Candida Overgrowth: Symptoms, Science, and What Truly Works

Hello and welcome to the Ark Woman Podcast. This is an exploration of woman kind. Here we discuss what it is to be a woman in the modern world while utilizing ancient and modern modalities in tandem to create a bounty of health for the body, mind and spirit. G'day ladies and welcome back to the pod. I thought I would put out a solo podcast because we've had a couple of pretty incredible guests and I have released a new e-book all about Candida so I thought I might pop a little podcast out there all about Candida because this is something that I think a lot of women are interested in because we've all had Thrush at one point in our life. So we're going to be talking all things Candida. So let's get started. What is Candida? There's a lot of misunderstanding around Candida. So it's a single-celled fungi commonly known as a yeast and so it's found in the human body. It's found pretty much throughout our entire environment. When we look at it underneath a microscope, Candida looks like small ovals. They're actually quite cute. If you didn't know what it was and what it did, you'd probably think, oh that's a cute little yeast cell. How gorgeous. It's a eukaryote, right? So it has a true nucleus and it has complex internal structures. So as a cell on its own, it can survive, right? And it can exist, but it tends to work with other Candida cells, which we'll get to. So there's about 150 to 200 species of Candida that we know of, highlighted, underscored in red, circled, in italics that we know of. Candida is prolific. It's bloody everywhere. It's inside of us. It's on the ground. It's in our food. It's everywhere. It's an integral part of the environment. Of the 150 to 200 species that we know of, 15 are really important to human health. And when we're talking about Candida, very often we are talking about one type, which is Candida albicans. There are about five or ten that I think are most important to talk about and know about clinically. And they're about one or two that you need to know about if you are consistently in a hospital setting because they are specific Candida's, which we see, crop up a little bit more and become a little bit more common in hospital settings. But if you're in a hospital, this is something that hopefully your health care providers are really aware of because those Candidas can be quite aggressive and cause pretty resistant infections because they are in a hospital setting and they tend to be a little bit more resistant to antifungal drugs. I was just saying that it's everywhere. So Candida is a part of us from the very start. It's an endogenous organism. So it's a part of our microbiome. If you didn't know, in your gut, so in your large intestine, which is basically your last port of core of the nutrients that you've eaten in the past 18 to 24 hours before they exit the body, so to speak. We have trillions of cells here, fungi yeast and bacteria. For the most part, it's bacteria, but we also have fungi yeast and even some virus here as well. And it's a part of our internal microbiome. Candida is a regular factor of a normal functioning healthy human individual. And beyond other species have Candida species in the microbiome as well. And it doesn't really seem to have any positive impact that we know of directly. It can impact and interact with other bacteriums and yeast in our gut, which can down the line give us some positive outcome. But we don't have necessarily any positive outcome from Candida itself when it's in balance. But what we do know is that when it's overgrown, it can cause a lot of issues. You're probably wondering where the hell does Candida come from? Where does it originate? How did it proliferate in me? Well, breast milk on your skin, it can come from the vagina as you're passing through the birth canal. If you were a C-section baby, even holding onto or being skin to skin with someone, you're going to pick up their candida albicans or any type of Candida species that is on their skin. And it's also in breast milk. So there are about three ways when you're an infant that you can get Candida. And it basically becomes a part of your skin microbiome, your internal microbiome as well. So everyone has Candida. Yeah, everyone has Candida. It's really confusing when people say I have Candida and what they mean is I have a Candida overgrowth. Those two things are really different. It's completely normal to have Candida albicans and other species in your vagina, in your mouth, in your gut microbiome, on your skin. And it's needed there. I think there is an absolute reason why Candida is there. We just don't have, you know, very much interest, I guess, in studying its positive outcomes. But we do know that when it's overgrown, it can cause problems when it's out of balance. Structurally, Candida albicans, as I was saying before, it's unicellular, which basically means she is a solo independent babe. She can survive on her own. But it is really interesting because it's a fungus that can work collaboratively and cooperatively when the environment shifts. And so this is when we change or when we introduce language like opportunistic yeast, because that's definitely what Candida is. She is very, very happy