Candida has become quite a well-known word. It is a form of yeast that lives in everyone’s gut and normally does no harm at all. However, given certain conditions, it can over-grow or change into a different form and cause real problems, either simple (although horrid) thrush to a full-blown systemic mould problem in the bloodstream that affects the whole body.

Sounds nasty! What conditions would create this?

Basically, if you eat a diet high in sugar or refined (white) carbohydrates, have a lot of antibiotics at any time (either repeated dosage over a number of years or a month of a high dose antibiotic, say, for acne in your teens), have a poor immune system and you combine this with a stressful fast-paced lifestyle, you have the makings of a candida problem in susceptible people.

What symptoms might I get?

Most often, you can get an overgrowth of yeasts, including candida, and this causes recurrent thrush or digestive problems. However, systemic candida patients often describe themselves as ‘feeling sick all over’ or as if they’ve been poisoned as the body fights to control yeast that has got through into the bloodstream.

A candida person might suffer from fatigue, recurrent headaches, skin problems, allergies, digestive problems like IBS, recurrent kidney infection or cystitis, chemical sensitivity, recurrent back or neck pain with no physical cause.

Often candida sufferers will hold water and look puffy, they may feel woolly-headed, have chronic aches and pains, dark rings under the eyes and crave sugar or carbohydrates terribly.

How do I know if I’ve got it?

Many people think they have candida, but don’t. I have lost count of the number of people who think they have it but don’t. Sometimes, it may be a different parasite that may be causing a problem, or it may be a food intolerance.

The best way to see if you have candida is to look for it. Properly. Have a read here of the Gut Tests Overview.

Antibody tests are not reliable in my view or clinical experience since it shows that you have had a problem with it in the past but that may not be present now. You could spend loads of time, money and effort doing a candida programme when it wasn’t necessary!

It’s also prudent to check your SIgA level and the presence of a ‘leaky gut’, for example so you have full information (see more on this below).

As I said, over the years I have found gut/stool tests to be much more effective than blood tests. The simple SAPs candida stool test looks for all candidas, yeasts and moulds plus pH of the gut and a mouth swab.

You might also want to look at leaky gut and gut SIgA levels. These are important. A leaky gut shows if the candida has damaged the gut lining and is therefore allowing spores or food proteins through causing you to feel poorly and set up allergies/intolerances. A low SIgA level shows that your immune system is probably unable to fight any baddies off and you would do well to get that level up first.

See the full factsheet about SIgA testing and treatment here.

How do you treat it?

This depends on whether it is a full blown candidasis problem or localised as in vaginal thrush or jock itch, for example.

For the latter, the best approach I have found over the years is to use bicarb baths to change the pH of the area, use something like Biocidin as a douche/topically, a course of good probiotics like this one and apply the probiotic powder mixed in a bit of cream or oil direct to the area affected. In vaginal conditions, this might be easier with Intrafresh.

Candidiasis itself is merely a symptom of an upset digestive and immune system, so this is what needs to be treated.

Eradicating a yeast overgrowth is relatively simple using probiotics and antifungals, but it can take a while and you must be consistent with it as candida is always waiting in the wings to rise up and bite you again when you’re not looking! Below, you will find the 8-12 week anti-candida supplement protocol I have used for my patients in-clinic for the last decade. It has rarely ever let me down.

Diet is crucial to stop feeding the yeast, although an anti-candida diet is never going to lower glucose enough in the body to starve it – despite what many books might tell you. The diet plan is included below for you.

Probiotics are an absolute must to repopulate the gut and you must make sure you’re producing enough stomach acid – candidiasis only happens if the digestive system balance is upset. Work also needs to be done on the liver, immune system, stress levels and anything found in tests such as a leaky gut.

Re-testing of any positive factors is usually recommended after 8 weeks minimum on the full protocol when you should find things have at least improved and hopefully you’ve clobbered it. If it hasn’t gone, I have included the top reasons for resistance and relapse for you to work through. It may be one or more of those, or you simply need more time for your immune system to complete the fight.

 

And here is a reply straightaway for my most commonly asked question:

Is the diet enough to kill Candida?

Sadly, no. The special diet is vital to diminish the number of fungi but you will need the protocol in addition as nobody can starve candida to death. In emergency, when it’s dying off, candida can switch to a protein metabolism and when seriously starved they start penetrating the intestinal lining to get sugars from the blood. This provokes the danger of a systemic fungal infection, which can cause even worse problems.

In short, you need an effective protocol, the hygiene guidelines and the diet to get it licked. And that’s why I’ve written the plan as I’m sick of hearing of people who have followed the candida diet for ages, sometimes for years,  when actually testing suggests it wasn’t candida at all and they didn’t test effectively (often through poor advice) OR they didn’t have a comprehensive enough protocol to get the job done and keep it done.

Simple when you know how, though…