#255. He Was Supposed to Die… But He Found the Real Cure

Hey beautiful, it's Dr. Tabatha. I want to share something with you that I believe God is doing right now in women's health. We're in the middle of a massive movement and most people don't even know it. Every single day, 6,000 women in the U.S. enter menopause. That's over 2 million women a year, and by 2030, that's more than 1.2 billion women worldwide. So here's the thing, most of these women feel exhausted, bloated, anxious, disconnected from themselves, and the medical system is Doctors are handing out prescriptions and quick fixes, and no one is helping women heal from the root cause of their issues. That's where Fast to Faith coaches come in. As a certified coach, you'll be equipped to help midlife women balance their hormones, heal their gut, regain their energy, and reconnect their faith, the foundation that so many of us have been missing. And from a business standpoint, woo, this is one of the most lucrative untapped opportunities in the entire health coaching world. The global health coaching industry is expected to reach over $33 billion by 2023, and midlife women are the fastest-growing, highest-spending demographic in that space. Most importantly, these women stay with their coaches. They invest deeply because they are desperate for lasting transformation— body, mind, and spirit. So if you've been feeling that pull and that whisper that you're meant to do more, This is it. Now is the time to rise, to serve, and build a purpose-driven business that not only changes other women's lives but transforms your own in the process. Because when you help one woman heal, you help her family, her marriage, her faith, and her future. That's the ripple effect that we're creating with Fast to Faith. So join me, click the link to come watch this webinar. It might be the one thing that really moves the needle for you in this next— Season. I can't wait to see you in there. Welcome back to the Fast to Faith podcast. I am so excited to introduce you to someone whose story and mission are deeply inspiring. So Dane Johnson is a board-certified nutritionist and founder of Crohn's Colitis Lifestyle. After facing his own near-death battle, which you're going to hear about, with Crohn's disease, Dane refused to accept a lifetime of medications and surgeries as his only option. I love that. Instead, he committed to healing from the inside out, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Now he's helped thousands of others do the same through his proven root cause approach to gut health. And today he's actually going to share his wisdom on healing from inflammatory bowel disease, restoring our gut health, and leaning into faith and purpose and how that can really be what you need to transform in your healing journey. So Dane, I'm super honored to have you here. Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. And before we get started, I would love to dedicate this time to anyone out there who's suffering with disease and especially gut health disease. I've been there. I know what it's like to fail with the diets and the supplements and feel lost and lonely and isolated and be thinking, why me? This is not the end. Healing is possible. There's so much we can do. It's not easy. It's hard work, but it can be done. I hope we can get massive results for you today. Thanks for being here.

Oh, I love that. Thank you for that, because there are people listening who are losing hope. You know, I hear that a lot, like, you're my last hope, I, I don't even know where to go anymore. And that's kind of your journey, right? Can I just say, like, I love that it's coming from you because you look like a typical healthy man who wouldn't have any issues. And we tend to judge people on the outside and be like, Oh, he doesn't have— he doesn't understand. He's nothing like me. But you didn't always look this healthy, right?

I was 100 and— right now I'm 190 pounds, about 6'1, 6'2, and I dropped to 122 pounds, unable to walk, in a wheelchair, with long hair down to here and a beard. I was— because I couldn't move, I couldn't walk. I, you know, shame would— I felt like shame was my middle name. I had lost like my, my whole idea of person and, you know, had been broken down, you know, having 25 bloody bowel movements a day, not being able to make it to the restroom, having your mom when you're a grown man have to change the pan under you, uh, going to the bathroom and letting everyone around you hear you screaming out in pain because you're— you can't. It's, it's like pooping glass. The inability to dress yourself, to shower yourself, um, it was, it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. And the ironic thing was I, I was, I was a good old boy from Virginia. It was like I was raised outside. There's horses as my neighbors, and we didn't— they Nothing, nothing much going on. And I took a one-way trip to California, and all of a sudden I was doing commercials, and I did a few bad movies, and I was a crappy actor. You know, being, you know, put in a few scary movies as the guy to get killed, right? The athlete guy. Oh, he's dead. Yep, that was me. Um, at the same time, I was doing these amazing things in my early 20s, and no one had ever done that before. And then I was dying of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, and I had to go on a feeding tube. I failed biologics. I was told I had to get my colon removed multiple times, like, you must get it removed now. This week. I never did. And it's been 10 years. I've had zero medications, zero surgeries. I don't have any symptoms. I have normal lab work. I've got 2 beautiful kids with, uh, who are not sick. I think they're the, the healthiest of the healthy, honestly. And they're 2 non-GMO organic babies. And, uh, we feel blessed. Oh, that's awesome. And so it was a long road. And just everyone out there, it's like, oh, well, he did it. When I would hear, you know, just to put myself back in that That space of years of sickness. It wasn't like 6 months. I was chronically sick for 4 years, already doing naturalist medicine, spent over 50 grand in the 4 years, and was more sick after those 4 years than when I started.

Yeah, so let's go back there because I think there are some women listening who may be struggling with symptoms that they're not really talking about. And this doesn't like start overnight as a full-blown in the hospital, right? Like what What were your initial presenting issues that you were having?

