Author: Eric Bakker

Thanks for getting back. We’re in the Irritable Bowel Syndrome series. Now we’re going to talk about the best treatment for IBS. We’re going to try and put a few things together here. If this is the first video you’ve seen in the IBS series, I’ll just tell you what we’ve already done. What is IBS? The causes of IBS, the signs and symptoms, test and diagnosis, best diet, now we’re going to talk about best treatment.

The best treatment for IBS in my mind is to first identify the cause to find out why the hell you’ve got this problem. If your marriage breaks down or your business relationship breaks down or something happens to you, wouldn’t you like to know why that happened? Or would you just go from one failed marriage to another, or be someone like Zsa Zsa Gabor and have like 10 marriages. Just keep marrying people for the sake of marrying people.

If something happens, an intelligent person will want to find out why it happened, so they could stop that happening again. Unless of course you win the lotto, or you want to know how you’re going to win it again. If you got sick, why did you get sick? There’s a reason why you’ve got Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It didn’t drop in your lap like a plague of locusts. You got IBS because you created the IBS. Was it a pharmaceutical medicine, you took an antibiotic? Was it a hugely stressful marriage breakup you went through and you hit the bottle for a year or something? Something caused IBS.

Rule number one is try to identify the cause. That way, you’ll be able to get your health back a lot quicker and prevent recurrence of IBS. The best treatment for IBS will take into account lifestyle and diet and eradication of any unwanted bugs. The next video I’m going to do, I’m going to talk about supplementation and IBS, but this one is more about putting the whole thing together.

A very important seminar I went to in 2003 in Seattle, I heard a very clever doctor speaking. Dr. Alan Gaby. Alan Gaby is the past president of the American Holistic Medical Association. He said that whenever a patient comes to a doctor with a condition, it’s a functional problem. Particularly if it’s been labeled as NAD, not a normal diagnosis. It’s a garbage can diagnosis. The physician throws the patient in this garbage can and hope to hell that the rubbish man takes the garbage can and the problem away. Because they know that there could be one of a myriad of causes. Usually, it’s stress related.

Personally, I believe that half the patients I see with IBS have got stress. Major stress. They don’t see the link between the stress and the functional gut problem that’s been created as a result. Did stress directly cause the gut problem? No. But stress made the person change their diet, made them change their lifestyle. Made the person stay up at night. Made them snack inappropriately. Have inappropriate relationships. Get more involved in porn or vice. Get more involved in cannabis and the sugar cravings. Get more involved in alcohol. There will be different reasons why people get screwed up like they do. But, if the stress is addressed first, or the reasons why they had all these inappropriate behaviors leading to it, it would have stopped in the first place. Never discount stress.

If you’re in a stressful situation and you’ve got a gut problem, that’s the number one thing I want you to tackle. Before you do the diet, I want you to get this crap organized. Not only is it going to help the bowel, it’s probably going to help improve you immensely overall. Your relationships with special people around you. Your income. Lots of things will improve when this crap’s been resolved. So what the hell is it? You need to get this sorted. Talk to someone you can trust. Someone that you can speak to. don’t just keep it bottled up inside. Lots of people I talk to within 10 to 15 minutes of talking to them, they start to cry. They open up and they tell me all these problems. A lot of people have got stuff bugging them that’s on their mind. Those are the sort of things I want you to think about.

That’s what I call the lifestyle component. The lifestyle needs to be sorted, because this is a functional complaint. This is not pathology of the bowel or disease as such. This is something wrong with how the machine is working. Get that sorted first. Try and look at some of my videos I’ve done on autonomic nervous system dysfunction – on sympathetic and parasympathetic imbalance. This plays a massive role in getting the gut right. That plus the diet. If you’re going to eat really good foods (some people say, “I eat very clean!”) but they’re bloody stressed out of their brain. You might as well drink bloody paint strip as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve seen many people eat shitty foods and shitty diets in good health. I have. I’m not lying to you. I’ve seen a lot more people eat really clean. The best diet and are feeling crap health. See plenty of those, too. Think about that. It’s not just about what you eat, it’s about how you feel, how you relate. A lot of things account for health. I’ve said this on many of my videos. Getting the stress sorted, the emotional obstacle to cure or the problem that you’ve got. It could be a lack of income, it could be that you’re pissed off with your mother-in-law, could be that you haven’t had sex for up to two years or five years, it could be a lot of reasons why you’re not happy. If you’re watching this video now, you’re probably already starting to think about some of those problems. Think about that.

