Anyone with Candida?

[Jax]

I ask as I've never known anyone else that suffers from it, I can trace symptoms back over about 18 years. Until I saw a nutritionist who sugested I might have it, I never knew what it was. I ploughed on on my own trying to find my way through the masses of confusing literature that I read.............when I think I should just have stuck with the advice my nutritionist gave me! My problem is, if I get told I have anything, I want to know EVERYTHING about it, what my options are, what I should and shouldn't do and how the hell I can get rid of it etc :o:o

I did a LOT of mooching around the net and got myself even more depressed and fed up and confused with it all. Luckily I got through the elimination period, then slipped back slightly into my old ways but avoiding a lot of the old baddies still.............and then found raw nutrition thankfully, and raw chocolate especially!!! :D

What are your experiences??

[Jax]

I'm just going to add in this site (The Finchley Clinic (http://www.thefinchleyclinic.co.uk/nojavascript/products/Candida_treatment.htm)) that I have found extremely useful and put me on to MSM to combat Candida. Scroll down the page and you'll find the bit about MSM and another link to why they think their MSM supplement is the best here (http://www.thefinchleyclinic.co.uk/nojavascript/products/MSM_Max.htm).

And my post about it here. (http://www.rawinuk.com/showthread.php?t=290)

[Claire Short]

Candida has been a part of my life for over fifteen years, at differing levels. I thought I'd share my experiences...

It started in my early teenage years with the common thrush infections we've probably all experienced at one time or another. Mum was sent to the chemist for cream because I was far too shy to get it myself and I seemed to keep it under control. I progressed on to oral tablets, Diflucan, when the infections got worse and I actually remeber thinking to myself 'Wow, this is great, I can eat what I want, my blood sugar levels go a little crazy and then I just pop a pill and the thrush goes away.' That memory often makes me laugh now!

In my early twenties the infections got much worse and with my GP handing out antibiotics like sweeties for every little hiccough I had, things were about to get much worse. Still I just kept popping the pills and I even got a repeat prescription for diflucan. Easy!

Mid twenties and my body had been through enough. I lost my hearing overnight leaving me with a ringing sensation in my left ear and 75% hearing loss. I also had thrush so badly that the Specialists at the GUM Clinic thought I had miscarried when they saw the state of my insides. The microscope showed I had a new name for my friend: Candida Albicans.

More tablets ensued and more creams. More antibiotics also for urinary tract infections. I was particularly stressed out at this time due to a near fatal accident that my Partner (now Husband!) was in. At the time I felt strangely positive about the whole thing, but after he pulled through and I relaxed, I felt drained. I guess the adrenaline had just kept me ticking over.

Finally I started to look for a natural resolution to this challenge and I eventually (after a lot of Candida books and other diets) found raw food!

Why does Raw Food Work?
Brian Clement decsribes Candida as a dark, damp and fungues filled cave. What would you do to clean that up? Oxygen, light and a lot of cleaning! That's what raw food does. Oxygen comes from exercise, enzymes and living foods, sunlight (during safe hours) provides the light and the cleaning...well there's a lot of detox things we can do for that. I love colonics, body brushing and sweating it out with a good workout - which gets the oxygen in us via a lot more breathing!

Personally - because the Candida thrives in a Diabetic body due to excess sugar and fat - I cannot tolerate fruit or a lot of nuts. I do best on a lot of greens, water, green juices, living sprouts and some seeds. This keeps me totally blood sugar balanced.

Sugar Addict
I was hooked. At my worst times I would drive into Tesco, buy a whole Carrot Cake, Packets of Cream Crackers and Butter and eat them in the car park outside until I felt full. It took a long time to unhook myself from the grip of the sharp talons of sugar (and fat too). I am almost there now, but still not out of the woods yet. The difference is, I'm in the driving seat now and sugar's got the back seat!

Like everything, it is a journey and I had my substitutes to get me off the powerful drug like effects of sugar. Raw chocolate was a life saver and took me from eating several bars of Green & Blacks each week to just a few much smaller (and tastier) bars of raw chocolate overnight. Thanks to Karen and her beautiful raw chocolate, which is the best I have ever tasted. Thanks Karen!

