Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.
Stu: This week we welcome Dane Johnson to the show. Dane is the owner and Founder of CrohnsColitisLifestyle. Dane’s passion for holistic nutrition began after he experienced a life threatening battle with Crohns Disease & Ulcerative Colitis. Natural medicine played a large role in his recovery and allowed him to discontinue the use of conventional drugs.
Dane is a leading practitioner in the holistic community with over 10 years experience in the Health & Wellness industry. He received his Holistic Nutrition Degree from The Energetic Health Institute and has since helped others find natural solutions to their own personal battles with Crohns/Colitis. Dane has been featured in fitness magazines such as ‘Fitness for Men’ and known for his natural recovery from a life threatening battle with Crohns Disease/Ulcerative Colitis.
Dane is the creator of the proprietary healing program – S.H.I.E.L.D; Co-founder of the non-profit NutritionHeals foundation, founder of CCLifestyle, and member of the National Association of Nutrition Professionals. During his battle with Crohns/Colitis, he always wished there was a place where he could connect with others who suffer and help build a healing plan. That place is now CCLifestyle!
In this interview we discuss his journey and the discoveries he made along the way, enjoy…
Audio Version
Questions we ask in this episode:
- What treatments did conventional medicine offer and how effective were they?
- What was the turning point that made you explore alternative treatments?
- What factors do you believe were the most powerful in terms of healing?
Get More of Dane Johnson
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- Chris Kresser: The ABC of Functional Medicine
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Full Transcript
Stu
00:03 Hey, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition and welcome to another episode of The Health Sessions. It’s here that we connect with the world’s best experts in health, wellness and human performance in an attempt to cut through the confusion around what it actually takes to achieve long-lasting health. Now I’m sure that’s something that we all strive to have. I certainly do. Before we get into the show today, you might know that we make products too. That’s right, we’re into whole food nutrition and have a range of super foods and natural supplements to help your day. If you are curious, want to find out more, just jump over to our website that is 180nutrition.com.au and take a look. Okay, back to the show.
00:44 This week, I’m excited to welcome Dane Johnson. Dane is the owner and founder of Crohn’s Colitis Lifestyle. His passion for holistic nutrition began after he experienced a life-threatening battle with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Natural medicine played a large role in his recovery and allowed him to discontinue the use of conventional drugs. In this episode, we discuss the shift that Dane embraced that ultimately led to his path of self-healing. We chat about how and when Dane explored natural medicine and discusses healing program shield that outlines the six pillars of healing that provided the greatest results. With so many of us suffering digestive disorders today, I’m so grateful to be able to connect you with Dane and share his knowledge. So without further ado, let’s get over to Dane.
01:34 Hey guys, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition and I am delighted to welcome Dane Johnson to the show. Dane, how are you?
Dane
01:42 Thank you for having me Stu. Hey everybody. Hope you’re having the best day.
Stu
01:46 Fantastic. Again, very thankful to be able to dive into some of your wisdom today and I know that our listeners are gonna love what you have to say, but first up, for all of those that may not be familiar with what you do, I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do and perhaps why you do it.
Dane
02:04 So I help people create alternative personalized programs for reversing symptoms of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
Stu
02:16 Wow. Fantastic.
Dane
02:17 I got into that because I myself was diagnosed with a life-threatening battle of … First ulcerative colitis, then diagnosed Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis Crohn’s. When I was … First symptoms 19, diagnosed 23. By the time I was 26 going into my 27th birthday I was nearly dead from it and I don’t say that lightly. I walk around usually around 180 pounds and I left the hospital, I was 122 pounds and I couldn’t eat food, I was on a feeding tube and I was immunosuppressants and I was on 200 milligrams of infused Prednisone and I was on an oral chemotherapy once I had left and a intravenously infused chemotherapy when I was there and Ambient, painkillers, three grams allotted a day. Everything you could imagine so for me, it was a big question of how is it a completely normal healthy young man can go from that to nearly dead from a disease that no one can really explain why? I was seeing a lot of errors in what I was being told versus what I was experiencing myself.
Stu
03:33 Fantastic. Boy oh boy, that’s a whole cocktail of drugs in there to treat something that … I guess a lot of us are not that familiar with. So I wonder before we dive into exactly what you did to be able to address that, could you just run us through Crohn’s and colitis because I know it kinda sits in that space of digestive issues, irritable bowel. It’s that big question mark. So what is Crohn’s and colitis?
Dane
04:05 Crohn’s and colitis are forms of irritable bowel disease which means a chronic inflammation throughout the digestive tract that has a host of root cause issues and problems but it inhibits people from properly absorbing and digesting food. It causes … A huge cycle of issues in the body but systemically it’s considered an autoimmune disease. So an autoimmune disease is when the immune system is hyperactive in attacking certain parts of the body and this whole autoimmune era has been an epidemic and there are many types of autoimmune diseases. I’m sure some people have been hearing of a few like multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis or Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis. Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis are autoimmune issues that are specific to the GI tract. Ulcerative colitis is known to be mostly in the colon and large intestine where the disease lies. Crohn’s disease tends to be throughout the entire GI tract, from throat to anus. So that’s how modern medicine is is looking at the two different types.
Stu
05:18 Got it. Okay, and looking at a little bit of your history, I can see that from my perspective it appears that you were super healthy, active, and lived a very healthy lifestyle. So what do you think … What was the catalyst do you think that allowed these diseases to manifest in your body?
