The Real Reason Gut Disease Keeps Getting Worse w/ Dane Johnson

23:36Then get it in the spirit. Your spirit doesn't change how you feel till you have new experiences, not just new thoughts. I've never had anyone on the show talk about stress like that before. So I love that. Well, stress is an energy to a physical response. It is. If I tell you something that stresses you out, you might cry. You might shake. Your heart might go. You might have to go to the bathroom. You might get diarrhea for two days. You might get angry. Might get angry. You might get a flare. So we're getting a physical response from what we believe to be true and what we're experiencing. So you have to start with the mind and then you have to condition it into the heart through action.

24:07Which is not easy for some people. No, it's conditioning. Because a lot of people just are out there and complain, complain and are stressed and think the worst of things. Well, we're conditioned as a society that when it's not our fault, it's not a responsibility to fix. Yeah. So it's someone else. Doctor, fix it, right? Right. And then so we've never really been forced to take our power back and really become accountable for what's not our fault. That's what I had to suffer through to finally learn that helped change my life. So before we even get into root causes and food and all of that, once you build that foundation, now you have the armor.

24:39Now you have the Batman belt. If you're Batman going to take back Gotham City, you've got the Batman belt to be able to go and figure it out because you can get consistent. You can maintain hope. You can maintain happiness. You can be more discerning in your decisions and you can be more disciplined because you are the fire. Okay. So can we move on to a different topic then? Yeah. Because like I said, I've got friends that are dealing with IBD. So let's talk about food because I know one doctor says, don't eat this. One doctor says you can't eat this. Are there certain things they should and shouldn't eat?

25:16So we want to start with a foundational principle of understanding food. We're all very confused because we read online and every day on Instagram, we see this food's bad and this food's good. And everything's high in histamine or it's high in fiber. Fiber's bad. No fiber's good. It's too much fat. It's too much sugar. That's exactly what they're going through right now. That's exactly what it is. And it was me too. And so I was trying the specific carbohydrate diet, famous IBD diets. I was trying carnivore. I was going paleo. I was going fasting or only bone broth for three or four days to reset or pureed carrots or homemade kefirs to add more beneficial bacteria.

25:49And it wasn't working. I was just losing weight and getting weaker. And I realized, and there was a trauma that I didn't want to be a bubble boy. Like the only way out is to live on this very restrictive diet for the rest of my life. And especially with the amount of young people who are getting sick right now, I know we have a lot of parents listening for their children. The kids are looking at this like, there's no way. That was me. Mom, mom, there's no way. I have five things I can eat. She sent me a gluten-free diet book. We were in the car. I threw it out the window. Literally revolting against what she was asking me to do.

26:21I worked at Papa John's Pizza when I was 14 years old. That's all I ate. I was like, gluten is every... I had 2%. But do you eat gluten now? No. Okay. I was going to say, gluten is hard on the gut. Well, I went through a spiritual shift that I want to share with people today. Okay. I changed deeply the idea that I was a victim and I had to be on a strict diet because of disease. And I fell in love with the idea of being empowered in releasing IBD and disease from my life so I can be free. So I eat whatever I want. I eat whenever I want. I eat however I want. But I refuse to poison myself. I was just going to say there's got to be a button there.

27:00I'm a free man. And that, I changed my perspective. Okay. The way I eat from the earth and I can eat broadly. So things like I couldn't handle a salad before, now I can handle a salad. So I want to eventually get on the offensive food so I can handle real whole foods. People with IBD, the problem is we cannot handle real whole foods. People listening most likely have problems with nuts and seeds. They have problems with grains. They have problems with salads, dark leafy greens. They can't handle it. So let's start breaking it down. The way we're going to get our freedom brought from nutrition and the foundation is to understand what I coined as food philosophy.

27:37Food philosophy is to look at any plate of food, any drink, any plate of food, and assess its risk for you. To do that, we have to dissect what every famous diet is saying. So what are the principles? So famously, we're saying that the kind of carbohydrate is a problem, polysaccharide versus monosaccharide, simple sugar versus complex sugar. So most famous diets, carnivore, paleolithic, AIP, the Daniel Walker's Against All Grain, right? That kind of stuff is saying we need to get rid of grains because our body can't break down these polysaccharides or complex carbs. But we do better with monosaccharides called simple carbohydrates like fruit.

28:14And so we want to start understanding these. So it could be lectins, oxalates, polysaccharides. It could be sugars. It could even be the kind of fat, okay? And then a big one, the cardinal rule, is the manner at which food is prepared. so if i have a grass-fed organic piece of chicken and i put a bunch of you know avocado oil that actually wasn't a great avocado oil that we find out right now lately and then i put it on the barbecue on high temperature and i grill and i grill it and it's and it's actually kind of uh charcoaled on sides and i put black pepper on it and i eat that there's a good chance i'm gonna get cramping pain diarrhea and urgency and i'm not going to feel good but if i had something like white rice where someone goes, there's no nutritional value.

28:58There's no protein. It's high in carbohydrates, but I break it down. It's been turned into congee and it's been pressure cooked and I don't have any of these oils or peppers or anything like that. My body will do something better with something that's very low in nutrition with IBD than the thing that was higher quality, more expensive that was cooked improperly. Interesting. This is what we're finding at restaurants because about eight out of 10 of the meals, generally speaking, We're eating at restaurants where they're using hidden seed oils and poor cooking philosophy. Interesting. Makes sense.

29:30So when you start, you want to understand that the manner at which the food is prepared is king alongside then the quality of the food. Okay. So if you have poor made organic chicken, you will probably get more of a symptom than even conventional chicken cooked properly. Oh, interesting. But that makes sense. That's a hard one to swallow. Right. What? But now that can empower people who just don't have all the organic food locally or the budget to afford all this organic food or you live in the middle of the country and you're not in California or a major city that has a Whole Foods right there.

30:03Right. And, you know, when I was healing, I had to be very resourceful because I didn't have any resources and I didn't come from a lot of money. So I just had to figure it out. That was me. That was me on my healing journey. I was in debt from college. I, you know, and I was chronically sick. I couldn't work. I couldn't walk. I was just trying to be able to stay in my apartment and not have to move back in with mom. with disability. So I had to be resourceful. I wasn't always eating the perfect organic food, but I learned that if I prepared it properly. So what's more important, if you can do this, a big takeaway is try even for 30 days or 60 days, only eat what you prepare.

