Dane Johnson: How I Healed Crohn's + Colitis Naturally

The doctors couldn't figure out why I was dying. December 14, 2014. I nearly died of Crohn's and colitis. I want to give the world what I didn't have when I was chronically sick, how I healed and how I stuck with it. I was convicted. I was self accountable. I completely changed all my actions. I rebuilt myself.

Dane Johnson is a board certified nutritionist who founded Crohn's Colitis Lifestyle to help others struggling with irritable bowel syndrome. Looking back now, can you see that wholeheartedly, truthfully, as a gift? Is that real for you to see the disease and the in the condition? As a gift?

100%.

How so?

I just suffered enough. I just was done suffering. Because when you suffer and then you try to fight back. Come on, let's go. Come on. And you go at it and then you suffer another month and you suffer another year. Something just changed in me where I just said I'm tired of being unhappy and I'm tired of being sick and I'm tired of being depressed.

Do we have to get to that place where we're so beat up and we're so just exhausted? Dude. With fighting the war, that that's actually where all the peace starts to come. Day. Welcome to the podcast.

What's up, man? Thanks so much for having me. I'm so grateful to be here. It's just a pleasure.

Same you. You have a light to you. Do people tell you that you have a glow?

Sometimes. But thank you for saying it. You know, I think just when I get in positions of being able to communicate my story and my impact and my journey to finding my health again and reversing chronic disease I was told was impossible. I just. I want to light up for people out there who don't have hope and are feeling lost and feeling like I've tried everything. I've done diets, and there's nothing I can do. And I've got this stamp on my forehead from my doctor, so I guess I just light up with the possibility that healing is possible. And there's always something we can do.

I love that you said possible because impossible has. I am in front of it.

Yeah.

Which means if you're looking at etymology, you're possible.

Yeah.

I guarantee you that when it comes to health conditions of any kind, now, yours is real specific. And so people are already here because they read the title, they know what you're about, they understand the kind of extreme healing. And I say extreme. Yeah, but it can be every day. Extreme healing. That you're going to bring. The I am part is powerful. It's really powerful. Almost like the hair on my chest and arms are, like, sticking straight up right now. Because I've had many health journeys, as most people do, but yours is real serious and real life threatening. The amount of work that a human being has to do to get to a place where they can not only heal what God brought them as a gift, but then to be able to be of service from that. And in the words of John Weinland, be of service or. Or from your wound, do the healing. That's massive, man. So, like, pull the time machine. Way back when did you first even start to feel the condition or the gift? And I don't want to make light of it. I know Crohn's and colitis or something that serious.

Yeah.

Does not feel like a gift. And it does claim lives right. Unnecessarily.

It does, yeah.

What was the moment where you actually recognized, looking back now as a father and as an influencer and just as a man who's healing so many people? If you were to look back, was there a certain moment where it all began?

The moment I was. I was 19 years old, and I was just hanging out with my buddies, as we do. I was a good old boy from Virginia, went to school in South Carolina. Wow. And we like to play football, watch the game, eat, eat, you know, Subway, go lift weights. Who. Who can throw up three plates type of stuff. A lot of that guy. Macho Southern stuff that.

Yeah.

And I went. I remember I woke up and I went to the bathroom and looked down. It was just pure red. And I was 19 years old, and I didn't know what it was. I was thinking, do we have cherries or beets last night? Or what was that? I didn't think much of it, but then it happened again and again. And I felt this swelling in my body, this inflammation my body, and I became unnerved. It was almost like the first time I felt more human, like, I'm not invincible. Before that, I got in the flu. You know, I got in concussion football. I broke my arm or broke a finger. You know, I played a lot of sports growing up, so that was stuff. Like. It was. It was different. This was. My body was fragile, and I'm no longer safe. And that was a. That way. It was almost like I needed to mask it. When I was young, I. The first thing I did is I delegated. And that was my biggest mistake. I learned. But I called someone and I told my Mom. I told my dad. My mom was obviously the one running in circles. What are we gonna do? Being a mom.

Yeah.

And I didn't want to tell the doctors because that's always a scary thing when you tell a doctor, like, hey, I've got blood coming out in my stool. And, you know, I'm a kid, my wife's just starting.

Yeah.

And I was reluctant to do so, but when I finally did, I got diagnosed. And it was just like a ripping of curiosity and optimism in life, you know, like, I have so much to look forward to. And I was angry. It created spite. And I think a lot of people felt like this when you. When something happens to you that you do not deserve, and that's just the hardest pill. I mean, me and you were kids, and we scraped our knee or a kid pushed us or, you know, hit us with a rock or something like that. We would cry, go tell the teacher, the principal, our parent, and then it would be taken care of. So we delegated out responsibility for things that weren't our fault. And that's what I did. That was my subconscious. That's what my nerves told me to do. That's what every cell did. Something bad happened to me, who's going to take care of it?

Well, you're 19. I mean, what kind of emotional intelligence do you have at 19? Unless you were brought up by yogis or something.

Yeah. And I just kind of escaped and tried not to think about it. It's like, okay, I've never even heard of ulcerative colitis.

Yeah.

And I was ashamed to tell people because it's a butt disease.

Right.

And I'm in South Carolina throwing the football around. I can't talk to my friends about this. They didn't know. We didn't know what was going on. And I was getting scared to be in a car without a restroom. I was getting scared to go eat and have a beer or drink pizza, which I was doing back in 2009, 2008. Right. As a kid. And that's what everyone else was doing. So then it brings up this. Why me? Why do I have to worry about this? Why am I getting cramping and bloating and pain? Why does it feel like I'm pooping glass after I eat certain things? Why am I waking up at 2 in the morning to use the restroom? Why am I going to the bathroom six, seven times a day? You know, why am I losing weight? You know, now it's affecting how I look. T shirts and jeans and how it so now it's like it's affecting my confidence, it's affecting my strength, it's affecting my ability to be a protector.

So for people that don't know, because I think there's a lot of confusion and maybe there's something like in your businesses and in your circles that people get wrong. Ulcerative colitis, it specifically is what you know on a really high level, how it impacts people is unique. But what exactly is it? And then we'll get into the energy part of it. But just the science of ulcerative colitis, what is that really?

It's a form of inflammatory bowel disease. It's localized more to the colonial, so it could be sigmoid colon, transverse ascending descending colon. So around the colon, we have chronic inflammation in the colon. We don't understand what causes it. And then you have Crohn's disease, which is more widespread inflammatory bowel disease. So anything from your mouth, your esophagus, all the way down to the anus or sigmoid colon. So the Crohn's tends to be more like in parts of the gi, also of colises and other parts. And so we can be diagnosed through sometimes things in blood or samples and colonoscopies, endoscopies. And I was diagnosed first with left sided ulcerative colitis. And then I went to another premier hospital and they said, no, no, no, you actually have Crohn's disease. We're finding problems in all parts of your GI tract. And then the third time, it was, no, no, no, you have ulcerative colitis with gastritis. So that's one of the things that started giving me the confidence and hope other people, I think people can relate with that, that I was getting multiple diagnoses. And all I knew is I was chronically sick and I was inflamed. And they kept calling it different things.

Plus, when you're that young, I mean, I don't know your relationship with your parents, are they very intelligent, are they supportive, are they loving?

Very. All of it. All the above. They're middle class, good hearted people. My dad's a company man, 40 years, same company mom, very smart entrepreneur. She's a go getter. She's a why not woman. If I say, hey, I want to go build this company, she's like, let's make it happen.

So would it be safe to say that you grew up with a fixed mindset or a growth mindset when you were young?

Split. My parents are completely different. I'm half stay steady, do the right thing. Work hard every single day. That's my dad. My mom's the think big, go to the clouds. And I have literally both in me.

Ah. That feminine energy that. That forces us to find new shorelines. I've got it. So good.

I've got it. That's how I got here.

So then, okay, because it's such a sensitive topic, Right. Anyone that's dealing with a major disease or a condition that's chronic or autoimmune or anything that's really pulling someone out of homeostasis, Right.

Yes.

Homeostasis being this beautiful set point that our creator made for us that really is alarm bells.

Yeah.

When we're misaligned.

Yeah.

And so looking back now, can you see even generationally, I don't know if you've ever been asked this. Can you see generally generationally in your mother or in your father's lineage, was there anything that they took on unconsciously that they gave to you that may have been exacerbating this condition?

My gut instinct to answer that is no. And that's what drove me mad. No one in my family had ever had a physical experience like this. And they were on both sides. What is going on? What is. My sisters don't have it. My friends don't have it. No one on the team has it. What is. What did I do to deserve this? There was a. That didn't make sense. No one had felt it. And you know, my family was eating gluten and having seed oils and having processed food and stopping at McDonald's, but we didn't know health issues. We didn't have diabetes, we didn't have cancer, we didn't have obesity. We were just healthy people who kind of in the back of our mind is, if you're a good person, you'll just be healthy. That was kind of the ignorant 90s. Here's a Lunchable.

I mean, there's some truth to that.

Yeah, there is.

You can't just put garbage down your mouth and expect it to run a high profile machine.

We didn't know we were putting garbage in the 90s.

Sure.

My parents there was. We didn't know organic, we didn't know seed oils, we didn't know glyphosate. And all that actually came to be around 1988, 1999, as Dr. Bush told me in one of our interviews, like, hey, that was when the great spray. I like to say the great spray.

It's funny but also sad. The great Spray.

It is very sad.

It's really fascinating. To me, like, I look at you, I feel your energy. Yeah, you just radiate health.

Thank you.

But a lot of people might look at you and they just have no idea, nor could we ever even truly understand somatically what you went through biologically, what you went through. But on an energetic level, before we even get into the science and the healing, looking back now, can you see that wholeheartedly, truthfully, as a gift? Is that real for you to see the disease and the condition as a gift?

100%, without a shot of a doubt. How so, so clear? Pain to purpose. How did Superman become Superman? How did Batman become Batman? He watched his parents killed in front of him in this story right in Gotham City. And then he went on to save the very silly that murdered his parents. Pain to purpose. I took the worst thing that ever happened to me, and I made it the best because I made healing in my health my number one priority. It wasn't even in my top 10 when I was 20. Yeah, you don't think about that. You just want to think about, like, a lot of guys when I was growing up, it was like, can I get stronger? Can I get bigger? Can I get cooler? Can I get richer? Right? Can I have more fun? I'm just living a hedonistic lifestyle here, right? I'm in college. This is my time. Do it now while you can. And then I went through great pain because none of that served the walk that I now had to take, that wasn't fair that I had to take, and I didn't ask for it. So there was a lot of spite, there was a lot of anger. And eventually, through prayer, through meditation, through reading insatiably four hours a day. I was also housebound for a year. I had to reteach my body to walk at its worst. So I nearly died of this at 26 years old. This is not something where I'm here because I had a little bit of ulcerative colitis, right? A little bit of an autoimmune disease. It's very rare. I meet someone who had as bad of a case as I had, and that was either. It's either shine or not. Do you have conviction? What are you going to do with it? I only moved this direction because I was backed into a corner. And something spiritually inside of me knew that I exhausted all of these benefits I had as a young American kid. You've got family with US dollar. They weren't rich, but they could. They dropped 20, $30,000 trying to help me heal. And I got do you know how much that was from my parents? My mom lost her job trying to take care of me and my sister was pitching in for the Whole Foods bill because I had to eat grass fed organic. Remember whole paycheck. That was that whole time Whole Foods, whole paycheck idea. We were two income families who worked nine to five jobs w two employees and we had funds, but we were not wealthy. And so I was realizing what this was doing spiritually, emotionally, to especially my mom. My mom was the person who helped save my life. And to all my moms out there, thank you. Thank you. They will say thank you eventually too. Don't worry all the kids, she saved my life. And same with the doctors. They saved my life too. If it wasn't for prednisone and there's biologics and TPN feeding tube, I would have died.

