Greetings, Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand.
Thanks for coming back and checking out this video.
I got an interesting bunch of questions from a lady on YouTube, a subscriber, a lady called
Michelle from Arizona.
Michelle’s asking me a few different questions about leaky gut and the kind of things she
needs to avoid in order to heal, to expedite healing, to feel better a lot quicker.
This one's for you Michelle.
I've entitled this video The 10 Leaky Gut Healing Mistakes to Avoid.
This is, again, based on a lot of experience and seeing people for a long time, with all
kinds of digestive problems, things we're going to talk about now.
These are the 10, some of the 10 key things I see as being obstacles to cure, obstacles
to get you better.
I don't usually like using the cure word, the obstacles that are in your path and hindrances
to recovery.
What do you think number one is?
Number one is something that I talk a lot about, is drinking alcohol.
Even drinking occasionally alcohol over a period of three to six months is going to
be a big obstacle in your way to recover from leaky gut.
Notice how I’ve put it up the top of the list number one, because in my opinion it’s
one of the most important ones, the most overlooked.
We're talking about even one drink per week or one drink per month.
Really this is something that you want to avoid altogether in your quest to get well
from any kind of digestive problem.
This is not just leaky gut.
We’re talking constipation.
We're talking diarrhea.
We talking parasites.
We talking candida.
We’re talking the small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.
We're talking inflammatory bowel disease.
We're talking food allergies.
We're talking many different types of problems that are affecting your GI tract.
If you want to get well, you just have to stop this.
That's all I'm going to say about that matter.
It's up to you.
Then you'll say to me, “But how long do I have to stop for?”
Well, how long is a piece of string?
Is it an inch or is it a mile?
I mean it comes in all different lengths and shapes and sizes, doesn't it?
You need to cut out the alcohol as long as you can, and particularly as we go through
the list here you’ll understand how it forms part and parcel with many of the other things
that we’re going to bring up.
But needless to say we're looking at a period of minimum three to six months if you've got
leaky gut.
Point number two, another mistake to avoid, not eating the correct way, not eating the
correct way.
Eating correctly for leaky gut is more than just a bowl of bone broth once a day.
It's more than just the kind of foods that you're going to eat.
We're going to bring up eating a little bit in this video because there's a lot about
eating and leaky gut.
By not eating the correct way some people for example are going to rely more in supplements,
they're going to take more probiotics to offset the bad effects of certain carbohydrates that
they eat.
In my book I write about eating on instinct.
I like people to eat instinctly, meaning that if a food makes them feel sick or bloated
or bad, they avoid that kind of food.
Remember, foods are like people in your life.
You've got relationships with them.
Some people you like and you hang around with.
Some people you don't like and you're hanging around less with.
Some people are a pain in the ass, you don't like them at all and they aggravate the hell
out of you.
Are we going to hang around those people or not?
You're probably not, you're probably going to be less available.
Now try and see foods a little bit like relationships, you've got relationships with them.
Some are going to feel good for you.
Some are going to feel bad.
Some are going to feel terrible.
So eat on instinct.
Eat with your gut feeling.
Remember that.
Your gut feeling may for example tell you that food A maybe not on a particular list
that you found on a forum or a blog or some call experts told you to eat this kind of
food, but when you eat it you feel bad, then you should avoid that food.
Always avoid foods that make you feel weird in any kind of way, regardless of what they
are.
That's what I call eating on instinct.
When you develop that instinct, if you're chewing food properly, you're selecting the
right foods for you personally, not for what’s on blog or forum or book says, you're going
a long way towards eating correctly.
Now you know that having fries and soda is not a good idea for example.
You don't need to have an instinct about that, unless you’re … [inaudible 00:04:32],
you don't need to be told that kind of stuff.
You know that you've got to avoid the kind of junky kind of crap.
I've done enough videos on this YouTube channel to show you guys what kind of foods in my
opinion are the best foods to eat.
Go back and have a look at those foods because I'm not going to just go on and on about what
to eat on this video.
But eating the correct way and eating long enough is the best way for leaky gut.
Simple foods are the best foods.
In my opinion a basic protein and maybe a salad or some vegetables is enough for a meal.
Simplistic meals tend to heal the gut a lot more readily than complicated meals.
Point number three, thinking that only diet and food, nutrition will fix the problem.
Some people are so anal and focused on food and so anxious about food, we'll talk again
about that a bit later on, but their whole focus is on what they eat.
Now food … you may not agree with me, but food only forms a small part of healing a
leaky gut.
You've got much bigger fish to fry than just diet alone.
There are a lot more things that make up the sum of healing that gut apart from just what
you put in here.
That's a very, very narrow approach if you think that purely what you eat will fix up
the gut.
In my opinion it forms maybe 5 or 10% of healing a leaky gut.
But if that 5 or 10% is not there or incorrect, you're not going to heal anyway.
There are a lot of reasons why you need to eat the right kind of food.
But I can tell you now based on seeing a lot of people, it doesn't form the overwhelming
reason why you're going to recover or not.
I see many people recover with poor gut function, even on diets that I didn't think were fantastic,
but they still fully recovered.
That's experience.
I can tell you.
It really works for some people.
Point number four.
Let me just have a look what I’ve got written down here.
This is an interesting one.
This links up with point three, thinking about the minutiae.
I see this with many patients over the years.
People get pretty anal and they get really reductionist, thinking that the whole problem
is GMO foods.
It's all because they ate some food that was GMO and their gut was destroyed, thinking
their entire gut problem is because of mercury fillings, or oxalates in the diet, or because
they're eating foods that are high in histamine, or because of specific types of reasons in
their diet why they've got this gut problem.
They tend to reduce things down to one thing and that becomes the whole problem.
They become anally, obsessed, and focused about that one particular thing.
They may even seek out a doctor who's an expert in mercury or expert in histamine, just to
fix that one thing, and then they realize it didn't make any difference at all.
Don't get bogged down with one tiny little thing because it usually doesn't make that
much difference in the big scheme of things.
Point number five, expecting a bunch of pills to seal the deal.
Supplements alone will not fix up leaky gut.
Leaky gut needs to be addressed with correct way of thinking, correct way of eating, correct
way of living, it needs to be addressed on a whole wide range of different topics.
You're not going to fix this by popping a probiotic in your mouth every five minutes.
It's not going to do it.
Supplements do form an important part of the process, but they are not the main thing that's
going to get you better.
Failure to address the underlying causes is number six.
We've done other videos before on causes of leaky gut.
One of the primary causes is antibiotics.
Other causes could be antibiotics in food, eating a lot of commercial poultry, eating
deep-fried poultry from these commercial chains, not a good idea if you have leaky gut, high-stress,
not chewing properly, poor lifestyles, not sleeping properly, spending too much time
on the internet, all these sorts of things could be potentially underlying causes.
It's good for you to examine your diet and lifestyle in detail.
Have a good think about what could be improved.
If you're failing in business and you talk to a business mentor or an accountant, often
he or she will sit down and say, “Well, you know what Michele?
The way I see it, this isn't really right about your business, and I think X, Y, Z are
some of the problems behind it.”
Maybe you need to get some professional advice or get another pair of eyes on your case of
someone to look at it objectively and say, “Well, I think this could be a big problem
for you.”
You know what?
We don't often think that our lifestyle’s imperfect.
We think we've got the perfect lifestyle, until we talk to somebody else and they'll
point something out and say, “Well, this might need fix-up.”
Point number seven, basically the point I’m trying to make here is that your way of thinking
has a big effect on the gut.
This links up to the last point really with stress, but thinking can have a big effect
on leaky gut.
We call the gut the second brain.
We’ve got the primary brain and the second brain.
When you're feeling sick for a long time and you've got a gut problem, stress can come
in between you and the way you think about things.
You can be obsessed about foods.
You could be obsessed about pain.
You could be just about supplements.
You could be obsessed about going to forums or blog sites or things like that.
You're thinking too much about the problem.
You're thinking way too much about the problem.
How about taking your mind away from the gut and away from some forum for more than an
hour or a day or a week?
How about going outside and enjoying living and stop your way of thinking, stop this obsessive
thinking about your health all the time?
I've done a video on this, quite a popular one that’s had quite a few thousand views
about stop thinking about how bad you feel all the time.
It's not a good idea.
Of course, if you go to the internet and social media, a lot of people are going to agree
with you because they feel like crap, you feel like crap, so you can talk about all
the time about how you feel like crap together, and that will just keep you in that crappy
pool the whole time.
You've got to get out of this way of thinking.
That's point number seven.
Point number eight, we're talking about the 10 leaky gut healing mistakes to avoid, remember?
Forgetting that lifestyle may play a huge role in leaky gut syndrome.
This may play a bigger role than actually what you're eating.
Remember, we said that food plays a maybe 10% role in leaky gut recovery.
We could be looking at a 80, 90% component here with lifestyle and way of thinking.
I got a fantastic email from a lady just before, living in a Mediterranean country, who's been
sick for a long, long time.
I'm going to just see if I can find her email here.
And here it is.
I received it on the 31st of January.
I'm not going to mention her name.
Hi Eric.
Just an update.
I've been doing your recommendations for a whole month now and changes have been amazing.
Guess what?
I'm now weighing an amazing 54 kilos, which is about 108 pounds, a weight which I've never
been able to get up to.
My skin is looking healthy.
I'm so much more energetic.
I feel like a new person.
What else does she … Thank you for helping me find a way to my well-being, the greatest
gift of all.
Now this lady's way of thinking was wrong.
She wasn't thinking right.
Her diet was amazing.
She had an incredible diet.
She probably ate better food than all you guys out there looking at this video.
She did everything right, but she wasn't thinking right.
We spoke a lot about that.
I've worked with her with a special person, special type counseling person.
She's changing the way she thinks about things, her weight’s coming up, and she's feeling
amazing.
I've seen this time and time and time again, that many people have got the wrong way of
thinking, and that can prohibit them from healing.
No matter how good the bone broth is, no matter how good the probiotics are, no matter how
anally and scrupulous you are in getting the right kind of organic food, if your way of
thinking is wrong, it's all going to turn to crap.
Point number nine, expectation of needing only 30 days to get well.
Again, this comes back to the way of thinking.
You may need longer than 30 days.
You may need 60 days.
You may need 90 days.
You may need a whole year to get well.
You need to do whatever it takes to get better.
Time should not really become a factor for you.
If you've been sick a long, long time watching this video, you need to forget about looking
at your watch and saying, “Oh my god, it's been two weeks and I'm still feeling like
crap.”
Remember the way you're thinking.
This brain affects this brain here.
So you need to stop that.
You need to entirely stop that.
My experience tells me that things always take longer than you expect, always.
Anything worthwhile in life, double the time that you expect it's going to happen and it
will probably happen.
That counts for education, it counts for making money or business or for health or for relationships,
whatever you want in life, it always takes longer, it always costs more, and it always
requires more effort.
Those are the things in life that are really worthwhile doing.
Therefore, you should get more experience and understand these concepts, allow yourself
a lot of slack, allow yourself that, to be in that, because if you keep kicking yourself
up the butt all the time, “I'm not well yet, I'm not well yet,” you're going to
really affect that gut, and remember regardless of what you eat.
Point number 10, it basically culminates all of the things we spoke about is stress.
Stress is one of the biggest problems when it comes to leaky gut.
The gut becomes extremely permeable and more problematic under the presence of high amounts
of stress, hormone cortisol and various other hormones that get produced.
The primary action of the fight-or-flight syndrome or the stress axis is to make sure
that our blood gets diverted from our digestive system to the peripheral parts of the body
to evade or escape stress.
That's the sympathetic mode.
If you keep kicking yourself up the butt, keep worrying about exactly how the bone broth
is made, keep being really concerned about food all the time, or think about it, or obsess
about food, this to me is a stress, so you are in the fight-or-flight.
You’re decreasing your immunity, you're decreasing your movement of food through the
GI tract, you're reducing your ability for your body to make digestive enzymes.
All of these things are being caused because of stress.
So what have we basically said in these 10 videos?
What we’ve basically said is I want you guys to heal from leaky gut, to relax a heck
of a lot more than you are, to eat on instinct, take your time, be a very patient person.
Many of the comments I get on YouTube I see are from very impatient people.
“Get to the point,” one guy said to me.
When you become a very impatient person and you've got a short fuse, it tells me that
you're a high stress person and you've probably got a digestive problem.
Supplements are important we said, but they're not the be-all end-all.
Taking a good quality supplement one or two things is definitely going to help, particularly
if they take them for a period of three to six months, it's going to really help.
You may want to think about anti-microbials and probiotics, enzymes, things like that.
Check out my CanXida range of CanXida Remove and Restore because they're going to help
people with leaky gut tremendously.
Low dose three to six months, excellent outcome, particularly if you use the lifestyle factors
that we discussed in this video.
That's one of the most important things I want to get across, it's the same thing I
said in my book, recovery amounts to 75% of lifestyle choices that you make.
Leaky gut is something you can definitely heal from and it shouldn't take any more than
three to six months to get a full recovery from leaky gut.
What's the outcome of that?
Way more health like in this lady's case, considerably healthy-looking skin, better
sleep, better well-being, improved mood, just feeling better in general.
And that's what a good life is all about, it's about feeling amazing, having amazing
relationships with other people, being successful in your endeavors in life, and feeling very
happy.
That's what I hope I've left you on a happy note, and also a hopeful note saying that
you can and will fully recover from leaky gut by following some of these tips I've laid
out in this video.
I want to thank you all for tuning in today.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Thank you.