Candida Causes, Symptoms & Natural Treatment Protocol

Hello. It’s Eric Bakker. Author of Candida Crusher. Thank you for tuning into this YouTube video today. Today, I’d like to talk to you a bit about Candida yeast infections. What is Candida? What are Candida yeast infections?

Candida is a type of fungus. It’s basically a type of yeast. It is quite common for these yeast to appear and grow inside peoples’ bodies, as well as on the surface of their body. Candida is commonly found in the gastrointestinal tract of people and also in the vaginal area of women. It can also be found in the throat, mouth, and on the skin surfaces of people. It can become quite a problem when it becomes an invasive infection, and particularly in those who have got a compromised immune system.

As I mentioned, it’s a normally occurring yeast that inhabits the gastrointestinal tract of more than 90 percent of people. It’s commonly kept in check by beneficial bacteria and other beneficial yeasts. It can migrate quite easily from the vaginal area of women, from the rectal area into the vaginal area and cause vaginal thrush. This is quite a common occurrence with many women. The overgrowth can also affect men, women, as well as children. This condition can underpin many different chronic illnesses.

It’s frequently misdiagnosed by many people in the health care profession. It’s commonly misdiagnosed as irritable bowel syndrome and even inflammatory bowel syndrome by lots of practitioners. One of the leading causes as you’re going to see in this presentation is antibiotics. Low-grade stress, in particular, chronic ongoing stress is often one of the big causes of a yeast infection. But so are diets that can be laden in sugar and yeasts.

Here, you can actually see a picture of Candida, the particular form. You can see the little buds here that can break off and grow into new yeasts. Candida is quite an amazing organism with how it can reproduce and spread through the body, and it can evade detection by the immune system. It’s very clever how it can mutate, change, grow, and evade destruction by the immune system.

What are some of the main causes of a Candida yeast infection? Well, these are the main 11 causes, and you can also see another YouTube video on this particular slide here. Antibiotic drugs are one of the leading causes of yeast infection. Since the advent of antibiotics, there has been a very big increase in yeast infections in people right across the board.

Antibiotics in meat are quite incredible how much antibiotics are used in poultry, for example. Many thousands of kilograms of antibiotics are used every year in America and many countries across the world in the food chain, as well as pharmaceutical drugs. Antibiotics found in foods are big causes of yeast infections because they kill beneficial bacteria and allow yeast to thrive.

Underlying immune deficiencies. Some people are actually born with immune weaknesses that can predispose them to a yeast infection. Steroid drugs or other pharmaceutical drugs can undermine a person’s health and be a causative factor. Alcohol is a huge cause of yeast infections. Men who drink beer regularly and women or men who drink wine or beer can be particularly prone to yeast infections. Particularly those who are under stress, taking antibiotics, consume reasonable amounts of alcohol. You don’t have to be a big drinker to get a yeast infection. But maintaining regular alcohol consumption along with sweet foods, breads, candies, chocolates, these things can all predispose you to a yeast infection. Candida friendly diets are diets high in soda drinks, ice cream, bagels, donuts, packaged cereals, jelly, or Jell-O; take away foods, all these sorts of diets can contribute to a Candida yeast infection.

Stress can be a huge causative factor. Stress actually can cause a depletion of the hormone “cortisol” long term, and cortisol is a very important steroid hormone produced by the adrenal gland, which has a very powerful effect on creating a strong immune presence in the body. With chronic ongoing stress, we can commonly find a person has an increased susceptibility to a yeast infection.

Exposure to toxins, chemicals, heavy metals, mercury fillings has been linked with the liberation of methyl mercury in the mouth. Some experts argue that there is no association with yeast infections, but many other experts believe there is a clear-cut association with methyl mercury and yeast infection.

Diabetes. Of course, people with particularly Type 2 diabetes will have elevated blood sugar levels that can make a person more prone to having a yeast infection. As they maintain unchecked levels of blood sugar, it makes it easy for Candida to grow. And, of course, they urinate out large amounts of sugar and that can cause all sorts of yeast problems in that part of the body.

Chlorinated water has been implicated. Chlorine can be anti-bacterial and allow yeast to thrive. And, of course, mold exposure. We find in New Zealand and many other temperate zones where people use a lot of heating inside that mold can be a big causative factor and help to increase yeast infection in many people.

