Greetings. It’s New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker, author of Candida Crusher and formulator of Canxida, the dietary supplements of choice if you’ve got Candida. Thanks for tuning into my video today. Today, I’m going to talk about yeast infections, particularly of the digestive system, antibiotics, and also a bit about probiotics.
I’ve had many, many cases over the years where I’ve found antibiotics to be a real problem when it comes to people approaching me with gut disorders, small intestinal bowel overgrowth, in particular. That’s what I’m going to talk a bit about today. I’ve had two cases today, both from America that really concern me. Which is nothing unusual because I get quite concerned with patients who routinely take pharmaceutical drugs and who present with yeast infections.
But one case, in particular, was a young guy who’s only 19 that took antibiotics on and off for several years for acne. And the other case was a case of a guy with major bowel dysfunction who had taken triple therapy for a helicobacter pylori infection. I’ll talk a little bit about those cases later on. One thing that you need to bear in mind is there are not many more things more devastating for your digestive system than taking antibiotics.
I had the fortune to attend a seminar in Australia last weekend presented by an amazing researcher of probiotics who put a fantastic slide up of the Amazon rain forest. And then the next slide was basically barren. It was basically like a nuclear bomb had gone off. And what this guy said was, “This is someone’s digestive system after they’ve taken a round of antibiotics.” They can be devastating and it can take years for your digestive system to recover from even a single round.
There are people, I think, that fall into three or four categories when it comes to antibiotics. One person, for example, will take 7 or 10 days of penicillin for strep throat and then recover 4 to 6 weeks later or partially recover more likely, because it takes a lot longer to fully recover. Another person will take a round of penicillin and take one to two years to recover. Another person may take a round of antibiotics and never fully recover. It’s probably a bit like exposure to some poisons. Some people recover because they detoxified quickly and gained good health. And other people have never been well since having a little bit of poison in their body. Everyone has their own ability to recover or not to recover, depending on multiple factors that we can’t really go into today on this video.
But what I want to stress to you today is you need to think twice before you take an antibiotic. They can be devastating. All too many patients I’ve seen take years to recover from 1, 2, or 20 rounds of antibiotics. The poor young man at 19 with the acne, I see this over and again of people who take these ridiculous drugs to cure acne. They try to kill bacteria thinking that they can get rid of acne. What a stupid thing to do. These people suffer for a long time. This poor guy has got leaky gut. He’s got pain in his joints. He’s got brain fog. He’s got constipation and diarrhea. He’s got massive sinus problems now. So he’s got all these multiple problems we have to fix. And guess what? He’s still got acne. Isn’t that stupid?
And the poor guy with the helicobacter pylori bacterial infection of the stomach, they typically take something called triple therapy which is often two types of antibiotics, and sometimes they give an acid blocker along with that. I’ve given up trying to eradicate h. pylori. I went to a seminar in Sydney, Australia. I think it was last year I went, and I spoke with a gastroenterologist with about 40 years of experience who said to me, “It’s a waste of time trying to kill h. pylori. It’s a complete waste of time.” She said, “You’re better off modifying the patient’s diet and lifestyle to build their immune system so this thing won’t proliferate.”
Trying to get rid of helicobacter pylori is almost impossible. And in nearly all cases, it will come back. If you’re watching this and you’ve got a helicobacter, you may well have partially recovered. You would have felt great initially, but then you regressed and the symptoms came back. And what happens? Repeat testing and maybe another round of these ridiculous drugs.
It’s more important to work on the milieu or the environment rather than to work on the pathogen itself. Louis Pasteur said that. Many, very famous people have said that. That killing is not the answer. Making a person strong is the answer. Increasing their resistance is the answer, not kill, kill, kill. We get nowhere with this stupid killing mentality. We’ve done a similar thing with wars in countries over the years. Killing the enemy is never going to win us the war. It’s only going to waste our resources and kill a lot of our own people by doing these dumb things.
