Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Beyond Symptoms to Root Causes
In this episode, Haylie Pomroy is joined by Dane Johnson, founder and CEO of CrohnsColitisLifestyle, to explore what's really driving the rise in Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, and why healing inflammatory bowel disease often requires going far deeper than a diagnosis or a diet.
Dane shares his own decade-long fight with ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, why conventional treatment protocols and quick-fix diets failed him, and how rebuilding his health required addressing root causes like microbiome disruption, environmental toxins, and endotoxin overload.
Together, they break down the symptom differences between Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, the role of stress and the nervous system in gut healing, and why community and belief are just as critical to recovery as nutrition and supplementation.
Discover why inflammatory bowel disease is rarely just a gut problem, and how a root cause approach can offer a path forward for anyone stuck cycling through diets, medications, and diagnoses, here on Fast Metabolism Matters.
If your body feels like it's running on empty, overburdened, or just not responding the way it used to, Haylie's latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do. Download your free digital copy today and start understanding what your body is trying to tell you.
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Dane Johnson is a board-certified Functional Nutritionist and a Natural Medicine Practitioner specializing in Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. He is the founder of CrohnsColitisLifestyle. He combines self-empowering resolve with holistic unity, the drive of an entrepreneur with the idealism of a Millennial inspired to make an impact. He has helped thousands of people eliminate their symptoms naturally and handled all public speaking, video content, market strategy, and managed a team of 10+ employees with the mission to create the most impactful Crohn's/Colitis program in the world.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danejohnson1/?hl=en
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danejohnson1/?hl=en
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Learn more about the CrohnsColitisLifestyle:
Website: https://crohnscolitislifestyle.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crohnscolitis_lifestyle/?hl=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crohnscolitislifestyle.com/
Haylie Pomroy, Founder and CEO of The Haylie Pomroy Group, is a leading health strategist specializing in metabolism, weight loss, and integrative wellness. With over 25 years of experience, she has worked with top medical institutions and high-profile clients, developing targeted programs and supplements rooted in the "Food is Medicine" philosophy. Inspired by her own autoimmune journey, she combines expertise in nutrition, biochemistry, and patient advocacy to help others reclaim their health. She is a New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet.
Learn more about Haylie Pomroy's approach to wellness through her website: https://hayliepomroy.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hayliepomroy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hayliepomroy
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hayliepomroy/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayliepomroy/
Transcript:
Dane Johnson: If you've been diagnosed with IBD, and it's been more than five years, you're probably dealing with super biofilms. You're dealing with probably high amounts of SIBO, endotoxins, metabolic endotoxemia, liver's overwhelmed, LPS. These are the big root problems that must be fixed for this client or patient to be able to go back into a state of balance.
Haylie Pomroy: Welcome to the Hope and Help podcast, where we talk about science and science-based tools for fatigue and chronic illness. I'm your host, Haylie Pomroy, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet, nine other books, and a bunch of different languages. But I wanted to let you guys know I am back in school. I am finishing my PhD in neuroimmunology because I am a lifelong learner just like you, also a fierce advocate for those in need of a bit of hope and help.
Today we're going to talk about a subject that is just rampant in the clinics right now, and that is Irritable Bowel Disease. Also falls into, we're going to talk a little bit about Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) and Crohn's as well.
And with the Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine (INIM), it's our goal to give you access to leaders in every aspect of things that you might be struggling with. We have a very special guest today. I have Dane Johnson. He is a board-certified functional nutritionist that specializes in IBD. Dane, thank you so much for coming and talking to us today. Our community is thrilled about this.
Dane Johnson: Thank you so much for having me, Haylie. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm grateful. Anyone who's seeing these types of patients or anybody who is dealing with this in their family or themselves, I want to make sure that this podcast today is revolutionary and can really help you out. I hold space for you, and let's get massive results. Thank you for having me.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. And, Dane, I'm just going to cut to the chase. Why in the world has this become your life's work?
Dane Johnson: If you'd have told me in college that this is what I'd be doing, I'd say you're crazy. Talking about bowel movements and the GI tract and the biology, it really was pain to purpose. I got sick as a young kid, and I went to all the major hospitals, and I had the same kind of treatment plan, whether it was Mayo Clinic, UCLA, or Cedars-Sinai, which did help save my life, but it was, let's use steroids like prednisone or budesonide as an immunosuppressant. Let's use a 5-ASA stomach coder like mesalamine or Lialda. Those don't work. Let's go ahead and put you on an immunomodulator like methotrexate or 6-MP, azathioprine, and then, when those don't work, let's go on biologic. I went on Remicade, then I went on Entyvio, and when those didn't work, let's do a full colectomy and give you a colectomy bag, and if you're lucky, you'll get a J pouch to have short bowel syndrome, a host of other issues.
I went down the whole road of no one could help me. My family couldn't throw enough money at this. The medications weren't strong enough, even though they did save my life, and then I was told that natural medicine was a hoax. For me, I was thinking, well, thank God, because I can't do this anyway. There's no way I can be gluten-free and dairy-free, and I was meeting with some naturopath doctors who were saying, let's go on a diet, like a famous diet, like the specific carbohydrate diet or the low FODMAP diet, or let's do intermittent fasting, or let's go on a three-day bone broth.
Haylie Pomroy: Right, that's all you need.
Dane Johnson: It was like, okay, and I got, I was like getting strangled into it. You're going to do this? 50 caps a day, you don't know what they are, you're just going to take them because I tell you to. You're going to only eat this for four or five days, and we're going to spend thousands doing it, and I was angry, I was resentful, I was just trying to get my life back, and what would happen is, I might see a little bit of relief, but then come back, the moment I went back to my lifestyle, and then I'd be five to ten pounds lighter from the fasting or the limited eating. I battled like this for years, so it wasn't I was kind of sick for a year. I was chronically sick, fighting for my life for about four and a half years in my 20s.
Haylie Pomroy: Wow, and it's crazy. My health crisis hit in my 20s also, and it was so hard for me to watch. I'm so grateful and so happy for my friends and family members that were out partying at the river, or just eating and consuming, and to your point, I was fighting for my life in my 20s.
Dane Johnson: It really changes you, and I'm so grateful for it now that was over 10 years ago, and I've dedicated my life to being healthy and serving and finding root issues, which I hope to dive into today and really after 10 years of trying and failing and trying diets and going to Whole Foods and buying out everything they had and listening to Dr. Google or this naturopath or this great medical doctor, they were all brilliant, but it wasn't helping me as a very, very severe case, and I think that's one of the things that's really specific and special about my journey is that none of it really worked for me. I had to go to the deepest level to really find results, and that allowed me to connect and resonate with so many out there who've tried a limited diet, have tried a probiotic, have tried a little bit of NAC or glutathione or a binder and done some basic functional medicine, and so I can go much deeper than that.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely, and Dane, so you, like me, I think when we first met, we met in Mexico, actually, at a clinic. And when we first met, we were super open and receptive; there was nothing we wouldn't be open and receptive to But I think that when you have something, whether it's chronic disease or chronic illness, and it's a big mess or a big deal, or it's really impacting your life critically, and I was faced like you, I mean, I was on prednisone and mepron and imuran and cellcept and the list goes on, and I would have given anything for it to have been the magic pill to reverse everything, and I could have gone on with my life, but that wasn't my journey.
And so I think sometimes we have to be careful not to take a reductionistic approach to the body pharmaceutically, pharmacologically, but we also have to be careful not to take a reductionistic approach to the body nutraceutically or from a dietary perspective. And so I think that you and I both are strong advocates for community, for really specialized health and wellness plans.
Can you talk to me, I want everybody to get into the boat with us I mean, we got to spend so much time together in Mexico and really just dive on this stuff, because I like you and everybody else right now, it's like you go do, and I believe that I'm going to just lay the gauntlet down. Nutrition should include food, not eating. I'm going to just say that. But why is it that you can't have berberine or one supplement or one pharmaceutical in this complex body? And why is it community for you? Because it's all about community for me. That's what we've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building these communities. And you have this really crazy, amazing, robust community that just is so indoctrinated with your passion for people to get well again.
Why is it about community?
Dane Johnson: Because imagine if you were stuck in a prison by yourself trying to get out. Imagine the energy, the spiritual shift of it, the loneliness. The worst thing you can do to a human who's already in lifelong prison, has a life sentence of prison, is to put them in solidary confinement. That's how much we need community. We feed off each other. If I come in and give you a smile, it helps you release the pain that you've been in. We can build each other. That's what a best friend is. Your best friend is simply a person that makes you feel the best most often. People say, oh, my best friend's my mom. That's because she makes you feel the best the most often. Well, you do the same.
Haylie Pomroy: And there was this really cool study. Actually, it was a speech for my son's wedding. But of course, I had to science geek out. And there was this really cool study that showed that individuals that enter the emergency room with life-threatening potential, there was an 87% survival rate increase in those that had someone with them.
Dane Johnson: Oh, I love that.
Haylie Pomroy: And it wasn't because they brought a master surgeon or they brought a cardiovascular interventionist with them. It's because they had someone that was there to witness their journey and be an advocate for their wellness.
Dane Johnson: And listen if I take that same imagine where you're in this prison alone in a dark because that's how it feels. I was alone with this. And that gave me the passion to build a home for all of us because I just built what I needed. I know you did the same, Haylie.
Haylie Pomroy: I was going to be a vet. I got into vet school. I was going to veterinary medicine. I was going to raise cows and sheep. What am I? No, I had to build this so that I had a house for which to heal. And then I invited everybody in.
Dane Johnson: And it was a win for you, too, even though you owned it.
Haylie Pomroy: It was a godsend.
Dane Johnson: It was a godsend. When you go through that much pain that you and I did, it was like I was housebound for a year. I was 120 pounds. I had to relearn how to walk. I was on a feeding tube. I almost died in 2014. My whole family flew in. The doctor said they couldn't figure out why I was dying. I went through the gauntlet. And when I finally got results after failure and a hundred thousand, so much money. And I come from a middle-class family. This is not wealthy. When I finally started getting results and getting that puzzle to finally work after all the diets, after all the supplements, after all the coaching calls, after all the research, functional medicine, after all the stuff, it was like, we need that. I just want to build what I never had. And one of the big things with community is now imagine that you're stuck in a house, but there's 50 other people stuck in that house. And you're going, you check the right wing, you check the left wing, you check under the bed, you check under the bed. Let's come together and figure out what we've learned. You take a couple of days over there. I'll take a couple of days, and then let's connect on it. And we can share in that experience, and we can start to feel normal. Because when you try to go gluten-free or get on a restrictive diet, it's only a problem because it's not normal. If you were the only person in the world who brushed your teeth twice a day, you'd go, oh, my chronic gingivitis has me brushing my teeth twice a day. Why me, God? But everyone does it. Now it's not a big deal.
Haylie Pomroy: It's normal.
Dane Johnson: You’ve got to create a normal through community.
Haylie Pomroy: It's called positive peer pressure. That's what I love to say. Dane, I get you here, so I'm going to ask you this question. What in the world is going on? First of all, why is IBD, or inflammatory bowel disease in general, why is this just exploding? What is going on?
Dane Johnson: Well, let's look at some of the stats. The clinical research is telling us that all autoimmune disease is scaling with westernization. And so if we look at the westernization principles, we see a lack of going into the woods, connection to farms, connection to earth. We see an increase in antibiotics, medications, less of an increase of local farm food. We see an increase in EMFs. We see an increase in stress, an increase in blue light. These are all western world things that are that are affecting IBD. And we know in 1999, only one million people were diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease. By 2015, it was two million people. Now it's about 3.2. That's only diagnosed just in America. There are about eight to 10 million worldwide, with the most prominent places growing in IBD going to be Canada and Western Europe. UK-type areas.
Away from this line also.
Haylie Pomroy: When you talk about westernization and with my background in agriculture, I've also looked at when we talk about glyphosates, I did not even know that that was developed as an antibiotic first. It's crazy. But if you think about it, that was how the drug was first approved and used. And that's what it was developed for is as an antibiotic. And it's designed to inhibit metabolic pathways in plants. That's how that kills the plants. That is found in our gut microbiome. Like that's not me going, that's bad for you. That's taking their science, and that got passed through the FDA. That's taking their science and saying, hey, folks, this is designed to block the shikimate pathway in our gut. But we have that same pathway. This is designed to kill bacteria that live in our gut. Like, just think we should maybe have that conversation.
Hi, it's Haylie Pomroy, your host. I've written six New York Times bestselling books on metabolic pathways. And my latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do when your body's overburdened. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/book, for a limited time, you can download a digital copy of this book completely free. That's hayliepomroy.com/book. Grab your free copy while supplies last. Now back to our show.
Dane Johnson: It's common sense. And in the sciences there, and that's part of that Western world, really chemicals. We spend all this time learning about PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls, and VOCs, volatile organic compounds and PFAS and glyphosate and BPA and microplastics. All of this, the simple takeaway is that manmade chemicals are disrupting the microbiome. They are affecting the terrain of the microbiome that is inhibiting your good guys. Think of your police officers, your Bifidobacterium, your lactobacilli, your phylo microbiota are all being inhibited. And that's creating a perfect scenario. Think of a running river versus a stagnant pond, and then pond losing its natural defenses to protect against Gram-negative proliferating bacteria that's supposed to be there, but supposed to be in balance. It's creating a train to be overrun by naturally occurring things, things like H. pylori.
Most people have H. pylori. It's when it becomes proliferated that it's a problem. Candida. Candida is mostly found in the colon.
Haylie Pomroy: And candida is a lifesaver. I mean, there's so many chemicals, but when it's out of balance, it's like cortisol. Cortisol is life-saving. When it's out of balance…
It's the ecosystem, the internal ecosystem, that's our body.
Dane Johnson: And how do we know? Because IBD didn't even exist before the 1950s. There was a few random cases of some of the bleeding and Johne's disease, which was basically ulcerative colitis of the cow. And there were a few random things. But if you look at the epidemic, again, it's parallel with that westernization, those toxins. In 1989 was the great glyphosate movement. We started spraying all of our crops, and the industrial revolution of food basically started ramping up. But look what happened with autoimmune. You look at any autoimmune disease, and you talk to any functional practitioner who specializes in multiple sclerosis, lupus, or any of these other issues, they're going to go back to what's going on with the gut.
Haylie Pomroy: I was in Ljubljana this last year at the International Congress of Autoimmune Disorders. And the top immunologists—I mean, from everything from Germany, Israel, Russia, everybody was there. It was just a remarkable meeting of the minds. And they do talk about the pharmacological implications. Every single one of them said, if we do not heal the gut, we do not touch the patient. There is not a drug strong enough to out-medicate healing the gut. I lived that. I know that. I believe that. It was just such an affirming on a global level. It was really amazing.
Dane Johnson: You know what? I think something that really helped me is try to inject a medication into the soil and see if it fixes the soil. Because the microbiome of the soil is very similar to the microbiome of the body. Billions of trillions of bacteria or different types of species connecting with each other and connecting with the human cell. The older we get, we're more of a bacterial organism than a cellular one.
Haylie Pomroy: We are.
Dane Johnson: We become more and more, as we get older, whereas a baby, you need breast milk and all of these things to build that ecosystem. And so there's this perfect ecosystem that's communicating, and we're losing that, just like the soil. Look with the soil, with the trees connecting with different plants. Do you know that plants and trees can share nutrients to help protect each other? Isn't that amazing? I'm talking to you. Who am I talking to right now?
Haylie Pomroy: Agriculture and soil science is one of the most loving sciences to study. It's really interesting because I went on and did biochemistry and then nutrition and now immunology. But one of the most loving, when you talk about the sharing of nutrients across species, across pollination, I mean, there are so many loving experiences that happen when you study plants. It's why you need to get out in the woods. That's why you need to be a part of that.
I want to ask you, and I know you do this a lot in your online community: what are some of the biomarkers that we look for? First of all, what would a person in our world that maybe has, because what we're also seeing is multiple autoimmune disorders happening within one body. I have a client the other day that has Hashimoto's thyroiditis, MS, is positive for celiac, and probably some others, but those are the ones that have shown positive autoantibodies for. First give me symptom profile of someone that could be concerned about IBD, and then I want to jump into the biomarkers.
Dane Johnson: Symptom profile: Crohn's disease—the two most common mentioned symptoms actually of Crohn's disease in a clinical research article I was looking at was fatigue and pain. And that was like 80 to 85% of a sample size of 250 people had mentioned those. And then of the sample of ulcerative colitis, I think it was 150. The two most common symptoms were blood in the stool and diarrhea/urgency. And so ulcerative colitis is more of a problem of the colon. And when the colon goes bad, you're going to see usually mucus, blood, urgency, weight loss, anemia are very common. Now that can happen in Crohn's disease too, because Crohn's is widespread. It's chronic inflammation from the mouth down to the anus, whereas ulcerative colitis is just indicative of the large intestine, which is your five to seven feet of the colon. Now, the one thing about diagnosis is I only put so much weight on the diagnosis because it's subjective, and it can change, and doctors disagree. And the root causes are very similar. Now I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, left-sided ulcerative colitis. Then I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at UCLA by a different doctor who had 30 years of experience. And then I went to another doctor, and he said, no, this is ulcerative colitis and gastritis. And then I went to another doctor: Crohn's.
Haylie Pomroy: And a diagnosis doesn't fix anything.
Dane Johnson: No, it doesn't. And it doesn't even tell us a lot of the pathology. Once you have IBD, it's already proliferated. I'm almost certain you have small intestine bacterial overgrowth. You have colonic dysbiosis. You have a poor functioning liver. 30% of people, I can't remember who did this clinical research article, but it was on the liver and it showed 30% of people diagnosed with IBD eventually manifest some type of liver disease, primary sclerosing cholangitis, and so forth because of the metabolic endotoxemia. And so that terrain problem just goes widespread across the body. Once the gut goes, your mucosal membrane goes and then endotoxins get into the bloodstream. And now you're looking at people with arthritic pains, eczema, psoriasis, massive brain fall, chronic fatigue, back pain. These are telling me that endotoxins, lipopolysaccharides, have moved into the body. And I was at a speaking event with Dr. Tom O'Bryan, who had this really good point he mentioned in his speech. And he said, people with SIBO can have upwards of 10 times the amount of LPS in their bloodstream than a person without SIBO. And I said, lipopolysaccharides. Lipopolysaccharides are basically, when you have this bacteria, billions of them die and grow and die and grow every day. And as they die, it's called die-off. And that releases an endotoxin also known as lipopolysaccharides. These are extremely inflammatory, extremely oxidative.
