Candida: Root Causes, Testing and Treatment with Dr. Michael Biamonte

Welcome to The Perfect Stool. This is your host Lindsey Parsons, and today I'm talking all about Candida with Dr. Michael Biamonte, who is the founder of the Biamonte Center for Clinical Nutrition. He's a co-creator of BioCybernetics, which is a computer software program that studies blood work, mineral tests, and many other lab tests to determine exactly where your body is imbalanced. He holds a Doctorate of Naturopathy and is a New York State certified clinical nutritionist and author of the book Candida Chronicles. He's a professional member of the International and American Association of Clinical Nutritionists, the American College of Nutrition, and is a member of the scientific advisory board for the Clinical Nutrition Certification Board. But before I get started, if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. And if you want to get transcripts of the podcast, pop over to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebooklet called Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acid testing when you sign up. And if you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool test or functional medicine test would help you get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now on to the show. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Viamonte.

Thank you. I'm very happy to be here.

Yeah, I appreciate you coming on.

Sure.

So why don't we start with how people end up getting an overgrowth of Candida in their intestinal tract in the first place?

Usually it's from taking antibiotics, from taking antacid medications, steroids, and sometimes chemotherapy. But very typically it's induced by medications. That's been the thought for many years. But it also can occur from excessive stress, excessive alcohol, and different types of recreational drugs. And we're now finding out that COVID can leave people with Candida, which is very interesting because a person gets COVID, he goes through that whole syndrome, and then thereafter He never quite feels right. And the reason why is because now he has a new malady, and it's the, the immune hit that COVID puts on the person that allows the Candida to overgrow.

Interesting.

Yeah. Essentially anything that disturbs your intestinal bacteria allows Candida to grow.

Interesting.

Even to the point where if someone goes in a public swimming pool or a pool that's heavily chlorinated, by taking a couple of gulps of that water, it could imbalance their friendly bacteria. Because in order for Candida to grow, You have to kill the friendly bacteria that's in your intestines. The friendly bacteria are the probiotics that everybody hears about all the time on TV. You have to kill those off, and then the Candida moves from being a subdominant growth in your intestines to more of a dominant part of your flora. And then that's where it starts causing all the symptoms.

And so why don't you talk a little bit about what those symptoms are?

Well, you know, there literally can be 150 different symptoms of Candida. It depends on how you want to count them. One article I saw, the person was saying gas and bloating. Another person, he listed them separately. But the idea is that you can get so many symptoms from Candida that it could turn your head spinning, and you would never guess what it is because the symptoms are disrelated. Like, as an example, when somebody first gets Candida, normally the first thing they experience is a decline in energy. They feel like they're dragging themselves around., and then within the upcoming weeks they'll start having either diarrhea, constipation, or a lot of bloating and gas. Then they could start having allergies, rashes. Brain fog is an extremely common symptom. The symptoms I'm giving you right now are probably the most common, but it can affect anyone in any, in any way depending on their own genetics and where they're weak. Some people would, when they get Candida, will get arthritis as a result. Some people get MS as a result of Candida. And there are overlapping syndromes with Candida that make it even more confusing. As an example, if someone acquires mercury toxicity, whether it's from vaccinations or the fillings in their mouth or eating too much tuna, whatever it is, the symptoms of mercury toxicity are very similar to Candida, and mercury toxicity causes Candida. So in this way, it can get very confusing. Probably the most difficult case and the most severe type of Candida is where the person then becomes what we've called for years a universal reactor, which is somebody who's just chemically intolerant. The term for this has varied over the years, but it's essentially a person who's so reactive that everyone around them thinks that they're playing some joke or lying about it because they literally can't go to the supermarket without having rashes break out and headaches and things like that. They're just chemically sensitive and allergic to everything. That's the worst case of Candida, and that's a case where the person would typically have Candida and leaky gut syndrome at the same time.

Right, right. That multiple chemical sensitivity is what I've heard it referred to as.

Yeah. There you go.

So, um, just to clarify on the vaccine and mercury question, 'cause I'm, I'm a supporter of vaccination for COVID and many other things. The only place in which one would find mercury is, is in the, what's the preservative called?

Thimerosal.

Thimerosal, right. Which is typically only in vaccines that are given in, in multiple doses, like at a community clinic, for example, not in individual dose vaccines.

Yes, that's correct. Now, thimerosal was supposed to be removed from vaccines years ago, but there was a period of time afterwards the use was continued. I don't know what the present status is, but I can just tell you that the, the mercury from thimerosal is something which can induce Candida too. It's very typical in autistic children that you find them very high in mercury and copper. That's one of the trademarks physically when we look at autistic children. They typically have Candida and leaky gut. That's a very common thing, along with various toxic metals, but most commonly mercury, and copper.