to hang out in balance with everyone and maybe provide a net benefit question mark for our gut microbiome. But the moment things change, she is on that bandwagon. She is collaborating with her mates. She's like, let's go. Let's overgrow. And that could look like stress, you know, for lots of different reasons, your microbiome, when you're going through a stressful time, your microbiome would change, which might mean that your protective and beneficial bacterium that is in your gut microbiome can't keep Candida in check. It might be that you have a new sexual partner. And maybe their gut microbiome and their microbiome didn't work with your vaginal microbiome. And something is off there. It might also be antibiotics, maybe had a UTI, or you had some other infection that you needed to take care of and you took broad spectrum antibiotics. And that has wiped out your beneficial microbes in your entire body. And that has provided another window of opportunity for Candida to overgrow. When she notices these windows of opportunities, that's when she stops acting unicellular on her own, and it starts acting collaboratively. So that's when it starts communicating with others through chemical signaling, which we know of. This allows these cells to regulate growth. It also allows them to form high-fay, which is how they move throughout the body, Candida moves throughout the body, and biofilms, which we'll be talking about as well. So basically, these interconnected clumps of Candida cells, they form this community, they share nutrients, they resist antifungals, and adapt collectively to stress. This is one of the many reasons why it's incredibly hard to clear Candida from the body. Understanding like a little bit of its structure and function, it probably leads into the way of like, what does it eat? Okay, so Candida Albacan specifically prefers sugars, so simple sugars from Papa hydrates. It can also eat protein from amino acids, and it can also eat fatty acids from fat, and it can also eat and survive on ketone bodies. So that really shoots a big hole in the whole argument of, I'm just, I have a Candida Overgrowth, so my only solution here is to starve it out by eating a high carbohydrate diet, or sorry, a low carbohydrate diet. Well, that's not really going to work because these communities of Candida, if they've overgrown, they can survive on pretty much anything. It's preferred source of energy is always going to be carbohydrate. It can metabolize lots of different macronutrients, and even ketone bodies, which is what our body makes when there's no carbohydrates around as well. So yeah, we'll talk about Candida diets later on. I want to just talk about biofilms. So a biofilm is basically a fortified microbial community. So fungal cells, they persist within them for weeks or months, and they're shielded from antifungal agents and immune defenses. Basically, how I want you to understand this is that Candida is a unicellular organism. It can float around the body or stay where it is. It can form a community with other Candida albicans or otherwise cells, and through chemical signaling, it can tell when there is an antifungal around. So say you know you have a Candida albicans overgrowth. So you have thrush and you went to your doctor and you've been given an antifungal to use topically or to ingest. The Candida can tell when this is around, and if it has a history of been exposed to that specific antifungal, it knows what's about to happen, and it can basically shield itself. And so these free floating cells, they can basically hide out underneath, basically this fortification. So a shield that builds around itself to stop itself from being able to being attacked from that antifungal. And then once it senses that the antifungal has passed through the system, they can release more Candida albicans beyond the biofilm and they can continue doing their thing. This is one of the reasons why women with IUDs, whether that be copper or hormonal marina, have a higher incidence of things like yeast infections because the theory around that is that biofilms can form on surfaces like the strings from an IUD, more likely than the side of a vaginal canal. So you can understand if you have biofilm because your Candida has overgrown and become organized, and has been collating with her little mates and creating biofilm, it's really, really hard to eliminate. So when we're talking about candida overgrowth, it's not just like how can we get rid of the candida and treat the candida, is there a biofilm? How long has it been there? What is it attaching to? It's what actually polluted this and what environment created a window for candida to be able to overgrow. Candida doesn't just overgrow. It doesn't just overgrow, then needs to be environment. That is going to allow it to do that and it needs to have a place in order to basically make that biofilm. The other thing about candida that is really, really interesting is that it can move around the body by way of creating something called a hyphae. So this is a branching filament and so these fungus, they can transform and they can shapeshift. So not only can this single cell fungus collate with her mates and form a biofilm, which is basically a fortress and hide behind it