37: Everything Parents and Teens Need to Know About Crohn's and Colitis

This episode will change how you see Crohn's and colitis forever. 

Crohn's and Colitis (IBD) are not random conditions and there's so much more you can do than just medication and surgery. In fact, many cases are reversible. I'll explain how IBD really happens, what's going on in your immune system and what you can do about it to begin healing naturally.

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• The massive spike in diseases in our modern world
• Why we get sick and why IBD is a "first world" problem
• How your immune system works with IBD
• Other illnesses IBD can cause
• Why IBD is NOT genetic or autoimmune and the hope you really do have
• 5 steps to reversing IBD

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Transcript

Josh Dech:

A Crohn and Colitis diagnosis is scary and overwhelming enough but when it's your kids it can be almost unbearable for a lot of families. And being left in the dark by your GI doctor, frankly, it makes everything much, much worse. So this episode, we're going to fill you in on all the gaps, the unanswered questions that your doctor left you with—everything your doctor's not told you about IBD.

So today you're going to learn what causes this disease, what's really happening to your immune system. You're going to finally understand: it is not genetic, it is not unknown, and it is not, in fact, autoimmune.

We're going to discuss the other health problems that this can actually cause—what we call extraintestinal manifestations or diseases that are a byproduct of Crohn's and Colitis. We're going to talk about the other treatment options that you have besides medication and surgery. We'll talk about the role of food, diet, lifestyle, and frankly how bright, promising, and hopeful your future can be even after being diagnosed with this.

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, and a scientific strategist and education director for the Root Cause for Crohn's & Colitis Organization.

And today we're discussing everything that parents and teens need to know about Crohn's and Colitis.

So here's the thing we want to start with. You've been told that IBD has no known cause. But I want to show you something and I want to explain why we all get sick and why we're continually getting sicker.

This behind me, you may have noticed I have a bunch of diseases behind me on the board. You can read with your own eyes. I'll pick a few out. These are the percentage of increase in each disease we've seen in the last 30 to 50 years.

ADHD: 800%.
 Celiac disease: 1,000%.
 Fibromyalgia: 7,000%.
 General autoimmune conditions: 1,600% increases as a whole.
 Sleep apnea: 430%.
 Autism: 200%.

These are crazy numbers to look at, okay? Here's what we have to understand—we are getting progressively sicker and sicker and sicker, and so we're more prone to getting diseases.

So knowing this information behind me here that you can see on the board... asthma: 42%, chronic fatigue syndrome: 300 to 500%, depression: 280%, diabetes: 300% increases. Knowing what you see here and knowing what you know now, I want to explain to you the only three reasons why human beings get sick.

Now this is barring, you know, being hit by a bus and having your organs spilled across the road. What I'm talking about here are the reasons we are degrading so quickly. I want to explain this to you because once you understand this, you then have the power to change your disease, your illness, and this disease process you're facing. Not only for yourself but your kids, your loved ones who might be having to go through this at some point—or currently right now.

So here's what we need to know: we get sick for three main reasons.

The first is going to be toxins of some kind. Now, a toxin is a really broad spectrum thing. A toxin can be anything from heavy metals to fungus. It can be environmental toxins we call VOCs or volatile organic compounds — that new car smell, that's formaldehyde, that's toxic, right? They're everywhere.

It can be pesticides. It can even be microbial toxins that are produced. There's countless amounts of toxins. When they get into your body, your body has to defend you, and that requires resources — and that depletion makes us sick.

So toxins are the first reason we get sick. Something is in there that should not be, and it causes a big mess.

The second one we have is going to be deficiencies. Deficiencies of what? Primarily nutrients. Your body is constantly building and rebuilding and turning over all of its things — always. And if you're deficient in anything — vitamins, minerals, amino acids, electrolytes, basic water, carbs, fats, proteins (I mean, you can live your entire life without carbs, but you get the idea) — when you're deficient in macro and micronutrients, your body starts to break down.

