Eric Bakker, ND: Greetings. Eric Bakker the Naturopath.
Thanks for coming back. I'm looking at this video. The question today is can, looking at my laptop
here by the way, can chewing properly cause gut problems and or candida? Well, you know me by now,
if you've been watching my videos, I always say the same thing, chewing leads to better
you know what? So if you don't break food down sufficiently, it's going to certainly cause a
problem as it goes down into the stomach, because how are you going to really break that food down
when you didn't break it down mechanically? How's it going to be broken down in terms of enzymes
and the stomach action if it's in large chunks? It's not. So it's going to be partially digested
and it's going to pass further down to the small intestine and cause problems down there as well,
including congestion, all sorts of issues form when you don't chew it properly, bloating,
more gas, bacteria, can't break it down properly. But the biggest tragedies, you're not accessing
nutrition from that food so. And then you're going to get a lot of problems with fatigue
and deficiencies. Deficiencies are quite common. When people lose teeth and they can't chew food
properly, they invariably end up with a digestive problem. I've seen this 100 times or more. So
teeth are critical because they really help to bust food down to very small particle size. So
I've told you the story I think, a few times about the patient I had from Saudi Arabia,
who told me that you get a fresh date, you can chew it for four or five hours. You just chew it,
and chew it, and chew it and chew it, one date. If you give a fresh date to someone in Australia,
it'll be chomp, chomp, gone with a mouthful of beer. So that's not how you eat food.
And alcohol's not a great idea to have with food. But the chewing part is critical.
Look at most animals, how they eat. And when you see how they eat, look at their teeth structure,
how they chew food properly. Some animals just gulp and swallow, especially meat eaters, but
tend to have a lot lower pH stomach and a strong, much stronger acid forming digestive system than
we have. And you don't usually see dogs drinking beer or wine. So they don't generally have
gut issues because they only eat. Imagine if we were the same. Nobody in the world drank alcohol
or anything bad for the digest system. You could close easily half the hospitals down globally,
probably within about 10 years. But yeah, but then who's going to make money? That's a problem.
But so chewing leads to better pooing, but chewing leads to also more energy with people.
I've had a few patients over the years, come back and email me or call me and tell me that
one of the best bits of advice I ever gave them was to chew better. And many
people are distracted when they eat now. They don't even look at their food anymore because
we got this stuff going on. Now I'm not tickling my hand here. I'm actually, I'm swiping to see
how many people like me on my phone. So that's what we've got going on now. We've got tech and
food. So what's more important chewing, eating, and engaging with the food or engaging with
some dog that just fell off the couch and your laughing at it. Think about it. Makes sense to me.
So how much should you chew? You're going to be surprised when I tell you that regardless of what
you're chewing now, if you chew more and spend an extra three or four minutes with your meal,
chewing it really properly, watch what happens with your gut. Watch what happens to the bowel
motions. Watch what happens to the digestive comfort. It will change. For most people,
it will because in my experience, most people don't chew properly,
especially when it comes to meat or it comes to foods that really need to be broken down properly.
Okay. We're not talking fruit so much. We're talking the heavier foods, chickpeas for example,
or legumes, depending on how they're cooked. So yeah, I would say it leads to problems and
then bloating, and then gas, and also dysbiosis. And then when you start getting these bacterial
population, influxes imbalances, you're pushing yourself slowly into potentially a candida state.
So I can see how over a long period of time, poor chewing can lead to serious gut issues,
especially if you're stressed. Thanks for tuning in.