Adapted from episode 109 of The Perfect Stool podcast and edited for readability, with Lindsey Parsons, EdD, Gut Health Coach and Jordan Power, an ulcerative colitis sufferer who reversed his disease after doctors suggested he have a foot of his colon removed.
Lindsey:
Like many people who’ve turned to alternative medicine, you were able to reverse your ulcerative colitis. And you may have had an exceptionally bad case, because as I understand it, your doctors were recommending that you remove a foot of your colon. So why don’t you tell us the story, from the beginning, about how you ended up with ulcerative colitis, and then what you did to reverse it?
Jordan Powers:
Sure. My background is that I come from a family of two doctors. My parents were doctors, and my sister’s actually an ER nurse. I come from the very common medical establishment pieties, let’s say. When I was about 18 years old, I went on multiple rounds of Accutane. It probably started when I was actually 17. When I had that third round of Accutane, in the middle of it, I got extremely sick to the point where I was admitted to hospital. I had dropped about 25 pounds in a period of about two and a half months, and I looked very sick. My bloodwork was terrible. No one really knew what was going on. My mom sent me for some testing, and eventually they diagnosed me with ulcerative colitis. The connection to Accutane hadn’t been made, and the people in the US hadn’t sued yet for multi seven figure judgments. They made that connection probably 10 years after I was diagnosed, and I signed up for the class action then. I don’t know for sure if that’s the connection, but I don’t have a history of any inflammatory bowel disease in my family. Colitis just came out of nowhere.
Lindsey:
Let me pause you for a second. So Accutane, just to clarify, is a drug for acne, and I know it’s high in vitamin A. It’s not just vitamin A, though, is it?
Jordan Powers:
Vitamin A acid, I believe. All I remember really is that it mentally drove me into a total depression. Then all your orifices and your mucous membranes dry up, because the idea is that the medicine dries up your sebaceous glands. It does work for acne. Don’t get me wrong, it absolutely works.
Lindsey:
Yeah, with the small side effect of ulcerative colitis, right.
Jordan Powers:
Then you have a disease for life.
Lindsey:
I’ve heard of other people having vitamin A overdose from it.
Jordan Powers:
They pulled it off the shelves for a period of time. I don’t know if it’s still off. In my book, I talk about a place called Kitava, in New Guinea. It’s a small island where they don’t have the chronic diseases we have in North America. Their teenagers don’t have acne. They don’t go through that requisite period where you have to get acne.
Lindsey:
I think anyone who doesn’t eat a bunch of processed food and sugar also has the potential of not having acne.
Jordan Powers:
Yes, it’s true. But you know, it’s just we think it’s just part of life. You’re a teenager with acne. That’s just what happens.
Lindsey:
Yeah, not at all. I told my kid as soon as he got his first real zit, that if he goes off sugar, he wouldn’t have acne. The fact that his entire diet consisted of processed white carbs made it hard. Not that I was the person who purchased those foods, just a disclaimer, but even so, that was his diet. The sugar alone wasn’t enough, but he actually did it. I couldn’t believe a child had that level of willpower to go off sugar like that. He’s pretty much stayed off it other than brief pauses for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Jordan Powers:
Wow, did you get them off seed oils, too?
Lindsey:
We didn’t really use them in our home. So other than in the processed foods that I wasn’t purchasing, yes, he was mostly off seed oils.
Jordan Powers:
Right. Okay. It’s just that they’re in 99% of restaurants, if you eat out.
Lindsey:
Right. So if he ate out, of course he couldn’t avoid them.
Jordan Powers:
Going back to my initial diagnosis, it was the age old tale of the doctor sitting you down and saying these are the only options. These three drugs are the only options available, these three drugs and steroids. There’s no cure, and no discussion of holistic treatments. At the time, I was still in that complex, right? I’m not really blaming my parents here, but I grew up with a certain conditioning. And the people that question that conditioning are often cast from polite society and deemed the crazy ones. Then I grew up and realized it’s actually the inverse. And the reason that they were cast from polite society is that they’re a threat to some sort of neoliberal order.
That was a real period where I just went on tons of medication, around eight pills a day, steroids, and hospital admissions. I saw my health get progressively worse. Around the time of my mid twenties, it stabilized. I do want to note also that I was eating well, I wasn’t eating a lot of bad food, but when you have that delicate of a microbiome, anything can really set you off. Then there was a period about a year and a half ago, where I went to South America and the combination of seed oils and alcohol and processed food and all the other things I was having set off what I called the train. With Colitis and Crohn’s disease, or inflammatory bowel disease, once you start going, it’s really hard to stop the train. So I’ve had multiple vacations ruined, my trip to Israel, and my trip to Colombia were both just completely ruined. I came back home and I couldn’t get it under control with medication or with steroids. I just couldn’t stop it.
