Tag Archives: Candida Treatment

Questions & Answers

The Why Of Food Cravings

I had someone write to me and ask, “Why do I crave chips, soda, pizza, burgers, and junk like that?”

One of the key reasons people like junk is because they develop a taste for it. Their body gets used to certain foods. There are multiple mechanisms involved in stimulating the appetite, but it’s like anything. It’s all about habits.

I’ve said this many times; people don’t decide on their future, their habits do. If you regularly eat fast food, you’re going to develop a taste for that kind of meal. Over time, it’s going to be harder and harder to break the habit.

It’s like tobacco. Once you develop a taste for cigarettes, it’s tough to stop smoking. Years ago, I smoked a lot and ate a lot of junk food. Do I like junk food? Not anymore. I was highly stressed at one stage in my life. The higher the stress, the more cortisol in the bloodstream, and the more salt, sugar, and fat cravings emerge.

Once you get a taste for high salt, you’ll find it difficult to break that taste. Slowly, but surely, when you start incorporating fresh ingredients into your diet, the craving for junk food will diminish.

Further readings:

I now love sour things and bitter foods like grapefruit. Don’t let other people tell you what you should eat. Eat when you want to eat. But the trick is to very slowly wean yourself off the junk and replace it with fresh food.

For example, if you like French fries, try substituting olives instead. Olives will undoubtedly answer your salt craving. If you have powerful salt cravings, you may have an element of adrenal fatigue. Or you may be highly stressed.

If you have blood sugar levels that go up and down, adrenal dysfunction may be at play. Once you start understanding the concepts of eating good food, sleeping properly, getting your emotions under control, and living a healthy lifestyle, your cravings will improve immensely.

When you have been eating junk food for a while, the bacteria in your gut becomes “junky,” too. The type of bacteria you have can influence your cravings. Scientists are now working out that bacteria often call the shots.

If you want to stop your cravings, you need to fix up your gut flora. I suggest using a supplement like CanXida Remove to get the gut clean and tidied up a bit. Once you do that, you”ll find it easier to lose weight. You’ll find it easier to resist your cravings.

The “bad” bugs gave up on me a long time ago. And guess what I crave?
Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, a nice piece of fish, organic chicken, and free-range eggs. That can be true for you as well.

Sources:

Questions & Answers

Dieting Done Right

Is it better to tweak your diet or to follow a diet designed for you by someone else?
Now, you might think that’s a bit of a dumb sort of thing to say. Why would you not want to go on a diet that somebody else made specifically for you?

I’ve hardly ever met patients that follow a dietician’s recommendation to the letter. Occasionally, people who are highly structured and weigh out everything they eat, pop up, but that’s not very common.

My question is, how can somebody else work out exactly the right foods for your bowel, your gut, at any particular time. I don’t think a professional can ever know your body and your physiology well enough to do that.

When it comes to food, I know what suits my palate, what agrees with my gut, and what doesn’t.

With my clients, I always make it a point to identify the foods they like and work around that information.

Most people gravitate to about nine or ten foods. They can change those foods over time, but then the bacteria in their gut is going to change as well. As your gut changes, so will how you think and how you feel.

When you make changes to your digestive system, you’re making changes to your entire life. That’s why I always like people to eat good food if they want to have a good life.

To have someone else come along and tell you that you need to eat X, Y, Z
on X, Y, Z day, and in certain portion sizes doesn’t work for me.

I do think that guidelines and suggestions are helpful. On many occasions, I’ve had clients who have avoided foods for some time because someone told them they shouldn’t eat it.

Further readings:

I’ll have someone ask, “can I eat bananas?” I say, “well, of course you can.”

“Well, I haven’t had a banana for three years.”

I say, “well, why?”

“Well, the naturopath I went to, he said that they’re bad for me.”

That’s very interesting, isn’t it? Someone says something’s bad for you, so you stay away from it for three years.

I don’t tell people things are bad for them unless it’s something like pop or donuts.

At different stages of your Candida recovery or SIBO recovery, you’ll be surprised how the gut can change. Sometimes the changes occur quite quickly, and that allows you to eat foods you haven’t had for a while.

I also have seen many people over the years with very poor digestive health that kept eating the same food day in, day out, day in, day out because they were told to eat those foods. It wasn’t until they stopped them or switched something out that their digestive health improved.

I’ve seen that pattern over a hundred times. A client is sentenced to a life of eating steamed spinach leaves for breakfast. That’s all they’re allowed to eat, and maybe a little bit of something else.

I don’t like that. It’s not the right thing to do to people.

Once you say to somebody, this is good and this is bad, that person and takes it as gospel. That will be their mantra going forward for five, 10, 20 years.

When someone says to you, this is a bad food for you, and this is a good food, take it with a grain of salt. Five minutes from now or next week, that food may be perfectly fine for your digestive system. You would be surprised how many foods you can tolerate even if you were told they were “bad.”

Of course, this advice doesn’t apply to junk food. I’m referring to healthy foods.

Be careful of the food police. There’s plenty of them out there. If you’re told not to eat something because it’s bad for you, you need to think that through yourself.

Sources:

Questions & Answers

Obesity And Cognition: What’s The Connection?

Being obese can have a significant impact on your cognitive function, including your memory and ability to learn.

If we look worldwide, we’re probably dealing with close to 700 million people that are obese. The public health consequences of that number is massive.

I read an interesting study by neuroscientist Elizabeth Gould from Princeton University. In this study, normal mice were overfed until they put on an additional 40% of their weight. What the researchers discovered is that the spine and brains of normal-weight mice were healthy.

Further readings:

The larger mice had impaired nervous systems. Their dendritic spines (tiny protrusions in the brain) were greatly diminished in the obese mice. The researchers discovered that the microglial cells, a type of immune cell in the brain, targeted and destroyed the dendritic spines. As a result, the obese mice had a lot of problems navigating mazes and remembering the location of objects.

The mechanism behind the damage seen in obese mice isn’t yet understood. What is evident is that the overeating and weight gain process damaged the parts of the brain involved with memory.

I’ve seen this in obese patients myself. Often they have anxiety, depression, brain fog, and memory problems.

Let’s stop people from getting obese in the first place. Governments need to take a long, hard look at the source of their tax dollars. Any taxes they are getting from cigarettes, alcohol, and junk food is paltry compared to how much it costs to treat the illnesses that result from those habits.

Sources:

Questions & Answers

Activity: The Key To Weight Management

I’ve read studies that claim genetics can explain why some people never gain weight and others end up obese. But, I’m not buying it.

It wasn’t that long ago that people were slim. It’s over the last sixty years or so that obesity rates have sky-rocketed. There is no way that we’ve had huge change in our gene pool over a few decades. The reason for the obesity epidemic lies somewhere else.

To my mind, one of the main factors that determines body weight is activity level.
People are big all around the world at the moment. 60% of adults in England are overweight. One in four adults are obese.

I think that technology plays a large part in the obesity epidemic. People have slowed down and become inactive.

People like me who remain active their whole life don’t struggle with their weight. I have brothers who aren’t very activite and they are bigger people. They also eat different food than me and spend more time on their screens.

The lifestyle change that has occurred in recent decades underlies weight gain in a lot of people.

When I’m active, I put in significant effort. If I’m in the garden and I see weeds, I’ll make sure I bend down and pick up those weeds, or pick things up. I’ll stretch, I’ll bend, I’ll move, I’ll walk. I do that every single day, and I will do for the rest of my life.

Further readings:

I haven’t met any very active people who are obese. I’ve met some who are overweight, but never obese.

Once you are very large, it can be hard to increase your activity overnight. You have to give it some thought.

To me the most important factors in weight are activity versus passivity and caloric load.

Eating less calories, eating fresh, healthy food, eating smaller portion sizes, and moving your body is the recipe for losing weight.

Of course, there are exceptions. For some people, their weight is impact by an overactive or underactive thyroid. There may be medical conditions that need to be fixed up so that you can lose the weight.

Still, common sense says to me that is lack of activity and lack of understanding food quality and quantity that explains most obesity.

An activity tracker like Fitbit can encourage you to up your activity level. Increasing your activity is going to pay off in the long run. There may be some discomfort at first but you’ll benefit for years to come.

Sources:

Questions & Answers

How Does A Sugar-Free Diet Impact Candida

How long does it take for Candida to leave the body on a sugar-free diet?

It doesn’t take long for a sugar-free diet to have an impact on your gut flora. Candida won’t necessarily entirely leave because you could be one of the 20 to 25% of people who have a normal population of this yeast in their gut. Many people have Candida in their gut that is well controlled.

Candida has even been shown to have some benefits in the body when it’s in a relationship with other bacteria.

Of course, if we take a major food source away from Candida, the population is going to drop off.

The question isn’t whether we can rid of Candida, but whether we can tame the beast? And we usually can.

I always tell patients that the best approach is to take a long, hard look at what you’re eating and drinking.

Then gradually take things out of your diet – maybe start with two or three of the sweetest foods in your diet.

Further readings:

Replace the unhealthy foods that you crave the most with healthy foods, and the population of Candida in your gut will steadily come down.

Taking an effective anti-Candida product while reducing your intake of sugar will drop the Candida population even quicker and reduce your cravings.

Don’t be foolhardy and try to wipe out a high Candida load over two weeks. That’s like pulling the emergency brake when you’re doing 60 miles per hour in the car.

Take things slowly and do them properly. Nothing good comes from doing things too quickly.
In the end, it won’t take very long for your Candida levels to drop significantly. All you need to do is start making better food choices and use an effective anti-Candida supplement like CanXida Remove.

Sources: