Category Archives: Questions & Answers

Questions & Answers

Understanding How the Intestine Replaces and Repairs Itself

All right, well thanks for coming back and watching the videos. Did you know that the intestines, particularly the small intestine, will probably have more regeneration capacity to just about any other part of your body? It’s amazing. How do the intestines repair themselves? Well, every five, six, or seven days, the whole lining of the gut basically is replaced. And when you think about it, it makes sense because we eat a lot of food and we drink a lot of beverages and they all affect the lining of the gut, which is just a single cell layer thick. If we look at the small intestine in particular, there are lots of CRIPs. Okay. And there are lots of tiny little villus or like little hills and valleys. There are literally millions of these things right throughout the small bowel. But what they found at Harvard University a few years ago was amazing because they couldn’t understand the regenerative properties of the small bowel in particular or the whole GI tract, so to speak.

But what they discovered at the, right down there at the base of these CRIPs, they found STEM cells. So STEM cells are quite interesting. We’ve got two types. We’ve got the embryonic ones which can really differentiate into many different types of cells, and we’ve got the adult STEM cells which have got more limited powers, really of what they can do. But it’s these adult STEM cells that can convert to other STEM cells or convert into intestinal cells, and that’s what they’ve discovered. That’s the beauty of the gut is this constant reproduction of these cells and the regeneration of that lining, the epithelial lining. And this is the lining that you really want to keep intact. It’s a little bit like when you drive your motor car or motorbike or whatever you drive, you want to keep the rubber and especially the tread on the tire intact. Don’t you?

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Imagine if you drove your car full of people with bald tires at 60 miles an hour in the pouring rain and then a rabbit hops out in front of you or something or whatever. What would happen? Bang. Because you’ve got no ability to really slow down or to maneuver that car properly, because where the rubber meets the road, it’s not really looking good. Now the intestines are the same you want to keep that epithelial layer healthy and intact. You want to keep a lot of bacteria there that need to be there to allow that process to work, and that’s where the proper diet comes in because it will really help to rebuild and rejuvenate that gut.

Allowing a lot of fermented and cultured foods and high fiber foods into the diet will really enhance that process of cells going out of the body, the dead cells, the slowing off process in that, the whole cleansing. Needless to say, when you eat poor food, you’re not contributing towards a healthy regeneration of the epithelial lining. But there you have it. It’s the STEM cells and that was an interesting discovery a couple of years ago. So, and now of course they’re going to dig a lot deeper and find out more about these STEM cells and their potential, which will be great for people with inflammatory bowel disease in particular. All right thanks for tuning in, I always appreciate it.

Questions & Answers

Is Coffee Okay for SIBO?

Eric Bakker, the naturopath. Thanks for coming back. Is coffee okay for SIBO? Can you drink coffee? Well, I’ve just been reading some interesting websites. I take 50-50. 50% of experts say it’s crap. 50% say the jury’s out that it’s okay. It’s a personal thing. If you were an Avast, the average naturopath 10-20 years ago what they thought coffee was, they would have walked away, thought you said that you were going to a brothel or something like that. That you were going to a bad place. But now people are thinking different.

Why? Why all of a sudden is coffee not a four letter word anymore? Well probably because science is validating coffee now to be actually a high in antioxidant food, anti inflammatory food. It is acidic. Yes, but then again, living in general is acidic. Walking in Los Angeles in the middle of the days are highly acidic. Everything we do is acidic. We can’t stop those sort of things.

Remember one thing in life, it’s all about we’ve only got a short amount of time on this planet, and it’s what we do and how we enjoy ourselves that makes the difference. And one cup of really good coffee a day for me… If you took that away from me, that’d be like saying, “Well, you’re going to the electric chair in 12 months.” It’s not a nice thing, is it? The thing is coffee doesn’t kill people nor do guns. But people who use guns in appropriately killed people. Just like people who drink 25 to 30 cups of coffee a day can end up killing themselves and that’s no crap. I have actually had a patient that drunk 30 cups of instant coffee a day. Ridiculous but true. One or two cups of coffee a day for most people is perfectly fine, especially if it’s well-made.

