Tag Archives: Antifungal Drug Treatment

Questions & Answers

Do Beneficial Bacteria Communicate With Your Immune System?

There is a fascinating study that was undertaken to try and understand if and how beneficial bacteria communicate with the human immune system.

About 50 years ago, they used a 2D electron microscopy technique to discover that beneficial bacteria hang on to the bowel wall. It’s almost like the bacteria have a little grappling hook that can attach themselves, a bit like a mountain climber goes up a mountain.

For many years, scientists did not understand how gut bacteria communicated with the immune system.

In recent years, researchers used a unique tomography technique to look at bacteria in mice. Using this approach, the scientists confirmed that bacteria in the gut of mice have a grappling hook.

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The bacteria attach themselves to the gut wall. The immune system detects the bacteria as being a normal part of the body. The immune system will communicate with tiny little packets of protein that get transferred from the bacteria into the cells of the gut wall, and then into the immune system.

It’s a bit like a docking procedure. It docks a little bit like, I suppose, how it would happen with the International Space Station. Essentially, the bacteria docks and locks onto the gut wall and then signals to the immune system. The bacteria send chemical messages but also receive communications from the internal immune system.

The immune system becomes charged up and ready to attack other kinds of pathogens.

Essentially, science is validating how beneficial bacteria contribute to the health of humans. Science is also clarifying why a healthy, beneficial gut flora is so essential to the human digestive system.

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Questions & Answers

Diatomaceous Earth: What You Need To Know

Some people claim that diatomaceous earth is good for killing and removing parasites from the body. However, it’s all anecdotal.

What is diatomaceous earth? It’s an algae that lived millions of years ago and left a silica shell behind.

Silica is quite an interesting mineral that’s extremely hard for the body to absorb. Diatomaceous earth doesn’t mix well with fluids, especially inside the body, so it’s pretty useless as a silica supplement. There’s also no scientific evidence that shows that it removes parasites. The studies I did look at, particularly one from 2010, involving animals and diatomaceous earth, were inconclusive.

Some people recommend diatomaceous earth for a wide range of purposes: high blood pressure, AIDS, cancer, everything. It cures baldness; it cures infertility, it cures mortgage problems, it cures every flipping thing. Well, it doesn’t. It doesn’t. It’s all anecdotal. I’m sure if I gave you a cup of sand to swallow and drink, you’d say you’d feel a certain way as well.

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Remember, just because everybody else does it, it doesn’t mean to say that it’s necessarily good or it’s going to work. I’m not a huge fan of diatomaceous earth, but if you think it works for you, then maybe it works for you.

Be very careful about inhaling diatomaceous earth because it can wreck your lungs. Very fine-grain silica causes the lung disease silicosis. Thousands of people die every year from silicosis. You don’t even want to breathe in silica.

There is food grade diatomaceous earth and filter grade. Filter grade diatomaceous earth is known to remove heavy metals from water. People then automatically assume diatomaceous earth will remove heavy metal from their bodies. It doesn’t work like that. Don’t fall for the hype.

Diatomaceous earth does have its applications, don’t get me wrong. But, when it comes to human health and killing parasites, I wouldn’t fall for the hype.

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Questions & Answers

Shampoo For Your Itchy Scalp

A question I’ve been asked several times from people is, what is the best type of shampoo I can use for my scalp or for my skin? I’ve got an itchy scalp, I got itchy ears, I’ve got itchy private parts. I wanna keep my hair fresh and clean, and what is a good shampoo I can use?
Well, my favorite brand is called Thursday Plantation. You can find these products on Amazon. I really like this company. I’ve been using their products now for probably over 25 years. I think they’re fantastic.

Thursday Plantation makes a fantastic range of shampoos and skincare products and soaps and all kinds of things.

In my opinion, this company also makes the highest grade tea tree oil on the planet. So if you want to get the best tea tree oil, look for this brand.

In multiple studies, tea tree oil has been found effective for skin infections. In one long-term study in Austrialia, I think at the John Hunter Hospital, tea tree oil was superior over ketoconazole and various other types of antifungal pharmaceuticals. It’s called tea tree oil, Australian tea tree oil, Melaleuca alternifolia.

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In New Zealand, where I live, we’ve got tea tree as well, manuka and kanuka. But these are different types of tea tree than the Australian.
The Australian tea tree oil has, through clinical trials and research, found to have probably one of the highest grade anti-fungal activities of any kind of essential oil.
If you’re using a product for Candida on the scalp, make sure it’s got some element of tea tree oil in it.

Eveneven if you’ve got any type of a skin condition on your scalp, I would recommend tea tree oil, because it is so superior. If you don’t like the smell of it, you can also have a little bit of lavender oil that goes with it.

There are many things you can use on your skin. Apple cider vinegar, for some people, if you dilute it, works quite well as well. Jojoba oil can be mixed with a little bit of tea tree oil and used for skin problems.

Other companies which I like to use are Jason and Aubrey Organics. Aubrey make really nice products. Not tea tree, but they do make various medicated kind of scalp tonics and similar items.
If you start using tea tree oil regularly, you’ll find that your scalp will become nice and soft. Dandruff will clear up. Fungus will disappear. Particularly if you use it for three months. Just a small amount every day. I think you’ll be quite surprised with the appearance of your scalp. I highly recommend it.

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Questions & Answers

Raw Foods And Candida: What You Need To Know

Raw foods are a part of almost everybody’s diet.

Most people have a balance between some raw foods and some cooked foods. A very few people will eat nothing but cooked foods, but that is pretty unusual.

What is best for your gut – raw or cooked?

It’s a difficult question to answer because I don’t know you personally. What I can tell you is, the healthier your gut, the more likely it is that you can tolerate a wide range of foods.

Raw food diets are excellent, but so are cooked diets.

It depends on the health of your digestive system very much.

Let me explain a few different things to you.

When you eat one or two pieces of fruit a day, that’s raw food. If you’re eating salad, that’s raw foods. Nuts and seeds can also be eaten raw.

I also consider milk that is not pasteurized or homogenized to be raw.

I love raw beef. If I know that it’s an organic cow and it’s home killed, it’s grass-fed, it’s a high-quality beef, I like raw hamburger meat.

I think that’s a fantastic food, and raw fish is nice, too.

Raw foods contain all sorts of enzymes.

If someone has a compromised gut with a low output of digestive enzymes, raw foods can step up and help digest the food that they eat.

When you heat food above 112 degrees Fahrenheit or 44 degrees Celsius, the enzymes in foods are destroyed.

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When food doesn’t contain enzymes, your body relies more on endogenous enzymes to break down food. That’s why I say that the less you heat food, the better. I recommend stir-frying and partially cooked foods.

For example, when I cook green beans, I plunge them into boiling water for about three or four minutes – then directly into icy cold water. That leaves me with lovely beans that are not cooked through the middle. When foods aren’t overcooked, you’re also likely to preserve more of the flavonoids and polyphenols that are so good for you intact.

Also, the fresher your produce, the higher the enzymes count. If your food has been in cold storage for months, chances are the enzyme count isn’t very high.

For me, the best combination is incorporating some raw foods into a cooked diet. I think the best time to increase the amount of raw foods in your diet is when the weather is warm.

In general, I recommend incorporating a lot of greens in your diet as well as partially cooked foods and raw foods.

I think you should take the middle path and eat both raw and cooked foods to make your gut very healthy and sound.

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Questions & Answers

What You Need To Know About Prebiotics

It’s important to know how to get prebiotics into your diet.

Prebiotics are a certain type of sugar, what we call oligosaccharides. Prebiotics go through the gut without being digested. When they arrive in the colon, prebiotics feed the good bacteria (probiotics).

My recommendation is that you get prebiotics from your diet rather than from supplements.
It’s much better to eat and chew the foods that contain prebiotic sugars. Food as a source of prebiotics is better for your colon than supplements.

When I first started to recommend probiotic supplements in the ’80s, people thought I was nuts. They couldn’t see the benefit. Why not just have a bowl of yogurt, they’d ask.

Let’s look at the different types of sugars. There are monosaccharides, polysaccharides, and oligosaccharides.

Polysaccharides tend to be starches or very undigestible kind of foods.
These are sugars, no different from white sugar. Polysaccharide bonds are more elongated and complex, making them more difficult for the body to breakdown.

The polysaccharides are also quite good for the gut, but it’s the oligosaccharides that have a tremendous effect.

Oligosaccharides are found in onions, leeks, garlic, Jerusalem artichoke, and chicory root, to name a few. The cruciferous (Brassica) family also contains a lot of prebiotic sugars.

The nice thing about the onion (Allium) family is that there are also good for immune function, mood, and blood pressure. Likewise, Brassicas have been linked to cancer prevention and immune health.

If you live in the U.S., you’re lucky if you are having any more than three grams of prebiotics in your diet each day.

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But if you live in certain parts of Europe, you’d be consuming 10 grams or more. If you live in Africa, you could be consuming way more, like ten times as much.

The general rule is that if you are eating minimally processed food, you’ll be getting a lot of prebiotics. This means you’ll also be generating trillions of beneficial bacteria as a result.

At one time, I would recommend prebiotic supplements to my clients. Then I noticed that I was getting a stream of calls from patients who were having significant side effects like gas, diarrhea, and headache.

I also found research that linked prebiotic supplements to the overgrowth of Klebsiella and Candida.

I found that I got much better results if I gave probiotics mixed with digestive enzymes and then encouraged my clients to eat prebiotic foods. This is the reason I created CanXida Restore, a probiotic-enzyme supplement that is entirely free of prebiotic sugars.

The other thing to remember is that prebiotics are not good for people who have a very sick gut. Don’t pile on lots of fermented and cultured foods, followed by prebiotics, and probiotics, if you’re just starting to get your gut healthy.

Stick with whole food if you want to include prebiotics in your diet.

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