Category: Candida Crusher FAQ Videos

I often get asked questions regarding Candida yeast infections from many people all around the world in over 100 countries now. It’s become very popular for me now to reply in this particular fashion because it would take too long for me to respond to each individually in mail I get. I get hundreds of emails every day. Typical questions. What are the causes of Candida is a question I get. How did I get there in the first place? How did this start for me? How can I identify the cause, so I can prevent it in the future?

In my book in Chapter 2 of Candida Crusher, I wrote the 11 primary causes of a Candida yeast infection. Let’s just get one thing straight. There are two types of causes. There’s the primary cause, or what I call the exciting cause, what really helped to initiate or begin Candida, and then there’s the maintaining causes, what keeps it going. Remember, there are two types of causes. Most people haven’t got a clue about these two types of causes. They just think there’s some kind of cause, so there’s always something that maintains Candida or a combination of dietary and lifestyle events that maintain the cause, and then there’s the initiating causes. Here’s just a little a piece of information I’m going to read out to you. The different types of causes that are most likely to occur with Candida. These are both maintaining causes and initiating causes.

Antibiotic drugs. The primary cause. I’d say most of the people I see with severe Candida or recurring Candida took one or several rounds of some kind of a penicillin, some kind of an antibiotic. There are different classes of antibiotic drugs and many of them have a helping hand in beginning Candida. Many women develop vaginal thrush after taking a course of antibiotics usually for some kind of respiratory problem or skin problem. Maybe even for urinary tract infection, they would have developed it. Many guys develop jock itch after taking antibiotics for a cough or a cold or a cut or some skin infection or something like that. Many children develop thrush as well, also from antibiotics. These are the primary.

Antibiotics in meats. The commercial poultry or chicken that you’re eating today probably contains an antibiotic. If you continually eat these kind of foods plus have several of the other causes, you’re probably going to help to maintain this yeast infection in your body. This is why I talk a lot about organic or free-range chicken. The grass-fed beef. The particular kind of proteins that are clean. This also gives a lot of vegans or vegetarians fuel for saying, “See, meat’s not a good food. You need to eat vegetarian sources of protein.”

Immune deficiency. Many people I see have an immune deficiency. They may have a folic deficiency or an iron deficiency, for example, leading to a deficient immune function. Many people have got digestive problems, which have helped to create the immune deficiencies or exacerbate them, which drag the Candida out even further. A poor immunity. Get your blood tested, for example, it’s a good idea to do a complete blood count and look at the white cell markers. Check iron and B-12. Good things to check out.

Steroids and other drugs. Very common. Many people take steroids, inhaled steroids, and those puffers for asthma. They may take a prednisone, a prednisone for an autoimmune disease or pain or inflammation. They may take a hydrocortisone cream for a skin problem. These are all steroids which help to suppress the immune system and perpetuate Candida.

Alcohol. One of the biggest causes with men with jock itch or maintaining causes, particularly, is drinking alcohol on a regular basis. Drinking beer, for example. I see this a lot with guys.

Diets. Sugar-laden diets. Diets high in sweet foods. We’ve spoken about this on numerous videos. Diets with plenty of white bread, bagels, donuts, candy, chocolate, and ice cream. These things just feed Candida in the gut.

Stress. Check out my three-part series on stress and Candida. There are many aspects of stress that have quite a debilitating effect on the immune system and perpetuate Candida.

Chemicals. There’s probably a lot of chemicals in your diet right now. You could be using personal skin care products. You could be using cleansing products or garden products or all sorts of chemicals around the home that can affect you in different ways. I’m going to do a series of videos specifically relating to chemicals and how they affect the three to four different aspects of your health in general.

Your endocrine function. When your hormone system gets affected severely. Your nervous system gets affected quite severely by… Your immune system gets affected quite severely. They’ve even linked Parkinson’s disease now with a chemical called Rotenone or Derestas[?] that you puff around your cabbages for the white butterfly. Rotenone or Derestas[?] have been linked positively with Parkinson’s disease, so be careful using chemicals. Even like glyphosate or Round-up. These chemicals can linger in the body for years and create a lot of destruction.

