What is Candida?

We hear and read a lot about this mysterious Candida, but what is the truth and what is myth?

In our intestines we have about 500 different species of
micro-organisms, mostly bacteria.

Usually bacteria  thought to be the bad guys, which make us ill, but in fact we need these tiny tenants to keep food bugs and upset stomachs at bay and to produce a number of useful substances for our health. These good guys are called“The intestinal flora”.

Fungi also belong to the intestinal flora. These can be yeasts,
similar to the ones we know for baking bread or making wine
or moulds similar to the tasty ones, which make cheeses.

Or they can even be the black stuff, which causes food to ferment and decay.
Usually their numbers are small.
Candida is a kind of yeast, a tiny single celled organism,
which in normal circumstances is a harmless part of our
intestinal flora.

However, sometimes when we are not so fit  these Candida
yeasts can develop the ability to get nasty, grow into large
numbers and cause symptoms.

Candida is a much used general term.
Usually it refers to Candida albicans. Yet there are many more species like Candida parapsilosis, or glabrata.
Sometimes symptoms can also be caused by moulds like Aspergillus niger or Geotrichum (milkmould).
It is essential therefore to know which of these many possibilities is the cause of the problem, and that is why an accurate analysis is needed before treatment should begin.

When an uncontrolled overgrowth of Candida or other fungi
occurs in the intestinal tract, we can get many and sometimes
seemingly unrelated symptoms.
The most common is heavy bloating, especially after eating.
Diarrhoea or constipation may also be part of the picture;
frequently these alternate.
However, different symptoms like nausea and acid
regurgitation can also be present, as can extreme tiredness,
lethargy, sweet craving, IBS, depression, allergies, recurrent
colds, eczema, palpitations, recurrent vaginal thrush, recurrent
cystitis and even more.

Once Candida or other fungi have managed to overgrow our healthy intestinal flora, they usually from harmless round cells into filament shapes.
These develop the ability to cling to our intestinalwalls with the help of protein digesting enzymes.
They are secreted from one end, which looks a bit like a little head. This makes them very persistent.

An important part of our immune system is located in our intestines.
Here the white blood cells get their training to distinguish bad from good and then they migrate to many other parts of the body to do their work.
The fungal overgrowth can irritate this system heavily and may cause the immune system to react allergically to different substances, especially foods.
The local irritation can also cause the ”tight junctions” between the gut wall cells to become leaky (Leaky Gut Syndrome), so that incompletely digested food molecules can slip into the blood stream and also cause allergic reactions.
In addition to this the fungi give off gas and toxins, especially when they are well fed. The gas results in heavy bloating, especially after a meal rich in carbohydrates, and the toxins stress the liver and nervous system, thus causing the chronic tiredness.

Usually our own friendly bacteria keep fungi in our intestines at bay.
Just sometimes our little helpers are weakened, for example by treatments with antibiotics, cortisone,hormones, other drugs or too much sugar in our
diet, or our immune system is weak for some reason.
In this case the fungi can cause symptoms rapidly.

Candida is not always the culprit
Even if you think you clearly recognise your own problems in this
description, fungi may not be the cause at all.
These symptoms can also be caused by something completely different.
A safe diagnosis is essential; otherwise you could waste money and
possibly loose valuable time by “barking up the wrong tree”.

Micro-organisms are far too small to be seen by the naked
eye and even if they are grown in a dense layer,
completely different kinds can look alike.
That is why the only safe way to diagnose intestinal
Candida is a stool analysis in a specialised microbiological
laboratory.

Our diagnoses are done by a German laboratory, which
has many years of experience and performs regular
research on the subject.

This laboratory will not only identify the exactspecies of fungus but also investigate if it is a harmless or an invasive kind.

Not forgetting that you are an individual person experiencing an imbalance, a consultation is going to ensure that your treatment is holistic and effective for you.

 If you feel that maybe Candida is a problem for you please do book an appointment with Andrea