43: True Stories of People Who Have Reversed Their IBD So You Can Do It Too

Crohn's and Colitis are reversible and today, you're going to hear some stories of those who reversed their bowel disease, what their root causes were, the steps they took and how their bowels are doing today.


TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• True stories of those who reversed IBD
• The most common root causes
• The steps needed to reverse Crohn's and Colitis
  
  

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Transcript

Josh Dech:

Reversing IBD, it’s really easy in theory. But we have to ask, what does it look like in practice? And so I’m going to share with you today some real stories of clients that we’ve seen who have reversed their IBD so you can learn how to do it too. You’re going to hear about their symptoms, we’ll get into root causes and what drove their IBD, and of course, the steps we took to get them better — so you can do it too.

Contrary to what your doctors told you, Crohn’s and colitis are reversible. Now I’ve helped hundreds of people reverse their bowel disease, and I’m here to help you do it too. Because inflammation always has a root cause — we just have to find it.

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

Now if you don’t know me, my name is Josh Dech. I’m an IBD specialist, a medical lecturer, and physicians’ consultant, as well as a scientific strategist and education director for the Root Cause for Crohn’s Colitis organization.

And today we are talking about real stories of people who have reversed their Crohn’s and colitis — and what you can do as well. Now some of these names are real names, some have been changed just because the information provided here isn’t necessarily public to their story, so for their protection I’ve changed those names.

But here’s what we’re going to get into. First, let’s talk about each individual. I’m going to go through six different stories with you so you can know what drove their IBD, the symptoms they were experiencing, what their diagnosis was, the root causes, the steps we took to get them better, and of course where they’re at now in their lives.

First one we’re going to talk about here — one of my favorite stories of all time — comes from our very own Billy Jean.

Now Billy Jean came in to see us — 47 years old — she was a nurse and she’s been dealing with severe ulcerative colitis for over 15 years. Most of that time, of her 15 years, she spent on heavy immunosuppressants like Entyvio.

Because of that, because of what was driving her IBD, she was experiencing acid reflux, anxiety, she had asthma, arthritis, skin cancer — so much so, the Entyvio led to the skin cancer. It’s a side effect. And she would just get one or two cut out a year. But after years, there was 20, 30 popping up. She even had to run through chemo.

So she’s dealing with that cancer, she had depression, allergies, headaches — and again — severe, crippling ulcerative colitis.

Billy Jean had things inside of her, right? There are three reasons we get sick. Some kind of toxin, some kind of deficiency, and some kind of microbe. Those umbrellas are the three reasons we get sick.

Now she was dealing with mold and parasites — two extraordinarily common causes or layers to IBD.

So what do we have to do to get Billy Jean better?

Number one, we had to go through drainage. Drainage is your exit doors. We know what detoxing is — it’s collecting the trash inside of your body. But drainage is bringing it out to the curb.

So we had to open up her drainage pathways — liver, gallbladder, bile ducts — we had to open this up. We had to test her home and her environment, figure out where the mold was coming from.

Now she did have to do some remediation. She got some air purifiers, opened the windows and dealt with that to clean the environment that was making her sick.

Now mold is a prime environment for parasites to come in and cause problems. So we had to work on that. She got a water filter, cleaned that up, and we went through drainage.

Then, as we’re moving all this toxicity out of her body, we had to go through and use binders. Universal binders like zeolite, fulvic acid, humic acid, bentonite clay — even charcoal can be useful. Certain probiotics like Saccharomyces boulardii can be binders, and they capture some of these toxins — so very, very helpful in this process.

So we did drainage, we had to use binders to gather all the toxins. Now in IBD, we have certain stages or arms — we’ll say — pathways of your immune system that are hyperactive, some that are underactive.

We had to balance her immune system to calm down that inflammation. And then, as the mold was leaving her system, she started getting rashes and hives and itching. And we identified parasites as the next layer her body was now dealing with.