I hope the day comes when doctors realize that antibiotics are not really a good option for most people. They’re necessary in a minority of cases, but they’re used in such abundance. We get them in the food chain. We get them in medicines. It’s ridiculous. If you’re watching this and you’re considering antibiotics for an infection, think twice about using this. Because you need to think of the long term consequences. You need to think about recovery. And if you haven’t recovered because you’ve taken an antibiotic, keep watching because I’ve got many more videos to explain how you can recover from the scourge of antibiotics.
I would love to try this, but it has one major flaw. It contains magnesium stearate. I understand that this ingredient is a benefit during manufacturing, but it has no value for the human body and may inhibit the absorption of the other ingredients. CanXida is not as pure as it should be and would be with the elimination of magnesium stearate. Hope you remove it, so that I can try this in the future.
In response to the inquiry about magnesium stearate,
Many people are needlessly concerned about the miniscule amount of stearic acid in a dietary supplement (tablet or capsule) when in fact they actually safely consume way more stearic acid from healthy food sources! Did you know that most meat, coconut oil and even chocolate (cocoa butter) are particularly rich sources of stearic acid?
Magnesium stearate is a combination of stearic acid and the essential mineral magnesium, it contains between 6 to 8 percent magnesium oxide. Stearic acid is commonly found in animal and vegetable fats and is one of the most common of all long-chain fatty acids. It important to understand that stearic acid is found naturally in many foods with a high fat content, and in far greater quantities than in dietary supplements. Do you ever hear of people avoiding ALL foods with stearic acid due to “health risks” or that it has “no value” for human health?
Stearic acid is also the immediate precursor of oleic acid, an important fatty acid found in healthy olive oil. Do you consume olive oil, or eat occasional chocolate or meat? Then in one average meal or snack you will be consuming a considerable amount of stearic acid than you would in an entire container of CanXida Remove!
Does the stearic acid in fatty foods impede absorption of lipids or fat soluble vitamins? No, research has found that most people have no problems breaking down fatty acids, unless they have major problems with their pancreas or liver. Those who regularly consume large amounts of junk foods, deep fried foods or who drink alcohol regularly may have issues with magnesium stearate when it comes to the absorption of ingredients of a dietary supplement.
The magnesium stearate in our canXida products is derived from palm oil. Our magnesium stearate [C16 to C18] is non- GMO and does not contain any trans-fatty acids. Our canXida Remove is BSE free and even suitable for vegetarians and vegans. Our CanXida products use a USP grade stearate tested to rigorous US Pharmacopeia standards, it is of pharmaceutical grade and of the highest purity and quality.
Our manufacturer uses stearic acid and magnesium stearate that are sourced from vegetable oils obtained from palm and other natural sources. These ingredients are widely considered to be safe, and are suitable for vegetarians and vegans.
You are correct; stearic acid is a waxy oil substance that acts as a lubricant to fill capsules when a dry powdered ingredient (or ingredient mix) is used. It is also used as an manufacturing excipient that helps tablets hold together and break apart properly. Without magnesium stearate, it is much more difficult to manufacture a tablet like CanXida Remove efficiently. It would only be possible to have half the amount of dried ingredients in our tablet, and tablet compression would be considerably more difficult. This would mean a less effective product.
When it comes to Magnesium stearate, the FDA has affirmed that stearic acid is Generally Regarded As Safe (GRAS) and can be added to foods in accordance with Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). I’d like to point out that our CanXida dietary supplement manufacturer is a fully GMP-certified manufacturer. Additionally, researchers and scientists do not consider stearic acid to be a lipid that is harmful to cardiovascular or overall human health.
From all the research that points to the view that magnesium stearate is fine to use in a dietary supplement, and that in fact by using it, supplement manufactures are able to make far more effective products. You will notice that the mag. stearate critics do so to promote the “purity” of their products without disclosing to their clients that many fatty animal and plant foods contain in fact contain many hundreds of times the amount of stearic acid than will be ever found in any dietary supplement. All this science and science assures us that stearic acid is a safe fatty acid found in healthy foods and that magnesium stearate is a safe analogue of stearic acid. Our manufacturer uses them only as necessary for the functionality of a particular dietary supplement, in tiny amounts (less than one milligram per tablet or capsule) compared to the amount of stearates found in common fatty foods.
