Tag Archives: Conditions and Diseases

Blue Funking Raw Food

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Shit happens.  Actually, quite a lot of shit happens.

I last posted a year ago.  At that time, I was in reflective mood.  The truth is, I had reached a point in my life where everything had changed.  It was a year since my Mum had died and 4 months since my Dad had followed her.  I was 3 months into my 3rd job in 2 years.  I had been an arthritic for 30 years and I was beginning to allow this thought to define my life.  I was looking back and worrying about what lay ahead.

Rewind 18 months and I wasn’t in a great place.  The effects of stress were beginning to impact every aspect of my life.  My health took a prolonged downward turn and my arthritis flared beautifully, which just fuelled my stress.  I even found that music wasn’t lifting my spirits.

Music has played a big part in my life since I was a teenager.  Not just listening, but playing, writing and recording.  I’ve played in bands since I was 15 and I’ve been very lucky to end up in some great bands with great people. I have lovely gear – just check out my see-thru drum kit!img_2021

But, I wasn’t happy playing with my mates.  Setting up for a gig left me stressed and angry.  Little issues (there are always issues when setting up) got right up my arse.  By the time we were going on stage, I would be wound up and, sometimes, I felt like walking out and giving up.  Not like me at all.

When my Mum died after a long decline into dementia, there was some relief.  She hadn’t known any of the family for a long time and I was happy for her that she had been released from her lonely world.

My Dad, my hero, was her carer even though he was well into his 80s.  He gave my Mum the dignity of dying at home with her family around her –  a promise he made when she was more herself.  A few months later and, instead of his life being more relaxed and less stressful, my Dad discovered that he was dying from a massive tumour in his colon.  My brother, sister and I became his carers and we took shifts staying at the family home to look after him.

My stress turned into depression.  The blue funk.

We buried my Dad in the same week that I had the interview for my current job.  As well as interview prep, I was in the middle of preparing a eulogy and rehearsing a song – yes, I played the ukulele and sang at my Dad’s funeral.  After, hopefully, making everyone laugh with a song taking the piss a little (I think my Dad would’ve liked it) I stood and delivered the eulogy in the church where he had been an Elder.  The day after the funeral, I got the job.  That whole week is a blur.

kickballsMy doctor took an aggressive approach.  I don’t mean he slapped me around and kicked me in the bollocks, which may have helped, he prescribed a drug regime to rid me of the self-destructive and negative thoughts.

It worked to a point.  But recently I feel like I’ve been going round and round in a circle with no corner to turn to get out.

Trapped.  Stuck.  Eating the wrong food and drinking too much.  All of the things opposite to the paleo lifestyle that gave me such amazing results 5 years ago.  My health was shit, my head was full of shit, I was a complete shit and I felt powerless.  I had to do something different to make the change that I needed to help me move forward.

Luckily, I have a partner who loves me and cares about me.  My wife Anthea knows.  She knows how I feel, what makes me tick and watching me struggle hasn’t been easy for her AND she has had to pick up my slack when she’s busy enough herself.  It’s been shit.  But, she offered me a way out.

I was 50 in June.  Anthea’s gift to me was for me to piss off out of the house for a week.  “Just go away!” she said.  No seriously, she bought me a week at a health retreat in Spain.  I must admit, I didn’t immediately take to the idea but the more I thought about it, the more I got excited about going.

I went.

I’m just back from an amazing week at Laughter Cleanse run by two wonderful people, Jo and Claire.  I was one of four guests.  I wanted the chance to reboot, to get my head in order and to break out of my circle.  So, what happened……..?

Cleansing and Detox – we had foimg_2106ur and a half days of fresh vegetable and fruit juice, 5 times a day with some dietary supplements thrown in.  Nothing solid to eat.  Now, you’ll be thinking that I’d be bloody starving but not at all.

Then there were the enemas.  Oh yes!  The most exciting bit.  One each day during the detox period and I felt the need to keep Anthea up to date as I went along.  In fact, on the Thursday (the 4th day) I was so dissatisfied with the results of my enema that I did another one.  Ah, that’s better.

I recommend everyone do this.  You really don’t know just how full of shit you all are!  The volume and colour of the stuff that’s probably been languishing in my colon for years was pretty impressive.  I took photos but I won’t share.