Okay. Could you point me to a study that connects thimerosal and autism?

Yeah, actually, actually I could email you a few. Absolutely.

Okay. That would be great. I would, I would like to include those in the show notes to, to back that up. Okay. So let me ask you, why do you think that Candida isn't recognized in Western allopathic medicine except in the case of severe immunosuppression?

That's an interesting question. If you, if you think about it, if a doctor is giving somebody antibiotics,. And then if a woman takes an antibiotic, it's not unusual that she'll get a yeast infection, right? So that's something that could be tied very, very easily, and it's sort of accepted. It's different for a person when they take an antibiotic and get a vaginal yeast infection. That's something that is very common and people are used to having. But when a person takes antibiotics and then thereafter develops like a chronic fatigue syndrome which goes on for years and years, that's, that's a tough nut, and that's something that can get somebody very angry. So I think you're going to find that a lot of practitioners who use antibiotics, especially indiscriminately, are going to shy away from wanting to take responsibility for a situation like that.

So how do you differentiate candidiasis, say, from SIBO or other gut conditions?

They all fall under the heading of dysbiosis. And the word dysbiosis simply means you have an imbalance between the friendly bacteria in your gut and harmful bacteria. And under that umbrella of dysbiosis, you then look to see what specifically is the imbalance. And that's where you would then come up with something like Candida, a parasite infection, or SIBO, which SIBO itself has two different types.

But in terms of symptoms, are there symptoms that differentiate for you Candida from SIBO or parasites?

Yeah, well, the— all of them have gastrointestinal symptoms, bloating, gas, potentially constipation, diarrhea, symptoms of like IBS-like symptoms. All of them have fallen to that category. But the one thing about Candida which is a little bit different is because Candida actually ferments alcohol in your intestinal tract, it tends to give the person the brain fog. And the, and the cognitive problems. So that's, that's one symptom that would stand out that's quite different. As a matter of fact, there is a Japanese strain of Candida that produces so much alcohol that one man at one point was actually found legally intoxicated.

So what test do you use to diagnose someone with Candida?

I primarily use 3 tests. We use DNA stool tests that exist nowadays, but we use them in a little bit of a different way than how you would take them for face value. We've found that if a stool test shows that a person has no friendly bacteria in their intestines, or they're deficient in it, it would be an automatic diagnosis of Candida, whether the Candida shows on the test or not. And that's because Candida is much harder to find and detect than other bacteria. Gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria are rather easy to find, but Candida is harder to find. So we, we can go about it that way. The Plus point in going about it that way is you also selectively see all the other strains of bacteria the person has. Then we use organic acid tests. This is a test made popular by Great Plains and Genova Labs. The organic acid test will tell you all the organic acids that are there for different bacteria, and particularly Candida, and then different types of mold. And then the other test we have that I probably use most frequently is a urine, a urine test that I developed myself many years ago when I was very upset with the lack of accurate Candida testing. And this urine test identifies some of the key organic acids and very importantly, some of the free radicals that the Candida releases into your body. So those are the 3 tests we use.

Oh, okay. So tell me a little bit more about this urine test you developed. Is that something other people can access?

Yes. Most important thing about the urine test is that it can be done at home using the patient's first morning urine. When we originally developed the test, we were doing it in my office and people were coming in at all different times of the day with their urine samples, and we were finding that the urine samples that were acquired later in the day were not as accurate as the ones that came in in the morning. So we switched it. So that the person could do it as a home self-administered urine test.

And is this using some of the similar markers to the organic acids like arabinose, or is this different markers?

It's, it's using different markers, but it's using markers that solidify. You don't actually get a score like you do with the organics test. You visually see the albumin in the urine solidifying with Candida antigens and antibodies. So you, you rate the test based on how much it, how much it curdles. This. You get a strong curdling reaction in a person who's positive. So the— it ranges from being very heavily curdled to just a curdling that kind of floats, to a slight curdling, and then to a cloudy milky reaction, which would mean the person has a normal response. Then we, then we have a test in the kit which is a free radical test, which turns very red in the presence of the free radicals that Candida releases, which are alcohol-driven free radicals. Then we also do it an indicant test on there. Indican more relates to SIBO. Indican is a test which tells you that you have putrefying bacteria in your intestinal tract, which is releasing harmful chemicals which are very toxic. It's actually a substance called indole. Indole is sent to your liver where it's detoxified, and it's, it's then placed in your urine, and at that point it's called indican. So these are 3 markers of an imbalance related to Candida or SIBO. And as I said, we use that test very frequently because it's very convenient and very accurate, and it's not as expensive as the others.

Oh, okay. And do you find that correlates well with the organic acids test directly?

Yes, we did. Um, many years ago I did studies with all of these, all three together, to, to watch their correlations. And we found that if interpreted correctly, they match identically.

