Can I Pumpkin If I have Candida?

Greetings. Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand, author of Candida Crusher, formulator of the Canxida range of products. It’s good to be back. Thanks for tuning in. We’re going to talk about pumpkin today, so those big, orange things that people like to carve faces in at Halloween. Pumpkin soup is awesome. We’re in winter now in New Zealand and I really like pumpkin soup. But should you have it on the Candida diet or not? If so, when can you have it? When should you avoid it?

Pumpkin is a starchy carbohydrate, not unlike squash. Not unlike things like sweet corn. There are many different kinds of starchy carbohydrate like this. Sweet potato, you could consider a bit like that. They’re quite sweet. People like them. When they cut out a lot of sugars from their diet, they’re drawn to starchy carbs.

When should you have them? When should you avoid them? Well, it really depends on you. If you’re a bloaty or farty person, if you’ve got lots of gut issues, you need to be careful with these sweet carbs, especially when you start to make diet changes and you want to eradicate a yeast infection or clear up SIBO or parasites. I recommend that initially you do an assessment, like a stool test to assess what’s going on in your gut. I also recommend that you clean your diet up in general. So if you currently are eating pumpkin and you want to get rid of Candida, first get rid of the general crap out of the diet, the stuff that you know you need to avoid like chocolate, like alcohol, like sugars, junk food, take away foods in general. Start cooking at home meals from scratch. Make home cooked meals like your grandparents probably made. These are basic things that you need to start doing before you just chop and change things out of your diet.

When you do all these kind of things, let’s see what your digestion is like then because you may not need to take pumpkin out of your diet right up front. Be careful about anyone who tells you to make dramatic lifestyle and diet changes very quick, so you can quickly recover. You need to avoid people like that. It’s almost like they’re trying to convert you or something like brainwash you religiously or something, so be careful. You need to make change slowly. The bacteria in your gut will not like it when you make massive changes very quickly. Any more than your muscles won’t like it when you start going on a massive exercise program. If your doctor tells you to lose a few pounds and exercise, you’re not going to join the gym the following week and then start training three hours a day and then do half marathons within a month. Only idiots do stuff like that. To my mind, only idiots are the ones who make massive overnight diet changes. You don’t do it. You make slow change. I’ve said this a hundred times on my videos before. Never make very quick changes with your diet.

Some people have too much pumpkin in their diet. In those cases, they may need to cut pumpkin consumption back. But in my mind, most people don’t consume large amounts of pumpkin every day all the time. Pumpkin is a wonderful food. I really like the butternut pumpkins like the long ones that have go the nice female shape about them. The tall ones, they got that creamy colored skin. I peel them and cook those in a pan with a bit of butter, with a bit of pepper in there and then just basically cream that up. You can actually put rice milk with it, oat milk with it. You can put cow’s milk with it and then blend that up. It’s very, very nice. It makes a beautiful soup.

If you’ve got a lot of gut issues and you are eating pumpkin, it may pay for you to cut back on squash or pumpkin or sweet corn right up front. Just halve the amount that you’re having and see if that makes a difference in your life. If you’ve got major gut issues, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel, done a stool test and found that you’ve got loads of Candida that cultured, you’ve got low levels of beneficial bacteria or if you’ve got just a serious gut problem in general, work toward over about a six-week period to eliminate the starchy vegetables completely from your diet. All the starchy vegetables, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, squash, sometimes even zucchini. Just be careful. If you’re very much drawn to one particular starchy vegetable or even starchy carb like rice and you’ve got major gut issues, just slowly wind this back over a period of four to six weeks until you’ve stopped that. And then substitute that sweet starchy maybe for a green leafy vegetable and that can make a big difference by putting spinach in there or broccoli in there or beans in there or cauliflower or things like that. That should make a difference. If you’ve noticed a relationship with cutting back on pumpkin and gas and bloating and flatulence, that’s a good sign that it was not really conducive toward good gut health. You can always introduce it down the track as your health improves and see how you feel.

