“Keep trying, eventually you will get change” Chris Beardshaw

Award-winning garden designer and TV presenter Chris Beardshaw faced life in a wheelchair due to problems with his toe joints as a teenager. He couldn’t stand without pain: “Getting shoes on and off was impossible,” he says. After various treatments and pain relief for rheumatoid arthritis ( RA), but no conclusive diagnosis, the threat of a wheelchair was “galvanising” and he decided to change the way he lived. After extensive reading (now he’d advise using arthritisresearchuk.org) his solution was to swap high-impact exercise for cycling and changes to his diet.“You have to be methodical; go through and see what it is that’s aggravating the condition,” he says. With more than 100 different forms of arthritis, an exact diagnosis is not easy, but by cutting out food groups then reintroducing them to his diet Chris found that citrus fruit and anything from the potato family, including aubergine and tomatoes, made his symptoms worse. Now he takes a glucosamine and chondroitin supplement and multivitamins: “I found the product that suits me and I’ve modified quantities to take the minimum,” he says. He also takes extract of devil’s claw as an antiinflammatory for flare-ups: “high doses for short periods work for me.” Another big help is getting the bestfitting comfortable shoes possible, wearing thick hiking socks to protect his feet and using orthopaedic insoles. “Keep trying out things for a reasonable amount of time,” he says. “You don’t get change in a matter of days, but eventually you will.”