What if chronic illness isn’t a life sentence...but a signal?

In this episode of Beyond The Pills, we sit down with Dane Johnson, CHN, founder of CrohnsColitisLifestyle, to challenge the conventional narrative around inflammatory bowel disease.

After facing a life-threatening battle with Crohn’s and Colitis, Dane was told medication and surgery were his only options. Instead, he chose a different path—one rooted in natural, root-cause healing. By addressing the gut, immune system, and lifestyle factors driving disease, Dane was able to eliminate symptoms, come off medications, and reclaim his health—without surgery.

Today, Dane is recognized as one of the most successful Crohn’s and Colitis coaches in the world, having helped thousands globally uncover their unique path to healing. Through Crohns Colitis Lifestyle, he’s built a powerful community of patients, doctors, and healers working together to move beyond symptom management and toward true restoration.

In this conversation, we explore:

1. Why symptoms are messages—not mistakes
2. What most people misunderstand about IBD and gut health
3. How root-cause healing creates long-term change
4. What it really takes to reclaim sovereignty over your health

If you or someone you love is navigating IBD, this episode offers hope, clarity, and a new framework for healing—beyond pills.

🔗 Learn more about Dane’s work:

www.crohnscolitislifestyle.com

🎁 Special Offer:

Dane is currently offering a free IBD strategy session to support those who need guidance and healing space:

https://www.cclworkshop.com/apply

113_Dane_Johnson

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Join me and other practitioners as we guide you towards vibrant health, body, mind, and spirit, and move beyond symptom management into true healing. Welcome, welcome back to Beyond the Pills. I'm Josh Rimini, pharmacist Turn Healer. And today we're gonna talk about gut health. It's one of the favorite places, the beginning and end of functional medicine.

Dane chose a different path, one rooted in natural healing, self-education, and deep personal responsibility through years of experimentation, lifestyle change in inner work. Dana has reclaimed his health and eliminated his symptoms without surgery or long-term medications. Today he's one of the most recognized Crohn's and colitis coaches in the world.

Welcome, welcome to the show,

Dane: my friend. Wow, Josh. Thank you for that intro and uh, I'm so excited to be here. I wanna start with an affirmation that I'm here to get results. I wanna help, I wanna use every minute to help give people that, that protocol, that root issue, that why on how we're gonna be able to heal.

We're not meant to be sick. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here,

Josh: man, that was about as charged up as any introduction back to me than I've ever had. I love this. Let's go let You are a guy that wants to actually do things in the world. I'm in the boot. Yeah. If you're charged up.

Dane: Josh, I'm boots on the ground.

Cedar Sinai, everywhere. No one could tell me what was going on. I was fine. And then 19 years old, blood in the stool, 27 years old. I'm fighting for my life. Whole family flies into the hospital. 'cause they tell me, the doctors tell my family I might die. I mean, long story, but, so that's why I'm here, Josh.

Yeah. And we're gonna have fun. And we're a fun donut.

Josh: You know, we, we instantly connected prior to this, you know, recording because. Your story, your life story, your healing journey brought you to where you are and, and compel literally called you to help other people like me, like my cancer story. Mm-hmm.

Dane: There is, and that's why I have the courage to be here, is because my case was one of the worst you could have. It nearly killed me because I failed for years before I ever got any success. And I tried famous diets. I did fasting or bone broth, a carnivore or low fodmap, or a specific carbohydrate diet or paleo diet.

And I, you know, I made my own homemade yogurts and spent thousands of dollars on supplements and listened to Dr. Google and eventually stood on my head and clapped my toes and still didn't get better. And so it's one of those things that, you know, it's pain to purpose. It's pain to purpose. And the story is, is it's, it's just what a lot of us needed.

Clinical results beyond what a book said that told them. There's a difference between lived experience and actually trying to stop the blood and get your colonoscopy normal, or go from 25 bloody bowel moments a day down to one to two normal and reading about it. Huge difference. And you really have to connect with the spiritual side of it, the mental side of it, what the day-to-day looks like.

And that's what, you know, I was called on to do. I didn't ask for this. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. But I asked everyone now out there, can we make it the best? Can we make it the best? And so that's what my story really is. It's like it, I was, it was Phoenix outta the ashes. I was diagnosed with something I'd never heard of, never ran in my family.

I was first diagnosed with left-sided ulcerative colitis, and I was, I was so shameful when you even say what, I got a poop problem. I've got a colon disease for the rest of my life. I can't tell my girlfriend that. I can't tell any, what are we, what? Ulcerative what? So it was this thing. I was like, uh, I was a, a farm boy from Virginia.

I also was a big into weightlift and neat and crappy food. And going to GNC, you know that protein place, GNC, general Narcotics Center, they, you know, they give you all that crap whey protein. I was sucking that down four times a day, trying to be a big, strong young lad in, in Virginia, right? Playing sports.

And, um, when I got diagnosed as blood in the stool, cramping, urgency, I didn't know what this is. And then all of a sudden I go, a year later, they're giving me mesalamine. They're giving me, you know, uh, steroid prednisone. Then all of a sudden I'm going to another doctor and goes, no, no, no, no, no. This is actually Crohn's disease.

It's an opinion. It's an opinion. I don't call. I don't

Josh: call them diagnosis. So this is fun. This has happened to me. Okay, take away Josh. I wanna keep going. I wanna keep going. Take it away. Take away. Diagnosis is an opinion. It's 'cause what happens when you don't like the diagnosis? You get a what

Dane: you, uh, you don't like a second opinion?

Yeah.

Josh: Second opinion. You call it opinion when you don't like it, but you call it a diagnosis when you wanna like label it. So you've been diagnosed out of there. Right? Continue.

Dane: I was gonna say panic attack. You get a panic attack. I don't know. You know these doctors labeling us, stamping us on our forehead,

Josh: but I don't, you have the, which makes you feel like I'm a criminal, right?

I have a thing. It came to me. Ulcerative colitis just found me like it's, yeah, it

'cause when you're diagnosed, you go through, it's almost like a divorce of I'm okay, I'm young in life, I have time. This is my moment. I mean, I was 20 years old, I was 22 years old. This was my time and my twenties were being stolen by this shameful, incurable disease. I was gonna the bathroom 25 times a day.

It started at three to four light bleeding. And what happens with a lot of diseases, it progressed. Yeah. Because the medications were masking it.

