Author: Eric Bakker

Hi there, Eric Bakker, another frequently asked question.

Eric, how do I protect myself from a yeast infection? How do I stop from getting a yeast infection back again or how do I avoid contracting a yeast overgrowth in the first place?

Well, it’s not that difficult to do, really, and many people who end up with Candidiasis, usually a combination of factors occurred. In many cases I’ve seen, a patient was never well since taking an antibiotic. So good advice for you right now, if you haven’t got Candida right now or want to avoid it is don’t take antibiotics. You don’t need them. In most cases, you really don’t need an antibiotic.

Now if a doctor’s watching this right now, I would challenge that doctor and ask that doctor how many times have you given an antibiotic to a patient and thought is this going to be a benefit or not? Because we know as practitioners that most illnesses are self-limiting. If the patient works under the right conditions, takes rest, eats the right kind of foods, takes some Vitamin C, maybe some Echinacea, they’ll often overcome that infection.

With my four children that are gown up now, we never, ever used antibiotics with any of the childhood illnesses ever. Not for coughs, not for colds, not for flus, not for urinary tract infections, we never went there. The children were never vaccinated. I had no immunizations. Now, again, you may think this is ridiculous. This is my personal choice being a father, being a responsible father, and a naturopath and a homeopath. I’ve treated my kids with natural medicine, so we didn’t have to resort to these toxic drugs.

So if you’re a patient watching this and you are worried about an acute infectious disease, see your naturopath about the right kind of treatment, so you can avoid this very toxic and side effect ridden therapy.

So antibiotics are one of the primary causes of yeast infections that you may want to avoid. The other one is stress, living a high stress lifestyle, which most of us do. Eating a diet late and takeout foods, sugar, alcohol, all these sorts of things we know are not good for us. Oftentimes, we do things in our lives where we know in the back of our mind it’s not really a good, healthy habit, but we keep on doing it. It’s a contribution of these habits along with antibiotics that often contribute to how a yeast infection will begin and how it is maintained.

So if you want to make your body Candida proof, stop doing these things that you know are eroding your health and contributing to bad health. Don’t take the toxic drugs if you can avoid them. Antibiotics may be useful sometimes in cases of severe bacterial pneumonia, but in most cases, they’re not required by the body at all. So by avoiding the primary causative factors, it’s a very powerful way for you not to contract Candida in the first place.

Have a look at my book, Candida Crusher, which can contains a huge amount of information on the causes of Candida and how to avoid these causes. There are plenty of other causes. The oral contraceptive pill is another one linked up with it as well. So these are just a few causes I’ve mentioned.

So subscribe to my YouTube channel for more good information and have a look at Candidacrusher.com and my book. That will outline lots of good information for you on how to avoid contracting a yeast infection in the first place.

Thanks for watching.

Good day there, Eric Bakker, naturopath, author of Candida Crusher with another question in our frequently asked series.

Eric, what are probiotics? Why are they useful? Can you tell me more about probiotics?

Well, that’s a good question and one I get asked quite regularly. Probiotics are beneficial bacteria. So your body contains billions of bacteria. There are a lot of bacteria particularly concentrated in your digestive tract. You’re looking at maybe between 500 to 600 species or more of bacteria in your digestive system.

So I tend to think of three main groups of bacteria in the gut. We’ve got the good guys or the beneficials. We’ve got the commensals or the guys in between. I call these guys the politicians. They can be good or bad depending on who’s around at the time. And then we can have the bad guys or the pathogenic bacteria. And the Candida species can be classified as pathogenic or bad when they’re in abundant amounts or they can be also classified as commensals because they’re generally kept in check by the good bacteria. Because most all people have got Candida albicans in their digestive system. It’s only when you get issues that upset the balance. For example, taking antibiotics or high stress, too much alcohol, various other factors that would allow the Candida species to take right off.

So probiotics are generally beneficial bacteria. There’s been a big explosion in the last few years of people taking probiotics. And there are many different types of probiotics you can take. But the two main groups which generally you’ll be familiar with will be the lactobacillus species and the bifidus species. But there are various other species even including yeasts. There are various yeasts such as saccharomyces or boulardii, which is a beneficial yeast. So not all yeasts are pathogenic or bad. So you need to be careful when you hear the word “yeast” that you don’t immediately think they’re bad.

So probiotics can be taken as a dietary supplement. I’m going to talk a lot more about probiotics in subsequent videos, and I’ll also talk a lot more about cultured and fermented foods which can help contain the yeast bacteria to enhance your flora or a high lactic acid, a particular acid, for example, in yogurt which can help to really build up levels of lactobacillus acidophilus in your gut. The lactic acid is a food for the lactobacillus, for example.

So probiotics are beneficial and they certainly have their place. And I hope that answers your question.

Hi there, Eric Bakker, naturopath, author of Candida Crusher.

The longer I have a yeast infection does it make it harder to treat? That’s a funny question.

I think what the person’s trying to say is, is this infection hard to treat if I’ve had it a long time? Well, it certainly can be. And the reason why this would occur is, I think, for psychological reasons and also physiological reasons. When you have an infection a long time, you will have tried many treatments. You may become despondent, anxious or even depressed because you can’t beat the infection. You may have talked to a lot of people about the infection. You start to wonder whether you are really ill or not, and this is what happened to me when I was in my ‘20s. I was sick for a long time and nobody would listen. In fact, some people might even tell you to go see a psychiatrist because they may think the problem’s all in your head.

So physiologically, what you’ll find is yeast can get stronger and change and multiply. You can end up with a lot more of the fungal form of yeast throughout your body. Yeast can end up in places where it can become quite hard to eradicate from the body. Yeast also keep bad company, so you will produce potentially a toxic digestive system with many other bad bacteria and parasites. So you can end up with quite a bad leaky gut, multiple food allergies, quite a raised immune response. You could feel quite ill with a continued long yeast infection. And my concern with such chronic cases is that the person will feel emotionally despondent and physically despondent, and it can be very hard to get on top of a yeast infection that you’ve had for many years.

So what do you do? What’s the solution when you’re feeling quite ill? Well, the solution is to take it easy. Get the right information and make good decisions. And as you slowly start to improve, which you should, is find treatments that are going to work for you. Avoid strong kill treatments that aggravate you. These are quite common and I read a lot about these on Kill Zone and see them on the internet where people are trying to quickly kill the yeast infection.

Well, these treatments don’t really work that well because you’ll soon find that you’ll be back to square one again. So I prefer people to go very slowly and to forget about this idea of killing, but rather look at this idea of encouraging the friendly bacteria by changing lifestyle and dietary habits. By looking at stress levels in particular, by looking at a holistic approach and by holistic, I’m talking about looking at the areas in your lifestyle and in your diet that are weak and need strengthening up.

My Chapter 7, the fifth section in my book, Candida Crusher, explains quite a lot about the concepts I’m trying to explain. There’s over 100 pages in my book about lifestyle changes. There’s over 50 pages in the book about immunity, stress, and a yeast infection. And once you really start to understand the importance of the stress connection, it may hold the key for why you are not recovering. So don’t focus on killing, look more at improving your diet and lifestyle and gently encouraging the right bacteria back in place, and this will discourage the bad bacteria.

This treatment has worked for thousands of patients and I’m sure it can work for you, too. So give it a go and have a look at my book. It will explain a lot more about these concepts in great detail. And many more of video clips will also explain more details of the point I’m trying to make.

So the longer you have a yeast infection, the harder it can become to eradicate. But never give up because I’ve seen many people with yeast infections even of 20 years’ duration beat the infection within 12 to 18 months with the right treatment.

So I hope that answers your question.