And so I sat down with my doctor after two colonoscopies, and he said to me, we can basically just cut out a foot of your colon, and then that’ll solve the problem. I’m not really a spiritual person, but there was really this moment where I was sitting in the room, and I said to myself, “Yeah, I don’t think this is in the cards for me. I don’t think this is part of my life.” I don’t know if that’s a level of denial. It could be. I just thought, I don’t need this. I came home and went on the internet and I started searching on YouTube. I stumbled across all kinds of people and started going on alternative paths. I call this experience opening boxes of horror. I was looking into what’s in our beauty products, what’s in our cleaning products, what’s allowed in North America that’s banned in Europe, all these different boxes that I kept opening.
I had a really protracted discussion with a man who worked in cosmetics consulting for some major companies. He would tell me these horror stories where he would tell them that this product is going to cause lung cancer, and they would just say, “Thank you for your service, goodbye.” I learned that there wasn’t a lot of money in integrity. I got so freaked out between my YouTube rabbit holes and discussions with him, that I just went on a binge, and I got rid of every chemical in my house, starting with cleaning products and beauty products. Then I found alternatives, and started really adapting an elimination diet through Paul Saladino, the carnivore MD, on YouTube. Within 30 days, it was gone. When I say gone, I mean really gone. It was the best health I’d had in my entire life after just 30 days.
Lindsey:
Wow. Can you summarize the diet that you went on? And then I assume you reintroduced things after, so can you tell me about the progression? Did you go full carnivore?
Jordan Powers:
No, so what I did was sort of carnivore: fruits, honey, raw dairy, and a bit of potatoes. Potatoes has just been something that always made me feel good. I don’t know if it’s the prebiotics. Before that I had never experimented with raw dairy. I heard the tales that it was going to kill me, but then I start doing research for my book. It said there’s only a one in 6 million chance of dying, and that there’s a much higher chance with cantaloupe and spinach and all these foods. So I got my hands on some raw dairy, because where I live, it’s illegal although there’s ways to get around it, which we don’t have to get into, but people can figure it out on their own. Raw dairy felt great. When I drank it, I felt like it was connecting with my body, whereas when I had pasteurized dairy, I would feel this inflammation in my body. So it was really just the meat, the raw honey, the raw dairy, fruit, and the potatoes and I stuck with that for about 30 days.
Obviously, it’s boring, but you know, when you’re that sick, you’ll do anything. Then the combination of swapping in different products in my house, starting with switching shampoo for a shampoo bar, skin products for beef tallow moisturizer, getting off the chemical sunscreens, and then really just cleaning my house with just rubbing alcohol and a little bit of soap and some essential oils, or some baking soda and vinegar.
The craziest part of this whole thing that also happened to me is that before I just assumed that I was depressed and anxious. I thought that was just my destiny. I’m 50% Irish, and it’s just how we are. The added bonus of this whole thing is that I would wake up after battling these illnesses off and on for most of my life, treating them with multiple SSRIs, and now I don’t think I have these mental issues either. I don’t think I actually am depressed or anxious. I don’t feel depressed, I can manage stress situations now in a different way and the modulation of my moods. That was the craziest part, more even than the colitis recovery, was to see the mental aspect. The way that you approach the world on a daily basis is affected by this. Even when my dog died during all this, I handled it in a way that I don’t think I would have if I didn’t have a stable mind. I was at peace with what was happening and I wasn’t trying to fight it. I wake up now and I say that I’m a different person. I don’t even recognize the body that I live in now.
Lindsey:
That’s amazing. Getting back to sort of the diet changes, what were the most dramatic things that you removed from your diet for this 30 days that were really transformational?
Jordan Powers:
This might be controversial, but spinach and kale were terrible, with the oxalates. Kale has great PR, so you read everywhere, you got to have kale. I would eat kale, and I would feel terrible. I would have the runs. Broccoli was terrible, any cruciferous vegetable was terrible. What I would do is I would make an anti-shopping list. I’d have my shopping list on the one side of things that I knew were fine. Then every time something would bother me, I would just write it down. I had to be hyper attuned to my body at that point. Most people are just like bots. We go through life, and we’re just eating things, and then 12 hours later, we don’t connect the dots with the food. So I created an anti shopping list, and I would just write down spinach, kale, broccoli, any white breads were a no. Obviously, any processed sugars were a no. Any meats where the animal was eating seed oils, hormones, or antibiotics I had to get rid of.
