Tag Archives: Vaginal; Yeast Infection

Questions & Answers

The Health Benefits Of Elderberry

Elderberry is a plant, also known as Sambucus nigra.

Sambucus is a fascinating medicinal plant that’s been used now for probably thousands of years. I used to grow this plant in Australia.

Elderberry can grow up to nine meters tall. I used to grow it down around my verandah in the backyard. Elderberry has beautiful big clusters of lovely, aromatic white, creamy flowers.
People make champagne or fizzy drinks from elderberry flowers.

The berries of Sambucus nigra are quite tart and need to be cooked. The berries have a high vitamin C and antioxidant content. The antioxidant compounds in elderberry fruit include phenolic acids and different flavonols like quercetin and kaempferol.

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The compounds in elderberry are very good at fixing free radical damage. As a result, elderberry is very good for people under a lot of stress who want to prevent progression to heart disease, cancer, or diabetes.

Several natural medicines contain Sambucus. Studies have demonstrated the elderberry can help prevent flu and shorten the duration if you do develop symptoms. Sambucus is thought to upregulate the immune system.

With regards to the gut, the combination of vitamin C, other antioxidants, and fiber, helps boost up beneficial bacteria levels.

I highly recommend growing elderberry. In addition to being very nutritious, it is a beautiful plant. Thankfully, Sambucus nigra grows well in a lot of different climates.

You can infuse elderberry flowers in hot water, cool it down, and end up with a lovely beverage. Some people just float the flowers in ice water. You can also make tea out of the leaves or the berries.

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Questions & Answers

Alcohol And Your Gut: What You Need To Know

Will alcohol affect your gut health?

Yes. Alcohol will affect your gut in several ways.

If you’ve been struggling with a health problem for some time and you drink alcohol regularly, it’s time to put that drink aside.

If you have been going to different doctors trying to find out what’s wrong with you and still no answers, then giving up alcohol is an important step. This is particularly true if you have histamine issues, allergies, or recurring digestive issues.

I don’t care how much or what kind of alcohol you drink. Whether it’s glass or a bottle or it’s red wine or gin, regular drinking is going to impact your gut health.

Alcohol impacts the four basic groups of bacteria that live in your gut. The bacteria populations are altered and moved around.

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You’ll only truly know to what extent your gut has been affected by alcohol by giving it up for at least six months. That may seem like a crazy thing to do if you drink regularly, but the difference between drinking and not drinking is profound when it comes to gut health.

Some people claim that red wine is better for your gut due to the polyphenol content. And red wine can indeed increase the amount of certain beneficial bacteria. But that benefit is offset by the impact of alcohol on the gut and liver.

Alcohol slows metabolism down. It affects hormonal health and increases the activity of inflammatory pathways.

Denial about the impact of alcohol on your gut won’t help anybody.
I recommend giving up alcohol for a significant amount of time and observing what happens to your digestive health.

A healthy gut microbiome will improve the physical and mental aspects of your health.
In my experience, bowel movements nearly always improve when people give up alcohol. In most cases, health improves across the board when alcohol is eliminated from the diet.

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Questions & Answers

Why Antibiotics Are Not The Answer For SIBO

You’ll likely never get rid of SIBO by relying on antibiotics, whether it’s amoxicillin, or rifaximin, or Xifaxin.

There are a lot of naturopaths in the US that prescribe rifaximin.

I’ve seen hundreds upon hundreds of cloents that have taken rifaximin with minimal results. They may initially have seen some improvement but then they relapsed and had to go back on rifaximin.

Rifaximin doesn’t get absorbed well in the gut. Essentially, it acts in the gut and then gets excreted. That’s why it isn’t good for anything except a small bowel problem. It generally doesn’t have much of an impact on the large bowel.

In my opinion, relying on antibiotics for SIBO is a complete waste of time in nost cases. It means you’re taking your eye off the ball and thinking that a drug is going to cure all your GI problems. Well, that isn’t going to happen in most cases.

Relying on an antibiotic to fix SIBO means you’re not looking at other options.

Ask yourself, “Did I look at all my herbal options before I started taking antibiotics?”

Herbal options tend to be more broad-spectrum. Unlike rifaximin they can also have an impact on small intestinal fungal overgrowth (SIFO).

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Most of the clients I have seen have got multiple gut imbalances. They have some fungal issues and many also have parasites. Many have low pancreatic enzyme levels, low secretory IgA, and poor immune function.

An antibiotic that works on SIBO is not going to address all the other gut issues.

My suggestion is to get a comprehensive stool analysis based on three stool samples. A SIBO breath test is not enough. The stool analysis will give you an overall idea of your gut problems. It will also provide a susceptibility panel that is specific to your situation.

Another reason I don’t think rifaximin is the answer to your SIBO problem is that probiotics aren’t considered thoroughly. In some cases, probiotics have a better effect than antibiotics.

If you have low to nil counts of lactobacillus and bifidobacteria along with SIBO, probiotics are far more important than antibioitics.

Managing SIBO is not just about killing harmful bacteria. It’s also about building up the beneficial bacteria in your gut.

Thirdly, the possibility of a poor migrating motor complex (MMC) is often missed if antibiotics are considered the “answer” to SIBO.

The MMC is responsible for cleaning up the small bowel between meals.
The vagus nerve, part of the parasympathetic nervous system, and a variety of hormones are involved in regulating the activity of the MMC.

If you’ve got sympathetic dominance through stress, you’re going to have parasympathetic depression and weak vagal tone. The result is poor MMC activity followed by bloating, gas, and other digestive problems.

Antibiotics do nothing to address poor vagal tone. You need to address the issues that are causing your stress.

In my opinion, when it comes to GI health, lifestyle trumps just about anything else in life, including your diet.

Antibiotics also don’t address any structural problems that may be contributing to GI dysfunction.

I had one patient, a police officer, who was told he had a mast cell disease affecting his gut. Turned out that his holster, weighing umpteen pounds, had impacted his 11th and 12th thoracic vertebrae and the nerve supply to his small bowel. When the chiropractor addressed his vertebrae problems, his GI issues resolved.

Think about your occupation; think about your life. Don’t think that an antibiotic is going to cure SIBO. It’s not in most cases. You need to look further afield.

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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

The Natural Approach To Gut Health

I often get asked by people, “Why is the natural way better for treating candida, SIBO, or IBS, better than the pharmaceutical, evidence-based way?

There are many reasons why the natural way is better.

One of the most important reasons why the natural way is a better way is because you got less chance of destroying the microbiome using a natural treatment then you would using a pharmaceutical option.

Medicine has only just woken up to how important bacteria in the gut are.

Is wasn’t all that long ago when I was a kid that everything was about destroying bacteria.

When I was a kid, no doctor ever made a call for a probiotic.
Everything was antibiotics and it still is to this day to a considerable degree.

To my mind, any drug that is “anti-“is not going to have natural effectiveness in your gut. It’s going to damage it instead.

The non-natural way is always pharmaceutical.

And when medical practitioners do talk about diet, they are only paying lip service to it. They don’t talk about the importance of prebiotic foods.
All you’re told is to eat a healthy diet, whatever that means, or go to the dietician.

The natural approach to gut health is the superior method because a) we’re not using any chemical concoctions that will kill the beneficial microbiome, and b) we’re not putting chemicals into your body that can cause side effects.

You would not believe the amount of time I’ve spent in my career trying to help people recover from drug side effects. I probably have spent at least 50% of my time doing that for clients.

For example, I recently saw a 20-year-old man who came in with sever years of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. During those seven years, he has been taking methylphenidate for ADHD. This medication caused increasing GI side effects over the years to the point that he was vomiting five or six times a day by the time he came to see me.

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This poor young man was at risk of losing his apprenticeship. His doctor couldn’t find any reason for the vomiting. But it was obvious to me, it was the flipping drug he was on. I’m taking him off the medication and clean up his GI tract. I’m guessing that in about six weeks, his GI symptoms will have cleared up.

That case is just one example of why I’m not interested in pharmaceutical intervention for gut issues – or just about any kind of long-term health issue.

When you come to see a naturopath like myself, we’ll never tell you that side effects from drugs are all in your head. Further, naturopathic treatments don’t induce side effects. They might induce strong healing responses, but that is different than side effects.

I also don’t like pharmaceuticals because, in my experience, people get stuck on them for years, whether they still need them or not. To me, that’s crazy.

When I treat clients, the idea is to get them well as quickly as possible and then transition off the program. Then, let their body build up on its own steam. Let the beneficial microbes flourish.

Natural treatments for GI problems are effective and make the patients happier over the long term.

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