Josh Dech:
Contrary to what your doctors told you, Crohn's and colitis are reversible. Now, I've helped hundreds of people reverse their bowel disease and I'm here to help you do it too. Because inflammation always has a root cause — we just have to find it. This is the Reversing Crohn and Colitis Naturally podcast.
Now I do these live trainings in my Facebook group every single week and put the audios here for you to listen to. If you want to watch the video versions of these episodes, just click the link in the show notes to get access to our Facebook group and YouTube channel. And for weekly updates, information, tips and tricks, you can sign up for our email list by clicking the link in the show notes below.
The number one thing most people are saying — that your IBD treatments are failing or you are failing the drugs — we have to answer the question: why are these failing or why are you supposedly failing these drugs?
Now most people believe they just have a really bad case, or that they're really unlucky. But this has nothing to do with what's going on and why these drugs aren't working.
And so in this training we're going to be talking about conventional IBD treatments. We'll cover alternative treatment options that people often utilize, and some of the things I even do with my clients — you can ask about toward the end here. We're going to talk about why they do or do not often work, why you cannot actually fail a medication — doesn’t actually make any sense, all that ideology is wrong. We're also going to talk about what we need to do to actually reverse the condition and help you actually get effective treatments or get some efficacy out of your treatments.
So if you're new here, my name is Josh Dech. I'm a holistic nutritionist, IBD specialist, medical lecturer and physician’s consultant for Crohn and Colitis and severe IBS. I've helped hundreds of people now find natural relief, fully reversing their conditions, coming off of medication and making their conditions disappear. My job is to help you learn how to do this — how to reverse your IBD — because contrary to what your doctor says, it can be done. And the stuff I'm teaching you is similar to what we're teaching these doctors. So you’re in the right place.
So we're diving right into this thing right now.
If you have tried something to help with your IBD, you've probably tried medications, you've probably tried something natural — and at some point it's worked or it's inevitably not worked, or it was working and then stopped working.
So today we're answering the question: why do some of them not work? Why do natural or pharmaceutical drugs not work to help with your IBD?
Now if you're wondering why I'm wearing this bright blue Hawaii Miami Vice shirt, I'm here in Calgary, Alberta. We're in the middle of a heat wave — we get one of these every couple of years — and it's like 35 degrees outside. For you Americans it's like 110-plus degrees. And I'm stifling in this. Makes me feel like I'm at least in Miami. I'm suffering in silence but with some dignity because I'm pretending I'm in a hot place.
And so today let's go over some conventional treatments first. The first thing I want to talk about is conventional. I'm just going to put con at the top. The irony's on them — if you guys know me, what I teach about pharmaceuticals, con is just a fitting word. So con for conventional.
Conventional treatments — we have certain medications or drugs that are used. All of these are going to attack one pathway of the immune system. So let’s talk about things like prostaglandins. Now if you don't know this word, bear with me. These are what drugs like mesalamine utilize — these are the ones that they modify. So prostaglandins are one of your inflammatory responders, and mesalamine suppresses this prostaglandin activity. That’s what these drugs are doing — they’re suppressing some of the activity.
These are hormone-like inflammatory mediators, so we use drugs like mesalamine to stop them. Remember, inflammation is a cause-and-effect reaction. If you're inflamed, your body’s reacting to something. The inflammation — the byproduct of that — is dilation of blood vessels, sensitization of nerves, and the end result our brain interprets is pain.
So by stopping this inflammatory activity, we stop the pain. Symptoms solved. Mischief managed.
But we have other things that we look at as well. We’re going to look at things like corticosteroids.
Now what are corticosteroids? These are going to be your common drugs you might have on short term: budesonide, prednisone. These also suppress certain pathways of the immune system. Your body’s trying to react — saying, “We gotta get down there and fix whatever’s damaged, whatever is wrong.” And so these drugs suppress part of that immune system.
Other common ones that we’ll see in here — we’re going to classify them, I’m just going to put immunomods — that’s immunomodulators. These are going to be your more heavy-duty things. We’re looking at things like Imuran, Methotrexate. These are going to be the ones — you might see a lot of these classified like biologics. You’re going to see things like Entyvio and Stelara and Humira.
These are your immunomodulators that modify your immune responses. So when your body tries to bring in the cavalry — it’s trying to bring in the cells to start healing you, these inflammatory responses — it brings the guys in to say, “Let’s get you healed, we need help.” We suppress them further — and we solve the pain problem. Your symptoms reduce. Maybe you bleed a little bit less. But they’re not solving it, obviously.
And we also have more extreme things like your JAK inhibitors. Those are things like Xeljanz and the newer medications, at least at the time of recording. And they block something called cytokine receptors, or the cytokine transmission. And again, these are just another inflammatory pathway your body has. So your body’s constantly reacting, it’s constantly inflaming to try to heal you.
And so based on whichever pathway is being called upon to try to heal the inflammatory process, these medications will suppress those pathways. And this is why they sometimes work.
What'll happen — many people go on steroids for example — again your Prednisones and Budesonides — and they go, “Well, I actually got worse.” That also tells us what’s going on at the root cause. We see this very commonly.
And so we have different pathways of your immune system. You have some inflammation — I’m gonna draw a little flame here on the board. It’s a blue flame. Very hot.
And so what’s happening is your body is calling on different pathways of your immune system — sometimes two or three at the same time. We take a medication which suppresses that call on the immune pathways — and so your inflammation magically reduces. And we go, “Look, I fixed the problem.”
But then guess what?
After a couple of months, weeks, or even years — what starts to happen? Your body calls upon other immune pathways as this fire spreads out the other side — because it wasn’t blocked. And so it starts to go the other way. We have other immune pathways. And now they go, “Well you failed the drug. We need to try something new.” Until you have failed all the drugs.
We call this medical gaslighting. “It’s a you problem, you problem, you problem.” But this entire ideology — picture it like having a gas leak in your house, and the fire department comes and just keeps pouring water on it.
They’re like, “Yeah, it’s inevitable. It’s going to keep burning. There’s nothing we can do. So we’re just going to spray water on it infinitely, hoping for some kind of resolve.” And if you’re lucky, it just won’t get worse. But in the meantime you’re like, “It’s a gas leak! Turn off the gas!”
Like, that makes sense. You want to drain the bathtub, turn off the tap to the bathtub, and then drain it, right? Obviously. We have to stop causing the problem.
But with your body, they go, “Yep, there’s nothing we can do. It’s just happening to you. And we’ll just put water on the fire indefinitely.” And so there’s different pathways that start to get called on. You keep failing these drugs and the same thing happens.
We see what we’re going to call alternative — there’s lots of, um, alternative options out there. So you’re going to find all kinds of things. We see things like chai — very common. We see your curcumin — that’s going to be your curcumin turmeric. We see a lot of omegas, we see slippery elm, aloe — there’s all kinds of things that people will go to as a natural resolve to try to manage some of these symptoms.
I’ve even seen people grab things like all kinds of enzymes, they’ve grabbed things like wormwood and other antimicrobials, antifungals, antiparasitics, and all these things. They just start taking them hoping for the best. And I get it — you’re in a desperate situation, everything’s inflamed and it sucks, and you’re going to try anything to get out of it.
I’ve had people come in with one bowel movement every two to four weeks — they’re so constipated. I’ve had people with 50 a day. Everybody can get better — it’s just a matter of time.
And so we’ve got all these alternatives now. But guess what — chai, turmeric, omega, slippery elm, aloe — what are they doing? They’re trying to build back up. Your house is on fire and what we’re doing is again trying to pour water on it with a different kind of water. Now we have a natural spring water instead of a fire hose city water. Whoop-dee — it’s still doing the same thing. It’s suppressing the immune pathways.
On the other hand, things like your aloe and slippery elm — they’re trying to build up while your house is still on fire. But we’re trying to rebuild the roof and tile the floors and put drywall on the studs while it’s still on fire. We’re just trying to build faster than it falls apart. And again, we’re depending — because the second we stop, the inflammation continues, and things burn down. We never get better.
And so we are on either alternatives, which are effectively — I call them plant-based medications — they’re actually doing the same thing the medications were doing. Typically with less side effects, sometimes more or less efficacy. And they’re not actually solving the problem. They’re simply pouring water on an active fire without turning off the gas.
And these are the main reasons why what you’re doing is not helping. What you’re doing is not working. We’re suppressing one pathway, your body calls on another. Your body has hundreds of checks and balances to make sure that it can heal itself. You can’t wake up one day randomly and be autoimmune — allergic to your own body. It doesn’t work that way. That’s absolutely asinine. It’s like denying gravity.
It actually goes and flies in the face of everything we know about active science and how your body responds. Everything’s cause and effect.
Me bending my arm — this is a cause and effect reaction. The cause is a contracted bicep and a relaxed tricep. The effect is a bent arm.
If I burn my hand, the cause is I touched something hot or put my hand into something hot. The effect is a burn.
If I get pink eye, the cause is bacteria. The effect is an inflamed, infected eye.
If you have IBD, the cause is a foreign pathogen or invader — your body trying to heal you from something. The effect is inflammatory bowel disease.
It’s not random. Everything is in a cause-and-effect reaction, from a macro to a micro — even a photonic level. Everything in the body is on a cause-and-effect, give-and-take reaction. You can’t randomly, out of the blue, have a bent arm for no reason. Something had to happen to get you there. And we have to keep that in mind. And so what we're going to look at here for you guys is: what does this look like?
Number one reason it’s not working: symptom management. And the reason why they fail — and they say you failed — is because they’re working under this umbrella ideology that is innate to your biology. That this disease process you’re dealing with is just part of you. There’s nothing you can do. You woke up one day randomly allergic to yourself, you have a disease condition, and nobody can do anything about it. You have this going on, and that is what it is. It’s random. It’s autoimmune. It’s genetic. It’s environmental. Nothing can be done.
That’s the umbrella they have. That’s the ideology. So their only hope is to put water on the gas leak and the fire, hoping we can just manage it. Because they don’t even know the gas leak exists half the time.
Well, let’s figure it out. How do we do that?
So our job — I’m not going to get into it in detail, I’ve done this on many calls before — but I will go over the idea.
We have to find the root cause.
I talked to somebody not more than an hour ago about the root cause approach. And the root cause approach is addressing the root cause. There’s actually — there’s people who call their things root cause programs or root cause this and that, which is a really nice name. But again, they’re using a lot of alternative naturals.
Until you can name the root cause, you have to be able to name it. Can you name the root cause? “Here are the list of things in this order that we believe are causing the problem.” And then you have to come up with — I’m just going to call it a road map.
You have to come up with a step-by-step process.
“In this stage, we’re dealing with number one. In the next stage, we’re dealing with sections two and three that are the root causes. And then we’re going to deal with this next process.”
Well guess what?
If you have a leak in the ceiling — I’m all about houses today — you have a leak in the ceiling, you can turn off the tap, stop the water, patch the pipe. Perfect. Problem solved.
Not quite yet.
There is residual damage caused by that leak. The ceiling has to be repaired. You have to redo the drywall, you have to repaint it. If it got down and got all over the hardwood, you might have to dry up the hardwood or have it even resurfaced and sanded. You have to repair the residual damage.
And so we have to look at that as well. And that’s another part of this process.
And so if you cannot name the root cause — you go, “Yeah, we’re doing a root cause approach.” Awesome. What’s the root cause?
“Well… it’s inflammation.”
Okay, why is it there?
And I see a lot of people — well-meaning — they want to help themselves, they want to help their kids. They go out and grab things like GI Maps. I’m a huge advocate for them in the right context. I used to use them a lot. But as our science has developed, as we got access to more testing, we use other types of testing.
But we are so honed in now doing what we do — we go by symptoms 95–99% of the time. Because your body speaks a language. And so if we can figure out what it’s telling us is the root cause, we can reverse it — often relatively easily.
And so what we have to go through:
Can you name the root cause?
Not just a natural approach and call it “root cause.” Because if you’re dependent on these supplements the rest of your life, you may as well be on medication. At least insurance covers the meds — rather than being out-of-pocket $500 a month for supplements till the end of time.
And so we have to be able to name:
It may change as you go, and that’s okay. But at least you can name it and you can map it. And that’s what we have to ultimately do.
A GI Map — great, it shows me my bacteria is all messy. We always have to go one layer deeper.