when she can tell that there is something around that might kill it. It can also move around with hyphae. So they're basically microscopic drills. They push into the gut lining or vaginal walls. They break through surface cells. They can create minor branches in the barrier. And so this is why candida albicans overgrowth, specifically is highly associated with hyperpermeability in the gut. This is where we have these cells in the gut, which is only one or two cell thick in the gut. And we have a candida overgrowth that's drilling through this really thin layer of epithelial layer in our gut microbiome, which has to be thin because that's where we're absorbing nutrients, right? But if we have an overgrowth and we have biofilm and we create hyphae, that's what can happen. And they can basically force through with enzymes and they can dissolve cell junctions that can basically tear apart type junctions in the gut microbiome. And that means that not only a candida albicans overgrowth specifically in the gut can lead to leaky gut, but all of the things that go alongside leaky gut as well. So usually if you have leaky gut, we have this hyperpermeability in an area where we shouldn't, and that's also where we have most of our immune system. Big, big, big problem there, right? Because if our immune system is consistently activated, we have high amounts of inflammation all of the time. We also have permeability into our blood vessels. So we have things from our gut microbiome that should not be going into the blood system that is and vice versa. So we have nutrient absorption problems, we have enzymatic problems, we might even form things like autoimmune or hyperactivity of our immune system in that area as well. So it's not so much candida, but it's what it does in the body and all of the flow and effects and all of the comorbidities associated with candida as well. So the high fee, so this is candida, but it's a different form. So it creates high fee. These have really tricky proteins. They're called sticky proteins. ALS3HWP1, for example. So basically these proteins, they can let high fee cling tightly to human cells and they can even trick the body into pulling them inside. Once any type of candida high fee or bio filament is inside of a cell, it's very, very, very hard for your overactive immune system to find it. And so that's another reason why if we have systemic overload of candida for a chronic amount of time, so a long amount of time, it's more associated with your immune system being an overdrive and a higher risk of developing things like autoimmune conditions as well. The other thing about the shape of the high fee itself and it's spelled HYPHAE, if you want to look at photos, in my book I have amazing photos, demonstrating how it moves throughout the body, which is really interesting and kind of freaky. You can see how it moves throughout the body basically, how it can cling tightly to human cells. And this also means that it's really, really resistant to anti-fungal treatments. So without a biofilm, but still very resistant to anti-fungal treatments because it can hide out inside of human cells. Hopefully that hasn't freaked you out. Even though candida can move throughout the body and it can be quite resistant, it can be treated. Don't worry, it can absolutely be treated. And so you're probably wondering like, where does it show up? So the oral cavity, so in your mouth, that's a really common place, your gastrointestinal tract, so your gut and your vaginal tract. So these are the three places that we commonly see it, but you can also see an overgrowth of candida that can cause things like fungal acne around the mouth. But that's because mostly you have a fungal overgrowth in your mouth and that's just went out onto the skin around your mouth. So if you consistently have, you know, almost dry, flaky, perioral dermatitis like skin around the mouth, not so much acne, just like little red bumps and inflammation and rosacea around your mouth. And that might mean you have a little bit of candida overgrowth in your mouth. The mouth is pretty warm, it's pretty moist and has a neutral pH. So it has an abundance of normal flora. So you actually have a microbiome in your mouth, your saliva, your local immunoglobulins and competing bacteria, they typically can control candida growth. So we usually find candida in 30 to 60% of healthy adults. So at low levels, and that's usually what we see, but if you have an overgrowth that can lead to oral thrush, which can look like creamy white patches on the tongue, your gums, your throat. And this is often caused by things like candida albicans, very often that's candida albicans overgrowth. In your gut, what I was saying before, it's usually in balance, but if we have any type of dysbiosis from stress medication like antibiotics, this can create impaired immunity and this can cause candida to overgrow and colonize the area. And it's the same in the vaginal tract. In the vaginal tract, we usually in four out of five women, we have a bacterium called lactobacillus crispitis. If you're interested in learning more about the vaginal microbiome, there is an amazing podcast with Dr. Moira Bradfield Strader. She has her PhD in penile and vaginal microbiology and she's