Lindsey:
So you went to high quality pasture-raised meats, and that kind of thing?
Jordan Powers:
Absolutely. That was another one. I realized that I can eat a steak and not feel bloated. Before I thought I hated steak, because I’d feel sick, and that was that. With the fruits, I would go organic as much as possible, and I would wash them in apple cider vinegar, or I would do different things to make them as clean as possible. I also started chewing my food slowly. That was an interesting thing. Before, I was always rushing, working, trying to get things in my body, but proper nutrient absorption happens through chewing the food. Even with my mineral water that I drink, I now swish it in my mouth and kind of let it absorb into the gums a little bit before I swallow. That’s a little trick that I do.
Lindsey:
That also warms it up.
Jordan Powers:
Yes, and then supplementation-wise, I went on to beef colostrum, because it’s really been shown to regenerate the intestinal lining. That was a big one for me. The biggest thing was also that I got rid of all the crap supplements I had been taking. Instead I just went down to beef heart and beef liver every day as a supplement, because I don’t love the taste. So that was the combination. And then I would try different supplements, zinc and stuff like that, but I really came down to the belief that high quality food cannot compare to the supplements that are shipped to your house with God knows whatever plastic and whatever fillers are in them. I just don’t think they’re comparable unless you find a really good supplier, so I really only take about four or five supplements now.
Lindsey:
To clarify, it doesn’t sound like you cut out all of your fiber when you did this 30 day diet, which is a more traditional colitis flaring diet.
Jordan Powers:
No, you know, the interesting thing about colitis is you oscillate between constipation and diarrhea sometimes, just because your body is off. So I did get the fiber from the fruit and select vegetables that I was eating, like carrots, that weren’t bothering me. But for the most part, the only vegetables I do eat now are carrots, some onions, some tomatoes. That’s all that I consume in the vegetable world because even when I used to have vegetable soup, I would feel disgusting afterwards, which seems like it runs contrary to so much of what we’re taught when we’re younger.
Lindsey:
So you’ve sort of stuck with this more limited diet.
Jordan Powers:
Yes, and I feel great. People tell me that my life is so boring, because my grocery list is about 15 items. But I don’t care because people don’t understand what it’s like to have your life consumed by a disease. There’s nothing that a variety of foods is going to make up for. I don’t want to go back to that horror and that darkness that I lived in, and of course, I do cheat. I’ll go on vacation and I’ll have dinner here and there. But I am fully functional now, it is unbelievable. I went for a scan with my doctor. Again, medical professionals can be pompous, and I say that as someone who’s parents are doctors. The doctor was looking at my colitis scan and he really just asked me what was going on because there was no evidence of disease. And I told him what I did, and he said that the good results were probably just a medication that I had switched to.
It’s so interesting to me, because I feel like they think that holistic medicine can’t work in marriage with modern medicine. It can’t augment it or kind of replace it. They feel like it’s a threat to their ego and who they are and what they’re taught. And I will say that I really give credit to my mom, who’s a GP, because she has really opened her mind up to the holistic world. She has told me that if she did her whole career again, she would really focus much more on the holistic route. Because, like I said, we call it the Pandora’s box of horrors. We open up something that we’ve been taught over and over, and it’s just horror after horror unveiling itself.
Lindsey:
Yeah, I look at my doctor and sometimes I think she’s just leading a life of quiet desperation. As a doctor, you’ve got this brief amount of time to talk to somebody and you don’t really know or understand all the stuff they’re taking, because for example, I’ve got a pile of supplements that I’m on and, and she doesn’t necessarily know how to solve my problem. I’ll just ask her to run the tests I want, and I’ll take care of the rest. God bless her. She does that.
Jordan Powers:
It’s also their time constraint, they have a period of 10 to 15 minutes to see you, and there’s no way they’re going to ask you about your diet and analyze your microbiome.
Lindsey:
Right. No, of course, they’re going to look at your medical record, and they’re not going to remember you because they see 20-30 patients a day, and they’re going to look and only quickly take a summary. And then that’s it. They’re not going to remember all of your history and everything else unless you really stood out to them.
Jordan Powers:
It’s funny, because now I’m in this holistic mindset. And I went to a doctor with these white spots on my skin called idiopathic guttate hypomelanosis, and it is just little white spots on your skin. The common belief when you google this is that it’s just sun damage. You get too much sun and you have these white spots. I’m sure that true for some people but mine kind of just showed up very quickly, within a three to four week period, I had them all over my legs and arms. And I went to this doctor who was like the biggest dermatologist in Toronto, double board certified, a hotshot, and he said it’s sun damage and to just put sunscreen on and stay out of the sun. I told him that I thought something else is going on here. It just appeared out of nowhere. And I had just been in Thailand, which was a hint.