“I got a GI Map and it’s showing candida.”
Perfect. That’s what is the residual. What caused the candida?
Let’s go back up one more layer. How did you get this overgrowth? Because it didn’t happen randomly.
Cause and effect in everything we do. This is how we get to the root cause of things. We have to go deeper, deeper, deeper, figure out what started it, turn off the gas leak, and that’s how this gets done.
And so I'm going to go through the questions right now for those of you here on the live. I'm going to go through and see what questions we got.
If you have not submitted your questions, this is a great time to do it. My job on lives is to answer the questions you want to hear — not the things I think you should know. And so by you commenting your questions, I'll be able to get into these and answer your questions and get you the help that you need.
Monica says: So basically all the medications are just blocking pathways to reduce symptoms?
You got it.
Medications block symptoms.
Remember, your body has all these checks and balances. It’s got T-cells, it’s got B-cells, it’s got cytokines, it’s got prostaglandins, it’s got all these different immune cells that it calls upon when there’s a problem.
And sometimes there’s different pathways of your immune system — we’ll call them TH1, we’ve got TH2, we’ve got TH17. They have different names — these immune pathways. And what happens? Think of them like radio signals. There are certain root causes that call on particular pathways — that use a certain radio signal. And these particular cells come in to the rescue.
That can happen.
Now, these guys don’t come in because we block that signal. They might call in some backup — and the other guys can start acting.
Now this is where we start to see again, “You failed the medication.”
But we’re effectively blocking this signal. We stop the radio transmission saying, “Do not call for help.”
The problem is still there, but they just block your body’s ability to bring in the cavalry that created the inflammation in the first place.
But the problem’s still there. It’s still toxifying the body, it’s still inhibiting you in many ways.
And this is why you’ll see people:
“I started with IBD, I had blood in my stool, went to the doctor with a bit of urgency and blood.”
That’s typically how it starts.
“So I had some urgency. That progressed to blood. Went to the doctor…”
And here they are — months or years later — they’ve got:
Because they just compound.
Because we never got to the root of the problem.
And all we did was block the signal.
And this is very infectious, very insidious — this root continues to spread out, and it gets to different organ systems all over the body.
And what happens now is we have these organ systems multiplying, right? They get to different areas — which again take different immune pathways and different immune signals — and cause different problems.
They create leaks in the gut, they create these toxins — endotoxins or LPS — which make their way through the bloodstream and the lymphatic system all over the place, settling everywhere around the body.
And now you’ve got issues all over the place.
And the doctors go, “Well, it’s just bad luck. It’s another autoimmune condition.”
It spreads like a virus if we don’t get the root cause.
We have to turn off the gas instead of just spraying water on the thing the whole time.
Let’s see if we got another question here.
Monica says: I wonder if that is why it causes some people to have more than one autoimmune disease — these other pathways being activated?
Monica — yes, yes, yes, and yes.
Why do we get multiple autoimmune diseases as things progress?
Well, if you’ve been around long enough — I’m going to switch markers, mine sucks — if you’ve been around long enough, you’ve heard me talk about the glass.
Your body is like a glass. Everything starts to fill it up:
Over time, what happens when that cup overflows?
Now we have all these symptoms.
We go to the doctor.
We get a diagnosis.
They look at this water down on the bottom — the splash damage of what’s overflowed — they look at all the water outside the glass and go,
“Yep. You have this disease.”
They never look to see what filled up the cup in the first place.
And so what happens now is this overflows.
Well, guess what?
If we don’t stop the overflow, it overflows and — let’s say this glass is sitting on a table. Okay great — there’s my masterful art piece — it’s sitting on a table.
Well now the water falls off the table into another glass. And now we’re filling up your immune system even more, all the reserves and residuals.
What happens now is everything is freaking wet, and now your immune system is way overdrawn, way overtaxed, trying to do the cleanup.
It’s like you — when you’re super anxious, you’re having a really bad day, and you come home and maybe your kids — your kid’s just in the living room, I don’t know, do kids do that? I don’t have kids. I got a dog. He does that.
Maybe you come home and your spouse is having a bad day and they start yelling — now you lose it.
