Author: Eric Bakker

Hi there. It’s New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker. I’m the author of Candida Crusher and I’m also the formulator of the Canxida range of dietary supplements. Thanks for checking out this video today. I receive a nice Facebook message from a person here in the United States. I’m just going to read that out now. This gentleman has got a question for me, which I’m going to reply to in this YouTube video.

Philip is saying here, “Eric, you’re like a celebrity to me and my wife. We have watched over 30 of your videos and we’re huge Bakker fans.” Thanks for that, Philip. “What’s your current take on low sugar fruits? You seem hesitant with low sugar fruits as time goes on in regards to your opinion on them. My wife and I eat pomegranates, blueberries and raspberries. We’ve been on your Candida Crusher diet for two months now. We’re 30 years of age and 27 years of age. She’s lost 40 pounds. I’ve lost 8. We still have some symptoms, but not as bad. I would say maybe 70 percent of the symptoms. And cranberry juice. Is that okay? Seem to get rid of the infection for a little bit, but now it seems to bring back the heartburn.”

Let’s go back, Philip, and talk about the low sugar fruits and my take on the low sugar fruits. There are a couple of reasons why I tend to recommend be careful with fruits, particularly at the beginning of the Candida Crusher diet approach. And also in some cases, but not all, be careful of the starchy vegetables, the starchy carbohydrate vegetables. Let’s look at the fruits.

Well, either people eat way too much fruit or they don’t eat enough fruit, and I find that typically so. In England, apparently, not many people eat a wide variety of fruits at all and that could be because of the cost of eating fruit because it can be more expensive there. But it could also be habitual because not many people, I think, eat fruit and pass that kind of a trend down into the generations. Fruit doesn’t seem to be a big thing in the UK. Meat and vegetables seem to be the staple.

Many countries like New Zealand and Australia where fruits are cheaper, people do eat fruit, but people don’t quite eat enough fruit when they’re really healthy. And there’s a lot of confusion about fruit. How many pieces can you eat? Can you eat it with meals? Do you have to eat it away from food? Food combining. Maybe these are some things that I’ll address in this video as well.

When you’re healthy, I think that eating fruit every day is a very smart move. But I really believe in my personal opinion that any more than two or three pieces a day is a bit over the top. Fruit does contain a lot of sugars in it and many different kind of sugars. They have to think back a long time ago and throughout history, people did eat fruit, but I believe that today we’ve got a much wider variety and we either eat in excess as I mentioned or not enough. Common sense, folks. You need to eat regular amounts of fruit all the time and pick fruits that make you feel good, improve your bowel function and digestive function. Fruits that don’t make you bloat or burp or fart that create problems.

Personally, I like green apples. I tend to eat one green apple every day. I quite like them. I like berries, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, we grow a lot of strawberries. We’ve got lots coming up at the moment with springtime. Pomegranates are a fantastic fruit. And we’ve got two avocado trees because I like avocados. I believe that an avocado every day is a very good investment for your health long term.

If you’ve got Candida, you need to be very careful. Not just of fruits, but of sugars in general. Some fruits tend to have a stronger reaction with yeast infection than other fruits. From my experience in the clinic for many years, I found the citrus fruits not to be very good with people with yeast infection. Some citrus is. The citrus, I think, that are okay will be limes and lemons. I’ve never found those to be an issue with people, but you need to be particularly careful of mandarins and oranges and tangelos, you know, the orangey kind, the sweet kind of citrus fruits. Be careful of those.

Watermelons, pineapples, mangoes, guavas, any kind that’s like really sweet to eat, particularly watermelons and melons in general tend to aggravate a lot of people with yeast infection. Passion fruits are a fruit that are quite interesting and I’ve not found them to be a problem with most people. Again, that could be another one you can introduce. Kiwi fruit, I think you guys in the States call them kiwi. We call them kiwi fruit here. I find kiwi fruit to be quite an acceptable fruit for most people with yeast infections, especially if they have just a small amount per day.

