Author: Eric Bakker

Greetings. New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker, author of Candida Crusher and I’m the formulator of a range of products called Canxida. Thanks for tuning in. I got a question here today from a lady called Pauline Berry from Kent in the UK. It’s in England. Pauline is asking me if hair testing is valid for Candida diagnosis.

Pauline, that’s a really good question and it’s one I get asked from time to time if that is okay. It’s an interesting email you’re sending me here. You’ve got lots of different questions here regarding testing. Another thing that you point out is about immune testing. You’re confused about doing saliva or blood tests regarding immune response to determine Candida. That’s not a valid way to determine if you’ve got a past or a present Candida infection because there are many reasons why you can get these inappropriate antibody responses relating to Candida infection.

Hair testing is very valid when it comes to analyzing toxic metals in the body and minerals and it’s a valid science and there are many different labs around the world that are very expert in determination. A hair tissue mineral analysis is an excellent science. I’ve got a lot of friends that are really good in this particular field and learning how to read these reports, looking at the potassium/sodium ratios and the zinc/copper balances, what kind of levels of mercury a person may have in their body. But when it comes to determining a yeast infection from hair analysis, to me it’s a little bit sort of foreign and bizarre to think that you can actually determine allergic responses or the presence of microorganisms from hair testing. I mean to me it’s almost a little bit like holding one of those little pendulums over an apple to give you a “yes” or “no.” “Can I eat this food? Yes or no.” What a load of crap. What kind of science have we got involved with that? You may as well pull a Ouija board out and start walking around the room and asking if there are spirits in the room and junk like this.

This is what gives natural practitioners a bad name, I believe, in my opinion. When you’ve got these weird bizarre kinds of testing that people really actually believe in. While I have no doubt there will be valid means of testing, there are also plenty that border on the sublime to the ridiculous. I really think that hair testing to determine a yeast infection is a ridiculous notion.

The other things in your email, you’re asking specifically about Candida determination from hair testing. Remember when we’ve got a person who potentially thinks that he or she has a yeast infection, they may not have a yeast infection at all. Many people go onto blog sites or on YouTube. They’ll actually start listening or reading information and think, “Yeah, that’s what I’ve got.” Because of all the signs and symptoms they’ve got. But they may have any one of a hundred different things or even a thousand different things. So when you go to a person specifically for a Candida test determination, it’s either going to be a “yes” or “no,” and that’s not going to give you a lot of other information there. It’s junk information. It’s quite useless.

Other testing that is more valid in my opinion, which I’ve a lot of experience with and can vouch for how well it works in a clinical sense, is comprehensive stool testing, Pauline, in your situation because of the way you describe all your digestive symptoms. You’ve got like gas, bloating, constipation one minute and diarrhea the next and you’ve got headaches, fatigue, joint pain, you’ve got all these different symptoms here. And you’ve been sick for quite some time.

My recommendation is to do a comprehensive digestive stool test, including parasitology. Three stool samples concurrently on three separate days and that’s going to give you a huge amount of information. You may not have Candida. You may have a very low amount of beneficial bacteria, which is very common these days. Regardless of how many probiotics you take. You may have all kinds of other imbalances there. You could have a problem with one of your pancreatic enzymes. It may not be producing sufficiently.

Before you start running off and getting a hair test done for Candida determination, think more about a stool test to give you a broader picture and potentially shine the light in the area where it’s quite dark or murky. I’ve always been told that if you want to find something, look around the room. If you still can’t find it, put new batteries in the torch and look in all four corners of the room because most people will look in one or two corners. They don’t look around the whole room. And if you really can’t find anything, turn the flippin’ light switch on, so you can have a much better look and throw the torch away. The light switch, I think, is the stool test.

The flashlight with faulty batteries is something that you’re looking at apparently is a hair test for Candida determination. Be careful about people who claim they can diagnose Candida accurately. I’m not saying I can do that, but what I’m saying is I can show you with the stool test, we can get a much broader picture and show you potential things that are a problem and may not be Candida related at all.

That’s my take on it. I hope that answers your question, Pauline. Do I think that hair testing is valid for Candida? I think it’s a lot of bologna and I think you should avoid it. Hair testing is a valid science, but not really determination of a yeast infection.

Hi there. Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand, author of Candida Crusher, formulator of the Canxida range of products. Thanks for checking out my video. We’re back again. We’re going to now have a look at men. How to recognize the man with a yeast infection? Men are different from women as we all know. How do you know that a guy’s got a yeast infection? Let me read something out of my book and then we’ll explain a bit.

