Candida: Why You Need to Know If You Have It and What To Do

Candida: What Is It?Candida is a yeast infection and can occur anywhere in your body - in local tissues such as eyes, mouth, ears, vaginal tract, urethra, prostate, breast - and also throughout your entire system. If it is systemic, it can cause a variety of symptoms, some of them merely inconvenient, others overwhelming, but all of them baffling.

Why You Need To Know:Finding out if you have such an infection and dealing with it effectively is crucial, and not merely because the symptoms are bothersome. Why is this so? Put quite simply, many health practitioners consider a yeast infection in an organ, or in your entire system, to be a pre-cancerous condition. Take care of it when it's just a yeast infection, and you can turn things around. But if cancer develops - well, that's another story altogether. So, what can you do? How should you proceed?

How To Find Out:First, find out for yourself. You can do this quite simply and easily yourself, and from the comfort of your own home. Here's how: Do this in the morning, when you first get up, before you brush your teeth, and before have anything to eat or drink, not even water.

Get a clear glass (one you can see through with no color in it).
Fill it with water
Spit in the glass.  

If your saliva sinks to the bottom or forms stalagtites or stalagmites (strings in the water) or if it forms globules that are suspended in the water, that's considered positive for yeast. If none of these things happen, don't move the glass, but recheck for up to an hour. If none of these things has happened after an hour, you're clear. I recommend that my clients carry out this simple procedure from time to time, making it part of their regular health-care routine, the better to nip it in the bud before it has a chance to proliferate.

If Your Test Is Positive:
If your test is positive, you will find many different approaches to chose from in eliminating it. These include prescription drugs, detoxification, particular diets, herbs and pro-biotics. You will need to choose an approach that works for you and that you can actually carry out. Happily, using the self-test above, you will be able to monitor your progress and know whether or not your approach is working, and if so, to what extent. In my office, I’ve had excellent response from a combination Cat’s Claw, Pau d’Arco and Echinacea Root,a pro-biotic and eliminating any causes of leaky gut (see below).

Candida That Doesn’t Respond to Treatment or Recurs: What’s Going On?Candida indeed can be very hard to get rid of. So it's especially disheartening to think you've gotten rid of it, only to find that it's back again. What's going on? Here's a likely scenario. Get this handled, and your likelihood of having a recurrent yeast infection goes way down.

First, some background. Your intestinal tract is a long tube that runs from one end of your body to the other. In the part of it called your colon, and yeasts are considered to be a normal part of the flora. In other words, it's one of the naturally occurring living 'bugs' that populate your colon.

In normal circumstances, the various ‘bugs’ in your colon keep each other in check so that no one bug can overgrow. However, if you take antibiotics, they kill off a full half of the bugs that are there. For the yeast, that means it’s party time, and they grow like weeds in spring. So if you’ve taken antibiotics, it’s very important that you repopulate your gut with ‘healthy bugs’ – in other words, probiotics.

But there’s another, important factor too, and it’s this: your intestinal tube itself is composed of many many tiny cells. The space between these cells is extremely small - often thought to be only one micron. This minute space acts as a barrier that does not allow live intestinal residents such as yeast to go across.

However, when you eat a food that you can't digest completely, these incompletely digested particles weaken the barrier. Where before there was only one micron between cells, now there might be a five micron space.

Yeast are infinitesimal; they are only one celled organisms. This five micron space allows the yeast to cross what should be a barrier. Now the yeast find themselves in a warm, wet, moist, nutrient rich environment with no competition from other bugs.

In short, it's again party time for the yeast. They multiply like there's no tomorrow. And if that environment is also estrogen rich, they multiply even more (because estrogen orders all cells to 'grow'.)

The solution to this scenario is to stop eating foods you can't completely digest. Of course, these can vary from individual to individual, but that said, one of the most common culprits is wheat. Many people have been able to end the cycle of recurring yeast infections by eliminating wheat from their diet . A smaller number also need to eliminate gluten.

Having this overview about Candida, what it is, why you need to know if you have it and what to do if you do, you can be empowered to take effective action against something that otherwise might cause bigger problems down the road.