When should you reintroduce these fruits? How many should you eat if you’ve got a yeast infection? For the first month or two, I think you should take all fruits out of the diet apart from berries, as I mention in my book. Berries, apple, pomegranate, kiwi, avocado, these seem to be probably the preferred fruits. And then you need to work out which of those fruits I just mentioned potentially aggravate you. Because some could aggravate you still. If you’ve worked out that certain fruits don’t aggravate you, you’re quite okay to eat them on a regular basis.

Can you combine with meals or not? Well, I’m not a huge fan of food combining at all. I never have been and I never will be. Mainly because most foods you eat to a degree have some combination of proteins, carbs and fats. Food combining is good for people with very sensitive digestive systems or people who are very unwell. People who have got multiple food allergies or serious irritable bowel may need to get into avoiding starchy foods with proteins, for example. Eating fruits all on their own.

But I’ve tried those diets, guys, and I’ve tried them with many people. I’ve tried food combining with many patients and I found just as many people have got aggravated by doing careful food combining as they didn’t when they didn’t do food combining. In my opinion, it’s a load of bologna all this food combining stuff. It’s almost like paint by numbers. If you’re eating this, eat this. Be careful.

I mentioned before, there’s so many gurus out there telling you how you should and you shouldn’t eat. It’s really experimental. It’s something that you need to work out yourself, what suits your digestive system. Because your digestive system is different from somebody else’s. Not anatomically or the physiology of it, but the bacteria are different. Everybody will carry around their own particular line of bugs that vary to a degree from person to person. And what you’ll find is that some fruits that can seriously aggravate you can be totally okay with the person right next to you. It’s something you need to try yourself.

If a fruit does aggravate you or you really want to have that fruit, what you could also do is try that fruit before meals, after meals, or even with meals, as opposed to totally separate from a meal. I mentioned before. Fruits in different stages of ripeness can also affect you or if fruits are cooked. I’ve got a very good book called The Fruit Cookbook and it’s got many recipes in it. Avocado, for example, can be boiled. It can be baked. It can be stir fried. It can be made into ice cream. You can do everything with fruit. Fruit can be cooked as well. Bananas are very nice when their cooked up when their green and starchy. They’re delicious cooked up with vanilla and coconut cream, for example. Don’t always think that fruit has to be eaten totally raw. It could be steamed. It could be stewed. There are many ways you can prepare fruit as well. If you’re hell bent on having that fruit and you think to yourself, “Eric, I really want that fruit.” Try eating it in a different stage of ripeness slightly or preparing it in a different way because that may agree with your digestive system.

When you start to improve, you can slowly add a little bit more fruit into your diet, but you need to be very cautious. Fruit can be one of those items where people have way too much of, as I mentioned. It’s not unusual for someone to tell me that I have six oranges in a day or four kiwi fruit. Fruit you need to be very careful of with your gut in terms of going to the toilet too often, will be kiwi fruit. Pineapple can create that as well.

The three core fruits in terms of improving digestive function when you’re healthy and keeping it in great shape, kiwi fruit, pineapple, and pawpaw. Pawpaw are yellow fruit from the tropics with the black seeds in it. Pawpaw contain digestive enzymes called papain, which is great for protein digestion. Pineapple contains bromelain, which is a very, very good anti-inflammatory and also a good digestive enzyme. And kiwi fruit contains multiple enzymes in them and prebiotics. Kiwi fruit is one of the healthiest fruits you can eat. But be careful because it can irritate the delicate oral mucosa. Some people get funny lip sensations or tongue sensations, so be careful how you eat kiwi fruit, too, they can create problems in that area if you’re sensitive to fruit.

Fruits tend to be a little bit dicier and more difficult to integrate into the diet when you’ve got Candida than starchy vegetables do. Starchy vegetables tend to be cooked and prepared differently, whereas, fruits we tend to eat raw. When you eat fruits raw, remember also, they don’t just contain a higher sugar content, they’re potentially highly allergenic for many people and they can cause issues with your immune system, with your gut, and with your bacteria. Because they’ve got so much sugars in them, the bacteria can react quite quickly to them causing bloating or gas. So it’s not just Candida that will play up in the sugars in the fruits, essentially the sugar content, because many people with Candida yeast infections also forget that they’ve got dysbiotic bacteria or they’ve got bad bacteria and potentially parasite. Parasites love fruit and so do bad bacteria. And that can create lots of symptoms, brain fog, joint pain, gas, bloating, irritable bowel. Many things can be caused.