It needs these nutrients through consumption, breaking down, and absorption to be able to rebuild your body and its tissues for the rest of your life. If you can't do that, you break down without building back up. Therefore, you stay broken down, and you stay sick.

So toxins and deficiencies are the first two reasons.

The last reason we get sick is going to be microbes. Now, this is either microbial infections or imbalances, okay? And I'll say this — I want to break this down for you.

The infections we get also play a role in imbalances. Let's say you have all your microbes in your gut microbiome — about 100 trillion microbes, give or take a few trillion. They're going to be all in balance — the good guys (I use air quotes) or bad guys.

When we have too low of good guys, the opportunistic or bad guys take over — fungus, E. coli, clostridia. They cause these infections. We have overgrowths. If we take antibiotics and push down the good, the overgrowths can happen. We get more fungal overgrowths. If we have infections of parasites, for example, viruses — these are things that cause us to be ill.

So between toxins in our world and our system, between deficiencies in our bodies — nutrient deficiencies, micro and macros — and microbial infections, these are really the three reasons why we get sick.

And what's happening over our world — as our world starts to evolve, it's been described actually in a book called The Evolution Gap by Eric Edmeades. But our world is evolving faster than our biology. We have more technology, more agricultural farming practices which leave our world depleted of vital nutrients.

Back in 2008, 2009, there was a study from the University of Texas, and they determined you’d need eight oranges then to get the nutrients your great-grandmother would have gotten in one.

So even our soil is being depleted based on farming practices and protocols we're using on an industrial level. So our food is deficient. Seventy percent of US homes have mold in them — that comes back to toxins, right?

We have what's called generational dysbiosis. And now, this is a big reason why this is also happening.

So picture your great-great-great-grandmother had, let's say, a thousand microbes in her gut — just for arbitrary math's sake. Well, enter the Industrial Revolution, and your great-great-grandmother maybe she inherits 800. And then we get more toxins. Now we're past the Industrial Revolution, we have antibiotics. Early 1900s, penicillin hits the scene.

Well guess what? Great-grandma might get 600. By the time your mom is born — or your grandma is born — she's getting 400. And then you get 200.

So we're losing microbial diversity. We can see this from other nations who are not as developed. And I’ll tell you — North America (and we're excluding Mexico — let's say Canada, US, we'll pull in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK), we’re between 5 and 6% as a collective whole of the entire global population, yet we have 50% — up to 50% — of the world's cases of Crohn's and Colitis.

It’s an industrialized issue — having to do with toxins in our system, deficiencies in farming, and having to do with microbial imbalances or a loss of diversity over time.

This is how this disease is happening.

And just to give you an idea of these stats, how dramatic this is right now — back in the 1950s, here we are 75 years later — in the 1950s there were only 15 per 100,000 people in North America who had a diagnosis of Crohn's and Colitis. Today it's 463 per 100,000. That is almost 5%. And if you want to do some math, this is a 3,000% increase in the last 75 years that we've seen Crohn’s and Colitis increase.

So it’s quite staggering. In fact, it’s gone up like this — where it started to increase and it's doubled since the 1990s. So it is a really major issue we're facing right now. This is why these diseases are happening.

But what is the development of this disease process? Let's talk about this for a minute just to really kind of distill it down to its simplest forms.

One, two, three. We sort of have three stages of gut disease or gut infection.

The first stage is going to be an acute stage — and it’s going to be managed. What does this mean? Picture it like you get the flu. You get a little bit sick. Your body gets rid of it. You eat something — food poisoning — it’s in and it’s out. You’re done. This is going to be our first stage.

Now when you’re here with Crohn’s, Colitis — you’re beyond this stage. You had the infection, but it never went away. And so what’s happened is it’s turned into a chronic condition.

What does chronic mean? Medical definition is just a year or more with minimal symptom change or relief, even under medical supervision and treatment. So it’s ongoing.

So we’ve gone from acute — where it started, your body should have gotten rid of it but couldn’t — and then it lasted long enough to be called chronic. But what happens when a chronic disease persists more and more and more over the years? It evolves. Your body breaks down.

