Author: Eric Bakker

Thank you for checking out this video today. Here’s a question I get asked from time to time. What are the signs that I’m recovering from a Candida infection? How do I know if I’m getting better? How do I know? Any clue?

Well, you have a think about it. There are many different signs and symptoms that will show you or more likely disappearance of symptoms that will show you that you’re actually getting well. What I want you to try to think about is how long you’ve had the condition for. What kind of treatments you’ve used to try to get well, and particularly, what were the most annoying symptoms that were bothering you with Candida? Have a think about that.

One of the best ways to know if you’re going to get well is to track your symptoms, so once you start treatment is to actually use a kind of a symptom tracker. You can make this yourself or you can use the one out of Candida Crusher. Symptoms are ideally tracked over a 12 week or 3-month period, particularly when you’ve got a chronic condition with multiple symptoms because it’s really hard for you to work out what’s got better, what’s got worse.

Patients often see me and say, “I don’t feel any better at all. I’m feeling just as bad as I did when I came to see you several months ago. This is all a waste of time. I’ve wasted my money and I’ve blown thousands of dollars on all sorts of treatments and it looks like your treatment is just another one of these scam treatments.” Look, I can tell you, I’ve heard it all before. I’ve seen many, many people over the years. Some give me good feedback. Some give me amazing feedback. Some give me not so good feedback. Some give me terrible feedback.

The interesting thing that I find is I just grabbed their case taking form, so I’ll have a look at the patient’s case taking form. I write all the things down, particularly when the patient first sees me. I’ll ask the patient questions every time they see me. A typical thing I will do when someone is seeing me with a lot of chronic problems and they give me 100 symptoms or whatever is I ask them “What are the three key things that really bug you? If you could get rid of these three key problems, what would they be right now in no particular order?” Most people say, “Oh, that’s easy. Poor energy. Bad bowel problem.

Terrible sleep.” They’ll give me three particular things, and then I will say to them “Now you’ve given me three key symptoms. Now what we’re going to do is grade each of these symptoms from 1 to 3; 1 being mild, 2 being moderate, 3 being severe.” And then someone could say, for example, like “Well, the bowel problem is number three; that’s like real bad. That’s got to go. It’s got to go straightaway.” And they’ll say something then like “Insomnia, yeah, it’s not so bad. I would say one, maybe two.” And then I would say, “Is it mild or is it moderate?” “Well, it’s actually moderate,” so then that will be a two and the energy may be a one or a two as well.

I’ve been treating this patient for some time and then I’ll ask them again maybe on the second or third follow up visit I’ll say, “What are the three key things that are bugging you?” And I won’t tell them what they told me a while back, and they may say other things or they may come back to the same things. And then I’ll ask them again. “Tell me about the bowel problem.” “Well, actually that’s a one.” And then I’ll write down one. Once they’ve given me those symptoms, I’ll say to them “Hang on a minute. A while ago you told me it was a three.” “Well, actually you’re right. The bowel problem is not as bad as it used to be.” But then when they came back on that visit, they would’ve said, “Oh, the bowel problem is just as bad as it always was.

The thing is when we live with symptoms for a long time, we tend to get used to them. And when they slowly disappear, sometimes we still think they’re bugging us. So the only way you’re going to work out if you’re getting well is to track your symptoms over a long period of time by using a symptom tracker of some degree. Or ask other people around you, friends or family, to keep an eye on you and to check in with you regularly to tell you if they feel that you’re improving. Because I’ll tell you this, when you’re improving physically, you’re improving emotionally and mentally as well because that’s how the body works. We don’t just get rid of symptoms on a physical basis. When we feel good inside, we also start feeling good emotionally. We respond better to people. We’re not as irritable. We’re not as depressed. We don’t come across as tired and disinterested. Our sex life improves. Some of us may feel romantic all of a sudden again or we may want to go on vacation and enjoy time with friends or family.

When you improve, you’re going to feel better in yourself. That’s a key thing. The desire to live a long happy life starts improving, and it shows on you. You’ll start smiling more. You won’t be as sullen and as irritable and as cranky maybe as you were. Because people who have got poor digestive health, poor urinary health, or poor immune health, health on multiple levels, poor hormonal health, they’re going to express this on multiple levels and people around them will pick this up.

You’ll be surprised how other people pick up these things even more so than you. So be sure to ask people around you to keep an eye on you. You’ll certainly know when you’re getting well from Candida. It’ll be a slow, but steady increase in health on many different levels, physical levels, emotional levels, and mental levels.

You can read plenty more if you go to yeastinfection.org and don’t forget to do my online yeast infection quiz. It’s the best one in the world by a long shot. It’s taken me a long time to perfect this quiz. Go to CandidaCrusher.com or go to yeastinfection.org and check for the button, click through to the quiz. That will tell you if you’re mild, moderate or severe. It will give you a pretty good idea.