What are some of the typical signs and symptoms of a yeast infection? You can read them here and you can also look at yeastinfection.org. I’ve got quite a few pages up on that website showing you the common signs and symptoms and the less common signs and symptoms. But these are the common ones you’ll find with digestive problems like bloating and gas, food allergies, vaginal thrush, mood disorders, poor memory, poor concentration, brain fog is a key symptom we find quite a lot, tired and malaise, toenail fungus, tinea, athlete’s foot, urinary candida manifestations, menstrual problems, libido issues, painful muscles and joints, constipation and diarrhea are very common symptoms, many sorts of respiratory allergies and issues, sinusitis, hay fever, persistent cough, phlegm, even heart arrhythmias have been linked with yeast infections. And poor nails and skin are typical signs and symptoms. Lesser common ones can be headaches, but I see them quite a bit, too, in people with chronic infections.

Candida can affect your body in multiple ways. Here, you can see a typical concern with the feet, athlete’s foot here, very common with people. And toenails can look quite distorted and quite terrible. Libido can be affected because when a woman has vaginal thrush or a guy has jock itch, it can undermine the ability for people to be intimate in their relationship. Skin manifestations, very, very common with yeast infections and commonly misdiagnosed as being psoriasis or another kind of a skin condition.

Anxiety, depression, lots of stressed people can get this condition. Lots of bloating and gas. We commonly see this with people. Lots of burping. Lots of farting. Very common with beer drinkers and ice cream eaters and people who crave sweets. They get a lot of fermentation dysbiosis, so poor bacteria and yeast will thrive in this whole gut area.

Here, we’ve got periorbital around the mouth kind of a rash. This could easily be misdiagnosed as being dermatitis, but a skin scraping and culture will soon reveal that it is, indeed, a yeast infection. Here, we have a gentlemen with probably a sinus headache, not feeling good at all, maybe taking pain relief, probably not knowing that he’s probably got an aspergillus or a yeast kind of infection there in the maxillary sinus or in the frontal sinus. A very common manifestation of a yeast infection is a sinus infection.

Here, we have a lady with a skin rash of the hand, another yeast kind of infection. Here, we have a gentlemen who’s coughing. It’s common to have mucous, phlegm, and post-nasal drip with a yeast infection. And, of course, stomach cramps, bowel issues, gas, constipation, diarrhea, bloating, pain in the small joints.

Candida can cause lots of low-grade inflammations in the body. It can cause a lot of pain. You can see particularly common here. They have pain on the left side lower down in the abdominal region. The descending colon, the sigmoid colon, is a key area I find where people will often have issues. It can commonly be misdiagnosed as constipation or bowel pockets, diverticulitis, when, in fact, it can be a yeast infection common in the bowel.

These are some quite awful toenails that I see from time to time in people. Patients sometimes use drugs like Lamisil, but tea tree oil will be found quite effective in this case. Here, we have a typical case of jock itch. I see jock itch in many males. Here, we have a psoriatic lesion. I’m currently working on an e-book on psoriasis because I see psoriasis to be mainly a yeast infection. Once I clear Candida up in a psoriasis patient, the psoriasis disappears. I have verified this in well over 100 cases.

The common medical approach of Candida infections, Candida, is generally undiagnosed. A proper stool test is not really performed on these patients. Sometimes they’ll have a urinary culture or smear test for thrush, but it’s seen as a nuisance illness, as a sort of side effect from antibiotics. It’s treated often as a local problem and it’s actually seen by many doctors mainly as a female problem, not even as a men’s potential issue. And as I mentioned earlier, it’s often incorrectly recognized as irritable bowel syndrome.

Natural medicine or natural doctors aren’t much different from conventional doctors, unfortunately, when it comes to chronic Candida because it’s sometimes misdiagnosed by natural medicine practitioners. And if it is diagnosed, it’s not treated adequately. It’s not given the respect that it deserves. I really believe this and you can read this in my book, Candida Crusher, that I talk that Candida, when chronic, needs to be treated with a lot of respect.

Blood testing can be performed to look at various antibodies in the blood to determine if there is an antibody production, although I’m not really that keen on antibody testing with Candida. I believe that the comprehensive stool test is really the gold test to do in this case, if you want to really know about yeast. You can actually determine it microscopically, visual analysis for a microscope, or it can be cultured. Urinary indican testing. We’re looking for a urine test to discover bad bacteria. And wherever there are loads of bad bacteria, we’re generally going to find some element of a yeast infection.

Treatments are not sufficiently followed through. Treatments are not prolonged or strong enough. It’s seen as small intestinal bowel overgrowth or allergies, leaky gut syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel syndrome, etc. Many naturopaths, chiropractors, and herbalists will diagnose Candida as being gluten intolerant or an allergy that the patient will have some sort of gluten issue. Not enough emphasis is placed on stress and lifestyle. There is a capability of curing a chronic yeast infection. I have no doubt. I’ve helped many people overcome this condition.

