EP 15: WTH ?!? Chron's and colitis discussion with Dane Johnson

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Approach to your health span. Have you noticed how our healthcare system may not have your best interest in mind? Join Dr. Eckel in this fun and sometimes disturbing exploration of the state of healthcare and what it means for you.

Now here's your host, Dr. Eckel. Alright, welcome back everybody. And welcome to what the Health. I'm Dr. Greg Eckel. I've got my guest today, Dane Johnson. He's clinical nutritionist specializing in natural healing of Crohn's and colitis and we're going to take a deep dive into that. It's definitely a specific purpose and passion of Dane's. In addition to that, he's got an interesting other project happening on just helping millions of folks with their healthcare costs with an efundyourhealth.org organization. So we'll talk about that one as well. I'm super excited for both of these topics and it really fits into my whole platform here of what the health and what is going on with healthcare in the United States. And you know firsthand, Dane, you know, this whole journey, I mean you've gone from, you know, personal kind of trials and tribulation to success story and you're helping thousands of people. Right?

Thank you, Greg. Yes, it's been a huge trial and I'm very excited to be here and communicate to everyone listening what powerful stuff we're working. And I know me and you talked about this sitting down one day, strumming on the guitar, talking about all our passions for health and how we want to really help change the world. And I think we got something strong here. So we. Yeah, the goal is to not only help people utilize natural medicine to become self empowered and get a true healing response, but also help them financially afford it. You know, this is a cash based business to get into alternative medicine. Frankly, it's not very affordable for a lot of, a lot of people, even Americans.

Yeah, it is unfortunate because so many people are spending so much on health insurance that doesn't really cover anything. We have higher and higher deductibles that don't really hit the mark and then it's for care that's inadequate at best. Do you want to start on that? You want to start with the E fund your health? Sure.

I mean it kind of, we can lead into either way. But that's exactly what was the problem. You know When I was. When I was 19 years old, I started getting symptoms of ulcerative colitis and then diagnosed about two, three years later, and then eventually diagnosed with Crohn's disease. And then I nearly died of it when I was 26. And throughout that whole time, my family wasn't poor by any means, but we weren't rich either. You know, we weren't driving Beamer bends and Bentleys. You know, we were your natural middle class family that went on vacation a year. Both my parents worked. But when I got sick, my family was throwing everything at the wall to try to get something to stick. I mean, you name it, we were buying out Whole Foods, flying to different countries around the country, hoping someone had something different than a total colectomy and biologics. For the rest of my life. It was ucla, Mayo Clinic. I was getting the same answers, which is chronic drugs and possible surgery as a young guy. I mean, I was so lucky in life, Greg. I was the luckiest guy in the world. I had left my office job in Washington, D.C. and became an international model when I was 23. And I was like, how did the hell this happen? I'm from the. I'm from the farmland.

Yeah.

What did I have business doing in la, in New York and Europe and stuff? But at the same time, I got an extreme reaction where Crohn's and colitis were starting to take over my life. And so it was very extreme. And that led into my family starting to spend. I think our first year, we spent around $30,000, and I only got more sick. And it just seemed like the hotels, the food, the airplanes, the doctor visits, the lab tests, the supplements and everything that just. We didn't know what we were doing.

Yeah.

And I just. I was completely lost, getting more depressed and all that. So I was really, I would say patient zero for efund you'd health.

Okay.

Your health didn't come because we had a really smart business plan that was gonna make us a lot of money. It came because of passion. It became because we saw a problem in our society that we were suffering from, and we wanted to help create a solution. So over the years, I was able to do some really impactful things, which we'll get into with health and wellness and. But what stuck is the need to help people find alternative sources to funding natural medicine. So organic foods, lab work, consulting, supplementation, all of that can be covered. Efund you'd health actually has a crowdfunding platform, and so it's much like GoFundMe Most people out there have used GoFundMe to raise money for something.

Sure.

Well, what we realized is 30 to 40% of the successful campaigns in GoFundMe were actually for healthcare costs. We were actually laughing. We said, gofundme is the new healthcare in the United States. Healthcare. When we saw that business model, we felt it was the most feasible to empower people so that people can come around and say, hey, let's all donate a little bit of money to Joey or Susan's need, and we can help them connect with the natural medicine doctor physician that can fit them and help them in alternative care. Then we can not just help them raise that money, but efund you'd hope actually has a corporate donor program that can match.

Oh, that's awesome.

So awesome. So what makes us different is if you raise $2,500 yourself, we can legally match up to $2,500 within our own. Our own organization, Room 501C3, which means you get a health services account debit card with $5,000 on it, which you can use at Whole Foods, you can use at your doctor's office, you can use for supplements. We've done our series A funding on this and done extremely well. In our beta, we had a few amazing cases. One of them actually was a client who also had Crohn's disease, and she was able to raise $7,000. $2,000 of it was from us, and 5,000 was from other people online. And interestingly enough, 60% of people who donated, she didn't know.

Wow.

So that was very interesting, Marca, that it wasn't just friends and family. It was people within our network reaching out and helping. Well, she used that money to go to a place, I believe it was called True north, where she did a fasting because for her, she actually had dealt with being 50 pounds overweight with Crohn's disease, which is a little more rare. But within about two or three months, she had hit all of her goals and she was symptom free. And she decided that she was done taking her Humira. She lost about 45 pounds. And so it was amazing that we were able to help her fund that.

How do people currently find out about efund you'd health?

