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What Is Helicobacter Pylori?

2,817 views · Published 14 February 2016 · 4:12 · Indexed 22 October 2026

Channel: CanXida · 2016 · Education

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Greetings. It's New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker, author of Candida Crusher. Thanks for checking out my video. I've had many people over the past several months ask me many different questions regarding the bacteria called helicobacter pylori or HP, helicobacter, what it's commonly known as. Helicobacter is a bug that commonly affects the digestive system of, I believe, almost half the world's population.  Incredible, but it's probably one of the most prevalent of all bacterial infections that exist today. We're going to do a series of videos on H. pylori. I've got a whole list of questions here. What is helicobacter and what are the signs and symptoms? What are the causes, etc.? 

This video is about what H. pylori actually is. It's a spiral shaped bacteria. "Helico" means spiral, and it lives in the atrium of the stomach. So the atrium of the stomach is essentially—I'll just draw a diagram to show you. The atrium is the bottom part of the stomach. If we draw the stomach, which we're doing now. There you can actually see the stomach. The bottom part here is where these little bugs like to live. What they do is they burrow into the mucous because you've got a mucous coating of the wall of the stomach, and the bugs love to live inside that mucous because they're protected. 

What they do, they're very clever. They produce an enzyme called "urease," and urease works on urea and there's plenty of this stuff called urea in the gut. It floats around there in the gastric juices. There's lots of urea. Urea gets converted by urease into bicarbonate and ammonia and these are very strong alkaline bases. The stomach is quite an acid environment, so the bacteria actually help to produce bicarbonate and ammonia around it. It shrouds itself. It reminds me of Star Trek when they put these shields up. I don't know if you watch Star Trek. I like these crazy kind of programs. When the captain says, "Put up the shields. We're getting attacked."

What this helicobacter does is it puts shields up so nothing can attack it. None of its enemies can get in and blast it. This is one of the big reasons why this blooming bug is so hard to get rid of. It hides in an environment with very poor immune activity. It helps to initiate activity that reduces stomach acidity and prolongs its life. It's notoriously difficult to get rid of. That's what helicobacter is. It's common in children. Very common in children. In fact, most specialists now believe that it actually starts in childhood and it remains asymptomatic, meaning no symptoms, for all that person's life. And at some later stage, it can produce symptoms.
Chances are for every four or five people watching this video now, one will have an H. pylori infection. Up to 40 percent of people in North America have it. I believe 25 to 30 percent of people in Australia and New Zealand have helicobacter infections. Up to 80 percent or greater in many African countries have this infection.
That's what helicobacter is. I'll do another video after this one on who discovered it and how they discovered it. The story about Dr. Barry Marshall. You'll be quite interested to hear about Barry Marshall who got the Nobel Prize in 2005. Chances are if you're taking some kind of medication for blocking the acidity of the stomach and particularly if you've got a peptic or duodenal ulcer, it's almost now known that people with digestive ulcerations almost certainly have this bug.

That's what helicobacter is. It's common. It lives in the stomach. It affects people and many people take medications. In fact, billions of dollars in medications get spent every year just to basically subdue this bug. Not even to get rid of it. Because most people actually have the symptomatic treatment of helicobacter. 

Join me in the next video and I'll be talking a bit more about Barry Marshall and the discovery. Thank you.

Discovery of H. Pylori https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6hk2LH52O0

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