Yeah. This is my next question. Where is the give and the take when it comes to allopathic or even idiopathic? Where they can't find the symptomology? When does Western medicine step in for something like Crohn's ulcerative colitis? And when does alternative step in? Is there room at the table for both of them? And if so, how does that even work?

That's my mission statement, actually. I want to help align conventional and natural because I think you need both to thrive. We need to put down our swords and realize that conventional medicine is going to help save lives. But it won't empower your life to have the best version of your life you can have. That's up to you. You can't delegate that out. That's a big mistake we made. And I was making when I was not getting results with natural medicine, is I was delegating out the protocol, the, the training, the ideas. Oh, I'm just going to do the SCD diet. Oh, I'll just do Carnivore. And it was smart, but it was generic and it was blind. And so what conventional does is conventional is the best in the world at emergency care medicine. Yes.

If you break a leg, they're.

They're great shot.

They're great.

Or you're like me, where you're so anemic, so malnourished, 60 pounds underweight, and you might not survive. And they need to give you prednisone and painkillers and they need to put IVs in your system with testosterone and D5 saline and, you know, and iron and amino acids so you can actually survive, you know, and that's not only Saved my life. But many clients I've worked with just needed IVs, and that's what conventional has. So we have to put down this anger towards what's happened to us. They poisoned our air, food, and water, and all these terrible lies, and start saying, what can this amazing technology do for me as the CEO of my health? I look at my board member, right? I see my conventional doctor as a board member. Talk to me. I'm all ears. What can you do? What do you think? What's your opinion? And I have full respect. And then I have my functional doctor who's on my board, and I say, talk to me. What do you think? What do you do? What's your strategy? And I listen. The biggest thing. We just got to be curious, and you have to be your own answer. You've got to get empowered. A CEO is not the best accountant, but he's got a great accountant. He or she has a great accountant to help simplify the actions in the movement of the company.

I can relate to that. I do not like numbers. They are not my friend. I like stories.

Yeah.

I like this.

Yeah.

I like real connection, where somebody can feel or think or act differently after they absorb what's coming here, what's coming through. And when I look back on your story, I'm like. It reminds me of so many people I've had on the podcast. This is episode 700 something.

Yeah.

And I think about how many people have been literally pushed to death if you didn't have a clear connection with your soul and with something outside of you, God, whatever that is for you. Do you think it would have even been possible for you to have an open mind and an open heart to combining Western and Chinese, Western and natural medicine? Would it have even been there if you didn't have a clear connection to your soul and to God?

Not in my opinion, no. It's clear as day to me. Because without that pain, without that experience and feeling that there's no way out. Like, I can't delegate it out. I am stuck, and everyone's crying for me, and I am a victim of this. So what's it gonna be? You're either a victim or you create. Right? Creation. It's a divine power all of us, as human haves. I had to tap into three big things. Intuition, manifestation, and creation. Okay, intuition. What is hurting me? This food, that conversation, that energy, you know, EMFs, where I'm sleeping, air quality, is there. Mold, you know, immune system. What is intuitively so I didn't know I'll give you an example of all three. So if you're really going to take on and be the best version of yourself in this life, whether you're trying to heal yourself or you're trying to build a company, or you're trying to build the best family in the world, whatever your goals are, you have to be able to tap into all three. You have to sharpen your intuition, your creative ability, and your ability to manifest, which a lot of people don't like that word, especially because it's biblically not correct, but take it with a grain of salt. The ability to see something in your mind and bring it into existence.

What do you mean it's not biblically correct? Because I've actually, you know, Matthew 11:24, believe that you have it. When you pray and ask from a humble heart and share with God what you will do and be of service for asking for it. That's the part that most people forget. They get caught up in loa law of attraction. I want a Ferrari, I want money. It's like, well, what are you going to give?

There you go.

For what you're asking for. That's real manifestation. I'm not scared of manifestation. I've manifested the studio we're in. Like, it's real for me.

I love it, man.

But I went through the doldrums and the pain of being selfish in the way that I was praying and the way that I was trying to, quote, manifest. How do you see manifestation in regards to your health, healing?

I actually see exactly what you say just being politically correct for everyone out there. Because some, some Christians do have problems with words like karma or meditation or even yoga. And because they're you, they can be used out of context.

Sure.

And so we have to bring them into context in a way that makes sense for our beliefs.

I'm Sorry, it's Mark 1124. It's not Matthew. My bad. I'm not a practicing Christian. But I think in that faith and in all walks of faith, there's so much amazing wisdom. There's so much divine, truly divine wisdom.

God is in that, in that book.

That we can feel and share. It's all universal. So I'll go back to it. So. So for health healing specifically.

Yeah.

And we'll definitely hit on all the other aspects, the biology, the physiology and everything else. Because I know with your foundation and with all the people you serve. Yeah, that's a serious conversation. We've got to have spirit and science at the table. We've got to have both of Them there, you got it. But you can't have one without the other because they actually feed into each other. So for manifestation.

Yes.

How does manifestation work for healing your health?

In simple ways. If you can't feel it, then it can't happen. Yet I had to feel as if I was already healing before I healed. I had to see what my life was going to be like and be okay with that reality. And before I could walk that path, meaning I got okay in my head with eliminating toxic foods and eliminating toxic lifestyle and journaling every single day, every single symptom for months at end. I could had data collected. I got okay with that mentally and spiritually before I was able to put it into practice to manifest it. So it's. Believing is seeing. Okay? Seeing is not believing. They got it wrong. Okay. It has to start from within. If you can't feel the energy that I can do this. If you. That's a feeling, not a truth. Truth is a perspective. We have to work on how we feel, not what we think we know. We sit here and we talk and we talk. You know why we constantly listen? It's because we're conditioning our feelings and we don't even know that. Your goal is to change how you feel about life, not what is truth. Because truth is not real. It's all over. It's all what you decide is truth today, good day or bad day?

Now, what do you mean truth is not real? Because that might be like a big gong hit to someone. What do you mean truth is not real? I like this.

It's so. A perspective of truth simply means that you get to decide what is good or bad with integrity in your soul. And you get to decide what success is. People, especially entrepreneurs, have this trouble. They'll go make a million dollars and then after they'll get this dopamine hit and then they won't feel successful a year later if they only have a million dollars.

Yes, I've heard about this.

So this is a perspective of truth. And let's say that when I was sick, when I was a victim of this, my mom or dad or my girlfriend at the time would call and say, how are you? And I would say, I'm okay, but I'm still bleeding. When I decided to heal, I'd answer the phone and they'd say, how are you? And I'd say, guess What? The blood's 30% down. I'm already healing. I'm already good. If I can get 30%, I can get 50. I'm already good. I'M on the road. So instead of, I still have blood in the stool. It's 30% less than last week. Instead of, I'm still having six bowel movements a day. I was having 12. So I was living in the reality. I chose a reality that I'm already healed, that I'm already good, that my body is already healing. I'm on my way up instead of living in the reality that I'm not there yet and this can't work and I'm exhausted. I'm going to burn out and quit. Wow.

You know, you just hit my heart. Because we were in Cardiff before we moved to Austin, and our downstairs neighbor came to me one day and he said, hey, yeah, I just want to let you know, I got diagnosed with cancer. And I immediately, because I was already deep into growth and development, then I said, great, here's a book. I'd interviewed someone about cancer and healing cancer. And I said, as you read this book, I just see you in the highest vitality and light right now, in this moment. It's not even a reality for me that you're going to be taken from this earth from cancer. And I could tell as I gave him the book, he didn't believe it yet. It's not like I'm better than him or it's just different stages of awareness. He ended up passing away. And then we actually conceived our son in that same house. So one life entered, one life came in, one life exited, one life came in. And it's just so surreal how the power of thought and the power of word is such a huge piece of healing. Yes. We'll get into the biology for sure.

Yes.

But the way you're speaking about, and I've heard Conor McGregor, we just had Garen Jones in the studio.

Yeah.

Any single person that's ever created anything of magnitude where they went through their own process had to come to terms with, no one's coming to save me. And that's actually good because I can save myself and I can do it through the power of that which created me.

And you can save the ones you love. Greatest gift of all. The greatest gift is not the savior, a saving of self. It's the saving of those that you love. If you truly love somebody that much, you'll give your life to them. Yeah, I'd rather die and let my sons live right now.

Yeah, no doubt.

So I am so happy that I have the gift to help them and make sure this doesn't happen to them. I would rather go through it, give it to me, don't give it to my mom, don't give it to my sons, don't give it to my wife, don't give it to my best friend, Give it to me. And then it's a matter of deciding. Like when you said that the missing piece I think people have is feeling is not something you just choose, it's something you condition. It's like a muscle. You can't just wake up and everyone's going, I don't. I want to believe it. Belief is faith plus hard work. Okay? If you don't have faith and you don't put hard work in, you can't create the recipe of belief. So you have to decide that you're going to believe. You're going to have faith in something. Faith is not as powerful of an energy as belief. Belief is the most powerful energy, but you have to build it. So I've got to start with faith. And then I have to take massive daily action conviction over and over and over. And I promise you, if you even do it for three days, your belief meter. If I said, how much do you believe you could actually heal cancer out of 100%, it just went from 20 to 27% in seven days. So as the belief meter goes up now, you got the law of attraction. Every vibration, every word out of your mouth, every conversation is now more beautiful, more helpful for everyone else, including yourself. Because I believe what is good for others is also good for yourself. We're not. We are all combined. We are all the same. And through that pain, I also learned that things that actually make me happy, I still had. That was my anchor. I had my eyes. Would you rather have Crohn's disease or go blind? I was like, oh, give me the Crohn's disease. I love, I love my eyes. I love the vision. I want to be able to see my wife, want to see my. See my kids.

Yeah.

