Natural Remedies For Candida - Program To Regain Health (Part 2)

Natural Remedies For Candida

6. Non-prescription Anticandida Supplements 

After you've completed the first four steps, you're ready to add supplements that help control the candida overgrowth:

Natural Remedies For Candida

• Probiotics: These preparations of lactobacillus acidophilus and other friendly probiotic bacteria (literally meaning pro-life, rather than antibiotic or anti-life) help crowd out candida in your digestive tract. Usual dose: ¼ to ½ tsp. of powder or 1-2 capsules, one-to-four times daily.

Natural Remedies For Yeast Infections - Programs To Regain Health (Part 1)

Natural Remedies For Yeast Infections

If this blog can give you just one thing, I hope it is the realization that:

You can overcome your health problems and get your life back on track!
 
Believing this simple statement is your crucial first step. Of course, you'll need help, including professionals and non-professionals. You'll need love and support from family members, friends, and support groups.

Natural Remedies For Yeast Infections

Make this your motto: "If it's going to be, it's up to me." 

Yeast Overgrowth Treatment

Yeast Overgrowth Treatment

After four months on the program, including six weeks on Diflucan, all but one of the participants ... experienced a very significant improvement in their condition. The majority reported feeling better than they had in years ...
 
Any medication that can potentially cause gastrointestinal ulcerations or inflammation and weaken the lining of the gut can allow candida to gain a stronger and deeper foothold ... While candida thrives on it, sugar weakens our immune system. It decreases the ability of white blood cells, phagocytes in particular, to engulf unwanted organisms ...
 

Yeast Overgrowth Treatment

Typically in patients with chronic sinusitis, the primary causes are: 

1. repeated broad-spectrum antibiotics, along with 
2. a sugarfilled diet and 
3. significant emotional stress.

Candida Overgrowth Symptoms - Sinusitis

Candida Overgrowth Symptoms

Sinusitis follows on the heels of asthma and allergies. In fact, it's closely connected and, I suspect, yeast plays just as important a part in the aggravating symptoms of sinusitis.

Almost 32 million Americans suffer from chronic sinusitis. That's 16.3% of the population and I was surprised to learn the majority of the sufferers are women.
 

Candida Overgrowth Symptoms

I've been interested in sinusitis since my medical school days. AIthough I enjoyed excellent health, I was bothered by a stuffy nose and mucus in the back of my throat. Although I tried various therapies, I was bothered by these problems until I visited internist/allergist Theron Randolph in Chicago in the mid-1990s.

How Can I Treat A Yeast Infection - Success Stories

How Can I Treat A Yeast Infection

Tabitha Vernier 

In February 2001 I received an e-mail from Kathy Vernier of Virginia. She told me about her daughter's long struggle with respiratory problems. Here are excerpts:

Tabitha has been troubled by sinus problems, bronchitis and recurrent bouts of asthma since early childhood ... She's also been hospitalized several times. Then three years ago, we took her to Dr. George Ward, a physician in the allergy department at the University of Virginia ... Although Tabitha gave no history of skin fungal infections, he prescribed Diflacan and it proved to be a wonder drug, enabling her to overcome her asthma and lead a normal life.
 

How Can I Treat A Yeast Infection

To get more information, I called Tabitha in May 2001 and with her permission, I recorded our conversation. Here are excerpts of the transcript:

Candida And Allergies - Yeast Related

Candida And Allergies

Based on the research studies of Iwata and Witkin in the 1960s and 1970s, and the clinical observations of Dr. Truss, superficial yeast infections may adversely affect the immune system, which, in turn, may adversely affect many different parts of the body. Yet, I'd never thought about the yeast relation to asthma until a physician friend added a note to a Christmas card I received in the early 1990s that said, "One of my patients with intrinsic asthma showed a marvelous response to Nizoral." 

My interest in the yeast connection to allergies increased when I read two 1994 abstracts published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. One of these abstracts cited the observations of Belgium researchers who described the favorable response of some of their asthmatic patients to (ketoconazole) Nizoral. They found that four out of five of their asthmatic patients treated with this antifungal drug improved, while four out of five of the placebo group did not improve.
 

Candida And Allergies

A second abstract, published by researchers at the University of Virginia, described a study of 10 patients with asthma and associated fungal infections of their feet. In a randomized study, they found that eight of the ten asthmatic patients were able to reduce their steroid dosage with no adverse reactions to fluconazole (Diflucan), in a dose of 100 mg. daily, were noted in any of the 10 patients, including "those maintained on fluconazole for up to two years."

Signs Of Yeast Allergy - Asthma and Allergies

Signs Of Yeast Allergy

More than 50 million Americans suffer from asthma and allergies. Of these, 17 million have asthma, a potentially life-threatening disease that affects airflow when breathing muscles squeeze, swell or are blocked by excess mucus.

More than 70% of asthma sufferers also have allergies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the prevalence of asthma has increased dramatically in recent years, up 75% in just 14 years, between 1980 and 1994. Experts theorize the increased amount of air pollution is responsible for at least part of this increase.
 

Signs Of Yeast Allergy

CDC statistics also show that 9.1% of women suffer from asthma, and 5.1% of men have the disease. 

Yeast And Allergies - Support By Practicing Physicians

Yeast And Allergies

Hundreds of practicing physicians have found that they can help many of their chronically ill patients by identifying and eliminating foods that play a major role in causing their symptoms. One such physician, my good friend Dr. Elmer Cranton, has for more than a decade used elimination/challenge diets in treating his patients with yeast-related health problems. In a recent letter, he said to me: 

I routinely prescribe elimination/challenge diets in all of my patients with yeast-related problems. By identifying trouble-making foods and removing them from the diet, I have decrease the patient's allergic load. Then the antifungal diet and other parts of my treatment program are much more apt to be successful.
 

Yeast And Allergies

Many other physicians who are members of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, the American Academy of Otolaryngic Allergy, the Pan American Allergy Society and the American Holistic Medical Association, use elimination/challenge diets in helping their chronically ill patients.

Candida Yeast Allergy - Treatment

Candida Yeast Allergy

Treatment for allergies starts with avoidance of the allergen. Over-the-counter or prescription antihistamines relieve and sometimes prevent the symptoms of allergic rhinitis (hay fever) and some other allergies. Decongestants can help shrink the blood vessels and relieve nasal congestion.
 
WHY YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT FOOD ALLERGIES/SENSITIVITIES 

I've said this before and it bears repeating here: Every person with a yeast-related problem has an overgrowth of Candida albicans in the digestive tract. This creates a disturbance in the normal balance of good bacteria, which, in turn, leads to a weakness of the membrane lining the intestinal tract and what is commonly called a "leaky gut." As a result, antigens (or toxic substances) in food are absorbed, and this plays a part in making you sick.

Candida Yeast Allergy

More than a decade ago, J. O. Hunter, a fellow of England's Royal College of Physicians, in a discussion of irritable bowel syndrome, suggested that patients with food intolerances have an abnormal gut flora, even though pathogens may not be present. In a discussion of food intolerance in the British journal, The Lancet, he said that food allergies may actually be caused by fermentation in the colon and by correcting imbalances in the gastrointestinal flora, those intolerances may be resolved.

Allergies And Yeast Infections - Food Allergies and Sensitivities

Allergies And Yeast Infections

I know I've mentioned this story before, but it bears repeating here with a few more details.
 
When I completed my internship and residency training and returned to Tennessee to open my first medical office, I knew nothing about hidden food allergies.
 

Allergies And Yeast Infections

I continued to be a food allergy ignoramus until the mid-1950s when Aileen, the mother of a 12-year-old boy, opened my eyes. Here's what happened: Her son, Tom, was so tired she could hardly get him out of bed for school each morning. Tom also complained of headaches, belly aches and muscle pains, and often was so irritable, Aileen said, "You can hardly stay in the house with him."

Treating A Yeast Infection - Joyce's Story

Treating A Yeast Infection

In August 1992, this 35-year-old woman called me and said, 

I've had severe myasthenia gravis for over 20 years and I have been troubled by many other symptoms. I recently obtained a copy of your book, The Yeast Solution, and began to change my diet. I'm already improving. I'm off all MG medication and gaining back my strength.