Haylie Pomroy: And extremely neurotoxic.
Dane Johnson: I mean, yeah, you got it.
Haylie Pomroy: The anxiety, depression, memory, cognitive—and even coordination skills when LPSs are elevated is huge.
Dane Johnson: Huge. And you know what? One of my favorite tests to check for that is the Wheat Zoomer by Vibrant America. Not only will it check for zonulin, which is the protein your body makes to recover from leaky gut, but they have some LPS signals in that test. That, or Gut Zoomer also can just really give you an idea. But that WheatZoomer is a blood analysis. We can actually see how much LPS is making the bloodstream. It's not perfect, but it's a good place to start.
Haylie Pomroy: It's fabulous.
Dane Johnson: It's a fabulous test. But if I'm seeing, if you've been diagnosed with IBD and it's been more than five years, you're probably dealing with super biofilms.
You're dealing with probably high amounts of SIBO, endotoxins, metabolic endotoxemia, liver's overwhelmed LPS. Like these are the big root problems that must be fixed for this client or patient to be able to go back into a state of balance. And to do it is hard.
Haylie Pomroy: And are these a lot of the hidden toxins that, when you're working with clients and people are coming through your community, that you kind of unravel?
Dane Johnson: Well, getting rid of the endotoxin problem is one of the major issues. And if I'm seeing a lot of brain fog, skin issues, liver issues, I'm going, OK, and I'm seeing signs of SIBO, high methane, high H2 sulfide, anything like in a breath test. I don't really focus on the breath test as much because there's too much—you've got to jump through a bunch of hoops. I can usually tell right off the bat based on how they're responding to FODMAP foods. Basically, high-fermenting foods. And so those are those root biology problems. Some of those we want to fix. But as far as your question about those hidden toxins, microplastics. Actually, in one research article, we saw that people with IBD had 50% more microplastics in their gut than the average person. Hint, hint.
I was wearing also Invisalign for 13 months before I got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. Literally, I got done with 13 months of this and then got diagnosed with UC. I must have been within six weeks of finishing.
Haylie Pomroy: It's so crazy that you just said that. We do 28 day challenges health challenges. And we were working through testing digestive reserve. And we do this really fun little at home test, it's called the Lemon Challenge Test. We check salivary and pH. And we have you challenge yourself with acidity of a lemon. And then we look at how long you rebound. And this one individual had been doing a bunch of stuff. She'd been like through three challenges and had a lot of different health issues. And I said to her, you don't happen to wear Invisalign, do you? And she said, I do. And I said, humor me, let's go 28. The doctor's going to kill me, although they still had the microplastic buttons on. But I said, let's just see if we can change the digestive enzyme output. And literally within two weeks. And I mean, she had really tried. And I didn't even think about that. But that's what that whole coming together as a community is pondering and thinking and wondering: Dean, how do people have an opportunity to work with you? I know a lot of individuals in our space, when they've had, and you're very specialized in this, and all of you can tell, with a world of knowledge that you've had to condense to save your life and just change the lives of so many others since. how do people engage with you? How would they connect with you?
Dane Johnson: I mean, if you just look on CrohnsColitisLifestyle.com or on Instagram or on YouTube, you can't miss us, Dane Johnson. You can Google it or just look it up and you'll find us pretty easily CrohnsColitisLifestyle.com. But what we do with people is we schedule a complimentary IBD strategy session. We go over your case, what your needs are, what's lacking, your experience with natural medicine, what we believe those root issues may be that we need to fix. And then if we feel there's integrity, we'll talk about how we can work together. Our doctors and practitioners, we have multiple around the world. We see people in Dubai, Africa, even India, all over Europe, all over North America. Our practitioners are pretty global. We see about 150 to 175 IBD clients at any given time. And then we meet, we do clinical, and all our practitioners meet every week. And we're really excited about what we do. And everything is customized. We don't believe in just generic drive-through type protocols. Nutrition's customized, supplements customized, root issue customized. We have a mental health specialist on staff who does EFT tapping twice a week with our community, anything for nervous system regulation. It's all holistic.
And the one thing also I want to say about community is when you get in a community, sometimes it feels like you have to be part of this cultish feel, like there's only one way. I have to only like this, I only have to take these supplements are allowed or no supplements are allowed. Our program's called S.H.I.E.L.D. The reason is, is because you build your own shield, and then you work with everyone else to take from each other and give to each other, but it's always yours. I leave you with this, build your answer and connect with others to help them find their answer, and for them to help you find your answer. We win together, but you don't have to do what they do. You can do it your own way, and you can tweak it to be your own. The answer is not just to get symptom relief, it is to get self-empowered. Build your shield.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. I love that. And in our community, I always say the metabolism affects every aspect of your life. And don't forget, it's your life, not what I think, not what anybody else projects upon you. But you can gain so much from each other and individuals. And at the Institute, Dr. Klimas, I got brought in to flesh out the integrative medicine program, and we have an integrative medicine clinic. And I mean, we have, like I said, on Fridays, and I got to get you into our clinicals on Fridays; we have everything: our immunologists, our hematologists, infectious disease, you name it, we've got a massive group. And this is what we do: we ponder and kick around ideas. And Dr. Klimas, who heads the Institute, when I first met her, I said you have all of this, why are you bringing in nutrition and nutraceuticals and lifestyle modifications and meditation? And she said, because the rest doesn't work if I don't have a viable patient to treat. And my hope is that I never need to treat.
And I was just like, like, I want to be part of this. Right? I want to be part of this. I drgged my whole community. And you.
Dane Johnson: I'm coming. That's Candyland for me. Let's do it.
Haylie Pomroy: Dane, I just want to talk about two quick things before I know your time is super tight—and I really appreciate our community really needs this. I just want you to touch on two things that we've touched on when we were traveling together. One is how the nervous system is connected to IBD. If you could please just—there are so many people, I think out there struggling right now that are saying, well, maybe your anxiety is causing your loose stool. It just hurts my heart. It's because you're stressing about your job. You're stressing about your kids. You're stressing about your relationship, that you have blood in the stool. I mean, I cannot tell you how many people just absolutely get bypassed. And I'm looking at it from a neurological immunological food nutrition perspective. You do such a beautiful job of all the people that I've met about really helping people understand how that nervous system is connected. Can you just share that with everybody?
Dane Johnson: Well, what I want to do is make it feel more obtainable because this idea of stress is almost, it feels elusive. It's like, imagine you look around and you're trying to measure the amount of air in this room. You know there's air, but you can't really see it. You can't measure it. You can't grab it, but it's there. What do you do with that? How do you utilize it? And with stress, you have to realize that stress and energy, and it affects your body physically. How do we know this? We have to, do you agree that an energy can affect you physically? You have to prove that. If I call you and I tell you bad news and get you really upset, you might be devastated, where your heart rate changes, you release adrenaline, you start shaking, all these different things. We know that a perception of truth, even if I lied to you and said, your significant other just passed away in a tragic car accident and you believed it, the belief will change you physically, and you could get massive symptoms. All of us will agree that this energy of stress can have a massive negative reaction. We have to then realize that if one thing is true, its opposite must be true. It's called law of relativity. For there to be black, there must be white. For there to be happy, there must be sad. For an energy to make you sick, there needs to be what? An energy that can make you healthy.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely.
Dane Johnson: And you just have to accept that truth for a second and then walk in that foggy path of saying, this isn't something I'm just measuring, like my food or my macros or my micros, my phytonutrients. I'm going to measure by just intuitively telling myself, how much stress do I feel? How much gratitude do I feel? And what you're looking to do is engage a part of the autonomic nervous system called the parasympathetic. We commonly hear that as the rest and digest, but that also regulates the vagal nerve. The vagal nerve helps to regulate digestion. And so what you're looking to do is shift the communication within your nervous system into a healing response, into a digestive response. How do you know this is working? Well, there are a few ways, but one of my favorites is if you're salivating, your mouth is salivating; that is a sign that you're in the parasympathetic. That is the sign that your digestive enzymes are going up, that your stomach is now ready to eat. This is one of the benefits of doing a little bit of breath or prayer before you eat.
That's what we did for many years. Take your time before you eat. Everyone says, chew your food. Yes, that's great. But I also want you to get you salivating. I want your heart rate low. I want you sitting down.
Haylie Pomroy: And smell your food, prepare your body for what's to come.
Dane Johnson: And think of it this way, if I told you the worst thing in life just happened, and you believe me, what would happen to you physically? What if you started practicing, I'm already healed? I'm grateful for this. I am. What signals going to your body? I did not heal until I found happiness. You have to get happy before you can get healthy.
Haylie Pomroy: Hi, it's Haylie Pomroy, your host. When I was going through my health crisis, the worst part of it was feeling lost and alone. And I decided that I didn't want anybody else to feel as desperate as I did. That's why we set up a private membership group where you can come in, ask questions, get support, be connected with people that can actually help you on your health journey. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/member, you can join me for 30 days for free.
I'll see you there. We can jump in and we can start to organize the path for your wellness. That's hayliepomroy.com/member. I will see you there. Now back to our show. It was interesting.
