(Can•di•da) is a yeast-like Fungi of the family Cryptococcaceae. It is characterized by producing yeast cells, mycelia, pseudomycelia, and blastospores. Candida species are commonly found in the normal flora of the mouth, skin, intestinal tract, and vagina. Flora is the term used to describe the complete family of healthy bacteria, also called friendly bacteria or microflora. When I say normally found, I mean that the presence of the candida is not only good but actually required for healthy tissue function. The main purpose of flora is to eliminate bad or infectious bacteria produced by the gut or introduced to the body from an external source (unclean foods or unclean sexual contact are the most common forms of introduction). When the bad guys overwhelm the good guys, it causes candadiasis or yeast overgrowth infection. Candida infections have been linked to just about every symptom there is. The two most commonly thought of are perhaps thrush and female yeast infections. If you do enough research into your health concerns from the alternative point of view, you will no doubt find information indicating that your issue may be caused by candida. Yes, every illness has been linked to candida in some form or another, which is why it is important to find out just how valid this form of infection is and what can be done about it.

So how can a fungi be good and at the same time cause the infection that initiates more supplement sales than any other illness in the alternative world? The fact is that the average healthy body contains 4-11 pounds of friendly flora (the amount is debatable depending on the "expert" you talk to). On either end of the scale, that is a lot of flora considering they are microscopic beings. You will find the highest concentrations of flora in a healthy large intestine.The body naturally reproduces, or repopulates, this friendly flora in the mucous membranes. According to the information presented by Dr. DeHaan on this web site and such nutritional research experts as Bernard Jensen, intestinal health is one of the fundamental keys to achieving or maintaining health of any kind. Intestinal health requires a variety of factors, which will be discussed below, but the balance of friendly bacteria, commonly known as acidophilus or probiotics, is among the most important.

It would seem very reasonable, even imperative, to supplement such an important element in the intestine, but the concept that the intestine needs a probiotic supplement to achieve health is actually backwards. On a logical level, it doesn't seem reasonable that a few capsules of probiotics or acidophilus can regulate the body's incredible amount of this naturally occurring element. It would be like trying to make a cup of tea by adding a few drops of water to your cup each day hoping it will get full, yet knowing there is a hairline crack leaking some of the drops you add each day! Why is there a hairline crack in the tea cup? Well, what happened to all the flora that were supposed to be in the intestine to start with? How did they become depleted?

If you have already been told that you have candida, or have come to the conclusion on your own from researching your health conditions, you may have noticed that all the special dieting and supplementing seems like a non-ending battle. There is some truth to most of the information you have read about candida in terms of how many functions in your body it can influence and what diets and supplements may be helpful. But very little of what you have learned about candida is actually going to help you win the battle with it. The infectious form of candida should not be thought of as something that one has been exposed to from an external source, thus an external supplement program is not the key either. If the environment of the intestine remains healthy, the good guys (flora) will repopulate surprisingly fast and keep the infectious forms from doing any harm. This is done by destroying the bad guys or passing them through the intestine for elimination. Because candida occurs as a side effect of internal, environmental imbalance, it is only a change of that environment that will correct the candida. In this sense, supplementing to "cure" candida is backwards thinking. The main question then becomes, “What is a healthy intestinal environment?”

But first understand that I am not discounting the fact that many people have gotten symptom relief with the use of acidophilus and all sorts of probiotics. The challenge is whether use of supplements are the best form of correcting candida infections. If a supplement makes you feel better or relieves symptoms while you take it, you are not correcting the problem, you simply changed the environment temporarily. If you truly correct the problem, you wouldn't have to take a supplement. Many of you will now be thinking that it must be the diet then. Diet must be the key to keeping the right environment in the intestine. You will find that this is in fact true, but not like you have likely read about candida diets. Most of the candida diets are so hard (strict) to follow that the body ends up with extreme stress and turmoil that itself becomes a contributing factor to actually feed the infection! Am I against the candida diets and probiotics supplements? No, but in all the years I have been helping people, I have never found that either are required to correct candida. Like I said, it may relieve symptoms, but it does not correct the problem. I would go so far as to say that probiotic supplements are most beneficial in theory, not in application, particularly when you look at the cost of probiotics.

While I am trying to leave every option open for you the individual, if you are able to change the environment of the intestine as I am about to explain, there is no need for any supplementing, even in what I classify as the severe cases. A severe case of candida can be seen externally when the cuticles around the fingernails are detached from the nail and look rough, dry and ugly. In really extreme cases, there is even splitting and bleeding, but this is generally caused by metal toxins, not the candida. When observing the cuticles, factor in the work a person does, which may contribute some to the roughness and that the person may have had a manicure and reduced the external evidence.

If you have a "severe" case of candida and want to attack it from every angle possible, you might consider taking Caprylic Acid (25-50 mg daily) to depopulate the bad guys (kill off the overgrowth) and use high quality probiotics to repopulate the good guys.When purchasing supplements of any kind, keep in mind that you get what you pay for, and that a company that is multilevel will have higher prices to pay the down line, which does not necessarily mean it is a higher quality.