I have my tongue. I have my spirit. I have my phone. Hey, how are you? I didn't lose you. I have my parents. We, we sometimes we lose things and sometimes we gain things. But when you're on your deathbed, just start writing down all the things you'll be grateful for when you die and see how much you've lost, what is actually gone. That's my anchor. You know, like the Rock always talks about his anchor in the gym. My anchor is just what I like gratitude of like, what is actually matters. You can put me in a 10 million dollar house if I'm not surrounded by people I love. I'm not energetically feeling great. I feed off those I love and they feed off me. It's. It's a never ending energy. And so I just started pouring into those I love. That's how I got happy. I couldn't walk, but I got happy. You look at pictures of me when I was sick, it's all smiles because I had a calendar of calling people I loved and making their day better. Dane, you almost died. How are you? Don't worry about me. How are you? How's your fiance? How's the wedding going? How you feeling? Have you talked to her about this? Have you done with this? I know me and you talked about things like, you know, pornography. We talked about monogamy and we talked about, you know, ego. How you doing with all that? And I can have an hour and a half conversation to hold space for someone, but I can't even leave the house and I've got to use the bathroom 20 times a day. But I feel good in myself because I'm holding space for that person I care about with secretive, very private conversations that I. We can build trust and I can love on them.

My mom was recently in the hospital.

Yeah.

And she's had a journey with bipolar and a lot of health issues. And I called her and I just, I set an intention before I got on the phone and I said I'm just gonna enjoy this time with her. And I got on the phone and I said, don't worry. You know, like when your car needs an oil change and a tire change, you're just going to get that. I just simplified it for her.

Wow.

You're just going to get an oil change, change of medication. Right. I'll see you when you get out. I already see you in the highest light and vitality. I already see you healthy. I see you here for Christmas. I see you here right now with your grandchildren. And that created this space where we laughed. It was the most I've laughed in like months. And I just laugh with my mom as she's on a bed in the hospital. That's medicine, dude. What you're talking about, I just lived through. You lived through it on a much bigger lens. But this medicinal aspect of human connection is probably. I wonder how you feel about this as important, if not even more important than holistic and western medicine put together.

It's more important because it's the foundation of everything. Because it has a ripple effect to every conversation. Where you go, what you try, what you search it all. You know, if I had. If you had that bad conversation. It may affected the next conversation in the next moment in time. It's a ripple effect. That's why the law of attraction is so amazing. But if you break that down, you used your intuition to know you already had experience. So you used wisdom and your refined intuition to say, this is what I want. You used your creative ability to imagine what kind of relationship you wanted to build with your mom. So you started creating a new relationship that you didn't have to. And it wasn't your fault if it didn't get created. But you decided to go forward and say, I'm going to willingly create it because I want it, not because I have to, but I want it. Okay? And then you manifested having better energy and a better conversation with your mom than you would have if you hadn't done that. It would have been a 3 out of 10. But you made it a 10 out of 10. Yeah, that's what manifestation is. You did that. You created that and you used your intuition, your manifestation and creation to see that through. So you have to get happy on the journey. People talk about the process. You don't understand that life is one process. There's always something to want tomorrow. The goods of that coin is asking, it is given. Right? I can always ask. There's always something to dream of. The bad sign is, is that we can fall into this place where we never actually arrive. We're never actually here. And so we're choosing to say, can I love the process of life and what actually matters? When you smile in life, that's a gift. That's everything. Everything else is fear. The materialism and the money. That's a lot of fear. When a lot of times we do that so we have a safe space. To then what? To then what? Everything was taken away from me, but yet I had everything. I would wake up, especially when I was. I was housebound for a year and someone goes, what were you doing? She go cuckoo. I said no. I had a full time job. I started going to bed. My bedtime was 9:30. I was 26, who was just in college a few years ago. This was not how the social norm was. This wasn't the shared reality I was experiencing my entire life. All of a sudden I'm in bed by 9:30, I'm up at 6. The first thing I do and the last thing I do is I pray. It wasn't like I just intuitively felt, I'm dying, there's nothing I can do. My mom, my dad can't save me, My Doctors, all the GI doctors I saw at UCLA Cedars Sinai. It was total colectomy and biologics for the rest of your life at 25 years old. And I wasn't willing to accept that. So if you're not willing to accept the reality that you're in, you have to start using your divine power to create a new reality. And guess what? You get to decide what truth is or what success is. So I started with this. What can only help me and cannot hurt me? What has no risk? Right. Think of it like an investment of your time. What has no risk? Prayer and purpose have zero risk. What else has no risk? Morning sun, feet in the ground, gardening. To this day, I still take care of about 150 plants. I was looking outside on your porch. I saw those plants. I was like, oh, yeah, we're gonna get along. Yeah, I love plants because they're living. And I had this one ironic thought when I was getting impatient one morning. I said. I said, you know, those tomatoes growing, it's kind of like me healing. If I look at it every day, I get impatient. But then two weeks later, I can't believe the results.

Oh, yeah, the watch. Pot never boils, right? It just doesn't.

It doesn't.

Yeah.

And so I started realizing all these things I could do right now that got me happy. I started dedicating time to calling people from my life that I wanted just to be there for. And I never made it about me. I made it about them. Because when you're sick and you're depressed, you need to feel of value again to the world. When I said I was depressed, what I was saying is I am no longer of value. When someone has to wipe your butt and take you inside and change your pan and your mom, and you're feeling the utmost shame you've ever felt in your life, and you just want to cry and crawl into a dark room and never come out. And you're pooping glass. It feels like you're pooping glass. And you look in the mirror, and you're £120. You're a shell of yourself. You know, the. One of the hardest things spiritually is that you are no longer of value to anybody. Everyone has to do everything for you. I think that maybe happens to people when they get older, too. I literally lost the ability to do anything. And so what I took back was my power to be of value to others. And that is so spiritually nourishing. When you get chronically sick and you go through that much pain, you Start realizing if you really meditate on, if you take the journey and you will start to breathe with yourself and you start to read and you'll let go of all the rat race for just a second. I didn't need to make money and I was lucky because I didn't have kids yet and I was young. God gave me that blessing. And I had worked at a deal or I had low rent in Santa Monica and I was two miles from the beach. That was another blessing. I could just go. And I started realizing all these truths about life, about what is happiness and what is balance and what is it to feel. What is a feeling? Like thoughts and feelings are two different things. I just realized I had all these epiphanies from reading and living and nearly dying. And through that pain, I just, I started having this acknowledgement, this growth, and I started realizing just like how to create happiness and how to deal with negative energy. Like, if someone came to me with stress and I got stressed, I'd feel more pain in my stomach.

It would start to flare.

I would have a bowel movement. Yeah, I'd start. I'd have mucus sediment and blood from raising my voice and holding my diaphragm. And no, that's not right. And so I had to realize, like, you gotta breathe, you gotta start with. And what you do energetically. The crazy thing, another epiphany I had when I was doing this is energy has a direct impact on the physical. Meaning if I am in the parasympathetic, I digest better, my organs work better, I breathe more deeper. Meaning I'm getting more oxygen in my red blood cells, which I need to even heal the wounds in my body. You don't have to hemoglobin, you can't heal. Your heart's not going to work right. You're constantly in the sympathetic state. You're going to be pumping adrenaline, you're going to get even worse. Adrenal fatigue, which is a core problem in the biology of autoimmune, is the adrenals. That's why we get stressed. This autoimmune reaction flares because we're getting adrenal exhaustion. One of the core problems, and that's why prednisone makes it worse, because it's a steroid core, it's a cortisol steroid. It's a fake hormone that can put more pressure on our adrenal glands. So I'm reading, I'm having epiphanies, and I'm learning how to create laughter like what you did. With your mom was perfect. You created that. You knew you could come with certain angle and you could ping pong with her. And then you both had this euphoric experience. Yeah. And you just chose it. And it's like, wait, what is this a good day or bad day? But it's am I, am I sick or am I blessed?

It's a degree of maturity that's earned, for lack of a better term.

Yes.

Through life experience. Through what you mentioned. Pain to purpose. So then this whole time you're talking, I'm like, wow, we literally haven't even touched the biology yet. Like, you just peppered it a little bit. I want to close this loop before we go to biology. And that is the part of your soul, the part of your beingness that was able to finally let go of anger and resentment and rage about getting the diagnosis about having the disease. That's probably the fulcrum where everyone either gets blocked or they move forward. That choice point, that decision point. And I'm not here to say that you're better than anyone else, but damn, it's inspiring when people choose the route of love, the route of self empowerment. What was it about you, about your soul that allowed you to choose love and move forward? And, and how did you tactically practically let go of the resentment and even anger towards God? I'm sure you were probably angry at God.

Very angry.

How'd you let go of that?

I was so pissed. I mean, I'm snarling in my body right now thinking about it. I just suffered enough. I just suffered enough. I just was done suffering. Because when you suffer and then you try to fight back. Come on, let's go. Come on. And you go at it and then you suffer another month and you suffer another year, and then you suffer another year. And if everyone has their breaking point and something just changed in me where I just said, I'm tired of being unhappy and I'm tired of being sick and I'm tired of being depressed and I'm tired of hiding. I'm tired of living two lives and I'm tired of trying to put this thing on for the world. And I'm actually just, just a very sick, alone, upset person who's just trying to get through the day. And the first thing, I didn't know what else to do. My intuition kicked in. I just got on my knees and I prayed. There was like a few things I can think of right now. I remember the day it happened to me. I lost control of my bowel movements on a plane okay. Coming back from a shoot because I was still doing some LA stuff, right? And I just came in and I. This was like the year three or four, and I was like, I'm done being sick. I don't care about any of this other stuff. I pushed all this other stuff I was holding on to. I got to go make money. I've got to keep my social presence up. I've got to keep my Instagram going. I've got to do all this stuff. I think social media just come out, you know, a year or two before that or something, and it was all these things that I was still holding above. And then it just went voom. For me. Everyone does a little different. I had been conditioning, conditioning and conditioning. And that was one of those big, big bumps, like a big push moment. But it was still conditioning, conditioning after that. So I think the answer is I let go of the perspective. I think I needed to live the reality I was holding on to. And I just flipped all my priorities, and then I had to hold on to something. So I just started praying. That was big. I started journaling. That was big. Because there's so much going on in our heads. I needed to simplify. What was the thought? Like, we'll have one thought, you know, 500 different times. It's just write it down. So Dr. Dain saw Dane twice a day, and he called him out. Your ass needs to get off the grapefruit. It's hurting you tomorrow. No grapefruit. I wrote that to myself. Okay. So I started creating what I needed. I needed a doctor. So I became my best doctor who could talk to me the way I wanted to talk, like. And then I would go three days ahead of my journal. And I'll put a link for anyone who wants my journal. My exact. The journal I use right there. Download complimentary. Go at it. I hope it helps you heal. I've heard a lot of people. Brett actually said it helped him heal from the Mafia. He used that same journal. And so it's like, boom. I just wrote down. I give myself notes. And then all of a sudden, my life felt a little bit more simple. Little things. I had to start my day with something like Bob Marley. I had to start with something positive. I always let the sun in. I did not. The first thing I did, get up. Mucosa healing tea outside with a book and a highlighter. I read a book a month. Book a day is the stupidest thing I've ever heard, in my opinion. Because if you really love this book.

How do you really take it in.

Oh, my God. I would sit there, just Tony Robbins, Susan Blum, Jordan Rubin, all these. And I would read on spiritual, I'd read on biology, I'd read on autoimmune, and I would just highlight. Go to the back book, write it down, start. And after, like, 15 minutes, I had like, five takeaways.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was like, this book is amazing. I mean, I read these books two, three times, and I would see these symmetries, and then I would find. I would create ways in my head of how this is not holding me back. Here's a great one that just changed my life. Everything I'm doing to heal myself of Crohn's and colitis is exactly what I need to do for longevity. It's exactly what I need to do to look my best, want great skin, want great hair, want a six pack.

Yeah.

It's the same thing as healing Crohn's, colitis, sugars, seed oils, processed foods right. Being able to get the nervous system right, being able to detox, liver support, lymphatic support, you know, sweating out toxins, heavy metals, environmental toxins. I can go on and on. Everything that you need to do to take back your life is the exact same. To be actually be one of the strongest humans on the planet, period. And when that went off, I said, oh, my God. I just tapped in. I'm going to pass. Everybody, here's normal. Here's me. I was trying to get back to normal. Oh, just give me back my whole life. I used to look at pictures like, I just want to be that guy again. I just get me back to who I used to be. Get me back. I was built a tunnel went under that son of and went straight up and did 10x over anyone I ever before. I'm happier, healthier, stronger, and more wise and a better person now than ever before. I was sick, and I am. I love who I am, and I would never trade it.

Because of the pain that you felt.

Yep.

Which created this insane vacuum.

Wisdom only comes from pain.

The vacuum. I've heard this analogy before. I know you've heard it, but maybe somebody's hearing this for the first time. When you pull an arrow back and you continue to pull it so the string on the bow almost breaks, and you finally let the arrow go. The further back you pull, the further it shoots. I have not found that to be disproven in any walk of life, whether it's health, healing, or entrepreneurship or being a great father or going through relationships Suffering of any kind actually, is this beautiful fodder for growth. It's funny, like, this morning, I always find the parallels in relationships. And I was doing an IG live, and I said, wow, can we actually just all collectively take a breath and see? The election doesn't truly matter. The rules and regulations that you think are making you unwell don't really matter. It's actually the choices that you're making on a daily basis where you see this stuff as fodder for growth or you see it as just happening to you. It actually can be that simple. I mean, just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy. Right? I'm not. Not. I'm not disrespecting anyone's process.

No, hard is Hard is real.

To go through your process is very, very challenging.

Yes.

So along the way, I mean, I. When you said I was tired of fighting, I almost cried because I think we've all been there.

Yeah.

Everybody has been fighting a war of some kind.

Yeah.

Whether it's health or spirituality or with the parents or. There's so many ways in which we just continue to fight the war. But at some point, we just get to this place where it's like, all right, God, take the wheel. Yeah, spirit, take the wheel. I can't do this alone anymore. And that's actually where true liberation comes from. Do you believe that that's the case for literally almost anyone or anything when it comes to healing the body, the mind, the soul, do we have to get to that place where we're so beat up and we're so just exhausted? Dude. With fighting the war, that that's actually where all the peace starts to come from.

I think that you have to realize that you can't do it yourself. And there's an energy to that. And you have to give up certain power, but at the same time, take control? It's the hardest thing I've tried to explain. I'm letting go, but taking full control at the same time. So I'm letting go of fate in a way. I'm letting go of. I can control this, but I'm taking full responsibility for every energetic currency I created and every step I put out there. Because it's a vote. It's a vote to the divine of what I want and what I'm building. And so if you do that, you'll actually find inside you. That's when your belief changes. So I think that's 100% right. And I just. It wasn't easy. This is not Something where I have this drive through of, oh, you can just heal. What? I, I went through this because I didn't have, I didn't know anyone else who had ibd. I had no, no mentors around this. The only mentors were the guys in my book. But there was a beauty in that because Tony Robbins was a big mentor for me. Unlimited power and unleash the Giant from wind. In 1988, I was, I remember like in eight months I was getting back in the sauna, detoxing. I would just sit there in the book and all these other guys would be looking at me like, look at this kid, he's in here. And I was a skinny little whatever. He's in here reading a book, sweating. He ain't playing. I was like, no, I'm not playing, man. Highlight. I'm doing it. Like there's no more talk.

Yeah.

And that made me wise. That turned me into a man. I went from a boy to a man. I believe I know 18 year old men and I know 40 year old boys.

Yeah.

And I really think it's that ability to. When you go through things, how do you respond to it? We got to get self empowered. We got to stop delegating out our health or our feelings or what the reality is. You've got to realize what the power of money is, what the power of feelings is, what the power of partner is and being dedicated to that person. And the power of health and personal development. You know, you can't really arrive. You can just find balance in. You just got to find balance in. The biggest trick I did that, I think one of the biggest that saved my life is that when I was sick, I was miserable. Okay, Most people are miserable. And so all of a sudden I would try to get healthy on a strict diet. Let me do the 500 bananas, let me do bone broth only. Let me only eat meat. And all those had their benefits, not knock them at all. They all have great benefits to a certain degree. But I would be miserable trying to get healthy. And so for years my mom would talk me into it or some Google thing would talk me into it. Some book would talk me into these really strict lifestyles. This is how you're going to heal Crohn's. And I would be miserable binging Netflix, waiting for the week to pass for me to get over this horrific plan that I had to do because I got this disease. So I'm more of a victim. I have to do this because I'm a victim. I have to do this because of disease. So now I'm getting angry and having a poor relationship with health. Like, to be healthy is to be miserable. That was me for about four years. And so then when I was happy, I was hurting myself. All my buddies. What do we do? Drink a beer, go out for a shot, go to McDonald's.

Yes, that's a great point.

Go play football and tackle each other. I'm bleeding. Don't tackle me. Yeah, okay. Yeah, like I can't do. So everything, every time I was social and being happy, I was making myself more sick. And every time I tried to get my sickness right, I was miserable, isolated and alone. So I was identifying a salad or just eating beef as isolated. No memories. And then I had this epiphany when I was meditating one time that every single memory that I loved before I was sick, when I was houseman, I had this thought. I started contemplating what were my happiest moments and why. I realized that all my happiest moments, I was either drinking alcohol, I was poisoning myself with toxic food, I was staying up late and hurting my body. Prom night, birthdays, New Year's, you know, that vacation with the boys.

Almost all holidays are about poisoning yourself with crap.

Every thing is like, this is the time of my life. Was absolutely poisoning myself. And I was just started laughing. I was meditating, I started laughing. I go, what are, what are we doing to ourself? I was like, has anyone else got this yet? I just have to have the best time of my life without poisoning myself. Game on, buddy. And so I started putting my hands up in the air sober. I started hugging and saying, I love you and I didn't have to be drunk. I started having a great time eating gluten free. I started. You know, I don't really drink alcohol every once in a while, but if I ever did, I started bringing dry farms, wine, keto, no sulfites to that. And told a story about how this wine is so much healthier for you, right? No more than 75 parts per million. And I would tell these stories and people all of a sudden started getting excited to be around me before they would give me their, their. Their empathy. Oh, I'm so sorry you have to go through that, Dane. I'm so sorry you have to be sick. Your parents tell you, your friends. I'm so sorry. Oh, it sucks. I'm so sorry. I don't want your empathy. You don't want their empathy. You want to inspire them. This is what you're going to do. Get happy and healthy. At the same time and come into the restaurant and be just there and be happy and be vibrating. And then everyone's going to go, oh, I'm tired of my bloating and I'm tired of my skin. And I don't like this. I don't have enough energy. And you're like, oh, I actually do this, this, and I feel great, and all this. And then you order clean and all of a sudden they're going to feel your energy and they're going to go, what are you doing? Maybe I should be like you. Maybe I should do some more stuff you're doing. So now my job is I actually believe with a conviction that the way I live is a better life. And I try to help inspire people to live more like me. People don't. I don't. People cannot influence me to be like them. I influence them to be like me because I'm happier and healthier. I don't care if I'm with the richest people in the world. Whoever is happier and whoever is healthier is the true influencer. Period.

Yeah. Whoever has a higher vibration and also who has more behavioral flexibility, birthed to them by hard experiences, AKA maturity, spiritual maturity, emotional maturity. They are the ones that attract or really kind of lead the energetic signature in the room. Have you found this to be true? It's like it's not the person with the six pack. It's like that's, I think, a cover emotion or a cover claim for somebody being healthy. There's lots of people, man, that have six packs.

Yeah.

That are not healthy at all. I'm sure you saw that in la.

That was me.

Lots of people. That was you.

I was me.

You were super unhealthy.

Yeah, I was 6% body fat, 172 pounds, living on steroids, keeping me out of hospital. I honestly, that's another topic. But I think it's almost the performance or health industry nowadays. I mean, it's all about just add more muscle, cut more fat. At what point is this actually not healthy? And so, yeah, I felt like I was healthier with not looking as, as aesthetic as you would think in a picture.

But when someone's truly healthy, you can feel it and you don't need to describe it with words. Another way, another way to say it would be, you know, to talk about our buddy Zach Bush. We have this enteric nervous system, the second brain, and it's got as many freaking connections as there are stars in the sky, which is insane to even think about. I mean, just the majestic Beauty of infinite it. The way we were creative is so surreal. It's so profound. But we have the second brain. And when I meet you, we look at each other and I look at your face and I judge my redox system inside of the enteric nervous system to make sure you're trustworthy. And you do it with me too. We all do it with each other.

Yes.

It's like we want to make sure that we're safe and that we're on the right vibe and that we're moving in the right direction where it's enjoyable and fun and free. How paradoxical is it that so many people try to lose weight or have a six pack to then be healthy? It's actually 180. You're healthy and you're happy and then you get all the things that your ego wants. It's such a paradox and it's so celebrated on Instagram. And you fell for that trap. Do you feel like that trap actually fed the disease, made you suffer more? That trap that I'm talking about, I'm.

100% certain it did. Because I was in the gym six days a week trying to get in shape, trying to get bigger, trying to get more ripped, and I was feeling worse. I would get worse symptoms of IBD when I pushed myself in the gym. So if I did wind sprints. Because when you do like HIIT training that puts such a stress on your adrenals and your nervous system. And if you're not already healthy, you are taxing your body by pushing that performance.

Same with crazy intermittent fasting.

We've worked. I've worked with professional rugby players and CrossFit athletes who are like, I was just getting, getting prepared for a game or whatever and I. My body literally gave out. I was always trying to peak. This is. We have to understand, if you want to have peak performance, you have to be dialed in with how you recover and how you balance. And I would notice that. I mean, I worked out six days a week for 15 years. I loved it.

Yeah.

Because it was a part of my ego and it was what I was going to edge out and do. And it was. And then eventually it was just hurting me. Yeah. And I've never actually gotten as passionate about that because I've done some work on. And what is my value and what is that ego? And when you become a student and just be curious and look at life, you realize people are attracted to energy.

