How I Reversed Rheumatoid Arthritis Naturally

Rheumatoid arthritis can feel like a devastating diagnosis, but I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be. 

Helping people reverse rheumatoid arthritis, and all chronic pain, naturally has become my life's work and my passion.

It's been a while since I told my story and shared what I've learned. Since I last shared how I healed from rheumatoid arthritis in this blog post, I've actually learned so much more about how to reverse rheumatoid arthritis naturally. 

So, if you or someone you know is suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, or has chronic pain that's stopping them from living life fully, then please, share this with them because what I really want to share is hope. 

Reversing rheumatoid arthritis, or pain in general for that matter, doesn't have to be about complicated diets. It does not have to be about taking handfuls of expensive supplements. And you don't have to be alone or feel overwhelmed doing this. 

I've learned a lot along my journey. And I went through all of those things. And I know now that it doesn't have to be like that. 

How did I get started on this?

First of all, I had a very stressful year.  Before that I been healthy all my life. And I ate really well as far as I was concerned. But I had this really stressful year. I wasn't sleeping and just was feeling really crappy, and then very, very suddenly developed this migrating joint pain. It was really bad.  

My shoulder hurt so badly it would have to go in a sling. And the next day it would be the other shoulder. And my feet hurt so much I got orthotics thinking that would help. Then my knees started to swell up so badly, walking was excruciating. The knuckles in my hands turned purple, and then they started to swell. I couldn't make a fist with my hands and I had so little grip strength I would get stuck in the bathroom because I couldn’t even turn the door handle.  

I was in so much pain, it was hard to sleep. And it got worse, it just kept getting worse. And even though what I thought was the stressor in my life was done, I kept on getting worse. 

Of course I was Googling because that's what we do, right? We start to Google to try to figure out what’s going on. 

Based on my symptoms, the Google searches were pointing to rheumatoid arthritis. I had the classic symptoms of RA: pain and inflammation tends to be mirrored on both sides. It was both feet, both hands, both shoulders, both knees. The symptoms tended to be worse in the morning and got better as the day went on. 

I suspected rheumatoid arthritis, but nothing was showing up in my bloodwork. I didn't have a diagnosis at that point, but I was very scared. 

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune condition. I didn't know anyone with an autoimmune condition that I was aware of. It wasn't in my family. I had no idea how serious autoimmune conditions could be. I had no idea that I was at the age when it was very common for autoimmune conditions to reveal themselves, and also that women are affected more than men. 

I also read that rheumatoid arthritis gets progressively worse with age, and that if you have one autoimmune condition, you are very likely to develop a second and a third one. Very often autoimmune conditions tend to run in families. 

The solution commonly offered is medications which come with severe side effects. The medications often work for a while and then stop working.  

I wanted to try to not take medications, because the side effects really frightened me. And the other thing that was rolling around in my head was that I knew my trigger was related to stress. If stress had turned it on, there must a way to turn it off, I concluded. So I started searching ways to reverse rheumatoid arthritis naturally. 

Along the way I found stories of other people that had reversed autoimmune conditions and rheumatoid arthritis naturally. I also found medical doctors, naturopathic doctors, and functional medicine doctors who had helped other people reverse rheumatoid arthritis naturally. 

This gave me a whole lot of hope.

Although I still wasn’t diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at that point, at least I felt like there was something I could do to help myself. 

I knew I had to do something. This joint pain that I had was so bad. I was in tears a lot. I really felt like I didn't have a future to look forward to. I had waited my whole life for the freedom years. Retirement and empty nest years were coming up, but I felt like it was going to be taken away from me.

I was going to be stuck in pain, unable to walk and unable to do all things I had been looking forward to my whole life. Even though I didn't think I brought this on, I felt like I was letting everyone down: me, my husband, my kids, my future grandkids and my whole family. 

I felt a lot of despair, but when I found these stories of hope, I had hope. And then I made a decision that I was going to do something about this and turn it around.  I was going to figure it out no matter what. 

I'm an engineer and I was still working as an engineer at that time.  Engineers are problem solvers, and so I just started problem solving like I would an engineering problem, brainstorming and experimenting different ideas.  

I started making changes and tracked how it affected the pain in my joints. I also tracked what was happening with my weight, my sleep and energy levels. I collected data and created graphs and charts just like I did for an engineering problem.

The first thing I changed was food. My family doctor, who was amazing, told me that joint pain could be related to food and that the three main foods that caused pain in joints were gluten, dairy and sugar. At first, I really didn't believe food could affect joints, but I cut them out cold turkey because I was in so much pain, I was willing to try anything.  

The results amazed me! After about five days the pain had dropped so much, I was astounded. I felt like food was the answer. Food is medicine. Food can hurt or food can heal. 

