29: How We Treat Crohn's and Colitis Differently

Crohn's and Colitis can make you feel isolated, unseen, unheard and invalidated when others don't understand what you're going through... It's even harder when it's your friends and family.

This is a guide to help you finally be seen and heard by your loved ones, and it also serves as a guide for caregivers to understand what your loved one is going through.

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• How Crohn's and Colitis are different diseases
• Treatments that are the same
• How we treat them differently
• Root causes for these diseases
• 3 Rules for IBD diets
• the 7 Steps to reversing IBD

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Video Podcast:
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Transcript

Josh Dech:
Crohn's and Colitis are different diagnoses, so the question is: how do we treat them differently when it comes to treatments? What do we do on the natural spectrum?

So I'm going to be showing you how we treat Crohn's and Colitis naturally and what might be unique to each condition. You're going to learn, number one, what makes these diseases different from each other — why this is so important to understand, because it is. And then the last thing we're going to teach you is the steps and systems I'm going to go through with you, that my team and I have used to reverse over 3,100 different cases. I'm going to outline those processes so you can learn and understand them yourself.

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’s 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.

Now if you don’t know me — my name is Josh Dech, I'm an IBD specialist, medical lecturer, physicians’ consultant for IBD of course and severe IBS, and I'm also the scientific strategist and education director for the Root Cause for Crohn's & Colitis organization.

And today we're going to be discussing the difference in treatments between Crohn’s and Colitis, and the steps that you need to take to begin really, truly reversing them.

So the first thing's first that we’re talking about — I want to get into the difference of Crohn’s and Colitis with you, just so you understand why they’re different. We’ll say medically speaking, as far as a diagnosis is concerned, to help outline what might be different in our approaches to these two conditions.

So the first thing I want to look at is: in Crohn’s disease — Crohn’s disease is here. Crohn’s disease is going to be anywhere from mouth to anus. It can inflame anything, even on the outside — like what we call perianal issues, like abscesses.

Whereas colitis, or ulcerative colitis, is going to be strictly to the large intestine. And here’s the main differences:

• Crohn’s: Anywhere — mouth, esophagus, stomach, small bowel, large bowel — any of those things can be affected.
• Colitis: Just the colon.

Now, what we typically see as well — there’s a couple other nuances.

Next we want to look at what's called transmural or deep layers of tissue. So in Crohn’s disease, what we’ll often see is many layers of tissues can be affected, whereas colitis tends to be just the surface layers.

Think of this as a difference between:

• Slicing your finger — like cutting bread and slicing deep, that's more Crohn’s.
• Colitis is kind of like you tripped on the sidewalk and scuffed your knee — it’s very surface level.

That’s the first one.

The second one that we’ll see as a big difference — besides mouth-to-anus and depth of tissue — of course, is going to be the microbiome.

We often tend to see the microbiome in Crohn’s disease being much more mangled or messed up, dare we say, than we do in colitis.

In Crohn’s disease, what we see — it’s called Peyer’s patches. You can get kind of like a Dalmatian — you can get flecks of these patches all throughout the body, primarily the small intestine, but they can happen anywhere, even the large intestine.

Whereas colitis tends to be one large or small stretch that may be inflamed throughout the way.

So that’s really the difference: it’s depth, it’s location, and it’s togetherness.

Colitis will be spread, whereas Crohn’s disease is all over the place.

Those are really our big differences.

Now, there are differences in complications we see between Crohn’s and colitis:

• Crohn’s is more prone to things like abscesses, so more sores forming, so to speak — strictures (narrowing), and fistulas, which are actually infections that burrow deeper into these layers. They can actually hollow out and go really deep.
  So there’s really major infection risks in there that we’ll tend to see.
• Colitis’ big complication is what’s called toxic megacolon — so that’s when the entire bowel can become infected and highly inflamed.

You’re also going to see a higher risk of colon cancer in colitis.

One last piece — I know I said two points like four points ago, but this is just a fun side fact.

We often say “It’s genetic in nature.” They’re not. There are genetic components, but we know it’s not a genetic condition.

But of the ten most common genes that we see associated with bowel disease:

• Four of them are unique to Crohn’s disease
• Two of them are unique to ulcerative colitis
• The other six are actually shared — we see them overlapping in both cases.

So that’s our difference between Crohn’s and Colitis.

What we gotta ask now is — what are we going to do to treat them differently?

So now that we understand how they're different conditions, what I'd love to do is talk about how we treat them differently — but before I go to the specific nuances, let’s talk about what we do overall. The things that are going to be the same across the board between both Crohn’s and Colitis.

Because here’s the reality of it — though they’re different diagnoses based on presentation, they’re both inflammation of the GI tract. They’re both inflammatory processes or inflammatory diseases.

So there’s a lot that we actually do the same between Crohn’s and Colitis. Let’s talk about that.

The first thing that we’re going to do in both cases, if we’re approaching this naturally, holistically, from functional medicine — is:

1. Find the Root Cause

The analogy I like to use is this:

So many of you watching or listening — you’ll have had this instance before where you went to the doctor, and for whatever reason, you were healthy for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. You were perfectly healthy, and then one day, you started getting sick — maybe over a few short days, weeks, or months. Or maybe over many years. Whatever it was for you, you suddenly came down ill.

And they go, “Oh, it’s genetic, it just happened.”

None of these things just turn on and turn off like a light switch. So there’s always a root.

Here’s the analogy I’ll say:

If you step on a nail, and it goes through to your foot, and you go to the doctor, and they go, “It’s really bad looking... it’s part of your body now though. There’s nothing we can do. So we’re going to give you some numbing cream — this will manage the pain for the rest of your life. And if it doesn’t work, we’ll cut off your foot.”

It would be insane. You’d look at them like they’re crazy.

But when it comes to bowel disease — you go all these years of your life perfectly healthy, and then one day, boom, you're sick out of the blue, and they go, “Yep, it’s just genetic. Nothing we can do. Here’s some medication to manage it for the rest of your life. And if it doesn’t work? Snip snip. We can do surgery. We can remove parts of your body — or all of your bowels.”

This is nonsense. Something has to be driving it.

So this is why we look for the root — we look for the “nail,” so to speak, in the foot. And that’s how we can begin the first approach.

2. Open the Drainage Pathways

Now, the next one we want to do across the board for both is address drainage.
There are seven main drainage pathways — and we’ll get into those another time — but think of this as: how things exit the body.

So the basics are going to be:

• Liver
• Lymphatics
• Gallbladder and bile duct
• Skin
• Sinuses

This is how things move around and exit the body, okay?

And in bowel disease — in Crohn’s and Colitis — drainage is one of these things that’s really junked up. There’s so much toxicity floating through the body, so much immune response, so much byproduct… this toxicity just starts to clog up some of these drainage pathways.

So what we want to do is start to open them up.

Once we’ve identified the root cause, we begin opening the drainage pathways.

3. Follow Three Simple Rules for Diet

There are three rules we want to approach in diet. And these three rules — again — they’re the same across Crohn’s and Colitis.

Everyone might do it differently. You might say:

“Oh, the SCD worked for me,”
 “AIP worked for me,”
 “BRAT diet worked for me.”

That’s cool.

I have three rules across the board:

Rule #1 – Whole Foods.
Natural food. Organic ideally. It grows, it swims, or it walks.

Something that would have been food 1,000 years ago — and is still food today.

Because most of what we eat today is not real food.

Rule #2 – Tolerable Foods.
These are foods you can eat and they don’t cause you problems.

Rule #3 – Low Histamines.
Because the immune pathways that trigger bowel disease are also connected to histamines.

If you think of histamines like:

• Rashes
• Hives
• Itching
• Throat swelling
• Anaphylaxis

That’s where we see a lot of histamine response.

In bowel disease, histamines can really trigger the same immune pathway, worsening your condition.

So those are my three rules:

Whole foods,
Tolerable foods,
and Low histamine foods.

The next things we also want to look at when we’re dealing with Crohn’s and Colitis is going to be:

4. Gut Barrier Repair

The gut lining is going to be compromised in all conditions.
So we want to begin repairing, healing, and sealing that.
Now, we mentioned briefly the difference between Crohn’s and Colitis being:

The microbiome tends to be worse in Crohn’s disease.

But it can also be quite messy in colitis — it depends on the individual.
So we also want to address — at some point (typically later down the road) — the gut microbiome.
We want to address the imbalances contributing to toxicity,
the imbalances contributing to inflammation,
and the disease processes you’re starting to feel.

5. Stress and Trigger Management

Another important one we want to look at is going to be stress management,
and managing other triggers in both cases.
Because these drive the immune system and immune pathways.
Now, there are some basics we’ll see:
We tend to see more nutrient deficiency in Crohn’s disease —
because again, that small bowel is inflamed, which is where most of your nutrient transport, absorption, and breakdown of foods comes from.
So we tend to see more nutrient deficiencies in Crohn’s,
whereas colitis is less prominent — but we still want to boost both of those things.
Even pharmaceuticals, right?
Look at all these crossovers.
Even pharmaceuticals — 95% of them are going to be used in both cases.
There are very few that are really distinct or have yet to be approved for both conditions.
So that’s another thing.
And so what we’re doing — I’m going to put beside stress — is immune management as well.
Now whether that’s through drugs or natural processes…

Your inflammation is strictly due to an immune response.
Inflammation, by definition, is simply your body’s reaction — or it’s supposed to be an acute reaction — to protect you from something that shouldn’t be there.

So we’re simply asking:

• By addressing the root — what shouldn’t be there?
• Drainage pathways — how do we remove it from the body?
• How do we take the diet and basically not make the disease process worse with our food?
• Barrier repair — because leaks in the gut cause issues with your immune system as well.
• Microbiome — long-term immune and general health support.
• And then stress and immune management — because again, you’re an immune response. We want to manage that response.

These are the things we do the same.
What I’m going to do now with you is go through some of the things that we want to do nuanced — what is unique between Crohn’s and Colitis.
You might be surprised at some of these things. Because again — they’re different diagnoses — but the conditions have so many nuances, where they have so many similarities.

So here’s what I want to look at.
You’ll notice — there’s an overlap of all the bulk of it, but there are some subtle nuances.
So again — colitis, less prone to nutrient deficiencies.
Crohn’s disease, more prone to nutrient deficiencies.
Colitis tends to be more responsive to topical mucosal treatments —
so things like aloe, things like that, that can really — even mesalamine, where it can help manage that inflammation on a topical level,
’cause again — it’s like a scuff.
Crohn’s disease needs something a lot deeper.
We really need to go after the immune system and infection management.
That’s it. That’s my list.
That’s all that’s different.
There is so much that’s the same.
We expect — “Well, Crohn’s and Colitis are different diagnoses. They’ve got to be different, right?”
Not really.
Crohn’s and Colitis — they have different presentations, but similar root causes, and similar immune responses.
In fact, I would venture to say — most people look at a Venn diagram kind of like this:

A little bit of overlap in the middle.

When it comes down to Crohn’s and Colitis — it’s much more like this (hands basically overlapping).
There are very subtle nuances for each individual that may be different when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of:

• What’s causing it?
• How do we address it?
• What does that look like?
• What are the nuances?
• How do we support nutrients?
• What does diet support, medication support look like?

All these things are almost identical across the board.

And maybe you’re expecting a different answer from me.
 Maybe you’re expecting this big laundry list of what’s different.
But it’s inflammation of the GI tract.
The nuances seem to be — from what we understand so far — more related to the genetic expression of these diseases, not the genetic cause.
Again — genes don’t cause these diseases.
They’re just involved with it.
And based on those reactions, those responses, those genes are going to change this outside here — these little bits.
This is the genetic variance that we’re going to see.
But everything else on the inside — it’s going to be addressed the same.
And there’s one more thing I should add for Crohn’s and Colitis as well:

Crohn’s disease tends to do well with very low to no fiber.
Colitis tends to respond well to things like soluble fiber — sometimes apple pectin and things like that.

But again — very nuanced.
Some people can’t have any fiber.
Some people — I’ve got clients with severe colitis who do great with fiber.
Everyone’s different.
These are generalized nuances, until I have a chance to talk to you individually.
There are — I’ll say — seven things I’m going to address with you.
Seven steps that we’ll use to reverse Crohn’s and Colitis from a natural, holistic, root cause, we say functional medicine approach.
These are the seven things you want to do, okay?
There’s very, very few.
Step 1: Food
Across the board, like we just talked about, is going to be food.
Again, there are three rules I want to reiterate with you:
Number one – Whole foods.

Foods that were foods 1,000 years ago — and are still foods today.

That’s number one.
The second rule – Foods you tolerate.
Third – Low histamine.
This includes:

• Canned foods
• Fermented foods
• Avocados
• Spinach
• Cured meats
• Things that are fried or deep-fried
• Certain processed or packaged ingredients

You can always do a Google search because even certain things like cashews, cheeses, even these whole foods can be high in histamine.
So it’s important to understand the difference.
That’s number one — food is our first management tool.
Step 2: Identify the Root Cause
We have to know — what is the nail in the foot?
What is the thing that caused this issue in the first place?

If I’m going in, and I’m a surgeon doing surgery, I have to know what’s broken — what I’m trying to fix — before I can go after it.

I want to know why you’re having these issues.
Why is it broken?
What am I fixing?
What are we going through?
These are very important.
If we don’t know the root cause problem…
Common root causes — we’re going to see a lot of different things, but really, there are only three main things that drive bowel disease — or really, frankly, any disease.
Okay?
And these are big umbrellas, I’m going to put up here.
But there’s three major things we want to go after:
1. Toxins
Toxins are a lot of things.
You have everything from:

• EMFs
• Mold
• Pesticides
• Plastics
• Preservatives
• Food chemicals
• Food dyes

All kinds of things that are unnatural.
This is why we need whole foods — unnatural things that contribute to disease or can actually entirely even create disease processes.
These are the first steps you want to look at.
2. Deficiencies
Now this includes deficiencies of microbiome and nutrients.
We have something now called generational dysbiosis —
which is generations of us poisoning ourselves and basically toxifying our systems.
Antibiotics being used — we’re losing our microbiomes.
And this has been shown in rat studies. It would just take too long to show in humans, but it’s been demonstrated in most studies. We’re seeing a fair bit of that as well.
But deficiencies of nutrients — because nutrients are like bricks.
Your body’s trying to build a house, and it needs bricks and tools to do so.
Those are your nutrients.
3. Microbes
Now we talked about deficiency of microbes.
What happens when you’re deficient?
There’s excess space.
It’s like having an apartment building — if all the rooms are full, every place is rented — you’re good. There’s a nice balance.
As soon as there’s vacancy, someone’s going to move in — someone you may not want.
This is where we see:

• Parasites
• Fungi
• Clostridia
• Viruses

that actually enter the body and create issues.
So our three root causes are:

1. Toxins
2. Deficiencies (nutrients and/or microbiome)
3. Microbial overgrowth or invasive species

Those are our root causes.
And I would challenge anybody ever to challenge me —
tell me otherwise, send me a study.
Hundreds of cases, thousands of articles in literature pieces reviewed — this is what it comes down to.
So:
✅ Step 1: Manage your food.
Like a cup full of water that’s already overflowing — don’t add more.
And give your body the resources it needs — that contributes to deficiencies.
✅ Step 2: Identify the root causes — what’s actually driving this issue.
Step 3: Drainage
We’re going to go into drainage.
Now, drainage is a big part of removing.
I’m going to put drainage up here with removing that root, because we have to remove it.

We can’t have tenants in the building if the doors are locked.