incredible. And if you wanted to watch that on YouTube as well, there's lots of diagrams so you can basically understand the vaginal tract. So if you're listening to this and you're like, I have consistent brush that just won't go away, that's a really good one to go and listen to. But basically we have lactobacillus crispitis and it keeps a pretty acidic environment. So 3.8 to 4.5. And it produces things like lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide, which is sometimes why if you have lots of discharge, you can see that if you have dark underwear, it can bleach your underwear and that's because of the acids that your bacteria in your vaginal canal are producing. Candida albicans colonizes the vagina in about 15 to 20% of healthy women without symptoms and about 20 to 40% of pregnant women. So if you're listening to this and you're pregnant and you're thinking, oh my gosh, yeah, I can absolutely see this. I've had a little bit more thrarsher of notice some change in my vaginal microbiome as I fall in pregnant. Yeah, this is why that's completely normal to see some type of an increase there as well. And so usually when lactobacillus is depleted, so this could be if you've done oral or you've done topical antibiotics or maybe you have gardenerilla overgrowth or for any other reason maybe you have low estrogen because estrogen feeds lactobacillus. And we need a lot of estrogen around to supply glycogen, which is a type of sugar to lactobacillus so that creates that in specific environment and basically out competes with candida. So there are a few reasons why candida might overgrow. Again, candida is opportunistic. If you have an overgrowth, that is not the problem. It is a symptom of the problem. It has happened because something else is went wrong. So those are a few examples of what might be upstream from candida because you can clear candida in the vaginal microbiome, but that's not really going to be the end of your problems. You know, you might be preaching to the choir with a lot of women who have had recurrent yeast infections vaginally. If you're listening to this and you're like, what does that actually look like? So again, like that cottage cheese presentation in discharge, itching, a lot of discomfort, redness around the vulva, soreness, and maybe even a bit of inflammation as well. So this is traditionally called vaginal candiditis. It's really common. It impacts about 75% of women. So one out of four women or three out of four women will have had thrush at some point in their life, and about five to eight percent have recurrent infections. And usually in that cohort of women, it's pretty aggressive. It's really, really hard to treat. And again, going back to what I was saying before, it's because you can clear the candida, but if there is an opportunity for it to grow back, it will. So candida, I'll begin again, is responsible for 85 to 90% of cases. And then we have candida, globarata, is the other species accounting for the remainder. So if you've had an overgrowth for a long period of time and most of your treatment with your health practitioner has been focused on candida albicans, it might be worth going and finding out if it's a different species because your treatment could change depending on the species. And most likely it's either of those two. The reasons why we have lots of treatment options for candida albicans because most of the time, that's the culprit. We also see candida growing in the urinary tract. And so this can be really, really, really tricky because you're not really. defense is urine flow. It's acidic, it's always going to be flowing through there and testing for like a UTI being caused by or any type of like overgrowth in the urinary tract is notoriously tricky because it is such a small funnel basically a small gland and like testing in the bladder is really really hard as well. This is something that Dr. Moria Bradfield straightens spoke about like picking up any type of you know recurrent urinary tract, whether that be E. coli or Candida or otherwise can be really really really tricky. This being said Candida is and we know it is a significant cause of UTIs. So usually it's Candida collaborator and that's really really common fungal UTI cause. We usually see it more in elderly patients and those with chronic catheters. So again, this is something we see more often in hospitals but overall we can see more Candida albicans in the urinary tract but again it can be a little bit harder to treat and detect. We can also see Candida grow on the skin and nails. So we usually see Candida will really like areas that are moist that have a little bit of friction between skin folds. So some women will usually have some Candida overgrowth like in a rash if they have larger breasts and it's always you know on the skin fold underneath her breast. So it could be there. It could be within skin folds anywhere on the body. It can also infect like nails and nail folds between the feet, between the hands as well if you're always wearing gloves or socks. So that's really important. If you have gloves and socks on all the time or if you have you know larger breasts or skin folds you need to be really really mindful on cleaning them regularly and keeping them