Hannah Aylward (00:00.118)

Immigrant cohorts who come over from Asia, India, different countries from very low prevalence societies of IBD or basically non-existent. When they come over to Canada, which is an extremely high prevalence IBD country, within a single generation, their kids are getting bowel disease at the same rate. Your genetics don’t change when you cross the ocean. Your environments do. Therefore, your environment creates an ecosystem where your genes can overreact or react poorly, pushing immune responses to the wrong way.

You’re overreactive now. So it’s not autoimmune, it’s not genetic. And then they say it’s idiopathic.

Hannah Aylward (00:40.376)

Welcome to the Nutrient Dense Podcast. I’m your host, Hannah Ilward, holistic health coach, functional gut health practitioner, and the founder of Han. So many people are continuously failed by conventional and alternative health care. We are here to do it differently. Alongside my team of functional registered dietitians, I’ve helped hundreds of women around the world overcome their chronic digestive issues when nothing else worked.

I’ve learned a thing or two about what it really takes to transform your health from the inside out, and I’m here to share it all with you. Please keep in mind that this podcast is for educational purposes only and should never be used as medical advice. Now, let’s dive in. Your transformation is waiting.

Hannah Aylward (01:28.184)

Hello, hello, my dears, and welcome back to another episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast. I’m super pumped for today’s episode because today we have Josh Deck on the podcast with us. Josh is a holistic nutritionist and physicians consultant specializing in Crohn’s, colitis, and severe IBS. After reversing over 500 cases of Crohn’s and colitis, previously thought impossible to fix, he’s worked with some of the world’s most renowned doctors.

He’s since launched a top 2% globally ranked podcast, spoken on international TV, and has been recruited to the Priority Health Academy as a medical lecturer. He now helps educate doctors and the public on the holistic approach to gut health and chronic digestive diseases. So let’s dive on in. Welcome to the podcast, Josh. Hannah, it’s a pleasure to be here. You know, hearing some of this data, it’s a bit of a throwback. That’s actually the bio’s bang on. It’s just, it’s older. We’re 700 plus cases. We reach top 1%. Like it’s just been such a journey.

And honestly, I feel all over the moon blessed to be able to do this work. It’s such a an actual joy. Yes. Well, we need we need it. We need the support. We need the help. We’re gonna kind of get into why as well. But let’s kind of just start with your own health journey. I mean, so many of us get into this field because we’ve kind of struggled ourselves. I feel is why you start searching for alternative routes and other solutions, because they often give you none. So

How did you get into all of this? Did you struggle with digestive issues yourself? And why did you really choose to focus in this area? Pain to purpose. It’s actually a fairly long story and I’ll compress it as best I can. When I was early teens, probably 11, 12, preteens, my mom almost died. Actually, she dealt with what we didn’t realize at the time was a perforated colon. She went in for emergency surgery. And over the years, she ended up having two bowel resections done where they pulled out one foot of her bowel each time. They put a mesh into her belly.

that to hold everything in, but then her organs stuck to the mesh and had that removed and her gallbladder removed and this and that. So she’s been through it my entire life. And my dad had gut issues. And I just figured, you know, it’s my turn at some point. And when mine started, I remember being 13, 14 years old, you know, after sports and anxiety and there were some instances sort of growing up in the hood that didn’t go so well. And so I always had this kind of nervous gut. And I was a wrestler and then every time I go to compete, I’d have diarrhea and it’s a whole to-do.

Hannah Aylward (03:49.234)

Long and short, by the time I was 18, my back was covered in acne. I had wasn’t an inch that wasn’t covered. I had joint pain and brain fog and ADHD and mood swings in the works to when I was in my 20s, things popped off and I was 15 babbles a day, blood, mucus, lost 30 pounds, crippling anxiety. Like I used to be a paramedic. I loved a chaos and a you know, a crime scene or whatever it was. And I was at the point where going to the grocery store caused panic attacks.

And the depression was so so deep, I planned my own suicide two or three times. And so it was a really nasty dark hole to climb out of. And luckily I was able to. And I started talking about it online. And a lady came to me. This is why I said I’m trying to keep it short. And she said, I’ve got alterative colitis. Can you help? I kid you not. I went to Google. I said, What is alterative colitis? I had no idea. I said, Well, I looked into it. I said, They say it’s this autoimmune genetic random condition, but I looked at the research. I said, It just

Doesn’t add up. I think there’s more to this than what everybody thinks. And lo and behold, within 90 days, she was about 80% better. Her functional medicine doctor had been with her for three years, calls me, says, tell me everything. We became friends. We just published literature together, July 15th of 2026. Some new research. I lecture for his academy. We co-share. It’s just been an amazing ride because it took one doctor to listen to something that was a bit more unconventional.

And that is the very, very long story as short as I can possibly make it. Yeah, that’s amazing. I mean, there’s a lot there and it sounds like you’re on like such a different side of all of this now. I mean, so much progress has been made. Like I would have never guessed that had you not just shared that with us, you know? You’re such a vibrant, appearing, healthy, happy person. So you really turn some things around. I feel amazing today.

Yeah, that’s incredible. It’s a and it’s amazing that Western trained doctor kind of listened and took this in and was willing to make adjustments. That’s what we need. That’s what we need more of. So there’s so much there. So it sounds like you went through your own journey here and then we’re seeing rates of irrital bowel disease kind of explode right now. Can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah. So there’s two aspects or two umbrellas. And I believe they’re actually two sides of the same coin at the very least on the spectrum.

Hannah Aylward (06:11.022)

So there’s irritable bowel syndrome or IBS, which you hear about a lot. And that’s really just there’s no marked inflammation or markers. It’s actually they use what’s called the Rome 4 criteria in order to measure, which is how many bowel movements a week, what’s your pain scale, et cetera. Then on the far end of that is think of it like a sprained ankle versus a broken ankle. You have inflammatory bowel disease or IBD. And these umbrellas are Crohn’s and colitis or ulcerative colitis. Now, there’s roughly something like

15 to 18% of the population of the US has been diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. So thick sprained ankle, right? Very low grade, but bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, et cetera. Up to 71% complain of symptoms at least once a week of those same things. So we have up to 71% who are having some kind of gut disturbance, who haven’t quite reached diagnostic criteria for irritable bowel syndrome. But then we have on this far end of the spectrum where things are getting worse and worse and worse.

With Crohn’s and colitis, where we’ve got people bleeding from the bowel, 30 to 50 bowel movements a day, extreme weight loss, high cancer risk, excruciating pain. It’s a nightmare. I would argue in some instances worse than cancer, because at least cancer has an end. You know what I mean? Like a lot of these patients, they are stuck and they have no options. And it’s a very dark road if you don’t have any hope. Here’s the problem that you’re asking about.

These bowel diseases back in like the nineteen thirties, it was nineteen thirty-two, Dr. Burl Crohn was one of the guys who found this Crohn’s disease and named it. It was so rare, it didn’t even really make a footnote in a medical textbook. It was just it was something you never saw. In the nineteen fifties, there was about two to four per 100,000 people in the US who had Crohn’s or colitis, these inflammatory diseases. Fast forward to today, the prediction is now by twenty thirty, it’ll be one in one hundred.

Which for those of you doing the math, that’s as many as twenty-five to fifty thousand percent increase in bowel diseases in just seventy years. One lifetime, fifty thousand percent increase. It’s unbelievable. It’s an epidemic that the world should be screaming from the rooftops and talking about, but nobody is. And it’s an absolute travesty because it’s gonna come sweeping in where one in a hundred people are gonna have a bowel disease. Canada’s almost there. We’re seven per hundred thousand. We’re on track to be one in a hundred. Yeah.