In my clinical practice, 75 percent of patients presenting with yeast infection related problems are females. Yet guys develop yeast related problems as well. In fact, I suspect there are a lot of men out there with a yeast infection, yet do very little about it to get well. They may even pass the problem on to their female companions and then they may get it passed back to them. Women tend to be more keen to get their health onboard than guys.

I saw my father try to conquer his yeast problems for many years. And it was only after many years that he went from doctor to doctor who prescribed drug after drug, finding nothing wrong with him. This was in spite of several trips to the gastroenterologist, where he was examined by way of an endoscope and had a barium enema performed in addition to having every other test thrown at him. The diagnosis was there was no abnormal disease and dad was prescribed yet more antibiotics. That was in 1982.

And unfortunately, almost 30 years on, nothing has changed. Yeast infected patients are still diagnosed by the mainstream doctor as having no abnormal disease if they present to their medical doctor with several yeast related signs and symptoms. If you’ve been to many different people and they can’t find what’s wrong with you, if you suffer from bloating, gas, abdominal discomfort, constipation and diarrhea, if you’ve been on antibiotics. If you can relate to this, do a stool test or go and see someone like me or anyone else who knows about Candida to get checked out because you may have this problem.

How do we recognize a male patient with a Candida yeast infection? I carefully check the toenails and see if there is any athlete’s foot. It could be a fungal nail or there could be infection between the toes. I find that men, for some reason, are known to more commonly complain of athlete’s foot than women do. I’ll often check the hands and scalp carefully, too. Particularly, if they’re manual workers. Guys, in general, tend to be less interested in hand and foot care than female patients. Shoes and socks off and we’ll often find something if we have a good look.

Guys who adjust their groin regularly, so men who move their things around a bit. If you know what I mean. Just go to a bar and look around, especially where alcohol is served. Many men subconsciously touch their groin area and I’ll bet that they’re either oblivious to the fact that they have a yeast infection or too embarrassed to seek treatment. Many of the typical male patients I see are blue collar workers, so these are going to be guys who drive trucks, work as building people, they do physical manual work. They’re working class men who typically enjoy a beer or wine after work. A social drink at the weekend and they snack on sweet stuff. They may not have the best diet and when carefully questioned, you’ll find they burp, bloat and fart, which is quite typical for a guy that drinks beer and has a yeast infection.

White collar office workers, so these are guys that maybe earn a bit more money. These guys also work under high stress especially. They work long hours at the office. Many of them often drink alcohol and they eat over computers. They might eat take away food or eat out commonly with their colleagues. Some spend time with clients and conduct business over lunch and dinner or at conventions and go to business meetings and typically alcohol is served. They’ll go out. They’ll spend the night out drinking again and partying. It’s all quite common.

Men with yeast infections are typically the ones who consume lots of beer, bread and sweet foods. Those who crave alcohol in general are prime candidates for Candida. And if they don’t crave alcohol, they’ll crave sweet things like candies, chocolates, licorice. It could be cookies or cakes or sweet foods or soda drinks. These are all commonly consumed.

Men whose wives suffer from vaginal thrush or yeast infection. The problem gets passed from the female to the male and then back to the male again. Men are typically troubled by recurring digestive problems like abdominal pains, diarrhea, constipation, bloating, heartburn, flatulence. Men who’ve taken recurring courses of antibiotics for prostatitis, for acne, for sinusitis, for chest infections or any kind of infection. The doctor may have given them antibiotics and then may have given them another round and another round.

Psoriasis. Check to see if a man has any of the typical or not so typical signs of Candida if he has psoriasis. If a man comes to my clinic with psoriasis, the first thing I check are digestive problems and I check for a yeast infection. When I did write my book on psoriasis, I found that three quarters of people with psoriasis, in fact, have Candida yeast infections. There is, in fact, strong research linking both these conditions.

Prostatitis. I have seen time and time again the male’s prostate problems often disappear entirely once his yeast infection is cleared up. Guys with prostatitis or urinary issues respond very well to Candida treatment. These need to be aggressively treated. These cases are especially hard to solve. If they’re beer or bourbon drinkers, or whiskey drinkers or whatever, they have to stop. You can’t clear prostatitis up in a male if he drinks alcohol all the time. And, of course, poor motivation, depression or anxiety, ongoing stress related issues. These are things you need to look out for. If a guy does get depressed or anxious long term and he’s got problems, he needs to be checked out for this condition.

I hope that gives you a bit of an insight into men and yeast infections. Don’t forget to subscribe. Don’t forget also please to do my yeast infection quiz if you’re a guy watching this or a female who suspects her male partner may have a yeast infection. Go to yeastinfection.org and do my quiz. And also, check out Canxida.com for some good natural solutions on yeast infections.

Greetings. New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker, author of Candida Crusher, formulator of the Canxida range of dietary supplements. Thank you so much for checking out my video. Today, we’re going to talk about recognizing different kinds of Candida patients. These are going to be different types of people that we see. I’m going to do a video on recognizing the female patient, recognizing the male patient, and recognizing the child patient.

This is recognizing the female Candida patient. This will be quite a handy video to have if you are a lady and you may suspect that you have a Candida yeast infection, but it’s also quite a good video for a naturopathic physician or a medical doctor to watch if he or she suspects that they may be dealing with someone who could have a potential yeast infection. I’m going to read some information from my book, Candida Crusher, and I’ll just add some comments to that as well.

How do you recognize if a patient has got a yeast infection? Is a yeast infection just a vaginal problem with a woman like some doctors tend to think? Well, it’s actually a lot more than that. Candida can create a huge amount of disturbance in the body. I’ve got a checklist here of different kinds of things that I want you to be aware of and different things that you could, if you are a physician, ask your patient, or if you are a patient, to try to get a feel for these types of bullet points I’ve got to come up with. If you can mentally tick off a lot of these things, it doesn’t mean to say that you definitely have got a yeast infection, but it means that there is a high probability that you’ve got one. I particularly would like you to do my yeast infection quiz. If you go to yeastinfection.org, you can do that quiz. You can also see if you’re a male or a female and go through that scenario on the quiz and just go through the checklist. That will really give you a good idea.

A case history will tell you if you are dealing with a female who has a Candida history or not. I just spoke with a patient in the States who asked me an interesting question about how do you know if you’ve got Candida? I said knowing that you’ve got Candida, it’s a little bit like when a patient comes to me as being sick for a long time, I consider myself a bit of a detective. It’s almost like one of those CSI movies where I have to find out all the facts. I also like to know about what’s happening around the case, the circumstances.

The history is very important to me to look at. Just like with any kind of investigation. We’re not doing a criminal investigation. We’re doing a health investigation. I like to know a lot about the person’s past. What kind job they have. What kind of foods they have been eating. What kind of living circumstances they’ve had. What kind of relationships they’ve had. These all will leave little telltale signs and vital clues. As a policeman or detective will tell you, most people end up getting busted on their own conviction. They’ll say stuff, and quite often, they won’t even know what they’re saying could implicate them in their disease. That will actually give me the information I’m looking for.

A woman who may have a history of taking the oral contraceptive or a mature woman with a history of hormone replacement therapy, estrogen therapy like Premarin. The pills, these hormonal pills, can sometimes really drive Candida up in the body. They can drive a vaginal yeast infection particularly in the body. I’m very careful to ask those kinds of questions. Look for the woman with persistent vaginal thrush, especially if she has had a vaginal yeast infection treated with fluconazole. Has she had that when she was younger, maybe say from 17, 18 up to about 25. Did she use any kind of medication for a vaginal yeast infection? Was she using applicators to put creams in there to try to get rid of it. Did she cure the problem? Did it go away? But then it came back later in life. Very interesting.

If there has been a history of recurring antibiotic use before the onset of the digestive health problem, you can almost guarantee that this lady will have had a yeast infection to some degree. People who’ve had antibiotics, particularly years prior, and then have had several rounds and you can see their health actually declining as a result of that. Usually, I will straight up request a stool test for that patient to look at what their level of beneficial bacteria are like. Low and behold, I will often find Candida there in the stool culture and a low level of beneficial bacteria.

Any woman with an annoying irritating white discharge. It could be bacterial vaginosis, but often it will be a Candida yeast infection. A female who experiences painful sex or who avoids intimate relations because of pain or discomfort, she should be checked out quite carefully for this condition. Suspect any woman with chronic polycystic ovarian syndrome or endometriosis.

I mentioned in a previous video, a good doctor friend of mine went to Canada years ago on an endometriosis conference and she said that they spent two to three days speaking about eradicating vaginal yeast infections. When a yeast infection becomes chronic and permanent, recurrent, and it gets suppressed by medication and then comes back again, there is often a potential there for that condition to go further in through the cervix, into the womb, and then create the infection and cyst development internally. There are many different hypotheses on the development of endometriosis, but one that I firmly believe there is some link with a bacterial or a yeast infection that actually got into the womb and created an immune response. Not all women, but many women with endometriosis have had yeast infections.

Look for the female who has a strong sweet or sugar craving. Carefully questioning during the case taking will illicit this crucial information. Does she crave chocolate, sweets or breads or maybe wine? Sweet cravings sometimes are a real red flag for a yeast infection. They need to be very carefully investigated. Don’t just look for a craving or strong desire for chocolate, bread, candy or sweets, look for the desire to consume orange juice, soda or fizzy drinks to dried fruits like dates, figs, or chewing gum, biscuits or a host of other foods that could be high in sugar. A person who wants a piece of bread recurrently could have a yeast infection, especially if it’s a strong craving or a desire.

I’ve recently discovered that various kinds of yeast affect receptor sites in the gut that can relay the information to the brain and drive a desire for glucose or for sugar, so it can actually be a yeast creating that desire for the glucose on a physiological level. Look for the woman who eats many pieces, three, four or five pieces of fruit each day. Fruit has plenty of sugar in it, especially oranges, grapes and dried fruits or bananas, too, can have a lot of sugar, especially very ripe bananas. Woman who love to drink wine, especially if there’s a history of oral contraceptive pills or antibiotic use. This can also be a key indication. White wine especially like chardonnay or pinot noir, the red wine, high in sugar.

Woman who love moldy foods like soft cheese like camembert and brie and sweet foods or drinks. A glass of wine with moldy cheese, again, can be an indication. Look for a woman who takes many kinds of dietary supplements, including probiotics, digestive enzymes, bowel products, detox products, cleanses. A person who goes to health food shops and natural people and they get all kinds of pills and potions to deal with multiple kinds of problems. Often there will be a yeast infection underpinning this problem.

Look for a history of unresolved digestive problems, particularly if this has been of long duration involving many visits to naturopaths or doctors. Many people who see me come to me as a last resort. They say, “I’ve been to 10 doctors. I’ve been to 5 naturopaths, 2 herbalists, 2 chiropractors, all sorts of people, and I’m still not right.” A stool test will sometimes really pick up some interesting information with this patient.

Woman whose partner suffers from yeast infections like jock itch. The problem can pass from the male to the female and from the female back to the male. Or in same sex relationships, this can happen quite commonly, too. Ladies with toenail fungus. Suspect digestive yeast related problems as well, especially if a localized toenail problem is of long duration. Wearing stockings, for example, all the time or shoes. I’ve seen this condition a lot with people who work on airplanes. Flight attendants can have this condition quite a lot. Wearing pantyhose, for example, office workers. Again, occupational. Having drinks after work and long hours of wearing clothing high in nylon can predispose you to this problem.

Poor motivation, depression or anxiety or any of the many different disorders that may develop in women without a firm diagnosis for Candida. So it’s important for me to understand not just the physical problems that the patient has, but also any mood issues that may be going on. People who have been sick for a long time often develop anxiety or stress. If it’s long enough, they may get depressed because they’ve been told that they’re crazy. That they, in fact, need to see a psychiatrist because it’s all in their head. It may be all in their head. They could actually have circulating garbage or bits of Candida antibodies floating in their head, so it may be in their head.

I hope this video gives you a bit of an insight into the different potential presentations of a female with a yeast infection. You need to think outside the square. Woman with yeast infections don’t just have vaginal problems. They can have digestive problems. They can have joint pain. They can have mood disorders. They can have many different problems going on.

They may have one or all of the above. If you put on your thinking cap and think outside the square, look at their case history, it could well be an issue there. If in doubt, do some testing that might further confirm what you’re looking for.

Thanks for tuning in. Don’t forget to subscribe and please don’t forget to do my yeast infection quiz. And also check out my Canxida.com website to understand the kind of products that I make. I make a Canxida cream now. Very specific for men and for women with all kinds of problems. Of course, I make the Canxida Remove and the Canxida Restore. Check it out. I’ll catch up with you in the next video. I’m going to do a video now on men and yeast infections. Different things to look out for.