What disrupts a healthy environment? To be completely fair, we need to start with birth. Some believe that if the mother has an imbalanced flora, then the baby will be born with that same imbalance or at least a high tendency for it. The birth canal is lined with flora as well. If it is a natural birth (non c-section) then the baby will have a high exposure to the balance or lack of in the birth canal. Thrush in infancy is a sign that there was imbalance in the body either in the birth canal, or in the breast milk, but more likely both. One of the greatest offenders to the good bacteria in the intestine is antibiotics, which most people use like candy for every complaint in the modern world. Commercially raised meats (not from the wild, not range fed, not organic) of all kinds (including fish) are very high in antibiotics, as is non-organic milk. So exposure as an infant, daily consumption of commercial meat and milk, antibiotics of all kinds and unclean sex, as mentioned earlier, are the external offenders that start the environmental disruption. That means these items actually kill off the good guys and leave the environment out of balance so repopulation is very difficult or impossible.

Internally, there are many things that can disrupt the environment so repopulation is difficult or impossible. As a matter of fact, anything that is unhealthy, or just lack of actual healthy foods will create imbalance of one kind or another in the intestine because everything that goes down your throat must be processed by your intestine. The worst offenders to the internal environment are things that keep the pH of the body out of normal range. Remember that the intestine is foundational to just about every other system of the body so if you have any health concern at all, you can pretty much assure you have some imbalance in the intestine. The absolute worst offenders of local environmental irritation of the intestine are:

1. general dehydration, which means less than 10% of your body weight in ounces of water daily,
2. coffee without food in the morning,
3. lack of plant based fiber, which means lots of vegetables and fruits that are either raw or lightly steamed
4. refined carbohydrates (pretty much anything with flour or refined sugar, which act as food for the bad guys),
5. lots of self stress, which primarily means what one imposes on self. This is the person who is hard on themselves; over-achiever (can't every be satisfied with the way it is), perfectionists. Don’t underestimate the power of this factor. Negative emotions of this kind will literally eat you up inside in the form of mutated fungi, infectious bacteria and parasites,
6. precursor toxins that lead to environmental weakness and compromise the immune system. I have listed this option last, but I believe it to be one of the primary issues. More about this below.

What creates the candida? Once the intestine's environment is sufficiently disturbed and the concentration of healthy bacterial species is diminished, the candida organisms begin a process of mutation into harmful fungal forms. In their mutated forms, these fungal rhizoids develop elongated root like structures capable of penetrating the intestinal lining, entering the circulating blood and colonizing tissues throughout the body. Such fungal organisms produce powerful toxins, posing a severe challenge to the system's detoxification pathways and cause many of the candida sufferer's symptoms.

Complications. Once the intestinal wall is compromised, people end up with some level of leaky gut syndrome. This means that the combination of low flora and compromised intestinal lining are no longer able to keep toxins and large food particles from leaking into the blood stream. This produces many of the "allergic" and inflammatory symptoms that so often impact individuals with candida overgrowth. Inflammation is caused by irritation, not allergies. If you fix the lack of health in the body, it will cease to be irritated by so many foods.

The solution. If you have a picture of what I have painted, you can see that a supplement designed to kill the bad guys and another supplement designed to repopulate the good guys is not enough. An excellent sales tactic, but not a solution. Using supplements to correct this issue would be like taking a mop and a bucket to the Valdez oil spill. The entire environment must be changed.

On a dietary level, some things need to be considered. Primarily assuring that there is plenty of water entering the body and regular meals are eaten each day, preferably with little refined carbohydrates and lots of plant-based cellulose, which comes from raw or lightly steamed organic vegetables and fruits. If you are not able to do that, make sure you are taking a good herbal fiber each day to absorb the excess acid being produced in the intestine. If you have someone who can do a kinesiological test of foods, identifying any foods that the body is not able to digest, absorb or metabolize would be good just so you are not introducing irritants to the intestine while it is trying to heal. I can’t recommend any specific list of foods because I find it is very unique to the individual. Identifying food irritants is a great addition if you have someone to help you, but not a requirement.

The real key to success, from my experience, is microbial detox. When I started using TBA, I found that people with candida actually tested to have candida as a secondary microbe. That means that other toxins were present in the body that set the stage, that disrupted the environment enough to allow for the overgrowth. What that discovery showed was that people are struggling to rid themselves of candida but they aren't doing what is needed to get rid of the reason candida is able to flourish. It’s kind of like having a drip under your sink that allows mold to grow. You can use every technique in the world to kill the mold, but if you don’t stop the drip causing the moisture, you will have a battle that is never ending. The very best thing to do is to find your local TBA Practitioner and have them test you for general toxins that may need custom detox remedies. TBA Practitioner’s can tell you exactly what toxins might be precursors to the fungus microbes so an appropriate program can be created.

On a technical level, friendly flora will not mutate into candida, or more specifically, the gut lining will not allow flora to seep into the blood, if the pH of the intestine remains healthy. Click here to learn about how to use pH to monitor your health status.

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