Author: Eric Bakker

Greetings. It’s New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker, author of Candida Crusher and formulator of the Canxida range of products. I’m going to talk a little bit about kidney problems this morning. It’s a beautiful day here in New Zealand. It’s still summertime. We’ve got actually wonderful weather at the moment. We’ve had some really strange weather as of late, though, and a lot of people I’ve spoken to in America and in the UK have had very similar strange weather patterns. Let’s get back into the kidneys.

Many people talk about liver detoxification, bowel detoxification, gall bladder flushes, getting the digestive system fixed up, but nobody talks about the kidney. You’ve got two kidneys and their role is critical and vital for maintaining excellent health. What do the kidneys do? What are they responsible for and why is it so important to look after them?

The kidneys are incredible. They’re a very high filtration unit. You’ve got two of them in the lower part of your back. We’ll talk a little bit about back pain later on. Many people feel kidney pain from time to time, but actually think they’ve got a lower back problem. The kidneys, as I mentioned, are a high filtration unit. They filter a staggering 400 pints of blood per day, so that’s probably around 200 to 230 liters of blood are filtered by the kidneys every day. They produce a staggering amount of waste that they actually pull out of the blood and put into the urine, so you can excrete them. It’s estimated around three to four pints, which is probably around 2 liters of waste get put out every day.

If the kidneys didn’t function properly, you’d be in big trouble in no time at all. Your blood pressure would be unregulated. You wouldn’t be able to produce red blood cells because the kidneys produce a hormone called erythropoietin and that stimulates the production of red blood cells, so you’d quickly get anemia and fatigue if you didn’t have good kidney function. More importantly, the kidneys not only help to cleanse the blood, the kidneys have glands on top of them called the adrenal glands. You’ve got two adrenal glands, and the adrenal glands are little mushroom shaped glands that sit on top of the kidneys that produce up to 50 different hormones. They produce some of the most powerful hormones in the body.

The kidneys are positioned very interestingly quite central in the body and also close to possibly one of the largest artery in the system where they can have access to a lot of blood there. But more importantly, the adrenal glands have access to the main circulation system where they can put their hormones straight into the main circulation. We’re talking cortisol. We’re talking sex hormones because the adrenals also produce estrogen and progesterone. They produce DHEA. Many hormones are produced, so it’s vital that the kidneys are in good shape to also keep the adrenal glands in good shape.

The kidneys have their own extensively detoxification system. And even the adrenal glands have got their own enzymatic detoxification system, which is a little bit similar to the liver detox pathway. So it’s critical that you keep your kidneys in really good shape.

How do you know if you’ve got kidney disease? What are some of the signs and symptoms? Things that you could be ignoring right now? Do you get itchy skin a lot? It might not be a yeast infection. If you get a lot of itchy skin around the thighs, around the legs, the back of the legs, you’re always itching the inner part of the thigh, itchy, especially if the skin is dry a lot. Dry skin, itchy skin, and I find particularly in the lower extremity carefully think are you drinking enough water? You may have the signs of kidney disease. Look for things like puffiness or fluid retention. If you’ve got that, that’s seriously bad kidney disease.

Things we’re looking at are consistent unexplained anemia. So if you’ve got low red cell count and you’re anemic quite a lot. If you’ve got low ferritin, which is a low iron storage protein that’s constantly low and yet they can’t explain why you’ve got low iron. They can’t find any iron in the stool. You haven’t been bleeding or haven’t had any heavy menstruation, so it’s unexplained loss of red cell production. You may want to check the kidney out a bit more carefully. Unexplained itching. Check carefully if you’re taking any medications that could upset the kidney. Alcohol really affects the kidney bad. In fact, I believe that most alcoholic hangovers and headaches occur from dehydration because you’re peeing out so much fluid and you’re stressing the kidneys out so much, it’s affecting you on multiple pathways. But many headaches with alcohol are not caused by the liver so much, but by the kidney dehydration. Check out those things. Itchy skin, unexplained anemia. There are other things you can look for that are a bit more complex like bruising and things like that. We don’t go into those kind of pathways.