Thank you for tuning into this video today, much appreciate that. I hope you’re enjoying some of my videos. I’ve created videos particularly for people like you with an interest in yeast infection. People who want to get rid of yeast infection, but also doctors, naturopathic physicians, chiropractors, and any other people out there interested in helping their patients overcome Candida.

I network up with many different healthcare professionals in my business and have for a long time, so to all you people I know out there, thanks for tuning into my videos and I hope you get some insight into helping your patients as well.

What are good recipes for Candida? That’s a question I get from people from time to time. Are there any special recipe books I need to get? Are there any websites with great Candida recipes? Well, you don’t need Candida recipes. You don’t need websites to show you specific foods for Candida. You don’t need that at all any more than you need “what are the right recipes to eat on a Monday? What are the right recipes to eat on a Sunday?” It doesn’t really matter.

You should know a couple of the core principles of Candida and incorporate them, simple as that. You need to avoid any kind of foods with processed – particularly or refined carbs and sugars in them because this is what really fungus and yeast thrive on. So if you just eat a basic Paleo kind of a diet, well, you’re looking at lean proteins, you’re looking at high fiber, vegetable foods, and you’re looking at particular types of grains that Candida doesn’t really like to get a foothold in. You’re going to be well ahead of the game doing that. Particularly if you incorporate particular foods that are antifungal.

What are some of those foods? You probably know them now. Coconut, coconut oil, particularly a dessertspoon per day. Garlic, raw fresh garlic is my favorite antifungal food. Oregano, thyme, rosemary, basil, all these kind of herbs that are used in Mediterranean style cooking. These are all antifungal to a good degree. Clove, different woody spices like cinnamon, clove and ginger, fresh ginger, grated ginger, all sorts of products you can eat. Lime juice, lemon juice, grapefruit juice, seeds from different kinds of fruits to chew on, all these sort of things. Adding these foods into your diet is going to give you a very strong antifungal base to your diet. So don’t try to look at making special kinds of foods to counter yeast infections. By eating the right kind of basically healthy diet, you’re going to help to starve the fungus out anyway by default.

But here’s the crunch, it’s not all about diet. I really don’t believe it. I’ve seen people recover with Candida that even eat bread, that eat sweet fruits, I’ve seen it, and I’ve seen it many times. So you can’t tell me that every person needs to eat a very strict diet to eradicate yeast infection. I don’t believe it. From clinical experience I’ve seen this not to be true. And I’ve also seen some people who never shake Candida even if they eat ultra-strict diets. They still can’t shake it, so you can’t get rid of Candida by diet alone. If you believe that, click off this video now because then again you’re a bit in la-la land, a bit deluded, a bit like the person who believes you can cure Candida in 12 hours. This is nonsense.

Having the right kind of dietary approach is a very powerful aid with Candida. It’s one of the pillars. I’d say it’s one of the four main pillars, but it’s not like the biggest pillar of Candida. So when you see books like the Candida Diet that just promote diet primarily, it’s wrong. Candida eradication is a very careful balanced approach.

The biggest missing link for Candida eradication is understanding the stress mechanism and how cortisol dysfunction ruins your ability for your immune system to eradicate Candida. This the best kept secret of all and I’ve had so much good feedback from my book regarding this particular piece of information that many thousands of people now bought my book and read this and come back to me and said, “Erik, we never knew this stuff. We bought all the Candida books on the market, but we never knew about cortisol and about Candida.” All these other guys are missing the boat. Diet is a small piece of the puzzle. I’d say it’s 25 percent. So it’s important, but it’s not the overall eradicating factor.

So let’s recap. What are some of the key foods you need to help you have an antifungal diet? Lean meats, poultry, fish, deer or venison, I think is a very good meat, not too much beef, 250 grams a week, about a quarter of a pound a week. You don’t need any more beef regardless if it’s grass fed or what. Ocean caught fish is the best. Grains, I think brown rice is fine with Candida. I also think Quinoa is very good, too. Amaranth and Quinoa. Nuts and seeds. Peanuts are not good, so avoid them. They’re too moldy. Nuts and seeds are goods. Almonds and Brazil nuts are very good. Sesame seeds are outstanding. All the green leafy vegetables are fine to eat. All the herbs and spices we spoke about you want to incorporate. Never eat leftover food in the refrigerator because it has mold and spores on it.

So that’s a few good hints and tips for you about some good antifungal foods and a Candida dietary approach. I hope that helps you. Thanks for your question.

I often get asked questions regarding Candida yeast infections from many people all around the world in over 100 countries now. It’s become very popular for me now to reply in this particular fashion because it would take too long for me to respond to each individually in mail I get. I get hundreds of emails every day. Typical questions. What are the causes of Candida is a question I get. How did I get there in the first place? How did this start for me? How can I identify the cause, so I can prevent it in the future?