Hannah Aylward (08:32.363)

Yeah. It’s wild. And we’re also seeing rates of colon cancer skyrocket as well. And I feel like I just saw s some statistic, but I don’t want to butcher it. But it was like it was similar. I mean, rates have exploded, right? They’ve like five X. It’s gone crazy. And they I mean, to the point where they’re dropping the age for the colonoscopy, which like should have been done, I think, a long time ago. But it’s wild. I mean, people are getting this stuff younger and it’s way more common now. So

I know that obviously health is complex, but what would you say or do you think are kind of like these main contributors? Like why do we see these rates exploding right now? And we don’t always have like a super, super clear answer. There’s a ton of things, but what do you think are some of these biggest contributors that are like making that number explode? You know what’s interesting? We don’t have the hard data yet, but I’m actually in the middle of writing another paper on this. So I actually looked at the data between

Industrialized versus industrialized countries. Because we we say bowel disease is an industrialized problem, right? It’s those of us in the Western world, it’s our food or environments or something we don’t know, but it’s an industrial issue. Yeah. So I’m in the process right now of comparing data from industrialized Southeast Asian countries, right? Singapore, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, even like parts of Japan. But we’re looking at these industrialized Asian countries who are just as industrialized as we are, if not more so, had the same access to medical care, colonoscopies, gastroenterology.

So you could argue it’s almost a one-to-one comparison. Here’s the thing we have anywhere from five to twenty five times more bowel disease than they do in what I call the Anglosphere. That’s your Canada, US, UK, Australia, New Zealand. And that that Anglosphere, we are roughly 6% of the global population. It’s not that much, it’s actually a very small segment of the population, but we have up to 60% of the global cases of bowel disease. These Asian countries.

They make up 35% of the global population, but only have three percent of the bowel disease. So to contrast that, six percent has 60 and 35 only has three. What are we doing differently? So I’m comparing the data. And what we’re finding is number one, we use way more antibiotics. That’s an obvious killer for bacteria. But the big standouts, believe it or not, it’s gonna be the antibiotics, but ultra-processed food, go figure. We compared the data anywhere from

Hannah Aylward (10:53.986)

Five, depending on if it’s rural China versus like Japan or Taiwan, we have five to twenty percent of their daily intake of food is considered ultra processed. For us, it’s north of 67%. Yeah. Those are the biggest standouts is antibiotics. Of course, you can look at alcohol consumption, lack of dietary fibers. That’s another consideration. Meat consumption is actually very close to identical if you don’t take ultra-processed refined meats. You just look at raw, like off-the-animal steaks and chicken breast.

We’re eating the same, so it’s a basically a non factor. But these are the biggest ones, even molded environments. But then look at birth control. That’s another risk factor. It increases the risk for I believe Crohn’s by up to forty-seven percent, right? Smoking and drinking and stress and C-section and bottle feeding versus breastfeeding, these are all risk factors. And so we’re seeing here is our westernized world is basically leading the world in bowel disease experiments, see how quickly we can make people sick. Yeah. It’s wild. And what’s interesting is when we look at the research for acne too.

we say like acne is kind of the same deal. Like it’s a disease of our areas. You don’t see it as much other places. Like it’s basically here. No. You never see it in the Congo or like in Tanzania ever. Yeah. Which is interesting. I mean, yeah, we did some training under Dr. Julie Greenberg and she speaks to that. It’s just an it’s interesting to pull the data and look at like, these people in other areas of the world like literally aren’t dealing with chronic acne. It’s not a thing, but it’s so prevalent in our spaces, which is

Just interesting to point out. So, okay, so we’re seeing these rates explode. And a lot of people will say, especially with autoimmunity or bowel disease, it’s like this is genetic, right? You just get this, it’s genetic. What do you have to say about that? This three pillar ideology of it being a genetic, autoimmune, or idiopathic condition, they call it unknown. It is the biggest farce in medicine. And none of it was really like intentional, I don’t think. Back in I’m gonna butcher my dates, but back around the nineteen fifties.

There was a researcher, TISkin, someone or rather, who found some antibodies that these antibodies must be auto. They must be attacking you because it looks so close to your tissue. About two years later, they found out they’re not attacking you. They’re not at all. They’re actually attacking microbes. And over the years, every single antibody we found is either attacking a protein or a sugar on bacteria, yeast, fungus, something else. Anti-OMPC, it’s outer membrane pore in C attacks a protein on the outside of E. coli. ASCA.

Hannah Aylward (13:17.942)

Is anti-saccharomyces cerebisiae antibody. Well, it’s a yeast. It actually attacks the manon sugar on the outside of a yeast. None of them attack your own tissue. So it’s not autoimmune at all. And to really nail that coffin together, there’s something we call the Watebsky Rose criteria. And this has been, again, back from the like 50s to 90s or something. But Rose and Bona and Watebsky, they came together over the years with their research and said, what makes a disease truly autoimmune? And there were three criteria.

The first is transferability. So you have to be able to transfer either the auto antibody, that thing that’s attacking your tissues, or an autoreactive T cell, like something that again is attacking you. You have to take that from a sick host, transfer it to a healthy host, and they get the disease. This happens in graves and other diseases where they can transfer the disease over by transferring the attacker and then it attacks their tissue, they’re sick. The second is effectively training the immune system to attack. So you take the tissue being attacked or whatever it happens to be.

transfer it in the healthy immune system what you learns to attack that bad tissue. So both of these are transferable qualities. The third is just certain types of immune activation, things that run in parallel with autoimmune disease, lymphatic activation, things like that. Bowel disease, all these other truly autoimmune Huntington’s and Graves disease and Hashimoto’s, they meet all three. Crohn’s and colitis only meet the third criteria, showing your immune system is working. Jokingly enough,

What actually meets that criteria as well is a beasting chronic tennis elbow for like athletes with a recurring injury. They also meet that third criteria. So there is no evidence it’s autoimmune whatsoever. This is way back in the day, and I met my first client. It’s like I think the evidence is wrong. This is the stuff we started finding. So that’s pillar one. I got two more pillars, so cut me off anytime. You want to jump in here? No, no, no. This is good. Keep going. Okay. So the next one they say is that it’s genetic. Now we look at all shit of colitis. It’s

Upwards of 15 to 19 percent, we have what’s called a genetic penetrance. With Crohn’s disease, it’s 20 to 40 percent penetrance. Now, what this word means is that if these genetics are present, this percentage of the time, so in Crohn’s, 20 to 40 percent of the time, you’ll develop that disease. It can’t possibly be genetic with that information alone, right? 20 to 40 percent of the time when you have this gene, you get the disease. That doesn’t mean you actually have a genetic condition, it means it’s a weak link.

Hannah Aylward (15:42.466)

But that’s what’s called the NOD2 gene. It’s one of the only the highest prevalence gene. The rest are like 5%, 2%, 10%. So it’s very, very low. All sort of clitis again even less. But then we have two more big pillars here. The next is the Swedish twin studies. So back in the 1988, or sorry, Halfer Sin was 2004. Anyway, built off the research, they found these Swedish twins said, look, 50% or more of the time, both of these identical twins actually get Crohn’s disease. It must be genetic, it must be familial.

And this term stuck. Just like in the nineteen fifties when they found what they thought were auto antibodies, the term stuck. It got into textbooks. Two years later they said, just kidding, they’re not attacking you. The term stuck. So that’s how it’s carried over. They said, it’s familial. It’s in the twins. Therefore, it must be a genetic issue. Well, that was disproven hugely later in time. They followed up with the twin studies. That was what Halferson did around 2004, followed the twin studies and said, actually it’s a much lower rate of both twins. But then what else do they share?

They share environments and food and habits and all these different things. And they discovered actually it’s an environmental condition that holds on this genetic weak link. The last nail in the genetic coffin, again, stop me anytime. It’s a lot of information. The last nail in the coffin here is immigrant cohorts who come over from Asia, India, different countries from very low prevalent societies of IBD or basically non-existent. When they come over.

To Canada, which is an extremely high prevalence IBD country, within a single generation, their kids are getting bowel disease at the same rate. Your genetics don’t change when you cross the ocean. Your environments do. Therefore, your environment creates an ecosystem where your genes can overreact or react poorly, pushing immune responses to the wrong way. You’re overreactive now. So it’s not autoimmune, it’s not genetic. And then they say it’s idiopathic. We just talked about dozens of root causes.

