Category: Candida Crusher FAQ Videos

Hi there. It’s New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker, author of Candida Crusher and formulator of the Canxida range of dietary supplements. I’ve got an email here from a guy in America who wants to remain anonymous. Then he asks me, “Can I eat rice on the Candida diet? Is rice suitable? Will it affect my yeast infection?”

This is a question I get asked all the time about rice. I’ve just had a look on several websites and different forums about rice. Half the people say yes; half the people say no. A lot of experts say no. But in my opinion, a lot of these experts have never had the kind of experience I’ve had treating tens of thousands of people with yeast infections or bowel problems. They’ve treated all kinds of conditions, but they haven’t specialized in gut disorders with people.

I can tell you now, eating rice on the Candida diet is very interesting for some people in terms of the effects it can create. For many people that I see, they have no issues at all eating rice when they’ve got Candida and that includes white rice, brown rice, wild rice, basmati rice, all kinds of rice. But I’ll be quick to add that you’re better off avoiding white rice on the Candida diet until you get a very good gut function back. Until the bowel motions improve. Until the bloating and gas disappear. Until your weight’s under control. Be careful with rice because some people eat much too much rice, just like they eat much too much bread or potatoes or these kinds of starchy carbohydrates.

I prefer to eat brown rice. I like brown rice with some wild rice thrown through it, the black rice. You can also eat red rice. In fact, brown basmati is quite a nice rice to eat, so there’s a rice you can get called basmati rice. I prefer to use a basmati rice for making Palou dishes, which is really a steamed rice dish with vegetables mixed through it. That’s called a Palou and then you can put different kinds of things like peas or carrots, some cardamom, some cloves, and some cinnamon sticks. You can put different spices and vegetables through the basmati and a bit of water in there.

And I usually put a little bit of water that’s about one knuckle or even a half to one knuckle joint above the rice in the pot. I use a cast iron pot and I use clean water. Usually just cold water. I don’t usually rinse the rice. You’re supposed to rinse it and all this business. I don’t do that. And then I’ll get it on high, get it boiling, and then turn it right down to low. I’m going to put a lid on the saucepan. Again, a heavy lid, I usually wrap a small tea towel around there. And I’ve learned that putting a small cloth under the lid absorbs a lot of the steam and moisture and it also gets the top of the rice nicely steamed. When you are going to eat rice, make sure you don’t use those aluminum saucepans. Rice cookers tend to be aluminum. Throw them out. You don’t want to have aluminum in your diet in a saucepan or in a rice cooker. Do the steaming method using a heavy saucepan. A stainless steel saucepan with a heavy copper base is also good to use.

Brown rice is preferable. You can steam that or boil it. If you do want to stick with white rice, there’s nothing stopping you from using an 80/20 blend of 80 percent brown, 20 percent white, a long grain. Basmati’s a better kind of white rice to eat than other kinds of white rice. Some people say one cup per day. No more. I mean it’s up to you. If you’re used to eating rice, you’ll sort of know how much you need to eat. Just don’t eat too much rice. Keep your amount down and make sure that if you do have rice, you have it alongside plenty of vegetables and protein. Don’t just eat a large plate full of rice. That’s a big mistake.

Can you eat rice on the Candida diet? That’s the question. Well, if you are getting symptoms like brain fog, joint pain, bloating, gas or you’re not feeling good and you are eating rice, stop the rice temporarily to see if it improves your gut function. If you are eating rice and you get none of those symptoms, try to switch over to brown rice, which has got a higher fiber content. There are a lot of B vitamins. Some experts even believe that brown rice contains digestive enzymes. I know that when I eat more brown rice, I have better bowel function than if I eat white rice. I think it’s a really good food, a good quality organic brown rice. It’s a fantastic food. Particularly, the B vitamins are rich in the brown rice. Don’t be afraid of eating rice on the Candida diet if you can tolerate it. It’s also going to help you maintain weight and stop you from starving. Because if you do what all these experts say like Dr. Joseph Mercola and take all grains out of your diet, you’re going to be looking for food. You’re going to be hungry more often and you’re going to find it difficult to control your appetite and your diet.

I don’t care what these experts say; I don’t really believe it’s healthy to maintain a diet purely on vegetables and meats. To me, it just doesn’t make sense to do that. It’s a boring diet. And you can’t maintain it for years on end. Having some carbohydrates in the diet makes sense, whether it’s millet, rice, or buckwheat, so try to add some kind of grain in there, and brown rice to me is a very good grain to have included in your diet. Don’t forget the wild rice, the black rice; it’s quite tasty. A small amount of that gives your rice a bit of color and a bit of extra flavor.

I hope that answers your question about rice on the Candida diet. Last thing I’ll leave you with is as your bowel function improves and you get very good bacteria in the intestines, you’ll find you can easily tolerate rice. If you can’t tolerate it, you need to work on the bugs, the parasites, and the Candida and help to clean the gut up and repopulate with beneficial bacterial, and then you should not have much problem. Particularly if you chew the rice properly, you’ll have even less problems.

Check out yeastinfection.org. I’ve got a lot of articles on there. Also, check out a lot of my FAQs on this channel. There are many questions regarding different kinds of carbohydrates and foods I’ve answered. Don’t forget to do my quiz at yeastinfection.org. And also, just a quick plug for my products. At Canxida.com, you will find some of the best products for Candida on the internet. Thanks for tuning in and don’t forget to subscribe. Thank you.

Greetings. It’s Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand, author of Candida Crusher and formulator of the Canxida range of supplements. Thanks for tuning in. I’ve got a question here from a gentlemen in England, a Mr. Paul Wilson from Sussex in the UK. Paul’s asking me, “Eric are night sweats connected to Candida? Can Candida cause night sweats?”

Let’s have a look at different kinds of reasons why you can get night sweats first, Paul. In fact, there are about eight or nine different reasons. I’ve just pulled up a list here and I’m going to go through a few things with you to explain to you more about night sweats.

Night sweats is a condition that we refer to when you’re in bed, you’re got the covers on you, you’re sleeping, and you wake up really hot and sweaty as opposed to fevers, which can happen at night or during the day. So fevers are almost every time immune related and usually involve some kind of infection like influenza, for example. There are different kinds of tropical diseases that can cause fevers as well.

Menopause. Obviously, you’re a guy so I wouldn’t expect you to get the same kind of symptoms. Some men do go through what we call andropause, so they go through a kind of a male menopause. But many females go through peri-menopause and menopause. So the menarche is the beginning of the menses. The menopause is really the end of the menses. It can occur. I’ve got some patients who go through menopause as young as 38 and some who go through it as old as 62. There is no sort of defined date here, but I seem to find that probably I’d say mid to late 40s, between around 47 and 52, seems to be the key age for development of menopause.

So what happens in this situation is the ovaries that produce the bulk of the sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone, they start declining. So the feedback loop between the ovaries and the pituitary is not so active anymore because the woman’s active menstrual years are really behind her. She doesn’t need to reproduce anymore. So the ovarian pituitary hypothalamic loop starts to slow down and the ovaries atrophy, they shrivel up a bit, they get smaller. What happens is the woman will notice that her period may go into decline. She may have a heavy cycle one month and maybe skip one another month. Some women have a very smooth transition. Others will have a much harder transition.

I find especially the women who go through a lot of stress have this because the adrenal glands make about 30 to 40 percent of the sex hormones, and the ovaries make the remainder. If a woman has had a huge amount of stress in her life raising teenagers, going through a divorce, gone through lots of financial hardship, she may have a considerable adrenal weakness or fatigue, so the adrenals at this point can’t step up to the plate and deliver the right level of hormones that the woman requires, estrogen and progesterone, and DHEA in particular. As her ovarian function declines. This causes a disparity and this often for many women I see can create anxiety, hot flashing, grumpy person, libido can hit the floor, all sorts of things can occur. And particularly the lack of estrogen, we find the hot flashes occurring. And they can typically occur at night in bed where she can throw off the covers. Husband can be cold. She can be hot. So the covers can go on and off all night.