In my book in Chapter 2 of Candida Crusher, I wrote the 11 primary causes of a Candida yeast infection. Let’s just get one thing straight. There are two types of causes. There’s the primary cause, or what I call the exciting cause, what really helped to initiate or begin Candida, and then there’s the maintaining causes, what keeps it going. Remember, there are two types of causes. Most people haven’t got a clue about these two types of causes. They just think there’s some kind of cause, so there’s always something that maintains Candida or a combination of dietary and lifestyle events that maintain the cause, and then there’s the initiating causes. Here’s just a little a piece of information I’m going to read out to you. The different types of causes that are most likely to occur with Candida. These are both maintaining causes and initiating causes.

Antibiotic drugs. The primary cause. I’d say most of the people I see with severe Candida or recurring Candida took one or several rounds of some kind of a penicillin, some kind of an antibiotic. There are different classes of antibiotic drugs and many of them have a helping hand in beginning Candida. Many women develop vaginal thrush after taking a course of antibiotics usually for some kind of respiratory problem or skin problem. Maybe even for urinary tract infection, they would have developed it. Many guys develop jock itch after taking antibiotics for a cough or a cold or a cut or some skin infection or something like that. Many children develop thrush as well, also from antibiotics. These are the primary.

Antibiotics in meats. The commercial poultry or chicken that you’re eating today probably contains an antibiotic. If you continually eat these kind of foods plus have several of the other causes, you’re probably going to help to maintain this yeast infection in your body. This is why I talk a lot about organic or free-range chicken. The grass-fed beef. The particular kind of proteins that are clean. This also gives a lot of vegans or vegetarians fuel for saying, “See, meat’s not a good food. You need to eat vegetarian sources of protein.”

Immune deficiency. Many people I see have an immune deficiency. They may have a folic deficiency or an iron deficiency, for example, leading to a deficient immune function. Many people have got digestive problems, which have helped to create the immune deficiencies or exacerbate them, which drag the Candida out even further. A poor immunity. Get your blood tested, for example, it’s a good idea to do a complete blood count and look at the white cell markers. Check iron and B-12. Good things to check out.

Steroids and other drugs. Very common. Many people take steroids, inhaled steroids, and those puffers for asthma. They may take a prednisone, a prednisone for an autoimmune disease or pain or inflammation. They may take a hydrocortisone cream for a skin problem. These are all steroids which help to suppress the immune system and perpetuate Candida.

Alcohol. One of the biggest causes with men with jock itch or maintaining causes, particularly, is drinking alcohol on a regular basis. Drinking beer, for example. I see this a lot with guys.

Diets. Sugar-laden diets. Diets high in sweet foods. We’ve spoken about this on numerous videos. Diets with plenty of white bread, bagels, donuts, candy, chocolate, and ice cream. These things just feed Candida in the gut.

Stress. Check out my three-part series on stress and Candida. There are many aspects of stress that have quite a debilitating effect on the immune system and perpetuate Candida.

Chemicals. There’s probably a lot of chemicals in your diet right now. You could be using personal skin care products. You could be using cleansing products or garden products or all sorts of chemicals around the home that can affect you in different ways. I’m going to do a series of videos specifically relating to chemicals and how they affect the three to four different aspects of your health in general.

Your endocrine function. When your hormone system gets affected severely. Your nervous system gets affected quite severely by… Your immune system gets affected quite severely. They’ve even linked Parkinson’s disease now with a chemical called Rotenone or Derestas[?] that you puff around your cabbages for the white butterfly. Rotenone or Derestas[?] have been linked positively with Parkinson’s disease, so be careful using chemicals. Even like glyphosate or Round-up. These chemicals can linger in the body for years and create a lot of destruction.

Diabetes. A prime cause of Candida and a prime maintaining cause as well. People with diabetes tend to have blood sugar problems, elevated blood sugar levels. They urinate out more glucose. Of course, it’s the glucose management catastrophe. Diabetes. Of course, when glucose isn’t managed properly, Candida is sitting there waiting to happen.

Chlorine or chlorine bleach. Fluoride, bromide or what we called haloids. These are chemicals that can have quite an interesting effect on your thyroid gland preventing the production of the thyroid hormone, but affecting your immune system in other ways as well. So swimming in pools of chlorine, eating foods with bromine like certain types of breads. Fluoride toothpaste. These are small maintaining causes, but still quite significant.

And mold is the 11th one. So mold – we have many people here in New Zealand and no doubt up in Canada and other countries that live in houses that are a bit leaky with rain. They get moldy. There’d be spores in the air. So you need to live in a ventilated to dry clean living quarters if you have Candida because you can really get mucked up by mold.

These are the 11 causes of Candida. I hope that answers the question on what are the causes of Candida.

Thank you.