All right, there’s actually a study from Daniel Piovanni back in 2019 who identified 71 different risk factors for Crohn’s and colitis. So to say it’s autoimmune genetic and idiopathic, meaning unknown cause, if that was a lot, go back the last five minutes and listen to it again. But it flies in the face of everything we know about the actual data, the actual science. And the problem now is we say, well, there’s nothing we can do that suppress your immune system and cut your bowels out rather than take a look at the data and go, whoa.

Hannah Aylward (18:03.786)

Something is clearly driving it. Let’s look for what that thing is. And nobody’s doing it. And I’m I’m like, I don’t know if you guys are listening on the audio. I’m like dancing here. I’m getting so frustrated with it because medicine is so wrong and people just don’t know that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it there’s so much to say about all of this, but I think that we can see with many things that, you know, it’s like

The epigenetics is basically showing us that your genes can kind of set the foundation a little bit, but the environment is really what sets off the expression and can contribute to the development of the condition. So it’s interesting because we will definitely see people who, you know, will say things like, well, my mom has these issues or so and so has these issues or it runs in my family or whatever. And I’m like, No, you you guys are you’re eating the same. This is, you know, you have like similar nervous systems, like same air, same water.

Yes, like belief systems, stress patterns, all of these things. And then you’re eating the same food. Like there’s so much more that goes into it. And no, we can’t control every little thing, you know? I mean, you can, but we can do, I think, a lot better than we are doing to set ourselves up for success to minimize the risk way more, right? Like and and decrease that risk. So there’s a lot to say there. But I think it’s a really empowering piece to kind of highlight for people because sometimes it’s like, my gosh.

This will happen to me because it happened to my mom or happened to my dad or whatever. And it’s like you may be at like a slightly higher risk, but there’s a lot more to it. So let’s get you some tools that you can implement to minimize that risk as much as possible. But yeah, I think it’s just a really important thing to note here. We are big fans of eating enough protein over here on Team Han. Protein is essential for muscle repair, a strong gut lining, balanced blood sugar levels, and so much more.

For most of our clients, we like recommending around 100 grams of protein per day to start, and adding in a good quality protein powder can be super helpful for hitting those numbers. It’s an easy add-in, you can throw it into a smoothie or even add it to oatmeal. Choosing the right protein powder can feel so overwhelming. Half of them are full of fillers and crap ingredients, and the other half, honestly, just taste bad. Equip protein is one of my go-to recommendations for our clients and one of my personal favorites.

Hannah Aylward (20:19.66)

We love it because it only has a small handful of ingredients. It’s 100% carefully sourced, real foods, no additives, allergens, chemicals, fillers, or other junk. It’s gluten-free and it contains 21 grams of protein per serving. Equip’s prime protein also offers a complete amino acid profile. It’s also independently tested to make sure that the protein powder is free of harmful amounts of heavy metals and toxins like glyphosate, which is honestly super hard to find.

Equip Prime Protein is a grass-fed beef protein. So it is animal-based, but it’s dairy-free, unlike whey or casein protein powders. Grass-fed beef protein is packed with collagen, gelatin, and micronutrients that your body needs. We also see that it’s typically much better tolerated in our clients with chronic gut and digestive issues over something like a plant-based protein powder. In addition, some of their flavors do contain natural flavors, but they’re distilled vapors from natural and organic compounds.

or fruits like vanilla, coconut, and strawberry and are processed without any chemicals, fillers, binders, or artificial ingredients, which once again is incredibly hard to find. Personally, I buy both the chocolate and the vanilla flavors of the Equip Prime Protein, but honestly, they have like so many other incredible flavors out now. If you’re interested in trying out Equip Prime Protein, you can use the code HANNAHAYLWARDHHC at checkout for 15% off.

And we’ll pop that code in the show notes of this episode for you as well. So once again, you can go to equipfoods.com, choose the flavor of protein powder that you want, and then use code HANNAHAYLWARDHHC for 15% off. I’m a big believer that the right supplements can be game-changing when it comes to overcoming things like burnout, gut issues, slow thyroid function, low energy, acne, and so much more. But the supplement industry is honestly the wild, wild west.

The FDA doesn’t approve supplements before they’re sold, so it’s really important to choose high quality brands whenever purchasing. Many brands aren’t third-party tested, some don’t actually contain what’s even listed on the label. Totally crazy, I know. And quality can vary a lot from company to company. That’s exactly why we use FullScript with all of our clients.

Hannah Aylward (22:32.238)

Through my online supplement dispensary with FullScript, you can get access to all of the professional grade third-party tested supplements that I trust and use with clients. Fullscript vets brands before they’re introduced into the supplement catalog and they hold them accountable to quality standards every year. Whether you’re looking for a high-quality magnesium or probiotic or digestive enzymes, maybe vitamin D, anything in between, you can shop them all in one place with confidence on FullScript.

This is personally where I purchase all of my supplements, and I’m not kidding when I say I have all of my friends and family purchase from there too. If you’re going to invest in supplements, you want to actually get what you think you’re getting and not just a bunch of fillers or random ingredients. As a listener of the Nutrient Dense podcast, you’ll also receive 15% off of your orders and you’ll get free shipping on orders over $50. You can get exclusive access through my personal full script store at

us.fullscript.com forward slash welcome forward slash hand. Through this link, you can also access my favorite product catalogs like supplements for nervous system support and my current favorites for gut and digestive health. Once again, you can go to us.fullscript.com/welcome/han or find that link in the show notes below and get access to practitioner grade third party tested supplements for 15% off.

Hannah Aylward (23:58.68)

So what I would love to get into now is like, what do you typically start with when you’re working with someone? So someone comes in, say they’re having 30 bowel movements a day, they’re having blood in their stool, they’re i have extreme inflammation, they’re not feeling good at all, they probably have low energy, they’re probably losing weight, all of these things are happening. What we’ll see too is just like very reactive. I’m curious to get your take on this because a lot of the times it’s like, okay, gut health, more fiber.

More this, whatever. And a lot of these people that are super sensitive can’t quite tolerate that. I’m curious if you see that as well. We definitely see that. So it’s like, where do you start with these people that are just so highly inflamed in so much pain and reactive? Let’s talk about what I don’t want to start with. First thing is pe I people come into me all the time. Like, I look at my gut microbiome sample. Look how bad it is. I must have this problem. I must have that problem. I must have dysbiosis cause my gut issues. No, no,

You have these things in your body, these are self-regulating ecosystems. Let’s start with number one, what caused it to dysregulate? Because otherwise you come in, you’re buying gut microbiomes and toxic burdens, organic acids and IgGs and food sensitivities. I’ve had people come in with multiple tens of thousands of dollars. I had a woman in recently, she’s more than seven figures in for her son over the last decade, trying to figure it out. But all this data does not matter. So if you’re in an extremely inflamed state, you’re in a flare. My recommendation get prednisone.

Just get the drugs. Right. And it might sound kind of counterintuitive being like a functional practitioner, but the idea is that these medications exist for a reason. I’m not anti-medication. Yeah. I am anti-taking a chronic inflammatory condition and applying acute treatments chronically. That’s not the way to get better. I picture it like having a nail stuck in your foot and you just put numbing cream on it, and every time it wears off, you put more cream on it. That’s kind of what your doctors are doing. So

When I look at somebody, if we can get them stabilized through medication, great. Outside of that, there are other diets that have been proven in studies with clinical research. For Crohn’s, we have what’s called the C D E D diet. That’s the Crohn’s disease exclusion diet. They showed 70 to 94% pediatric remission rates in eight weeks, and up to 60% actually maintained that after 24 weeks, which is what, eight months.

Hannah Aylward (26:15.658)

And so adults, it was 45 to 83% remission and about 40% kept it after 24 weeks. On the UCED, this is the alternative colitis exclusion diet, it was about 37, 38% in pediatrics, again, 40% maintained in eight weeks. If you need something more restrictive, then I put down to the SCD, that’s a specific carbohydrate, which is up to 40% remission rate for six months in PEDs, and some small cohorts actually held 100%.