A big part of the week for me was our morning routine:

  1. 10 minutes of laughter – everyone lying on the floor pissing themselves laughing, releasing enough endorphins for the whole day
  2. Joy Fit – getting the lymph flowing
  3. 45 minutes of yoga, which I just loved, loved, loved
  4. 15 minutes of meditation – awesome!

img_2103Then there was the location.  How can you NOT feel good being in a place like this?

Loads of time and space to do your own thing, chill, snooze, read, chat, listen to music, have another enema or two, whatever.

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Nutrition – the juices were bloody lovely.  We had either ginger or turmeric shots each morning, followed by delicious vegetable and/or fruit juices freshly made from organic produce.  Awesome!

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We also had this disgusting stuff called Spirulina twice a day – the trick was just to get it down as quickly as possible.  It’s pretty awesome stuff but tastes horrendous.  I won’t go into its many health benefits, just Google it people!

Friday was solid food day.  Raw.  Vegan.  Now, I bet you’re thinking that raw vegan food is bland, tasteless, dry, all nuts, salad, cardboard and hemp washed down with water.  Well, that’s the image I had in my head.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

We ate glorious pad Thai, amazing Mediterranean olive and walnut bread, banana and ginger ice cream, key lime pie among other things.  All raw, wheat free, dairy free, sugar free and more delicious than you can possibly imagine.

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Why raw?  Well, we still have the bodies of our hunter gatherer ancestors.  Same idea as paleo.  In the last 200 years and especially in the last 50 years, we have moved to processing pretty much all of our food.  We add chemicals to make it last longer, sugar to make it taste nice and bulk it out, E numbered compounds that we have no idea about, MSG, etc.  The list goes on.

Yet we still have the genetic makeup of hunter gatherers.  A few hundred years isn’t enough for evolution to allow our bodies to adapt, that would take a few hundred thousand years if not more.  The bulk of what we put into our bodies is unnatural and toxic to us.  Again, same idea as paleo.

The difference between raw and paleo is cooking – duh, no shit Sherlock!  Cooking kills the enzymes – the life force – of the food.  Now, I’m not turning into a hippy and I’m not about to grow a long beard or anything like that, but it does make sense.  We’re designed and we’ve evolved to live in harmony with nature and our surroundings.  Our bodies are geared up for raw food, using the natural enzymes in it to help us digest and pull nutrition from it.

It all sounds very Avatar but why shouldn’t it be like that?

Raw food (either completely raw or dehydrated) maintains the life of the enzymes.  It made me feel really good.  My body is an amazing thing, as is yours.  It wants to heal itself.  It’s desperate to be given the clean, non toxic fuel to help it do just that.

The Future – So, what was my outcome?  Did I reboot?  Was it the change I needed?

You betcha baby!

Days 1 and 2 were odd.  I was tired.  I retreated to my room and slept a lot.  I needed the privacy to be with myself and reflect.  Day 3 was odd.  I had a sore head all day and a grumbly tummy – not through hunger, I hadn’t given myself long enough on the bog after my enema.  I squirted all day and almost followed through a few times.  Nasty.

On Day 4, I woke up and felt superb.  I literally jumped out of bed (I haven’t felt like that for over 3 years) and when I looked in the mirror, there was a healthy person looking back at me.  My energy was up.  My head felt more clear.  I felt happy – that was unusual!

Day 5 was even better.  I slept so well the night before (again, something that hadn’t happened a lot).  I felt energetic.  Feck, what’s going on!?

Day 6.  More of the same and more.

Day 7 and beyond.  Well, I’m on day 11 today.  I have, with the exception of a couple of meals, maintained a raw diet.  I feel great.  I’ve had a sore and swollen right ankle which has given me a limp for around 3 years.  It’s getting better.  The chronic inflammation in my hands is receding.  My right shoulder is less sore.  I have a little more stamina.  I feel a little stronger.  My head is more clear.

I’m going to continue.  I have to.  I owe it to myself and my family to give this everything.

In my last post I talked about having another 35 years to go.  If I’m lucky and that’s the case, I’ll have been living with rheumatoid arthritis for 80% of my life.  A scary thought?  Maybe.

Maybe I won’t have to.

