41: Improving Your Mental Health With Crohn's and Colitis

Crohn's and Colitis can cause your mental health to decline severely, and this happens for a number of reasons like quality of life, chemical imbalances and medical trauma.

This episode is dedicated to helping you improver your mental health with some very easy, tangible steps.

TIME STAMPS:
00:00 - Introduction and The Reasons Why IBD Causes Mental Health issues
01:38 - Emotional Trauma vs. Menta Health
03:04 - Gut-Brain Axis vs. Mental Health
05:41 - Systemic Inflammation vs. Mental Health
06:58 - Nutrient Deficiencies vs. Mental Health
08:32 - IBD Treatments/Drugs Causing Mental Health Issues
10:15 - Solutions for Your Mental Health
13:58 - Things to Avoid
15:41 - Basics to help your mental health right now
17:48 - The Gut Brain Connection
19:24 - How to get help reversing your IBD



TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• Why IBD affects your mental health emotionally, biologically and chemically
• The Gut-Brain axis
• How systemic inflammation affects your brain
• IBD medications vs mental health
• Things to avoid that you didn't know could be harming you
• Basics steps and solutions to improve your mental health right now
  
  

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Transcript

Josh Dech:
IBD and mental health is sort of a two-pronged problem. Here's the thing. The mental stress and the physical pain, all these things that you have to go through with IBD — your doctor telling you that it's this lifelong condition — and the emotions connected to that are enough for one person to have to deal with.

But on top of that, there's biological, biochemical problems that your gut creates too — or creates for your brain — and causes it to go out of whack and makes you feel a lot out of sorts. Depression. Anxiety. The works.

And so today we're going to be talking about managing or improving your mental health when dealing with IBD. We're going to be covering two categories here today. Number one is going to be the major five things that are acting against your mental health when you have IBD. The second is going to be some very simple, very tangible steps you can take today to improve your mental health and start feeling like yourself again.

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.

If you don't know me already — my name is Josh Deck. I'm an IBD specialist, medical lecturer, and physicians’ consultant. And I'm also the scientific strategist and education director for the Root Cause for Crohn's Colitis organization.

Josh Dech:
So here's what we're going to get into right now. I want to talk about the five reasons why you have mental health issues when you're dealing with IBD.

We're going to go through each of these things, because mental health is very real. It's connected to your gut. It's connected to your brain. And once you understand why you're dealing with these issues, you're going to be able to understand what you can do to actually fix, repair, and reverse these things.

Let’s talk about the five major reasons.

Five reasons that you are dealing with mental health issues: depression, anxiety, insomnia, fatigue, irritability, right?

1. Emotional Trauma

First thing: there's of course the emotional side of IBD. This one's very real.

When we're dealing with really powerful, confusing or frustrating emotions — like emotional traumas or medical trauma — with chronic illness, because these diseases can be unpredictable...

That was an amazing sneeze. I have a wiener dog down here, if you heard that. They're just going to fight for the next hour. So if you guys hear them in the background — it's two dogs having fun. You'll be fine.

So we have the emotional trauma, right? Chronic illness. It's unpredictable. It's painful. You could be in the hospital today, tomorrow, for weeks on end... or not at all. You don't know. Hospital stays. Surgeries. Isolation that comes from it. Social isolation. Not being able to go out and do things.

The health anxiety attached is a lot of emotional stress which can leave you feeling emotionally exhausted, irritable, depressed. That’s the very real side of it.

2. Gut-Brain Axis Dysfunction

Now this is pretty much where it starts and stops from the personal emotional sides attached to disease.

Now every situation’s unique, but there's four really important things of our five right now that we're going to be talking about that are driving you physiologically to have the mood situations you're in.

And they are having a great time down there. I love this for them. That’s fine.

Here, I’m just going to — just so you guys can hear... them. Perfect. You can't see them, but you can hear them.

All right. So let’s continue getting into this.

The next issue we have that's driving your moods and your mental issues is going to be what we call the gut-brain axis.

