Live Healthy with Crohn’s Disease

The Reality: You Can Heal Where the Doctors Can’t You have been diagnosed with something called Crohn’s disease, inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, or any of the other names this malady has been given. You have looked at all the scary literature and heard the dire medical advice and prognosis. What do you do now? Maybe you have acute symptoms and are enduring the debilitating effects of pain, fatigue, diarrhea, medications, and surgery. Or maybe you are in a remission. Your symptoms have subsided, but you are worried about when the next attack will be. Wherever you are in your journey, it is my hope that you can believe it can be better. Life with Crohn’s is not easy. You may find that the journey recommended in this book is not an easy one either, but it will be worth it, and it can give you the normal, healthy life you so want and deserve. You are the one in control, and your decision will give you the strength to make the everyday choices that will eventually lead to a symptom-free and disease-free everyday life. It is time to take responsibility for your own health and well-being. Just as one could not expect a doctor or a medication to cure heart disease, you cannot expect a doctor or medications to cure your Crohn’s disease. Doctors and medications can do nothing to help the main causes of the disease: your lifestyle choices, beliefs, and emotional reactions. Diseases come from dis-ease in your body, and dis-ease is the result of your lifestyle. Whether you are aware of all the causes right now or not, you do need to take responsibility, not only for the dis-ease but also for the healing. As you take responsibility for where you are today and then decide you can heal your body, you will learn what you need to learn and do what you need to do. Eventually you will find comfort in the success you will achieve, and that makes all the difference. Conventional medical treatments and medications work only for a time. Surgery works only for a time. Doctors can only do so much. What I want to share with you can work for a lifetime. You can heal where the doctors can’t. When you were diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, you may have been given any number of causes of the disease—or maybe none at all. Today, you may hear something like this: “while the exact cause of Crohn’s remains unknown, researchers now believe that a combination of genetics, environmental factors, and an abnormal immune response may result in damaging inflammation of the digestive tract.” There is no mention of emotions or stress being an issue. What environmental factors are in play? What is an abnormal immune response? Can I change this? This typical explanation only raises more questions. Was I born with this? Is it stress? Is it diet? Is it living in the city? Is it living in the South or the West? Is it my relationship? What am I doing wrong? How can I fix this? Conventional medicine is giving us no answers. It is my belief that the causes of Crohn’s disease are both physical and emotional stresses that have overrun our bodies to the point where they are not able to effectively eliminate the stresses. The body’s reaction is inflammation. I also believe (as with any dis-ease) that the majority of these stresses are emotional. The physical stresses affect the whole body, reducing the effectiveness of the immune system and impairing the physical body from functioning correctly. Emotional stresses have landed in your digestive tract and also caused your physical body to malfunction. For healing to be achieved, the causes of both the physical and the emotional stresses must be identified and then eliminated one by one. Crohn’s affects one of our most basic bodily functions—taking in food and eliminating waste. While it may be chronic and incurable, it is described as manageable, which by definition tells me that I can do something about this. I have found that to be true—but you do need to pay close attention to your gut and to what makes it hurt. You need to look at your life and emotional reactions and see what is causing the dis-ease. No matter where you are in the diagnosis, you are not past the point of no return, and any change will make a difference starting today. The work is in finding what makes a positive change to your lifestyle that will, in turn, make a difference in your health. This is what you will find in this book. I want to explore the fact that there are causes for this disease. Then I want to share some tools that I have found are successful—tools that will help you adjust your beliefs and lifestyle, reduce the symptoms, and heal your body. The reality is that this disease is a good thing in your life, a wakeup call, a blessing. You could argue that having to run to the nearest bathroom, experiencing pain after eating every bite, or staying home to sleep after barely making it through your workday instead of being out with friends are not good things. You would be correct on all accounts. But I am here to offer a different perspective—a perspective that will offer you a chance to see why you are suffering from this disease, how you can take back control of your gut, and why it is a blessing in disguise. The reality is that the life you have led, the emotions you have felt, and the beliefs that you have lived by have, in fact, gotten you to this place of dis-ease.