 

The Log Is The Blog 2

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The Return of Humira

Well, I have had to take my meds.

A couple of months ago, I had a pretty rough time.  After the euphoria of seeing my consultant, playing mind games with her registrar and officially coming off my medication, I was feeling amazing, confident, bouncy, full of myself and ready for a drug free ‘rest of my life’.  The reality, however, is that I’m not cured.

Bugger!

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My daily log tells the story.  From the start of February, things started to take a dive and I was feeling more unwell every day.

Unlike me, I started to worry.  I tried to be patient and give it another day, and another, and another.  But, it just wasn’t happening.

In the early hours of Thursday 14th February, after being unable to sleep, I hobbled out to the garage (where I keep the fridge for my drugs – there’s food in there too, I don’t just have a ‘drug fridge’) and injected.  This was a big thing for me.

I’ve said before that I’m lucky, in that Humira establishes itself readily, so I was quickly feeling better – as the following days in my log show.

Log2-2

I was, however, quite disheartened because I had been clean.

But, really thinking about it, while I had been very clean with the food I was eating, I hadn’t stopped drinking.  Well, I can’t resist a gin and tonic or six now and then!  Who can?  Well, I suppose lots of people can, but I do have a constant battle with my willpower – constant.

The news of my demise was greatly exaggerated – by me.  It did elicit some interesting opinions from my family, though.  My wife said, “Did you really think that you were cured?”

This took time to sink in.  My wife has been my greatest support.  She was the one who handed me the book ‘The Paleo Solution’ and said, “You’ll never read it”.  She has been hugely encouraging and is the steadying force when I’m feeling down or reaching for the bread.  She has stopped me from giving in lots of times.  She is a formidable woman. Intelligent, tenacious, splendid, sharp, clever, quick, funny, brilliant and gorgeous.  I am her biggest fan.

But, really.  Honesty at this level.  It took me by surprise.  And it made me think.  Did I REALLY think that I’d be cured?  To be honest, yes.

No.

Yes.

Truth is, I don’t know.  There was a small part of me really hoped that I’d be well and truly off the drugs.  I was disappointed.

Then, I was having a chat with my eldest daughter.  She said the same thing!  “Dad, did you really think that you’d be cured?”  She said this with a kind of ‘Dhuh, stoopid!’ look on her face.  She’s a teenager after all.

So, a bit of deja vu and a reality check from the women in my life.

In the space of a few days my family had brought me back to earth and made me wonder if I really would/could/should come off the medication.  It took me a week or two to get over this, which surprised me.  I’m pretty upbeat, positive and optimistic most of the time and this set me back.  I couldn’t get it off my mind.  This was not a comfortable space for me to be in.

It’s a big cliché but being positive is essential for life with a chronic condition – or even without one.  Life in general can be a bit shit.  I have often been in lots of pain or constant discomfort.  I’ve had painful operations and spent months recuperating.  I’ve had wound infections, been catheterised more than once, had a feckin’ big needle stuck in my groin to aspirate fluid from my hip and had all sorts of other tubes of varying sizes thrust into bits of me.

Everything I’ve been through has been an experience and I have tried to treat everything as just that – an experience.  I do think that attitude has a lot to do with wellbeing.

So, after my reality check my positivity has returned.  Hurrah!  Since taking my drugs at the beginning of February, I have felt the need to inject again – two weeks ago.  But, the difference is that I have accepted that I MAY, that’s MAY, have to have a helping hand now and then.

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I’m not giving up.  I’ve gone ten and a half to eleven weeks between my last three injections and I’ve been feeling pretty good.

The experience leading up to the 29th April (my last injection) was nowhere near as severe as the build up to the 13th February, as you can see from this excerpt of my log.  The difference this time is I have only taken Humira – I’ve left the Methotrexate out of the equation for now, just to see what happens.

This is all still an experiment and I’m still learning what I can tolerate and what I can’t.  It’s all about the choices I make.  As my wife keeps saying, “Is having a drink now and then something you’re not prepared to give up?  You know it’s not Paleo.  You need to make a choice.”

She’s right of course.  Just like Neo in The Matrix Reloaded, it’s all about choice.

And making good ones.

