Greetings!
It's Eric Bakker from New Zealand, the naturopath.
I have another question here from a subscriber.
Let me see, "I seem to be reacting to fermented foods.
I've tried plain Honeymate yogurt and kefir, but broke out in a facial rash within a few
days.
At first, I thought it was a dairy issue, so I made yogurt and kefir with coconut milk.
The same thing happened again, a red, oozing, itchy rash appeared.
It stayed for about ten days.
I'm wondering if I have just had too much too soon.
I had about six ounces of yogurt for three days in a row and then I had kefir.
I wanted to try again, but if I do, should I just have a small amount every several days?
Because this rash wakes me at night and it's very uncomfortable, I'm afraid to experiment.
I need your trust and advice.
Thank you."
Well, I think many people overdo this category entirely of fermented foods and cultured foods.
And when you see websites that came out with books like, "Body, Ecology, Diet," people
went crazy with fermented foods.
They made far too much kefir, they're now eating too much sauerkraut and too much yogurt.
So that's like saying to me, "I wanna get fit, so I decided to take up canoe polo.
I'm doing boxing, judo, hockey, wrestling, I'm going to the gym three hours a day, and
I've just started to do paragliding.
And now I wanna do base jumping.
But I'm feeling bad.
I wake up in the night and my body's aching all over.
What's wrong with me?"
Why am I feeling like crap all the time.
I'm only playing 15 different types of sports."
I mean, for Christ's sakes, if you're taking all of these types of things like yogurt and
kefir, and no doubt there'll be some kombucha and maybe some sauerkraut thrown in there,
it's overkill ... overkill.
The gut can't handle this kind of microbial onslaught, so when you're pummeling the body
with all of these particular acids like high dose acid lactic food, multiple types of yeasts
in these food and bacteria, it's total, total overkill.
What these websites don't tell you is you need to be very careful with the microbial
balance in your gut, and make change very very slowly.
So, for example, if you've not had kefir before, you may want to start with a half a teaspoon
of kefir per day, because it's such a powerful food.
I've got a book from the 1950s on ferments and cultures and they specifically state in
the book not to take kefir if you've got a digestive problem.
Move it up fifty years down the track and everyone's taking kefir, recommending everybody
have it.
Move it ahead fifty more years from now and people will have the same amount of caution.
They'll realize how powerful this food is.
We go through these stupid trends all the time, and people don't seem to wake up.
They just follow like sheep.
They follow what everybody else says.
So, the clinic has taught me kefir is the wrong food when you've got a gut imbalance.
Yogurt is fine, but again, if you've got a very big problem with candida, and low beneficial
count, you need to go very slow with yogurt to begin with.
You may also have a dairy allergy.
So you need to be cautious.
Always be cautious with yogurt.
Start with your tablespoon per day.
And many people can gradually build up to a small bowl per day.
Sauerkraut is not a problem.
But if you've got a leaky gut and a bad histamine problem, you may get itchy skin and strong
reaction to it.
Again, you've gotta heal the gut before you include these foods into the diet.
So the first thing you might wanna do is a stool test.
Check to see what level of beneficial bacteria you've got, what level of imbalanced flora
you've got, have you got any yeast or parasites there, is there any inflammation in the gut,
is the immune system faulty?
So fix these little problems first and then introduce these foods slowly but surely to
build up the microbial health of the gut.
It can take three, six or twelve months to achieve what I just said.
Once you've achieved that, and you slowly introduce these foods, you can build a helper,
a gut helper, to a very high level where you can tolerate a small amount of kefir every
day.
And who knows, you may even be able to tolerate kefir in a day and a yogurt.
But to put kefir and yogurt into the diet at the same time, to me, that's really crazy.
That's literally like doing three hours of gym work a day and then three hours of running
every day.
You're just gonna overkill the body.
So back off, and take it nice and easy, and build up very slowly.
The rash will disappear as you back off these irritating kind of cultured and fermented
foods.
So don't forget, kefir is a ferment and it's full of yeast.
People don't realize that.
You can actually get candida strains from kefir.
You need to be very careful with this food.
So, I hope that gives you a bit of trust and advice.
Thanks for the question.