Rheumatoid Arthritis - 033

SPEAKER A The following program presents principles designed to promote good health and is not intended to take the place of personalised, professional care. The opinions and ideas expressed are those of the speakers. Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about the information presented. Welcome to healthy living. I'm your host, Margot Marshall. Don't let joint pain slow down your journey. Rheumatoid arthritis can be believed. Hear how Emily went from a wheelchair to walking the Grand Canyon. Stay tuned. SPEAKER B Healthy Living is a production of 3ABN Australia television focusing on the health of the whole person body, mind, and spirit. You'll learn natural lifestyle principles with practical health solutions for overall good healthy. SPEAKER A My guest today changed from being an orthopedic surgeon to practicing lifestyle medicine. Why? Because he finds that things people can do for themselves are often more effective than conventional medicine. Welcome, Dr. Clark. Tell us about Emily, who went from a wheelchair to hiking in the Grand Canyon, and why was she in a wheelchair? SPEAKER B Emily had rheumatoid arthritis. She came to a program run by a mentor of mine, Dr. Crane. The program was really for people with heart disease, and in a program for heart disease, activity is a very important part of the program. So my mentor was wondering, what are we going to do with somebody in a wheelchair from rheumatoid arthritis? She'd had rheumatoid arthritis for 35 years. SPEAKER A Oh, that's a long time. 35 years. Okay, so she's in a wheelchair and it's been in a wheelchair for 35 years? SPEAKER B Yes. Well, no rheumatoid arthritis. SPEAKER A Oh, rheumatoid arthritis. 35. And now she's in a wheelchair. SPEAKER B Now she's in a wheelchair. And the reason they get in a wheelchair is because it affects just about every joint in the body. It tends to destroy the cartilage and the tissues surrounding the joints. You get joint malalignment. They often have fingers that drift to one side and have swellings in different knuckles. And so she came to a program that was mostly for active people, and yet she's in a wheelchair. They weren't sure they were going to be able to accomplish a lot with her, but during the three week program, they put her on things that we're going to talk about as far as lifestyle changes. And they had her start getting active by the end of the three weeks they were getting her out of her wheelchair, walking with a walker. Well, she went home, and she decides she's going to stay with the program. She stayed with the diet, she stayed with the activity, she stayed with the lifestyle choices. And in two and a half years, she had improved so much, she hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back. SPEAKER A That is absolutely amazing. It's quite a big walk hike. SPEAKER B Oh, it's a very difficult hike of about 9 miles or 14 km. SPEAKER A Wow. SPEAKER B And your descent drops 4500ft. SPEAKER A So it's not a walk in the park? SPEAKER B Not a walk in the park, no. SPEAKER A That's an amazing thing. I mean, she started with baby steps. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A And it took about two and a half years for her to be able to be doing what probably a lot of ordinary people couldn't even do. There are a lot of people who would not be able to do that. SPEAKER B That's right enough. Yes. SPEAKER A That's just amazing. Is this an isolated case? SPEAKER B Well, no. There's a lot of people who have taken up good lifestyle habits and seen a difference. And I've had the privilege of working with some of those. I remember one lady that I had worked with on her rheumatoid arthritis. I had talked to her, but I hadn't really had follow up with her. And I came to her part of the country a year later, and I walked into a venue where I was supposed to do lectures, and there she was standing. And so I said, Well, Cheryl, how are you doing? And she says, Just like that. And she snapped her fingers. Well, she could see I looked puzzled, and I was I'm like, hmm, maybe this is a part of Maine where I don't know the social code, but seeing my amusement, she did it again. Yep. I'm just like that. And she snapped her fingers again. Well, at that point, her daughter came in, who I also knew, and she had a smile on her face, and she says, yes, Mom's, just like that. And she snapped her fingers. At that point, I knew it was a conspiracy. And then they both smiled and said, you remember when you talked to my mom a year ago? She had had rheumatoid arthritis, and for three years prior to that, she'd been unable, due to the swelling in her fingers, to snap her fingers. SPEAKER A And now she could snap her fingers. SPEAKER B And now she could snap her fingers. SPEAKER A Isn't that interesting? It'd be a huge thing for someone who can't snap their fingers to be able to do it. So very ordinary thing for most people, but huge for someone who has not been able to have normal function of their hands for a long time. What a beautiful story. So I'm just interested, and I'm sure our viewers are interested to know, how did this happen? Because this is something that you don't expect. What did they do? How did they get from where they were to where you've just told us? SPEAKER B Yes, and we want to elaborate on that. And one of the important aspects here is to avoid the things that would