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The Log Is The Blog

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In my last post, I shared the story of the latest visit to my rheumatologist, just after the New Year.  I’m officially off the drugs now, but slightly nervous about not having that crutch to lean on now and again.

So, I decided to keep a daily log of what’s going on with my body and how I feel about it all.  I imagined that I would be able to show a history of wellness of which I could be rightfully proud.  I really didn’t expect my notes to be as surprising as they have been…..

…..or lead me in another direction.  Intrigued?  Read on…..

Here is an excerpt of the first few weeks.  There is much more to the spreadsheet than this, with frank notes about how I feel, what I’ve been drinking and eating, etc, so this is just a small piece.

Log Excerpt

The first surprise was when I last took my drugs.  I really didn’t think it was as long ago as the end of November.  I hadn’t looked back and worked it out until now – I’m into my 10th week, which isn’t too shabby.  In the last 18 months, the longest I’ve gone without medication has been, I think, 7 weeks.

I say ‘I think’ because I’ve never kept a log before – stupid boy!  Please say “stupid boy” to yourself in the tone of Capt. Mainwaring.  The exact detail of how long (if it isn’t 7 weeks) is lost in my misty memory of the last 18 months, so I’m putting a positive slant on this.  I’ve had to remind myself to stay positive because I haven’t been feeling quite right, which brings me to my 2nd raised eyebrow.

Log persistent

As you can see, my fingers have been giving me a little trouble.  It’s unusual for them to be this bad for this long and it has messed with my head a bit.

When I reflect, they’ve just been a bit swollen and a little sore and nothing too bad.  I suppose, when you look at the log, I scored the pain low for a reason.  They have been showing a slow improvement from 1 or 2 to <1 and 0+ over the last couple of weeks.

Yes, I even had to make up a 0+ rating as the swelling was there, but only just and the pain more like a discomfort.  I’m at odds with myself about whether 0+ is the same as <1, but that’s just the statistician in me being pedantic.  Pedantic, moi?

Anyway, I made it through a band rehearsal with no trouble and no after affects, so I think I’m just used to feeling well and could be overreacting a bit.  It is still messing with my head, though, and I’m not usually a worrier.  When I realised I’d gone 9 weeks, I started to think I might be pushing it a bit.  My thoughts have drifted towards the store of drugs that I still have in the house………….but, no, I’m hanging in.

The next thing that surprised me was my morning stiffness.

Now, if you’ve just taken a mouthful of tea, try to swallow it.  OK, regained your composure?  Good.

Log Morning

Anyone with rheumatoid will tell you that a night lying still can make your whole body as stiff as a board.  Mornings can be very slow and very painful – I’ve been there and it’s truly awful.

Doctors always ask about pain first thing in the morning and how long it lasts, so it’s an important factor in assessing how well someone is.

I’ve had hardly any at all, except a couple of times when my joints have twinged and given me a little bother, but not much to speak of.  There have also been a few times during the day when random aches and pains have appeared, but also bearable and not that bad.

My mornings have surprised me, given the terrible sleep I have and this is the biggest revelation from keeping the log – sleep!  Sleep is so important and I’m just crap at it.

Actually, that’s not true.  When it happens, it’s great.  I’m just crap at making it happen.

Over the last – I dunno how long – I have drifted into the habit of not going to bed.  My wife and I have busy lives with work, kids, band and all the stuff you have to do to make it all hang together, so when it comes to settling down of an evening, we’re tired.  My wife knows when she’s tired and toddles off to bed.  I always say, “I’ll just watch the end of this and I’ll be up later.”

This is where it all goes to hell.  Within about 10 minutes, sometimes more, I’m asleep sitting on the couch.  Sometimes I’ll find my way into a lying position and wake up at 3 or 4am.  Then I’m up!  I may make it upstairs, I may not.  At 4am our cats (we have 2) are quite active – they know I’m up and they make noises to be let out.  So, I end up doing stuff and I have been known to cook a whole meal before everyone is up in the morning.

Log Sleep

All this activity, when I should be in the deepest part of my sleep cycle, just keeps me awake.  I can and do drift back to sleep, but then my sleep cycle starts over again and, by the time I should be getting up (about 7am) I’m being dragged from deep sleep again.  This is just rubbish sleep!