If you are eating fruit and you don’t seem to be recovering, put all the fruit out of your diet entirely for at least four to six weeks because it can be a very reactive food when it comes to Candida. I don’t eat any more than two pieces of fruit per day. I tend to get most of my fiber and nutrition from the vegetables that we grow. I’m more of a vegetable than a fruit fan. But when I do eat fruit, I tend to includes some fruits into the diet. We are growing a lot of fruits at the moment on my property, so I’ll be able to let you know in years to come. I’m growing nectarines, peaches, plums, apricots and many different fruits. I’ve got about five apple varieties I’m growing. I prefer the old fashioned varieties of apples rather than the new ones. We’re quite lucky. My wife and I live here in New Zealand. We live in a great region for growing fruits and vegetables. I’ll let you know in time to come.

I hope that answers your question, Philip, about the fruits. Pomegranates are a great fruit. I’m glad you’re eating those. They’re a very good fruit to eat. What about the cranberry juice? You mentioned here. “The cranberry juice seems to get rid of the infection for a little bit, but now seems to bring back the heartburn.” If you’re drinking cranberry juice, Philip, be careful that it’s got no sugar in it. And also, buy the cranberries whole, dried cranberries, and just get probably about a dessert spoon and simmer them in a bit of clean, pure water probably for about 20 minutes and then try a little bit of that juice to drink or dilute that with water. I don’t think that will cause the heartburn. I assume that you’re drinking a commercial cranberry juice. I’ve never been a fan of any kind of commercial juices. Because usually they’re not really made properly. They’re made with sugar. They heat them up too much. Try making your own cranberry juice if you like cranberries. They’ve got a nice quite tart flavor about it.

Thanks again for the kind words, Philip. I’m glad that you’ve been watching my videos and that’s the whole idea of this YouTube channel is to create a good educational source for people out there to look at and to get some good information from. Let’s summarize these points on the fruits, the fruits and the yeast infection.

Fruits are okay as your digestion improves, so don’t include a lot of fruit at the beginning. Usually after eight weeks, you can start including more and more fruit. Don’t eat any more than about three pieces in one day of fruit until your digestion is very, very good.

Should you eat fruit with food or not? That’s up to you. As I mentioned, it’s experimental. Some people tend to eat a fruit directly after a meal as a dessert. Some people may have it at the beginning with a bit of yogurt or as an entrée. Some people may decide to actually cook with fruit. If you look at a lot of countries in the Caribbean and many tropical countries, it’s normal for people to cook with fruits. That blows that whole food combining thing right out the window.

Be careful that you don’t overeat fruits. Don’t have too many fruits to eat when you do get well because they are a big source of problems for a lot of people and they’re not unlike cookies. Even though they’re not refined and processed, they still contain a lot of sugar, so just be cautious of them.

Don’t forget to subscribe to my channel. I really appreciate that. Also, please check out my CandidaCrusher.com and my yeastinfection.org websites. I’ve got a very good quiz I’ve created for people to determine if they’ve got mild, moderate or severe Candida. And don’t forget I make a really nice range of dietary supplements as well. You’ll find those links to those on yeastinfection.org or CandidaCrusher.com.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

Greetings. Welcome back. It’s Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand, author of Candida Crusher and formulator of the Canxida range of dietary supplements. This is another video in this series of helicobacter. We just did one previously on helicobacter treatment. How to treat naturally. We’ve done other videos on how to prevent getting it, risk factors, testing, diagnosing, the causes, all that sort of stuff, so this is a whole series on H. pylori. If you just come in and watch the video, please be sure to watch the other videos as well.