I am totally and 100 percent confident of my CanXida products, I can assure you – there are NO flaws in this product! I take these products myself as well as recommend them to family and friends. Magnesium stearate will not be removed from my products, and it is up to you to decide if stearic acid is for you or not. If you decide not to purchase CanXida based on the magnesium stearate premise, then I would also highly recommend that you please stay away from ALL foods containing this commonly found fatty acid, foods such as meat, poultry and fish, most grain products, vegetables, nearly all oils and fats, eggs, legumes nuts and seeds as well as many fruits, chocolate, all coconut products. I guess this only leaves rice?
All the best,
Eric Bakker ND
REFERENCES:
1. “Stearic Acid.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 18 Dec. 2006 Denke MA.
2. Role of beef and beef tallow, an enriched source of stearic acid, in a cholesterol-lowering diet. Am J Clin Nutr. 1994 Dec;60(6 Suppl):1044S-1049S. Review. PMID: 7977148
3. Effects of cocoa butter on serum lipids in humans: historical highlights. Am J Clin Nutr. 1994 Dec;60(6 Suppl):1014S-1016S. Review. PMID: 7977142
4. Schmidt, W.F., Barone, J.R., Francis, B.A., Reeves III, J.B. 2006. Stearic acid solubility and cubic phase volume. Chemistry and Physics of Lipids. 142(1-2):23-32.
5. Schneider CL, et al. Dietary stearic acid reduces cholesterol absorption and increases endogenous cholesterol excretion in hamsters fed cereal-based diets. J Nutr. 2000 May;130(5):1232-8. PMID: 10801924
6. Code of Federal Regulations. Title 21, Volume 3. Revised as of April 1, 2006. CITE: 21CFR184.1090 [48 FR 52445, Nov. 18, 1983, as amended at 50 FR 49536, Dec. 3, 1985; 69 FR 24512, May 4, 2004]
7. FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. Database of Select Committee on GRAS Substances (SCOGS) Reviews. CFSAN/Office of Food Additive Safety. October 2006
You may have seen some of my many videos on the Candida Crusher YouTube channel. Today I’m going to talk about a different topic, which I haven’t really covered much in the past. But I’m going to do a few of these videos, and it’s regarding toenail fungus, so yeast infection of toenails. It’s very, very common. It’s a condition I very commonly see. In fact, I would easily say that half to three quarters of my patients have one or more nails, particularly toenails, with some kind of fungal infection. It’s an extremely common condition. We see a lot of it in the western world, particularly people like myself who wear socks and shoes all the time, office workers.
I’ve treated patients from many walks of life for a long period of time, and the people I typically see with finger or toenail yeast infections are often people who work in damp or wet surroundings like chefs, cooks, gardeners, market gardeners, people who work in dairy farms, they wear rubber boots all the time, cleaners in offices or hotels. These are people that we commonly see having a yeast infection. When you think about it, yeast loves warmth. It loves darkness. It loves moisture. All these sort of environments which yeast really thrive in, in the groin, the vaginal area, and the toenails.
Toenail fungus is more common than fingernail fungus, although I do see quite a bit in people with their fingernails as well. It’s commonly mistaken, in fact, for psoriasis of the nails. When, in fact, it’s not psoriasis, it’s actually a yeast infection. There are various kinds of species of yeast that live around the fingernail and under the fingernail.