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I’ve got a nice espresso machine. Tracy and I really enjoy a nice coffee in the morning, usually around 8:30 AM, 9:00 AM. It’s freshly ground beans, really good quality non-homogenized, Jersey milk, full cream cow’s milk made with zero total dissolved solids in the water. Zero TDS or ultra pure water, high quality milk. Superb coffee made well. You cannot beat it. There’s no way you can beat that. You go to Starbucks or crappy joints like this where they put chemicals or they probably spray crappy chemicals in the air there. They’ve got chemicals in their food, they’ve got chemicals in their coffee. The last time I had a coffee at Starbucks, I took it to the laboratory and tipped it out. It was crap. I’ve yet to find a place in America-this is going to sound rich-particularly Los Angeles, where they actually make really good coffee. Haven’t found it yet.

So good coffee is one of the joys in life for many people, and when you take that away, it can affect the quality of that person’s life. Now I’m not talking excess coffee, I’m talking small amounts. Caffeine has a stimulatory effect. It needs to be used with caution with people with adrenal fatigue, especially extreme adrenal fatigue when they’re in the advanced stages. But many people with very light adrenal fatigue or who get affected by stress actually get a little buzz out of caffeine and it can help them. But when you use caffeine or alcohol, coffee, like you do alcohol in excess and because you want to stay up all night because you’re developing some new video game or something, that’s starting to get into murky water. You’re going to start wrecking your sleep cycles and create gastric problems from all the acidity. That’s when you get problems.

And I see no problem at all for SIBO, for a person having a coffee, a shot of coffee at all. But again, remember it’s person’s specific. One person, the SIBO may feel perfectly fine with a coffee and other person with non-SIBO may be sick on a cup of coffee. So it’s something you need to try. And does coffee wake you up at three o’clock in the morning one cup? I doubt it. Not for most people. So remember if you don’t want your sleep cycle affected by caffeine, have it in the morning and don’t have it after lunchtime, especially if you’re a person who wakes between two to four. Don’t really have any caffeinated foods or beverages after lunchtime if you are a person who suffers a lot from broken sleep.

If you’re a person who has serious adrenal problem, you definitely need to keep away from caffeine for some period of time. I’d probably say go more into a green tea or something with extremely low levels of caffeine will be more beneficial for you. But I don’t see coffee really having a problem with SIBO. Many people I’ve worked with over the years, in fact, enjoyed a cup of coffee when they have constipation because they find that really improves that. So it’s up to you. You need to try it.

But here’s one thing. If you’re going to have coffee try and have nice coffee and good coffee, quality coffee, not something out of a tin that’s been processed. You throw it in a cup, then cut two spoons of white sugar in that and a bit of hot water. That’s not coffee. That’s crap. Real coffee smells amazing and tastes even better and it’s good for your soul. It’s good for your spirit. And I think it’s a fantastic part of the day. And it also connects people. It’s a social thing.

So remember, I’ll finish a video like I started it. We’re here for short time. We’ve got to enjoy ourselves. If we start listening to every single squeak and sentence online saying, this is bad and that’s bad, I mean, we’ve always all jump off the Empire State Building right now. So just tune out on a lot of the negativity out there and enjoy that cup of coffee. Thanks for tuning in.

Questions & Answers

What Is The Best Probiotic Soap For Candida ?

Eric Bakker, the naturopath from New Zealand. We’re going to talk about soaps, especially probiotic soaps. So there’s a big trend now towards probiotics. If you have a look, you can get probiotic everything. I’m surprised I haven’t got probiotics spectacles or probiotic shoes yet. I mean everything else is probiotic, isn’t it? Foods and drinks and all kinds of stuff, so people always jump on the bandwagon. But what about probiotic soap? Well, it’s more important what’s in your body if you want to influence the bacteria of the microbiome in particular than what’s outside of the body. You can use neutral soaps. There’s goats milk soap, and your pH neutral soaps you can use. There are a lot of handmade soaps, quite nice ones out there. There’s a big trend I think moving away from bar soaps more into sort of body washes for younger people. But yeah, one of my favorite soaps for candida would be the Thursday Plantation tea tree oil soap.

So that’s a good one. Thursday as in Thursday, Friday. Thursday Plantation. So just google it. The tea tree oil soap. It’s really good, particularly for private areas of the body, but even just for the scalp. I’ve often recommended it for psoriasis patients, people with eczema, dermatitis, all sorts of skin conditions, but also serious jock itch and vaginal problems. But it’s nice to create a whole film over the whole body that is antifungal. Okay? So this is not probiotic in general. There is a company called Mother Earth. I found out when I was in Anaheim a few years ago at the expo and I was very impressed with their range of products. Mother Earth, as in mother and father, Earth as in the planet. So I’ll just google it for you now while I’m talking, but I’m pretty sure it’s Mother Earth. Mother Earth products. Let’s have look.