Hot flashes in this case can often be accompanied with mood disorders, anxiety or depression, tiredness, muscle pain and weakness. I find in my experience that low estrogen often occurs commonly with low testosterone, so you may want to go to a doctor and get some salivary testing done. You can also get some urinary tests done now for metabolites. There is a really good lab called Precision Analytical that does what we call the Dutch test, which is superb for looking at the stress hormones, the sex hormones, and what we call the androgens as well. That’s a very good test, the Dutch test. That will determine what your level of hormones is like. If you’re worried about menopause, get tested and then get these levels of hormones balanced. Quite often, this will make a big difference for menopausal night sweats.

Idiopathic hyperhidrosis. Idiopathic means we don’t know what the hell caused it. There is no known cause. Some people get random sweats where they can’t define any kind of immune illness or hormonal imbalance underpinning it. It’s quite rare having the idiopathic, but some people will have this quite bad. I’m quite sure that if the person was checked carefully for different kinds of foods or heavy metals or issues in the body, they may find a level of toxicity there or a major food problem. The person is consuming a food or drinking something that they shouldn’t be doing. Alcohol, I found, has sometimes underpinned the idiopathic hyperhidrosis. Some people get flushing from different kinds of preservatives in wine, for example, can cause flushing. And the person will go to the doctor and the doctor says, “Look, we don’t know what’s causing this sweating.” If you drink alcohol and you suffer from night sweats and no one can work out what it is, just stop the alcohol temporarily to see if there’s a link there between booze and the no known cause sweating.

Infections. Infections are quite a well-known cause of night sweats, especially conditions like tuberculosis, but also conditions like endocarditis or a bacterial infection of the heart valves. Osteomyelitis or bone infection. There are many kinds of infections that can cause it. I know there are different tropical diseases that can cause a lot of night sweats in people. I think dengue fever is one of them. And in Australia, we’ve got Ross River virus, for example. I think it’s a virus and it’s spread by mosquito bites and that can cause drenching night sweats as well. And often these infections are accompanied by extreme fatigue, if you get a lot of sweating. Malarial drenching is a typical one where the person will have saturated sheets from night sweats. Usually a blood test will uncover if you’ve got an infection or not underpinning night sweats. So if you’ve been traveling to different countries, that could be one of the causes. You could have picked up an infection.

Cancers. Of course, cancers like lymphoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is more common than Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but the lymphomas involve cancer of the lymphatic system with the enlargement of lymph glands typically in the neck. I found some patients will find, men will find it when shaving. That can often underpin sweating, too. And again, blood tests will pick this up, so your doctor should be able to pick up if you’ve got lymphoma or any kind of infectious disease that could be underpinning night sweating.

Pharmaceutical drugs. There are different kinds of drugs that can cause night sweating or sweats, flushes in general. Antibiotics, for example, from as many as 10 up to 25 percent of people who take different kinds of antibiotics can experience night sweats. Not many people know that. And also, paracetamol, Tylenol, Advil, different pharmaceutical drugs like aspirin can cause flushes and sweating in some people. If you’re taking a pain medication and you suffer from night sweats, again, you may want to see if there’s a link there. Antacids, for example. Some people report with antacids that they get flushing or sweating. Aspirin is a common one, actually.

