Tag Archives: candida

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

Candida And Agave Syrup: Do They Go Together?

Agave is a spiky plant that grows in Mexico. Over the years, I’ve had several people ask me if agave is better for people with Candida than Stevia or high fructose corn syrup.
The truth is, I don’t recommend it. Agave syrup is not a great food to add to your diet because of its high fructose content. One tablespoon can range from 50 up to 70 calories, and the fructose content is very high.

Table sugar is approximately 40 to 50 percent fructose. High fructose corn syrup is about 55 to 60 percent fructose. But agave can be 80% or more fructose.

Fructose, or fruit sugar, is a problem because if you eat a considerable amount, it affects different centers in the brain. The dopamine reward pathway is significantly affected by fructose. As a result, the more you eat, the more you want. This could be one of the reasons that people eat so much fruit – they are almost addicted to the sugar hit. Eating fructose can stimulate the appetite for more carbohydrates and more sugars. If you have a gas or bloating problem, definitely stay away from agave syrup.

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Fructose can also negatively impact the liver. If you eat enough fructose, it can even contribute to fatty liver disease and increase the risk of diabetes.

Honey, stevia, and xylitol are all much better alternatives to agave syrup. This is particularly true if you have Candida.

Unpasteurized, unprocessed honey is a much better sweetener than agave syrup. Honey contains a mix of many different sugars, as well as amino acids.

I raise my own bees and honey. In the morning, I will have rolled oats cooked in pure water with fruit and a little bit of honey on top. I consider that to be a very healthy breakfast.

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Questions & Answers

How To Avoid Candida Die-Off

Candida die-off is something you want to avoid if possible, but it’s not always possible.

If you’re concerned about die-off, and especially if you’re very unwell, I urge you to have a comprehensive stool test. That analysis should give you a general ballpark of where your gut is at the moment.

A stool assessment will tell you whether the severity of your gut imbalance is mild, moderate, or severe.

The approach I take is, the stronger the problem, the smaller the hammer. People often say, “The bigger the problem, the bigger the hammer,” but the bigger hammers often inflict the most amount of damage, don’t they?

If you want to minimize the amount of die-off, you need to proceed very cautiously with treatment.

Most people I work with don’t get die-off, because they go very slowly and gently, and as they feel more confident and their level of health improves, they keep pushing it harder and harder.

Fixing your gut is not a rodeo. Don’t come out of the gate full speed.

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The quickest way to get severe die-off is to double or triple all the dosages of everything, and just make a diet change on a dime. Go from a completely crappy, shitty diet into an incredibly healthy diet, and take a lot of supplements. I can pretty much guarantee you’re going to feel like death.

This is why I talk about the warm turkey approach, okay? I don’t like cold turkey. Cold turkey means you stop something on the spot. Warm turkey means you stop something over 14 days.

Some clients I work with take three months before I can start treating them. I need those months to transition them from a very poor diet and lifestyle to relatively reasonable ones.
Other people I see are pretty healthy, to begin with, and just need a bit of fine-tuning.

So, it depends on your starting point. The more dysfunction you’ve got, the longer you’ve been sick, the worse the gut problem, the longer it’s going to take to get better.

Even before you see a practitioner or try and get help regarding Candida, start making slow, positive changes. Think about the warm turkey. You will mitigate your outcome seriously by changing your habits before you even begin treatment.

You can slowly make changes to your diet, your alcohol intake, your cannabis habit, and your high-stress lifestyle. If you do that, you’ll find treatment much less problematic. In fact, in most cases, you’ll be able to avoid die-off symptoms altogether.

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Questions & Answers

Your Microbiome And Your Weight: What Is The Connection?

Does the gut microbiome influence your weight?

I’ve been telling people now for 20 years plus that if they get their gut in great shape, that the weight will fall off, and it’s been validated now in several studies.

A study out of the Mayo clinic followed 26 obese adults over a 90 day periods. The researchers found that one group of people had a 527% greater weight loss than the other group.

The amount of exercise and the type of diet was the same for the two groups of people. The difference between the two groups was the gut bacteria.

The group that had lost the most weight had a large amount of Phascolarctobacterium in their gut compared to the other group.

The first group lost an average of 17.4 pounds, and the second group lost an average of 3.3. pounds.

The second group had ore Dialister bacteria than the first group. Dialister consumes carbohydrates. Therefore it can interfere with the people obtaining energy and nourishment, leading to a desire to eat more and more.

What this study demonstrated is that even though the diet can be the same, if the bacteria are different, that weight is not going to come off.

Further readings:

The University of Copenhagen did a very interesting study.In this study, there were 62 people divided into group A and group B. Group A followed a very healthy Mediterranean
Group B were put on the Standard Danish diet, which is similar to the Standard American Diet (SAD). SAD is high fat, high salt, high sugar, white bread, lots of margarine, and deep fried foods.

When they looked at both of these groups, group A had a weight loss of 7.7 pounds. Group B had a weight loss of 3.7 pounds.

When they examined group A, they found two types of subjects in
group A. One group lost a lot of weight and the other not so much. The group that lost the most weight in group A had a particular ratio of Bacteroides and Prevotella.

This study points out that despite a good diet if you haven’t got good levels of Bacteroides and Prevotella, you still might not lose weight.

A healthy gut microbiome results in better fermentation and better levels of long-chain fatty acids. These long-chain fatty acids make sure that the hormones that regulate appetite are made in sufficient amounts.

The other thing I like to talk about is metabolic endotoxemia.

When you have bacteria that die in your gut, they leave cell fragments behind. Yeast will also leave cell fragments behind that need to be cleaned up.

In people with a leaky gut, this clean up doesn’t happen. The end result is metabolic endotoxemia, which is a fancy word for a sick, dysbiotic gut.

This situation occurs a lot in people who are overweight or obese. Along with metabolic endotoxemia comes fatigue, poor sleep, poor libido, anxiety, and depression.

That’s when people head to the doctor. They get put on half a dozen drugs, puts them in a downward spiral.

Now the way to avoid metabolic endotoxemia is by having a very good diet, eating good foods all the time, trying to work on relaxation, and improving your lifestyle.

Healthy gut bacteria produce an ample supply of short-chain fatty acids. Short-chain fatty acids are the by-products of bacterial fermentation of healthy foods. One of these fatty acids is called propanoate, and it has a vital role in regulating appetite.

Taken together, the research proves eating healthy food, creating healthy bacteria in the gut, means you’re going to have a way better chance of having an appropriate body weight.

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