What ends up happening now is we end up with a chronic or autoimmune condition. So we’ve gone from stage one to two, two to three. Most of you right now with IBD are somewhere between two and three.

But I did tell you — it’s not autoimmune. And I will get there in a minute. But this is where we’re classified. And so the further you are on this side of the spectrum, the closer you are to chronic autoimmune — the longer it's been going on, the more damaged and compromised your body is — the harder it is to come back. But not impossible.

For those of you who have been here for less than five, six, eight, ten years — it’s pretty easy to rewind this clock. To get back to what's an acute thing that your body can actually manage on its own. It's once we break through these barriers.

So what we see here is an acute immune response — your body’s dealing with it. But as things go on, your immune system can get tired. By the time we're at stage three, we now have what’s called immunodeficiency.

So your immune system — that should be dealing with these acute stages — no longer can. It’s been broken down, it’s been fatigued, it’s been dismantled in some way. And so this is where we see autoimmunity coming in. But is it autoimmunity or immunodeficiency or just imbalances?

And that's what I want to talk about with you today as well.

So those are our stages. Let’s explain what’s happening here. We talked about your stage one, two, three — acute, chronic, and autoimmune. So let’s put this at the top here. We’re going to go with acute, we’re going to go chronic, and then we’re going to go autoimmune. We'll just put that on the board for reference point.

So here's what starts to happen. You have your acute immediate responses. There's a lot of different paths of the immune system — we’ll call this, think of it like an octopus — the analogy I like to use. Each arm kind of does a different thing. One arm is responsible for pathogens like bacteria and parasites. One does fungus. One does acute infections and immunity.

So you have this first immune response up here — this is going to be what we call your TH1. That stands for T-helper 1. You have these T-helper cells — these parts of your immune system. Your body should be regulating things.

What we see in end stage is a dysregulation of this TH1 pathway. So your immune system is all imbalanced. This one here — this first pathway — it actually regulates and controls your next two immune system pathways we're going to talk about. So this helps regulate and control them. When this is deficient, these ones become hyperactive. You have what you have now.

So this guy here — TH1 — it regulates your immune pathways. It can reduce inflammation. It actually clears out infections. Remember we talked about the three reasons why you get sick? We have toxins, deficiencies, and we have microbes. Well, this pathway right here deals with these guys. It gets rid of them. It helps get rid of two of those three reasons why you get sick.

It enhances your gut barrier — that's going to be leaky gut. Keeps your immune system in check. It increases your natural defenses. But in IBD, this tends to be depleted on the end stages — but it might not be, depending on where you are.

And so then what happens? Let’s assume now we’re on the — let’s talk about the end stage: chronic, autoimmune, or what’s classified as autoimmune — even though I disagree with it being autoimmune. What happens now? You have hyperactive responses. These ones are going haywire — this TH2 and 17.

What does that mean?

Well, TH2 — this T-helper 2 — when it's elevated, you get excess mucus, diarrhea, gut sensitivity, pain, allergic-type reactions, more leaky gut (because this one controlled your barrier, this one's breaking it down). We start to get more systemic inflammation all around your body. Maybe you’ve got skin problems, joint problems, hair is falling out, maybe you get sores in your mouth or upper GI. We get food sensitivities.

Now what happens? This one — TH2 — sort of predates TH17. This is like the ugly stepchild. What happens? It gets — goes haywire. It goes mad, okay?

And what happens now is you get extra neutrophil activity in this 17 pathway.

What does that mean? Well, every time you go into your doctor, what are they looking for? Calprotectin.

When they’re measuring calprotectin — neutrophils are this white blood cell. It’s one of your five types of white blood cells that are in the area. When they're there — like being used like a car being driven or idling in a parking lot — they actually produce a byproduct called calprotectin when they’re active in the area.

So when you have a hyperactive response of this pathway, you have a hyperactive neutrophil or white blood cell response — which increases your calprotectin levels.

