Author: Eric Bakker

Greetings. New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker, author of Candida Crusher. Thanks for checking out my video. Today we’re going to talk about SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, and specifically what are the best kind of foods to eat for people affected by SIBO.

I’ve just spent probably a good half an hour looking on the internet on different SIBO websites, IBS websites, leaky gut websites just to get an idea on the kind of information that’s out there for people. A lot of this information is put together by people who never see any patients, but there’s also plenty of information put on the internet by people like me who did see patients.

What I want you to really get into your mind is everybody has got their own opinion about what you can and can’t eat. There are no real laws or rules regarding diet. Probably to sum this video up in a nutshell, the best diet for SIBO or the best foods to eat if you’ve got a bacterial overgrowth are the best foods that you can tolerate for your condition.

I’ve got an interesting piece of paper here from a particular website that outlines the different kinds of basic carbohydrate modified diet. There’s probably real major carbo modification diets that have sprung up probably in the last 10 or 20 years. The specific carbohydrate diet or the SCD diet, for example, which was first put together by a lady named Elaine Gotschall for a child that she had. I believe a child with celiac. She wanted to look for a diet that would have very low reactive potential for her child. She believes that if you follow this diet quite strictly for 12 months or more, you can almost get back to normal eating. I can tell you I’ve got plenty of patients that have been on SCD diets for 5 to 10 years and they don’t come off them.

A diet is a four letter word. A normal eating plan that we all do for me what I would call normality. To me, a diet is a little bit like going to the gym. You do something short term to get an effect and then you go off that again. It’s not something you’re going to do for the remainder of your life. If you do, do it for the remainder of your life, it’s going to be slowly modified to suit your needs, to suit the foods that you like to eat. But there’s a lot more than meets the eye than just food when it comes to the gut. I’ve tried to make this quite clear in multiple videos.

The specific carbohydrate diet allows meat, fish, poultry, eggs, some beans, lactose free dairy, non-starchy vegetables, ripe fruit, nut seeds, honey, and saccharin. Not allowed: grains, starchy vegetables, lactose, some beans, and any sweeteners other than honey, saccharin and the occasional stevia. That’s the SCD diet. We’ll come back to that one in a minute. Of course, the other one is the GAPS diet, the gut and psychology diet, which is quite an interesting book put together by Dr. Carol McBride. I really like this book. It’s an excellent book. It’s got some really good information in it.

The GAPS diet is quite similar. A few modifications to the SCD diet. A few less beans. No baking soda or store bought juice. There are a couple of modifications to it. Of course, and also the low FOGMP diet. What does FOGMP mean? Fermentable oligosaccharides disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. These are different kinds of fermentable carbs and sugars you need to avoid in your diet.

When it comes to SIBO, a very important factor for you to remember is have you got SIBO or not? Many people believe they’ve got SIBO. Many people will undergo a breath or stool test. I’ve not found a patient with a very simple presentation yet with a gut problem. Many people have got multiple issues that affect them when they’ve got SIBO. They often have some kind of yeast. It may be an unusual yeast strain or it may be Candida. They’ll often have down levels of beneficial bacteria, particularly the lactobacillus and the bifida species will be low. And they’ll also have other issues like parasites like blastocysts or Dientamoeba fragilis or pseudomonas or there could be other bugs there.

When you talk to me about SIBO, I want you to explain to me exactly what kind of condition is going on in the gut. And I keep banging on about the stool test because the stool tests to me are one way of actually doing a criminal check on your background, so I actually run a thorough check on it. I want to see what kind of bad people are involved with you when it comes to your health. It’s easy to take people at face value, but when you start digging a bit deeper, often you’ll find some very interesting facts.

I can’t tell you how many stool tests I’ve seen with the most remarkable results. Many patients the last few years are showing up with very high levels of streptococci bacteria. Alpha homiletic strep, gamma homiletic strep. Many of these bacteria have sat in the body for multiple years, have become resistant to many different pharmaceutical drugs. Unfortunately, many of these people end up going to see a functional doctor. They think they’re doing the right thing. They’re go on xifaxan or they go on another kind of antibiotic and they think it’s the right thing to do. But little do they know that many different types of pharmaceutical medications just create bugs to become stronger and more resistant. To me, it’s not really a viable option any more to look at pharmaceutical intervention for any kind of gut problem.

I’m not too bad on nystatin for some patients. I’ve had some relatively good results. But remember, nystatin is an antifungal. It’s not really antibacterial. When it comes to SIBO and food, to me, you have to try to understand where I’m coming from. Have you got SIBO? Is it predominantly a bacterial problem or have we got a mixed bag we’re dealing with? Are we dealing also with fungi issues, parasites and beneficial bacteria issues? Then you’ll say, “What’s that got to do with it? Just tell me about what kind of foods I can and can’t eat.” It’s got everything to do with it. Because some people who are diagnosed with SIBO can tolerate a wider range of fermentable carbs than other people who can’t tolerate them at all.