Okay. So can people order that test if they're not working with you, or do you think—

No, they can't. And the reason why is because we tried that once and we got a flood of phone calls from people who were not patients who were asking questions about interpretation. Okay, questions that you couldn't really answer unless you were able to spend time with the person and explain the whole process to them.

Right, right, right. Okay, so how long do you find that it typically takes someone suffering from Candida to get back to normal?

It depends on various things. In most cases, you can, you can normalize the person's intestinal flora in 6 to 8 months. So that would mean you can completely disinfect and kill all the bad organisms there and then get the probiotics to grow again. The problem after that is what might have caused the Candida that might still be in the body as an underlying cause. And that's where we go back to the toxic metals. It's very common that people with copper, mercury, iron, aluminum, and arsenic toxicity develop Candida as an underlying cause. So if those metals are still present in the body when the Candida is handled, you've got to correct those metals. If the— if you have a woman who's very estrogen dominant, or even a man who's very, very high estrogen, that causes Candida as well. Estrogen tends to be very stimulating to Candida's growth. So if you have that problem, then you need to balance those hormones before you can consider you're done. And there are very— some various other issues that can be an underlying cause. So if you eliminate the Candida but you don't eliminate these underlying causes, the person could just relapse in a couple of months when they start returning back to a more normal diet. Because as you know, and most people know, to get rid of Candida, you also have to follow some diet restrictions with carbs and sugars to starve the Candida while you're killing it with the medicines.

So I, I've actually heard at least one functional medicine practitioner who I really respect say that diet, other than sort of the basic, yeah, get off of, you know, the white carbs and the sugar, but just that the diet doesn't seem to have a big impact in their Candida treatment in their clients. So I'm, I'm curious, how strict of a diet do you find is necessary and for how long for people to get rid of Candida?

We have 3 different degrees of strictness depending on what— how bad the test is. So if a person's test is very heavy, we have a stricter diet that we call the Caveman Diet, which is along the line of what the doctor was saying. And then as the test becomes less severe, the diets are more plentiful in some— in some selected starches and sugars. But generally speaking, a person never is going to get rid of Candida unless they follow some degree the dietary restrictions. And you can tell Actually, we had a doctor who worked with us once who used, used to have his patients do what he called the spaghetti test. When he, when he, when he thought their flora was good and sound and the Candida was gone, he would send them out for a big spaghetti meal and then see how they felt the next few days.

Yeah, that makes sense.

That's before we had any real testing back in those days. But you have to follow the diet. I would disagree with the doctor to the extent that he's portraying this, because the diet is very important depending on the person. There are some people that if they even eat artificial sweeteners or alcohol sugars, which years ago we used to permit on the diet, they will— they'll react. It's as though Candida has learned and evolved to react to these sugars and consume them. So it's really the— what the doctor said is not totally accurate, and I can say that because I see hundreds of Candida patients a week. It depends on the person. I would say he's, he's mostly correct that you've got to follow the basics of the diet, but that's not going to handle it. See, that's the other side of the coin. You'll get people on the internet and on YouTube talking about these Candida diets, that some of them are insane and some of them are so restrictive. But that's because that's what they found worked for them. That doesn't mean everyone has to be that strict. So it's really, it's a case-by-case situation. Many times some people need to be strict, some people don't.

And so what, what are the different layers of strictness? So what does the least strict diet look like versus the most strict diet?

The most strict would be no more than 40 to 60 grams of carbs a day, and it's mostly things that walk, crawl, fly, climb, meaning animal protein, swim, you see, and then things that— vegetables. That's mostly what those people would eat. The more lenient diet is maybe 90 to 110, 120 grams of carbs a day, and that includes some complex carbohydrates like beans and lentils, Granny Smith apples and berries, an occasional root vegetable, but not that much.

Okay.

That's probably the distinction between those two opposite ends.

Okay. So tell me about your protocol and the different stages of it.