You know, it started as more IBS when I was a teenager, just bloating, gas, cramping, urgency, just not much. You know, I was like, oh, I ate something, maybe it was hot chili or candy or something. And I grew up with the standard American diet, so I grew up on Papa John's pizza, and, and I worked at Papa John's pizza for 4 years, so that's all I ate. And Chipotle, you know what, Subway. And it just kind of kept growing. And then when I was 19, Ironically, every time I had a very stressful event in my life, my health took a big shot down that it kind of just stayed around there. You get a little better, then kind of go back to that area. So the first time I ever saw blood was actually the first time I had put this weight on myself to try to get in better shape where I was going to get more muscular, more ripped. It was right when I started thinking about doing acting and modeling, and I wanted to look like, you know, Thor from The Avengers. I was just eating crazy, just all protein, cutting out fats, working to do 2-a-days, and all of a sudden I started seeing blood in the stool. And that was 19, sophomore in college. And then I kind of laid, you know, calmed that down. Then it came back. It came back with a vengeance at 23. That's when I got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. And then 24, Crohn's disease. And then they kept going back and forth. Crohn's, UC, Crohn's, UC. Different doctors, different hospitals disagreed on what the diagnosis was, but we knew it was inflammatory bowel disease. Now, ironically, it was 13 months after wearing Invisalign that I was finally diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. And there's been some research comes out. I'm gonna give you guys some wins today. I'll give you some— Yeah.

Some thoughts.

There's been a lot of research coming out that's showing that people with IBD have upwards of 50% more microplastics in their gut than the average person. Now, if you think about Invisalign, that's just plastic you're chewing on and swallowing all day long, and then the moving of your teeth is opening up your gums. Now, that's direct access to your body through your microbiome. So the oral cavity, that is your microbiome. The gums is a direct line into the rest of your body. So I've got these microplastics, and I would comment— They commonly get bleeding gums. That's leaky gut. Bleeding gums is leaky gut.

Yes.

Right? The separation of the tight junctions in your body and so any kind of bacterial load, viral load, parasitic load, any kind of environmental toxins, air, food, water, can start having direct access through there. What we have to do is we have to simplify what's happening. We're all hearing these crazy terms, PCBs, VOCs, PFAS.

What?

What did he just say? Right?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Let me shoot you straight and simple. Okay, the toxins— they're all toxins, they're chemicals. Okay, glyphosate's a chemical. Volatile organic compounds on your fragrances and your perfumes are chemicals. Parabens are chemicals. These chemicals are altering the terrain of your microbiome. That is making your immune system more susceptible to autoimmune reactions, and then your nervous system is getting more stress from the EMF. and the blue light and the stress of the life and also the toxins again are putting stress on your nervous system, your autonomic nervous system, and then your— because the terrain is being altered, that communication network is altering your mucosal membrane. So emulsifiers, what keeps ice cream together, what keeps peanut butter together. Look at peanut— you look at Jif and it doesn't have that oil at the top?

Right.

It's because it has emulsifiers in it.

Yes.

These are chemicals. It's not real food. Peanut butter isn't peanut butter anymore. If you read a great book on this by Dr. Joseph Pizzorno, The Toxic Solution, he's gonna talk about in the 1970s, the average chemist making these chemicals for food had a lifespan of about 10 years less than the average human. So just manipulating these chemicals was reducing the lifestyle, so he decided not to become a chemist in the 1970s, went hard in helping to produce a lot of what we now know as natural medicine. So Pizzorno, The Toxic Solution, read it. Air, food, and water. The emulsifier polysorbate 80, which keeps ice cream together, keeps your peanut butter together, helps to hold these foods together, that acts as a detergent to basically wipe out your mucous membrane. So you have your microbiome, and then the mucous membrane is that nice thick mucous wall between your bloodstream, your cytokines, your 70% of your immune system, and the gut. Now, if that gets destroyed, it helps 2 things happen. Fungal and bacteria move up the GI tract. So gram-negative prolific bacteria that's naturally found in the colon can start to proliferate, such as Candida albicans or Candida species, up 20 stories, up the whole entire GI tract to cause small intestine bacteria overgrowth. And how do they go move up? The weakening of the terrain. So you have no police officers.

Yeah.

And then the mucous membrane has been destroyed and now they can just take the ladder straight up.

Hmm.

Because that slippery slope affects the balance of the microbiome. So those are 2 examples that, at the end of the day, the toxins are destroying the terrain, which has a domino effect, and that's why me, no one in my family had ever had gut health issues. My dad, my mom, my grandpa, aunts, no, there was no such thing as IBD. IBD didn't exist 70 years ago. There might've been like, I think there was a case or 2 kind of talked about, like a shadow of a case in the '40s and '30s, and it really was, All of these diseases have just risen with the Westernization. So as Western work principles, more antibiotics, less breastfeeding, less farmland, more cities, more chemicals, we're seeing the rise of all disease, especially inflammatory bowel disease, where only 1 million people were diagnosed in the United States in 1999, and then by 2015, 2 million people were diagnosed. So it doubled the diagnosis in 16 years just in the United States alone with the— Largest growth going to be in Canada and UK. So the farther we are from the equator, the more we're seeing these issues proliferate. Autoimmune disease, especially inflammatory bowel disease. What we're talking about is we know for a fact that the terrain is being destroyed. Okay, chemicals, think glyphosate, think the PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls, not as big of a problem now, but PFAS, microplastics. So when they say change out your plastic tubs, don't microwave them, stop drinking water in plastic water bottles, that's a 20-year-long phenomenon. When you were growing up, Dr. Tabatha, did anyone bring— drink water out of a plastic bottle?

No, we didn't walk around with drinks all day. Like, I was literally just saying that to a friend the other day. We didn't have our cups and our plastic water bottles. That's just not how we rolled. You— now you look everywhere and there's plastic literally all around you in every form.