30:37Your life will change. It's doable. It's cheaper. It reduces variables and it gets you trained. Yeah. And you become faithful in you again. And so if you just do that, if you just do that right there and then you start saying, let me prepare it. So how do you prepare it? Low temperatures. Try to stay away from too much direct heat. Okay. If it's sizzling, okay, it can be the sound of I'm not going to feel great. Interesting. Okay. I did not know that. Yeah. It's kind of the sound of inflammation a lot of times. Okay. So what I'm looking for, like if I'm on a stovetop pan, I'm going to put a dash of water in there and I'm going to put a top over it and keep it on low and create more of a steaming effect.

31:16Interesting. I'm going to use an Instapot, a pressure cooker. Okay. Okay. I'm going to make sure it's juicy, soft, delicious. So I tell everyone this, and this is to help you spiritually with food. I want everyone listening to eat like a king or queen. Now, Carla, I want you to do a little exercise with me. You're worth a zillion dollars in this imaginary world. Okay. We're on your yacht. Okay. And we're about to eat food. And the waiters bring it to us. It's sterling silver. They open it up, and we've got some food. and I want to ask you some questions about this food. This could cost any amount of money.

31:48The money's not relevant. Okay. On the plate, is it wild-caught local or is it conventional CAFO? It's wild-caught local. Okay. Imagine there's carrots. Okay. When you start to cut the carrots, does it cut through like butter where you hardly have to cut it and it just slips right off or is it hard and... It slips like butter. When you put it in your mouth, is it juicy and soft and it melts in your mouth that you have to chew it really hard? Definitely juicy and soft. Okay. When you're starting to eat, when you're trying to heal yourself, eat like a king or queen. Okay, that makes sense. Make it juicy, make it soft, make it so you hardly have to chew it.

32:24Interesting. Because the easier you break it down in your mouth, the easier it breaks down in your stomach. Oh, that makes sense. And now let's go back to the idea of how the human gut even starts to restore. Let's think about a baby. A 12-month baby doesn't have inflammatory bowel disease. Interesting, yep. We give juicy, soft, delicious. and that's why back in the day, parents and children ate a lot of the same stuff because all this zesty food and the high-level food, every time I go to a restaurant, they give me char-grilled broccolini. I'm like, take it back. Boil this. And I'll even tell the waiter, I'll say, cook it as if you're cooking it for a 12-month-old baby, please.

33:00Oh, there you go. You know, I make my waiters earn their tips, actually. There you go. So I don't want you to eat baby food, but I want you to eat juicy, soft, delicious. So write this down. Before you decide on how much plant, how much meat, how much fat, no seeds, no skins. And if you can't squish it, don't eat it. That is really good advice because the people that I know that are dealing with it, they're trying to figure out what they can and can't eat. And so they're like, oh, this flares me up, this I can't eat. It's driving them crazy. It is. And they're online looking for the perfect food.

33:33It's not the food yet. You got to build the foundations. So interesting. Just like the mind. Start with the foundational steps that can give you some consistency. Because now I just increased bioavailability. I just reduced variables if I just try to cook more myself. When I lived in Manhattan, New York City, when I lived in Los Angeles, when I lived out in Germany, I was doing this. I'd wake up, I'd prepare food, I'd make food that was from yesterday. When I cooked, I'd cook at least four meals at once and I'd heat it up, put it in my book bag and I was on my way. And that's how I took my life back and got back to my career.

34:06That makes sense. So how do we handle stress? We become self-empowered. Yep. You know, I wanted my career back and I almost had died a year ago. You know, in a former life, I was an actor. I had been booked a lead role in a movie and I had a cane. Wow. So it was like, okay, to do this, I'm only eating when I cook and I'm going to go out and go for prep or rehearsal or whatever. And I'm just following these principles. I did what I could because I wanted my life so much that I was willing to divorce Western thinking and be uniquely me. I carried a pound of book bag for like two years. I like that.

34:39So it's just be how much do you want it? How, you know, the only reason I got there, and this is from someone who ate McDonald's every week, worked at Papa John's and only ate Papa John's pizza. My breakfast was 2 % milk with cereal for like 10 years. I know. That was me. That was you. That was me. So you and I both know it doesn't matter if you don't have IBD or not or chronic disease. You know the experience of starting to spiritually release the falsehood that we know in American Western world. the falseness of that this is not food and this is not real. And it's probably easier for you nowadays, right?

35:09It's not even hard. Oh, it's so easy. Because you went through it. Like you got to go through it. You got to change, right? Where do we go? Get it from your mind to I want to change my belief system, take action. And then all of a sudden it's a new belief. Yeah. I'm free. I eat what I want. I don't have a diet. I've got a lifestyle. Yeah. And my lifestyle makes me happy and healthy. Oh, I love it. No one influences me who's not happier than me or healthier than me. Those are the only two attributes I look at at Mentors. Well, that's good advice. Very good advice. Let's take a quick break to hear from our show sponsor.

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36:20We're taking the guesswork out of clean living. Our most loved products are now available at the place you already shop. Find Just Ingredients at Target in stores and online. Now back to the show. Okay, so these people that I keep referring to that I know, they now know that they're going to change their cooking. But are there certain things, though, that those with IBD have to stay away from? Or should stay away from? Top three or four, I want you to stay away from alcohol, especially beer. Beer is a bomb to the gut. It's one of the highest things in glyphosate, if you actually look at it, one of the highest there.

36:57That's a natural antibiotic that's going to destroy your microbiome. That's one of the root issues of inflammatory bowel disease is the microbiome balance. Two is going to be, even right now, I would just be very careful of raw food because with IBD, you tend to have low stomach acid. We'll go over some of these root causes. I really want to get to the root causes of IBD and what you can do about it. But when you have IBD, you have usually low stomach acid, poor pancreatic function, and a stagnant liver not creating bioflow. And when you put in raw food, any kind of bacteria, parasite, anything on there, usually a healthy stomach acid at a pH balance of 2.2 to 2.4 can break that down and protect your small intestine from that infections or those bacteria.

