Category: Candida Crusher FAQ Videos

Greetings. It’s Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand, author of Candida Crusher and formulator of the Canxida range of dietary supplements. I have a very interesting question here from a patient in California. Eric, what if my SIBO is left untreated, what will happen to me?

It’s like anything else in life. If you tend to turn a blind eye to something that’s a small problem in the beginning, in the end it will become such a big problem that you can’t turn a blind eye to it anymore. And you get to the point where you’re going to seek medical treatment. But the problem with medical treatment is if you presented a doctor with SIBO signs and symptoms, what do you think you’ll be given? You’ll probably be given antibiotics, which is the last thing that you need. It’s a crazy thing to do. It’s like someone who’s got no money at all that is going to take out a huge big loan at an interest rate they’ll never be able to afford to pay back, and eventually, they’ll end up on the street with nothing.

When you start taking antibiotics for digestive problems, it’s a stupid thing to do. You get nowhere with this long term. The best way to treat any kind of a gut problem is initially by trying to identify the cause of the problem, particularly like the diet and the lifestyle change that you need for your gut to return to health again. It makes a lot of sense. What do they say, “A stitch in time saves nine.” So if you fix something now, down the track it’s not going to be unfixable.

I urge you to have a look at some of my writings at yeastinfection.org and read some of my other articles on dysbiosis and SIBO in particular. Do my Candida Crusher quiz, which I think is one of the best on the internet. And also have a think about my book, Candida Crusher, in general. Look at the diet that I’ve written there in the lifestyle suggestions. A lot of my writing is already published. There are over a thousand articles now published on the internet regarding the naturopathic gastroenterology work that I’ve done in the last 27 years, so you can benefit from a lot of free information. If you’re stuck, you can always have a consultation with me through ericbakker.com. Just go to my .com website. I’m always willing to see patients. I’ve seen a lot of patients now, and it’s really great that I can help so many people out through this medium, the internet.

I urge you if you’ve got a functional problem with the gut is to get onto it sooner rather than later because you can turn these things around. And if you get there in time, you’ll be able to save yourself a lot of problems. In New Zealand, we have four people dying every day of bowel cancer. Now, those people had no idea they had bowel cancer. And in this country, 34% of the people that get diagnosed with bowel cancer are terminal. When they’re diagnosed, they have metastases through various parts of the body. Now, they never had any pain. They had no problem. They just went through life with bloating, gas, with no problem at all until one day they’re passing blood, and then it was too late.

I’ve had patients like this that are no longer alive today because they chose to ignore these signs and symptoms. So I urge you if you have digestive problems, fix them now and don’t wait until you get a diagnosis that you might not be happy with because then it’s your own fault because you didn’t want to do anything about it.

Yeah, it’s not really a nice video today, but it’s one that I really want you to think about. Problems need solving sooner rather than later. Thanks for tuning in.

Greetings. It’s naturopath Eric Bakker from New Zealand, author of Candida Crusher, and also formulator of the Canxida range of dietary supplements. Thanks for checking out my video. I’m going to do some more FAQs. I’m going to do a series of frequently asked questions on SIBO or small intestinal bowel overgrowth.

I get emails all the time from people from many different countries now. In fact, I have patients now in nearly 50 different countries around the world, all on Skype and on Face Time. It’s quite exciting meeting all these new people. It’s amazing the kind of position that I’m in. I really enjoy doing these internet consultations.

I’ve got a question here from a lady in India of all places. Eric, what is SIBO? Can you tell me what SIBO is?

There are a lot of misconceptions regarding SIBO. In fact, I think there are many different types of bacterial overgrowth and we get experts talking about SIBO, but what about LIBO, large intestinal bowel overgrowth. What about stomach bacterial overgrowth? There are overgrowths of bacteria that can live right throughout the digestive system. What about the oral cavity bacteria? Bacteria live all around us, in us, and on us. Bacteria are not necessarily bad.

If we look at the digestive system, it’s basically a 20-foot long tube broken up into various parts. And these parts do different jobs – for want of a better word. If we start with the stomach, we’ve got an area that’s very important, it has a very low pH and an acid forming environment, so it’s involved in taking the food we’re supposed to chew properly and mixing it up with enzymes, take it further down where digestion starts occurring in the small intestine.

The small intestine is a very important part of the digestive system where most of your digestive processes occur. There is also a large part of your immune system that resides in the small intestine, so this is the part that we’re going to talk about. What is SIBO? It’s an overgrowth of bacteria in this small intestinal tract. There are three parts to the small intestine. You’ve got the duodenum, the jejunum, the central part, and the ileum, or the terminal part. All of these parts have varying bacteria in them and varying pH or acidity or alkalinity by which they work depending on many different factors. If we look at the bacterial content of the small bowel compared to the large bowel, it’s quite remarkable. It’s estimated we have around 10,000 to 15,000 bacteria per milliliter, which is only a thousandths of a liter. It’s a very small amount of fluid. We’ve got 10,000 bacteria just in that small amount.

