CANDIDA OVERGROWTH: Symptoms, Root Causes, and Natural Treatments
Dr. A, an integrative practitioner with 30+ years of experience, explains Candida overgrowth: what it is, where it grows, and why it happens. High sugar intake and uncontrolled blood glucose are the main dietary triggers. Treatment starts with reducing sugar and restoring gut bacteria, then moves to antifungal herbs like oregano and rosemary, or medications like nystatin if needed.
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A common problem people have is Candida overgrowth, and why do we get it, and what can we do about it when we get it? Hey, I'm Dr. A. Welcome to the YouTube channel. I use this channel to answer questions that patients ask. I do this because I've been teaching and researching and writing in the integrative and naturopathic medical space for over 30 years now. I've been practicing a long time, and I use that background to do these Q&As. So the first thing that we want to think about is what is Candida. Candida is a yeast form, and the normal disorders, diseases caused by candidal overgrowth are from the Candida albicans species. And that's the most common Candida we see in medicine. Now, are there other Candida forms? So if there's a, the first name and then the second name is the species. So albicans, yes, there's a Candida auris, for example, and many, many others. A lot of times when you see non-Candida albicans, albicans yeast forms, it's a more resistant disease and it might be harder to treat. So we're going to just talk about Candida albicans here because it is the most common for human dysfunction. Signs and symptoms depend where you have it. So the first thing is, where would Candida grow? And normally Candida grows in moist areas of the body. So that would be the respiratory system, ear, nose, and throat. It can grow all along the digestive system. It can grow in the reproductive system. So that could be in the anogenital region, the genitals specifically, on the skin around there. And then also you can get Candida in what they call intertriginous regions that might be more moist. That'd be areas around, say, the axilla, the armpits, sometimes under the breasts, any place like that that you see. So that's often where you see it growing. So people will often have mouth lesions. Now, a lot of times you hear in, in children or some adults they have thrush. That's usually Candidal overgrowth growth in the tongue and the mouth. And that doesn't have to just happen in children, but you hear about it in children a lot. You can have body-wide symptoms. It can be very fatiguing if you have a lot of it. So think about, you think, well, okay, the external areas might be anogenital areas or armpits or places like that, or maybe my tongue. But then also what about the whole rest of all of the meters and meters length of your GI tract? Well, if you have a bad Candida overgrowth in different areas of your GI tract, you can have a A lot of candidal yeast activity, which means you're going to get a lot of immune activity to those areas, your immune system trying to fight it, and that actually can deplete you of energy. So in advanced stages, you can have fatigue. A lot of people have digestive issues because of yeast overgrowth. Of course, there's a million reasons to have digestive issues, but Candida can certainly be one of them. It can cause— remember we said ear, nose, and throat area— paranasal and sinus infections. Now, there's other fungus that get into the sinuses, but Candida is not an unusual one. Also, you can have recurrent yeast infections. So in females, that may be particularly vaginal yeast infections or the skin around the vulvar area. As we said, you can have perianal yeast problems, et cetera, that go on. In men, a lot of times you'll get it in the area around the genitals or the perianal area, depending on where it's coming from, what it's happening. And then kind of like fatigue, you can also get some other systemic symptoms that go on, whether You know, or you don't know that you have a lot of it happening. And those can be just global inflammatory symptoms. So brain fog is not uncommon in advanced stages, joint pain, interestingly, because of the metabolic toxins and the increase in inflammation, et cetera. Quick interruption from the regular video. If you are a healthcare practitioner and you have an interest in this topic, we're going to put a link in the description below to my CE website and specifically the webinar that is about this topic. So see you over there. Thanks. Now, one thing that we want to say kind of at the top is if you have a very bad Candida infection that's maybe in a lot of places and you don't know why, a lot of times you should have the rest of your health checked out because Candida is often what we call an opportunistic infection. And although usually it's because maybe we did something to kill the good bacteria or kill other things that that hold off the yeast infections or other stuff. If you have an underlying disease that's either an immunosuppressive disease, for example, way, way back in my medical training when AIDS, HIV disease was very new and there were no treatments for it and all of that, we saw people with end-stage HIV or even earlier HIV with a lot of thrush, a lot of candidal infections and other things. Also though, we've seen people who are undiagnosed Diabetics will have a lot more yeast infections and things. So getting your health checked if you're having a lot of this, very, very wise. Most of the time though, it's usually due to a little bit less problematic and more obvious things. One would be feeding the Candida. So feeding the Candida, and what feeds Candida the most? Sugar. So one of the things that you can do, especially if you're dealing with thrush and Candida overgrowth, and that is not feed it any more than you have to. So that would be to decrease the amount of simple sugars that you put in your system that then the Candida could Metabolize and use for fuel. So start off with lowering sugar amounts. The other thing would be if you do have an underlying trigger that you want to deal with that. So underlying triggers on the high medical end of the spectrum would be things such as getting your blood sugar under control. If you do have diabetes, first get it diagnosed, then get blood sugar under control. That will help. If you have other reasons for it that are dietary, like sugar, get that under control. But then the next thing is your digestive system has a microbiome that either be on the healthy side or the disease-causing side of the microbiome. And so sometimes in people after, say, we kill some of their Candida, if they have recurrence, we might put them on things to help reestablish their good gut flora. So that's another thing you can do to decrease the trigger is improve the good flora in your digestive tract. The next thing beyond lowering sugar, control blood sugar, all that, and of course rule out immune problems would be there are some plants that are naturally anti-candidal. Now, aromatic herbs tend to be antifungal and also antibacterial, etc. Things such as rosemary can be that way, oregano can be that way, thyme can be that way. Many, many herbs do this. Now, sometimes just increasing the amount of those herbs in your food is one way because they have aromatic substances that bother the Candida. So that's one way to go. And also, sometimes people may be prescribed or recommended to a botanical supplement that's concentrated some of those aromatic herbs that go on and can be helpful. There are other things that can be helpful along that might, you know, like we said, support the good flora, the microbiome, all of that that goes on. So sometimes there's a combination approach of killing with some botanical things and then giving good bacteria, good flora back into the system. Also, in people where things have gotten way out of control or there's a lot of really painful, bad symptoms, we might use medications to stop the growth of the Candida. Those could be things like nystatin, which is a topical. It can be used to hold in your mouth for thrush and then you swallow it. Nystatin can be used in the gut as a topical as well. It can be used topically on any of the areas on the outside where it is. You might be prescribed a different type of antifungal, such as fluconazole, is a common one that's prescribed, more of a systemic. And then in real bad cases, there might even be some other antifungals that are given to people. In general, unless you have uncontrolled diabetes or an immune suppressive disease or immune suppressive drugs you're taking, usually Candida is opportunistic and it can be managed and gotten to go away rather rapidly in most people. If it's not going away rapidly, you have to look underneath and say, why is an opportunistic fungus or yeast overgrowing even with moderate treatment, and then you have to figure out what can we do to take away those problems. All right, I'm Dr. A. I hope that answers the question about Candida today. It's always fun to answer these questions. Really want to thank all of the subscribers and the viewers. If you're a viewer and you haven't subscribed, doesn't cost anything, just go ahead and subscribe, share it, like, all those good things. And check out these other videos we're going to put up here for you to take a look at. I'll see you on the next video.
