Welcome to the MyBuddyGreen podcast. I'm Jason Wachib, founder and co-CEO of MyBuddyGreen and your host.

Eileen Laird is an author, podcast host at Autoimmune Warrior, living a vital life with

rheumatoid arthritis. She's reached millions of people through her popular website and podcast

Phoenix Helix, and is the author of Healing Mindset, a guide to the mind body connection for people

with autoimmune disease. Eileen Wachib. Thank you. It's a real pleasure to be here.

It's great to have you, and you have a pretty powerful personal story, which inspired this,

you know, healing mindset, I think, book and the way you live your life and everything you do. So

let's start there. You're healing mindset story. Sure. So it was about 10 years ago, and I was living

healthy and happy life. I was living in the mountains of North Carolina where I am now. I did a lot

of hiking on the weekends for fun. I was working full-time as a massage therapist, which is a pretty

demanding job happily married. So I didn't have any trauma that triggered autoimmune disease for me.

I know for some people that is the case, and I just woke up one day with the strange symptom

in the toe of one foot, and within a few months I was disabled. So they call that rapid and severe

onset of rheumatoid arthritis at my rock bottom. I was limping, crossing my living room. You know,

hiking was off the table, walking was off the table. I didn't have the strength in my hands to

wash dishes anymore, never mind work. It was terrifying. I cried every day. It was a level of pain

I had never experienced. So I was 43. Obviously I had had pain in my life, but I felt like it deserved

its own word because it was so overwhelming, so excruciating. It made me gasp, and it was,

I'd wake up in the morning feeling about 90, and that was the good part of my day, and then every night

there would be an autoimmune flare, and I called it flare rush and relatic, moved around my body.

So if it was my wrist, I had to put it into a brace. If it was my shoulder, it went into a sling.

If it was my knee, I had to get off my feet for the night, and then the worst for me is if it hit

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