I’ve said this also previously, but I’m modifying by changing how you prepare that food, it can have a big effect on the gut, too. For example, baking pumpkin as opposed to making a pumpkin soup, can have a big difference in terms of how it affects your gut. Maybe if you have pumpkin soup, you’re bloating and farting more. But if you bake the pumpkin, you notice that that drops off. That means that you can modify that starch with a cooking method and it may have a different outcome in terms of the effects on the gut. Worth thinking about.

Just to recap. Should you avoid pumpkin? Can you have it on the Candida diet? In many cases, you can, but you need to just seriously reduce the amount. For best effects, probably better to really cut right back or even stop as you’re introducing the Candida diet. Pull these things right back and focus on other kinds of vegetables because they do have quite a lot of sugar in them. For some people, this form of sugar is not too bad, as opposed to white sugar or bread. For other people, it’s not so good. But only you will be able to know that by cutting back and watching the relationship between cause and effect.

I hope this video has been of use to you today. Thanks for tuning in. Don’t forget to click on the link below for my Candida report if you haven’t already got it and please subscribe. Thanks for tuning in.

Pharmaceutical Drug for Candida Eradication

Greetings. Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand, author of Candida Crusher. Thanks for checking out my video once again. I also want to thank everybody for all the wonderful comments I’m getting on the YouTube channel. I really appreciate them. I’ll try to answer them as much as I can. Apart from the crazy ones that I just delete, which I get every now and them.

Today, we’re going to talk about pharmaceutical medications. Pharmaceutical drugs and their interactions. This is an area that not many people talk about and it’s also an area that I don’t think many people in the natural medicine business are familiar with or dabble in or get involved in and that’s pharmaceutical medications.

Many people take pharmaceutical drugs. Now, I’m not one of these people who are either for or against pharmaceutical medications because many people long term will take some kind of a drug, whether it be a sleeping pill, an antidepressant. It could be a drug to regulate thyroid function, for example. It could be a drug for epilepsy, an anticonvulsant. It could be insulin to regulate their Type 1 diabetes. There are many reasons people take pharmaceutical medications.

People can also take pharmaceutical medications to switch off pain like headaches, period pain, or back pain. If you live in the States, particularly, have you seen an advertisement just to take a pill if you’ve got a headache or just to take a pill for your period pain. We get these ads here on TV in New Zealand as well. It’s crazy how many advertisements I see for pharmaceutical drugs. They’re even advertising antipsychotic medication on TV. Check to see with your doctor if you’ve got schizophrenia and this drug might be suitable for you. Then you see all the tiny little side effects down on the bottom. That is inappropriate.

But what we’re going to talk about is the interactions of pharmaceutical medications, particularly with diet and lifestyle and also natural medicine supplements. This is something I see a lot of patients being affected by. Only the other day, I had a young man I saw who developed convulsions. He came to me and he said, “Eric, I’m in my…” He’s a bit younger than me, about 50 and he developed convulsions and it’s something he’s never had it before. He had it about three or four weeks ago. I was quite alarmed so I said, “Well, let’s just have a look what’s going on.” When I took the case, I had a really good look at the medications he was taking. He was taking an antidepressant and a sleeping pill. And then when I inquired further about his lifestyle, I found that he was drinking beer. The doctor didn’t actually tell him that you couldn’t drink alcohol with the strong medications he was on.

A few weeks prior to the convulsions, he was drinking beer on a regular basis and then he was working with son working in the yard building a fence or something. It was quite warm weather. He drank about 10 or 15 beers over a period of a weekend. And then, he developed a major convulsion, a major convulsion. Lying on the ground writhing away. His son had to call the ambulance. Of course a trip to the doctor and the doctor basically said, “Well, that’s it. You’ve lost your driver’s license for 12 months.” And this guy was pretty devastated about that. But when we had a good look at the case, it was clear cut interaction between the antidepressant the and alcohol.