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Yep, Mother Earth. So check that company out. They make some pretty … No, hang on. That’s the food bar people. But anyway, there is a company out there that make these products, shampoo conditioners and soaps and things like that that actually contain bacteria for the skin. There are many companies that are making these products now. So with a little bit of time online, if you’ve spent some time on Google, you’ll find a company like that. So yeah, remember the skin is your biggest organ. It’s a big barrier towards what’s on the inside. By not using harsh and powerful chemicals, you’re not really going to wreck that micro-biome, all that external bacterial membrane that we’ve got.

It’s interesting when I talked to this chap in the States with this company regarding the personal care products he’s making, he said his CEO hadn’t had a bath for a long time, for literally several months, or it could have been a year and just, I think, just used plain water without any personal care product. He said he was actually the cleanest smelling guy in the whole office compared to other people. So when we use chemicals on our body, we do destroy the natural flora. I had a Swiss friend once who claimed he never used any soap or shampoos on his body, and that guy, again, didn’t have any bad body odor. He just used plain water.

Now he’d just swim often in lakes or rivers, and if he’d have a shower, he didn’t use any personal care products on his body. There’s a trend for a lot of people to move towards natural ways of living like that. So do those people stink? Do they smell? No, not necessarily. Why should they? Especially if they’ve got a clean diet, they’re not going to be stinky at all. All right? But try not using personal care products and live your life on junk food. McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, lots of Coca Cola, and let’s see what your body smells like then in comparison to someone who would eat fresh and clean and healthy kind of foods.

I think you can understand the principle I’m getting at here. What you put in your body will certainly change your body, the bacteria inside and outside. So there are companies that make these kinds of products. I don’t think it’s Mother Earth. It could be Mother Dirt or something like that. Let me just look that one up. It could be Mother Dirt, but there are companies that make them now. There you go, Mother Dirt skin products. I found it.

I think that’s the name of the company. Yep. It’s called Mother Dirt. Not Mother Earth. Mother Earth make like snack bars and stuff like that. But do you really need these things? Not at all. No. You can use just the very plain glycerin kind of soap. That Pears glycerin soap or just a neutral pH soap is quite a nice one to use on your skin. So the question is what is the best probiotic soap for candida? I recommend actually that you treat the inside of the body more so than the outside if you’re going a gut issue. But if you want to treat the outside, check out Mother Dirt products and then treat the inside with probiotics, enzymes, things like that. And of course proper food because you really want to support the balance and growth of the human microbiome internally as much as you can.

But there’s nothing wrong with using something on the exterior as well. But if you have got a candida problem or a personal problem, the personal areas, don’t forget the Thursday Plantation tea tree oil soap. It’s one of the best. I’ve recommended that product now for over 20 years. It’s really, really, really good. If you’ve got a condition, however, like eczema or dermatitis or psoriasis, medical kind of problem and you really want to treat it, you could try the Mother Dirt products. But even more so if you’ve got psoriasis is to treat the internal of the body. I’ve never found psoriasis treatment successful with the patient until they got their gut fixed up. So by fixing up your gut, the skin will fix itself by default in most cases. In fact, coming back again to psoriasis, even psoriasis foundation admit themselves that many people have got a candida problem that needs fixing up.

Something I’ve maintained now for 30 years and finally now the psoriasis people are talking about that. So this isn’t a psoriasis video. I’m just saying that you need to treat the inside of the body probably even more so than the outside if you want to get the bacteria right, all right? But look at the neutral soaps, look at the medicinal soaps, look at Mother Dirt. All those products are starting to come out now. Needless to say, try not to use harsh chemicals on your scalp or on your skin, all right? If you can’t drink it or eat it, why would you put it on your body? Makes sense? Thanks for tuning in.

Questions & Answers

Why Peanut Allergies are Worse than Other Food Allergies?

Back in the naturopath. Thanks for coming back. We were talking about peanut allergies. Everybody knows someone with an allergy, right? I’ve just being sneezing. Maybe I’ve got an allergy. I’ve been sneezing because I spent all yesterday in the garden harvesting honey. So taking lots of honey frames out and extracting that and I can get a bit sniffly and sneezy from that cause it’s quite a strong odor.

