9: Can food fix your Crohn's or colitis (IBD)?

I have seen diet both cause and reverse Crohn's and colitis, but if food isn't helping your IBD, we're going to tell you why not, and of course, what you can do about it!

Please remember that diet DOES MATTER!!

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• Why food really matters with IBD
• Why food may not fully fix your IBD
• how food can help indicate the root cause of your IBD
• what food does inside your body and gut

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Transcript

Josh Dech:

Contrary to what your doctors told you — Crohn's and colitis are reversible. Now, I've helped hundreds of people reverse their bowel disease, and I'm here to help you do it too. Because inflammation always has a root cause. We just have to find it. This is the Reversing Crohn and Colitis Naturally podcast.

Now, I do these live trainings in my Facebook group every single week and put the audios here for you to listen to. If you want to watch the video versions of these episodes, just click the link in the show notes to get access to our Facebook group and YouTube channel. And for weekly updates, information, tips and tricks, you can sign up for our email list by clicking the link in the show notes below.

Now, if you got IBD and you know that even though your doctor says food doesn’t matter — you just know that food obviously matters. Food is a huge part of everything. Food is nourishment. Food is often medicine. But if you're finding food isn't making a difference for you, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. It still matters.

But you might be finding it’s not making a difference for you. You might be finding that food only helps you a little bit. Or you found that food has made a dramatic difference — but there's still some things lingering and hanging on that we have to deal with. You can’t figure out what’s going on.

So today we're talking about why food is not fixing your IBD — and what to do instead.

Now, as a quick overview, we're going to talk about why what you're eating isn't fixing your IBD — obviously. We're going to talk about why diet may or may not help your IBD. We’re also going to throw in a little bonus here today to talk about how you can use your food to help indicate root causes.

Now, if you’ve been to my lives before, you’ll know I constantly talk about your root cause. Inflammation at any point in the body — any disease, any anything — is not random. We're going to talk about that here today. Help you find your root cause through food.

So first things first — let’s talk about why food matters. This is really kind of third-grade stuff. But unfortunately, a lot of doctors don’t believe food matters. They will say food doesn’t matter. “Eat whatever you want. It has no impact on this disease. Whatever.” They'll say, “Food won't get you into this disease, therefore food won't get you out. Eat whatever you want. Food doesn’t matter.”

Oftentimes in the same breath, they'll say, “Avoid gluten. Avoid dairy. Maybe try drinking a bit less.” And that’s about it. Because they literally get a couple of hours in seven to nine years of schooling on nutrition. It’s very, very little.

Just talk about why food does matter. If your doctor has said to you that food doesn’t matter — give me a thumbs down. Like screw those guys. Give me a thumbs down in the chat, let me know.

And while you’re doing that, I’m going to talk about why food obviously matters.

So here’s the thing — this is you. Yay! You’re happy. And when you eat food — right? Let’s, uh, what are we going to say is food? I'm going to give you — I'm going to make a taco. Everyone loves a taco. Okay?

So you eat a taco. What happens? Well naturally — you poop. You eat, you poop.

Here’s something else to think about — food gets digested by you. Gets turned into poop. What happens to that digestion? How does it break down?

Well, same thing — you have food, which is broken down by microbes, which is turned into poop. You eat, you poop. So do your microbes.

Now, what are we feeding? If we are feeding these microbes the wrong things — if we’re feeding them things that create bad byproducts, things that create inflammation, things that promote toxicity in the body — and you are eating things that create inflammation, you are contributing to bacteria whose byproducts make more inflammation.

So obviously what we eat matters. You eat, you poop — so do your bacteria. They eat, they poop. They poop out good things and bad things. They poop out short-chain fatty acids like butyrate — which is great for the immune system, reducing inflammation.

Your bacteria actually produce certain vitamins. They have all kinds of immunomodulating effects. They do all kinds of stuff for your body. But if you’re eating the wrong stuff, you’re pooping out the wrong stuff. You’re pooping out toxins. We call these guys LPS — stands for lipopolysaccharide. Another fancy word. You can also call them endotoxins, right? They’re toxins. Endo means within. So — the toxins made by your bacteria, which create more problems.