That's right.

They're attracted to people's vibration.

Yeah.

If you, if you look at someone, you say that person's a good looking person. You also see signs of health under the eyes, the whites, the color of their eyes, breath, their tongue, whiteness in their tongue, skin reactions, you know, we can see health. If you want to be a better looking person, get healthy, you want to get a raise at your job and be more of value to others at work and work harder, you need to get healthy. There's not one asset like this is the most valuable thing on the planet that people are waking up to. Money can't even compare to self empowered understanding of my total body health, mind, body, spirit, hormones, nervous system, detox system, GI tract, immune system, you know, endocrine system and all of these. And we got to take the power back, we got to stop delegating. And that's all I did, Josh. I just became Sherlock Holmes. I started asking why and I didn't say I need to be a master. I need to simplify what matters and get my takeaways and execute. So I'm going to do it. I'm going to be organized. I'm going to own all these processes. I'm going to find my simple takeaways and I'm going to execute. I'm going to journal on the whole thing and data collect. And so I data collected for 187 days straight. I know how many bowel movements I knew the symptoms, I know what I ate. I know what time I went to bed. I know how much I weighed morning and night. I know how much water I took. I knew what supplements I took at the dosage. I knew if I had a celebration meal. Also my language. I learned this from Tony. My man Tony. If he sees this, I stopped saying cheat. I don't say the word cheat. Okay? I never cheat. I only celebrate. And I celebrate in a way that my body can handle when I choose. Because I want my body to be in a state of celebration if I choose to put something in my body that's not great for me, but my body will accept it because I'm celebrating.

I love that you brought up Tony because people can have their opinions about him yet. You don't have to love everything about the messenger. Just love the message. Right? The message that he brings around neuro linguistic programming about. About how important the words are that we say to each other.

Yeah.

And that we say to ourselves. I mean, language for me has been. If I were to say there was one thing in my life that made the most difference above anything else, it's the language that I use with Myself, with my team, with my family, and with people that I care about. It's actually the. It's all a language game, dude. I. I don't mean to just reductionize that and. And, you know, put light on anyone's hard journey that they're going through to heal themselves. But I will say, like, the language part of this quotient is just as important as the prayer, the meditation, because the way that we pray, the way that we meditate, the language that we use, I mean, you can feel what I'm saying right now, right? The way that the reason Tony inspires so many people and people that are been trained by Tony in many ways is because when we hear the truth and the language feels right, we just vibrationally know it's real. We just know that it's real. And there's so much peace and lightness in the truth. Truth. It's like I've heard before, the truth is light and lies and deceit are heavy. And so much like deceit is snuck into the English language. Even the phrase I'll try, I don't say that. I don't let my team say that. We're not allowed to say, I try or I should. Those words don't exist for me. Because when you should all over yourself or you try, you're giving your unconscious mind evidence that you actually don't want it, or even more sinister, that it's already been accomplished, therefore you don't need to try to do it. Isn't that crazy? The power of language. Did you have a moment like that where you recognize or was it like a amalgamation of moments where you knew that, like, I've got to change my language to myself, to others. When did that happen? The Language Healing Tony Robbins book.

And you think about crunch. You think, which one was it? Which I think, I don't. I read both of them and they were the books he wrote in like 1988 and 1992. And I was like, really? I'm going to read this whole book. But I was like, this is fantastic. And I. I don't know who Tony is now. I've never met him.

Yes.

But I will if I ever meet him. Thank you for that book you wrote 35 years ago, or whatever it was. He was talking about how language was so important. And as I was reading page after page, it was conditioning me to not only agree but to say, you're right, I'm going to do this. It's a conditioning to take action. So you can. A lot of people will say, yeah, you're right. And then they don't do anything about it. So how do we get to the point where we actually change? You need a conditioning. And that's why reading a page is so brilliant, because it takes way more time than just listening to an audible. You have to condition. So I read those. I looked at what he was saying. I was like, he is 100% right. The whole time I was on a diet, I would tell people that I just cheated on my diet. I had a cheat meal. Right. We hear that in bodybuilders, too. I had a cheat meal. You know, I'm like, why are you putting that language out? Because it's just lowering your frequency, and then it's affecting the relationship. If me and you want to do something, we can do it 10 times better than just me myself. So the compound effect of all of us being at the same frequency is more powerful than one person being at a frequency. Dr. Joe Spencer teaches us that. Okay, so we all have a vibration and go towards a similar goal. It's much more likely to happen even quicker and stronger. So when I say to. When you said, don't say, I try, I try means that the other person doesn't have to take them for their word or they don't have to be accountable.

Exactly.

I'll try to do it. It's like, I'll try. Okay, well, okay. But if you say, I'm gonna do it, you're going, okay, yeah. So now you're accountable towards that.

You can trust trustworthy.

Three days later, if you say, I haven't done it yet, you owe me an apology. Not a. Oh, yeah, I'll get to it. Yeah.

God, I get. You know, it's funny, I. I get triggered by just everyday people speaking. Or I'll. I'll be out in public and I'll hear a conversation, you know, at a restaurant or something, and I'll be irritated, and then I'll go to compassion. But it's like, at first, I think where I'm at in the journey of awareness and consciousness is just being 100% wholesome in the way that I communicate to myself and my family. That's the big one for me. Still, even I'm 44.

You've practiced it, though. I practice it. I'm feeling you right now. You are this. You're advanced.

I practice it. And the one caveat that I was going to twist in, and I want to get your viewpoint on this, there's also get. There also gets to be spaciousness for when we don't meet the excellence that we know we're capable of. Right. Because if we give ourselves shame or we start blaming ourselves for not being at a level of communicative excellence or language excellence, or even physical excellence, like, you know, we have a list of 10 things. If you get done three or four really important ones, celebrate that, because that blocks the shame dragon from coming in. The shame dragon is the one that makes us reconcile, capitulate and marinate in depression and anxiety and all the things that actually exacerbate many of the GI disturbances that most people have. Have you found that to be the case with your foundation, with all the people you've served? How many people you think you've served at this point? Thousands. And what's the name of the.

The Crohn's colitis lifestyle. We call it CC lifestyle.

So, so in CC lifestyle, people come to you because they've probably thought that they've tried everything. Yes, right.

They, we hear that often.

They get to your doorstep because they've been told it's impossible. They forget about the I am in the beginning of it. So by the time they get to you, they've already been fed so much of a construct about their diagnosis, who they are, what's possible, what's not possible, from physicians, by the way, that aren't evil or malevolent in their intent. They're actually trying to help these people because they're trying to CYA them as well. Because hospital structures are built on cya. Cover your ass. Not to like wax poetic on the COVID your ass. And we're talking about colitis and Crohn's, but, but yeah, like that. When people get to you, when they get there, there has to be a structure of language that you use with them and an awareness around their own language because that's really what's adding to the stress and the sympathetic dominance that is making their flare ups happen more regular. Is that, is that the case?

It's the difference between short term goals and long term success is that if you do get the symptom relief, the ability for you to have that last for 10 or 20 years, you have to do what you're talking about. You have to change the reality of what you perceive to be truth. Am I a sick person? You know, that's even this idea, is it curable? Is it remission? You know, I always like, I've built ideas in my head that I've now conceived into my reality because they serve me and no one gets to decide my reality except me. Nobody no doctor can stamp me on the head and say, that's your reality. I refuse. It's my reality. Now, I'm not going to be ignorant towards what I've been told as a diagnosis, but I've worked out ways of that. So what you're saying is I've got to build a foundation that I'm safe again. The difference between short term success and long term success. And the funny thing is this can be construed to every single goal you have, not just health. And that's what gets me on fire about it is this idea of what is success, what is truth. If you get your symptoms 90% gone and 10% are still there, is that a success or not? And you said once you get three or four, you should celebrate. I actually think we have to realize that if happiness is always in the future, you never arrive. So my word for last year was to arrive. Every year I give myself a word for the year that I want to like, really put energy into that word. So, like, when I first tried healing myself, it was bold. Take bold action, right? And then it was like. And then it was like consistency. And then it was like integrity. And then it was like commitment. And you know what's funny? Two weeks after my word for the year was commitment, I met my wife. I kid you not. I have a video on my Instagram from a few years back. It's January 1st, I'm in Tulum, everyone's partying, and I just do this two minute thing about my word for the year. My word for years, commitment. I met my wife January 14th. We have two kids.

It's like, did she see your video?

Yeah, I told her once. She thought it was funny and hilarious and all that type of stuff. And it's like. And it just gives me the chills right now. And it's like last year my word was to arrive. Because even with the next level of success, whatever you, you do, when, when are you just enough? You know, when people who have a million goals, I think there's a deeper problem going on of like, when are you enough? And I see, see some people who don't try to go after millions of dollars and they just are here and they're smiling and they're happy and sometimes I envy them. I'm like, because in my mind, I'm either going to do a top 1% or I'm gonna be a bartender in Hawaii. There's no middle ground for me. There's no middle ground. I'm either sandals or I'm. I'M going doing big things. And that's just been in my head. I've been laughing about that for 20 years. But, you know, I really love people who just are here and they don't. I'm like, envious sometimes of like, you're just. You've arrived in a way. And I can. In one of my problems been. And maybe people can relate with that, is I'm never. No matter how much I get of that thing, of the three that I get the third thing on my list, I the get the fifth thing on my list. I get the seventh thing on my list. It's almost like I need to add things on my list to get that because I'm actually addicted to the drive and the productivity. So every good thing has its opposite side. And I think that did cause more problems with Crohn's and colitis because I was addicted to the push. And even today, I will admit I have problems with the push. I still work too hard.

What do you mean by the push? Where does. Where does the fuel source of that push come from in you? And what exactly is the push?

I think it's an addiction. I think when America was. We've made it this thing that we're so excited about. Right. You gotta want it like you want to breathe.

Yeah. Like these. Like these Andy Elliott guys.

I followed that.

People shaming people. If you don't have a six pack, you can't work for me. It's the craziest message.

I think that's ridiculous.

It is the craziest message.

And also just like, you know, like, you gotta want it that bad. You gotta suffer. You gotta suffer. And I get that suffering is a part of life. But, like, I think we. I mean, you know, what is happiness? What is it just to be here and be present. And do we all need to be famous and be worth $100 million? I think that there's downsides to fame and money and all of this, those responsibilities.

I think that happiness is actually the way of the peaceful warrior. Like, the peaceful warrior does not seek out war isn't fed by the push that you're describing. The peaceful warrior has trained himself or herself to be able to fight a war if necessary. Yeah, but they're not always on guard and in hypervigilance to fight the next war. Yeah, because that makes all of us unhealthy and unwell. Like, just because you have land and cars and a boat and all these things, what do you have to do to support that and maintain that? Is it really Worth that. I felt it when we upgraded here financially, I was like, wow, do I. Can I handle this? Yes. What in my life, what beliefs get to be let go of to where I can hold all of this and still have radical health, Amazing health. And so that's a journey for me is like, as I expand. As a father, I'm sure you felt this because as a father, we're protectors. Right. You had said earlier, you said, I don't want my mother or my children to have this. I'll. I'll take it. Yeah. I'll carry this.