So your body, in an attempt to try to heal you, to come in and rescue you — you're inflamed. That’s what inflammation is. It’s a rescuing, healing response that is not regulated because this first pathway is out of whack. These next two go haywire and they overproduce their byproducts.

This ends up leading to ulcers, strictures, fistulas. Bacteria that should be controlled from this first pathway — getting rid of these microbes that should be managed — because these guys (2 and 17) manage your gut lining — they're broken down. You’re inflamed. All these microbes now get around your body and they circulate.

And now you have what’s called bacterial translocation — or the movement of bacteria throughout your body — which causes systemic inflammation and immune responses or persistent immune activation.

This can lead to all kinds of things — like inflammation in the small intestine, which leads to... what is it, the third reason we get sick? Deficiencies.

And so you can see pretty quickly here — if you have toxins and microbes in your body that are not being regulated anymore, they create inflammation throughout your system which leads to malabsorption. And when your house is on fire, you need extra water to put the fire out — but you’ve been burning for so long with so much inflammation, you can’t get nutrients in.

So now you have toxins circulating. Microbes — which also produce more toxins — going all throughout your body. And no resources in the terms of nutrients that you need to put these fires out and repair everything.

This is why you’re getting sick.

So the question is, what do we do about it?

Before we can get there, I want to explain something to you. I told you I’d tell you this is not genetic, it is not autoimmune, and it is not idiopathic (meaning unknown cause). There’s a lot more to the picture than what you’ve been told so far. And what I’m doing here — this conversation can be very frustrating to have. I get a lot of hate over this one. I’ve had threats, I’ve been harassed over it. But I want you to have the tools because this is what you’ve been told by your doctor.

So who’s this guy coming in saying, “Well, your doctor is wrong”? We just took a look at it differently. And now we’re teaching doctors all over the country how to do what we do. We’re consulting for them, patient sharing, and actually helping them learn how to do this. Because the results you’re seeing are remarkable, and it can happen for you too.

So here’s what I want to do first. I want to tell you, sort of break down this story you’ve been told up to this point. Now that you know what’s happening, you’ve been told it’s just genetic. You’ve been told it’s autoimmune. And you’ve been told it’s idiopathic — meaning no known cause.

I want to show you why none of these things are true.

First things first, did you know that a family history is only present 24 to 28% of the time in IBD? That’s it. 24 to 28% of the time is any family history. So they’re blaming your genetics.

Let’s assume there’s no family history, but maybe you got a bad gene or a double recessive gene from both your parents. Okay, maybe. But did you know that genetics are implicated only about 25% of the time without family history involvement? So still 75% of the time, there’s no genetic involvement.

On top of that, even if 25% was you, your genes don’t work in a vacuum. What ends up happening is those toxins we talked about — those three reasons we get sick: toxins influence genetic expression for the worse. They turn them up or turn them down. They make them express, like turning up the volume knob rather than turning it down and calming it down.

So toxins increase your genetic expression for the worst. Microbes actually have an influence. They communicate with your genes, with your DNA, with your immune system. Which also, if there’s infection or imbalances, turns them up and makes it worse.

And there’s a whole study called Nutren — which is how nutrients, vitamins, minerals, amino acids play a role in your genes. So the three reasons we get sick are the same three reasons causing your genes to express poorly.

So we can’t blame your genetics.

Let’s talk about the second one. They say it’s autoimmune. Well, if it’s autoimmune, you must have antibodies, right? That’s what autoimmune is — they’re antibodies. They attack yourself.

Let’s look at this. In Crohn’s and Colitis, only about 70% of the time, one could say 50 to 70% of the time — let’s go with 70 for argument's sake, just to over-exaggerate a bit — 70% of the time, there’s antibodies in the system at all. Okay, that’s it.

So we have antibodies only 70% of the time. What does that mean? At least 30% of the time, it’s not autoimmune. Yet your doctor is treating you like you’re autoimmune, without for sure checking if you’re autoimmune.