If I lie on the couch, I get a sore neck and I’ve developed a painful right shoulder from having my head in a poor sleeping position.

None of this is good.  We should sleep for roughly one-third of the day.  On average, I’m sleeping for about one-quarter of my days, sometimes less.

There is compelling evidence showing that poor sleep causes systemic inflammation.  For me, a rheumatoid arthritic, that’s really bad.  Just Google ‘lack of sleep and inflammation’ and you’ll see what I’m on about.

Now I admit, I have played on the “Oh, I don’t get much sleep” thing and said, “Oh, ya, you know, I don’t need much sleep, right” as if I’m some kind of brilliant cool dude, but that’s just stupid.  I’ve been stupid.  It’s something I really have to change, which means a new routine.

Right now, it is Sunday the 3rd of February at 10:27pm GMT.  I have given myself a curfew, “Don’t be downstairs beyond 11pm.”  But, tonight, I still have some other stuff to do AND there are 2 episodes of the new Top Gear series to catch up on – this is my dilemma, see!

I’m still fighting with myself – just about different stuff now!  I’ve only stuck to the curfew twice in the last two weeks and I’m going to fail miserably again tonight.

Yes, I know, I’m stupid.  But, stupid or not with my sleep, I have been as clean as a whistle when it comes to food.  I am giving myself the best chance I can to get off the drugs for good and I’m remaining stoic – I just have to do the same with my other routines.

So, without further ado, night, night.

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Is Remission Possible…..

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…..and is it within my grasp?

A couple of weeks ago, I popped off to see my consultant rheumatologist.  It was my annual visit and I had a very interesting time.  I’ll tell you about that in a minute.

When I saw her at the end of 2011, I was four months into eating paleo, nearly at the end of installing a new kitchen, dropping weight, feeling great, gaining muscle, feeling strong and reducing the drugs.  When I explained what I was up to, instead of giving me the standard medic’s sceptical response, she was very happy for me to continue.  In fact, she arranged a few extra tests to make sure there was nothing else going on.

Her parting shot was, “Don’t lose any more weight!” I didn’t.

One of the extra tests was a coeliac screen.  There is clinical evidence linking rheumatoid arthritis with coeliac disease, which just shows that gut health plays a part in autoimmune conditions.  My coeliac screen was inconclusive, which was kind of annoying.

Anyway, I didn’t need to see her again for a year.  So throughout 2012, I continued to eat as well as my willpower would let me, started writing about it, didn’t take the drugs as often as I was supposed to and experimented with bringing some food groups back into my diet.

After much experimentation (some of which is documented in previous posts) I can now say with confidence that anything with a sniff of wheat brings my symptoms back and they come back very quickly.  Now, I know I’m not coeliac, but my gut really doesn’t like wheat and shit really does go down.  Here’s a good example.

Since Christmas and our magnificent paleo dinner, I have been feeling pretty groovy and quite awesome.  Last week, I was out for a lunchtime curry with colleagues and had some pakora and, yes, it was in batter.  A little rice (not too much) with my bhuna and by the time I got back to the office I was feeling sluggish, tired, my hands were a little sore and the pain in my right elbow was coming back.

That’s the power of food.  Amazing.  Since then, I have had a persistent and very annoying problem with the index finger on my right hand – for the last nine days its been swollen and mildly painful and it doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon!  I’m tracking all of this in my log.

Oh, my log, yes I’ll tell you all about that in a minute too!

So, back to food.  Along with wheat, I also know that dairy doesn’t agree with me – a little more difficult to put my finger precisely on what’s happening but I just can’t stomach it any more!  I was beginning to think that dairy was making my skin bad, but not now.

It’s sugar!

Jeez, stuff with a lot of sugar in it brings my psoriasis back with a vengeance!  I have some patches on my forehead, on the back of my head under the hairline, on my lower back and on the backs of my hands.  Sugary foods and sweets just make it flare like a beacon and, unfortunately, alcohol too – and it’s very unpleasant, itchy, sore, unsightly and, what’s more, my wife can always tell when I’ve been up to no good!

So, even after all this time, I still have this going on…..

BrainFight

I have been constantly battling with myself.  As they say, you only cheat yourself and it’s been a slow realisation that I just can’t have some types of food, not even just a little bit.

