35: Why Stress Causes You To Flare and How To Stop It From Happening

Stress is almost always synonymous with a Crohn’s or Colitis flare – and once you know how and why this is happening, you can take these steps to prevent it from happening. 

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• Why stress causes flares
• Techniques to help you manage stress
• What stress does to you immune system
• Supplements and medications to control your heightened stress responses
• How to repair and reverse stress related damage and stay out of flares

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Transcript

Josh Dech:

Stress is almost synonymous with Crohn’s or Colitis flares, and once you know why that’s happening and how this is happening, you can actually take the steps you need to prevent it from happening. And so today, you’re going to learn why stress is causing you to flare, techniques you can use, of course, to manage that stress, supplements you can take to help control these heightened stress responses you’re experiencing, as well as tools to recover your gut from long-term stress damage.

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 links 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, and the scientific strategist and education director here for the RCFC — that’s the Root Cause for Crohn’s and Colitis organization. And today we’re talking about how stress causes you to flare and what you can do to stop it.

So the first thing we’re going to do is walk through five quick reasons why stress is making you flare, and then we’re going to talk about each one. I want you to understand why it’s happening, because you can’t fix something unless you know why it’s happening. So let’s go through those together.

The first reason why we see stress contributing to flares is because stress causes something called leaky gut. You may be well familiar with this by now.

What is leaky gut? Let’s see. What happens when you’re stressed? You actually have elevated levels of something called cortisol. Now this hormone gets a bad rap. It is a very good, very beneficial hormone. We need it to stay healthy. It’s anti-inflammatory, it wakes you up in the morning — but in elevated amounts from chronic stress responses, cortisol becomes highly problematic. And what does it do? It actually weakens your gut barrier. So it takes down that integrity, which leads, of course, to this thing we now know as leaky gut.

Okay, what does leaky gut do? Well, you have all these toxins now inside of your gut — this is going to be your intestine — and all these toxins are made by nasty, overgrown gut bacteria. We call them LPS or endotoxins. What happens when you have leaks in your gut? These toxins slip out, and they get into what’s right across from your gut barrier — being your bloodstream. And they circulate around your body.

Now when this happens, your immune system has to go in and clean up all these toxins. It goes, “Whoa, you shouldn’t be in my brain. You shouldn’t be in my joints. You shouldn’t be in my liver.” Now your immune system has to work extra hard to clean these things up. And now you’re heightening that immune response as a general whole — your immune system as a whole is on high alert.

Think of it kind of like filling up a glass of water. As that fills up and overflows — you’re in a flare. Well, elevated systemic immune responses fills up your cup. That’s the very simple explanation.

Now, cortisol also reduces something called mucin, which you need to have this healthy mucous membrane layer, which is going to further take down the integrity. And with this messed up layer, high inflammation, it leads to a state we know as dysbiosis. This is going to be an imbalance of gut bacteria — too many bad guys, not enough good guys — and this causes heavy immune responses. So you want to be very careful about that.

So the first reason why stress contributes to flares is because of leaky gut — the immune responses and what it does to the rest of your system.

Let’s talk about reason number two. Since we’ve already talked about this, it’s now going to be… medical acronyms I’m making up as I go, for the sake of time.

So, dysregulated immune system. What happens? IBD already is a dysregulated or hyperactive immune response. We have a depletion of a very important immune pathway called Th1 and hyperactivity in Th2 and Th17. Now you don’t need to memorize these, but just — it’s going to come in handy later.

So stress further dysregulates this dysregulated immune response. It alters your immune system. What does it do? Well, there are pro-inflammatory responses your immune system creates under a state of stress. And some of the ones it’s going to mess with now are called TNF-alpha, that we’re going to see. Another pro-inflammatory response: interleukin-6 and interleukin-1 beta.

Now again, you don’t need to memorize these. But here’s why it’s relevant: there are certain medications we use in IBD to treat the symptoms — and that’s going to be things like Humira and Remicade. Well, Humira and Remicade, they suppress TNF-alpha, interleukin-6, interleukin-1 beta — among many other things. Stress elevates these responses. So it’s actually counterintuitive to the medication. It does the exact opposite of what your meds are trying to bring down — it pushes them back up.

That’s why we need to know this stuff, okay? So we can understand how it happens. Big problem: we have high stress.

So let’s talk about the third reason why you experience stress-related flares. We’re going to have the state of dysbiosis or dysregulated immune system.