create the rheumatoid arthritis in the first place. And so I gave her a program that outlined things to do throughout the day that would help her. First thing is, I had her when she first got up in the morning, she would drink a liter of water with the juice of one lemon in it. This helps get all the tissues hydrated. The lemon is antioxidant, helps fight inflammation. And then I would have her go out and take a walk in the early morning. This helps boost the immune system. It makes it so that the white cells are doing what they're supposed to do, instead of causing havoc in the joints, which rheumatoid arthritis has a lot of white cell damage due to deranged white cells. It's an autoimmune disease. Well, so the other things that we had her do is we had her eat a good diet, very good diet. Now, I might say that I made sure her schedule was good. SPEAKER A Before you go on from diet, you say you had to eat a very had her eating a very good diet. A lot of people that you talk to say, oh, I eat a good diet. And if you were to actually discover what they eat, it probably wouldn't quite measure up. I think we've said it on other programs, but there's only one in 20 Australians, for a start. I don't know about other countries, but I don't think your country's ahead of us on this one in 20 who eat enough fruit and veggies and that's so foundational to good health, but that people will say, oh, yeah, I eat a good diet, I eat a pretty good diet. So we want to tease that out a bit more. But go on, you were going to go on to something else there and. SPEAKER B Yes, I kept on a very good schedule. One of the things that is important for rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases is getting to bed early and getting up early and doing it regularly. For example, getting to bed by 09:00 and then getting up maybe at five. And what this does is it helps to stabilize the circadian rhythms, the biological clock, because in the autoimmune diseases, you have a mismatch between what the biological clock should be and what it is in when your melatonin spikes in the morning and when your cortisol spikes. And so a mismatch in your clocks is one of the big causes of rheumatoid arthritis. So regular schedule, regular early bedtime, the goal is to get at least 2 hours of sleep before midnight, if not three, because 2 hours of sleep before midnight are worth four after midnight. SPEAKER A Yes. And I don't know that a lot of Australians, I can only speak for Australians, but I don't think they do very well at all. Look, even young people, students, young people with the internet and the social media, honestly, they might be lucky to get to bed by midnight. And it's really, really sad. It's really setting them up for a lot of problems. Because this regular schedule you're talking about isn't just for this particular disease, is it? But it's one we're focusing on today. So it's good advice for us all, for everybody. Everybody. Okay. SPEAKER B Early to bed and early to rise. SPEAKER A Go on, finish. SPEAKER B It makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. SPEAKER A Okay. SPEAKER B Benjamin Franklin. So in starting her breakfast, we had several goals. One was to avoid things that caused the problem. So we weren't having her fry things or make heavy foods for breakfast. We had her eat at least 80% of her breakfast as fresh fruit. SPEAKER A Right, I could do that. I would really enjoy that. SPEAKER B Oh, it's very good. And of the fresh fruits, things that we especially had her take notice of are pineapple. Pineapple has bromalaine in it. Bromalaine is an anti inflammatory. It also helps to break down clots. It's very effective in reducing inflammation in joints. Also berries, berries of different kinds. Raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, they're all very good. Very good. And then as far as what she ate, that wasn't fruit cooked cereal or something like that, we avoided box cereals. Box cereals have totally lost their nutrition in most laboratory studies. They have trouble keeping laboratory animals alive on box cereals. And so we wanted to eat nutrition. SPEAKER A Just stop there because they make wonderful claims. I mean, you've really got to read the packet label and they make wonderful I won't name any on camera, but people can see them in the supermarket and they make wonderful claims. Even the very name, I won't say there's a few of them. And to read that label, to read that name, that's the boldest thing on the front cover. You would think, oh, this is good, this is really good. But you're saying that if they've been talk about what makes them like, not suitable talk about that, yes. SPEAKER B The box cereals, for example, I had a patient that worked in one of these industries that made box cereals. They were making a cornflake product and they put the corn into big vats. He had a video for me just because he'd gotten hurt on the job and I had to see what he did. They put this corn into Big vats. It cooked for over 24 hours, and then they sprayed it out into flakes and cooked it. Well, in that 24 hours of cooking, what happens to your broccoli if you. SPEAKER A Cook it too long? Don't have to go far over with broccoli to spoil it. SPEAKER B And then they spray it out in flakes and put it in a bag full of air. And now you've lost all the protection against oxidation, such as the capsule around wheat or the