Hypoglycemia. Low blood sugar. I made a big mistake when I was in my 20s a long time ago when I went for a run, a long jog outside, and I came back and I drank a can of Coke. What a dumb thing to do. I had low blood sugar, but when I put 12 or 15 teaspoons of sugar into my body, I hit the floor because I immediately elevated my blood sugar. A large amount of insulin was produced to reduce it, my insulin levels just plummeted, and so did my blood sugar, I just dropped and I felt really weak. I collapsed. I got hot flushes, I got cold flushes, and I got shaking and chills. This can happen with really low blood sugar. Type 1 diabetics can have this with poor insulin control. They can get a lot of sweating and flushing.

Thyroid problems. Very common. Hyperthyroidism. If you’ve got very low TSH, get your blood level checked and you’ve got maybe shaking, maybe anxiety and sweating can often accompany that as well. So people who get very hot or very cold may need to get their thyroid hormones checked if they’re uncertain what’s going on there. With hyperthyroidism, we’d expect the person to be more on the skinny side. With high levels of anxiety and can’t relax, so they can sweat typically.

The last one is a rare neurological condition. It can be some conditions like autonomic neuropathy, autonomic dysreflexia, these are all weird names that we give to unusual conditions involving the nervous system, which can either be through infection or injury. There are different kinds of reasons why a person may have a damaged nervous system, and that can cause inappropriate responses peripherally in the body. They can get all sorts of weird sensations accompanied by flushing and sweating. Some people that have had strokes can experience that as well.

That’s eight general reasons why night sweats could occur. Paul, I hope that answers your question. But probably the more common ones we see in women, especially 40s and 50s, would be menopause. And the other common reason I would see with night sweats would be infections of some sort.

To answer your question, can Candida cause night sweats? Yes. It can. It’s definitely something I’ve seen. And in fact, I had a lot of heat myself when I had this condition and a lot of sweating and flushing. Remember fermentation is often involved, especially if the person’s consuming alcohol or eating sugars and has a yeast infection because they’ll be fermenting on the inside. And fermentation creates gas and heat and that can make you sweat, particularly if you crave sugars. If you’ve got farting, bloating, burping, and sweating and you crave sugar, there is a chance that you’ve got a yeast infection.

That’s a long-winded reply to your answer, Paul. The eight reasons why you can have sweating and also Candida can definitely be there in a relationship with night sweats. Thanks for tuning in.

Greetings. It’s New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker. I’m the author of Candida Crusher and the formulator of the Canxida range of dietary products. I’ve got an email question here from a man called Jeff Allen. Jeff Allen is from a small town called Paraparaumu here in New Zealand in the southern part of the North Island. And Jeff’s asking, “Is Candida and diabetes connected? Can one cause the other?” Good question, Jeff. Let’s talk a bit about the Candida and the diabetes connection.

There are different kinds of diabetes. In fact, there are three types of diabetes, but two are more commonly recognized. Type 1 or an autoimmune diabetes and Type 2, what we call mature age onset. Type 3 diabetes is a newer form also called metabolic syndrome and it comes about from obesity, high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, so you’ve got elevated blood lipids. This Type 3 not many people have heard about that one.

Diabetes is a very common phenomenon, Jeff. It’s a growing epidemic in the western world and it comes through western living. It comes through basically eating the wrong kind of food, not exercising, and getting obese and major blood sugar dysregulation occurs. Blood sugar regulation occurs primarily through a gland called the pancreas, which secretes a hormone called insulin. Only a very small percentage of the pancreas is involved in the production and release of insulin through the acini cells. The bulk of the pancreas makes up enzymes and bicarbonate to help assist digestion.

Insulin is very important because it’s a hormone that allows the body to push glucose inside the cell. It binds to receptor sites and activates cells, so glucose powers up the body. Another hormone called cortisol is produced by the adrenal gland, and cortisol helps the body to assist in the long-term regulation of blood sugar between meals when the blood sugar level drops. The brain will sense that and it will actually liberate stored glucose called glycogen by way of cortisol. I hope you’re still with me and understand this. You may want to watch the video again.