What does this mean?

Your gut and your brain are communicating with each other all the time. Let me back it up for you — they come from the same place and same tissues.

In utero, there's something called the primitive disc. It's built sort of like this triangular, circular thing, and it's got these connective tissues — kind of looks like an awkward stick — but anyway...

What happens between the 17th and 18th day of development as a fetus in your mother’s womb, this thing called the primitive streak — this is actually neurological tissue — it splits, it elongates, and it divides to become your brain and your gut.

Really cool piece of biological tech.

And from there, you develop 85 billion neurons inside of your brain and 500 million inside of your gut.

Now, from this point forward, those two organ systems are talking to each other from that point forward forever.

They communicate through nerves. You have the vagus nerve that comes from the brain down, innervates to your gut. You have those 500 million neurons in your gut that go back to your spine and up to your brain.

They share chemical signals — we call them neurotransmitters — and those are mostly made, 90 percent, inside of your gut.

So you got your GABA — that’s like your feel-good, calm, relaxed, chill out, right? Your down-regulator.

You have serotonin — happy, feel-good.

Dopamine is created — that’s one of those things that gets you driving, motivational, makes you feel really amazing.

Those come from your gut. And that’s the neurotransmitters. 90% are made there.

Well, if you have dysfunction because your gut-brain axis is messed up, you have inflammation of that vagus nerve that goes from your brain and connects down into your gut.

If this is all inflamed, your signals are inflamed as well. Simple as that.

You have these 85 billion-plus neurons getting a mixed-up signal. Chemicals. Nerves. Signals travel up and down that highway and even from your gut back into your spine into your brain.

So you have this whole circular pathway — upways, downways, leftways and sideways — all screwed up.

But it comes back to your gut. And that inflammation from your gut can travel up these nerve signals — inflammatory cytokines and all kinds of stuff — and disrupt these chemical signals.

So your brain is not getting those feel-good chemicals. Hormones. Neurotransmitters. Molecules. All those things. It's not getting them like it should be, because the signaling pathway — the road — is all screwed up. Drivers can't get where they need to go.

3. Systemic Inflammation

That's the next one.

The third reason we're dealing with mental health issues — the third reason we're dealing with mental health issues when we have IBD — is going to be what we call systemic inflammation.

The good news is, we have a very happy puppy. She's four months old.

You know what — we may as well just bring her up here and introduce her to everybody, since she's being such a terror.

All right, come here.

You guys are going to meet our puppy since she's making herself the star of the show today. This is Callie. Oh look who's quiet now. This little hooligan.

Look at — look at that face.

Oh, there we go. That sounds about right. Unhand me! There you go.

So that's Callie.

Let’s talk about systemic inflammation.

Again, we talk about these pro-inflammatory cytokines, right? They cross your blood-brain barrier — it's this really multi-layered, very thick net or thick-knit mesh that protects your brain from things that shouldn't be there — and they cross the blood-brain barrier, inflaming your brain.

They alter your brain chemistry and your brain function. And this directly links to depression, anxiety, insomnia, mood swings, schizophrenia, bipolar, ADHD symptoms, all the above.

Even autism comes from neuroinflammation. It all comes back — if you got brain — that’s a big, big issue.

4. Nutrient Deficiencies

The next thing we see is malabsorption of nutrients.

Especially in Crohn's disease — with the small intestine where most things are broken down and absorbed — but also in colitis, we see malabsorption of nutrients.

This happens because your gut lining is highly inflamed. That’s where things need to get broken down. Enzymes are produced. You have bacteria living there that break things down and produce vitamins and amino acids and all kinds of goodies for you.

And if your gut lining is highly inflamed, and you're unable to properly digest, break down, absorb, and have things cross the blood-brain barrier — or, or absorb rather to get into your blood where they need to go — you're going to be sick.

So common deficiencies that we end up seeing when we're dealing with gut issues like this are going to be some real basics.

