Crohn's and Colitis Fix: 10 Week Plan for Reversing IBD Symptoms and Getting Rid of Fatigue

INTRODUCTION

Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.

—Josh Billings

What’s Going on with My Body? I’m Too Busy to Be Sick.

Julie had been a happy, cheerful, and optimistic person since she was a little girl. She was always very intuitive and noticed, as a child, that the way she behaved was annoying to her friends. It drove them crazy to see how happy she could act. She would start skipping when she saw the blue skies or when someone took her out on a trip. Little things made her excited. And yes, she grew up, but she remained that positive little girl inside.

What is happening to me? I’m so exhausted, these terrible fevers, these horrible, bloody runs. I have an infant and a toddler. I need to take care of them. I must figure this out, thought Julie. There’s no reason I should be feeling this way. Julie was concerned and questioned why she was not healing. The doctors in the ICU were diagnosing her with everything possible, like pneumonia, sepsis, or other infections, but they were never sure. And then, finally, a diagnosis—ulcerative colitis—came as a shock.

The medications were taken, but Julie wasn’t improving much. There were so many antibiotics that Julie thought her gut must be sterile now—no bug could be living in there anymore! And the symptoms just continued. She was so exhausted that she would fall asleep quickly, but she would often wake up at night from the pain or from having to go to the bathroom. The physical abdominal pain was often so bad that it would wake her up at night, almost like a nightmare. Once she was up at night, the thoughts would run wild and the fear of dying would creep in, and the fear of not being able to spend time with the kids, and the fear of not being able to pay the mortgage, and the fear of not being able to work because she always needed to go. This can’t continue, she thought. I need a break.

On the following trip to the doctor’s office she complained that she had trouble sleeping and that she was very depressed. You would think that would be expected, that the person who was in pain, constantly embarrassed about having diarrhea, bloating, gas, and the other wonderful stuff that came along with this illness, would be likely to start feeling this way. So, the next recommendation from her physician was to see a psychiatrist. She was seen by the psychiatrist for a very short appointment and left the office with anti-depressant and anti-anxiety prescriptions. She came home and finally felt really depressed. She couldn’t understand why she was given medications by a psychiatrist when she was not a psychiatric patient—or why she had even agreed to go there.

Then the next stage came. Julie didn’t want to do anything. She didn’t feel like eating, drinking, or taking her medications. Being super sensitive and even intuitive, Julie felt that her husband was growing tired of this new situation. She was just waiting for him to come in one day and tell her it was over. And maybe, just maybe, she didn’t need to wait until he said it; maybe it was time to say it herself. But, what about the kids? How would they handle a single mom situation?

So, with her focus on getting healthy or else, Julie wrote herself a letter that was meant for future-Julie in ten years. This is what she wrote to herself:

Dear Julie,

I know that you’ve been through a lot, but you came out of it stronger and healthier than you’ve ever been. Look how much you’ve accomplished in ten years. You are now a medical doctor, seeing patients, helping them heal, and traveling a lot for work to learn new methods. You are a mom of two wonderful kids and your husband is so supportive. Your house is incredible, impeccable, just a dream come true home with a beautiful princess staircase, modern kitchen, and super cozy bedrooms. I believed in you and I always knew you would be the healthiest, happiest, and most gorgeous forty-year-old gal.

Your journey made you stronger and wiser and I’m thrilled that you are me in ten years. Thank you for taking all the steps to heal. Thank you for sticking with a program and believing in yourself and your healing. Thank you for showing me the way and most of all, thank you for not giving up!

Sincerely yours,

YOU ten years younger

P.S I hope you get this letter on your 40th birthday and that your next ten years will be as amazing or even more amazing than this decade.

Julie printed the letter and sealed it. She placed the letter where she kept her most important documents and letters, smiled, and went to sleep.

The next morning her first thought was about her appearance. Julie thought that if she wanted to physically feel a certain way, she should look a certain way too. She wanted to appear light, lean, and healthy looking. She pictured herself sitting elegantly, eating dinner with her back straight, with her fork in her left hand and her knife in the right one. She was almost daydreaming, imagining herself looking healthy. Julie went downstairs, got her computer, and searched for natural solutions for IBDs.

Her road to healing was somewhat bumpy, yet she always remained focused on her goal. And her goal was complete healing. With the help of naturopathic and functional solutions, her willingness to stick with the healing program, and her positive energy, she was able to get back on track, and now she’s in full health. This book will help you do the same.

This book is about healing your digestive mess. We often talk about treatment plans, we often discuss the problems and illnesses of others, and we often feel empathetic for those who are sick, but this book is about actually setting your intentions to heal Crohn’s, colitis or other digestive illness and keep on going toward your goal. In this book, you will find practical steps to improve your chronic digestive disease. You will also find the tools and the functional medicine methods for gut healing.

If you are looking for a book that is the next magic pill or a plan to heal without doing anything at all, this isn’t that type of book. The healing process is very complex, and functional medicine looks at all aspects of human health as a complex system, including emotions, stress, environment, toxins, microbiome, and more.

Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis affect millions of people. This number is growing, but so is the research for Crohn’s and colitis alternative, nutraceutical, and complementary treatments.

This book is about waking you up and helping you reset and restore your gastrointestinal flora. It will help you balance your gut microbiome, and it will help you figure out more about the importance of immune system response for your gut healing. It will teach you how toxins play a role in your illness. This book can help you become more proactive and be in better control of your health. It can teach you how to get more energy and how to balance your mind and gut better.

This book is a great tool for those that believe their digestive health is super important to them. It will be a tremendous benefit to those that are digging and looking not to just patch up their symptoms, but, instead to actually heal their root cause.

Here, I will share my journey with Crohn’s disease and how I got to full remission. Health is important. Gut health is responsible for many other human body functions and systems including our brain, skeletal, muscular, and immune systems. If you recognize the importance of a healthy gut and a healthy immune system, you know that you would work at making it better. Healing your gut, sharing with others, empowering other patients, and empowering your children to eat better—you are on your journey to heal your beautiful tummy and the tummies of your loved ones.

If you’ve been through the merry-go-round of numerous doctor visits, hours of waiting, x-ray series, barium, MRIs with contrast, surgeries, and other fun stuff you go through when you have a chronic digestive disease, you know that you are willing to do anything to feel better. You spent hours doing acupuncture, acupressure, and massage therapies and you feel better but not great? And you tried yoga, suction cup therapies, bioenergy, and meditation and you feel better but not where you want to be? Maybe you are even sitting there thinking about trying fecal transplant or parasite ingestion because you read on some blog that it worked for Crohn’s patients. I’d like you to take a breath and think about your healing. There’s another way that works. It worked for me.

Chapter 1

MY JOURNEY

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

— Helen Keller

Journey with Crohn’s Disease

Iknew that I would be a health care professional since I was a little girl. I loved my toy doctor’s kit. I loved taking care of my family. I loved how assured the doctor always seemed. I even loved the trips to the pharmacy when I had to go with my grandma. Where I grew up, the pharmacies looked very different. They were old fashioned with glass counters, pharmacists and other personnel were dressed all in white, and oh, that smell of eucalyptus oil, it was intoxicating. I stared at the counter, looking at the glass rods used for mixing creams and couldn’t wait to come home to use them to heal my dolls. I even made my grandma buy me first aid supplies that were completely useless to her so that I could enjoy my playtime.

I also chose my profession because I couldn’t watch my grandma suffer. She was always having stomach problems and lost a large chunk of her large intestine due to chronic inflammation. At that time they didn’t call it Crohn’s or colitis, but that’s what it probably was. So, I wanted to make a difference for her, to create the magic pill in the future so her stomach would stop hurting. Little did I know that I would get a Crohn’s diagnosis myself. Well, maybe the universe had this plan for me.

The reason I wrote this book was because it was a natural next thing for me to do. I accomplished a lot as a health care professional, and I’ve dealt with so much as a Crohn’s patient, that it just became an absolute next thing for me to do.

I’ve always procrastinated to write the book that I had wanted to write for so long, I’ve always procrastinated. I planned and I hoped and I planned again to eventually come up with the book for Crohn’s that wouldn’t just be a next book for IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease), but a book that was a know how to leave the symptoms behind A book on how to fix the gut more effectively without the fear, without the what if it doesn’t work, what if it’s just another self-help book that claims to help IBD patients. I wanted to write a very different book for a real Crohn’s or colitis patient where it’s easy to follow the steps, where it’s easy to fit the suggestions into your lifestyle, and it can work as well as it did for me.

In the beginning of my healing journey, I was in a place of fear, pain, and despair, with lots of questions and lots of moments where I felt numb, almost paralyzed. I thought, Is this it? Is this how it’s going to feel for the rest of my life? Is this how I’m going to spend my holidays? Is this how I am going to take care of my kids? Is this how I am going to work? I was lucky, somehow my husband made me believe that I was going to be okay—and that’s super important to believe in your healing. One morning, during one of my flares, he told me that we would absolutely find something that would work. He looked at me with such certainty, and he’s such a kind and honest man. At that moment I had no doubt. That feeling of real hope carried me through the rough days and nights, and that belief made me strong enough to get to the next step of my journey, the step where I asked myself, What am I going to try now? I’ve tried the traditional route without much help. I’ve already lost my hope once, I’m not going to lose hope again. My husband was right; I would find something that would work.

What happened in my case? After I had my first child I had mild colitis symptoms and was misdiagnosed with ulcerative colitis. I thought that was bad and I was scared. Unfortunately, this kind of misdiagnosis still happens when ulcerative colitis presents as Crohn’s and vice versa, especially with mild symptoms. The symptoms started going away slowly with medicine, and I thought my colitis was