capsule around corn or rice or whatever the grain is, and you've broken it open, cooked it forever, sprayed it out in flake, and now it's exposed to the air. Everything gets oxidized. SPEAKER A Yes. So that was very clear then, isn't it? It's really bad plan. So you're saying some cooked cereals of what, whole intact grains? Is that what you were saying here? SPEAKER B Yes, I had her do some cooked cereals, but also to eat things more like cornbreads or things she made herself or things she could buy that were solid and chewable and made from products that weren't highly processed and so porridge. And for them, I usually have them. Add some oat bran to oatmeal for a good porridge, and even some ground linseed or flax also is very helpful. SPEAKER A Very good for us all. SPEAKER B Yes. High nutrients and helps keep you regular. And then immediately after her breakfast, she was to take a walk. It's not good to settle down and do nothing after a meal, as much. SPEAKER A As it feels nice to do that. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A It's not a good plan. Why is that? SPEAKER B When you go and you eat a big meal, the stomach gets the majority of your blood supply, and that isn't necessarily good, because the blood will stagnate down there at your stomach, whereas if you get out and walk, it keeps the circulation going to your brain, which is very important, and to your arms and legs. It helps the blood not to stagnate there. It actually AIDS digestion. Walking keeps your pelvis moving and therefore it rocks your intestines in your stomach and keeps the process working and it keeps you from going into that dullness of mind that leads to Alzheimer's. SPEAKER A Oh, that's important. SPEAKER B Try to remember here what Alzheimer's was. Not Alzheimer's. SPEAKER A Yes. Now, that walk after a meal isn't intended to be a power walk or anything like that. It's just a fairly normal sort of. SPEAKER B A walk for ten to 15 minutes, just get out and walk regular. Regular walk, yes. SPEAKER A Okay, right. SPEAKER B And so then about midmorning, we had her drink another liter of water. And these folks often aren't well hydrated. Only about a fifth of Australians drink enough water. And so drinking plenty of water, it's hard to overhydrate. I mean, if you drank eight liters a day, you'd be in trouble if you didn't add a little salt to it. But drinking up to three, four liters a day isn't bad. And so we usually push them to drink three liters a day, and we sort of time it, keeping the water at least 2 hours after a meal and a half hour before a meal, and not with a meal. SPEAKER A And why don't you have it with a meal? SPEAKER B The digestion is much better if the digestive juices can choose their own concentration without being diluted by lots of liquid. SPEAKER A Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? I remember at school, in the laboratory, if you're going to do an experiment and you put some acid in there, you don't pour a couple of cups of water in, it wouldn't help. So it really does make a lot of sense to do that. SPEAKER B Well, then came to lunchtime where she was eating a lot of processed foods, a lot of even some animal products. We put on her a diet that was largely fresh vegetables or savory fruit. Now, I say that because we don't want to mix fruits and vegetables, especially for an autoimmune disease. SPEAKER A Sure. SPEAKER B When you mix lots of fruits and vegetables, their digestive processes are different. And when you combine them, the stomach doesn't know which digestive process to use. For example, if you ate a carrot and a peach, the carrot is going to take a long time to digest. The peach will digest very quickly, but while the carrot is still digesting, the peach will rot. Make vinegar. And vinegar creates autoimmune disease. That said, avoid all products with vinegar in them. I've had some people tell me, but they told me to drink apple cider vinegar for my arthritis. And I say, well, why don't you just be more natural and eat the rotten apples? SPEAKER A Oh, my goodness, how does that go down? SPEAKER B But it helps them realize that, yeah, the brown fuzzy thing that you threw out of the orchard is what they're selling you in the bottle. And then no, it isn't that great. And if I put that rotten apple juice from the rotten apple on my salad, what's going to happen to my salad? Well, it's all going to rot. And especially when it gets down here where it's warm. And in laboratory animals, if we put vinegar in their colon, they get diseases of an autoimmune nature, like Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis. And so it's not a good thing to be eating vinegar, especially for an autoimmune disease. I mean, for anybody if you don't want to rot. And so we had her avoid those things. Use lemon juice in cooking instead of vinegar. SPEAKER A Lemons are beautiful. Lemons give a beautiful tang to dressings and all sorts of things. Love them. SPEAKER B Very good. Yes, and high in nutrients and lemonins and lemonoids that help fight cancer and autoimmune disease. So we had her eat either fresh fruit salad, as in a savory fruit salad, avocado, capsicum, cucumber, avocado, you name it. Zucchini. SPEAKER A Now, let's just make a very clear definition of what you're calling a savory fruit. What is it that makes a fruit a fruit and a vegetable? A vegetable. SPEAKER B The difference is that