If we look at the large intestine, we’re looking at literally a billion bacteria for the same quantity of digestive juices, so you’ve got way more bacteria in the large intestine. That often is the reason why many people get sick and they get bloating, gas, and lots of digestive problems. Candida can thrive anywhere in the digestive system. Some people tend to have a lot more Candida in the large intestine. Some tend to have it more in certain parts of the small intestine, but the SIBO is a bacterial overgrowth.

Generally, what you’ll find is it’s not one particular species, but it will be several species of similar bacteria that we repeatedly find in people. And this can cause a really big problem with people when they get an overgrowth of these bacteria. Because the bacteria is so important for helping us maintain proper digestion and absorption of the nutrients in the food that we eat. They are also very important for ensuring we have good motility or movement of food and stool through the digestive system. Once we start getting an imbalance, an overgrowth, we start getting all sorts of flow on effects as a result of those processes being disturbed.

And you can see what happens if you’re not breaking down food properly, absorbing, and digesting it, you’re going to get a lot of fatigue. You’re going to get poor growth or recovery, poor recuperation, poor brain function, poor muscle function; lots of things are just not going to work properly. If you get poor motility or what we call peristalsis through the small bowel, you’re going to get a lot of pain, cramping, bloating, and all sorts of weird sensations in the gut. And often they’ll occur here around the belly button region, so SIBO will affect people here. People often say, “I’ve got a problem with my stomach.” People tend to point lower down. SIBO can present itself in many different ways.

But suffice it to say, we need very good bacteria in this area if we want outstanding health. That’s what we’re going to look at with our following videos. We’re going to look at causes of SIBO, symptoms of SIBO, testing for SIBO, all these sorts of things. I just want to explain in this video what SIBO really is. It’s an imbalance or overgrowth of these bacteria.

Thanks for tuning in. Catch up with you in the next video.

Hi there. It’s naturopath from New Zealand, Eric Bakker, author of Candida Crusher and formulator of the Canxida dietary supplements. Thanks for checking out my video. We’re going to continue on with the SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or small intestinal bowel overgrowth. There are many different names for this condition. What we’ve got here is a condition basically where we’ve got an increase in bacteria in the small intestine creating all kinds of different problems. So check out my other videos on SIBO to understand a bit more about the condition.

This video is about why is it so difficult to treat? Why do so many practitioners get it wrong and only have temporary results with SIBO? It’s not just SIBO, it’s also Candida yeast infections in general that people have a lot of difficulty treating and eradicating in their patients.

If we look at SIBO, Rifaximin is an antibiotic that’s commonly recommended for this condition. With SIBO, many doctors are actually recommending Rifaximin. If we got doctors like Dr. Allison Siebecker, who’s a SIBO specialist, she recommends Rifaximin or a botanical anti-microbial treatment. The problem with Rifaximin and natural anti-microbials is that research has shown that in many cases, in fact, the natural treatment probably works better than Rifaximin. But the problem with both treatments is that about half of the patients have shown through research to have a recurrence within 12 months. I think one of the reasons why is that lifestyle and diet changes are not addressed long term sufficiently for patients to get a full recovery. And that’s the problem. People seem to be all hell bent on getting treatment. But when it comes to maintaining good health, this is a whole new ballgame.

When you go to a practitioner and you’re not feeling well, you expect a treatment. You expect a resolution. But then when you get well, are you going to maintain a natural healthy lifestyle and diet to maintain wellness or are you going to slowly slide back into drinking alcohol regularly, not getting sleep, stressing out, eating the wrong kind of foods, not chewing properly, all these sorts of factors come into play. If you go back to what you’ve always done, you’ll go back and get what you got in the first place as to why you went to the doctor originally.

It’s common sense again. As I usually say in my videos, most good health is common sense. Don’t just focus on treatment. Focus on your long-term strategy. How you’re going to stay well for years and years ahead. The gut, the digestive system, is the heart and soul of the person. If you can maintain a high level of wellness in the digestive system, you can maintain a really high level of wellness in the overall body. In the brain, in the immune system, the musculoskeletal system, all of these systems will function optimally if your digestive system is functioning optimally.

But in order to get the gut to function optimally, obviously assessment, I think, is important. Correction and treatment is important, but then maintenance is the golden rule. You’ve got to maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle to stay well. No rocket science. In all these videos I create, there is no rocket science behind them. You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to work this out.

If your doctor or naturopathic doctor or integrative doctor, whomever you’ve seen, is giving you recommendations; you followed them. You followed a course of treatment. You’ve improved. Why wouldn’t you maintain that kind of treatment long term to get amazing wellness? Why would you slowly slide back into what you did then get the condition back, and then go to another doctor and say, “Well, the first doctor was no good. It didn’t work out. I’m sick again”?

It’s important to look at yourself if you don’t fully recover or if you recover and then relapse back into the condition again. That’s why SIBO is difficult to treat. Because I really believe after having seen patients now for nearly 30 years that the majority of clients I see end up going back to do what they did when they got sick in the first place.

Check out my website, yeastinfection.org. Make sure you do my Candida Crusher quiz. You’ll find links on CandidaCrusher.com and yeastinfection.org. And do consider my supplements I’ve created especially for SIBO and Candida, Canxida.