If you’re drinking alcohol, even small amounts of alcohol, let’s just say a glass of wine once or twice a week, a couple of cans of beer once or twice a week, and you’re taking any kind of pharmaceutical medication, you’re really walking a tightrope. It’s a very dangerous risky game. Why is that? That’s because drugs have to be metabolized by the liver, but the liver is also the same organ that helps to metabolize alcohol. Those two things often clash. If you look in the drug guide – your doctor will have one of these drug guides and the drug guide clearly states with many medications that you need to avoid drinking alcohol, but this is not told to many people.

But it’s not just alcohol. You may be eating far too much of one particular food, for example. I’ve seen some interactions with a high fat and even a Paleo diet with people taking multiple medications at the same time. If you’re taking a pharmaceutical medication, what I’d like you to do is go to drugs.com or go to a different website than that and print out all the information on adverse effects and reactions, just print out all the pages. And then get yourself one of these highlighters and then I want you to highlight all of the relevant areas, all the areas that stand out to you.

When I spoke with this young man who had the convulsion, I looked the drug up in the book and I said, “Do you suffer from da, da, da, da, all these side effects?” He said, “Eric, I’ve got all of those. Every single one of them.” And I said, “Well, why didn’t you talk to your doctor about it?” “Well, I did, but the doctor didn’t see a link.” Many doctors don’t see the links between side effects and drugs. What they will do is give a subsequent drug to treat that new disease. And then sometimes I’ve seen people being treated for side effects of drugs that were given to treat side effects of drugs. That’s how crazy it is.

Also be careful taking natural medicines when you’re taking pharmaceutical medicines because there can be an interaction there as well, so you need to check with your practitioner first if you’re taking any kind of drug long term to see (A) is it interacting with any kind of foods or drinks you’re taking on a regular basis. It could be tea, coffee or alcohol. It could be different kinds of foods you’re eating. You may have noticed that when you started taking that drug, the symptoms got worse that you already had or other symptoms appeared. You need to talk to your doctor about that; (B) you need to make sure the drugs you’re taking if you’re taking more than one don’t interact together. This is a very, very important thing to do; and (C) if you’re coming to someone like me for a consultation or a naturopath or a doctor and you’ve developed these symptoms, make sure they’re not related to the drug that you’re taking.

Classic symptoms are attached to classic drugs. For example, I’m interesting in growing rose, so I’ve noticed that some roses have got a very strong fragrance. Others have got other quite unusual habits how the petals will drop with a little bit of wind. Other roses clash when you put them together. The scents will clash. It’s the same with pharmaceutical drugs. A little bit of studying up and a bit of reading up and you’ll soon become – maybe not an expert, but you’re become an informed and aware person. Knowing what he or she is taking to see if there is any link between that and how you’re feeling. It’s very important to do that. Go back to your doctor and talk about these effects that you could be getting. They may be able to switch you to a drug, decrease the dosage or take you off that drug altogether, and that would be a really good thing for you to do.

I just thought I’d put this video up to alarm you about pharmaceutical drugs. I get these reports from people, particularly women taking the oral contraceptive pill, antidepressants, tablets like Zopiclone, sleeping pills. I get lots of people complaining about those with the side effects. Many medications. You could even be looking at acetaminophen, drugs like that. Paracetamol can cause a lot of problems. In fact, one of the leading causes of hospital admissions for liver failure in America is not alcohol. It’s in fact paracetamol or acetaminophen. You guys call it over there. That drug does not work at all with coffee, tea or alcohol. You can get very sick doing that. That’s very much Russian roulette. Check out the drug you’re on.

Leave some comments please and don’t forget to click on the link for your Candida report if you haven’t already done so and subscribe. Thanks for tuning in.

Artificial Sugars on Candida Diet Yes or No?

Greetings. It’s New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker, author of Candida Crusher, formulator of the Canxida range of dietary supplements. Thanks for checking out my video. Today, we’re going to talk about artificial sugars. Particularly artificial sugars and their relevance to Candida yeast infections. But also artificial sugars and their relevance to any kind of digestive problems or metabolic issues like obesity, weight gain, heart disease, many other conditions.

