Rheumatoid Arthritis and Candida Connection

Greetings! Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand. Author of Candida Crusher and formulator of the CanXida range of products. Thanks for coming back. We’re talking about autoimmunity. We’re going to talk about rheumatoid arthritis as being one of our first topics of autoimmune. I’ve been treating RA patients for as long as I can remember, probably close to 30 years. There’s osteoarthritis, the wear and tear arthritis, and there’s rheumatoid arthritis, the autoimmune arthritis. A big difference between them both.

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Osteoarthritis can affect males and females. Rheumatoid arthritis predominantly affects females. I’d say 90 percent. This is a condition that often runs in families. There is a strong genetic component to it and there’s usually a trigger. One or multiple triggers. I’m just trying to remember now what the particular marker is. I think it’s a HLA DR 1 to 4 is a genetic marker. There are different kinds of markers or genetic predispositions we find in particular disease and this is a HLA one.

The medical treatment is primarily aimed at reducing the inflammatory markers. Drugs often given can be older type drugs or newer type drugs that they use now. Some drugs they use now are aimed at blocking an inflammatory marker made by the white blood cells called tumor necrosis factor. The TNF alpha blockers are often used now with great effect. But the problem is, the side effects include cancer and diseases like that or opportunistic infections. Many times I’ve seen people on TNF blockers that end up with bad Candida infections. Candida is actually an opportunistic infection that’s actually linked with rheumatoid.

Proteus mirabilis is a bacterium that many times I’ve found in stool test results underpinning RA. RA being rheumatoid arthritis, but it’s also linked with Lyme’s disease and Yersinia and clostridium and strep and staph and Candida Albicans and many different types of opportunistic bugs can be there in the gut. Get in their leaky gut. When the person has got the particular gene susceptibility, bang! It’s almost like trying to catch a fish. That pathogen causes the inflammatory response and the genetic predisposition is there and bang! Off it goes. They set up this inflammatory cascade. And it will start affecting the small joints of the body causing all this immune dysfunction that they have. All the patient’s interested in doing is switching off that pain, that awful inflammatory pain.

Many times I’ve seen rheumatoid arthritis, I’ve tried to look for the hidden infection. And in many cases, found it in terms of Candida or something like Lyme disease or there will be some kind of marker there that we can actually find. Then we try to reduce that population. We try to shut the door for leaky gut. We try to get rid of the fungal problem. We try to change the diet. We try to modify the patient’s lifestyle. We try to improve their adrenal function because this is going to give the patient the ability to reduce their own inflammation by default naturally.

Many people with RA get very stressed. They get stressed because they’re in a lot of pain. They take a lot of medications. These can be drugs like methotrexate, which is like a chemo therapy drug. There is a malarial kind of a drug that they take there as well, Plaquenil is a drug used to treat malaria of all things. It can really mess up the eyes of the patient and the liver and other organs. This drug was often used for RA, but the patient gets dizzy. They get sick. They get weak. They feel like vomiting half the time. These drugs are given by the rheumatologist to treat rheumatoid arthritis. In the end, the side effects are so severe that nobody stays on Plaquenil or methotrexate. They get off these drugs. Then they move onto the DMAR drugs, or the disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs. These can involve things like the TNF alpha blockers or many other drugs that are being developed right now.

What the hell do you do if you’ve got rheumatoid arthritis? Have I got the solution? I don’t know if I’ve got a solution at all. I never use the “C” word, the “cure” word, but what I can tell you is I can help people with rheumatoid arthritis significantly by helping first them to understand they need to reduce the need for taking drugs on a long term basis. Short term medications, I think, are quite effective, but long term it’s a no brainer. You can’t stay on powerful drugs long term any more than you can stay on an American Express card at a 25 percent interest rate for too long. It’s going to fry you up. You can’t do it. Unless you’re Donald Trump. I always bring Donald Trump into these discussions.

You know what I mean. You need to think carefully the more powerful the medication, i.e., high interest rate, the less likely you can really remain on this kind of treatment. It’s really a balance between pain relief and side effects. I’m not against drugs. I’m against drugs that create serious sickness and side effects in their own right. Fish oils, anti-inflammatory by nature, Omega 3, start at one gram, move up to three grams per day. Turmeric extract has proven to have very good inflammatory reaction. In fact, it works on TNF, so it is an anti-TNF in its own right. I think it’s called the BCM 95, turmeric extract. So you can get good high turmeric extracts today that have a very good anti-inflammatory effect.

Here’s a tip for you. One teaspoon of turmeric powder. Mix it with a bit of coconut oil on a Monday. On the Tuesday, one teaspoon of ginger powder mixed in a little bit of coconut oil. On the Wednesday, go back to the Turmeric. On the Thursday go back to the ginger, so alternate turmeric and ginger every 24 to 48 hours and watch what happens in two to three weeks. You could get a bit farty or bloaty for a week or two, back off the dosages, but you’ll find that, in time, that particular protocol alongside fish oil is going to give you a good anti-inflammatory effect. But don’t tell too many people because it might mean a drop in sales. I think TNF blockers in 2009 alone was something like $22 billion worldwide. God knows what it is now. It could be up around the trillions of dollars.

There’s no money in turmeric. There’s no money in ginger for companies. There’s a lot of money in peddling drugs that have powerful effects. Think about that. Think about what we spoke about. Reducing your need for these powerful drugs.

Understanding the connection between the adrenals and a good cortisol response and producing the body’s own ability to reduce inflammation. Shutting the door on leaky gut. Identifying Candida or SIBO or underlying gut issues and cleansing them. Check out the CanXida products I’ve made because they have a nice effect on cleaning up Candida and many different types of imbalance staph and strep in the gut. Parasites. It’s going to help to clean that gut right up. A clean gut is a very good start in your quest in helping to reduce the need for strong medication. Changing the way you eat. Changing your lifestyle. I’ve done many videos on this topic. So if you’re new to the channel, please check out some of my videos on stress, adrenal fatigue, leaky gut. There are hundreds of videos on this.

If you’re got RA and you’re watching this right now, I want you to know that you can make a big difference in the amount of pain you experience over time, but the sooner you get onto it the better. There’s no point in trying to work on rheumatoid arthritis when you’ve got crippling gnarly fingers and you can’t even undo a lid off the jam jar. You shouldn’t be eating jam anyway. What am I saying! Undo the lid off a yogurt jar. If you’ve got a huge amount of disfiguration already in the joints, it’s probably going to be too late for you. But if you’re just starting out and you’re a young lady watching this video, I hope I’ve been an inspiration to you to let you know that you can make a big difference with rheumatoid if you get onto it early enough. I hope that gives you a bit of an insight. I’ve helped a lot of people with RA and I’ve seen many people get benefit when they’ve got onto it sooner rather than later. That’s it for this video. Thanks for tuning in. Click on the link below if you haven’t got my free Candida report. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next video. Thank you.

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