What is dysbiosis? Simply put, we have a reduction of the beneficial strains of good guys. So we lose a lot of these good guys. Typically, they’re the lactobacillus and bifidobacterium strains. Among many other ones that we can often see — like akkermansia, faecalibacterium prausnitzii, some of the big fancy names. But these two guys are kind of the big ones. Let’s just focus on those: lacto and bifido for now. These are the ones that are often depleted.

They’re largely responsible for a lot of your immune responses, inflammation, digestion, metabolism, all kinds of stuff. And when we’re in a stressful environment, with an inflamed gut lining, these guys die off — the lactobacillus and bifidobacterium umbrellas.

What else happens? It increases the inflammatory microbes. And these inflammatory microbes are going to be things like E. coli, clostridia, citrobacter, salmonella, prevotella — a bunch of nasty ones that we don’t want overgrown. They’re opportunistic, and when they’re opportunistic, they take the opportunity of a suppressed immune system in an inflamed environment to overgrow. Now we have a problem. And that’s what happens as well with dysbiosis.

Now there are two more reasons why I’m going to show you quickly why stress contributes to flares or is going to push you into a flare. And then we’re going to talk about what you can do — some techniques, some supplements, some medications you can even use — to rebalance and remedy for each of the five reasons that we’ve listed here.

So let’s get into that.

So let’s talk about reason number four that we see — a reduction of digestive function.

What is a reduction of digestive function? Well, for your body to rest and digest — which is the opposite of stress — stress puts you into fight or flight. When you’re in rest and digest, what happens? You produce stomach acid adequately. You have healthy GI motility. That peristalsis moves things through as it should — that’s going to be healthy. You produce adequate digestive enzymes, healthy bile flow, and so you’re breaking down, resting, you’re digesting, breaking down and absorbing your food.

The problem is, when you’re in a stressful environment, you do the opposite of that. You have a decrease of stomach acid — HCL — production. Why? Because your body is focused on survival — not relaxing and digesting your food. It’s got to heal, it’s got to get you out of this environment — from a bear, or an evil tribe, or whatever it is. That’s kind of the evolutionary perspective on it.

So when you’re stressed, you lose this. You’re either going to get an increase or a decrease of digestive motility. So that could either back you up and lead to constipation, or it can speed things up and lead to diarrhea. Increased GI motility — you’re going to get extra water, your body dumps it out. Constipation — your body shuts down motility, slows it down, you get a lot of extra absorption of toxins you should’ve gotten rid of. And you can even get hyperfermentation of stuff that’s sort of stuck in the tube. We want to avoid that as well.

And so how can we support these? We’re going to get into some tools. But obviously — get back to rest, digest, and support the dysfunction. That’s going to be the easy one. I’ll give you some supplements and techniques for that in a minute.

So moving on — the fifth and final reason. Now there’s many reasons — these are the big five — why stress messes up your immune responses, leading to flares is an altered nervous system response.

What is an altered nervous system? Well, there are many nervous systems, so to speak, in your body. We know the central nervous system — that’s your brain and spinal cord. Peripheral is everything that extends out to the arms and legs and everything outside of that. You also have what’s called your enteric nervous system, the ENS we call it.

Now your CNS and your ENS — so your brain, spine, and your digestive nervous system — all play a role. They’re very interconnected. There’s 400 to 500 million neurons innervating inside your intestines alone. And so they’re very well connected.

What happens when you’re under high stress? Well, you’re going to get an increase or again, decrease in gut contractions. So therefore, your motility is going to be slowed. Stress increases something — we’re going to call it CRH. It increases this hormone called corticotropin-releasing hormone.
Oops — always dropping something off my big caboose. I squat, my big fat booty knocks stuff off.

But so we have this corticotropin-releasing hormone. What does it do? Well, it’s actually going to stimulate cortisol release. Now we just talked about cortisol — the good guy that gets a bad rep. Too much cortisol, elevated over too long of a time — bing, bang, boom, now we have inflammation. Now we have problems happening. So we want to watch for that — be very, very careful.

So what happens next? Now cortisol triggers mast cells. Why do these matter? Well, this whole stress response combined with cortisol — well, if you remember briefly, we talked about these immune pathways that are dominant. Th2 is one of them — that is the one that controls and regulates mast cells. So you’re going to get these histamine responses, you’re going to get a lot of excess mucus production, all kinds of things. And then we now have more inflammation, more irritation.

