I’m going to do it, guys. I’m going to find the cure for Crohn’s disease.

First, a few premises:

  1. I have Crohn’s disease. I was diagnosed over 20 years ago. At this point, “having Crohn’s disease” is a pretty entrenched part of my identity.
  2. Second, I’ve done the drug merry-go-round to manage my disease. Guess what? It didn’t work. In fact, it made my life much worse. SIBO.
  3. Removing all the fiber from my diet and finally getting an infected dead tooth out of my mouth have allowed my body to eradicate most of the excess bacteria.
  4. I’m in better health than I’ve possibly EVER been in my life, without drugs.
  5. And yet, I’m not perfectly healthy. My guts are still messed up.
  6. And even more yet, when I score myself on the Crohn’s Disease Activity Index, I score a 70—IN REMISSION.

Now we can plough on to the meat of the matter. From Guru Anaerobic:

Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative Colitis are particularly vicious types of inflammatory bowel disorder (IBD). According to medical experts (and support organizations like ‘Crohn’s and colitis UK’) both conditions are life-long and irreversible. Current opinion is that they are caused by a mix of genetics, autoimmune derangement, environmental triggers, maybe microbiome – whatever.

Very often the sufferer doesn’t realize they have a problem (there may have been signes which went unnoticed) until a major flare-up occurs. For serious flare-ups a short course of steroids may be prescribed, but not for too long due to side effects. Once the flare-up has subsided the general advice is that a life-time of immunosuppressants or ASA’s (a certain class of drugs) are required – the rationale being these drugs will help prevent future flare-ups recurring (they don’t). Without drugs another flare-up may not occur for years, no one knows.

In between flare-ups the sufferer is said to be ‘in remission’.

The sufferer will always be in remission even if they never have another flare-up. ‘In remission’ makes the individual a life-long victim, a life-long sufferer. In the case of IBD they are a victim even if they are completely asymptomatic. If drugs had no downsides there would be no problem, take them like smarties.

After an injury (or disease) the last thing to heal is the mind; I realized this when I had a running injury (one of many) which had healed. Whilst I was warming-up for an 800m race a friend shouted to me, “Mark, why are you limping?!” – even though my injury had resolved I still held it in my mind and was unknowingly (sort of) taking my weight off the leg where the injury had been.

Ok, one could argue that “in remission” means ‘to take care what you do so the condition doesn’t return’, but we all act in a certain way so we don’t suffer from something don’t we? You don’t eat cake, chocolate and jelly beans everyday because you might get fat [If you were once obese and lost weight, are you in remission?]. I don’t smoke as smoking is related to a host of diseases and conditions – is my life diminished because I don’t smoke?

The alcoholic is not an alcoholic, the IBD sufferer is not an IBD sufferer. If they are not suffering from any effects they are no longer a sufferer. They are not in remission – they do not have the condition; they are cured, they don’t need any drugs. Could they one day suffer from the condition again? Possibly, if they don’t acknowledge there are certain things they shouldn’t do, But this doesn’t make them a life-long sufferer, in the way that I can’t constantly eat sh*t or smoke.

We need to get rid of the term ‘in remission’ and replace with ‘free from’. Being in remission makes you a victim, it’s like a slavery mindset.

Much like I refused to be a slave of the modern medical system, I refuse to be a slave to Crohn’s disease. For my whole life, I’ve refused to let Crohn’s define who I was, or what I could do. After a while, it started to feel like a shackle that prevented me from living the life I wanted. I was in danger of succumbing.

Now, the sheer wonder of my body’s ability to heal has me looking to the stars again.

What does this tell me?

It’s time to preemptively work on getting Crohn’s out of my head. Time to summon everything I know about mantras, and do the mental work while my body does the physical work of healing and rebuilding.

“I am free from Crohn’s Disease.”

That way, my mind doesn’t have to catch up to my body. God willing, they can heal together.

You steer where you look, so it’s time to look at a cure, at healing—at freedom.