Category: Candida Crusher FAQ Videos

Thank you for tuning into this video. The question I get asked from time to time is what are the long-term side effects of fluconazole? Fluconazole is an azole antifungal drug commonly used by medical practitioners to treat vaginal Candidiasis, but also systemic or mucosal Candida infections.

It can be used sometimes for HIV patients or people with like full-blown Aids to keep on top of yeast infections. It can be used prophylactically to prevent yeast infection or it can be commonly used to treat vaginal infections and often used routinely dose after dose, month after month, even year after year. I’ve seen patients on this drug sometimes weekly or monthly for even 10 years at a stretch, which is ridiculous.

All too often, Candida becomes resistant to the effects of these azole antifungal drugs. It will build a stronger, new generation of succeeding Candida strains, which will become increasingly resistant to this drug. Just like antibacterial drugs, antibiotic drugs. When we look at them, we’re getting to the point now where we’re getting such major resistance with these bacteria that even the top shelf drugs are becoming ineffective with a whole lot of people. We’re getting to the point where we’re creating “super bugs” or bugs that are going to be resistant to even the strongest drugs, and that’s going to be a really big problem.

I’ve got a drug guide here which is commonly used in New Zealand called the MIMS New Ethicals. I’m just going to read out to you some of the side effects of fluconazole and then I’m going to discuss the long-term effects. What this drug actually causes.

It says here precaution if you’ve got hepatic impairment. If you’re kidneys are a little bit weak or tired, you need to be very careful with this drug. Careful also with prior arrhythmic condition like if you’ve got irregular heartbeat. If you’ve got electrolyte abnormalities like problems balancing potassium and sodium in the body. People with severe adrenal fatigue should not use this drug at all. Precautions with structural heart disease or underlying heart problems. How would you know you’ve got an underlying heart problem? You wouldn’t even know this.

Precautions with cancer and Aids. Precautions with previously associated fluconazole or associated hepatic toxicity. If you’ve previously been made sick on this drug, you shouldn’t really be taking it. Especially if you’ve had skin rashes. If you’ve ever taken this drug and you’ve had a skin rash or developed a skin rash, you should definitely avoid fluconazole.

Also, be careful if you’ve got fructose malabsorption. How would you know? Sucrase also maltase deficiency, lactose intolerance. How would you know you’ve got these conditions? You wouldn’t know half the time.

Precaution for women of childbearing age because there can be a danger with this drug during pregnancy. And women on this drug if they’re likely to conceive, they need to take precautions. You need to be careful.

Let’s look at some of the side effects of fluconazole. Common ones are gastrointestinal upsets, skin rashes, headaches, elevated liver function test. If your liver enzymes are going to be elevated when you take this drug, basically it means that your liver is becoming toxic. It’s becoming sick.

Elevated LFTs are commonly associated with a whole wide range of pharmaceutical drugs. The doctors will typically test for three or four different liver enzymes, and many of them are between defined ranges of about 0 to 30. The doctor believes if you’re anywhere between that range, you’re okay. But what about if you’re on the upper end of that range or slightly over? Many doctors don’t mind that. I think that’s pretty stupid because what they’re saying is they don’t mind if your liver becomes a bit toxic or sick or is starting to actually become damaged and spill these enzymes into the circulation.

That’s like basically the doctor condoning alcohol. Look, you’re showing some mild degree of alcoholic toxicity here, but we’ll be okay with that as long as you don’t make it too toxic. Gamma glutamyl transferase or GGT is the common marker that doctors look at for alcohol related toxicity, and I know quite a few doctors don’t mind if the GGT becomes slightly elevated. ALT and AST are other transferase liver enzymes. And again, these are the particular markers that we look at for chemical induced toxicity from pharmaceutical drugs, and many doctors again don’t mind if they become slightly elevated, which I think is pretty stupid. You don’t really want to make your liver toxic.

Let’s have a look at some of the further adverse effects you can get on this medication. Polyuria, so urinating too much, kidney pain, numbness or tingling in extremities, dizziness, seizures, skin itching, sweating, fevers, drug skin eruptions, sleeping disturbances, insomnia, nervousness, pain, female sexual dysfunction, menstrual disorders, deafness, respiratory disorders, high blood pressure, kidney and liver damage. Patient information. Finish the course. May cause dizziness or seizures. Do not drive or operate machinery if affected.

Why the hell would you want to take this drug when it creates all those potential side effects? Some are common. Some are less common. Some are rare. But I’ve learned from experience treating thousands of women and men who’ve taken fluconazole that a lot of these so-called uncommon and rare symptoms actually occur a lot more commonly than you would expect.

If you’ve been on fluconazole and you experience any of these kind of side effects, you need to immediately discontinue the drug. If you take fluconazole and you start experiencing symptoms after, you need to stop the drug. The long-term effects are kidney and liver damage, and that can create a huge amount of problems for you long term.

Taking this drug and drinking one or two alcoholic beverages is like a person not taking the drug drinking several alcoholic beverages. The damage on the liver compounds. Please understand that taking a drug like fluconazole, long term effects, in my opinion, create severe gastrointestinal damage, particularly liver damage, and that’s the last thing you want with Candida is to create liver damage.

The liver is the seat of improving the immune function of the body. It contains millions of kupffer cells which are basically immune cells. The liver also has an incredible amount of functions in the body, over 500 functions, in fact. It helps to restore your health to such a large degree that in my mind you’d be crazy to take drugs that impair its function. Particularly long term.

As you get older and your body declines, these effects compound even further. Please understand taking this drug short term or long term is not really a wise option. Have a think about your natural options when it comes to Candida yeast infections. Think about something that’s not going to create resistance and toxicity in the body. That’s a wise decision to make. I hope that’s given you some insight into the long-term possible effects of fluconazole.

Thank you for tuning in.

Thanks for checking out my video today. We’re going to talk about magnesium today. I had a question from a guy in Australia a couple of weeks ago asking me if magnesium is any good for taking as a supplement when you have a yeast infection.

Magnesium is superb to take whether you’ve got a yeast infection or not. In fact, I’ve been taking magnesium for over 30 years. It’s one of my “must have” dietary supplements, and I’m going to explain to you why. It’s so darn important to take magnesium on a regular basis.

Magnesium is required to drive well over 300 to 400 enzyme systems in your body. It’s a crucial mineral that plays a role in multiple areas of the body. Very important for neuronal function, for neurotransmitters or brain function. It’s important for mood control, blood sugar control, and immune regulation. It has a big effect on relaxing the heart to allow it to fill properly, to contract properly. Calcium aids in contraction. Magnesium aids in relaxation of all the muscles in your body. So for relaxation, common sense, you need magnesium.

Magnesium also is important for your immune system in that we call it a DNA auditor, so it actually audits DNA and it makes sure that if you’ve got cells that are going haywire, it’s a bit like a conveyor belt. It will actually stop the conveyor belt and get rid of the turkey that’s no good to be packaged. It will go “eeee” delete that turkey like it will delete a cell that’s going to go haywire, so it actually audits whether cells go crazy or not. Apoptosis is programmed cell death and magnesium plays a crucial role.

Magnesium also plays a crucial role in getting rid of Candida’s by-products. There are several different by-products that Candida has. Ammonia is one of them. Ethanol.

There are many different by-products as a result of a yeast infection. But one of the most important enzymes I’ve written down here from my memory is called aldehyde dehydrogenase and that’s driven by magnesium. When you’ve got enough magnesium in your body, you can drive this enzyme system that helps to breakdown acetaldehyde, which is one of the potent toxins produced by Candida when it dies. You need to get rid of this out of the body. Acetaldehyde is also produced as a result of drinking alcohol, so it’s a potent neurotoxin. It kills brain cells, makes you sick and tired, fat and lazy and this is part of the reason why people with Candida get “brain fog”, too, is the acetaldehyde. Magnesium helps to power up the enzyme to get rid of this stuff.

Magnesium is also the most easily excreted mineral under any kind of stress. They did research at Harvard University way back in the ‘60s and they found out that when they applied stress to rats, a rabbit or a human in different controlled studies and even meta-analysis showed this, research based on multiple studies, that when a stress was applied to a living organism, the magnesium was excreted in direct proportion to the stress applied. It’s incredible.

Many people with yeast infections are stressed, so they’re going to urinate out large amounts of magnesium. The tragedy today is in our diets, we’d be lucky to get 200 mg in per day. If we look back a long time ago when people didn’t eat processed foods, it wasn’t uncommon to consume 1,000 to 2,000 mg per day. Now the average American or British person is lucky to consume between 200 to 300 mg, so we’ve got a huge deficit here.

Magnesium you can get from a wide variety of foods providing they’re organically grown in soils that are rich in trace elements and minerals in the soils. Superphosphates tend to pull a lot of these elements out of the plants, so you don’t really want to buy store or commercially grown produce, which is going to be depleted in these elements. Grow your own food like I do. Deep, leafy greens contain magnesium. Nut, seeds, and good quality grains. And there are many dietary supplements you can take.

Magnesium is a key mineral that you need to help fight Candida.

I hope this answers your question about magnesium. Thank you.

Thanks for tuning into my video today. I’ve got a question here from a lady called Julia in Germany, and she’s asking me if I can explain more about gluten intolerance. Eric, I’m gluten intolerant and I have a Candida yeast infection. Please help me. What can I do? Well, Julia, let’s first have a look at gluten intolerance and this whole debate about gluten intolerance. I think you might find this a useful video. There’s a lot of talk in the last couple of years about gluten intolerance. It almost seems to be like the “flavor of the month.” Many people are gluten intolerant.

There was a survey done in 2009 in America that found 39 percent of people who bought gluten-free foods, in fact, had no celiac disease. They did it to improve their digestive health. And only about two percent of all celiacs actually purchased gluten-free foods. Most of them just avoided foods with gluten altogether because they knew they had a gluten problem. There’s a big difference between being a celiac and being gluten intolerant.

A celiac is a person who has a severe autoimmune disease, a problem with their small intestine where the microvilli or the tiny little sections inside the bowel, particularly the duodenum, the first part of the small bowel and the second part is severely affected. The tiny microvilli are actually sloughed off. They’re actually broken up and destroyed. Gluten actually causes this and can cause a lot of destruction of the small intestine. These people can get quite sickly and weak and have failure to thrive. In many cases, it’s picked up when they’re quite young. Sometimes it’s not picked up until they’re an adult and it can create major disease for these people. Celiacs, I believe, account for three percent of the population.

Gluten intolerance is a different thing altogether. When we have a look at gluten, the gluten protein itself, if you mix flour with water you end up with quite a sticky mess. Gluten is, in fact, quite sticky inside the bowel and creates a lot of unwanted immune reactions. I find this is particularly a problem with people who’ve got leaky bowel syndrome. So please go to my website ericbakker.com or go to yeastinfection.org and read more articles that are written about leaky gut. There’s about 10 articles on gluten intolerance and celiac’s disease on ericbakker.com. You can read a lot more. There are some very big pages on there.

Most people really, when you think about it, almost half the people who buy gluten-free foods have got gut problems. A lot of these problems stem from things like excess alcohol, stress, antibiotics in the food chain and also consumed as pharmaceutical medications, soda drinks, sugars in the diet. There are lots of reasons why people develop a problem with their small intestines permeability. This can often spell disaster for lots of people and, of course, they’re going to become increasingly intolerant to a wide range of potential allergens in the diet. These generally involve proteins in foods. If you think about our key allergies, they involve proteins.

Intolerance is different from an allergy. I’ve also got quite extensive articles on the difference between allergies and intolerances. Allergies involve immune related problems. Intolerances often involve issues with enzymes or leaky gut, which is not necessarily an allergic response. You have to understand quite clearly the differences between them both. Many people with gluten intolerance feel better when they avoid gluten in their diet and when they can heal up their stomach. They can improve their output of enzymes and acids. They can make the pancreas more efficient. They can improve their small intestine’s permeability, and heal the lining of the small gut. They improve their bowel flora. All these things are necessary if you want to get rid of Candida. And it will also mean that in time, you probably can eat gluten again.

I really don’t believe that you need to avoid gluten for life, Julia. I think that it’s a stage you go through because most of the populations I see in the western world have some type of a gut problem that’s quite mild. Many that see me as patients have serious bowel disorders to the point where they need some professional help. But a lot of people out there who drink alcohol on a mild to moderate basis will develop leaky gut. Stress forms a key role in driving leaky gut with many people. It’s completely unspoken of. No one talks about stress in the gut. There’s a huge big connection between stress and emotional responses and digestive problems. We see it with people time and time again in the clinic.

Gluten intolerance and Candida, what’s the connection? When you’ve got leaky gut, you’re going to have a lot of digestive problems. You’re going to be more susceptible to bad bacteria, parasites, and yeast infections. You’re going to be much more prone to having poor levels of beneficial bacteria and imbalanced flora further down in the digestive tract, and Candida will often come along for the ride. It’s very common to see people with a Candida yeast infection and gluten intolerance.