The best kept secret I wrote about in Candida Crusher is called the kidney flush. How do you do a kidney flush? There are a couple of things the kidney really likes. We all know that we need to drink plenty of fresh clean good quality water. That’s a very good thing to do for the kidney. You need to back off coffee, tea and alcohol because those things affect the kidney really bad. They dehydrate the body and they stress out the very fine tubules in the kidney. They can cause a lot of problems. Coffee drinkers often end up with kidney stones.

The kidneys also regulate the pH of the body and they regulate the electrolytes and the potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium. They have a big effect on minerals in the body. And you’ll find that people who drink too much coffee end up with all sorts of problems with acidity and pH imbalances. The kidneys are responsible for excreting many different wastes, toxins and chemicals. These toxins are many and varied and come from a wide variety of sources, including chemicals and toxins in your food and water, pharmaceutical drugs, environmental chemicals, pesticides, alcoholic residues, pollution. When the kidneys fail to function optimally, these toxins can potentially cause many different problems like headaches, blood pressure, nausea, itchy skin, fatigue, many other different problems.

What are some of the key things you can take for kidney function? Watermelon is quite good. Celery is quite good. These are quite high water containing produce that really help to flush the kidney out. Watermelon is quite high in potassium, so it’s a good one to have. There’s an herb you can get called goldenrod. It’s also called solidago or goldenrod. It’s a very good one, especially for males to have. Cornsilk. When you open the corn and you’ve got all that little silky sort of stuff hanging down, you can actually keep that and dry that out and you can make a cup of tea out of that and that’s very soothing for the kidney.

Cherries are good. One of the best herbs is parsley. Green parsley, you just break off four or five stalks when you grow it, put it in a pot, a non-aluminum pot, and a bit of water and you simmer that and then you pour that into a cup and you drink that. Add a bit of water to it and you drink that. That’s very good at flushing out the kidney and at cleansing the kidney.

One of the best things for cleaning the kidney are parsley roots. So the parsley plant, especially the second year, the roots contain a lot more of the beneficial nutrients in them. You dry the roots out and you can use those. They’re very, very powerful for kidney cleansing. A good probiotic. Have a think about taking a product like my Canxida Restore. That’s got a lot of beneficial enzymes in it, as well as beneficial bacteria that are going to help improve kidney function because yes, you’ve actually got bacteria in the kidney as well.

A glass of pure apple juice, not the crap you buy in the shop, but you actually get green apples and squeeze them. Very good to have. The following kidney friendly foods. Watermelon as we mentioned. Cherries, red bell peppers or capsicums, cabbage, cauliflower, garlic, onions, green apples, cranberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, red grapes, egg whites and fresh fish. You’ll be thinking. “Hang on a minute. I can’t eat grapes. I’ve got Candida.” You can eat grapes with Candida, but you’ve got to wait a while. You can’t have them with the first stage of treatment. You need to possibly wait a few weeks, maybe even a month or two and then you can put a few red grapes in. Red grapes are more beneficial than green grapes for the kidney.

When you’re trying to clean out the kidney, you’ve got to really cut out red meat. Because red meat is really hard on the kidney function. It produces a whole lot of nitrogen wastes, which can really affect the kidney a lot. White meats are better for the kidney. Red meat is harder. If you eat red meat, drink a lot of water and don’t eat any more than 250 grams of red meat in a week. That’s my recommendation.

White flour, sugar, rich foods, fatty foods, deep fried foods, junk foods, pizzas, coca cola, peanuts, spinach. Be careful of spinach. The silver beet contains oxalic acid and that can be hard on kidney function. Chocolate is not good for kidneys, so ladies watch out for chocolate. I hope that gives you a bit of an insight into the kidney.