Conventional testing. These are the four general tests that a convention doctor will do if he or she does deem Candida to be a problem. A urinary cultural smear, conventional stool test for a narrow range of pathogens, an antibody blood test, and a gut fermentation test, a particular blood test. But a functional medicine practitioner or a naturopath will be more interested to do the enzyme-linked blood test to determine various antibodies of Candida such as IgM, IgA, and IgG. These things may not mean much to you, all these terms I’m using, but I will certainly elaborate on these terms in other more comprehensive video clips, in time, on the Candida Crusher YouTube channel.

The comprehensive stool test, I believe, is the best way to determine, not just Candida, but a whole raft of other dysfunctions in the digestive system that many patients with Candida actually present with. We can actually determine by what kinds of foods are broken down and passed out; we determine these to be organic acids. Certain sugars, for example, will break down to certain organic acids, and we can determine by the level in the urine to what degree a patient will have a yeast infection. I find this simple test called indican to be quite a good test to determine how good or poor the bacteria are. This can be done in-house. It takes five minutes in my clinic and it’s quite a good test in general to determine how poor the gut is functioning.

Why do I like stool testing? Well, it’s a non-invasive diagnostic test for assessing the gut. It gives me a very comprehensive picture of a patient’s gastrointestinal function. I can determine from a few stool samples what the bacteria levels are like. Yeast can be cultured. We can discover parasites. We can look at various digestive markers. For example, amylase or pancreatic enzymes can be picked up. We can look at various absorption markers to see if the body actually is taking foods into the system. There are various metabolic markers and inflammation as well to see if there are any inflammatory responses going on in the gut. Again, I’ll be talking more in-depth about the stool test on other YouTube videos.

One point I would like to bring up is the circulatory IgA, which is the key immune marker in the stool test. And if we find it low, we’ll often find this in conjunction with chronic yeast infections and also food allergies and low beneficial bacteria. Pharmaceutical drugs or viral infections can often cause this. We can often find it with inflammatory bowel disease like colitis or Crohn’s as well. And stress and low-grade infections are commonly found. Patients who have had past viral infections will often show low IgA.

IgA is made in the small intestine. The body will make between one to two grams of this antibody per day. And one of the key roles is to grab hold of pathogens, bugs, and things like that and to pull them out of the digestive system. So IgA is a very important policeman for want of a better word. They look after the integrity of the small intestine, in particular. It’s important to have good levels of IgA. When it’s high, we can certainly suspect inflammatory bowel disease if we find elevated inflammation markers such as lysozymes, but I’ll discuss that in another video.

How do we boost IgA? Well, colostrum is quite good. Prebiotics, certain types of fibers, cayenne pepper, saccharomyces boulardii, which is a beneficial yeast that you can have with Candida. Don’t confuse this with a Candida yeast infection. Reducing elevated cortisol when a person is stressed is very important to increase IgA.

So let’s look at some of the drugs that are commonly used with a yeast infection. Nystatin, named after New York State. This drug was discovered by two women quite a few years ago. I believe it was in the 1950s or 60s this drug was discovered. It’s a widely promoted drug by Dr. William Crook in his book, “The Yeast Connection,” as one of the best antifungals. It’s not absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract, so the body will pass it out. It interferes with the cells of Candida. It helps to destroy them. It can cause quite severe reactions.

I’ve had many patients through Skype consultations that have told me that after taking nystatin, they got very ill, indeed. I developed quite a strong reaction to Nystatin when I took it myself, so I’m not a big fan of this particular drug. It can create a quite strong side effect. And Dr. Crook said, “Side effects are good. Strong side effects mean strong kill.” But I’m not really keen for patients to have very powerful die off reactions. I don’t think it’s really necessary with Candida to have these heroic treatments.

The common drugs used by many doctors, the “zole” drugs. Fluconazole, for example, or diflucan, is a very common drug that’s used for vaginal thrush. Fungizone, amphotericin, I think it’s called, is a very powerful drug that’s often used intravenously. It’s a very powerful drug that can create very strong side effects. But Fluconazole can make you quite sick, too. It can have liver toxifying effects. These drugs inhibit enzymes necessary to convert something into yeast.

By taking a zole drug, you’re interfering with the function or the structure of the membrane of yeast, so you’re destroying yeast by inhibiting the reproduction and growth of it. It’s not really recommended by me. The body can develop resistance to these drugs and also Candida can change, mutate, be quite smart, and become resistant to the “zole” drugs, which means you need to take higher dosages and stronger drugs to get the same effect.