I'm going to put B12 because that's a common one, but generally speaking — most B vitamins.

A methylated B complex goes a long way when we're dealing with these types of things.

We also have magnesium, iron, zinc, and even copper can be a bit of a mess because the zinc-copper balance — and supplementing some of these things — can be great.

We also want to look at amino acids.

Tryptophan, for example, is an amino acid that gets converted into serotonin. If your gut’s inflamed, you’re not breaking down, digesting, absorbing these proteins to break them down into your amino acids to convert into neurotransmitters like serotonin — of course you’re going to feel like trash.

These deficiencies can mimic symptoms like insomnia. They can mimic depression. Cognitive decline — looks like early-onset Alzheimer’s. Chronic fatigue.

All of this can come from inflammation and lack of nutrients.

5. Prescription Medications

So the next thing we want to talk about is actually going to be the treatments for IBD — which is going to be prescription medication.

Particularly steroids.

Did you know corticosteroids — like prednisone — they are well known to cause mood swings, insomnia, agitation, even in some cases mania and psychosis?

Right? These biologics — they alter your brain chemistry.

These big immunosuppressives — they also make you more prone to infection, which again, can alter your mood. And all of it impacts the emotional well-being.

Being told you’re on medication for life — biologics — those are scary as hell.

Of course you’re going to have some issues there.

They constantly cause issues with the gut-brain axis.

The best analogy I use all the time is — look. If you step on a nail and it goes through your foot and your doctor gives you numbing cream for the pain for the rest of your life — or offers to cut off your foot — it’s not a solution.

When you have bowel disease that’s inflamed because something is inflaming you — it doesn’t happen randomly — and then your doctor just gives you medication to numb the pain? It doesn’t get rid of the problem.

So we have to consider — is that by just using immunosuppressives, your body’s not going to get or feel better. It’s going to drive a lot of issues this way.

So ultimately, these drugs, the situation, the inflammation, the infections, the microbes, the deficiencies — all compound to affect emotional well-being.

Your gut-brain axis, systemic inflammation, which makes its way to your bones, skin, joints, brain — all the above.

Lack of nutrients mimics mental health issues and can very much look like insomnia, schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, anxiety — all the above.

And then of course prescription medications — like steroids especially — are also well-linked to mood disorders, destabilization.

Josh Dech:
So the question we got to ask now is — what can we do about it?

It’s one thing to talk about it. That’s the boring stuff.

Let’s give me the good stuff.

Like let’s talk about some sexy solutions here that are going to get you better right now...

At this stage, if you’ve listened to more than one or two episodes — whether you’re on the podcast, watching on YouTube, or here live on social media — you’ll know I’m an advocate for root causes.

No disease, no inflammatory process comes from nowhere. We’ve shown that a hundred times over. It just doesn’t happen. You can’t inflame for no reason. Inflammation is your body protecting you.

So what can we do?

Step One: Find the Root Cause

Obviously, the number one thing we want to do is figure out your root cause.

Now, if you're here and you got some questions — live, wherever you are — drop them in the chat. We’re going to get to you guys, I promise that. I just want to make sure that you guys know, you do have a chance to ask questions, okay?

So, root cause. If we don’t know why you’re inflamed, you’re forever chasing symptoms. You’re forever chasing whatever.

And then we go on these anti-inflammatories. I hear it all the time, "I tried natural."
 No, you didn’t.
 You tried plant-based medication.
You didn’t go after the root cause and fix the problem. You tried natural anti-inflammatories. If that’s all you want — do it. Get the drugs. That’s it. Get the drugs.

The vitamins, minerals, plants can help support that, but — get the drugs. Get the good stuff. But until we get the root cause, you’ll be dependent on something.

So we have to go after that. It’s number one.

Step Two: Use Binders

Number two — a great way we can manage some of this gently and slowly is going to be binders.

What is a binder?

It’s not the flippy thing you have in school. It collects. It grabs. It binds onto toxins.

Much of the reason we’re inflamed — we have microbes, parasites, bacteria, fungus — whatever it is, they’re causing inflammation. And those byproducts they produce are known as endotoxins, biotoxins, or LPS.

These toxins leak through your gut. They inflame everything else. They get around your body and inflame your brain.

If you can capture these with binders, then you can prevent them from getting absorbed — or reduce the level of absorption.

Now again, by just binding them — what we’re not doing is actively going after the root cause. We’re just putting water on an active fire. We still have to turn off the gas leak.

But binders can look like zeolite, bentonite clay — you gotta be careful with those, can be a bit rough.

But humic and fulvic acid, chlorella, even spirulina if it’s okay,
Saccharomyces boulardii is a yeast-based probiotic.
We can look at things like modified citrus pectin, okra fibers or okra powder — there’s all kinds of goodies we can get that’ll bind onto junk and toxins.

But we want to go slow. Because you can bind too quickly and make yourself very sick. So be careful if you’re using those.

Step Three: Replenish Nutrients

Another one we can look at is replacing the nutrients, because remember — we talked about nutrient deficiencies sort of imitating disease conditions.

So what can we do?

Well, basics. You can get a nice vitamin and mineral supplement, or we can get either a complete amino acid supplement or EAAs — they’re called Essential Amino Acids. What your body needs from external sources it can’t make on its own.

Vitamins and minerals — ones we talked about — B12, magnesium, iron.
I don’t love oral iron because it’s just metal shavings. Like, there’s liquid forms and stuff you can get a bit easier.

Eat lots of meat if you digest it well.
Zinc, amino acids — these are going to be great to help build things back up.

Common amino acids like L-theanine can be very nice. You can also get a GABA supplement. That’s G-A-B-A.

Now I don’t recommend taking it all the time, because you can bounce back the other way. But if you’re having an extra bad day, a little GABA can go a long way.

Curcumin, omegas — these can help calm the inflammation and give your body a chance to just relax while supplying some of the basics that it needs to feel good and perform better.

Things to Avoid

We also want to avoid a few things.

What we want to not do is make your situation worse, because it’s going to inflame the gut. It’s going to jack up your brain.

Avoid caffeine. Avoid stimulants.

I know you’re tired. I know you’re exhausted. But you need to avoid the caffeine.

Try to find a 5 to 10-minute power nap instead. Maybe some nootropics that can help. But caffeine — it actually inhibits certain things in your brain, leaving you to be stimulated, so your brain can’t calm down. And the rebound is that it gets stimulated instead.

So you want to be careful with that because you’ll really mess up your brain chemistry.

Of course, by going after the root cause, we’re also going to be getting repair to your gut lining. This is huge.

Remember what happens when you’re inflamed — you have all these toxins, these bad guys leaking from your gut. And all these toxins they produce go through the leaks in your gut lining. They get out into your bloodstream and lymphatic system, circulate around the body, landing in your brain and other places, causing inflammation.

If we can heal and seal this gut lining — now there are lots of supplements to aid in that. But again, until you get to the root cause, it’s like building a house while it’s currently on fire. You’re trying to repair quicker than it breaks down.

There’s lots of things that can do this.

Slippery elm, DGL, aloe vera... You can get into BPC-157 — it's a peptide. Or larazotide is another peptide. They’re great for the gut lining. They can be very helpful — but expensive.

So if you’re just throwing expensive stuff to try to patch it faster than it breaks down, you’re missing the mark here. But it can sometimes be an interim solution until you can fully get to the root cause, which of course I’d be happy to help you with — just reach out.

Lifestyle Fixes: Light, Sleep, and EMFs

Other things we want to look for — things that are actively contributing to even the breakdown of a healthy body.

Consider for a minute — we have things like sleep and light.

Your sleep is largely based on your circadian rhythm — we call it your sleep-wake. "When I get tired, when I’m awake" — is based on light and digestion.

Eating too close to bedtime? It’s going to wake you up. You’re going to have trouble sleeping.

