because people are suffering with it with children in these situations.
Anna And we also had a chance, I had a chance to speak to the other parents when we were at the hospital because you know you have like six beds in one room and then there were different you know there were kids like waiting for the injections. So one of the dads he said that his four year old son he had injections like two months before, and the swelling never went down. It was just you know the pain wasn’t there. And two months after that were already off the hospital for another one. So it’s like, and he was in a methotrexate, he was four years old. He was on a 12.5 methotrexate.
Clint Yeah that’s right. So you know I guess for some people though the treatment is going to help a lot. And then for other people other children like the like that example perhaps it doesn’t help as much as what we would like. So we gonna do everything in our power that we possibly can to try and keep pain levels low because there’s no guarantee that other interventions are going to work.
Anna You mentioned there was the funding as well because it was lunchtime when he woke up from his anaesthetics. And the nurse she was going around and offering the foods to anyone and we were already on the Paddison Program so I had a cantaloupe I had that you know buckwheat and stuff like this for him you know plastic boxes. And he only wanted to eat cantaloupes so he had the full box of you know cantaloupe and the nurse was kind of she felt sorry for him that she didn’t have anything else. (inaudible) don’t eat anything else maybe pasta maybe this means and you know the food in the hospitals is just not how it should be. Let’s put it this way and the other kids you know they had the pockets of crisps they had Mcdonald’s and she was quite, he had enough. So you can you know go home probably in an hour but she was so concerned about Marcel and it’s like you know it’s just shows you know like everything is upside down in nowadays.
Clint So true they’re all worried about Marcel because he has to eat simple foods but he’s the one that doesn’t need to ever come back. It’s crazy isn’t it.?
Anna It was crazy.
Clint So normally there’s the occasional skeptic that watches our results here and raises questions and says things like yea but. All right so let’s cover some year buts. Now let’s talk about inflammation levels. Someone might say but is there still high levels of inflammation? Now his SED rate or ESR of 50, and C reactive protein of 19.5 milligram per litre. Have they come back down to normal?
Anna To be honest with you after five weeks we already have noticed quite a big drop in his markers. So his ESR dropped to ten years after only 5 weeks.
Clint After five weeks. Yep. \.
Anna Yes, his C Reactive protein went to 3.
Clint Normal.
Anna And then subsequently month after month they were going down not ESR but CRP was going down. So you could see like every another two months and CRP was 2, then another month CRP was 1, then below 1 and stayed below 1 in two months.
Clint That’s absolutely fantastic. I think that the C reactive protein is more of an indicator of disease activity. The SED rate is a general inflammation marker that is used almost like a sanity check to make sure that.
Anna His ESR dropped as well to 5.
Clint Oh it dropped to 5 as well.
Anna (inaudible) if December.
Clint Okay, so is it C reactive protein less than 1 and an ESR of 5?
Anna Yeah.
Clint Man no wonder you running around playing sports like any other kid. How does it make you feel to be able to run around and play sports? Feels good?
Marcel Yeah.
Clint What’s your favourite sport Marcel?
Marcel Football.
Anna Which English Premier League team do you most admire?
Marcel Watford, because I live in Watford.
Clint Okay. And what you think of Harry Kane?
Marcel Not really good.
Clint Not really a good? Love it.
Anna (inaudible) Barcelona So with his dad so you’re not (inaudible).
Clint Let’s see if we can cover off any of the skeptics kind of yeah buts. Do you ever have any pain from doing lots of exercise? Do you find that it ends up hurting your feet or when you write a lot with the fingers that used to hurt? Did they hurt after writing a lot?
Marcel No, the only thing is because I have a big break for tennis when my fingers start hurting. So now it’s just like me getting used to holding their racket for long. It’s not the joint that hurts just like my hands.
Clint Probably hurt most adults holding the tennis racket for a while if they haven’t played for a long time too so I wouldn’t be too worried about that. What have your friends said who may have come over to hang out and play some video games or kick a soccer ball, and they’ve seen you doing these mega green smoothies like what has other kids say?