It's in our— yeah, and it's in our seafood, sadly, and it's in our Starbucks coffee cup with hot— anything hot proliferates the problem. Even when people say, oh, what about PFAS in your, in your clothes and especially your underwear because polyester is a plastic, okay, and it carries these chemicals. Well, when you wear that into a sauna, like people wear their workout clothes into a sauna, you see a large increase in these chemicals being able to make it into your body when your pores open up. So we're just bombarded. The chemicals that are toxic, they destroy the gut, they destroy the gut lining, inhibit the growth of beneficial bacteria, then cascade effect to the gut lining, the leaky gut, the epithelial cell lining. Now it creates an environment where these that were in balance now become out of balance, and then when they start to proliferate, natural bacteria such as H. pylori, right, or Candida, they start to grow. Now we start to get a negative reaction, an autoimmune reaction to this, and then it causes food sensitivity.

Mm-hmm.

If you have small intestine bacterial overgrowth, which is pretty much everybody who has IBD and most people dealing with IBS of some sort, you know, there's 2 different things I think we need to distinguish, that there's colonic dysbiosis and then there's small intestine bacterial overgrowth. And colonic dysbiosis, where there's overgrowth in the colon, you get a lot more gas, diarrhea, urgency, your colon's maybe getting inflamed. Well, that can then just move into— remember, growing upwards, the bacteria growing up the gut. So once it goes from the colon to the ileum, the jejunum, and the duodenum, now we've got small intestine bacteria overgrowth. But those roads, you have a weaker gut lining, so the small intestine's more susceptible, and then that can more easily proliferate into our pancreas. Into our liver.

Yeah, I literally had a patient, a male patient recently who had elevated liver enzymes. His lipase was elevated. His gastroenterologist couldn't give him an answer why, because he's celiac and gluten-free. And we did stool testing and it was literally— he had SIBO and Candida overgrowth. I'm like, oh my gosh, your poor pancreas. And now it's all resolved. It's incredible.

Wow. And so there's this cascade effect, and I know this is hard for everyone listening, but just remember, we gave away our power when we just said one person in a white coat would just solve any of our health problems. And then we're in a brand new world that your father and your grandmother and grandfather were not in. So if you wanna know the differences, just say, how did grandpa live? What did he eat? What did he breathe? What did he see? And then that's where you can start reducing the damage. Now, I think a lot of people have heard this over and over again, but what I wanted to do right there is just give you a simple visual of you go, oh, Wait, I got it. Just my microbiome, the city of bacteria, that cell-to-bacteria communication is being injured, and the good bacteria can no longer stay in balance. That causes a proliferation, and that has a cascade effect to the gut lining, to digestion, liver, pancreatic, and then stomach, esophagus, all GERD, gastritis. So it's this cascade effect, and then I become what? More sensitive to food.

Hmm.

Why is it I can't eat pumpkin seeds anymore? Why can I not have a, Uh, salad. Why can't I have a polysaccharide, a complex carb such as pasta or beans or grains? My grandmother had them all the time. My grandmother lived to 90 years old and she could have those all the time. What happened? She had a stronger gut and she had better digestion and she had open detox pathways because she wasn't constantly exposed to the toxins in her air, food, and water. And a good— another good book I would recommend to, to look at this is, uh, Dr. Dave— William Davis, Supergut. He's got a great book where he talks about SIBO and some of this bacteria load. Those are really 2 good ones. And so you can just start to— I want your answer is try to simplify in your head what's going on. Start reduce the damage. But then there's another level where people say, well, Dane, I've already gotten rid of the chemicals. I eat clean. I'm gluten-free, but I'm still sick. The reason is because it's like if you were running ultramarathons and then your knee got hurt and you said, well, Dane, I'm not running ultramarathons anymore. Why is my knee still hurt? Because you now have to offensively do physical therapy to correct the knee, because now you have to offensively do physical therapy to correct the gut. Most of us, just changing these things will not actually fix it, right? If 10 people go on the SCD diet or carnivore diet or just stop the damage, change up our gut, 3 will get better, 3 will be neutral, and 3 will stay just as, maybe even get worse, 'cause they can't handle the fiber, they can't handle the prebiotics, they can't handle the polyphenols. So it's interesting. It's like the bigger question that's hard, the mountain is this: how do I correct the damage even after I've stopped damaging myself through these external lifestyle changes and unknown hidden inflammatory chemicals, toxins, and experiences?

Yeah, I think that's super important. And, you know, we talk like it's so easy to clean up our diet and change things and reduce our toxic burden, but I remember, When I first started studying all of the toxins, just from a functional medicine standpoint, like I was angry. I had no idea. I didn't learn any of this as a doctor. And I felt overwhelmed, like my entire world is toxic. How do I even go about this? Do you have some general guidelines to help so that we're not feeling overwhelmed and like we just want to cry and burn our house down?

Well, okay, so first off, the more you get trained— here's a really good one: don't just take a supplement because a practitioner tells you to. Make sure you can give me 2 to 3 sentences on what it does and why you are personally taking it. One of the problems is that we end up taking 20 caps a day because someone told us, but we don't understand them. So once you can give me 2 to 3 sentences on each supplement, I want you to start looking for supplements that can help Take off this stress. So we have like— there's 5 categories I teach people in the— I call them solving supplements. But you want to be able to walk in— your goal is to walk to any grocery store or any place with a lot of supplements, and you just need to first categorize the supplement. So the categories we teach is probiotic regimen, supportive supplements, mucosal healers, binders, and antipathogens. Meaning, is one of them helping to rebuild the police officers, the probiotics, the beneficial bacteria? Is one of them your medics, Mucosa healers, things like slippery elm, deglycerized licorice root, aloe vera, glutamine, marshmallow root. Is one of them supportive? Think of the post office being able to transfer information. Okay, your B complex, maybe a little bit of an anti-inflammatory like fish oil or curcumin. Think of antipathogens as your SWAT team, right? Team's gonna go in there and take that bad guy out. That's gonna be like your wad of oregano, or some of them can do both, like berberine can be supportive, it can also be antimicrobial, or olive leaf, or Mimosa pudica for all my Iovac. I'm a big Ayurvedic and Cellcore fan for antiparasitics and, you know, and so, so on and forth. So right now your goal— success is always to simplify. It's so hard because there's so much to learn. Now remember, Dr. Tabatha has been doing this for years and practicing for years. Are you better now at this than you were a year ago?