But we also have to identify what we’re trying to get rid of.
So drainage — this is opening those drainage and detox pathways:

• Opening up your liver
• Giving yourself bile support

Supplements like TUDCA are phenomenal.
Liver support, dandelion, NAC — there’s all kinds of supplements we can use to help support the liver.
Really important to get those things moving.
In fact, liver and bile are probably the largest drainage issue we see across the board.
If you’re somebody with skin issues — that could be an internal infection coming outward.
If you’ve got acne — it could be fungus pushing outward because your drainage is blocked up.
It can’t get rid of it, so it pushes it through the skin.
Or it’s overgrown, and these toxins are coming out through the skin.
So we have to open our drainage pathways to remove the problem.

So we just finished with Remove, and now we move on.
There are four more steps of our 5 Rs, which give us the full seven steps of how we actually reverse bowel disease.
Step 4 / R2: Replenish
Replenish what?
Well — the deficiencies.
The removing step is about removing the toxin or the microbe, whatever the problem is.
Replenish is about replenishing your deficiencies —

The tools your body needs. The micronutrients, the macronutrients, right?
Vitamins, minerals, water, electrolytes — things your body is depleted on.

We have to replenish those stores.
Step 5 / R3: Rebuild
This is going to come back to the gut lining —
a healthy microbiome, where we’re deficient.
A healthy microbiome cannot live in an inflamed gut.

You wouldn’t live in a house that’s on fire.

Your microbes cannot live in an ecosystem that is highly inflamed.
Bad guys like to move into those environments — we have excess microbes overgrowing.
So we have to repair and rebuild those tissues.
We also have to repair that microbiome.
Because:

• We’re deficient in microbiome.
• And we have microbes that shouldn’t be there.

Not only are we fixing the house that they live in —
 We need to fix the residents of that building as well.

This is where we’re repairing the microbes specifically.
Step 6 / R4: Repair
Closely tied in with rebuilding — but more focused on gut lining and tissue recovery.
We want to:

• Repair the barrier, because leaky gut drives immune activation.
• Seal and strengthen the gut wall.
• Reinforce mucosa, so your immune system calms down and the gut can regulate normally again.

This step supports long-term resilience and is critical for preventing relapses.
Step 7 / R5: Rejuvenate Your Immune System
Here’s why.
We often hear:

“I’m sick — I should boost my immune system.”

But your immune system is more like a teeter-totter.
By boosting it, you’re boosting one response more than the other.
Let’s use another analogy.
If you think of your immune system kind of like an octopus —
All these different arms, and each arm does a specific thing.
In bowel disease, we see the implication of three main pathways of the immune system:

• TH1
• TH2
• TH17 (also called TH7 in older models)

Let’s break it down:
TH1

• Manages things like viruses and bacteria
• Activates one of your cells called macrophages
  (these go in and eat things like Pac-Man)

TH2

• Manages parasites and allergens
• This is that histamine response we talked about
• You’ll see eosinophils, a type of white blood cell

You might have a stool sample that shows high eosinophil activation protein
Or your eosinophils in your bloodwork might be elevated

TH17

• Manages types of bacteria and fungi
• Think candida, other pathogenic microbes
• Activates neutrophils

Now what is calprotectin?

It’s a byproduct of excessive neutrophil activity.

Like cars when they’re idling — they produce exhaust.
Your neutrophils are producing calprotectin, kind of like exhaust.
The more of them there are, the more exhaust we have,
The higher the measurement, the higher the activity —

Therefore we say, “You’re really inflamed.”

Calprotectin is a byproduct of these immune pathways.
So what happens when you say, “I want to boost my immune system”?
You pick one, and drive it up —
You drive up that inflammatory response.
You drive up that histamine response.
We don’t want to drive it up — we want to balance it.

It’s that balance that actually rejuvenates and restores your responses.

From being all crazy and out of whack, to being equal.
Here’s another analogy.
If you’re super high-strung — stressed out:

• Bad day at work
• Stuck in traffic
• Forgot your lunch
• Ate McDonald’s
• Ripped your pants

All these things are going on — it’s a bad day.
You come home and your partner or your kid — someone’s screaming and yelling.
You lose it.
You have a breakdown. You scream. You yell. Whatever your response is —

Because you’re overdone.

Your immune system is overdone.
We are bringing it back down to calm, helping it chill out.
So that your immune system’s response can be:

“Huh… this is a bit of an inconvenience, but we’ll address it.”

That’s what we’re looking for.
That’s the importance of Rejuvenation.

 Recap & Live Q&A: Your Questions Answered
Josh Dech:
So one more time:
✅ Food — three rules, very, very simple:

• Whole Foods
• Tolerable Foods
• Low Histamine Foods

So we’re not driving up these immune pathways, okay?
✅ Identify the root —
It’s going to be some form of toxin, some sort of deficiency (either in microbes and/or in nutrients),
as well as microbial imbalances — we’ll typically see some invaders like:

• Parasites
• Fungi
• E. coli
• Salmonella
• Viruses like CMV, EBV

✅ Remove — part of opening your drainage pathways
We’re going to remove that problem — that toxin, kill off the microbes — whatever it is.
We have to get rid of it.
✅ Replenish your nutrients —
Because again, deficiency is a key component.
✅ Rebuild your gut lining —
Because it’s damaged.
Your microbes need a house to be able to thrive and no longer become deficient.
And again — it also reduces your immune responses from leaks.
✅ Repair the microbiome —
Get those microbes, viruses, bacteria, fungi — all back to balance.
✅ Rejuvenate those imbalanced immune responses to calm things down.
This is the process in reversing bowel disease.
It is very doable and very fixable, guys.
This is an outline that you’ll see in books —
My book coming up, you’ll see it in textbooks over the coming — hopefully less than 20–30 years, but you never know.
In fact, we’re seeing right now on average —
It takes 17 to 20 years for something to go from research to publication to actual practice.
Sometimes upwards of 30.
My naturopath was telling my mom back in the 1990s:

“Aluminum in deodorant is bad for you.”

That just broke major news four years ago.
They already knew it — 30 years ago.
It takes a long time for these things to go from common sense, to figuring it out, to actual study, to practice, to the masses… to you.
So you have to advocate for yourself.
You don’t have to do this for another 30 years.
🙋‍♂️ Live Q&A Time
Here’s what I want to do for you guys:
If you know me, if you know what we do — and you want to be part of the 300+ cases that have now been reversed and learn:

• What is your root?
• What are your drivers?
• What do these steps actually look like for you?

Each one of these is subtle and nuanced based on you, your needs, and your individuality.
It’s very simple.
All you’ve got to do is check the links below the video or in the show notes below the podcast.
There’s a link — you can send me an email directly if you like.
You can book a call and schedule in to see if this is a good fit.

The call’s free.
We just want to learn about you.
We just want to know — is this possible?
Can we help you?
What will that process look like?

All you’ve got to do is click those links.
Now, let me go to the comments here — what questions have we got?
❓ Laura asks: “What if your gallbladder was removed? Can that affect things?”
Yes.
Does it affect that you need drainage?
No — your gallbladder is merely a storage vessel. Really, that’s what it is.
Your liver produces the bile, and it just puts it into your gallbladder so that when you eat a high-fat meal or something else, it squirts out the appropriate amount to your small bowel and says:

“Okay — go break down those fats.”

But if you’re experiencing any kind of GI issue, and you’ve had your gallbladder removed, you need more drainage and bile duct support than anybody else.
Because your ducts inside your liver were so gunked up and sludgy,
it led to your gallbladder storing rocks, stones, or thick bile, which led to the need for removal.
Now — again, a lot of the natural way —
we’ll come to the Instagram in just a sec — we see your question there.
In the natural way, we say:

“Well, we can often thin that out before getting your gallbladder removed.”

Do flushes remove stones?
 There’s all kinds of ways to do it.
 But they just go to removal.
The challenge now is:
If your gallbladder has been removed — how do we…?
Well, what you’re going to need is an ox bile supplement for the rest of your life.
But before that, we need to clean your liver.
We need to go through and support the drainage pathways, because they’re all junked up.
And if your liver’s messed up, probably your lymphatics are junked up too.
If your lymphatics are junked up, it’s common to have skin issues as well.
So there’s a process we have to go through here.

So the root cause of all Crohn’s and colitis — they're the same things we talked about here.
Now, there are different forms of zinc, mind you — and I’ll get to that in a sec.
But the root cause of colitis and Crohn’s — there are three things, three umbrellas.
Let’s go over it one more time.
✅ 1. Toxins
This can be:

• Mold
• Chemicals
• Pesticides
• Heavy metals
• You name it.

Stress — again, stress doesn’t cause bowel disease, but it causes imbalances in your microbiome and immune system, which contribute to it.
But toxins are a main driver.
✅ 2. Deficiencies
These are:

• Nutrient deficiencies
• Microbiome deficiencies

If you’re lacking certain microbes, you’re lacking soldiers in your army.
You’re lacking defenses.
Your microbiome is a huge factor in your immune system —

70% of your immune cells are made inside your digestive system.
That’s a really important part of it.

✅ 3. Microbial Imbalances
Now, microbes — again, it’s a deficiency, but we also see invasive microbes:

• Fungal overgrowth
• Candida
• Mold (if it’s a toxin or you’ve ingested it)
• Parasites
• Viruses — especially cytomegalovirus (CMV) or Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)
• E. coli
• All kinds of infections that cause problems

And someone else might go:

“Well, I had antibiotics a lot — or once or twice — powerful ones, and I ended up with disease.”

That’s a deficiency — you dropped your defenses.
Something else grew in, or you weren’t getting rid of the toxins like you should have.
❓ “Does zinc help?”
Yes.
Zinc can help with some of these immune responses, but also something specific — a form of zinc.
Because there are different kinds, like zinc picolinate, etc.
But zinc carnosine has been shown to help actually restructure —

Be part of rebuilding that gut lining, that barrier, that mucosal layer in your intestine, especially your large bowel.

So that can be really, really helpful.
We do see that in colitis.
But again — I want to be very specific that just supplementing is numbing cream.
Because what we end up getting into — without realizing it — is we end up with what’s called:

Plant-based medication.

We end up supplementing so many supplements, and plants, and herbs, and vitamins, that what we’re doing is:

Managing the problem, not fixing it.

Supplements should be used very deliberately and specifically.

“I’m taking this thing for this purpose.
 I’m getting rid of this object, or this microbe, or whatever it is from my body.
 When that’s gone — I’m done.
 And here’s the next thing I move on to.”

They should have:

• A purpose
• A start
• A middle
• An end goal

That is using supplements for a purpose.
If we just use them forever to constantly keep up, like spraying enough water on a fire — not enough to put it out, but just enough that it doesn’t blow up and get worse?
That’s managing.
That is plant-based medication.
❓ “What are symptoms that your liver is full of stuff and needs to be cleaned?”
Lots.
You can get:

• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Trouble digesting fats
• Illnesses, prone to flu and viruses

There are so many symptoms that can show your liver is junked up.
Very common one:

When you eat fats, do you get diarrhea? Do you have greasy, oily stools?

Those are probably the easiest ways.
You can also physically press on your liver.
You can do that — it’s on your right side, right under the rib cage here.
If you actually take your fingers and press in and put some pressure on that liver, and you’re like:

“Ugh… it kind of hurts…”

It can be that the bile ducts inside your liver are so gunked up, there’s a lot of pressure, and by pressing on it, it hurts.
That’s a great way to tell if your liver is a bit gunked up or junked up.
❓ “Does cat’s claw help with ulcerative colitis?”
This is again where I want to be very cautious.
I wouldn’t be looking to specific immune-modulating things unless you know exactly what you're doing.
Sometimes, cat’s claw, in the right person, depending on what your immune responses are, can help. But...
This is where we have to be very careful:

What is your immune system saying? What imbalances are we experiencing in your immune system?