Dane
05:44 Looking back, the more time I spend in the natural medicine and functional medicine world, the more clues I get on what could have been the main catalyst. One, I had taken many doses of antibiotics throughout my teenage years. Two, I was eating a lot of fast food which probably had a host of bacterial issues in the meat and in the food. There are a lot of inflammatory issues going on there. When I was diagnosed I was under high amounts of stress. I’ve noticed a commonality with the clients I’ve worked with that they tend to be in a high amount of stress when they have their first episode, which triggers the immune system, and I’ve also noticed … Don’t hold me to this out there guys, but I have noticed certain trends that people who have Invisalign have problems because of the BPA in the plastic that you’re putting in your mouth and it’s slowly being broken down and swallowed and ingested into your gut.
06:56 I read an article talking about the potential correlation and then it dawned on me, “Hey, I was using Invisalign a year and a half right before I got diagnosed.” Right before. Then I started asking around and luckily I have such a database of people I work with, Chron and colitis I kind of just send a message out, say, “Hey, raise if your hand if you had Invisalign.” I got a good amount of hands raised. Straight teeth is great, I don’t know much about it, guys, don’t think that Invisalign is bad or I’m saying it’s bad, it’s just something I noticed that just came up about a month ago. That could have been something and I also noticed that people who have a past with shingles tends to be a common or cold sores. I never had either but I have seen a lot of trends in that region with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s. So there are a lot of different potential root cause issues but one thing I’d like to add onto everyone out there who’s listening who knows [inaudible 00:08:08] Crohn’s is identifying with this.
08:09 The diagnosis Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis is an umbrella diagnosis in my opinion. There could be many, many issues of why you’re having gut problems and a lot of times the doctors are just putting a camera down your throat or up your butt and going, “Yep. It’s Crohn’s.” That’s just this umbrella diagnosis which could be a host of issues and that I think is the big problem why we’re seeing so many people say, “This worked for me,” and we’re seeing someone else say, “It didn’t work for me,” and someone else saying, “It actually made me worse.” We’re seeing a huge lack of correlation and information on how to help people and I think that is one of the main reasons.
Stu
08:51 Wow. Okay. It’s a big unknown, isn’t it? Especially when you consider the fact that we’re all so unique in terms of our genetic makeup, our genetic heritage. Even where we are on the health journey as well and we are surrounded by any number of things that could impact our health at any given time. So you mentioned Invisalign and BPI in plastics and things like that and I guess sure, if you’re susceptible, you have a gene that may be susceptible to environmental toxins and plastics and things like that, then you can switch that on.
09:25 I had a chat to another lady a couple of weeks ago and she just raised a hand and said, “Let’s think about the water that we drink. Tap water’s got chlorine in it, at least around here it does. Chlorine is an anti-bacterial agent and we’re drinking that, it’s going into our guts and it’s an antibacterial. What do you think it’s doing to the gut bacteria?” Then you mentioned things like the food, the fast food, and all of that stuff that has an impact on the gut and over the last 10 years, we’re seeing a massive rise in gut-related issues and also the importance then that we put on gut health as well. Now given the fact … Because I want to talk about medication next as well. Given the fact that we’re now finding out, new science is telling us that diverse gut bacteria is critical for human health and all the things that we’re doing seems to be compromising that, tipping the balance into the bad bacteria which can cascade as into any manner of health issues. So when you went into hospital and you were given conventional medicines, I’m guessing that they were obviously there to fix the problem but they weren’t gonna help your gut in any way. In fact, they would probably do the opposite. What are your thoughts on the conventional medicines that they gave you and I’m intrigued as to how effective they were first up.
Dane
11:00 I love this question and I think a lot of people on this side of the fence in natural medicine stray away from it. Let me say this, for anyone out there who’s considering to use conventional medicine for autoimmune disease or Crohn’s disease, conventional medicine is useful, it’s needed, it saved my life. It if wasn’t Prednisone and those immunosuppressants I would not be here.
11:24 Now the question is, is it a usable and tolerated longterm solution, and that’s where I think that functional medicine and natural medicine can come in and really lend a huge helping hand. From what I’ve seen, the results can be astronomical, beyond just taking back your life and reducing symptoms but creating a new form of self. My belief is that we should not be dieting or doing these things out of fear. We’re teaching people, you don’t want to be sick, so stay away from this, only eat this, and that’s a fear-based energy and fear-based energy will always create a stress which will always be the hardest thing for people to actually invest and fully believe in. What we’re trying to do is have people start believing in their own bodies again and see the correlation between diet and their own self and manifestation of the experience they want in their life. I believe it’s more than health, it’s about living the life you want, and conventional medicine can have a part in that where it can be useful and if you have an extreme situation in health, using conventional medicine along with natural medicine can get you to where you can take your life back, go back to work, take care of your kids, make money, and then over time you can start to reduce that based on what you think is best for you and what your doctor thinks is best for you.
12:51 Now granted that a lot of people out there go, “My doctor doesn’t know the difference between nothing,” we’re losing a lot of faith in our [inaudible 00:12:56]. I had screaming matches with my doctors. I was a young kid, I was stubborn but I’m so glad I was stubborn because I didn’t believe for a second that the only answer was to live on Remicade or Entyvio or Humira and get a colectomy bag at the age of 24. That was the only solution I had. I refused that, and today I’m drug-free, I’ve [inaudible 00:13:18] all surgeries, and I’ve helped hundreds of people around the world do the same and it just came from a belief in self.