We spoke briefly about the diet in the previous video, natural treatment. I’ve just spent a good half an hour looking at different blog sites on helicobacter treatment, the best diet, and some of the information I’ve seen is just crap. It’s just absolute junk. I don’t know how people can put this stuff up on the internet. One website actually said it’s perfectly okay to drink a little bit of beer if you’ve got helicobacter. Another website said that you can eat copious amounts of fruits. Is it any wonder people get all screwed up and they come to me and they read all this ridiculous advice? There are so many people out there who think they know about helicobacter, but how many patients have they actually treated with this condition. How many people have they spoken to who actually treat this condition for 30/40 years, a long time?

Some of the colleagues I have, have been treating helicobacter since the moment it was discovered, right back in the ‘80s and they’ve been looking at the best ways of eradicating it. The information I’m going to share with you on this video is quite important and it’s based on my experience with helicobacter for over 20 years. But also experiences that I have learned and knowledge I’ve gained from people that have been in the business a lot longer than me.

There is no clearly defined diet for helicobacter pylori. Let’s just get that right at the start. There is no like magic diet that’s going to cure it. As I mentioned over and again in my previous videos, you will not cure helicobacter with a pill alone. You need to work with a diet plan, so you need to eat certain kinds of foods that are conducive towards building you up. The most important thing that I explain at the beginning is with helicobacter food or choices. You need to obviously avoid the foods that are aggravating you the most. The foods that make you feel sick in any way, you need to push them aside, and I want you to be intelligent about this. In fact, get a piece of paper and write all the foods you like to eat on a list.

A pad like this, you write down all the foods here. Write them all down. And then what you do—all the foods, cucumber, Budweiser beer, Hersey’s chocolate, Xanax pills, I’m being facetious here, Kentucky Fried Chicken. If you do like treats or naughty foods or take away or anything like that, just write that all down, too. Every single thing that you eat. It’s good if you can break down into different vegetables as well. You should only come up maybe with one or two pieces of paper. What you do then is a column on the right, you draw a line down it. And then what you need to do is write 1, 2 or 3 in that column by each food. For example, 1 means you’re fine with that food; 2 means it might give you a little bit of trouble; 3 means that “Wow, I can’t touch this. I’m getting a lot of problems with this food.”

Garlic, for example, could make you feel like a 3 and feel terrible. Cucumber could make you feel like a 3. Bell peppers or capsaicin could make you feel like a 3. Potatoes could make you feel like a 1, no problem. This is a very smart thing to do. Very smart. Because if you put the date on this and put all the foods down and grade them on severity on how they make you feel from 1 to 3, any way you want to grade, 1 through 10. I don’t care how you grade it. This is smart because now you’ve got a baseline. Now you know how your diet or the foods that you’re eating are affecting you. Because what you’re going to find out in 6 or 12 months from now with treatment is it won’t be the same. Some of the foods that are making you feel like crap, in six months, may not be so bad. In one year, you may be perfectly fine to eat them.

I’m always keen for people to test and measure their treatment. It’s an intelligent approach. If someone gives you advice on a diet, there should be some way for them or for you to measure the response if that diet is going to work or not. So please try to grade the foods that you’re currently eating. And in time, you can check that again. Either monthly, weekly or six months, whatever you determine is the right thing for you.

When we look at the food approach, there’s a couple of important things that you need to understand with helicobacter. It is a bacteria and it is going to live in competition with many other different kinds of bacteria. It is going to change the function of the stomach. It is going to change the way your whole digestive system works. I found people with H. pylori have even altered ability to taste. Like certain foods don’t taste right for them, and they start eating around this bug. They may eat too quick or too slow. They may be drinking fluid with their food. They may have some bad habits that developed around this bug. They may be popping an antacid into their mouth five minutes before they eat food because they don’t want to get indigestion. You know what I mean, so you need to carefully think about that.