Antibiotics are actually used for yeast infections because many practitioners confuse Candida with a bacterial infection. Not a good idea. In medicine, many doctors are trained with infection, just give antibiotics and watch and wait approach. Give these drugs first and let’s see what happens. But I don’t really like this idea at all.

Antibiotics actually have a very powerful disturbing effect on the normal bacterial level of the large intestine, and they create the proliferation of a lot of bad bacteria. And then, of course, yeast will start thriving in the absence of good bacteria. It’s not a good idea. Good bacteria, bad bacteria get killed. Yeast start coming up. And as I mentioned earlier, they’re found widely in the food chain. My recommendation for foods is to eat clean meats. Preferably, free from antibiotics.

Look at this graph here. This is quite interesting. This is in 2011; 29.9 million pounds of antibiotics were sold for meat production in North America. Antibiotics to treat sick people in the USA in 2011 were 7.7 million pounds. So let’s say two pounds is a kilogram, so you’re looking at about 3.5 million kilograms of antibiotics in one year in America, which is phenomenal.

This will give you some idea of reasons why we’ve got such a big problem with Candida yeast infection in North America. We’ve got a high amount of high fructose corn syrup consumption. We’ve got lots of artificial sugars being consumed. We’ve got lots of alcohol being consumed. We’ve got lots of antibiotics being consumed. We’ve got lots of low-grade stress. So now you can understand how yeast infections can be really rife and why 60 to 70 million Americans suffer from a yeast infection.

Stress reduction is very important and you’ll read all about this in Section 5 of Chapter 7 of Candida Crusher. I’ve written extensively on stress. Acute short-term stress appears not to be as aggravating as long-term, low-grade stress when it comes to gut problems. There’s a study that was done here in the American Journal of Gastroenterology in 2000. I won’t go into these pathways here about interleukins, but you can read more about this in my book.

I recommend the big cleanup in my book. Before people go on the Candida diet, I recommend that they start with what I call the “warm turkey” approach. I slowly take them off of junk food and caffeine. I do that over a 14-day period. I wind them down slowly. This minimizes aggravations and the typical healing responses people get, and it improves retention rate for a patient. This is mainly something I would use for people who live a conventional wasted lifestyle of buying supermarket foods, working a normal 40-hour a week job, and being under low-grade stress.

These are the three stages to my Candida Crusher diet approach. The meat, eggs, vegetables diet. The low allergy phase and the reintroduction phase. Again, you can read about this in more detail in Chapter 7 of Candida Crusher. I’ve written over 200 pages on diet. It’s one of the most comprehensive Candida books you will find regarding dietary advice. I go into many aspects of diet.

The MEVY diet, I recommend because it is really an anti-Candida diet. It takes away the food source of the yeast. Yeast does not like to thrive on meats, blueberries, avocados, green apples, yogurt, fresh vegetables, and eggs. These seem to be key foods. They’re tasty foods. It’s a good diet. You’re not going to starve on this diet. You shouldn’t lose a great amount of weight, so I recommend this approach for several weeks before we start introducing other foods.

Then we look at a low allergy diet approach. Most people with a chronic yeast infection will have leaky gut syndrome, which you can read more about on yeastinfection.org. Many people with a yeast infection have had a background of antibiotics or the oral contraceptive pill. They’ll have poor levels of bacteria. They’ll have all sorts of gastrointestinal distress. It’s best for them to come off the key allergy foods. And the key food on this picture is cow’s milk.

I can remember doing a lot of work testing young children, in particular, finding that nearly 70 percent of 350 food allergy tests, I found kids to have a problem with cow’s milk. Bananas came back about 14 percent. Pineapples come back reasonably high. Shellfish, things like prawns and crabs and lobsters will come back relatively often. Oranges, peanuts and bread and gluten is not as common as you think. The finger’s always pointed at wheat and gluten when, in fact, many people have bacterial and yeast problems that need clearing up before they start taking gluten out of their diet. I’m not a big fan of eliminating gluten from people’s diets to be honest.

The reintroduction diet is something that you look at once you start feeling a lot better and a lot of your key signs and symptoms start disappearing. Now, this may take four months. This may take six months. This may take 12 months. This may take two months. You can read about why there is such a swing in duration in my book. I explain this in more detail. But the foods that you need to reintroduce first are generally the foods that you discontinued that gave you the least aggravation. So you’re not going to really, for example, introduce cow’s milk straight up. The foods you want to have the most back in your diet are the foods you’ve got to introduce last. Because they’re often the key foods that will have caused you an issue in the first place. Many people like alcohol. Many people like cow’s milk. They like bread with lots of yeast in it. They like cakes, biscuits, coffees with sugars in them and milk, lots of citrus, lots of bananas, alcohol, so all these sort of items that we like to consume, you need to be careful and introduce them last.

