How I Conquered Rheumatoid Arthritis – Part 3
Living with Graves’ disease, with ups and downs depending on how consistent I was with my diet and lifestyle, I had never made the connection between my mood, my irritability in particular, and my gut microbiome or digestive system.
I was often upset, getting angry very easily, and I would learn later that this was one of the many signs that my liver was under stress, along with several other organs in my body.
To be honest, one thing I found (rather stupidly) convenient about Graves’ disease is that I was not gaining weight despite eating a lot, because hyperthyroidism accelerates our metabolism, making us restless and always hungry. What really frightened me was the risk of exophthalmos, meaning bulging eyes, a risk my endocrinologist had warned me about to encourage me to keep the disease under control.
I did not really know what it meant to have an autoimmune disease, or that it would only get worse if I did not make the right changes to restore balance in my body. Nobody had explained this to me.
The hardest part was the lack of sleep, and at that time, my youngest son was not sleeping well at night, so I often went to the office having slept only 3 or 4 hours. I still do not know how I managed to work or think properly.
I never liked coffee, so that was not how I got through my days, but when I reflect now, I was consuming a lot of sugar without realising it.
It is now scientifically proven that sugar causes inflammation.¹ Many people do not realise that they have some level of insulin resistance, due to stress, their diet, or sometimes the medications they take.²
Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas to transport sugar from the blood into our cells, keeping our blood glucose within well-defined limits to keep us alive. When we produce a lot of insulin, too often, again due to our lifestyle (stress) or our food choices, our cells stop responding, and the body needs to produce even more insulin to extract glucose from the blood and deliver it to the cells. We know today that this is the starting point of many diseases, from cardiovascular conditions to neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s, and even cancer.³
People often think that sugar means only white sugar, but it also includes complex sugars in the form of bread, pasta, white rice, and even fruit. They all end up being broken down into sugar in the body. We need sugar to survive, but too much sugar is harmful.
My breakfast was a hot chocolate with a raisin swirl or a croissant every morning. Yes…
This seems crazy to me now, but I was not better informed at that time. I am French and was so used to my croissant or chocolate croissant for breakfast, though I reassure you this is not the case for all French people!
For lunch, I would eat quickly, whatever was most convenient, lots of sandwiches, sometimes salads, often at my desk while reading emails or taking calls.
I was working in a very fast-paced environment, with traders in investment banking, so there was a lot of urgency and a lot of stress. I must admit there was also a lot of stress I imposed on myself. I wanted to be perfect, I wanted to perform, and I always focused on my shortcomings rather than everything I had already accomplished.
I rarely went outside for fresh air, maybe sometimes to pick up a takeaway lunch. I was not drinking enough water. My husband would often remind me, but it had never seemed like a problem for me over all those years, no declared issues, so I thought everything was fine.
I continued like this for several years, always pushing myself, pushing my body, without giving it the nutrients, sunshine, fresh air, and rest it needed to repair and regenerate.
Then came the thing we all hope never to face. I lost my father in 2020. It was the first time I had lost someone so close to me. There were a lot of regrets, a lot of sadness, and a deep feeling that I could have learned and discovered so much more at his side. I realise now that this was also an emotional trigger. However, an autoimmune disease does not have a single cause. It is a multitude of factors that lead our body into autoimmunity.
Looking back, it became clear that for Graves’ disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Sjögren’s syndrome, each emotional trigger, combined with the absence of what my body truly needed to overcome those challenges, caused my health to deteriorate rapidly.
In 2022, after my mother visited me in Hong Kong, I accompanied her to the airport, and I remember trying to hide from her that my knee was hurting. I was limping slightly and wondering why.
A few days later, the pain had disappeared, and life went on. It was a pain I would continue to feel from time to time over the following 2 years, but each time only for a day or two and then nothing after, so I was not too worried.
The second time I had that pain, more than 6 months after the first occurrence, I went to see a physiotherapist. He examined my knee, found some fluid, and said it would either resolve on its own or he could drain it if needed. He recommended waiting, as the procedure carries some risk of infection. So I waited, hoping it would pass, and it did.
I did not know why I had that pain, but I was not too worried since it did not persist.
What I did not know then is that before an autoimmune disease fully takes hold, our body desperately tries to tell us that something is wrong, that we need to take action.
Unfortunately, I was never good at listening to my body, despite already having an autoimmune disease at the time with Graves’ disease. I do not even think I truly recognised my body’s signals, or understood that certain sensations could be a way of knowing whether something was good for me or not. I had no self-awareness in that area at all.
Outside of work, and while taking care of my family, my passion was cooking, in particular French patisserie. I would spend hours preparing different cakes and sharing them with friends. I loved to host and cook for others. Seeing them enjoy my food made me so happy.
I would spend hours, sometimes entire days, on the most sophisticated pastries, without resting much, and I insisted on doing everything myself every time I had guests at home. No one needed to bring anything. I wanted to manage it all, always.
Looking back, I can also say that I was inflexible. I did not want any help because I was so demanding about everything, including at home with my family.
That inflexibility, maintained for so many years, would soon manifest in my joints through the pain of rheumatoid arthritis.
The last time I had knee pain before my diagnosis was in the summer of 2023, while I was in France. I was eating a lot of corn bread because I was still trying to avoid gluten and thought corn would be a better choice. I will come back to this particular point in one of my upcoming articles. I found myself unable to walk one morning.
I went to see a doctor with my sister, the doctor suggested it might be inflammation. I applied an anti-inflammatory cream, and the pain eased, but it came back.
I was scared. I did not know what was happening, and I had a flight back to Hong Kong to catch that same evening.
My mother and my sister were very worried. My sister insisted on upgrading my flight ticket to business class so I would have room to stretch my legs, as my knee was so painful.
That day, I was escorted through the airport in a wheelchair. I was seeing the world for the first time from below. A very humbling experience…
After landing in Hong Kong, a few days later, I felt much better and went on with my life.
All those previous years, I had not noticed the signals my body was sending me, whispers asking me to react before it became so inflamed that it would start screaming with the onset of rheumatoid arthritis throughout my entire body.
Six months later, I could no longer sleep because of the pain in my wrists. They were red and swollen. I had never even considered that one could feel pain in that part of the body.
That is when I received the official diagnosis in February 2024. This illness brought me to my knees after the shock of the announcement I described in the first article.
But I was able to get through it, and today I no longer have any of my autoimmune diseases. I have overcome rheumatoid arthritis, and I am in excellent health. It took me 8 months, and this is what I want to share with you, so that you know it is possible to get through it. I will explain how in my next article.
References
¹ Moling, O. and Gandini, L. (2019) ‘Sugar and the mosaic of autoimmunity’, The American Journal of Case Reports, 20, pp. 1364–1368. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6761705/
² Ballena-Caicedo, J., Zuzunaga-Montoya, F.E., Loayza-Castro, J.A., Bustamante-Rodríguez, J.C., Vásquez Romero, L.E.M., Tapia-Limonchi, R., De Carrillo, C.I.G. and Vera-Ponce, V.J. (2025) ‘Global prevalence of insulin resistance in the adult population: a systematic review and meta-analysis’, Frontiers in Endocrinology, 16, p. 1646258. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12411212/
³ Velickiene, D., Szymczak-Pajor, I. and Ratkevicius, A. (2025) ‘Is insulin resistance the Eminence Grise of ageing and non-communicable chronic diseases?’, Frontiers in Endocrinology, 16. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12657140/