We removed those. Got them out of her system. And then we cleaned up the residual damage to her immune system and pathways.

And then we had, of course, to rebuild and repair her gut lining — the integrity of her gut microbiome — so that her body could then rebalance itself.

Today, Billy Jean is 100% symptom free. She has no IBD. No signs of cancer. No more chemotherapy. No asthma. No arthritis. Nothing.

Perfectly healthy. Off drugs. And thriving.

After 15 years of being on it, we had to identify the mold. We had to identify the parasites. And remove them appropriately.

Next one we’re going to be talking about is going to be Larissa.

Also — guess what — you’re going to see this pattern a lot. Mold and parasites.

Larissa’s story — you can actually find these two on YouTube. We were able to get a nice recording and edit those down. It just takes a lot of time, but those are available on YouTube.

Larissa came to see us — 44 years old. Crippling colitis.

In fact, our first call together — as our assessment together — she was on the toilet during that time. She was so severe, she had to get up and have a bowel movement during our first 20-minute call.

She was that regular. That frequent. That severe. She was always in the bathroom and often described her life — she’s chained to the toilet. That she’d move a TV in there and just live there if she could.

Every colonoscopy she was getting had gotten worse and worse.

In fact, she came in after many years. She was diagnosed in 2013. She came in September of 2023 it was. And she had gone into her doctor, got a colonoscopy — it was incredibly severe. She failed all the drugs. Nothing was working.

She came back again in February and again had another colonoscopy — and it was again even worse. And it was around March or May they did another scope — which was yet again worse.

And then she had come in, started a 16-week protocol. Guess what we found. Mold and parasites.

We did a very similar process to Billy Jean — drainage, liver, gallbladder, bile ducts, binders for the toxins.

We rebalanced her immune system. Got rid of the parasites. Cleaned up the damage they had caused. And rebuilt and repaired the gut lining and the gut microbiome.

It was that simple.

She was dealing with crying and pain every single morning. She had described the pain in her bowels as like squirrels with razor blades running around.

She was chained to the bathroom. Chronic stress. Thought she was dying. Dealing with anxiety. Chronic dizziness. Joint pain. All of that.

But after going through the process of removing mold and parasites and rebuilding her gut — symptom free.

Now, it wasn’t as easy. 16 weeks — I have this on my Instagram if you’re here watching now — it’s one pinned at the top. You can see the colonoscopy report.

But 16 weeks, her colonoscopy was perfect.

And Curtis, one of our practitioners, had taken her on as a client for that time. Colonoscopy was nearly perfect after 16 weeks.

From going from 2013, getting worse and worse and worse.

Now that being said, this is gold standard. Doesn’t always go as quickly as 16 weeks. But it’s what’s possible.

But it took her many months after that to rebalance her immune system and get her body back to check.

And she’ll be many years of just getting things rebalanced. But now — she’s symptom free.

When her colonoscopy — their doctor said, “We need to remove this.”

Next one we’re talking about is going to be Jeff.

Now I’ve changed this one just for anonymity and of course protecting the family here — cause it’s a bit of a sad story.

But Jeff was 33, diagnosed with Crohn’s. Really severe bleeding. 20-plus bowel movements a day.

Again — chained to the toilet.

He described his pain as “agony” — that was the word he chose.

He actually developed colon cancer from this one. Severe pain, gas, bloody stool, lots of bloating, weight loss, energy loss — the works.

He was dealing with a lot of issues.

Now his root causes — remember, we get sick because of toxins, infections, or some kind of deficiency.

For Billy Jean and Larissa, it was mold and parasites. That’s your toxin and that’s your microbe.

For Jeff — his deficiencies and his toxins are what made him sick.

So he was dealing with a whole bunch of stuff. There was a lot of alcohol abuse — 10, 20 times a week he was drinking something, some kind of alcohol consumption.

There was a long history of drug use and drug abuse, which led to toxicity, which led to bacterial dysbiosis — bad guys got in, overgrew, caused problems, led to SIBO.