Let’s look at some special foods. And you can read about this in Section 4 of Chapter 7 of my book. I’ve got a great amount of detail about the special foods. Sauerkraut, for example, a very good food to eat here because of the lactic acid content that encourages the proliferation of lactobacillus good bacteria. Oregano contains a component called carvacrol, a particularly essential oil that’s a very powerful antifungal. Coconut contains Caprylic acid, a very good antifungal medium chain triglyceride. So one tablespoon of coconut oil per day is a very good antifungal. Cloves also contain a powerful essential oil that is antifungal, so I usually recommend the consumption of one or two cloves per day. Yogurt and kefir. These are very good foods that you can have. Foods with cultures in them are simple to make. I’ve done video YouTube clips on these you can look for about the benefits of yogurt and kefir. The allium family, foods high in sulphur, good cleansing detoxifying foods, and garlic, in particular, is very antifungal.

Various supplements I recommend, probiotics, very important to take for many different reasons. Probiotics are often beneficial bacteria found lacking in many people with a yeast infection, and these levels need to be built up again. Digestive enzymes are critical. I’ve written extensively on reasons why people need to supplement with pancreatic enzymes to help break down starches, in particular. You’ll realize that starches are a big problem when you read the GAPS diet book, for example. Starches are a big issue with Candida. People need to break them down, digest them and absorb them and excrete the waste properly. And when enzymes help to break food down properly, bacteria can start feeding on the waste produced as a consequence of digestion and form a very healthy digestive tract. This can often hold the key for recovery for many people, particularly people with bloating, flatulence, constipation, and diarrhea will benefit often from a well-placed enzyme in the diet. Antifungal/antimicrobial supplements are required by all Candida patients. These are the three key products you can read more about in my book.

Leaky gut syndrome. I don’t think we’ll go into this too much on this video. It is a condition that many people with Candida suffer from. They start developing problems with the small bowel. Breaches occur and imperfectly broken down proteins, in particular, can bypass in through the intestinal wall and affect the immune system and cause all sorts of immune responses. Leaky gut syndrome is a key thing you’ll find with food allergies. Once we overcome this syndrome, your ability to consume an increasing amount of foods you will find will certainly be satisfying for you. Many people with so-called gluten problems have got leaky gut syndrome that needs fixing up. Once the membrane of the small bowel is repaired, gluten should not really be a problem for many of these people. I’ve helped hundreds of patients back into gluten that were told they could never eat wheat products again.

What are some symptoms of leaky gut? Well, abdominal pain. The sensations of pain on the left or right-hand side. Bloating, constipation, gas is a big one. Heartburn, brain fog, mood swings, nervousness, poor memory, wheezing, shortness of breath. You may recognize some of these things if you’ve got Candida. And once you clear this leaky gut up, you won’t suffer so much from these problems anymore.

Here, we can actually see a picture of these tiny things called microvilli. You can actually see here the lymphatic system running up through each microvilli and the blood vessels running around it. And here, you can actually see the cells lining this area here. Here’s a picture again of the villi. These tiny little villi. And we’ve got this tiny little area around it called the “brush border.” These are tiny little hair-like projections with mucous that sits in there. In this area here, the circulatory IgA is king. This is an area that we want to build up is the health of these cells lining these villa. And once we build these cells up nice, plump, and fat, they can do their job of absorbing nutrients inside the gut and digestive area. We’ll talk more about this on another video.

A couple steps to healing the leaky gut. You need to give up alcohol for three months. It’s realistic. If you can’t stop drinking alcohol for this period of time, you need to turn this video off and go and look elsewhere for some type of a quick fix, which is probably going to be full of rubbish anyway. Because if you can’t give alcohol up with gut problems, I can’t help you. I’m sorry. Then my book wasn’t for somebody like you. Most people that are serious about getting well with Candida have got no issues about entirely stopping alcohol for a minimum of three months. You have to stop using non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Certain types of medications like aspirin, Tylenol, paracetamol, Ibuprofen, you’ve got to get rid of these drugs. These drugs wreck gut function. Don’t believe me. Go to Dr. Google and have a good look around and you’ll see that what I’m saying is correct. Non-steroidal drugs destroy digestive function.

A stool test for parasites, yeast, or bacteria. You can contact me if you want at Eric@naturopath.co.nz or “nzed” for those people living in Australia or New Zealand, so eric@naturopath.co.nzed and I can give you some more information and pricing on stool testing. This is a test I recommend people have who’ve got chronic problems.

