70: Finding The Root Cause of Your Crohn's or Colitis - A Real World Example With A Real Client

Have you ever wondered how I find the root cause of your bowel disease? This episode is a real recording from a client who just joined our program and is already seeing amazing results in less than 2 months - because we found her root cause.

Listen to this episode to see how we do it, live and in real time.

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• How to find your root cause
• Why your history matters
• Putting all the pieces together to understand your story

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Transcript

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Have you ever wondered how I identify the root cause of your gut issues? Well, I'm going to show you exactly how I do it with a real-world example. Now, this episode is going to be different than what you're used to hearing. It's not a recording of me standing and talking at a whiteboard teaching a lesson. It's actually a recording from a Zoom call that I had with a new client who joined our program about two months ago at the time of this recording. And she's already seen incredible results with a nearly 70% reduction in symptoms. Now, most doctors will tell you that Crohn's and Colitis are these random genetic conditions, but the root cause of your bowel disease does exist. It's just buried within your history. And in this episode, you're going to learn how we start digging into your history to identify your root cause or causes. Now, there are some details between things like Instagram messages or her intake form that you're not going to hear live on the call, but I'll summarize things at the end for you just to fill in the blanks. But lastly, I do want to frame this episode. She believed that getting COVID was the big thing that drove her to developing bowel disease, but her history clearly said otherwise. Now, this is a recording from my first intake call prior to her joining the program. So stick around to the end because I'm going to summarize this for you to fill in the blanks so you can truly understand how this works and how you can use this to find your own root cause. There you go. Hi, everybody. Hello. Hello. How are you? So good today. Why not? Yeah, the sun is going to be shining sooner or later, I think. Yes. So you must be Lina, is that right? Yes. Yes, I am. And this is my husband, Frank. Sorry, Fred or Frank? Frank, Frank. Frank. All right. So here's what I want to do with you guys. At any time, first of all, feel free to cut me off. I'm going to have questions for you. You'll be talking. I'm going to cut you off to clarify some stuff, just the way it's going to go. And so at any point, feel free to chime in. If there's anything I forget, anything that you forget, Frank, jump in on Lina's behalf. That's going to be awesome. But I want to treat today like it's the first time talking because I got 200 conversations a day that get started over social media. So I want to take everything right from the top. I do have your intake form. I see things have been getting worse the last two months. So I want to go through all of that with you guys. Let's start right from the top. Tell me what's going on, what we're here for today. Okay. So basically what's going on for the past two months, I've been having this episodes of diarrhea that weren't getting better. And then when they got better, it went to constipation. But it was mostly diarrhea. This is my third day without diarrhea in a while. I just want to say I've always had stomach issues. I'm the person in the group that always needs to know where the bathroom is. I travel with a little potty in my truck. Yes. It's been used. This is love. Because I just never know what is going to trigger. And sometimes it's out of nowhere. Sometimes I know, like I eat things that may not agree with me. Like right away? Yes. Yes. Like right away. Like I want to say like 15-20 minutes. And it's like I break up in sweats and it's like I have to go. I have to go now. That's been kind of like the norm for me. But typically it's just that one episode and then I'm quote unquote fine. For the most part, I'm regular if you say. Like I have a bowel movement in the morning. I'm pretty normal if I'm not having my episodes, right, that happen every now and then. But this back in, was it Labor Day? No. Memorial Day? What was the time? What was the holiday? Labor Day. Labor Day weekend. I got sick. I don't know what I had. I didn't get tested. It felt a lot like when I had COVID back in the day. But I don't know. I can't say for sure. I had a fever. I was pretty like tired. And that's when my first like episode of diarrhea started. And then I could never like all my other symptoms went away, but that one didn't. And I'm feeling better now, but it was very draining. Like I felt so tired. And I've never had my symptoms last this long. Typically like if I address my, you know, if I change my diet, if I only eat apple sauce for like two days, and