Diabetes. A prime cause of Candida and a prime maintaining cause as well. People with diabetes tend to have blood sugar problems, elevated blood sugar levels. They urinate out more glucose. Of course, it’s the glucose management catastrophe. Diabetes. Of course, when glucose isn’t managed properly, Candida is sitting there waiting to happen.

Chlorine or chlorine bleach. Fluoride, bromide or what we called haloids. These are chemicals that can have quite an interesting effect on your thyroid gland preventing the production of the thyroid hormone, but affecting your immune system in other ways as well. So swimming in pools of chlorine, eating foods with bromine like certain types of breads. Fluoride toothpaste. These are small maintaining causes, but still quite significant.

And mold is the 11th one. So mold – we have many people here in New Zealand and no doubt up in Canada and other countries that live in houses that are a bit leaky with rain. They get moldy. There’d be spores in the air. So you need to live in a ventilated to dry clean living quarters if you have Candida because you can really get mucked up by mold.

These are the 11 causes of Candida. I hope that answers the question on what are the causes of Candida.

Thank you.

Thanks for checking out the video. What are the stages of Candida recovery? What are the milestones along the way that I’m going to experience when I’m on my way to getting well?

Well, there are various stages and they really vary from patient to patient. Some patients believe you can’t get well from Candida unless you have severe aggravation, die off, or what we call Herxheimer Reaction. That’s nonsense. A small percentage of people have die off. It’s only a small percentage of the sensitive or the ultrasensitive patients which I’ve spoken about. They’re the ones who primarily get Herxheimer Reaction, but most people, 80 percent of people I deal with with Candida, probably some are like you out there, is not generally going to get die off. Even people with severe Candida when they make changes slowly and methodically, they will not get die off.

What are the changes? Generally, what we’re going to experience once we start withdrawing certain foods from the diet, we’re going to get fatigue. Now don’t confuse fatigue with die off. Some people get a mild headache or tiredness and they’ll email me, “Erik, I’ve got die off.” Come on. Wake up to yourself. That’s not die off. Die off is when you’re really, really sick. You can be in bed. You can be incapacitated. I’ve had some patients that go to the hospital to the accident emergency and almost need acute admission into a hospital bed for die off. That’s how bad it can get. So die off is not something like fatigue or tiredness or a little bit of diarrhea or constipation.

These are things that commonly occur when you withdraw caffeine from the diet, a lot of alcohol, pizzas, donuts, bagels, tons of sugar, all these sort of foods. When you slowly make diet changes – many people make a diet change too quick and they accelerate the change in their gut and that can create a problem. If you follow my warm turkey approach, cold turkey is taking everything out straight away. Warm turkey is doing a slow withdrawal of the bad foods; you’re not going to experience a lot of problems.

So the stages of Candida recovery really depend on you, but generally they’ll be what I call a “wash out” period for a few weeks first. So for two weeks, there could be some discomfort, some fatigue, and some sleeping problems. It could be some itchy or scratchy skin on different parts of the body. It could be a bit of flatulence or bloating or bowel change. These are all normal stages as your body is on its way to recovery.

What you’ll notice then is a sense of wellbeing. You start feeling pretty good inside yourself. Punctuated by one or two days where you think “Wow. I’m feeling amazing.” Now I call that the “window” of opportunity. That’s when your health is starting to show. It’s like opening a window and everything’s beautiful out there, but then the window shuts and you’re back inside again. What happens then is your body will just give you a little bit of a show what it’s going to be like in the future, but that door slams shut in your face generally because you stayed up late one night, you ate the wrong food, so the danger period of recovery occurs when you’re starting to improve in health. You can read about this in my book.

I notice with a lot of patients they start to get well and they make changes, and then they decelerate recovery. They go back down once again. These are the things that you really need to be aware of because they are basically hindrances. This is a stage that a lot of people have in recovery as well. They make a partial improvement, then they step back; they get worse. And then usually they learn from their experiences and then they make changes again and then they improve again. These are common things that you’re going to find.