Again, I keep saying this similar sort of thing. I don’t want to keep playing the same record. But a lot of it is experimental. A lot of it means that you need to try things for yourself in very small amounts to start with. A very important I’d like to also stress in this video is by modifying starches, it can have a very different effect in your gut. An interesting comment from a YouTube subscriber who said that when he steamed grains, he could tolerate them really well. But when he didn’t steam them, he couldn’t tolerate them. Many people have told me when they bake chick peas or bake lentils or bake potatoes or bake pumpkin, they can tolerate that. But when they boil it, they get bloating and gas.

None of that information is here on these websites. Don’t automatically assume because you’ve got a problem such as SIBO that therefore you have to avoid every kind of starchy vegetable. You may be okay with certain types of starchy vegetables. Some of my patients can tolerate wild rice very well, the black rice. I had a patient recently email me and said that he can tolerate brown rice mixed with a small amount of wild rice or the black rice extremely well. But as soon as he adds basmati or jasmine rice or any other kind of white rice, he gets immediate bloating and gas.

Many other people have told me that they found the information I gave them was correct was to start on a teaspoon of cooked rice and then slowly build up to a tablespoon of cooked rice and not to take a large portion size. Sometimes starches work better if you improve pancreatic function. That’s another thing you didn’t think about is you need very good stomach and pancreas functional ability to be able to break starches down. Many people have got issues with their digestive organs. Not just bacteria. Now you can start seeing it’s getting a little bit more murky and complicated. It’s not a matter of should I eat this or should I not eat that. It’s not that simple.

We didn’t even come near stress. Fifty percent of people with SIBO have got autonomic nervous system imbalance. They’ve got a big problem with the nerve endings in their gut, the hormone production in their gut and they get lots of issues with that that can affect the motility of the stool through the bowel. That can mean that food particles stay longer in certain parts of the digestive system and cause fermentation. When they should be moving through a bit more quickly, they’re moving through more slowly.

The movement of the food through the gut is very dependent on the proper functioning of your autonomic nervous system, which is controlled to a big degree by stress. Nobody talks about these things. Nobody talks in these GAPS diet books about the effect of the motility and the fermentation and how the adrenal function either up or down regulated can affect bloating significantly in the gut.

These are things I’m going to explore a lot more in subsequent videos. What are the best foods to eat for a SIBO diet? Let’s go back and talk about that. The foods that you can tolerate. The first thing that you need to obviously do is cut out all of the crap out of your diet. I’ve spoken a lot about this on previous videos, so you know the foods you should cut out. Sugary foods, ice cream, alcohol, soda drinks, breads that you buy in the shop, all these standard kind of foods need to go. Home cooked meals, basic foods, foods that our grandparents used to eat, basic vegetables, basic meats, lean quality products, not with a high amount of animal fat, in my opinion, not really the good way to go. Butter, I’ve always been a big fan of butter. Basic foods of a very high quality nature, cooked okay, are usually going to agree with your gut quite well.

Remember, the stress part. I read another very interesting article about the exhaustion epidemic, which I’m going to do a video on today, too, about how many people now are exhausted. We’re sleeping two hours a night less than people did 70 years ago. Don’t you think that affects the gut? Come on. We’re getting more people with gut problems than we’ve ever seen before in clinics like I run. In my mind, a big part of it is technology. Staying up at night. Not sleeping anymore.

What’s that got to do with eating? This is a SIBO diet video. What the hell are you talking about? I’m trying to show you than there’s a lot more than meets the eye than just what you put in here. It’s also your lifestyle. That’s something I don’t want you to forget. In the next video, we’re going to talk a little bit about the foods you shouldn’t eat with SIBO and there’s clearly defined foods that I really want you to avoid probably for a good 6 to 12 months.

Let’s sum everything up we’ve said in the video. Experiment with your diet. By all means, read the GAPS book, the SCD book, the FOGMP books, read all those books. Get good ideas out of those books. Also have a look at Candida Crusher because I write quite a lot about different diet approaches in that book. I write about body ecology and GAPS and all these sorts of books. Donna Gags has got good ideas with body ecology, putting fermented and cultured foods back into the diet. Everybody’s got their take on it. And all the shelves you see behind me all bowing and ready to fall over, a lot of these are full of diet books.

The best diet for you is the book that you write for yourself. It’s the foods that you can tolerate at this point in your life. Disappointed? Don’t be disappointed. Diet plays an important, but in my opinion, a minor role in recovery from a lot of gut problems. Think about it. Thanks for tuning in. Don’t forget to click on the link below for your free report. Thank you.

