Greetings, greetings, greetings. Eric Bakker, naturopath, author of Candida Crusher and formulator of the Canxida range of products and I’m from New Zealand. I’ve got a question here from a lady in a place called San Antonio. I think that’s in Texas. It reminds me of the 1973 Dooby Brothers’ song, China Grove. I think it’s got San Anton in it. Pretty cool band. Marcie Hughes is the lady’s name. I think a typical American name. I’ve never heard anyone in Australia or New Zealand called Marcie, so it must be an American name, Marcie. Is it in Texas? I think it’s in Texas.
Marcie’s asking me “Eric, is fatigue related to Candida? Can Candida cause crazy fatigue tiredness? Marcie, let’s first have a look at what fatigue constitutes because there are different kinds of fatigue. There is also fatigue, tiredness, and there’s weakness, so these are three different concepts we’re going to talk a little bit about today. Fatigue is very common with many different types of conditions. In fact, it’s so common Doctors are sick and tired of hearing the word “fatigue”.
Dr. Wilson, my good adrenal fatigue friend, once said to me “Don’t go to a doctor and tell him you’re tired. If you go there, they’ll say ‘Go away and send me someone in who’s really sick’.” Isn’t it crazy? Doctors don’t even see fatigue or tiredness or being a symptom anymore. They just say, “Everyone’s tired. Go away. I’m sick and tired of you guys. Go away.”
They did a survey in 1998 in New Zealand and I’m sure this would count for many western countries and they found that nearly 60 percent of doctors and specialist doctors suffered from burnout or fatigue. So if you’re in that 60 percent bracket, if you’re a doctor watching this now, how the hell could you recognized tiredness in someone when you’re so exhausted yourself. I’ve got a lot of energy. I never get tired. Of course, I get tired, but I mean I don’t really suffer from a lack of energy. I think it’s because of my diet and my lifestyle. I’m pretty sure that’s got a lot to do with it. I’ve learned not to burn the candle at both ends. I’ve learned to get to bed on time and to develop very good sleep habits. I relax in the afternoons. I try to have a small meditation session every day. It’s vital for recharging up your battery. We’ll talk about that later.
Fatigue often comes from improper diet and lifestyle. You see all my books on my shelves. A lot of the books I’ve looked at, the older books, all talk about the value of cultivating good sleep habits. They talk about the value of eating good meals. They talk about basic stuff and that’s what people have done for a long time in my industry, but I keep hammering on in all my videos that common sense isn’t very common. We live in a time of smart phones with dumb people. A lot of people don’t really understand that these stupid cell phones – you walk around everywhere and you see people looking at them night and day. People don’t switch off from technology anymore.
Steven Hawking, the professor, a very clever guy in the wheelchair. I just watched a video of Steve saying that we’ve been getting dumber and dumber. We’re not thinking anymore about our health, our lives, our environment. In fact, the way we’re going, the world’s finished within 100 years. Humanity as we know it is doomed, it’s finished unless we make serious change. Even though we think we’re becoming more intelligent and rely more on technology, I think we’re becoming more stupid when it comes to our bodies when it comes to health. We are still creatures. We’re animals. We need to live a natural life in a natural world. We can’t divorce ourselves from that. We’re not cyborgs or robots yet. As soon as we stray away from these paths and try to stay up later with yawning but keep on staying up. We’ve got to keep on going. That’s when we’re pushing into the zone of fatigue.
How many people watching this now have got one of these? This is an iPhone. How many people have got an iPhone? Hands up. I bet you everyone puts their hands up watching this. You’ve either got an android like a Samsung or an iPhone or whatever. How many people out there with one of those devices would not charge it up every day if they use it all the time? They’re texting. They’re reading emails. They’re working on it. You would charge it up every day. Every single day you charge it up. What do you do? You look at the bars, 99 percent. I’m looking good.
Now I love to see humans being created with some sort of device on their arm with bars, one bar, two bars, four bars. Oh, I’ve got full power today. I’m really good to go. But you know what, I think most people wake up with two bars or three bars and then they discharge their energy and then halfway during the day, they’ve got no energy left. So they have a couple of cups of coffee and a muffin or they take some uppers or pills or whatever they take to think they can develop energy. You develop energy by walking every day, by sleeping every day, by chewing food properly every day, by breathing correctly every day, by drinking plenty of water, by doing basic health habits. That’s how you develop energy. A healthy body generates ample energy and it will conserve that energy, save it for you when you need it, when you want to discharge it.
