Questions & Answers Archives

1. I had taken antibiotics for my Lyme disease. Since I finished my antibiotics, I have been feeling fatigue and poor digestion. Please explain why.

The antibiotics that you were taking to treat your Lyme’s disease may have disturbed the balance of good gut flora in your gastrointestinal tract. With the decrease in the good gut in your body, candida has probably taken the opportunity to multiply and overgrow. As a result, you can contribute your feeling of fatigue and poor digestion to the candida overgrowth.

The thing about antibiotics is that they are most commonly prescribed to kill off harmful bacteria in the body, however, in the process, they can also end up destroying the bacteria which are beneficial for the body. In a recent study, researchers treated a group of female mice with antibiotic for 7 days. After the treatment, they were introduced with Candida albicans. Their gut was tested for 7 days and for 21 days after injection of candida. At the same time, a different group of female mice were introduced Candida albicans without having been treated by antibiotics. It was demonstrated that the group of mice where were given the antibiotics had their gut colonized by candida. The group of mice which were free of antibiotics had successfully eliminated candida from the gut after 21 days.

The study also shows that overtime, as candida colonizes the gut, it not only grows in number and stays there for a long time, it also prevents the good bacteria from coming back. In this case, your gut flora was disturbed with the use of the antibiotics which may have caused the candida to take over and cause fatigue and poor digestion. If you suspect candida behind your fatigue and poor digestion, get tested for candida and start your treatment as soon as you can to restore good gut health.

2. My craving for sugar is so intense even though I don’t like sweets. How can I curb my cravings?

We are now aware that sugar is what candida needs to thrive in the body. If you are having intense sugar cravings, then the yeast in your body is intensifying your sugar cravings in order to stay put. The irony doesn’t escape us: increased consumption of sugar helps the yeast grow and having too much yeast gives you intense sugar craving.

Every human has candida in their digestive tract. However, in the case of a weakened or poor immune system, candida can overtake and multiply. Once the candida takes over, it is hard to get rid of it. The person must go through a candida cleanse and stay away from certain food groups in order to kill the candida overgrowth.

If you suspect having candida (not sure where to begin, take our quiz here to taking the first step), first get the diagnosis. Once it has been confirmed that you have candida, consider starting with the candida cleanse. Work with your doctor or a naturopath in determining what foods you should consume and which ones to avoid. You may also be recommended to go on probiotics to help decrease the overgrowth and help restore your inner ecology of healthy gut flora. Remember, a healthy inner ecology consists of good bacteria and beneficial yeast balance.

3. I have really bad period cramps. My doctor has tried everything to help me with the pain and I still see no results. Can you explain what else could it be?

Medically, there has been no links made between yeast infection and a delay in the menstrual cycle. While having a candida overgrowth may not directly impact when you will get your period every month, it may affect your periods in other ways.

If you get your period during the time you are dealing with a yeast infection, it may cause you some mild to severe discomfort. Due to the hormonal changes in the body brought by period, the pH of the vagina changes. If you are dealing with yeast infection, it can be aggravated with the change in hormones. Having periods also contributes to a very moist environment in the vaginal area. Yeast grows and multiplies in moist environments. When having yeast infection during a period, you will want to clean your vagina thoroughly with water as often as you can.

To help alleviate period cramp, following a clean and healthy diet will help. A diet free of sugar and carb will also help at keeping the yeast overgrowth at bay. Having a vaginal yeast infection is very uncomfortable. The risks of getting a vaginal yeast infection can be lowered by wearing cotton underwear, loose fitted pants, keeping your vaginal area dry, not overdoing with antibiotics.

4. I have severe adrenal fatigue with breathing difficulties. I don’t have asthma or a history of it in my family.

The adrenal glands are glands that help us recover from stress. When you think about the adrenal glands, you think about stress. Stress is something that affects all of us. For those who deal with stress effectively, their adrenal glands do not get impacted severely. For those who do not deal with stress effectively, their adrenals never recover fully.

When you don’t recover, you can conduct an adrenal test to determine what your cortisol levels are like. Salivary cortisol is a more accurate indication of the 24-hour rhythm or pattern of cortisol in the body, as opposed to doing one blood test. The adrenal gland produces about 7 to 10 milligrams of cortisol hormone per day. Cortisol has a fantastically powerful effect to regulate many different systems in the body. It’s one of the most important hormones that affect our inflammation.

When there is not enough cortisol in the body, the body is in pain. On the other hand, having too much cortisol can also cause problems, namely that of inflammation. Too much cortisol can also cause allergies and hypersensitive. Typically, people who feel burned out or have severe adrenal fatigue, it is because they are lacking cortisol. Because they don’t have enough cortisol, the body finds it hard to keep the immune system strong. With a weak immune system, you are prone to getting fungal infections, bacterial infections, parasites. It is a vicious cycle where when people have been sick for far too long, their cortisol levels decrease which provides an environment for the bad bugs to go up and the good bugs to go down.

If you suspect that your adrenal function is low, you can treat it with following the correct lifestyle and diet. Doing so will also help strengthen your immune system and help in fighting those pesky yeast infections off within three to six months.