37:37With IBD, that's commonly not there. That's why we're getting undigested food in the stool. Okay. People with inflammatory bowel disease eat a salad. They will see that salad come out the other side. You got low stomach acid. You got poor microbiome balance. So watch out raw foods. Any form of alcohol you want to stay away from. Gluten, especially in the Western world, okay? It's sprayed with massive glyphosate in the beginning. They're not fermenting it. They're bleaching it. Bread is not bread. That's another thing about food. Don't just think about I should eat this, I should eat that because food is not food.

38:07Bread is not bread. Chicken is not chicken anymore. Yeah, I know. You have to do your research on finding the best. What I tell people is stay away from the bakery until you're ready to make it yourself. So until you know how to ferment, until you are good, maybe even making your own flour is an important part. Even the flour and how they're turning it into dough has chemicals they're not putting in the ingredient list. Yeah. You know this, right? I do because bread from a bakery would kill me. Bread from the store shelf would kill me. But I can do homemade sourdough fermented bread just fine.

38:40I could not exactly. I think her name is Sue Baker. Does a great job of this. Have you ever heard of her? You should check her out. I think I know who you're talking about. Teaches you how to mill. Teaches you how to make your own stuff. So that's what we do. I would say just stay away from the grains, the breads. If you're a vegan vegetarian, we can do it. Let's just do it better. And so gluten, absolutely, I would just stay away from in the beginning. And then foods treated with lots of antibiotics or bleached with chlorine water, anything that's going to hurt that microbiome, we want to be careful from.

39:08So, yes, I do want to stay away from certain amounts of meats, deli meats that have nitrates or have been treated with antibiotics because it's going to hurt our ability to rebuild the microbiome, which is one of the root issues, in my opinion, very strongly of inflammatory bowel disease and why you're having such a hard time living is the overgrowth of proteobacteria and fungal overgrowth and things like that. Well, really what you're teaching, though, is how all Americans should eat. Isn't that such a beautiful statement? Because that gave me my power back. I said, Dad, I'm not doing this because I have IBD.

39:38I'm doing this because I want longevity and I don't want diabetes, heart disease, or cancer. Yeah. Which are the real horsemen that are killing us. Yep. Exactly. So IBD is going to save me from the real problems. That's true. That is true. Thank you, God. I'm blessed. Oh, I love that. Right? I love that. Well, my depression blessed me. It almost took my life, but I've learned how to live a healthy lifestyle in exchange. So me and you, you know what we were both diagnosed with? Purpose. Yeah, I love that. I'm not diagnosed with IBD. I was diagnosed with a purpose. I love that. To learn now, love now, and look how many people it's changing.

40:09Look how many lives we're changing because of our pain. How blessed are we? You talking? This is how you build happiness. You shift your perspective. You get in your mind. You run towards it until it's in your heart. Love it. So with food philosophy, I wanted to make sure that everyone understood that, that try to eat only what you cook for a while. Change your life. Journal on it. Reduce the variables. No seeds, no skins. If you can't squish it, don't eat it. And then I would say, generally speaking, more of a paleo style eating habit is going to be great. Stay away from raw food. So if you want to try nuts, do like a stone grounded nut butter.

40:42Try like a purple potato. Highest in antioxidants, anthocyanins, tons of resistant starches. Purple potato, I love. Congee with white rice, I see it work very well. As long as you're getting it clean with no arsenic and all that stuff, I find it very bioavailable, especially people who are very malnourished and can't absorb. I find grounded meats over regular meat because it needs lower temperatures, less chance of undercooking it and getting salmonella poisoning from the dirty bird, right? Chicken, the dirty bird, or anything like that. So grounded meats, lower temperature, they cost less. And then you want to put salt.

41:15Maybe use a little bit of lemon. I like to use raw oils more than cooking with oil or cook with fats. Like I love ghee or I love like an A2 butter. Okay. And so these are generally speaking, if you don't know where to start, look at this idea of paleo. Find foods that are easy to break down. Grounded meats are going to be better than those regular meats. Look for carbs that are easier in the body that don't have as much polysaccharides or oxalates, phytic acid, lectins you might find in grains. So like a yellow potato, a purple potato, some of that white rice can be really good. Fruit is a great carbohydrate that's a monosaccharide.

41:49Look at soluble fiber. Stay away from insoluble fiber. It's another thing with diabetes. When you're looking at fiber, fiber is not the problem. It's the context in which you have fiber. If I ask everyone right now, before I say this, can you define fiber? And about 1 % of our listeners can. So we're sick, but we have no education. Yeah. So fiber is the indigestible matter found only in plants. Just generally speaking, that's how I teach people from a coaching perspective. Not just the science, just think of it that way. So when you have fiber, you have two types of fiber. Soluble fiber and insoluble.

42:21Insoluble means it doesn't absorb water. So think of a log floating on a river. Okay. Or think of a leaf. Think of kale. Okay. Throw it on the river. What does it do? It floats. Okay. Soluble fiber absorbs water and tends to sink. You know it's soluble because if you squish it, it goes, okay, fruit. Can you squish a melon? Yep. Can you squish a banana? Yep. Blueberry? Yep. When you cook food properly, is it easier to squish? Yep. So when you're cooking, you're helping to break down the insoluble fiber, maybe leaving more of the soluble fiber. And soluble fiber is a prebiotic. It's fertilizer for all the good guys.

42:55For the good guys, yep. Okay. And if you want to rebuild gut, it's like rebuilding the farm. I love this documentary and analogy. If you watch this documentary called Big Little Farms. Oh, yeah. I like that one. The Santa Monica family who rebuilds it takes them five years to rebuild the soil. Yep. It's the same thing with the microbiome. God created the microbiome much like the soil. Yeah, he did. Yeah. So you've got to rebuild it. Prebiotics, postbiotics, good beneficial bacteria, and things that don't cause inflammation because the inflammation reduces the ability for the microbiome to diversify, for the plants to grow.

43:25Yep, exactly. So go with soluble prebiotic fibers. Examples, blueberries, acacia fiber, wild blueberries, all good examples. Some people can do like avocado as long as you can handle the fats and you don't have a terrible histamine response. Well, I do know some people do have an issue with fats. Yes, this is a huge problem that I see with people that I've actually helped people get, you know, symptom-free relatively quickly because they didn't understand fats. And a lot of our practitioners are putting people on the keto diet, the carnivore diet, or just like a bone broth diet, something like that.