Marcel I couldn’t do this, I can’t do this, that’s what they say. Like oh I love meat this stuff, it’s just the common answer.
Clint Yes true. Same with adults, I could never do that. It’s so common.
Anna If you say to your friends at school that you’re vegan, what do they ask you.
Marcel I mean most of them no. Usually they’re like Oh why, why is this your choice.
Anna And what do you eat then, do you eat eggs? No. To drink milk? No. Do you eat cheese? No. What do you eat?
Clint It’s just so funny. It happens at every age, it never changes. Marcel let me tell you, you got this for the rest of your life. These questions.
Anna Where do you get (inaudible).
Marcel Most is where do you get your proteins from? You just tell them black beans, spinach right. It’s yeah.
Clint Yeah. Which is a good opportunity now to talk about what your diet looks like now it started out really simple. How did the reintroductions go? Because I get asked this a lot from other parents who are in the situation that you have been through. When you reintroduced foods, which ones did you find had no issue at all? And which ones if any did you have to say actually I can’t eat that?
Marcel Well I can’t really exactly remember, but I remember when we introduced nuts. I felt a little bit of inflammation.
Clint Right. But you mentioned black beans so you’re able to eat beans and lentils no problem?
Marcel Yeah.
Anna Very quickly actually, because after two weeks or something I started slowly giving him black beans because I wanted something more substantial on the diet. So this would be the you know, the changes which we decided to do. I decided to do it because it’s a child so I want to have something else. Rather than just bukcwheat and salads, and then a little bit of chia seeds. (inaudible) swell but just a little bit like half of a teaspoon of something.
Marcel I remember when I was 4 and you always gave me sweeties at lunch.
Anna Because I worked in his former primary school. So what I would do is to it like you know would take a blender. I had a blender at school actually so I prepare everything for the smoothie, go to work, put in the fridge so lunchtime I would prepare his smoothie you know give it to him and he was like Why. But he always would have it so it was like 70 back home also Lito smoothie (inaudible) Yeah so because it was faster than eating salads for him lunchtime for example so he could just know drink his smoothie and he was ready to play football with his friends. Lunchtime (inaudible).
Clint Your skin’s glowing Marcel, you looked like a very very healthy young man. How do you feel in terms of your energy? Do you outrun some of the other kids? How do you feel in terms of energy levels and you know competitive levels with other kids?
Marcel In terms of energy like you said, a few very energetic and Oh come with being competitive. Yeah, I outrun most kids most of the time.
Clint It’s awesome. That’s great.
Anna No one actually if they didn’t know that you have arthritis. I don’t think that anyone would actually expect that he’s got some kind of condition you know. Because you can’t really tell.
Clint Yeah it’s wonderful. There’s a movie coming out in a few months I believe. I’m seeing it in the beginning of August this year. But I think it’s a private screening which is the game changers movie. And I think doesn’t be a good one for Marcel to watch because the young man you know about to get into his teens, and go through a lot more sport and one day represent the Premier League and so on as a champion. And I think it’ll be good to see these athletes who are performing at the world class level and they’re vegan, and so it’ll be good just a little bit of a motivator to say you know what I’m going to stick with this because my health worth it. And I’m not going to sacrifice anything with my sports and in fact it could be an advantage. So that’ll be a good movie to watch.
Anna Yeah absolutely. I have a book like vegan athletes you know so sometimes they like you know take bits and pieces from it. And I’m Marcel have look at this in (inaudible).
Clint Marcel out of all the things that you did, you starting out with the simple foods, you did lots of green smoothies green juices. Which ones if you had to say are the most important to have given you the best results?
Marcel Celery and cucumber juice.
Clint Wow powerful. Yeah.
Anna Actually we add something else.
Marcel Yeah we add cabbage.
Clint Cabbage that is hard core.