Maybe if you’ve got this problem, you can ask your partner or friend if they notice anything about you around meal times, burping or bloating or medication taking or things like that. Some changes may need to be made. If you’re currently taking an acid blocker like a PPI or some kind of drug that coats the gut, shields it, you may need to be aware that this is affecting you quite a lot. Particularly, if you’ve been doing it a long time. You probably suffer from fatigue. You may suffer from sleeping disturbances and other problems. You may suffer from some anxiety and depression. It is also important to say you need to get off these drugs. You can’t stay on these medications. If you really want to get the tummy well, you need to cut back these medications.

One of the most important foods I like people to take to start with when they’ve got heartburn is some raw cabbage juice. This is something I’ve taught many people over the years. I’ve had really good feedback from. You get two or three green cabbage leaves and you juice them. You do this in the morning. I want you to promise me that you’re going to do it for one or two weeks straight without failure. Get a juicer or blender or some machine that whizzes things up, mash up these two or three leaves and try to come up with one or two tablespoons of cabbage juice. That cabbage juice needs to be consumed on an empty stomach first thing in the morning before any food hits the gut, before you have a cigarette or a coffee, whatever you do, you have that cabbage juice.

What that does is it coats the stomach. It contains different kinds of fibers and sugars that actually feed up the beneficial bacteria. It lines the gut, but it also has a very special healing substance in it, which they don’t really understand what it is. It reduces inflammation. It heals ulceration. I can tell you, I’ve got so many grateful people out there in the United States and many other countries that have come back and told me, “Eric, the best thing you ever told me was the cabbage juice. I can’t believe how much comfort I’ve got in the gut since I took it onboard.” Some patients actually do it twice a day. They do it in the morning and they do it in the afternoon. That’s up to you, but I want you to do it for at least 10 to 14 days straight. And if you get benefit from it, stick with it for a bit longer.

Why is this important? Because eventually it’s going to get you off Nexium. It’s going to get you off Pepto Bismol. It’s going to get you off Tums. It’s going to get you off all those stupid drugs. That’s the whole idea is to reduce your dependency on medication. That is going to be a turning point in your life when you finally reduce the medication. That’s the beginning of you to start getting energized and feeling alive all over again.

We just spoke in the previous video, it’s important to eat foods with antibacterial component about them. Now, a lot of fresh foods have this, but some of my favorite ones are onions, the onion family. Leeks, shallots, scallions, spring onion, chives, garlic, any of that family. There are different ways you can eat those. You can stem it, bake it, boil it, juice it, and stew it, whatever way you can. Try to get some of the allium family into your digestive system once or twice per day. I grow large amounts of these sorts of foods and I consume every day. There’s no surprise why the Greeks ate these foods a long, long time ago because they are very healthy foods. People ate a lot of peas and spinach and allium family going back even three or four thousand years. People knew the health benefits of these foods.

Leeks and onions in particular, brown onions, red onions, very, very well for the stomach. Good tip. Try to have some leek soup or some onions in your diet. If you’re worried about gas and stuff like that, over a period of time, as the beneficial bacteria numbers increase and the pathogenic or the bad bacteria go down, that should disappear. You shouldn’t get so much bloating or gas and things like that. If you notice a lot of gas when you change your diet, it’s often because you’ve put too much food into the gut that the bacteria can’t cope with.

If you’ve ever driven your car up a hill and pushed the accelerator down really hard, jammed it down and the engine went oo-hoo, oo-hoo, your engine was coughing and it was all smoke blowing out of the exhaust pipe. The amount of fuel you put into the engine was way exceeding what the motor could actually do with that fuel. Some people’s digestive systems are like that. They put way too much food in that the body’s not quite ready to handle yet because it hasn’t had experience with that food, for example, or it’s overloaded the stomach or it hasn’t been chewed properly, so just be aware of that.

Antibacterial foods, as I mentioned in a previous video, also include the fresh herbs. Rosemary, marjoram, thyme, basil, mints are also quite good for bacteria, lemon balm, there are many different kinds of fresh herbs that you can grow and put into salads and into your own food. These are going to work quite well. You can also put them in juices. Some of these herbs juice up quite well. I find that basil is quite nice with spinach and apple and ginger and things like that. Very antibacterial. Turmeric, ginger and garlic, three really good things to add to your diet. Cultured and fermented foods we spoke about. You need to pick the one that you like.