The food, common sense. You need to eat good healthy food. We’ve talked many times about this in a lot of the videos. You know what to eat. If not, check out one of my hundreds of videos I’ve created on healthy eating. Foods to eat, foods to avoid, there’s plenty of information about that on the internet. Supplementation will help you. It’s not mandatory, but it’s going to help to clean up the gut.

If we put the whole thing together: Assessment, understanding cause and effect, removing the stressful obstacles to cure, taking some supplement to speed up the process of getting the gut back on track, and eating the right kind of foods. That really, in my mind, is the best treatment for IBS, and the best treatment for a lot of chronic illnesses. Thanks for tuning in. Catch up with you in the next video.

Greetings! Eric Bakker. We’re going to talk today in this video about the best foods to eat for IBS. The best foods to eat for IBS are the ones that are not going to aggravate you and help to build up the work that you’re going to hopefully be doing, because you’ve been watching the other videos. You’re going to be helping to rebuild the gut function again. You’ll have taken some supplements to eradicate unwanted pathogens. You’ll have taken a supplement that contains some beneficial bacteria and enzymes to help bust up different kinds of starches, proteins and fats, to assist digestion, and you’ll have taken a supplement that contains good vitamins and minerals in an anti-microbial base that’s going to help build cellular health and give you energy back again. Stop weight loss, encourage appetite to come back again for example.

The foods are going to play into the hands of the work that you’re doing with good supplementation. The foods are going to play into the hands of the low stress lifestyle that you’ve taken on board to adopt. Because you understand the connection between stress and IBS. If you don’t understand that connection, please go back and look at some of my other videos, because IBS is a hell of a lot more than just eating these foods and avoiding other foods.

To understand the kind of material I’m going to present with this video, we need to talk about prebiotics. Back in 1994, there was a guy called Marcel Roberfroid who started to understand that we already knew we had beneficial bacteria, but Roberfroid started to really think, “Well, hang on a minute, what did these guys eat? What do these beneficial bacteria feed on? What do they need? Do they eat McDonalds? Do they eat pizzas? Do they have Advil and diet coke? No. They need stuff called prebiotics that feed the probiotics.”

Beneficial bacteria need food. You need food. You need pizzas and beer and whatever you eat. You know what I mean? The point is beneficial bacteria need to be fed, and one of the best foods for them is stuff called oligosaccharides. We’ve got simple sugars, monosaccharides, disaccharides, oligosaccharides (which have got a carbohydrate chain of about 3 to 10), then we’ve got starches, which are much more complex sugars. Difficult to break down. Sugars create a lot of wanted and unwanted effects in the gut.

We know through looking at specific carbohydrate diets for example that we need to avoid the simple sugars like lactose and sucrose because they react very quickly in the gut. They cause a lot of gas and fermentation. Candida loves these kinds of sugars. If you want to build Candida levels up to high levels, just have a couple tablespoons of sugar a day. You’ll be farting like a bullfrog and you’ll be sick in no time. These are the sugars we want to avoid. Roberfroid started to discover that people, A: need to break down the oligosaccharides properly (again, where enzymes are important to come into the Candida equation and IBS equation), also that the oligosaccharides actually feed up beneficial bacteria in the colon, especially. These foods by default have quite a sweet taste.

If we look in the States, in America, people may get between one to three grams per day of oligosaccharides. If we go to Europe, many European countries like Greece and Italy, people eat 3 to10, even 15 grams a day of these foods, because their diet leans more towards these kinds of foods. I believe also this is one of the key reasons why a lot people in these sort of countries have less problems with their bowel than people in Europe and US and Australia/New Zealand do.

Oligosaccharides can be broken down into fructooligosaccharides and galactooligosaccharides. We know breast milk for example is a very good food for babies, because it’s high in galactooligosaccharides. It’s an exceptionally good food. I often wonder about babies that are formula-fed and not breast-fed anymore – what kind of a start they get in life. Then they get sick, they get antibiotics and they start on the merry-go-round of drugs.

I’m going to read out a list of some foods now and it’s actually on my website EricBakker.com. You can read this page. It’s called “Natural Alternatives to Antibiotics, Part four.” These are foods high in FOS, GOS and inulin. One thing I would like to also say in this video is I’m not a fan of prebiotics at all in dietary supplements. For this reason, I have not use them in any of my products. Be very careful if you’re taking FOS or inulin in a dietary supplement, because it can really help to build SIBO right up. It can push Candida up, SIBO up. It can give you massively strong effects, which you may perceive to be die off, when, in fact, actually you’re eating a kind of a sugar that’s playing right into the hands of an overgrowth. Just be very careful.