I spoke before about the back pain. Some people get a back pain and they get a nice dull low pain around the back and it can often be on the side that you’re sleeping on. So if you’re sleeping a lot on the left, you could a little bit of a dull pain on the left side or you can get it on the right. If you get a little bit of a very low dull pain in the back a bit like a dull toothache from time to time, it could be kidney pain and it’s not uncommon. And I bet that you will have had a kidney pain over time, especially in your 40s or 50s like me. You will have experienced a little bit of kidney pain here or there, but probably thought “Ah, I’ve got a lower back problem. My back’s hurting a little bit or the muscles.” But it was probably the kidney more likely, especially if it was off to the side.

Remember drink water, especially when you get up. Drink water around meal times. I don’t drink with food. I usually drink after I’ve had food to eat. Drink plenty of water when it’s hot and also drink water even if you don’t feel like drinking water, just try to have a few sips. It’s going to be so beneficial for your body. Try to cut out the alcoholic beverages entirely for a few weeks and increase your water intake and I can guarantee you you’re going to notice a huge difference in how you feel. Energy will come up.

That’s a bit of information on kidney function. Last thing I’ll leave you with is at least once per year go to your doctor and ask for a kidney function test. We look at a few different parameters there with kidneys. One is called creatine clearance and the other one is called GFR or glomerular filtration rate. Creatine is a waste product produced with the metabolism, so the muscles produce a waste called creatine and that gets excreted through the urine. We can actually measure the creatine to see if it’s high or low to see how the affective the clearance of the creatine is. If the clearance is poor, it could mean the kidneys need attention.
The kidneys work a little bit like all sorts of sieves or colanders all on top of each other. Glomerular filtration rate is basically how effective all those sieves are working. If the filtration rate is really poor and the creatine clearance is really poor and you’ve got a bit of blood pressure and a bit of fluid retention and itchy skin, you’ve got a bad kidney problem. I think you can start getting the picture now.

I hope that gives you a bit of information on kidneys. Thanks for tuning in.

Greetings. New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker. I’m the author of Candida Crusher and also the formulator of the Canxida range of supplements. I have a question here from a man called Angelo Macradakus. Angelo sounds like a Greek guy. I really like Greek people. I used to have a lot of Greek patients when I practiced in Brisbane in Australia many years ago and I really enjoy Greek festivals and Greek culture.

“Hi, Eric. I just want to say thanks for all your amazing content. Your videos have been extremely helpful alongside your book. I was just hoping you could make one of your extensive videos on what the differences are with the lifestyle, nutrition and supplementation when dealing with leaky gut as well as Candida, as opposed to just Candida, if there are any at all. I greatly appreciate this. Thanks for your good work. Keep up the good content.”

Angelo, this is for you, my friend. Not just because you’re Greek and I like Greek people, but also because it’s a very valid question. What is the difference with treatment if you look at lifestyle, nutrition and supplementation with leaky gut as opposed to Candida?

People with leaky gut and, in fact, many people have got leaky gut. I would go as far to say anyone who lives a diet based on western diet and lifestyle principles will have leaky gut to some degree. That’s because we all tend to eat food that contains some element of chemicals, preservatives, emulsifiers, all these sort of things in our food, including antibiotics, artificial sugars, they seem to permeate our lifestyle and diet to a big degree. Unless you’ve got an extremely austere lifestyle and you eat everything completely 100 percent unprocessed and you grow all your own food and live on a farm and where a straw hat and don’t have electricity and drink pure water that’s been purified and all this sort of stuff, you’re going to get some kind of element of chemicals into your diet. That can affect the membrane or the gut of the diet.

Some people have got seriously bad leaky gut. How do you know you’ve got bad leaky gut? If you’re drinking alcohol on a regular basis, you will have leaky gut, period. If you drink alcohol every day, you will have a major leaky gut problem. We know that. If you take pharmaceutical drugs, you’ll have leaky gut. You could be taking pills for headache, arthritis pain, NSAID, what we call non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. You could be taking drugs to block acidity of the stomach like Nexium, for example, omeprazole. You could be taking anti-convulsants. You could be taking antibiotics. You could be taking anti-depressants. Any pharmaceutical medication that you’re on in time is going to cause leaky gut. If you’re in that category, welcome to the leaky gut club. If you’re eating commercially raised poultry, you’ll have leaky gut. If you’re eating grain fed beef, you’ll have leaky gut.