Now, depending on what you have going on in the body, certain foods may be worse for you.

And this is what’s really interesting. So — when you eat, you poop. So do your bacteria. What you feed them determines what they poop. It determines what we feed and which bacteria are pooping. And if they’re getting bad things, you’re causing inflammation.

This is like third-grade biology, but still doctors say, “Well, it doesn’t matter. Food doesn’t cause this disease, therefore food doesn’t matter. Eat whatever you want.”

So food doesn’t matter. Doctors say that. We know that’s — we know it doesn’t mean anything. We know that’s dumb.

Now, let’s talk about how food impacts IBD.

The first one is going to be a really obvious way. I'm going to talk about the second one — we're going to talk about what it may be feeding and how you can use that to help determine your root causes. Okay? Your root causes.

Now, if we don’t know the root cause, we can’t fix it. But we reverse IBD like clockwork — that’s what we do in our programs. You hear me talk about it all the time. Because we find the root causes. We find the things causing you the problem — and that’s what we’re going to do here for you now.

So number one reason why food causes problems in IBD — whether it’s you’re feeding bad bacteria — that’s the first one we talked about — we're just going to put feeding bad, okay? So you’re feeding into the problem.

Another thing that we can see is that we are unable to digest certain things. If you’re somebody who has a very rapid transit time — you eat, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour — you’re in the bathroom, you’re looking at whole food in the toilet. You’re going to have whole undigested pieces of food.

That digestion should take a minimum 4 hours for most things — up to 12 and 16 hours for some things to break down. If they rush through, they don’t have time to be broken down. They’re coming out whole. Along the way they’re causing inflammation. Your body is creating leaky gut.

Did you know leaky gut is a good thing?

Leaky gut is your body trying to wash things out — like when you put your thumb over the hose to like wash your driveway. That’s your body flushing things out.

But when you have leaky gut, it becomes so wide that not only does water get in, but things get out. And when you have — your body is taking in things that it can’t break down, digest, absorb. Your transit time is too fast. It’s things that are irritating. Things that your body wants to get rid of. These leaks become very wide and things also leak out, causing more inflammation in the body. They get into your bloodstream, lymphatics, and just circulate all over. That’s a big problem.

So — you’re unable to digest it, or you’re feeding bad stuff. These are the two main reasons why we see people having problems.

Now you go, “Okay, fiber causes me a problem.” That’s another one we can look at. Unable to digest. Let’s also call sandpaper.

I'm sure you guys can all imagine what it feels like to put sandpaper on your skin. Well imagine you have now raw, inflamed skin. You put sandpaper on it. Well, sometimes cruciferous vegetables — cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage — like scratchy fibers — can be like sandpaper on the tissue inside of your gut that’s already inflamed.

So these are things to watch for.

Now — here’s what’s very important.

We want to discuss how we can utilize food — because we’re really going into today why food is not fixing your IBD. You’re eating the wrong things. You’re feeding the wrong stuff. You’re contributing to the problem or causing inflammation. But when we identify what food specifically could be feeding what type of symptoms that you have, it can help us identify the roots and so what you can do to manage your diet accordingly.

Now, I always advocate — get to the root. If you’re working with us directly or you’re taking one of our DIY programs that we have available as well — it’s a phenomenal course. Community — comment “DIY” if you want access to that, it’s brilliant. We just recorded a module today actually on finding your root cause and we have modules — all kinds of stuff getting into this so you can, you know, sort of self-diagnose.

Now let’s talk about food. There are reasons why we'll feed the wrong stuff. Let’s start very broad. The word dysbiosis just means an imbalance in the bacteria. In this case, it’s imbalance in the bacteria inside of your gut — imbalance in your microbiome.

