50: The 3 Reasons You Still Have IBD and Why It's Not Going Away

Crohn'd and Colitis are not permanent conditions; so here's what you need to know:

There are only 3 reasons you get sick and those 3 things are causing your IBD - and once you understand the 3 things your doctor is doing wrong, you'll be able to begin the healing process.

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• The only 3 reasons you get sick
• The 3 things keeping your IBD active: Root causes + Triggers, Recirculating and Recurring Triggers and Lack of Repair
• 3 Things you can do right now to begin healing your IBD

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Transcript

Josh Dech:
So, you've been battling IBD and you've done all the drugs.
You've done all the natural approaches and therapies,
but you're still sick.

And I'm going to be showing you right now
 why you're still sick
 so you can finally start to heal your body.

Now, in this episode, you're going to learn
 three things that are explaining why you're sick
 that your doctors actually missed.
 I'm going to show you why your treatments and therapies
 are not actually helping you.
 And then, I'm going to go over three things that you can do right now
 to start healing your gut naturally.

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,
and I'm going to show you that IBD and all of its symptoms are reversible.

And specifically today,
 I'm showing you the reasons why you're still sick that your doctor has missed.

Josh continues:
So, the three reasons you're still sick
as an overarching umbrella we're going to be talking about here
are the same three reasons I often talk about.

But if you're a longtime listener, you've heard me before.
 Hang in there because we're going to go into some really deep detail
 on these three particular umbrellas.

Well, we got three umbrellas of three things.
 Anyway, it's going to be a good time.

So, we know there's three reasons that we're sick.

• Root causes
• Recirculation
• And a lack of repair

Let me break that down for you.

There's a root cause — this is the reason why you're sick.
We have recirculation, which is going to be these issues continuing throughout your body, not getting out.
And then we have a lack of repair.
And this lack of repair is simply the fact that all this damage has been done,
which is why you're inflamed.
We don't actually aid that repairing process.

So, let's break this down a little bit more here.
 Let's talk about root causes.

There are three main root causes that are going to be sitting under this particular umbrella.
 The only three reasons human beings get sick —
 which are going to be:

• Toxins
• Microbes
• And Deficiencies

Now, here's what they look like.

Toxins: metals, mold, parasites, pesticides, environmental toxins, recirculated indoor air that's unclean.
All kinds of stuff is toxic to the body.

Microbes: parasites, bacteria, fungi, and viruses.

And Deficiencies: all the things we need to thrive —
vitamins, minerals, amino acids, water, sunlight, exercise, regular movement, rest, sleep,
all that good stuff.

Here's the problem.
 If you've been listening, you understand these three things.
 If this isn't your first episode, this is a really deep dive
 and I actually want to talk about the labs you can even get into to get into some of these.

And again, the things your doctor's missing.

So, you have your toxins, we have your microbes, we have your deficiencies.

The problem is your doctor has missed all of these
 because they assume it's an autoimmune condition — Crohn's, colitis.
 They're not.
 Or that it's genetic — Crohn's, colitis, IBS.
 "Oh, well, your family has it. You do too."
 Or that there's no known cause.

They don't even bother to look into what these things are.

But even when testing — you go,
 "Well, my doctor did some testing."

What did they do?

Well, they probably did a stool test to check for microbes.
 But they're checking for three to five pathogens.
 They might check for some viruses.
 They’ll check for Shigella.
 They'll check for CMV, maybe.
 They might check for E. coli or Salmonella or Veracilla.
 Really basic stuff.

But at no point are they taking a full GI map.

I've even spoken to clients who went to their doctor and said,
 "Hey, I got my stool sample, my GI map."
 They go, "Ah, that's just a theory."

We're in 2025.
 And your GI doctor thinks that the microbiome is still a theory?

It’s time to get a new doctor. Okay?

Josh continues:
So, your doctor's missing all of these by making assumptions.
And even when they do test,
they're testing microbes on a very microscopic level.

They're testing heavy metals — will check for three or four,
 not 12 or 15 toxic heavy metals that are actively in our environment.

I had a client who went to their doctor and they said,
 "My doctor tested for mold. I don't have it."
 They even paid out of pocket.
 They tested three strains.

Did you know that the EPA recommends checking a minimum of 32 different strains?

So, their doctor did less than 10% of what you could get from any other recommendation.

So even when they are checking for your root causes,
 they're missing them
 because they're doing a fraction of the broad spectrum.

