What Are The Causes of IBS?

Greetings. Eric Bakker from New Zealand back again. We’re talking about irritable bowel syndrome. This time we’re going to talk about the causes of IBS. The way I see it, I’m just going to read some stuff I’ve got in my other computer on the four main causes of IBS the way I see it.

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Infections, especially if you’ve had a SIBO or a Candida problem, could be a real big issue. Number two, lactose intolerance. Number three, food allergies and food intolerances. Number four, stress. Let’s have a look at those four things because those are four huge areas. The four big reasons why people get irritable bowel syndrome.

I also write in my book if you go to a doctor, there’s a big chance that you may be diagnosed with NAD or no abnormal diagnosis and be sent away with Metamucil or some kind of bulking agent or something like that. That’s okay. It may work for some. But if you keep getting this problem coming back, you better darn well find out what the cause is because you don’t want to have this problem for a long period of time.

Most of my IBS patients know all the lavatories in town. They know where all the toilets are, all the restrooms. A lot of these people don’t even like going out in the morning for shopping or running errands or doing things like that. This can really mess up your life. This problem. One of the worst things you can have is to have a bowel that’s not functioning optimally, so it’s imperative that you find out what the cause is. Causes addressed make a lot more sense than just treatments. Why would you want to shoot in the dark at something? You’re better off putting the spotlight on it and then just getting it in your scope and shooting it and taking it out with one hit because you’ve identified your target.

It’s very important that you understand the causes need to be sorted out. For each person, those causes may be individual. There is no such thing as one cause fits the boat for everybody. Just like saying that everybody needs to wear a red jacket or black shoes. What a load of crap. Everybody will want to wear different kind of clothes. What do you think of my groovy shirt this morning? Tracy doesn’t like this shirt. She thinks it looks a bit crappy on me, but I quite like it. She’s away today so I can wear what I want. Yeah.

As I mentioned, the four main areas I look at are infections, lactose, food allergies and food intolerances, and stress. What they found through research is nearly 80 percent of people with irritable bowel syndrome have SIBO, had SIBO or have had SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth; 80 percent. About 25 to 30 percent of people with irritable bowel syndrome have Candida or had a Candida infection. There is a big chance someone with IBS had some kind of a gut problem.

Remember we talked about infections? Yeast, bacteria, parasites. You can have Candida, which many people have in their bowel not presenting a problem because it’s in balance. We’ve got hundreds of species of bacteria in our gut and these are kept in check by other bacteria, particularly beneficial bacteria. But when the balance goes out through antibiotics or stress or for another reason, this is when an infection or an overgrowth can happen.

Up to 18 to 20 percent of people with IBS have got a parasite problem. That’s nearly like 1 in 5 who’ve got a parasite. I can tell you from over thousands of stool tests I’ve done that many, many people I see with IBS have got a yeast infection, will have a bacterial problem, or a parasite problem. When we do the stool test, we get the results back. Bingo! We found the cause. We address that immediately and often in cases, there’s a big resolution of the symptoms. Maybe not a complete disappearance because it takes some time for bowel to come back into its own.

If you’ve had a problem higher up in the small intestine or you may have had a helicobacter infection of the stomach, you may have taken a drug for that, triple therapy or antibiotics, you may have also taken a drug like Rifaximin for SIBO. In about 40 to 50 percent of cases that will work, but I can’t tell you how many hundreds of patients I’ve seen that have been through a Rifaximin treatment or a different antibiotic treatment that initially worked but then it came back again. It’s like the alcoholic. “I’ll not drink it anymore. I swear I won’t drink.” And then they stop and then they start again. Infections are often like a recovering alcoholic. They will lie to you. They will tell you they’re not going to do it again, but then they come back and haunt you again and again. Just be careful.

When promises are made that if you take an antibiotic that you will conquer this thing, you will kill it. It will not come back. I can tell you a lot of people fall for this like and it comes back. The only way you’re going to get on top of an infection and nail it permanently is by first understanding what led you into that problem in the first place. That’s A. B, effective treatment to eradicate and get things in balance, and C, the most important one is to maintain a good lifestyle and diet for a long enough period of time, which stops a recurrence. That’s the intelligent approach. The dumb approach is just to take a drug and then to go back out there again and drink all your beers and have all your crappy foods and then have crappy relationships with people and not sleep and be on Facebook all the time liking people and stuff like that. When you’re leading a balanced lifestyle, you cannot get that gut back again.

The causes. Remember we talked about the infections. We talked about SIBO. But what about lactose? Lactose is a big problem with a lot of people. If you’ve got a lactose problem, you’ve got diarrhea. Generally, diarrhea. You can get constipation from lactose, but usually you’ll be farting, bloating, and loose stools. That’s the clear one with lactose.

I can’t really tolerate cow’s milk at all. I like a little bit of cow’s milk when I have porridge in the morning. I’ve had a habit for a while of putting raw milk onto my porridge, a creamy raw milk, but then I’m sniffing and clearing my throat. In some of my videos, you may have heard me sniffing or clearing my throat. That’s particularly so if I’ve had porridge that morning and I’ve had some raw milk. I’m one of those people who can’t tolerate milk. I don’t have any milk anymore in my life. I’ve just kicked it out completely. Hopefully, it will be the end of my sniffing and throat clearing.

Be careful of lactose and if you’ve got IBS, especially diarrhea and bloating, stop any dairy products for a while and see if that could be the cause. Simple. Just stop. Stop for about two months and see what happens to your gut. That includes cheese, all kinds of milks, just be careful, particularly cow’s milk. I wouldn’t go as far as to say stop goat’s milk. Butter is always fine. I don’t find butter a problem. I’ve never seen a butter allergy, but I’ve seen plenty of dairy allergies. That’s the primary one I want you to think about is lactose when it comes to IBS for many people, especially Asian people, fair skinned people. There are a lot of people who can’t really tolerate lactose. They may be drinking milk now and not even understanding the link between that and their diarrhea.

Third one, food allergies and food intolerances. People who’ve had SIBO for a while often develop leaky gut. People who drink alcohol. There are many reasons why you could get leaky gut. Leaky gut often leads to a big problem with tolerating foods. Many people get issues with their pancreas. You might see my little microscope thing here in the corner and wonder what the heal that is. I’ve been looking at eyes now for nearly 30 years, so I do eyedeology. One of the interesting things I find with many people is pancreatic dysfunction. That’s one of the glands that often shows up in the eye. The kidneys show up. The pancreas shows up.

I had a very interesting case a few days ago of a lady. I looked at the eyes and she was 63 and I said, “Something doesn’t add up here. I can’t see kidney function showing up. I can’t see pancreas showing up. It’s almost like you’re in your 20s or 30s. What’s happened?” She said, “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. I don’t drink any coffee or tea. I have no alcohol. I eat an extremely clean diet and I only drink water and occasionally herbal teas.” You could see it in the eye. That kind of lifestyle had paid off. Cause and effect. Food allergies, food intolerances. Check out my videos on those because you can see a lot of information I’ve already done on that.

Stress. Stress accounts for about 25 up to 30 percent of IBS. Did it initially cause IBS? No. I believe that it came along. There was a trigger. The person had a dysfunctional lifestyle for a while with their gut and because they were stressed often. Stress comes along and it just keeps the bowel in a dysfunctional state. When you’ve got IBS really bad like some of my patients have, it’s almost like living like a person whose got cancer on chemotherapy. Your quality of life is not really there. You become asocial. You don’t like going out eating. I wonder if there’s a Google ap where you can find all the toilets because that might be a good business idea for me to make an irritable bowel syndrome ap for people where all the toilets are.

The point I’m making is when you’ve got stress, you get autonomic dysfunction. I will have completed some videos on this topic already no doubt. Stress plays a massive role in initiating the problem to get out of hand and to maintain it to keep it in a bad position. Particularly if you’ve got a thyroid or an adrenal problem as well and you’re a nervous person, irritated person, you have insomnia, you have mood issues or cognitive dysfunction. If you’ve got those kinds of patterns and you’ve got irritable bowel syndrome, you don’t just want to target the gut. You want to target other causes that are higher up, which is going to help the bowel come back into its own good form again.

There is a huge link between the bowel and cognition. Many, many people I see with brain fog or can’t think with clarity have got a bowel problem. I’ve seen this quite a lot. Get your comprehensive stool analysis completed. I can’t stress that enough. If you want to really understand the cause of IBS, one of the first things I recommend you do is a comprehensive stool analysis, including parasitology, three samples. Get that done. It’s going to cost you a couple of hundred dollars, but you’ll have some answers. You’ll at least be able to eliminate that line of inquiry or say, “Hang on. What have I got here? I’ve got blastocysts. What the hell is that? Some kind of a weird food or something. What kind of bug is this?”

Establish the cause and then think about the treatment. Think about that. The next video we’re going to do in this series will be “Signs and symptoms of IBS.” Catch up with me in the next video. Click on the link down below if you haven’t already got my free Candida report. Thanks for tuning in.

Before you leave the page make sure to watch My TOP 5 Candida Fighting Foods. I share my 5 favorite foods that beat candida overgrowth. The video is on my youtube channel and you can click here to watch it. Let me know if you have any other questions.