43:55And that's all really good. It can really help starve out, you know, proteobacteria, dysbiotic bacteria, SIBO. But if you have stagnant bile, you can't break down the fats. Now, bile is what breaks on fat. So people don't realize that the stomach acid breaks on carbohydrates and proteins. Right. The bile coming, made from the liver, not the gallbladder, just stored in the gallbladder. the bile is released from the liver through the bile ducts. It's dumped into the duatum. That's right under your stomach. And that's when the fats get broken down. So if you don't have that bile movement, those fats are going to cause more gas, more bloating, more cramping, more diarrhea, more urgency.

44:31You're going to feel terrible. So another root cause of IBD. One of the biggest root issues, and I say root issues just so no one goes crazy with the word. There's a very flary word in the world is root cause. What's the root cause? That's why I like to say root issues. And remember, there's never just one root cause. It's always root causes. Correct. There's no such thing as a root cause. Maybe we should just jump into those. Okay. You want to? Well, I can finish the thing with the fat. Oh, yeah. Finish with fat. Then we'll go to root issues. You have to work on liver. Okay. So the liver is why also it's one of the biggest root issues.

45:03Okay. The liver is like Robin to the gut being Batman. Okay. And if you don't have the liver working, you're going to continue to have GI distress. You're not going to get the bile. Bile breaks down the fat-soluble vitamins, ADKE. It also helps your body make cholesterol, which leads to all hormones, which is why a lot of men and women are getting low T or estrogen issues or progesterone issues, because they can't properly break down fats to make the cholesterol. So, bile production, maybe taking a digestive enzyme with some ox bile, if your body can handle it, increasing the natural stomach acid, using a little betaine HCL, using high-dose pancreatic enzymes, all can really help break down those fats.

45:40I know a company that sells a good one, too. Do you? Just ingredients. There we go. So anyways, keep going. So yeah, so get a good digestive enzyme like the Just Ingredients one. Take it before the meal, not after. You might get some heartburn if you don't. And especially with IBD, you gotta get the liver broken. So what I would recommend is look at like a castor oil pack to start moving it. Always when you're looking at protocol, start at a low dose. 30 minutes of castor oil pack, five minutes of an epsom salt bath, and then titrate up. Slowly increase to make sure your body can handle it so you don't get a Herxheimer reaction.

46:10When you push on the liver, you could feel bad. Skin reactions, headaches, diarrhea, you need to know what you're doing with that. But get the bioproduction. And it's one of the common things I see with people who are more keto, carnivore, high fat. Because in order to live without all the carbohydrates, you need to be on a lot of fat to reduce those sugars. So you've got to make sure. And then with the fats, I like to recommend raw fats. So raw extra virgin olive oil, maybe a little bit of raw butter if you can handle it. Looking at maybe a little avocado. And try to stay away from the cooked oils.

46:41I'd say use the raw oils and then try to cook with fats like ghee. My favorite is ghee. It's 99.9 % clarified butter, no casein, no lactose. But as I fixed my gut, I was dairy-free for six years. I was completely intolerant. But as I fixed my gut, I was able to handle cultured A2 cow. Interesting. So I can have cultured A2 homemade yogurt every day without a problem. Wow. And if I want to gain 15 pounds real quick, it's that yogurt that will do it. That will do it. Yeah. So like, and as my body could handle, I had less histamine reaction. I could handle L. rooteri. And then I learned how to separate certain beneficial bacteria like L.

47:20rooteri from like B. infantis or bifidobacterium bifidum that really works on the colon versus the small intestine. Because a lot of these like yogurts that you could handle with high fat that are high probiotic, they tend to work in the small intestine and aggressive towards small intestine bacteria overgrowth. But yeah, we can jump into root causes now. I was going to say you've answered a ton about food, which is really beneficial because a lot of these people just starting on this journey, they don't know what to eat or how to eat it. So thank you. You explained a lot. That's really good. Beautiful.

47:49Last thought on that, just start with the foundation and grow it. Just build the foundation, get consistent. Then we start maneuvering. It's a chess match. It's not checkers. A lot of good takeaways from that. Yeah. Can we talk about symptoms? Yes. Like for those listening, I don't want to scare them. But how do people know if they're dealing with any part of IBD or even IBS? just so you know the symptoms that you have yeah don't get scared over them if you only have a little bit of symptoms act now because it's the rest of your life you're not trying to find the answer you're trying to get empowered get trained and if you're getting aha moments now you're realizing wait i can learn a lot of this and build my own plan yeah so it's not it's just everyone in the world i really think should do this that's why i'm so happy and excited to share this that's why i'm on fire for it because i'm not a prisoner yeah i'm leading yep like you're gonna come to my side eventually.

48:38That's how I feel. So Crohn's disease is a little harder with the symptoms because the problems in the midsection, a lot of times, like the ilium or the duanim. So when you have such a long GI tract, you might not get the blood or mucus or urgency, but you might get a lot of pain, weight loss, cramping, just a feeling of pressure and swelling in your gut. You just don't feel good. You don't feel comfortable doing sit-ups. You don't feel comfortable going on a run. You don't feel comfortable eating. You feel nauseous. I think clinically speaking, the most common symptoms of Crohn's disease are going to be bloating, cramping, stomach pain, and malnourishment, like a loss of iron, loss of certain trace minerals, magnesium, zinc, things of that nature.

49:16And are we talking painful? Because a lot of Americans just bloat after they eat or have to run to the bathroom after they eat. Yeah. And that's the thing. It could be more IBS constipation or IBS diarrhea. But what I'm saying is, yes, it can easily progress into IBD because if the root causes festers, if I have a wound on my knee and I just keep putting biologic immunosuppressants on it, calm down the inflammation, that infection can fester. So the pain could come depending on how aggressive your immune system is reacting to it, or if you're developing strictures or fistulas or fissures. These are more advanced problems where you're getting a hole within the inside of your body, a fistula.

49:57It's like a tunnel in your body or a fissure. There's this big gaping wound that won't heal. The more common symptoms where you're like, okay, something's really wrong is ulcerative colitis, proctitis, pancolitis. So the colon, that's where you're getting blood in the stool, chronic diarrhea, weight loss is tends to be a bigger problem because you're not reabsorbing the water and the nutrients and you're going to the bathroom so much, you're losing all the water and electrolytes. That's why it's important. You guys have the Just Ingredients Electrolyte Synergy. That's one of my favorite products, by the way.

