Gluten Intolerance and Candida Connection

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.