 And you guys want to guess how much money I spent on all this BS? This isn't even everything I've tried. There's literally like a dozen more things that I've returned already. So 300, 400 dollars later we have some very valuable lessons learned and we have a solution. But for anyone who's unfamiliar, I started having health issues back in April of 2018 and I tried a John S. Vonner Planet's Raw Primal Diet for several months. I stopped cooking my food, although I was consuming mostly raw anyway. I stopped salting my food and I started getting cravings for carbs, honey, eggs, dairy. So I started having a tablespoon or two of honey per day, tried reintroducing eggs, seemed to go okay. And then I had dairy and everything went downhill. People were saying, oh, it's just detox bro. And I was having anaphylaxis attacks, heart palpitations, insomnia, like crazy, crazy allergic reactions to this dairy. People were telling me it was detox, you just have to adjust to it. So of course I stopped consuming the dairy immediately, but when I consumed it, I literally did not sleep for a week. I said, okay, maybe it was the lactose in the milk. So I tried raw cream and raw butter. Same thing, horrendous, horrendous allergic reaction. So over the next few months I suffer from insomnia, heart palpitations, worst few months of my life by far. Long story short, I initially thought I had a parasite and then I thought I had Candida. Someone told me I had Candida. Then we landed on gut dysbiosis, which is an imbalance of gut bacteria. And in the last few months, I've been kind of isolating it to copper toxicity. Now, until I get a hair mineral analysis, I don't want to say anything for certain. But the lesson learned here, guys, is you have to find out what the underlying issue is. You can kill all the Candida in your stomach that you want, but it will come back if you don't fix the underlying issue. What fixed the underlying issue for me? Frankie's Volgrease, aka Vitamin D3. I started taking a lot of Vitamin D3, I started exercising, I water fasted for five days and then all I ate was meat and fat lightly cooked with salt. That is what ultimately fixed my gut issues. But some of these things did contribute to it and the main way was I lost a lot of weight. I was like emaciated. I was like 135 pounds. I couldn't exactly water fast to reset my appetite and all the food I was eating was being consumed by the gut bacteria. These antimicrobials helped me consume the food and gain some weight back so then I was then able to fast. But keep in mind, guys, the ultimate solution was water fasting, resetting my digestive tract, giving it a break, taking Vitamin D3. Very important for healing the body, precursor to cell differentiation, gene expression, exercising, really being active. That helped me with my sleep and ultimately my body was able to heal itself. But I don't want to go too much more into that story. The focus of this video is going to be all of the things I've tried, the purpose that they're supposed to have, and what I've learned on this six month journey in regards to all of these supplements. The most valuable resources for me were one, a friend I made along this journey that reached out to me and gave me some advice, and two, the notes from the Integrated Seabo Sefo Conference from 2017. I will put that in the description down below. A lot of these things are what I took from that conference. So there's a few general categories that a lot of this stuff can be lumped into. We have antibacterials and antimicrobials on the left. I have some digestive enzymes here. This is some Vitamin C powder that's completely separate. Charcoal powder, completely separate, probiotics separate. These are fatty acids. These are used to kill yeast cells. And then here I have some supplements on the side like boron and zinc that other people recommended. And the things that I did not mention here are NAC, N-A-C-D-L-C-S-T-E-N, as well as ALA, alphalopoic acid, bismuth, or collating agents to break down biofilms. Biofilms are mucus in the gut that contains bacteria, and they're pretty much protected by that. Most things would be used to break down the biofilms. And also I had some MCT oil, which is pretty much concentrated coconut oil. There's also a garlic extract, I think it was called Allicin. All this stuff, guys, is going to be on my Amazon shop in the comments down below if you want to try any of this out. And there's also melatonin, but melatonin gave me... Guys, when I take melatonin, I see demons. So melatonin might help for your insomnia, but it did not help for me. Of course, the vitamin D3, guys, the only supplement here that I recommend taking every day that works, but let's jump into all of this stuff. And before I jump into all of this stuff, as you can imagine, I was taking a crazy, crazy amount of pills. I was literally taking all of this at once at some point. It was absolutely absurd. I was, thankfully, I wasn't working at the time. Like, I was working at the time, but I was able to fix my schedule so I could do this and be on the toilet half the day. As you can imagine, a lot of these antimicrobials, you can't just drink clove oil. It's going to be accurate and terrible. An interesting thing about putting an antimicrobial thing in your mouth and how hard it is to break down this bacteria in your stomach is rinse your mouth out with mouthwash. See how the bacteria of biofilm forms in your mouth. And that's in your mouth. Imagine getting this stuff into your stomach and having it release where the bacteria is. The bacteria is diluted and the stomach fluid. It's very, very difficult and ineffective to really take