Candida Albicans and Candidiasis: When A Good Yeast Goes Bad
What Is Candidiasis? Candida may be wreaking havoc on your microbiome and your body. Learn candida cleansing strategies to curb the overgrowth.
Imagine an unwanted houseguest in your living room, demanding a steady stream of sugary carbohydrates — anything from high fructose corn syrup all the way to alcohol. That is candida overgrowth, and a more unpleasant houseguest one cannot imagine. Just as you'd ask unwanted guests to leave, so you also want to cleanse excess candida from your body.
As you may know, your body naturally grows some types of fungus.
In fact, most of the time, the fungus in your body is meant to be there and is completely harmless. It's when the microbiome — the fungi, yeast, bacteria, and viruses — gets out of whack that you need to take action. And if it’s a yeast overgrowth, then you may need a candida cleanse.
What Is Candida?
Candida, specifically Candida albicans, is the most common type of fungus found in our bodies. Don’t think “mushroom,” though. Candida is a yeast – a single-cell fungus that functions a little differently. C. albicans takes up residence at or soon after birth. As a natural part of the microbiome, it works synergistically with bacteria to contribute to health. (1)
However, yeast cells consume sugars that you eat. What they excrete — CO2 and alcohol — influences the microbiome, too. Bacteria cannot tolerate a high alcohol content (think wine and beer) and will die off: the beneficial bacteria, as well as the pathogenic bacteria. (2)
Unfortunately, when our immune systems don’t keep it in check, Candida can multiply and put the microbiome out of balance. Candida fungus can even cause an infection if it is too overgrown. The infection may turn deadly if you don't take care of it. Invasive Candidiasis is actually the top cause of fungus-infection related death in the US. (3)
What is Candidiasis? When a good yeast goes bad…
Amazingly, there are over 150 types of Candida you can find in your body. Most of these types of Candida fungus are there to help you with things like digestion. However, there are certain species of Candida you definitely don't want growing in your gut. (4)
An overgrowth of Candida albicans, a pathogenic yeast you can find in your gut, is the predominant cause of Invasive Candidiasis. This strain of Candida accounts for over half of all cases of Invasive Candidiasis. (5)
“Normally, healthy bacteria on your body prevent yeast overgrowth. Imagine you have a two-armed scale with healthy bacteria on one side and yeast on the other. The scale stays balanced until something disrupts it.” (6)
So whether that something is a depressed immune system, overuse of antibiotics, or environmental pressures — like stress or poor diet — your microbiome is a delicate system that can’t handle much shift. Too much candida or too little beneficial bacteria may lead to candidiasis.
When beneficial microbes or our own innate and adaptive immune responses fail to keep C. albicans in check, then the single-cell yeast can flip to a filamentous hyphal form. (7)
Hyphal means that Candida transitions from a single-cell yeast to a multicell, hyphal fungus. Those multicell tubules stick together and multiply, forming drug-resistant biofilms while invading different parts of the body. With the rise of transplantation surgery, chemotherapy drugs, and immune-compromised systems, C. albicans infections has likewise exploded. (8)
And this is where the problem lies. Candida as yeast? Not pathogenic. Candida as multicell hypha fungi? Well, that’s another story.
Studies show that people with chronic candidiasis syndrome or those that have Invasive Candidiasis may experience Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (9), Urinary Tract Infections (10), gastrointestinal inflammation (11), and much, much more. (12)
Combating Candida Overgrowth
So what can you do to protect yourself from Candidiasis? You need to do a candida cleanse, including a candida cleanse diet. Finding the best candida cleanse for you can be challenging. However, the symptoms of Invasive Candidiasis and chronic candidiasis syndrome are too awful for you not to make some lifestyle changes.
First Courses of Action
Yeasts thrive best in dark, moldy, oxygen-deprived environments. If you suspect candida overgrowth, then consider getting more direct sunlight on the skin. Direct sunlight destroys most yeasts. Those with candida overgrowth on the skin, in particular, should expose their skin to the sun whenever possible. Direct sunlight on the skin also activates the production of Vitamin D. Increasing vitamin D3 intake significantly reduces C. albicans clusters and deteriorates biofilms. (13)
But what if you live in far Northern or Southern climes, and sunlight exposure wanes with the seasons? If so, then try experimenting with infrared saunas and ozone therapies. Oxygen and ozone are good tools, as they oxidize candida, causing die-off. For example, ozone therapies will disinfect surfaces — preventing candida exposure and infection — while also treating active infections. (14, 15) One book, Flood Your Body With Oxygen by Ed McCabe, provides more information on oxygen therapies.
Third, colloidal silver offers a more direct method to kill off candida overgrowth. A high-quality, high parts per million (ppm) colloidal silver also works well, as silver ions kill Candida and related infectious organisms. While government regulations in some countries typically keep commercially available colloidal silver products below 20 or even 10 ppm, colloidal silver should be at least 90 ppm to be effective. (16)
Since the original publication of this article, a new silver product has come to market: coated silver — and it is far more concentrated and far more effective.
Learn more here.
Candida Cleanse Diet
Sometimes — most times — it comes down to diet.
A candida cleanse diet is meant to remove the things in your intestines that allow candida fungus to grow. To cure yeast syndrome, practitioners may suggest you adopt a candida cleanse diet. Essentially, you want to remove simple sugars — food for C. albicans — and not contribute to the yeast population.
The best candida cleanse involves eliminating a lot more than that though. It also includes removing gluten, all dairy, foods with mold, foods with pesticides, and even foods that contain preservatives. (9)
This is all meant to reduce inflammation and eliminate foods that allow candida fungus to grow, thus making your terrain inhospitable to C. albicans.