So I then I went to a holistic doctor that I pay. It was the same diagnosis; it’s a fungus on your skin. This is how you treat it. He said do this and this, take these supplements, put this antifungal cream on and within three weeks, it’s gone. At the end of the day, they both diagnosed it correctly. But you had the first doctor saying there’s no options available for you. And then the second doctor is saying there’s something going on here at its core. That’s very much like the colitis thing. Why is my body attacking itself? What purpose would that serve? And why are these illnesses not in these places like New Guinea? And to start with those questions sets you off on a different kind of path.
Lindsey:
Yeah. So you never went on a biologic, did you? Was that offered to you? Or did you not get to that point?
Jordan Powers:
It was offered to me, it was around the same time at the surgery. And I didn’t do it because it was about $1,000.
Lindsey:
Unfortunately, the side effect for people that go on them is suppressing your immune system. One of the biggest dangers, of course, is getting cancer. So of course, there’s a trade off, my ulcerative colitis might go away for a while, but I may get cancer in the meantime.
Jordan Powers:
Yeah, I feel like you maybe have the same belief as me, that the body, if you just leave it alone, it’ll just fix itself. But once you start one thing, it’s a domino effect where you throw off the whole homeostasis of the system and then other things start popping up. You know, I’m on an SSRI for this and now my sex drive is down. So I need to take this other pill and then it’s causing this and suddenly you’ve got five side effects going on. Where you should instead just conquer the question of why are you depressed and what is the impetus for that depression? But they don’t have time.
Lindsey:
Of course, right now it seems like with the mental health medications, especially if you get beyond just depression and anxiety and into like bipolar, that kind of thing, you can start piling one medication on to another and all of a sudden there’s teenagers who have five mental health medications and often the parents at some point go okay, something’s not right here. We need to make some lifestyle changes. Usually you have to go relatively far down that route before you start realizing that it is insanity. My child should not be on five medications.
Jordan Powers:
It’s also the same thing with the skin. People tell me that my skin’s never looked better and ask me what do I put on it? And I’m like, beef tallow with raw honey mixed into it. I just bought it off the internet. That’s all I do. I don’t even wash my face. I just put that on now. I used to put on a cleanser with alcohol in it that would strip the oils and then I would put on a toner with 48 ingredients. Then I’d put on some other cream that was in plastic and a truck. I would do all this and my skin looked worse. I had more breakouts, I just put this $35 beef tallow with raw honey on every day. And that’s literally all I do, and my skin looks better than most people. It just goes back to the idea of just leave it alone. Leave your skin alone. Just leave it alone, because by complicating things you’re creating all these different problems for yourself.
Lindsey:
Years ago when I was in college dated a guy who asked me why I washed my face with anything, because he just washed his face with water. I decided to try that. And ever since I’ve washed my face with nothing but water. I have never had skin issues of any sort.
Jordan Powers:
I think you just mess up the system.
Lindsey:
Yeah. It’s just a big industry trying to sell us more stuff. So it sounds like you really believe that removing toxins from your house, and your diet was a big part of the puzzle, what makes you so sure that that was a big reason for your healing?
Jordan Powers:
Well, when I wrote my book, I linked to a bunch of studies, which all showed that when you mess with the microbiome, that’s when you start having problems. 50% of the diversity of our microbiomes has been destroyed over the past few decades. So I think when you mess with anything, that’s a problem. For example, if you’re eating a plate of something, and there’s still detergent on it, then you’re mixing that with your food. What is that doing to your gut? Even drinking tap water, the fluorides and everything that’s in that is terrible. It really was these conversations I had with this guy.
And then when I wrote in my book, don’t use this product, don’t use this product, it’s been linked with lead or heavy metals. I link in my book the various studies out there for these different things. So I’m not this guy saying I’m just anecdotally making this up, right. I can tell you, not just from the conversations with this consultant, who’s 30 years in the cosmetics business, and the stuff I’ve watched, but also the studies I put in my book. Just anecdotally, from myself, when I introduced those things into my life, because I am hyperattuned to my moods, I can tell you that they messed me up. I noticed that when I go on vacation, because then I can’t filter my tap or my shower water. When I’m on vacation the combination of having to eat seed oils and having to have certain chemicals and stuff like that in my body, I start to notice that I snap more at people. I realized that eliminating certain foods and chemicals meant that I wasn’t triggered by things. And I wasn’t snapping at people. There’s moments on vacation where I’m just a little more snappy than usual.
Lindsey:
Yeah, and you should, in theory be more relaxed on vacation.
Jordan Powers:
Absolutely. I think I snap because on vacation I’m just introducing bad things to my body. I really do believe that it’s been almost a year now where I’ve been off medication, I am in the best health I’ve ever been in my life, mentally and physically. But I don’t get too confident, because I do believe I’m still teetering, and I will be teetering for another year or so. I’ve talked to, there’s a guy named The Holistic Nick or Kenny Honnas, also guys who have cured their colitis. They say it takes a couple of years to really get yourself back to a point. So I try not to risk it, and stay as diligent with things because I don’t want to backslide. There are moments where I feel a backslide, when I’ll go for dinner with some friends or have a little booze or not get great sleep. I can see myself going there.
But it is very, very scary what is in a lot of those products. Even stem cell creams are barely tested, and they put those on the market and people were just slathering them all over their face, and they mess with cell replication. No one knows the long term effects of those. A lot of these clinical trials when you look into these beauty trials for different creams, it really comes down to we gave the cream to 60 women for 90 days and none of them got a rash. Go buy it at the CVS. People think there are a lot more guardrails in place to protect them. There’s also things in your food and beauty products that are banned in Europe but allowed in North America.
Lindsey:
Yeah, like food dyes, for example. I spent many years fighting to get the food dyes out of the food in the Montgomery County Public Schools outside of DC in Maryland. We got rid of almost everything. I would say the only thing that remains are natural caramel colors that they put in meats, because it’s almost impossible to get those removed, given the quality of meat that they get in the school system. We got them out, we did a lot of good things.
Jordan Powers:
Wow, good for you. It’s the little battles that leave a mark on the world. You made a change for people. Some of those changes might not even be so tangible for people, but they might even go, “Well, I feel better this week.”
Lindsey:
With food dyes, it’s not that everybody’s affected by them. But there’s a certain subset of kids that have ADHD kind of symptoms because of food dyes. My partner who started the nonprofit with me, called at the time, Real Food for Kids – Montgomery, she had a daughter who was one of those kids that reacted to food dyes, and she did crazy stuff when she was on the food dyes.
Jordan Powers:
I’m newer, and I’m not trying to be a health expert. I just really wrote this book because of my experience. A lot of people asked me about my healing process, so I just wanted to get this out there. You seem like you’ve been immersed in this for a longer period of time. Do you feel like you’re used to the way that people will dismiss you, or sort of pretend that you’re the crazy one because you don’t want toxins in your life?
Lindsey:
If it’s a doctor, I don’t open the door to even let them say anything about what I’m doing. I mean, I know my GP is good. But I’ve definitely had one bad experience with a gastroenterologist completely dismissing and belittling me. After that, I decided I’m not even going to share anything. I’m just going to come here, tell them what I want or need, take whatever piece of advice that’s within their conventional medical paradigm, and then just do the rest on my own.
When it comes to other people outside that, I do find that there are certain people who don’t understand my work. This maybe comes up the most when you know someone who has cancer, because that’s when you’re feeling this desperation. There’s so much I could tell you about what you should and shouldn’t be doing, and about ideas and people to look at. But you can only reach out so much, because everybody in their life is doing the same thing, right? You’re not the only person giving them advice. Especially if you’re not that close to that person. Usually things get crazy when you get cancer, right? Like all of a sudden everything drops out, but you have to focus on the most important things. So I don’t think they can even receive all that input, because they aren’t even checking email anymore, or because they’re more worried about just living and dying and things like that.
So it’s happened a number of times that you’ve seen somebody get cancer that you know, and love, and you just can’t do anything if that’s not their paradigm. Two of the people I knew who died of cancer at age 50, their parents were doctors. And, of course, they were not as open to alternative things. I mean, somewhat one of them, but the other one was completely closed off to it. And there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t come to their homes and force food down their throat. You know what I mean? I couldn’t change their diets. I couldn’t even get them to consider supplements. I certainly couldn’t get them to consider alternative practitioners. There just was nothing I could do. I mean, I did my best, but it was it was frustrating.
Jordan Powers:
Yeah, it’s a very isolating existence to be heterodox on any subject. Now I’m heterodox on health. I was already heterodox on the media, because I’d worked in IT for 12 years. So I think I needed that conditioning to question the establishment in order to then also be able to take in alternative health information. But a lot of people, I don’t know what the wiring is in their head, but they need experts, and they need to just go with the flow, and they need to follow.