like I'm better. But this wasn't getting any better. And I had to take Imodium because I had signed up for to chaperone a school trip for my daughter. And that morning, I woke up feeling terrible. That brought on a little bit of the constipation. And then it went right back to And this is my third day, no diarrhea. Normal size bowel movements. I know this is TMI. That's what I do for a living. If I don't go a day without talking about poop, it's a weird day. Because my bowel movements, when they were not diarrhea, were really small. Like I could tell my colon was inflamed because they were like strings or like little rabbit size poop. Now it's not like that. And I haven't taken anything. But yes, that's pretty much the gist of it. Okay. So here's what we're looking at right now. So you're a nurse. And Frank, what is it you do? I'm our operational vice president for a private security firm. Not in medicine. Okay. No. Got it. It sounds like quite the title though. Here's what we want to look at. Like anything, you know the saying, straw that broke the camel's back, right? There has been a load on your back for all these years, decades possibly since birth. And that's what we want to figure out. Because this instance right now, it's definitely an acute instance on an already fragile system. So my job with you is to go back in time to figure out what led you to being so fragile. Because that's how we're going to fix it. We're not going to go in and do a COVID spike protocol. We're not going to go in and give you some herbs. Like that's not the interest here. Let's fix the reason why you feel this way your entire life anyway. Let's go all the way back in time. I want to go back to as far as you can possibly remember. Do you happen to know if you were breast or bottle fed as a baby? I was breastfed for about six months, my mom said. Okay. Vaginal birth? Yes. Good. And have you been told or do you recall growing up, I don't care if we're talking like infant, toddler, anything in between, ear infections, tonsil issues, eczema, allergies, GI issues, anything early? Yes. Doing everything, right? Ear infections, yeah. Ear infections. I was known for ear infections. My tonsils, it was bad. I would get tonsillitis constantly to the point that I was in my 20s. And doctor said like, you know, if you get tonsillitis one more time, we just got to take them out. And then it stopped. I didn't get them again. You were getting tonsillitis like constantly from like infancy up to 20s? Yes. And something that I used to get a lot of when I was a baby, when I was little, maybe a toddler, because my parents have shared the stories with me, boils on my skin, but to the point that they had to be like... Relanced? Yes. That happened a few times. Is it worth mentioning also, I don't know whether it is or not, but much of her childhood, she was living in another country in Colombia, where... Yes, I was born in Colombia. Where procedures and things were different, you know, than what we do here in the States, probably to some degree. So you would have been born, you're 41, so you're probably 84? Four. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. 84 is quite a time in Colombia. Yeah. Yes. How long did you live there for? Until I was 14. Okay. Yeah. And what part of Colombia? Cali. About two hours south west from the city. Okay. So were you... From the capital. All of the Escobar, Cali cartel stuff at the time? Oh, yes. Yes. That was... Yeah. Got it. So talk to me about childhood trauma. Let's go back there because now we're talking about a couple of things that may have onset this, right? I mean, we can look into mold and parasitic infections, et cetera, but we're talking nervous system disruption, we're talking potential trauma. I actually had a woman I recently spoke to late 40s, same, she grew up in the 70s, and she was right at the beginning of Escobar and all that as well. And the sound of a motorcycle clacking would send her heart rate through the roof because of all the things and trauma from that too. In the form of PTSD, like I had when I was about 11. It's funny you mentioned that because right now the political climate is not the greatest in Cali and I still have family there. And I was having this conversation with my brother and it's like, I remember growing up knowing that my mom would leave the house and we didn't know if she was going to come back because at that time... Random bombs. It was a war between the Escobars and the Cali cartel and they would just bomb random places. So you didn't know. So I remember if it was past 6 p.m. and my mom wasn't home, I would start worrying and looking and waiting and just waiting and waiting, making sure she would come in. So, yeah. Gotcha. Okay. So let's take the next step here. Tell me about the physical house you grew up in. Tell me about the quality. Tell me about any instances of potential mold. Tell me what that was like. Okay. Growing up as a baby baby, I know things weren't great. My mom was living with my grandparents in