Greetings. It’s Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand, author of Candida Crusher and formulator of the Canxida range of supplements. Thanks for tuning in. I’ve got a question here from a gentlemen in England, a Mr. Paul Wilson from Sussex in the UK. Paul’s asking me, “Eric are night sweats connected to Candida? Can Candida cause night sweats?”
Let’s have a look at different kinds of reasons why you can get night sweats first, Paul. In fact, there are about eight or nine different reasons. I’ve just pulled up a list here and I’m going to go through a few things with you to explain to you more about night sweats.
Night sweats is a condition that we refer to when you’re in bed, you’re got the covers on you, you’re sleeping, and you wake up really hot and sweaty as opposed to fevers, which can happen at night or during the day. So fevers are almost every time immune related and usually involve some kind of infection like influenza, for example. There are different kinds of tropical diseases that can cause fevers as well.
Menopause. Obviously, you’re a guy so I wouldn’t expect you to get the same kind of symptoms. Some men do go through what we call andropause, so they go through a kind of a male menopause. But many females go through peri-menopause and menopause. So the menarche is the beginning of the menses. The menopause is really the end of the menses. It can occur. I’ve got some patients who go through menopause as young as 38 and some who go through it as old as 62. There is no sort of defined date here, but I seem to find that probably I’d say mid to late 40s, between around 47 and 52, seems to be the key age for development of menopause.
So what happens in this situation is the ovaries that produce the bulk of the sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone, they start declining. So the feedback loop between the ovaries and the pituitary is not so active anymore because the woman’s active menstrual years are really behind her. She doesn’t need to reproduce anymore. So the ovarian pituitary hypothalamic loop starts to slow down and the ovaries atrophy, they shrivel up a bit, they get smaller. What happens is the woman will notice that her period may go into decline. She may have a heavy cycle one month and maybe skip one another month. Some women have a very smooth transition. Others will have a much harder transition.
I find especially the women who go through a lot of stress have this because the adrenal glands make about 30 to 40 percent of the sex hormones, and the ovaries make the remainder. If a woman has had a huge amount of stress in her life raising teenagers, going through a divorce, gone through lots of financial hardship, she may have a considerable adrenal weakness or fatigue, so the adrenals at this point can’t step up to the plate and deliver the right level of hormones that the woman requires, estrogen and progesterone, and DHEA in particular. As her ovarian function declines. This causes a disparity and this often for many women I see can create anxiety, hot flashing, grumpy person, libido can hit the floor, all sorts of things can occur. And particularly the lack of estrogen, we find the hot flashes occurring. And they can typically occur at night in bed where she can throw off the covers. Husband can be cold. She can be hot. So the covers can go on and off all night.
Hot flashes in this case can often be accompanied with mood disorders, anxiety or depression, tiredness, muscle pain and weakness. I find in my experience that low estrogen often occurs commonly with low testosterone, so you may want to go to a doctor and get some salivary testing done. You can also get some urinary tests done now for metabolites. There is a really good lab called Precision Analytical that does what we call the Dutch test, which is superb for looking at the stress hormones, the sex hormones, and what we call the androgens as well. That’s a very good test, the Dutch test. That will determine what your level of hormones is like. If you’re worried about menopause, get tested and then get these levels of hormones balanced. Quite often, this will make a big difference for menopausal night sweats.
Idiopathic hyperhidrosis. Idiopathic means we don’t know what the hell caused it. There is no known cause. Some people get random sweats where they can’t define any kind of immune illness or hormonal imbalance underpinning it. It’s quite rare having the idiopathic, but some people will have this quite bad. I’m quite sure that if the person was checked carefully for different kinds of foods or heavy metals or issues in the body, they may find a level of toxicity there or a major food problem. The person is consuming a food or drinking something that they shouldn’t be doing. Alcohol, I found, has sometimes underpinned the idiopathic hyperhidrosis. Some people get flushing from different kinds of preservatives in wine, for example, can cause flushing. And the person will go to the doctor and the doctor says, “Look, we don’t know what’s causing this sweating.” If you drink alcohol and you suffer from night sweats and no one can work out what it is, just stop the alcohol temporarily to see if there’s a link there between booze and the no known cause sweating.