But these were actually discovered by or tested and found by Ari Levine out of Israel, at least the UC and C D E D diet. Whereas the S C D diet came out of the 1920s, when they were first seeing kids with some gut issues, which are anomalies, they started playing with this and it was refined by Elaine Gotchell back in the 90s. She wrote a book, I forget what it’s called, for her daughter, and put her into full remission. So what we have to look at, and I say this not to say that diet’s going to fix your bowel disease. If that’s what you’re hearing right now, there’s lot more to this conversation about actual root causes.

Or talking about is saying your leg is broken right now. How can we stabilize that so it doesn’t hurt? So we can then go to fix it later with other tools. That’s why we’re talking about food. But that’s what I’ll look at the the Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis exclusion diets, SCD, or if you’re in really rough shape as well, the elemental diet. There’s lots of great options out there from absorb plus to physician’s choice from integrative therapeutics. Dr. Rusio has one. There’s different availabilities for these, but you absorb in the small intestine.

There’s very little residue. So you might not poop minimally if at all. And you’re getting nutrients in without irritating the tissue or feeding the bacteria, which are part of the problem. Then we can go on to actually talking through a history. And your history, in my opinion, matters more than any test can ever give you. Hmm. What you’re saying, you’ll kind of use different diets with different people, depending on what they’re coming in with, using some of these tools and kind of refining based on the person. And as

Hopefully more of like a temporary solution to bring inflammation down and then take them to the next step. Yes. It’s sort of like what’s the emergency now? If I’m riding a motorcycle and I fall off, my arm flies off. I don’t want lavender oil. Right. Right. Put me under. Give me the anesthesia. Give me the doctors. Like there’s a time and a place for that. But I don’t chronically want that. I want to go to physio and rehab and build my strength back. In the immune system, it’s reacting for a reason. So now that we have you stabilized with something, you’re

Hannah Aylward (28:37.816)

Like if you’re five bowel moments a day with diarrhea, you’ll be fine. But if you’re someone who’s like you’re losing weight, you’re chronically ill, you’re undernourished, you’re 10, 20, 30 bowel moments a day, you have no quality of life, you’re not sleeping. Get the drugs. Just take them for now. I know people want to avoid biologics, but I have a mom we’re working with a young 13, 14 year old kid, and he’s been in rough shape. I don’t blame her. She wants to go natural, but we said he needs medication. Yeah. And lo and behold, here he is. He’s already up 10 pounds, his colors, he’s feeling better.

Because it just halted it enough for us to get in and work behind the scenes. Yeah, I firmly agree with that. I think there’s absolutely time and place with for all of all different inter types of interventions. And we’ve gotten some plants before where they’re very resistant to that. They’re like, I’m not using that.

It hasn’t worked in the past, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, I understand, but you can’t tolerate anything. Like you’re not tolerating anything. You’re in the hospital. I mean, our interventions can’t really work when it’s that severe. We’ll definitely see people who, you know, will have one off trips to the ER and stuff. And like, that’s okay. Things kind of come back down and we can work with them after that. But when it’s so inflamed and so chronic, I strongly agree. This is a little bit of like a side tangent, but

We’re kind of seeing these like GLP ones also be able to potentially decrease inflammation. And there was a new research showing that I think it came out this year because you know, a lot of research is being done in this category, but showing that it can be really helpful for those with MCAS. So it’s like that’s another situation where I think like the intervention can help stop things and just get you feeling better. So then our tools can work for you. Strong agree with you there.

And I think it’s an important thing for people to hear. And then like we’ve had clients too that we’ve worked with. And, you know, after doing the work with us, then they’re like, no, I didn’t go in for my I didn’t go in for the steroid. I didn’t need it. I didn’t need it anymore. You know? And I’m like, Okay, great. But we would never take them off of that. You know, like that’s between them and their doctor. And eventually a couple months in, it’s like, okay, things are getting better now. And you didn’t need to go. Like that’s wonderful. But yeah, it’s things can backfire when we do that a little too quickly. So

Hannah Aylward (30:45.214)

Love that and really deeply agree there. So then you mentioned the history. Talk to us about that. You said someone’s history is arguably more important than all of the other things going on. So expand on that for us. Sure. Your history tells me everything. So I I subscribe to the idea everybody is perfectly made and intelligently designed. You know, I don’t believe in evolution for a lot of reasons, but one of them is I think we’re too dumb to keep ourselves alive for like three billion years. You know, look what we’ve already done in the last 70. And so when I look at this.

I subscribe to the idea, and this is why the s we found the solutions we found. We said, well, if the body is perfectly and intelligently designed and everything’s meant to work, what is it in our modern man made human world that has caused this perfect design to suddenly like become dysfunctional? So we started peeling out the layers, and the first thing I want to look at right away is number one, and this you can’t help, but what are you inheriting? There’s a an interesting theory that’s now been termed as generational dysbiosis. And the work actually came from Justin Erica Sonnenberg out of Stanford.

Took mice and over the years and generations of mice, which you can do very quickly, they showed that they had microbes that were lost over time, right? Yes. Each generation from their grandparents, et cetera. And what they actually found when we study humans, now we can’t see generational dysbiosis in humans or take hundreds of years. It can’t be done. But we did find when they studied the Yanomami tribe, these are previously uncontacted Amazonian tribes, they have, they actually sequenced their gut microbiomes and they found they were the best gut microbiomes.

On planet Earth, they have between 1,000 and 1600 unique bacterial species inside of their gut, which I’ll get to the numbers here. It’s pretty astronomical. The Western world, like UNI, Canada, UK, et cetera, the Anglosphere, these are the ones with all the bowel disease. They have between 150 to 300 different microbes, unique ones, compared to up to 1600. But worse yet, those with Crohn’s and colitis average 100 to 150. So they’ve lost up to 90% of their gut microbiomes.

And this is one of the reasons we’re sick and we inherit this. If your great-great-grandmother pre-industrial revolution had a thousand microbes after antibiotics and processing comes out and you know waste materials from in from industry, then you know, your great grandmother’s now born with say eight hundred, then grandma’s born after antibiotics with six hundred, then mom’s in the fifties with ultra processed food who gets four, then you get two, your kids get one. We get less and less over time and they’re extincting. So, number one is what you’re inheriting. So that’s already a weak link.

Hannah Aylward (33:11.896)

But then on this already weak link, what stacks that? Well, if you are C-section birth, that’s actually a risk for Crohn’s colitis, some less so. And I forget the exact stats. One of them is moot, but for Crohn’s and colitis, like these stats do matter. It’s just whether it was Crohn’s or colitis. But C-section birth versus vaginal, because coming through the birth canal, you’re covered in these microbes. You get inoculated, it gets into your mouth on your skin, et cetera. Breastfeeding is a huge one. And these are your first inoculations.

And so many babies, up to 30% now are being bottle fed instead of being breastfed. So they’re not getting those bacteria. And then what we find now is we have even less microbes. And then we’re sterilizing and hand sanitizing, and kids are picky eaters. So they’re eating junk food. And then we get pokey pokes. I can’t use the V word, but you get these, because YouTube will ban it. But you get these things, which also further can damage the immune system. There’s direct connection we’ve seen there, causing immune dysregulation or dysfunction, causing the immune system to overreact.

And then we get kids on antibiotics, which kill things even further. The ultra processed food kills them even further. And this is what we’re seeing right away. So your history, right from how you were born to how many antibiotics. Did you have ear infections, tonsil infections? If I see a kid with tonsillitis, I’m looking at mold in the home right away. Right? Number one thing I see for causing tonsillitis. Then you got antibiotics, and then you went through stressful periods. And then you went to your 13, 14, you got acne, so you’re given accutane. that’s a big one for burden for the liver.

And then your periods are all messed up because of all these other things. So your doctor puts you on birth control, which increases your risk by 47% for bowel disease. And then, and then, and then we build these layers. And now that I have a history, I can say, well, here’s all the things that quote, filled your cup, so to speak. Right. Because as we say, genetics load the gun, your environment pulls the trigger. So let’s find all the things that filled your cup. Now looking at you, what’s the top of funnel? What’s what’s the very top of issue? Are you living in mold now?

Is it just dysbiosis? You’ve been chronically stressed and the cell danger response, we call it like all these different factors. Now I can determine what test I may or may not want to do. Because if you go out spraying and praying and doing all these different labs, you could spend thousands of dollars on nothing only to come back and go, I guess I didn’t need those because my history didn’t indicate this would have been a good place to put my money. Right? That’s why history matters more than anything. Now we have a a bead to follow and like this through line through your entire medical care.

Hannah Aylward (35:31.97)

To see what happened, therefore establishes what’s wrong. We can now test to prove or disprove it, and we follow that trail. And I’ve seen over seven, I’ve overseen myself in my practice over 700 cases now of Crohn’s and colitis reversing because we’re following these through lines and following the logic of a body that became dysfunctional due to very identifiable factors. It’s complicated by nature, but it can be so simple from this high-level view. And so I think people need to start seeing it.

Yes, absolutely. And it’s interesting because there is this concept, especially it’s Sonnenberg, right? And he is really about like re-inoculate, like reinoculate the gut, more bacteria, feed the bacteria, which is totally valid and wonderful. And we actually had some people that had like done his approach, two people in the last round of our program. I speak to it because the history is so important. So they had been like prebiotics, prebiotics, prebiotics, fiber, fiber, fiber. And then they get into work with us and I’m like,

Something is not right here. And I talked to them for five minutes and I’m like, we need to test for mold. Like this is feeling very moldy to me. And then of course the test comes back and it’s sky high. I mean like super high, not three times, like 20 times the limit. And I’m like, okay, this is why you weren’t responding to just fiber, fiber, fiber. Like the bloating’s not getting any better. Repulating is not helping this because we’re dealing with this constant environmental toxin exposure. So

Just an example, you know, it’s like there’s all these beautiful tools and the history absolutely informs like what tools do we use? When? What do we start with? And where do we kind of go from there? Cause even the best theory and the best research won’t work in certain cases because of other things going on, you know? So just something interesting. Well, I think it’s good you bring that up because that that’s called terrain theory. And this was actually back from late 1800s, mid 1900s when things started coming through.

Back to Ignaz Semmelweiss and Louis Pasteur and Eli Mechnikov and all these different guys who discovered bacteria back in the day, it’s called terrine theory. And we look at replenishing the microbiome. That’s the best case scenario because your gut microbiome and your immune system communicate and train each other and make you more resilient. And with that, it increases nutrients and balances genetic expression and all these things. But what we find, if you took a healthy tree, for example, and you took that tree and transplanted it into toxic soil.

Hannah Aylward (37:51.0)

What happens to the tree? Yeah. And dies, of course. And so what we have now is these healthy microbes from like a fecal transplant is the thing that’ll actually take stool or microbiome extracted from someone and either implant it or put it in pills to a healthy person to inoculate the bacteria. This is a fifteen to thirty thousand dollar procedure. They have an extremely high failure rate because what we’re doing is trying to transplant microbes into an environment that is

It’s the same environment that killed the first set of microbes. It killed your own bacteria. Why are these guys going to survive? Yeah. And so we’re going prebiotics, prebiotics, probiotics, prebiotics. You could a, with prebiotics, be feeding the bad guys that took up the vacancy in that environment. Or you could be throwing probiotics and all this money into a toxic environment where the terrain cannot support this growth, like a tree into toxic soil. And I’m so glad you brought up mold because it’s such a huge driver. And here’s a stat for you.

I took three hundred and seven different conversations that I de identified, of course, for anonymity, and I threw them into Claude. And I said, Hey, Claude AI said, Tell me about these people. What are the through lines? Blah blah blah. What is the percentage? They got a bunch of data. Up to eighty seven percent of these people were suspected or confirmed to have mold as a current or past part of their history, like a very relevant part of their history. Yeah. Eighty seven percent. No wonder we’re all sick.

I mean, this is really my soapbox. This is really like if you really want to hear me, this is what will really send me over the edge. Cause I have dealt with I have dealt with mold personally. And I was doing quote unquote everything right, you know, and I was like exercising and I was eating well and I was eating I eat more processed food now and I don’t eat a lot of processed food, but I wouldn’t touch anything. You know, I was like the worst thing I would eat was like almond flour crackers.

Sometimes and then we were like a splurge. Like I was like Whole Foods, Whole Foods, Whole Foods, Exercise, All the Things, Non-toxic products, one drink a month. I was on my P’s and Q’s and I was living in mold and I had no idea. And I was inflamed and my gut was a mess and all of this. And I just so since I’ve lived it, I’m like, it obviously hits a nerve for me, but it’s so underemphasized in people’s history. I think it there is, I know some people think, so I’m I’m curious to get your thoughts on it, that like

Hannah Aylward (40:10.11)

IBD is like mold, like like stemming from mold exposure due to that like systemic inflammation that it can contribute to. So I definitely want your take on that. But it sounds like you’re seeing a lot of it. And once you’re exposed once, it can be, you know, these mycotoxins can hang out in the body, you can have a hard time detoxifying them. So there’s a lot there. But recently, at least in the US, there was, I think it was literally yesterday, there was articles published because they finally did some research on.

This population in hospitals, and these people were dying. These people in the hospitals were dying, and a big percentage of them were getting exposed to mold. Like everyone was getting exposed to mold in the hospital, basically. So I don’t want to co totally butcher this study, but it was like these people are dying. We don’t really know why they’re dying. And the hospital’s full of mold. And these sick immunocompromised people are in the hospitals dying from the mold exposure. So

Like everyone can fact check me on that, but that’s what I pulled out of there. And of course they will make the argument for like, well, those people are immunocompromised, so they can’t tolerate it. But healthy people will be fine, you know? And I’m like, No, what if I want to like scream at the tomato lungs? I’m like, no. But you’re in a hospital. No one’s healthy. That’s why they’re in the hospital. I’m like, my gosh, there’s mold in the hospitals. Like someone has to fix this. So even though it may not literally kill you, it’s not helping you. It

Maybe in twenty years, you know, like it’s not helping your health. So can you speak to like how mold impacts the gut? It sounds like you’re seeing a lot of it. And do you think it is a big contributing factor to IBD? I think it’s massive. In fact, there’s an organization I’ve been a part of for some time now. I work for, you know, their nonprofit. It’s Root Cause for Crohn’s Kalitis Organization. And what we actually started finding is mold, yes, it’s a huge, huge issue, but

One of them actually named their Facebook page is IBD mold toxicity. Yeah. It’s it’s how prevalent it’s becoming. And a lot of the work we’re doing is surrounding mold as a primary driver. So yes, it’s huge. I gave you that 87% stat. What it does, mold toxins are funny because they can take anywhere on average from three to six months to degrade inside of your body. Not everybody is a good excretor. In fact, there’s certain HLA, DRDQ, these these gene haplotypes, which do not excrete mold very well. They’re highly reactive to the mold. And it tends to also be

Hannah Aylward (42:26.4)

Some congruence in this HLA gene for those who are also gluten sensitive. Not celiac necessarily, but gluten sensitive. I’ll back it up. Here’s a great example. Gentleman I’m working with, five foot nine, got really, really sick. He renovated his own home, the works was a fixer-upper, got rid of the mold, but didn’t retest, it all came back. His mold score, we did the test in his home called an ERMI, the Environmental Readiness Mold Index. And they basically they scoop up a bunch of dust, they which collects mold, they send it to the lab and say, here’s how many spores per gram of dust.

Here’s the gene of the spore or the genetics, therefore the risk. They give you these scores to how risky is it, how much mold do you have? And the top end of the score was a 15. He was 40.8. gosh. Massive, massive mold levels. But his urine tests, which showed excretion, he had two strains of mold, which are both moderate. So that told me, because even a healthy body, you’re breathing in mold, gets in through your skin, your eyes, whatever, you’re gonna be peeing this out nonstop. Your body’s detoxing it. So not only was his body accumulating a

It ton of mold, but he couldn’t get rid of it. So that’s one example of basically worst case scenario. On others, it can pass through, but either way, what mold’s gonna do, it damages your microbiome. It’s actually antibacterial. That’s where antibiotics come from. They take them from mold. So it’s antibacterial number one. So it damages your ecosystem. Number two, it damages your cellular health and mitochondrial health. You have thousands of these mitochondria per cell producing energy, they’re part of detoxification, so many things. They get damaged, they compromise. It pushes your immune system.