I'd love that you say that. I was interviewed one time and a person really held my feet to the fire and said, one thing, you only get to pick one thing. And I don't believe in a reductionist approach. And we kind of debated back and forth. And he said, well, what's one thing? I said, there's not one supplement. There's not one food. There is one thing, and that's you. That's the one thing. But he said, what is the one thing that without it, you would not have had a health victory; you would have not gotten well. And he really pushed me because I said, gosh, I mean, fatty acids, omega-3, 6, and 9, I consume those all the time. My vitamin D, you're not going to get my cold dead hands are going to pry me off that bottle. My probiotics, cooking fermented foods like I was just my brain, my brain, my brain. And I stopped, and I took a deep breath, and I said, the one thing was the belief that I could get well. And if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't have spent, like you said, we grew up on food stamps. I find it really ironic that I sell food books that are New York Times bestsellers.
Dane Johnson: Just a deeper question, Haylie. How did you create belief? Because that is the deeper problem everyone's having with they want to have faith, but then the next day comes around, this podcast wears off, and then they feel trapped again. How do you create belief?
Haylie Pomroy: I will tell you, me personally was building my community because on the days when it was hard, and that's a deep question, Dane, on the days, and there's been a few, when it was really hard, I had already expressed that to so many people. And when I couldn't carry myself over the threshold that day, they carried me.
Dane Johnson: Beautiful.
Haylie Pomroy: It's community, which is why, I mean, I can smell the hospital room. I can feel the lights. I can I always say the thing that sticks out of my head, because I was a pivotal point for me is the buttons on the hospital gown had made dents in my leg. I don't know why that hits me. But at that moment, I thought it cannot be this hard for everybody else. Like, my whole goal is to shorten the gap between where you're at and where you deserve to be, and have every right and every that dream for you, I will hold that, is to shorten that gap. And that's what I love so much about, first of all, your community is so rich with science. Like I'm a scientist. And it's so rich with compassion and empathy. But it's also really practical and has customized playbooks for individuals that are not just going to buy the next popular vitamin on the shelf. They're going to integrate food as medicine, not like medicine. They're going to integrate health and wellness from a 360 approach, because I just don't know how else to get a wellness story out of somebody.
Dane Johnson: Everything has to be customized. Even the most brilliant. I met with this practitioner. She was saying, Hey, can you come teach my team and all this? And I started talking about where she was. And one of the things I noticed is she kept looking for the next big thing, the next big stem cell, the next bigInflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD)—it's saying, I ask you this, if I got great results 10 years ago, when I knew 5% of what I know now, maybe it's not just what you're doing, it's how you're doing it. Maybe it's not just the next supplement. It's how you're utilizing that product with everything else. I didn't start sleeping through the night until I started doing prayer. And I started releasing that, that pain, Haylie, what you, I think you just felt is reliving a little bit of how do you have, when I get there too, if I go into my story, it will hit me so hard because that pain is why we're here and what we do and why we've created authentic programs, not just chasing a dollar. And we've really held space for people to really serve them because we needed that. I didn't know where to get belief. I was a kid. And even after five, six years, even when I was trying for a year or two straight, it's like, I'm still not there. And you easily get trapped in pain and anger and want to break my fist on something.
Haylie Pomroy: I think the twenties was a little bit of a gift too, to get diagnosed in my twenties.
Dane Johnson: Oh, hallelujah. The rest of your life is better. It's the whole, you're going to college young. The rest of your life is smart. Right?
Haylie Pomroy: Exactly. The ignorance of belief. I was like, I don't need dumb enough to go. Why, why? There's a needle in a haystack. I remember them saying—
Dane Johnson: What a blessing.
Haylie Pomroy: It's going to be one in a million that you can ever get off this man. And I said, well, I'm only one. I'll take that. I thought my favorite line from the movie, dumb and dumber. You're saying, I got a chance.
Dane Johnson: You're saying, I got a chance. A girl, me and a guy like you.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely.
Dane Johnson: Remember when people give you those stats, guys, this is based on a person sitting there where a doctor's punching codes into that. They're not even close to talking about what your spirit can do, what your energy can do. They have no, none experience in natural medicine or food training. They have zero understanding. And this disease is only 40 years old. What happened? What happened if your grandpa didn't have it and you're living differently and you're ingesting and breathing and bathing and different stuff than your grandpa did. Maybe there's something to it. That's what started getting belief.
You know how I got belief. I just started to take action. And the more action I took in faith, that is a recipe for belief: faith plus hard work. You can't choose belief. You got to earn it.
Haylie Pomroy: You got to earn it.
Dane Johnson: And believe is the most powerful energy in the world. You got to earn it. You got to get out of that hospital bed. You got to get up even when you can barely walk. I couldn't put on my shoes, but I'm going for a walk. My bowel movements were uncontrollable. I'm still going; I'm going to do what I said, like shame has got nothing on me anymore. I know where I'm going. And I had to let go of what I couldn't control and had to be a dog on a bone of what I could. You have to let go at the same time as you've got to grasp on. And the biggest thing, Haylie, I really want to leave people with this is you've got to get a master's, a Ph.D. in happiness. You've got to get up. You've got to realize what's making you sad, what's making you isolated, what is stimulating the feelings you no longer want and do not serve you. Resentment, anger, frustration, what you can't do, loneliness. These are feelings you've got to say, wait, that just came up. Why? Because you're sitting down, binging Netflix because you didn't get dressed for the day, because you didn't go outside and actually get your feet on the ground and say what you're grateful for because you allowed your mom to call you or your dad or your best friend or your significant other. And you told them what was wrong instead of you told them what was right. What kind of energy are you building with other people? I got a degree in happiness when I was stuck in that house. I took three months to be able to walk again. I was housebound for a year. There was no money. I would go to the bathroom 25 times a day. I looked like I just got out of a war camp. I weighed 120 pounds at 6’2”. You got to just decide because when you get, as Haylie said, when you got that happiness going, everything else gets clear and easier when you're happy. When do you eat Cheetos when you're stressed?
Haylie Pomroy: I don't.
Dane Johnson: I know you don't, but I'm talking to everyone out there who's serving me in a quantum energy of time and space, listening to this, like, when do you eat crap food when you're lonely and stressed, you don't feel good about yourself or there was a break? What's the funny thing in the movie? Guy girl breaks up, guy girl's at home eating ice cream, watching Jerry Maguire or something, exactly.
Haylie Pomroy: Exactly.
Dane Johnson: We got to get happy to get healthy.
Haylie Pomroy: Dane, I really appreciate you coming on. I mean we have had such great conversations about kind of taking pain and turning it into purpose. And I think that at the Institute, it's so important with our clients that have chronic disease, chronic inflammatory disorders, ME/CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome.
I think it's so important that they understand that there's hope and that we might not be you, but we empathize with you, and we are here for you. You guys, please go check out Dane. Tell me one more time the website where people would go to.
Dane Johnson: CrohnsColitisLifestyle.com. We're all over the internet. You can just type in Dane Johnson on Google or CrohnsColitisLifestyle, or you can type in any of that type of stuff. You can find us on Instagram, mostly YouTube and just schedule a free call if you want to just talk to us. There's no hassle. There's no money. It's just, hey, we want to put our best foot forward for you and just get the connect and see if it's a fit and see if we can help you. And just healing as possible, everyone. I want to leave you with this thought that you don't know what you don't know. And if you start with belief, and even if it's a foggy road, you just find what you're grateful for, and you keep walking, and I've been where you've been. And so is Haylie. And I'm telling you that the only way to create the life you want, whether it's wealth, health, or anything in the middle, is to put your foot in front of the other and walk your road. Even if it's hard, seek discomfort. If it was already comfortable to do it, you would have done it already if it was comfortable. Get uncomfortable, be smart about it, become your CEO of your health, and become your own best doctor. And I believe healing is possible and you're going to get fantastic results.
Haylie Pomroy: And I love it. I would say one of the biggest gifts that Dr. Klimas has given me in being part of INIM is we've had three major health crises in our family. And Dr. Klimas, on two of the occasions said, fire your doctor fast. Because my daughter was in the hospital, and hospital that I love, and amazing friends over there. And we just got a bad hospitalist. I don't know what else to say. And I'm on the phone with her, and she says, Haylie, shaking me loose. What's wrong with you? Fire your doctor, fire her fast, get somebody else. And I was like, okay. So if someone's not an advocate for you and your vision of your health and wellness, they are not on your team. I don't care what their degree is. Dane, please promise me you'll come back. I know so many of our community is going to have a ton of questions. You are one of the most available, brilliant individuals in this space that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. And I just am so grateful that you took the time to talk to all of us. We are healthier because of it. Promise me you'll come back. I didn't get it yet.
Dane Johnson: Haylie, I will totally come back. If anyone has specific questions, I would love to go into deeper root issues, what's happening, and how we actually treat these root issues to get real results. I've got no problem bringing the heat.
Let's do another one.
Haylie Pomroy: All right, guys, Dane's coming back. Please hold on to hope. We are here to help. And at the Institute, we believe in you. We believe you, and we are your advocate. Thanks, Dane, so much. We'll talk soon.
Dane Johnson: God bless. Thank you.
In this episode, Haylie Pomroy is joined by Dane Johnson, founder and CEO of CrohnsColitisLifestyle, to explore what's really driving the rise in Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, and why healing inflammatory bowel disease often requires going far deeper than a diagnosis or a diet.
Dane shares his own decade-long fight with ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, why conventional treatment protocols and quick-fix diets failed him, and how rebuilding his health required addressing root causes like microbiome disruption, environmental toxins, and endotoxin overload.
Together, they break down the symptom differences between Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, the role of stress and the nervous system in gut healing, and why community and belief are just as critical to recovery as nutrition and supplementation.
Discover why inflammatory bowel disease is rarely just a gut problem, and how a root cause approach can offer a path forward for anyone stuck cycling through diets, medications, and diagnoses, here on Fast Metabolism Matters.
If your body feels like it's running on empty, overburdened, or just not responding the way it used to, Haylie's latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do. Download your free digital copy today and start understanding what your body is trying to tell you.
Free Download: Get Your Copy of Toxic Overload 👉 https://hayliepomroy.com/pages/toxic-overload?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast
You don't have to figure this out alone. Inside Haylie's private membership community, you get personalized guidance and support, member discounts on supplements and shakes, and the ability to ask questions directly to podcast guests like Dr. Systrom. Join free for 30 days and take the next step on your health journey.
Join the Fast Metabolism Membership — First 30 Days Free 👉 https://hayliepomroy.com/pages/fast-metabolism-membership?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast
Dane Johnson is a board-certified Functional Nutritionist and a Natural Medicine Practitioner specializing in Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. He is the founder of CrohnsColitisLifestyle. He combines self-empowering resolve with holistic unity, the drive of an entrepreneur with the idealism of a Millennial inspired to make an impact. He has helped thousands of people eliminate their symptoms naturally and handled all public speaking, video content, market strategy, and managed a team of 10+ employees with the mission to create the most impactful Crohn's/Colitis program in the world.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danejohnson1/?hl=en
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf3Yhapgc2Qb16_MP7f-DuQ
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danejohnson1/?hl=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danejohnson1/
Learn more about the CrohnsColitisLifestyle:
Website: https://crohnscolitislifestyle.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crohnscolitis_lifestyle/?hl=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crohnscolitislifestyle.com/
Haylie Pomroy, Founder and CEO of The Haylie Pomroy Group, is a leading health strategist specializing in metabolism, weight loss, and integrative wellness. With over 25 years of experience, she has worked with top medical institutions and high-profile clients, developing targeted programs and supplements rooted in the "Food is Medicine" philosophy. Inspired by her own autoimmune journey, she combines expertise in nutrition, biochemistry, and patient advocacy to help others reclaim their health. She is a New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet.
Learn more about Haylie Pomroy's approach to wellness through her website: https://hayliepomroy.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hayliepomroy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hayliepomroy
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hayliepomroy/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayliepomroy/
Transcript:
Dane Johnson: If you've been diagnosed with IBD, and it's been more than five years, you're probably dealing with super biofilms. You're dealing with probably high amounts of SIBO, endotoxins, metabolic endotoxemia, liver's overwhelmed, LPS. These are the big root problems that must be fixed for this client or patient to be able to go back into a state of balance.
Haylie Pomroy: Welcome to the Hope and Help podcast, where we talk about science and science-based tools for fatigue and chronic illness. I'm your host, Haylie Pomroy, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet, nine other books, and a bunch of different languages. But I wanted to let you guys know I am back in school. I am finishing my PhD in neuroimmunology because I am a lifelong learner just like you, also a fierce advocate for those in need of a bit of hope and help.
Today we're going to talk about a subject that is just rampant in the clinics right now, and that is Irritable Bowel Disease. Also falls into, we're going to talk a little bit about Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) and Crohn's as well.
And with the Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine (INIM), it's our goal to give you access to leaders in every aspect of things that you might be struggling with. We have a very special guest today. I have Dane Johnson. He is a board-certified functional nutritionist that specializes in IBD. Dane, thank you so much for coming and talking to us today. Our community is thrilled about this.
Dane Johnson: Thank you so much for having me, Haylie. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm grateful. Anyone who's seeing these types of patients or anybody who is dealing with this in their family or themselves, I want to make sure that this podcast today is revolutionary and can really help you out. I hold space for you, and let's get massive results. Thank you for having me.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. And, Dane, I'm just going to cut to the chase. Why in the world has this become your life's work?
Dane Johnson: If you'd have told me in college that this is what I'd be doing, I'd say you're crazy. Talking about bowel movements and the GI tract and the biology, it really was pain to purpose. I got sick as a young kid, and I went to all the major hospitals, and I had the same kind of treatment plan, whether it was Mayo Clinic, UCLA, or Cedars-Sinai, which did help save my life, but it was, let's use steroids like prednisone or budesonide as an immunosuppressant. Let's use a 5-ASA stomach coder like mesalamine or Lialda. Those don't work. Let's go ahead and put you on an immunomodulator like methotrexate or 6-MP, azathioprine, and then, when those don't work, let's go on biologic. I went on Remicade, then I went on Entyvio, and when those didn't work, let's do a full colectomy and give you a colectomy bag, and if you're lucky, you'll get a J pouch to have short bowel syndrome, a host of other issues.
I went down the whole road of no one could help me. My family couldn't throw enough money at this. The medications weren't strong enough, even though they did save my life, and then I was told that natural medicine was a hoax. For me, I was thinking, well, thank God, because I can't do this anyway. There's no way I can be gluten-free and dairy-free, and I was meeting with some naturopath doctors who were saying, let's go on a diet, like a famous diet, like the specific carbohydrate diet or the low FODMAP diet, or let's do intermittent fasting, or let's go on a three-day bone broth.
Haylie Pomroy: Right, that's all you need.
Dane Johnson: It was like, okay, and I got, I was like getting strangled into it. You're going to do this? 50 caps a day, you don't know what they are, you're just going to take them because I tell you to. You're going to only eat this for four or five days, and we're going to spend thousands doing it, and I was angry, I was resentful, I was just trying to get my life back, and what would happen is, I might see a little bit of relief, but then come back, the moment I went back to my lifestyle, and then I'd be five to ten pounds lighter from the fasting or the limited eating. I battled like this for years, so it wasn't I was kind of sick for a year. I was chronically sick, fighting for my life for about four and a half years in my 20s.
Haylie Pomroy: Wow, and it's crazy. My health crisis hit in my 20s also, and it was so hard for me to watch. I'm so grateful and so happy for my friends and family members that were out partying at the river, or just eating and consuming, and to your point, I was fighting for my life in my 20s.
Dane Johnson: It really changes you, and I'm so grateful for it now that was over 10 years ago, and I've dedicated my life to being healthy and serving and finding root issues, which I hope to dive into today and really after 10 years of trying and failing and trying diets and going to Whole Foods and buying out everything they had and listening to Dr. Google or this naturopath or this great medical doctor, they were all brilliant, but it wasn't helping me as a very, very severe case, and I think that's one of the things that's really specific and special about my journey is that none of it really worked for me. I had to go to the deepest level to really find results, and that allowed me to connect and resonate with so many out there who've tried a limited diet, have tried a probiotic, have tried a little bit of NAC or glutathione or a binder and done some basic functional medicine, and so I can go much deeper than that.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely, and Dane, so you, like me, I think when we first met, we met in Mexico, actually, at a clinic. And when we first met, we were super open and receptive; there was nothing we wouldn't be open and receptive to But I think that when you have something, whether it's chronic disease or chronic illness, and it's a big mess or a big deal, or it's really impacting your life critically, and I was faced like you, I mean, I was on prednisone and mepron and imuran and cellcept and the list goes on, and I would have given anything for it to have been the magic pill to reverse everything, and I could have gone on with my life, but that wasn't my journey.
And so I think sometimes we have to be careful not to take a reductionistic approach to the body pharmaceutically, pharmacologically, but we also have to be careful not to take a reductionistic approach to the body nutraceutically or from a dietary perspective. And so I think that you and I both are strong advocates for community, for really specialized health and wellness plans.
Can you talk to me, I want everybody to get into the boat with us I mean, we got to spend so much time together in Mexico and really just dive on this stuff, because I like you and everybody else right now, it's like you go do, and I believe that I'm going to just lay the gauntlet down. Nutrition should include food, not eating. I'm going to just say that. But why is it that you can't have berberine or one supplement or one pharmaceutical in this complex body? And why is it community for you? Because it's all about community for me. That's what we've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building these communities. And you have this really crazy, amazing, robust community that just is so indoctrinated with your passion for people to get well again.
Why is it about community?
Dane Johnson: Because imagine if you were stuck in a prison by yourself trying to get out. Imagine the energy, the spiritual shift of it, the loneliness. The worst thing you can do to a human who's already in lifelong prison, has a life sentence of prison, is to put them in solidary confinement. That's how much we need community. We feed off each other. If I come in and give you a smile, it helps you release the pain that you've been in. We can build each other. That's what a best friend is. Your best friend is simply a person that makes you feel the best most often. People say, oh, my best friend's my mom. That's because she makes you feel the best the most often. Well, you do the same.
Haylie Pomroy: And there was this really cool study. Actually, it was a speech for my son's wedding. But of course, I had to science geek out. And there was this really cool study that showed that individuals that enter the emergency room with life-threatening potential, there was an 87% survival rate increase in those that had someone with them.
Dane Johnson: Oh, I love that.
Haylie Pomroy: And it wasn't because they brought a master surgeon or they brought a cardiovascular interventionist with them. It's because they had someone that was there to witness their journey and be an advocate for their wellness.
Dane Johnson: And listen if I take that same imagine where you're in this prison alone in a dark because that's how it feels. I was alone with this. And that gave me the passion to build a home for all of us because I just built what I needed. I know you did the same, Haylie.
Haylie Pomroy: I was going to be a vet. I got into vet school. I was going to veterinary medicine. I was going to raise cows and sheep. What am I? No, I had to build this so that I had a house for which to heal. And then I invited everybody in.
Dane Johnson: And it was a win for you, too, even though you owned it.
Haylie Pomroy: It was a godsend.
Dane Johnson: It was a godsend. When you go through that much pain that you and I did, it was like I was housebound for a year. I was 120 pounds. I had to relearn how to walk. I was on a feeding tube. I almost died in 2014. My whole family flew in. The doctor said they couldn't figure out why I was dying. I went through the gauntlet. And when I finally got results after failure and a hundred thousand, so much money. And I come from a middle-class family. This is not wealthy. When I finally started getting results and getting that puzzle to finally work after all the diets, after all the supplements, after all the coaching calls, after all the research, functional medicine, after all the stuff, it was like, we need that. I just want to build what I never had. And one of the big things with community is now imagine that you're stuck in a house, but there's 50 other people stuck in that house. And you're going, you check the right wing, you check the left wing, you check under the bed, you check under the bed. Let's come together and figure out what we've learned. You take a couple of days over there. I'll take a couple of days, and then let's connect on it. And we can share in that experience, and we can start to feel normal. Because when you try to go gluten-free or get on a restrictive diet, it's only a problem because it's not normal. If you were the only person in the world who brushed your teeth twice a day, you'd go, oh, my chronic gingivitis has me brushing my teeth twice a day. Why me, God? But everyone does it. Now it's not a big deal.
Haylie Pomroy: It's normal.
Dane Johnson: You’ve got to create a normal through community.
Haylie Pomroy: It's called positive peer pressure. That's what I love to say. Dane, I get you here, so I'm going to ask you this question. What in the world is going on? First of all, why is IBD, or inflammatory bowel disease in general, why is this just exploding? What is going on?
Dane Johnson: Well, let's look at some of the stats. The clinical research is telling us that all autoimmune disease is scaling with westernization. And so if we look at the westernization principles, we see a lack of going into the woods, connection to farms, connection to earth. We see an increase in antibiotics, medications, less of an increase of local farm food. We see an increase in EMFs. We see an increase in stress, an increase in blue light. These are all western world things that are that are affecting IBD. And we know in 1999, only one million people were diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease. By 2015, it was two million people. Now it's about 3.2. That's only diagnosed just in America. There are about eight to 10 million worldwide, with the most prominent places growing in IBD going to be Canada and Western Europe. UK-type areas.
Away from this line also.
Haylie Pomroy: When you talk about westernization and with my background in agriculture, I've also looked at when we talk about glyphosates, I did not even know that that was developed as an antibiotic first. It's crazy. But if you think about it, that was how the drug was first approved and used. And that's what it was developed for is as an antibiotic. And it's designed to inhibit metabolic pathways in plants. That's how that kills the plants. That is found in our gut microbiome. Like that's not me going, that's bad for you. That's taking their science, and that got passed through the FDA. That's taking their science and saying, hey, folks, this is designed to block the shikimate pathway in our gut. But we have that same pathway. This is designed to kill bacteria that live in our gut. Like, just think we should maybe have that conversation.
Hi, it's Haylie Pomroy, your host. I've written six New York Times bestselling books on metabolic pathways. And my latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do when your body's overburdened. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/book, for a limited time, you can download a digital copy of this book completely free. That's hayliepomroy.com/book. Grab your free copy while supplies last. Now back to our show.
Dane Johnson: It's common sense. And in the sciences there, and that's part of that Western world, really chemicals. We spend all this time learning about PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls, and VOCs, volatile organic compounds and PFAS and glyphosate and BPA and microplastics. All of this, the simple takeaway is that manmade chemicals are disrupting the microbiome. They are affecting the terrain of the microbiome that is inhibiting your good guys. Think of your police officers, your Bifidobacterium, your lactobacilli, your phylo microbiota are all being inhibited. And that's creating a perfect scenario. Think of a running river versus a stagnant pond, and then pond losing its natural defenses to protect against Gram-negative proliferating bacteria that's supposed to be there, but supposed to be in balance. It's creating a train to be overrun by naturally occurring things, things like H. pylori.
Most people have H. pylori. It's when it becomes proliferated that it's a problem. Candida. Candida is mostly found in the colon.
Haylie Pomroy: And candida is a lifesaver. I mean, there's so many chemicals, but when it's out of balance, it's like cortisol. Cortisol is life-saving. When it's out of balance…
It's the ecosystem, the internal ecosystem, that's our body.
Dane Johnson: And how do we know? Because IBD didn't even exist before the 1950s. There was a few random cases of some of the bleeding and Johne's disease, which was basically ulcerative colitis of the cow. And there were a few random things. But if you look at the epidemic, again, it's parallel with that westernization, those toxins. In 1989 was the great glyphosate movement. We started spraying all of our crops, and the industrial revolution of food basically started ramping up. But look what happened with autoimmune. You look at any autoimmune disease, and you talk to any functional practitioner who specializes in multiple sclerosis, lupus, or any of these other issues, they're going to go back to what's going on with the gut.
Haylie Pomroy: I was in Ljubljana this last year at the International Congress of Autoimmune Disorders. And the top immunologists—I mean, from everything from Germany, Israel, Russia, everybody was there. It was just a remarkable meeting of the minds. And they do talk about the pharmacological implications. Every single one of them said, if we do not heal the gut, we do not touch the patient. There is not a drug strong enough to out-medicate healing the gut. I lived that. I know that. I believe that. It was just such an affirming on a global level. It was really amazing.
Dane Johnson: You know what? I think something that really helped me is try to inject a medication into the soil and see if it fixes the soil. Because the microbiome of the soil is very similar to the microbiome of the body. Billions of trillions of bacteria or different types of species connecting with each other and connecting with the human cell. The older we get, we're more of a bacterial organism than a cellular one.
Haylie Pomroy: We are.
Dane Johnson: We become more and more, as we get older, whereas a baby, you need breast milk and all of these things to build that ecosystem. And so there's this perfect ecosystem that's communicating, and we're losing that, just like the soil. Look with the soil, with the trees connecting with different plants. Do you know that plants and trees can share nutrients to help protect each other? Isn't that amazing? I'm talking to you. Who am I talking to right now?
Haylie Pomroy: Agriculture and soil science is one of the most loving sciences to study. It's really interesting because I went on and did biochemistry and then nutrition and now immunology. But one of the most loving, when you talk about the sharing of nutrients across species, across pollination, I mean, there are so many loving experiences that happen when you study plants. It's why you need to get out in the woods. That's why you need to be a part of that.
I want to ask you, and I know you do this a lot in your online community: what are some of the biomarkers that we look for? First of all, what would a person in our world that maybe has, because what we're also seeing is multiple autoimmune disorders happening within one body. I have a client the other day that has Hashimoto's thyroiditis, MS, is positive for celiac, and probably some others, but those are the ones that have shown positive autoantibodies for. First give me symptom profile of someone that could be concerned about IBD, and then I want to jump into the biomarkers.
Dane Johnson: Symptom profile: Crohn's disease—the two most common mentioned symptoms actually of Crohn's disease in a clinical research article I was looking at was fatigue and pain. And that was like 80 to 85% of a sample size of 250 people had mentioned those. And then of the sample of ulcerative colitis, I think it was 150. The two most common symptoms were blood in the stool and diarrhea/urgency. And so ulcerative colitis is more of a problem of the colon. And when the colon goes bad, you're going to see usually mucus, blood, urgency, weight loss, anemia are very common. Now that can happen in Crohn's disease too, because Crohn's is widespread. It's chronic inflammation from the mouth down to the anus, whereas ulcerative colitis is just indicative of the large intestine, which is your five to seven feet of the colon. Now, the one thing about diagnosis is I only put so much weight on the diagnosis because it's subjective, and it can change, and doctors disagree. And the root causes are very similar. Now I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, left-sided ulcerative colitis. Then I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at UCLA by a different doctor who had 30 years of experience. And then I went to another doctor, and he said, no, this is ulcerative colitis and gastritis. And then I went to another doctor: Crohn's.
Haylie Pomroy: And a diagnosis doesn't fix anything.
Dane Johnson: No, it doesn't. And it doesn't even tell us a lot of the pathology. Once you have IBD, it's already proliferated. I'm almost certain you have small intestine bacterial overgrowth. You have colonic dysbiosis. You have a poor functioning liver. 30% of people, I can't remember who did this clinical research article, but it was on the liver and it showed 30% of people diagnosed with IBD eventually manifest some type of liver disease, primary sclerosing cholangitis, and so forth because of the metabolic endotoxemia. And so that terrain problem just goes widespread across the body. Once the gut goes, your mucosal membrane goes and then endotoxins get into the bloodstream. And now you're looking at people with arthritic pains, eczema, psoriasis, massive brain fall, chronic fatigue, back pain. These are telling me that endotoxins, lipopolysaccharides, have moved into the body. And I was at a speaking event with Dr. Tom O'Bryan, who had this really good point he mentioned in his speech. And he said, people with SIBO can have upwards of 10 times the amount of LPS in their bloodstream than a person without SIBO. And I said, lipopolysaccharides. Lipopolysaccharides are basically, when you have this bacteria, billions of them die and grow and die and grow every day. And as they die, it's called die-off. And that releases an endotoxin also known as lipopolysaccharides. These are extremely inflammatory, extremely oxidative.
Haylie Pomroy: And extremely neurotoxic.
Dane Johnson: I mean, yeah, you got it.
Haylie Pomroy: The anxiety, depression, memory, cognitive—and even coordination skills when LPSs are elevated is huge.
Dane Johnson: Huge. And you know what? One of my favorite tests to check for that is the Wheat Zoomer by Vibrant America. Not only will it check for zonulin, which is the protein your body makes to recover from leaky gut, but they have some LPS signals in that test. That, or Gut Zoomer also can just really give you an idea. But that WheatZoomer is a blood analysis. We can actually see how much LPS is making the bloodstream. It's not perfect, but it's a good place to start.
Haylie Pomroy: It's fabulous.
Dane Johnson: It's a fabulous test. But if I'm seeing, if you've been diagnosed with IBD and it's been more than five years, you're probably dealing with super biofilms.
You're dealing with probably high amounts of SIBO, endotoxins, metabolic endotoxemia, liver's overwhelmed LPS. Like these are the big root problems that must be fixed for this client or patient to be able to go back into a state of balance. And to do it is hard.
Haylie Pomroy: And are these a lot of the hidden toxins that, when you're working with clients and people are coming through your community, that you kind of unravel?
Dane Johnson: Well, getting rid of the endotoxin problem is one of the major issues. And if I'm seeing a lot of brain fog, skin issues, liver issues, I'm going, OK, and I'm seeing signs of SIBO, high methane, high H2 sulfide, anything like in a breath test. I don't really focus on the breath test as much because there's too much—you've got to jump through a bunch of hoops. I can usually tell right off the bat based on how they're responding to FODMAP foods. Basically, high-fermenting foods. And so those are those root biology problems. Some of those we want to fix. But as far as your question about those hidden toxins, microplastics. Actually, in one research article, we saw that people with IBD had 50% more microplastics in their gut than the average person. Hint, hint.
I was wearing also Invisalign for 13 months before I got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. Literally, I got done with 13 months of this and then got diagnosed with UC. I must have been within six weeks of finishing.
Haylie Pomroy: It's so crazy that you just said that. We do 28 day challenges health challenges. And we were working through testing digestive reserve. And we do this really fun little at home test, it's called the Lemon Challenge Test. We check salivary and pH. And we have you challenge yourself with acidity of a lemon. And then we look at how long you rebound. And this one individual had been doing a bunch of stuff. She'd been like through three challenges and had a lot of different health issues. And I said to her, you don't happen to wear Invisalign, do you? And she said, I do. And I said, humor me, let's go 28. The doctor's going to kill me, although they still had the microplastic buttons on. But I said, let's just see if we can change the digestive enzyme output. And literally within two weeks. And I mean, she had really tried. And I didn't even think about that. But that's what that whole coming together as a community is pondering and thinking and wondering: Dean, how do people have an opportunity to work with you? I know a lot of individuals in our space, when they've had, and you're very specialized in this, and all of you can tell, with a world of knowledge that you've had to condense to save your life and just change the lives of so many others since. how do people engage with you? How would they connect with you?
Dane Johnson: I mean, if you just look on CrohnsColitisLifestyle.com or on Instagram or on YouTube, you can't miss us, Dane Johnson. You can Google it or just look it up and you'll find us pretty easily CrohnsColitisLifestyle.com. But what we do with people is we schedule a complimentary IBD strategy session. We go over your case, what your needs are, what's lacking, your experience with natural medicine, what we believe those root issues may be that we need to fix. And then if we feel there's integrity, we'll talk about how we can work together. Our doctors and practitioners, we have multiple around the world. We see people in Dubai, Africa, even India, all over Europe, all over North America. Our practitioners are pretty global. We see about 150 to 175 IBD clients at any given time. And then we meet, we do clinical, and all our practitioners meet every week. And we're really excited about what we do. And everything is customized. We don't believe in just generic drive-through type protocols. Nutrition's customized, supplements customized, root issue customized. We have a mental health specialist on staff who does EFT tapping twice a week with our community, anything for nervous system regulation. It's all holistic.
And the one thing also I want to say about community is when you get in a community, sometimes it feels like you have to be part of this cultish feel, like there's only one way. I have to only like this, I only have to take these supplements are allowed or no supplements are allowed. Our program's called S.H.I.E.L.D. The reason is, is because you build your own shield, and then you work with everyone else to take from each other and give to each other, but it's always yours. I leave you with this, build your answer and connect with others to help them find their answer, and for them to help you find your answer. We win together, but you don't have to do what they do. You can do it your own way, and you can tweak it to be your own. The answer is not just to get symptom relief, it is to get self-empowered. Build your shield.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. I love that. And in our community, I always say the metabolism affects every aspect of your life. And don't forget, it's your life, not what I think, not what anybody else projects upon you. But you can gain so much from each other and individuals. And at the Institute, Dr. Klimas, I got brought in to flesh out the integrative medicine program, and we have an integrative medicine clinic. And I mean, we have, like I said, on Fridays, and I got to get you into our clinicals on Fridays; we have everything: our immunologists, our hematologists, infectious disease, you name it, we've got a massive group. And this is what we do: we ponder and kick around ideas. And Dr. Klimas, who heads the Institute, when I first met her, I said you have all of this, why are you bringing in nutrition and nutraceuticals and lifestyle modifications and meditation? And she said, because the rest doesn't work if I don't have a viable patient to treat. And my hope is that I never need to treat.
And I was just like, like, I want to be part of this. Right? I want to be part of this. I drgged my whole community. And you.
Dane Johnson: I'm coming. That's Candyland for me. Let's do it.
Haylie Pomroy: Dane, I just want to talk about two quick things before I know your time is super tight—and I really appreciate our community really needs this. I just want you to touch on two things that we've touched on when we were traveling together. One is how the nervous system is connected to IBD. If you could please just—there are so many people, I think out there struggling right now that are saying, well, maybe your anxiety is causing your loose stool. It just hurts my heart. It's because you're stressing about your job. You're stressing about your kids. You're stressing about your relationship, that you have blood in the stool. I mean, I cannot tell you how many people just absolutely get bypassed. And I'm looking at it from a neurological immunological food nutrition perspective. You do such a beautiful job of all the people that I've met about really helping people understand how that nervous system is connected. Can you just share that with everybody?
Dane Johnson: Well, what I want to do is make it feel more obtainable because this idea of stress is almost, it feels elusive. It's like, imagine you look around and you're trying to measure the amount of air in this room. You know there's air, but you can't really see it. You can't measure it. You can't grab it, but it's there. What do you do with that? How do you utilize it? And with stress, you have to realize that stress and energy, and it affects your body physically. How do we know this? We have to, do you agree that an energy can affect you physically? You have to prove that. If I call you and I tell you bad news and get you really upset, you might be devastated, where your heart rate changes, you release adrenaline, you start shaking, all these different things. We know that a perception of truth, even if I lied to you and said, your significant other just passed away in a tragic car accident and you believed it, the belief will change you physically, and you could get massive symptoms. All of us will agree that this energy of stress can have a massive negative reaction. We have to then realize that if one thing is true, its opposite must be true. It's called law of relativity. For there to be black, there must be white. For there to be happy, there must be sad. For an energy to make you sick, there needs to be what? An energy that can make you healthy.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely.
Dane Johnson: And you just have to accept that truth for a second and then walk in that foggy path of saying, this isn't something I'm just measuring, like my food or my macros or my micros, my phytonutrients. I'm going to measure by just intuitively telling myself, how much stress do I feel? How much gratitude do I feel? And what you're looking to do is engage a part of the autonomic nervous system called the parasympathetic. We commonly hear that as the rest and digest, but that also regulates the vagal nerve. The vagal nerve helps to regulate digestion. And so what you're looking to do is shift the communication within your nervous system into a healing response, into a digestive response. How do you know this is working? Well, there are a few ways, but one of my favorites is if you're salivating, your mouth is salivating; that is a sign that you're in the parasympathetic. That is the sign that your digestive enzymes are going up, that your stomach is now ready to eat. This is one of the benefits of doing a little bit of breath or prayer before you eat.
That's what we did for many years. Take your time before you eat. Everyone says, chew your food. Yes, that's great. But I also want you to get you salivating. I want your heart rate low. I want you sitting down.
Haylie Pomroy: And smell your food, prepare your body for what's to come.
Dane Johnson: And think of it this way, if I told you the worst thing in life just happened, and you believe me, what would happen to you physically? What if you started practicing, I'm already healed? I'm grateful for this. I am. What signals going to your body? I did not heal until I found happiness. You have to get happy before you can get healthy.
Haylie Pomroy: Hi, it's Haylie Pomroy, your host. When I was going through my health crisis, the worst part of it was feeling lost and alone. And I decided that I didn't want anybody else to feel as desperate as I did. That's why we set up a private membership group where you can come in, ask questions, get support, be connected with people that can actually help you on your health journey. If you go to hayliepomroy.com/member, you can join me for 30 days for free.
I'll see you there. We can jump in and we can start to organize the path for your wellness. That's hayliepomroy.com/member. I will see you there. Now back to our show. It was interesting.
I'd love that you say that. I was interviewed one time and a person really held my feet to the fire and said, one thing, you only get to pick one thing. And I don't believe in a reductionist approach. And we kind of debated back and forth. And he said, well, what's one thing? I said, there's not one supplement. There's not one food. There is one thing, and that's you. That's the one thing. But he said, what is the one thing that without it, you would not have had a health victory; you would have not gotten well. And he really pushed me because I said, gosh, I mean, fatty acids, omega-3, 6, and 9, I consume those all the time. My vitamin D, you're not going to get my cold dead hands are going to pry me off that bottle. My probiotics, cooking fermented foods like I was just my brain, my brain, my brain. And I stopped, and I took a deep breath, and I said, the one thing was the belief that I could get well. And if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't have spent, like you said, we grew up on food stamps. I find it really ironic that I sell food books that are New York Times bestsellers.
Dane Johnson: Just a deeper question, Haylie. How did you create belief? Because that is the deeper problem everyone's having with they want to have faith, but then the next day comes around, this podcast wears off, and then they feel trapped again. How do you create belief?
Haylie Pomroy: I will tell you, me personally was building my community because on the days when it was hard, and that's a deep question, Dane, on the days, and there's been a few, when it was really hard, I had already expressed that to so many people. And when I couldn't carry myself over the threshold that day, they carried me.
Dane Johnson: Beautiful.
Haylie Pomroy: It's community, which is why, I mean, I can smell the hospital room. I can feel the lights. I can I always say the thing that sticks out of my head, because I was a pivotal point for me is the buttons on the hospital gown had made dents in my leg. I don't know why that hits me. But at that moment, I thought it cannot be this hard for everybody else. Like, my whole goal is to shorten the gap between where you're at and where you deserve to be, and have every right and every that dream for you, I will hold that, is to shorten that gap. And that's what I love so much about, first of all, your community is so rich with science. Like I'm a scientist. And it's so rich with compassion and empathy. But it's also really practical and has customized playbooks for individuals that are not just going to buy the next popular vitamin on the shelf. They're going to integrate food as medicine, not like medicine. They're going to integrate health and wellness from a 360 approach, because I just don't know how else to get a wellness story out of somebody.
Dane Johnson: Everything has to be customized. Even the most brilliant. I met with this practitioner. She was saying, Hey, can you come teach my team and all this? And I started talking about where she was. And one of the things I noticed is she kept looking for the next big thing, the next big stem cell, the next bigInflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD)—it's saying, I ask you this, if I got great results 10 years ago, when I knew 5% of what I know now, maybe it's not just what you're doing, it's how you're doing it. Maybe it's not just the next supplement. It's how you're utilizing that product with everything else. I didn't start sleeping through the night until I started doing prayer. And I started releasing that, that pain, Haylie, what you, I think you just felt is reliving a little bit of how do you have, when I get there too, if I go into my story, it will hit me so hard because that pain is why we're here and what we do and why we've created authentic programs, not just chasing a dollar. And we've really held space for people to really serve them because we needed that. I didn't know where to get belief. I was a kid. And even after five, six years, even when I was trying for a year or two straight, it's like, I'm still not there. And you easily get trapped in pain and anger and want to break my fist on something.
Haylie Pomroy: I think the twenties was a little bit of a gift too, to get diagnosed in my twenties.
Dane Johnson: Oh, hallelujah. The rest of your life is better. It's the whole, you're going to college young. The rest of your life is smart. Right?
Haylie Pomroy: Exactly. The ignorance of belief. I was like, I don't need dumb enough to go. Why, why? There's a needle in a haystack. I remember them saying—
Dane Johnson: What a blessing.
Haylie Pomroy: It's going to be one in a million that you can ever get off this man. And I said, well, I'm only one. I'll take that. I thought my favorite line from the movie, dumb and dumber. You're saying, I got a chance.
Dane Johnson: You're saying, I got a chance. A girl, me and a guy like you.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely.
Dane Johnson: Remember when people give you those stats, guys, this is based on a person sitting there where a doctor's punching codes into that. They're not even close to talking about what your spirit can do, what your energy can do. They have no, none experience in natural medicine or food training. They have zero understanding. And this disease is only 40 years old. What happened? What happened if your grandpa didn't have it and you're living differently and you're ingesting and breathing and bathing and different stuff than your grandpa did. Maybe there's something to it. That's what started getting belief.
You know how I got belief. I just started to take action. And the more action I took in faith, that is a recipe for belief: faith plus hard work. You can't choose belief. You got to earn it.
Haylie Pomroy: You got to earn it.
Dane Johnson: And believe is the most powerful energy in the world. You got to earn it. You got to get out of that hospital bed. You got to get up even when you can barely walk. I couldn't put on my shoes, but I'm going for a walk. My bowel movements were uncontrollable. I'm still going; I'm going to do what I said, like shame has got nothing on me anymore. I know where I'm going. And I had to let go of what I couldn't control and had to be a dog on a bone of what I could. You have to let go at the same time as you've got to grasp on. And the biggest thing, Haylie, I really want to leave people with this is you've got to get a master's, a Ph.D. in happiness. You've got to get up. You've got to realize what's making you sad, what's making you isolated, what is stimulating the feelings you no longer want and do not serve you. Resentment, anger, frustration, what you can't do, loneliness. These are feelings you've got to say, wait, that just came up. Why? Because you're sitting down, binging Netflix because you didn't get dressed for the day, because you didn't go outside and actually get your feet on the ground and say what you're grateful for because you allowed your mom to call you or your dad or your best friend or your significant other. And you told them what was wrong instead of you told them what was right. What kind of energy are you building with other people? I got a degree in happiness when I was stuck in that house. I took three months to be able to walk again. I was housebound for a year. There was no money. I would go to the bathroom 25 times a day. I looked like I just got out of a war camp. I weighed 120 pounds at 6’2”. You got to just decide because when you get, as Haylie said, when you got that happiness going, everything else gets clear and easier when you're happy. When do you eat Cheetos when you're stressed?
Haylie Pomroy: I don't.
Dane Johnson: I know you don't, but I'm talking to everyone out there who's serving me in a quantum energy of time and space, listening to this, like, when do you eat crap food when you're lonely and stressed, you don't feel good about yourself or there was a break? What's the funny thing in the movie? Guy girl breaks up, guy girl's at home eating ice cream, watching Jerry Maguire or something, exactly.
Haylie Pomroy: Exactly.
Dane Johnson: We got to get happy to get healthy.
Haylie Pomroy: Dane, I really appreciate you coming on. I mean we have had such great conversations about kind of taking pain and turning it into purpose. And I think that at the Institute, it's so important with our clients that have chronic disease, chronic inflammatory disorders, ME/CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome.
I think it's so important that they understand that there's hope and that we might not be you, but we empathize with you, and we are here for you. You guys, please go check out Dane. Tell me one more time the website where people would go to.
Dane Johnson: CrohnsColitisLifestyle.com. We're all over the internet. You can just type in Dane Johnson on Google or CrohnsColitisLifestyle, or you can type in any of that type of stuff. You can find us on Instagram, mostly YouTube and just schedule a free call if you want to just talk to us. There's no hassle. There's no money. It's just, hey, we want to put our best foot forward for you and just get the connect and see if it's a fit and see if we can help you. And just healing as possible, everyone. I want to leave you with this thought that you don't know what you don't know. And if you start with belief, and even if it's a foggy road, you just find what you're grateful for, and you keep walking, and I've been where you've been. And so is Haylie. And I'm telling you that the only way to create the life you want, whether it's wealth, health, or anything in the middle, is to put your foot in front of the other and walk your road. Even if it's hard, seek discomfort. If it was already comfortable to do it, you would have done it already if it was comfortable. Get uncomfortable, be smart about it, become your CEO of your health, and become your own best doctor. And I believe healing is possible and you're going to get fantastic results.
Haylie Pomroy: And I love it. I would say one of the biggest gifts that Dr. Klimas has given me in being part of INIM is we've had three major health crises in our family. And Dr. Klimas, on two of the occasions said, fire your doctor fast. Because my daughter was in the hospital, and hospital that I love, and amazing friends over there. And we just got a bad hospitalist. I don't know what else to say. And I'm on the phone with her, and she says, Haylie, shaking me loose. What's wrong with you? Fire your doctor, fire her fast, get somebody else. And I was like, okay. So if someone's not an advocate for you and your vision of your health and wellness, they are not on your team. I don't care what their degree is. Dane, please promise me you'll come back. I know so many of our community is going to have a ton of questions. You are one of the most available, brilliant individuals in this space that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. And I just am so grateful that you took the time to talk to all of us. We are healthier because of it. Promise me you'll come back. I didn't get it yet.
Dane Johnson: Haylie, I will totally come back. If anyone has specific questions, I would love to go into deeper root issues, what's happening, and how we actually treat these root issues to get real results. I've got no problem bringing the heat.
Let's do another one.
Haylie Pomroy: All right, guys, Dane's coming back. Please hold on to hope. We are here to help. And at the Institute, we believe in you. We believe you, and we are your advocate. Thanks, Dane, so much. We'll talk soon.
Dane Johnson: God bless. Thank you.