This is why I actually use low histamine diets for IBD — because this dominant Th2 pathway. So we want to watch for that.

What else is going to happen? Well, under a stressful event, you have an increase of some emergency hormones called epinephrine and norepinephrine. Epinephrine and norepinephrine increase what?

Let’s go back to our first little immunology lesson we had. We just talked about these stress responses — TNF-alpha, we talked about interleukin-6 and interleukin-1 beta. Epi and norepi increase these immune responses — the very ones your Remicade and your other medications like Humira are trying to suppress.

So now we’re getting an elevation of the response that’s already hyperactive due to these chemical releases. So you can see how this combination of things causes you some trouble. And you run yourself into a bit of a pickle.

What else is going to happen? Well, now we also have a deficiency — rather — of something called acetylcholine. Well, we like acetylcholine. It’s very, very nice. Now, acetylcholine can reduce gut inflammation. But stress decreases vagal tone. So that’s that vagus nerve.

So we’re going to get a decrease of that vagus nerve, a decrease of this acetylcholine — which we need for inflammation and relaxation and all the goodies. So we lose that as well.

The next one — we have a lot of your gut bacteria produce a neurotransmitter known as GABA. Big fancy word — stands for gamma-aminobutyric acid. What is that? Well, it’s your relax, rest-and-digest, chill-out-man — it’s a chill hormone. And what it does — or neurotransmitter, rather — what it does is it relaxes you. It can help you sleep.

When you have the state of dysbiosis, inflammation, all the things stress creates — you don’t produce your rest-and-digest relaxant neurotransmitters like GABA. You might have an increase in this epi, norepi, glutamate — stimulatory things. What does that mean? You are now hyper-excitable. So you’re already overactive. Stress responses become even more active.

And when they’re even more active, you have elevated immune responses once again. So what would normally be a minor inconvenience can throw you into a full-on meltdown — because your neurotransmitters are all out of whack.

So let’s talk what we can do next. We’re not going to leave you hanging. We talked about five main reasons why stress causes flares. Took about 13 minutes to do — perfect. What I want to do now is get into the techniques, the supplements, and the medications that we can use on a per-condition basis to get your body the help that you need.

So let’s dive into this.

First things first — let’s talk about stress techniques. There are some very basic things we can do. Let’s talk about that vagal tone.

What is vagal toning? A few things. Your vagus nerve — it’s a major cranial nerve, runs down the left side of your neck, innervates with your heart, your lungs, your digestive system, everything. It’s directly wired into your brain. It communicates with all the millions — hundreds of millions — of neurons inside of your gut, which are also connected back to your spine, which goes back to your brain.

And this vagus nerve — up and down — is a bi-directional pathway. So that means your brain communicates to your gut, and your gut communicates back to your brain. It’s not a one-way street. If you have toxins, they travel up that nerve, they get to your brain. Stress responses can go both ways as well.

So vagal toning — because we’re so tense now — can relax, put you back into that rest-digest response. So what are we going to do?

A couple easy things. Number one — let’s talk about box breathing. Very, very simple.

Now, the reason we call it a box — typically, this is sort of the gold standard. Now, everyone’s respiratory or cardiovascular health will be different. Let’s talk about breathing — very simple way to get that vagal tone.

We’re going to breathe in through the nose, nice and slow, for four seconds. Now, we’re not deep, we’re not tight — we have all this air in our lungs. What we’re doing — we’re breathing in up to a normal breath. And we’re going to pause — two, three — holding that breath for four. Now, around two, three seconds you’re starting to panic — just let it out. That’s cool. We don’t need you to create stress.

If your cardiovascular health isn’t there yet, you don’t feel you have the cardio endurance for this — just time it out yourself. But we’re four seconds in through the nose, we’re going to hold — two, three, four — and on the way out we’re going to, with pursed lips, like you’re breathing through a straw, we’re going to breathe out and create that pressure.

Now again — we’re not emptying our lungs — but we are getting a nice gentle breath out. We’re going to pause for four, and breathe back in again.

For you, it might be 4-2-4-2. That’s fine. Or 4-1-4-1. Or maybe it’s 6-4-6-4. Wherever you’re at — that’s going to be good for your vagal tone.

So breathing. You can also get the same response from humming, believe it or not.