They're not even trained on this stuff.
 We had to push and push to find a doctor for them who would test mold because it was insurance covered.

They had to pay for a mycotoxin test out of pocket
 to the tune of about $400.

Josh Dech:
And so these things can add up,
but your doctor is missing them entirely.

We know this is why you get sick.

Wait — let's even talk about blood, right?
 We're getting to root causes and what we do as part of roots.

You can't always test for a root cause.
 There's not always a test.

Parasites, for example — aren't a clear indicator for parasites.
 You'll get anywhere from 40 to 99% inaccuracies,
if not 60 to 90% inaccurate on these different tests.

So we have to look at other factors, such as blood.

Well, here's the problem — reference ranges are a joke.
 Where your doctor will go through and say,
 "Well, you're within normal range."

You can be at the top or the bottom of that range,
 your doctor says you're normal.

Did you know that this is a farce?

Because your blood work — the quote "normal range" — will change
 from state to state, city to city, province to province
 because they take the general population in your area
 and they say this is what the general population's blood work looks like.
 Therefore, here's our high and low end.
 If you're in there, you're quote "normal."

But we know that 92% of the population is metabolically unhealthy.
Therefore, "normal" is already sick.

And if you're within normal range, you could be ill.

And all they're looking for is highs and lows.
 They're not reading the numbers in context to know if you're healthy.

On top of that, let me know. I'm curious — with a quick yes or a no:
 Did your doctors — drop it in the comments —
 has your doctor actually tested antibodies?

Have they?

I do a whole conversation on this.
 I got episodes on this, so I'm not going to repeat it,
 but to say it's an autoimmune condition doesn’t make sense.

Most cases have no antibodies.
And the ones that do — very, very few are auto-antibodies,
meaning they attack your own tissues.

The antibodies are attacking other things that shouldn’t be there.

But even in the case of auto-antibodies — the ones that should be attacking you —
most of them are not.
They just kind of look like they are
or it's a crossfire issue
or friendly fire.

So — when did your doctor last check your antibodies?
 Or did they say,
 “Here’s your diagnosis: autoimmune.”
 Stop.

Well, if most of you don’t have any antibodies at all,
 but they’re calling it autoimmune —
 how is that not medical malpractice?

How are they getting away with this?

Josh continues:
And so your doctor is missing things by testing the wrong things.
As far as I’m concerned — it's medical malpractice.

They're making a lot of assumptions.
 Not giving you the treatment that you need and deserve.

On top of that — you go back to natural therapy, right?
We’re dealing with triggers and root causes — their first issue.

Well, of course, we got the toxins, microbes, deficiencies.
 We know blood’s a joke.

And you go,
 “Well, I’ve tried natural. I hear this all the time.”
 “I went the natural route. It didn’t work.”

What did you do?

Curcumin, omegas, slippery elm, vitamin D.
You used anti-inflammatories.

You’re managing your symptoms.

As far as I’m concerned,
 that is plant-based medication.

So, all you’re doing is managing your symptoms with natural herbs and remedies
 to keep yourself from being more inflamed.

But you didn’t go after the root cause —
the reason why you’re sick in the first place.

So, that’s the first reason why you’re still sick
 that your doctor is missing — root causes.

They’ve not identified the thing —
 the toxin, the microbe, the deficiency — that made you sick.

Even when they are testing,
 they’re not testing deep enough.
 Which means they’re missing the roots.

So if you want to get better,
 we have to identify that root cause.

Nobody gets sick for no reason.

You can’t be 30 years old,
 one day come down with Crohn’s
 and have it be genetic.

Something caused it.
 Your doctor just doesn’t know what it is
 because they weren’t taught this stuff.

They are taught to identify your symptoms,
 give it a label — that’s your diagnosis —
 and with that, like a checkbox: check, check, check.

I now can give you this med in this order.
 If it doesn’t work, stage four is surgery.

This is cookbook medicine.

That’s not healthcare.

So, the first reason you’re sick — triggers and root causes —
 and your doctor’s missing them entirely.

The second reason you’re sick.
 This one here is really important,
because what we’ve got is a trigger of some kind —
your microbe, your toxin, your whatever —
even let’s say we identify it.

One of the biggest issues that we have
 is recurring triggers.

So whether it’s an environment or a home that’s making you sick —
there’s mold or something —
and they’re constantly recirculating.