Let’s look at some of the common causes of toenail fungus. I think the number one cause is people wearing sneakers and socks prolonged. Women wearing pantyhose or providing an environment where this yeast can thrive. If you wear socks, you need to take them off regularly. If you can walk barefoot in your office like me, I’m lucky. You wouldn’t know, but I have bare feet. I like walking around barefoot in my office. If I’m seeing patients, naturally, I’ll have socks and shoes on, but I try to take my socks and shoes off most of the time and just have bare feet or some leather sandals that I like to wear around the place for airing out the feet. Feet really like hands need to have lots of air flowing around them, some sunlight exposure. And this is why you’re going to typically see more toenail fungus than fingernail fungus. We don’t often wear gloves on our hands. And if we do, we take them off. But we wear socks for eight to ten hours a day all the time. This is a typical cause or a contributing cause. Some of the leading causes we’re going to see later really are more diet and stress related.
Another one is clipping the toenails. People who tear the toenails, who cut them too short, which leaves a small wound that allows bacteria or fungus to get in there and start seeding more fungi around and under the nail. And before you know it, you’ve got the beginning of a toenail infection. Remember, if you have got a toenail infection, it’s important to find the cause of it. And also try to understand it’s not just affecting you locally with the toenail or a fingernail, it’s affecting you systemically, so it’ll be internal.
Topical treatments purely on the nail are a waste of time. You’re wasting your time just putting Lamisil on your toenail or trying to treat the nail externally without looking at the internal contributing factors. Very smart move if you do. Internal treatment and external treatment because this is how you’re going to really “nail” the nail infection. If you want to get rid of it permanently, you need to make changes on multiple levels. Treating it purely on a local level is pretty stupid. You get rid of it for a while, but it’ll usually come back again.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t pick up toenail infection or tinea or yeast infections between the toes from locker rooms. A lot of people think if you walk around barefoot around a gym, you instantly get an infection involving a yeast that will grow tinea pedis, a tinea infection, around the feet or between the toes. It’s not true. Many people walk around barefoot in all areas around the world, including gyms, that never get these infections. Some people do. I bet you that the people who are more prone to these infections who say that they “catch” them are the ones that tend to have too much sugar in their diet, alcohol in their diet. Foods and beverages. Chicken with antibiotics in it, for example. I’ve spoken about this a lot because a lot of our foods today, our meat foods, we consume these primary proteins that do contain chemicals, and these chemicals affect our gut. They can increase our susceptibility toward many different kinds of intestinal infections and allergies. Be careful the kind of foods you eat.
Try to read some more of my information on yeastinfection.org, one of the world’s most informative websites I’ve been told for yeast infections. Don’t forget to do my quiz on CandidaCrusher.com. It’s one of the world’s best online yeast infection quizzes. Let’s look at the causes again. So common causes of yeast infection, as I mentioned, are wearing socks, pantyhose, shoes too long, keeping the feet in environments where they’re quite damp and moist.
One of the worst cases I’ve ever seen was a lady who worked on a dairy farm whose feet were for many hours in rubber boots and they’re wet quite a lot of the time, and she had a horrific yeast infection involving the feet and the nails. Her doctor, in fact, wanted to send her to a surgeon to get surgical treatment done to take lots of pieces of skin off and even do skin grafting to her foot because it was so bad, which I thought was a joke. It took this lady a good six months to get a complete cure of this problem. Basically, I got her out of the rubber boots and got her to wear plastic open sandals and I got her to dry her feet with a hair dryer a few times a day, and we used tea tree oil. We got rid of the condition. It was horrific, absolutely horrific.
Similarly, I’ve seen with chefs. I’ve had some terrible conditions seen of people who do a lot of cooking, preparations in kitchens, who clean and I’ve seen this sort of thing, too. Remember, if you have got a yeast infection involving the toenails or between the toes, you need to really expose your feet to dry warm environment, sunlight, salt water, kick off those socks and shoes as much as you can. Don’t wear pantyhose that often. Change the environment. Make it more hostile toward yeast, which will mean it will be easier to get rid of and harder for it to come back.