Now, there’s two different ways to hum, and everything in between. You have this high hum — where it’s like up in your head, right? You can feel this vibrating up here. But then you have this ohhh — where you drop it down into your chest. Think of the hippies, right? Sitting on the mountaintop — “Ommm.” It’s that same vibration.

This humming or singing, even gargling water, can stimulate this deep-down throat vibration, which gets you this vagal tone — rather than up here in your head. This is where we lose it. So you want to bring it back down, nice and low — and that’s going to get that vibration which can stimulate that tone.

Other ways to do that — cold water. Now you can — cold bath is a lot for some people, especially with IBD — so I recommend a cold cloth on the face, on the neck, or just submerge your face in the sink.

Even meditation can stimulate that vagal tone.

The next thing we want to look at is going to be sleep hygiene. Believe it or not — I almost just spelled sleep wrong with one “e” on the board — “slep.” “Slep hygiene.”

So we want sleep hygiene. What is sleep hygiene? It’s having a routine and a protocol, and treating yourself effectively like an athlete of sleep.

Most of us — we get up, we do things, we go to bed when we get tired. We sit in our bed, we’re on our phones, we’re scrolling, we’re watching something on the computer or the TV, or playing a game — whatever it is — blue lights beaming in your face. We don’t actually get into our circadian rhythm — this rest and digest mode.

What does that mean? Humans were designed to sleep and wake with the sun. Always have been.

Interestingly enough, there was actually a study done on insomniacs. They took them out to the woods for something like two or three weeks. These people couldn’t sleep — they were on medication. They took them off everything. They woke up with the sun, went down with the moon, no electronics, barefoot in the grass. They basically camped for three weeks. Guess what? Chronic insomniacs started sleeping — because their circadian rhythm was not disrupted by cell phones, 5G, Wi-Fi, EMFs — electromagnetic fields from your house. Everything’s buzzing, electricity all the time. They’re actually connecting back to nature.

The sun comes up — the blue light comes in — that wakes them up. It stimulates them. Cortisol comes in — which is good, it helps you wake up — and you move.

At night time, as the light comes down, it gets duskier. What happens? Your body starts to stimulate things like melatonin, and it starts to calm you down, and it gets you ready for bed. But most of us get a hundred times too little light during the day — we’re indoor cats. We’re in offices. We don’t get enough light. And then at nighttime, we’re beaming blue lights and cell phones and all kinds of stuff into our face.

So what can we do for sleep hygiene?

Turning off the lights. Getting things that are plugged in. Get an alarm clock. Get the cell phone out — or at the very least, turn it on airplane and don’t let it charge next to your bed. You can turn off your Wi-Fi modem at night. All kinds of goodies.

I actually have here next to me this pair of blue light glasses. Now when it gets late and I’m working on a computer — when the sun is coming down — I’ll throw these on like a doofus over top of my… right on top of my glasses there. But these blue light glasses — there are different shades. You get yellow, orange, and red. The darker it gets, the darker the shade you should have on your face.

That tells your brain — you have photoreceptors, these are receptors that absorb light — the receptors on your skin and in your eyes, they respond to lights. So if you put these on, you take that photo reception out of your eyes. You say, “Oh, it’s dim. It’s time to go to bed.” And your brain starts to turn on sleep chemicals and sleep hormones. And this is sleep hygiene.

The most imperative part to us sleeping well and having healthy recovery is good quality sleep hygiene.

Now that we got that one done, let’s talk about some supplements.

Now, we talked about five main reasons why your body is responding poorly to stress. So to hit them again — we talked about leaky gut, a dysregulated immune system, disrupted gut microbiome, reduced digestive function, and an altered nervous system.

Now, I’m not saying you need this complete list of supplements — in fact, at the end of this, if you’re here watching on Instagram, send us a DM with the word “immune” and I’m going to get you a list that summarizes this call, the information you need, some of my favorite basics, etc. You can get that.

If you’re watching on YouTube or listening on the podcast version of this, check the notes below the video or below the episode, and there’s a link there to download my sheet — the immune system balancing sheet, which is everything we’re talking about here. So you don’t gotta memorize it.

Okay, so let’s talk about this. When we’re dealing with leaky gut, what do we want to do?

There are two basic processes for leaky gut. The first is going to be heal and seal. The second is going to be soothe and cool.

What does that mean? Well — you’re inflamed, let’s bring it down. You’re leaky — let’s patch that up. How can we do that?