Contrary to what you may be fed by the media or by Wikipedia or sites like that, artificial sugars do create health problems and there are many, many different studies that actually substantiate these claims. If you’re a person who likes diet drinks or consume sucralose or there’s various names for these different types of chemical concoction that they put in food today. I recently saw a program where they had quite a large tub of water. I think it was like 5,000 liters of water and they literally put five buckets of sugar in there, mixed it up, and then had someone taste it and they went, “Wow, this is really sweet.” And then the lady in the lab said, “Yeah, this is how much sugar goes in Coca Cola. Now, we’re going to show you how much artificial sugar goes into diet drinks.” So she had a 5,000-liter tub of water and she only put like that much in a cup, just a tiny little bit of I think it was sucralose went into that 5,000 liters. And that was stirred around and the lady tasted it and went, “Wow, this tastes even sweeter. This is very sweet.”

These things can really, really make you feel like you’re having a lot of sugar when, in fact, you’re not, but they do create chemical changes inside your gut inside the body. They’re a very, very powerful sweet compound. One thing I don’t like about them is they actually make you think like you’re having a lot of sugar. Some studies have shown they actually increase the desire for more and more sweet stuff. You think about it. If something tastes really sweet, it means that you’re going to say, “Wow, that tastes good.” I’ve said in previous videos that when people tell me that they like the taste of something, it usually means it’s sweet. Usually, if someone likes the taste of something, it’s not because it’s very salty or high in fat or high in chili. It’s because it’s sweet and manufacturers know that.

What they’ve done very cleverly, certain companies that make soft drinks, for example, they’ve actually moved into these artificial sugars. And you’ll find it in chewing gum. You’ll find it in all kinds of diet products. You’ll find it in a lot of foods. I read a survey where it said something like up to three quarters of foods in the US contain some type of artificial sugar or high fructose corn syrup. Be very careful when you consume these sugars on a daily basis. They create a whole raft of different problems.

A study in 2014 looked at the effects of these artificial sugars on mice and humans and various other animals, but particularly mice and human beings. They found that blood sugars are actually raised more with the consumption of artificial sugar than with plain sugar. Blood sugar can be affected. How does it happen?

What we think happens and what science has proven through research. You can read it in the 2014 study. Just go Google artificial sugars and research and you’ll actually find this study on the internet. It actually changes the gut flora composition, so the bowel flora changes under the presence of artificial sugars. That’s really bad when you start altering your own microbiota. You’re leaving yourself wide open for a whole bunch of different problems. You’ve got your own gut flora.

What experts believe is the gut flora is determined at a very young age and it doesn’t really change that much over a person’s life. So when you start drinking diet drinks every day, you can actually manipulate the gut flora and create big health problems for yourself. Gut flora are responsible for a whole lot of different reactions in the body. We know that there’s a link between the gut and the brain through neurotransmitters or hormones. We know the gut flora are responsible for making folic acid and B vitamins. There are many, many different reasons why you need to keep a very healthy, stable gut microflora and these artificial sugars can alter that. A good reason not to have them.

What happens higher blood glucose actually occurs under the presence of this as I was saying. When you get more blood sugar in your bloodstream, it can make problems. It can certainly increase the risk of infections and particularly yeast infections that like to eat sugar. The other problem when you’re starting to change or manipulate the glucose levels in the blood artificially, you’re going to put a big stress on your endocrine system, on the adrenal glands, on the pancreas. Glands like that get affected. And we all know what happens when you start playing around with adrenals, especially playing around with cortisol and insulin with the pancreas. We’re going to get fatigue. We’re going to get obesity. We’re going to get metabolic syndrome. We’re going to get inappropriate inflammatory responses in the body that can lead to autoimmune diseases, heart disease, diabetes, cancer. It goes on and on.

I had a very good friend of mine pass away two years ago, Paul. Paul was 58 when he died. Paul was a Type 1 diabetic, so he was relying on insulin shots. Taking insulin in the morning. His slow release insulin, Avandia and then taking a couple of other shots during the day. Paul had a Masters in chemistry. He was a very clever man. He was a teacher, but Paul passed away. Paul was obese. Paul didn’t understand the link with obesity and health. Science doesn’t equate to common sense.