Infections. Infections are quite a well-known cause of night sweats, especially conditions like tuberculosis, but also conditions like endocarditis or a bacterial infection of the heart valves. Osteomyelitis or bone infection. There are many kinds of infections that can cause it. I know there are different tropical diseases that can cause a lot of night sweats in people. I think dengue fever is one of them. And in Australia, we’ve got Ross River virus, for example. I think it’s a virus and it’s spread by mosquito bites and that can cause drenching night sweats as well. And often these infections are accompanied by extreme fatigue, if you get a lot of sweating. Malarial drenching is a typical one where the person will have saturated sheets from night sweats. Usually a blood test will uncover if you’ve got an infection or not underpinning night sweats. So if you’ve been traveling to different countries, that could be one of the causes. You could have picked up an infection.
Cancers. Of course, cancers like lymphoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is more common than Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but the lymphomas involve cancer of the lymphatic system with the enlargement of lymph glands typically in the neck. I found some patients will find, men will find it when shaving. That can often underpin sweating, too. And again, blood tests will pick this up, so your doctor should be able to pick up if you’ve got lymphoma or any kind of infectious disease that could be underpinning night sweating.
Pharmaceutical drugs. There are different kinds of drugs that can cause night sweating or sweats, flushes in general. Antibiotics, for example, from as many as 10 up to 25 percent of people who take different kinds of antibiotics can experience night sweats. Not many people know that. And also, paracetamol, Tylenol, Advil, different pharmaceutical drugs like aspirin can cause flushes and sweating in some people. If you’re taking a pain medication and you suffer from night sweats, again, you may want to see if there’s a link there. Antacids, for example. Some people report with antacids that they get flushing or sweating. Aspirin is a common one, actually.
Hypoglycemia. Low blood sugar. I made a big mistake when I was in my 20s a long time ago when I went for a run, a long jog outside, and I came back and I drank a can of Coke. What a dumb thing to do. I had low blood sugar, but when I put 12 or 15 teaspoons of sugar into my body, I hit the floor because I immediately elevated my blood sugar. A large amount of insulin was produced to reduce it, my insulin levels just plummeted, and so did my blood sugar, I just dropped and I felt really weak. I collapsed. I got hot flushes, I got cold flushes, and I got shaking and chills. This can happen with really low blood sugar. Type 1 diabetics can have this with poor insulin control. They can get a lot of sweating and flushing.
Thyroid problems. Very common. Hyperthyroidism. If you’ve got very low TSH, get your blood level checked and you’ve got maybe shaking, maybe anxiety and sweating can often accompany that as well. So people who get very hot or very cold may need to get their thyroid hormones checked if they’re uncertain what’s going on there. With hyperthyroidism, we’d expect the person to be more on the skinny side. With high levels of anxiety and can’t relax, so they can sweat typically.
The last one is a rare neurological condition. It can be some conditions like autonomic neuropathy, autonomic dysreflexia, these are all weird names that we give to unusual conditions involving the nervous system, which can either be through infection or injury. There are different kinds of reasons why a person may have a damaged nervous system, and that can cause inappropriate responses peripherally in the body. They can get all sorts of weird sensations accompanied by flushing and sweating. Some people that have had strokes can experience that as well.
That’s eight general reasons why night sweats could occur. Paul, I hope that answers your question. But probably the more common ones we see in women, especially 40s and 50s, would be menopause. And the other common reason I would see with night sweats would be infections of some sort.
To answer your question, can Candida cause night sweats? Yes. It can. It’s definitely something I’ve seen. And in fact, I had a lot of heat myself when I had this condition and a lot of sweating and flushing. Remember fermentation is often involved, especially if the person’s consuming alcohol or eating sugars and has a yeast infection because they’ll be fermenting on the inside. And fermentation creates gas and heat and that can make you sweat, particularly if you crave sugars. If you’ve got farting, bloating, burping, and sweating and you crave sugar, there is a chance that you’ve got a yeast infection.
That’s a long-winded reply to your answer, Paul. The eight reasons why you can have sweating and also Candida can definitely be there in a relationship with night sweats. Thanks for tuning in.