Greetings. New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker. Author of Candida Crusher. Thanks for checking out my video and thank you for all my subscribers for sending in different kinds of comments, lots of good feedback and also for your questions. I’ve got lots of questions. In fact, I’ve got so many questions. I’ve got paperwork full of questions.

Let’s go through a few today. We’re going to cover a couple of different videos today. The first one I’m going to cover, which I’ve had a few people asking me from different countries, particularly a few parts in South America and also North America. “How do you get rid of tapeworms naturally? Eric, how do I get rid of tapeworms?”

Let’s talk about worms in general for a minute. I will talk about tapeworms as well, of course, but many people freak out about worms. You’d be surprised how many times I’ve seen a photo that someone sent me or I picked up a picture from some website or looked at YouTube about all kinds of bowel motion pictures and people thinking they’re passing out worms. “Look at this huge parasite I passed out and this massive worm. It’s like a UFO almost,” one guy said. Crazy. I’ve even had people ask me if they’re passing out worms through her eyes, ears, nose, penis, vagina, you name any part of the body and someone thinks they’ve got a worm coming out. Some people think you’ve got worms in your eyes. There’s a lot of funny people out there.

Most times when you see something in the stool and it appears like a worm, it’s not a worm at all. It’s an undigested food particle. A lady sent me this alarming photo as part of her consultation saying she was very, very anxious and scared. She thought she was going to die. When I looked at the picture, it was peas. It was small round pieces of pea that were undigested and she thought these were larvae and parasites and things. Basically, many different types of vegetables, unless they’re chewed properly, will be passed out partially digested and you may think that you’ve got worms, but you haven’t at all. So be careful. Don’t freak out. You’re not passing a UFO. What a crazy thing to say. There’s some funny people out there. You better have a sense of humor in my business, otherwise you go nuts.

Let’s look at a bit about tapeworms. Tapeworms are flat worms. They’re segmented worms. These can be about the biggest parasite that can really live inside the human body. They can get quite large. They can get very long. Generally, they’re going to come from uncooked meat, so beef, pork, lamb, fish. Different kinds of species of tapeworms can live in different kinds of animals. Particular types can live in fish, beef. With land animals, I’m not sure about fish, but I know that they pass generally through the fecal matter. Animals will basically pass out wastes and then eggs or larvae deposit on the ground. Other animals will pick that up through feeding. It will go into the animal. It will live in the intestinal tract and it will develop into a mature adult stage, release eggs, and then the cycle continues.

But also people who handle contaminated meat or who actually have tapeworms, they can actually, if they’re not clean and hygienic, if they’re not in there handwashing, they could actually pass eggs or larvae onto other people through food handling practices and things like that. I don’t want you freaking out about tapeworms. Because in all the years I’ve practiced, which is nearly 30, I’ve only had one case of tapeworms. Tapeworm is quite rare today. It’s not a very common thing you’re going to find in practice. Not very common at all. Much more common to find parasites that you can’t see with the eye like blastocysts, for example, which is probably one of the world’s most common of all parasites. Not tapeworms. People think of parasites, they think about huge beetles and worms crawling through people’s bodies and stuff like that. It’s not like that at all. You can’t see these things with the eye. You need a microscope. It’s incredible how many people have told me that they can feel big bugs crawling around inside of them or they feel digestive systems or they get noises internal. They think it’s worms burrowing through their intestinal tract. These people have got an amazing sense of imagination. They’d probably do good in movies or plays or things like that or become good comedians maybe. I want you to rest assured. Tapeworms are not that common. In some countries, they probably will be much more common, but in North America and Europe, they’re actually not common at all.

The three stages of a tapeworm. We’ve got the egg stage, the larvae stage, and then we’ve got the adult stage. You can in very rare cases actually have a serious infestation of tapeworm. It can burrow into different organs and it can get pretty bad. But in those cases, an MRI will be required to see if there is any infestation throughout the body. But generally, with a stool test, we can pick up eggs quite successfully for tapeworms. As I mentioned, I’ve done a lot of stool testing and I’ve only ever seen one tapeworm report come back.

What are the symptoms of tapeworm? Symptoms of tapeworm are generally similar to the symptoms of other parasites. It could be a lot of nausea, vomiting, weight loss, bloating, anorexia, lack of appetite, all sorts of strange, crazy symptoms that we can get with parasites. Weakness, weight loss, tiredness, diarrhea is a common one, bloating. These are all common symptoms.

What’s the medical treatment? There are two drugs I’ve written down here. praziquantel and albendazole are the two common drugs that are used for tapeworm. Many people believe that only medical treatment is required for tapeworm and for the successful eradication of tapeworm, but that’s not the case. For thousands of years before drugs even came along, people did eradicate all kinds of parasites, bugs, worms, and bad bacteria from their bodies. They didn’t go down to Wal-Mart back in the old days. The Aztecs didn’t really have Google did they? When you think about it.