I’m not a big fan of kombucha at all with stomach problems, so I push kombucha aside. Kefir, yogurt and sauerkraut are my three favorite ones. Those are the ones I recommend you regularly add to your diet. Seaweed is actually good for the stomach. There are certain types of seaweed like wakame is very good for the stomach. Why is it so? Again, these things contain certain types of carbohydrates in them that really help the stomach. We’ve got a lot of wakame growing here in the south island of New Zealand. It’s considered to be quite good for the gut.

Healthy, fresh foods in general are what we’re talking about. Green foods. And as I mentioned, the neutral grains. I see them as neutral like brown rice, buckwheat, quinoa and amaranth. Those grains I find quite acceptable for the stomach. I don’t believe you should have to avoid gluten when you’ve got a helicobacter infection, but you need to certainly be careful of the allergenic foods in your diet. If you follow my Candida Crusher approach, you’ll find that I’ve put people on the MEVY diet first, meat, eggs, vegetables, yogurt and part two is the low allergy approach. That’s what I’m going to recommend for you quite strongly because of the inflammation and the antibody production in the stomach, you want to avoid cow’s milk strictly with helicobacter pylori. You want to avoid cream. You want to avoid cheese to a high degree. Don’t eat a lot of cheese. All cow products. In fact, be careful of lactose in general, even if it’s goat milk. Just be careful of lactose containing milks. You’re probably okay with almond milk or a nut milk. Eggs, you’ll probably be okay with eggs unless you’ve got allergies. Bananas not too good with helicobacter pylori. Chocolate, definitely not. Alcohol, definitely not good. Sugar in any form definitely not good. You need to try to avoid most sugars.

You can experiment with a little bit of Manuka honey as long as it’s got a very high UMF factor or the unique Manuka factor. If you’ve got a factor range of 20 or higher, which is quite expensive, you can experiment with a little bit of that, like two teaspoons per day. Just take that off the spoon on an empty stomach and see how that makes your tummy feel. I’ve had some quite incredible feedback from some patients who took two to three teaspoons of Manuka honey per day on an empty stomach. If you’ve got SIBO or Candida, probably not a good idea. If you’ve just got an H. pylori infection or an upper digestive issue, try the Manuka honey. That’s going to work quite well for you.

There are many other ways around H. pylori, natural treatment, when it comes to diet. I did mention the vitamin B-12. That’s another important one for you to get checked out. Remember we said that in a previous video? Get the B-12 checked out. Here’s another interesting one you can try is aloe vera. The plant aloe vera, just grow some and use some of the chunky pulp out of the leaves in water because that’s quite soothing for the whole digestive system. It works particularly well in the colon, but it’s also good for the stomach. That can really help to soothe the inflammation.

Follow my Candida Crusher approach when it comes to the diet and I think that’s going to help you to a large degree. That’s probably the diet I’d be looking at. As I mentioned at the beginning of the video, please do a little bit of writing down and measuring the response of the foods you currently have and this will be a good yardstick for you. As you improve, you’ll notice that the severity of the aggravation will reduce more and more over time.

Thanks for tuning in.

Welcome back. Thanks for joining me back again in my helicobacter pylori series. It’s Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand and author of Candida Crusher and formulator of the Canxida range of products. We’re going to do another video today called “What are the risk factors if H. pylori is left untreated?”

The risk factors really depend on you. It depends on how you’re experiencing your infection. Do you have a mild case? Do you have a moderate case? It depends a lot on your current diet and lifestyle. Are you smoking tobacco? Are you drinking alcohol all the time? Are you eating crappy foods? Are you eating a lot of takeaway food? Are you living a high stress life? Are you taking lots of medications? Are you ignoring health in general and just living a life full of whatever, booze, and I don’t know what you do out there. You get my point.