50:24Thank you. The electrolyte product you have, wonderful. You need a lot of electrolytes and minerals. And when I was chronically sick and I just got out of the hospital at 120 pounds, I would get dizzy and faint if I just had water. Interesting. I had to have electrolytes every time I had water because I was losing so much water and electrolytes through 25 diarrhea-bound movements a day. Yeah. Makes sense. So you're just, you know, your body's 75%, 80 % water. So you've got to get that back in. So root causes with ulcerative colitis tend to be more mucus, blood in the stool, diarrhea, multiple bowel movements, weight loss, common.

50:59Other symptoms we see with IBD, arthritic pains, chronic acne, psoriasis, eczema, headaches, chronic fatigue syndrome. We'll see hemorrhoids can come and go, IBS or IBD are things we do see. And sometimes you'll get dry eyes, liver issues. About 30 % of the people diagnosed with IBD eventually get some kind of liver disease. Interesting. So because that's the correlation that I'm looking at doctors like, hello. Yeah, right. You know, we got to fix the liver. You can't just suppress it. Right. And that's one thing I want to let people know about with symptoms is one of the common questions we get from people who are struggling is, can I work naturally while I take my medications?

51:39Yes. What you do naturally only works. For sure. If it's done right, it works symbiotic with any kind of medication. because if I'm on Remicade or Intivio or Rinvoke, what that's doing is helping to suppress the inflammatory response, but then the natural is going in there and rebalancing the microbiome. So there's five things I want to do, okay? So the root causes, okay? There's five things I want to do that's going to work either if you don't want conventional medicine or you want to come off medications or you are on medications and they're not working enough. Five things we got to do, okay?

52:10Biologically, I've got to enhance your digestion, we talked about, okay? Stomach acid, pancreatic enzymes, liver. I've got to rebuild, rebalance the microbiome. The microbiome is the city of bacteria. I got to get it balanced. It's out of balance. And when it gets out of balance, they create what's called lipopolysaccharides or endotoxins that are inflammatory. Those inflammatory markers hurt your forest, your regenerative farm from getting plush plants everywhere with a thousand different species. So we've got to mitigate that proteobacteria. We've got to rebalance the microbiome when we've got to get rid of infections.

52:44We'll talk about here in a second. Number three is we've got to seal up the gut lining. Okay? Your borders. You need border control. Yep. Okay? So proteobacteria, undigested food causing food sensitivity. Why? Because the gut lining is damaged. You've got undigested food going into the bloodstream. And guess what? The immune system is right behind that gut lining. 70 % of your immune system, the dendritic cells, right? The T cells, B cells releasing T-nith alpha, releasing all these interleukins and cytokines. It's right behind the gut. So all of a sudden, that's open. You've got lipopolysaccharides.

53:20You've got undigested food particles. You've got foreign invaders all being exposed to the gut. No wonder your immune system's freaking out. We got to seal up the wall, close the borders. Leaky gut, which most people know it by. Leaky gut, right? We got to tighten up the mucosal membrane. We got to rebuild the mucosal membrane and tighten up that epithelial cell lining. And so if we can, that's the third problem that what I love about what we're saying, I just want to put this cliff note. Doctors don't disagree with it's not woo woo. All doctors agree that digestion's important, the microbiome's real, the gut lining's real, and it needs to be fixed.

53:56The fourth one is the nervous system. You know stress is making you sick. So why aren't you practicing gratitude? Or breathing. If you're going to sit here and look me in the eye and say stress is making you sick, Why aren't you practicing peace, love, and gratitude? Right. The opposite. You have to. So the nervous system, we've got to engage the parasympathetic. Okay. A little takeaway on that. When you're salivating, you're in the rest and digest mode. When saliva is being created in your mouth. Interesting. That's where prayer can be useful. That's where meditation can be useful. So just take a big breath right now.

54:29Imagine the most juicy, delicious thing on a beach with your friends laughing. And just try to imagine yourself salivating. Interesting. And just open your mouth and through the mouth. Don't be scared to let people hear you breathe. I always see that, you know? Yeah. But a great reason to pray before you eat. Yes, take a moment and you, whatever you believe in, pray to Kermit the Frog if you want to. I don't care. Just take a moment and do some prayer, do some meditation, do some gratitude, and try to engage the autonomic nervous system into the parasympathetic. Well, and then there's even more that happens when you sit there before you eat, smelling the food.

55:07It starts getting your enzymes going. There's a lot of cool stuff that happens if you just sit before you eat. And before I say the last one, I want to put what you're saying is when people say, how did you heal? I said it wasn't one thing. It was everything combined. Remember what I said? I journaled every day. I only ate what I cooked. And I only listened to Bob Marley and Jack Johnson. And I stopped watching Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Right? I was done with the stress. I don't need to watch anything stressful. Yeah. I need plants. I need sunshine. I need God. I need love. I need my parents.

55:40I need my friends. I need my siblings. And I need what's good, not what's wrong. Yeah. And see, I'm literally feeding to my body. You're okay. You're safe. Love it. So you've got to rebalance the nervous system. And you can do stimulations, vagal nerve tone. You could do my Sensate. I love this little device. I wear it in the morning and it plays this music and helps me drop into the parasympathetic. I use it in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber in the morning per se. Oh, that's awesome. So yeah, I eventually, I said, you can keep the foreign car. I'll take my American-made truck and give me the H-Bot.

56:09Same price. Yeah. Okay. So that's the nervous system. The last one is the immune system, right? The immune system gets nurtured through everything we talked about. So when you rebalance the nervous system, when you rebalance the microbiome, when you get digestion working, when you seal up the gut lining, the immune system can get balanced. Yeah. Immunism gets balanced with proper sunshine, with taking vitamin D and your fat-soluble vitamins, or making sure you've got enough zinc and minerals and getting enough magnesium in your body so you can convert vitamin K and magnesium, and it can help you with any kind of epigenetic issues you have.