So you have recirculating or recurring triggers
continuing to make you ill.

Best example is a moldy home.
 Or mold in a workplace.
 Or maybe you have a vacation home
you go to two, three times a year — and there’s mold there.

I got a client right now I’m working with —
 she’s got some homes around, like Mexico and stuff like that,
 and they’ve got mold.

And when she goes, she gets sick.
 She comes home — it’s different mold.
 So, she’s different sick.
 But she’s still sick.

So, the environment you keep going back to makes you sick.

Maybe it’s the bedroom upstairs
 and it’s colder up there in the winter.
 So, you go up there — well, guess what?
 Maybe that’s got mold and now you’re getting sick on a seasonal basis.

Maybe your environment — you’re, I don’t know — road tripping once a year
 and you’re driving through farm country
and you’re staying in these areas for months at a time
or it’s a work thing and there’s chemicals.

Your environment is continually recurring.

You found the mold —
 but now you got re-inoculated with mold.

Josh continues:
Sometimes we’ll also have these recirculating triggers.
So we have something that gets moved around the body.

“Well, I did a heavy metal detox.
 I used cilantro.”

Well — cilantro is a mobilizer for heavy metals.
But if you’re not capturing and getting it out of the body,
it will recirculate.

It will land somewhere else.

Now, you’ve got neurological issues
instead of just gut issues
because the mold moved and got recirculated — reabsorbed.

We often have what’s called co-infections.
Let’s go back to mold — great example.

Mold creates an environment
for lots of other things to join it in making you sick.

Mold — prime real estate for parasites to live.

Well — now that you got parasites in your system with the mold, what do they do?

They create biofilms.

Biofilms are a protective layer for what?

Dysbiosis
or what we call gram-negative bacteria — bad guys —
to grow, which produce more toxins.

And this is a prime environment, under all of this,
 for candida to overgrow — which is a fungus.

Josh:
So mold invites parasites.
They create biofilms.
They cause inflammation.
Candida overgrows.
You got more dysbiosis.
They produce toxins — which load your system.

And now you’re sick — or sicker.

These are called co-infections.

Your environment can make you sick.
We can be recirculating and mobilizing toxins without getting them out.
We can be continuing to inoculate through a toxic water source or a food source.

I have a colleague of mine — she runs a gut health company called Tiny Health.
They test vaginal microbiome, they do gut microbiome —
they started with kids, now they do adults.
It’s a great company.

She studies this for a living.

She moved to Houston, Texas —
started getting gut issues.

Tested her water — guess what?

Aluminum, pesticides, hormones, uranium in her water.
So she’s got all these toxins, and that was a new inoculation.
Every single time she would drink, she would get sicker.
So she was reintroducing those triggers.

The problem is now you go through all this, you go,
 "Well, I got my mold.
 I got my parasites.
 I took a parasite protocol.
 I got sicker."

Guess what?

Drainage.

You have seven main exit doors —
you could argue nine —
in the body.

But seven main exit doors
where things leave.

Your liver, gallbladder, and bile ducts
are two major ones in bowel issues —
Crohn's, colitis, IBS —
that need to be opened.

If those are not open,
 and you go to kill off the parasites,
you're evicting tenants from the building,
but the doors are still locked.

So they just move back in.

A lot of antiparasitics are paralytics.
Guess what happens when they wake up?

"Oh — I'm still home."

I didn’t slide right out of the bowel.

So these are big issues.

Your lymphatic system, your skin, your sinuses, your kidneys —
these are all drainage pathways, exit doors.

Even on a cellular level,
we have drainage.

If you're not getting these guys out of your system,
you're going to continue to recirculate.

Because you packed up the garbage,
but nobody took it to the curb.

It just got stuck in a different room.

This is a recirculation issue.

That's the second biggest reason why you're still sick.

So, the first:
 Triggers and root causes — they're not being addressed or being missed.

The second thing:
 Recirculation or a recurrent trigger continuing to make you sick.

But let’s say, just for argument’s sake...
 so many people have gone through this.

They went natural.
They did what they did.
And they got better.

And they go:
 "Man, I felt amazing for years…
 until I didn’t."

Suddenly, I got sick again.

What happened?

And the rest of the world goes:
 "See? I told you it was autoimmune.
 See? You were just in remission.
 See? It's going to come back — there’s no cure."

Wrong.