Right now, a lot of it's through word of mouth because we're empowering the practitioners. So we're going to the practitioners that we really trust, and we say, you are so good at your job. We want to help people who can't afford you. So if Someone walks in and says, I can't wait to work with, let's say Dr. Eckel, but hey, he's got a certain rate. Or let's say one of these other guys out there like Mark Hyman or one of those guys. What we do is we empower them and educate them. So if they come and say, hey, I want to work with you, but I don't got two bucks to our name, they can refer back to efund you'd health. We can help raise the money. And what's good, also from the practitioner standpoint of view, is the person who usually introduces an E fund. You'd health from the practitioner point is the one that the client usually uses the money with. So it helps make sure that the practitioner is being involved for being a referral in a word of mouth.

And I've definitely referred my patient base to the platform and it's been awesome. You know, it's what a great gift to put out there. And it is, it's one. It's unfortunate that the system is so broke that that's what we're going to, but it's also really what a gift to have out there to actually create this change for people where otherwise it's just unattainable. Right?

Yeah, really is. I mean, it's a lot of money for a lot of people. And when you look at how much, you know, debt to equity ratio, we have even in America, considered the wealthiest country in the world, it's a problem. So we hope that to help raise awareness not only on the power of natural medicine and what your alternatives are, but make it affordable and help, you know, make sure. Because we know as natural medicine, it's an expensive business to run. I mean, if you're a brick and mortar and you've got an assistant, you've got to run labs, everyone's got to eat, you got to pay taxes. I mean, there needs to be a large amount of cash incentive to make it work. So we want to make sure that the doctors are getting paid what they're worth and that people have the ability to go in there and pay for it because, you know, if it's done right, it could really be life changing.

Yeah, for sure. And well, I mean, you're a testament to that as well. Why are you so passionate of raising the lantern? For natural health.

You know, and that's something I'm really excited. Anyone sharing on this. I believe in my heart that all purpose in life is rooted in pain. And if you want to be passionate about something look at something that's caused you a lot of pain. And whatever's caused you a lot of pain can cause you a lot of joy. On the flip side of that, I call it like the universal law of relativity. And the reason I'm so freaking passionate about this is because it nearly killed me. And I. And I. And it nearly robbed me of my life. As a young guy who didn't know a thing about any of this and went through the standard conventional medical system, I was highly, highly disappointed with what that system was offering me. I mean, here I never was sick until I was 19, 20 years old, and all of a sudden, I was looking down the barrel of pooping out of a bag for the rest of my life, taking drugs for the rest of my life. I was covered in cystic acne. I was. Was in a wheelchair. At one point, I had to go on chemotherapy. I was eating through a feeding tube. I went from £185, 6 2. Down to £120. I was just like, my life was being swept out from under me. And then it was like the doctors couldn't do anything about it. Didn't matter where I went. I kept getting the same answer, the same answer. There's nothing you can do. Diet doesn't matter. Mindset doesn't matter. Supplements don't really work. It. And it got even worse when I started seeing some naturopath doctors who didn't actually have an expertise in Crohn's and colitis. They knew a little bit about, okay, getting rid of gluten free, getting rid of dairy free. Let's try to support the immune system. Let's nourish the immune response, increase vitamin D levels. Okay? That's all well and great, but it wasn't specific enough to deal with my system that was really struggling. And so everywhere I looked, it just wasn't the answer. So what became the catalyst to me is I got backed into a corner where I was the only answer, where it was like I was either going to go find it or not, because I couldn't write a check big enough. I didn't even have someone to write a check to. Yeah, I really thought could help me, you know, and my family was running out of money. I mean, they were writing checks. They couldn't keep it up. So I just got to a point where, you know, dealing with depression, dealing with pain, dealing with anxiety. Why me? I hate life. F God, all of that stuff, you know, being a young guy, it was just like, I'm either gonna. I'm either gonna sink or swim. So I, when it got really bad, what I did is I was in school for natural medicine. So I was working with natural professors and they were help consulting me on ideologies of healing. And I started reading insatiably and I basically locked myself in my house for a year. I became housebound. I was bed rested for about two months and then I was housebound for about nine or 10 months. When I say housebound. I started going for walks, biking, going to grocery stores, but I wasn't drinking, I wasn't going to restaurants. I didn't eat anything I didn't make. I didn't sleep anywhere else, I didn't travel anywhere. I basically turned my home into a healing home. I call it ground zero. It was like my foundational ability to create healing. I read probably four hours a day and I only read on gut health, mindset, spiritualism, autoimmune. I just, I was insatiably reading and I was writing down different things that could work and then I implemented them into mine. So one of the biggest steps, the biggest hacks, I'll recommend anyone out there who's stuck and feeling like they're in prison. As I learned how to build my, my answer instead of looking for the answer. So, so I stopped saying, I'm going to be vegan, I'm going to be this, I'm going to do the intermittent fasting. It was all about trial. And then put that trial into notes on what was going on to me. So I kept a journal, everything I was feeling and doing, and all my symptoms for about 185 days. Wow. So everything. So I woke up prayer and purpose meditation, aromatherapy, fill out my journal, go outside at 7 in the morning reading an hour of a book to get my mind right, turn on Bob Marley, prepare my breakfast. And then as I go on, I add things in. So I was always looking for how can I keep myself spiritually healthy and happy so I can keep this up? And then how can I continue to critique? So I found that the three things that are really important for all healing, if you have Crohn's or Ms. Or anything, is personalization. Stop looking for the answer. Find your answer. The second was simplification. If you don't simplify it, you won't be able to keep doing it. So be able to run the play every day. Right. And the third thing is always be fine tuning. So fine tuning is to say, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. That supplement or that probiotic might be really Good. But it might not be enough to get you over the mountain.

Yeah.