Paul always said to me, “There’s nothing wrong with Diet Coke, Eric. I’m perfectly fine with drinking two liters a day. I’m happy with it. My doctor told me that it would have no risk to my diabetes or heart disease.” And I said, “Paul, look at you. You look like a beach ball. You’ve got a round gut. Your face is all flushed and red. You can’t continue on like this. You’re going to have a heart attack.” Well, that’s what happened. Paul passed away of a heart attack. On one Sunday morning, he woke up and he passed away. And I was gutted. I felt so upset for his wife and his daughter that his happened at 58 years of age. Ignorance is bliss. Did Diet Coke contribute to Paul’s passing? Hard to say. The funny thing is Paul kept drinking two liters of it every day, if not more. And not only that, Paul loved sweet stuff. Paul loved food. He also liked to have deep fried chips. He liked take away food. And I believe that continually drinking these diet kind of drinks or artificial sugars, it fuels the desire for more and more. It’s almost an addiction. It fuels the addiction.

The other thing with artificial sugars is they increase digestive permeability. This has also been found through research that your gut becomes more permeable under the presence of Splenda, Sucralose, NutraSweet, Aspartame, all of these kinds of sweetening agents. Don’t chew chewing gum with this junk in it people. Keep away from this crap. You’re being deluded here that this sugar is okay for your health. Everyone will tell you that.

We were told for years that smoking was okay for your health. Go to YouTube and have a look at the 1960s ads. More doctors smoke Camel than any other cigarette. All this sort of junk. There’s even an ad on YouTube you can find on Coca Cola that I’ve pasted on my own Facebook page, my Eric Bakker, MD Facebook page and it’s showing you an attractive lady in her 20s drinking Coca Cola saying, “It’s good for me because it keeps the weight off. It helps to suppress my appetite.” People were actually fed this kind of junk back then, and now we know Coke contains about 17 teaspoons of sugar per can. It can’t be good. Back then, they peddled these kind of lies. Many people now believe artificial sugars are safe for them. The truth will come out eventually, so I just want you to be careful consuming any kind of artificial sugar. In my mind, it’s poison. It’s toxic. I wouldn’t even consider it.

Other reasons you want to avoid these kind of toxins in your diet. As I mentioned, increased risk for different autoimmune diseases, cancers, increased appetite as in Paul’s case, especially for sugar carbs. Paul loved Dunkin donuts. Paul loved all kinds of those box cereals, probably like Cheerios like you guys have in the States. Paul loved Kentucky Fried Chicken. Paul loved pizzas. He just loved carbohydrates. He couldn’t get enough. I believe he kept right away from the soda drinks and drank water more, maybe flavored with lemon juice or some minted orange floating in it. If Paul started to consume more berries and changed his eating habits, actually lost a bit of weight, Paul would’ve still been with us today.

Brain fog likely from intestinal permeability, so you can actually get brain fog. It has been associated with these artificial sugars. I had a lady contact me here in New Zealand about four or five years ago who was in the media, who was actually going to look for a law suit against a chewing gum manufacturer because after chewing one packet of a particular gum every day, she started to develop serious brain fog with major headaches. I’ve had several patients I’ve treated over the years with headaches that they thought they were going to die and they were consuming diet soda drinks. One patient drunk between two to four liters of diet drinks per day and she actually thought she had a brain tumor, so she went to about 20 doctors. She had brain scans. She even brought a bottle of diet drink into her doctor who said, “It’s perfectly fine. You can drink this stuff. It’s not linked to headaches.” The funny thing is, once we got her off the diet drinks, what do you think happened to the headaches? Food for thought.

I hope you’ve learned something from this video to please avoid artificial sugars for the sake of your brain health, for the sake of your endocrine health, for the sake of your gut health, for the sake of overall health, for the sake of not really maintaining problems like a yeast infection, for the sake of not pushing yourself into diabetes, into obesity. Don’t believe the hype. Just because experts say something is good, it doesn’t mean to say it’s good. Think about it. Food for thought.

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