How do I know all this stuff? It’s because I’ve been treating patients now for such a long period of time. I’ve done so many of these lactulose and mannitol digestive permeability tests that I’ve worked out that people who eat and drink like this will have leaky gut. Leaky gut predisposes you to a whole raft of potential different problems. It’s one of the major things that can underpin a lot of autoimmune disorders. These are diseases where the immune system starts attacking itself. No known cause they say. Well, welcome to the club if you live in the western country. I doubt that leaky gut is a condition that affects many people who live in underdeveloped countries, particularly people who live in India who just eat lentils and rice. These people don’t go to the corner shop and buy a can of coke every day. They don’t have energy drinks, Red Bull for breakfast. They don’t have fries for lunch. When you’re living a lifestyle based on an indigenous person who is living a very simple lifestyle, eating a very basic sort of diet, I doubt very much if you’re going to have a strong degree of leaky gut.

But let’s talk about the treatment differences. I don’t really think there are a lot of differences between treating leaky gut and treating Candida. The principles in my mind are the same. The big thing I like people to stay away from with leaky gut are the foods that have a high potential for allergenicity in the body. I tend to put people with leaky gut on a low allergy diet approach. Same thing I do with Candida. I tend to put people with leaky gut on a no-alcohol diet. Same thing I do with Candida. Probably the big difference with Candida and leaky gut is we’re dealing with a yeast infection. We’re dealing with an immune system that has a little bit more twists and turns about it than a person with digestive permeability. With digestive permeability also I would expect a much more allergic potential to the diet than I would with Candida. Many Candida patients can, for example, tolerate gluten. They can tolerate different types of foods that some food police say they can’t tolerate. Trial and error will tell the Candida patient that. Whereas with leaky gut syndrome and I know the person has got very bad leaky gut, I would be a lot tougher on their diet than I would if I had a feeling they had Candida and a very mild case of leaky gut.

How do I know the difference? Easy, I look at the case history. Has the patient been on antibiotics for a long period time? Does the patient have a huge amount of gut related problems that may not necessarily be Candida? How can you distinguish between Candida and leaky gut? Do a stool test. If you’re in doubt, do a permeability test where two sugars are basically assessed where a person basically drinks some sugars, particularly sugars, and then we can basically assess what comes out of the urine to see what’s being held back. There are different tests you can do, but I don’t do the intestinal permeability test anymore because I find that everybody has got leaky gut to a degree. It just varies. Some people have got it worse than others. I think the stool test is a more valid test for determining a wide range of digestive problems. Generally, you’ll be surprised how many people think they’ve got Candida when, in fact, they haven’t got Candida at all. They’ve just got bad bacteria and a low level of beneficial bacteria. These are often the people who have got serious leaky gut problems. I can pick leaky gut in the stool test without looking at the sugars, lactulose and mannitol, to see what aberrations as far as they’re concerned.

How I would treat leaky gut if it was just purely on its own compared to Candida? I would be tougher on the patient, a lot tougher. I would probably also be looking a lot more at the fermented and the cultured foods. I really like the person to get into some kefir, tiny bits of kefir and yogurt, and I’d probably have a stronger element of probiotics and digestive enzymes in the diet, as opposed to the Candida patient. The Candida patient I would tend to work a lot more with antifungal/antibacterial approach. The leaky gut, I wouldn’t do it so much unless a stool test warranted that. I would tend to look more at digestive enzymes and probiotics.

When it comes to the lifestyle, Angelo, what I would certainly recommend for both camps, leaky gut and Candida, is to assess the element of adrenal fatigue in the patient. If you’re very tired and you’re worn out, you’re fatigued, you wake up tired, you’re fatigued in the afternoon, you’ve got blood sugar problems, you want sweet stuff all the time, maybe some memory loss, confusion, sleeping disturbances. So if you’ve got the typical adrenal fatigue pattern, especially if it’s really bad, that definitely needs treatment and that will help the leaky gut to a large degree by getting the stress hormone cortisol balanced.

I find people with good cortisol balance have got a much easier ability to get a handle on their leaky gut as opposed to people who are adrenally fatigued and who are not diagnosed or that element is not corrected and they’re purely treated for the leaky gut. I find that they can stay like that for years. But if you correct that adrenal fatigue pattern and particularly if they’ve got hypothyroidism and hypoadrenalism, if you correct that alongside their leaky gut, i.e., correct the lifestyle along with the diet, you’re going to get a really good result and a much quicker outcome. It’s going to save the person a lot of money and a lot of misery. The lifestyle is a very, very important to get sort, which could underpin a lot of adrenal issues with a lot of people and often does.

Many patients that I see that have been sick for years have got adrenal fatigue and it’s generally never assessed, it’s never treated, and purely the gut is treated. So many doctors I know out there who just basically are one trick ponies. They’ll look at one particular thing. “Oh, it’s all Candida. It’s all mercury. We’ll get rid of all the mercury fillings and you’ll be cured. It’s all gluten. Stop eating gluten and the hemorrhoids will go. Stop eating gluten and you won’t hate your mother-in-law anymore.” All this sort of nonsense, you know. Don’t fall for the one trick pony practitioner. It’s important that you understand that people get dysfunction on multiple levels. Many people with leaky gut and Candida have got an endocrine imbalance as well or a hormonal imbalance. For females, it can affect them a bit differently than for males. If in doubt, these things need assessing by a health care professional.

I know I’m carrying on a lot here, Angelo, but you can see there are a lot of issues at stake here when it comes to leaky gut syndrome and Candida. Especially if the patient has been sick for many, many years. Generally, unresolved long term leaky gut and Candida will mean an element of hormonal dysfunction that remains unresolved. The unresolved hormonal dysfunction will generally mean unresolved lifestyle stuff. Things that haven’t been fixed up. Again, it comes back to lifestyle.

In my book, I write a lot about this that 75 percent of recovery is lifestyle. Three quarters. This is why a lot of people don’t take it seriously because you aren’t going to make a lot of money giving people advice, as opposed to selling them pills or tests or drugs or surgeries or stuff like that. When you spend time with patients and actually work out where their problems are and to help them or assist them, give them some guidance, so that they can correct these issues, then you’ve done a great service for that patient.

That was a long winded reply I hope to your question, Angelo. Dealing with leaky gut as well as Candida as opposed to Candida. So you are going to find some cases of people with yeast infection on its own with leaky gut, but more likely most people with chronic Candida, especially intestinal Candida or vaginal yeast infection or serious jock itch, will usually have leaky gut as well. Just remember, leaky gut, think more of along the lines of healing the gut, reducing the inflammation, getting the bacteria right again. With Candida, look a little bit more at an antifungal approach. Getting the bacteria right. With a leaky gut, look more at getting the digestive enzymes working more efficiently, upper GI and pancreas, to help break foods down, stop them from affecting the permeability of the gut too much.

Check out my product called Canxida Restore, which is an enzyme probiotic I specifically developed for leaky gut and Candida. It works quite well. Whereas, the Canxida Remove is the antifungal/antibacterial product that is going to help cleanse the gut. Get rid of all that crap. Both of those products work quite well together.

Thanks for your question, Angelo, and I do miss the Paniyiri Greek Festival I used to attend quite a lot in Brisbane. I really enjoyed the Greek culture, the music and the food, and maybe one day I can go to the Greek Islands and really enjoy that.

Greetings there. It’s New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker. I’m author of Candida Crusher and I’m also the formulator of the Canxida range of dietary supplements. Thanks for checking out my video. I’m going to do another video today for one of my subscribers. This is a lady called Donna Collins. Donna is from Canada. Donna’s husband had a very successful result with the Candida Crusher program. Donna is asking me to do a video on die-off, so she’s saying “Eric, can you do a video all about die-off? Die-off 101. What are the signs and symptoms? Can you clear up the confusion for the subscribers about die-off and what it really is and separate fact from fiction?” Let’s talk a bit about die-off, Donna, and explain to you a bit about what it is, so it’s going to be a benefit to the subscribers out there.