a lot of antimicrobials. That being said, let's get into it. So the first thing I have to show you guys is the gelatin capsules because you can't take this stuff. You'll lose your mind. So gelatin capsules come like this. You take the top cap off. And this is great for anything. This isn't just for this. So these are pretty big too. Five milliliters. You take the cap off and then all of these have droppers. So let's say we want to put, we want to do an iodine capsule. We take our iodine dropper and some droppers work better with these. Some don't. If the dropper has a really fine tip like this, you're good. But be very careful not to get the liquid on the outside of the capsule or on your hand as the smell will stay on your hand depending on what it is. And if you get it on the outside of the capsule, it won't be so pleasant to swallow down the capsule. So after we fill up the capsule, we take the top of the cap and it caps on. Now, although you might be thinking I can do this ahead of time, no you can't. Because some things break down capsules and some don't. In my experience, iodine does, clove does. Most of these do, but what's really important to note is some of these make the capsules explode. Usnea releases gases and the capsules explode a few seconds after you put it in usually. And black walnut breaks down the capsules very quickly and melts them. And wormwood also explodes the capsules and pops them after you put it in there. So keep in mind guys, just one interesting thing, pomegranate oil smells so good. It's so fruity. Only thing on here that actually smells good. And I was taking a crazy, crazy amount of this stuff guys. I would take two or three of these capsules and these are big capsules and I was doing that for every single one of these things. But let's jump into what each of these things serve as a purpose and then we'll isolate each one individually. So the antibacterials and the antimicrobials, as you can imagine, they kill certain bacteria, certain fungus as Candida is a fungus. Now what they also do is they promote growth of certain bacteria and they inhibit growth of certain bacteria. So one of these specifically like berberine that we have right here inhibits hydrogen-producing bacteria and then we have garlic that could inhibit methane-producing bacteria. As I said, I don't have the garlic here but different ones inhibit different bacterial growth and they also promote certain bacterial growth. But I would think that if you're taking every single one of these antibacterials or antimicrobials, nothing is really going to survive in your stomach. That is why this stuff is meant to be used as a band-aid, as a temporary solution because you can't establish a healthy gut microbiome taking so many antibacterial things. It's important to touch on berberine because berberine is one of the most suggested and effective antimicrobials. This supplement also has Oregon grape and golden seal, other things that are recommended in the SIBO conference protocol. So this is definitely one of the most important things you should be taking if you do decide to do this. Two to three grams per day I think was the recommendation. Grape-proceed extract is also something referred to commonly in its antimicrobial context. If I had to say the most tried and true things and the most effective things here that I've deduced from my research, berberine complex is very high on the list. Grape-proceed extract is very high on the list. Oil of oregano, oil of clove, iodine, pomegranate, I'm going to be honest guys. The only reason this stuff is sitting here in front of me is because out of the hundreds of things I looked at and all of the research I did, these were deemed as the most effective. They were most consistently across every single recommendation for anything in regards to candida, SIBO, fungal issues, dysbiosis. All of these things are at the top of that list. So keep that in mind. None of these things I would have here if they weren't effective to some degree. The wormwood and the black walnut, although I've seen black walnut in anti-candida stuff, the only reason I have the wormwood is because I had it on hand because I was doing parasite stuff. So it's worth noting that the black walnut and the wormwood are typically used for parasite stuff, not candida stuff. So clove oil is particularly good for increasing gut motility, moving stuff through your stomach. And oil of oregano is great for biofilms, fighting biofilms. I remember reading a study on pomegranate and the type of acid found in pomegranate inhibits fungal growth in the stomach, but now I don't want to go in-depth into every single antibacterial, antimicrobial because this is specific to people having this problem. So check out that conference, but I do want to emphasize that point that each one of these serves a different purpose. So if you have SIBO versus CFO, you would take different versions and different combinations of things. In my mind, I was like, well, why not just take all of them? Probably not the best idea. These teas here, Paudiarco, Uber Ursi are simply berberine-containing teas. That analogy we made earlier about the mouthwash, I don't think these are effective. The concentration and the difficulty of getting something potent in your digestive system leads me to believe that the purpose of these is mainly to make sure that when you're having a meal, the bacteria isn't eating the food. It's that your body is digesting and absorbing the food. When I was really, really emaciated, 135 pounds, I won't say emaciated, but when I was losing a lot of weight, when I was like 135 pounds, I couldn't fast. So taking these