The first thing I would say to you, Marcie, with the fatigue is to check out your digestive function to make sure that you’re eating properly, you’re chewing properly, eating at regular times, eating quality food, you’re not relying on seven or eight cups of coffee a day. It’s not going to work. That’s the first thing I’m going to get you to do. Fatigue, tiredness and weakness, they’re three different creatures altogether.
Weakness to me is more like you’re finding it difficult to pick objects up. You’re going through your knees occasionally when you’re walking. You haven’t got a lot of stability, a lot of core strength. You find it difficult to walk up hills. Weakness often goes with unfitness. It can also go with deficiencies of the macro minerals like potassium, sodium, calcium and magnesium. Those four macro minerals need to be in great shape in your body for you not to be weak, so just remember that.
The big minerals have a lot to do with weakness. Digestion comes into weakness as well. You need to have great absorption and utilization of what you’re getting from your diet. Engines need great internal combustion to deliver the power that fuel creates to the wheel. Really good engines have got a very powerful ability to convert reciprocating motion into rotary motion. That’s the principle of an internal combustion engine.
People with healthy cells like me have got a great ability to convert glucose through the mitochondria into a very powerful spark of energy that ignites the body on multiple levels, gives you a lot of energy, but that process has to work. You need to have a lot of magnesium, a lot of B vitamins, everything has got to be in place. Good nutrition, good power. Good digestion, excellent power. Just remember that. Poor gut function, that’s where you’ve got to start to get that working.
Fatigue and weakness are different things. Generally, when I hear the word “fatigue” I’m starting to think about an adrenal problem. I’m thinking thyroid dysfunction. Those are the two major glands that are coming into fatigue. Endocrine dysfunction, hormonal problems. Weakness, think a little bit more about a chemical dysfunction. The fatigue, think more endocrine dysfunction. Tiredness can be a combination of both. Tiredness generally would be you’ve worked hard, you’re tired. Tiredness is okay as long as you recover fully and the tiredness goes away. Chronic fatigue people are often tired. They’ve got fatigue, but they’re tired. You now understand the difference between tiredness, fatigue and weakness?
Tiredness you recover from. Fatigue can be chronic fatigue, can be long term fatigue. Weakness also you can recover from. But fatigue can be of long duration. The first thing I would say to you is yes, Candida can certainly cause fatigue, very much so. But any kind of gut dysfunction can cause fatigue. Bad bacteria, parasites, insufficient level of beneficial bacteria, and yeast infections often have an element of fatigue there.
Yeast infections often have an element there also of tiredness and of weakness. So all those three concepts can be involved with Candida. If in doubt, maybe do some stool testing to see if your gut is okay. Fifty percent of the stool tests I’ve been checking lately have no Candida at all. Have in fact got poor beneficial bacteria. And a lot of people have been dumbfounded to get the results back and say, “What? No Candida. This test is wrong. It’s crap.” In fact, it’s not crap. They were basically misguided. They heard around that everything is a Candida problem. But it may not be at all. Never jump to conclusions. Don’t do that. They say it’s a good way to get exercise. Jump to conclusions. You’re jumping. Fly off the handle. Good way to get exercise. Flying and jumping, but don’t do it. You’ve got to think carefully.
You know what they say about assuming? If you assume something, you make an ass out of you and me, is assume. So be careful, never make assumptions. Never make assumptions when it comes to your health. Many times I’ve found people have entirely causes of problems than they originally thought.
What are we going to do to fix up the crazy fatigue with the Candida? Well, as I mentioned. First thing, do some assessments on the body. Maybe do a bit of checking out. Make sure that your lifestyle and diet is conducive toward recovery from this underlying problem and then let’s see what the energy does. The second thing that you can do is work on the sleep. You’ve got to cultivate that sleep habit. I don’t care if you’re going to bed at one or two o’clock every morning currently and you say you can’t sleep; you just make it a point in the afternoons of having a rest period. Even for 20 or 30 minutes, because this will bring your cortisol level down and then cause it to be more balanced later on in the evening. It’s very important for you to do that.
Saliva cortisol testing may be quite a good thing for you, too, if you can’t get your head around the fatigue and you want to know if it’s adrenal or not. Because you may well have very high or very low cortisol levels at inappropriate times of the day, so it could be another thing you could do. Gut testing, adrenal testing. I’ve worked now with over 10,000 patients with adrenal fatigue since learning about Dr. James Wilson’s work, and I’ve had outstanding results using his methods to help people recover from thyroid dysfunction and adrenal dysfunction. Best kept secret to chronic Candida, adrenal fatigue. Get that sorted.
I hope that answers your question, Marcie, and all the best in San Anton. Thanks very much.