Well obviously — all the management, right? Food, diet, stress, sleep, etc. Let’s talk about some supplements to help you along the way.

So there are a few here we’re going to list. And again — you don’t need them all, they’re not perfect for everyone. But here’s my general list:

Let’s talk about something called colostrum. Very beneficial — but if you have a dairy sensitivity, you’ll get bind colostrum. Very rare you could actually pick up, like, breast milk colostrum — it’s only the first 3 days. Leave it for the babies, okay? It’s for them.

Another one we can get is like IgGs or bind immunoglobulins. You can pick those up in a supplement form, which are going to help.

Other things that may be helpful are going to be things like collagen and gelatin. However — what I’m not recommending here is bone broth.

The reason for that — remember this pathway here? We talked about a hyperactive Th2, that histamine pathway? Bone broth is extremely high in histamines. So you’re filling up that cup once again — causing it to overflow. So high-histamine foods are going to exacerbate most symptoms in IBD. So I go low histamine.

So I don’t include bone broth as a supplement or as a food item here.

But the next one — let’s talk about things like slippery elm bark powder. You can get aloe vera. Now again — proper aloe vera. You don’t want the ones with preservatives and full of sugar, as like a juicy, sugary drink. You want raw, unpasteurized — I don’t think pasteurized aloe vera actually… but you want preservative-free aloe, chemical-additive-free as best you can.

A couple of things we can get as well — just watch things like L-glutamine because again, it can stimulate some immune pathways. But that’s generally okay.

Zinc carnosine also repairs the gut lining and helps calm some of these active immune pathways — so it’s a double whammy.

We can get things like marshmallow root and DGL — can also be very beneficial in helping soothe, cool, and produce that nice mucous layer that we’ve lost from high stress. So that’s going to help you soothe and cool the gut.

So that’s dealing with leaky gut, kind of in a nutshell. Again, if you want my list — if you’re watching on Instagram, comment “immune”. If you want my list and you’re listening on YouTube or on the podcast — check the links below. I have a list of things you can simply get there.

I do apologize — I think my— oops, sorry guys, there I just had an alarm going off. I always forget I have that one.

So that’s that. Step number two — we talked about a dysregulated immune system. Dysregulated immune — how do we balance that back out?

Well, a couple of things. Ultimately, we want to oftentimes improve that suppressed Th1 response, and then that Th2 and 17 we talked about — we want to chill them out. You want them to calm down.

Well, what does that look like?

Very, very simply. I won’t say simply — it’s kind of a disservice. But here’s what we can do:

There are lots of supplements. So generally speaking, to calm it — things like curcumin. Oftentimes there’s another Chinese herb called Ching Dai — can be very beneficial in helping calm some of these responses, these inflammatory responses.

Resveratrol. EGCG — which is a green tea extract, which can be very calming. I’m not going to write all these on the board because it’ll drive both of us nuts. But berberine, quercetin, omegas as well.

And for that Th1 — again, back to zinc, selenium, astragalus, and something called lactoferrin, which you can get in a supplement form.

But then there are some pharmaceuticals that do this really well. Now, not all doctors are willing to play, and they don’t work for everybody. But this one’s very inexpensive to manufacture — which I believe is why it’s not super common. But on the other hand, you also have to typically pay for it to be compounded. There’s some cost there. But it’s called LDN — this stands for low-dose naltrexone.

What is it?

Naltrexone is an emergency use medication used in hospital or in an ambulance. And what they do is — for somebody with an opioid overdose — quick injection of up to 50 milligrams to basically save the life from dying from an opiate overdose.

But here’s what happens — in LDN, and there’s in fact a dose called ULDN — so ultra low-dose naltrexone — you get anything from something like 0.25 all the way up to about 5 milligrams per day.

And it actually pairs really well with CBD oil — especially in the evening. Goes really, really well. But not for everyone. And it can take a couple of weeks to kick in.

But here’s what it does. In high doses, it causes leaky gut. In low doses, it downregulates these dysregulated Th2 and 17 responses.

It can actually decrease those interleukin responses — some of those we talked about that are causing tissue damage. We know in this other dominant pathway we call 17 — for example — this one is the pathway that deals with extra neutrophil.

Why does that matter?

Well, in IBD — what do we check for? Calprotectin. Neutrophils, as a byproduct, produce calprotectin. The more of them there are in the area — like cars idling in a parking lot — the more calprotectin you have.