So, I’m being clean, cutting down on what I drink and staying away from the stuff that makes me unwell.

I am really out to prove a point because I am now completely off the drugs – officially!

This is what happened when I saw my consultant.  When I was called into her room, she was elsewhere so I saw her Senior Registrar.  He didn’t know my story so I had to summarise the events of the last 16 months in a couple of minutes.

Now, for someone who has a reputation for talking at length about just about anything, is left to the end of the meeting to give an update (so that everyone else around the table has a chance) and who is the butt of many a joke about brevity at work, home, everywhere else, this was no small feat.  My colleagues won’t believe that I actually managed to do it.

But I did.  I got quickly to the part about only taking the drugs every 6 or 7 weeks and I wanted to know what I should do now.

Incredulous, flummoxed, he made a noise like a horse snorting and said that it was very unusual for someone to come off strong anti-arthritis drugs so quickly, or to only take them at 6 week intervals and that he didn’t quite know what advice to give me.  He said, “In fact, I’ve never heard of anything like this.”  That disappointed me a little.

When you consider that there is a wealth of information and credible evidence kicking about the place, readily accessible to anyone who might be interested, you might think that the docs would have a look too.  I wonder how much doctors really are interested…..

…..when the drug companies are paying the bills.

Anyway, that’s a completely different tangent and I’m trying to be brief.  He went off, shaking his head, to speak to his boss.  They came back, asked a few more questions, listened, then asked the most important one.  “What’s your ultimate goal, Scott?”

Well, I hesitated.  This was the crucial question.  The one I’ve been asking myself for the last year and a half – almost.  Did I feel that, with little flare up after little flare up, I could really achieve my goal?  Was I prepared to put my mouth where my money was?  Could I maintain the willpower, stop fighting with my brain and actually stick to something?

My wife’s words echoed – look how far you’ve come!  She’s right . I got a little emotional and said, “I want to stop taking the drugs.”  My consultant said, “OK, go for it.”  But added, “Let’s see you in 3 months and assess how you’re doing.  My clinic is very full, but we’ll squeeze you in.”  I wanted to say, “Why is your clinic so full?  Your patients should be on a paleo diet.  You could save money, time, effort, etc!” but that’s a conversation for another time.

I couldn’t have said anything anyway because, for the second time, I was in tears in my consultant’s room.  This time, though, for a much better reason.

So, that’s that.  For the time being, I am drug free and feeling a little scared.  I do think I was using the drugs like a crutch – there if things weren’t going well, there if I just thought I should have them, when I felt guilty that I hadn’t taken them in a while.  I must say it feels a little weird.

But I have my log.  Yes, I can now tell you all about my log!

I thought I should have some evidence of how I feel physically so that, after 3 months is up, I can take it to my consultant and be able to have the above conversation!  I have a spreadsheet (no surprise there – I have a spreadsheet for most things) and I am recording, daily, how I feel in the morning, how things feel during the day and (really important) how I slept.

So far, I’ve had to record far too much in my log because of my dodgy index finger, which is annoying in so many ways!  But, it will give me a brief history of how it feels to be completely drug free, no matter what happens in the next 3 months.

Am I even more determined?  Damn right!

Brain vs Brawn image provided by Yau Hoong Tan and is on the Flikr photo feed at this address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tangyauhoong/4474921735/

90% of heart bypass patients……

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…… revert back to their old ways within 2 years.

That was the interesting, if alarming, statistic I learned recently.  It’s been an interesting time all round since I last wrote.  Until this morning, my health had been pretty stable, I’ve been feeling pretty good, my knees, feet and elbows were all excellent and I was walking with confidence!  A result of my medication?  Maybe, but the drug will have left my system by now as it has quite a short half life, so I was feeling pretty cool.

The band had a gig – another wedding.  Here’s me waiting to rock the party.

It was a strange set up.  Usually, we try to be in when the room is being prepared, get the gear ready, check the sound so we don’t have to interrupt the proceedings by turning up with a van full of boxes!

This time, it was quite a small room and the wedding party were using the whole space.  We had a 45 minute window to get in and ready to rock while the room was being prepared for the evening celebrations.