56:42So those five, forget IBD for a second and go after those five. Well, those five, what's crazy is not just for IBD. Those are the five that I would suggest also for those dealing with depression. So don't just try to survive, thrive. Your goal is not just to get repaired from IBD or autoimmune disease. Your goal is to be healthier than the healthy. And you are going to pass everyone else who's quote unquote healthy, who never got sick with anything, living in this modern world married to the Western conveniences. Yeah. Because you're going to, you're down here and they're up here. You're going to build a tunnel and you're going to go way up and then they're going to start asking you advice.

57:20Yep. It's exactly right. You become healthier than the healthy. and those five. And then those really break down to what do we start attacking? We have to start going after more advanced, don't start with this, pathogens, and then we've got to be able to identify toxins. Okay. So pathogens and toxins are two big subcategories that are driving all five of those problems. So work on those first five, then delve into pathogens, maybe. Yeah. A lot of people are hearing that and they're going, oh, I have a few takeaways from that. But a lot of other people are going, well, what do I do for digestion?

57:48What do I do for microbiome? How do I start? We could go talk about all of those. That's a lot. It is. So takeaways are going to help. So one thing that's going to help you not feel overwhelmed with that, especially if you're new, okay, is what you do for one, you do for the other. Meaning? Meaning if you take out a food that is easy to digest, you'll get less inflammation. It'll help rebalance the gut lining. And with less inflammation, I'll help me seal up the gut lining. So I'll less likely have more leaky gut. And then I'll most likely get immune system more nourished because it's getting bioavailable food it can actually use.

58:18Okay, so let me ask you, do you like supplements for helping with the microbiome and helping with the lining of the gut? Supplements are life-changing. They're important. I use a lot of them. It's about finding things that actually work that are specific to you and they're tailored for where you're at in the journey. So is it powder? Is it single ingredient? Is it dropper? Is it capsules with multi-ingredient? What are we doing and why? So do you like probiotics? because I know obviously they're so good, but some people when they're just starting out, it like destroys their gut. Like they're like, oh, this is so painful.

58:51Do you want me to, I can share exactly how we can fix it with probiotics. Okay, go for it. So probiotics. So the problem with probiotics is that we're putting multiple strains in a capsule that they're one, not symbiotic. So the strongest one surviving. And then when they go in the body, we can't guarantee they're actually living. And we also, a lot of them cause a histamine reaction or we're too aggressive for where we are. So especially lactobacillus. So what you want to do is you want to consider starting with single ingredient, single strain powdered probiotics that you can microdose. Okay.

59:21Makes sense. And I always start with bifido species before lactobacillus species. So you want to focus, the ones I like to focus on have a hundred years of human clinical research showing that humans have been having these for years. Bifidoinfantis, Bifidobacterium bifidum, Bifidolongum are like my favorite to really focus on. And these tend to be lower histamine reaction and they reside in the colon and they can get to the colon a little easier. So you might start with like one fourth a teaspoon of a very low dose, like, you know, 1 billion CFUs, 500 million CFUs of bifidobacterium bifidum and take it on an empty stomach twice a day.

59:54And if you prove no problem, you start scaling that. Makes sense. So with probiotics, the problem is, is that these are single cell living organisms with their own consciousness and they're looking for a host to grow in. and you can't just manufacture that so easily for$49.95. And it's just a really tough thing. Now, SBOs have come out in a different way where you don't need refrigeration. They're very aggressive. But I'd say most people with IBD are going to herx on them. I usually don't need to start with them, even though I love certain SBOs at certain times and there's great research and what Karan Kirsten has done, I think is pretty good and microbiome labs, all that.

1:00:27But I like to start with Natrin probiotics. Anyone check them out. That's where I like just because they're family-owned, they make everything in-house. They're the only probiotic company I know who makes their own probiotics in their own warehouse because it's so ridiculously expensive. It's so hard to do. It is. It's really difficult. But as you start to rebuild the gut, then we can get into more of those classic multi-strain probiotics that can handle. So I like to start slow, especially with IBD, and then start scaling. But I'm looking for a potency guarantee. I'm looking for family-owned.

1:00:57I'm looking for third-party tested. I'm looking to a lot of times still separate certain lactobacillus from bifidol. And I've been researching this lately, and there is some evidence to suggest, especially if you're a pregnant mother or you have an infant, I really want to work on getting your bifidol infantis specifically shown and clinically used for mothers who are going to be mothers, breastfeeding mothers or infants, that that's the most important strain that's missing in the breast milk. And there is some research to suggest, we're not sure yet, but maybe the increase and rise of colorectal cancer might have to do with the lack of bifidoic bantus.

1:01:33And I think there's some great research that I'm seeing that Natasha Dutranaev, the owner of Natron, is doing. And I've heard some other podcasts from a woman, Dr. Sabim Hazan, who's a medical doctor who will bring Remicade to market, who's also doing bifido implants. Interesting. They're starting to talk about. So I think there's something going on with the lack of bifido species in the colon because they're delicate and they die easier. Okay. And those are also butyrate producing. So when we're doing our quantitative PCR stool test and we keep seeing low butyrate. Low butyrate. Oh, this makes sense.

1:02:05I think it's the low colonies of bifida. That's interesting. Because for those listening, butyrate helps heal that gut lining. It helps with those tight junctions that have popped open to heal them. So that makes sense. And I love pairing it with my bifida strains in the morning. So if I'm just using some bifidolongum, infantis, bifidum, I might throw a little bit of butyrate. Calcium or CalMag, doesn't matter. Yeah, because that butyrate is so important for the gut lining. Yeah. And so you're saying all this, but like in reality, all Americans need help with butyrate probably in their gut lining.

1:02:36That's exactly. And I hope everyone's getting excited about that. You are called to learn something new that you can now help other people with. And everyone's going to be called to do this. Yeah. And, you know, the best way to eat it, you know, get in more ghee. Ghee is a great source of butyrate. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons I love ghee. And it's a natural fat where it can handle higher smoke points. So, you know, when you're going at this, this is going to really help. The probiotics are key. We have to recolonize the gut because even if you do restrictive eating and you lower the fungal and you lower the bacteria, your beneficial microbiome and diversity isn't properly regrowing back.