Anti-inflammatory diet is a key thing for people with leaky gut. No sugar. Watch out for white flour, in particular. Not because I’m against gluten, it’s because these foods may really play up with leaky gut. And to heal it, we need to get your diet tidied up. You need to watch out for lots of meat with fat in it, vegetable oils. I prefer extra virgin olive oil. Fruits and vegetables and usually white meats like organic chicken or fresh fish is a good approach. And there are a few dietary supplements you can use as well. L glutamine, in particular, is a good amino acid to help heal the leaky gut. But if you suffer from high anxiety, you probably want to avoid glutamine. Because glutamine can turn into glutamate and it can cause problems with people with high anxiety.

Malabsorption and maldigestion are things we’ve spoken about and they’re common in people with Candida and leaky gut syndrome conditions. This is where a lot of digestive pains will come from in bloating, gas, and constipation and diarrhea, also brain fog is quite common in these people. These things tend to clear up once we start eradicating Candida.

Irritable bowel syndrome is what I call a “garbage can” diagnosis. It tends to be where we lump people into when we don’t know what the heck is wrong with them. IBS is another term I see commonly in people with low-grade chronic stress and also with food allergies. And irritable bowel syndrome is a condition that will generally clear up to a remarkable degree once we get rid of the bad bacteria and we reduce Candida to low levels.

Here’s a picture of a patient’s fingernails. You can see here with the white flecks on the nails. Many patients who think they’re getting a heart attack, in fact, have heartburn and low levels of stomach acid, which we call hypochlorhydria that can be easily fixed up with a digestive enzyme. Flaky nails, dry nails, hair that lacks luster. These things often respond well to digestive enzymes.

You also need a good functioning stomach to convert pancreatic enzymes from their inactive form to the active form. And remember, we mentioned that pancreatic enzymes are very important to break starches down, so you don’t end up pushing partially broken starches into the small bowel to create lots of bad bacterial areas for them to grow on, so we don’t produce lots of gas and bloating and bowel issues further downstream. The better things work upstream, the better things work downstream in the gut.

If you’ve got any questions, you can email me at info@yeastinfection.org. Again, my name is Eric Bakker. I’ve been in practice for 25 years now and treated over 15,000 cases of Candida yeast infection. This is my book, Candida Crusher. You can certainly have a good look at this book and if you’re interested in purchasing it, it’s only $47 US dollars. It’s taken me three years to write this book. I’ve been told my many practitioners who have a copy that it’s one of the best books they’ve seen on yeast infection.

You can also do my comprehensive, online yeast infection evaluation here by clicking on this link and YouTube. The YouTube channel. We’ve got quite a few videos I’ve uploaded with many more to come. I hope you found this video informative and it’s answered some of your questions about yeast infection. I do welcome your questions.

And if you have got a chronic yeast infection, you can always consult with my through Skype. I have patients now in over 30 countries. You can read a lot more information on my yeastinfection.org site. I’ve got some of the best articles on the internet regarding Candida yeast infections. I’ve got my comprehensive book, YouTube channel, and the yeast evaluation test. I welcome you to use these resources. They’re all at your disposal. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Vaginal Douching: Best Ways To Vaginal Douche

Greetings. New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker here. I’m the author of the book called Candida Crusher and also the formulator of a range of products called Canxida. Thanks for checking out my video. A question I get asked from time to time from women all around the world in many different countries. Women from England, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, Greece, Germany, Holland and right throughout the United States. I get asked a lot of questions regarding vaginal yeast infections.

Chapter 5 of my book contains a lot of information on vaginal yeast infections. You can also read many articles that I’ve written on yeastinfection.org and also have a look at this YouTube channel. There are many, many different solutions I give. This video is going to be about the best herbs for vaginal douching or how you can clean the vaginal area very effectively with herbal medicines.

You don’t need to use vaginal creams and applicators and pharmaceutical suppositories for this condition. I’ve been helping women with the condition now for a long, long time. Probably over 25 years. This is going to be some great information for women who suffer from vaginal yeast infections and are looking for a permanent solution. Let’s jump right into it. The best herbs.