Anna In the beginning it was actually alfalfa sprouts cabbage and celery juice and cucumber. But most of it is alfalfa sprouts. So we just decided to leave that for now but it’s still a cabbage. This is how we do it cabbage, celery and become cucumber.
Clint Wow. Yeah. No that’s great. So how long after consuming the juice would you start to feel like that sort of release of the inflammation or was it just that the more you drank it just slowly went away sort of with weeks?
Marcel I would say that more juices and smoothies and stuff. What’s it like, I don’t know. Like I coudn’t really feel the smallest difference and stuff. I think it’s like you could just feel it getting better sometimes.
Anna Yeah you like (inaudible) in the past. You know it’s two days. And you see the symptoms whatever if any type of food would affect him then the symptoms would be more subtle. You know now you probably know what I mean. You get better and better and you don’t get this like stiffness or stiffness. I don’t know maybe a year ago he lost his stiffness (inaudible). It’s just not happening.
Clint And Marcel tell me is there anything that you’re looking to change or are you impatient with the diet that you’re on or do you understand that you’re going to have to eat lots of plants for a very long time to stay well?
Marcel I’m not really impatient, I think eating being vegan is the better option because it feels way better like you can see it heal the disease so like it’s just all the evidence you need to see this is like the best diet in non vegan diet. So yeah I’m going to stay on it for all my life.
Clint What wonderful words and it gives me great feelings of joy to know that you have that commitment and knowledge as well. Because what you know at age 11 some people don’t learn in their entire lifetime. So you have a great amount of life experience at a very young age which has led you to have this incredible insight, and this in a way a blessing of knowledge to help you for the rest of your life. So that’s very impressive.
Anna And we also saving the planet.
Marcel We’re helping the planet as well. Just makes you feel good like you’re doing something to stop global warming.
Clint Most definitely. So this morning we had to delay proceedings a little bit because you were cranking a big smoothie together. Tell me what you put in the smoothie this morning.
Marcel I don’t really know I just drink (inaudible) healthy.
Clint Oh he doesn’t even know what goes in it, you put it all together.
Anna More or less (inaudible).
Marcel All I know is there’s some form of like spinach or greens like and there’s a fruit and there’s chia seeds.
Anna And spirulina quite often.
Anna We started spirulina quite early as well. Or if I can mention one thing I’ve noticed that spirulina helped with his haemoglobin level because when he wants to find and I didn’t have organic spirulina available over so I said I’m going to buy just any spirulina. I’m just going to wait until we go back to England and then I have my spirulina there. So hemoglobin would drop a couple of points it’s nothing now below the required level but I could see this changes because he has (inaudible)this without on a monthly basis I could compare what I was doing this month and I was doing that month and what was. So this was quite helpful as well.
Clint Yeah. That’s a great tip. Yeah. I haven’t heard that before. That’s excellent. Let’s cover off any other tips or advice for other people who are in a similar situation.
Marcel Just focus on your celery juices, salads and smoothies.
Anna Yes I guess we want it’s really. We want it to get like a quick result. So we’ve done a hundred percent. We’ve done exactly what was in your program and we may be added to other things like spirulina because I know for some it might be posing a problem because there is quite a lot of you know I think omega 3 in it or…
Clint It’s such a small amount that’s consumed. Yeah it’s a little bit of fat in there is negligible. And quite possibly helpful. So I for example I used to take bites of spirulina roasted to insane amounts of spirulina but at the same time that I was taking it I was doing a lot of different other supplements. And the combination total of all of them. I can’t say what was going on because there’s too many variables. But yes I have a soft spot for spirulina and people take it. My first response is normally internally quite positive. I think okay this is good news. So yes it’s good to hear that you feel it was attributed to his improvements in his blood.
Anna Yeah we’ve done some supplements but we didn’t go over to crazy about supplements. So we’ve done calcium because he was deficient in calcium and we’ve tried magnesium.
Marcel It’s anti-inflammatory thing.