dry because otherwise Candida can overgrow in these situations as well. And it can present as a pretty red raw itching burning rash again under the groin, under the breast armpit between figures and toes under abdominal fold folds. We can also see this in infants which can be really really you know uncomfortable for little babies. So this is Candididal Diaper Dermatitis. This is bright red irritated skin in the diaper area again from that moist area and that just allows this environment for Candida to overgrow. Okay so say you don't have any of like the symptoms that are coming up a lot but you have a few other things. So like digestive discomfort. So if you are pretty gassy and bloody that might be a symptom of recurrent yeast infections is definitely one fatigue and brain fog. So Candida is because it's alive it eats things and it creates waste just like we do. It doesn't have a bladder, it doesn't have a bowel but it does eat and it does create waste and its waste is toxic. So aldehyde, biotoxins, they strain the liver, the liver they can disrupt your mitochondria and they can dull mental clarity. So I'm not sure on the evidence on you know if Candida high fee forms specifically can get into the brain and impact the brain in that way but we know that overall the toxic load that Candida creates can impact your cognitive behavior and how you think and how awake you feel. So if you consistently have a low level fatigue or brain fog that might be some cause as well to think about maybe you do have a Candida overgrowth. Another one is sugar cravings and this is something that we see repeated a lot and again because Candida depends on glucose for energy and when it's overgrown it can impact your appetite. So it can actually make you crave the thing it needs. It's that really funny video of Tiffany Haddish. I don't want the Candida but the parasites in me want the candy. So that's kind of what's going on basically it can result in persistent sickle for cravings for sweets and refined carbs and then it can cause insulin resistance from you eating so many carbohydrates all the time to feed the Candida which can down the road impact your hormonal system and so that's why specifically with things like PCOS we see women with PCOS have a higher incidence of developing Candida and then it's harder to treat the Candida as well. So we can see is it the chicken or the egg which thing really caused this and there's a lot of you know really beautiful evidence at the moment showing us that because PCOS is already a hormonal disorder that has gut degradation we already have an environment with PCOS specifically that we can have more Candida again with endometriosis because endometriosis is an estrogen dominant disorder we often see women who have high amounts of an endo or estrogen for a long period of time can be at higher risk of developing things like Candida overgrowth specifically Candida overgrowth in the vaginal tract as well which can seem counterintuitive because you're thinking for estrogen feeds lactobacillus shouldn't that not be a problem well there can be an estrogen and Candida relationship that still being studied still not very very understood that that is something we see as well you're probably thinking okay I don't have PCOS I don't have endo I've taken really good care of myself you know I haven't taken any antibiotics recently I'm not stressed out what the fuck why do I have a Candida overgrowth if you've done the tests okay number one low stomach acid so stomach acid in your stomach so that first part of your digestive system that's a pathogen defense if you have low stomach acid it means that Candida species can survive gastric passage from food and it can over colonize your intestines we also have H. Pylora so Helicobacter Pylora I'm doing my H. Pylora I test soon because I travel a lot to Southeast Asia I'm exposed to other pathogens and I've noticed that my iron is getting a little bit low H. Pylora is a parasite that drills into the side of your stomach and it can lower stomach acid so that's why very often if you have a Candida overgrowth very often you need to go and test Candida because those two things come alongside each other a lot they can coexist in biofilms they can resist treatment together their best friends their best buds specifically in the upper digestive tract so not so much in your gut microbiome but very much in your small intestine in your stomach as well going back to what I was saying before high blood sugar high insulin resistance so if you eating a lot of processed carbohydrates or simple carbohydrates you're going to be a higher risk of high blood sugar and insulin resistance that's perfect environment for Candida to thrive and as well if you have impaired immune function if you have deficiencies in things like vitamin D zinc selenium this can impair your immunity and it can impair your body's ability to clean up Candida sufficiently and fast enough and so if you are also an immunosuppressant so if you have any type of autoimmunity and you're on an immunosuppressant you're at a higher risk of developing things like H. Pylora and Candida as well so that's something you need to be really mindful of also I've said this a bunch before but antibiotic use I think that's quite obvious but steroids as well specifically corticosteroids they lower the body's eucosal defenses which allows yeast to grow and allows it to damage barriers in that can increase inflammation as well so if you're on any type of immunosuppressant any type of antibiotic most likely your broad spectrums as opposed to your specific antibiotics and corticosteroids specifically for steroid use then you're going to have a higher incidence of Candida overgrowth moving on how can you get diagnosed I really want to press this if you have patches on your tongue if you've noticed that you have patches of red scaly skin in moist areas if you've noticed recurrent thrush all of those symptoms absolutely point in the right direction of Candiditis which is the you know that that is the traditional diagnosis for an overgrowth of Candida specifically Candida albicans we need to test so if you're not testing you're guessing I don't want anyone listening to this to go okay I have all of those symptoms I'm just going to go ahead and assume it could be something else you know it's you know it's unlikely but it could be and if you mystery and you spend all of this time working on something that it isn't you could waste time money and you could also worsen your health outcomes as well if you don't know exactly what's going on so work with a practitioner please do the tests and so you're like okay what are the tests Candida culture so that's the number one this is kind of where we take a sample from blood urine stool vaginal or even a swab so taking a cotton swab and using a swab and that's basically where you put it in a petri dish and then you allow it to grow that's the gold standard that confirms viable organisms rather than byproducts or antibodies so that's your number one that's going to put it in colony for me units so see a fuse and that's going to specify what Candida strain is impacting you and causing these problems as well the next thing you can do is stool testing so stool testing it's basically you take a sample of your stool that depends on the testing company you're using how much stool they need and they can use CFU so colony forming units as well and that's also going to be looking at gut ecology so you can look at pH bacterial competition you can look at opportunistic beneficial pathogens so it looks at your whole environment in your microbiota so in your gut microbiome and so that's a really great one as well if you have sustain. make symptoms. So if it's all over all the time, you have brain fog, you have like bloating, that's a really good one to do along the side, like a H-Pyloride breath test, which is basically you have to go in fasted and you take a tablet and you wait three minutes and then seven minutes, so 10 minutes altogether and you do a breath test and you can pick up whether you have H-Pyloride in your upper gastrointestinal tract. You can also pick up H-Pyloride in stool tests as well, but it's not the gold standard, it's kind of like a secondary test for H-Pyloride. You can also do things like organic acids and blood testing, but that is only used in conjunction with Candida culture. And again, you're not interpreting these results on your own, you need to go through a practitioner. Don't try and treat this at home. Candida if left for a long period of time, specifically if it's with helicopactor by LORI, that's really problematic and that's dangerous. It's super super dangerous just because we talk about it a lot in the zeitgeist of health and wellness online. Does it mean it's normal? So please work with someone and make sure that you're doing your due diligence basically and you're using the health professionals around you to take care of you. That's their job. Please let them do that. You can also do vaginal microbiome tests as well, by the way. So that also looks at like pH, opportunistic bacteria, beneficial bacteria, yeast, all of that. And that's really, really important. So your opportunistic bacteria, like things like the coli, for example, that's going to be good to pick up because we can see some interactions between those two. And then your total lactobacillus, hopefully, they'll be looking at that and overall fungal pathogen. So there's usually about six, five or six fun guy Candida species fun guy that you should be looking at in your vaginal swab as well. If you have recurrent yeast infections. So thank you so much for listening. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. If you loved it, all of my solo podcasts are uploaded in full to my Patreon. This is where you can dive deeper into my clinical insights, the how and why behind your symptoms and the practical steps you can take to heal and move forward towards real health. Inside the Patreon, you will find hundreds of articles on things like fibroids, ovulation pain, cycle patterns, functional lab work, nutrition, and even recipes. You also get to vote on the articles and podcasts I create next and connect with the beautiful women in the community. If you'd like to join us, head over to patreon.com/archwomen and sign up to the one-tier system to get all of the goods. I hope you have a really beautiful morning, afternoon or evening wherever you are in the world, and I'll see you in the next podcast.