Before I started searching for a ‘cure’ for my anxiety, I had never heard of something called ‘Candida’?!? However, the more I read about it, the more intrigued I became as it seemed to be the root of MANY mental and health problems, including anxiety. So, I decided to dig a little deeper to find out exactly what this was, how it affected the body and how to get rid of it!!
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What is Candida?
Candida is a sort of yeast and is the most common reason for fungal infections worldwide. Many species are harmless but when mucosal boundaries are disrupted or the immune system is bargained they can invade and cause disease. Candida albicans is the most commonly isolated species and can cause infections (candidiasis or thrush) in people and other animals.
Candida yeasts ordinarily live in the intestinal tract and can be found on mucous layers and skin without causing infection; however, overgrowth of these organisms can make symptoms create. Symptoms of candidiasis shift depending on the zone of the body that is infected.
Candida is a yeast, which is a form of fungus, a little measure of which lives in your mouth and intestines. Its activity is to help with digestion and supplement absorption, but when overproduced it can cause loads of physical and mental reactions.
How do you get Candida?
- Eating a diet high in refined carbohydrates and sugar
- Taking antibiotics that can kill too many of the friendly bacteria
- Consuming a lot of alcohol
- Taking oral contraceptives
- Living a stressful lifestyle
Symptoms of Candida
- Difficulty concentrating, poor memory, lack of focus, ADD, ADHD, and/or brain fog
- Feeling tired and worn down or suffering from chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia
- Irritability, mood swings, anxiety, or depression
- Strong sugar and refined carbohydrate cravings
- Digestive issues such as bloating, constipation, or diarrhea
- Skin and nail fungal infections such as athlete’s foot, ringworm, and toenail fungus
- Autoimmune diseases such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Rheumatoid arthritis, Ulcerative colitis, Lupus, Psoriasis, Scleroderma, or Multiple sclerosis
- Skin issues such as eczema, psoriasis, hives, and rashes
- Vaginal infections, urinary tract infections, rectal itching, or vaginal itching>
- Severe seasonal allergies or itchy ears
How Candida affects the body
Mood regulating
Candida overgrowth causes sugar and carbohydrate cravings, which can make your diet to spin out of control. You at that point create nutritional inadequacies and endocrine aggravations happen, which further weakens your immune system. This advances the release of certain brain chemicals that disturb the brain’s normal mood-regulating balance, triggering increased anxiety or depression.
Candida can utilize GABA as a carbon and nitrogen source
GABA really advances the development of Candida albicans – this goes to state that candida is indeed ready to use GABA as a source of nutrition. If this is true, at that point candida overgrowth can exhaust your GABA levels which could prompt anxiety and depression.
Candida is likely inhibited by serotonin
Research work by Mayr and partners from Austria appeared in 2005 that an introduction of candida to serotonin really influences the development of candida which may decrease the pathogenicity of candida. Although this examination was done on candida cells in test tubes, it is conceivable that this also occurs inside our bodies. What this could mean is that ordinary levels of serotonin keep candida infection at bay and drop-in serotonin would enable candida to overgrow – this contention points to candida overgrowth being caused by anxiety/depression.
Candida and hormonal imbalance
Hormonal imbalance is linked to both neurotransmitter lopsidedness (described in this article) and to candida overgrowth (irregularity in hormones causes candida overgrowth). In this manner, it would mean that if you have hormonal irregularity, you could all the while cause neurotransmitter unevenness and candida overgrowth. This again points to the possibility that candida overgrowth and anxiety/depression may happen together.
Candida-acetaldehyde-serotonin link
There is confirm that candida can create acetaldehyde from sugar and ethanol. In this way, if you have candida overgrowth, there will be more acetaldehyde in your system than normal. Acetaldehyde binds vitamin B1, B6, and B9 and makes them inaccessible for their function, leading to their deficiency. B Vitamins are involved in the amalgamation of neurotransmitters like serotonin and a deficiency in these vitamins will prompt a deficiency in neurotransmitters which could prompt anxiety and depression.
Depression is an abhorrent symptom of a candida infection, and there are home solutions for candida depression that you can utilize. Here are home solutions for candida depression and helping you traverse it.
How to get rid of Candida
Candida can be difficult to kill so a three-step process is used in order to get rid of this completely. To successfully treat it, you need to do these three things:
- Stop the yeast overgrowth,
- Build up the friendly bacteria
- Healing a Leaky gut so that candida can no longer enter your bloodstream.