13:27 So conventional medicine can help hold the boat up but beyond that, I think it is our responsibility to be able to start learning about self care. Like we’re considered to be responsible for learning about wealth management or making money, we should be held to the same account about our health. These companies are not going to stop making these products and shoving this stuff down our throat in these commercials or making it cheaper. It’s just gonna come from a prudence and resilience from us as people to know what kind of life we want and the dangers, like cigarettes.
14:05 Because let me ask you this, people say, “I only smoke a half a pack a day of cigarettes.” Okay, is that more dangerous than a cheeseburger? Well, what if you had 12 cheeseburgers in a day? What [inaudible 00:14:17] more dangerous? So it’s looking at it and just deciding who you want to be and natural medicine can start to allow you to take back your life.
14:27 No one was meant to live on drugs and the average person taking a drug consistently every single day is going up and up and up and up. So we want to learn how can we take back our life and even supplements. I think that a lot of times I use a lot of supplements with my clients to help them get the results, but [inaudible 00:14:44] turn that into food as medicine, using the earth to rebalance our energy and rebalance our gut microbiome and balance our inflammatory responses and our cognitive function. That’s the longterm idea that I would love to share with people about how they substitute conventional medicine and maybe eventually replace it but … Yeah, don’t take it lightly. So conventional medicine does have its place.
Stu
15:14 Exactly right, and I completely agree and it comes back a little bit as well to our bioindividuality. So it’s a little bit like a short guy wanting to be tall. Now you can undertake all of the supplementary regimes on the planet and you can eat like a prince. You’re not gonna be taller.
Dane
15:37 Yeah. Stretch yourself out.
Stu
15:39 Some things you just can’t change and like you said, yes, conventional medicine has an excellent place for the things that you just cannot change in all of these other areas but you can certainly support them with alternative therapies in terms of diet and lifestyle, stress, sleep, all of the above, to get to a point where perhaps it’s not so much of an issue where you can pull back on the meds or come off them completely.
Dane: 16:03 Where I am right now, I would like to give everyone this sign of hope that what I’m seeing emerge in functional medicine is extraordinary and I think we can get beyond just symptom relief. I think that we can become truly empowered to start manifesting our dreams utilizing natural medicine. We are so deeply connected to this earth and our body is so divine. Don’t ever count out the body and the spirit and what is possible. The moment you put a limit on it, that is the limit. [inaudible 00:16:36] a real mental power there and I’ve been doing this for a lot of years and what I’m seeing in functional medicine is inspiring me. I’m still learning every single day. I know that doesn’t sound always true but when I sit down with some of these leading biochemist, bio-engineers and these doctors who are writing these books and writing the new book on functional medicine, it is extremely, extremely coll stuff. We are going to be able to personalize diets, we are going to be able to find more preventative medicine so we can start saying, “Hey, you have a 90% chance of getting multiple sclerosis or Crohn’s disease or these.” We’re gonna be in a place where we can start making sure people aren’t getting it and not just trying to put out a fire but the time it’s already turned into symptoms, chronic symptoms.
17:20 Yeah, definitely. Exciting times. 10 years ago, I think doctors were just laughing at the word gut health and microbiome and leaky gut. They would just … Yeah, forget it, it’s in your mind, such as things like chronic fatigue but now, 10 years on, we’re into DNA, genetics and microbiome and all of this great stuff which is really leading us into exciting times certainly for human health so very exciting.
17:50 So I’m intrigued then, the turning point for you that made you explore alternative treatments. What was that?
Dane
17:58 I was backed into a corner. I was on all the conventional drugs. I was just getting –
18:00 I was on all the conventional drugs. I was just getting worse and the next option was surgery.
Stu
18:07 Right.
Dane
18:08 For me, that was unacceptable. I was just not willing to, and I had this brand new career in my life that I had worked hard to get and I felt like everything was being taken from me and swept out from under me and I just refused to accept that. I refused. So when it got to that point, I made healing my number one priority. There was nothing more important to me.
18:31 Nothing more important, and luckily, when I started … It took years to do this but when I really made it that and I really committed myself and I learned and applied and I journaled and I self-doctored and I added all the things that are intangible, that people just don’t want to do. They’re like, “Aww, it doesn’t matter.” Like [inaudible 00:18:53] and purpose and meditation and getting sun and having positive conversation and only listening to positive music and only watching things that make you laugh and smile and focusing on optimism. You start realizing how divine your energy is.
19:08 My favorite word is energy. Everything I think that I’ve learned has really come back to the root of energy and identifying it and being able to shift it. It was just such a blessing to go through it. I really consider getting Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis the best thing that ever happened to me because it allowed me to have an experience I never would have had, and it’s a good conversation I had at lunch this morning that I’d love to share with everyone. I was out at lunch with this girl who started this brand new product. It’s a food-based vitamin. It’s a really cool thing, really cool, and I loved it. She’s like, “Yeah, I’m thinking about going back to natural medicine school and I wanted to get your opinion on it, think about it.” I told her, I said, “You know, the best thing about natural medicine school is I was so sick when I was doing it that I was … Take it and literally apply it to me body, that I was so underweight, malnourished, anemic, couldn’t walk that I … Real strong dosage of, “Hey, does this work or not work?” [inaudible 00:20:03] People who have a lot of symptoms, you’re looking in the mirror and you’re going, “Oh yeah. I’ve been vegan for two weeks. I kinda feel different. My skin looks a little bitter. I’m waking up a little easier. My mood’s a little better.”