Absolutely.

And were you better a year ago than you were 3 years ago?

Right, exactly.

This is like learning Chinese, okay? You start to go, oh my God, I can say commands. Now I have to learn to talk in the past tense, in the present tense. Now I need to be able to lecture in Chinese. Give yourself time and space. So your goal is to simplify. What is your Batman belt to control it? So if I'm trying to reduce toxins, I wanna focus my supplements. I gotta say, what supplements am I taking that's gonna support drainage and also bind to the toxins so I can properly release them?

Yeah.

Okay, liver support. Your drainage is gonna be lymph, liver, kidneys, skin, and ability to poop. So what's gonna help you do those properly? And then binders, like there's some wonderful binders, fulvic acid, humic acid, bentonite clay, zeolite clay, apple pectin, activated charcoal, What's going to be right for you? Now, I'm just speaking Chinese a little bit to you, so you got to just write that down and say, okay, simplify, and what you want, and this is why the gold standard of what you're paying for when you get into functional medicine is not just the symptom relief. Most people are going, I want to listen to this podcast because I want to get symptom relief. The gold standard you are actually looking for is self-empowerment.

Yes.

How do I respond for a lifetime? How do I get empowered? That's one of the reasons I call my program Shield, not Walk on Water, right? There's only one man who did that. We call it Shield. So—

I love that. Oh my gosh, that's so good. I would love for you to talk about how we can get into this trap of thinking we know what we're doing with supplements, because I get a lot of women coming to me who have just been on killers for, you know, 6 months, 12 months, and they are not supporting their detox pathways or their microbiome. And they just feel miserable and it's heartbreaking to me. I'm like, who led you astray?

Okay, so when you— now imagine a big city. Now imagine you send in the SWAT team. If you send in the army or the SWAT team, there will be friendly fire. There will be fumes in the air. There will be buildings starting to be broken down. There's gonna be a mess in your city. When you kill things— now with SIBO and dysbiosis, there is already a larger increase in endotoxins causing metabolic endotoxemia. When you shoot the the bad guys, they release a toxic— imagine a toxic gas. You got the zombie and you're shooting him and he's just releasing this gas and you're like, don't get close to the gas, that stuff's nasty.

Yeah.

That's endotoxemia, also known as lipopolysaccharides. They're the most inflammatory thing that just kill good cells and cause more senescent cells and guess what has to clean them up when you kill?

Your liver.

The Robin to your Batman, the liver, the kidneys. You gotta poop them out. So if you will go send the SWAT team in and you are not prepared, And your body isn't able to get rid of those, you're gonna get what's called a Herxheimer reaction, which is simply defined as your body becoming overtoxic. Your body becomes overtoxic with the buildup of endotoxins, and we all respond differently to how we detox. Some of us are stronger, some of us are weaker. The longer you've been sick, the weaker you're gonna be, and then also you have methylation issues or gene issues that can affect that, and nervous system's gonna affect that.

So—

So it's not one thing you have to do. It's how do you put together your unique plan, and then what variables do you change along the way to keep it steering towards the true north? And that's where you have to understand what's moving and why. That's why Dr. Tabatha and I are always learning, because it's, hmm, how could this help? How could this homeopathic work? What about this Ayurvedic? What about this nervous system change? What about how do we stimulate the nervous system when this isn't working and that's not working over there? What about this case? to be vegan or they want to be a meat eater or somebody's having a negative reaction or an allergy to something like milk thistle or NAC. So it's about how do you move? So when you look at what's working for others, you want to take note of it, but don't take it as church, okay?

Absolutely.

So you just, you take it in. So when you just kill, kill, kill, here's the thought. If you have to continue to kill long-term, and I still kill, so take this with a grain of salt, If you have to continue to rigorously kill long-term, is your body actually getting in balance? Is your body actually getting in balance?

Right, right. That's a good question.

Because if I have to constantly battle SIBO, my beneficial bacteria, my body cannot go back to continue to control it, and that's one of the biggest root issues long-term with inflammatory bowel disease, and I'd say any autoimmune disease. We have, especially if you're diagnosed autoimmune, our bodies Notoriously have a problem keeping ourselves in check. And even, even a stressful event, right? What happens when, when, if someone has cold sores and they go into a stressful event, they get cold sores.

Right.

It's not just what you eat. Your nervous system is the bridge between the energetic and the physical. What you perceive as true will change your nervous system. Your nervous system's gonna regulate. It can have an effect on digestion, hormones, microbiome, what, what's being released. Are you, are you releasing dopamine into your body? Are you releasing, you know, cortisol? Right? Are you releasing adrenaline?

Because there's so many women with autoimmune conditions, and they, they get frustrated that their body isn't as resilient or doesn't respond the way their friends does. And it's like, you're just more sensitive, you, your immune system is ready to attack, it is on guard for you. But that makes you more apt to get into that situation of having a cold sore outbreak or Yeah. Recurring SIBO, so it is all about keeping your foundation super strong, right?

