Greetings. New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker, author of Candida Crusher, formulator of the Canxida range of dietary supplements. Thank you, again, for checking out my video. I’ve got an email here from a lady called June Tickell. June is from Florida and June has a 12-year-old son with eczema and she wonders if he has Candida as well, so she’s asking me if eczema and Candida can be together, cohabitate in a person. Can a person have both of these conditions?
They can. I’m going to do quite a lot of videos this year, hopefully, on eczema and also on psoriasis and explain these different kinds of presentations in the clinic. Eczema is quite a different skin presentation from psoriasis and dermatitis. Many people get these skin conditions confused. In fact, a lot of doctors get confused. They don’t even know the difference some of them between psoriasis and eczema or dermatitis and psoriasis.
Eczema basically is an immune problem where a person is going to have an issue with certain kinds of foods causing an inflammatory response. It generally involved leaky gut syndrome. As the person matures, usually by the time they get to about between 12 to 14, maybe 15, the immune system tends to settle down. Some white blood cells can take many, many years, 10, 12, even 14 years to fully mature. Younger children tend to have more of a problem with eczema than older children, but some adults can still get it.
Eczema can be inherited or acquired, but generally, you will find there is a strong element of hereditary there with eczema. We often talk about atopy. Atopy is a condition where a person will pick up the gene from one or both of the parents and it can be quite bad if it’s from both. So if dad, for example, had hay fever and mom had asthma and eczema, the child has got a 75 percent chance of picking up eczema, quite a bad case of eczema and will probably have multiple food allergies there. And I also find sometimes eczema can be acquired as well through serious antibiotic use when the child was quite young. They can develop it.
Eczema is not uncommon. We get a lot of it here in New Zealand and I put it down to a huge amount of dairy consumption because the cow is king here in New Zealand and lots and lots of people still drink way too much cow’s milk. I don’t think cow’s milk is a great food in general. I’ve never been a fan of people drinking cow’s milk. I do like a bit of whipped cream, though, with my strawberries at Christmas time and I do like a little piece of cheese here or there. I think mozzarella cheese is quite nice. But to drink glasses of cow’s milk is not a good idea.
June, the first question I ask you. Does your son drink cow’s milk because that’s the first thing that I take out of the diet when I know someone has got eczema? Eczema is really all about getting the gut right, restoring that leaky gut membrane. I certainly have seen Candida and eczema together in many different cases and it’s very important for your son to get his digestive system right and to take that allergenic food out. In fact, it’s the second phase of my Candida Crusher approach.
The first phase I put patients on. I put them on the MEVY, meat, eggs, vegetables and yogurt. And the second phase is the low allergy diet. You’ll say, “Hang on a minute. You’re telling people to have yogurt, but isn’t that a dairy product?” Yes, it is. But it is a cultured dairy product and a really good quality yogurt will have a large amount of beneficial bacteria in there. The lactose will be consumed by the lactobacillus. There will still be beta casein in there, which is a dairy protein that could upregulate the immune response, but generally, I don’t find that a problem with most people with eczema. And I’m not talking about the Yoplait or those yogurts with artificial sugars like aspartame or chunks of fruit or tons of sugar in there. Look at the packet of yogurt, if it says “sugar” ditch it. Don’t touch it. Yogurt should be a fresh, raw sour yogurt without any sugar added to it at all. There is a big difference between that kind of yogurt and the crap you get in the supermarket.
With eczema, it’s all about taking the allergenic foods out of the diet. So what are the top allergy foods? I used to work years ago, the first years of my practice, I worked with a pediatrician, a guy who is quite well known in Australia for working with a lot of children with allergies. My kids were quite young at that stage. We tested hundreds, I think we tested about 350 kids in a two-year period. We did blood testing on them, and these were kids from six months up to about seven years of age. And what we found out was that the children – these were the children particularly with eczema, asthma, and hay fever, a typical allergy kind of pattern.
We found that those children, the highest allergy, in fact, it was almost 70 percent was cow’s milk. Cow’s milk ranked high. I found most dairy products would rank to a degree. Butter was never a problem. Cheese was certainly there, but it was on the low end potential. Mozzarella cheese, I found, a usually quite low allergy. Oranges ranked quite high. I think bananas were 16 percent of the allergies. Oranges about 19 percent. Oranges, bananas, pineapple, chocolate, sugar, these are all allergy foods for children you need to watch out for. Milk is the big one. Fish, no, not really. Crustaceans, shell fish, fish, not really. I found it very rare for a child to have a strong allergy toward fish. In fact, if it was an allergy, it would be an anaphylactic or very, very strong response where the child would be hospitalized or need an adrenaline shot. These were very rare cases. I don’t find fish allergies to be common in children at all. There are always exceptions.
So it’s very important for a child with eczema not to have any antibiotics. I think it’s a dumb move because you just increase the permeability. You wipe out more beneficial bacteria. Antibiotics should not be given to children unless in extreme circumstances. I’ve seen way too many problems occur as a result of these stupid antibiotics given indiscriminately for things like a little cut finger or something where you can put a bit of tea tree oil on.
How would you go about treating a child with eczema and Candida? You need to be very, very good with the diet for starters. This boy needs to be able to have some treats that he can enjoy. Certainly, you need to think carefully about that. And also, have a look at the low allergy diet sheet that you can find in my book, June. I’ll send you a copy of that low allergy diet sheet, so you can have a good look at it. You might be able to read about that at yeastinfection.org. Take the allergy foods out of the diet, look at giving the boy a good probiotic enzyme formula.
Enzymes are very good to give with eczema because they allow the proper breakdown of protein foods to very small components. It’s generally the protein components that set up an immune response in a person, not always, but generally. And giving lots of beneficial bacteria is very important when it comes to eczema as well.
By fortifying the gut, helping to repair the leaky gut, you’re going to also make it much more difficult for Candida to get a foothold in the body, so certainly do that. The low allergy approach is a part, as I said, of my Candida Crusher approach. I think your boy is going to pick up quite nicely. Always look for the key food the child wants a lot of. I had a child in my room once that was given one and half kilograms, that’s three pounds of cheese a week, and this kid is like five years old and he’s jumping off the chairs. He’s kicking my books off the floor. He’s jumping up and down on the clock and everything. I couldn’t believe this kid. All I wanted was out of my room. I found out during the consultation. I said to this mom, “What are you giving this kid? He’s really wired up. What does he snack on?” “Oh, he likes cheese.” I said, “Well, how much do you give him?” She said, “Oh, just a couple of pieces a day.” And it ended up being three pounds of cheese a week. Of course, that food was on the off list. When that child was brought back in three weeks, I could not believe the difference how he sat there quietly with his hands on his lap all quiet. In fact, it was just a different child.
Foods can really cause a lot of behavioral disturbances, especially when they create this allergic potential. When it comes to your boy, June, my question to you is what food does he like to snack on? What is he sneaking when you’re not looking? What is he asking for all the time because that could be one of the foods that could be causing or really bringing the eczema right up in the body? Take that food out to start with or cut right back.
Check out my Canxida Restore product, June. One capsule per day should be enough for this boy at this age. That’s a probiotic enzyme. The Canxida Remove is the antifungal. I would just give him one tablet per day. That’s going to help with the Candida. Both those products should work quite well on him. You can get those at Canxida.com.
I hope that answers your question, June. You’re going to get a good result. Just make sure that you’re onto it with the diet and I think you should do fine with this boy. Thanks for your question.