Inflammatory Bowel Disease-Ulcerative Colitis & Crohn’s Disease: It Doesn’t Have to Be Your Story

The incidence of the autoimmune conditions ulcerative colitis & Crohn’s disease has become pretty common in today’s world. Unfortunately, a lot of people suffering from this condition are given intense drugs to suppress the symptoms while the root of the illness is not addressed. This is because there is no diagnosis code for microbiome imbalance. Some people have to go as far as removing their colon to get relief. At The Healing Center Denver, our doctors work tirelessly to make sure you get to keep the organs in your body. Seriously.

Some symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease include:

  • Mucus in the stool
  • Blood in the stool that can lead to anemia
  • Frequent diarrhea
  • Abdominal pain
  • Sudden weight loss
  • Other autoimmune issues

Each person is different, so each case is different. However, any one with ulcerative colitis is experiencing an extreme imbalance in the microbiome that causes chronic high levels of destructive inflammation. The goal for healing this condition in our patients is to eliminate sources of inflammation, recolonize the beneficial bacteria and calm the immune system. Sounds simple right? It’s complex and takes a significant effort, but you can heal.

The one hundred trillion cells that make up our microbiome do a lot for us. It’s a delicate ecosystem that communicates with the nervous system, our immune system that also makes nutrients and breaks down half of the waste we need to remove. It can take months to years to recolonize a broken microbiome. Fecal matter transplants can be a key tool in the process along with the rest of a customized protocol designed to restore gut health.

How does the microbiome begin to become imbalanced?

  • Antibiotic History
  • If you get a concussion
  • Fiber profile
  • Diets with glyphosate herbicide (anything non-organic-especially grains!)
  • Stress (down-regulates your Vagus nerve)
  • Blood sugar imbalance

The condition of ulcerative colitis is due to extreme inflammation, especially if you have all the symptoms above, it’s a perfect storm. How do you fix it?

  • Fix the metabolism/ Blood sugar
    • A broken metabolism causes dysfunction in our adrenals, our hormones, our nervous system, and our gut to name a few. In order to fix this,
      • Eat every 3-4 hours within a 12 hour window.
      • A diet with 50-250 plant materials per month.
      • You need to eat within an hour of waking up to give your body fuel for the day
      • Some people with a broken metabolism may experience nausea in the morning, waking at night, afternoon crashes, and sugar craving
  • Elimination Diet
    • At The Healing Center Denver, we use a low-inflammation food diet to retrain our eating to non-inflammatory foods like organic vegetables and low-glycemic fruits, grass fed and antibiotic free meats, and fats. We then challenge foods to build a diet that works for each unique person, coupled with food antibody testing a clear picture emerges for each patient about what foods work individually.
  • Kill protocol
    • A kill protocol means taking specific supplements to eliminate infections. You can find all of our favorite supplements HERE for each type of infection.
  • Nourish protocol
    • 20-25 grams of fiber…this usually has to be built slowly to tolerance
    • Take a spore-forming probiotic like Megaspore. Megaspore conditions the gut so critical good bacteria can flourish
    • Probiotics- sometimes direct seeding is beneficial
    • Take a postbiotic like Thaena– the sterilized version of a fecal matter transplant
  • Stimulating the vagus nerve
    • The vagus nerve controls communication between the brain and the gut and is directly impacted by stress and trauma. If the vagus nerve is not working properly, your gut is likely to become imbalanced. We stimulate the vagus nerve through breath work, yoga, meditation, adjusting and vagal stimulation devices.
  • Fecal Matter Transplant
    • Healthy microbiome samples that are directly transplanted to rapidly change the microbiome. These samples are extensively tested for unwanted pathogens etc. but you must choose for yourself if this is something you want to do.
    • Donors are tested to make sure they have never been given an antibiotic, not at risk for infectious diseases, not immunocompromised, and have no gut imbalances. They will also be screened for viruses, C. difficile, parasitic infections. The process includes merging your microbiome with theirs. Some processes include a retention enema, while others include a pill or both.

A lot of people with ulcerative colitis do not know the possibilities of being in remission, but there is hope and you can often get there without drugs.

Please remember, you need all the pieces to have an effective transplant. Blood sugar, diet, eliminate infection, etc. Without all the pieces, a fecal matter transplant may be wasted.

Contact our functional medicine Doctors in Denver, at The Healing Center today to see if a Fecal Matter transplant is right for you.

Can you imagine? We can.

 

Reference:
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/fecal-transplant

Lynch WD, Hsu R. Ulcerative Colitis. [Updated 2023 Jun 5]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459282/