Josh: Yep.

Dane: They were masking the problem. And no one was telling me about the problem. And I'm gonna get to that to a second. So I go to CL, I say Crohn's, then I go to Mayo Clinic.

They necessarily, they say ulcerative crisis with gastritis. Then I go back to UCLA. 'cause I was living in California. And they go, no, no, no. I'm certain it's Crohn's disease. And the guy had a team of doctors following around with a pen and paper. So I'm going, okay, I don't know what it, I have Crohn's, I have ulcer colitis, I have chronic inflammation in the bowel.

IBD equals IDK. Now I get it. What if a doctor came up to you? And this also would've saved me from the trauma. I wanna give someone a lesson to my story real quick. What if a doctor walked up and said, listen, you've got chronic inflammation in the bowel. We don't know what causes it, but we got steroids, antibiotics, and immuno immunosuppressants.

You want any, what would happen?

Josh: What would

Dane: would've

Josh: happened? What would happened

Dane: to your Trello?

Josh: They might make you feel better. This is what we got. This is all we got.

Dane: And so it, it's just the, the the, the shame and trauma and what happens. And we know that stress makes autoimmune worse. We know stress makes cancer worse.

We know stress makes every disease worse. The stress of the diagnosis was another battle in itself because I'm now labeled and I can't explain it 'cause no one's taught me. So the only way I can explain myself to others is tell people I'm a chronically sick person. Well, what happened? I got diagnosed with IBD.

Josh: Yeah.

Dane: And so that's a scary thing, but you know, I digress in that. And so I just went through severe pain, Joshua. It wasn't easy. I didn't get results quickly. Diets didn't work for me. I read the books and I said, this is nuts. No one can do this. Like I read specific carbohydrate or carnivals, like who can live like this for the rest of their life?

I grew up on Papa John's. I worked at Papa John's Pizza for four years in high school. That's what I ate three times a week. I grew up in Virginia. We didn't do, there was no gluten free, this, that, and the other was no, there was no organic, it was food in macros and if you're fat, run it off. That's how I grew up.

There was not a podcast like this out here. So I was alone and isolated and no one could really relate with me. And then all, you know, all, like a lot of our family does, you know, my, my mom was running around spending all her money trying to buy the books, listen to podcasts, get me to drink coconut milk instead of the milk.

'cause it, because online it says it's the milk that I'm, I'm getting this gluten-free bread that tastes like cardboard because online it's the gluten. And then, you know, I'm going on these liquid shakes for three weeks straight, and the only thing I'm losing is my weight. You know, and so it's just getting worse and worse.

So that was happening for like three or four years. Josh and I was on Prednisone, taper off on Prednisone, taper off. And as it didn't work, the doctor goes, yeah, we need to use something stronger. Let's go to Immunomodulators, like six mp. Okay, azathioprine, methotrexate. I was on all of them. So as a young man who didn't know better, I said, doc, give me whatever you've gotta give me.

I gotta want my life back. I'm 23 years

Josh: old. Yeah, you fix me. Do you fix? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the story that how I, this is the story,

And no one ever taught me to stand up and be the answer. Never. And I only got there through pain. Just pure pain and time. 'cause I would sit there and just wait for it to work. I did the same thing with natural medicine. So someone around me who loved me would try to go figure out a solution while I was depressed and angry and upset at at the world.

And then they'd say, okay, you're gonna go on these steroids, you're gonna go on six mp, methotrexate, Entyvio, Remicade, whatever. Oh, and then we're gonna try it. And then a doctor's gonna go build you a diet and say, okay, only eat bone broth with chicken and pureed carrots for three weeks and we're gonna do a reset.

So I'm sitting there binging Netflix waiting for this reset to kick in. It just got worse and worse. And a lot of us are doing that. We're just trying to follow a simple plan and it's not gonna work until you become the CEO of your health. So for four years, I failed to really stand up, get off my knees, and get out of victim mode and stand up and become the CEO.

'cause I couldn't walk to the, I couldn't walk to the bathroom and I would just release a little bloody water. And pain kind of shout out in, in pain. And then they would just go dump it. And we do that about 20 times a day. And then I had an IV in me with, uh, at any moment I'd hit the button and I'd get three grams of Dilaudid daily.

You guys don't know what Dilaudid is. It's 17 seven times stronger than morphine. It's what you give to a person who's dying of a disease. And so I'm on cloud nine with legal heroin basically, but I'm still in pain. I'm hallucinating. I can't remember anything. I wasn't conscious for probably about two weeks at that time.

Uh, I was on four different antibiotics, 200 milligrams of infused prednisone biologics. I was on, uh, the, the, the Dilaudid. Then I was on the TPN feeding tube. 'cause I lost the ability to eat. And this is all happening like, like that, it's like years of pain. And then after all the work and spending about $50,000 on natural medicine and flying around the world and seeing different specialists, then I almost died.

But I didn't understand what they could do and what they could not do. And I didn't learn how to step up and be what I, my body needed to have the life I was always meant to have and claim it. And so that's why I'm here. But in that, what happened, well, one doctor from Florida, my mom was calling every doctor figuring out why I was dying because they were literally saying he might not live through the night.

Straight up, I don't remember it. I was unconscious. This is the story my mom says, right? And she goes, and then there's a doctor in Florida who said, I think it's cytomegalovirus that's taken over his body because the steroids, the antibiotics, they've weakened his immune system and he's been sick for so long without the root issue being dealt with.

And they said his insurance doesn't cover that. I had crap insurance kid. And then they go, if you don't give it to him, he's gonna die. Give him the sample and test it. They gave me a three day sample of this chemo and I woke up. I woke up, I became conscious I could start talking again, and then my numbers started, my blood work started getting better.

So then they put me on that. And so I got it. I had it intravenous. If you see a picture of me online, you'll see me holding a little thing with a black bag, and I'm in my underwear looking like a little dummy with a big beard and long hair. Yeah, that's that moment. And so that saved my life. It was the doctors who saved my life.

So let's give them credit, right? They are the best at urgent care physicians. You get a car accident, you get shot, or you are fighting for your life in that moment, bleeding out, man, there's no one better than them. So they helped save my life in that moment. But once I woke up and became aware, I realized there was no more they could do for me.