a small bedroom. Things weren't... So we were designated the room in the back of the room, of the house. So my grandparent's house is a big house, but it's long. So when you come in, you have the living room, dining room, kitchen, and then all the rooms are towards the back. But in the back, it's like... Exposed to elements. It's exposed to the elements. Moisture. So mold, maybe, yes. But after I turned one, I would say my parents moved to an apartment. I don't remember much from that. And then we moved to the house where I grew up. And mold, I would say yes. Maybe mold. Houses in Colombia are made out of brick. And sometimes... A lot of cinder block and stuff. Yes. And I remember the smell. When it rains, the smell is like a mildewy smell. Something went wrong. Please try again. That's my phone. And that's the house that I lived in pretty much until I moved here. Got it. Okay. Um, yeah. So you see what I mean with the straw that brought the camels back? Yeah. So let's talk about mold for a minute here. Because mold, it is antimicrobial by nature. So it disrupts your gut, gut microbiome. It leads to fungal overgrowth, dysbiosis. It challenges, if you recall back to like AMP from university, it challenges your Th1 immune pathway, intracellular stuff. So your body's ability to fight pathogenic microbes, viruses, parasites, et cetera. That's mold. So early on, whenever I see infants, children, toddlers with ear infections, or particularly tonsillitis, I'm looking at mold right away. So what we have with you is an early onset of, sounds like a high probability of mold exposure, leading to mitochondrial dysfunction, gut disruption, gut lining, leaky gut, inflammation, possible infestation. And parasites aren't just like a Southeast Asia, South America issue. They're an everywhere issue, right? Yes. That's something I said to Frank. Like in Columbia, we take something to deworm ourselves every six months, but here there's no such thing. Yeah. But here's the thing. You had a prime environment. They do that over there. I mean, even like Dominican, they'll do it every three to six, sometimes more often. I got a colleague of mine over in Ethiopia, they will literally eat raw meat with herbs, right? To kill the parasites. So they're very prevalent. We know that. We just ignore them here because we're stupid. And so we want to look at for you early mold exposure. That's going to be your mitochondria, cellular snuff, TH1 suppression, which can also lead to TH2 or histamine-based dominance, rashes, hives, allergies, sinus issues, food sensitivities, et cetera. Leaky gut, fungus, all these different things. Now we have this state of what's called dysbiosis or imbalanced gut bacteria. And then we add on chronic stress, trauma, possibly PTSD. Now what we're doing is ramping up the nervous system, which alters the motility of the gut, leading to these rickety responses, which promotes inflammation, promotes dysbiosis further, indigested food, et cetera. This is where we get these diarrhea rapid transit times and all this different stuff because your body, are you familiar with the concept of leaky gut? Yes, I'm familiar with the concept. The junctions of your, you know, the lining of your large intestine, small intestine are not like, they're kind of like open. Yeah, it's a primarily small bowel issue. And if you look at your small intestines, right, you know, they've got those little finger-like things on them. And what happens if you look at a diagram of these villi, they're called these little finger-like structures in your intestines, inside of them, there is a lymphatic and blood vessels. And so what happens is only one cell thick under stress, inflammation, et cetera, those junctions open. Now this is a defense mechanism. If your body eats something it shouldn't, that's why you get diarrhea 10 minutes. What happens, your body opens up the cells to draw water into your bowel because it's trying to like flush it out like a slip and slide, like hosing down a dry ball. It's like, get rid of you. And then what happens now, sustained over time from stress, from mold, from fungus, et cetera, those gaps get bigger and bigger and bigger. Now we have toxins, instead of water leaking in, we have toxins leaking out of the gut directly into that lymphatic and blood tissue. Then they circulate around the body. Now your body develops food sensitivities. This is where they come from. You have particles of, that leak, that are too big. It's not an amino acid. It's not broken down. It's like a piece of chicken. It gets into your bloodstream. Your body goes, whoa, big issue, red flag. Now you have an immune response. And now every time you eat that food, you have a food sensitivity. Your body creates leaky gut, flushing out it goes. And this is why we have increasing issues with foods and irritability, sensitivity, et cetera. But that's why they're also transient. Based on how stressed you might be, how much sleep you are getting, based on your diet at the time, those gap junctions are