So, although I know that raw chocolate still holds addictive properties for me and gives me and the Candida a little buzz, I have great respect for it as a focal point of my journey to health. Likewise with fruit and nuts.

My diet now, as I've mentioned elsewhere, is really basic. I like quick, easy no fuss foods. Things are starting to taste better and better in their totally natural states. I am still weaning off a few things, but my cravings have all but gone and my bad days are like a superbly healthy day for most SUKD people.

Post me any questions about Candida and I'll be only too happy to share my experiences.:)

[sharonjones]

many thanks claire this is a great post about candida.

have you taken other supplements to try and purge this monster?

[Claire Short]

Hi Sharon,

I tried pretty much everything going, but my diet wasn't up to scratch at the time so it was literally money down the drain. Now my diet is far improved, I don't have the funds for what I know I need! I had caprylic acid, probiotics, oregano, colloidal silver....list goes on but nothing touched it sadly.

Here's my wish list, when funds allow:

Spirulina (I take this now for alkalising and reducing food cravings)
Chlorella (this too for heavy metal detox, blood sugars and food cravings)
Probiotics (Hippocrates ones - or Kiki soil based, a long course will be required I suspect!)
Vitamin B12 (just because I feel it's lacking in the world)
General Candida Supplement (something general and herbal with Pau'D'Arco and Oregano - not sure where from - maybe Hippocrates do one)
Food Enzymes (for optimum digestion)
Orthomolecular Diaxinol- recommended to me by Dr Brian Clement at Hippocrates for blood sugar control

I think that would do it!!!!

[Jax]

Hi Claire, hope you don't mind me merging your thread to this one, I've always intended to post my own story (although bits of it are all over the site now :o ) to help somebody out, but I don't think she felt confident enough to post. Anyway, hopefully once she sees your post and my full story, she may come forward.

I think in a way you've been quite lucky in that somebody diagnosed you at quite an early age. I have guessed at possibly stumbling along and suffereing with it for 17 years, however when I think back to numerous 'summer colds' but not hayfever as a child, it may well be longer than that!! I'm hoping to trace back over my medical records when I get a copy and see if there were ever any other signs of it further back.

[curlyheadfreak]

I am also locked in battle with the evil candida :rolleyes2:

I always had a sweet tooth as a child and was quite overweight until my early 20s due to being fed too many cakes/sweeties by my parents (and by myself ha ha). Also, my Mum is Italian and sowe lived on white pasta, white rice, white bread etc. So I think the stage was pretty set in childhood, really!

Then in my 20s I became a terrible emotional eater, although knowing what I know now about candida etc I'm not convinced that it was just emotional - prob also huge sugar/starch cravings fuelled by candida. But anyway, vast amounts of the bad stuff went in quite regularly!

But what really did it was becoming diabetic in 2007. I went undiagnosed for around 6 months and the constant high blood sugar before getting my insulin meant that candida went CRAZY! Also the high blood sugar caused regular urine infections and thrush which I got given antibiotics repeatedly for (they didn't even do any good!). And I've never been rid of it since basically! Am slowly getting the hang of what triggers it - the obvious stuff, but also certain nuts (cashews, pine, roasted nuts), too much fruit, too much fat, fat/sugar combos...even courgette and butternut squash :(....seems to be such a difficult balancing act and any tips gratefully appreciated. Still get HUGE cravings for starch, sugar, nuts and, especially, the fat/sugar combos, even healthy ones...could eat dates stuffed with raw tahini all day and not get enough!!! Have to stay away from the raw desserts too unfortunately.

I'm trying olive leaf extract at the moment, which seems OK but it's hard to know whether things are making a difference.

Jax, how did you take your MSM? I have some from a couple of months ago but I haven't started it yet because it said something about not taking near eating foods containing vit C or something? And I eat a lot of vit C so got too confused to bother with it ha ha!

Claire

[Jax]

Hey Curly good to see you over here, you got me thinking about MSM now, I put it in a litre bottle of water and sipped it all day, and if I remember rightly I got that David Wolfe's Eating for Beauty book I borrowed. I can't look it up easily to check, but I don't think it had any reference to Vit C, and it certainly didn't say anything on the packet.

With the candida thing, I was advised to have spoonful of coconut oil in a smoothie each day, because the candida doesn't like the caprylic acid. I have to say since doing that and eating more raw foods it seems to be under far better control.

