Greetings, it's Eric Bakker, Naturopath from New Zealand.
Thanks for checking out this video today.
This is my wife's little dog, just in case you're gonna hear any noises in the room.
"Are going to be quiet for me today?
I think you will.
You're gorgeous."
Today we're gonna be talking about inflammatory bowel disease.
This is based on my experiences over about 30 years.
I'm gonna be talking about Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.
I'm gonna give you some very good hints and tips.
If you've got one of these conditions, I'd like you to pay particular attention.
This information has helped a lot of people over the years.
I've seen people with all kinds of functional bowel problems.
Many of these people have approached me, because they weren't really getting the results that
they were expecting with conventional treatment.
Let's get started.
Before we get started, we're going to explain the difference between ulcerative colitis
and Crohn's disease, because these are two quite different conditions lumped into the
inflammatory bowel disease category.
Crohn's disease tends to be a lot more insidious, a lot more disturbing, a lot more painful,
a lot more serious, than ulcerative colitis.
In fact, up to 70% of people with Crohn's, at some stage in their life will end up with
some type of surgery.
Not always effective, but often required, because they end up with such big health problems.
If you think about the word ulcerative colitis, it implies the colon.
Ulcerative colitis generally affects the lower parts of the large intestine.
It's gonna be affecting the descending colon and the sigmoid colon.
Not usually the rectum, but the colon's affected, especially like the latter part of the colon.
Whereas, Crohn's disease, it can affect any part of the digestive system, from the mouth
right through to the rectal area.
But, it will generally affect the distal parts of the small intestine.
In medicine, distally means further away.
The small intestine is broken into three parts.
You've got the duodenum, or we call it duodenum, you've got the jejunum, and you have the ileum.
The ileum is the terminal part that connects up to the colon through the ileocecal valve.
The ileum is the part most affected by Crohn's Disease.
Crohn's tends to have a lot more serious effect on the bowel as I mentioned.
There'll be ulcers, and these can be very deep ulcers.
These can affect the deeper layers of the tissue causing a lot of destruction of the
bowel, hence the surgery.
Whereas, colitis tends to affect the more superficial and upper layers affecting the
mucosa.
This can cause mucus and bleeding, which we commonly find with colitis.
With Crohn's we're gonna get lot more pain, much more pain, much more cramping and bleeding,
like serious pathology.
What do we do about these conditions?
That's what we're gonna talk about.
We're gonna talk about how you can get a good outcome with inflammatory bowel, how you can
avoid a lot of the discomfort and how you can also avoid lot of the unnecessary anxiety
that comes with this condition.
Inflammatory bowel can really muck up your life quite a lot.
It can cause a lot of problems.
Most people I've seen with inflammatory bowel disease end up so stressed out because of
this condition, some of them end up quitting their job or having relationship problems,
or it really disrupts your life.
I wouldn't know what it's like to have inflammatory bowel, because my gut has always been in such
good shape.
But I can totally understand where people come from when they have inflammatory bowel,
because the quality of their life can go very low, very quickly.
That then, of course, will affect them emotionally, significantly.
Let's look at the natural approach.
What are you gonna do if you've got this condition?
What are some of the best things you can do?
Well, I always say the bigger the problem, the bigger the hammer.
I've got a lot of tools, and I've got small hammers in my workshop, but I've also got
a sledge hammer, a real big sledge hammer, and I find that sometimes very effective for
problem like breaking a big piece of concrete.
But you are not going to be breaking a big piece of concrete with a tiny little tack
hammer that you use for putting little tacks in.
Similar with this condition.
So, you need a big solution when you've got a big problem.
You need a strong heavy solution.
Now the big one, the sledge hammer, for a lot of people watching this is gonna be no
alcohol.
Because it goes without saying, when you gotta a major bowel problem, you don't really wanna
be drinking alcohol.
So, if you've got an inflammatory bowel disease, and you're watching this problem now, and
you think that you can get away with a few glasses of alcohol here or there, you are
completely kidding and deluding yourself.
But, you can't do that at all.
Not at least until you've got a very well functioning bowel.
It's just common sense, you just don't do those kind of things.
So alcohol is just a no-go zone straight off the bat.
The second one, to me, it's a caution.
It's taking pharmaceutical drugs of any kind, particularly nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory
drugs, like Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Acetaminophen, Aspirin, any kind of drug for pain in particular
is very erosive on the gut.
So you really want to try and avoid to take drugs as much as possible.
For other chronic conditions like headaches or backaches or arthritis or knee pain or
stomach pain or anything like that, you really want to try and minimize your drug intake.
We talked about the alcohol and the drugs.
Those are two very powerful things in their effects on the gut.
The third thing that you really wanna do is stool testing.
You wanna ask your healthcare professional and then you want a functional diagnostic
stool test.
It's called a comprehensive stool analysis or a CSA x 3, three samples.
There's about 20 labs in America that will do it.
You need to talk to your healthcare professional and say, "Look Doc, I want this test done.
I wanna scope out what's going on inside my tummy.