I’ve just had a look at different blog sites on die-off on many different sites. There is a huge amount of confusion with die-off. Just like there is a lot of confusion when it comes to food allergies and food intolerances, which are completely different things. Lots of people get confused when it comes to understanding the terminology die-off and they’re very quick to jump onboard. I get lots of emails and have many patients telling me, “Oh, I had terrible die-off. I had a bit of pizza and I had die-off. I took supplement xyz. I had immediate die-off. I changed my diet. I started to eat more eggs. I got die-off. I took a probiotic. I had die-off. I went to the museum. I had die-off. I changed my job. I had die-off.” I’m hearing this die-off crap all the time. People are telling me all the time they’re getting die-off. I think people are getting confused. They don’t really understand what die-off is and how it really occurs and how it’s not that common to get classic die-off.

So let’s just explain a bit about die-off. I made a few notes here. Went to Wikipedia. Did a bit of research actually on the guy who really brought this whole concept to light back in the 1870s. A guy called Carl Herxheimer. Carl Herxheimer and Adolph Jarisch were two friends. They knew each other quite well. Both of these guys were dermatologists or skin specialists.

Unfortunately, Carl passed away in a concentration camp. He got placed in a concentration camp when he was 81 years old because he was Jewish, which is really unfortunate and passed away at 81 years of age. These guys basically treated a lot of skin problems.

They’re quite well known for treating syphilis, which is a venereal disease that was very common in those days, more so than today. Syphilis is quite well known to have a lot different kind of skin problems, so these guys would commonly use mercury. Would you believe mercury? Mercury was a medicine back in those days. They would give mercury to people with particularly secondary syphilis and it had a marvelous effect on the skin, but almost immediately the patient would suffer from terrible side effects. The underlying bug or spirochete that people with syphilis have was killed quite quickly with mercury, and it created horrific side effects with these people. So they would get fever, chills. I’ve got a list down here of different problems that they would experience. Fever, chills, muscular aches, skin rashes, flushing, tachycardia, so fast heartbeat, headaches. They would get very sick, extremely sick. This is what a typical Herxheimer reaction is, is getting hot and cold, fever, profuse sweating, fast heart rate.

Some sites say that brain fog is a part of die-off. I believe it is, but it’s very rare to get brain fog from die-off. Brain fog can occur with die-off, but it’s a much more delayed reaction as a result. I’ll explain what I mean in a minute by that. If you do get a classical typical die-off, it’s going too often occur very quickly after you take a very powerful antifungal and I’m talking like really quick. It could happen within hours. Certainly within 24 hours of taking that product. It will happen very, very strongly. You’ll get a strong reaction. And you’ll have those reactions that I just mentioned. Things like fevers, chills, muscle aches. If your nose is itchy, that’s not die-off. If you fart or bloat, that’s not die-off. Please don’t get confused with a lot of minor symptoms or fatigue, tiredness, a bit of headache. That’s not die-off. I’ll explain why these occur and how to really clearly define the difference between typical die-off reaction and generally what 99 percent of people experience but call die-off.

What people typically do that create problems that they think is die-off, they change their lifestyle. They alter the dosage of their supplements. They come in too high or too low with a supplement to start with. They start with generally way too high. They take on new foods or they do too big of a change. Hello? I’ve talked about this before in a video. You need to make change slowly. Please watch that video about making change slowly because that is a key thing if you want to avoid die-off, which it probably isn’t. If you want to avoid feeling like crap when you’re going to start the Candida Crusher approach, you need to do things slowly to start with, very slowly, then you won’t feel awful.

Another key thing that people get is inflammation. Inflammation can make you feel pretty crappy and that can often be misconstrued as die-off. Let’s break these things down now, this list I just read out to you and explain to you one by one the events that can lead to what you feel is die-off that actually isn’t really classic die-off. And then later on, we’ll come in and explain to you a bit more about some of the cases I’ve seen with real die-off and how serious they can be.