So add it all. Compound. Compound. And you're looking at mind, body and soul. It's all about energy. Energy is anything that you feel. So you need to be listening to the energy of what? Your food, of your relationships, of your personal mindset, of the energy of your house. I call that house flow. And then fine tuning that to create a compound healing response. And over time, the greatest energy will always prevail. So, you know, eight, nine months later, I was. When I got on, I was. When I went home from the hospital, I checked myself out. I was on TPN feeding tube. I was on 200 milligrams of infused prednisone, which turned into 80 milligrams orally. And then I was on Humira, methotrexate, painkillers, antiviral chemotherapy, Flagyl, and I think another antibiotic and then ambient for sleeping. So I was pretty. I was like drooling from the mouth. Greg. Like, you walked me. It was just kind of drool coming down.

Walking pharmacy. Yeah. That's amazing.

Yeah, yeah, me and. Me and Space Odyssey. Netflix got real close at that time.

Gosh. Wow. That's. Yeah. No, the amount of medications. Right. That you're on. Right. Because that's what the western approach is. That's all they've got for you.

Yeah.

So you might have been one of the first people on Humira.

Yeah, I went on. No, I went. I went on. I'm sorry. At that point, I was on tibio. I was on him here for a second beforehand, but we immediately thought it wasn't going to work as well and we put me on a tibio.

Got it.

So, yeah, yeah, I was very. It was a very quick. A lot going on.

And why did you think, like, how did you know, like, what Was there a certain point that came to you, like, I'm gonna die in here, I gotta get out.

Yeah, yeah. And before I go further, because I think a lot of natural medicine is clarifying what I'm about to say. Conventional medicine saved my life for sure. Dead if it wasn't for emergency. So let's give them their. I want to give them their credit. Oh, yeah, they saved my life. I would be dead if it wasn't that I'd be right six feet under. Natural medicine gave it back to me.

Yeah.

Natural medicine gave me my life back, empowered me to be able to travel, eat a broad diet, be connected to the planet, feel good, confident, be free to live my life and have High experience. So I just want to make that clear. What was your question?

That's great. My moniker is actually where east meets west naturally. Right. So I've got a DEA license, I prescribe medications, you know, I've got full prescriptive rights. And you know, it is an integrative approach which when you're talking about individualizing a plan and program, it starts with listening to the patient and the patients have all of the information we as providers need to hear. We just have to have the time to be able to listen and then bring that forth for the innate healing ability of the body. Yes, Western medicine, by all means. We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's a great integrative approach. If you need your life saved and kept together or keep your head above the water. It's phenomenal. Right. It's a great system for that. But like you're saying on this chronic component, like you couldn't live. I mean, yes, people live all the time on that whole cocktail of medications you're talking about, but their quality of life is just miserable.

Yes. Well, I think that's a personal choice. Even the clients I work with now, I always tell them that's something you're going to come terms with. That's a personal choice. Want to continue to use biologics and you know, I try to make people aware and then they go from there. And some people, it's okay if you're on for six months, a year or two years and if you want to get off, then you can get off. Then you can talk to your doctor and you can work with a practitioner to make it make sense. You know, there's no, there's no one way and there's no magic pill. No.

And I really like that you're talking about, you know, filtering it through your own apparatus. Right. As we all being creators and having that capability. You know, that I'm full and full on and in alignment with you around that, you know, of that personalization and really empowering people and giving them that ability to trust themselves and their decision making process and not abdicating or just following, you know, mindlessly of like. Well, that's what the doctor told me, right?

Yep. Yeah. And you know what I'm really excited about and I want everyone to know what I'm excited about because what's really good about this, remember, all purpose is rooted in pain. What's good about this is this is going to create a seed of self empowerment. The biggest thing we lost from Trade back in the 1800s was a sense of self empowerment, what you can do for yourself. We started relying on these other things to do everything for us. And when you rely on a government to take care of 350 million people, you're going to get, you're going to get what you're going to get. You get what we got now. Alright. And so we walk out of college and we think to ourselves, I have to learn how to deal with money, finance interest rates, loans. We just go, yeah, if you're going to be good with money, you got to know money and you got to go learn that independently. It's your responsibility. But somehow we haven't gotten it in our brain yet that we need the same things with health. We can learn about organic food and how to mix it, how to prepare it, what supplements are, how to read labels. And guess what? If you do both, you're going to get a huge value in your life. You're going to be able to go on vacations, you're going to have, you're going to create wealth in your health. Yeah, right. Passive income where you can have a beer and you can do things and you're not going to be hurt. One of the biggest problems with people who are implementing into stage one of that natural healing is they create this bubble where they can never get out of this bubble. Right. I'm sure a lot of people are going, yeah, if I eat one thing outside of what I do, I'm screwed.

Yeah.

And that's a, that's really a half ass healing program because you haven't addressed root cause healing. And again, that's different for everyone. Some people are highly sensitive. They've been had these problems for 10, 20 years and they do need to be really strict for a while so they can properly detox and rebuild their immune system and microbiome. But you know, there's so much to be done and when you take health on and you really listen, you implement, you grow and you, and you make you become the CEO of your health. And you say, I'm going to take this on as a, as a hobby. I'm going to learn this man. Does your life get good? Yeah, I mean I was talking with a client earlier this morning and he goes, he's a director, he's a director here in la. And he goes, Dane, ever since I did this I keep, you know, I've been doing really great. And then I start cheating. And I know you're going to, you know, be mad at me, but I start cheating and then I feel like crap. And he goes, you know what? I just realized this. I'm starting to get to the point where I don't even want to eat that food anymore. And I go, there you go. Yeah, that's the ticket. When you can change from a sacrifice of my lifestyle into an investment of who I'm going to be.

