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There are many kinds of fungus that live in the human body. One of them is Candida. It’s a type of yeast that normally lives in small amounts in places like mouth, and belly, or on your skin without causing any problems. But when the environment is right, the yeast can multiply and grow out of control.

Its main job is to help out with digestion and nutrient absorption.

But when overproduced, it can break down the wall of the intestine and penetrate the bloodstream — releasing toxic by-products into the body and causing leaky gut and candidiasis. This can lead to many different health problems, from digestive issues to depression, sensitivity to various food products.

 

There are many kinds of fungus that live in the human body. One of them is Candida. It’s a type of yeast that normally lives in small amounts in places like mouth, and belly, or on your skin without causing any problems. But when the environment is right, the yeast can multiply and grow out of control.

Its main job is to help out with digestion and nutrient absorption.

But when overproduced, it can break down the wall of the intestine and penetrate the bloodstream — releasing toxic by-products into the body and causing leaky gut and candidiasis. This can lead to many different health problems, from digestive issues to depression, sensitivity to various food products.

Why does it overgrow?
Under normal circumstances, the healthy bacteria in gut typically keep yeast levels in check. However, a few factors can cause the population to grow out of control:

Eating a diet high in refined carbohydrates and sugar

• Consuming a lot of alcohol regularly
• long term use of oral contraceptives
• Eating a diet high in beneficial fermented foods (like Kombucha, sauerkraut, and pickles, Kefir)
• High-stress lifestyle

Multiple courses of antibiotics which kill friendly bacteria
How to know that you could be having yeast overgrowth:
Skin issues like eczema, psoriasis, hives, and rashes.
Strong sugar and refined carbohydrate craving skin and nail fungal infections, such as athlete’s foot or toenail fungus.
Feeling tired and low on energy, suffering from chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia.
Digestive issues such as bloating, constipation, or diarrhea.
Autoimmune diseases such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, lupus, psoriasis, scleroderma, or multiple sclerosis.
Difficulty concentrating, poor memory, lack of focus, ADD, ADHD, and brain fog.
Irritability, mood swings, anxiety, or depression.
Vaginal infections, urinary tract infections, rectal itching, or vaginal itching.
Severe seasonal allergies or itchy ears.
How does it cause leaky gut and Autoimmune diseases:
As we know yeast infections and diaper rash are well-known conditions and generally easy to spot, however when it is overproduced in the gut, candida will break down the walls of our digestive tract and penetrate the bloodstream. When left untreated, it’s more dangerous than one could imagine!

It can also be toxic to the system. Essentially, when it breaches the intestinal barrier and enters the bloodstream it releases toxic byproducts such as acetaldehyde into the body. Acetaldehyde is a well-known carcinogen and is responsible for “hangover” symptoms such as nausea, headache, fatigue, and liver damage.

This leads to a condition called leaky gut, leaky gut creates the perfect environment for the yeast to multiply, pass through the intestinal lining, and enter the bloodstream along with the undigested food particles. Meanwhile, it can colonize the gut and damage the intestinal lining. therefore leaky gut and yeast overgrowth compliment each other!

How it adversely affects liver:
Similar to leaky gut syndrome, yeast overgrowth releases toxins into the bloodstream that must be removed by the liver. If there are too many toxins due to overgrowth, it can overload the liver and interfere with its ability to do its job. This means over toxicity and trouble maintaining blood sugar levels, storing vitamins and minerals, and regulating hormones, your anxiety, mood swings, unexplained lack of sex drive are related to this!

The connection between yeast and the liver also explains why many of the symptoms of overgrowth like irritability, fatigue, and brain fog—are similar to those of an overburdened liver. It also explains why many cleanse or nutrition programs include liver support supplements and detoxification support.

Inflammation:
Overgrowth, leaky gut, an overburdened liver, and the physical and mental symptoms they create can trigger the immune system to react, causing CHRONIC INFLAMMATION, this can manifest itself in uncomfortable symptoms like weight gain, skin rashes, or brain fog and can eventually lead to autoimmune disease.

The relationship between the yeast, the liver, inflammation, and gut health is extremely complex, but it’s important to remember that everything in the body is connected, the body is whole. Different organs rely on and interact with each other. Adopting a functional medicine approach instead of treating each symptom individually will give the best results at achieving optimal health. This is a perspective that is often missing in the conventional medical approach, leaving many people bouncing from one specialist to another, with an each of the symptoms which can’t  connect.

Diagnosis can be tricky:
Yeast overgrowth affects everyone differently and symptoms can be diverse and difficult to describe (as they are often closely similar to inflammatory and autoimmune symptoms), making a diagnosis difficult. Some people suffer for years with nonspecific symptoms before they figure out that candida is actually to blame. If you suffer from one, a few, or many of the above-mentioned symptoms it might be an indication that the yeast is the cause.

To further complicate the matter, your doctor might not consider candida when trying to find the root cause of your symptoms and if he or she does, they might not know how to test for it or treat it successfully. It’s often suspected that a chronic overgrowth in the gut is frequently misdiagnosed as diseases like chronic fatigue syndrome or skin disorder and that it might play a significant role in inflammatory diseases like ulcerative colitis.

This makes sense because conditions like IBS have been named to describe chronic, generalizable diseases with no clear root cause or single explanation. Basically, IBS is a blanket diagnosis given to many patients suffering from a chronic upset stomach. So, it’s not too much of a reach to hypothesize that dysbiosis and candida overgrowth could be a major contributor to the problem.

Blood test
You can consider checking your levels for antibodies called IgG, IgA, and IgM. This can easily be done through most medical labs, and high levels can give clues to an overgrowth.

Though I have found in my clinic that these tests can be negative even when a stool or urine test is positive. Which brings me to the next two tests:

Urine Organix Dysbiosis Test
This urine test looks for a waste product of overgrowth that’s called D-arabinitol. Elevated results indicate an overgrowth, and the test can help determine if there is candida in the upper gut or small intestines.

Comprehensive stool testing
This seems to be the most accurate test amongst all. The lab will check for candida in the colon or lower intestines, and can usually determine the species of yeast too, as well as which treatment will be most effective.

How to treat overgrowth?
To successfully treat it, you need to do three things:

Stop the yeast overgrowth,
Build up the friendly bacteria
 Heal gut so that candida can no longer enter the bloodstream.
Getting rid of the overgrowth: which mainly requires switching to a low-carbohydrate diet.Sugar is what feeds yeast. So eliminating sugar in all of its simple forms — such as candy, desserts, alcohol, and flours. At the same time, cut back on the more complex carbohydrates, like grains, rice, beans, fruit, bread, pasta, and potatoes. This will help prevent the candida from growing and will eventually cause it to die.
Eliminate all fermented foods.
Using diet alone could take three to six months before it is back under control. So, Its often recommend that my patients use an anti-fungal medication, such as Diflucan or Nystatin, for at least a month.
Finally, healing gut by eliminating inflammatory foods that can harm  GI tract — and introduce anti inflammatory foods— will prevent the yeast from working its way through gut into the body, and dramatically improve overall health.

If you want to find out if you have overgrowth? Consider seeing a Functional medicne doctor, who is trained in detecting and treating it.

Dr. Kalpana Shekhawat-M.D

Functional medicine specialist

BHRT consultant