Not only that, but by reducing environment toxins through food choices and bringing in more nutrients, you will support your immune system, which is ultimately your best defense against Candidiasis.
A candida cleanse diet is a more ancestral type of diet, such as a modified raw food or Mediterranean Diet. Specifically, this diet should contain no dairy products except ghee. A candida diet should, without exception, be organic.
Plant foods that encourage a candida cleanse include vegetables, fresh-pressed green juices, occasional sprouted nuts and seeds, seaweeds, superfoods, and superherbs.
Yes, that's a long list, because an excellent plant-based diet will focus on nutrient-dense plant foods.
So let's break this down.
Green vegetables and green juices, for example, should highlight kale, Swiss chard, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, or artichoke. But make sure to include less-sweet vegetables, like prickly pear or jicama, and avoid the sweeter root vegetables, like carrots, beets, and sweet potatoes.
Sprouted nuts and seeds provide an incredible amount of nutrition in a small package. Soaking, in particular, reduces the enzyme inhibitors that bind up nutrients. For example, sprouted broccoli seeds contain up to 50 times the nutrients as full-grown broccoli. Additionally, seeds like chia and hemp are high in ALA, an omega-3 fatty acid. Nuts, like walnuts and pecans, offer up a satisfying snack source.
For an effective candida cleanse, include superfoods and superherbs. Top herbs from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for candidiasis include Gynostemma, Astragalus, He Shou Wu, and Rehmannia. The TCM formula CHGX — traditionally used for Candida overgrowth — includes licorice root, Chinese rhubarb, cinnamon bark, and Korean Mint (patchouli). (18)
But that's not all!
The Ayurvedic tradition shares several herbs that will be equally helpful: Tulsi, Ashwagandha, and shilajit, among others. Top superfoods focus on powdered green grasses, spirulina, marine phytoplankton, and chlorella.
Be sure to get important fats in your diet, including young wild coconuts — not sugary Thai coconuts — raw coconut oil and high-quality olive oil. Other antifungal foods include garlic, cinnamon, thyme, lemongrass, fermented vegetables, and yogurt. If you need the sweet, then wild berries are best. (17)
Medicinal mushrooms, especially reishi and chaga, support a balanced microbiome. Powdered mushroom blends include an array of extraordinary medicinal mushrooms, such as chaga, turkey tail, cordyceps, maitake, and shiitake, among others. Mushroom teas also support gut health.
Please Note: Avoid alcohol-based tinctures initially and use only when your symptoms have gone.
Pre- and Probiotics and Supplements
High doses of healthy probiotics (acidophilus, Bifidus infantis, L. salivarius, L. plantarum, L. bulgaricus, etc.) will colonize and assist the digestive tract. This is an important step to overcome candidiasis and reverse dysbiosis (i.e., too much bad bacteria and yeast in the system and not enough good bacteria).
Prebiotics are also valuable. These foods nourish probiotics (healthy bacterial flora). Prebiotics include foods such a chicory root, dandelion root, Jerusalem artichoke, and other healthy, low-sugar roots.
Pro Tip: Boiling and chilling potatoes creates resistant starches that feed beneficial bacteria. Add a little potato salad to your diet on occasion.
Supplements that can be helpful in the fight against candida include olive leaf extract, grapefruit seed extract, supplemental enzymes, MSM (methyl-sulfonyl-methane) powder (as it detoxifies mercury), small amounts of fully mineralized sea salt, activated charcoal, and liposomal vitamin C.
Herbs that are great allies against candida include oregano, garlic, pau d'arco tea, and cat's claw tea.
Sugar and Carbohydrates during a Candida Cleanse
You’ll find great benefit from sugar fasting, that is, eating no sweet foods of any kind for several weeks or months and simultaneously dosing up on probiotics.
In the long term, when the desire for real sugar appears, enjoy naturally sweet foods, such as wild berries or high-quality, cooked organic squash or sweet potato or yam. Fermentation of fruit or starchy foods in the gut leads to gas and indigestion. Not fun! But in the long term, you’ll need to include some carbohydrates to keep the body in balance.
Cautiously return to eating more carbohydrates once the body is cleansed and the candida symptoms have disappeared.
Intestinal Cleansing As Part of Candida Cleanse
I recommend following a candida cleanse treatment and intestinal rebuilding program either before or after a sugar fast. The following are important guidelines for herbal cleansing while overcoming candidiasis:
Do not have fruit juice if you have candida, especially while on an herbal cleanse. Use only green vegetable juice with lemon or simply water as the liquid base for superfood smoothies or herbal elixirs. Also, do not include any sweeteners.
Take a high-quality probiotic formula containing, at least, acidophilus, Bifidus, and L. bulgaricus. Take this at least 1 hour before bedtime throughout your cleanse., as well as 1/2 hour after each meal.
Take ample amounts of the probiotic Bifidobacterium infantis. Bifidobacterium infantis is found in breastfed infants and is probably the most basic of all intestinal bacteria in the human species. This probiotic may be added to enemas. Be sure to have your colon hydrotherapist provide you with an implant of Bifidus bacteria following each session.
Take 800-2000mg per day of activated charcoal, at least an hour before meals and 2 hours apart from any medications; can be taken in divided doses. Follow with plenty of sea salt water!
Keep a Clean Home
Those with candida should also keep a clean house. Moldy homes are bad for the candida sufferer. Seek out home air purifier technology such as a HEPA filter. Look for black mold in the home. And let a candida cleanse treatment program become a lifestyle.
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These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information and these products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
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