Totally. That's awesome. That's the way that I've set my practice up as well, is I don't really tell people what to eat. I have this peanut butter cookie story of the matriarch of a family that came in. She told me, oh, don't address my diet doc. Because I treated her whole family and I addressed everybody's diet. So I didn't. Well, a month into it, she came in. She said, when are you going to do the diet diary? When are you going to address my diet? I said, well, you told me not to. I'm listening to you. My favorite cookie, my favorite food is peanut butter cookies. I will never give that up. I said, I will never ask you to give those up. She had asthma, allergies. We got her off all of her medications through the whole summer. The holidays rolled around. What was out? The peanut butter cookie, right? It looked delicious. She hadn't had a peanut butter cookie in, like a year. She had a peanut butter cookie. She came in right into my office on a Monday morning and announced, I will never eat another peanut butter cookie in my life.

What happened?

She said, well, well, Doc, you know how I love peanut butter cookies. And there was one at a holiday party, and I was feeling so good, I thought I could have the cookie. She had the cookie. All of her asthma symptoms came back, and she was back on inhalers, back on meds, and it just became not worth it. I told her, I didn't tell you never to eat the cookie again. People have to come up with that decision themselves. So I love that, that you've got that built into your program and, you know, you're seeing that pattern with folks. That's so awesome.

Yeah. You know, people. I think it's just personalization is so important. Anyone out there who's thinking of doing any type of program, I think you just. You have to connect. The number one thing I look for now, even if I'm working with a naturopathic practitioner, someone I can connect with and someone I can relate with, someone I really enjoy spending time in, shooting, just shooting the shit with, you know, that's important just to be able to. Relatability is such a key you know, and when your practitioner has gone through something themselves, man, do they have such a great amount of connection, ability to really help you and have a big heart for doing you right. And, you know, I think diet, we all got to find our right way or there. I actually talk about something called food philosophy. It was very funny because when I started looking in healing, once I got my results, fast forward, I'm drug free. I'm 60 pounds heavier. I'm working out every day, I'm traveling the world, I'm eating a broad diet. I can even cheat and eat foods. I was on a feeding tube. Now I'm having a little gluten. I didn't drink alcohol for about a year and a half, and then I tried a sip. First time I tried it, it broke out into red rashes everywhere. That's still a problem. And then started getting better. I've been working on that over the last seven or eight years now. I can do a ton, but I built it up. And when I noticed, I started talking to other people, I noticed that there were people who did really well with a vegan diet or really well with a carnivore diet or people had done a fruitarian vegetarian diet. I started going and I go, okay. People have gotten great responses with each one of these philosophies. What are the common denominators between them and what are some reasons behind why this worked for that person, why it didn't work for that person? Through that, I created what I call food philosophy. And food philosophy is for a person to become innately in touch with what could be going on in the gut and how they're doing with fiber or sugar or how they're breaking down certain fats. And once you look at that and you understand, okay, is it a constipation problem, a diarrhea problem? Is it a bacteria problem? Is it a hydrochloric acid H. Pylori issue parasite? Is it a small intestine bacteria overgrowth problem?

Dr. Yeah. It can just get so overwhelming so quickly.

Dr. Yeah. Ye. Once it's there, you can start looking at the root philosophy of what do all these diets have in common? Everyone's focusing on what's different instead of focusing on what's the same. And you look at the common denominators, you can find a foundation for a diet that can usually reduce symptoms for a lot of people. I also realized that when you get that foundation, you can fine tune and critique it for each person. That can give people a staple for creating bowel Rest, increasing nutrient absorption and the most important, eliminating inflammatory response from your food. Because I don't care how green it is, if it causes inflammation, get it out.

Yeah, you know, how do you determine that?

So what I usually do is with food philosophy, I'll start with a foundational idea. So I'm looking for symptoms of people with SIBO first and foremost because if they have small intestine bacterial overgrowth, they're probably going to have a problem with certain sugars. And so if I'm seeing that, I might stay away from sugars. And if they are doing okay, I'll probably start using a little bit of fruit. Fruit. But fruit is a monosaccharide. It's a simple sugar that's much easier to digest, especially when it's eaten independently. But more important than sugars, carbs and fats is actually looking at the texture and quality of food. I call it the baby food theory. There's a reason why a 3 year old can eat something and an 8 year old can eat more like a cheeseburger and fries. A two year old can't have that, but an eight year old can. And it's because when we're born, our gut actually our microbiome is not even there, our digestibility isn't even there. And so we have to actually, as a human being, rebuild, build our gut to be able to do these things. But if your system gets broken, you have to rebuild it. Now let's say that the gut was the knee. If you tear your acl now running is good for everyone, but if you have a torn acl, you should not be running. Now, certain food like a salad or brown rice or beans that are, you know, a lot of people with Crohn's colitis have terrible time with, are really good for everyone.

Right?

But they're not good for the Crohn's and colitis. And it's that same theory. You have to work up to those things. You have to be able to break down those fats again, you know, maybe, maybe it's. Lectins are a problem for you. And that's where you understand food philosophy and all these theories of raw vegan, carnivore, leptin, paleo and say, yeah, well.

So are there specific no, no's that you say, oh, these are consistently there.

Yeah. So the specific thing is always eating organic. You want to reduce the number one thing anyone can do out there is reduce an inflammatory response. So ask yourself, can you properly break down this food? And it might not just be the food, it might be the way the food is prepared. So the way food is prepared is just as important as the food itself. So let's say that you ate a raw carrot, you didn't do well, but let's say you peeled and pressure cooked the carrot to where you could squeeze it in your hands and you did all right. Right. Or let's say that you had, you didn't do well with banana. But let's say you put the banana in a Vitamix with a little water and then you put a little marshmallow root, which is demulcent herb, or a little psyllium seed, or psyllium husk, which acts like a strong soluble fiber to get rid of chronic diarrhea. Then all of a sudden you do okay with that as a pureed banana. Or let's say that you did terrible with barbecue chicken, but when you slow roasted it and you got rid of direct heat and you kept the temperatures low, and let's say it's grounded chicken to make sure it's cooked thoroughly, you need less heat to actually cook it. You did really well with that. But then let's say that you had the same meal, but one time you were chronically stressed, you were eating on the run, you weren't feeling good, your sympathetic nervous system was engaged, your digestive system wasn't working correctly. Yeah, next time you're salivating, salivating means your parasympathetic nervous system is engaged. So next time you're salivating and you're eating that in the proper state and you do better with it. So there's all these parameters. So in food philosophy you understand the four keys of food philosophy, which is the quality of food, the state at which it's cooking, food mixing, and the state of your body. So the state of your body is actually, I believe, real time evolution working right in front of us. Because evolution is always making the strong stronger and the weak dead.