Yeah.

And that's the beautiful essence of the masculine providing and protection mode that's within you. That's that you. So beautifully said. And I think us, as men, we all feel this. Like, I love providing. I really do. I. It makes me almost want to cry. I fucking love providing so much. Not because my woman or my children owe me anything. Just because they are. Just because they're being. Just because they're alive. I want to provide for them. And that part of it, I think there's a healthy masculine for that, providing. And maybe push is the wrong word. There's a fuel source that I think we can all come from, and the fuel source is love. But how do we make love masculine again? How do we make love strong again? How do we make vulnerability something that men actually go to? In other words, what do you think men are getting wrong when they look at a fuel source for entrepreneurship, for growth? Where do men go wrong when they want to be a successful man?

I think it's a lack of balance. I think it's a lack of willing to admit when they need to work on themselves. I think men carry a lot of pride and a lot of ego. And I see a lot of successful men, and because they're successful, there's. They can't tap into it. It's like, no, no, I don't want to have that conversation. My success meter is. Is balance and a sense of like 1 out of 10, happiness and, and fruitfulness. And I don't. I think a lot of things, like materialism is a stepping stone to that, but there's a. There's a ceiling to its value. And, you know, a lot of friends, guys I know as well, they don't like having deep conversations like this. I'm actually attracted to men who can sit in jam with me.

You can't do this is what life.

Is about if you're just texting me all the time. Time I need to get on the phone with you. I, I, I only, I. It's funny, I realize about this myself. I'm not actually.

You're an old school millennial. You're an old school millennial.

I'm not. I get on the phone with you, I want to sit down for three hours and I want to jam. And if there's an, if there's a moment where you have nothing to say, that's fine. But like, I mean, I was with my best, I, I know this guy last night. He lives in San Antonio. I was jam with him for four hours and I haven't seen him in two years. And I've known him since kindergarten. There's just an energy where I feel him and it's just, just, oh, man, we can just go and go and go, and I'm just gonna. That makes me happy. That's what I want space for. I want my time back so I can pour it into people and men. When you said it makes you so happy the most. The thing I think that gives us all the most value in our life is how we are of service to others. I really think it, like, there's only so much we can get out of a hedonistic lifestyle. Sure. I know I have some friends who are just literally, if you look at it, you're like, you're pretty much all about self, pleasure.

Yeah.

And that's. And you've got all these God given talents and money and all these things. And it's just drugs and alcohol and women and travel and another beach and another blue, you know, blue sky type thing. And it's like, for me, I love all that. I'm not knocking it. I'm just saying I want to build. I want to create something bigger than myself. And that's what drove me to say I want to have a family and I want to give my life to my woman and be her partner and really focus on this person and these kids. I want to build something bigger than myself. And that's what the company's about. When I finally got results of Crohn's colitis, I just woke up one day and I said, oh my God. Whatever I just tapped into is exactly how I'm going to manifest anything I want in this life. How I healed and how I stuck with it. I was convicted. I was self accountable. I completely changed all my actions. I rebuilt myself. The guy who came out was 100% different than the guy who went in. Like, not even recognizable at all. And because I went through that process, I could start copying it, paste it for Whatever I wanted. And I had this thought, I want to give the world what I didn't have when I was chronically sick. And that has been my compass. It's not been to make $100 million. It's not been to be famous, okay? It's not been to be I told you so. It's been, I want to build a home for a chronic, incurable disease that I never had. And I want to create what they need, even if it reduces how quickly I can scale my company, even if it affects the cash flow. That is the compass. And what's crazy is everyone I've brought into this, it was just me. I bootstrapped the entire company over the last nine or 10 years, I've never taken a dime from anyone.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

And everyone on my team has the same disease as me. Our doctors. We have two doctors we work with, one on staff. Okay. Nurse practitioner, clinical herbalist, professors, mental health hypnosis and EFT specialists. All of them have been diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease themselves. And so I started looking at what hurt me. And that's the power. It was like every doctor I saw never had the disease. Yeah, you don't know what you're talking about, man. I actually screamed at one of these doctors. I got so angry because he was trying to tell me what to do. And he was trying to tell me that everything I was doing with my nutrition didn't matter. And I about. I about killed the guy. I was pissed. I mean, he. I would. I was on. I had a cane. In my mind, I was strong, but physically, I was not.

You're, like, swinging your cane in the.

Air, yelling at him. I'm, like, shaking. My knees are about to buckle. But I was so angry because he was trying to. I felt like he was killing my dream. But he never had the disease. He'd never been sick. And that just got me spitfire. And I had to forgive that because I was like, damn. Calm yourself. You're a kid. You don't know shit. That's a doctor. Give that man his respect. So I had to take my lickins and learn as a young man. But there were certain things I wanted to be. I never met anyone who had had the disease that I had had. And so a few things, no matter what disease anyone's dealing with, get connected with people in the same path as you. It's what entrepreneurs do.

Oh, yeah.

It's what. What Republicans or Democrats do. It's what Americans should be doing. We have things in common. And let's come Together and let's take note and learn from each other. And we're all headed the same direction. Even though we're in our own cars individually, we're all going here.

You had said you wanted to build the house for chronic disease that you didn't have when you were going through.

Yep.

What does that house feel like? What does it look like? What's the doormat? What's the door like? What are the inner workings of that kind of house that you've created?

It's. It's the healing home. So I have a digital healing home and I have my actual house healing home that I raised my family in. There's been a phrase that I always. It's a personal experience. We have our own canvas, but where the mountains meet the sea is where you'll find me. I didn't move to California because of the politics, that's for sure. And I didn't move for the taxes.

Yeah.

But my grandparents were in California. I visited when I was 12 and when I saw those mountains and I saw that sky and I felt that temperature and I just felt that energy, it just lives inside of me. And so I just, I love the land, I love the earth. I love being able to spearfish in Catalina. You know, I love to be able to walk down to the beach and see that sunset. And I love what it stands for for me. And then I create an atmosphere where whatever I need to do for my health, I try to be able to do it at home. So I've invested a lot of my finances back into the house. So I bought a hyperbaric oxygen chamber in my house. I bought a sauna. I bought an ozone machine. I bought. I spent $7,000 on, on a water filter that I put into the house and drilled the quartz and all this stuff. And next, you know, I'm always looking at how can I do things that increase my frequency, that make me feel more safe in my body. Because when you've been chronically sick, I'll have days, I'll have weeks where things aren't going my way and I don't feel safe in my body. And some of the trauma of having a life threatening disease can start poking up again. And people who are sick will call that a flare. All right. Or flaring emotionally like I don't get any major symptoms anymore, but I can get well. Oh, man, is something wrong? Is there cancer growing in my body or, you know, just get in your head sometimes? We all have moments.

Yeah.

So that's not my strongest thought. But it's an honest thought that people need to hear is that I'm just a human. So what can I do to continue to feel safe in my body? So certain things, like you won't find gluten or processed food in my house. If I ever come in contact with it, it's because it's outside of my house. So that's something that's got me in balance. And it's also been great for my kids because I feel more safe with them. The worst thing that could happen to me is me not get sick. It's for my children to get sick. So I am creating an environment that reduces their risk. And, you know, it's an environment where we, you know, we do sometimes sound healing and we have, like a hand pan. So I'll practice kind of playing on the hand plan.

Those are so beautiful.

I'm just looking for. I'm looking for energy.

Oh, yeah.

And I'm looking for balance. And then I can walk out of my house at 75 degrees. I'm two miles away from the beach, and I'm just continuing to create. So I think the answer is be curious and ask yourself, what pays in the dividends of energy currency, which is worth a lot more than dollar. There's three currencies. Time, energy, and money. Money is the least valuable. Time and energy are the most valuable. The older you get, the more you realize that. Okay. And the better you get. The idea with money is just to get enough that you don't have to worry about it. It's not to keep stacking it. That's where I think, you know, I'm not trying to chat anyone out, but I listen to someone like Grant Cardone and other people. I'm going, you missed the boat, dude. Yeah, you got to get off. And then you no longer think about it anymore. And so you can think about things that really matter towards your connection, your life experience, and who you care about. So that's my goal there. And so I'm always creating a healing home. And then digital is. I was alone with this, and now every day I'm on my own platform, more than the social media platform. So I built something called IBD University, and it's a private group that is a combination of Reddit, Google, YouTube, and yeah, that's probably. Yeah, those. Probably those together just for people who have ibd. So all of our members are people who have been diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease. Parents, children, you know, people who've had this for 40 years post surgery, total colectomy, no Collect me. Just diagnosed, and all of a sudden you're in this world where everyone's sharing the most secretive, shameful thing and then it's searchable what they're saying. Like, I posted a testimony today of a woman where this is the. I can't guarantee this, but this girl Jackie, and I was watching it today because it was getting me so excited. And she was diagnosed with colon cancer at a very young age in early 20s. And she was also diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease, and she had part of her colon removed. And then years later, they found high grade dysplasia again, which means there's more cancer. And she started working with us. And I'm like, that is the most. One of the most severe cases you can have. So I try to be, you know, like, really, this is a really hard case. You have to understand what kind of case this is. Eight months later, she got a colonoscopy and they found no signs of cancer. Zero. No dysplasia. Gone. Eight months. She stopped. We didn't tell her to do this. She decided to stop her biologic. She was on her fourth biologic called Sky Ritzy, and she decided to get off. We were trying to tell her, no, no, stay on the medication for a second. This is too dangerous. She got herself off. She got rid of all of her symptoms. Her calprotectin went from a 600 to a 27. She got rid of all of her symptoms. And she was also an avid CrossFit person. So she was in the gym just hitting it.

Oh, yeah.

No cancer, no medications, no symptoms. Normal calprotectin. Okay. Shown with blood work, shown with colonoscopy. Doctor says there is nothing there. And I mean, it was one of the most unbelievable stories we've ever done. And I don't even know if I can replicate it. It's that crazy.

How do you walk that line between and obviously, in the beginning of this podcast, I'm giving a caveat that none of this is medical advice, Right?

None of it's medical advice because you're not a doctor. Yes.

It's so crazy we even have to say that, right? It's like, yeah, legally, I'm going to say that, but I'm also going to say that some of the greatest healing happens outside the hospital, if not the majority of it. How do you hold the two worlds? One of the worlds is natural ways of healing connected to nature. The de stressing of the nervous system in so many ways, whether it's through meditation, breathwork, sauna, even hyperbaric. Which I think is fascinating. I don't know too much about that. I just. At the Runga event, it was quite profound. A friend of mine, Joseph Anu, does it here with his son every day. They love it. But how do you hold these two worlds? Because it's got to be tricky. Like people that have gone to Western for so long and they haven't healed and then they find the IBD university and they start getting into the trenches and being in community, which is really the healing medicine that we all deserve is in community. Nobody heals alone. That doesn't exist, y'. All. None of you are lone wolves. Okay?