If you think back to the good old days, what did people do to get rid of tapeworm? They had nature’s pharmacy. They relied on different plants out there. They relied on seeds and nuts and fruits and vegetables and many things. This knowledge was passed down from one generation to another generation to another generation. We call this empirical observation. People worked out that certain things and certain things didn’t work. They didn’t actually and do university studies and double blind trials and all this crap that we’ve got to go through today. It either worked or it didn’t work. I’m a bit like that in my clinic with patients, too. I believe that a treatment either works or it doesn’t work. Observation works well. And the longer you’ve been in practice, the longer your own empirical observations have built up over a long period of time and then you can make reasonably good judgments on what’s going to be effective for the person and what’s not going to be effective.

You can go down the pharmaceutical route for tapeworm if you want, but it’s not necessary. I’ll share with you now some really good natural tips and tricks on how to eradicate not just tapeworm, but different kinds of worms from the body in general. And you don’t need a whole bunch of money. You don’t need a whole bunch of dozens of different supplements from the internet. You just need a couple of carefully placed foods in your diet and understand the principles and you’re going to go a long way toward natural eradication of tapeworm.

If you look at probably one of the most common things that were used by different American Indian tribes, but also the South Americans, for tapeworm for generations. And also people in different countries in Asia how they eradicated. They just used to use the pumpkin. Pumpkin has actually been validated through a 2004 study conducted in Peru where they found that pumpkins seeds, in fact, were probably just as effective as using natural vermifugos, which is another word for expelling worms and parasites from your body. Pumpkin seeds are very effective. They contain an amino acid, cucurbitacin. That’s a particular type of amino. That amino they found has an interesting effect on eradicating the tapeworm by interfering with its reproductive cycle, but also directly affecting the worm itself.

Pumpkins are quite good to eat. If you feel you’ve got parasites, pumpkin or pumpkin seed even more so. I’m not a crazy person by any means, but I believe a really good time to treat worms and parasites is before a full moon. Again, traditionally, if you look back in history. For thousands of years, this is what people did. They really planted crops by the moon. They harvested by the moon. But they also treated for parasites by the moon cycle. I wrote about this in my book, Candida Crusher. You can look it up. If you look three to four days before a full moon. We call that the waxing moon. Moon coming up. That’s a very key time to treat parasites. Chewing on pumpkin seeds or eating a lot of pumpkin seeds before a full moon will have more benefit than after a full moon.

Looking back at some interesting books on South America on the Aztecs, for example, and people like that, this is what they did. Actually treated before a full moon. Interesting when you’re going to harvest crops. I’ll just give you a few tips here. If you’re going to chop fire wood or harvest crops, be careful about taking them too late after the full moon. Because what happens is moisture can be affected a lot, so you’re going to have more moisture coming in before a full moon and less moisture after a full moon. There is heightened tension before a full moon. This is where things build up. They come to a head at full moon. Then they tend to simmer down and settle down going toward the new moon at the other end of the cycle.

Coming back to tapeworms. That’s a good time often to have extra pumpkin seed in your diet and good for children. If you notice of their children, you’ll find their bottoms become itchier if they’ve got roundworm before a full moon than at the other end of the cycle. Just an interesting observation.

In this particular study from Peru found between 70 to 80 pumpkin seeds as a dose was quite good. You actually grind them up into a powder, then you can sprinkle that on food. Pumpkin seed also contains a lot of zinc and some people believe that it’s the zinc portion is the effective thing against expelling parasites. Others believe it’s the amino acid. I don’t care what it is. The thing is I know that pumpkin seeds do work.

Another tip that I’ve learned in my practice and just talking with lots of practitioners over the years is grated carrot and grated beet root. Fresh beet root and fresh carrot. Mix them together. You get this lovely red orange salad. Don’t put anything on this stuff. Just have straight beet root and carrot together. You have about one to two tablespoons again for about a week leading up to the full moon. You can eat it any time, but I just think it works better then. You try that trick. Grated carrots, crated beet root.

I’ve grow my own carrots and beet roots, so can tell you. It’s an incredibly effective way also to clean the liver up and just to regenerate the gut and the body in general. Very fresh carrots pulled out of the garden, washed, and very fresh beet roots are delightful baked. You can bake them together. You can grate them together. They just work well I find that combination. It’s a lovely color on the plate, too, having those two things. I often put a twist of fresh lemon juice on it.