Treating A Yeast Infection

Treating Yeast Infections - Physicians' Viewpoints

Treating Yeast Infections

Over the years, I've corresponded with Cincinnati neurologist R. Scott Heath, M.D. Dr. Heath has subscribed to the theory of a candida/autoimmune disease connection:
 
Sometimes I've felt sort of like a voice in the darkness ... just as you have felt. Yet, I have seen a number of people who have unusual symptoms, including fleeting numbness, transient problems and vision complaints. In such patients, I often can't find anything wrong neurologically. Obviously my concern is simply this: Do they have MS or don't they? 

Treating Yeast Infections

Yeast Infection How To Cure

Yeast Infection How To Cure

In March 1993, I saw 33-year-old Marjorie in consultation. Her main complaints included "always tired and drained and loss of sex drive (four years duration); yeast infections/vaginitis (two years duration)." Here are excerpts from a letter Marjorie sent me prior to our first consultation:

All of my life I've been troubled by many nose and throat infections and have taken many antibiotic drugs. In 1988, my son was born, after a difficult labor. After that, it seemed my health went downhill. Although I went back to work, I had to quit after months. I just couldn't do it. I didn't have the energy. I also had a marked loss of sex drive.

Yeast Infection How To Cure

Candida Yeast Infection Symptoms - Sexual Dysfunction

Candida Yeast Infection Symptoms

It's certainly not surprising that a woman with the multiple symptoms of candida yeast overgrowth would have little energy for or interest in sex.
 
Even if the inclination is there, frequently the pain from conditions like endometriosis, vaginitis, vulvodynia or interstitial cystitis may make even the thought, much less the act, of sexual intercourse unbearable.

There is little medical literature on sexual dysfunction and candida, but there is an interesting Australian study reported in the Australia-New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1999. It notes that was present in 21% of women participating in the study on vulvar vestibulitis syndrome (VVS), an inflammation of the area around the vagina, frequently present in women with vulvodynia and often a cause of painful intercourse (medically called dyspareunia). When those women received long-term antifungal therapy, 71% were cured, the article's abstract says.

Candida Yeast Infection Symptoms

Candida Yeast Overgrowth Symptoms - Evelyn's Story

Candida Yeast Overgrowth Symptoms

I was unusually healthy as an infant and young child. My mother tells me I was rarely sick and I wasn't troubled by allergies. During my teen years, I was bothered by menstrual cramps - nothing unusual. I married early and my son was born when I was 19. No significant problems on through my 20s except for moderate menstrual problems and occasional yeast infections.

Four years ago, I married again and beginning three years ago, my husband and I decided we would like to have a child. Although we used no contraceptives, nothing happened.

Candida Yeast Overgrowth Symptoms

Symptom Of Yeast Infection - Infertility

Symptom Of Yeast Infection

One American couple out of every six is troubled by infertility. This translates to about 10% of the adult population of reproductive age, some 6 million people.

The causes are multiple and complex. Some causes of infertility are known: a malfunction in ovulation, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, irregular periods, fibroids, pelvic inflammatory disease, environmental toxins and sperm problems.

Yet, others are unknown, and a woman may fail to conceive even when sperm are active and normal, and a comprehensive infertility investigation comes up empty-handed.

Symptom Of Yeast Infection

Reasons For A Yeast Infection - Molds

Reasons For A Yeast Infection

Molds inside spacious homes, small and large apartments, schools, offices, factories (and other workplaces) are making people sick, and they may be contributing to the "sick all over" feeling that so many people with yeast overgrowth experience.
 
In his cover story article in USA Weekend (July 19-21, 2002), "When Mold Takes Hold," Arnold Mann provides clear - even frightening - documentation. Here are excerpts:
 

Reasons For A Yeast Infection

How Common Are Yeast Infections - Hormone Connection

How Common Are Yeast Infections

I learned a great deal about the adverse effects of chemicals on hormones from Mary Lou Ballweg, president of the Endometriosis Association. She made me aware that PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls used in industry until they were banned in the 1970s) and other toxins were playing a part in causing endometriosis and other endocrine and immune problems.
 
We've already talked about the high rate of endometriosis in monkeys exposed to minute amounts of dioxin, a byproduct of industrial processes that involve chlorine, including paper and plastic manufacturing.
 

How Common Are Yeast Infections