Because you’re already so capped and already at your wits’ end, that sometimes the big things, or even the little things — getting stuck in traffic — is enough to blow your top off.
And that is what happens to your immune system.
It’s overfilled, it’s overdrawn, your cups are full, and there’s no drainage.
We have to:
This is going to be very, very vital to actually removing the roots and getting things better.
Most of us have really garbage drainage.
We never turn off the tap. We’re in overflow. And we’re just overtaxed.
And autoimmune conditions pile up — 3 years, 5 years, 7 years later you get another one.
7 years later you get another one.
Now you’ve got 15 different autoimmune conditions.
Your doctor thinks God just plays favorites and probably hates you the most — and all we can do is give you drugs.
Doesn’t make any sense.
There’s always a cause and effect.
If we’re just looking to mask the symptoms, it’s like you’re watching your cups overflow and you put a mask on — “Look! I don’t see it!”
It’s not happening.
Didn’t fix anything. You’re just ignoring the problem until it gets so bad you can’t ignore it any longer.
And this is why Western medicine, in my opinion, sucks huge balls. It’s just — I don’t think it’s very useful.
It’s worth $4 and $5 trillion a year. Give you guys an idea — I think the spend in like 1950 or 1960 was like $2.7 billion dollars in the United States. $2.7 billion — for what, 150 or 160 million people at the time?
$2.7 billion.
Today it’s $4.5 trillion.
Do the math on that. It’s absolutely absurd.
Now to give you an idea, the population only doubled in that time. So you could have like, maybe $6 billion a year on medication spent in the USA — considering that things stayed the same. But no. People are getting sicker. We’re hooked on stuff for longer, we’re on more medication, more drugs than ever before.
And we have 222 times — maybe — I know $4.5 trillion is the total health spend, but I did the math on it.
Oh sorry — just medication spend, that’s what it was.
It’s about $1.5 trillion or something just in medications.
And so our medication spend has gone up by 222 times since the 1950s or 60s. And the population’s only doubled.
It’s absolutely wild.
Kimberly had asked: So that’s why my blood work is all over and my anxiety is so high?
Well, here’s what happens with blood work.
Here’s what happens, Kimberly, with your blood work.
Your doctors have a set of blood work that they look at.
They have what’s called a reference range.
Now, if you are within this reference range — right — they’re happy. As long as you’re not down at the end of the reference range on either side of it, they’re happy.
You’re “quote-unquote” normal.
You’re within range.
And the computer — when they spit out the blood work — says, “Hey, it’s either high or it’s low.” And it flags it and turns the text red.
And so, going through hundreds of patients for five minutes a day, they can look at your blood work, go “high, low — nope, you’re good, you’re normal.”
You go,
“Doctor, I feel like death mauled over. I feel like everything’s falling apart. I feel atrocious. My energy is down. I’m not performing very well. I’m gaining weight. My bowels are a mess.”“Yeah, but everything’s normal. Here’s some antidepressants.”
Happens all the time. It’s astonishing.
But here’s why this sucks:
92% — guys — 92% of all of North America is not metabolically healthy.
Metabolism being defined as any chemical process in the body used to maintain life.
So that’s bowel and digestion — not just weight gain, weight loss — but also hair growth, sleep, all these things, muscle building — it’s all part of metabolism.
92% of all North Americans are not healthy on a cellular, basic, functional level.
Well this reference range — where do you think they get it?
They get it from that sample size — where 92% of them are sick.
Therefore, by the very definition —
“Quote-unquote normal” is actually sick.
And this is why we have to look to functional medicine practitioners, because they’re not looking for a computer to actually flag it high or low.
We don’t have you for seven minutes to get you in, get you out.
We can see you for an hour, two, three hours. We spend weeks with you on weekly check-ins sometimes.
That’s what we do in our programs — a weekly check-in.
Because your range — optimal for you — might be right here.
Or it might be right here.
That would be optimal for you.
But your “normal” — which is average — and average is sick.
And this is why your blood work can be all over and your doctor still goes,
“Yeah, you’re fine. Here’s an antidepressant. You must just be in a bad mood. Here’s some birth control.”
It’s absolute garbage.
And this is why people stay so sick for so long.