Two other fruits that are going to be effective for tapeworm are pineapple and papaya. Pineapple contains an enzyme called bromelain. Bromelain is a digestive enzyme found in pineapple. One expert that I was reading up on believes a three-day pineapple fast is very, very effective for tapeworm. Be careful of course if you’ve got a Candida yeast infection. You can’t just gorge yourself on fruit. I think papaya is actually not too bad for some people with Candida. Pineapple you need to be much more careful because it’s potentially allergenic. Papaya is not so allergenic. I prefer papaya and, in fact, the black papaya seeds are used by a lot of people in the Asian-Pacific region. You can actually dry those black seeds found in papaya. You can put them in your pepper grinder. Use it like pepper. In fact, a lot of people do that and they actually help to soften up predigested meat, so when you eat it, it’s easy to digest.

Green papaya leaves when wrapped around very tough steak, you’d be surprise how tender the steak is. Get one or two big papaya leaves. Not too old, so reasonably young. I used to grow the papayas. I tried this out myself one day with a piece of chuck steak. That crappy steak with a lot of fat in it that you put in the casserole. You try that. You just get a nice couple of big papaya leaves. What you do is you put them on a surface, put a wooden roller over it or just gentle crush them, but don’t wreck them, and then wrap that right around the meat. Two or three leaves right around it and just pull it tight. Put that in a bag and put that in your refrigerator for one or two days and you watch what happens. It’ll be nice and tender. Tenderized steak. That’s the action of the enzymes starting to break the protein fibers down, soften them.

Black seeds from the papaya. You can dry them and grind them on food. You can also chew them fresh. They’re great to give to children ground up on food to stop roundworms, hookworms, tapeworms, all kinds of things. The papaya contains papain, which is also a digestive enzyme. Papaya is a fantastic food for people for traveling in the tropics to keep their gut clean. Pineapple similarly. I love pineapple and prefer to eat it when I go to tropical countries because it’s sweet, juicy and fresh. That crap they’ve got in New Zealand. They’re pick it green. They’ll throw it on a boat. They’ll gas ripen it. When it gets here, I don’t really like pineapple in our country because it doesn’t grow here. Always try to eat fruits where they’re grown. It’s a good tip. If you live in the States, it’s crazy to eat bananas in the middle of winter when they’re picked somewhere in another country. I just don’t think that’s the right thing to do.

I hope that gives you a few tips and some good information on tapeworm. Avoid sugar. Worms and parasites love sugar. Also consider my Canxida Remove product, the tablet. That contains a lot of ingredients that are going to really piss of these tapeworms big time, especially the black walnut, but also the berberine. It’s quite an effective tablet against parasites in general. You’ll find that at Canxida.com. Also don’t forget to click in the link in the description box below to get my free Candida report. I put together a very nice Candida report for you, a shopping list. I think you’ll quite enjoy that information. If you’re not a subscriber, subscribe. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you.

Greetings. It’s New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker. Author of Candida Crusher. Thanks for checking out my video. It’s good to be back. I just had a trip over to the States and Canada to visit a good friend of mine, spend a few days in Los Angeles and went down to Anaheim to Expo West, the world’s biggest nutritional and natural health expert. What an incredible experience it was. A lot of stress. Long distance air travel. It does involve quite a bit of stress and it’s so good to be back home in my own house with my own food and my own bed. It’s just awesome. I’m glad to be back and I’m going to do a whole heap of videos today.

Got an email from a lady. My friend in Sweden, Natalie. Natalie was a bit concerned on an article that she read. Why Candida diets kill your thyroid and make your Candida worse. I’ve got an article here. I’m just going to go over this article with you and explain a little bit about why most of this is absolute crap. It’s put together by a person who believes that thyroid is the main denominator for nearly all disease. You name it; it’s because of the thyroid. You’re losing hair, thyroid problem. Your marriage fails, thyroid problem. You can’t get an erection, thyroid problem. You get gangrene and your toe drops off, thyroid problem. You’re fighting with your neighbors, thyroid problem. You get the picture? I call these people “one trick ponies” and there are plenty of them out there.

You need to be careful about people who tend to promote one condition, one medical complaint or one illness or one imbalanced organ as being like the main cause of all disease. It’s a lot of crap. There are many different reasons why illness is caused by the body. There are many case and effects, so don’t fall for the line that the thyroid causes all of your health problem anymore than I want you to fall for the line that Candida causes all of your health problems.

In fact, I’ve stated many times in my videos that about half the people that I see, that I check out and carefully analyze and do stool testing have got no Candida at all. They, in fact, have got very poor levels of beneficial bacteria or they may have a lot of parasites or they may have a strong inflammation or they may have a low grade continual inflammation we pick up. Then when we analyze the blood, we find they’ve got Epstein-Barr virus or they could have something entirely different. They could have Lyme disease. People are quite interesting when you work with them. Many people have their mind made up. “Oh, I’ve got Candida. All of my problems are Candida and I want you to tell me that my problems are Candida.” But when we check them out carefully, they may not have a yeast infection at all.