Because if you’re taking cat’s claw, for example, it can push and pull immune pathways.
Even curcumin can be very problematic for some people.
Because we’re pushing and pulling the wrong immune pathways.
So if you push down one that’s well-balanced or overactive — it might help.
But if you push one up that’s already overactive —

You’re causing a problem.

You’ll find cat’s claw might make you much, much worse.
In fact, I don’t think I’ve used cat’s claw —
As a precaution, 'cause generally I find it problematic.
I haven’t used that in the last hundreds — probably 200 — cases.
We want to be very, very careful with certain immune-modulating herbs, unless:

• You know what you’re doing
• You know what your immune responses are
• You know what response you’re trying to elicit

We want to be very careful.
I wouldn’t go trying to modulate your immune system on yourself —
Because you could throw yourself into a flare or end up in the hospital.

Alright — next question we’ve got over here comes from Laurette:
❓ “Ox bile supplements — I was distracted, so I wasn’t able to catch on…”
That’s fine — so go back and check that one out, but long and short:
Your gallbladder — here’s the thing about ox bile.
It’s quite exactly what it sounds like:

Ox, like the animal, and bile, to emulsify fats.

Ox bile supplements = your gallbladder replacement.
So your liver will make all this bile, right?
And it puts it into your gallbladder. The gallbladder squirts it into the small intestine, and that’s where we begin digesting fat.
This process — called emulsification — think about oil to water.
It goes from this thick, stubborn substance to something absorbable, broken down, and usable.
Picture this:
You have a tap and you want a glass of water.
If all you get is:

Drip. Drip. Drip.

You’re still going to be thirsty.
But if you have a glass of water and you go:

DUMP!

You chug it down — you get what you need.
That’s kind of what happens.
Your liver is dripping out bile, and it stores that in the gallbladder so it’s ready. Then when you eat fats — it dumps the bile.
So what happens if you don’t have a gallbladder?

Ox bile is the dump.
It’s the pill you take, which is actual bile, and it breaks things down for you.

If you don’t have a gallbladder — I typically recommend (and again, this is not medical advice) — but I recommend:

You support with ox bile at the very least.

It’s a very important part of the process.
But again — if you had your gallbladder removed, it means your liver was in trouble to begin with.
Your gallbladder doesn’t get messy on its own.

The liver gets in trouble,
That causes a problem downstream in the gallbladder.

And so by removing the gallbladder, you’re managing one of the symptoms —
But not fixing the actual problem, which is your liver.
Guys, that’s great. Easy in, easy out.
You know what to do.
If you need help — just have a conversation with us.
It’s not a complex process.
Takes about half an hour — I want to learn about you, see what’s going on.

Can we help?
 Can we not?
 Maybe we can.
 I’ve yet to come across somebody who can’t.

Then we can talk about the possibility.
Just knock on the door. There’s one word between you and getting the help — and that word is:

Solution.

If you’re here on YouTube, you’re here on the podcast — make sure you check the links below, and you can:

• Send me an email
• Schedule a call
• Grab the free resources

There’s tons of stuff out there.
We have a podcast dedicated to IBD.
All these talks are on the podcast.
You can get them for free.
They’re on YouTube.
Send me a DM if you need anything specific.
You want those links.
Thank you so much for being here.
We’ll see you guys all next week.
💬 Final Words
One of my favorite things to hear as an IBD specialist is something along the lines of:

“I learned more from you in 15 minutes than I did from my doctor in 15 years.”

If this — for the first time — is really starting to click…
If it’s starting to make sense, and you’re going:

“Wait a minute… this might be reversible.
 I think there’s more I can do.
This condition came out of nowhere.
It happened to me out of the blue.
I was healthy for 10, 20, 30, 40 years — and suddenly I wasn’t.
And you’re telling me there’s no cause?!”

If you’re understanding, finally, that there is a cause, that something is driving this…
I want to invite you to check the link in the show notes below.
Send me an email. Ask a question.
See if a program is the right fit for you.
Because I promise you:

This doesn’t have to be a lifelong sentence.
You’re not doomed to this.
IBD can be reversed.