It is about the foundation really strong, but I want to give some power to those who have a tough case right now, because I was one of the hardest cases. I would read about people saying they got good on SAD, and I'm like, I don't even need anything, and I'm about 2 seconds away from a hospital. Forget SAD, I'm way beyond that. Those who get results really quickly, this is a joke, so take it with a grain of salt, but it helped me when I was really sick, okay? I was in a wheelchair, I couldn't walk, I couldn't eat, I was housebound for a year. months to be able to get out of bed and walk again. I get it. I really get it. They end up getting something called MPS, and it's a real— it's really a nasty thing you don't want to deal with. Magic Protocol Syndrome. You don't want it. You don't want it. Somebody goes in and they do a quick little hack and they start to feel better, but it doesn't work for you. You are being asked, I really think by God, to go deeper and to really understand your body for a greater purpose. Meaning, if I hadn't got that sick that long, I wouldn't have been able to help the thousands of IBD warriors I have been able to over the last 10 or for 11 years. It's because I had so much pain that I now have so much purpose. If you get a little pain, you get a little purpose. If you hack your way out of this in 2 seconds, 2 things. Number one, you don't really learn it, you don't really believe it, you're gonna end up going back to your old self. And I believe that person has a 10x chance of having more problems in a year or 2. So it's like the tortoise and the hare. The tortoise takes off quick and you're slow to go, but the tortoise goes way up and then the tortoise goes way down, but you actually learn what you're doing. You divorce the lifestyle that makes you unhealthy. You divorce You purge the toxins, you purge the toxic energy, the toxic people, the toxic food. You clean up your air. You really get trained and now you go here.

Hmm.

And then if you have a problem, it's more like this and then you can correct it. See, that's my life. My life is now— it was way down here. Nothing works, nothing works, nothing works, nothing works, nothing works. Oh my God, is something working? Nope, that didn't work actually. And then I keep— and finally after 4 or 5 years, I finally get up here and then I'd stay here and then 2 years later I was up here and I'd stay like that. But it's always like that. It's never this. It's always a little up and down. I'm sure Dr. Tabatha has ups and downs. I have ups and downs.

Absolutely.

So it's— but you get even higher. So instead of going, you know, going from 80% healed to 50% healed, I go from 98% to 88%, you know, or 85%, where the symptoms I feel aren't as heavy. And I've also gotten cleaner with how I live. You know, it took me years to really get rid of the gluten completely because I was a gluten addict. I was a chip addict. an American diet addict. You too?

Oh, absolutely. I was so addicted to gluten. It talked to me. The donuts would talk to me.

They're talking to you.

I kept trying to go back to them, and I had to learn the absolute hardest way, like, you are destroying your body. I'm— I just— you're speaking my language. Did you have a moment where you just fully surrendered to Jesus and was like, I'm ready to die to myself because I don't want to live like this anymore? Because I feel like some of you need to get to that point who are listening.

Well, maybe that's kind of the idea. You wanna hear something wild? I was sick for 4 years trying every diet, spending thousands of dollars. I walked in, I had got booked to do this job out in Ohio and they was like, you know, it's a dream come true when you're a kid and you're flying around the world doing this stuff. And I had lost control of my bowel movements like 3 times. I was having these severe night sweats. I was losing my vision and I had to go to the bathroom like 12 times on a 3.5-hour flight from Ohio back to California. And I walked it back in, and I remember shutting the door, and I was just so— like, I was lying to everyone. I was, I was like Two-Face. I was pretending that I was like this cool, healthy, fit actor and model. No, I was sick. I was 2 seconds away from an ER room, and I just walked in the house and something snapped in me, and it was like, I'm done. I'm just— I'm done being sick. Healing is now my number one priority and my full responsibility. And it wasn't about— I, and I know a lot of people can't do that with kids and work and stuff. I was a young kid, but something just snapped. And I really think it was the boy turning into a man. I really think so. And you know what was funny is that night was the first time I just dedicated myself to doing prayer on purpose every single morning and every night, because something snapped in me. And when you snap, things become very clear. You just probably haven't snapped yet. Here's what's clear. There's so much you're not doing that can only help and can't hurt. Like prayer. If prayer can't hurt and it can only help, why aren't you doing it? And here's more evidence: if stress makes you sick, then what does gratitude and prayer do? For something to exist, its opposite must exist. You need to surrender and also bite down like a dog on a bone at the exact same time. There's a higher power than you need to let go of, but then you have to take you have to take full responsibility by taking massive action and making this your number one priority, and be like I am. I am— I was done with sugar. I was done with gluten. Like, I was ready to scream to the mountaintop. I don't care how long I have to be gluten-free. It really changed me. And here's another thing I was done with. I was done guessing. I didn't know if I should eat plants or meat. The conversation was making me confused. I'm sure it's out there for you, but here's what I got convicted on. I'm not putting a thing in my mouth that I don't cook and I don't prepare.

Mm-hmm.

Because what I do need— what I do know is that I lost my power over eating even trusting my body and trusting my intuition.

Uh-huh.

I didn't have that anymore. So I'm only gonna eat what I cook because there I can build my intuition— my intuitive nature on what works and why. Iron sharpens iron. You gotta work hard, you gotta get uncomfortable, and you gotta take full responsibility. See, it is a responsibility to be able to only eat what you cook. So I stopped cooking 1 meal, I cooked 4 meals, and I cooked 4 meals with Bob Marley Okay? I cooked 4 meals with the sun out.

Yeah.

