Greetings, greetings.
Eric Bakker, the naturopath from New Zealand, where we've had our recent mass shooting.
It's pretty bad.
Thank you for all the emails and kind words from people who have reached out to sympathize
with people in New Zealand.
We've had quite a awful ... Last week we had 50 people passed away because of terrorist
activity involving two mosques.
So thank you for those comments.
They've been greatly appreciated.
Now we're gonna talk about LES, or lower esophageal sphincter.
This is a topic many people have asked me about, about reflux disease and about all
sorts of problems with swallowing, and burping, and bloating, and feeling sick, and things
like that.
So you've got this sphincter muscle, this round muscle, that contracts and closes off
down at the bottom of the esophagus where the stomach is.
It basically stops the contents of the stomach from coming back up again.
The lower esophageal sphincter works really well with most people, especially if the person
is not obese, overweight, if the person's not highly stressed, if the person isn't drinking
30 cups of coffee a day, like one of my patients were drinking, or eating a large block of
chocolate every day like many patients I've seen over the years.
People who smoke excessively, people who eat lots of chocolate, lots of mints, have lots
of coffee, lots of very powerful things in their diet over and again; and particularly
larger people can have problems with their sphincter, and that can make it quite saggy-aggy,
quite loose, and not closing off properly, and that can give reflux.
It can end up giving you a sour taste in your mouth, a burn in your throat, a sick feeling.
Some people get chest pain out of it, they think they're having a heart attack with this
reflux disease.
So GERD, or gastroesophageal reflux disease can happen because of LES problems, or lower
esophageal sphincter not really closing off properly.
What are some of the key things you can do to strengthen the LES?
How can you make it stronger?
To begin with you need to eat the right kind of food because, hello, if you're gonna drink
20 or 30 cups of coffee a day, you're gonna have a lot of problems, not just with your
stomach but with your kidneys and your blood pressure, and all sorts of stuff.
So if you're not eating right, you've got to do it right if you want to get good digestive
health.
When I wrote my book, Candida Crusher, I did write a section in it about not eating too
fast, not throwing everything down the throat like it's a kind of cement mixer.
Some people have got no idea; they'll have a cup of coffee, then they'll have an ice
cream, they'll have a piece of chocolate, they'll have a glass of wine, they'll have
a slice of pizza.
They seem to think that magically everything in here just seems to digest, but when you
start getting problems with your digestion you should start thinking what did you do
that contributed to those problems.
Going to the doctor's not going to help because you'll only get put on a proton-pump inhibitor
like Nexium, like a drug that blocks acid production.
That's not the answer.
Guys are graded doing this.
I've talked about this before, about the John Wayne school of health.
For the older people who remember a western actor called John Wayne.
John Wayne was the sort of guy that would get shot and get back on his horse and ride
off in the sunset as if everything was okay.
Don't be like that with your health.
When you have a digestive problem think why it was caused, or what did you do, what did
you eat.
Did you just get fired and then go and have a big piece of pizza and a couple of cans
of beer?
Maybe you got all stressed out and upset.
Something happened to cause that problem.
A continuation of this problem can often underpin lower esophageal sphincter problems.
I had lower esophageal sphincter problems years ago, myself personally, when we had
three young kids, and I felt quite stressed out and I was eating too fast.
I remember chewing too quick, swallowing too quick.
Had these kids at the table screaming or crying or problems, and having stress with my partner
because of this, and I can remember having reflux and problems.
When the body is in a fight or flight mode it's not going to digest food properly.
When it's in a relaxed mode, what we call the rest and digest, or the parasympathetic
dominant part of the autonomic nervous function, when that's uppermount you'll digest very
easily.
That's why it's important not to watch the six o'clock news, with rapes and murders and
robberies and stuff, when you're eating your food, or to scroll through your Facebook feeds
when you're eating.
I prefer people put all that junk aside and just sit there, relax, chew their food, and
eat.
That's going to go a long way towards helping you overcome LES kind of problems.
The correct food selection is critical, that you eat good food all the time, especially
if you've got this problem.
The second thing is to eat food in the correct circumstances, not under high stress but hopefully
in a relaxed kind of situation.
The third thing you can do is to maybe get an assessment of your stomach regarding the
stomach acid ... I've spoken about this in previous videos ... a baking soda test or
a betaine hydrochloride test to stimulate the stomach to see how flat it really is.
You can get your stomach prepped up in making acid, and train it to work better, by giving
it a little bit of [Schwenish] Bitters or extra lemon juice in your diet, or some apple
cider vinegar, like Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar.
Especially in, you people in the northern hemisphere, now going into spring and summer
is a good time to really increase all these acid foods in your diet because they will
really help tone that sphincter and get your stomach in better shape, too, especially if
you chew foods properly and slowly.
Take your time, small portion sizes.
Remember skip the chocolate, skip the mint, skip the coffee, skip the nicotine; all these
stimulating things can affect the gut.
You can overcome LES problems.
Also think about taking a digestive enzyme formula, particularly one with probiotics
with it, because that's going to help get your upper GI in a great shape, the pancreas,
the stomach, and the small intestine.
The probiotics will really flow on down and help to improve the bacterial content of the
small and large intestine.
That's gonna work quite well for you if you do that.
Just remember those lifestyle tips.
If you don't do that, you're probably wasting your time.
Chew slowly, take your time, correct selection of foods, weight loss if required.
You need to get onto that because if you've got a lower esophageal sphincter problem,
it can make your life hell, especially in lying down or refluxing food.
It can make you very sick, and in its worst extreme form it can even stimulate cell changes
in the throat and lead to all sorts of diseases you don't even want to talk about.
So get onto it.
You can get it fixed.
I've had work with many patients with sphincter problems who've fixed them up perfectly fine.
Thanks for the question.