Well, you see, when I first discovered Candida, I didn't really know much about what it was. This was back in 1986, '87. I didn't know much about it. I referred people to their doctor to try to handle it because I determined that one of the Odd things about Candida is Candida causes people to react strangely to medications and vitamins. When they take vitamins that should be good for them, they actually get very bad, bizarre reactions. So when I had this happening with people, I referred these people to their doctors to handle the Candida, and they were met with, well, I really don't know much about that, or it doesn't exist, or I can't help you, or some story. So then I started referring them to some of my colleagues at the time in New York City, like Dr. Bob Atkins and and Ronald Hoffman and some of the very well-known functional doctors, and they got much better results with those doctors, but still not where I wanted it. So I had to take it upon myself to figure out what it, what it was all about and to come up with what the treatments were now. And a lot of the things I learned were by listening to my patients and hearing what they were doing that wasn't working. And when I would hear these things, like, for one of the first things was a patient would tell me— I heard this a million times— the patient would tell me, I went to the doctor, he gave me niacin, he gave me this other drug. For the first month or two, I great, I thought I was cured, and then it gradually started to come back. So I'm saying, I said to myself, why would that be? So I would listen to the patient, I would go hit the medical textbook on mycology and yeast, and what I found out was Candida was very, very sensitive to mutation. Candida could mutate very easily. It would genetically switch, is what we call it. So I found that what was happening is the longer the person was on the treatment, they would genetically— the Candida would genetically switch and mutate and then become resistant to the treatment. Mm-hmm. So this is where I then determined that what we had to do is we had to come up with a, a way of rotating the antifungals so the Candida wouldn't become resistant to the one that you were using. So we came up with, with the policy of having the person use 4 different antifungals and they would have them rotate them every 4 or 5 days. This way that ensured the Candida could not mutate. So this is, this is one major thing that's different in how I treat the Candida than another person. The other thing is we don't use probiotics at the beginning because they determined, thanks to, um, Genova Labs many years ago, in doing— they allowed my patients to do some free stool testing, and we determined that the probiotics do not work in a person until you've eliminated a good amount of the intestinal yeast. Probiotics are repelled by Candida. So when you have a dysbiosis, whatever it is— parasites, Candida, bacteria, whatever— they tend to repel the probiotics and prohibit them from sticking to the gut lining. So you've got to first eliminate those organisms before you can put the probiotics in. We also very early on when I was researching, it found that a great amount of people with Candida had parasites, which is kind of a, you know, an ugly thing to, to say, but nonetheless true. And it's because when you have an imbalance in your intestinal tract, that lack of friendly bacteria that normally protects you from all types of organisms, it's not there. So we, we would tend to see in people— you can imagine this, if you could, if you could walk through someone's intestinal tract with a flashlight, you would go through areas where there's friendly bacteria, everything looks kind of normal, but then you come across an area of the intestinal tract where there's— there are colonies of bad bacteria, yeasts, and parasites all harbored together because they all tend to be synergistic in how they work together. So they live that way. So we started to do the very first thing with a Candida patient is a parasite cleanse. Not anything grossly elaborate, but something, something like a colon cleanse that had black walnut, wormwood, cloves, some of the typical things that are used for Northeastern parasites.. And we found that we got much better results when we gave the person the parasite cleanse first, then got them into the Candida treatment. The results were quite different, and that, that became then part of the protocol. So our, the, the protocol that I use that's explained in the book, and there, there are many other axioms and logics to it, but all of these things were arrived at by watching people respond, watching what the, what they were doing that was wrong, and then not making the same mistake twice with them, coming up with a different way around it so that it actually worked.

And, and you mentioned the book. What is the book?

The book is called The Candida Chronicles, and it's available on Amazon. And it explains the history of my research into Candida, how I determined these different modalities and treatments. And it goes over quite a few different examples of treatment plans a person can use. Plus, there's a whole section in there on diet and recipes.

Oh, okay, perfect. I'll link to that in the show notes. So what kinds of parasites are you seeing on stool tests with Candida?

The most typical one is Blastocystis hominis, which is a very interesting organism. Back in, in, back in the '80s, blastocystis was classified as non-pathogenic by the CDC. And then they, with the advent of all the research into AIDS, it was then looked at differently and they started to reclassify it as a pathogen. Blastocystis is actually a kind of combination of a yeast cell and an amoeba at the same time. It's like half protozoa, half yeast. And it's interesting because on its own, it really doesn't do that much to you. The symptoms of blastocystis mostly come about because it weakens your intestinal immune response. So intestinal IgG, IgA, all these antibodies tend to weaken when you have blastocystis, and that allows other organisms that are there— it magnifies their negative effects. So it's very common to find blastocystis and Candida together. It's also pretty typical that you would find someone who's had Giardia or who's had any type of amoeba would then afterwards have Candida as a result of the Giardia disturbing their intestinal flora. Roundworms, tapeworms, flukes, all very common in people with Candida.

So basically anything that impacts your gut immunity and causes dysbiosis.

Yes. Yeah, that's the simplicity of it.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so going back to the blasto, I'm curious because I've heard that there are strains that are pathogenic now and strains that are not, and also, you know, heard about studies where that they're finding it present in, in plenty of healthy people.