Yeah.

Evolution is a cold hearted, you know what I'm saying? So it's always making it stronger. So when you're chronically stressed, your digestive system is down, your immune system is down and your reproductive system is down. Chronically stressed, you can't make babies, you can't fight off infection, you can't break down your food. Evolution's like, next, let's get this guy out. He doesn't need to be a part of the gene pool.

Yeah.

And so that's one of the ways we can look at it. And then we look at food philosophy and we say, okay, if you've got a gut and you have chronic diarrhea and chronic urgency, chronic bloating, start looking at that baby food philosophy and say, hey, how can I increase bowel rest while increasing nutrient absorption? And how can I use certain supplementary herbs to help heal the mucosal lining and stop that diarrhea response? And so things like I love comfrey root or grounded free form powder, slippery elm or marshmallow root, or even glutamine. High dose glutamine can be great for diarrhea. And then looking at the digestive ability, maybe it's fats. A lot of people who have a problem with creating enough bile have a hard time with things like avocado or the coconut oil. So maybe the fats.

It's interesting. We will get folks on the superfood kick. It's good for everybody. And then they're reacting to the food that they really, you know, went super on.

Classic.

Yeah.

That is, I mean, so, you know, I mean, Greg, that what you just said is. I'd say one of the key problems right now is we have a bunch of people trying to really like, give a large idea of what's good and what's bad. And because we, society are conditioned for what I call MPS, and even my clients who get responses in 10, 12 days, I say be careful of MPS have MPS. This is magic pill syndrome. Yes. Okay. Because we are conditioned for a shot or a pill and it goes away. And we're literally running from being response able to take care of our health and manifest our dreams.

Yeah.

Stop running and start taking response ability. And you will go from a fear based person to a creator who can literally create your life. And you will become healthier than the healthy because you will be conscious, aware and connected. And then you will be looking and naturally seeking for that in others. And your community and your love and your family will only rise from this.

Yeah. So where did you get that concept? So that seems like a, that's a very unique perspective. Right. And it seems like this is growing in the consciousness right now, in the conversations. And obviously we run in similar circles, but for you, like what you mentioned, you know, there were a bunch of. When you were doing your reading or like, what were some influential, like, books that were like, whoa, that really unlocks so much in my great, great question.

And so what, what got me this, it was, it was trial and error because I was patient zero. I was nearly dead.

Yeah.

I was doing fruit diets. I was doing fasting. I was doing intermittent fasting. I Was doing bone broths for weeks. I was making my own goat yogurt and living on that. I was doing only meat. Only meat. So one point, only fruit. I'm doing only meat. Then I'm trying the vegan thing, you know, and then I'm doing the low fodmap. Then I'm doing scd. And I. Over a year, I kept trying and doing and trying, and I found that certain parts of the philosophy really helped him were big light bulbs. But then there were certain parts of this conflicting philosophy that were big light bulbs. Then. Over the last four years, I've personally consulted over 200 people with Crohn's and colitis for at least three months. Each person. I have an extensive amount of experience dealing with people with chronic irritable inflammatory bowel disease and seeing what works here, what works there. And what I found is when we identify disease, we're really putting an umbrella, like, identifier on, like, six or seven different possible root cause issues.

Yeah.

If you call something multiple sclerosis, you call it Crohn's disease, you call it cancer. We really don't know the pathology of that. We're just kind of saying, okay, it's within this spectrum. It's autoimmune. I mean, even IBD itself is very broad and doesn't actually say much like inflammatory bowel disease. And I hate, you know, just a little jab at conventional medicine. Forgive me, but I actually think that stands for. I don't know.

Yeah, it is a garbage. It's a garbage diagnosis. I mean, we're gonna put you over there. It's just something's going on with your bowel.

And here's the thing. 25 to 50 million Americans right now have IBS and only a much smaller portion of IBD. But if you ask a doctor, what's the difference between IBS and ibd, it's only two things. One, they're seeing inflammation with the CRP or the calprotectin, and two, they're actually sticking a camera up your butt or down your tongue and seeing the disease, physically seeing it. So the difference between diagnosing Crohn's or ulcerative diverticulitis or any of that. And IBS is just seeing it. Yeah. We have basically 25 to 50 million. They're one hair away from just being diagnosed with a chronic disease that's incurable and all go down that route. Right. So it's really kind of an epidemic because the gut is the outside world inside of you.

Yeah.

You know Everything external, the only way it goes inside is through your mouth and out your butt. Right. So it's outside world. And that outside world gets triggered. Your whole body, your whole health goes out of, out of whack.

Yeah.

And we, our microbiome, we have more bacteria in our body than human cells.

Yeah.

We're more of a host for bacteria than we are human. Right.

It's a little bit gross when you think about it.

Yeah, it is gross. It's also powerful. It's going, man, maybe there's something to this bed of this bacteria. And yeah, we've learned a lot in the 1950s and 1960s. It wasn't too long ago, I mean, look at everything we learned about human rights and about bacteria. And we learned, you know, I mean, it was not so long ago that we were giving everyone regular milk, unpasteurized milk, and it was killing everybody.

