It is not that uncommon to find a patient who comes to my room with an addictive type of behavioral pattern, and this is something I have witnessed with many chronic digestive cases especially with a digestive disorder like a chronic candida overgrowth. The addiction can be to sugar, alcohol, biscuits, or a lifestyle pattern that in time may contribute to a yeast overgrowth like staying up consistently late each night, not chewing foods properly, worrying too much and not relaxing enough because of work addiction.

Stress is often a key factor. Meals can be delayed or perhaps skipped in favor of high carbohydrate snacks. These patterns can continue for months depending on the person’s age or even for several years. It may be a pattern a young person goes through when they are perhaps twenty years old for example. They leave home, get a job and live in an apartment and hang around their friends a lot. This may include studying, part-time jobs, and all too frequent partying. It may be a male or female who works as a shift-worker at a factory, or a busy single mother with kids who works as a part-time nurse. It may be a taxi driver or an airline pilot or airline traffic controller. It may be a middle-aged woman trying to take care of her aged mother and her teenagers at the same time.

In many of these instances, their diet may leave a lot to be desired including alcohol, sweet foods, coffee with sugar, take-away meals and considerably less time or motivation to focus on nutritious well balanced home cooked meals. Whenever there is a person with a chronic case of candida, then there will often be a chronic case of a faulty diet and/ or lifestyle underpinning this.

I like to point these things out because it may be you reading this right now with a somewhat dysfunctional lifestyle or dietary habit preventing you from having a great digestive system and optimal health. Stressful patterns and hit and miss diets are a classic way to cause dysbiosis and eventual yeast overgrowth. With a stable life and a nutritious diet comes a stable digestive function.

No secrets, remember, just plain common sense.