Yeah, the difference is whether or not they have other microbes that are there that are possibly pathogenic, that pairing them off makes the whole difference. And that's what they've— that's what I've never seen made clear in any study, because that's the simplicity of it. The presence of Blastocystis is not really a big deal. It doesn't have to be a big deal unless there's some other pathogen for it to pair with. So if you have Blastocystis and the rest of your flora is healthy, you could be fine. But then if you acquire food poisoning somehow, some way, and you have that blastocystis there, now you're— now you're going to have something which could go on and on and on. If you develop Candida while you have blastocystis, now that increases the impact of it. So it's really the pairing that they— that needs to be looked at. That's what I observed on my own. So if I see someone has blastocystis, it's definitely a red flag, but I look and see what else they have in the test and what else they're manifesting symptomatically to understand how that's impacting them. Not a good idea to have it in any case because it does have that ability to weaken your immune response eventually.

So what, the parasite cleanse that you described, the colon cleanse, that is effective in eliminating blasto?

No, it's not.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Yeah, it's very hard to get rid of. I actually had to formulate a product which we called it that at the time, Blasto Off or something like that. I don't remember, it was very long ago. But it was— the product was meant to remove the blastocystis because blastocystis adheres to your intestinal lining. It's very, very hard to get it off. So I had to look into what nutrients or what substances would break the protein bonds that the blastocystis makes to hang on. And we formulated that product and started using it with some other things, and it worked really well. But then the funny thing is we found out that it had the same effect on Candida, so we changed the name of it. We called it Candy Loosener. And we made it part of our regular Candida protocol. But the product eventually had come from this research into blastocystis.

Oh, okay. So you still have the product called Candy Loosener?

Candy Loosener, which really was meant to help people eliminate blastocystis because it's so hard. See, killing blastocystis is not such a, a tough thing. It's getting it to come off the lining of the intestinal tract where it hides in the mucous membranes. That's what's tough, and that's what the Candy Loosener does.

Okay. And are there like biofilm busters of some sort that to do that, or?

Yes, you, you called it. Half the product is a biofilm buster, and the other half of the product contains different substances which break the bonds that the blasto makes. One of them is MSM sulfur. MSM sulfur dissolves the proteins that most parasites make, including blasto, to be able to stick to the lining of your intestine.

And how long will people typically have to take that in order to get rid of the blasto?

6 months.

6 months. Wow. Okay. So not a quick process. So that's kind of part of the protocol for Candida the whole way along.

Yes, it is, but at least it does— at least you get rid of it. Because I've had people come to me saying they've had blastocystis for years and they kept bouncing from one doctor to another and they're never able to get rid of it. And that's, that's the challenge with blastocystis. You have— yes, you need to try to kill it in a drug or herb fashion, but you also need to be able to get it to loosen up and fall off the intestinal lining so it's not affixed.

Okay, so back when you were talking about the metals, I, I wanted— I meant to ask what do you use to test for those heavy metals?

Well, you can do that. You can do it in quite a few ways. The way I like, and I've always traditionally done, is with hair analysis. And the reason why I'm a proponent— I've been using hair analysis since 1985, and I'm a big proponent of it because the hair is a tissue, and as a tissue, it's showing you storage. If you take a blood test on someone for minerals, you can have them eat a banana and then take a blood test and their potassium levels will be high. And yet if they do it fasting, they'll— they won't be high like that, you see. So hair doesn't give you misreadings that could occur based on like a, um, an exposure which is temporary. We had a patient once who— he had— he went for blood work on the same day that he went for a jog under the Brooklyn Bridge, and they happened to be repairing the bridge, so there was all kinds of iron being thrown out into the air. So his blood test that day had high levels of iron, but When we had him repeat it the next week, it was fine. So it gives a false reading sometimes. Now, so the hair is a tissue that you're looking at, and you're looking at tissue storage. And tissue storage means when you find something that's in the hair, it's not something that just is there temporarily. It's been there for a long time. And when you have experience with hair testing and you do it for many years, and especially if, let's say, you're following one patient, you have a patient do the test every 3 months, you start to see that they have a pattern. To their hair. This was used in forensics, which is where we got the idea as nutritionists to use it, because in forensics they would take care and they would look at it. And this is how they discovered that Napoleon was killed by arsenic poisoning. It's how they discovered that Beethoven died from lead poisoning. So when you look at the, at the hair and you're following it, you see the pattern that's there. And as you work with the person's biochemistry, you can gradually change that pattern and optimize it. But when you look at hair, the bottom line is you're going to see something that's in the, in the hair. It means it's in storage. It means it's in your tissues. It means it's not just something that's, you know, a very temporary thing. It means you actually really have a buildup of this in your body, and you know to take that seriously. And you know that you can follow it when you detoxify the person. We use urine tests when we get the person on a program to check their excretion. And this is the best way to look at it. Hair shows you storage. A urine test for toxic metals and a stool test, because both of them exist, would show you excretion. So if you have somebody and you're detoxing them because you see they have high metals in their hair, how you can tell the efficacy of your, your program is by looking at their urine and stool and see how much of this metal is now coming out. Because what you'll do is you'll get an increase coming out in the urine. So if you did a hair test and a urine test, let's say it showed high mercury, as the person's on the program, when you do subsequent urine tests that mercury is going to elevate because the body's pushing it out, it's dumping it.

Okay. And that's essentially what you want to see when you're, when you're getting rid of it.

Yeah, you don't want to see it low, right? Not at all. Right.

Okay. And what, what do you use to chelate those metals?

We use EDTA, DMPS, a lot of the standard chelators that have been used for quite some time. But we also have a particular way that we do it. We like to use like 3 or 4 things categorically because you get a better cleaner detoxification. We always use a chelator. So let's say that would be— in the case of mercury, it might be DMPS or, or DMSA. Then along with the chelator, we want to use elements that are antagonistic. So what I mean by that is all vitamins and minerals have an opposition with each other or a synergy. When it comes to mercury, zinc, iron, and selenium are very antagonistic to mercury. They actually help nudge the mercury out of storage in your tissues. Vitamin C is like a natural chelator of mercury. So when we have somebody on a mercury program, we have them on a chelator, we have them on the nutrients which also tend to be antagonistic or supportive to, to bringing it out, and then we have them on binders. There are different types of substances which help bind the metal and take it out differently than the chelators. That would be things like citrus pectin. Typically it's called modified citrus pectin, and modified citrus pectin, cilantro, Um, sodium alginate, bentonite— all these different clays also help bind the metals and pull them out. So when you use these things in combination, you get a much more thorough detox. Because the thing you want to avoid— and this is what happens— is if the person doesn't have all these things in the proper balance going for them when they're chelating the metal, there's a certain amount of reabsorption of the metal. And most of the bad reactions the person has when they're on a metal program are from the metals being reabsorbed back into their system. But when you have them taking all 3 of these items together, you get a minimal amount of reabsorption. So the person gets through it without feeling horrible.

Mm-hmm. And I, I'm curious about the cilantro. Are, are you talking about as a food or is there, is this like an extract?

You can do it either way.

Okay. Yeah. I've often sent people to, to eat a lot of cilantro, but I'm not sure how compliant they are with that.

I hear you. Yeah.

Okay. So once you've gone through this 6 to 8 month Or how long does your protocol typically last? And you said 6 to 8 months, right?

Some people 6 to 8 months, some people 6 to 8 years. Depends on what's going on. The people you've got— there are genetic tendencies towards Candida. There is a particular SNP called MMP-1 which predisposes the person to Candida. It's a SNP which affects the collagen in the person's intestinal tract. And it makes it easier for the Candida to permeate that collagen and stick. Those people are people who need to manage Candida as opposed to treat it, because their Candida is really never going to go away in that way because of the genetics. So they're managing it. And then you have other people who don't have that SNP who you can clear on the Candida within 6 to 8 months, and then you can work on, as we said before, what the underlying issues might be. Do they have toxic metals that are underlying this? Do they have hormone imbalances? Do they have low stomach acid, which is another reason you can get Candida? And as you said, as you mentioned before, there's being immunodeficient, which is also a possibility. So normally we expect— and with the surprises of life, we expect it to take about a year for us to handle the, the typical person with Candida, the person who developed Candida because he was minding his own business. He got hit with a lot of antibiotics. Let's say he had dental work he was in a car accident, he developed some type of infection, something happened, he got hit with all these antibiotics, he developed Candida. That's the kind of person that's the easiest because they're going to take maybe 8 months, something like that, to a year. They'll clear it up. They don't have really very strong underlying problems. Now when you have women who have problems conceiving who have Candida, they usually have lots of underlying hormone problems. And very often I find that they're copper toxic. Toxic. And those type of people are going to take a few years to handle because depending on their ability to detoxify, you've got to get the copper out for things to be normalized. So I always look at it this way: there's two parts to my Candida treatment. The first part is getting rid of the Candida. The second part is handling why you've got it and why it became so persistent. Those are the underlying reasons that we look for there, where we're looking at metals, hormones, stomach acid level, or, you know, parasites. It could be quite a few things. But you're really looking at two kinds of programs here when you're dealing with a chronic case of Candida. The typical person that we get, I would say, has been fighting Candida for at least 10 years. They've been to at least 5, 6, 7, 8 doctors, and they're, they're bouncing around, and they've never really gotten the correct results because, you know, everybody that they see has their own hobby horse or their soapbox that they get on about Candida, and they don't really have the whole picture like I'm giving it to you. I'm giving you today the whole picture of what happens with Candida from start to finish. Most doctors know a part of this, or they specialize in one part of it. Like, there was a very— there's a very famous doctor who was in the Midwest, not, not of course going to mention his name, but he's, he's very well known because he preaches that you've got to get the mercury out of your body or the Candida will never go away. And what I learned from his patients when they started coming to me was that the last thing you want to do is touch the mercury first. Because all the patients that were going to him— and it all made sense, it makes sense to me that you want to get rid of the mercury in order to resolve the case— but when you address the mercury first, what you're doing is you're pulling this mercury out of the person's tissues, it's coming down the intestinal tract where the Candida is sitting, and you're basically giving the Candida a bath at this mercury. And not only is the mercury immunosuppressive, so it reduces the immune response in your gut, but can— this has been, and this has been observed for a while, no one's really fully got a grip on why this is, But Candida absorbs mercury. When you start killing Candida in a person who's mercury toxic, as the Candida decomposes, it releases mercury ions into the body. So if you do this as the first action on the person, they're going to be so sick they're not going to be able to continue. And that's what ends up happening. And that's how I ended up having all these patients come to me, because they, they were trying to go through this doctor's protocol and it just made them so sick they couldn't handle it. So I learned the hard way again from that. There's a The College of Hard Knocks. I learned at that point you don't touch the mercury first. You first reduce the Candida as much as you can. Then you gradually pull the mercury out while you're maintaining the person on a program that will suppress that Candida as the mercury is coming out.

