Author: Eric Bakker

Thanks for checking out my video today. How is Candida diagnosed? How do we know we have it? How do we know we’re not just imagining we’ve got this disease?

I think the best way to diagnose chronic Candida, particularly, is the stool test. I think it’s the ultimate way. There are different ways you can test for Candida in the body. You can do blood testing, for example, for particular antigens, Candida antigens in the body. You can do what we call organic acids urine test to look at the metabolites, the products broken down in the body that tell you if Candida has been there. There are different ways we can test, but I think the ultimate test is the comprehensive digestive stool analysis test. Three samples. Three concurrent days. I work with a couple of labs. If you go to ErikBakker.com, you can find out more about testing there. I work with a couple of labs in America. My favorite lab is Doctor’s Data in Chicago.

I’ll tell you why I like the stool test. It’s because it just doesn’t tell me if the patient’s got Candida or not. It tells me a lot of information. They do a really good microbiology panel to show me the level of beneficial bacteria, what we call the commensals and the bad bacteria. So the beneficial bacteria should generally in a healthy patient be a three or a four plus behind the beneficial. Many people, in fact, have a zero like NG, no growth, or one plus.

The commensals are bacteria that can turn good or bad. Healthy people have got no commensals or very low levels. People with severe Candida can have 9 or 10 different strains of commensal bacteria, and the pathogenic ones are the nasty ones. These are the terrorists of the gut. I call the commensals the politicians of the gut. They can change. Go good or bad depending on what’s happening around them at the time, so you’ve got the good guys, the politicians, and the ISIS militants or the terrorists. These guys are downright nasty, so you don’t want to have those in the gut at all.

So this is a culture, so they actually try and grow these bugs in the stool. They do a microscopy as well, so they actually microscopically – so they look at the stool to see if they can see any white spicules or Candida there. They also try and culture the stool for yeast, and I’ve seen anything up to 5 or 10, even 15 strains of Candida grown in stool samples. Just imagine if you’ve got low beneficials and you’ve got Candida albicans cultured in all three stool samples, it’s quite bad. That’s a serious yeast infection.

When you pass out a stool sample, you should not be able to pass out any viable live yeast. If you can culture Candida from a stool sample, it means you’ve got active growing Candida in the stool itself, which is a pretty serious yeast infection.

The other thing I like about the stool testing is the fact that we can look at the immunology of the bowel. We can look at what we call the circulatory IgA, which is an immunoglobulin A, which is one of the most abundant immunoglobulins or antibodies found in your whole body. The body makes a couple of grams of it, one to two grams of it per day. You’ll find it in the stool in set levels, so if we find the levels very high or very low, it will give us an idea that you’ve got serious immune activity happening in the digestive system. The body is trying to bind to things and take it out. If it’s very up regulated or down regulated in conjunction with these bacteria, it gives me a lot of useful information about you, what’s going on in your life.

We can even do a cancer marker in the stool, so we can see how high your risk is for bowel cancer, if you’ve got a risk there at all. There are many other things we can look at. They also look at a fat stain, for example, and they check for fibers and meat fibers and things, so they can see how well your digestive system is working, to see if the enzymes are breaking things down properly. It’s very important for good health to have very good digestive function, to break down food properly to the smallest substrates that allow the beneficial bacteria feed on those things and thrive. We need to feed them up.

Fiber to me is like compost in the garden. We know that if you’ve got a vegetable garden, you know, I’ve got a nice veggie garden so I put compost in there and I grow good vegetables. So if the soil is barren and there’s no compost in there or no food, we’re going to grow crappy vegetables.

Your health is the same. Lots of good fibers, different types of fibers in your bowel allow beneficial bacteria to thrive, keeps gas down, keeps bloating down, and these beneficial bugs produce things like Vitamin K, for example, and B vitamins that sustain good health. So it’s important to have these, and the stool test will assess all of that and more. Isn’t that amazing? This is how I like to test patients for Candida is I like to do the CDSA times three. It’s a stool test, so that’s a good test that you might want to consider if you’re interested in a Candida diagnosis.

I hope that gives you better insight into how to diagnose Candida. Keep away from these cheap budget tests. Go for the stool test. It’s the best one. And check out my home test. You’ll also find some videos I’ve done on the several different home tests, the spit test, the tongue test, the taste test, the sound test, so you can see all those videos as well. It’s all no charge at all to do the home testing. Stool test costs money, but it’s the Rolls Royce of tests. I do several of them every week on patients all around the world and it helps to solve problems. Some patients have had these conditions for 10 or 20 or 30 years, and the stool test will just throw it all up and say, “This is what’s wrong.” It allows me to pinpoint the treatment for that client.

I hope that answers your question. Thanks for tuning in.

How do you know when Candida is gone? How do you know when your yeast infection is no more? How do you know when your health has improved to the point where you can relax and not worry about thinking, “Oh, my goodness. I’ve got a yeast infection.” Well, if you think about it, it’s not really hard to answer that question, is it? The way you’ll know is you’ll start feeling a lot better inside yourself. The symptoms will improve.

You’ve probably heard me talk before about a symptom tracker. It’s important for you to track your symptoms on a regular basis. I developed a Candida symptom tracker that’s in my book, Candida Crusher.