So I went down a long road with food. I actually had no idea what I was doing in the beginning. Removing gluten, dairy and sugar helped lower the pain, but I still had pain. 

Then I got the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. Although my rheumatologist wanted to try medications, I was encouraged by my early success with food to keep going the natural route as long as I was improving, or at least not getting worse. 

Continuing with my research, I discovered the autoimmune paleo protocol (AIP). I tried AIP for a while. I tried going all plant-based. I tried a lot of different things. I was all over the place, to be honest, trying to find the right solution for me. 

All this was helping me but I was still in pain, and on top of that I developed fear of food. I felt like I was sensitive to nearly everything.

And I was still worried: was I doing the right thing?

What I didn’t know was that the worry that I was creating was actually keeping me inflamed. 

My worries about food were keeping me in a stressed state. I was also stressed about my self-care, about making sleep a priority and staying away from people who caused me stress yet feeling alone and misunderstood.  

What I also didn’t realize at the time was that I had carried a lot of stress throughout my whole life. I had tried to be perfect, which was really just a sign of not loving myself enough and not believing in myself enough. I spent my life trying to do it all and then taking the weight of the world on my shoulders. I had tried to be the best wife, mother, daughter, friend, sister, employee, but I didn’t need to hold myself to a standard of perfection.

It took me many years to realize that in order to reverse rheumatoid arthritis for good, I had to deal with what was going on inside my head and inside my heart. 

I had to address what I call my “come from”: how I thought and felt about myself. 

Because this was actually the root cause of the stress, and the root cause of rheumatoid arthritis. 

I had to go inside and really feel what was going on in my body. 

At the time, I didn't understand how to feel emotions in my body, how to feel love, how to feel what confidence really feels like. I came to realize that I was perpetually tense in my core. I was in a constant state of stress. 

It takes a lot of attention to learn how to release negative emotions, but releasing is necessary for healing. Release and healing happens as a by-product, a happy side-effect. 

This is what I love to talk about and share on my Jane Hogan Health YouTube channel, Facebook page and Instagram and I share in my Friday Thrive email and my weekly podcast, Wellness By Design. 

So, if you or someone you know wants to reverse rheumatoid arthritis, the first thing they need to do is to lower stress, both external and internal stress.

I have a great tool to help called Relief with Peace. It’s three audios you can listen to help lower stress so you can lower pain right away. So, go ahead and get the audio bundle, it's a great place to start. Download it for free here.

I love to share my story and share these tools!

I figure, the more people talk about this, the more people will hear it, the more people will understand that they can become empowered in their health because it doesn't matter what else you do, it starts with you. 

Healing starts with your mind, your heart with your breath. Using these, you can calm yourself down. And when you feel calm, your body can heal and begin to release pain. 

It's so empowering to know that you can be the one that's turning all this around. 

When someone is losing out on life because they are in pain, whether it's rheumatoid arthritis, regular arthritis or any other kind of chronic pain, they just want the pain to end because being in pain stops them from living the life they want to live. 

What I came to realize is that the pain was a calling from my soul. It was a wake up call telling me “Okay, Jane, it's time to stop the stress. It's time to turn it off and turn your life around, because this is not how life was meant to be. You are meant for greatness.” 

It’s not that I think I'm better than anyone, because I think every one of us is meant for greatness. We just don't even understand how great and powerful we are! 

Although I have a background in science as an engineer, I also have a spiritual side. I never grew up with a church, but I always felt really connected to nature, and I felt like there was a bigger presence, but I just didn't know what it was. Years before rheumatoid arthritis came along, I did tai chi and trained in Reiki and practiced meditation sometimes.  

I had a science side and a spiritual side as well, but they were two completely separate things and they seemed almost in opposition to each other.

But what I've come to realize is that science and spirituality are actually perfectly aligned.  

There is a Canadian physicist called Nassim Haramein, who says “Spirituality is just physics we haven't found an equation for yet.” 

Through science, we know that everything is energy and energy cannot be created or destroyed. We are actually energy that's compressed in physical form. There's more to us though than our physical form. We are spiritual beings and physical beings at the same time. We are a spiritual being, that's having a spiritual experience in a physical body. 

This all comes together beautifully, because as energetic beings, when we have pain and inflammation and illness, disease, any of these things, it's showing us that there's energy not flowing. Stress in the body prevents energy from flowing. To heal, we need to address energy and get energy flowing again. 

There are many ways to get energy flowing. I love to combine the mind, the body and the breath to do this. 

That’s where the Relief With Peace audio bundle can help! Use it to integrate the mind, body and breath to help relieve pain. Download for free. Just click the image below.