And so you mentioned that women who have trouble conceiving are often copper toxic. Is there a relationship between those two?

Well, copper is estrogenic.

Okay.

In the body, like, minerals are very interesting. Anyone who wants to make a good study of minerals, I would refer them to Trace Elements Lab. Dr. David L. Watts has written a great book about trace elements, and he has— he's the world expert as far as I'm concerned. Watts has shown in many studies that copper itself as an element tends to be estrogenic. Copper is what stimulates estrogen receptors. Copper also stimulates the production and release of estrogen. Zinc, on the other hand, more stands for progesterone. And while we're on the subject, manganese is the one that more stands for testosterone. So if you have a woman who's accumulated copper for, for whatever reason, it's like her body is walking around with, with more sensitive, more estrogen sensitivity or estrogen dominance than one who doesn't. And that's the case where Candida, Candida loves that. Candida loves estrogen. The estrogen makes babies grow, it makes Candida grow.

And where are they getting the talk, the copper from?

That's a very good question. Many years ago, we had a lot of cases of copper toxicity from people who lived in cities, particularly who lived in old brownstones. And what we found was that the copper plumbing, after a while, gets old. It leaches copper in the water. And people will notice this when they look in the sink, or they, or they, they look down at the drain and they see green stains in that drain. That's copper. Now, you could, you could also— a vegetarian diet is also very high in copper. So if a woman is, let's say, a blood type O who normally would be more of a paleo diet, if they're being a strict vegetarian or a vegan, they'll develop copper toxicity from the diet. And there are, um, some other sources of copper you can acquire, but that's kind of individualized to someone's, like, their hobbies or their profession where they're coming in contact with the metal. For the average person, plumbing is a major reason why they have copper. And then also you have to remember too, amalgams— like, everyone, everyone thinks of mercury amalgams. Mercury amalgams are actually an alloy of zinc, copper, and mercury. It's not all mercury in there, there's copper in there too. So if someone's amalgams get old and they start leaking mercury, they're also leaking copper.

What about a copper IUD? Are those problematic?

Highly.

Okay.

Highly. That's— sometimes that's the underlying reason for a woman's Candida problem.

Yeah. Okay. So can you talk about the major categories or types of herbal products that are used to treat Candida and explain why you use the ones you use?