I wanna know if I've got Candida, I wanna know if I've got parasites, I wanna know if
I've got good bacteria.
I wanna know."
You want to know, alright?
If your business is failing, doesn't your accountant give you a spreadsheet and explain
to you why the business is failing?
If your health is failing wouldn't you wanna get a professional to give you some sheet
saying, "Look, these are the areas that we need to pick up on."
It's common sense.
The fourth thing is we're gonna look really at an anti-inflammatory diet.
When you've got inflammatory bowel disease you want an anti-inflammatory diet.
What are the things that you think or would assume would be inflammatory?
You probably know that by now.
It's all the crappy foods in the diet.
It's takeaway foods, it's Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Denny's, McDonald's, Pizza
Hut, all that kind of crap.
The stuff that you really shouldn't be eating.
I had a long conversation with a patient yesterday about what it was like growing up in the '60s.
Guess I am nearly sixty myself now, but when I was a young guy growing up in the early
1960's and then in 1969 our first supermarket came into the area.
Prior to that mom would used to get ... the truck would turn up once a week for the groceries
... there would be a guy pulling up that would have meat, for example, for sale.
There would be a guy pulling up that would have milk for sale, the milkman, and then
you would have the vegetable guy who had fruits, he'd pull up.
We would always have these produce coming in that was brought to you.
If you wanted stuff like sugar or salt or stuff like that you would go to the corner
store and then the guy would put it in a bag for you, weigh it out and you pay that price.
And then the biggest supermarkets came to being with all the processed foods, where
initially was all in glass.
I don't know if you are old enough to remember that, but everything was packaged in glass
and thick cardboard boxes and now it's all plastic, correct?
There were no really fake packaged foods, microwave meals or stuff in those days.
You had to make everything from scratch.
And I still do that today, all my meals are prepped from scratch, everything we do.
We try and eat most of our foods that we grow ourselves, and if we do buy stuff, we buy
the best food that we can buy.
I want you to follow that line, I want you to make your meals from scratch, from high
quality organic ingredients.
If you can't, you make sure that you're gonna eat food that's made with the best possible
ingredients.
Because if you really treasure your digestive system like I do, you are gonna want to eat
good food all the time.
Anti-inflammatory diet means a low crappy food diet.
It means as minimal preservatives and excipients and flavorings and colors and additives and
high-fructose corn syrup and BHT and all these chemicals that they put in food now, all that
crap that's put in there.
You wanna avoid that as much as you can.
Simple meals work the best for inflammatory bowel.
A piece of fish and a piece of steamed broccoli.
That's a meal, for example.
It's a low inflammation diet.
What are the foods that inflame the gut.
Foods that inflame the gut as I mentioned are takeaway foods, but they are also foods
high in bad kind of fats, saturated fats like the bad saturated fats that are being heated
up.
Deep fried foods, for example.
We're looking at trans fats or fats that are solid at room temperature.
Just be careful, because takeaway food and preserved food and packaged food often has
these fats in it.
You want to avoid that, in fact the bad fats as I mentioned.
Most vegetable oils you want to avoid, if you can.
I recommend extra virgin olive oil.
I also recommend a higher quality sesame seed oil, its quite good for the body.
And if you can get some really fresh clean oils that are being called pressed, that's
well worth doing.
Coconut is a good oil also, if you get a really good coconut oil.
Its good for the gut, as well it tend to a fungal [inaudible 00:10:22] it tend to inflammatory,
it's good.
Red meat is not a good idea for ulcerative colitis.
Red meat is inflammatory, heats the body up and it's inflammatory and it can even be allergenic
to people because it's bovine, it's cow protein.
Pork is not a good idea for inflammatory bowel disease.
The best proteins in my opinion are either vegetable proteins ... I am a believer in
tofu, you may not be, but I eat a non-GMO tofu at least once or twice per week, soya
tofu, good one.
Tempeh, the fermented soya product is good to eat.
But there are various other beans and peas you can eat, like chickpeas and lentils, quite
good sources of protein.
Fish and good quality organic free range chicken in my opinion are the better proteins to eat.
Be very careful of sulfa based foods in the diet.
Sulfa, particularly eggs, can really flare up some people's bowel quite a lot when it
is inflamed.
I've learned that by experience.
I've read some research on that years ago, that eggs are not the best foods for people
with inflammatory bowel disease.
Fresh fish, nice white fillets, a piece of salmon, some chicken, these are good kind
of proteins, and the vegetarian proteins, as I discussed.
Vegetables are very very important for ulcerative colitis, the right kind of vegetables.
Particularly the right kind of fibers are important for the colon.
So, let's talk a little but about fiber in the diet now.
Low fiber spares some flares and pain.
Wrong fiber, more bowel motions.
Right fiber, better formed bowel motions.
Low fiber meaning you are not eating enough vegetables, or you are boiling the crap out
of everything, or you're eating processed food.
So you need fiber in your diet.
There are different types of fibers, soluble fiber and insoluble fiber.
These have different kinds of purposes in the gut.
But most vegetables, good quality leafy greens contain a lot of fiber.
And this is what you want in your diet.
Fibers serves many purposes.
It allows a very good passage of stool and through the gut.
It helps to heal the bowel.
It stops and slows down the ability of the stool to block up and cause increasing ulcerational
pain or hotspots.
But, it also promotes the formation of good beneficial bacteria, which help to heal the
colon, soothe it, and help to stop things like leaky gut.
So, granny smith apples, sprouts, green vegetables ... I've also just done some research interesting
on tapioca starch made from cassava.
Tapioca, these little white pills that you can buy, a little bit of that in your diet
is very very beneficial for inflammatory bowel disease.
You may wanna give it a try.
It's just going to help to feed up and build up, what we call, short chain fatty acids
in the colon.
And this is going to help a lot with bloating and gas and pain and things like that.
Another one of my favorites is aloe vera.
Fresh aloe vera leaf, you can just fillet that, get that yellow bit of stuff off it,
put that in a container, put it in your refrigerator, fill it up with 20 ounces of water or so and
then once a week replace the leaf.
We can also buy the aloe vera juice, get a good quality one.
Aloe vera is very soothing and healing for the digestive tract.
We talked about the fibers.
We talked about the vegetables and the proteins and the fats.
Hydration is a very important thing too, so I'd like you to drink plenty of herbal teas.
If you're suffering a lot from bloating or gas, or flatulence, or things, you can try
fennel tea.
Camomile tea is quite soothing and peppermint tea.
Peppermint tea is my favorite.
I grow a lot of peppermint in summer, I juts love the refreshing taste of peppermint.
Those are good herbal teas for you to have.
Caffeine is not really a good idea with inflammatory bowel.
But, most people I know with colitis can get around with one coffee in the morning, not
a problem at all.
Dietary supplement is very important with inflammatory bowel, because many people are
deficient in vitamins.
Vitamin D, up to 75% of people with inflammatory bowel have vitamin D deficiency.
So, get a blood test done for vitamin D, get a blood test done for B12.
Up to 50% of people with inflammatory bowel have got a B12 deficiency.
And that could lead to depression and anxiety and a whole bunch of different problems.
You can get all sorts of weird peripheral neuropathy like tingling, numbness, weak hands
... many different symptoms can occur with B12 deficiency.
So recommend you get B12 checked and vitamin D checked.
Also, don't think that when you got inflammatory bowel it's important to make sure you got
no parasites, no Candida, no bad bacteria or things like that.
[inaudible 00:15:13] just even at times where very very well people also with inflammatory
bowel.
So for probiotics, check out the canXida range that I've created, canXida restore, the green
in the green bottle with the green label, that is going to help you a lot because it's
got enzymes and probiotics in it.
The canXida remove is excellent for inflammatory bowel because it cleans up the gut.
It's got so many different metro [inaudible 00:15:38] in it which helps to get rid of,
parasites, yeasts, different fungi and bad bacteria.
One or two tables per day for three to six months is going to clean that whole digestive
system up, and eliminate those unwanted pathogens.
CanXida rebuild is an excellent multivitamin designed for people with conditions like inflammatory
bowel disease.
So it's going to help supply nutrition and help to correct lot of the deficiencies for
the gut.
So several of the base, and the antimicrobial base in it.
So taking one or two rebuild per day is going to go a long way towards supplying the cells
from nutrition that are lacking through poor gut function.
It's also going to help to inhibit the microbes because of the antimicrobial base in it.
So the canXida products would go quite well with inflammatory bowel disease.
Particularly, if you follow the advise outlined in this video ... No alcohol, watch the pharmaceutical
ghosts, follow an anti-inflammatory diet, cook food in your diet from scratch, nutrition
is your medicine, medicine is your nutrition, it's a primary thing that you wanna get involved
in.
Drink at least six to eight glasses of good quality water per day, drink a few cups of
herbal teas.
Last thing, but, not the least, that we didn't speak about was stress.
Stress is one of the primary triggers for inflammatory bowel disease.
I can't tell you how many people I've seen that get a gut flare when they are under stress.
I see this quite a lot.
I've seen this with airline pilots, I've seen this with people work with the New Zealand
sheep, I've seen it with accountants, I've seen it with CEOs of companies, I've seen
it with professional athletes, I've seen it with some musicians.
I've seen all these kinds of people who have inflammatory bowel disease and I've seen these
people get the flares most when they had a big project on, or a big personal stress,
or a work stress.
That's when the flare really came up.
So if you've got something coming up, make sure you prepare yourself for it and you relax
several says prior to the event, so it doesn't form a key trigger when it comes to inflammatory
bowel disease.
I hope that gives you a little bit of an insight into what I consider to be one of the best
hints and tips for inflammatory bowel disease.
And now we're gonna say goodbye and Ruby is gonna say goodbye too.
"Are you gonna say goodbye Ruby?
Oh, you're a good girl.
You miss your mother, don't yeah?"
Thanks for tuning in everybody.
I do appreciate it.
Thank you!