What do we do? Gluten is not the first thing I want you to take out of your diet, Julia. The first thing I want you to take out of your diet if you look at my Candida Crusher program, I call it the big clean up, is to take the known junky foods out of the diet like alcohol, caffeine, high sugar and processed foods, packaged foods or bottled foods. Just eat basically common good foods probably like your grandparents used to eat. Things that grow in the ground and above the ground. Not things that grow in the supermarket on the shelf in some sort of package or bottle.

I tend to grow most of my own vegetables. It’s not hard to grow some foods in the summertime. And if you go to your local farmer’s market or green grocer, you can buy some very good vegetables and fruits for yourself to consume. This is a good step toward improving your diet is making this change. Eating high quality proteins that are lean, not too high in fat, fish, free range chicken, good quality eggs, cut out all the sauces, all the bottles in the fridge, all the junky kind of foods in packets like chips and chocolate and biscuits and crap like that. Cut all those out for two or three weeks.

Then I get you to move into my MEVY diet, meat, eggs, vegetables and yogurt. This is not a new diet. This was outlined in the ‘80s and it works fantastic for a Candida yeast infection. The MEVY diet involves various kinds of meats. And if you’re a vegan or a vegetarian, you may want to look at beans and legumes, grains, different nuts and seeds, soy products, free-range eggs, fresh sour acidophilus organic yogurt. These are all good foods to eat with Candida.

Part two of the diet; you’re going to move into a lower allergy diet phase for several weeks. At this point, you’re going to take out milk and dairy products, butter is fine. You can take out peanuts, oranges, bananas, pineapples. There’s a list in my book, Candida Crusher, on the most allergenic kind of foods.

I do the allergy diet in three phases. We’ve got mildly potentially allergic foods, moderately and severely potentially allergic. In the severe potential category you put cow’s milk. We put bananas. We put peanuts, oranges. There are other foods you can look up there. I think on yeastinfection.org, you can find a list of these foods as well.

When you’ve completed this stage, you’ve taken out the allergic foods. Wheat and gluten are not on the severe category. I would put them more in the moderate category. I wouldn’t say they’re mild, but they have a moderate capability of creating a gut problem with you.

Take out first the junk, then start eating the MEVY diet probably three or four weeks, and then move into the low allergy diet. Still on the MEVY diet, but now you’re going to clean it up a bit more and take the potentially allergic foods out. Don’t immediately take gluten out. Gluten can come if you still have gut issues after you’ve taken the junk and the allergic foods out. Then you may want to take gluten out.

And then what we do in the third phase of my diet is we do the reintroduction. We put the foods in first that you tend to like the least that you excluded from your diet originally. So you need to get a piece of paper and write down all the foods you excluded, the foods you love, and the foods you can give or take. The foods you can give or take you introduce first. Because I know you’re not going to really eat tons and tons of that food straight away. The foods you like the most are the last foods you reintroduce, which makes a lot of sense to me. But following my diet approach, three to six months, Candida gone. Particularly if you understand the relationship with stress into linking with diet and take a good antifungal product.

I developed a really good product called Canxida. At Canxida.com, you’ll find this. It’s a perfect adjunct to the MEVY diet. You take two or three per day for about three to six months. That should completely nail the yeast infection, particularly if you avoided alcohols and sugars, eaten fermented and cultured foods, looked at adopting a low stress lifestyle, put relaxation into your diet, improve your sleep, increase your fresh water consumption and drop the crappy drinks from your diet like alcohol, coffee, tea and soda drinks.

By following basic things, you’re going to get a fantastic result. How do I know this? I know this because I’ve treated now nearly 17,000 patients with yeast infections and counting. This is my 27th year of practice. I intend to practice for many more years yet. I’ve worked out over the years what works and what doesn’t work for the majority of people.

Gluten sensitivity is a very real phenomenon, but it’s much more rare than you think. Remember, don’t point the finger at gluten. Point the finger at all the crap in the diet first. Point the finger at dysfunctional relationships you might have with people around you, employer, partner, neighbors. Point the finger at the unhappy lifestyle habits that you’ve created first before you start saying that gluten is the Darth Vader. The gluten is the bad thing that’s making me sick.

People often like to point the finger to one thing as a scapegoat and blame all of their ills and misgivings on that one darn thing instead of taking a cold hard look at their whole lifestyle and diet and making changes where they need to be made first before they start eliminating things like gluten.

I hope that gives you a good insight, Julia, into my take on the gluten sensitivity and how that fits into the equation when it comes to eradicating yeast infections. Thank you so much for tuning into this video today.