Probably one of the better herbs to use is pau d’arco. Pau d’arco is an herb from the inner bark of a large tree in South America. Make sure you get a good quality pau d’arco because there are a lot of substitutes on the market. It’s got to have between two to four percent lapachol content. Ask your supplier for a standardized extract, preferably a bark with a high lapachol content. You get probably about 25 or 40 grams of the bark of this tree and you get about a pint of water, about 600 mils. Use a good quality water, preferably bottled or spring water. Don’t use tap water with chlorine and fluoride in it. And you bring it to the roiling boil in a stainless steel saucepan. Don’t use aluminum. And then you turn it down and simmer it for about a quarter of an hour on very, very low with the lid on it to keep the condensation inside. Then let it cool down to room temperature. Strain this, put it in some bottles, and keep that. That’ll keep in the fridge for a while.

What you do is you take a small amount out and you can just get it to room temperature, body temperature, and you want to roll a tampon in this solution and squeeze it out and insert that. Leave that in for about 24 hours. That will keep in the fridge, that bottle, probably for a week, maybe 10 days. You can make up smaller amounts if you want. Maybe 300 mils or half a pint. You don’t need a lot of it. And also, what you can do is insert the tampon in the solution and then use it vaginally. You can also drink a little bit of that tea as well, so the tea can be consumed when it’s warm and then use when it’s tepid vaginally. That’s the pau d’arco.

Calendula tincture is quite nice to use. Go to your medical herbalist or good organic shop and buy a small bottle of calendula tincture with a low alcohol content. Something maybe about 10 or 20 percent alcohol content and you can use a few teaspoons of this in a small bowl of water for douching and for cleansing. You can use a turkey baster or an applicator to suck up the solution and use that vaginally. Calendula is very antifungal and it’s very good for healing and soothing the skin. It’s also good if you’ve had an episiotomy or after childbirth. Calendula helps to tonify the skin around the perineum and vaginal area. It’s good for cleansing. Good antifungal.

You can also get some dried herbs. Coneflower, so Echinacea purpurea. You can use a little of herb like andrographis for example is another Chinese herb. Echinachea is quite a good one to use in conjunction with the calendula flowers. Both of those go well together. A small amount of dried Echinacea and some calendula flowers, and you can make, in this case, an infusion. The pau d’arco was a decoction. That’s boiling and simmering. Infusion is more how we make a cup of tea. We put a tea bag in some hot water and then throw the tea bag away. You can make an infusion of some Echinacea leaves or flowers and calendula flowers; make an infusion. And then you use that as a vaginal cleanse as well.

Tea tree oil can be used. One good tip I got from a patient in Germany. What she does very effectively, she gets some isopropyl alcohol and then she gets some tea tree oil and she’s making up about a 40 percent concentration, so about 60 percent isopropyl alcohol, and 40 percent tea tree oil in the right quantities. Blend that and then mix that in with a generous amount of water until you’ve got a nice strong tea tree smell about the water. Quantities are arbitrary. I’d probably use something like a half a teaspoon of tea tree oil and then make up, say if that’s the 40 percent, then 60 percent isopropyl alcohol. You’re going to use maybe two and half teaspoons of the isopropyl alcohol. Mix that with the tea tree oil. Blend it in well and then throw that in with a little bit of tepid water. You’re probably going to use about a half a cup of tepid water and then use that as a douche. Because it’s quite hard to get water-soluble tea tree oil these days. It seems to be taken off the market. It’s probably too effective. A little bit of tea tree oil. A little bit of isopropyl alcohol, mix them together, put it in a bit of tepid clean water and use that as a douche. Another effective solution.

That gives you a few different herbs you can use, the tea tree oil, the calendula, pau d’arco, the Echinacea. And there are many other kinds of herbs you can use, but these are about the core. Garlic can also be used as an herbal medicine. Dr. Torrey Hudson from America recommends making a garlic tampon, for example, getting three or four cloves of garlic that are peeled. Putting a needle and thread through them for a string, then you’ve got a tampon. So you can draw that out. That’s another effective solution for you. Some women get burning from garlic. Others don’t get so much burning, so you need to experiment with that.

I’ll do some other videos on boric acid suppositories because they are extremely effective and, in my opinion, 95 percent successful in completely curing a yeast infection. We’ll catch you in another video. Don’t forget to do my online quiz at yeastinfection.org. Check out my book, Candida Crusher, that’s available. Check out Canxida.com where I showcase the different products I’ve made. Thanks for tuning into my video.

Is Marijuana Okay On Candida Diet?

Greetings. It’s New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker, author of Candida Crusher and formulator of the Canxida range of products. Thanks for checking out my video. A question I get asked quite regularly on YouTube, but also through my website and by patients that I see on Skype is Marijuana and Candida. “Eric is medical marijuana effective against Candida? Is there any link between marijuana and Candida?” A woman called Jennifer from Edenborough, Scotland, so Jennifer is asking me “Marijuana and Candida – tell me what I need to know about this topic.”