5. Why do I keep getting low grade fevers without any cold or flu?

Systemic candidiasis is a serious infection that can affect many parts of the body, including the eyes, the bones, blood, heart, etc. It is caused by candida. Systemic candidiasis happens when candida enters the bloodstream. Fever and chills are some signs of this invasive yeast infection. Taking antibiotics will not help with alleviating the symptoms as it would for a bacterial infection. Systemic candidiasis is the most common fungal infection. Many people also get hospitalized for it.

Treatment of SC includes of oral or intravenous antifungal medications. When candida has entered the bloodstream (also known as candidemia), it can also cause septic shock increasing blood pressure, fastening heart rate and causing rapid breathing. Most times, people who are dealing with candidiasis believe that they have the flu. It becomes hard to differentiate candidiasis from the flu due to the symptoms they share. These people are also most likely suffering from other medical conditions as well.

If your fever is not induced by a flu or a cold, speak with your general practitioner about testing for systemic candidiasis. If that is the cause of your fever, you will want to treat it as promptly as possible before it takes over different organs in your body.

I have worked in conjunction with medical practitioners on and off for many years and, when required, have referred patients with chronic gastrointestinal distress to gastroenterologists for an initial bowel screen to rule out anything obvious, such as a polyp, stricture, prolapse, diverticulitis, hemorrhoid or possibly even bowel cancer.

All too often, though, the person would come back with the diagnosis of NAD (no abnormal diagnosis) – nothing abnormal, no diseases, just “irritable bowel syndrome” (IBS), and the recommendation that they should make dietary changes, increase fiber in their diet and use psyllium hulls. In most such instances, these changes brought the patient very little relief.

One of my favourite writers is Dr. Liz Lipsky Ph.D, author of “Digestive Wellness”, Liz states that in irritable bowel syndrome, there are four main causes:

1. Infection (yeasts, bacteria, parasites)
2. Lactose
3. Food allergies and food intolerances
4. Stress

I once heard Dr. Alan Gaby say (past-president of the American Holistic Medical Association) that he calls irritable bowel syndrome a “garbage can diagnosis”; and that most medical doctors just go and dump people in there when they can’t figure their health problems out, and hope that somebody else will collect them and take them and their health problems away with them. It doesn’t sound very nice, and I can assure you that not all doctors would do this, but the reality for many practitioners when faced with a patient who has IBS is to simply refer them on or to prescribe them a drug after a ten minute consultation.

Related articles:

This is very much like a patient who presents to a doctor with a pain in her behind which eventually turns out to be a thumbtack, and the doctor calls it “thumb tack disease” and promptly prescribes paracetamol for this painful disease with no known cause. Why don’t we get the patient to pull that thumb tack out of her behind by figuring out where she sat down at the time of the thumb tack problem?

My concerns are that some practitioners who are consulted by patients with digestive disorders have little or no understanding, nor training, in functional digestive complaints such as candida albicans, food allergies, leaky gut syndrome and irritable bowel syndrome. “You have nothing wrong with your digestive system that we can find” is what is typically said to the patient. Candida is a condition often caused by antibiotics – some of the most common drugs prescribed by medical practitioners.

I have several medical colleagues in both Australia and New Zealand who now can recognize and treat candida effectively, but unfortunately this number is only a fraction in comparison to the many orthodox medical doctors who believe that anything but orthodox Western medicine is absolute quackery.

You have to be the judge of this yourself, but it has always been my belief as a naturopath that it makes good sense to make the correct lifestyle and diet changes first, which assist in the healing of your digestive system well before opting for any drugs or surgery. In other words, the cause needs to be addressed.

Having worked in different medical and natural medicine clinics over the years, I have had the opportunity first hand to observe many chronically sick patients, and most have had some degree of dysbiosis and/or candida yeast infections.

The candida yeast infection was not always the primary cause of their chronic ill health; rather it came along and developed in a stressed digestive system, as part of their lowered resistance, and had likely contributed in some way to the very illness itself. I have found that by working with the chronically sick patient and helping them improve their gut function, it is possible to turn the case around, but it can become difficult when there is a diagnosable condition, particularly sophisticated pathology.

If the irritable bowel disease has not been treated satisfactorily in the first place, then it may actually be of an advantage to me, because the patient and doctor have no clear approach to adopt to alleviate the patient’s health issues, and in case a patient has not reacted effectively to any prior treatment, they may well be significantly more ready to accept making alterations to their diet and lifestyle, to see if their health can change for the better. The more compromised their digestive health and affected their lifestyle has become, the higher the degree of motivation they will have to want to make the right changes and the better the compliance will be. In the event the examination is clear-cut but, then in some cases the affected person could possibly be interested in solely dealing with the symptoms of the ailment alone, instead of focusing on any underlying causes.

The drawback, unfortunately, is that the longer a person has been unwell with IBS, the greater the chance that some other pathology (disease) will develop, and often silently in the background. It may take much longer to achieve that turn-around to great health the person is looking for, and when this is the case, compliance will not be that great and drugs and surgery may be a better option, especially if a great deal of pain or pathology is present.

Related articles:

Not what you expected me to say, but patients want to have a full range of options open to them if they are really sick, and they should too. That’s what integrative medicine should be all about, the best of both worlds.

Frequently Asked Questions #6

Candida is Often Misdiagnosed as IBS

Articles

About The Site

About Us

Can’t Find What You Are Looking For?

Candida on Pinterest

Candida Crusher Kindle Version