And then it took me another two months before I could walk, let's say quarter mile, half a mile. And uh, and then from there I was able to start biking to the grocery store and, you know, cooking my meals and, and all of that stuff. And so through that I basically was not only in school for natural medicine, working with my naturopath professors, and this is, you know, still for you.

You're not just thinking about it, like learning about fasting, trying fasting, you know, learning about going into ketosis, trying ketosis, learning about doing coffee enemas or probiotic retention enemas or castor oil packs or, or meditations breathwork to engage your para parasympathetic. No, you're doing it.

So I was, I had no, I couldn't leave the house. So people said, you must go crazy in there. I'm like, no, I got a full-time job. So that I could tell you all about that journey. But there I had massive epiphanies on how healing actually works. I started to realize what variables actually got me results and what mattered and why.

Like I'm addicted to gluten, I'm used to drinking alcohol. This is how I was social. I go party and drink and go out to concerts and smoke weed. And like I had to divorce the western world of thinking and rebuild the idea of happiness, health, and my relationship with society in that year. And, and I tried it before, but I kept failing.

One of the reasons I'd realized I was failing the years prior is I was trying to hack my health. Let me keep in society and just go gluten-free or let me keep in this and just do a three week cleanse. Let me keep doing these principles. But, but just try to go buy that expensive BPC 1 57 or go buy that, um, you know, indigo Naturalist, or go buy that probiotic and then I'll just be able to keep this lifestyle and just have the hack.

To cure a disease is the ability to respond to it in real time. So you are not powerless. Can you eradicate a bad day? Can you eradicate a headache? Can you eradicate getting the flu? You can't cure a thing in this world that actually doesn't make sense. The word cure has no power in this world, in my opinion.

So my, all of our gingivitis is all in remission. It's all in remission. We all have the chronic disease called gingivitis, and it's in remission because we brush and flush and use some highly antibiotic, crappy, uh, mouthwash that destroys our microbiome. You don't need to do that. I don't need to go into that.

I, I just had to throw that in there just to keep it light. But so that, so I know I'm going on a little tangent, but that's, that was my story. And those were some of the things I learned, um, and, and how I, uh, how I went to pain to purpose. But after that year, I went to the doctor and she and I refused my Entyvio and I gotten myself off the meth methotrexate in that year.

And I, and I refused. I thought she was gonna kill me or throw me out of her office. When I saw her, she goes, Dana, I was gonna be really upset at you until I looked at your lab work. It's normal. No, you're not anemic. My blood cell count's normal. You CR crps normal. It never, it'd been, it'd been terrible for years.

And I was like, what? Oh. And she goes, let's, okay, let's do, let's do the colonoscopy and let's see, colonoscopy results come back. 90% healed. I'm not, I'm Josh. I hadn't been on a vacation, I hadn't gotten my, uh, infusion. I almost three months. I had been off prednisone for six to eight months. I hadn't taken meth methotrexate in five, six months.

I started crying. I was so excited. But then the doctor dropped something big on me. She goes, okay, okay Dan. 'cause I started saying, you every one of us hope our doctor will go, what have you been doing? And go get a pen and paper. 'cause they wanna teach their other clients what you did. And then it's like, you think that's gonna happen?

Josh: That's exactly what it is right there. The people we serve, it's like you go to the doctor and it's like, I don't know what you're doing, but keep doing it. It's like, they don't wanna know,

Dane: they don't have time to know.

I know, I know. Let's give them, let's give it. They don't have time. They give church case them five minutes to see us.

Josh: Yeah. And, but you know, it's

Dane: like, it's a bad, it's a bad system. They're employees, doctors are not, they're employees of a bad system.

Josh: Well, we're we, we've had plenty of practitioners, you know, on this podcast.

All, all they kept doing was giving me stuff until they could figure it out. And like, I still remember, like I couldn't walk from the car to my, like all the story is just so uncanny. That's so similar. We gotta go off topic. We're some other time to talk about how the synchronicities of our journey, because that journey has obviously gotten you to the calling that you have.

Like none of what? Like I, this is how I look at it. Right. And And you as well, I believe. Is like, all of that was for a purpose for you to be here today.

Dane: I agree. And that's just why, I mean, you know, for me, I mean that's when I started getting that stronger relationship and just spiritual belief and adding prayer into my life.

'cause it was like, when you're the Josh, you know it like, when you're just that gone and it's just like, man, you gotta give it up somewhere. You just gotta let, it's like the weirdest thing. You gotta let go of the victim.

Josh: That's where the surrender comes from.

Dane: Yeah. You gotta surrender, but at the same time, you've gotta hold on harder and stronger.

You've gotta learn to do salsa dancing while it's storming outside. It is, you gotta get happy or you'll never get healthy. You can't live through the journey. It's too hard. If you're a vic, if you are living in victimhood while you're in pain, it's just gonna get worse. You've got to say, I forgive, I forget.

I'm gonna find a reason to smile. Even though I can barely walk. I used to laugh about it. John, I, I had a cane. My, my best, my best friend for a little while was like an old lady at the grocery store who couldn't walk much yourself. We would just kind of sit and chat with you every once in a while.

Josh: Oh, I didn't have hair at 16 and I had a earring 'cause I was stupid.

Dane: Well, I'm glad we could laugh about it, even though it's for a reason though. No. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh: But that's 'cause that's

Dane: real. I don't mean to laugh at that. No, no, no, no.

I,

Josh: it's, it's genuine because my friends didn't treat me like a sick kid. Uhhuh, he, they treated me just like they would treat everyone else. And that's the medicine I needed. The same thing that you said.

Dane: The

Josh: medicine isn't the medication. It isn't the thing. It's that belief system. It's the thing like it's getting up more than you're getting knocked down every single time.

Yep. Smiling in the face of bullshit, chaos. Yes. That is what heals We're talking healing. That's why you're on this podcast. That's why we're having conversations in this world. Yeah. We, I'm not in the business of symptom resolution.

Dane: Yes. Or masking,

This is how people, whether it's Crohn's or colitis, cancer, anything. Yeah. It's moving towards that healing modalities. Is we heal ourselves. Yes. We give ourselves like stress is a big deal. We can't just put it like, oh yeah, we know that's what happens. We say, yeah, okay. No, it literally is. Yeah. Like these pieces matter the most.

And I love your story because what I've learned it from this way is when it, your, your pain to purpose, right? Yeah. When it, when it's the hardest, it matters the most.

Dane: It, and it shapes who you are for the rest of your life. Like, it changes your soul. And I think everyone, I want everyone to listening right now to take something away from what we just said.

Like Jos, to me, it's still hilarious. Like I remember the first time I went back to the gym and I couldn't lift away. So I was there and there was a trainer working with like a 70, 80-year-old woman and she got up from like a back row machine and I sat down right behind her same weight. I was like, huh, nope.

Can't do it. Had to go lighter than grandma until I couldn't stop laughing. That day. You, I found a way to got, I got happy. I got happy because this is perspective three things you've gotta work on. Like one thing I teach people is this idea of imagination. Imagination. You have to work on the idea of perspective.

Okay. Creation and intuition.

Josh: Yeah.

I'm so happy and grateful that I still have my eyes. There are people who are blind. There's nothing they can do. I'm so happy. I have my leg, I have my feet. I've got my spirit. I got this breath. Woo. It's not great to be alive baby. Let's go. I got there. Are you there? Are you there with me? If you're not, you got some spiritual growing to do.

Look at that sun right now. Look at that. Look at that cloud. Look at that mountain, look at that grass that's there. That's there. You are here man. There are a lot worse things. So you gotta work on that perspective and then you've got to use your intuition. What do I eat? Dane? You don't know 'cause you don't have any confidence 'cause you haven't tried and worked out the variables.

You want something you wanna do today? If you are ready to heal, I want you to only eat what you cook or what's prepared for you for 30 days straight and watch your life change dramatically. It is not about getting in a camp. It's about getting self-empowered. Take the camps cherry pick and you become the answer.

I dub you the CEO. It is not your fault, but it is your response ability, like Superman response, ability to heal, get your board, get your team, and you run and you get happy. You dance in the rain and you let go that it's not your fault. No, you did nothing to deserve this. That is a hundred percent true, but it is for darn sure your responsibility.

Until I got that and for Josh from me, I don't really feel like I turned into a man until I got sick. I, I like to tell people straight up, I know 40-year-old boys, I know 18-year-old men. I've worked with 15-year-old kids who got this, who are on it, who are disciplined off the alcohol, off the glyphosate, off the gluten, not playing around.

Josh: Well, it's, it's the inner stories, right? It's the things that we always are, are self-limiting beliefs, if you wanna just call it that. But it doesn't.

Yes, we, the way I love the way you're saying is, is there is a space where it's like, just take out the fluff and go, like, go, you're really, 'cause and what you said about just get out, there's like, the material doesn't matter. It's what really matters, right? Yeah. Your health really matters, not because it's your health.

It's because what can you do from it?

Dane: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's like, it's not like dunking a basketball on 10 foot, that's physically impossible for most of us. This is about saying, I am no longer gonna put that in my mouth. I am going to go to bed. I'm no longer gonna keep that TV on at one in the morning.

That's all good and that you need that. But you gotta build the foundation of what it is to be successful. We're talking about. 'cause until this foundational is there, even if you get results, they're gonna fall away in the future. 'cause there is no perfect pill and there is no perfect protocol. And you have to have the love and the passion, the desire, and that's the foundation.

And then you can put the garden around it. Learning about all these protocols and strategies and ideas. And that's what I did. But because I had the foundation, I could keep it up for a year, 10 years. It's been 11 years since I almost died, Josh. I'm still here. I'm still passionate. I'm still fiery healing's, still my number one priority.

Intuition is sharpened through iron. Iron sharpens iron you gotta do to get intuitive. So, you know, and that's where that really changed my life. So if I gave you like five things that have started changing your life, I'd love to give people like five things they can do. That's not about the perfect idea, but it's the foundations of success.

And they like to tell people the five, um, like five or six root causes I found that made me so chronically sick and, and what I did about 'em. So the five things like, number one, you should be journaling five minutes in the morning, five minutes of the night. If you can't tell me what your symptoms were 14 days ago and what variables you were doing at that time, you have no power.

The second thing is, as I said, try to eat what you only cook. If you're un, if you don't know what the best diet is for you yet, just go there because you can control that. And it reduces variables. Did it have gluten? Did it have seed oils? You know, did it have, was it high in oxalates? You can do all that.

And guess what? Before a hundred years ago, every human on the planet only ate what they cooked because there were no packaged foods a hundred years ago. So for thousands of years, your great, great-great, great, great, great, great, great ancestors have all been doing this. You're just awakening what humans been doing for thousands of years.

So the, the discomfort of it is the, is a lie in the society that you were born in. So you have to realize that the discomfort's normal, but the truth is there. So know the truth and go through the discomfort. 'cause growth is always uncomfortable. You will never get success in life, whether your business, marriage or healing, if it's not uncomfortable, the answer is always uncomfortable.

Josh: You get, you

I get, I'd get like combos and chocolate donuts and I'd chew 'em up and spit 'em out in the trash can. I mean, I was a fi

Josh: and so this was really hard to, because that's, that's, that subconscious in there is super strong and it's, it's overcoming. The stallion, right? Yeah. Overwork everyone. It's going back to, it's just like when people say, I can't meditate.

I was like, no, everyone can meditate. Just notice when you get off center and go back to center. That's actually a win. When you notice yes, you come back.

Dane: Yes. That's what winners do. It's not perfection, it's consistency. Write this down. Consistency will always matter more than perfection. If your plan is too overwhelming, calm it down, throw it to 75% of that plan and get consistent, then try more.

You can't add until it feels simple. You gotta get consistent. Favorite word in

Josh: wellness?

So these are not about, oh, I found this perfect supplement in this. Now I can go, I can do a whole hour on supplements. I can do another hour on herbs, peptides, biohacking, root cause. So all of that gets there. But that was the foundation. So when I was stuck in my house, I didn't have a job. I didn't have cashflow.

I could, I was using savings to try to pay my rent so I didn't have to work on disability. Back in mom's house back in Virginia, I wanted my life in Santa Monica. I wanted to be on that beach. And so I got, when your low one resources get resourceful, it is free to, to journal. It is free to read book like I, Tony Robbins book, uh, Dr.

Joe Dispenza. Um, uh, breaking the Habit of being myself, Jordan Rubin, the Maker's diet patient healed thyself. Um, like I, I started reading Josh like four hours a day 'cause it was just lighting me up with dopamine, lighting me up with possibilities. So when someone called me, he was like, did you know this?

I had so much undigested food in my stool, it was like, wait a minute. I've got low stomach acid. No wonder I can't break down this food. No wonder I'm so sensitive because I've got undigested vegetable fibers and meat fibers getting into my colon. Duh. Why didn't I think of that four years ago? 'cause I was traumatized with something I'd never asked to do.

I never asked to be, uh, uh, uh, to understand health and wellness. And I just listened to doctors took medication. So I would, there was these dumb moments. I'll, I'll go to the root cause. So all of a sudden I'm getting the natural medicine heavy, hard. I am pushing. I found can candidiasis Wait. What? What?

Fun makes you stink, gives you cystic acting. I was covered in acting. Wait. Wait, why didn't my doctor at Mayo Clinic mention ever in the 500 meetings I have with them anything about candida and there's clinical, no one's arguing. If candida's thought the ghost, it's not a conspiracy theory. Candida overgrowth is a known clinical problem.

Yeah. Low stomach acid. If you have IBD or IBS, I can almost bet you you have poor pancreatic function, you have a stagnant level with no ox B, stagnant Ox B or B Bioproduction. You probably could consider taking ox bile and you've got, you know, low stomach acid, liver, pancreatic, you can't break down food.

Josh: Yeah. It's just, yeah. Well, and that's as a pharmacist turn functional, you know, in the healing spaces. I don't like, we can talk about, like, we don't have to talk about, but like, that just threw me into the space of like how many patients I've worked through that were chronically low acid. Because the PPI was there for thousands of years, like, we're gonna give it to you symptomatically.

But everybody had the reflux so nobody could do anything. And it's like, well now you're not absorbing anything and your protein is like, and then Yeah, but I, but I, and then it's like you said, it was like, it's, it's one of the hardest drugs to get off of because Oh yeah. Because of the, I just, the crimping of the hose, you know, and then moving.

We need to digest food. It's a, it's an, it's a need to have guys, not a, not a nice to have.

Dane: And, and so, and then I just, I started pulling out my hair with them, with anger, and this is when I went through my angry stage with my doctors, because me, little old me a few years of reading some books and doing some trainings and going to school for natural medicine.

I was like, why aren't we talking that I understand conspiracy, the, like a doctor say, look, come on. There is no parasite, you're not testing positive for blasis, hominini or Cyclospora. Like, and okay, I get that. There's like, I can go, okay, maybe there is, maybe there's, they're hard to find, you know? Now I know there is, but back then they're like, this was obvious, doctor, like I am a little angry and now I've forgive and forget and you realize this.

It's not, the doctors are brilliant. They're smarter than me in so many ways. It's not what they do. That was the answer.

We're moving, this is why it's called Beyond the pills. We're not discounting that if I get hit by a truck, I'm going to the er. Yes. It's really good

Dane: for

Josh: me

Dane: to go there. Yes, yes.

Josh: I don't go to the shaman to go heal because I got hit by the truck. When I do go to the shaman, once I'm healed from the truck to figure out why I got hit by the truck, I just love that.

That's my shaman.

Dane: That's great.

Josh: But what we're talking about is not removing anything. Like the stuff is not removing. We're restoring balance. We're letting the the body do what it's supposed to do. I

Dane: couldn't said it better. And then people come to me go, well done. You saved my life. I'm like, I actually just helped your body do what it does best.

There was a doctor in Florida, the ER client doctor had no idea what to do. And then now I know and I'll get my, I'll get my viral loads checked. But then the, even the lab, it's hard to check 'cause they're only checking IgG and IgM, which is a fresh infection, which is almost never, never good. And they don't do Ellie spot technology, which is much, much more sensitive and better.

And then they're always, always checking IgG, which is his past infection. Right. So just even the testing is Walmart and, and even when I would, even with the Walmart testing, Josh, they never checked me, they never checked me for small intestine bacteria. They never checked me for dysbiosis. And that's, they never just stool analysis.

They didn't do anything. And that, that to me is crazy.

Yeah. And food sensitivities and gut permeability and zonulin, and it's all available to us. Yeah. Why don't you test the poop? Let's look at the census, see what's going down down there.

Dane: Exactly. But see, but now we're Josh. Now we're all just waiting, just looking

Josh: for the disease, not. The problem.

Dane: Okay. Yeah, and I wanna empower everyone listening to this right now, really feeling connected to this.

Everything we're talking about is also the answer for longevity. So even people who are not sick need to do this, and this is how you're gonna become self-empowered. This is why I believe the worst thing ever happened to you is gonna become the best because when you fix it, you're gonna outlive and be healthier than everyone else because you're gonna be conditioned and real, to be self-empowered and really be proactive in your health.

I got five to 10 minutes. I don't have time to go over that LA and to even act on the lab work and do

Josh: the best they can,

Dane: now they do. That's it. That's it. Don't be mad. They're doing the best they can with what? And guess what? You gotta remember that the system holds them ransom. They paid $300,000 for their license and if they go out out of bounds, they'll get stripped of their license and they no longer can make money and they're in debt.

There's a lot of fear there with doctors and what they can say and what they can't say. They are employees of a system and that system has their, has the teeth in them. These are brilliant, good people, and that puts my soul to rest. I don't wanna be angry. Don't carry resentment. If you are resentful, your doctor, forgive, forget, move on and realize what they can and cannot do.

These are some of our most brilliant people in our society and I love them, and so I don't wanna say bad things on them. I wanna work with them. I don't wanna work against them.

Like there's things we can do to empower ourselves. There's free or low cost things on everything we can do. Like you said, just try cooking your food for 30 days. Eat from the farm, not the factory for 30 days.

Dane: And do it, do it in a stainless steel pot or bake it or pressure cook it. Instapot. Yeah, no,

Josh: no.

Yeah. Like do it whole, not just whole foods. Like don't, don't cook spam on your, like, you know, not well that's not what we're talking about is like, you know, and eat what you like, but eat responsibly not the the stuff. And like it goes so long. It's like, yeah, I always do this too. Like try it for 30 days and then come back to me and see what happens.

There's no such thing. He had local real food and, and so, and also another thing about money, people go, well, I can't afford it. Do you understand that the average American only spends 11% of their income on food? What do you think the, what do you think the percentage of the income your great-grandfather spent on his food, his time, energy, and money to feed his family?

From what I've heard over 50%.

Josh: Yeah. But you, you think about where we are today too, right? It's not an excuse like what was important back then, right? Shelter, food, food, clothes on my back. Yeah. Repeat like, and I was happy, happy in nature. The, the most happiest, healthiest people I've met are in the most destitute places of, of Peru and like Costa Rica.

There's too much information and there's, if we go to simple, 'cause that's what we're talking about. Instead of going, what's the peptide? What's the stack? What's this thing? What's this protocol for me? Yeah, we can do that. We don't hold that container. What you said is get that foundation. Right. What is this foundation?

What is your, what is your routine in the morning like? Do you step on the ground in your bare feet before you hit your phone?

Dane: Yeah,

Josh: right. These little things do matter and people are hesitant because they simple is effective, but it's also elusive because what we're talking about, no one, no one will really like say, man, he had it wrong.

There's 38 trillion cells in your body. We have no idea what they're doing. I love that you're bringing the spiritual aspect into it from a real perspective.

Dane: Yeah. I don't know how all

Josh: these cells in my body do what they do, but I know when I give it the right signals, they do.

Dane: Yes. And that's what

Josh: I wanna do.

Dane: See these are all epiphanies that allow you in the journey. 'cause everyone listening, you're not gonna get better tomorrow. You're not gonna get better in a week. But if you keep going and taking action, you will get better. It's a journey. My journey was longer than most, which is what gives me the courage to be here.

'cause I rarely meet someone who got more sick with the IBD experience. Only many other diseases that are worse than mine. But, and so I, I, I, that journey took a lot of years for me. And so, but I got balanced and simple in the journey. So that's what we're trying to do right now. We're trying to set you up to be ready.

This is ominous parasite. And then I found h pylori. Remember the doctor told me I had gastritis because I had ulcers in my stomach. And you, you know how hard is to test positive for, for, uh, h pylori through a stool analysis because a stool analysis predominantly finds bacteria infection. 'cause HP is a bacteria from the colon 'cause it has to travel through 26, 27 feet of the GI tract.

Upper. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh: See it's not, which is why, which is why they never talk about sibo. Like your, your small intestines supposed to be sterile. You don't want the guts there, you want it there. Yeah. And I just wanna make sure, 'cause you and I are very keen on this, but I want people to understand the, the, the importance of.

You can change your microbiome in 24 hours with the food you eat.

Dane: Yeah. And, and, and that's all part of this creation. Like, we're not the an, you know, it's like when you do these things for your body, there's this greater power beyond you. Kind of like the idea of trying to heal, um, a wound. Like if you cut your arm, you're not gonna take a supplement.

It's gonna heal itself. That's the body you gotta get outta the body's way. The microbiome can start fixing itself when you start, stop destroying it. And you know, a lot of the chemicals we keep talking about, all the microplastics and the glyphosate and the pesticides and the VOCs and the PCBs and all this, it's destroying it.

Josh: Well, and then when I talk to a lot of my entrepreneur friends and people like this, it's like, we all have choice. And it's like, you know, they, it's, it's elusive because they go, oh, but it tastes so good. That's called addiction. That's called addiction. Right? Well, well, sugar's more addictive than cocaine to our brains.

Dane: Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, it's made to sell. I mean, look, it's made to sell. You gotta learn. You know what you feel. Look, no one did anything. What we're talking about is, is greatness. It's great to heal yourself. It's hard. It takes a greatness. No one did anything great. Feeling like they should do that the whole time.

Like Muhammad Ali didn't get before a big boxing match and feel perfectly good. He felt scared. He felt worried. He thought about what happens if he loses. He realize he was a hundred thousand people who were about to watch him. What happens if his bad hip goes out? But he, but mentally, or what he said and what he showed was pure confidence.

Just because you feel angry doesn't make you an angry person. But if you feel angry and keep slapping everybody, every time you feel angry, you are an angry person. 'cause you can't control that. So our feelings, everyone feels all this stuff. Every, your feelings are not, are not unique. That was really big for me.

I'm having cravings. Yeah, everyone does. So what's the difference between success and failure? Allowing your feelings to dictate your actions. Now, the way you have to do that is you gotta dance with that, with giving yourself, you have to substitute what you want with another good feeling. So when I wanted sugars, I went for a walk in the sunshine with Bob Marley in my ear.

'cause the way Joss continues to stay healthy now, and I stay healthy, is we live what we built. You're not gonna exit this guys, you're not gonna exit this, you exit this, you're gonna start getting sick again.

Josh: The way, the way my mentor has told me, a good friend of mine now, um, is he says, you have to be the product of your product.

Right? Yeah. And from, from a and, and he'll, like you said it earlier too, like. Doctors don't go to school like you, you said the read the book, you do the thing. It's like, but when you're in your own wellness, healing journey, it's a do you first principle you don't like, I'm not here reading books only on healing and wellness and then applying them to you.

Dane: And, and so is that not true with success in any other thing in life? Name one thing. You want a career, never a marriage.

It's you ne you don't, like in fitness, you don't arrive at having strong life.

Josh: You just get better every day.

Dane: You, you get, you get there and then you have to maintain and then you can celebrate. You can move and that will keep you in balance. It's not like you'll never have a drink again or do all these things.

You can do that as you build and as you grow. And what I've found, what's really cool and set me free, Josh, is the better I've gotten, the less I've even needed or wanted. That's the really word, wanted these things in my life. I don't want alcohol. I was so angry that I wouldn't be able to drink it when I was first diagnosed.

I don't want alcohol. I don't want gluten. It's not that I can't have gluten. I have no desire. Yeah. I don't want to poison my body.

Josh: Well,

Dane: that's, I don't wanna go to the club till two in the morning. I don't want it. There's a difference. I'm free.

We're all human. Right? You're not gonna be perfect. Like there is something to be said about the Pareto principle in 80 20 and like, but if you're really sick, you gotta dial that thing up.

Dane: Yeah, you do.

Josh: You gotta dial it up. Like we're not talking about being intensive forever, like you said. Yep. My, my wellness routine is very simple now.

Yeah. Because I've gotten to a place, and I also know through my own experience in other people's, like no matter how sick you are, no matter how bad you think it is, every human on the planet that divine in you, every single person on this planet has the right and ability to heal. Not everyone does because of the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that we're talking about, but you can pretty much turn around anything in three years or less.

Dane: We can, yeah, you're right. We can rebuild and um, I'm gonna give, you know, some takeaways right now that people can use. What can you start to rebuild?

Where do I start, Dane. Okay. Try this. Start focusing on what you're not gonna do before you focus on what you are gonna do. I

Josh: love this one

Dane: because if you really look at it, it's really about not trying to metaphorically dunk the basketball. It's about staying away from the poison. If you can get balanced by saying, I'm not gonna be snacking all the time, try this, try to eat three times a day and don't snack.

Very cheap, easy herbs. When I go to the restaurant, I only get hot water with lemon. If they put the lemon in the bottle, I the water, I ask for a new one. 'cause that lemon's full of crap on it. And I only want a little bit of the squeeze of the lemon. Or, you know, that's why I wanna eventually build my own restaurant.

'cause all the restaurants are crap, in

Josh: my opinion,

Dane: most of them. But it's, um, hot water with lemon. Get rid of plastic, drinking outta plastic drink. Get rid of cold water. It's not helping you. It's gonna flush, it's gonna absorb better. Stop snacking. Get rid of alcohol, get rid of drugs, stay sober. Find happiness sober.

You can put your hands in the air, you can smile, you can laugh. Now, I know some people need to use, and that's fine. I smoked marijuana every day for a long time when I was chronically sick. It help with the pain. It helped me deal with those days. It helped me deal with depression. I get it. And so I, I'm saying that generally speaking, but as you keep going, I kept looking at it and saying, do I still need it?

Okay. Um, uh, next start working on fixing the biomechanics. That's not a conspiracy theory. So you can relate and connect with people. Start with the simple stuff. How do you enhance digestion? How do you start balancing the microbiome? Everyone agrees there's a microbiome. Everyone agrees it's important, both conventional and natural.

So what do we all agree on? That's not gonna make everyone think you're, you're crazy. Start there. Right? And so, microbiome, the gut lining. How do you support the gut lining? How do you support the digestion? How do you support energy levels in adrenals? One of the biggest things I see a lot of people continue to miss is they're chronically sick.

They're chronically stressed, and they've been malnourished for a year and a half, and they've been very sick. You know what that does to your adrenals? They're capoot. Adrenals help to create cortisol, which regulates inflammation. It's your stress hormone so that you need some cortisol. Not too much, not too low.

Next become. I like how Brian Johnson says it honestly, become a professional sleeper. Go to bed. When when I decided I was gonna heal and not just being angry that someone else couldn't heal me, let that sink in. I told everyone in my vicinity, this is my bedtime. Ain't nothing getting in my way. I went to bed at 9:00 PM I had to deal with, I feel boring.

I feel like an old man. I feel like I'm not missing out. I went through all that. Then all of a sudden I was waking up at six in the morning outside with my book on my highlighter, reading on possibilities with the sun on my face and quiet, and I'm feeling better. You heal when you sleep. Okay? Then look at the same thing with healing.

That's your body's power to heal. And if you can't sleep through the night, you need the work protocol to make sure you sleep at night. Don't drink so much water and uh, right at night, try to eat three, four hours before you go to bed. Okay? And if you lose a few pounds doing this, that's okay. If your energy and brain fogs go is getting better and you're losing a pound or two, you're probably losing inflammatory weight.

And it's probably due to a slow lymphatic system that causes you to swell and retain water. So this is, that's where you can always go. And when you get lost, I want you to meditate because I heard a, a wise man once say that. Scholars find the answer from without books, college degrees, but a wise man or even a in eastern world, a yogi, finds the answer from within.

Go out earthing with your actual feet in the ground and move the blood flow, get natural infrared light through the sun, and watch how that dopamine inspires you on your next move. Your next move is already inside of you. But you were too traumatized. We're too sick, we're too angry to even see it and feel it.

So we gotta get in balance for today. Open up that consciousness to see that next move. And it's not gonna be the move. It's gonna be a great move, and you need about 200 of 'em stacked on top of each other in the right way. And you're gonna pivot. You're gonna mess up. It's not gonna work as well. That's why you need your journal.

That journal is your, your bank account of health, right? If you're a person who likes money and you all wanna get financially free and I wanna pay off my house and all this type of stuff, you go always looking in there and doing your p, your checkbooks and your p and l and all that stuff. Do that with your health.

Josh: Well. Where you focus, your is where you focus your energy and what, what you track and measure improves. Yeah, exactly right. Just in your business you track and measure all your KPIs and you don't in your life and you're right.

That's crazy. What, what's also good is, is just getting it out of here and on paper releases some of that energy too. Like there's a transfer out, like just journaling is like five minutes. That's it. These are not things that are going to, you know, sleep. I already tell everyone like, what's the stack for supplement?

Like what do I do for longevity? I'll go sleep. It's the number one, number two, number three protocol stack supplement that I recommend for longevity. 'cause you can put three and a half years of vibrant life on your life if you do that one thing well. Consistently. Yeah, right. No one's ever gonna sleep well every night.

It is the medicine. Mm-hmm. So thank you for enlightening. Where do you, you have your community, I wanna talk a little bit about that, right? We gotta, we we're almost at the end of our close here, but. What, uh, do where's, how do people find you in your community?

Dane: Yeah, so, um, it, it's crohn's colitis lifestyle.com.

So, Crohn's class lifestyle on Instagram and YouTube. And what we do to help support that integrity and trust is we hold a free one hour IBD strategy session, deep dive on your case, what you've been through, what your experiences, and see if there's a potential connection if, if we can't help you. Um, and so we always wanna start on that right foot, so we hold that space in off of that complimentary for, uh, anyone I can actually send Josh, if you, uh, people wanna check it out, they can just find us or put it in the show notes.

We know you came from

Josh: Josh. Yeah, we'll definitely put it in the,

Dane: in the show notes, in the links.

Josh: We wanted to make sure. That's my goal. A lot of this is if, if, if you're suffering from these things and you don't, you've gone through that story, or you're in that story, or you're, you're in some space here, like take action.

Yeah. When you feel it, like if you're feeling something today, like out of this conversation, take that action step. Yeah. Because there's plenty of people that'll go, they'll listen to it and then they'll just go on into their role one day. Yeah. But like when you take action when it aligns. Yeah. Universe always.

Always is in your favor. Now it's always in your favor, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't have, it doesn't have an opinion. If you choose the wrong thing, it's gonna support you in that space, not because it's good, but it's going to lead you down the wrong direction because you've chosen that path. It doesn't care whether, what path you choose, but we all know the dark cloud that follows you or the path that is, is more light.

Dane: Yeah. And if I could, I, I like to talk, I like to do things based on what I needed and what I would do.

I'm not the CEO of your health, you are. I'm your coach, like a boxing coach is not gonna win the fight.

Josh: Yeah.

If you go left or right, your team needs to come together and feel like you got each other's back and you're really working for each other and trying. Um, and then, but you have to be accountable to that. You can't just throw it on someone, write a check and throw it on Someone say, you are in charge of making me healthy, or You are the reason I'm sick.

You can't do that. And then number three is. You need a place that actually specializes hyper specialization in what you're going through. When I was sick, I had these great naturopath doctors around me, but none of them specialized could show me testimonies reversing it or had it themselves. So when I started building CCL, I said, I'm just gonna build what I needed because there were so many holes in what I needed.

I need someone who actually had IBD specialized in IBD and could treat IBD and could show me testimonies. We have more testimonies than anyone on the planet. I post a testimony every single week, every week. Real people, non actors who've been through a minimum of four months, usually average 7, 8, 9 months of work who are going on and volunteering.

So who actually hyper resonates with you? Do they have IB, D, maybe it's female, maybe it's Crohn's or Crohn, ulcerative colitis or constipation. Find people that you trust, the integrity, they can actually show you testimonies. There's a hyper focus in there. And also make sure two things with a community.

Make sure that pro the program can be customized to you. There's a lot of McDonald's drive through stuff out there where it's just like, here's the generic plan. I, I knew a girl, she paid $5,000 to this really kind of famous person. Who just gave 'em the most generic thing in the world and she came to me and goes, I don't know what to do with this piece of paper.

Josh: Well, we're in the age of personalization. We cannot, like you need touch points.

You need touch points. You need, I work on genomics a lot in the functional Well, because how, what better way can we personalize it through story? Yep. Your own experience. Yep. And I, I love that because it's not that you, you have the empathy for people going through the same thing because you literally visually felt it.

You've gone through it like yes, for some, this is why. I can't make it up, but like cancer patients find me. I don't, I have a resonance because I can, I can understand what they're going through and now it's this WellCare side that they've forgotten because in, in all these spaces, they just wanna keep you less sick or less dead.

And then you come out on the other side and you don't even have a place to go.

You can ask them to be accountable. They need you. They need that coach. They need that tough love sometimes. Yeah. They need someone to lead them to show, look, look what Josh did in his life. This isn't the end. That there's a future, that there's hope. You know what that does to someone's soul who's been just told they have this disease, there's nothing they can do in the trauma they went through and then they come and they meet you and look, look at this guy.

He was probably told he'd never be here. Look, he got kids. He's happy, he's fun. He's laughing. Man, that's, it's, you know how valuable for someone, it's someone in Despairity. It's

Josh: true. People's story is how they listen, how they learn, but also that hope piece, right? You said? Yeah. I love it. Like the coach piece.

And he always goes like, someone just gives me their, like, I, I mean, I, I've studied with shamans and shaman and energy. I love it. It's my favorite place. But shamans don't give a shit about the story. No. They're just gonna help. And so it, it is not that they don't care, but the story isn't the problem. It's like, how do we get you there?

Not because they're not empathetic, because I am gonna listen. That's why when you, me, whoever, like we work with people, I listen. Million dollar listening, because guess what? When you're heard you feel safe. When you feel safe, your nervous system is checked down when you have hope. When I dispense drugs, like as a pharmacist for years and years and years, I would put the best intention every single one.

And I didn't know it at the time, but that's what kills people. Mm-hmm. Like the police placebo effect is real. Yeah. Like, let's nurture why we can heal ourselves better. So

Dane: I really, this, this, well that's the boat. You know, you're on the boat, you're the captain. It's like, you know, most of the time I was just looking at people in an ivory tower, like,

And it was just like, call or, I've gotten all these credentials so I have the power to tell you what you're feeling through what you're going through. There's nothing wrong with these people that are brilliant, but true healing ha doesn't happen in a bottle. It happens with participation

Dane: and the, and the last thing I think I would look for, yeah, and the last thing I'd look for when you're, when you're looking for that place in that home is look for pe.

Look where you have, can transparently talk to the community. I've been in programs before where I couldn't actually talk to anyone else who was going through the program. So what I said is like, I need to create a safe, policed environment where I'm not gonna, you know, get nuts. So people yelling at each other.

So you don't just have a coach, you don't just have training, you don't have to have a program, but you're literally saying, Hey Megan, you are also pregnant with IBD. What are you taking? What are you doing? Hey, you, um, you got three surgeries and you also had to have a, uh, you had a fistula. What worked?

What are you doing? Did the DMSO do methyl sulf oxide work for you? Uh, what about hyperbaric oxygen? Did it actually get rid of the fistula? You know? Oh, did you actually get the HBO to be covered by insurance? How'd you do that? We, well, we, through our peers, real programs let you talk to other members. Yes.

If they don't let you talk to the mother, it's 'cause the reviews are probably not great at all.

Josh: Well, that is the power of community. The community isn't the numbers. Yeah. It's you. The Cleveland Clinic said it very, very clearly, like we learned from our peers through gru way more than we learned from someone telling us what to do now.

So thank you for enlightening it in your way. Yes. And your story. This was fun. We'll do some more. Thank you,

Dane: Josh. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Let's

Josh: grow because

Dane: yeah. The world needs more healing. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me and everyone to listen. Thank you for being here. And I, I hope we poured so much into this.

I hope it changes lives. And God bless you, Josh. Um, and healing is possible. It's hard, but you can do it. Thanks for having me.

Josh: Beautiful. What a great episode. All right guys. Thanks. That's a wrap. Until next time, stay well. Thanks for joining me today on Beyond the Pills. If our mission to de-prescribe 10 million unnecessary medications resonates with you, share this episode, subscribe and leave a review.