That's right.

That's just not reality. That's not the reality that I see. At least, how do you hold the world of Western medicine that has potentially done its best and failed? Someone that shows up on your healing home doorstep without you getting in trouble, without you getting labeled as a quack? Yeah, right. What do you say to people that say Western is the only way?

Well, when I had the courage to even come out and start saying this, the first thing I heard all around the Internet is, this is a scam. You're just trying to get rich off people on suffering people. How could you say this? And I just started with my before and after. I didn't. I got away from saying things generic. So it's been a very light dance I've done here because I'm very aware that if I say one, I said, this is one thing about when people know you, if you say something to four people, you can control the narrative. If you say something to a million people, there's going to be a percentage that hate you, despite good luck.

Yeah.

You say something to a million people, someone use a percentage, will hate you. It does not matter what you say. Yeah. So you have to come to terms with that. You have to do your best. Because with great power is great responsibility. Right. We have to say, look, if you are going to ask for this in life, for me, my thought is, if I'm going to ask for this life and I'm going to try to lead people through what I never had, I have to be okay with criticism. I have to be okay that it's not perfect. I have to be ready to apologize. Even when I try my best, I've got to also be a good leader, listener, and listen to what people are saying. Even if I think I'm right and put down my ego, you have to get kill your ego. So things I've done is I don't go out there and confess that this is the right diet. I actually don't believe in diets, but I create lifestyles. I lead. If you look online, 90% of what you'll see, like YouTube, for example, is just testimonies. I just share people's stories of success. Yeah, because our organization has more stories of reversing Crohn's colitis than any doctor clinic consultant in the world, bar none that I've ever seen. We have hundreds. Hundreds we put every week. And these people take 6 to 12 months or 2 years to even do a story. And then only a 25 to 30% are willing to get on camera and say it.

Sure.

So you're talking. That's how much. All right. And so it's not perfect, but we also. We do only customization. So every single person I work with gets a private coach. I will not sell a video program that's scalable that I can just run and make $20 million on and have a 30 success rate. Ain't gonna happen. Keep the money right now, universe. Keep it. I want a 90 success rate, and I'm not giving on it, because I know 10. It's like this person's doesn't do the work or in our ER room when they join or.

Or it's part of the mystery or something. I mean, just the mystery.

No one bats a hundred. You can't and know. And I try. I literally wake up trying to about 100. So I just think that integrity's got to come first. And the thing when capitalism works, when it's morals over money and it needs to stay there, and money is not. My God, it is not my overarching to my goal with money is to have enough. I never think about it again. And then I start using it to create things that are better for the earth. Like, I want to create a restaurant chain in the United States. It has nothing to do with profits. I want. I don't want profit. I just want to be able to go and eat somewhere on how I eat at home.

What would you serve at the restaurant? What would you serve there?

Dude, I already have it in my head. I'm literally gonna map it out. Once money is no longer a thing, I'm just gonna build this. And I don't. I don't care if it's profitable. I don't care. Because money is no longer a motive.

Yeah.

I already have the name of it. It's gonna be called Celebrations. Nice Celebrations. And I mean, it's gonna be a ghost kitchen. We're gonna get it around the country, and it's what I would feed my children. And you're gonna be able to click on an entree and get an education on micronutrients, phytonutrients, the amount of fiber. Who should be using this? Why? What kind of diet does it follow? Is it aip? Is it low fodmap? Is it sed? What is sed? Like, imagine if you could go and you got educated on what this is, and it tasted amazing. Celebrations.

Yeah. Yeah.

There is no such thing as gluten or seed oils or glyphosate in the restaurant. I don't need margins, brother. I don't need to make money on this. That's what Elon Musk tapped into.

Yeah.

If you can get rid of the idea of power over you, you can. You are free to create.

He gave up the patents. He was like, no, he said, patents are for the weak.

He. He took the whole 120 million he made on PayPal, bet it all on Tesla, and then had to borrow money for rent. Crazy. He bet the whole 120 million he made as a kid with PayPal. This is. He tapped into something. The goal is to get rid of these barriers that I might lose. And that's why he's the wealthiest man in the world. That's not ironic. Right? When you let go, it actually becomes back in abundance.

And there's people that go back and forth about his true intentions. And just like the Internet. Internet is a soup of crap. Yeah. There's all these people that are.

I know some people are angry with them for whatever, but.

But what I can see is that we are moving. And this is what's so exciting, man.

Yeah.

We are moving into an expansion of consciousness in 2025.

Oh, dude.

That is the most exciting I've ever felt in my life. Truly.

Me, too.

Truly. And I'm not, like, a huge pro. Trumper. I'm excited about what RFK is going to do for health. I'm excited about the conversation of health. Because whatever we fight, we feed. If I'm fighting. If I'm, like, fighting colitis, fighting seed oils, fighting cancer, all I'm doing is feeding it. And so what I love about RFK and this. This slogan, you know, Maha, make America healthy again.

Yeah.

It's like, yeah, again. Because we. We were born that way. And we just learned through coping mechanisms and strategies that our body was trying to tell us that we ignored through modernity's hooks that got into us, that convinced us that we should listen to them instead of us. That's what this is really about. That's what I'm most excited about in 2025. Like what. What lights you up about the work you're doing in 25 compared to any other year when you really feel into it, greater impact.

I can. I can touch more people and help more people than ever before. That's why I actually built the company. Because when you build a company, you don't build a company to make more money because it actually costs a lot of money. It's very risky. And nine out of 10 companies fail. So I was a coach. I saw 40 Crohn's Colitis clients every single week. And I was, you know, and I had maxed out. I was charging this much. And I was seeing all these people all around the world, my clients sitting with me for two, three, three years. And I was sitting there and I said, what's my why? And I realized that I wanted to be, I felt called to be the world's best CEO of Crohn's Colitis Solutions. And then I needed to delegate. And I need a team who had the same mission as me, who wanted to create a home and wanted to create a place of integrity and a community where we're on the boat with you, man. We have this too. We are in the same risk. We feel the same way. Let's come together and let's thrive and let's be healthier than the healthy. Like, even to find a healthy person, I'm like, yeah, I'll put my lab work up against theirs any day of the healthy person. And I'm just pro common sense. I'm open minded and I'm always curious. I don't think I know everything, but just make it make sense. Whether it's government or it's health or it's right in front of us. Just if I'm wrong, I'll say I'm wrong. I got no problem with that. That's why I liked rfk. I'm, you know, I just, I was running behind rfk. I was like, where are he's going, I'm going. Because he was speaking my language, you know, and my kids can't go into school unless they're vaccinated. And I think that's. That's a. That's a infringement on self rights.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I'm just.

What happened to my body, my choice? I thought it applied to everything I know. And it's like these are the same people that are screaming, my body, my choice. That are also pro taking a jab in the arm. That's experimental.

The crazy logic of this, guys, it's common sense. My kids, and we're talking about 3 year olds getting 72 jabs. Come on. And then we have epidemic sickness, like, let the parents choose. Yeah.

My kids.

If your kid's vaccinated, they're not at risk. Right. So why are you worried about mine? It's a little crazy, but can I share with people some of the things that I did to heal? Because I know a lot of people hear this and I'm beating around the bush.

They're like. And we have just.

What'd you do?

We have a tiny eclipse right here that. That we have before you get to the airport. Okay. So I just want to close that loop because to be a parent is, in my opinion, that's everything to me.

Yes.

It's everything. Like, I'll give you space to share for sure before we say goodbye. But, like, for all the people out there that are wondering, should I be a parent and do I want to bring kids into this world? Yes, do it.

Yeah.

Because you will learn how to heal parts of yourself that you didn't even know you didn't know were there.

Yeah.

The unconscious incompetence that I've been privy to and that I've been exposed about myself to by having children is the most empowering thing. So, no, you do not have to give up your child's autonomy or your health autonomy. And you do not have to do what the powers that be say. If you don't feel in your soul that it's right, forget about rules and regulations. Like, do what you feel is right. That's the point I'm trying to make now. That wisdom only comes from being a father. Right?

Yes. Well, there's no better. There's no greater love than having a child. You don't. You don't feel that. And it's 100% such a different love.

To you compared to your woman. You can't even compare. It's like apples and bananas. They're both amazing.

You know, the irony is about. When you have a kid with somebody is the most important decision you make is who you have children with. Because who you love the most in the world is half them.

Yes.

So when I look into my son's eyes, I see me, but I also see. See her. But I loved her before we even. We created. And so it's like I have this whole joy and love and I have this, like, he's different than me. In a certain way, but he's just all of me. And you just. You can't feel anything like it. Like, I. I am so happy I had kids and I'm actually just kind of want more. I mean, I just. As you. As life goes on, I want. I'm like, man, I think I'm ready for a third here.

Yeah.

But then my wife looks at me, I'm like, yeah, get a nanny. Crazy.

Yeah. I'm like, oh, God, get support.

You gotta have to live next to.

Your grandparents and parents and get.

You get right. I mean, you have to. You. I had to grow up. But I think everything I went through, what I feel called to do, is take everything I've been through through my life. And the older I get, the more I just want to share what I've learned and give it to somebody, you know, Like, I'm already training my replacement. That's my son's.

That's good thinking.

And that's the. You know, they. I want. I just want. I will always be with them. If I die tomorrow, I live in them. I was in Greece once and I was sitting there and we were on this boat and I was just thinking to myself, man, I wish my dad was here. I don't know why I was just. I was on this boat and we were doing this fancy thing and I was just like, my dad's really never left the country and he's worked for 45 years at the same company and just like, hard working. And then I had this astonishment and I was like, wait a minute. My dad is here because he lives in me. Because when I look at, like, my body, I see my dad. I'm like, oh, those are my dad's hands. Oh, that's my. I'll see a picture myself, like, oh, that looks. I can see my dad now. And so I'm like, wait a minute. That is my dad's energy and his spirit living within me. So he is experiencing it through me. And I hope my sons will hear that one day too. That whatever happens, I make they. They. We are the same. We are blood. And I am experiencing it through them. And when they think about what should I do, I will always be in that consciousness of what I would do. And I'm just human. I'm not God. I'm just another human like you. And I hope my 2 cents serves you to make you a better and stronger man. And I just. And I just find that I love life when I can serve and I can give. And the more I become, more Valuable when I'm a value to others. And the people that I want to be the biggest value to are first my family. And then it trajected out. And God has given me a gift that I can, through my pain, I could create something that could help millions of people around the world. IBD, give or take 8 million people around the world. And I'm. And we got 3 year olds coming to us, brother.

I just can't even think about 3 year olds, dude. It's like 16 football stadiums filled with people and it's going like this massive football stadium.

When I got, when I got sick in my early 20s, when they finally diagnosed me like 22, they were like, we don't usually see people this young. I got 12 year olds, 10 year olds, 8 year olds, 6. I got a. I, I worked with a 3 year old. I worked with a 6 year old. It's an epidemic right now. This is real. I'm seeing these sick people all the day. All.