Insulin is required to get the blood sugar into the cell through receptor sites on the cell. Cortisol is released when blood sugar level drops a little bit too much because cortisol will allow the body to breakdown stored sugar, generally in the liver and some other parts of the body, to be released in the bloodstream, which would then be converted to glucose.

If you’ve got diabetes, it’s much easier for you to get a urinary tract infection because you’re going to have more blood sugar output, a urine output of sugar, and mellitus means sweet urine, diabetes mellitus. That could be another thing that diabetics get is increased incidence of urinary tract infections, vaginal infection, and also skin yeast infections. Many kinds of yeast infections are prevalent with diabetes because of their dysregulation of glucose, and of course, Candida loves glucose, so it will feed on that.

Type 1 diabetes is entirely different. It’s generally juvenile and you’re born with it. It is an autoimmune disease, meaning that the body is actually attacking the pancreas and destroying it, causing a permanent lifelong dysregulation of glucose, usually requiring the injection of insulin. Here in New Zealand, we have ads on TV now for slow release insulin that you can actually inject.

Type 3 diabetes or metabolic syndrome is really I call it “metabolic sindrome.” Because sinners get it. Dietary sinners get it. Exercise sinners get it. These are people that sit on the coach with a remote control and often don’t want to do too much. They end up very large people and they get not just the diabetic, Type 2 problems, but they get a lot of hypertension and many other associated problems that go with obesity.

What happens with the Candida? Candida creates actually a real problem in the body because it can actually make this enzyme called secreted aspartyl protease or SAPs. The University of California, San Diego, worked this out a while ago that this secreted enzyme that Candida actually produces has a really bad effect on the body by destroying the receptor sites on cells and not allowing glucose to really go into the cell to power it up. So this creates an increase in glucose in the body.

Candida, in fact, can cause Type 2 diabetes. It’s not really well known by medical practitioners, and they tend to laugh at this whole thing. But research has shown now that it actually does occur. So people with severe Candida, in many cases, can actually develop diabetes. This protease, this enzyme, is also linked with hypertension. It’s linked with immune dysregulation. It’s linked with a big yeast infection. There certainly is a link there, Jeff, between these two sorts of things.

The other big thing you’ve got to remember is diabetes can come about also when you’ve got severe adrenal problems on top of Candida. Candida and adrenal fatigue often go hand in hand. These are two conditions I commonly see. Particularly, people non-responsive to treatment for Candida who will get partially well, then relapse. They can often have an adrenal fatigue problem. Because they’ve got a problem with their cortisol, so cortisol is one of the most powerful hormones to regulate your immune function. If cortisol is not working properly, you’re going to have a really big problem. And if you’ve got these secreted protease enzymes floating in your body from Candida stuffing up or ruining the receptors on the cells and you’ve got low cortisol, you’re going to have a major problem on your hands.

These are a couple of mechanisms by which some Candida patients don’t seem to recover. How they’ll get partially better and then relapse. Partially better and then relapse. Many inexperienced practitioners that treat Candida patients don’t really understand the concept of the secreted aspartyl proteases. They don’t look at the by-products of Candida metabolism like mannan and the glycol toxins produced by Candida, particularly poisons that neutralize the immune function.

The immune system is very important when it comes to protecting the body from the effects of diabetes. It down regulates inflammation, stops infections; it’s very powerful also to help control autoimmune responses to stop Type 1 diabetes getting worse. There are multiple connections by which Candida and diabetes exist. The main thing I’d like you to understand is it’s important to get a yeast infection under control because it’s not only linked with diabetes; it’s linked with many other kinds of chronic degenerative diseases that we know.

That’s a long convoluted answer to your question, Jeff, but I hope you do get some appreciation for this. Don’t forget to do my yeast infection quiz to see what your score is. You can do that on yeastinfection.org and please subscribe to this channel for more videos like this. And don’t forget my Canxida range of dietary supplements. You’ll find that at Canxida.com. Thanks for tuning in.