So, we set up as much as we could under a gazebo in the car park.  It was dark, cold, damp and not very pleasant.  By the time we got inside, my hands were like ice and we were all a bit grumpy.  Especially my bass player – a wee hug, though, and he was OK.

Anyway, all that aside, we were up and running almost within the time, it was another fab gig and loads of fun, as usual.  My hands were still a bit dodgy but everything was working pretty well.  We kept the dance floor filled and our clients were very happy.

Then, at the end of last week, I was at a seminar/forum/event thingy with the ‘process folk’ from across my company.  I work in Business Change and my employers are very keen to build a community of connected change professionals in the organisation.

OK, now, before you start yawning, I’d just like to say that I think it’s a good thing and it works.  My colleagues work all across the company and you can go for months without seeing people in your team.  So, every three months, we get to see each other ‘en masse’ at a forum.  I like these things, I’ve presented some of my work at one, it’s good.  So there!

This time, we had a couple of guest speakers and the guy who had my attention (totally) was Craig Smith from Flint Consulting.  Now, this wasn’t just because he had a really funky presentation (I do want some of that, though, I do!) but because he was a very engaging speaker too.

He started his talk with the above statistic and related it to how a lot of change programmes in companies fail.  Due to the fact that people go back to their old ways, the stuff that’s comfortable, easy, the path of least resistence, etc, etc.  I have experienced this kind of thing in my workplace first hand and I couldn’t help relating it to what I’m trying to do right now.

My wife said that I’m trying to undo 46 years of habit.  She’s right and I suppose that’s what it must also be like for heart patients.  Now, you would think that, faced with death, people with a dodgy heart would take note and put being alive before anything else.  It just goes to show how complacent we can be and how comfortable old habits are, even if the risks are great.

If I was complacent, my path of least resistence would be to start injecting my meds again, start eating rubbish again, start not getting better again and be quite happy to pass this off with a, “Well, it would never have worked anyway” or a, “All these bad things’ll never happen to me” kind of throw away remark.  So, Craig’s talk struck a chord with me on a personal level.

To succeed, I have to be stubborn, stoic, relentless, learn from my failures, drop my complacency and never give up – just how you would lead an organisation into making a change for the better.

For example, this morning (Wednesday 21st November) I woke up with a very painful swelling!  Oooh er, missus!  Not what you might be thinking, my right wrist had swollen up overnight.  This does happen, although, it hasn’t for ages.  To be honest, my wrist had been grumbling for a couple of days, but this morning was dreadful.  I couldn’t move my wrist or my hand.

Here it is as of midnight, 21/11/12.  Compared to my left side, you can see that the right wrist is still swollen (although eased off enough to allow me to type) a bit red and it has an arthritic ‘heat’ about it.  Anyone who suffers with rheumatoid will tell you that when it’s active, joints can feel like they’re burning.  I can move my fingers now, although they’re pretty crunchy!

Anyway, back to earlier today.  I had to delay going into work because I couldn’t do anything.  Shaving was almost impossible, brushing my teeth was almost impossible, putting my cufflinks in was almost impossible, shoe laces – bloody hell, they were a nightmare and putting on a tie, that was COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE!  Today was the first day I’d gone to work without a tie.

Now, I could’ve jumped the gun, thought that the diet isn’t working well enough and reached for the syringe.  I nearly did.  BUT, that would be allowing complacency to rule my head and I would be merrily careering down the road to failure.

I think I’m better than that – I think we all are.  I’m not completely cured, but I have come a long way so why start doubting now?  I could easily go backwards, put back the weight that I’ve lost and resign myself to injecting medication every week and maybe not feel so good while posing a risk to me and costing the NHS a small fortune.  I don’t think I should settle for that and I don’t think anyone else should either.

That’s why I am happy to tell anyone with anything autoimmune to try changing their diet before doing anything else – and be stubborn with yourself because you owe it to yourself!

So, on that note, I am taking my diet a step further by following an Autoimmume Protocol for the next 30 days.  Really, it’s just the diet I follow just now but cutting out tomatos, eggs (both of which have become staples in my diet) bell peppers and spices.  All of these things have been shown to affect people with autoimmune problems.  It should be interesting.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Thomas Edison, which I found quite interesting.  He said, “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in a proper diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.”

Hmmm, haven’t had that experience yet!

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