Anna So we’ve done the magnesium, we’ve done minerals. Of course I did three. Just like altogether found a really good source like a raw vegan products gluten free products as well. So we’ve done probiotics to start with.
Clint Oh and you know one thing that that year we’ve spoken about a lot here is the exercise and I think that this is a really important message that you know it’s natural and so helpful for kids to exercise and we should allow as much exercise as the joints allow essentially if there’s no complaint from the child and the joints don’t get more hurt from the exercise then I believe that it’s sky’s the limit. And if this means you know trampolining and or bike I my personal favourite is a normal regular pushbike. It’s great for the knees, great for just having fun that feeling of euphoria, all these happy endorphins stuff it’s all helpful to healing and just lots of physical activity. So Marcel you’ve embraced that, you’ve done as much physical activity as you as anyone. And I think that that’s played a big role in just you know allowing your body to heal. So I think that’s something that you’ve kind of done by default but something that we should you know put the microscope on.
Anna It’s something that he always like. In the beginning when he was not able to walk but he was able to cycle isn’t it. So he’s done a lot of cycling and also swimming.
Anna And then when he was able to start playing football again he start playing football and tennis. But in the beginning in all those bad times when he was not able to do all this plus he would love. He would love to do it.
Anna Then we would be cycling and swimming and even if sometimes he didn’t feel like in the evenings that no, we’d have to go. We have to swim,we have to go and swim, let’s go. So we’re like pushing as well. So yes he’s done quite well with the physical exercise. This is part of your program as well that’s why we’re kind of you know stressing about this quite a lot.
Marcel Also at school because it was so happy place. It’s just so fun to think (inaudible)
Anna Yeah exactly. So yeah. Absolutely. And if I may say in terms of the food as well. And we started to making my own sauerkraut. You know I started to purchasing this fermented oats after listening to Dr. Matthews, your podcast with Dr. Matthews. So we stopped using like shop bought probiotics. We started using of course miso as well. So he wasn’t a big fan of miso at the start but now he is, he really likes miso soup now as well.
Anna So all this natural sources you know we really didn’t want it to overload him with this supplements. No can buy it. We just started to going away on that and we just started to kind of keep it simple and baseline foods.
Clint Yes. You’ve really done an outstanding job to transition from I guess a classic Western style diet with a Eastern European influence. You mentioned like to bake and lots of that kind of high fat high protein kind of meals and to completely do a 180 degree turn and make a vegan family and get rid of the symptoms of your child who was otherwise going to be on a course of very long term drugs and challenging health condition. It’s been incredible. So what a family huh. You guys deserve a family of the Year.
Anna I think you know because with Marcel it was really easy because he wasn’t complaining. You know he just eats whatever he knew that he needs to eat in order to get better. So it was really he made it very easy for us.
Clint Yeah what a boy. So Marcel I want to tell you something so because you’ve been through this and you’ve overcome this very very serious challenge by doing something that as most of your friends say they could never do. I want you to know that all the other challenges that come in life you can handle them. All right.
Marcel Hardest one.
Clint You’ve already done the hardest one. So if you get to a situation where you’re going to go to university and you’re worried that you won’t be able to to do a certain degree or if you feel a challenge in a futures scenario and you don’t think you can do it I want you to think back to what you’ve just done in the last 12 months. You can do anything. All right.
Anna Yeah this is what I’ve been telling him as well exactly.
Clint Yeah I think he can do anything.
Anna Thank you but he needs to go now. He was quite emotional.
Clint Yeah it is emotional. You know that I wanted to share that with him even if it’s a little emotional because I want him to know that, I want him to know that because it doesn’t get any harder than that. It just doesn’t. You know you’re in agonizing pain, is struggling to walk from the car to the school we can all these pain at school, he has to get someone else to write his exam results for him. I mean come on. And now he’s running around, he looks amazing. He doesn’t have any of the symptoms he’s… all these blood markers are fantastic. He’s dodged not just the bullet, he’s dodged a nuclear missile right here.