I had about half a dozen cases yesterday and one guy, a stool test result, it was straight out yeast infection. You could see it. He had Candida parapsilosis, a more unusual strain. He had perfectly good levels beneficial bacteria. We could culture the yeast in the stool. We could see tons of dead yeast in the microscopy analysis. He had no inflammation. It’s a straightforward kill case. We gave that guy Canxida Remove for two or three months, he’s as good as gold. That poor man had serious rectal itching and jock itch. That’s going to clear up entirely. That’s why I like carefully checking people out before I make up my what’s wrong with them.

Let’s get into this document here. “Why Candida diets kill your thyroid.” Look at that word “kill”. It’s already almost like ISIS territory, isn’t it? This has got a lot of dramatic words in it, this document. “Your worst nightmare has just come true. After Googling your health problems for six hours, you must have read 27 articles that all point to one devastating condition. Then, any doubt you might have had was laid to rest after a diagnosis was confirmed by your produce stock boy of your local Whole Foods Market.” It’s actually really fooling a lot of people here.

“That’s right. You must have Candida. There’s no other explanation. Why? It’s not the only known health condition that is responsible. It is the only known health condition that is responsible for causing every single symptom and disease known to man and woman. Have digestive problems? It must be Candida. Craving sweets? Must be Candida.”

Basically, this guy does the same on his website. He’s saying that every condition literally is caused by hypothyroidism. He says here, “Candida has quite become the catch-all diagnosis for just about every symptom today. Let’s get one thing straight. You can’t kill it and get rid of it forever. It’s a common misconception. Candida overgrowth has a lot to do with thyroid health. I’ll show you simple ways to fix your Candida overgrowth and prevent it from coming back by fixing the underlying cause of the problem. Hint: This doesn’t involve starving Candida.”

Then he says, “Hypothyroidism is the most common cause of Candida, not sugar.” I’m sorry, but this is a load of crap. The most common cause of Candida is antibiotics. The most common cause of Candida and multiple factors involved. There is not one common cause, but I can tell you that in my opinion, one of the most striking causes of yeast infection I see today in patients in antibiotics. How do I know that? Twenty, thirty thousand patients plus. That’s how I know that. I can absolutely say that with confidence. I have never seen people as sick as I have today who’ve been on multiple rounds antibiotics. In most cases with careful analysis, what do I find? Yeast infection. I can say with confidence in my opinion and from my clinical experience of 28 years, the most common cause is pharmaceutical antibiotic use. Don’t discount the fact, also, that these drugs are in foods now. If you eat commercial poultry, antibiotics. Many foods contain antibiotics.

Hypothyroidism, I’m sorry, Mr., but it is not the most common cause Candida. This is actually crap. This is not really a true statement. This is a false statement. “Much of what you’ve been told about Candida is dead wrong. For example, sugar doesn’t cause Candida any more than it causes diabetes. Candida overgrowth is actually caused by hypothyroidism, estrogen dominance, excess cortisol, and their effects on your immune system.”

If you look at my Candida Crusher book, which I’m going to send this person a copy of my book because I would like to get a bit of communication happening here. This person will be able to read that, in fact, I’ve written about 25 different independent causes of Candida yeast infection. Pharmaceutical link quite highly in there. Stress is not the cause of Candida. Stress allows a person to have a vulnerability to getting Candida and a continuation of the problem, a continuation of SIBO, a continuation of leaky gut syndrome, a continuation of poor immune function leading that person open to a wide range of illnesses. Because excess cortisol shuts the immune system down. It’s a well-known fact.

Then he goes on to talk about circulatory IgA, which is probably the most predominant antibody made in your body. He’s basically saying here that circulatory IgA becomes deficient in hypothyroidism making you more susceptible. The thyroid keeps coming up all the time. It has everything to do with estrogen dominance and excess stress. But one thing that he is correct in, stress does have a huge big helping hand in the continuation of Candida, but it’s not the main cause. Stress certainly affects a person’s ability to consume healthy foods. Stress makes us more vulnerable to wanting to have salty foods, sweet foods, junk food, cola, spending long hours at night on computers, not sleeping properly. And, of course, as our vulnerability increases, our susceptibility increases, our resistance drops and then we leave ourselves wide open for a whole range of different illnesses as I mentioned.

He does also say something that is true here. “There have been many studies that have looked at the effects of Candida on vaginal epithelial cells on the influence of estrogen.” We know, for example, that women premenstrually, especially one to two days before their period, are much more prone to a thrush or a vaginal yeast infection. I’ve spoken about this on my videos before if you look under the women’s section. Why? Because estrogen as it starts to come up in that part of the cycle, it stimulates the production of glycogen and it does so to plump up the cells, so the cells of vaginal area plump up. The womb plumps up. Ready for implantation. Ready for fertility to occur. Ready to nurture that fetus. This is sugar. And, of course, is this Candida present in the vaginal area. It’s going to cause a problem because it’s going to feed on that glycogen because of the stimulation of estrogen and thrush will become quite an obvious symptom.