What's at the core of that epidemic that was also at the core of your disease?

Okay, so this is what I have. My, my thoughts. All right. Few things I noticed about me that I think may have caused the sick, enhanced the sickness. I agree with the Dr. Bush said about the soil, that's a problem. The glyphosate, the lack of nutrients was a big problem. The antibiotic epidemic. Yeah, okay. That destroys the microbiome, the immune system goes off. All right. Processed foods, I think, also really big in seed oils and stuff. Those toxins are getting stuck in our body. That's affecting bile production in the liver. That's affecting lymphatic flow. It's affecting the nervous system. Our cells are not getting the magnesium, the selenium, the zinc because of mercury and lead poisoning. Because when those heavy metals get into the cells, you get cellular to function and then just take it, you know, roll the dice. You're going to get a chronic disease at some point with one of these things. They're going to call it something. For me, a few things that I noticed. Number one, I was using Invisalign for one year before I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. What? Wait, what? What did he say? Invisalign Plastic in my mouth that I was chewing on for a year. Then I saw a clinical study that showed that people with IBD had 50% more microplastics in their gut than people who didn't. Okay, that's a ding. What else do we got? I was living on whey protein at GNC General Narcotics Center. I was obsessed with weightlifting and all that stuff. And I was taken in, like I kid you not, 80 to 90 grams of that stuff a day. Man, that dairy was so processed, filled with antibiotics and hormones and all sorts of stuff. And, you know, me and the guys used to laugh back in the day of getting flagellants and bloating and diarrhea from drinking too much of that stuff. But, hey, we wanted to pump. So I think those fitness goals, like you alluded to, I think that fitness and trying to push my macros was hurting my gut. Three is all. I grew up only on processed food. Four viruses, okay? I found. When I nearly died, the doctors couldn't figure out why I was dying. There was one doctor in Florida who I'd saw. My mom called every doctor I'd seen. So December 4th 14th, 2014, I nearly died of Crohn's and colitis. I was on four different antibiotics. I was on 200 milligrams of infused prednisone. I was on a feeding tube. I weighed 130 pounds, 125 pounds. I was on three grams of Dilaudid, which is seven times stronger than morphine. All right, I was on. I'd been on biologics, failed them. I'd been on six amino modulators, all of it. And they couldn't figure out why I was unconscious. And they didn't know if I was going to survive the night. They told my mom, December 14th, we're not sure if he's going to live through the night. She's calling every doctor Frank, you know, around frantically. What can we do? He said in one of this one guy, in one colonoscopy that he found a bit of cytomega virus. Okay. The cytomegalovirus is a virus that for certain people, when your immune system is extremely deficient, it can kill you. People with cancer, people with aids, or someone who became so sick of Crohn's and colitis that this virus took over my body. They gave me an antiviral chemo and I woke up. And from that moment, I said, okay, that's something. And I've always known, even to this day, I still deal with a little bit of problems around chronic viral can come up like I check for viral load. I have a test I use in Germany with Dr. Arman, M.D. he created a viral panel for me that he believes is connected with viruses specifically attacking the gut lining. They activate something called the SEC, the IgA antibody. And an IgA antibody is a local mucosa reaction. And I found like three viruses active myself. And in all of the clients I've tested in our program, about 40 to 50% of the people diagnosed with IBD, I have found current active viruses. We test for six and two bacteria in the blood. And I found, and then later I started getting into natural medicine and really diving into this. Now, mind you, the four or five years I went to the doctors, no one did a stool analysis and said, I wonder if there's some kind of, you know, like, what is infectious colitis? Sometimes we'll get diagnosed with that. Oh, it's not colitis. It's just infectious colitis from food poisoning. It'll go away. Well, I started realizing they're actually very similar because when I started doing all this labs that they never did at UCLA or Ceta Sinai, I found massive loads of Candida in a non invasive quantitative PCR stool analysis. It's like, whoa, that's E to the seventh Candida albicans. What does that mean? That means you have a crap ton of Candida that's overgrown and it's pro inflammatory and it causes chronic leaky gut and it makes and it can increase food sensitivities and it causes your T cells to be activated and it can increase TNF alpha and IL1 beta 6. And it's like, wait, is that clinical? Are you sure Candida for growth can do that? Yes. Okay. Why has no one told me about Candida? Why? Why have the last four years, I almost died. None of us even mentioned or talked about the possibility, love that word, possibility of Candida. I found Candida. I found Blastocystis hominis parasite. I found Cyclospora. I found large amounts of H. Pylori, which I now believe that whenever I see ulcers ulcerations, I'm always looking for H. Pylori. One of the doctors said you have ulcerative colitis with gastritis. Gastritis. Upper GI ulcerations. Okay. And whenever I see upper GI ulcerations, I've gotten tons of people symptom free using this exact protocol where I start treating H. Pylori even if it's a false negative, because they live in biofilms and they're hard to find in the stool because H. Pylori tends to survive up in the upper GI and it can burrow in your body if there's high acid. And biofilms reduce the chance of even finding them, so you get false negatives. So I started treating myself using things like mastic gum and light biofilm disruptors. And then using George's aloe vera and deglycerized licorice root and things like that. And all of a sudden, my digestion's working. One of the things no one told me about with ibd, I couldn't break down food. I would get undigested food in the stool. I would get severe bloating. You wonder why everyone. One of the reasons people are so sensitive to dairy in gluten, because they're the hardest protein molecules to break down. They're like rocks. They don't break down. So now if you have low pancreatic enzymes, low stomach acid, all of that stuff's going in and it's going into your small intestine, unbroken down. Now you're getting an inflammatory response because this big protein has to get through the gut lining. And so your body produces zonulin, a protein that causes your gut lining to break apart to allow this undigested protein to go into the bloodstream. That then causes a. A immune system reaction. And we build sensitivities. Not allergies to food, sensitivities to food. And igg or maybe an iga. Food sensitivity. That's why all of a sudden, I could eat whatever I want when I was 16, and now I'm 23, and I can't eat anything without a reaction. I had chronic leaky gut. If you have leaky gut, you have systemic inflammation. And it is one of the biggest root causes to all disease. Doesn't matter. Okay. The gut lining is broken, and it's causing. It's. It's like border control. It's a huge problem. So I started realizing there was anatomy problems here. Brother. Like, this is not about. Let's argue about the cube, the root cause of disease. And we have natural medicine arguing conventional says there is no root cause. And natural say no. It's the parasites. No, it's the virus. It's all these pathogens are one of the problems. But you got to first start looking at the body's anatomy. I had poor digestion. I had to rebuild my digestion. That's doable for everyone out there. Can you rebuild your digestion? Forget the chronic disease. Can you rebuild your digestion? Can you take your coastal healing teas? Can you start taking natural herbs to build it can maybe take a shot of apple cider vinegar. Can you treat that, H. Pylori? Yes. Wait a minute. So I just build digestion that might. That my body's getting stronger. I need to fix my gut lining, stop the zonulin production. I need to balance my microbiome. I got too much candida. You can't eradicate it. I need to to balance the candidates. Yeast and candida is natural in the body. Balance candida, balance the bacteria, and then keep my natural microbiome to be able to control this. That's the long term problem people have. They get it in balance and they get out of balance and then they flare and then they go back in balance and then they get stuck. Why do I have to do this? And that's one of the problems is keeping that balance. That's where you need your healing home. Emotional sides. Create a new life. That this is how I live. I'm not on a diet. This is my lifestyle that makes me be happy and healthy. No diets for me.

Listen, the reason why I didn't ask you so much about the minutiae of your healing Pandora is because the tip of the iceberg that you just said with so much passion, if that doesn't inspire y' all to go to this university that you've created, I don't know what will. Like you light up when you talk about it. And the reason why I didn't ask you about the minutia of healing, I was interested in the energy that we explored today. I was interested, interested in the spiritual quotient. Because if that's not in place, who cares if you go to all the intellectual pieces. Yeah, what's my supplement stack? What's my lifestyle? What's my modifications? All of these things have a place at the table. It's been really, really exciting. I know you have to get an airplane.

Yes.

It's been really exciting to sit with you. I think this is one of another, maybe one or two podcasts we'll do because there's so much to be known about the second brain, the gut, how it impacts our health on such a monumental level. But I'm really proud of what you shared in regards to the spirit and the energy of how you healed. I think that's just as important, man, as the science you just dropped on us. So tell people where they can go to sign up. And I'm sure there's probably an entryway like the doormat to the healing home. Where's the doormat to the healing home that you've created for people? Where is that?

So Crohn's colitis lifestyle. You can find us on Instagram, YouTube. We post using a testimony a week on there. You start looking and start exploring. I just tell everyone, just look and get Confidence of who you want to work with. You need trust and integrity with whoever you work with. I want to earn that. I will do everything in my power to earn it, but I do need to earn it. So keep looking. And I hope today's conversation changed things. And I agree with you on that, on the foundations, because that's how you get long term success. What you decide, that's the anchor, that's the foundation. That's how you're going to be. Not just good now, but good for 10 or 20 years. You have to shift your perspectives and, and that's so important. So Crohn's CL Life Lifestyle. Our main program is called the Shield Program. IBD University is our, is our home. That's our place. And so we have those two different options for you. I would just tell people, you know, just click below so I know you came from here and so be like, let us know that you came from here. And we're going to go ahead and give you a complimentary IBD strategy session with one of our specialists. So we go out of our way to say, let's just get on the phone, let's talk about root issues, let's talk about your past experience with natural medicine, let's talk about your current symptoms, let's talk about your goals, and let's build trust and integrity. Because if I, if you join our team, I want you to be a part of this mission. And I want you to say, this is the best decision I ever made because that's the movement I want to build. If people are not even more excited after they cross that line and take a gamble on me, then I'm not getting closer to my dream of what I want. I want all of us to stay together. This isn't just like a two month or three month prayer. It's a lifetime membership. And you are part of a community of people building something bigger than ourselves. And so I invite anyone out there who needs that to reach out. I will hold space. I will try to earn your trust and integrity and just let us know how we can serve you. And we want to serve. We want to do our very best. And please thank this man for having me and taking a gamble on having me on the podcast, sharing my story.

No gamble at all. Your friend.

Let's shout. Aaron. Aaron connected us and you know, but you took her word for it. And thank you for having me. And, and I just hope everyone realizes that healing is possible. I'll make a stand for you. I'm sending all the love I can to you, man.

Dan, thanks for being my guest.

Thank you.

Appreciate you being here, y'. All. Until we see you again, Dan and I are both wishing you love and wellness. Make sure you go to the show notes today and actually receive this gift that he's wanting to give you. Maybe this is the moment you've been waiting for. Could it be possible that this is the moment you've been waiting for? If you just trust you're into it? If something's lighting up in your body where you're like, that could be hope. That could be the path. Go to that path. All right, y'. All. We'll talk to you on another episode. Peace.