Stop the yeast overgrowth
The first step is to eliminate all sugar from your diet. This can be done by starting a low carbohydrate diet and avoiding all processed sugars from candy, alcohol, flour, and desserts. Some ideal diets are GAPS, Keto and Paleo. Candida feeds off sugar so by eliminating this will help significantly in the process of killing off Candida as it will literally ‘starve it’.
As part of this process, it is also important to eliminate all fermented foods. Although this help to feed the good bacteria, the bad bacteria feed off these as well.
Another beneficial item to introduce is Coconut oil. This basically ‘pokes holes’ in the yeast cell wall, causing it to die.
There are many products on the market that can assist with the ‘killing off’ process of the yeast overgrowth and these can be very beneficial in speeding up the process (as it can take between 3 – 12 months to eliminate the problem.
Build up the friendly bacteria
An important element to include in this stage is the introduction of probiotics. This rebuilds the good bacteria that has been destroyed by the candida. It is recommended to take anywhere from 25 to 100 billion units of probiotics on a regular basis and this should help to restore your levels of good bacteria. The most popular probiotic used, which seems to have a positive effect on Anxiety is Ultra Jarro-Dophilus. (PICTURE)
Heal your gut
Healing your gut seems to be the final piece of the puzzle to killing Candida. Leaky Gut can be the cause of many anxieties and other mental issues so it is important to heal this. The GAPS diet is a great starting point to healing a leaky gut and a step that can not be ignored when working on (effectively) killing off Candida.
Candida Die-off symptoms
When large numbers of yeast and fungal cells are rapidly killed, a die-off occurs and metabolic by-products are released into the body. It feels like you have the flu and some of the symptoms are as follows:
- Nausea
- Headache, fatigue, dizziness
- Swollen glands
- Bloating, gas, constipation or diarrhea
- Increased joint or muscle pain
- Elevated heart rate
- Chills, cold feeling in your extremities
- Body itchiness, hives or rashes
- Sweating
- Fever
- Skin breakouts
- Recurring vaginal, prostate and sinus infections
Help with die-off symptoms
There are some products that can help you significantly with reducing die-off symptoms to make the healing process easier:
- Activated Charcoal (top pick) – This can be a game changer when dealing with die off symptoms. It ‘sweeps’ up the toxins released into your system by the Candida and significantly decreases the symptoms (listed above) during the ‘killing off’ process.
- Vitamin C – Take 1000mg a day to boost your adrenals and restore your immune system.
- Reduce or stop the Candida Cleansing product (temporarily) – this will allow your body a chance to remove the current toxins and once you feel better, introduce it back but in smaller (and slower) dosages. This ensures your body is not overwhelmed by the toxins released by the dying candida.
- Reduce your dosage of Probiotics – a course of good probiotics will repopulate your gut, crown out the Candida, restore your stomach acidity and boost your immune system. Probiotics are less likely than antifungals to cause Die-Off but if you start to experience increased symptoms you can temporarily reduce your dosage.
My Experience
When I first started the Candida cleanse, I eliminated all sugars and started on the GAPS diet. I would have bone broth each day (as that is key to healing a leaky gut) and although I found it challenging in the beginning, I started to get used it after 3-4 days. I did experience some of the die-off effects (particularly headaches, achy body, and a blocked nose) but I was able to control this really well with using Activate Charcoal – a real life saver.
I found within a week, that my general anxiety had reduced. I felt different and I didn’t need to take as many of my stress and anxiety herbs before going to the shops. The ‘carb’ and sugar cravings were probably the worst. I was really feeling this within 2-3 days of starting the process but discovered that glutamine was great as it helped eliminated obsessive thoughts about food. Apparently, it works because it is used as an energy source in the brain so cravings disappear. It certainly worked for me.
Within one month, I felt significantly better within myself. My general anxiety was better and I started to feel clearer in my head. Within three months, I lost 40lbs (although I needed to lose weight, this wasn’t the main reason for doing this, but what an AWESOME bonus!!). My brain fog has lifted and I find myself feeling much calmer in general.
I don’t experience panic attacks anymore and my agoraphobia is getting much better. I can drive to places I couldn’t before and I don’t experience ‘panic’ like I used to. I am sleeping much better and I have a lot more energy. I would highly recommend anyone experiencing panic attacks to look into Candida as this could be the ‘missing’ piece of the puzzle in regards to curing your anxiety!!
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