Well, LDN can decrease that immune response, decreasing the neutrophil response, decreasing your calprotectin. So it brings that back down as well.

And it actually shifts those immune responses from dominant — right, because this is the immune response that’s way too high — it actually shifts it to something called T-reg cells. This is the manager that says, “Hey, you work harder, you calm down,” and it balances stuff.

So it’s a very, very cool medication. Over the last few years, it’s been more and more common.

So that’s a pharmaceutical you can look at. So that’s going to be management for your dysregulated immune system.

Let’s talk about your gut microbiome. We talked about dysbiosis — so that is… I believe that’s two out of five, if I’m not mistaken. Let me just check my notes.

We talked about gut — how to fix it.
Dysregulated immune system — how to fix it.
Now we’re talking about your dysbiosis, or your gut microbiome.

So dysbiosis — how do we fix that?

Well, a couple of things, and I’ll make this one quick for you. Here’s the idea. Generally speaking, probiotics can sometimes have a lot of benefit.

We know we lost a lot — we talked about how stress reduced your lacto, or your lactobacillus and your bifido — which is your bifidobacterium strains. Some simply supplementing these can be very beneficial — just go slow, because it can sometimes trigger weird responses. I’ve seen them make people bleed, so just be careful with that. But introduce them slowly and see.

Another great one for managing immune responses and actually capturing things like C. diff and E. coli and all that is Saccharomyces boulardii. Call it just Sac B. But this is a yeast-based — comes from different sugars like the mango and lychee plant — but it’s a yeast-based probiotic you can actually get to help balance those immune responses as well.

On top of that — avoiding antibiotics where possible.

30% — per the CDC — 30% of all antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary. It’s just, “Well, try it and see what happens.” I’ve lost count of the amount of people I’ve seen get antibiotics who never needed them, and they ended up with colitis or Crohn’s disease because of the imbalances it contributed to. So you just want to watch for that.

Plant-based or natural-based can often be a really good substitute. And if you do reach me as well, I have an antibiotic substitute list document I can give you. But comment “immune” — make sure you get all the stuff that you guys need.

So that’s the next one.

So coming up here — let’s talk about digestion. You have reduced digestive function. Well, remember we talked about digestive function, motility, digestive enzyme production, all the basics that we need. If that is reduced and not working properly, lo and behold — we have a problem.

So some very simple supplements that we can take for this:

Obviously your vagal tone will help improve this. But HCL — it’s hydrochloric acid — that is stomach acid replacement. Oftentimes it’ll actually be paired with pepsin to help you break down some of these proteins. But those supplements can be taken very easily.

As well as a digestive enzyme. Now, I’m not a fan of the ones that have like 14 ingredients, they break down everything. Basic is typically okay if you’re eating good quality food — protein, lipase, amylase — very, very easy.

And again, this is on my list that I’ll give you guys — if you comment the word “immune” or check the links below if you’re on the podcast or YouTube. But you can get that link there.

Another supplement we can use, of course — which is one of my favorites — is called TUDCA. T-U-D-C-A — bile acid.

This one: anti-inflammatory properties, immune balancing, restores the liver, helps detoxify, mobilizes bile — it’s got like 14 different beneficial things that it can do for your body. It’s expensive compared to the rest, but one of the most pertinent I’d say for restoring GI health and function.

So between the HCL, some base digestive enzymes, and/or TUDCA, you’re usually in pretty good shape.

Now the last one we talked about — we went through leaky gut. Stress causes leaky gut — contributes to flares. Stress causes dysregulated nervous system — so your neurological responses from the brain down to the gut are a little bit jacked up.

So let’s talk about this altered nervous system response. What can we do about it?

Well obviously — everything we just talked about. I won’t put these on the board because they’re long to write out. But supplements like phosphatidylserine, phosphatidylcholine, ashwagandha, basics like lavender, valerian.

Certain amino acids like L-theanine, or that neurotransmitter called GABA. These can help you calm and relax.

A magnesium supplement. Sometimes holy basil — anybody who’s stressed out as well.

To get better adrenal responses, we can use rhodiola. We can also use sodium — like salt. Now, proper rock or mineralized salt.

The connection between blood pressure and sodium has been debunked. I can’t tell you how many times — get your salt in. If you’re a stressy person with adrenal issues — salt your food. Right? That’s my biggest recommendation. It’s necessary.

And the last one is actually a methylated B vitamin.

