For Brett, psoriatic arthritis began with stiffness in her hands and progressed quickly. In this video, learn how she helps stop the hurt of psoriatic arthritis with daily meditation and yoga.
Transcript
I have psoriatic arthritis, and I help stop the hurt by making sure I meditate and do yoga every day.
My psoriatic arthritis journey began when I started to have some stiffness in my hands. And it came on pretty quickly.
About a month afterwards, I had such trouble walking because my knees were so inflamed that I ended up
having to seek out medical care because I actually couldn't even work at that point. After talking to my doctors, I realized
that psoriatic arthritis can be genetic, and I was under an enormous amount of stress at the time.
Stress affects psoriatic arthritis for me, and I think for most people, because it causes inflammation
in your body when you have too much cortisol. I reduce stress by meditating every day,
and I do yoga every day. The meditation kind of helps you live in the moment, and using yoga as a natural form of therapy
for psoriatic arthritis, I think, is really important. And there's a lot of scientific evidence to back up that yoga and meditation can hugely
improve your symptoms. What "stop the hurt" means for me is acceptance with this illness and where I am right now,
it means getting a proper diagnosis and proper treatment, and having hope in the future for a cure