Which we could connect, again, possibly to parasites. But for him, it was primarily alcohol and drugs.

Now we were able to get in there — after about 12 weeks’ time, the symptoms had reduced.

After about 5 months’ time, he had cancer tumors that were something like 14 cm — reduced down to 2 or 3 cm in just a couple months’ time.

The inflammation was removing, and that’s what he was getting the benefit from.

Again, we went through drainage — liver, gallbladder, bile ducts — opened them up.

We removed all the overgrowth of bacteria, all the toxins. Started to reverse the damage from a long time — a decade plus — of drug use and abuse and alcohol consumption.

We rebuilt and repaired the gut lining and started to rebalance the immune system.

Now he was temporarily symptom free. He was off all his medication. The cancer reduced by 80%.

Unfortunately — he did end up dying from a drug overdose.

So we don’t know where he’s at today or where he could be at today. But this is the power of what can be done when you find your root cause.

Next one we’re going to talk about here is going to be Louie.

Louie came in to see us — he was 60 years old at the time. And he had this for 17 years.

Really severe ulcerative colitis.

And this is the one I talk about often — we had the pleasure of actually working with him on Doug Kaufman’s Know the Cause on international TV to share his story.

17 years of severe Crohn’s — or severe ulcerative colitis.

7 to 10 bowel movements a day. He was in agony with his bowel movements. He’d be sweating and have tears in his eyes because of the pain he was going through every single day.

His diagnoses were ulcerative colitis and acid reflux, or GERD. His doctors just gave him some pills for that.

His root causes led to a lot of different things.

Early on he was dealing with parasites, and he dealt with some fungal overgrowth issues like candida.

This ended up leading to his liver being sludged up — being toxic.

Which led to sludgy bile, which led to his gallbladder having stones.

They ended up removing his gallbladder.

Because of the gallbladder and everything that was already overgrown, he wasn’t digesting fats properly.

What we had to do was go back through his system, reverse engineer this.

He was getting hyper fermentation. He was having bile acid dumping into his gut — he wasn’t able to sustain it.

So what did we do?

We went back — of course — drainage once again. There’s the word. Liver, gallbladder, bile ducts.

We had to remove what would have been sludging up his gallbladder to begin with.

Because even though he’s got no gallbladder — his bile ducts still exist in the liver. And he still has a common bile duct from the pancreas.

We had to move a bunch of stuff around.

So we had to open his drainage. We had to replace his bile — because he had no gallbladder. He wasn’t getting adequate bile.

So we actually used a digestive supplement containing ox bile — that is an animal-based bile supplement that you can take.

And of course, we had to go through and remove the problems — the candida, the parasites — that were driving his problems.

And then it was a matter of simply rebuilding and repairing his gut lining and gut microbiome.

And Louie here was now 100% symptom free.

But because he had his gallbladder removed, he is now on a lifetime supplement — a digestive enzyme support that has ox bile in it to help him aid his mechanical digestion.

Because his body will never do it again. Because of course, he has no gallbladder. That’s it.

He just came back from Greece a year or two ago. Walking, flying, living, eating pizza — and had some wine.

He’s not abusing it, but he’s eating and living his life normally.

I touched base with him a few months ago — completely symptom free.

It’s been years. No signs of Crohn’s or colitis. He almost died. They planned his funeral three times.

And here he is — living his best life.

We just had to find out what the slow onset for his colitis was, what led to these issues, and then remove them and reverse them, and then patch the holes in his physiology — which was again his gallbladder.

Next one we’re going to talk about is going to be Jen.

Now Jen came to see us — 21-year-old female. Jen was lovely to work with. She was willing to do the work.

Diagnosed with colitis — you’ll notice Crohn’s is a little bit more rare here. It just is. Colitis is much more common.

But Jen was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis.

She was dealing with eczema. She had a lot of hair loss. She had anemia, so her iron was very, very low.

A lot of anxiety, headaches. Her immune system was really challenged — she was getting colds every 2-3 months. She’d get the flu.

She was dealing with menstrual issues, breast tenderness, PMS, a lot of weight gain, bloating, constipation, mood swings — the works.

She was dealing with all of this around her cycle.

Her root causes were not mold, were not parasites.

They were actually dietary.

So she was eating a lot of chicken McNuggets and a lot of McDonald’s. Eating a lot of processed food, fast food, refined foods — anything out of a box or a freezer. Rarely cooked for herself.

This developed what we call dysbiosis — it’s an imbalance of gut bacteria. The bad guys overgrow, the good guys die off.

That toxified her body. It led to inflammation and high levels of immune responses, which led to inflammation in the gut, which broke down her gut till she had ulcers in her colon.

It’s like getting a blister in a pair of shoes — wear your socks or don’t. One will get you blisters, one will not.

It’s that simple. And that’s what happened with her — food.

Now she was able to heal and come back from this — but I’ll get to her in a second.

We had to go through and change her diet. We had to go through and change her lifestyle — more fresh air, more exercise, more movement, get the lymphatic system moving.

Of course, drainage.

We had to remove the problem as well, which was diet. So we fixed that, repaired the gut microbiome.

Now she had healed. Gone, had her colonoscopy reports done. She was feeling amazing.

She came back a couple of years later — and now most people look at her and go, “Well, I told you it’s just in remission. You never cured anything.”

I can’t legally use the word anyway — but there’s no cure. “It was just remission.”

Well — when Jen had come back after a number of years, she had gained about 80 pounds.

She was back to eating horribly.

And then at this stage — again — diet-induced ulcerative colitis.

But then she had adapted another layer, which was also a parasitic infection, which we see a lot of.

And we started removing those — and guess what?

She got better again.

Simple as that.

Remove the parasites. Change the food. Fix the problem.

Lost a ton of weight. Feeling amazing. Energy’s up.

Weird that food impacts your digestive system.

She is symptom free.

No supplements needed because she does have her gallbladder, unlike Louie. And there’s a lot of benefits here.

Here’s what I’m getting at.

Every case of Crohn’s or colitis has a root cause. Every case.

You cannot become inflamed for absolutely no reason.

It just doesn’t happen. That’s not the way your body works.

Inflammation is a temporary measure to heal you from something. We just have to ask what your body’s healing you from.

There are three reasons we get sick.

We have some kind of toxin.

Now toxins are a big, big umbrella. Toxins can be pesticides, it can be mold or those mycotoxins, it can be heavy metals, it can be any kind — high chronic stress, high blood sugar over long periods of time.

All kinds of toxins — VOCs, smells from paint and formaldehyde or a brand new car — all these things are toxic. Microplastics.

They fit under the toxin umbrella.

And then of course we have deficiencies.

Now deficiencies — exercise, sunlight, fresh air — but primarily vitamins, minerals, amino acids — basic building blocks that your body needs to heal itself.

When we have deficiencies and we’re breaking down — we have nothing left to build back up.

So you have toxins, which inflame you, which lead to deficiencies of nutrients because your body’s going through its resources to try to heal and repair you.

That’s another problem.

The third reason we get sick is going to be because of microbes.

So we have toxins — which actually create inflammation leading to micro overgrowth.

We have deficiencies — which can happen because of toxins. And toxins create deficiencies.

We have microbes, which can be toxic because they produce toxic byproducts. And these toxic byproducts reduce your deficiencies — or create deficiencies, reducing your nutrients.

So we have this circle.

Toxins and deficiencies can create each other. Contribute toxins to microbes and microbes to deficiencies.

These are the three reasons we get sick.

Microbes are some kind of virus, parasite, bacteria, fungus — some kind of microbe.

Toxins. Deficiencies. Microbes.

That’s why we get sick.

Every one of these stories — Billy Jean, she had mold, she had parasites — that is toxins, that is microbes.

Larissa — same thing. Mold and parasites. Toxins and microbes.

Jeff was dealing with deficiencies and toxicities, which also contributed to what was probably microbes — SIBO and parasite.

Then we have Louie — 60 years old. He dealt with microbial overgrowth, which toxified his body, leading to his gallbladder being removed, which contributed to nutrient deficiencies and again, more toxins and microbial overgrowth.

Jen — same thing. 27 years old. Was eating a poor diet, which contributed to toxins in the processed and refined foods.

She had nutrient deficiencies because processed, refined, artificial food is not dense in vitamins and minerals — which led to microbial overgrowth, dysbiosis.

She got healed. She came back. Started eating poorly again. Had more toxins in her body. More deficiencies — which led to parasitic infection.

We get sick for three reasons — toxins, deficiencies, and microbes.

If we can figure out what layers of these things have created your illness and your disease, Crohn’s and colitis are very reversible conditions.

Every one of them can be explained, and there’s a simple process to remove them.

We have to go through drainage, and then our 5R protocol, which we’ve talked about extensively on other episodes.

To run you through it really quickly, the 5Rs are going to be very easy.

Now we’re going to put D for drainage — that’s going to be always.

We have to remove the problem.

If we cannot remove the problem, it’s like trying to empty the bathtub while the water is still running. It’s going to continue to make an issue.

So we have to remove the problem.

Then we want to Replenish.

Replenish what? Well, sometimes it’s microbes. Sometimes it’s nutrients. We have to replenish the things that are low. It’s as simple as that.

Then we want to Repair the gut lining. That’s going to keep the immune responses down, keep your body healthy. It’s going to give the microbes a nice place to live.

Then we want to, of course, Rebuild that microbiome — get those microbes back to where they need to be.

And then it’s Rejuvenate the immune system.

Not “boost.” If it’s boosting, you already got imbalances. We need to rejuvenate — which means bring back to normal.

And that’s what your body needs when it’s trying to heal itself.

We have to do Drainage and the 5Rs to correct toxins, microbes, deficiencies.

That is IBD in a nutshell.

It has been 18 and 12 minutes now, and this is information your doctor should have told you from day one.

If it has been 18 and a half years for you, you’ve been dealing with this, I’m telling you — there’s a way through it.

It doesn’t have to be what you’ve been told. These are very reversible conditions.

You cannot be 10, 20, 30, 50 years old, healthy one day, get sick — your doctor goes, “Oh, it’s just genetic.”

Bullshit.

It is not.

There’s always a root cause. We just have to find it — and then reverse engineer the process so you can get better.

It’s as simple as that.

So here’s what we’re going to do for you.

If you’re watching on YouTube or you’re listening on the podcast, there are links down below in the show notes where you can find information, how to get in touch, listen to the podcast, watch the YouTube channel — there’s tons out there.

What we’re going to do — we’re going to have a conversation.

We’re just going to reach out, we’ll talk together, say:
 “Hey, is this a good fit? Can we identify your root cause? If so, what does it look like to reverse this? To get you better? To get you healthy? To figure out your toxins, your deficiencies, your microbes? To go through the D and 5R process?”

I know it almost seems too simple — and it is.

Which is why it is an abomination to healthcare that doctors are still prescribing or immune-suppressing drugs for what they call an autoimmune condition.

The reality is — honestly, truly — the Crohn’s Colitis Foundation, the Mayo Clinic, the CDC have downgraded it from “autoimmune” to an immune-mediated condition.

Which means your immune system is hyperreactive.

Now conveniently, they’ve actually still tucked it under the autoimmune umbrella, so they can still give Entyvio, Remicade — these $40 billion-a-year worth of immunosuppressive drugs.

That’s my take.

But the reality is — these are fixable conditions.

You don’t have to be stuck with it.

Thank you so much for being here.

We’re going to see you next time.

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, and 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 — 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.

And IBD can be reversed.