Yes. There's one particular group of products, antifungals, which work better systemically. And there are formulas nowadays made with some of those. Key herb is Lomacium, which was used by the American Indian, North American Indians. Yes. They used it for a condition they called furry tongue. Which we now know of as being thrush. A companion herb to that is called Spilanthes, which is, which is a little different but works virtually similar mechanism. And as I said before, there are formulations now that exist with different, from different companies. There's a particular one we use a lot called BioCidin, which there are 3 or 4 different versions now of BioCidin. Biocidin is very effective for killing Candida. But then keep in mind, as I said in the beginning, we would rotate these. So it would, it would not be unusual for us to give someone a rotation where they would take Biocidin, then they would take Lomacium, then they might take Spilanthes, then we might use some, one of the herbs from South America called Colorex, and we might, we might use something from Metagenics, the Candibactin. There's Candibactin AR and BR. It wouldn't be unusual for us to rotate these things. Berberine combined with citrus extracts, the grapefruit seed extract— when you combine berberine and grapefruit seed extract, that's very effective against Candida. That's a product that's called Tricycline. It's made by Allergy Research Group. So these, all these can be used while, while you have the person on what we refer to as our basic Phase 0. Phase 0 is what the parasite cleanse that I told you about originally evolved into. And Phase Zero is a combination of diatomaceous earth, candy scrub, candy loosener, and an enzyme product which helps digest the Candida. A lot of the Candida patients I'm sure are familiar with Canxyme and other products that physically digest the Candida. We use those enzymes with diatomaceous earth and with, with our candy scrub and candy loosener as our Phase Zero. That's our first phase for Candida elimination. That's what helps get rid of the parasites. It helps get rid of what I would refer to as the top layer of Candida. And then we would graduate the person into the first phase, which is where they use those herbs I just mentioned, which tends to work very well systemically. Hydrogen peroxide is not an herb, but food-grade hydrogen peroxide works very well at destroying Candida systemically. We would then eventually graduate the person to phase 2, which is where we handle the intestinal Candida. This is the Candida that usually will come back and cause the person to relapse if it's not addressed, and it's also the Candida layer which tends to stop the probiotics from being able to stick. Now, when it comes to this, the only thing that's going to work on deep in the intestinal tract are antifungals, which are fatty acid-based. And the— there are primarily just two which are effective, but you have to get really, really good quality products. You have to use caprylic acid and then undecylenic acid. Because they're fatty acids, they're able to enter the cells and enter those tissues where the Candida grows deep into, and then eliminate it. Just sear it right at the edge, and this will, this will kill it deep enough for the probiotics to be able to stick. Now, what we found with probiotics is interesting. It's not as simple as going to the store and buying a probiotic. Once you've had Candida, it's difficult to get the probiotics to stick in your intestinal tract again. So you need to use a probiotic for your small intestine, which would be some acidophilus strain, and then a bifidus strain for your colon, because the colon is represented by Bifidus, small intestine by Acidophilus. Then you need to use a host of different things that— which we call prebiotics, which serve as food for the probiotic to get them to grow. It's almost as that, like you had a, a lawn and your lawn was hit with so much sun and bad chemicals and bad things, it just killed the grass and it made the— it made the soil infertile to grow grass again. So you, you have to literally supplement that soil to be able to get the grass to grow. And we find that sometimes we need 6 or 7 different prebiotics in a person's case. One of the most important prebiotics is fiber, because fiber is what friendly bacteria feed off of in order to make short-chain fatty acids, which help regulate your intestinal tract. So when you're looking at a probiotic, if the person takes probiotics and they don't work, it's number one because they still have too much Candida, and number two, it's because they're not using enough of the prebiotics to feed the probiotic to get it to grow.

And are you using a pre-mixed prebiotic with different prebiotics in it, or are you—

it's about 12. We use about 12 different products on the, on the Flora program. One of the important probiotics is Saccharomyces, which is a yeast. It's also very often referred to as Casper because it's a friendly yeast, and it actually, it helps other probiotics to grow, and it protects the, the probiotics so that Candida doesn't repel it. But the— it is a yeast itself, but it's not a pathogenic yeast.

Okay, so I'm wondering where people can go to find you.

Very easy. They can search me on the internet. My website is health-truth.com. health-truth.com. And I also have another website which is the New York City Yeast Doctor.

Is that a doc— .com?

New York City Candida Doctor. Sorry. Yes.

CandidaDoctor.com. Okay.

And probably if they just search my name and then put the, the word Candida next to it, they'll come up with hundreds and hundreds of pages.

Okay, great. I'm sure they'll have no problem and I'll link all those in the show notes. And the products that you mentioned that you created, I am assuming they can find those on your website.

Yes, they can.

Okay, great. Anything else that I didn't ask about that I should have?

I think within, within reason, no. I think we've got a— we have a pretty good— I think as far as for the average public who's suffering with this condition to become more enlightened and to understand why what they've been doing hasn't worked, I think we've hit the main things.

Okay, great. Well, I appreciate all this in-depth information that you've shared with us, and I'm sure people will be looking for you after this if they've been struggling with this, with this issue.

They're very good. Okay, great. It was great to talk to you.

Thanks so much. Well, he was certainly a wealth of information on Candida. That was awesome. So if you are struggling with Candida or any other gut health issue, I know all of this can seem very overwhelming when you hear it. So I can encourage you to come talk to me. My specialty is helping people with these things and kind of simplifying this all. So if you want to set up a free 30-minute breakthrough session from the link in the show notes, I can see if I can be assistance to you. I coach people with more severe and long-standing problems in 5-appointment packages, or also offer just one-off appointments for simpler issues. And if you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page, you can join my Gut Healing Facebook group, or join my newsletter list at highdeserthealthcoaching.com. And while I'm not terribly active in the other forms of social media, you can also find me on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, and you'll at least get pinged when a new show comes out. And please follow or subscribe to the show if you haven't yet. And you'll find links for everything in the show notes. Thanks for joining me here today. And here's wishing you all the perfect stool.