Methylated just means a reusable form. The process of methylation — think of it like taking crude oil from the ground, turning it into car oil for your car that it can use. It turns it from unusable to usable form. And that’s this methylated version.

Typically what you’ll see for like B12, right? It’s called cobalamin. This is the B12 vitamin.

Now what you’ll see in a pill is typically something like cyanocobalamin. That’s the cheapest way — they bind this B12 to a cyanide molecule. Which is actually safe, it’s fine — they bind it to a cyanide molecule and that’s how they’re getting this B12 vitamin.

What you want is a prefix that says methyl — methylcobalamin. That’s going to be a methylated — from unusable to usable.

We see this as well with something called folic acid, which again is crap — it actually prevents proper folate, the natural form, from getting through the blood-brain barrier. So it’s bad for you. But they give it to pregnant women. They shouldn’t.

What we want is something called again methylfolate. That is the natural form. These methylated vitamins are already extracted and usable and ready for use. It makes it easy — your body can take it and fix things.

B vitamins, sodium, and things to relax your system — and that’s where you go for supplements to manage stress.

Now what I want to do at this stage is turn over to the questions. If you’re here watching on the live, this is a great chance to ask questions. It’s not me just telling you what you need to hear — it’s what I think you… or what I’ve been asked, rather. It’s not what I think you should know — it’s what I’ve been asked directly.

And I mispronounced — on the comment the word “immune” I used last week for an immune-balancing handout, which you can also get. I’ll give that to you, that’s fine. But if you want today’s on stress, DM the word “stress.”

Great chance to drop your questions. The reason I do these — again — I want to answer the questions that are useful for you, not the things that I think you should be told.

Q and A

So let’s dive in — any questions you have about your immune system, stress, whatever it is — let me know. We’ll get them to you right now.

Ali had asked:
What do you think of vagus nerve stimulation devices?
Hell yeah. Why not?

Is it something I’m familiar with? No. But ultimately — it’s that stimulation of the vagus nerve and vagal tone that’s going to create these responses that we want of better digestion, better motility, lower stress responses — all of that.

So if you have a device versus something you can do for free — which is humming, gargling, or singing, whatever it is — I’m cool with that too. User discretion on those ones.

Nutrition Search had asked:
What about the drug Lubiprostone? Have you heard of it for intestinal permeability?

The truth is — I’ve not heard of it. I don’t know. I’m not familiar. Now if I wasn’t using my phone right now to stream this, I would absolutely look it up. But tell me about it — if you get the comment in quick enough before I wrap up…

Here’s the thing — there are a lot of medications that can help boost those dampened immune responses. Your immune responses do a lot of things — including healing and sealing the gut lining, keeping a structural integrity.

When you have these hyperactive and these depressed responses, we lose that. So gut permeability is a big, big problem when we’re dealing with these types of symptoms.

Now Ali had said:
Larazotide is much safer for leaky gut than Lubiprostone.

Now Ali, if you guys don’t know, is kind of brilliant. She’s actually taught me a lot about the immune system and the genetics regarding IBD. In fact, there are some instances where I’ve done these lives and she’s like, “Actually, this is a better way to do this.” I’m like, “Oh!”

So if Ali is telling me that Larazotide is better — that’s what I’m going to go with without even asking, because I trust her implicitly with this. So that’s a great one to look into as well. Hope that helps answer that question.

So on that note — that’s all we’ve got for you for today.

If you want this information — whether you comment the word immune or stress — that’s great. I’ll make sure you have both links for those as well.

I have a podcast called Reversing Crohn’s and Colitis Naturally. I’ve been doing these lives for years now. About six or eight months ago, I decided — let’s put them on a podcast to make them accessible.

So they’re available on YouTube and on the podcast you can get as well. So I’m going to make sure you have access to all of that. So feel free — if you comment and you get that…

I see you here — Olga, for stress. Angie — stress. I see you. We’ll get you a copy of all this — the links to the podcast, YouTube — all that’s there.

On that note, guys — thanks so much for your time and your attention. Always appreciate you learning as much as I love teaching it.

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 from my doctor in 15 years.”

And if this, for the first time, is really starting to click — and it’s starting to make sense — you’re going, “Wait a minute… this might be reversible. I think there’s more that 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.

’Cause I promise you — this doesn’t have to be a lifelong sentence. You’re not doomed to this. And IBD… can be reversed.