20:14 It’s not that deep sense of like, “Wow, my life changed.” So I think that the benefit guys, whoever out there who’s really sick is you have right in front of you the key ingredients to an amazing experience that can help define a life of passion and purpose and can really give to the world. Nothing worth having comes easy and I really always imagine myself as being almost like a warrior. Like in the movie 300 where a 10-year-old boy gets thrown out into the woods in the winter and if he makes it through the winter surviving he comes back a man. I felt like the family couldn’t help me, the money couldn’t help me, the doctors couldn’t help me. I was out in the woods by myself in the middle of mother effing winter and like, you know what? I don’t care if I’m just 23 years old or 22. I don’t care what this white coat doctor says. I don’t give a shit. [inaudible 00:21:12] what I’m capable of doing and [inaudible 00:21:15] this. I just said, “What’s the first thing I can do?” I just simplified it and I made everything digestible and I brought it into tangible, doable things on a daily basis.
21:28 So I focused on what was right in front of me and that was really the catalyst for me was just being at my wit’s end. Thank God for it.
Stu
21:43 I wonder as well because you mentioned mindset previously and I’ve had some amazing conversations with some very smart people. Specifically, Bruce Lipton springs to mind. So a biologist who extracted stem cells from the human body and realized that he could only grow these stem cells effectively in the right environment and that was a positive environment that used certain hormones and then he brought that back to stem cells being able to grow in the body in the right environment, and in order for that to happen, the environment had to be full of positive hormones. So the negative would happen if the body was full of stress, hormones that are built around like stress. Things like cortisol and adrenaline and all of these things. He said, “We have a machine in our body that allows us to make that switch between positive and negative, and it’s our brain.” He said, “We can think happy thoughts in our brain, just floods our body with these amazing growth-giving hormones that allow our body to heal and repair.” He said, “But the opposite is true if we are in a stressed environment. We’re feeling stressed. We’re flooding our bodies with all of this stuff in terms of stress hormones. That has the absolute effect.
23:11 So for you to be able to embrace this journey and think, “Right, I’m gonna do this. Nothing is gonna stop me.” That mindset is changing your biology at a core level that is enabling your healing to really take another leap forward. It’s just amazing. I don’t think people truly understand that mindset can be so powerful as a really important pillar in healing.
Dane
23:38 That’s the gift to being sick, amen to that and it’s so true, and I never knew that. That’s exactly why I feel like there’s nothing more valuable than experience. Bill Jackson can read about playing basketball all day long but until he gets out on the court and does it he’ll never know what it’s like to play the game, to be [inaudible 00:23:57] and for everyone out there, if you are sick right now, you have to realize this is an opportunity to change every experience you have in this world. People spend all their money looking for experience, traveling the world, doing drugs, trying to … Whatever they’re trying to do, they’re just yearning for new experience and you have at your fingertips the ability to triumph and manifest something great and learn truly what I believe is godly energy, divine energy. Mindset is, it’s the same thing. Everything in life is made up. Your name is made up, your country is made up, your origins are made up. It’s all made up. This world is … Who’s to say this world isn’t made up? You know, that’s what religion says. So it’s like in seven days, God made it up.
24:44 It starts with a concept. What is a thought? Think about it. Just stop everything for a moment and just … If you had a thought for the day and you woke up this morning and said, “You know what? I think this could make me heal.” Where did that thought come from? Now a scientist could say, “Oh, it was a neurological spark.” It’s like the big bang theory. Same thing. It’s like, “Great, but where did it come from?” Nowhere. A thought is nothing into something. That is manifestation. That is godly and then that comes into voice and that is spoken and brought into existence.
25:15 Then your actions take that to the next level of existence. Everything comes in layers. There is no perfect blueprint for healing, there is no perfect blueprint for living. It all is a layer experience of personalization and uniqueness. I will never know what it’s like to live in this world as a woman and a woman will never know what it’s like to live in this world as a man and a black man will never know what it’s like to live in this world as a white man, a white man will never know … But we can relate and we can also understand that everything is completely unique and there is no … When you let go of the blueprint and you start finding your blueprint, you start finding your answers and that starts with a mindset change and believing in self.
25:56 The biggest problem with health issues is it starts to make you disabled and I think this was another gift is I was a normal healthy kid up until my 19, 20, 21 years old. By the time I got sick, I had lived enough life as a healthy person that I at my core did not believe I was a sick person. I got sick. What saved me is I always rejected that. I always rejected that feeling of being a sick person. When you live sick year after year after year, your body can’t help but have that trauma live inside. It subconsciously changes how you feel about yourself. I can’t eat that, I can’t do that, I can’t run, I can’t lift. I’m not worth that person to date. I can’t make that amount of money? [inaudible 00:26:41] That’s all from a deep sense of feeling of self and that’s where the idea of mindset comes but mindset [inaudible 00:26:51] willpower and this is something I really learned. This is the biggest piece of advice I think I want everyone to take away today that I learned is that it’s not willpower that’s really gonna do it. It’s an acceptance and then using your rational mind to put new experiences in front of you that help nourish you.
27:10 See, the spirit needs nourishment. Willpower is to do something against what the spirit wants. That is used and needed sometimes, but we need to create an environment that nourishes us, and a lot of times we don’t believe in ourself because we’re not actually nourishing ourselves to allow ourselves to grow and find space for healing.
27:29 So you’re going, ” Dane, well, what the hell does that mean?” It sounds all great but what does that tangibly mean? What that means is identifying things that can help make you feel better and grow and comfort you. Your home environment, conversations you have, who you surround yourself with, what you allow yourself to eat, what you allow yourself to read, when you have yourself go to bed, how long you sleep. What the conversations you allow people to have with you. Conversations you are allowed to have with yourself. Once you realize there are certain problems, if you could identify that, “Hey, I don’t have a lot of self-belief. I don’t have a lot of self-confidence. I don’t know my path.” The way to master it is to simplify and you just need to make it very, very simple.
28:14 So what I did is I found ways to simplify that mindset change. So how could I change my mind that I’m not a sick person and these doctors didn’t know what they were talking about? I had no reason to believe that. The mindset change was starting to … One thing I did tangibly, I started to journal every single day. What I journaled is just what I did. I made a rule. I said, “Okay, well here’s something I can do that can only help me and can’t hurt me. Everything I eat, I will make myself. I will not buy anything that’s pre-made. I will only eat what I make.” I said, “I’m gonna do this for 60 days. It’s not forever, it’s not a diet I gotta follow and live in this bubble and be this disabled person who could never eat anything again. For 60 days, this is where I am now and I’m gonna track where I am with my weight and my bowel movements and the blood and mucus and [inaudible 00:29:03] sleeping and my energy levels, and I’m just gonna just say I’m gonna do these things that can only help me and can’t hurt me. That’s how I’m gonna start nourishing my spirit.”
29:13 Instead of being willpower, I was putting things in place that allowed me to be nourished and allowed me to have a sense of ease. When the pain goes away and you substituted the pain for just having a proper nutritional regimen, believe me, it’s a fair trade. You’re going, “Oh yeah. [inaudible 00:29:30] Maybe you’re doing paleo. Maybe you’re doing vegan or fruitarian or whatever [inaudible 00:29:34] Yeah, I’ll have my three bananas. Yeah, I’ll have my organic bone broth or my [inaudible 00:29:40] beef with vegetables, right?
29:42 Then all of a sudden it’s like, “Wait a minute. I gained 10 pounds. My energy’s bad. I’m going to the bathroom only four times a day from 15 and I can go out and see my buddies. I’m actually gonna go say hi to everyone. They’re at the local shop. I’m just gonna go up there and say hey and be outside in the sun again and put my clothes on and not live in my pajamas. So that substitute of the spirit is very inviting and that’s how I changed my mindset is rationally identifying what my spirit needed and giving it instead of just having a willpower diet.
Stu
30:12 That’s so good. I heard a quote the other day and it really stuck with me. I wrote it down and I just thought, “Wow, this is so applicable to so many areas of my life.” It was “If it is to be, it’s up to me.” It’s just … Right, okay. I’ve got the power to do all these things and if I want to make positive change, then you know what? It’s gonna be up to me. If I want this, it’s up to me to do it and it just sounds like you’ve embraced that and just ran with it.
30:43 Tell me about your 60 days then. After the 60 days and you decided I’m gonna do all this stuff, I’m gonna make my own meals, I’m gonna pull back on all of the potentially processed foods and all that other stuff. How did you feel after 60 days?
Dane: 31:01 So this was the first time I ever decided to take my health into my own hands. I had two major episodes. The second one was the one that nearly killed me. That was about two years later. The first time I ever tried natural medicine was the first time … I really created a catalyst that created belief.
Dane
31:18 So the 60 days. What I did, I said, “Okay, I’ll do it for … ” It was originally 40 days and it turned into 72 days. After 72 days, I decided to reward myself. I got myself off all drugs and I was a young guy who was stubborn and I just decided, I’m off Prednisone. Like I weaned off Prednisone, I decided not to go back in for another Remicade infusion. I stopped taking 6-MP, I stopped taking Lialda, and then all of a sudden 72 days later, I was like, “Hey, I’m having no symptoms really. I’m having minimal symptoms, I still had some, and I’ve gained 25, 30 pounds in 65 days.”
31:58 That was about after two or three years of chronic problems. Very sick. I mean, I was just going up the tree of pain and it was like three years of that. Then I had that first 60, 72 days. So then I decided to fly out to Germany and live in Europe for … On Day 74 I was in Europe and I [inaudible 00:32:17] and then I caused myself some more problems because I started eating a different food and I lost my regimen, I lost my routine and it wasn’t terrible but definitely my health went [inaudible 00:32:26] but I was 24, 25 at the time so I was so interested in living my life that I was like, “Oh, it will be okay,” you know?
32:39 What that did is it acted as a catalyst for me to be very interested in self-empowerment and natural medicine. So it was roughly about a year later, I started looking at natural medicine schools and I thought to myself, I was a C student, I hated school. I already had a college degree, undergrad and all that, but I decided that going back to school for natural medicine, I did a two year program would be beneficial for many reasons. One, it would put me in an accountability place where I could learn all this about natural medicine and teach me how to create my shield, which eventually became the name of my program. I was like, “How could I protect myself from this again?” I was like, “Well, I’ll do a program so it will teach me how to protect myself. I’ll have this other potential career,” in case … Because at this time, I was a model. I was a full-time model, traveling the world modeling. So I built that out of nothing and no found me to model, I literally just built this career. I was in Germany and Paris and London in all this.
33:38 So I said, “Okay, well I’ll do this two year program and then it will help me.” I said, “Eventually when I have a family one day, there’s also a chance of my son or my daughter getting Crohn’s. How am I gonna protect my wife from having to deal with me as a sick person? I was like, “I really need to know how to protect myself.” So I saw family protection, me protection, new potential career protection and self-empowerment maximized. I said, “This sounds fantastic. This is a win-win-win.” Signed up for that, and a year into it, I got deathly sick and I wasn’t … I mean, I was drinking alcohol again, I was eating gluten, I was traveling the world, I was in high stress. I was [inaudible 00:34:18] physically fit. I was into fitness, not health. I was just working out to be aesthetically as fit as I could. After the 60 days, I went on that run and by the time I was 26, I was at a fashion show and I … I’d done it for six years and it was for this company called Ugg, Ugg Shoes and right before we were about to go on stage and there was hundreds of people outside and it was a really …
34:48 I was keeling over, extremely sick. That’s for another day but I eventually drove myself to the hospital, stayed in the hospital for six weeks, nearly died in that hospital, and then walked out of the hospital, 122 pounds six weeks later and wheelchaired out of the hospital. I checked myself out of the hospital despite what the doctors wanted to do. That’s another long story, and then at that point began my one year healing journey where I was housebound for about nine or ten of those months. I was bed-rested for about six to eight weeks.
Stu
35:28 Boy oh boy. So you mentioned Shield and I’d love for you to be able to tell us a bit about that. I’ve had a look on the website and it looks like a fantastic [inaudible 00:35:42] to be able just to dive in and be able to approach every facet of your health with the right mindset. So tell us about it.
Dane
35:52 I couldn’t be more excited about Shield. It just came to me, I think it was … It was just given to me by some power or something because really, the more … You know, when you come up with a name –
36:01 I really, the more, you know when you come up with a name of a company, you’re always worried that two or three years later you’re gonna grow, and you’re gonna find that it’s not really useful any more. It’s usually nothing but the opposite of that. So, I wanna simplify what my goal is for everyone out there listening. What’s my mission? What am I trying to do with all this? My mission is not to create the blueprint for everyone with Crohn’s or Colitis. My mission is to help empower people with great therapy.
Stu
36:27 Right.
Dane
36:28 I wanna be a catalyst for people to become self empowered. What I realize when I hear myself is that I had learned all these things from school and all the these books I’ve read and all these personal experiences I’ve tried. It was all these things that I had put together into my program, and I shared with all these different ideas out there to create what really worked for me.
Stu
36:47 Yeah.
Dane
36:47 So, I asked myself, how did I get here? How did I go from a sick 24 year old kid, 22 year old kid with a personal training degree with a crap disease to being a holistic nutritionist, 180 pounds, off of the drugs, despite with Cedar Sinai had said, and UCLA and Cleveland Clinic? How did I get here? How did I do this? What made this work for me? Because for years, I thought it was impossible. When I’m out there I get it. It seems impossible. I ate Papa John’s the whole time I was growing up. I worked at a pizza place. I get it. I was not raised around natural medicine. It seems impossible. I realized that I had one mindset switch from the fear of living in a bubble on a diet and doing all this crazy stuff to self empowerment and everything that could heal Crohn’s also gave me the life I truly wanted for myself.
37:48 I wanted to be a healthy person. I wanted to be empowered. I wanted to have energy. I wanted to be able to climb a mountain at 45 years old without arthritic pain. I wanted to look young. I wanted to be able to make love to my wife at any age any time. I just started realizing everything I wanted in my life was the exact sort of mindset as getting rid of the fear and starting investing in who I wanted to be. We’re one in the same. Number two, I realized that I personalized a program for me. I wasn’t following any one specific diet. I wasn’t following any specific supplement arrangement. I was finding things that were working for me and listening to my body. So, I really personalized it to myself.
38:26 So, I started looking at it, and I said, what am I doing? I said, I’m not curing Crohn’s. You know. There is a chance of this coming back. I don’t believe in the word cure. The word cure is a fear based word. You can’t cure anything in this world. You can only, anything can come back. So, and you can’t cure death, so, I’m not going to cure everybody. Forget it. It’s a worthless term. But, I was protecting myself against the responses of the weakened gut. I was creating a shield. I was creating my armor. I was willing to fight. I was willing to box.
38:59 Then I said, okay. What were things that make it? Well, diet was effective, but it wasn’t everybody. Supplements really helped, but it wasn’t everything. Herbs really helped, but it wasn’t everything. Imagination, where I wanted to go in my mindset was good. But, it wasn’t it. If I didn’t change my diet, my imagination didn’t matter. Exercise was really helpful, but I learned to exercise for health not just fitness. I came into this trying to be in Men’s Health Magazine and having an eight-pack and being ripped up, but that’s not exactly healthy. There’s a difference between being fit and healthy.
39:26 Then I realized that lifestyle was huge. That the flow of my room and my kitchen and who I allowed myself to talk to and what would listen to and what I read was all really big and my lifestyle was really big, but it wasn’t everything. I realized it was everything combined. It wasn’t just one thing, it was everything combined functionally done, a symphony. I tell people to recruit their symphonies. The A note and C note, and E note, can be done in so many different ways, but we wanna be a Picasso of this. We wanna be a Beethoven of this to create the perfect symphony for you.