But let’s take this back a little bit. Let’s pull the curtain back. Let’s assume, because statistically you’re probably in the 70% more than the 30%, so let’s assume you do have antibodies that are active.

Did you know the top 10 most prominent antibodies detected in IBD are, in fact, not autoimmune antibodies? Which means your antibodies are not attacking your own tissues. They’re attacking something else.

These antibodies — the top 10 antibodies that we see most commonly in IBD — anywhere from 70% down to 5 and 10% of the time, they’re triggered not just for your own immune system or for your own body tissues, but they can attack fungus and parasites. That’s microbes. Weird, right?

They can be stimulated by toxins or other things that shouldn’t be there, such as your IBD medication — Imuran, Methotrexate, even antibiotics, or stress can cause these same antibodies to come up.

So how can we say that these antibodies are strictly autoimmune if they’re not even there to attack yourself? They’re not autoimmune antibodies unless you can prove they are.

So we’re treating your body as if it’s autoimmune, but we’ve made two assumptions already which are false. We assume it’s genetic — 75% of the time, it’s not. Even when it is, there are other influences. We assume that it’s autoimmune — 30% of the time, there are no antibodies. The other 70% — where they are, they’re not autoimmune antibodies.

So your body’s not attacking itself. And to say it’s idiopathic — meaning no known cause — we just explained why you get sick: toxins, deficiencies, and microbes.

We’ve seen a 3,000% increase since the 1990s, since the 1950s, doubling since the 90s. Something must be causing it.

So let’s dive into this. There is so much more to this than you’ve been told, and this is why you need to know this information. It’s not that your doctors are lying to you, they’re just taught other things. They have one set of tools in their toolkit.

What I’m doing with doctors across the country right now is giving them access to these same tools so they can then give them to you — or you’re here right now getting them from the source.

So I did promise you as well, I want to talk briefly about what else these diseases — Crohn’s and Colitis — can cause within your body and your systems. And this is just things you’re going to want to look out for within your loved ones, your teens, your kids, whoever you’re here for — even for yourself.

So let’s talk about what other diseases can be caused by IBD. I hate to say the word, but I’m going to tell you anyway.

There are some very common things that we end up seeing. We can see issues with your joints. We can see problems with your skin. Sleep. Hormones. We can see other autoimmune diseases compounding. Every 5 to 10 years or so, you tend to get extra autoimmune diseases. It can increase all kinds of stuff. We see issues in the liver — oops, can't even spell liver! We see issues in the liver, issues in the gallbladder. We see issues oftentimes in the stomach. Even cognitive issues — so in the brain, anxiety, depression, etc.

Why? We talked about all these toxins inside of your gut that are produced from microbes, from your immune system, leaking things out, causing inflammation.

So you have your intestines — I’m just going to draw these crudely on the board here. What happens when you have things that leak? They leak either from the small or the large intestine, or both, and they get into your blood. And where does your blood go? Everywhere. Your blood circulates to every part of your body and it carries with it these toxins that leaked out of an inflamed gut.

So you can see just about anything causing any disease. From Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, liver disease, kidney disease — these toxins get out and toxify the organs. We can see all kinds of stuff. In fact, 93% of the leading causes of death in North America — heart disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes — they’re all connected to the gut in some way, shape, or form. And we can even see where gut can create these issues 30, 40 years down the road, like heart disease and Alzheimer’s, etc.

So everything is connected.

So the question we ultimately want to be answering now is: what can we do about it?

Well, you go down to your doctor and imagine you're healthy. And if you're here for one of your teens, they probably got this either what they call VEO (Very Early Onset) IBD, happened early on in life. Maybe it’s something where they were 10, 12, 14 years old, suddenly boom — now they’re sick. Or maybe they had a little bit of issues early on that progressed and progressed until they got sick enough to get a diagnosis. Either way, it happened.