antimicrobials with the meal stopped the bacteria from eating the food and allowed my body to digest the food. Now all these antibacterials, antimicrobials, they kill bacteria, they inhibit growth, they can break down biofilms to some degree. We also have iodine here. Potassium iodide does the same thing. I read a study, if you Google potassium iodide candida, it kills yeast cells within 30 seconds of contact, I believe, but what's the concentration? It's in vitro. I'm not really sure about the effectiveness of it in the digestive system, but it's certainly one of the most effective things I've seen from a mechanistic standpoint in a study. So the next thing to touch on is the fatty acids. And funny story is me drinking two cups of MCT oil, not like two eight ounce cups, two big 16 ounce cups of MCT oil, and I was on the toilet for two days. What I found out was that saturated fats, especially from coconut oil, can really damage the gut lining and cause more issues for people, so I would definitely stay away from coconut oil. I'm personally allergic to coconut oil and I didn't realize this because when you remove the carbohydrate content of coconut and those other elements of coconut, the oil doesn't give me an allergic reaction in my mouth, whereas the cream does. So be careful, guys, of underlying coconut allergies when consuming refined oils or MCT oil. I definitely wouldn't use this, but the reason this is used as an antibacterial or an antimicrobial is because it has capriic acid and loric acid. Here we have a concentrated version of the capriic acid that's found in coconut and I also have another acid, undicilinic acid. What these do is they literally just kill the candida. So if you get these acids in the presence of actual stomach acid in your stomach, they will kill the candida, but this is important to note. If capriic acid and undicilinic acid, if the fatty acids are not in the presence of an acidic environment in the stomach, that means that they are not going to be effective. And I know it's capriic acid, that just means it's a fat. It's not necessarily acidic itself. So you have to take betaine HCl or ensure that the stomach acid level is very high. When you're taking these otherwise, they will be ineffective. And I never noticed anything from taking these two specifically. So I can't really recommend them in any way whatsoever. The charcoal powder, same thing. I never really noticed a difference. The zinc, I purchased that because I thought it was a copper problem, but I'll touch on that in a separate video. I don't think it's safe for me to really make any assumptions without knowing other things for sure. We got the boron bros. There's definitely some benefits to boron, and I did notice some mental clarity actually when I took the boron, although I did stop taking it. I don't think, and I don't like taking supplements outside of vitamin D3 in my diet. I like to do things naturally as our ancestors would have, with the exception of vitamin D3 supplements. And then we have a probiotic prescript assist. What I will say about probiotics is they can make SIBO or SIFO much worse. I took this, and it made things way worse. So probiotic recommendations, I can't really say. The one thing that did work for me was vitamin C flushes. Vitamin C helps flush out histamines. It also binds to copper in the bloodstream. So vitamin C, excellent, excellent thing. One of the best things, and the only thing that I can definitely recommend for people. To do a vitamin C flush, you take like 15, 20, 25 grams of vitamin C. It flushes your system. Be close to a toilet. And then we have the digestive enzymes. And the reason I'm touching on the vitamin C and the digestive enzymes last is because they were the most effective. And the only things in hindsight that I would turn back to now, I don't really want to discredit these antimicrobials because the antimicrobials helped me gain my weight back. So without these, I can't say for certain if I would be better as I am now. They might have contributed to me being able to fight back the bacteria enough to get my stomach to absorb some nutrients to gain weight back. So then I could fast and reset my digestive system. Now, your body produces enzymes depending on what you eat, lactase to digest lactose, pepsin to digest protein, lipase to digest fat. It produces bile to digest fat as well. And by consuming these digestive enzymes as well as betaine HCl, which is stomach acid, we can allow our small intestine to absorb the nutrients easier. This is very, very important because people with SIBO, CFO, as well as other gut issues tend to have low stomach acid. So what we do is we increase the stomach acid, it breaks down the food, the food absorbs in the stomach, and then we can effectively get nutrients. Now this doesn't work for a lot of people and it's not actually necessary for a lot of people. But it's important that you use betaine with bitters. If you don't have bitters, it's not going to activate. I mean, you could literally take 5, 10, 15 betaine pills, but if you put bitters in the pills, the bitters stimulates the digestive system to produce acid. And these supplements tend to have pepsin, which is for digesting protein. So what I actually did was I would take two or three of these stomach acid pills on an empty stomach in the morning. When I felt my stomach was acidic, I would then have my meal and then I would have some more stomach acid pills to try to break down the food and absorb it before the bacteria did. The bile just helps because I'm on a very, very high-fat carnivore diet, so I deemed it necessary to consume more bile. You can also try lipase, but