The foods: Jerusalem artichokes, we call them fartichokes. If you eat too many of them, you’ll be farting, so be very careful if you’re eating Jerusalem artichokes for the first time. Just start on one. Don’t eat the whole bowl full because you will fart like you’ve never farted before, so just be careful. Burdock roots, chicory roots, dandelion roots, garlic, onions, leeks, shallots. These are very high in FOS. These are excellent foods to feed up beneficial bacteria. Garlic is amazing, and so are the allium family like brown onions. Try and eat some brown onions raw in summertime every day. This is going to really help encourage good growth of bugs in the gut. This is going to stop cramping, but start with small amounts. This is the key.

Any time you take on these foods on board, don’t just start with a huge bowl full twice a day, because you’ll get a problem. Green plantain bananas. Very good. Raw cacao. I may say sometimes to take raw cacao out of your diet as an elimination, but small amounts can be trialed with you if you’ve got bad IBS as you improve because they can be a good prebiotic food. Green tea. One to two cups of green tea a day. A great choice for a person with IBS.

Brassica family. Some people will say, “Don’t eat these foods. You’ll be bloating and farting all over the place.” You can try and bake them or steam them. Eating them raw may cause a problem. You may find some brassicas to be very good and others to be very detrimental, so you need to experiment. Brussels sprouts for example are quite a strong brassica. They may cause a lot of discomfort with IBS. The brassica family are what you put in there as you improve. Don’t put them in at the onset. You may have been told by your naturopath or nutritionist to take all the brassicas out. We’re talking cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale, kohlrabi, bok choy, choy sum, like all of these kind of things. Some of these you can keep in, for example, bok choy or choy sum. The Chinese veggies may be fine, but you may find you have a real big problem with broccoli and brussels sprouts and cauliflower. As you improve, put the brassicas in, because they’re an exceptional food for the body.

Legumes. Adzuki beans, pinto beans, navy beans, mung beans. Sprouts, another good form of sugars. They’re nice and sweet to chew on. Again, with beans, start slow. Don’t have massive big bean dishes to start with. Sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, chestnuts, hazelnuts, pecan nuts. These are all very good sources of inulin and FOS and GOS. Again, start slow. Rye dough sour bread. If you can tolerate gluten, try a little bit of rye dough sour bread.

These are quite good foods to include with IBS. But remember, please follow the advice I said about the best diet. Where we first keep you off all sugar and crap, and we start putting in a meat, eggs, vegetables and yogurt kind of approach. Then we move you into a low allergy phase, and then we start putting these foods in there. These pinnacle foods to help build very good levels of gut health back, promoting bacteria. Don’t get confused. These aren’t the foods you do on day one.

These are the foods that you slowly start to incorporate as you improve. If you keep on this diet I’m saying here, you can be completely IBS free within six months. How can I say that? Because I’ve said that many times before with patients and I’ve had a great outcome with a lot of people. Thanks for tuning in. See you in the next video.

Greetings! Eric Bakker back again. We’re doing a series on Irritable Bowel Syndrome. If this is the first video you’ve seen in the series, make sure you check out the several other videos we’ve done on causes, what is IBS, testing and diagnoses, etc. This video, we’re going to talk about the best diet for Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

What do you think is the best diet for you when it comes to Irritable Bowel Syndrome? What are the best foods for you to eat and the best foods for you to avoid? Well, I don’t know you personally, but I’m reaching out to you through Dr. Google. I’m going to tell you that the best foods for you to avoid are the foods that aggravate you the most, and the best foods for you to consume are the ones that make you feel really good – give you good energy, allow you to sleep properly, maintain good body weight, improve gut function. Those foods can vary very much from person to person.

I don’t know what your gut function is like. I haven’t assessed your gut function. I haven’t seen your stool test results. When you’re watching this video and you’re listening to some of the things I’m saying, this may apply to you, but it also may not apply to you. Just be careful when you take any advice or listen to somebody through YouTube or read any information on a blog site that you don’t take it as the gospel. Common sense prevails people. The most important thing you can do when you’ve got Irritable Bowel Syndrome initially is to actually use your brain.