Lindsey:
Right. I mean, you have to feel like you’re doing the right thing for yourself. And I guess you have to decide what that is, and then close your mind to everything else. Because if you keep it open, then there’s all sorts of quack jobs who are trying to push all sorts of things that have no peer-reviewed evidence behind them. There’s a difference because there are actual studies on this, even if this may be a newer idea, there’s still initial studies. By the time it gets into the conventional medical paradigm, it’s 20 years behind. When it becomes part of the standard of care, at that point, you could have been using it for 20 years because it takes that long to get into the standard of care.
Jordan Powers:
One of the things I was talking about with someone who was going to get an MRI my life is that it’s coming out now the dye they use in MRIs is heavily linked to cancer now. People are getting MRIs every day with this stuff. And now they’re trying to ban it in certain places. So there’s the irony of going for cancer screening and to then take a cancer-causing agent at the same time. I find myself trying to not get too paranoid because it’s just not feasible. I’ve kind of stopped opening boxes because every time I open a box, I find more horror. It’s the same with wars and anything else, so I’ve pulled back on that.
I think there’s maturity when you tell people your experience and you’re standing in front of them, and you’ve cured your disease and your depression, anxiety. In that case, they can’t really deny you, they can’t deny looking at you and seeing that you’re functional and you lead by example. And so that’s also why I wanted to write this book for people. I say to people, “Hey, I’m not a mirage. I was the person that you saw in the hospital multiple times who was very sick. And I’m standing right here, and I’m traveling the world and feeling great. That should be enough for you to at least question the medical paradigm a bit.” I will say that probably 20% of people react well to that.
Lindsey:
Yeah, well, in my health coaching training, they had an expression, which is that you can’t save the people who are swimming away from you. So if you have a drowning person, they have to be working in your direction. You can’t chase them down. If you want to get help, you can you can take the first steps yourself. I know one of the other things you mentioned when we had talked before the show was about your hair. Can you tell me a little bit about what changed there?
Jordan Powers:
Yeah, so I actually just finished another ebook, I’ll give you the link for that one as well. It’s going to come out this week. When I was doing all this, I was also putting my stepdad on the same diet. He’s not sick with anything, but he did get off statins for a lot of reasons. He questioned everything in his life after that point, and we were doing the same stuff, with the bone broth, and I’m getting better, and he’s feeling better. He wasn’t battling a chronic illness, but just feeling better in general. And I went to his house one day, and I looked at him and I said, “Oh, my God, your hair looks amazing.” He was putting his hand through it. And it was probably 20% less gray at that point, too. At the same time, I was experiencing the same thing. I’m not talking about dramatic difference, but I’m talking about even my nails growing faster. I would just have filled in my hairline. It was easier also toc lean it, wash it, style it. And so I started looking into that aspect of healing. And it’s like your skin and your hair are the barometer, right? You look at yourself, and you can look at a person and see that they look healthy, even if you don’t know why. Whether it’s the whites of their eyes, or whatever it is.
I put together this book, and I looked into history and you look at photos from the 1900s. It kind of similar to when you look at photos of the 60s and 70s, people on the beach, you see that like 5% of the people are fat. In these photos from the 1920s you see the difference then and I was looking at these guys, they were in their 30s and 40s. Most of them didn’t have receding hairlines. And so I started looking into whether it was getting worse. If we know chronic diseases are getting worse, is balding getting worse too? It was really bad in Asia, people were balding at 18. So I put together this book looking into the chemicals you put in your hair, the sulfates, there’s multiple class action lawsuits now against shampoo makers, some of them probably have merit, and some of them are a cash grab. But I’m of the belief that when you mess with the microbiome of the scalp, you’re going to run into problems. I went into what I do for my hair, basically an organic shampoo bar and some coconut oil. That’s basically it. And then really breaking down more the hormones, raising prolactin, estrogen, seed oils, and the different things that can mess up your hair and linking that information to different studies about filtering your shower water, because I noticed my stepdad and I were going through that. There are also a couple helpful Chinese herbs that people are using and rosemary oil is shown to be as good as Rogaine now.
Some of the more heterodox beliefs, including that a lot of what’s going on is not related to DHT. It’s related to inflammation in the scalp. Why do you never lose hair here, but you lose it here? That’s why they do hair transplants from the back, investigating what’s going on there. I include little bit about blood flow and facial development. And so I put that together and I called it “How not to go bald: 30 all-natural solutions for hair retention.” It’s not a cure all, but it’s all interrelated. Looking at your hair, and why you’re losing your hair at 18 years old, maybe it’s because you’re consuming high amounts of PUFAs. It also looks at parts of the world like the Blue Zones. When I went to Costa Rica, that was another thing I noticed. I couldn’t believe how healthy the people looked because I was near one of the Blue Zones. You’re talking about people in their 70s and 80s and they’re moving boulders and logs. And they’re not doing NAD drips, they’re just living their life. The community is socially cohesive, and they’re living in tune with the earth and staying active. These guys, they’re 70. They’ve got muscles and a full head of hair. I do think it’s all interrelated. I think some people are more susceptible to hair loss genetically, but I put that together and tied it in with what I learned in the book as well.