It’s also important to mention that large women, bigger people in general with higher fat, more fat cells, produce more estrogen in their own right. They are also more prone to yeast infections because of that fact. High cortisol. When you think about it. Cortisol is a very important hormone that our body produces under chronic stress, under acute stress. It was designed to allow us to handle stress for periods of our lives. A long time ago when a person had high cortisol, they were better prepared for warfare, for famine, for natural disasters.

But today, we get high cortisol because we’re talking on our mobile phone. We’re upset with something. We get high cortisol when we’re caught in traffic or we get high cortisol because someone doesn’t like us on Facebook or some junk like that. We get inappropriate high cortisol and we get cortisol high for too long. Cortisol slows our metabolism down. It slows it down. It allows us to preserve and maintain more body fat. And then, of course, we get that nice big fatty ring all around here. We get this big belly fat, which is common with high stress and cortisol. We get the little bat wings on the arms. We get the fat deposition at the back here. All these things are aimed. When there’s no food around that we’ve got the fat stores to survive on. A bit like how bears will eat all summer and then hibernate all winter and burn off the fat. If only a fat person could do that. Sleep all winter and wake up in spring skinny as a chicken. It doesn’t work like that.

You can see what cortisol’s role is. Cortisol does also suppress immune function and this guy does mention that in his article, which is fair enough. I must give him some credence here. He does have a few good points to his article. But it’s completely wrong to say that hypothyroidism is the main cause of yeast infection.

He says also “Candida diets kill your thyroid health and make Candida worse. If Candida feed on certain forms of sugar and carbohydrates and cutting all carbohydrates out of your diet will do the trick. Restricting carbohydrates in your diet is dangerous to your thyroid health.”

What he’s basically saying here is that these Candida diets involve stopping all carbohydrates. That is actually stupid and nobody should stop all carbohydrates in their diet. Carbohydrates are necessary for energy. They’re necessary also for good gut function. Our bacteria need to ferment carbohydrates and to grow on the residue of carbohydrates. I’ve never been a fan of carbohydrate restriction. You will note I talk about sourdough rye bread, for example. I talk about different types of grains and starches. Some people have got this stupid idea to take all grains, all starches out the diet and just live on juices, kale juice and a bit of chicken and stuff like that. You can’t live like that. You get sick very quick. Carbohydrate restriction is not a good idea in Candida. You will not develop a good microbiome with a carbohydrate restriction. Anyone that tells you to restrict carbohydrates is quite foolish and you need to walk away from these kind of people.

“Without adequate carbs in your diet, bad things will happen.” Well, of course, they will happen. No one’s talking about taking all carbs out of the diet. “Starving your Candida makes it more aggressive. Restricting carbs and starving Candida only contributes to the underlying problem.” This guy is quite extreme with his view with “kill” and “starve” and all these strong words. Be careful when you read these kind of article because there’s plenty of them on the internet.

This is this person’s three simple ways to correct Candida without killing your thyroid. “Eat carrots. Carrot fiber will help absorb excess estrogen within the digestive tract. Supporting healthy circulatory IgA production. Let’s talk a little bit about circulatory IgA. We didn’t go into that too much because this guy doesn’t really explain enough to you about IgA.

In my opinion, low IgA is not because of thyroid dysfunction at all. There may be a relationship between them, but the main cause of IgA are these things, which I’m going to read out to you now. High antigenic load. People eating the wrong kind of food. People having food allergies. Sometimes one inappropriate food when eaten, especially with leaky gut, can drain IgA. Your body makes about two to three grams of circulatory IgA per day in the bloodstream, as well as in the intestinal tract. And it does so to basically help to regulate the immune function in the digestive system very carefully. It’s almost like Velcro. It will stick to things it doesn’t like and help to remove them from the body. You can have a high IgA or a low IgA. Low IgA is quite common with people that are quite overwhelmed. Pharmaceutical drugs, anti-inflammatories, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, blood pressure pills, aspirin. Many drugs affect IgA levels.

Many people also take pharmaceutical drugs from tap water. If you go to the big cities, there are traces of drugs in all the tap water today. They can’t filter it out. Viral infections. Many people have a low grade chronic ongoing viral load. This will cause a complete drain on the bodies IgA production. If you’ve got a very small leak in the valve of your tire, you can keep pumping it up all the time. But over a period of months, it will keep going down. That’s what we call a viral load. You can have smoldering infection in your tonsils, the adenoid. You can have a smoldering infection in the ileocecal valve. There are different parts of the body where you can have a smoldering infection. I’ve spoken about this many times.