although these have a purpose and a mechanism in the body and they seem to work, I felt like shit. I didn't like using them. They are not the solution. This is all a Band-Aid that should be used temporarily if you think it can fix your problem. Essentially, all of these things combined were enough for me, as I said. Absorb nutrients, get past the problem so that I could then water fast. But let's kind of just separate these into categories. So that's everything separated, you know, the vitamin C serving its own purpose over there, raw charcoal powder going in the garbage, zinc and boron on purposes, probiotics on purposes, fatty acids, stomach acids and antimicrobials. Now, I'm going to tell you guys what's missing that I've tried in the past. MCT oil instead of these. Garlic would also be in the antimicrobials. There's melatonin that would probably be with the supplements. And then there's NAC and ALA and bismuth. So I mentioned them earlier, the Na-Cetilcysteine, the alpha-lipoic acid and bismuth. Bismuth is just Pepto-Bismol. And what these three things serve as a purpose to do is to break down biofilm, break down bacterial films. So what I was actually doing, not with this stuff, what I tried before this was I would take a lot of Pepto-Bismol. And I mean like 30 to 40 pills of bismuth. And then I would take it with the Na-Cetilcysteine and the alpha-lipoic acid thinking it would break down the biofilm. I don't know how effective that is. I know that different chelations of bismuth can break down biofilms. I'm not sure if the form of bismuth and Pepto-Bismol can break down biofilms. So breaking down biofilms might be something worth looking into. I don't think it's necessary, but it's definitely worth mentioning that there are substances that you can buy over the counter such as Na-Cetilcysteine, alpha-lipoic acid and Pepto-Bismol that are associated with breaking down the biofilm. So my theory was I'll take the biofilm stuff at night. So when I go to bed, the biofilm breaks down. I wake up, I hammer it with antimicrobials. I hammer it with fatty acids. And then when I have my meal, I take the stomach acids, digest the food really quickly. So in my mind, it kind of made sense. I was breaking down the biofilm, killing the bacteria, eating food to make sure that I had nutrients and that the food was absorbed with a high stomach acid and enzyme content. And then I thought, okay, well, maybe boron deficiency, zinc deficiency, vitamin C flush. In my mind, all of this stuff made sense. So to take you guys through the routine that made sense in my mind at the time was I would wake up, I would have the stomach acid pills with the fatty acids thinking that the acidity would bring this to the Candida, whatever, and kill it. Because this has to be in an acidic environment. After I did that, I would take the antimicrobials, ensure that I have enough antimicrobials in the system so that when I have my meal later, there's no bacterial growth. Then I would have my meal with more enzymes and more acid. Then I would do another antimicrobial, did I do another antimicrobial flush? Yeah, then I would do another antimicrobial flush after my meal, absolutely crazy. And then I would do a vitamin C flush to get it all out of my system. And then at night, I would do the alpha-lipoic acid, the bismuth, the NH-geedle cysteine. I was taking probably over 100 pills a day, ruining my liver, completely crazy. I figured this stuff was easier on my liver than taking all the Tylenol and the Advil and stuff that I was taking for the pain of headaches and stuff from not sleeping over the insomnia. So, okay, so if I could go back in time and only do one thing that I thought would have worked, here's what I would have done. I would have taken the stomach acid in the morning and when I felt my stomach was acidic, I would have eaten some food. After I ate some food, I would have taken some more stomach acid pills and then I would have done a vitamin C flush. Maybe, maybe, maybe I would have incorporated a small amount of berberine. But you guys have to understand, all of this stuff is so inflammatory to the gut microbiome. It is so inflammatory that you cannot use this for longer than a period of days to a week or two. You can. And even then, it should be in a much lower dosage than I use. I probably use probably like five, 10 times more than I should have. So keep that in mind, guys. And as always, take everything with a grain of salt, preferably not Himalayan salt. That's what I've learned about all this stuff, guys. Hopefully, this helps someone out. I hope it does. Definitely check out the 2017 Integrative Sevo conference. I'll post that in the comments down below. So thank you guys for watching. If you guys would like to support the channel, please like, subscribe, and share the video. All of this stuff will be in my Amazon shop. I'm not recommending you get any of this stuff besides Frankie's bowl of grease, of course, the vitamin D3. I don't think any of this stuff is necessary, and I think your health can be achieved in other ways. But I'm providing it just because I know you guys are going to ask. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. If you guys want to check out my website, frank-tepano.com, you can reach out to me for a consultation on there. I also sell some minimal ingredient hygiene products like fluoride-free tooth powder, as well as aluminum-free deodorant. For my consultations, I focus on improving every aspect of overall health from a physical perspective in regards to diet, sun, exercise, and water. You can shoot me an email as well, frank-tephanelandgmail.com, if you are interested in that.