I Had Crohn's Disease for 21 Years. Here's What I Found in My Cleaning Products.

I’m going to tell you something I don’t usually lead with in business conversations.

I spent 21 years being sick. Not a little sick. Hospitalized-multiple-times-a-year sick. Crohn’s disease — the kind that puts you on the floor in pain, that cancels your plans on no notice, that makes you calculate bathroom proximity before sitting down anywhere.

I tried everything the conventional medical system offered. And a lot of it helped, genuinely. I’m not here to tell you doctors are wrong or medicine is bad. I’m here to tell you what happened when I started asking a different question.

The Question Nobody Was Asking Me

Every gastroenterologist I ever had was meticulous about food. What I ate. When I ate. Triggers to avoid. Dietary modifications to try. The conversation was always about what went into my mouth.

Nobody ever asked me what I was touching. What I was breathing. What my hands were in contact with for hours every week when I cleaned my own house.

I started asking that question in 2019, during a period where I was relatively stable and had the mental bandwidth to actually research. I started pulling on threads. And the thread I kept finding myself holding was: the chemicals in conventional cleaning products are not inert.

They are absorbed through skin. They off-gas into indoor air. They are associated with disruption of the gut microbiome — the community of bacteria that live in the intestines and that people with Crohn’s already have significant problems with.

I’m not a doctor. This is my story, not a clinical argument. But let me tell you what the research actually says, and then let me tell you what I did.

What the Research Shows

Quaternary ammonium compounds — quats — are the active disinfecting ingredient in most conventional household cleaners. Lysol, most Clorox products, many “antibacterial” sprays. They’re effective at killing bacteria. That’s why they’re used.

They’re also absorbed through skin, and a growing body of research has connected repeated quat exposure to disruptions in gut microbiome diversity. A 2019 study in Environmental Health Perspectives found that children in households that used quat-based disinfectants had significantly different gut microbiome profiles than those in households that didn’t.

Different microbiome profiles. In children. From cleaning products used on kitchen counters and bathroom surfaces.

For context: people with Crohn’s disease already have disrupted gut microbiome diversity. The intestinal bacterial environment in Crohn’s patients looks meaningfully different from healthy controls. Adding chemicals that further disrupt that environment to a person who is already fighting to maintain intestinal stability is — at minimum — something worth thinking about.

Then there are volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from synthetic fragrances, which off-gas into indoor air during and after cleaning. Studies measuring indoor air quality in homes where fragranced cleaning products are used regularly find VOC levels that routinely exceed outdoor air quality. Some of those VOCs — formaldehyde, acetaldehyde — are classified as carcinogens. They’re inhaled. They’re metabolized by the liver. They contribute to systemic chemical load.

For someone with a compromised immune system that is already doing things it’s not supposed to be doing, that systemic load matters.

What I Changed

I want to be careful here. I didn’t cure Crohn’s disease by switching cleaning products. That is not what happened, and I won’t claim it.

What I did was reduce every modifiable source of chemical exposure in my environment that I could identify. Cleaning products were actually one of the easier levers to pull — I could change them immediately, completely, and at relatively low cost.

I stopped using any product with quaternary ammonium compounds. I stopped using any product with synthetic fragrance. I switched to truly sulfate-free, preservative-free, fragrance-free cleaning solutions. I aired my home out more. I eliminated the disinfectant wipes.

And then I waited to see what happened.

What Did Happen

I’m not going to overstate this. My health management involves multiple interventions — medication, diet, stress management, sleep, and yes, what I clean my house with.

What I can tell you is this: in the two years after I systematically reduced chemical exposure in my home, I had my most stable period of the previous decade. My hospitalizations went from multiple per year to zero. My flare frequency dropped. My gastroenterologist noted the improvement. She asked me what I’d changed. When I told her, she said something I didn’t expect.

She said she’d been following the research on environmental chemicals and IBD and that reducing chemical exposure was something she’d started mentioning to her more severe patients.

That was the moment I stopped thinking about this as a personal health hack and started thinking about it as something other families needed to know.

Why I Started Ecolosophy

I’m not a scientist. Elizabeth is — she’s a PhD chemist, a mom, and our co-founder. John and Miguel are business people. I’m the person who had Crohn’s disease for 21 years and decided I needed to build something.

The cleaning product industry is enormous. The conventional options are everywhere and cheap. The “non-toxic” options that exist are often greenwashed — they use “natural” language while still containing synthetic fragrance, ethoxylated surfactants, and quats.

I wanted something real. Not just “better than Clorox” — actually clean. No synthetic chemicals. No unlisted byproducts. Full ingredient transparency. A formula that a PhD scientist mother looked at and said: I would use this in my own home.

That’s what we built. And I clean my own house with it every week.

What I’d Say to Someone in My Shoes

If you have Crohn’s, colitis, or any autoimmune condition — talk to your doctor about the emerging research on environmental chemical load. This is not a fringe conversation anymore. Gastroenterologists and rheumatologists are increasingly discussing environmental triggers with patients.

Your cleaning products are not your only lever. But they are one lever — and unlike diet, which is complicated and personal and contested, your cleaning products are simple. You can change them completely in one afternoon.

You don’t have to wait for a definitive clinical trial to decide whether you want quaternary ammonium compounds sprayed on your kitchen counter every week. You can just decide you don’t.

That’s where I started.

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If you want to see exactly what we put in our concentrate — full ingredient list, nothing hidden — it’s here. No quats. No synthetic fragrance. No ethoxylated surfactants. Just clean.

For a deeper look at quats specifically: What Are Quats in Cleaning Products?

#cleanwithlove #ecolosophy #nontoxichome #detoxyourlife #plantbasedliving