I have a confession: I don’t have Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis myself, but I know it up close — my best friend has UC, my cousin has Crohn’s, and watching what they go through has always stuck with me. So when I got the chance to sit down with Dane Johnson, founder of Crohn’s Colitis Lifestyle, for this week’s episode, I knew it was one I needed to share here too.
Dane’s story is genuinely wild. Diagnosed at 19, he spent his 20s in and out of hospitals — at his lowest, 122 pounds, in a wheelchair, on a feeding tube, fighting for his life. Today he’s 191 pounds, medication-free, running a company, and raising three kids. That’s not a small turnaround, and on the podcast he walks through exactly how it happened — slowly, imperfectly, over about a decade.
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A few things from our conversation that stuck with me:
“CEO of your health,” not a passenger in it. Dane’s biggest mindset shift wasn’t a supplement or a diet — it was refusing to hand full authority over his healing to any one doctor, book, or protocol. He still worked with practitioners, but he made the calls.
Build your plan, not “the” plan. Instead of rigidly following one diet camp (paleo, carnivore, SCD), he described cherry-picking pieces from different approaches that made sense for his own body and tracking what actually helped.
He didn’t skip conventional medicine — he used it as a bridge. Steroids, biologics, even an antiviral treatment for a hidden viral infection were part of what stabilized him before he made further changes. His view: it’s not “natural vs. Western,” it’s using every tool available.
Consistency and tracking mattered more than any single tweak. He talked about daily journaling and rating his own symptoms as the thing that let him actually notice what was working.
I want to be upfront about something: Dane shares a lot of specific detail in this episode — supplements, gut-healing approaches, his own theories about root causes — based entirely on his personal experience and research, not clinical studies. Crohn’s and colitis are serious, individual conditions, and what worked for one person’s body isn’t a protocol to copy without your own care team involved. Listen for the mindset and the questions to ask, not a checklist to follow blind.
🎧 Full episode: The conversation goes much deeper — into his hospitalization, the specific turning points in his recovery, and how he thinks about “incurable” as a label. Well worth the full listen if this resonated at all.
Jamie / JamieLivesWell:
YouTube: youtube.com/@jamieliveswell
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Website: jamieliveswell.com
Dane Johnson / Crohn’s Colitis Lifestyle:
Instagram (personal): instagram.com/danejohnson1
Instagram (brand): instagram.com/crohnscolitis_lifestyle
YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCf3Yhapgc2Qb16_MP7f-DuQ (”Crohns Colitis Lifestyle”)
Website: crohnscolitislifestyle.com
Healing Journal:
https://healingjournal.crohnscolitislifestyle.com?el=JamieLivesWellPodcast
IBD Relief Strategy Session:
https://www.cclworkshop.com/apply?source=JamieLivesWellPodcast&el=JamieLivesWellPodcast
Further Listening:
