Candida overgrowth in the gut

This post is is an excerpt from Dr. MerCOLA’s e-book “Could a Candida Infection be Sabotaging your Health?”

For nutritional and lifestyle suggestions on how to heal from Candida, read our related blog post Kicking out Candida.

What Is Candida and How Does It Become Candidiasis?

Candida is a common, yeast-like fungus that lives in your mucous membranes and, normally, quite benignly together with the microbiota and microflora of your mouth, gut, and intestinal tract all the way to the rectum.(2) It also likes to grow in warm, moist areas of the skin, such as under your baby’s diaper, in your armpits and groin and, in women, in your vagina and the folds of your vulva.

Over 20 types (3) of Candida can cause infections in humans, but the most common is Candida albicans (C. albicans), which causes up to 75 percent (4) of all Candida infections, and which is the type we’ll be focusing on in this E-book.

Undisturbed, C. albicans is a round, yeast-like structure that is present without it ever causing a problem or you even knowing it’s there. But with the help of a protein that has a sugar (glycogen) attached to it, (5) it can grow too fast and too much, causing it to elongate into filaments called hyphae. These filaments then burrow into the soft tissues of your body, causing the fungus to morph into the infection called Candidiasis, commonly referred to as a yeast infection. (6)

It’s important to understand that a Candida overgrowth is not due to the mere presence of Candida in or on your body—Candida is a normal part of your body’s microflora. In fact, it’s so normal that oral swabs in 40 to 75 percent of healthy adults will test positive for C. albicans at any given time. And, as many as 25 percent of women will be positive for C. albicans in their healthy vaginas with no signs of an overgrowth or infection. (7,8)

It’s thought that Candida enters your body as early as birth with other organisms that are a normal part of the birth process, all of which cause no problems until there’s a breach in your body’s defense system.

It’s that breach that opens the door for a Candida overgrowth to occur, and it’s the overgrowth that can wreak havoc on your health and even cause death if your immune system is dangerously low. (9) That’s why people with AIDS or HIV, or who are immunocompromised by cancer treatments like radiation or chemo, or who are on antibiotic therapy, are especially susceptible to a yeast infection.

In fact, according to the Oral Cancer Foundation: (10)

“Yeast infections such as Candida were recognized centuries ago as an indicator of much larger underlying diseases such as diabetes mellitus, malignant tumors, and chronic infections (such of the miners’ canary.)

When antibiotics are used, there is a flip-flop in the balance of the natural occurring flora in the mouth (and elsewhere) where the normal flora is damaged by the antibiotic therapy to the advantage of the fungus, which then blooms.

Damage to the mucous membranes and to the salivary glands also allow for Candida colonization. Dry mouth (xerostomia) upsets the balance of microorganisms in the oral cavity. When the delicate balance of normal and abnormal bacteria is disturbed, an overgrowth of this fungus may occur.”

Please note that Candidiasis is a fungus, not a bacterium, and an overgrowth of it should not be confused with bacterial vaginosis, (11) a completely different type of infection that’s caused by an imbalance of bacterial flora in the vagina.

Since it’s a fungus rather than a bacterium, a yeast infection is not treated with an antibiotic—in fact, as I’ve already alluded to above, antibiotics are notorious for triggering yeast infections. Therefore, most doctors will recommend a topical or oral fungal treatment if you are diagnosed with a yeast infection.(12) But other, non-pharmaceutical ways of addressing Candida overgrowth are also available.

Candida Overgrowth in Your Gut

Much of the focus on Candida in the past has been on vaginal yeast infections and how to treat the symptoms. But more recent research has centered on the gastrointestinal system and Candida’s ability to both colonize the gut benignly along with your normal microbiota, as well as to contribute to inflammation (60) that triggers diseases of the gut.

For example, irritable bowel syndrome, (61) Leaky Gut Syndrome, Crohn’s disease, (62) and inflammatory bowel disease (63) have all been linked to yeast overgrowth in various studies.

Not surprisingly, it’s also been shown that patients with ulcerative colitis and gastric ulcers tend to have more severe disease if they have Candida overgrowths in their guts. Victims of Candida overgrowth also have more trouble getting well, apparently because the overgrowth can delay healing of inflammatory lesions, which can lead to a cycle of disease that promotes even more inflammation. (64)

Even more serious is when Candida overgrowth occurs deep within the intestinal tract itself. If it grows out of control there, the infection can create structures called rhizoids, which act like little screws that drill into the walls of your intestines, penetrating tiny perforations, grooves, crevices and weak points (65) that might already be there naturally, and where foods, fats, and toxins can lodge and subsequently “leak” into your bloodstream. (66) This is called Intestinal Hyper-permeability, commonly known as Leaky Gut Syndrome.

When Leaky Gut happens, the body will start to fight what it believes is a foreign substance, and will form antibodies that not only wreak havoc on your entire immune system, but can trigger food allergies (67) as well as continue the Leaky Gut cycle.

In turn, this can cause vitamin and mineral deficiencies in your body, which lower your immune system even more, causing another vicious circle of gastrointestinal and autoimmune problems—and with them a feeling of fatigue, listlessness, and often, depression when it seems like you just don’t know what’s wrong with you.

Leaky Gut Syndrome: Where It All Begins

About 30 years ago, Dr. William G. Crook, a physician who I long admired and respected before he passed in 2002, wrote a groundbreaking book that connected certain health conditions to yeast infections. In it,68 Dr. Crook named specific physiological and autoimmune, allergy, or allergy-like symptoms that he attributed to C. albicans overgrowth, such as:

• Food cravings (especially for carbohydrates, yeast’s favorite food)
• Bloating
• Liver overload as it tries to deal with all these toxins
• Decreased thyroid function and metabolism because the liver is busy elsewhere
• Tremendous fluid retention as your body tries to dilute the toxins
• Fat cells swelling as they trap toxins as a means to protect the rest of the body
• Gas from yeast due to its normal metabolic functions
• Toxins that block thyroid hormone function
• Hormonal imbalances on all levels (known as pseudo-hormones or false hormones) caused by environmental chemicals blocking receptor sites
• Weight gain due to the stress of toxins and feeling awful create excessive release of cortisol, the chronic stress hormone, which has an added negative effect of making it nearly impossible to lose weight

When you look at these symptoms in the context of what you might be suffering due to an unaddressed yeast infection, it’s easy to understand how it’s possible for something like depression to also be a manifestation of uncontrolled Candida overgrowth, if only because the weight gain, bloating and food cravings make you feel depressed.

Unfortunately, it took nearly three decades for conventional medicine to recognize that Dr. Crook was on to something—that, indeed, a yeast infection not only can disturb the gut enough to trigger immune responses that mimic allergies, but can actually cause an allergy to C. albicans itself! (69)

For example the literature now shows that:

And today, Dr. Christina Zielinski, lead author of a 2012 study on C. albicans and autoimmune responses, has picked up where Dr. Crook left off, telling Science Daily that she is “…convinced that an imbalance in our microbial microflora has a decisive influence on the development of chronic inflammatory illnesses like rheumatism, Morbus Crohn and psoriasis.” And part of the guilty microflora causing this imbalance and chronic illness is Candida overgrowth, Zielinski says. With science now solidly behind the idea that a yeast infection can trigger allergies and allergy-like symptoms, as well as alter your gut balance and cause numerous autoimmune and inflammatory problems, it’s easy to understand how the symptoms below fit in to Dr. Crook’s original analysis.

Signs of Candidiasis That You Wouldn’t Immediately Guess

Some common conditions connected with Candida overgrowth in your gut, or exacerbated by it that you may not immediately recognize are:

As you can see, the list is long and varied, but sadly, it’s by no means all-inclusive or definitive, as the science behind the link between Candida overgrowth in the gut and chronic illness is ever-growing. What is definitive, though, is that this simple graph highlights just how important your gut health is to your entire well-being.

For nutritional and lifestyle suggestions on how to heal from Candida, read our related blog post Kicking out Candida.

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