[Jax]

David Wolfe has been talking about Candida at the Longevity Conference, you catch a snippet at this link (http://www.longevityconference.com/longevity-expererience-dvd/), in addition there are some questions and people's advice in a forum there too.

[marieme]

OK Jax, this isn't truly about candida but...about a fungal skin infection.

A few years ago I broke out in some fungal skin problem and attended the doctor for help. He prescribed cream. I looked it up on the internet to find that it is banned in America because it can cause liver problems. Can you imagine my concern? I instantly threw the offending cream in the bin and began to search my diet to find what fungal foods, and anything remotely associated, I was ingesting, removed them from my diet and lo and behold, the fungal infection disappeared.

[Jax]

The talk I attended by the blood analysist Ruth Daber (http://www.energiseforlife.com/wordpress/2009/10/30/live-blood-analyst-ruth-daber-uk-eu/) on Sunday was enlightening to me to say the least, on many points. But one of the things that was so powerful for me were her slides of blood cells which included a sample of blood with candida in. Now I might be simplifying things here but I was led to believe that there wasn't a conclusive test for candida, yet here the evil enemy was staring me in the face!!

Unfortunately due to one completely enthusiastic chap bombarding Ruth with questions about alkaline chicken bones I didn't get an opportunity to quiz her about it..........so I'll patiently wait on that one.

Whilst researching about cancer treatments for this thread (http://www.rawinuk.com/showpost.php?p=2179&postcount=6), I found this link for Cancer Active (http://www.canceractive.com/cancer-active-page-link.aspx?n=1089), and it considering candida as a cause for cancer, I'm not trying to be an alarmist but it's not something that has ever jumped out at me from the literature that I've read (not that I've read it all of course), so I was a slightly surprised that it was there.

Another thing that surprised me was this quote " ´Cancer patients undergoing radio or chemotherapy did not finally succumb to the cancer itself, but to an infestation of candida albicans´. That was taken from Contemporary Oncology Magazine 1993 in the USA." Yet again I see evidence about things that are far too prevalent these days, being discovered many many years prior yet not being readily acted upon, I find it SO infuriating.

[Jax]

I can now update that I've had a blood analysis with Ruth Daber and we could see some yeast present in the blood. I reckon that before my attack on Candida we'd have seen a LOT more, as my symptoms have subsided quite considerably :peace: I'm nowhere near as bad as I once was!!

BUT obviously there is still more work to do, so I am embarking on the pH Miracle way of eating, thereby lowering the acidic level in the body as Candida thrives in it :( As I've said before, a lot of the Candida literature is confusing with one advocate saying some fruits are okay and another then saying it's not etc etc :noidea::noidea::noidea: It gets so confusing, but after reading Dr Young's book I'm thinking everything he says makes sense and no questions for me have arisen, unlike when I've read other 'experts' writing about Candida - watch this space I guess ;)

[thestral]

I had systemic candida in addition to another health problem.

I cracked mine by cutting out all sugar/yeast products, taking oil of oregano, coconut oil and spirulina. I didn't cut out fruit, or mushrooms, I thought it risky to unbalance my diet.

I went through one hell of a detox but it didn't half shift it quick. I was over the worse in 2 months, and looked and felt amazing by three months. I still eat tons of fruit, and mushrooms and things and I've been just fine. I do still take a low dose spirulina and coconut oil, and only oil of oregano when I feel I need it.

[Jax]

Ah I've never tried the oil of oregano, must put that on my ever expanding to do list!
Unfortunately my income took a massive nose dive and I struggled with absolutely every aspect of life in the last year, so concentration on candida AND what I was eating (apart from vegan food) went right out of the window. But after suffering very badly for about 4 months with an extremely nasty virus, I discovered homeopathy. The homeopath also indicated I had candida :pout: so it hadn't gone completely which I guess I knew deep down, she gave me some drops for that, and now some other ones to attack it again from a different angle I think.

At the pot luck on Sunday I met another sufferer, who is using MMS (http://www.mmseurope.com/miraclemineralsupplement.html)to combat it, I'm not familiar with this product so it would be good to chase her up in a couple of months to see how she gets on. She did say that she wasn't taking in any coconut oil though, which I believed helps kill it off :confused2: