Hi, there. It’s Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand. I’m the author of Candida Crusher and I’m the formulator of the Canxida range of supplements. Thanks for checking out my video. Today we’re going to talk about five different reasons why diet is totally insufficient to treat SIBO.
I spent a bit of time of Facebook. Not that I spend a lot of time on Facebook, but I sometimes put pictures of my parrots on there and things like that. People who own parrots are crazy people. They like to share that kind of information with other people. You might be a cat person or a snake person. I met a very interesting lady in Canada recently whose very much into reptiles, snakes and stuff. There is a lot of interesting people out there.
Everybody is so hung up on diet when it comes to SIBO and Candida and IBS. It’s diet, diet, diet. There’s a very interesting Candida website I recently looked at and there was no mention of lifestyle. It was all about eat this food, eat that brand of food. It’s interesting how people become so fixated on diet. I had a recent patient from the States who said, “I can’t understand why I’m not getting better. I got the best possible diet and I exercise every day.” In fact, she looked very healthy, but her whole focus was on eating the right kind of food and going to the gym twice per day and she thought that was going to make her better.
Many people tend to walk around with these blinkers on when they’re really focused on food. I think the media plays a big role in that, too, to help us focus. We’ve got all these cooking shows with these eliminations of cutting people out who didn’t puree some whale’s egg properly and put it on top of some stupid thing. People crying because they can’t cook omelets properly on these shows. So many cooking show on TV today. So much interest in what chefs do. So much interest in looking at different kinds of foods today. At a health show that was in Anaheim recently, thousands of stands with all sorts of new kinds of cookies, breads, crackers made from quinoa, all sorts of interesting stuff. There’s no doubt about it. We’ve got a lot of scope for good food today, but there’s too much emphasis placed on food.
Now we’re going to have a look at a couple of reasons why diet is not sufficient for working on SIBO properly. Let’s have a look at one important factor is your overall health and wellbeing. It is true that food is medicine and medicine is food. It is true that food is a cornerstone or foundation or a pillar of good health, but it’s only one pillar. There are several other pillars that you need to think about. A very important other pillar in my mind is emotional well-being. There are a lot of people that are pissed off out there that live their life with anxiety, with stress. Lots of patients I see have fears and anxieties. This is going to affect the gut quite profoundly. There could be many reasons why you have these fears and anxieties. Lots of people with bad digestive disturbances have anxiety and we know that the gut will affect the mind and the mind affect the gut. Some of these patients I see have been trying to treat the gut along with anxiety medications from the doctor for many years and they get no result. In these cases, we clearly need to look at a lot more than just diet. There are a lot of unhappy people out there in the world today for many different reasons. If you’re not happy, your digestive system can never be happy. That’s one thing I want you to think about is the emotional health and well-being.
Number two and three really go together. Stress and sleep. I’ve really called them separate points because we’re living in an age where many people just don’t get enough sleep and don’t get good quality sleep. When I started practicing, it would have been about one in five people had a sleeping issue. Now, it’s more like 60 percent of people. It’s over half of people I see now that don’t sleep properly anymore. They’ve got disturbed sleep. A lot of people wake up early in the morning. Many people can’t get to sleep promptly at night because their mind is taking over. Many people get to bed too late. Many people have used technology in bed. Now, we’ve got all these ridiculous wearable technologies. These phones and things like that. Next thing, we’ll have electronic underwear to wear to bed. Look at the way it’s going. We’ve got iPads in bed. We’ve got iPhones in bed. We’ll have iUnderwear in bed. It’s ridiculous.
They’re talking about these glasses now that you can look through with displays on them and things like that. TVs will be gone in the future. You’ll be watching all your movies in your glasses in your bed. It’s getting to be ridiculous, this technology. A really good point I like to make is we’re stressing ourselves out with technology. Technology was supposed to help us. But in fact, it’s making us more sick. It’s making us less effective as people in many different ways. I really believe that. A sensible and intelligent use of technology is important.
Stress in my mind is one of the number one reasons why many people maintain gut problems for a long time and don’t get rid of it. They try to eat food, but they try to look at their lifestyle. They don’t look at their personal and professional relationships. Many people I see are unhappy with their jobs. Unhappy with their partner. Unhappy with their kids. Unhappy with their in-laws. There’s some degree of unhappiness causing them stress. The worst stresses tend to be the emotional stresses, the psychological stresses. Stresses often also come from not earning enough money, unmet expectations. There are many issues that cause stress.
Stress also comes in many different shapes and sizes. We can have stress caused by mercury amalgam fillings. We can have geopathic stress. We can have nutritional deficiency stress. We can have stress from drinking too much alcohol because our liver is under stress. We can have stress from air pollution. I was in Los Angeles a few weeks ago and I couldn’t believe how toxic the air was over there. You fly in there and you’ve got this big brown band on the horizon. There is nearly four million people in that city. If you live in a bid city, you’re going to be under quite a bit of stress. Stress comes packaged in many different shapes and sizes. Stress is not necessarily somebody behind you in a car beeping their horn. Stress can be a lot of different things. That will have a profound effect on your digestive system. You can see some of my other videos explaining the link between stress and the gut. There’s a huge link there.
Sleep we’ve talked about. I believe technology is the big part of sleeping problems today. Try to do the right thing and get to bed on time and not stay up too late.
Chemicals will be the fourth point. Many people contain or harbor many different types of chemicals in their body. Tens of thousands of different chemicals are in the environment. Every year, thousands of new chemicals get released into the market and many of them have never even been adequately tested on women and children. These make their way into the food chain, into the water chain. It’s been said that even the drinking water in a lot of cities now contain oral contraceptive pills and up to 10 to 15 different types of mental health pills are in the water, anxiety pills, anti-depressant pills, a lot of these chemicals cannot be filtered out. Where do they go? They go into your body. It’s incredible. As the population of the world increases, so does the chemical density in our bodies. Places a lot of stress on our organs. Regular cleansing and detoxification is going to help you get on top of your health problems because it will allow your immune system to work more effectively. A good cleansing regime is paramount if you want to really shake off SIBO or any kind of gut problem.
The last one really is similar as the chemicals. It’s medications. We’re an overmedicated society. Many people take far too many medicines. I was at a neighbor’s house yesterday saying goodbye because we have a neighbor moving out. I met another gentleman there, an 86-year-old man in wonderful health. I said to him, “Ari, what is the secret to living to 86 and being as healthy and happy as you are?” He said to me, “Two things. Happy wife. Number two, relaxation.” He said, “I don’t take any medication. I’ve never taken any pills.” I said, “How can you be 86 and not take medications? Everyone takes medications beyond 70.” He said, “I’ve got a quiet place in the yard where I sit and I completely relax. The art of relaxation in my mind is the number one for health.” This is a very wise man. He’s worked it out. There’s no point worrying about things. We’re all going to die anyway. We might as well just relax and take our time doing things.
If we do relax, we’ll find we don’t really get stressed out a lot about things. Also, we’ll find we don’t need a lot of medications for blood pressure or being overweight because we’re stuffing our mouths with food because we’re unhappy. Eighty-six million Americans are prediabetic. Twenty-nine million Americans have got diabetes. This is 140 million people. A lot of unhappy people in America and in Europe and in many countries around the world. Type II diabetes is a disease of lifestyle. You’re too big. You’re too overweight. There are many reasons why people gain this kind of weight. In my dad’s case, he was unhappy. He was depressed. He’d had multiple marriages that failed. How did dad get happy? By having a container of ice cream for lunch every day. That’s how he got happy. That’s how a lot of people get happy. That’s why he needed medications. The medications led to death when he was 72.
I want you to think about some of these factors that we’ve spoken about. If you look at my dad’s case, he wasn’t a happy guy so he didn’t have the emotional health there. He ate the wrong kind of foods, carbohydrates. He gained a massive amount of weight that led to about half a dozen medication, which eventually killed him.
Those points are things I’d like you consider instead of just diet when it comes to SIBO. Diet does play a role in SIBO. You’d be crazy to eat ice cream every day. But also you’d be also crazy and foolish to believe that if you ate a perfect diet that the SIBO would go away because it’s not going to happen. You’ve got to look at a lot more than just what you eat if you’re going to get well.
Thanks for watching the video. Don’t forget to click on the link down below for your free Candida report. Be sure to check out my other videos on SIBO as well. Thanks for tuning in.