What I’m meaning by that, I’m not trying to patronize or belittle you, but I’m saying if you’re drinking alcohol, bloody stop it. You can’t even have one glass of wine a month if you’ve got IBS. It’s just not going to happen. Any form of sugar. We’re talking erythritol, sorbitol, honey, molasses, stevia, xylitol, any kind of “tol”. Any kind of sugar, just stop it. Sugars are a huge bane for people with IBS. It’s one of the worst things you can do. If it tastes really sweet in the mouth, it could have a big aggravating role in your gut.

Research has shown 85 percent of people, when they took all forms of sugars out of their diet, had a massive relief of symptoms within three to six months just by doing that one thing alone. If you’ve got IBS and you’re watching this, the very first thing that you do is you take sugar out of your diet or foods containing sugar. Go into your pantry and have a look. If I went to your kitchen right now and looked at the kitchen bench, would I find a sugar jar, a honey pot? If I went to your pantry, would I find any bags of sugar in there? Bottles of molasses or syrup? Would I find a container of xylitol? Would I find you chewing any gum with xylitol in it? Are you eating any confectionery with artificial sugars? Are you drinking Coke Zero? Have you got any kind of sugar in your diet, whether it’s artificial or real or whatever? That’s the first thing you chuck out of your diet for at least six months if you’ve got IBS. If you can’t do that, switch the video off. Let’s cut the crap. No sugar. It’s a no exceptions policy.

The second thing I want you to do is to follow my MEVY diet approach in the Candida Crusher book. Meat, eggs, vegetables, and yogurt approach. That’s usually for about three to four weeks initially. We just move you gently into that kind of dietary approach. If you have any problems, take some of my CanXida Restore product – enzyme, probiotic. That’s going to help you to break a lot of these foods down properly if you’re putting some new foods into your diet or increasing some of these foods.

The second thing that I want you to do after the MEVY approach is to move into the low allergy phase. I assume you’ve already chucked the sugar out of your diet. You’ve stopped putting sugar in any kind of food, whether it’s real or artificial, or if it’s one of these new fandangle sugars like erythritol, or xylitol or those “tol” kind of sugars. Now we’re going to look at the low allergy approach. You’re going to take out oranges, bananas, most fruits (which you should have already done with the no sugar), bananas, oranges and pineapples especially, all forms of chocolate and cacao, raw cacao, biff all that. Get rid of that out of the diet.

If you’ve got a serious gut problem like a very major digestive disorder, you probably would have already followed the GAPS diet, or the SCD diet, one of these specific carbohydrate kind of diets already. But if it’s very serious, you may also want to consider taking sweet corn out. Sweet potato, pumpkin, squash, all these starchy kind of vegetables probably need to go. Many people I find will load up on one or more of these kind of things. They’ll have two bowls of pumpkin soup every day and wonder why there’s a problem.

If it’s a very bad gut problem, you want to stop juicing for a while, too. Juicing, especially cold juices in the morning, can really stuff up the digestive system. I see too many people who jump on the juice bandwagon and feel worse rather than better. You’re better off having some lightly cooked food in the morning. A couple of scrambled eggs perhaps. Often a protein source is better in the morning. Most people can tolerate oats, I find. If they have a small number of oats in the morning. Breakfast is often the trickiest meal to eat, but you need to eat some kind of food in the morning. Eggs usually are well tolerated by a lot of people.

We’ve gone into the MEVY phase. We’ve gone into the low allergy phase. At this stage, your digestive system should be feeling pretty darn good. What you may have also wanted to have completed prior to going to this is a stool test to find out what kind of pathogens you may have. Have you got bacterial imbalances? Have you got Candida? Have you got parasites? What the hell is causing this constipation and diarrhea? Consider the CanXida Remove product I’ve created, because it’s a really nice product for IBS. It cleans up a lot of digestive problems in people. It helps to eradicate a lot of bad bacteria and Candida.

I’ve seen it being very successful with Blastocystis and Dientamoeba and many different kinds of parasites. You can often do that at the onset or as you’re going through the dietary changes. Just make sure you keep the CanXida at a low level. Don’t really take it up to a high dose if you’re making a lot of diet changes, because you’re going to get a lot of aggravations.

The other thing I’d like to explain to you is it’s not just about the diet. We’re going to do another video on stress in the gut a bit later on, but it’s important for you to take some time out when you’re making these diet changes. Try and say no to people and not take on too many new projects. Not a good idea to go on diet changes if you’re starting a new job, getting married, entering a relationship, or just bought a $5-million-dollar house or whatever you’re buying. If you’re taking on a new stress, it’s not a good idea to take on a new diet change at the same time. Common sense is not so common. We’ll see you in the next video.