To be overreactive. It can suppress your body’s ability to fight parasites and viruses, but it can elevate things like histamine responses and make you more reactive. It can damage your gut lining. Like it’s just a it’s neurotoxic, it’s liver toxic, it can be kidney toxic, your detox pathways get junked up, it can congest bile flow and make that thick and sluggish, which is part of detoxification and hormone balancing and immune regulation and on and on. Mold is one of the worst things we can ever have inside of our bodies, are these mold toxins. But here’s the difference. Remember we talked about

Balance, right? Everything they got has to be balanced. Look back what happened to Yellowstone National Park in the early 1900s, right? They went, Look at we have too many wolves, they’re killing people, they’re killing animals, blah, blah. They got rid of the wolves. Then Yellowstone Park started dying because the caribou overgrew, the elk overgrew, there was no natural predators. They had too many, they were eating too many plants. Therefore, the plants started dying. So they worked their way into the rivers and they started eating all these plants, keeping the water clean, and the fish started dying, and everything started dying because they got rid of the quote bad guys.

Hannah Aylward (44:54.636)

They brought them back in and suddenly Yellowstone is is flourishing. What this did indicates is a great example of what happens inside of our gut, because the quote bad guys, candida, parasites, mold, they live in harmony with us in natural environments. There’s mold in the woods. It’s not going to kill you, but in excessive amounts, it’s going to be a problem. And we grow excess amounts behind polyurethane plastic sheeting, insulating our houses. We grow them in excessive amounts in food that sits in the fridge covered in chemicals.

And there’s arguments that even the mold is not so much, I mean, I believe the mold themselves is toxic, but it’s also the chemicals they break down, like drywall and paint and these VOC compounds, that becomes toxic because mold degrades things. That’s why it grows across wood. It’s eating the wood for food. And as it does it, it off-gasses things from your home. So now we suddenly have what could be, if you were barefoot naked in the woods, ultimately this optimal balance of good and quote bad.

suddenly we’ve taken the wolves out of Yellowstone Park or he put too many back in. And we wonder why our ecosystems are dying and out of balance. This is really what it is to me. I’m not worried about molder parasites. I’m worried about excess coming into an imbalanced environment, allowing the bad to flourish, causing problems in my body it can no longer keep up with. Yeah, it’s a good point because I think there is a lot to it and there are some trains of thought where people are like

they’re really heavy on terrain theory. And it’s like you should be able to tolerate some mold and you should be able to do all that. Totally. And I think there’s like truth to both sides because a lot of people are coming in. It’s like mold is not the only thing. You know, the gut microbiome has already been hit with antibiotics. The stress is high. The nutrient deficiencies are there. It’s another thing filling the bucket. Right. So in my opinion, it’s both. And I do think we have to lower those levels for people to get better. I don’t think you can just

Prebiotic your way out of it. I it’s like literally what we’ve seen in clients too. It’s just not working. It’s like that kind of stuff just isn’t working. But you should be able to detoxify some of it because you will get exposed to it. So it’s kind of this happy medium. But I think that’s a really a good point that you made. And in regards to mycotoxin testing, we just had a client’s test come back. Nothing. And what we were trained is that you’ll totally get false negatives because.

Hannah Aylward (47:10.966)

She has known mold exposure. She can see it all over the HVAC in her house. And the mycotoxin panel came back with nothing, but she literally feels better when she’s outside of the home. Now, some people may say it’s like just anxiety or whatever, but I’m like, no, the body is storing it and you literally can’t excrete it. So it’s a really good thing to point out because I think in best case scenario, we want to like run this test a couple of times and like support your body and see how these levels change. And they can. You can get the false negative.

You can do the detox work and then it can come back way higher. So there’s a lot of nuance there, which is why I think working with someone is just so important, someone that’s seen a lot of this and walked people through this process of detoxifying from mold. And the one other thing that I would like to kind of get your opinion on here is I saw this medical doctor, I think it was like yesterday, the day before, someone was showing an environmental total tox panel and this doctor was kind of like.

Well, yeah, I mean, that’s great. These toxins are in your urine. Like, so you’re detoxifying them. Your kidneys and liver are always detoxifying, so it’s not a problem, you know? And I was like, I don’t think so. So I would I would like to get your two cents on that. Cause he was basically saying this test is a waste. Your body’s you know, excreting these toxins for you naturally all the time. That’s why they’re in the urine. So this test is like totally a joke. Sure, yeah. I mean, if I walk by and I slap somebody every time, it’s like, look, he slapped me, but he’s

gone, so I must not be getting slapped anymore. I’m gonna come back and slap you once every minute. Like we have these repeat exposures, and maybe that was a super poor analogy. It looked better in my head. But the idea is you get this test and you go, look, you’re excreting it. It’s a large assumption to make that you’re excreting 100% of the toxins, number one. Yes. But number two, that there’s no damage they’re doing while in transit. Right? We know okra toxins and aflotoxins and all these mycomeaning fungus, but these mold toxins, we know they’re

Hepatotoxic, that’s means liver toxic. They are nephro, meaning kidney toxic. We know that. We know they are neurotoxic. We know they they store in fat and bile and they can cause thick sluggish issues. So to make the assumption that the urine test means nothing because you’re excreting some, you’re assuming you’re excreting all and that there’s no transient damage being done, which I think is absolutely ridiculous. Don’t we want to look at why we’re having such high levels? Like where is all this exposure coming from? Because the body is having to keep up with this demand.

Hannah Aylward (49:23.756)

I mean it’s we’re putting the body under s a much higher demand that than we once were. So yeah, your body’s always detoxing for sure. But I kind of think personally, I’m like, if anyone is taking the narrative of well, the body detoxifies naturally, you don’t have to thwart it, I’m like, you just haven’t worked with chronically sick people. Like you just haven’t seen the people that really, really need help with this. I agree, but I guess I look at that is I mean our environments are no longer compatible with our biology.

And so you’re right to say yes, you’re detoxing all the time. you don’t need to support it because your kidneys and livers detoxify naturally. You’re right. They naturally detoxify natural toxins. We’re now living in an environment that is so unnatural, they accumulate your body doesn’t know what to do with it. It damages things, it damages cells, it damages mitochondria, it creates holes in the system. It just doesn’t work like it used to. We’re making leaps and bounds and assumptions, which I don’t think are necessarily wrong to make. We’re making these large assumptions and ignoring the rest of the data.

Just like detoxing. You’re assuming there’s nothing else there. Or I can have some xylitol or maltitol or whatever food emulsifiers like polysorbe 80 in my food because the dose makes the poison. Yeah, dude, but it’s death by a thousand cuts. There are toxins everywhere and a million unique drops still fill the bucket. Yeah, exactly. It’s like, yeah, dose makes the poison and we have small doses of three thousand things. It’s crazy. No, yeah. I thought it was interesting. I was like, gosh, I don’t agree with this, but

I wanna jump back for a second and then jump forward briefly. I wanna make sure that people feel well supported and not like, my gosh, there’s nothing I can do. Totally. Because you mentioned breastfeeding, C sections, all of that. So which I I like I I totally I totally understand that that will impact the microbiome and all of that. And this is

Just a quick note for all of the women who are like thinking about getting pregnant, wanting to plan for all of that, I highly recommend doing some of this gut work beforehand because you will give a lot of your microbiome to your baby. And of course, I’m biased. This is like my job. So I’m not here to convince anyone of anything, but I’m like, if you can do some of this prep work first, because I think it’s very important because of that. But for the women that have to deliver BSC section, for the women that have trouble breastfeeding and they can’t.

Hannah Aylward (51:32.032)

What can they do? How can they support this reinoculation of the gut microbiome when things happen that are out of their control? Yeah. And that’s an important thing to bring up. I get a lot of shit from people on like you’re a man, don’t tell me I’m like, look, it’s just the data. Okay, it’s the science. But the reality is, if you don’t do a C-section in some cases, your baby will not be here. Do the C-section and deal with it later, right? You can’t breastfeed. Great. If you don’t feed them anything else, they will die. Give them something. I’m okay. Get the formulas.

I just say, look, if you can’t A, optimally would be donor milk. That would be great. If you can get donor milk, amazing, but it’s gonna be expensive. If you can get high quality formulas, like don’t just use cow’s milk. That that’s the worst thing you can do, but get high quality formula, not the junk from Nestle that’s full of corn syrup and canola oil, like that’s setting up for failure. If you’re doing a C-section birth, you can actually do a vaginal swab and reseed, where you’ll actually take a cotton swab, like a sterile swab of some kind.

Or a sterile gauze, you’ll insert it into your your vagina and you’ll let it sit there and absorb for a couple of hours. When your baby is born, you’ll pull it out and then wipe them down, face, skin, arms, legs, everywhere, and you can inoculate their skin that way. Otherwise, the first microbiome they’re getting is from the doctor’s gloves. Right? So give them what you can, those workarounds. And then other things we can look at, yes, there are infant probiotics. There’s a great little company. No, I mean, shout out where qual you credit given where it’s due. Look at tiny health.

They’re an amazing organization that specific they actually started working in infant microbiomes. And if I’m not mistaken, they do work on reseeding and plans and programs for infants. And they can actually help you inoculate that way as well. So the idea is do what you can, work around it. You can’t breastfeed, donor milk, or at the very least, a high quality formula, infant probiotics. If you have to, elective C-section is very different than going through and doing emergency C-section, for example, right? So those are little things we have to look at because

If we have the choice, let’s do what we can to set up our future generations for success because they’re already coming into a messed up world, right? Then we look at those probiotics and prebiotics and then ultra processed food. You know, well, my baby’s picky. You know what? They’re a baby. They’re gonna get hungry, they’ll eat something. My my toddler’s picky. Yeah, well, if you leave them for long enough, they’ll eat the paint off the wall. Like they don’t give a shit, right? So feed them the right things. Do your best. You don’t have to buy organic everything either. Go to the environmental working group. Just just Google the dirty dozen EWG.

Hannah Aylward (53:53.718)

It’ll show you the 12 fruits and vegetables, most covered in the worst pesticides. That if you’re going to use those, buy them organic every year. It’s strawberries and grapes and blueberries and apples and spinach and that stuff. So just abide by those basics. They have the the clean 15, which are the 15 you typically don’t gotta worry about pineapples and root vegetables and things like that. So there are ways around it. Control the ultra processed foods. Don’t oversanitize everything. You know, let them get their hands dirty, put their fingers in their mouths. That’s fine. That’s part of getting that microbiome.

If your kids are growing up, for example, and they get an ear infection, do what you gotta do. But if you can avoid oral antibiotics, that’s best case. There’s lots of other options out there for systemic infection, natural herbs, naturopaths. Even those who don’t agree with homeopathy, I’ve seen it do what you could call miraculous stuff. My cousin and I went when we were kids went swimming in the lake and we both got the same ear infection, same day, same time. He went an antibiotic for two weeks. I was done with homeopathy in three days. Wow.

My dad went back to the doctor, he looks in my ear, he’s like, huh, it’s gone. Like, what happened? You know, I gave him these homeopaths. He’s like, that stuff doesn’t work. Okay. Right. So there’s always alternatives out there. Sometimes things will just run their course. Every flu and cold, don’t give your kid antibiotics. Even for yourself, look at what you can do now. If, provided it’s just reseeding, there’s nothing to do beforehand. Yes, your prebiotics and probiotics and fermented foods. Make sure they’re really fermented because our industrial food system sucks. You’ll find

sauerkraut with citric acid in it that’s been added or lactic acid that’s been added to give it the tang, but there’s no actual bacteria in there. So you’re not getting anything fermented benefit anyway. So you just have to watch your sources go back to real food. And my general rule and then I’ll shut up is get it as close to if it’s something you could grow and pick and like farm or hunt and kill. That’s it, that’s where real real food is. Everything outside of that is in some way adding drops to your bucket. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you for that. Cause I think that women will be appreciative of of those tips. And, you know, cause sometimes like you gotta do what you gotta do and it does and things don’t turn out the way that you want them to. And it didn’t it’s not your fault. Your birth plan gets thrown to the thrown to the side. I mean, I have multiple friends who are like, I’m gonna deliver it home, it’s gonna be great, it’s gonna be this, X, Y, Z. And it’s like emergency C section to save the life, save the baby. And it’s not what what they wanted, you know. So in those cases, it’s like, what else can we do after that?

Hannah Aylward (56:16.674)

And I think it’s beautiful just to equip yourself with those tools if that does happen. The next thing I wanted to touch on kind of before we start wrapping up a little bit is the gut brain connection. And what role do you see the gut brain connection playing in your clients with IBD? It’s a lot more than we give it credit for. What’s interesting is since we’re speaking about birth in development as a baby developing in the womb, what we actually have is something that’s called the primitive disc.

In between 15 and 17 days, is it looks like a stake, like a cartoon stake. And between day 15 and 17, it actually splits and divides and becomes the brain and the gut nervous system tissue. So, right from basically development, your gut and your brain are the same tissue, and they talk from that day forward. All the nerves start connecting. You have roughly a hundred billion neurons inside of your brain, about four to five hundred million inside of your gut. Now we have what’s we we know the vagus nerve, right? The super highway between your gut and your brain. They talk to each other.

This vagus nerve runs down the left side of your neck and it’s actually the tenth cranial nerve, up 12. It’s as big, it’s thick, like a base guitar string. You could pluck it. And it gets into your chest and it goes past your heart and actually spreads out like a horse’s tail. It fans out all these hundreds and millions of different bits, which innervate your entire digestive system. So they are always talking to each other. But here’s what’s my favorite part about this whole gut-brain connection. 80% of the signals between your gut and your brain go from your gut to your brain.

So your gut talks to your brain far more than your brain talks to your gut. When we talk about this connection, yes, what goes into your gut goes into your brain as well, and vice versa. But if we’re not taking care of this, if we’re doing things to compromise, if we’re highly stressed, that nervous system, those vagal toning, all the neurotransmitters, all these things become compromised. And then your gut and your brain can compromise each other. If you’re a highly anxious person, not only are you chemically shutting down your gut, digestive system, stomach acid, throwing off the pH, all those different things, which

cause downstream issues like going into a four motor company and stopping something at the top of the assembly line. By the time it gets to the end, it’s all screwed up now because you screwed something up early on that happens in guts. So that’s what stress will do that. Or if you’re consuming foods and having a lot of dysbiosis and you know junk food that’s that’s screwing up your bacteria in your gut, they produce more inflammatory things, byproducts and toxins and inflammatory cytokines, which can again irritate the nerve and the brain. So it’s this very important two-way communication and it can be helped.

Hannah Aylward (58:40.918)

Again, de stressing, getting sunshine, sun in your eyes, infrared light, barefoot in the grass, earthing, grounding, breath work, not eating on the run, you’re throwing the kids in the car and running to soccer and shoving food down your face. That’s a bad way to mess up your gut. Pause. Eat if you can. Chew 30 times, right? When you actually cook your own food and touch it with your hands, it stimulates digestion. When you chew with your feet on the ground, your body gets the nervous system signal. I am safe. It’s okay. It digests. You can’t.

Digest food and fight and flight, you have to be in this rest digest. There’s all these little things. So the gut brain connection, I don’t give it all the weight. I think some people go gut brain, gut, brain, gut, brain. It must be everything. I don’t give it the weight to be everything. There’s all these other things we talked about the last hour together. But it’s a very important piece of the puzzle, especially for those who are on the go. I’m not a stressy person. Yeah, but are you highly reactive to stuff? Do you ruminate? Do you wake up at nighttime? Do you have allergies and histamine responses? Like does your skin grow? Like all these other things.