You’re flying across the rain forest, there’s a small fire burning. You fly back next week; the whole forest is gone because that little fire took out the whole forest. One match stick can take out an entire rain forest. Just like one virus when left unchecked can wipe out the whole immune system. Depending on the integrity of the immune system.

Poor nutrition. You’re not eating the right stuff. You’re not getting enough vitamins and minerals in your diet. You’re eating junk food. The crap food I had when in America was disgusting. I walked into a restaurant and the guy said, “Sit down, sir. We’ll fix you a real healthy breakfast.” It was crap. I couldn’t believe what these people were giving me to eat. I basically couldn’t eat this kind of stuff. I said to Tracy, “I’ll be glad to be back home to my own vegetables and my own fruits and the food that I’ve got, fresh fish and good quality food.” If you eat crap, you feel like crap and you look like crap. Simple as that.

Inflammatory bowel disease. Very common with IgA dysfunction. It’s incredible how many people have got irritable or inflammatory bowel. Parasites. Poor levels of beneficial bacteria. As you can see, there are many reasons why IgA can be low.

How do we increase IgA? Again, I’ve done a video on this. The four R method is good. Remove, replace, re-inoculate and repair. This guy doesn’t talk about any of that stuff. You just eat carrots and your IgA will go up. It’s not as simple as that. Remove the offending foods. Very important to do. Remove the offending drugs. Find out what pharmaceuticals you’re taking that could be affecting the immune system in the gut. You replace enzymes. Many people lack digestive enzymes. Re-inoculate. Make sure that you get good levels of beneficial bacteria through your foods or take good probiotics. And repair, so heal the leaky gut, remove the offending foods. These are all clever things to do. None of them are mentioned in this article. This is just one of the sensationalist articles.

Balance your blood sugar. And here’s the killer for you. Eat more fruit when you’ve got Candida. It’s an easy way to lower cortisol and boost your immunity. Fruits are easily digested in the upper portion of the digestive tract, long before it reaches the lower portion of the digestive where Candida belong. I’m sorry my friend, Candida can live anywhere in the gut. This person’s assuming that Candida only live in the large intestine. Candida can live in your mouth, your throat, your stomach, your pancreas, your small intestine, the whole flipping digestive system. Eating fruit is a stupid idea with Candida. Stupid idea.

Too many patients over the years have shown me through clinical experience that loading up your diet with lots and lots of sweat fruits like bananas, pineapples, plums, pears, peaches, all those sort of things is a bad idea. These are playing right into the hand of a yeast infection, so I don’t recommend that you do this at all. The only fruits I recommend with Candida are things like coconuts, avocados, pomegranates. Some people can get away with kiwi fruit. Many fruits have got a very powerful allergenicity about them, too, which means that they have a really bad effect on the person’s immune system. They’ll lower the IgA. They’ll bypass through the leaky gut. They will create bloating, brain fog, gas, all these sort of problems.

This person probably hasn’t got a clue about all these issues because this person probably never sees any patients. Making these stupid assumptions on fruits are easily digested is dumb. You may as well say, “I’ll have one or two glasses of cola a day because it won’t affect you.”

Restore your circulatory IgA is point three. This person is saying here, which I do agree with. But eating carrots to restore IgA is not a good idea. Then, I’ve got a simple three food triple thyroid boosting daily protocol. You believe what you want to believe, but I just think these articles are a bunch of crap and I read too many of them and they’re often written by misinformed people who are trying to push one particular product and one particular protocol.

I couldn’t care less what protocol you follow. I couldn’t care if you buy my book or my products or anything. It’s all up to you what you do. I designed this channel to give people information based on my experience. I made this channel to help people to become well and also dispel a lot of these stupid myths about fruit is okay with Candida because fruit is not okay for the majority of people. I have got a minority that can tolerate fruit, but generally upon careful analysis they had no yeast infection at all. They had some bacteria imbalance and poor levels of beneficial. People with bad Candida should not eat fruit. People with bad Candida need to understand that pharmaceutical drugs will continue to make them sick.

Thyroid and adrenal health do factor in with Candida, but they are not the primary cause. There’s an association there with them. As I’ve mentioned before, many people with a continual immune dysfunction will be much more prone to having Candida. And when they’ve got Candida, it also places a drain on the adrenals and thyroid.

What should you treat first? The adrenals and thyroid or the yeast infection? That depends on the symptoms. It depends on the severity. In most cases, you can treat them both at the same time.

I hope that’s dispelled some myths for you, Natalie, and given you a bit of information and insight into what this person’s saying. I would just take it with a grain of salt or maybe a grain of carrot. Thanks for tuning in.