Amaria asks: If the root’s not found but I’m taking Humira or another drug, could the IBD eventually lead to surgery?
Well, it definitely could lead to surgery. Everyone’s different — I cannot say definitely, I can say possibly. Everyone’s glass fills at a different rate, everyone progresses. Some people progress very, very quickly.
I’ve seen people who, like, within a couple of months, went from healthy to bleeding to perforations — they needed surgery.
Some people — it’s 20, 30 years.
I use my analogy of walking in a pair of shoes with no socks on:
Now, you can take medication and put numbing cream on the heel for the pain — but it doesn’t stop the blister.
But there are many factors that will change how quickly that blister blisters.
I’m a size 12. I’m wearing a size 6 — it’s gonna be a pretty bad time pretty quick.
If it’s a size 11.5, it’s not gonna wear as quickly.
What is happening to progress that wear and tear?
So everyone’s going to be different.
But eventually, it does wear down.
Whether it finishes in your lifetime to actually perforating and needing surgery — we don’t know.
But it is still breaking down.
Also, Humira is trash for your liver.
And so it’s going to break down other systems and toxify the body in other ways.
All these diseases are inevitable.
How far, how fast they go is going to be individually dependent on a number of different factors.
But progressive wear and tear is guaranteed.
It’s just a matter of:
How fast, or how far is it going to go in your lifetime?
That’s really what changes.
Is scleroderma reversible?
Everything’s reversible.
It’s how much can it be reversed?
How much can we reverse every condition?
I’ve reversed scleroderma in clients before.
Everybody can get there.
The question is:
I got a good friend of mine — he’s got scleroderma.
It’s all coming from his gut.
His scleroderma flares up when his gut gets worse.
We’ve seen all kinds of inflammatory conditions.
And we had another question from Linda:
Did I have IBD?
Luckily, I was never diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease.
I got an irritable bowel syndrome diagnosis when I was like 12, and then things got really, really bad.
My joints got bad, the brain fog, blood in the stool — I’ve had the urgency, 15+ bowel movements a day, I lost like 25 pounds — it was absolutely the pits.
And so guts are on a spectrum.
This is actually a really interesting question — I talk about this in other ones, I won’t harp on it now — but this is why I believe we’ve been so successful.
We have sort of a scale — I explain it in different ways — but you have:
They all progress.
I’ve had people come in from all walks and conditions.
I had a fellow — actually came in — I talk about him all the time.
He was healthy, started a new job, right here.
Two months into his new job, he was diagnosed with IBS.
And then six months after that — so eight months on the job — he was diagnosed with IBD.
He went from healthy → to IBS → to IBD.
He got the urgency, the diarrhea, the stool issues, and then the blood and the inflammation.
Went to his doctor — because genetically, he was prone to expressing this level of inflammation in his bowel.
And so he jumped from one to the other.
He had a mold infection.
Fixed it. Bing, bang, boom — he’s fine.
No more IBD.
His doctor said it’s because he was Jewish — kid you not — blamed it on his heritage, and it had nothing to do with it.
And so everybody has a root.
All cause and effect.
I don’t have any more questions coming in, which is perfect.
Guys, I’m going to wrap it up there.
Thank you so much for coming.
We’re here every week.
If you need more information, we have a podcast, we have a YouTube channel.
I have two podcasts — one is all IBD, one is all about other things gut-related and things that influence your gut.
Tons of professionals, and specialists, and practitioners from all over the world.
We had Dr. William Li, Dr. Steven Gundry — we’ve had all kinds of celebrity PhDs.
Next week I’m actually meeting with Dr. Bruce Lipton — if you know him from The Biology of Belief — we’re very excited about that.
We have amazing, amazing people on these shows and these podcasts.
So send me a message, ask me for resources — we’ll get you all the information you need.
Or comment the word "solution" and we’ll get you some one-on-one help.
We’ll get on the call with you directly and see about getting you a custom program and a custom solution for your situation.
That’s it, guys.
That’s all we got for you.
Thanks so much for coming.
See you next week.
Thanks for listening.
Now, if you want help reversing your IBD, I’d like to invite you to join our Reversing Crohn’s and Colitis Naturally Community, where we give you the tools you need to actually reverse your IBD.
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