Other causes are antibiotics in your diet or antibiotics taken as a medicine. Okay, so don’t take antibiotics. Antibiosis means antilife. Why would you take something that’s antilife? That’s dumb. It’s ridiculous. To me it’s almost as stupid as taking on credit continually, credit, credit, credit, without even thinking about making payments. In the end, you’re going to end up totally bankrupt. And it’s the same with your health. If you keep killing and killing, you’re going to end up literally bankrupt. I get too many patients with incredibly bad chronic conditions who rely on antibiotics for every cough and sniffle, so don’t do it. Don’t go there. Don’t take these drugs. They’re disgusting drugs. You may need to use them once in your lifetime for bacterial pneumonia, but generally, I never recommend antibiotics. My four children have never had antibiotics. I just don’t even go there with them. They’re all adults now with great health. We never raised them on any kind of drugs or pharmaceuticals. In fact, they’ve never been to doctors or hospitals. I hear the same with many of my patients. You don’t need drugs.
Understand the causes with your yeast infection. Now let’s look at some of the best treatments you can use for this. As I mentioned, sunlight, salt water, tea tree oil, oregano oil. Oregano oil is a bit more powerful than tea tree oil to use. You sometimes don’t really need to go for powerful treatments. One drop of tea tree oil on each affected nail, cut the nail very short, and get the tea tree oil around the nail margin and just put one drop on the nail every single day. Persistence breaks resistance. Continue and persist with it. In three to six months treatment, you’re going to get rid of this nail infection.
I’m going to read to you out of my book, the ten quick tips for nail yeast infections. This will reduce your chances of getting recurring fungal infections. I highly recommend you follow these ten rules. This is out of Candida Crusher. Keep your hands and feet clean and dry. With your toes again, after a shower, towel dry and even use a hair dryer to really thoroughly dry the feet. Don’t wear socks in bed. If you’ve got cold feet, get your thyroid checked out. There could be problem there, but you should never wear socks in bed. Dumb idea. Also gloves. Try not to wear gloves continually. And if you do, make sure you dry your hands thoroughly after you use them. Hot sweaty hands need to be cleaned a few times per day then dried out.
Number two. Go barefoot. Go barefoot as much as you can. Sand, sun and salt, the three key things which I like people to get involved in. So a couple of times a week if you can in the summer go to the beach and walk around in the margin of the sand and the ocean. You’ll find you’ll get rid of this nail infection pretty quick.
Sunlight. Sunlight is very hostile toward yeast infections. So for jock itch, for toenail fungus, even for psoriasis, sunlight proves to be a very powerful ally in your quest to get rid of a toenail fungus or a yeast infection. So make sure you use the sun quite a lot. Fifteen minutes a day. An exposure in the middle of the day for a few minutes is fine as long as you’re not in too long, but preferably around 10:00 or 3:00, 10 a.m. or 3 p.m. is a good time to do it.
Replacing your socks every day. Never wear the same pair of socks twice in a row. Cotton socks to absorb moisture. Never wear nylon or poly blend. Just wear pure cotton socks. Every day, chuck them in the bin with a bit of bleach in there and keep putting clean fresh socks on. With your shoes, put one to two drops of tea tree oil in the shoe on the inside where the toes are per week, one to two drops. That’s going to help to draw a lot of these substances out of the oil into the shoe. It’s going to put the vapor through there and kill any fungal spores. It’s a clever idea to do.
Rotate your shoes, too. Another good idea, so have three or four pairs of shoes and always rotate them. Don’t wear the same pair of shoes continually for weeks on end. Maybe one or two days, stick them out, let them air out with a bit of tea tree oil, next pair of shoes. Clever move. Also sandals.
So many people with bad toenail fungus have the same pair of shoes they wear continually. Use natural remedies and drop the drugs. You don’t need drugs.
Lamisil, drugs like that, just can these drugs. Use tea tree oil. Another one you can do is put some crushed garlic on a really bad toe. You can actually crush garlic and get the juice out of it and that’s extremely powerful for a fungal toenail infection.