the fruit is often the product of the plant. It carries the seed, and it came from the flower. A watermelon would be a fruit. On the other hand, the vegetable is the vegetation or the plant that grew the fruit, such as the root, as in a carrot, the leaf, as in a spinach, the stem, as in a celery, the flower itself, as in broccoli or cauliflower. SPEAKER A All right, that's easy to determine. Then we don't have to remember lists of things. We just got that principle. Thank you for that. SPEAKER B And for the rheumatoid arthritis patient or the patient with autoimmune disease, you don't want to be mixing those and you don't want a high variety at the meal. The higher the variety, the more likely you are going to get things that need different digestive processes. And this will lead to inflammation, lead to more autoimmune disease. So we had her eat either fresh fruit, as in the savory fruits, as we're calling them, or vegetables. So make a vegetable salad. And in my estimation, the most important thing you can do for a vegetable salad is make a good dressing. SPEAKER A Yes, I think you've got some on your website, haven't you? Some nice dressing recipes. SPEAKER B Yes, on my website there are a lot of recipes, several dressing recipes. My website is Rev Twelveteen.com. Okay, Rev twelveteen.com. SPEAKER A I had the pleasure of trying one or two of your dressings while you've been here, and oh, I've got to have those recipes. They're beautiful. SPEAKER B Yes. And a lot of those recipes are ones we use quite frequently and find. SPEAKER A Them very good and very healthful recipes. SPEAKER B Very healthy. Yeah. The dressings don't have any oil. They only use nuts and seeds. So they do have oil from those, but it's naturally occurring. They don't have any vinegar. They use lemon juice. And so they're very healthy. And so you can put it on like gravy. You don't have to go easy on it. SPEAKER A That sounds really nice. Really nice way to go. And that's a really lovely, simple solution to this thing. If you're saying, well, don't have this and don't have that, it's nice to know how to replace those things and with making them really delicious and nutritious, that's a winner, isn't it? So it's good for you and it tastes good and it is good. SPEAKER B Yes. Right. So salad for the raw or fresh portion, and usually say 80%, and if we say 80%, they usually achieve 60%. And then the cooked portion, things like brown rice, quinoa, white potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes, I mean, steamed veggies, like broccoli, cauliflower, all kinds of good things that you can. SPEAKER A What about beans leggies? Would they be something you would recommend for people with arthritis? SPEAKER B Yes, beans are very helpful. And of the beans, your red beans are the most antioxidant. Lima beans are very good. These beans are very helpful in that they have fiber which can carry out excess cholesterol out of your body and lower inflammation. SPEAKER A Actually, beans have got the highest percentage of fiber of all foods, so they're right up the top there. And there's heaps of them. You can't buy them all in Australia, but there's quite a few. But I think there's about 300 altogether, whether you could ever get that many. But it's good to vary them from day to day because they all have something unique about them. SPEAKER B And so then immediately after lunch, we had her take a walk. The walk again is to make sure the blood doesn't stagnate. Stagnant blood becomes inflamed. And as she walks, we're especially paying attention to her clothing, we want the blood to make it all the way down to her fingers, which are swollen and sore. SPEAKER A Sounds like a really good idea. SPEAKER B Yeah, you hate it when there's no blood in the fingers. And so you end up with warmer hands. And this is important because if the blood isn't flowing to the hands good, then wear and tear isn't taken care of very quickly and you get more arthritis. So long sleeves. And if the blood flows nicely down to the arm and flows back, it doesn't inflame the lungs. Whereas if you have bare arms, cooler blood comes back in it inflames the lungs. It congests the blood to the head, chest, abdomen and pelvis. I mean, I had a gentleman, a friend who had nosebleeds all the time. We told him you have to wear long sleeves, the blood doesn't congest your head all the time. We finally convinced him two years later I saw him and he said I haven't had a nosebleed in two years. SPEAKER A I thought you kind of took him two years to take your advice. SPEAKER B There's a few people like that too. SPEAKER A When they do, this all makes just so much sense. I love the way you explain it because to be told to do things and you don't know why, it doesn't really motivate you. But when you understand all the reasons I find that really excellent. Thank you. SPEAKER B And you notice I didn't mention snack time. SPEAKER A You didn't mention snack time? No. SPEAKER B Snack time interferes with your circadian rhythms. Snack time raises your cholesterol. Snack time messes with your stomach. There will be more reflux disease, which we covered in another topic. There's a lot of problems with snacking. You weren't made to snack all day. People who eat six meals a day double their risk of cancer. SPEAKER A Is that right? Wow. SPEAKER B So it's not a good thing to be snacking. And especially for autoimmune