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Two members’ stories taken from our quarterly newsletter.

Steve’s story: men don’t get candida!

I always believed that candida was something that afflicted women and since joining the Candida Society, it’s easy to see why. All of the support group leaders (bar two) are women, and I am the only man in the support group I go to. So here’s a man’s story.

I have never enjoyed good health, probably due to a misspent youth subsisting on a diet of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and junk food and as I frequently suffered with bronchitis and joint problems, I had more than my fair share of antibiotics and steroids. Degeneration had set in early, but the real downturn started in 1990 when at 35, I suffered a nervous breakdown where I was hospitalised for a week and was unable to work for six months. At this time I was completely “spaced out” with feelings of unreality, brain fog, severe memory dysfunction and tinnitus.

I gradually recovered after giving up drinking and smoking, changing my dietary habits and taking up cycling but I soon found this to be short-lived as my energy levels dwindled and chronic fatigue set in. My joint pains worsened, especially my back, and I began to suffer chest and muscle pains and irritable bowel syndrome.

After numerous tests which included ECG, x-rays, mineral deficiency and cytotoxic tests, nothing was found. After repeated visits to the GP, I was told I had an anxious personality and not to worry about my health!

I struggled on over the next few years suffering mood swings, depression, headaches, lack of concentration, chronic fatigue, bloating, fungal infections, low body temperature etc. until in 1998 I was like walking death.

I was in so much pain, particularly with my back, when an osteopath pointed out that my dorsal spine was rigid. I took myself to a private hospital where the rheumatologist discovered bone deformity in my dorsal spine due to osteoarthritis which was also affecting my neck, shoulders, hips, wrists and knees. He prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs which killed the pain but made my other symptoms worse.

By chance, a friend suggested I see a nutritionist, who immediately put me on an anti-candida diet. Even at this point, in my state of confusion, I still didn’t realise I had candida. I somehow thought the diet was to alleviate the arthritic symptoms and it wasn’t until I read “The Yeast Syndrome”, that everything finally started to make sense.

However, the worst was yet to come. I started taking anti-fungal supplements, which affected me badly even in minute doses, particularly the dairy based probiotic, but I was told “don’t worry, it’s only die off”. It was after six months of this that I discovered that I was not only intolerant to all gluten grains but to lactose as well. By this time, I weighed 9st. 5lbs. which for a man over six feet tall is fairly light, and my body temperature was averaging 97.0 degrees.

I then started seeing a nutritionist who was very supportive. She put me on her anti-candida program and suggested remedies for hypothyroidism and parasite eradication. I took some pretty lethal tonic for the latter which also made me ill. However, I slowly made progress with the diet, supplements and using naturopathic techniques such as colonic hydrotherapy, enemas, skin brushing, castor oil packs, cold showers etc., but the chronic fatigue continued.

I had weekly acupuncture sessions, started a gentle yoga class to help my breathing and creaking joints and used a rebounder daily to stimulate my stagnant lymphatic system.

Chronic fatigue persisted so I went back to the NHS. My GP suggested I had M.E. and referred me to the hospital where the consultant, much to my horror, after agreeing with my GP’s diagnosis, offered me antibiotics just in case I had anything nasty that needed killing off.

Determined not to give up, I went to see a Kinesiologist who pinpointed post viral syndrome, hypothyroidism and mercury toxicity. Well at least I had two of my symptoms confirmed.

I had my amalgam fillings replaced, started taking the approved ME supplements and experimented with my diet. I discovered that the more raw food I ate, the better I felt and the more energy I had. I also found that starch was a big problem for me to digest which made my energy plummet every time I ate it, especially cooked (e.g. rice, millet, quinoa).

So now I am on a 95% raw vegan diet, my energy is increasing slowly, I eat less and I have put on weight. I replaced my starchy breakfast with fruit and seem to be tolerating this well. Some practitioners are very rigid on the diet - fortunately mine isn’t, as I think it is so important to listen to what your body is telling you and find what works for you. After all, what works well for one person may not necessarily work for someone else.

It has been more than 18 months since starting on my journey to better health - I’m not there yet, but I feel I am more able to manage my condition now. It has been a huge learning experience - I have read countless books, listened to many tapes and tried various therapies, some of which have been beneficial and others not. It seems to be a gradual process of identifying and removing stressors, whether physical, emotional or environmental and creating an environment conducive to rejuvenation, allowing the body to do its own healing.

The other thing I have learned is to think positively, keep going against all the odds and never give up. Slow and steady wins the race. It has also been very beneficial meeting and talking to other sufferers, knowing that other people have had similar experiences, and that I’m not alone in my struggle.

So although there may apparently be more women candida sufferers than men, possibly due to their physiological and hormonal constitution, there could be a lot of men like me who don’t realise that candida is the underlying cause of their health problems, or think that men don’t get candida!

 

Yvonne’s story: A difficult-to-treat case

I have been house-bound (mostly bed-bound) for almost seventeen years. At times unable to stand, walk or crawl, I had severe pain in the muscles, joints, face, neck, ears, spine and kidneys. In addition, I had a strong metallic taste in my mouth; food and chemical allergies; tinnitus; continuous ‘flu-like’ symptoms; body stench; bad breath; hair loss; persistent cystitis; intolerance to heat and cold and temperature fluctuations; complete exhaustion; sleep disturbances, non-refreshing sleep, and an inability to concentrate. I just felt ill ‘all over’. As I am a workaholic by nature, I could not understand what had happened to me.