You’ll read my articles. There’s one called “No Smooth Sailing,” where I say that recovery from Candida is like trying to win the America’s Cup for some people. They think it’s all going to be easy until they get out on the open ocean and they get the storms that hit them. They get the broken mast. They get the people on the boat they get sick and tired of them and want them to get the hell off the boat, and that could be your family or friends. They’ve had enough of you complaining about gas or bloating or whatever. There’s a lot of things to learn along the way to recovery, but then you’re going to hit the destination and you’re going to sail through the storms and you’re going to hit the port where you’re meant to be, and you’re going to feel pretty awesome and that will come as well.

Those are the end stages of recovery. Then what you’ll find is the window stays open for a lot longer. Instead it stays open for a whole week at times, but then you’re going to go to a wedding and you’re going to make a dumb mistake. You’re going to have maybe three glasses of champagne and a bit piece of cake and you’re going to go down again. You’re going to go into a tailspin and that happens to everybody. They decelerate quickly and then I’ll get an email or a call and they’re all depressed and I say, “Well, how did you feel?” “Well, I felt awesome. I felt amazing, but then such and such happened. I went to a bridal shower or I went to a wedding or I went to hen’s night or I went to a party or whatever, Thanksgiving, and I felt like crap two days later,” because there was still a little bit to learn.

That’s the terminal stage. When you get over that, you pull your head in and make more improvements, the recovery is long term and then eventually the window stays open permanently.

And those are some stages of recovery. I hope you sort of got some good information out of that bit of a talk. Thanks for your question.

I’ve got a question here from somebody in Australia, in Sydney, Australia. What are the symptoms of severe vaginal yeast infection?

The symptoms of severe vaginal yeast infection can be sometimes mistaken for bacterial vaginosis. Symptoms generally include itching and sometimes severe itching. Itching can be bad and really uncomfortable. I’ve had some patients that can’t work anymore because of the itching. Itching, redness, discharge is quite common. Discharge can be clear, a white finished discharge up to a thick, almost like cottage cheese white discharge, but the two characteristic symptoms would be itching and discharge.

BV or bacterial vaginosis is that fishy odor or the foul-smelling vaginal area. Generally, there’s not a really bad foul smell with a vaginal yeast infection. It can be a musky sort of odor, but not generally a really fishy strong sort of smell. We get that more with bacterial vaginosis. Bacterial vaginosis will also have more of a whitish or a gray waterish discharge. Itching can be there, but nowhere near as intense as the vaginal yeast infection, which can be really bad. I’ve also found many women complain about a lot of pain after intercourse with a Candida yeast infection as well. They also get them with bacterial vaginosis, but even more so with the vaginal infection. The key symptoms are those two things. Think about the itching. Think about the discharge.

Now some women with Candida yeast infections also get pelvic pain to different degrees. Many of them can even have a low-grade endometriosis without even knowing about it. I discovered years ago that many cases of severe endometriosis are, in fact, caused by a yeast infection. It makes sense because if you’ve got a vaginal infection and you’re going to treat it with applicators or creams from the doctor and you’re going to take diflucan or fluconazole recurrently to cure this problem. You’re not going to cure it with drugs. You’re not going to cure it with creams. All you’re doing is you’re driving it further up the vaginal area, in through the cervix, into the endometrium, and then eventually you get endometriosis. So you get basically an inflammation in the wall of the womb. Yeast actually can get through there and start creating an immune reaction. Cysts will develop; small cysts develop around that area and that becomes endometriosis.

Endometriosis has skyrocketed since tampon use with many women. I’ve got a female doctor friend who said that she found years ago a massive connection between endometriosis and chronic vaginal yeast infection, so you need to bear that in mind, too. You could have a low-grade pelvic pain.

If in doubt, make sure that you get checked out and have a swab and have that cultured for Candida to see whether you’ve got a bacterial problem in the vaginal area or a yeast infection.

Be sure to check out my other videos on how to get rid of a woman’s yeast infection by doing the “kill and build phase.” This is a bulletproof way; 99 percent guaranteed to get rid of this vaginal infection.

Thanks for tuning in.