Clint And he deserves it.
Anna I didn’t know in the beginning I was I had like had it at the back of my mind. What if this is not going to work. Because we’ve done this one day plans. I was very hopeful you know and I was like I was seeing you know the results come really quickly so you know and I really want them to come quickly because it was we were fighting kind of against the time with the doctors because they were pushing you know having drugs on him. So yeah this was this was you know it’s like it’s really intense back then yeah it was.
Clint That’s right. And I’m glad you mentioned that the sort of the time pressure and we see this frequently the period between when the results in the blood show that there is a situation, an autoimmune situation. You have a very short window before the medications are essentially pushed upon you. And during that time there is a great deal of soul searching and researching and sleepless nights. And to see results so quickly is a Godsend because that means that you can you can confidently have a discussion with the doctor about a slight delay in treatment because things seem to be improving. And even if they don’t believe that they’ll continue to improve without drugs you can at least have the conversation and maybe you know manage to postpone it indefinitely. So you’re right that time pressure that month or so, that’s a heavy month.
Anna Yeah it was three months to be honest with you guys because I was like postponing and postponing it. Listen I’m doing something else. I wasn’t going into the details but I’m doing something possibly going to be done some this and that and I want to wait another month. I want to do that and I think you just felt like you know every summer we’d go back and they will try to persuade and they would try to convince you like they did basically, I don’t know why maybe but if it’s a child with rheumatoid arthritis they want to attack it really aggressively. I don’t know if it’s everywhere in the world like this or just England but to me it’s very aggressive. You know the first reaction so it would be methotrexate and prednisone and steroid injections everything at once.
Anna They just want to dump everything you know at the same time which is I don’t think it’s all necessary at the moment. You know depending on the circumstances depending on the situation but it proved that it was definitely not necessary and if I would believe the doctors what they say what they are advising. Well we would be in a completely different position.
Clint Mm hmm. That’s right.
Anna We don’t even want to think what would have happened.
Clint Let’s not go down that path mentally let’s keep on…
Anna Yeah. You know take a deep breath and just. No it’s not easy because they tried to scare you a lot. Yeah. So they tried to scare you with all this pessimistic you know scenarios for the future. You know if you’re not gonna take this drug so.
Clint Mm hmm mm hmm. So just to close out I’m gonna throw to Marcel with a little bit of a curly question. If there were three words to describe what you need to do to go through this program and to improve your health, what would be three words you would say that you would need?
Clint I love it. I love it.
Clint That is awesome it is. All right. Well you too have been a treat to talk to. It’s just always makes me glow from tip of my head to the bottom of my feet to listen to stories like you’ve shared. And again I just want to reiterate the degree of difficulty was a ten out of ten. And you’ve shown that you can handle the ten out of ten as a family. So congratulations on all that you’ve achieved. Complacency now is your only enemy. And so keep up all the great work that you’re doing. Become the green smoothie champion. And thank you so much for sharing this and I will chat with you and in our support group and I look forward to continuing to offer help if you need it because you’re doing so well.
Anna Thank you so much Clint! It’s actually all now thanks to you. What can I say. What can you say. Just huge thank you!
Anna I didn’t know what would happen. You know if we wouldn’t find on time your program and I don’t know. So yeah this was a… I don’t believe we’ve gone far.
Anna I think there was someone there looking after us. There is someone up there the end of the day.
Clint Yes that’s right. You can take a lot of credit and because the information’s there and I think a lot of people don’t find it because they’re just not looking. So it’s not hard to find our program these days. You know there’s so many videos like this one that you’ve helped me create just now. So if people use the right search term it doesn’t take long. If not like instant to be able to find examples and a path forward that I think is really helpful.
Clint So thank you so much. Marcel I know it’s your weekend, it’s your Saturday I’m sure you got lots on today. Good luck with your soccer or football as you call it and I’ll be in touch with your mom and look forward to more wonderful positive updates. So well done Marcel. Thanks mate!