If you have dysbiosis, it can be any of the above things we’re about to talk about. But this is sort of the overarching — think of it like our umbrella, okay? So our umbrella is dysbiosis. All the problems are going to be within this.

When we’re eating certain things, it contributes to the problem.

The microbiome is made of viruses and bacteria and fungi and parasites and all kinds of creatures that live inside of our body. And they all work together in harmony. But when they are dysbiotic — or imbalanced — now we have a problem. Now we have disease. Now we have problems accumulating.

So let’s talk about this. One of the big — the major — I’d say 50 to 60% of the time I see something in people causing their IBD. Now remember, there are often many, many layers.

I'm going to give you three main things today that we see as a root driver towards causing IBD. And all of them we see in people — like in combination quite often. Sometimes it’s one, sometimes it’s all of them. It’s all about layers and layers — we have to always go back through layers.

So one of the big things that I see in people as part of this umbrella — probably 50 to 60% of the time — is parasites.

Now we think, “Ew parasites, that’s gross, I'm disgusting.” Nope. Parasites are everywhere. There’s estimates that up to 5 billion people globally are infected with parasites in some way.

Now there’s arguments that can be made that some parasites live in harmony in our gut. It’s when they become problematic and overgrow, it’s a problem.

Well here’s why parasites might be a problem. They can make you crave things like sugar. You might have seeking behavior. You might look for alcohol, or drugs, or thrills, or sex, or whatever type of addictive behaviors you might see — because they mess with those dopamine pathways.

They can make you crave sugars as well — because they love that stuff.

Another thing that parasites love, believe it or not, is actually fiber. If you’re someone who ingests fiber and you pop off with symptoms, you might be feeding some parasites. They love this stuff.

And they actually come out — think of it like — have you ever seen these videos of these sandworms in Australia, where you like put sugar or meat or something on the sand, these worms come out? That’s kind of what parasites do.

They’re hiding below the surface and you sprinkle this fiber on top. It comes through the gut, and they pop up to try to eat it. And then these symptoms arise because now they’re coming in and out of the gut lining, causing irritation. They’re inside the gut, so your gut-associated immune system goes, “Oh, problem. Attack.” Inflammation starts.

And we can see that as well through fiber. And so parasites love fibers. That’s something we have to watch for.

Now there’s a whole lot more to this. We actually filmed this module today — I was talking about — about the DIY stuff, how to get into it. There is probably 30, 40 symptoms that we utilize to go through parasites — six or eight keystone ones, with a bunch of other common issues.

But fiber can feed parasites, and boom — it pops things off. And now you got a major problem.

This next one I’m going to put in here is going to be fungus.

Now fungus — I’m going to call it Candida, and we’re going to call it mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are from mold, but they’re a byproduct of fungus. Like fungus produces these mold spores, these mycotoxins — which, they’re itty bitty. They get through the eyes, they get in through the lungs, ingestion, whatever.

And Candida, fungus is very common. Now what does fungus love?

Well — it loves sugar as well. It loves fibers as well. It loves starches and carbs and other things that can break down to sugars. It even sends signals to the brain saying, “Give me sugar. Feed me.”

If you’re somebody — maybe you got a white film on your tongue, got a lot of cravings, psoriasis, eczema… maybe you’ve got joint pain, brain fog — these can be symptoms of fungus.

If you find yourself craving sugars — you eat it — maybe you feel good for a minute but feel like trash later, and it goes on for days and days? You probably fed some of these fungal toxins, and now it’s causing problems.

It’s all about layers.

Oftentimes you might not know you have parasites until you get rid of your mycotoxins, or your mold, or your fungal issues — and then the parasites show up. Because they compete in immune pathways. It’s a whole thing.

But the point being — parasites and fungus are big ones. They love sugars, they love fibers, they love carbs, they love starches. And when you consume these things — it can pop things off.

Now another one that we look at as a big root that we see is Clostridia.

Now, you guys may know this as like C. diff. Clostridia also has its own umbrella, okay? Of other Clostridia-type of things that we can see inside — like organic acids and other testings.