39:59 So, that’s what it was. Shield. And that’s an acronym. That’s the six pillars of health. I found that SHIELD was the six pillars of health and it is an acronym for Supplements, Herbs, Imagination, Exercise, Lifestyle, and Diet. SHIELD. So, what I do is I help empower people to create their personalized SHIELD program. You start learning about all the efforts, all the benefits of all these things in supplements, herbs, imagination, exercise, lifestyle, and diet, and we start tailoring them to your specific life. And you become the CEO of your life. You become your answer. We do not just rely on someone else to make the answers for us. We become the CEO, and then we have our Board of Executives. So, I tell people, I’m on your Board of Executives.
40:41 You can work with me, and I will work one on one, but you are the CEO. You are the boss. That is the biggest thing. We need to start realizing that we own the power. It is our response ability to react or respond to our health and to our needs, and it is on us, because we are the only ones who are gonna have to suffer for it. We need a variety of people. If you own a company, you don’t just have a CMO. You also have a CFO. Right? You don’t just have one person in HR. You might have two or three. You need a group of people who specialize in certain aspects to build your company. Your company is called, Your Health, LLC. That is where we come in, and I invite people and I only will work people who are willing to take the response ability to being the CEO of their health.
Dane: 41:32 Once they take that head seat, I am more than happy with showing them how to be a CEO and what’s expected of a CEO, and I will fill that spot as a right hand consultant. But at that point, that’s when we come truly empowered. The compound interest of taking responsibility for your health is huge, because your mindset changes. Those hormones changes. Your perception of being disabled starts changing, because you start purging the trauma of I’m a disabled person. The longer you’ve been in that, the more mindset is your main problem. Okay. And, you can’t help them. I always tell people and I sympathize, but I was going through trauma every single day living years and years and years in this chronic state of sickness that like I was a disabled person. I couldn’t do things. And I had to purge that.
42:18 This is my most exciting thing to tell everyone out there. If you purge those things in my program and you work with me, I invite you to cheat. I invite you to eat food. I invite you to drink a beer, pizza, get punched in the gut, go whatever, jump out of an airplane, not because it’s good for you. But, because when you purge the idea that you are helpless and that you can’t do those things. I want people not to not have gluten or beer or pizza, not because they can’t, but because they just don’t want to.
Stu
42:46 Yeah.
Dane
42:47 They’re more excited about their life and where they wanna go than sitting down and having Papa John’s and cracking open a Coors Light. That’s just gonna lower their life energy and their life experience. You know? So, I wanna empower people to find the investment in who they wanna be. Every dollar … this is the funniest thing to me. I said, what if you are perfectly healthy and you’ve got ten million dollars in the bank, what would you wanna do? Most people would probably take whatever amount of money it took and hire the best life coach out there to help them find their highest experience.
Stu
43:19 Of course.
Dane
43:20 And heal Crohn’s at the exact same time.
Stu
43:25 Perfect. So I did have questions like-
Dane
43:30 Shoot me, because I know we’re running out of time.
Stu
43:31 No. No. That’s all good. I’m just thinking where should people start? What do you do best? What holds you back the most? I’ve got all of these questions, but it’s quite clear to me that the answers are all contained within SHIELD.
Dane
43:44 Yeah.
Stu
43:45 The first question is where can people find SHIELD?
Dane
43:48 So, SHIELD right now, me and my team are working on an online 60 day healing program.
Stu
43:54 Okay.
Dane
43:56 The consensus of that is there’s gonna be a compilation of videos that they can watch and show them how to start and how to grow. Then there’d be something called Crohn’s Colitis University. It’s a private Facebook group that is like a college. It’s application based. We don’t just accept someone who’s willing to get a subscription. It’s based on where your mindset is, where your goals are, and if we really feel like we can help you. So, we wanna approach it like a university. That’s coming very soon. Where you can apply to be a part of that, and so connecting with like minded individuals. It’s like learning and becoming part of SHIELD. For now, I do private consulting and you can … I have an application process for that too. Just because you guys can imagine the amount of people. There are millions of people around the world who have Crohn’s and everything that’s online and the amount of traffic and amount of people who reach out every day is astronomical. I’m just one person, so I wanna make sure that I can actually be a good fit for you. So, I ask a series of questions to make sure you are at healthy mindset or healthy place where I think I can be a catalyst in your life. At that point, we’ll have a 30 minute strategy session and talk and see if it’s a good fit.
45:06 That’s where they can find me. That crohnscolitislifestyle.com. Click on coaching. You can do that, but absolutely join the email list, because I give away my complimentary eBook, six tips to healing Crohn’s and Colitis. In that email list you also get my complimentary 60 day healing journal. So, the exact journal I used to heal myself, I turned it into a PDF and it’s free right on my email list. So, those are two really great value adds to start looking at this and saying how can I do that? If I was where I was when I here and I never had a coach, and I had that journal, and I was in the mindset, don’t let the journal be a crutch guys. Don’t let these answers be a crutch. You really do need to get that mindset and start saying these are gonna be it. These are just tools. They’re not your feet.
45:55 Your feet walk you forward. The head is only as good as the first, right? So, you’ve gotta be there. Don’t just use those tools to think it’s gonna be evident for you. We’ve been conditioned to think about what’s not to work. So, I am working diligently around the clock to be able to scale this. When we scale it, we’ll also have a training program where I have coaches that have been in remission with me for at least a year, can through an online healing course and be a coach for people. So, I also wanna help fill the gap of giving people an online coach they can work with who has Crohn’s themself and is living in remission or has achieved their goals, whatever they might be that you can relate to.