What happened was:

A — you got re-inoculated and got sick again
and/or B — there was an extreme lack of repair.

Lack of repair.

Repairing what?

Let’s talk about this.

You go through dealing with IBD, IBS.
 You got C. diff a couple of times over.
Your doctor gives you antibiotics.

You got an infection — come in —
 your doctor goes,
 “Well, let’s try some antibiotics. Let’s wing it.”

They never address the issues that antibiotics cause.

Fungal overgrowth,
bacterial imbalances,
mitochondrial — so cellular energy production —
drainage, detoxing on a cellular level —
never gets healed or redressed.

The gut lining never gets repaired.
Antibiotics damage all of that.

So now you have a terrain
and you wonder why nothing grows in the garden
when the soil is tainted.

We never address the immune system.

What happens in IBD?
 These are called immune-mediated responses.

It’s been downgraded from “autoimmune” per the Mayo Clinic,
the CDC,
the Crohn’s Colitis Foundation now recognize —
it’s immune-mediated.

Now they leave it under the autoimmune umbrella,
even though the antibody theory doesn’t actually line up.

I believe it’s so they can use their multi-billions of dollars worth of drugs
and keep selling them to you.

But I digress on that one.

What happens instead of your immune system being in checks and balances?

Your immune system is hyper-reactive.

This is an immune-mediated response.

Instead of you getting upset and going,
 "Huh, I’m just going to take a breath and shake it off,"
 you freak out and punch the mailman.

Right?

That’s an immune-mediated hyper-reactive over-response.

They leave you like this.
They never address why.

They never actually bring your immune system back to balance
and get it back to regulating itself.

So your immune system is now hyperactive or hyperreactive
to any insult, injury, stress, toxin, anything.

So we never repaired that.

We never addressed the basics.

When was the last time your doctor talked to you about sunlight?

Vitamin D — vital in IBD and immune disease, autoimmune disease — absolutely.

When was the last time your doctor talked to you about nutrition?

Most GI specialists — gastroenterologists, specialists in the gut —
say,
“Eat whatever you want. Food doesn’t matter.”

Tell me that’s not crazy.

Tell me that what you put into your gut doesn’t affect your gut.

That’s like saying what I put in my gas tank doesn’t affect my car.

It’s absolutely asinine.

And again — should be medical malpractice.

They don’t talk about exercise.
They don’t talk about sleep hygiene.
Waking and sleeping with the sun — your circadian rhythm —
what that does to your immune system,
what it does to your stress responses —
they don’t talk about any of it.

They never talk about cleaning your system out from the leftovers.
Once they’ve given you all these toxins, these biologics, all these drugs and medications,
they never talk about cleaning up the toxins they put into your body
after infusions or steroids.

There’s an extreme lack of repair.

So you’ve got an imbalanced immune system,
cellular toxicity,
you’ve got all kinds of dysbiosis,
mitochondrial dysfunction,
leaky gut, gut lining issues,
you’ve got a nervous system dysregulated,
you’re nutrient depleted.

And you wonder why you get sick again?

Because there’s a lack of repair.

Your doctors never address this — frankly, nor will they ever.
It’s just not in their curriculum.

Here’s our issue.

You get sick for three main reasons.

We have toxins,
we have microbes,
and we have deficiencies.

The problem we run into?
 The toxins, the microbes, and deficiencies are never found to begin with.

Number two — you get desperate.

You try it on your own — which is amazing.
I'm advocating for you. I’m here. I’m rooting for Team You.

The problem is those toxins, deficiencies, and microbes never get detected.

And then you try to work it on your own
 or you see a practitioner who says,
 “I do functional medicine”
 and it’s just plant-based medication.

These things end up recirculating
because they never actually got properly removed.

And even if you did get lucky
 and you found someone who was able to identify and remove it,
and you forgot to repair the terrain
in which your body is trying to plant seeds in
to grow healthy, good fruit, so to speak…

You’re missing these layers.

And so, you’re continually sick.
We’re recirculating.
We’re re-inoculating.
We’re not repaired.

And you’re left weak.
Your system is left down.
Your defenses are down.

And we wonder why we keep getting sick.

So I’m going to launch in now —
 three things you can be doing right now to get some help.

Because if you want to identify this,
 do what your doctor’s not doing.

You have to advocate for yourself.

No one’s going to care about your health more than you.

Maybe me — I get pretty fired up about this
 because of the injustice of it all.