1:03:13Yeah. And that's where you're getting recurrent flares. So it's hard, just like that documentary. Took them five years in big little farm to regenerate the farm where it could self-sustain. It takes, if you've been injured with antibiotics or anything else and you've been sick for five or ten years. You have to give it time and really focus on nurturing that microbiome long term. That stress, another round of antibiotics, crappy food, too much high fructose corn syrup and glyphosate exposure, that diverse microbiome isn't getting the chance. It's so hard. It's so hard and people don't realize, oh, you know, you really got to go at it for a while and it has to like fermented foods and probiotics are just a staple in my life because I was chronically sick for years.

1:03:52Yeah. You need the fermented food for the probiotics. So one of the root issues of IBD is your microbiome can't sustain balance on its own. Makes sense. That's the problem. That's one of the big problems. Your body cannot do it on its own. And so you've got to coach it along every single day. Got to be real careful what you put in there. All right. Those five things, are those then the five root issues of IBD? Yeah. Those are the five biomechanical issues we need to fix. And within them, we want to be looking at about five different pathogens that we commonly see connected with inflammatory bowel disease that when we check, we are finding these.

1:04:25Okay. And then certain toxins that are also keeping our body overwhelmed. Interesting. Pathogens, parasites, common like blastocystis hominis or cyclospora. Mold, okay, mycotoxins, things like aspergillus, ocrotoxin A, viruses. Like for me, what almost killed me was cytomegavirus or Epstein-Barr virus or herpes simplex virus or coccyx virus. Interesting. Viruses, big one. Next is going to be candida overgrowth, okay? Candidiasis. Huge problem. Doctors never found it in me. I had a lot of these, by the way, when I was chronically sick that I later found. Interesting. And then last is going to be bacterial load.

1:04:58So it could be C. diff, campylobacter. It could be H. pylori causing ulcerations and gastritis. So we want to be looking at those and making sure you don't have just a massive infection. Okay. And then toxins commonly connected are going to be toxins we probably, we can't detoxify. Wait, let's talk about those five pathogens, though, because I don't want to scare people. You can work with a functional doctor to figure out if you have any of those. Yes. So. Well, and it's hard because a lot of times there's false negatives. Like H. pylori, you could have ulcerations, but it's not showing up in a stool analysis because the H.

1:05:29pylori is predominantly in the stomach. Oh boy. It gets thick. Guys, I'm sorry. There's a reason we got sick for so long and it's hard to figure out. Because like my son is dealing with a lot of parasites right now and a lot of mold from living in an undeveloped country. And so we're working with a really good doctor though that is doing different tests to figure that out. So I do want to give people hope that there are ways to figure this out. You can. My favorite is a quantitative PCR stool test. It's called the GutZoomer by Vibrant America. Do that, do a few of them. That can find it. If it doesn't find something, there are potential false negatives.

1:06:02With parasites - That I do know. Yes, parasites and certain bacteria in the upper GI. And so a lot of times we will just run a plan and see how you feel. A very safe plan and start talking with you, your background, your experience, your intake form to say, okay, we think there's a false negative. Like I had a pregnant mother who kept having severe Crohn's disease show up in her CT scan. It was ulcerations, tested negative for H. pylori. Whenever I see ulcerations, I think H. pylori, I put her on an anti-H. pylori protocol. We started immediately seeing her. She was reacting to it a little bit.

1:06:32We did it safely. Six months later, not even that, four months later, she had a perfect CT scan, no signs of Crohn's disease. So it can be infectious, but you want to look at those. And then if it's not showing up, I like to do like the MyMichael Lab by Dr. Andrew Campbell can be helpful blood test, a total tox burden test by Fibron America, urine analysis, or an organic acid test, a gut zoomer quantitative PCR, all good to look at and consider. But a lot of times if I'm working with you, I can tell right off the bat and based on where we are with any kind of finances, my job is to be as clean on your wallet as possible and say, where do we get results and why?

1:07:04And just game plan it on what do we invest in and why? I love that. Tell me though the toxins. Okay, toxins. So the problem is a lot of us genetically cannot eliminate toxins that are chemicals, man-made, things that are not naturally part of our environment. Imagine that. Imagine that, right? So, you know, common toxins we're seeing are from microplastics. Here's a hint. Before I got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, I had Invisalign for a year. Interesting. And then research started coming out that people with IBD have 50 % more microplastics found in their microbiome than the average person.

1:07:36Interesting. So I'm looking hard at microplastics. I'm looking hard at, obviously, glyphosate, anything with high levels of antibiotics. I'm looking at things like voluntary organic compounds, PCBs, polychlorinated bifinols. So thinking anything that smells weird, certain heavy metals have been connected, like cadmium, lead, arsenic, mercury, commonly connected, or some science showing it's connected to IBD. So these toxins, the problem is, you know, you could maybe be in a room or mold mycotoxins in a room. You could be in that room or drinking chlorinated water with heavy metals and you're fine.

1:08:11Your body can start eliminating them. Mine can't. So that's an epigenetic issue, or it could also just be a liver issue. So that's where - Toxic burden, overload. Yeah. One of the number one things you need to do that's also going to help, and we said everything helps each other, is you have to work in your drainage pathways. If you can't sweat, you can't detox. Okay? I know a lot of people out there, they're never sweating. Can't sweat, can't detox. You got to get the skin, sweat. You got to be able to poop. Can't poop, you can't detox. So if you're constipated, huge problem. If you have overwhelmed liver, liver disease, we talked about, we got to get the liver and kidneys moving.

1:08:40Those are two others. And then I've got to get the lymphatic system moving. The lymphatic system that drains toxins doesn't have a heart like the blood vessels. So you need to move. If you're not moving, your lymphatic system is not moving. So being a stagnant person, that's going to be a problem. That's why walking outside while earthing cannot be good for your nervous system, but it's good for your lymphatic system. And that is what helped me with my depression, and it helped you with your IBD. So it's amazing that all these things that we're talking about are for the gut that then affect so many other health issues.

1:09:10And if I could just say one thing that could really help wrap this up, I know we went over a lot and I spoke very fast, but what you do for one thing does for everything. It's ride the wave. Stop trying to build the wave and just realize that God, the divine made the wave and you just gotta ride it. Get outside, get a part of the earth, Put on the Bob Marley. Move your body. Eat real food from the earth and just make what you eat. Remember, 200 years ago, your grandfather had no food. I'm just asking you to eat real food. I love it. Your great brother, come down from heaven and slap you upside the head.