For the first twelve years my GP told me it was ‘all in my mind’ and that there was nothing really wrong with me. I didn’t feel depressed at all - just very ill but I believed that he knew best and tried to push myself as he advised. I kept collapsing and my condition deteriorated so much that at times I thought I was dying and became so ill I was unable to dress myself.

After four years I was rushed into hospital for a D&C and advised that I needed a hysterectomy to relieve my heavy periods. After the operation I developed a haematoma, but this was not detected until it became badly infected, necessitating a month’s hospitalisation. This left me doubled up with abdominal pain, which the doctors assured me would subside. It didn’t. Instead it got worse until I was unable to stand upright at all. After a few visits to the GP I was told that I was suffering from IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) - no investigations or tests were deemed necessary, instead I was given numerous prescriptive drugs. None helped.

My condition deteriorated so I spent the next eight years doubled up in agony as well as coping with all the other symptoms that I’d had before the operation. My husband became so concerned that he insisted that I see a specialist. Eventually my GP referred me to a specialist at a Nuffield hospital in Harrogate, who recommended keyhole surgery for adhesions. I paid a £1,000 for this advice which was not a good investment. When I was opened up, they discovered that there were no adhesions only damage “probably done during the hysterectomy which I would have to learn to live with...”.

Five years previously I had read a little about ME/CFS but believed my GP when he told me that ME couldn’t be my problem as THEY would have diagnosed it. Now I was not so sure that THEY knew what they were doing, so three days after the keyhole surgery I contacted a Group for ME and was sent a book about candida called ‘Could Yeast Be Your Problem?’ by Leon Chaitow. I was in constant pain, which felt like late labour, so I decided to try the diet. Within three days I could stand upright for the first time in eight years and the pain began to subside.

On taking the supplements, I experienced Herxheimer’s reaction (die-off). I began to ooze thick white dead yeast. I coughed it up. It oozed out of my eyes, ears and nose. It even grew on the enamel on my teeth! I, quite literally, foamed at the mouth. I was riddled with it and detoxing my body was so painful that I blacked out. A neighbour phoned for my GP who told me that he now believed that I had candida but that he didn’t know how to treat it.

For a year I contacted anyone who I thought could help me. As everyone agreed that to have that degree of candida, I must have M.E., I went to see another (private) specialist in Leeds. She diagnosed chronic M.E. and said that I had had it for more than twelve years. She couldn’t understand why it hadn’t been diagnosed earlier. I realised that it was pointless going to see my GP as he was not interested, and kept wanting to give me antibiotics which I couldn’t tolerate, and didn’t need.

I joined many organisations and contacted many sources including places abroad. Even though I had followed the diet faithfully and taken all the supplements for candida, I continued oozing thick white dead yeasts. When I read that candida could be a symptom of mercury poisoning from amalgam fillings, I decided to investigate it further.

In December 1997 I managed to get to Rochdale to see a Mercury-Free dentist. His tests confirmed what even a blind man could see - something was very wrong with my teeth. All of my fillings were black and corroded. I had one gold capped tooth which had turned black. On the numerous occasions when I had questioned my orthodox dentist about this, I had been told that I wasn’t cleaning my teeth enough. Nonsense! As I was constantly oozing foul-tasting and foul-smelling candida from my gums, I cleaned my teeth far more than most.

He advised that this particular tooth should be extracted as soon as possible as it was so corroded. Three days later and it was gone. The gold cap almost fell off as it was black, rotten with corrosion. Below this cap was a heavily-filled tooth. The filling - mercury amalgam was also black and corroded. Underneath all this mess was a root canal. When this was extracted the ‘silver’ rods used in the root canal work were also black with corrosion and one of the ‘silver’ rods was protuding through the end of the root of the tooth. It had been sticking into the flesh since being placed in position. Underneath all of this was a huge pool of stinking poison which was perilously close to the sinuses. This had been giving me severe pain in the face, eyes and ears and sinus problems for fifteen years. Now all the pain has gone and my sinus problems are considerably improved.

As I was so ill, I had to have the other fillings replaced gradually. In fact getting rid of all of the mercury amalgams took a year, and I had the last one replaced in December 1998. I have been told by a dentist, who also had mercury poisoning, that it can take one month for every year that you have been poisoned to clear the mercury from the rest of the body and the brain.

I remember having my first filling when I was about seven years of age - done courtesy of the school dentist. In those days, the philosophy was to ‘save the teeth’ by packing in as much mercury amaglam as possible. Well saving my teeth, with the second most toxic substance known to man, cost me my health in later life.

I have lost almost eighteen years of my productive life. I have been unable to work, be a proper wife, mother, daughter and sister. I was too ill to attend my daughter’s wedding; too ill to help my sister when she was dying of cancer; too ill to visit my mother before she died when was she was rushed into hospital after having a stroke.

I feel angry at having suffered for so long, with so little support from the medical establishment. I am, however, grateful to be finally getting well. I have just been out shopping (I love writing that!) and am going to Saudi Arabia for three months until Spring 2000. So I am certainly ‘getting there’ at last.

 

NB: For more on the relationship between mercury amalgams and illness see:

Dr. Hal A. Huggins (1993) It’s All In Your Head. Avery. £14.40

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