Can Betaine HCL Treat Candida Yeast Infections?

Greetings. Naturopath Eric Bakker from New Zealand. Author of Candida Crusher and formulator of the Canxida range of products. I've got a question here from Claudevia Sameen from Kiev, Ukraine. Claudivia is asking me, "Can Betaine HCL treat Candida?" So betaine hydrochloride. Betaine is really a supplement; trimethylglycine is a supplement that we use for improving stomach acidity. It's commonly thought that many people who get reflux disease and heartburn have over acid production and, in fact, many have under acid production. It's a very common assumption that heartburn is caused by over acidity and it's spawned a whole huge industry, particularly in North America in the United States.

It's almost a $10 billion US dollar industry with one drug called Nexium alone netting over $6 billion last year. Stomach acid is very important. It's a very important part of good health for people.

A very important part. And when we start blocking stomach acid with medications, we create a huge amount of problem with people. I've done another video on Nexium that you can watch, and that explains a little bit more about the different kinds of medications, the acid blockers, we've got different kinds, two different types we use, and their effect on human health. A study has found that over 70 percent of people who take these acid-blocking medications have got, in fact, a yeast infection. By increasing stomach acidity rather than decreasing it, we're going to have a good effect on improving not just the stomach function in general, but we're also going to prevent the body from gaining the ability to get these infections. So you're more prone to getting a yeast infection or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, what we call SIBO, if you've got a higher pH of the stomach, so a more alkaline stomach rather than a more acid-forming stomach. A good way to take betaine hydrochloride, Dr. Jonathan Wright in the States, very famous doctor years ago recommended people start with 300 to 500 mg of betaine HCL as a supplement.

Take it with a meal one capsule and then with each succeeding meal, increase by one dose until you reach your what we call "tummy tolerance." If you start feeling a bit of reflux or heartburn behind the sternum here, you back off and you work under that threshold. I've had some patients honestly take 20 or 30 of these capsules a day until they reach their stomach's acidity level. And then over a period of a week or two, they had to back off and use lower and lower dosages. This is called the "tummy tolerance" method and it works quite well for a lot of people. If you've quite serious heartburn, you could try a little bit of betaine, a little bit of lemon juice or cider vinegar may help, too, or a bit of betaine. If you've got Candida, make sure that you take a digestive enzyme that contains a bit of betaine. Check out my products called Canxida Restore. That's got digestive enzymes in it, along with some probiotics.

Probiotics, in fact, improve the upper level of the stomach's health, and antibiotics are linked, in fact, with people taking these acid blocking medications. Because what we found is that when many people take an antibiotic, they, in fact, destroy the beneficial flora in the stomach. And yes, there are beneficial bacteria there, too, and right throughout the digestive tract.

This, in turn, can create reflux disease and problems requiring a drug like Zantac or Tagamet or Prevacid or Nexium, one of those drugs. So if you require one of these drugs, have you taken an antibiotic in the past? Maybe you just need to take a good probiotic enzyme formula to build that health back up again. That's a bit of a long-winded reply there for Claudivia in Kiev, Ukraine.

I hope that answers your question Claudivia. Don't forget to do my online quiz at yeastinfection.org to determine what kind of level of severity of Candida you've got. Thanks for tuning in.