Peanut allergies. Why do people get such violent reactions, especially children towards peanuts? Strong reactions that they don’t seem to get with many other foods. I mean if we look at the reaction of a peanut allergy, it’s almost like a bee sting. It can kill a person in seconds, literally. You know, in a minute that can be dead. But why would that be so? Well, if you have a look at the research, the interesting thing with peanuts, like many other foods that we become allergic to, it’s the protein structures that are the problem.

So proteins are often the compounds that set up immune-based reactions in our body. Now these proteins can be found in bee venom. They can be found in peanuts, for example. They can be find found in cow’s milk, lots of different types of proteins. But the key thing with peanuts is there’s almost up to 20 different types of allergenic proteins in that peanut. When you compare say with a cashew three or four different potential, allergic proteins. But what they’ve also found out that heat can modify those proteins and make them even more allergenic to the immune system rather than less allergenic. In most cases when you heat up a protein, you denature or break the protein down. But in the peanuts’ case, when it’s cooked or heated, it can actually make some of those 17 proteins actually more powerful in attacking the immune system.

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So in fact, peanuts are legumes. They’re really sort of grown underground. They’re not really a tree nut. But from the research I just did, it looks like cashews can have an even more violent reaction with a small subset of people than peanuts can. But why are people reacting so much to all these things in increasing amount? It’s almost like double the amount of people the last few years are reacting than we ever found in history.

Well, I’ve got my own personal theories on it and a couple of mine are it’s because people are basically pushed in side a lot more these days. The kids play video games a lot more. They lack vitamin D, they may lack other factors, vitamins or minerals. Have an insufficiency there that can help to boost their immune system up. So lots of younger people today don’t really eat properly, probably like a lot of young people haven’t done for so long.

Now the other issue I think is the hygiene hypothesis. So there’s constant hand washing while using all these sanitizers all the time and not allowing the person’s immune system, particularly at a young age, to be exposed more to outside stuff like soil and things like that. So when you’re constantly washing people’s hands all the time, this can really create a really defensive immune system as well. And an immune system ready to pounce and jump on a protein that it seems inappropriate. Think about those things.

If you have a person in the family who has a potential for allergies, just be careful of peanuts. They are hard to avoid these days. Cashews and peanuts and nuts like that are often found in many different foods, especially packaged or processed foods. Cashews are in fact are often used as a substitute for pine nuts. So just be careful if you have got allergies or dining or eating out with someone you know has got an allergy. Just make sure that what you’re eating doesn’t contain these nuts. But the majority of people don’t have these sort of powerful reactions with nuts, but the minority do.

Questions & Answers

Is A Candida Cleanse Causing My Diarrhea Or Something Else?

When people go on a Candida cleanse, they can get all sorts of digestive symptoms. They might experience gas, bloating, constipation, or diarrhea.

Why is diarrhea one of the possible results? Well, if you think about the reasons why people go on a Candida cleanse, there are many reasons. Many people assume they’ve got Candida. As I’ve said in previous videos, half the people I check out properly have not got Candida. They’ve got other parasites or lack of beneficial bacteria. Other times they have an underlying pancreatic issue.

When you go on a Candida cleanse, don’t assume that you’re cleansing Candida. Before you start a treatment plan, get a comprehensive stool analysis (CSA). A CSA will tell you what you’re dealing with in your gut. Maybe it is a Candida problem, but it could also be something else like harmful bacteria.

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Once you have confirmed the presence of Candida and started a cleanse, there are two main reasons why diarrhea will develop. Firstly, dramatic diet changes can cause diarrhea. If you add fermented or cultured foods too quickly into your diet, your gut can suffer. Secondly, if you are taking too large a dose or too many types of antimicrobials, diarrhea can result. If you are taking antimicrobials without having confirmed that Candida is the problem, you could be undermining your gut by destroying beneficial bacteria.

Be careful; if you didn’t have diarrhea until you started the Candida cleanse, you could be treating the wrong problem.

If you have confirmed Candida and diarrhea develops, my recommendation is that you go back to the diet you were following before the Candida cleanse. Then, make changes more slowly, so your gut bacteria have time to adjust to your new way of eating.

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