But if you’re somebody who eats, like, a calcium supplement — you take a couple of calcium pills or collagen — and you pop right off and you start bleeding?

Well guess what happens — these things, Clostridia, will actually use them. And they can utilize these and actually can pop the Clostridia spore. They go on these couple-of-day cycles — typically three days — and they’ll pop the spores.

It’s like popping a balloon full of confetti. That confetti gets everywhere. And now your cells, your immune system, the cleanup crew has to come in and start picking these things up. They’re trying to spread, causes more inflammation — you can get bleeding really heavily.

So if you’re eating calcium-rich foods, calcium supplements, if you’re consuming collagen or bone broth, and these types of things are making you worse? There’s probably a layer of Clostridia.

Well — coming back to it — Clostridia and fungus compete against each other. So we’re always going back to try to find these root causes as to what’s driving the problem.

But this is how food can affect you — if you’re feeding something that you don’t realize you’re feeding, and it’s popping off your symptoms, then this is what’s driving the disease.

In my practice, I see parasites, fungus, and Clostridia 99% of the time driving it.

Now people go, “Well, I’ve already done a parasite cleanse. I’ve already done antifungals.” Doesn’t mean anything. And I’ll show you why really quick before we get into this.

If you guys have questions — ask me. There’s a lot of layers to this stuff.

But picture this — you have Candida here. Well Candida actually competes against Clostridia. And Clostridia actually promotes parasite growth by suppressing that part of the immune system. And parasites can actually drive Candida.

And they go, “I’ve already done a parasite cleanse or a Candida protocol. I’ve already done antifungal medication.” Well cool — guess what? This is being suppressed. Or it’s driving it.

And so you can’t actually get rid of it all. Maybe you got rid of 70%, but 30% was still there. That 30% fed into the next problem, which fed into the next.

And so we have to go through like a Jenga Tower and pull these things apart one by one.

And so simply — what you’re eating and what you’re consuming can help us identify your root causes.

This is what we can do instead. I said at the beginning we’re going to talk about why what you’re eating isn’t fixing your IBD — because we haven’t addressed these root causes. We haven’t addressed the dysbiosis itself. It’s a very complex process. Antibiotics are not going to fix it.

We have to get in there manually.

We said we’d talk about why your diet may or may not be helping — well, that’s because you could be feeding these things, or not doing the things we need to in conjunction to get rid of these root causes. To actually pull them apart in the right order in the Jenga tower, so it can actually tumble down.

We talk about how your food can help indicate what might be causing it. Now, it’s not as simple as going, “Oh I eat fiber, I must have parasites, I have problems.” It could be much more layered than that. But these are things to consider.

This is why we go through our histories and do two interviews and 300 different questions and kind of assess these things.

But how do we reverse the IBD?

It’s a Jenga tower.

So picture we have all these parts and pieces. You got Clostridia, you got parasites, you got fungus, you got mold, you got more parasites down here that are still dormant.

What it looks like — we kind of have to go through — picture it like this: we have to go through and pull out these layers.

So I can get rid of some parasites. Perfect. That looks really good. I'm feeling a little bit better.

Well, I can’t get the rest of my parasites because they’re being blocked by my Candida. I have to go through and fix that fungal issue. Now I can get more parasites.

Now that they’re there, I can get rid of some of this Clostridia. Perfect. Well, that’s revealed another layer of my fungus — and on and on it goes.

And maybe you got more parasites down here. And now there’s other dysbiosis. Now your liver’s all jacked up, and now we have to go and clean out the liver. We have to promote pancreatic health. Now we have to go back and nutrient deficiencies are a problem. And it’s always layering, layering, layering.

It could take a long time.

Now, in the meantime, we want to see if you have any questions.

Well guys — that’s great. There are no questions. So I’ve either done a phenomenal job — or I bored you out of your minds and nobody’s paying attention. Both are super cool.