Foot spa or footbath. Very clever idea. With a footbath, you can actually put a little bit of water-soluble tea tree oil or just pure tea tree oil in the footbath. It works quite well. Some patients I know use apple cider vinegar in the footbath and a bit of tea tree oil. Colloidal silver. There are many solutions for you to use to get rid of a yeast infection of the nails. Tea tree oil, I think, is one of the best. Make sure it’s Australian tea tree oil, Melaleuca alternifolia. The best tea tree oils in the world are grown in New South Wales in Australia and they come from the Ballina Region. Thursday Plantation is one of the best. A very, very clever product to use.
The Australian government, in fact, found tea tree oil so powerful; the soldiers who went out on the WWI were issued with a bottle of tea tree oil in their kit. Did you know that? Incredible. The medicos back then knew of the power of tea tree oil, so these guys going off to places like Turkey to fight had tea tree oil in their kit bag. Lots of soldiers who went to the Vietnam War in the ’60s also took tea tree oil with them. It shows you how powerful this is for people in the government level to make the recommendation.
Be cautious of artificial nails and nail salons. Watch out, these places are toxic dumps. You shouldn’t really go there. They stink of toluene and all these filthy chemicals. They’re not really good places to go to. There’s also a risk of contamination there, so be careful. You could actually pick up a nail infection from these sort of places. It’s not really good to sit in a toxic environment and breathe all those chemicals in.
Crushed garlic. I’ve already mentioned crushed garlic. But the tenth one is never, never, never, never give up. Don’t give up. Always keep on keeping on. You will get rid of this infection. If you treat internally effectively with the Candida Crusher diet or the MEVY diet, meat, eggs, vegetables and yogurt. You eat special antifungal foods which I’ve outlined in my book. You take a good antifungal supplement like Canxida Remove. You can find that at Canxida.com. You take that two to three times per day and you’re going to really get this yeast infection under control because you’re going to kill off all this rubbish inside.
You’re going to help get rid of bad bacteria, parasites and yeast. You’re going to boost your immune function up internally. You’re going to allow the beneficial bacteria to grow. That coupled with the local treatment is very smart.
But even better, try to understand the role that stress plays with yeast infections. I’ve just had Skype consultations with three or four American patients today that work and live under high stress situations. Two out of three of them were divorced. A terrible situation to be in. One guy said to me, “When my marriage fell apart, that’s when my health fell apart.” I hear this routinely from people. One of the biggest stresses our lives are people, especially dysfunctional relationships with partners, employees, or employers or with our children. So when you have these problems and they manifest like that, they have quite a powerful effect on making us not feel good about our lives.
These things affect our stress axis, our ability to maintain good hormonal levels to combat things like infections. If you really want to get down to it and do a good job eradicating a yeast infection whether it’s vaginal, toenail, scalp, jock itch, I don’t care what it is you need to give your immune system the best possible chance of being a powerful ally in your fight against this infection. And how are you going to do it? Understanding the relationship with stress. The best kept secret. Understand how the adrenals and thyroid need to function optimally to power your immune system up to get rid of any kind of infection, including cancers.
We know that 90 percent of cancers can basically be prevented with diet and lifestyle, so that’s a pretty powerful statement. If you go online and do some searches, you’ll find what I’m saying is correct. If diet and lifestyle can help us reduce the incidence of cancer, surely, it should help us to prevent from getting something like a yeast infection.
I hope I’ve given you enough information today to give you a good heads up on how to “nail” your nail infection. Pretty lame, isn’t it? So don’t use drugs. Use natural medicines. You’ll feel better in the long run without creating toxic side effects. Understand that persistence breaks resistance. Please do my Candida survey on CandidaCrusher.com. Check out yeastinfection.org. And if you want the best antifungal on the market, check out Canxida.com. It took me a long time to make this product. I’m proud of it. I’m getting stunning feedback from it, including many patients from countries around the world who’ve got toenail yeast infections.
That’s going to wrap up my YouTube video today. Thank you so much for tuning in.