I get patients all the time on Skype now who say, “I suffered terrible die-off the other day. I took this supplement and I felt very sick. I had a bowel problem after that. I felt very spaced out. Surely, that’s got to be die-off.” When you start a supplement, you must begin – just to recap. You must see the video I’ve completed recently on going slowly. Any kind of supplement you take; I like you to start it very slowly. There is a whole lot of reasons why you can feel terrible after you take a supplement. But oftentimes, the body will not be used to that supplement, particularly if it’s an antifungal/antibacterial product like my Canxida Remove product. That’s quite a potent product. When you take that one right away, lots of different reactions can occur in the body. It can kick the immune system in the butt and upregulate it, make it a lot stronger. That’s one.

Two, it can have a very profound effect on liver function and kidney function. Both of those functions, in turn, can make you feel hot, cold, weak, tired, sick, faint, they can create lots of reactions in the body. Any time you have any kind of stimulatory effect on a major organ, it can certainly change the way you feel. That’s not die-off. When you start taking a supplement, it will often be also that you make changes on multiple levels, i.e., the lifestyle change, the diet change. So when you’re making changes on three or four different levels, of course, you’re going to feel different. You’re going to feel entirely different. It’s quite natural to feel different. If you moved to a new country and go on holiday, you’re probably going to eat different foods. You’re probably going to sleep in a different bed. You’re probably going to talk to different people. You’re probably going to do a whole bunch of stuff that’s different. The funny thing is, you’re going to feel different. That’s because you’re doing different things. Please bear that mind.

Coming in too high with a dosage, too high for you, not necessarily for Paul or Peter or Jane or Mary over there because every one’s dosage is going to be different. Every single person will require a slightly different incoming dosage. And then over time, the person will work out what the right dosage is for that kind of person. If you go shopping with 10 people, they’re not all going to buy a red shirt or a red dress. One will want a black one. One will want a green one. Everyone will want something different. People have different needs and suit different kinds of things. It’s the same with dosages. Even though a supplement may suit a wide range of people, the dosage will certainly not.

I’ve got many patients who gain great benefit from taking a quarter of the Canxida Remove I make per day. Quarter of a tablet and they feel fantastic on it with a good outcome. I’ve got other people who take three to six per day. So you need to feel your way around. If you’re a sensitive person, you start low. You take maybe a half a tablet per day if you react to a lot of things.

Don’t come in with three or six per day if you react. Of course, you’re going to feel like crap. Don’t blame it on die-off. Don’t immediately blame everything and say, “It’s die-off. It’s die-off.” It probably isn’t. It’s probably just because you upregulated your liver. It’s probably just because you stimulated your immune system. You may have even had a very powerful effect on your stomach or pancreas with that product for many different reasons. And that, in turn, will affect the bowel, the small intestine, the large intestine. It could have caused gas or bloating. You could have upset the bacteria in your digestive system. You may not have sufficient beneficial bacteria. And again, when you’re taking a strong antifungal product there, you’re going to get a lot of reactions there as a result of that.

A big thing that many people forget with “anti” kind of products, particularly antifungals, is the liver. Because many of these supplements like black walnut, berberine, clove, neem, they have a very powerful effect on a phase two liver detoxification pathway. There are several pathways that get stirred up by these herbs. This, in turn, can create a bottleneck of toxin. It can up or downregulate your liver function. This may hold toxins back in the body and your immune system is going to go to town on these toxins. Or it could increase or facilitate the release of these toxins on the body. This, in turn, can make it tougher for the digestive system to handle these toxins, especially if the bowels aren’t working well or it can make it tougher for the kidneys to operate and that can cause a lot of fatigue and skin itching and many different things.

Check out my video I did on urinary problems and particularly the one on kidney function. Best kept secret is getting the kidneys working well. Many people have kidney problems and that can make you feel tired, wasted, sick, itchy skin, dry skin. You can feel like partially hungover. That could be a kidney problem. It may have nothing to do with die-off at all. You may not be simply drinking enough water with your detox.

Inflammation. Let’s talk about that one. With a typical Herxheimer reaction generally what happens a drug like mercury killing a lot of things in the body. You’re much more prone to getting a classic die-off if you’re going to take a drug like tetracycline or a very powerful antibiotic. That’s because you’re killing huge amounts of beneficial bacteria and not the friendly guys. You’re killing them. You’re just machine gunning them all down. Wiping everything out. Way more potent than using an antifungal. Those drugs may well put you into die-off. What happens is you kill off all the stuff, the immune system has to start dealing with all that damage. The both beneficial damage as far as you’re concerned and the collateral damage.

A lot of these dying bacteria will release chemicals themselves. The immune system will pick up on this. It will be on high alert. It in turn will release chemicals called cytokines, particularly there is one called interleukin. There is one called tumor necrosis factor. They’re the typical interleukins that go town on these endotoxins, endo, they’re in internal, they’re inside. Toxins inside the body, so interleukins six and eight attack these endotoxins and that’s what typically creates a lot of awful feeling in the body. This is a typical die-off scenario and that reaction ramps up very quickly after you take that antibiotic.

Anaphylaxis like from penicillin, acute allergic reaction, that is a typical immune reaction that can kill you. It can actually kill you. Die-off won’t kill you, but it can make you feel like death warmed up. At least you feel at near death and really sick and crappy to the point where you need to go to the ER and you feel like you’re dying, you probably haven’t got die-off. Did you hear when I said “die-off”? If you feel like dying, it’s probably die-off.

Most people who contact me and think they’ve got die-off don’t feel like dying. They just feel like crap, but they don’t actually feel like near death. There’s a big difference between, so please don’t get die-off confused with a reaction in the body.

Introducing new foods into the body. Maybe your body can’t cope with those new foods. Maybe you’ve reintroduced them too quick. Maybe you’ve introduced new foods too quick. Maybe your digestive system can’t cope? Maybe your enzymes in your gut haven’t got sufficient power to break those foods down, creating bloating and gas. As I mentioned, coming in too high.

Supplements, lifestyle events, all the changes, inflammation, we spoke about that. I hope you’re getting a bit of a feel for what I mean. These are typical things that underpin feeling awful but don’t constitute die-off. We talked about the cytokine response.
Now brain fog. So many people think that brain fog is actually a result of die-off. I don’t believe it is. I believe brain fog is more related to the beneficial bacteria or lack of. I believe there’s a big relationship with the vagus nerve and the gut and the brain and it has got a lot more to do with a sympathetic/parasympathetic imbalance. People with brain fog often have stress. People with brain fog in most all cases when we do stool testing show really weird levels of beneficial bacteria. I don’t commonly find brain fog in people with three, four plus beneficial bacteria in the stool test. Don’t commonly find it. So I believe that in the future, research will validate what I’m saying right now to you guys is that brain fog, in my opinion, is more related to the beneficial bacteria than it is to die-off.

That’s not to say that endotoxins can’t create that feeling in the brain. Because when you’re hungover, you certainly got that brain foggy kind of feeling from the liver and kidneys trying to clean the body out. But I believe that in time research will validate that. That that foggy brain feeling – and how do I know that? I know that because in many cases when I’ve helped to restore the beneficial bacteria in patients, the brain fog disappears. Sometimes within a week it’s gone. I’ve seen that.

I think that just about covers most of things I wanted to talk about die-off. I hope it wasn’t too confusing this video. Again, just to recap. Die-off is severe. It’s extreme. It can last anything up to about a week in patients. It’s like a storm. It can come out of nowhere and it can disappear very rapidly. That’s my experience with die-off. I’ve only ever seen true die-off probably about a dozen times in all the years I’ve practiced, in the nearly 30 years. That’s not a lot of times, but I have seen it and it’s been very severe. In most cases, it resulted in the patient being hospitalized or going to the doctor feeling that they’re actually going to die. There is a severe reaction and it did have the things like chills, fever, terrible skin rashes, all of those things. That is true die-off.