Greetings and more greetings from New Zealand.
Hi, it's Eric Bakker, the naturopath, thanks for coming back to my channel.
When I wrote my Candida Crusher book in 2013, I think I published it, I'd been writing it
for about three, four years.
So I started writing it probably about 2009, 2010.
I can remember way back in the early days, even well before that, I would often recommend
to people to try sourdough bread if they had a candida problem, or a gut problem in general,
to get away from normal bread, and eat sourdough bread.
Now, at that stage, you didn't really see that much of that kind of information on the
internet, because everybody said, "Don't eat bread, it's no good for you, it's verboten,
if you eat it, you'll get sick.
It will give you bad infections, yeast problems and gluten, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah."
So everybody was basically dissing bread, any kind of flour product was bad, until someone
like me said, "Hey, hang on a minute, maybe sourdough bread's okay."
I found out years ago, years and years ago, even when I was a student, that sour cultures
were actually good for the stomach, good for the digestive system.
I had this really weird, quirky kind of teacher, basically a guy who trained in macrobiotic
cooking, the Japanese way of cooking, and he was a student of a guy called Michio Kushi,
from Japan.
So, look up macrobiotic cooking, if you don't know what it is, it's a Japanese kind of way
of cooking.
And this teacher was a brilliant guy, like he actually showed us how to make sourdough
bread.
This would have been back in the mid 80s, I think when I was doing some courses, and
so I learned about sourdough bread back then.
But also this guy taught me to make it difficult to seitan, I think it's s-a-i-t-a-n, like
Satan almost.
And guess what, it's pure gluten, 100% gluten dish.
It's true.
There's a dish called seitan, a Japanese dish, it's a 100% gluten.
Now, nobody moaned about, "I'm gluten intolerant," back then, okay, apart from celiacs, most
people are eating gluten, and nobody really moaned about it until the internet started
saying how bad and toxic gluten is, like a few years ago, I got the impression that I
was being attacked by people for recommending that small amounts of gluten were all right
in the diet, and I got basically accosted by a doctor a few years ago at a medical conference
saying, "Are you mad, telling people to eat gluten?
Don't you know how bad it is for the bowel," and all this sort of crap.
Whereas I've known hundreds, if not thousands of patients to get away with eating gluten
for years without a problem.
So, just be careful about what you read online and what you hear online.
And that's the problem, because when people get educated about things, they reach a certain
level where they think they don't need to learn anymore.
And then when they read something, they think, "Wow, that's a scientific article, it must
be true, so therefore it's the gospel."
So then they started parroting it to other people, and eventually you have so many parrots
all around the world talking, that nobody knows who's a parrot and who's not a parrot
anymore.
So just watch out.
Back to sourdough.
Sourdough cultures are not like making normal bread, because as you know, you're going to
get a starter, you're going to get flour, preferably really good, high quality wheat,
because you know what?
People actually still grow good quality wheat around the world.
There's this misconception that everything that's flour is crap for the health, but that's
not true.
Okay, you still can get good quality flour.
So that's basically mixed with water, and set aside at room temperature until the wild
yeast from the air, they go into that culture, okay?
So you're tasting a little bit sour, ooh, it tastes like sauerkraut, it tastes like
yogurt, but that's the good part, it's the sour part, acetic acid, lactic acid, okay?
Various acids are now building up in this, and the other thing you'll note, is that gluten
actually starts breaking down into amino acids more effectively than protein, under the presence
of the bacteria and the yeast now brewing in this sour culture.
Sourdough is one of the oldest forms of bread ever to have existed.
People have been making sourdough an awfully long time.
Long before they had iPhones, they had sourdough bread, long before we had Instagram, and all
this memeing crap, we had sourdough bread.
In biblical days we had it.
No-one was moaning about gluten this and gluten that back then.
So, is it really going to make you feel sick if you've got a yeast infection?
Well, it really depends.
Some people still insist of having a nice piece of sourdough bread, and then putting
an inch of strawberry jam on top, well that's not a great idea, is it?
Don't put loads and loads of peanut butter and jam on it and eat it, and then, "Why am
I getting bloated and gassy?
Oh, see, I told you gluten was no good for me."
People often put crap on bread.
So if you're really worried about the addition of sourdough bread, and you've got a candida
problem, here's what you do, okay?
You start with a very small piece, you don't start with five slices, like some people do.
Start with a tiny piece, and we're talking a piece of the size of a matchbox.
So maybe try that one day, and see how your tummy handles it.
Always dip your toe into the bathtub before you throw your whole naked body into it, and
then realize it's way too hot or cold.
Same thing applies with the candida diet.
Don't just eat 10 slices of bread the following day and say, "See, told you gluten is no good."
Go slowly.
You'll find that when you start adding sourdough bread into your diet, small amounts, and build
it up, just like I've done over the years with sourdough and yogurt, and sauerkraut
and these cultures, you can soon work out what your tolerance level is, how much you
can get away with, and also how it's affecting your gut, and you'll find, lo and behold,
that it's probably going to be perfectly fine.
Especially if the sourdough culture is good, and it's been made properly.
So, there are a lot of beneficial yeasts in the sourdough culture that can guess what,
help you counter candida.
So as crazy as it seems, sourdough bread is actually very healthy for the body.
I wouldn't quite put it in the same ballpark as sauerkraut, but it's still an excellent
food to eat.
Small amounts, regularly, I like it nice and thin, a slice of it.
Don't eat a lot of bread myself, but if I do it, it'd be sourdough.
So is it good with candida?
It is for the majority of people, providing they understand when to put it into the diet,
when not to have too much of it, and more importantly, what they're putting on top of
it.
So if you're going to have sourdough bread, for goodness sakes, have it maybe as a chicken
salad sandwich or something like that, just be careful what you put on it, because it's
not really a great idea to put a lot of sweet stuff on top of bread.
Many people attempt it because of the sour taste, to have sweet with it, and that's what
can cause problems.
But if you introduce small amounts regularly over time, I don't think you'll find that
you'll have a real problem with it, and sourdough bread is a delightful food to eat, all right?
So just watch out for the naysayers, because there's plenty of them out there.
Thanks for tuning in.