I cooked 4 meals with all positivity and love. I released the pain and I just went towards gratitude, peace, happiness, prayer with conviction. And that's one of the biggest things is when you really decide to heal, there's so much obvious. And I know that we all have a lot of responsibilities. I didn't have as much responsibilities when I went through this. I didn't have kids, I wasn't married, I didn't, you know, have to work so heavily, I didn't have a mortgage. So I understand that, but you can find your middle ground there. That was the foundation. And that's the foundation, Dr. Tabatha, of where I started is, you know, within a week of doing prayer and purpose, journaling every day, only eat what I cooked, I started my day, my house had to be clean. I no longer would wake up and sit in my pajamas. I'd no longer be un— I mean, I had hair down to here and a beard. I no longer would act sick.

Yes.

This all came to me creatively, like a 4-year-old coming up with a game. It's so obvious. Like, if you know, if you're done being sick, why do you look sick?

Right.

Why do you dress sick? Why do you spend your hours sick? I couldn't walk. Don't tell me. Don't tell me it's an excuse. You can go outside and take your shoes off and put 'em in the ground while you do prayer, while you read the Bible, while you read anything of help. Like, I would just read every— I started reading 20 minutes a day, and by month 5 or 6 at home, it was about 4 hours every day, easy.

Easy.

It's just like, you gotta condition. You already, you know you need to, You'll be able to do legs twice a week at the gym, but you won't do that with your mind.

Yes. And I would argue that the women listening who have all those other responsibilities, that is even more reason that you need to get off your butt and shift, because other people are counting on you to be healthy and to be able to show up as the amazing woman that God created you to be. So, you have to get unstuck, not just for you, but for everyone, right?

Well, and that's where the pain is, Dr. Tabatha, 'cause if I had heard that, I would've been so angry.

I know.

'Cause I was trying. I was like, this doctor put me on this crazy diet and I just did it for 2 weeks straight and I don't feel better at all. I actually just lost 5 pounds and I have less energy. It is hard, guys. I get it. I'm trying to rise you up to find conviction and then you need a clear plan that's built for you. Don't try to do a plan. Build your plan. And so you have to make sense of it. You have to put it together. And for me, the reason I built out my program or what I do is because it took me years to figure out what I'm like, oh my God, I get it now. So there's simple things like when you only eat what you cook, you're gonna get intuitive nature on how you feel with it and you're gonna cut out all the toxins because you've already gotten rid of most of that stuff. It's actually gonna be cheaper. Alcohol is only an expense deteriorating your gut. Just get rid of it for 90 days. I promise you're not gonna miss it. They call it the devil's juice, right? It's rotten juice that's causing every— everything dumb you've ever done, you were drunk.

Exactly.

Every dumb thing.

You're poisoning yourself on purpose.

And it's so inflammatory to the gut and if your mucosal membrane is weakened and you have a bunch of Candida overgrowth, that is gonna be a grenade, an absolute grenade. Same with the seed oils and I know the restaurant food, this, that, and the other. Get a seed oil card, okay? SeedOilCard.co. I just give this every single time. I give this to the waiter every single time I go to the restaurant. Only the green good oils, none of the bad oils. Thank you so much. Earn your tip, brother, right?

Yeah.

And so there's so much. It just— it takes some time. Be peaceful with yourself. Start with the nervous system. Take time, you know, just— you need sunshine, you need your feet in the grass, eat what you cook for a little while if you can handle that, if you're really ready to heal. And then you need to write 2 to 3 sentences on every supplement you take and why. I want you to focus on drainage. I want you to focus on any kind of medic, okay? Any anti-inflammatory. So curcumin, slippery elm, marshmallow root. There's this really great product called Mucosal Calm by, uh, listen2yourgut.com. Mucosal Calm, really great to start. And, um, you know, use a tea. Stop drinking cold water. Hot water and tea. Lemon, apple cider vinegar, maybe a pinch of salt. You can throw George's aloe vera in there. This is almost gonna cost you nothing. I start almost every day with a tea. Cold water is not bioavailable. Anyone with gut health issues has bioavailability issues. So you see, I'm just dropping dimes on you, just showing you. And this is— but this is 12 years. It can be overwhelming, but just let this be an anchor for you that there's so much you can learn and do. And let your conviction, let your Let your fire be that this isn't just to heal yourself. This is to be also to lead and empower those you love so that your kids don't have to go through this or so that you can show your kids what's possible. If you're a parent listening for your son or child, try to start changing your life and get happy doing it because when others see you happy and healthy, you are the biggest influencer. It's not J.Lo, okay? It's not any of these celebrity people. Whoever's the happiest and whoever the— is the healthiest. happiest is the true influencer. And if I sit at a table long enough with these people and they end up not being healthy mentally, spiritually, addicted to drugs, addicted to poor food, addicted to lifestyle habits such as, you know, addicted to sex or porn or any of this other stuff which I've already worked out of my body, eventually that's going to make me happier and healthier. My spirit's going to shine more, and then I will end up being the influencer. That's my core belief. Now, I'm— again, I don't walk on water. I have my problems, and I still Try to, you know, continue to try to be better. But the more I practice divorcing things that are not good for me, the happier and healthier I get. And then everyone around me gets happier and healthier because my life is a leadership for what's good for my children. You know, I have— my biggest addiction is actually right now is TV. It's really bad. My son's biggest addiction is TV. And I go, how about that?

Mm-hmm.

What I can't fix, my son can't fix. When I was addicted to other problems, I later realized that they were my father's. Those problems. My mom told me.

Absolutely. I said, oh my God, generational curses. We got to break the chains. I, I'm just standing here in awe, Dane, because literally I'm gonna get women saying, Dane's the male version of you. He's saying everything that you say to us all the time. Like, I'm just standing back and going, God is so incredible the way he is using like countless people to send the same message from a different voice so that the right person can hear it. Like, that is just mind-blowing to me what you're speaking right I'm just so grateful that you're here sharing this. It's so powerful, and women need to hear it sometimes from a man. Sometimes they need to hear it from somebody else. I know my children don't listen to me, but they'll listen to somebody else, you know what I mean?

Well, people, you know, just, just get happy, guys. Don't— I know it's almost a miserable experience to try to change your diet and all that. You can't just figure it out. You have to change how you feel. It took me years to get rid of gluten. I got rid of it because I changed my spiritual energy and connection to that lifestyle, but it took years. It won't take you years if you continue to learn and try, but talk about it. You know, enroll others, do it with others, find a different community. Like, when I was sick, all my community lived that poisonous lifestyle. Years later, when I was truly in balance with health, my whole community was like that balanced health.

Wow.

That's why it takes years. And then I had to take, you know, do functional tests and wait 4 to 6 months and do more tests and have an aha moment and something's not working. And, you know, a year and a half ago, I was dealing with adrenal fatigue and some panic attacks 'cause I was working so hard. That was a new experience, and I bet you in a month or two I'll have a new experience where I'm failing to, to do it correctly. That's the human experience. But, you know, wisdom comes from experience, not age. So the more you take action, the more wise you can become. And wisdom comes from failure, not success.

And I love that you're pointing out the fact that this is a journey. This is a lifelong journey. We will continue to be bombarded with toxins and stress and different events, and, you know, Bacteria, and we just have to get some fortitude and some resilience in our body and in our mind to be able to handle what's next, because you're never 100% fixed or 100% healthy and impenetrable, right? You got to build that shield. I love that.

Yeah, you build that shield. Supplements, herbs, imagination, exercise, lifestyle, and diet. Build your shield. And eventually I say get rid of your diet and build a lifestyle. I can eat whatever I want, I just don't poison myself, so I'm free. And so there's areas of this. So just start with simple things. You know, number 1 is if you can, try to eat only what you cook or try to make really good decisions around eating. Number 2, try to nurture your nervous system. How do you know it's being nurtured? Because you feel good, you feel at peace, your heart rate's low, you're salivating before you're eating, okay? Number 3, don't take something unless you can give me 2 to 3 sentences on what it does and why you are personally taking it. Focus on prob— your police officers, your probiotics, your medics, your mucosal healers, and your drainage pathway which is supportive supplements, okay, like N-acetylcysteine or milk thistle or castor oil packs, you know, maybe a little binder like bentonite clay, and focus on a probiotic, especially with the colon. Start with the bifido. Don't go on to the fermented foods yet. Don't go on to the lactobacillus yet. You're most likely gonna get a histamine or Herxheimer reaction if you're really sick. So, you know, start with the simple things and then start stacking on top of them and start reading every day, 'cause you do need to condition your mind. You can't just know this. You have to feel it. It's not something so easily known. The best thing you can get from this podcast today is like a match. It's like a strike of a match. It's like he just gave me a bunch of things I can use, and I feel— underline feel— that I now have hope, that this is simpler, that there's things I can take away and do. But that feeling will dissipate tomorrow. So what do you got to do tomorrow?

You got to get into action.

Well, you've got to go find it. You've got to listen to Dr. Tabatha's next podcast, right? You've got to find— you've got to continue to condition. That's why we go to church every Sunday. That's why you listen to a pastor—

I do it every day.

Who's read the Bible for 10 years straight. Why are they still going? Because it's not what you know, it's how you feel. And your actions help to balance your feelings. And when you change your feelings, you change your nervous system. And when you take different action, like prayer is action, you use the law of attraction to bring it closer. You enroll God in the reality you are creating. Now you've got the paddle down the stream. When you're sick, it's like, I'm going down the stream, there's nothing I can do. Grab your paddle. Paddle and start kicking that thing upstream. That's prayer. That's purpose. That's love. That's music. That's outside. That's doors. That's calling somebody else and making their day better. Stop telling them what's wrong and start telling them what's right. You've gotta become a ninja. You need to get a degree in how to feel good, how to use the right frequency and vibration to attract that life. Here's what I was gonna say earlier. Within 7 days of doing prayer and purpose, I finally slept through the night.

Oh, so good. That's incredible.

My nervous system was so shot. Yeah, I just, I literally got on my knees, not talked about getting on my knees, get on your knees. I don't care if someone's watching you, do a prayer. The Maker's Diet, check this out. Jordan Rubin, The Maker's Diet, great book. He calls it God's diet, really strong Christian, and he's the one who also helped build Ancient Nutrition. He helped build Dr. Dan Pompa's supplement line. He's done really big things. He almost died of Crohn's disease and he wrote a few books, Patient Heal Thyself, Myself and The Maker's Diet are 2 really good ones. Well, The Maker's Diet, he's got a morning and night prayer in there, and I ripped those prayers out and I said the morning prayer every day for about 8 or 9 months, and I said the night prayer every night for about 8 or 9 months. Just rip them out and tape them. The Maker's Diet, he's got 2 really good prayers in there. You know, that's just— language changes your vibration. And when you start praying, you start— the mask of what you don't have starts coming off. Like, here's some— here, epiphany, one of the last epiphanies, because now we're over, is He's like, would you rather have this or would you rather your loved one have this? My energy eventually got to give it to me. I don't want my mom to deal with this. I don't want my dad to deal with this. I don't want my sister. I for sure don't want my sons dealing with this. Give it to me. Through my pain, I have purpose. And guess what? Would you rather you lose your loved one and deal with this or not have to deal with this, be in complete remission, but no— but your loved one's gone?

Right.

I still got my family. I still got my tongue. I still got my love. I got my ears. I got my eyes. earth. I got the soil. I got laughter. I've got my friends. Call your friend, make their day better. Depression is when you feel like there's no way out, and depression always feels like a lack of value. You want to feel valuable. You want to feel confident, be of value to others. I can't walk, but I can still make your day better.

Right, absolutely. You're turning your pain into purpose, and that is literally what God wants you to do every time. Romans 8:28, like, everything is working for your good if you will just get on board and realize it. Like, stop focusing on the pain and the misery and start figuring out how can I bless other people with what I just learned, with what I just went through. Like, let's help others. When we get our focus off of our disease and our diagnoses, then we have the power.

And the science backs it up. You help somebody have a good day, your nervous system is going to change. You're going to get that dopamine, and that's anti-inflammatory. That calms down pain. Walk towards What I'm trying to say is take action to have a new experience. What you're thinking is a prison. What you do changes how you feel. So you can't think your way to new feelings. You have to act your way to new feelings. You have to act your way to new experiences, which changes the nervous system. So if you sit down with therapy talking about your problems, it won't do it. But if you start enrolling that therapist in what you're going to do and why you're going to do it, and you actually do it, building integrity with your word and your action, Your life will change. I took— remember, it took me a year. So 6 months in, I'm still— I'm 140 pounds. I'm 6'2, okay? 140 pounds. I could only eat about 7 foods. I was still getting some blood, but man, I was happy. I had conditioned. I was reading. I was learning natural medicine. I was working with my naturopath professor. He was giving me new protocols and hacks. I finally got it. I started doing some breathwork. I'm riding my bike every day to the gym. I can't lift weights, but I got friends at the gym and I'm out of the house finally.

Mm.

And it's like, what's up, man? And it's like, yo, is that Dane, the guy who used to bench press 315 pounds at 6% body fat? Yep. Now he's got a cane. Yep, that's right. And it was like, and I used to find reasons to laugh. I remember I was, I was at the gym because I finally would say, how do I make myself feel better? Why I loved going to the gym. So just being able to attend the gym, just to be able to attend, not even lift, helped me feel better. Remember, walk towards a smile. And it's the last story I'll tell you. So I've got— I can hardly walk. I mean, I'm hardly moving. And there's these personal trainers. I knew the personal trainer. I was talking with him, and he was working with this woman. She must have been 75 to 82. I mean, full white hair, short, full white hair. And he was working her out, doing a rotation of machines. Well, there's no way I was going to pick up a weight, so the only thing I could do is sit at a machine and try to move it. So she was doing these back rows, right, where you kind of grab and there's a thing in front of you and you pull it back. And then she's done. She does like 10 reps, and I sit down on the same weight as Grandma, and I try to lift it. It was like, oh, nope, gotta, gotta make that lighter. Can't, can't hang with you yet, Grandma. You over there working. I see you working strong as an ox, that Grandma right there. I love it. And so I was dying laughing in my head. So what was misery where I couldn't lift up without falling was now I had turned it into laughter that I see you, Grandma, I see you. And it was like, it was just a reason to smile and laugh. And you know, and I just sit down and talk with 85-year-olds because I couldn't even walk, and some of them couldn't walk either. So I was like, "Hey, we're kind of in the same boat. You know, tell me about the 1940s. Like, I'm interested. What was it like?" They're like, "Oh, we didn't have to lock our cars. Elvis was great in the 50s. This is how life was. My house cost me $45,000." I was. I just had some of the best conversations, you know. And so you you can find you can you can turn lemonade from lemons. And yeah, that's the biggest thing. God bless guys. You can heal. Healing's possible. Make a stand. Absolutely.

So where is the best place for people to find you if they wanna work with you and they know they need your help?

Yeah, well, I'd say first off, just be— you know, click on the link below in the show notes. We came— we know you came from Dr. Tabatha, but what we do is we will schedule a free one-on-one session with you with one of our IBD support specialists, and so we're gonna talk about your case and talk about what works and why and see if we can partner with you to really help you out with these gut health issues. We focus on IBD. We will do some undiagnosed IBD or IBS. us if, if it's, uh, there's some authenticity and transparency that we really feel like we can help. But that's the big thing. We want to understand your case, what you've done, what you haven't done, and see if it's a good fit. So you can find us at Crohn's Colitis Lifestyle. We're on Instagram, we're on YouTube, we're hard to miss on anywhere on the internet. You can find us out, Dane Johnson Crohn's Colitis Lifestyle, and we'll do, uh, we'll do everything in our power to help you out.

Love it. Yes, all the links are in the show notes. Thank you, Dane. It was just such an honest, courageous conversation, and I know that so many women and just feel trapped with chronic gut issues. So I really hope that you're getting a lot of value out of this. There was a lot of golden nuggets dropped. You might need to listen to it again, even on a slower version, especially if you have autoimmune conditions. Like, you need to fix your gut. Absolutely. So I agree, God designed our bodies to heal, and I hope that some of the insights you got today show you that healing really is possible, but you got to get to the deeper root causes. You got to nourish your body, and then you have to lean into faith and trust God. You're not broken. You're loved. Your healing matters, and you are equipped to live the life God is calling you to do. So go out there and faith it until you make it. I'll see you next time.