Lindsey:
One of the things that I thought you’d mentioned initially was about a copper deficiency and the gray hair.
Jordan Powers:
Yeah, that was one of my holistic friends, who recommended taking copper with zinc on a daily basis and see if you can reverse some of the grays. And I would say I probably reversed them like 20 to 30%. So far, it’s been mostly the greys on the sides of my head. I don’t think I’m going to win that battle entirely, but it helps. There’s some interesting stuff now about hydrogen peroxide and how if you lower those levels, you can stave off the gray hair, which I didn’t dive into too much in the book. It’s just so crazy to see my step-dad looking like he has the same the hair he did when he was 35. And he’s 68. It’s strange to see all these things happen, and his skin looks great. I just wonder how much of the stuff we consume normally is being poisoned to a degree.
Lindsey:
I think some people also have poor detoxification, just genetically. I’m going to have somebody on my podcast from a DNA company soon, and I’ve got my reports, and I found out that I don’t naturally detoxify well, so I’ll probably do well to supplement with glutathione or NAC or some precursors to glutathione. That’s something that just genetically I’m burdened with. So that may be you, maybe you are not going to methylate well, you’re not going to detoxify well. There may be things that you will always need to supplement. A lot of people need B vitamins who come into my practice. I think there’s just different ways that our bodies relate to the world.
Jordan Powers:
Well, I’ve always loved niacin flushes. And I’ve done them for a really long time. I’m talking years before, I would do them because some holistic podcast had said they were good for mental health purposes, and this is when I was really struggling mentally. It’s because it opens up the blood flow to your brain, and so you get like a fresh flush like you would when you’re exercising. And so when I was doing those, my mood would do a 180 on a really bad day. I’ve continued doing those for my skin and hair. I hope you’re not going to tell me that they’re bad for you. Because I do them at least once a week.
Lindsey:
No, no. There’s forms of niacin that cause flushing when you take them and there’s forms that do not. You’ll see it advertised as no-flush niacin. I have heard about using niacin for depression. So what kind of doses would you would you take?
Jordan Powers:
I did about 1000 milligrams. So two of the tablets. I get the flushing kind.
Lindsey:
Some people don’t like the flushing feeling. But I think the one that works for depression is the flushing kind.
Jordan Powers:
I believe it increases your NAD levels. I think that’s also one of the other things.
Lindsey:
It’s certainly a precursor.
Jordan Powers:
So I do that because I don’t mind the flushing, I combine it with some sauna, which I find is nice. But little things like that. I’m half Italian, but I’m also half Irish, and the chemical sunscreens really scare me after my discussions with certain people. What I do now is that I don’t go out during peak hours, but I take astaxanthin*, which is that really powerful antioxidant, which is also great for my colitis. When I went to the Caribbean, I was in Anguilla for about six days. And I didn’t go out during the peak hours. So I’d go out from 2-5 pm, no sunscreen, just zinc oxide on my face, but no sunscreen on my body. I would take the astaxanthin. I loaded it about two weeks before, and I didn’t burn once, which is very strange for me. It’s also the seed oil consumption, people believe it’s oxidizing. When I would go to places as a kid, I burned if I went in the sun without sunscreen. In the Caribbean, I didn’t because they say astaxanthin acts as an internal sunscreen. That tip really has changed things for me, because for people that are fair and don’t want to slather on a bunch of chemicals on their skin, it’s a nice option, and you also get the antioxidant benefit of it as well.
Lindsey:
Awesome. Any additional thoughts on things that you’re doing to protect your health right now or things that you’re doing other than the eliminating toxins and an elimination diet that you might recommend for someone with colitis?
Jordan Powers:
I think largely we’ve covered most of them. I will say also the other aspect we haven’t touched on which is a big part of me getting healthier is the mental aspect. It’s one thing to feel better and be able to tackle these things because you’re in a better state of mind. But I’ve started following people like Teal Swan, who’s quite controversial, but she really helped me. I read one of her books. I’ve just been practicing a level of radical responsibility. The idea that I don’t whine about how other people treat me because I can’t control that. Instead I deal with why I stayed. And why I tolerated that behavior and my self esteem levels and what I will tolerate moving forward. That radical honesty and responsibility has really changed my life, and filled it with purpose. Now I don’t get sucked into people’s problems and their gaslighting.