So that’s where we’re going to wrap it up for the night.

Remember, as a quick recap for this thing: What you’re eating isn’t fixing it because you’re addressing the wrong things. You’re not getting to the root.

Your diet may not help it because it’s layered. There’s too many pieces. Just fixing a diet isn’t always what’s going to fix it. We have to go and find the roots and pull them out and correct the dysfunction.

If your hand was inflamed — if you were impaled by this marker and it was all swollen and infected — and you went to the doctor and got medication, like numbing cream for the pain? It’d be insane. You’d say, “Pull the thing out of my hand.”

We know I’m inflamed to something — so figure out what it is. Pull it out. Your body can heal.

We recognize it on external injuries, but internal — we don’t. It’s like we forget.

The body inflames to something. Not randomly. It’s not genetic. It’s not autoimmune.

If you don’t understand that — you’re new to these lives — ask me. I will prove it to you. It’s not just genetic. It’s not just autoimmune. It’s not just unknown.

I’ve got stories out the wazoo — great pun for this group — about how those things are all BS. It doesn’t make any sense.

And we’ve debunked that dozens and dozens of times — on international TV, podcasts with doctors, the works. And we can show you guys how that’s done as well. Just ask. Ask your questions below.

Okay now — finishing up the recap here:

If your food is indicating to you that you’re creating problems — if you’re feeding fungus, if you’re feeding parasites, if you’re feeding Clostridia — these things are more problematic.

If you’re having oily, greasy, floaty stools, that tells us something. If you’re having certain pain in specific places in the body, that tells us something.

We’ve literally got maybe 120, 130 symptoms in a list of like, “Here are the symptoms that are most likely to cause this problem.” And we go through and figure out your roots.

It can be done. It’s very easy. We reverse these every day.

So on that note, I don’t see any questions — oh! I do have one question, let me see.

Kristen has asked, “What about strep in the gut? GI 360 indicates it.”

I’m not worried about strep.

Staph and strep are two bacteria that are often just overgrown. They’re opportunistic. They love inflamed environments. If you have something causing you a problem, and inflammation is a byproduct of that, staph and strep just like those environments — and they tend to grow more in those acidic environments.

So I’m not worried when I see them. It just shows me you are inflamed.

In fact, the GI map — I used to love them. They used to be the cornerstone of what I’ve done. But over the years, as we’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of people — we probably see 15 people a month that we’re reversing every single month. Fifteen different people — who are reversing it.

And I use GI maps less and less.

So I wouldn’t worry so much about the specific bacteria right now.

What we have to ask is always one layer deeper.

If you’re dealing with an issue right now and you go, “Okay well I’ve got staph and strep problems.” Well, why?

You have them. So you can try to bring them down — they’re just going to grow back the same way they did the first time.

So we have to ask: Why are they overgrown? How did that happen?

Which brings us back to our root cause.

It’s always a layer deeper.

“Well I was on antibiotics and that’s when I became inflamed.” So now you’re inflamed, you got staph, strep — cool. Why were you on antibiotics?

“Well, I had an infection.”

What was the infection from?

“It was in my lungs.”

Okay — so your immune system was suppressed. Why?

“Well, I’ve got all these symptoms: A, B, C, D — and it actually shows that you got fungus.”

How did the fungus get there?

“Well, when I was a baby, I was maybe bottle-fed. And not C — I was a C-section baby. And I ate a lot of garbage.”

Okay — so bacteria didn’t grow. You couldn’t police them.

And so — we’re always going one layer deeper to find that root cause, the thing that started the problem.

And that is how we reverse it. Otherwise we’re always going to be chasing this top layer. It’s always one layer deep until we get right to the base. We pull it out from there.

And that’s how you reverse IBD.

So on that note — I'm going to wrap up because I see no more questions here coming in.

Thanks so much, guys.

And Valerie — I know you caught the live late but don’t sweat it — you can always tune in to the replay.

We’ll see you guys next week.

Thanks for listening.

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