opening and closing. And so this immune response can build up, takes about three to four days to peak in your system, say the chicken thing, right, with the big pieces. But then it's two to three weeks to come down. So if you have a good couple of weeks, you're not stressed, inflammation's coming down, those gaps are closing up, that food sensitivity goes away. And then you have a stressful day or something happens, your period comes, your symptoms get worse. All of a sudden, I can't eat chicken again. What the hell? It's because they open back up again. And this is this opening and closing of your gut that's creating these waves of issues or your immune responses to them. But this is what we're looking at now. Early mold exposure, stress, trauma, CNS stuff, leading to dysbiosis, potential co-infections, active immune responses. Now we're here. This is why we do a history. Wow. Go back in time, start over again. Yeah. Yeah. You got it. Any other questions for me? Yeah. What's next? Yeah. Gotcha. Yes. Is there any type of testing that is recommended? Do we go just off of symptoms? Couple of things. So typically out of the gate, it depends on the finances, right? The more money you want to throw at it, the more we can get you. It really depends on what you want and how we go about that. Some people would rather not. Some people are very, like, let's be very conservative. I have people where I said, look, it's a mold infection. It's active. And based on what your These five mold toxins. And he said, well, you know what? I want to know that it's mold for sure. Can you prove it to me? I said, sure. So I went back, got a mold test, came back and said, here's the mold. And he said, okay, I'm good to go. Some people prefer that. But in your case, what we would likely do is spend, I'm guessing, don't hold me to this one. I'm just, this is off of 18 minutes of chatting, but I expect that we spend a month or two just working on prep, drainage, inflammation, immune responses, getting things a soothe and cool, just getting things more functional before we do any lab testing. Because I can test you right now, test your whole gut microbiome, get a stool sample, measure all of that. The thing is that over time, what ends up happening is that your microbiome shifts and changes anyways. And so in two months time, as inflammation calms down, as your immune responses calm down, it's gonna be a whole different reading. Now, we can work off of both. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that I'd rather get a more up to date version. Because again, your microbiome can change in days. So it's not a perfect picture. We might look at organic acid testing. We could look at what's called total tox burden. Total toxic burden test is gonna be urine and stool. And we combine with what's called a gut zoom, or like that big map. Now, the GI map, that one will give you, if we go really comprehensive, it'll give you all your inflammatory markers like SGA-100, MMP-9s, eosinophil activation, like all kinds of deep tissue stuff, lactoferrin, like all the stuff we'll get. It'll give you fat and stool, pancreatic function, individual microbial activity, tests for viruses and parasites. It's this huge comprehensive 20-page report. Second to that, the total toxic burden checks for active mold in the system. It's gonna check for heavy metals, and it's gonna check for environmental toxins, pesticides, glyphosate, microplastics, that type of stuff. So we can get these tests. That bundled together are about $7.60. Now, everything we order straight from the lab, like I don't order them and resell them to you. You pay the lab directly. It's how we keep costs down, but that's your bundle price for something like that. Now, like I said, we could get something out of the gate. Never hurts to do. Sooner is always better, I suppose, but we wouldn't need a test for you, at least right away. And depending on how you respond, your intake paperwork, I've got 200 questions. I'll look at any medication, diet logs, supplements. We look at all this stuff. You might never need a test. Just depends on you. However, as a caveat to that, let's say we spend four, five, six months together. At the end of that time, if we're working now to finally just fine-tune some things to build that resilience, maybe then we get a stool sample, just to see what else is still lingering that might come back to bite us later or leave a little bit of instability. Outside of that, it really depends. So let me just say this as a summary. We may not need testing. It may be recommended at some point, or you can purchase it any time that you feel so inclined just to be safe or to really cross your t's and dot your i's, but 90% of our clients never see a single lab test. Okay. I look for the test. So I'm data-driven. Yeah, I'm good with that. I say, what are the tests? I'm wondering for the bulk of us. Yes, I'm data-driven, but I do know that I tend to fixate on certain things. I was looking to say hypochondriac or anything like that. We