That was a real problem for me that I think was also really throwing off my microbiome. The way I approach the world is I don’t get triggered by people. People can say things about me, and if I don’t believe those things to be true about myself, because I know myself and I have a strong self concept, I no longer react in the crazy way I used to do. Because I can go no, that’s not who I am, and that’s not what I believe in, you’re mischaracterizing me. A lot of this is just a level of maturity, and investing hours into understanding yourself and who you are, and your background. I think that was the final piece of this puzzle to get me to a place where I could look at myself in the mirror and feel good about who I’d become. One of the guys on YouTube, The Heal Your Gut Guy is his name, he spends a lot of time connecting people’s stress and their mental problems with their gut and making connections between the two.
Lindsey:
Usually one of three things I’ve identified that throws people’s guts off is either an episode of food poisoning, a lot of antibiotics, or other medications like steroids, or an extreme period of stress. Inevitably, that starts the whole process of a downhill slide for everybody. So of course, getting the stress piece under wraps is important.
Jordan Powers:
Yes, talking about stress, I do a million things. I have three businesses, I do a podcast, and now I’m deciding to do music. I’m just trying to fill my life with different things and give myself direction. I’m writing a song right now called Cleaning House. The idea behind it is why do I feel like life makes more sense when I get rid of certain people. What comes with that is a level of loneliness; it’s sort of like a tax you have to pay. The idea is that once I once I get rid of 90% of people, I will be happier and have a level of peace. I also will trade that with a bit of loneliness at times, and it’s hard to navigate that sometimes. That’s been a big thing for me is getting rid of people that didn’t serve me and didn’t serve my purpose. I think so many people hold on to people as they get older, because that’s just what you do. But often, it’s not that you’ve evolved past them in a better way, but you’re just on a different journey. You just feel that divergence. I’ve let some people go out of my life that I really needed to let go of for a really long time. I do it in a different way than I used to do it when I was all messed up in my gut. I just have an honest conversation. It’s not about me saying to people, you need to change and you need to do this. It’s about me saying that this is what I need out of our relationship, and if you can’t provide that to me, then I need to do what’s in my control and leave.
Lindsey:
That’s a very courageous thing to do. So congratulations on making that big step.
Jordan Powers:
I think it’s needed for so many people.
Lindsey:
Well, thank you so much for sharing about your journey and the stuff that you’ve been going through. Tell me the name of your two books.
Jordan Powers:
Sure. So “The Freedom Blueprint: 35 Remarkable Strategies to Conquer Chronic Illness” is the first one. And then I’ve got “How Not to Go Bald: 30 All-Natural Solutions for Hair Retention.” I’m selling them both on Gumroad right now. I also run a marketing agency, but it’s pretty esoteric. It’s mostly lawyers.
Lindsey:
I don’t think most of the people listening are interested in marketing help, but you never know.
Jordan Powers:
Yes, but that’s this is the main thing. Those are the only health books that I’m going to do. This is just something that I’ve gotten into.
Lindsey:
It’s a side passion, right?
Jordan Powers:
I ran into so many people asking me over and over how I cured my colitis. And so I decided, let me just sit down and put it into an ebook and then for the rest of my life, I can just send people the link, and they can look into it themselves. Because people come to me for help a lot, and it’s a lot of time and I also don’t have the training to unravel all their issues.
Lindsey:
Yes of course. People’s health situations are very complex and require a lot of background information and study.
Jordan Powers:
I’m sure you get people that say this to you all the time. They’ll say their health problem is they feel tired, and that could be 500 things. I don’t know how to attack that.
Lindsey:
Absolutely. Okay, well, thanks so much, Jordan. It’s been a pleasure.
Jordan Powers:
I appreciate you having me on. This has been really great. Thank you.
If you’re struggling with bloating, constipation, diarrhea, soft stool, acid reflux, IBS, IBD or any type of chronic disease, etc. and want to get to the bottom of it, that’s what I help my clients with. You’re welcome to set up a free, 30-minute breakthrough session with me (Lindsey). We’ll talk about what you’ve been going through and I’ll tell you about my 3- and 5- appointment health coaching programs in which I recommend lab tests, educate you on what the results mean and the protocols used by doctors to fix the problems revealed. Or if you’re ready to jump in right away or can just afford one appointment at a time, you can set up an 1-hour consultation with me.
