Greetings. It’s Eric Bakker, New Zealand naturopath, author of Candida Crusher. Thanks for tuning into my video today. Today I’m going to talk about factors that actually damage your intestinal microflora. Let’s get into it.
We’ve spoken previously about antibiotics, so you’re probably quite aware that when you take an “anti” biotic, you’re going to affect the “pro” biotics, so antibiosis means anti-life. Probiotics mean pro-life or for life or what will generate life. We’re not going to go into it in this video today. But there are other medications apart from antibiotics that adversely affect the beneficial flora in the gut.
A typical one that I see is called PPIs or proton pump inhibitors. These drugs are really designed to treat GERD, gastroesophageal reflux disease. Many people in America, New Zealand, Australia, and many countries get heartburn, so they go to the doctor. And the doctor will prescribe a drug that basically works on the enzyme where it blocks the enzymatic production of hydrochloric acid in the stomach. Pretty stupid thing to do when you think about it, blocking the production of acid. Because you need acid to help break down food properly in the stomach. And not only that, when you start playing around with the pH of the gut, you’re going to adversely affect the pH of the whole digestive system, which means that taking anything up here is going to affect everything further downstream. Even though you’re working on a symptom by reducing the discomfort of GERD and heartburn, you’re actually destroying your gut in the process, so it’s a crazy thing to do.
Another drug, chemotherapy drugs. These are very powerful drugs that help to kill off a lot of cells in the body. Not only cancer cells, but also beneficial cells. So people on chemotherapy also end up destroying their gut function to a big degree. Radiotherapy, chemotherapy, NSAIDs, or non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs. You may have taken one of these for a headache or arthritic pain like Advil, which contains ibuprofen. Tylenol, drugs like that that contain paracetamol. These are non-steroidal drugs that reduce inflammation and pain in the body. These things have a very powerful effect on toxifying the body, particularly the liver, but they also destroy the beneficial bacteria in the gut. NSAIDs aren’t really a good idea.
Other factors that can damage it that are not drug related that I see quite a lot are stress. And I’ve written extensively about stress in my book, Candida Crusher. If you suffer from stress, it can have a very significant impact on reducing the amount of beneficial bacteria that you’ve got in your digestive system. Nobody speaks about stress in the gut. People talk about alcohol. They talk about antibiotics, but they don’t talk about stress. Stress has an interesting way of really crippling a person’s immune system, particularly the alarm phase, or the acute stage of stress that reduces the blood supply to the digestive system. It slows down the movement of stool through the bowel. It has an incredible effect on your circulation, and many aspects of human health are affected by the alarm phase or the acute phase of stress.
You need to be aware that stress also has a significant impact on the gut. Stress also makes us want to drink more alcohol, drink more coffee, take drugs that help us to counter the effects of stress like headaches. Eighty percent of headaches are tension headaches caused by stress. What do we do? We take a pill. We just swallow another pill and that’s going to stop all our pain and we’re going to wreck our gut, which means we’re going to take another pill. Playing right into the hands of big pharma.
I’m not a conspiracy person at all. Medical people are required in our society, and we all benefit from surgery and drugs when applied at the right time. But there is certainly a massive overprescribing of a lot of pharmaceuticals that make people sick and kill a lot of people.
And, of course, there are dietary factors that also affect us. This video is just really about some of the pharmaceutical approaches that have a significant effect, but potentially any one of these drugs in my drug guide, and there’s what 1,200 drugs in my New Zealand drug guide, that if you were in America, you could be looking at 2,000 pharmaceutical medicines. And a lot of these drugs do have an effect on the gut. If you’re taking a medicine long term and you’re suffering from gut problems, bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation, you need to go back to your doctor and ask if this drug is really necessary. Does this drug have side effects? Do a Google search for that drug. Spend a bit of time also looking at stress. You can read more articles on yeastinfection.org. Don’t forget to take my quiz on CandidaCrusher.com because there are a few questions in there relating to stress and the gut and Candida to see what kind of effects you’re potentially experiencing from stress, from drugs, from things like that. And then make some informed decisions.
Think about what you’re doing and what changes you can make to improve this incredible organ that we have here called a microbiome. We want to get the bacteria right in the gut. It’s your main foundation for health. There is no point in taking natural or pharmaceutical drugs for symptoms. It’s about restoring gut function. It’s one of the key tenets of naturopathy. Eat well. Drink well. Live well. Sleep well. Breathe well. All of those things need to be done right before you even look at taking medications.