diseases. SPEAKER A That actually in the Beloc and Breslow study. That's a study that made these two men quite famous. One of the health habits that contributed longer life and healthier life was not eating between meals. And yet some people will say it's a good thing to do. It's actually not. It actually works against you. So good that you mentioned that. SPEAKER B And then 2 hours after the end of lunch we had them drink another liter of water and that way they'd be well hydrated. And then after that we had her do a little therapy. I like hydrotherapy. And so I had her get two bowls of water. One that was warm and one was cold. Notice I didn't say hot. For rheumatoid arthritis we don't want to go as hot as we can go, but we want to go warm and we want to go cold. And so I had her put her hands in the warm water for three minutes. While they're in the warm water I had her work her hands gently, not to extreme, but just gently. This is improving circulation during the time it's warm. Then I had her put it in the cold water. This helps reduce inflammation and helps pump the tissues. Cool water. Just let them set for 1 minute, then back to the warm water for three minutes and work them a little bit. This helps trigger finger, this helps carpal tunnel, this helps rheumatoid arthritis, it helps regular arthritis. It's good for all kinds of things. And any problem with the hands, usually a good hot and cold treatment makes a huge difference. Infections. Anyway, we ended up with cold after the fifth exchange, fifth repeat, and then dry them off. And I usually have them put on a pair of gloves to keep them warm because the hands then will warm back up and it improves their metabolic rate and their healing. SPEAKER A So you end with the cold water, but then you get them straight into some gloves so that they don't get too cold. Why do you end with the cold water and then put them into gloves? What's the point of that? SPEAKER B When you end with the cold water, the hands are very cold. They will warm themselves up. But if you put them in gloves, they'll be able to warm up quicker and hold that heat longer and it increases the effect of the treatment. SPEAKER A Sure. Very good. Well, you've covered a few things there. What else? Was there some more strategies that you have? Because we've looked at what have we looked? Sleep and regularity and the food things and when to walk and so on. And lots of water. Do you know with water you mentioned that only a fifth of Australians drink enough water. That's the same as the number who don't eat enough fruit and veggies. And if they're the same people who know, likely one in 20. Yeah. It's not good. It's really not good. And there's room for all of us. There's room for all of us to improve what we do. And I hope that people will I hope that they'll at least do something from what you're telling them. Now. Was there something else that helped her? To help her? SPEAKER B Yes. One of the things that helps is certain herbs. Herbs are like God's medicine and they come natural, unprocessed. And one of the things that can be very helpful is just to eat a couple three leaves of gotcha cola a day for these people. SPEAKER A I'm not familiar with gotcha cola. Is that something you can buy and grow in the garden or is it a dried herb or what is that? SPEAKER B Usually it's growing in shaded, damp areas around people's houses. SPEAKER A Okay. SPEAKER B It's probably considered somewhat of a weed. It's like your lawn got taken over by these round, leaf looking things where the stem is just in one corner and you can look it up on the Internet. SPEAKER A How do you spell that? SPEAKER B Let's see. G-O-T-U-K-O-L-A. SPEAKER A Okay. SPEAKER B And it's a very good herb for arthritis. People have used that alone and had. SPEAKER A Good results with and they would just put that in with their salad or something? Is that the idea? SPEAKER B Some people put it in with their salad, some people just go out and pick it and eat it. Not between me. SPEAKER A Not between me. SPEAKER B Now, the last thing that's hugely important for the rheumatoid arthritis patients is stress management. Many of them can point to a huge psychological stress event that set them up for the rheumatoid arthritis. Within two years of losing a spouse, having a major trauma or something, they ended up with arthritis. So stress management. SPEAKER A Stress management. That's something we'll probably have to cover another time. But it's good to know that that's a good strategy. Well, that's a really good lineup of things that can be done. I guess there were a few more, but of all of those, of all of the things you've mentioned, what would you think was number one? SPEAKER B I tend to think that the water consumption is huge, especially since we know so many people dehydrated and water is so important to tissue health. SPEAKER A Well, that's amazing. To think that something so simple, so available and so lovely I love water. Could do such an incredible difference, especially lining it up with all those other things that are helpful. Thank you very much for that. If you'd like to watch our programs on demand, just go to our website, that's 3abnaustralia.org.au , and click on the watch button. We'll see you next time, and we look forward to having you join us. God bless. SPEAKER B You’ve been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia Television.