If you’re a person who’s living a healthy life, a person who’s getting plenty of sleep, a person’s who’s trying to eat a good healthy whole foods diet, a person who exercises regularly, a person who understands that smoking is the most stupid thing you can do. When you start living like that, the chances are you’re going to overcome the infection much faster than a person who’s not living like that. The risks will always increase with any kind of condition when a person doesn’t take their health seriously.

One of my favorite sayings has always been, “If you don’t take your health seriously, you should take it somewhere else.” And that’s what I think all doctors should tell their patients. If you don’t give a damn about your health, then the doctor shouldn’t give a damn about you. Then you’re left to your own devices. I could never understand why years ago, they had people in hospitals smoking tobacco, cigarettes, and they’d actually wheel them out of the ward outside with the nurses so they could smoke out there and then wheel them back in again. I could never work that one out.

When you do habits that are known to be detrimental to your health and you’ve got no control over those, then there is only one possible outcome for you and that’s living a pretty crappy life when you get a bit older. And it’s all your own doing. But if you’re not like that and you’re like me, you try to take care of your health, then the chances are the consequences aren’t so grave when you have an infection. Because there’s a huge chance for you to overcome this infection in a shorter rather than longer period of time.

Let’s just say you’re a healthy person with a helicobacter infection who’s probably taking a proton pump inhibitor, some kind of acid blocking drug or Pepto Bismol or something on a regular basis, and millions of people in America are doing that right as we speak. In Germany, in Holland, in England, in Singapore, many countries around the world, people are doing it right as we speak. They’re taking a medication for their heartburn. They don’t pay any attention to the infection. They think that they’ve got no helicobacter because their doctor said they’re perfectly fine, and they can’t find any cause for the heartburn or inflammation, so they just put them on a drug.

Well, the long term consequences for those people is not so good, unfortunately. I think you can get away with these drugs when you’re in your 30s and 40s and 50s. But when you get a bit older, that’s when your chickens come out to roost. Why would that be? And that’s because your body is getting older. Liver function declines. Kidney function declines. Immune function declines one to three percent per year. Everything is slowly declining. We’re all going to die. We know that, but all of us want to die slowly. We don’t want to die quickly.

Medications long term come at a huge cost to your health. The point I want to make out of the video is if you do have a symptom, your consequences are great if you keep taking a drug to suppress the symptom. That’s the problem. If you take a drug short term and then get off it, I think it’s okay. Try to see drugs like credit cards. Once you’ve used them, cut them up and dump them. Flush them down the toilet. Get rid of them. Don’t keep using it. Would you keep racking up debt on a credit card and not paying it back? You wouldn’t do that, but that’s what people do with medications all the time.

Don’t be a mug and stay on a drug. If you’ve got a symptom, find the cause and fix it. That’s the intelligent approach. And people who start thinking like that have got a much greater chance of not having serious consequences as they age than people who throw caution to the wind. Keep drinking wine or whiskey. Keep eating potato chips all the time. Keep taking drugs. Those are the people that end up with serious health problems down the track.

This is quite a serious video and I want you to think about it. If you take medications long term or have got a partner who takes them long term or a loved one or a friend or a family member in exactly this position, it’s nice to be able to urge that person to say, “Look, come on. Check this out. It’s not good long term. Let’s get this problem sorted. Maybe a bit of testing. Let’s try to clean up your act. Clean up your diet.” Those are the intelligent approaches that are going to help that person to have a better quality of life as they get older rather than misery, which a lot of people have. When they get to my age, 50s or 60s, they end up with serious, serious digestive problems, crippling pain, more drugs and more medication. It’s not really a nice way to grow up and to spend your last years in pain and misery.

To answer that question, “What are the risk factors if it’s left untreated?” Well, the risk factors, in my opinion, are slim if you’re a healthy person who knows how to look after his or her health. But the risk factors are great if you remain on medication and you throw caution to the wind and don’t care about your diet and lifestyle, then you’ve got great risk factors.

Thanks for tuning in. Catch up with me in the next video. The next video, we’re going to do “How do I prevent from getting H. pylori?” Thank you.