1:09:46Just eat real food. Stop opening packages. Yeah. You know, and just be careful of that because there's a convenience tax when you have Oreos and Doritos and stuff like that. And just come down and do your nature. Your body wants to heal. It's going to do the work. Yep. I always say the body wants to do its best, but you've got to fuel it properly. Yeah. Get out of its way and start there. And I promise four months, six months, a year, you'll get better at this. You'll become a black belt ninja. Just start with what you can do. Get consistent before you get perfect. Well, you have given so much good advice.

1:10:16I know you have helped so many that are listening because a lot are confused out there as to where to start, how to help themselves. So thank you for everything that you've said. But you have a practice where, I mean, you're helping lots of people heal. So tell me about that. Yeah. So out of this, I created a company called Crohn's Colitis Lifestyle. And our mission is to build customized and personalized plans for each person to get life-changing results. And what we do is every plan is completely different. No two plans are the same. And then everyone gets a IBD coach who helps build their plan with them.

1:10:49So direct message support where you're at, build a plan for you and we have really life-changing results and we do this all around the world and we see about 250 clients at any given time but it's really about impact over anything and so it's never generic it's always customized to you and we just help work with you and your doctor to get empowered get past this be what i needed my mission is really just to be what my mom, my dad needed, what I needed when I was chronically sick, to simplify, to execute, to prove, and to be flexible on what really works and why. And so what we do is we offer a free one-hour session for anyone who has IBD, thinks they have IBD, or just IBS and really needs somewhere that they have trust and integrity.

1:11:35And that's the thing. We work with you. It's a free hour, no gimmicks, no hacks. We just want to hold space because if we do work with you, we want to make sure it's a good fit. Amazing. Yeah. So you have a bunch of coaches, doctors, and you see people from all across the world because they can just do it online. It's all global, all online. And we have, we put out a testimony every week of getting a complete symptom relief. Wow. Once a week. Wow. And we have, and our. That's huge for those that are in the midst of it. Cause I know people in the midst of it. And when I say that I'm just to give you an idea, we, each client we work with is a minimum of three to four months.

1:12:10We don't give a cookie cutter plan and just follow these videos and take these up. We don't do that. But that's how most businesses scale. We're impact first. We're not going to scale unless we get impact. Love it. 91 % of our clients report life-changing results. That's amazing. And we hold a client success tracker every week. And we have a naturopath medical doctor. We have two naturopath medical doctors on staff, a clinical herbalist. We have a registered nurse. We have a chiropractic doctor. We have these people, but they're all acting as coaches, not as your medical doctors. And what's also crazy is about 80 % of our team has IBD ourselves.

1:12:42Wow. So we've had it. We specialize in it. We've seen your case. This is all we do. That is amazing. I love that you have taken pain in your life and turned it into purpose. It is incredible. Yeah. And helping so many others. Yeah. It's just, it's been a labor of love. This is our 11th year doing this. This is not something we just started doing. We've seen thousands of people. I think we've had most success at any IBD coaching clinic I've seen. And we really just want to continue to do it right. And as we grow, we want to grow where people have a real home because that's what I needed, a healing home.

1:13:14Good for you. And the last thing I just want to say to everyone out there is healing is possible. And last piece of advice. I know there's so much, but just start with what you're not doing before what you are doing. If you can take some of that stuff and say, I'm just going to walk in faith to stop doing these things, the alcohol, the gluten, the crappy food, the restaurants for a second, the negative space, the living and letting the stress overwhelm you, you're going to get life-changing jolts. You're going to get aha moments where it's going to feel more free, more powerful, and it's just going to get easier.

1:13:46It starts hard, but success always is simple when you actually achieve it. Oh, I love it. Thank you so much for being here. You have taught them so much. I know this is going to be a blessing in many people's lives, so thank you. Thank you so much. Before we wrap up, I always ask five really quick questions. Okay, you ready? Yeah. All right. Number one, what emerging health topic are you most excited about right now? You know, I would say I'm going to give it to mesenchymal stem cells because they can modulate the immune system without turning it off and don't increase chance of tuberculosis or lymphoma like some biologics or immunosuppressants clinically.

1:14:22So I think mesenchymal stem cells are really cool. And then there's this new one called, I've been trying lately, it's called Firefly Light Therapy. And it can help to relieve certain bacterial infections. It can also help with wound healing. Oh, interesting. Just light, no supplements. It's cost effective. This guy named Dr. Bates built it. I had my mom do it. I did it. And my pregnant wife used it. Got rid of the flu, parasites. We started testing less for parasites. Mom had serious mold issues and lost movement of her shoulder. Started coming back. Takes 10 minutes. Wow. Wild. Cost effective.

1:14:56No supplements. You don't need it to the supplements. I need to look into that. I'll tell you about it later. Yeah. Wow. Especially for my son who's dealing with mold. We'll talk about it. But yeah, just get on Google this guy, Dr. Bates Firefly Light Therapy. It's pretty cool. If you have an infection in the lungs, you can't take a supplement for what's in the lungs, but you can use this light therapy. It's not infrared light, but it's similar. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Number two, what's a piece of advice you'd give your younger self? I think a piece of advice is walk in faith. Don't be scared to be your own best answer.

1:15:27Oh, I love that. Okay, number three, what's the one health practice you'll never compromise on no matter how busy life gets? Quality food. Same here. Number four, you might have already answered this one. What's your favorite Just Ingredients product and why? I like the electrolyte formula because of my background with that. I love it. My wife also loves it herself. She's today 35 weeks pregnant, eight months pregnant. So exciting. She has adult emulphed every day. Well, good for her. Well, thank you. All right, last question. What is the best ingredient you've found to life? the best ingredient uh i found is belief belief is faith plus hard work you have to earn it you can't just decide you got to earn it and if you can get belief nothing can stop you oh that is good i'm gonna think about that one that is a really good one well again thank you so much for being here you listeners go check out dane especially share this if you know someone in your life that is dealing with any of the ibd types that we talked about today share this because like I said, I have lots of friends right now dealing with this.

1:16:31I don't know why. And this is some great advice that I want to pass along to them. So again, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Happy healing. Thank you for being here and being part of this community. Don't forget to subscribe to the Just Ingredients podcast. We've got so much more to share with you. And if you're not already, come join us daily on all social media platforms at Just.Ingredients. Until next time, keep choosing what nourishes you.