I’m not sure if you’ve got a copy of this book yet, but the book’s got a huge amount of information in it, all about the different signs and symptoms of Candida and, particularly, I’ve created this form called the “Symptom Tracker” that you can record your symptoms down on the left side or tick the appropriate ones and add your own down at the bottom. And then each week in the columns, track your symptoms over a 12-week period. Each symptom can get graded one, two or three, mild, moderate or severe, so what you’ll find is as you obviously improve, your score starts decreasing. The severity rating goes down, so the threes become twos, become ones, eventually over time, but what you’ll also find is other people will pick it up in you. If you’re in a relationship or if you’ve got close friends or family around you, they’re going to notice some changes in you.

Generally, I believe in what’s called “Hering’s Law of Cure.” There was a doctor a long time ago called Dr. Hering, a famous homeopath, and Dr. Hering believed that symptoms disappear in the reverse order of onset. So let’s just say you had a headache 10 or 15 years ago that developed and it’s been on and off there for about 10 or 15 years. And then you had a symptom develop more recently, say a lot of bloating or flatulence, but that’s only happened two or three years ago. Well, if you think about it, that’s probably going to disappear before the headache is. The digestive problem is probably going to clear up and get better before the headache will clear up and get better, and that’s how the body works. It gets rid of symptoms in this particular manner, so the symptoms you had a long time ago are usually the last ones to go. In some cases, we can even see a return of all symptoms, so you may not have had a headache for 10 or 15 years, and then as you recover, the headaches may come back, which may freak you right out. This is actually a favorable sign.

Homeopathic physicians a long time ago were very clever in observing patients, particularly their recovery from chronic illness and worked a lot of these things out. I always am quite happy when a patient gets a return of all symptoms. Many times these symptoms come back because the patient suppressed them originally with a pharmaceutical drug. They took some kind of pill or drug and the symptom went away. As they recovered and detoxified and cleared rubbish out of their body, the symptom came back.

Now doctors laugh at these sort of things, but I couldn’t care less what doctors say when it comes to recovery of patients. Because my only relationship in healing is with the patient. The patient pays me a fee. The patient makes some sort of contract with me they want to get well. I partner with that person. I couldn’t give two hoots what doctors or specialists say. I couldn’t care less if they say it’s placebo or it’s only a temporary recovery. Who cares? Because if the patient feels well and they’re happy and their quality of life comes back, that’s all I care about. And I know when Candida is gone when that patient starts making monumental changes in their life as a result of their improvement. I’ve seen patients get remarried and take on promotions, start a family, all these things. Now people don’t do those things and really feel happy about it unless their health comes back.

So call it placebo, call if what you want, I couldn’t care less. If a patient feels great, that’s what matters to me regardless of the therapy that we use to get that patient to that position. Right?

We must never forget that the word “doctorea” or “doctor” means to teach or teaching, so it’s important to teach our patients how to get well and the steps they need to take to recover. The true healers do that. They don’t care about the money. They don’t look at the ego or the methods of healing. They look at how the patient is and if they’re recovering or not, and they take impediments away. By taking impediments away, obstacles to cure, the patient will improve, and that’s all that matters. And that’s when the patient will improve when they’ve made those changes in life. They’ve taken those barriers away. Good health only comes from change. It doesn’t come from pills or drugs or surgery. It comes from change. Usually a change the patient has made.
So I hope that answers your question. Thanks for tuning in.

How do I get rid of a yeast infection under my breast? This is a question I’ve been asked a couple of times. Not so much as many of the other ones, but it’s an important one to answer.

First thing to determine is whether it is a yeast infection or not, and sometimes a swab will do this. Sometimes a good visual inspection will give you that idea, but generally in areas like the folds of the skin around the belly or under the breast or between the buttocks or even around the thigh area, if a person’s quite large, of course, this is going to be a perfect breeding ground for Candida. You’ve got the darkness, the moisture, perspiration, all that in that area and Candida is going to like to grow in that area.

The most obvious thing to do is to – if it’s possible – is to look at some kind of breast reduction or how we can stop this skin from sort of like hanging together there creating that. Maybe a bra or some kind of a device, but you’re going to spend regular attention to that area to help overcome it. This condition needs to be treated both locally as well as systemically.

I’ve had many women from Australia, New Zealand; I’ve treated with this condition over the past many years, and generally I find my satisfactory long-term resolution is weight loss. Weight loss will help because it’s going to help the body generally strengthen the immune system, increase digestive function, we can get the bowel back in order again, reduce the ability of the body to grow Candida internally, and also help it, therefore, externally. And externally, we apply things like calendula cream or tea tree oil. We have showers twice per day. We can get a natural kind of a powder and put dry powder under the breast area there to keep the moisture away from the region that’s causing it. I wouldn’t use fungal creams if I were you. I’d probably use a tea tree oil cream, as you can get these kind of products at a good health food shop, a good cream with tea tree oil.

So dryness, sunshine, these are enemies of Candida. Allowing sun exposure to that area. Keeping the area dry. Maybe some form of barrier for a while. Weight loss. Local application. Internal treatment. Internal treatment follow my Candida Crusher program. Go to yeastinfection.org. Do my quiz on CandidaCrusher.com to determine if you’re mild, moderate or severe and then definitely treat the outcome based on the quiz. The quiz is amazing. We spent a lot of time and money on that quiz to get it perfect. It’s the best quiz online. So you’ll be able to determine with a high degree of accuracy how bad this is affecting you internally as well as around the breast region.

So give those suggestions a go. Thanks for tuning in.