CANDIDA AND CANDIDA INFECTIONS

    One of my patients had a big win in her level of health a few weeks ago. Life looked fun again. She wanted to get out and interact with people rather than avoid them. Her condition had bugged her for many years. Her skin looked great and the little spots on her body and especially her face were gone. What occurred?  

    We also addressed her adrenal health. You might ask why adrenal problems are so common. The answer is that any excess stress in the body or to the person which then stresses his/her body creates more stress. In her case, a long term candida infection would wear out the adrenal stress system. An optimum amount of stress is good. Too little stress leads to a challenge-less life. Too much stress which is more common wears a person out. Books have been written and studies have been done on the subject of stress and adrenal response. Adrenals are not the subject of this article. Why this lady got over-stressed is.

    Years ago she enjoyed life. When she came to me she looked haggard in her face. There was no glow or smile. She was concerned about her candida infection which she had researched but no one could fix. She brought up the fact that candida fungus lives in a hard shell like a fortress. I told her to effectively eliminate gut candida you have to punch holes in that fortress and then your herbal potions could kill it. She was in for a free consultation. Because I gave her this explanation about the shell-like fortress she was willing to become a patient. Three months later she got the glow and smile. She was one of the tougher cases. Actually she needed a bit more address to the candida infection even after three months but life had returned to her cheeks and her outlook on life.  

    Some people think candida infections are caused by too much sugar. Sugar is more an aggravator of an existing candida infection. Often people with candida infections feel compelled to eat sugar. Let’s just say that candida in the gut in part prevents other bacteria important to sugar metabolism from having a place to live. Reestablishing this special bacteria through specific herbs improves sugar metabolism and this is also ideal in thoroughly addressing the candida infection which is a form of dysbiosis a term you may have heard.  It means improper gut flora balance including presence of unwanted flora incapable of producing optimum health.  This is a simplified functional definition.

    The age of antibiotics is really the initiating cause of candida problems. I am not knocking antibiotics as these have saved many lives and helped men overcome the ravages of certain bacterial organisms such as tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhea, strep throat, staph infections and others. But, as with all drugs, there are side effects. Antibiotics kill the disease and most of the valuable flora in the gut too. Antibiotics are indiscriminate. There are 10s, perhaps 100s of trillions of these flora in every healthy gut that get killed. At best, most people took yogurt after antibiotics. There is not very much gut flora in yogurt compared to the trillions of lost flora. In other words the order of magnitude of yogurt flora is insufficient to restore a healthy gut flora following antibiotics. You need a high quality multi-organism probiotic that also contains prebiotics that serve as food for the probiotics after every time antibiotics are used. If we had ALL been doing this ALL our lives each and every time after antibiotic use candida infections would be rare indeed. Very few have such a history. There are still healthcare professionals out there who would say candida infections do not exist. For these stalwarts of some long gone pre-antibiotic world I say come to present time. Things have changed. Various books have been written on the subject for at least 20 years including The Yeast Connection and The Woman in 1995 by William G. Crook MD.  This is a 770 page tome. Just reading it, much less following all the advice could become your new way of life. So, 20 years ago health care professionals were grappling with this problem of yeast or fungus infection as antibiotic use was ever expanding since its inception back in the days of World War II or there about.  

In the early 2000s I would find candida or candida-like infections in patients and frankly had limited success. This was frustrating. Then I discovered a key fact which I mentioned earlier when talking about  the lady with the successful win in life. The fact is that candida has this fortress-like shell making it difficult to get rid of. Knowing this I was able to find how to penetrate the shell and my supplement programs started working. That was years ago and I do not know how many patients later, certainly well over 100. I have a case now that has been suffering healthwise for 40 plus years. Between this candida elimination program and a simultaneous 3 week purification special supplement and diet nutrition program her blood sugar dropped 100 points. This person was using insulin and sometimes her blood sugar got too low and she had to cut her dose of the drug. Not bad for a person whose blood sugar would hit 265. That is what I like to see.

    So why do all the good, useful flora get killed off and the candida survives? Are you not glad you thought of this question? Well candida is normally found in low amounts in your throat. The throat being in your fresh air passage is not so likely to get killed as down where the antibiotics release in your gut and there is plenty of blood flow and so forth. When the good flora get killed off the candida can migrate to a new home and remember they live in a fortress and perhaps antibiotics do not even penetrate this. That would be a point to be researched. So, candida can now be addressed effectively in a very few months in most cases. The gut is where these infections get started and they migrate from there to the vaginal tract, skin, the blood and so forth. Handle the gut effectively and the war is won. The herbs and so forth address the whole body. By the way, we even have a probiotic product now that has certain strains of flora that survive antibiotics. Still, if you must take antibiotics follow these immediately with a good long course of the best pro and prebiotics you can get your hands on. If you are a clean freak and never get your hands in the garden dirt go out and pick up soil based organisms from clean dirt that has healthy plants growing in it. There are hundreds of friendly flora in the garden, and normally, before antibiotics, in your gut as well. The best probiotics have only several strains of the most key healthy flora. In addition to your probiotic/prebiotic product pick up other gut flora from clean dirt. You do not have to eat the dirt just get it on your hands and breathe the air which will contain the flora. 

    Candida infections are almost universal in the United States due to the heavy use of antibiotics. The greater your antibiotics history, the worse the infection. The symptoms would be worse, the greater your antibiotic history or milder your antibiotic history. Here is a typical health history*:

* Repeated of antibiotics during childhood
* Acne during teen years
* Recurrent urinary infections
* Frequent vaginitis
* Menstrual problems
* PMS
* Fatigue, depression, headaches
* Visits to many different physicians
* Digestive symptoms
* Crave sweets
* Sick all over, etc., etc.

    The greater your history of antibiotics, the more severe will your candida infection be. Sugar cravings often go with candida infections. Weight loss is difficult to get a good result with in the person infected with candida. May this article assist you in having better health.    
   
* This list of symptoms was taken from the book The Yeast Connection and the Woman by Dr. William G Crook.