I could tell you something about marijuana a lot of people may not be aware of. Marijuana has quite a destructive effect on the body, and you may have read this kind of information. And if you’re a pot smoker, you’re probably thinking, “Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before.” Tobacco smoking is not good. Marijuana smoking is not good. But what you may not know is cannabis smoking has a much greater burden on the lung and on the immune system than tobacco has.

In fact, a lot of research spanning between 1997 right up until about mid-2000 has proven scientifically that you get about a 3.5 to 4 times greater tar burden from cannabis smoke than you do from cigarette and tobacco smoke. Every marijuana cigarette that you smoke is equivalent to about the burden of 20 cigarettes, so if you’re smoking one joint per day for a week, you’re literally smoking a pack of cigarettes per day. That’s the kind of burden it has on the lungs.

Researchers in Sweden also found quite a big link between regular cannabis smoke, regardless if you’re using pipes, bongs, or joints or however way you’re getting the smoke into your mouth, it was causing much increased incidents of different kinds of oral Candida conditions. So you’re predisposing yourself a lot more to Candida of the mouth by smoking. Xerostomia, leukoderma, and different conditions that effect the oral cavity. No doubt, you’ll also be increasing your chances of reducing the immune system’s ability to fight any ear, nose or throat infection. Because the THC, the tetrahydrocannabinol, basically the oil, the THC oil, it reduces the neutrophil count. So it actually has a direct effect on lowering neutrophil count.

Neutrophils are primary first line defense white blood cells that counter infectious disease. So people who regularly inhale cannabis or smoke cannabis in any shape or form are going to certainly have a lowered immune response. Those are things you need to bear in mind. The cannabis smoke also has a direct effect on suppressing the ability of macrophages to work in the lungs. Macrophages are basically scavenger cells or cells that line many different parts of the oral cavity, the lung tissue, different parts of the body are lined with these cells to help improve the ability of that surface area to reduce the ability of pathogens to get in and create infectious disease or parasites or pollen or bacteria. So macrophages scavenge these kinds of things and deal with them. But what the cannabis smoke does is it directly attacks the macrophages ability to do that, so this really stuffs your lungs up.

Cannabis smoke has multiple other effects. They did research quite a while back now with a group of about 1,250 female patients, and they had a look at the cannabis habits of these women over a four month period and found a direct association between regular cannabis over 16 weeks and vaginal Candida yeast infections. There is also a link. Somehow they’re not quite sure. It may be because of the reduced neutrophil activity, but they’re still doing research in that area.

Marijuana is not really good to smoke if you want to prevent a yeast infection or if you want to recover from a yeast infection. The medical marijuana debate is something different altogether. But again, not enough research has been done to look at the effects of regular medical marijuana use maybe in a tablet form and the effects that it will have on predisposing the person to Candida yeast infections.

But Jennifer, what I want you to get from this video is regular cannabis smoking is not really a good idea for health, period. It’s not a good idea. I hope people who are watching this video who keep asking me the question, what about having weed or smoking dope or having joints, can I still recover from Candida if I smoke marijuana. It is possible, but it’s very, very difficult for your body to do so. So regular cannabis consumption is not something I recommend to people for general health. Nor do I recommend regular alcohol consumption, or regular soda drink consumption. To me, cannabis, alcohol, and soda drinks all belong in that same category. They all screw your health up depending on how much you take and use over a period of time.

I think if a person had a glass of wine from time to time or had a joint once or twice a year at a Christmas party or a drink of coca cola at a wedding that happens every now and then, I think that’s perfectly okay. But that’s not what happens. The majority of people will smoke dope every week. The majority of people will drink alcohol regularly, several times per week. And the majority of people also when it comes to soda drinks, drink these drinks every day. Some of my patients drink two liters of coca cola a day. Some of my patients smoke one joint a day. And a lot of my patients drink alcohol every single day. And then they come to me and say, “Why aren’t I getting well? I’m not recovering.”

And a lot of people are also stuck in their ways where they’re willing to give up everything, but they don’t want to stop smoking dope, or they don’t want to stop drinking alcohol. If you’re one of those people watching this, there is no point in talking to me about your health if you’re not prepared to make that change to really improve your health.

I hope that answers your question, Jennifer. Cannabis or marijuana and Candida are bedfellows. I believe there’s an association there. If you regularly smoke dope, expect a very difficult time to get rid of Candida. Probably best not to even start in the first place. And it will save you a lot of money if you don’t smoke that stuff because it cost a heap I’ve been told. Thanks for tuning in.

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