But picture you go to your doctor and you stepped on a nail. The nail goes right through your foot. Your doctor looks you dead in the eye and he says, “Wow, that is really bad-looking, but unfortunately, that nail’s just stuck there. There’s nothing we can do. It’s part of your body now. However, there is hope. What we’re going to do is give you some numbing cream for the rest of your life to manage that inflammation, to manage that pain. If it gets infected, we have antibiotics, and if that gets too out of hand, we can’t control it with medication, we could just cut off your foot.”

How insane would that conversation be with your doctor when they tell you the nail’s part of your body? It’d be nuts, right? They’d lose their license.

But you come in one day, 10, 12, 20, 30, 40 years, if you’re here for yourself — you were healthy, now you’re not, and your doctor goes, “Wow, it’s really bad, but it’s just part of your body now. It’s just genetic. There’s nothing we can do. But here’s your options. We’re going to give you some medication for the rest of your life to manage the pain. If you get infections, we have antibiotics. And if it doesn’t work, we can cut out your bowels.”

Why is that conversation not just as insane as a nail in a bloody foot? It should be. Frankly, it is. But we don’t know. We don’t have the tools. We can look at a nail and go, “Oh, power of deduction. That’s in my foot. It shouldn’t be there. Pull it out.” But we’re not looking for the nail in bowel disease. We’re not looking to find where that came from, why it’s there, how to pull it out. But that’s what this call is about.

Now that you understand why we’re getting sick, your nail is toxins, your nail is microbial imbalances, the nail is nutrient deficiencies. If we can remove these things and give your body what it needs, suddenly it can begin to heal.

That’s why you’re inflamed. Your body is inflamed because it’s trying to heal you. It is a healing response. It’s not a bad thing. It’s chronic inflammation that’s gone unchecked because your body can’t fix one of these three pillars by itself. And that is why you’re getting sick.

So what do we do about it? Well, if we don’t want to go to medications and surgeries like your doctor said, let’s look at another option.

Number one: Let’s identify the nail. We have to learn and figure out what your root cause or causes are going to be. There’s a lot of common things. I don’t have time to get into all these today, because it’s a whole other lecture by itself. But it’s some kind of deficiency, some kind of infection, and some kind of toxin of some sort — or a combination of all of the above.

But remember, let’s go back to stage one, two, and three of your immune activations. We have acute, we have chronic, and then we have autoimmune chronic. Well, if you’re here between two and three, you may actually have this immunodeficiency.

Now, this is something that sadly, up to this point — there’s hope on the horizon. We’re trying to get some clinical trials for some cool new drugs, but right now you’re kind of stuck with immunodeficiency. Maybe you do need long-term IVIG therapy, immunoglobulins. Maybe you do need some sort of immunomodulator for the rest of your life until some of these cool new drugs hit the market.

But the reality is, there is a point of no return. But that tends to be a very small, small percentage — maybe 10% to 15% of people that we see with the 350, almost probably 400 cases at this stage — we kind of lost count — that we’ve actually helped reverse after even decades of being on medication.

Immunosuppressors can be reversed because we find the nail. We find the root causes. What toxin? What microbe? What deficiency? How do we rebalance this now imbalanced immune system?

And so we actually want to go through a process, and oftentimes supplementation. But there’s a difference. If we give you supplements just to manage your symptoms — “I’m inflamed, here’s some curcumin.” “Oh, you’re not going to the bathroom? Here’s some aloe or some slippery elm.” No problem. If you’re managing the symptoms, I call this plant-based medication. It’s all it is — you’re managing your symptoms.

The benefit of medications, at least your insurance covers it, right? Otherwise, you’re paying out of pocket.

So the balance now is: pay out of pocket, have fewer side effects from plants, or have them covered and have more side effects from drugs. Either way, they’re doing the same job — just pick your poison.