can get you all the data. I mean, you can get as many tests as you want. It's just finances, right? If you guys don't mind throwing a couple hundred or even a thousand dollars at it, we can get you whatever you want. If you want to go the whole kit and caboodle, I recommend out of the gate for anybody who says, look, money's no object. Give me every test under the sun. The first one that would go to would be the gut zoomer. That's that full GI sample, the total toxic burden, even in an organic acid test. And that oat or organic acid test is going to give us a bunch of cellular markers, tells us about internal fungus cycling, possible mold markers, mitochondrial dysfunction, vitamin status, a whole bunch of cool stuff. And then the last, which you can actually, you guys are in the States? Yeah. Cool. So you can get a test for free from a certain lab. I'll send you a link. It's a hair tissue mineral analysis, which can also give us a really good comprehensive picture. So between the four of those, your 760 on the zoomer total talks, I think you're 350. They might've changed the price 360 for the oat, which brings you up to about $1,100. So we can pair those back. We can do them all. Like I said, it just depends on how much money you want to throw at it. Well, I'm making an indicative decision. Seriously. I mean, you've been dealing with this for a long time. It affects your quality of life. It does. And you know, my truck isn't happy. He says that like jokingly, but you don't understand. Like we were in Queens. I went to this place that sells like Columbia empanadas, supposed to be like great. Haven't had one in forever. A three. And it was a disaster. Like we're on our way to the zoo. There was no bathrooms around. Thank God we have this, this portable thing that we originally was, so our daughter would always have something when she was traveling with us. But now it's. It was, it was horrendous. He's like, you're lucky we're married like almost 20 years in. Yeah. Yep. Well, yes, I get it. And I dealt with that too. I get it. I mean, I was, I had gut issues. I remember growing up, I had sensitivity to foods and I had a lot of irritable bowel. I could hold it. But if I ate something I shouldn't, which I often did, you know, I remember wrestling in high school, always like nervous, got into the bathroom, diarrhea all the time, undigested food. And then it hit me really bad in my mid early twenties where I was 15 bowel movements a day, 10 minute transit times. And my brain, cause I mean, we know all the neurotransmitters for your brain are made here. And I was severe anxiety, depression, like, like suicidal. Like I planned my own death like three times. And it was really, really quite severe. I was having blood and mucus in my stool. It's the worst. Your energy is down. Your brain doesn't work. Nothing feels good. Like your skin is crawling constantly. You can't sleep. Can't focus. It's, it's a mess. I get it. It is. Thanks so much for listening. Now that is the first 20 minutes or so of a call and how that went and lasted about an hour. But hopefully now you have an idea just how easy it can be to identify a root cause when you understand the history and the timeline of events. But just in case you missed it, you're not sure how it comes together. Here's the summary of, of Lena's root cause that we identified between her Instagram messages, intake form, and the rest of our call together. So the short of it is that she originally thought that getting COVID caused her bowel disease, but billions of people got COVID and didn't get IBD. So her history in a nutshell was early mold exposure, leading to chronic tonsil issues, skin and ear infections. And of course, she went to the doctor to get treatment for that. So by the time she was 20 years old, we estimated she had been on almost 40 doses of antibiotics on top of living in Columbia and gangland. And so there's PTSD and trauma on top of that. So her body was already dealing with so much. All this together led to a lifetime of manageable, low grade digestive symptoms. And COVID was just the straw that broke the camel's back, tipping her immune system over the edge into this hyper-reactive state we now know as bowel disease. So I hope that's a crystal clear picture for you and understand that when you ask the right questions, you actually get to real answers. And if you do want help finding your root cause, of course, you're always welcome to schedule a call with me and my team. I'll drop a link for you down below. Just book in a call, answer a few questions, pick a time in my calendar, and I'll see you soon. If not, this podcast will forever remain free and you can catch videos of all my lessons on root causes and treating bowel disease on my YouTube channel, also linked down below. But again, if you want to chat with me and my team directly, just click the link down below and schedule a call. And if having trouble finding the links, head to gutsolution.ca. That's all singular, dot CA for Canada, gutsolution.ca.