Right.

That was one lifetime ago.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, we also have to remember how young we are and don't think that science and doctors and everyone has all the answers. We really have to listen to our bodies and meditate and create. Create the truth from within. I really believe humans have the ability to create within much larger than just listening. Let listening be a catalyst to you finding your answer. But finding your answer is an experience. It's a movement. It's one foot in front of the other, not just a thought. A thought is just a spark, movement. And so I think the long winded answer here is I had to do this because I had to fight for my life. And then I decided to be that for others.

I love it.

Every client I take on, I take personal. Because if I shake your hand and we have a deal, I'm in it for impact, I'm in it for results. And I don't give up so easily. I don't think I've ever told a client I can't help them. They tell me, you know, it's the opposite. I don't, I don't give up my clients because if I shake your hand, I'm in it. And I've had clients who are basically on their deathbed. We've been able to help them and they've chosen to be drug free and all that. If that's what they want. I don't advise that. That's up to them. And I mean, I had a girl last. Yesterday we had a call, she's 14 days into her program. She's 95% symptom relief.

Wow.

She's not in college right now because her ulcerative colitis is so bad. You know, we had another girl who had the colectomy surgery, and we've had ton of it, tons of this magic pill syndrome thing where they get on the program and within eight or 10 days, they're looking at massive symptom relief. And I'm not saying that's possible for everyone, but I want to let everyone know out there that you could be right around the corner from these symptoms going away. It's very possible. It's about building a symphony. A symphony plan that really works for you. Empowers your body to heal because your body wants to heal. That's the number one. Your body is divine.

Yeah. The body is able to heal itself. Right. I mean, I've seen it for two decades in the clinical practice, so on. On that front. So is that the shield that you're talking about? Is that the program that you're talking about?

Yeah. So I was. So I came up with S.H.I.E.L.D. as my program. It's. It's a metaphor and an acronym. So it's a metaphor to the idea that I'm not trying to cure anything. I actually don't even believe in the word cure. And I know some of my thoughts here are a little out there, so everyone hang with me. But I believe the word cure is just a fear based word that doesn't actually help anyone. And it's just a way to say, I don't know, a lot of things were incurable that now seem incurable. If you look atif you ask yourself if you got the flu and you got rid of it and it came back a year, I would ask, did you cure? Did you put it in remission? Very hard thing to think about. Did you cure? Did you put it in remission? Okay, you put it in remission. So the same flu came back? No, it's a different flu. Okay, so you cured it and you got a different clue. Okay, if I go to the doctor right now, my CRP is normal, my calprotectin is normal, my colon looks normal. A doctor who didn't know I had Crohn's disease first would say that you don't have Crohn's disease. Right. But if I told him I had Crohn's disease four years ago, five years ago, nearly killed me, he'd go, oh, well, of course you got remission. Be careful.

What are you doing?

You're not on drugs. You're crazy. Right? So what's a diagnosis if you can't even diagnose it? Yeah, Can I repeat that to everyone out there? What's a diagnosis if you can't even diagnose it? If one doctor is saying A and the other doctor saying B, what the hell is it? It's all man made, okay? So listen, you got to free your mind and realize that your reality is the reality you create for yourself. And the perspective you choose should be one that empowers you, not disables you. And so SHIELD Was a way of saying, let's forget all this stuff and death is in remission. That's the only thing that's in remission. Death. Okay? And I'm going to build a shield for myself so I can live a powerful life and go anywhere I want and do what I want and live abundantly and powerfully. And the same for my family and everyone I care about. S.H.I.E.L.D. okay? And when your shield gets strong enough, I'm going to take a big freaking rock and I'm going to throw it at you to make sure it works. Okay? That's phase two. That's where we actually cheat. I advise my clients to cheat.

Gluten, alcohol, whatever, bolus of glute.

Dirty. Let's get real dirty. Right? But that's not four or five months later. That's when we feel you're strong. Because I want to get rid of the trauma that being identified with the chronic diseases cause in your life. So your shield, we're going to test it, we're going to build it. Your shield. SHIELD is also an acronym that stands for supplements, herbs, imagination, exercise, lifestyle, diet. These are the six pillars of health. And when you put them all together and you work them on a day to day regimen, you compound a healing effect to allow the greatest energy to prevail. So that's what SHIELD is and SHIELD it's all about personalization. We have people we've helped as vegans, vegetarians, meat eaters out of India, New Zealand, Australia, us, Canada, it doesn't matter.

Oh, that's awesome.

So we really want to empower you to say, what's your answer? What are you looking to build? And there's a lot of clients who come to me and say, hey, I'm healing as a meat eater, because I think that's what causes me the less of an inflammatory response. But I'd like to be a vegan because I really care about the world and animals. Sure, Doctor, even do that. But it might take extra time for the microbiome to adjust in their body to synthesize size that protein correctly. Cool.

So you can Tailor it to whatever specific diet. And you're saying there's no unique diet, only uniquely to the individual. And you've systematized it into your shield program. And I've got your contact info below the show and the notes. People can work. Just sign up for the program. They can work independently with you as well.

Yeah. So my number one with my company with Crohn's colitis lifestyle is Impact. I really want to make sure that we're Impact. My goal is to be the most impactful healing program for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis in the entire world. That's my mission. I want people with Crohn's and colitis to have a true alternative program that can really, really help big time. Right. And the more I can help, the great. I mean, I'm thinking we're going to go big. We already affiliate out to clinics if people are extreme. And so the root of what we are is we're a consulting company. One on one on the phone, and everyone within our company has Crohn's and colitis themselves. So we have a naturopath doctor on our staff who had her colon removed when she was two years old. She went to Harvard, the whole nine yards. Huge. Very beneficial. So we have her. We have six coaches around the world who are all in remission of Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis themselves. So we have some. We have a coach in Australia, London, Spain, Canada, and three in the seven. Yeah. Three in the U.S. so what we have is we have our online program. So if you can't afford private consulting or you just want to, you know, test it out, you can use our online program. That's four different modules that shows you how to turn your house into a healing home and build your unique program. So it weighs the food philosophy and how to prepare food and how to build your day. It's called your daily blueprint. So that's where we start with that. And then if you want to upgrade any money you invested in the online program acts as a down payment for upgraded private consulting. Oh, cool. So we believe it's not. We believe that's what's going to help us have the most impact for people. So we work with you one on one. You're dealing with a coach who has the disease themselves or a doctor. And we can do it. Pretty much. We're working on getting more places in the world.

Sure.

And so, yeah, that's basically what we do. And we have a private Facebook group Where we have doctors and CEOs of companies come in and talk about what's great about their product, what's great about what they do. We're breaking down ideas like Sibo or any of that for all of our clients who have coaches. So it's a way to connect, but not to raise a flag of, ah, this is the vegan group or this is the paleo group. Like, you're in there, you're building your shield, and everyone's connecting and getting information.

Cool. Oh, that's great. And to have that community of folks going through similar stuff, you know, I'm sure you've got a lot of cross education happening there.

Yeah, I try to watch out because a lot of people get really confident in how they feel is the best, and I have. We have to massage that out and realize that, you know, there's a lot of information out there. A lot of it's conflicting and none of it's bad. It just needs to be personalized.

Yeah. Great. Oh, that's awesome. Well, I want to tell everybody out there, if you're just tuning in, this is what the health. I'm Dr. Greg Eckel, and my guest today is Dane Johnson, clinical nutritionist and developer of the shield program and with a man with a mission to kind of rid the world of Crohn's and colitis and provide a ton of support out there. In addition to that, he's got E Fund you'd Health, which is an amazing organization as well. So we're coming down to the last quarter of our show here, Dane, and we've covered the E Fund you'd Health, and we've covered your shield program. And now I'm wondering for you, how do you specifically keep your energy up? Because you're out. You're dealing with. I mean, you're dealing with others and with some significant health issues. You've got two companies in development. You've got coaches around the globe. You're coordinating a physician. You know, how do you. What. How do you manage all of that?

Don't scare me, Greg. Don't scare me. You know, I love what I do, I think is really what it is. When I talk to a client, when I. When I work with a coach, I get passionate about this because it caused me so much pain. And I'm just. It's. It's. It's like I'm still on day three of my own program. Like, no, this is possible. And I got all these people out there continuing to tell me it's not possible.

Yeah.

And I've got, you know, 50, 60, 70 testimonies behind me. Yeah. I'm sitting here going, it's possible.

Yeah.

And this is another thing. And I think I pray this for everyone who's listening. When you can, when you really make healing and natural medicine and taking care of yourself a priority, you start to become addicted to it. It's like a workout. You know, once you get working out, you're like, I can't wait to get to the gym tomorrow. I'm gonna kill a workout. But when you're starting, you're like, shoot, I can't even keep up with this. Right? So it's like you get addicted to the hacking. Everything I learn, I get stronger, I get faster, I get more connected. I feel like I look younger, I feel better. It's just everything that we in a society, I mean, a lot of us, we all want, is to feel good. And so I keep feeling better. And then it keeps connecting with people who like yourself, who are so passionate about feeling good and helping people. And then I'm like, dude, you are the coolest guy ever, man. I could sit here, talk to you for hours. And so I keep connecting with people who are like that and they invigorate me. And then all of a sudden they have a connection community of people who want to wake up at 5:30 in the morning, go surfing, get an organic meal, talk about a really empowering book, plan a trip to Australia and do all these really fun things, which is only possible because I'm the CEO of my health. I think I bring that energy to my coaches and I bring it to my clients and I bring it to anyone who is interested in E fund you'd Health. So when looking at someone coming on board as working with our community, either as a client or as an employee, I'm really just bringing that energy. And if they can bring it back to me, they fill me up. And so my conversations and my relationships tend to fill me up more than they bring me down.

Yeah. Awesome. I've got a lot of clinicians, practitioners that are tuned in and subscribing to the show. So I really hope to get that message out on Efund you'd Health. What's your goals with that organization? So you know, where is it at and its evolution?

So we had a very successful series A funding where we proved concept and we showed the data of what happens when we raise money, who our target is, how much of that money gets sent back, the practitioner who's referring them and the software is Working great. Now we're looking at raising $2 million to be able to become a national organization, be able to scale. And that 2 million will also make us self sufficient, so we won't have to raise money after that. So E fund your health takes 5% of what we raise to be able to pay for our internal team, to be able to help manage the practitioners or the clients or the marketing and all that type of stuff. So our next bit is to continue to show potential investors or donors what's possible. With E fund you'd health and show them the business plan and really the value of it and make sure that we're able to become self sufficient and we can help people on a national scale that works. Then we'll look at international. But the biggest point I want to make is that we can start driving funds to organic foods, to the right type of practitioners, to the right type of supplementations, to the right type of companies, the lab companies. And so we can have a real say in that. Right now the industry is growing so massively, but it's becoming more and more only for the wealthy. And if we don't create a system for the other 95% to get a hold of this, it will help. It will hurt our economy in every single way possibly and will hurt us morally in every way possibly too.

Yeah, I'm wondering, have you looked at like self funded corporations? You know there's a vested interest rate to get their people well and their costs are going up on the insurance front to have ability to seed a health fund for their employees as a tax write off is a pretty big incentive. Has any kind of forward thinking CEOs or companies jumped on board with that at all?

Yeah, we've actually talked with a few different alternative insurance companies that have a plan working right now for a low deductible that can pay them per month, cover them for X amount. So for that large scalable situation right now we've been looking at partnering because if we're not set up right now to start looking at okay, we're going to be the corporation will put in X amount and that will help with X amount of clients. It could potentially work, but we don't have a system that makes sense for both parties right now. So we're looking at people who are coming into alternative medicine need to spend 5, 10, $20,000 for cancer, autoimmune, chronic illness and be able to help that. When that makes I think we'll be able to look at a more scalable, larger system of how we can impact corporations and that. So for now we're looking at partnering with some of these other companies that are out there, but we haven't made a decision yet.

Yeah, cool.

Awesome.

Thank you for sharing that. You know, I think it's a, it's got such great potential and, you know, the GoFundMe platform obviously is a success and is helping, you know, countless, I don't know, millions, I don't know how many they have on that. And to have it specifically around a natural health program or platform to help people with their healthcare and connecting that community, it really changes our economy and, you know, really, I think, helps us all flourish much better. So that. Thank you for putting that great organization together.

Thank you, thank you. You know, there's a lot of my family who really, who was pushing for it because they just saw a big, A big need and. Yeah, so it's been a lot of people who've been pushing this forward, but I'm very passionate about it.

All right, so another, I got another tough hot seat question for you. So if Dane Johnson was responsible for changing healthcare policy in the United States, what would be the biggest lever to push on here?

Oh, man, that's a tough one. You know, I've got such a big heart for people who are in need.

Yeah.

Oh, man, I, you know, don't hate me, people. I would say I'd probably cut a little DOD cost and put it towards medical. Yeah. What I would do is I'd probably make health care more insurance more affordable and just find a way because, you know, money is only a bridge for opportunity within our real life. Money is not real. And I think we, I think we're too in love with it. And I would say that, you know, we need to have a system that can help support. I think what, you know, by no means what Denmark and Canada have done is perfect, but there are some systems there that help people, you know, get the treatment that they need and make it more affordable and especially with people who have three or four kids and things like that. So, yeah, I would say just if I would sit down with the best of the best and say, I don't know what I'm talking about, but let's figure out a solution. Sure. Healthcare more affordable. And I would say one of the biggest things is I would allow natural medicine naturopath doctors in functional lab work to be covered by insurance. Yeah. We need to get this out of just the cash spending and get insurance to take it seriously. Yeah.

You know, I sat down with a Yale trained Medical doctor over the weekend at a retreat that I was on. And, you know, he's down in Ashland, Oregon and has been in practice 35 years. I love him. Howie, if you're listening. And you know, we got into that conversation around that. He said, you know, they're in the insurance model. They take the Oregon health plan here in Oregon, and unbeknownst to many, there's a parity for pay disparity, meaning, you know, we as naturopathic doctors get about a third to a four fourth the reimbursable rate that an equivalent provider gets for the same code in the insurance model. And we tried to bring that up for vote in Oregon, but it never made it to the vote in the state legislature because the insurance companies squashed it with their lobby. And it is fascinating to me. We have a healthcare crisis in the country. We're looking for more health care providers. But then there's this whole disparity on reimbursable rates and docs. Naturopathic docs are really struggling in the insurance model, right?

Yes.

Look at. The insurance model is broken on its fee for service. And it's basically an incentivized sick care keeping. There's no incentive to get people well, I mean, other than the heart center. And I'm not blaming the providers at all in the system. But there's not a, you know, the incentive isn't there? Right. There's a residual income for big pharma and procedures, but, you know, in ancient China. Right. The doctors never got paid when people got sick.

Right.

We've reversed it here. And, you know, you have this unique position with your platform and, and having gone through it, the medical system yourself, and having to realize, like, oh my gosh, I have to make this up myself, and you're a brilliant dude and have come up with an ability to systematize it to help even more people. So I think that spiritual path that you're on is turning your personal tragedy into your purpose. Passion. Brilliant. Similar. You know, we're kind of on, you know, similar. Passive. Like that's what lights up. You know, it's what gets you up in the morning. Right.

I mean, that's why we're on this call, because we both feel that and we both have enough happened in our lives that this matters. And this is why you, you, you've done such a great job building the show and talking to these people, because it really matters to you.

Yeah.

Purpose. And it came from pain. And, and I agree that we, we have a system that incentivizes people to keep them sick. And what would happen if the big pharma products worked and they had to stop taking them? They go out of business.

Yeah.

And you know, and honestly, I think there's a lot of different problems going on, you know, and whoever's got the money has a lot of the controller controlling ownership of how operations are working and, you know, the hospitals, who's keeping the hospital's lights on and who's paying the doctor's bills. I don't blame the doctors. I really. They're part of a bigger system.

Yeah.

Don't get so mad at your conventional doctor. They just. They're part of a system.

Yep. Hey, I want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing your knowledge bombs and your platform and your program. People can tune in to Dane Johnson's work in the notes. This is what the health and this is exactly why I've created this platform. Please share this with your loved ones. We want to get the word out. This is how change happens. This is actually how we are changing the healthcare program to thriving. Right. We all can thrive. We're all going together and this is how we do it. We share this information. We want to get the word out because we want to help millions of people. And that's what we're about here at what the health. This is Dane Johnson, our clinical Nutritionist, founder of efundyourhealth.org Any last parting message to the listeners?

I'd say be the CEO of your health and create your biggest dreams and it will all work out awesome.

I want to encourage folks to tune in next Tuesday to what the health where 2 o' clock to 3pm on West coast time. Please share us if you love the show or like the show, just leave us some. Leave us some feedback. Get on those platforms and rate our show. We'd love to get some great ratings out there. So thanks for tuning in.

Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.