But I can’t care about your health more than you do.

So, I’m not — you know — I get people all the time.
 They come to my inbox like,
 “Josh, I’m desperate. I need help.”
 I’m like, “What’s going on?”

And then they just don’t respond back.

So I’ll check back in a week —
 “Hey, did you want some help?
 Can I get you something?”

They’ll leave me on read and never get back.

I’m like, “Okay, I’m done.”

I can’t care more than you can.
Nobody cares more than you.

So here’s three things you can do right now:

✅ Number One: Get Some Functional Lab Testing

Now, I’m going to caution this one.

Here’s why —
 I’ve had people come to me —
 I’m not joking —
 ten, fifteen thousand dollars worth of lab testing,
and they’ve gotten nowhere.

They don’t have any answers.
 They’re no further ahead.
 They’re still left confused.

All this lab testing has gone nowhere.

They’ve tried to identify the root cause.
They did a GI Map — which can be great.
A stool sample.
Or a Total Tox test — great test.

From Vibrant Wellness or Vibrant America —
they’ll check for mycotoxins, heavy metals, and environmental toxins
like glyphosate and microplastics.

You can get an HTMA —
Dr. Stephen Cabral even offers them for free in the USA
as part of their intake process.

That’s a hair tissue mineral analysis.

It might show heavy metals, minerals,
but in the right context — to a practitioner who knows what they’re doing —
they can tell you about drainage, detox, adrenals, stress, cellular dysfunction —
all kinds of stuff.

Even pubic hair, leg hair if it’s long enough —
they can use that.

A mycotoxin test is mold-specific.
There’s also the organic acids test —
which shows byproducts on a cellular level.

My caution:
 Only test based on what you believe your root cause might be.
Otherwise, you’re just testing and guessing and getting nowhere.

A good practitioner can save you a ton of money
because they’ll know which tests are needed — if any.

✅ Number Two: Decongest

And I don’t mean for your sinuses —
 I mean your entire body.

We talked about drainage pathways:
liver, bile, lymph, sweating, sinus rinses —
you want to open these up
so things can exit your body.

You also want to decongest your nervous system.

That’s good sleep hygiene, good stress management,
electrolytes — like proper salt.
Use Redmond’s, rock salt, sea salt.

Whole foods, too.

I have three food rules for IBD:

1. Whole foods — stuff that grows on the earth, your great-grandma would recognize.
2. Tolerable foods — foods that don’t bother you.
3. Low histamines — Google it. Eat from that list.

Add a good water filter — not a Brita.
Get a distiller, or something high-quality.

✅ Number Three: Get Help

I don’t care if you think I’m a weirdo,
 can’t stand me,
 think I’m too passionate,
 too loud, too complicated.

Get help.

This doesn’t have to be DIY.

You’ve been working on this for months,
years, some of you decades.
You still have no answers.

I see people all the time coming to my inbox like,
 “Thanks for the info. I’m gonna try on my own.”

How long you been trying?

“Well… 10 years.”

You think you’re gonna get it now?

I’m not saying you need me.
I’m saying you need somebody.

We do this. This is what we do for a living.
 But there are lots of functional practitioners out there who are remarkable at this.

Get help.
Save the money.
A good practitioner might save you from needing any lab tests
because they understand your history, your symptoms, your blood.

They’ll know what’s relevant to you right now.

They make it simple and applicable.
They take away the guesswork.

So if you want to look someone up, Google it.
 If you want help from me, I’ll show you how to do that:

Just drop a comment below with the word “solution” and check your DMs.

I bet you 70% of people who comment never reply.
 Don’t be one of them.

If you’re on YouTube or listening on the podcast,
check the links in the show notes.

You can send me an email,
ask a question,
book a call with me or my team.
We’ll see if we can help — very simple.

We take away the guesswork.

Guys, been a pleasure.
 Thanks so much for being here.

We’re gonna see you all next week,
same place, same time.

One of my favorite things to hear as an IBD specialist is:

“I learned more from you in 15 minutes than from my doctor in 15 years.”

If this is the first time it’s starting to click —
 and you’re going:
 "Wait a minute — this might be reversible.
I think there’s more I can do..."

If you were healthy for 10, 20, 30, 40 years
 and then suddenly you weren’t —
 and they told you there’s no cause…

If you’re finally understanding 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 does not have to be a lifelong sentence.

You’re not doomed to this.

IBD can be reversed.