If you are somebody who’s got blue lights shining in your face, laptops open? Problem.

Get blue light blocking glasses. I have these orange ones. If I’m working late — beyond 5 or 6 PM — I put these on like a doofus over top of my glasses. And these block out a lot of the blue light, allowing my natural circadian rhythm to produce melatonin, etc.

And then when the sun’s down, I have really dark red ones to block out the bright blue lights, which really helps with sleep and circadian rhythm.

And believe it or not — EMFs. Electromagnetic fields. This is going to be your Wi-Fi, your cell phone.

Turn your phone on airplane mode. I put mine on airplane mode and I tuck it in a Faraday pouch. I got them on Amazon. I got two of them for 15 bucks. They work great. Blocks all the signals coming to and from — which disrupt your cellular health, your circadian rhythm.

And if you’ve got fungus and mold in your gut, these EMFs — these Wi-Fi signals that you have — like turn off your Wi-Fi router — they actually promote the growth of mold by 500%. They speed it up that much.

So these signals can really negatively affect your body. Like crazy. Dramatically.

Sunlight, Fresh Air, and Water

So those are some great hot tips.

Other things you can do — speaking of light — sunlight.
Windows open. Open the blinds during the day. Get outside when you can. Sit near a window if you can.

Getting basic sunlight, opening the windows for fresh air, getting a water distiller — just basic light, air, and water is huge.

If you can invest 200, 300 bucks for a little home countertop water distiller — all the difference in the world. The fluoride, the chlorine, all the junk that’s in the water comes right out.

And you can just put a pinch of clean sea salt in there — like Redmond’s or something — that’s a great way to go.

So again — sunlight, fresh air, and a water distiller.

Stimulating the Vagus Nerve

Now let’s talk about the nerves.

So remember we talked about this gut-brain connection?

Let’s stimulate that vagus nerve. This is great for stress responses, great for calming.

That can look like breathwork, it can look like humming or singing, vibration — all kinds of goodies that can stimulate that vagus nerve — and that’s really going to help you chill out.

It also can help relax your gut.

This vagus nerve actually comes down from your brain — and what it does is:
One, it’s thick — like a bass guitar string. You could actually pluck it — it’s really quite thick — and it spreads out almost like a horse’s tail.

And it innervates into your gut, your heart, your lungs — those big central organs — and they’re constantly talking to each other.

So getting a signal or vibration to chill it out is a great way to relax that.

Somatic Release & Emotional Detox

And then you have stuff like somatic release, right?
Talk therapy, even like shaking, jumping, vibration.

You ever see when dogs fight? They shake after. That’s not them because they’re super anxious — that’s their nervous system.

Somatic release, it’s called. As your body lets things go, those shakes are huge. Great way to get rid of some things.

Mental Health Tools & Final Thoughts

And of course things like journaling, dealing with the mental psychological aspect of these stress responses.

Everything’s got a root — that’s always what we want to focus on.

I know some of these conversations can sound great, but I never want to be mistaken for saying, “Here’s a solution.”

I get people all the time — in one breath I’ll say, “We need a root,” but here’s some things to help.

And they go, “Oh, Josh thinks IBD could be cured with curcumin.”

So literally I said the opposite of that.

There’s a lot more to it. But there are root causes.

Getting Help

So here’s what I want to get at.

If you need help, I’m going to tell you how to reach me for each platform.

What we’re going to do — we’re going to connect with each other, we’ll jump on a call, we’ll talk to see if our Gut Health Solution Program is a good fit for you.

If it is — amazing. We’d love to help you.
 If it’s not — that’s okay too. We’re just here to help and give you some answers.

So here’s how you can get in touch.
 We’ll see what we can do. Walk you through. Find your root cause and unravel this, because it didn’t come from nowhere.

Your genetics don’t flip on like a light switch one day and your gut body goes, “Yeah we’re mad now, let’s be inflamed.”
No. It doesn’t happen.

Our job is to figure out where it’s coming from, why it’s happening, and reverse it — so you are no longer inflamed. Your body heals itself.

It’s as easy as that.

Closing Notes

If you’re watching on YouTube or you’re listening on the podcast, there’s a link below in the video — or below the podcast — where you can drop in and just grab a thing right from there.

We’ll be able to get you guys some help — there’s a link to book a call, email address, the works.

Q&A with Cat Davis

Now let’s go over to Facebook, ’cause apparently I’m not live on Instagram.

Cat Davis asks:
“Can IBD cause severely painful periods and painful ovulation?”

Josh:
Yes it can.

So let’s deal with Cat’s question one at a time.

Can IBD cause severely painful periods and painful ovulation?
Yeah — dramatically.

Here’s why.

One — your hormones largely regulate your periods. Your PMS symptoms, whether you have them or not — breast tenderness, water retention, anxiety, depression, moods — all that is tied back to your hormones.

What controls hormones?

Of course, your natural production, but also your regulation of hormones.

And your gut and your liver are both screwed up when you have IBD. And those are huge regulatory and balancing points for your hormones.

So if you're having issues there — it's going to be another problem.

On top of that — if you look at the anatomy of it — I know we look at a chart, like with gynecology, and you've got these really nice laid-out organs. You know, the ovaries over here, the uterus there — everything looks really nice.

In reality?
 If you were to cut somebody open, it’s all mashed together like hamburger meat.

Your organs are all laying on top of each other. They’re squished in there — nice and tight. They don’t lay out nicely like a textbook.

And so what happens when everything's all mashed together?

We have what’s called translocation.

So you get inflammation in your bowel — that creates leaks. Those toxins, those inflammatory byproducts, the cytokines — all of that leaks from your intestines and they directly translocate into your reproductive organs, causing inflammation.

So 100 percent it can cause that problem.

Second Question: Eggs and Acne

And the follow-up question was:
 “I seem to have an IgG allergy to eggs. I get symptoms — inflammatory acne. Should I ever eat eggs again, or could it heal in time?”

Let’s talk about that.

I’ll tell you from experience — it can heal in time.

I used to never be able to touch eggs.
I was highly inflamed — parasites, candida, massive leaky gut, 15 bowel movements a day, 10-minute transit times, blood, mucus — the works in my stool.

I felt horrible. Lost nearly 30 pounds. I was a train wreck.

One egg. Half of an egg. Whatever. Light me up.
 A bite of an egg — I’d have acne all over my body. Up my neck, down my back, down my arms. I even got it on my wrists. I was just covered in it.

But as my gut healed, those proteins weren’t leaking into my gut in large quantities, and my immune system calmed down.

So did my responses.

Now I can happily eat things containing eggs. I still don’t eat whole eggs. I probably have a ways to go still — many years for my gut to fully heal — but it’s a great place to start.

So these can heal.

Josh Dech:
Here’s the thing — so many people come in with food sensitivities where they can’t eat certain things.

But that’s a sensitivity, right?

Like, one day I can eat eggs, the next I can’t. That’s not an allergy. That is a sensitivity.

Allergies are not transient.
They’re either there or they’re not.

What happens is — you have these leaks in your gut.
Some days they’ll be extra big leaks, some days they’ll be a lot smaller. It just depends.

And so based on what your body’s going through — your immune responses, how high things are or are not that day — it’s going to be different for you.

Some days you can eat them. Some days you can’t.

Which means one day — as you heal and seal this gut lining and calm your immune responses — you should be able to eat eggs without a hitch.

Josh Dech:
So on that note guys — sorry Instagram — I pressed live and I didn’t press it good enough I guess.

But that’s it for what we’ve got for you.

All done. That’s all we got for you guys today.

Thanks so much for being here, and we’re going to see you all on the next one.

[Outro Music Fades In]

Josh Dech:
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.

Because I promise you — this doesn’t have to be a lifelong sentence.
You’re not doomed to this.

IBD can be reversed.