46:35 So, right now we have a coach that we’re training who is a 25 year old girl in Australia living with Crohn’s who is going to help us create SHIELD value adds and benefits and can dos in Australia. So, we’re gonna be working in the Australia market, the England. We have another coach. And we have the U.S. as well. But, we can start looking at alternative options. Where can you eat? Where can you get the proper supplements? Where can you get the proper herbs? Where can you get the proper support group? Things like that. So, that’s crohnscolitislifestyle.com and SHIELD is outlined on there. There’s a two or three minute video breaking it down. Just click on the Build your SHIELD tab, and that’s where you can find that. Yeah.
Stu
47:24 Fantastic. My word. You are crushing it. It’s fantastic to find somebody that is able to offer so much value from the workplace. I guess, is unbelievable. So, thank you so much for that. We’ll put all of that information in the show notes of course, and all of the links as well that we’ve spoken about today. But, I had a quick question. So, a wrap up question that I ask everybody on the show. It’s all about non-negotiables. What do you do? What are your non-negotiables? So, every single day, the things that you absolutely have to do. So, part of your psyche ingrained into your routine to enable you to crush each and every day?
Dane
48:15 You know, this is a fantastic question. The biggest thing I wanna take, I don’t ever wanna take away from this. Even the people on this side of the podcast are thinking about those non-negotiables, they need to keep adding them to their life. I was thinking, he needs to add these things into his life.
Stu
48:34 Yeah.
Dane
48:35 It’s from the other side of compound energetic investment, and so the things I do on a daily basis that are non-negotiables is start off with a highly absorbable healing shake every day. That just empowers my body and keeps my blood health prime. It just, I always feel better with it. It allows me … Another is I would say nine times out of ten, getting some type of exercise in per day, but exercise changes. Me, I love to do it first thing in the morning. It increases my serotonin. It increases my mitochondrial energy reaction. It resets my mind. It allows me to come full circle, and not just start on the computer. So, that’s non-negotiable.
49:26 The latest one for me is absolutely for me, being gluten free and staying gluten free. I’ve always known to be gluten free, but I’ve always allowed myself to have it.
Stu
49:35 Yeah.
Dane
49:35 But, it’s really come to terms where I’ve done lab work over and over again, and no matter how much I keep healing my mucosa lining, gluten is still coming up as a problem.
Stu
49:44 Right.
Dane
49:44 So, that’s gonna be a non-negotiable that I just don’t want it in my life any more. I don’t need it, and I don’t want those underlying inflammatory reactions. A non-negotiable, a huge one, I just moved from New York guys why? We were talking about this before, because the energy in New York and the living conditions in New York is the complete opposite of everything that is earthly and everything that I really stand for in my life. So, non-negotiable is living in a place that is acidic, is inflammatory by nature, it is a high stress. So, being surrounded by like minded individuals that nourish my spirit, living in a home that nourishes my spirit, being in a state of happiness, of just not needing the location because I live where I dream of vacationed.
50:42 So, those are my non-negotiables. Diet, specific type of breakfast, a specific type of exercise, and lifestyle.
Stu
50:52 Great. Fantastic. It’s funny those things as well, that people think well, I don’t need to focus on this so much or that. That’s really not gonna make that much of a difference, but it’s all those little one percenters that add up that can create huge change in your overall health and wellness. So, absolutely.
Dane
51:12 Yeah. The one thing that I’d like to leave everyone out there who’s just feeling really resonated with this, is no matter what your issue is, start by simplifying what that looks like in one day. So, if that’s a year long goal, a six month goal, or a lifetime goal, start with what that looks like in one day. You can have things like reading less or going to school and all that. But, what are the things you can do on a daily basis that empower you and also destress you. Not make your life harder, but make your life simpler. The reason that became a non-negotiable with my morning shake is because I realized my cleaning up and my time constraints were much less. My life became easier. I didn’t have to think and do as much. I freed up my time, and I absorbed that in. It alkalized my system and gave me a massive amount of nutrients.
52:05 So, it was a huge win, win, win, win. What can you do on a daily basis that give you a win, win, win?
Stu
52:12 Great advice. Absolutely right. I think a lot of us are focused on three month challenges and goals that are really so far away in the distance that absolutely what can I do today? How can I maximize each and every day? That is unbelievable advice, and I am so thankful that I’ve connected with you and cannot wait to share this with our audience, because I think they will be … they’ll get so much out of it. A lot of people in this space, Crohn’s, colitis, irritable bowel, sensitivities, all of the digestive issues, it’s a growing concern and people are being impacted by this more and more each and every day. So, to be able to dial into what you’ve done and point them in your direction I think is gonna be invaluable for them.
Dane
52:56 Thank you and everyone out there. Thank you for listening. I’m working diligently to create more value adds for you guys. There’s a lot down here. Gut health is extremely important for everyone out there. It is gonna be an epidemic. It is a major problem, but there is a lot we can do. This guy right here is adding a lot of value to it. Make sure to follow all his stuff.
Stu
53:14 Thank you so much. Hopefully we shall connect in the future at some stage, but until then, thank you again. You have a great day.
Dane
53:21 Thank you, Stuart. Thanks so much.
Stu
53:23 Bye-bye.
Dane
53:23 Bye.
