Candida Question

To dpd,

What do you mean exactly when you said:

"It may very well be the combination of lyme and abx that cause the bad candida overgrowth problems we here are all to familiar with."


Hi Grace,

I believe that indeed, to get candida overgrowth by definition you are immune compromised. This notion raises the hair on the necks of many candida sufferers because the establishment medical community claims candida overgrowth only happens in folks with immune suppression from either HIV or chemo, thus leaving out the possibiltiy in the vast majority of folks who have come to realize they have candida overgrowth.

Now the alternative community has largely taken on the opinion that candida overgrowth can happen in folks WITHOUT immune suppression. The belief here is largely that abx killing off normal flora opens up real estate in the gut and candida moves right on in.

The problem here is that CLEARLY NOT ALL FOLKS WHO TAKE ABX GET CANDIDA OVERGROWTH IN THE GUT. I believe that indeed immune suppression has to occur, and that toxicity of some sort is causing the immune suppression. While any number of toxic chemicals includin the sort that Steve talks about can indude this problem, I think heavy metals and lyme toxins are THE MOST COMMON candida inducing toxicity.

Moreover, note that it is becoming increasingly clear that lyme depletes ones stores of glutathione, and glutathione is HUGE in heavy metal processing. It is apparently the most frequently used chemical in the body to remove organic mercury from within cells, so if you are depleted in glutathione you naturally start to accumulate mercury in your body.

Note also that glutathione is a big player in immune function, as well as vitamin C chemistry and viamin E chemistry and selenium.

To support the notion that folks believe lyme depletes the body of glutathione, note that Wellness pharmacy supplies a glutathione nasal spray, which I take, and when you ask them what its for they specifically claim to have developed it for lyme patients.

So in sum, I believe candida overgrowth only happens in folks with immune suppression, and perhaps this immune suppression is largely caused by lyme disease. Finally, when you give a lyme patient abx, if not done carefully you invite candida overgrowth. So perhaps lyme disease is largely a missing link here, explaining why some folks take abx and get candida overgrowth while others don't. It's the lyme patients here that take abx and get candida.

Note that obviously heavy metal toxicity can exist without lyme, so that is also a condition which would cause abx to quickly induce candida overgrowth.

I fear this was far more wordy than necessary. Hopefully it made sense.

I'd like to respond to your posting dpd, and raise the point that antibiotics alone can contribute to a suppressed immune system.

I was in good health (and no candida overgrowth) and maintained a healthy lifestyle (yoga, little sugar, organic foods) before I contracted a bacterial infection (PID) for which I was put on heavy doses to two antibiotics concurrently.

You could say that the PID infection supressed my immune system, but I attribute my current candida directly to the antiboitics I was taking.

Towards the end of course of antibiotics, I started to have candida symptoms as well as other symptoms that can only be attributed to a suppressed immune system.

Sure, I'd taken antibiotics before in my life with no consequences, but never like this.

Everyone is different, and I've read theories upon theories as to how people can get candida. It would be very nice to point to something conclusively as a cause, but from everything I've been reading on candida, the one thing I've learned conclusively is that you just can't generalize.