You might be someone who feels chill, but your nervous system’s locked into the cell danger response. Like there’s so many layers to this puzzle. And I just want to encourage you, yes, consider gut brain, do the basics, humming, bagel toning, get wearable tech, whatever you want, take care of it. I just I don’t give it a hundred percent of the credit for the damage done to our bodies either. Yeah, I agree with that. I think it’s kind of a big, deeper underlying root cause that causes issues over time. But I don’t think

I think that the more physical, I guess we could call it, stuff has got to be addressed alongside the nervous system if you really want to get better. I I feel like nervous system regulation is having this moment right now on social where everyone’s like nervous system, nervous system, nervous system. And I’m like, I’m like, yeah, totally. And, you know, I d I haven’t quite seen anyone get rid of SIBO with nervous system regulation. Personally, I think that we need to do both at the same time, you know? So

I agree with you there. It’s like a huge player and not not the whole picture, which like nothing really is, right? It’s all of these things put together. So I just want to understand your process and so people can kind of understand. When you see someone to come in, you’re like, okay, let’s look at the history, let’s look at all of this. And then what kind of labs do you find yourself running to understand kind of what is going on that could be contributing to IBD? It all depends on your history for sure.

Hannah Aylward (01:00:57.25)

Right. Like somebody comes in, their big history is just dietary issues, cultural. Like, you know, I got clients from India, for example, and they eat a lot of carbohydrates, a lot of potatoes and chickpeas and rice and roti and flour, like all these different things. It’s a lot of carbs. Well, they’re more prone to have dysbiosis and fungal issues, right? That’s one thing. If you’re a kid born in the West who grew up on ultra processed food and, you know, a lot of antibiotics, I’ve had people before 20, 30 year old years old who have been on multiple dozens, 30, 40 rounds of antibiotics in their life.

That’s where we’re probably going to start. Yes, let’s look at your microbiome. But if your current history shows me that mold’s a current issue, I’m going to deal with that before I deal with your microbiome. So I’ll get a urine test, for example. Yeah. But like that gentleman, right? He was five foot nine, 99 pounds. He was so sick in his home. Well, his mold test was huge, 40.8, but he only had excretion of two different molds. Like we talked about, he’s piling it up. So what’s the next step? Right? We have to deal with what’s in front of us that’s stopping everything else.

But the history simply provides that through line. So I know the layers that have been damaged. So once we determine what’s the test right now, urine or organic acids or stool or hair tissue minerals or, you know, lymphocyte map will look at their entire immune system, immune paneling. These things fall into order. Once we know the history, we can map it out really wide. I picture like Iron Man, like good morning, Jarvis. And we throttle this stuff out. We can see it. And then we pull in one piece at a time and go layer by layer and we rinse and repeat. So

To answer the question in a roundabout way, there’s a lot of tests we’ll look at. Typically, the ones I’ll utilize I find myself leaning on more are environmental, so ERMI’s, your E R I, that’s the mold test. We’ll look at urine excretion for toxins, gut microbiomes, organic acid, hair tissue, IgG, IgE panels. If I’m looking for mold exposure, not food, I don’t care about food sensitivity. Rarely will I look at like an MRT, which is a food test. And I get asked all the time, what about genetics? Don’t care. Genes only load the gun.

Right. Something else pulls the trigger. So if I hear yeah, here I am, you know, I got a guy I’m working with, he’s 16, and we just now here we are a year later. We got his genetics tested. We found yes, he’s got huge gluten sensitivity, which we know. He’s got a couple of autoimmune susceptibility genes, which we we already figured through his testing. But now we have the proof for the rest of his life, here are the things he’s going to avoid now because of his genetics. But it’s at the end of the line for me to say, let’s let’s figure out the last steps here. Mm-hmm.

Hannah Aylward (01:03:21.676)

Yeah, we don’t run a ton of genetic testing. I think it can be helpful here and there, but it’s kind of like, I don’t know. I it to me, yeah, it’s really not the full picture. I think there’s a lot of a lot of other stuff going on. So I agree with you there. And when you’re taking clients through this process, I mean, are you seeing people hitting remission? What does that look like? Are we seeing people going from 30 bowel movements to regular bowel movements every single day? Like, what does that kind of look like? Cause you you what I think once it goes from IBS to IBD, you know, we see a lot of IBS. We do see some IBD as well.

And we’ve definitely helped people there, but we see more IBS than we see IBD. So I just feel like when you get this diagnosis, they’re like, this is it, you know. So what are you seeing with your clients? Like how much progress can people make here? I’ve seen a hundred percent reversals. Some people are sticky. It depends on the situation. If you’re living in a moldy home, we have a woman who’s doing that now, but she’s not in a position to remediate or to move. So we’re doing our best. You will hit a ceiling, right? Maybe it’s 50% whatever it is.

So based on your bio individuality, so what makes you unique to you biologically, based on your environment, compliance is actually surprisingly like it’s not that hard. Like we’ll restrict some foods and take some supplements, but some people don’t show up, they don’t follow, they’re slow to implement. That will change things. But we have a 92% success rate within four to six months of seeing reversal of an average of 50 to 80%. Amazing. But it’s where do you stop? Right. And a lot of people this is a hard conversation. And I know where we’re winding our end here, so I’ll make it quick.

I say that bowel disease, Crohn’s colitis, generally speaking, is something that time and money can often solve. Because if you can throw enough money at labs and spend enough time figuring it out and fixing it, you can get to the end. And very few people, maybe 1%, are going to get to the end and still have lingering issues due to immune collapse or dysfunction, due to lymphopenia or NK cell deficiency or something else. Most people can truly get to the end. It just takes time. I’ve had clients in that took them 12, 18 months, but they’re rare.

Most it’s up to eight. That’s why our programs are six and eight months long. Yeah. That’s I think really important for people to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel here. And with that, for someone who is newly diagnosed or who’s been kind of like in the depths of this for a long time with all of the stuff, the bloody stools and all of that and the severe pain, what would you say to that person overall? There’s hope and you have more control than you think. I don’t want to set false expectations, but sort of ties to your your most recent question. I had people come in with

Hannah Aylward (01:05:45.784)

50 bowel moments a day down to five and eight in three weeks. I’ve had some people where they went from thirty to twenty-five to twenty. It’s a slow trickle. But your story is unique to you. And now that we know we led this conversation proving here’s the data, it is not genetic, autoimmune, or random. I have a video on my YouTube channel. It’s pinned. It’s the first one you’ll see if you go there. It breaks down the research in about nine and a half minutes, where it all comes from. It’s the proof. None of this is what they say it is. So you have more control than you think.

Your doctor’s giving you medication and surgery as options, which makes sense. Because if you believe it’s genetic, it’s truly autoimmune, and there’s no reason it’s happening, of course, medication and surgery make sense. Once you realize none of that is true, this entire world of possibilities opens up. You just have to know where to look in the order to put it in. And for those who say, well, you I tried natural, it doesn’t work. It was probably plant-based medication. You tried to manage your symptoms. You took curcumin or qing dai or omegas or vitamin D, you took supplements.

to manage your symptoms, but you didn’t organize, you didn’t do the roots, you didn’t go layer after layer for every layer you have. So you just didn’t finish the job or approach it the right way. But natural can work and sometimes it works even better in conjunction with medication till you’re stable enough to come off. Yeah. There’s just takes a little bit of time, you know? It takes a little bit of time when we’re trying to reverse this or put this disease into remission. It’s like

Takes a couple, a couple months, consistency, all of that, and you’d be really amazed at what is possible on the other side, you know? So thank you so much for this conversation. Where can listeners find you if they want to learn more from you and potentially work with you in the future? Yeah, easy. So head over to gutsolution.ca. That’s all singular, gutsolution.ca for Canada. You can find my YouTube podcast, all the information. Or if you’re on social now, pop over to joshdeck.health.

I’m all over the place. For those of you who want that Crohn’s colitis, I have a podcast reversing Crohn’s and Klitis naturally, but it’s all out there on the internet. Just Google me, go to gut solution.ca. Everything is there. And I have so many abundance of free resources, hours, dozens of hours of free content. Yes, amazing. Thank you so much for this conversation. I’m excited for everyone to hear this one. It’s been a pleasure, Hannah. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast.

Hannah Aylward (01:08:05.078)

If you found this episode valuable, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and come back next week for a new episode. See you then.