However, if we use a supplement, we can identify: here are your root causes or causes and contributing factors. The things we see the most prominent right now driving your immune system over the edge. Here’s what we can take to begin removing this. Here’s how we can begin to reverse it. Each supplement should say, “Okay, here’s what I’m giving this to you for. This is what you have in you, going on or that’s dysfunctional right now. You’re going to take this supplement for X amount of time to elicit Y response, and then we can sort of phase this out and say, here’s what you’re taking for how long, what we expect it to achieve for you, and here’s how we block these out — phase after phase, layer after layer after layer of this disease.”

That’s plant-based medication now. Loosely speaking, generally speaking, we want to follow the five Rs.

What are the five Rs? Very simply — and this is, again, broad spectrum overview — it’s a five-step process that we use as sort of an overview, bird’s-eye view, to help you identify what it takes to actually reverse this problem.

So the first one is going to be: remove. Remove what? Remove the problem. If it’s high stress levels that are contributing, manage your stress. If you’re not sleeping, work on your sleep and sleep hygiene. Or medicate yourself, that’s fine too. Nothing wrong with that. If you have infections, remove the infections.

Picture your body like a cup of water. As that cup begins to fill up and it overflows, now we have a diagnosable disease. So remove the things that are filling up the cup. That’s number one.

We also have to learn how to empty your cup. Now we call this drainage. But you know, RD and four more Rs doesn’t have as nice of a ring as five Rs. So we’re going to remove, which also means drainage — exit doors in the body. We have another live on that one, so I’m going to cut that one short.

The next we have is replenish. Replenish what? Well, one of the top three reasons you’re sick is nutrient deficiencies. Make sure your body is getting bioavailable nutrients — the basic things it needs to repair.

Then we want to rebuild. Rebuild what? Your microbiome. That ecosystem. Microbial imbalances — it’s part of removing it, but it’s also part of restoring the good guys that are supposed to be there.

You’ve had a lot of antibiotics. You’ve destroyed a lot of good stuff in the ecosystem. Let’s rebuild those, bring them back. Right? After we’ve removed the toxins that shouldn’t be there taking up space, let’s put the good guys back in.

After that, we look to repair. You wouldn’t live in a house that’s on fire. Your bacteria, your microbes won’t want to live in an environment that is also inflamed and full of holes. So we have to heal and seal, soothe and cool the gut. We start repairing that lining, which decreases the load on the immune system. It helps seal up this cup so no more water can get into it. And that’s how we begin repairing.

The last one is rejuvenate. Well, we talked about stage 1, 2, and 3 — how your immune system can go from acute to chronic to chronic autoimmune. If you’re somewhere between stage two and three here — chronic, chronic autoimmune — we want to repair those imbalances. TH1 suppression insufficiency, TH2 and 17 dominance. So we want to reduce these guys and increase these guys. And there’s a myriad of ways we can do that, but that’s the gist of how the five Rs work.

Food, diet, stress, and lifestyle all play a factor. Poor nutrition means more deficiencies. High stress means more imbalances, more infections, more toxins — more everything. Your doctor may have told you to eat whatever you want. That’s insane. Obviously not. If this is the first time explaining things that your doctor frankly never has, you’re like, “Man, for the first time ever, this is making sense to me. For the first time, I’ve got an answer.” Like, it makes sense. Maybe I lived in a moldy home, had a lot of antibiotics, and a lot of stress growing up. And that’s what drove me here. That could explain this whole process.

We can explain the immune imbalances. Everything can be explained.

So if you want help, here’s how we can get you that. If you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on the podcast, check the links below in the show notes there. And there’s a link there you can schedule a call. We’ll have a conversation about our program — the Gut Health Solution — to walk you through what are your root causes, what are your contributing factors.

Even if we can get you down 50, 80, 90% — amazing. We’ve got people after 15, 20, 25 years, 30 years sometimes fully reversing off medications for the first time in decades. Colonoscopy reports clear, perfect, pink, and healthy. I will send you this information. We’re working on publishing a case study on these cases. You can see them for yourself, so your doctor can see them. Right now they’re just YouTube videos, but it makes for a pretty cool story.

On that note, thanks so much for being here, guys. We’re going to see you all next week.

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 is, for the first time, 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.