Wednesday 17 May 2017

Candida & Dr. Yadav

After trying the FODMAP diet, things were going really well at first. Then I added back foods with FODMAP for one month before I maxed out the threshold which caused the IBS symptoms to have a party all over again.

I then went back to FODMAP diet but the IBS wouldn't shut up and quiet down!

It even reached to a point that chicken, fish and EVERY SINGLE thing that I ate triggered IBS. I had even stopped having rice. The intestines were churning out rap songs, vibrato passages and electronic music. Sometimes I could even hear an orchestra in there. 

That was when the kinesiologist's diagnosis of Candida being the cause of my IBS lit a 1,000,000 watt bulb in my brain.  

How could I get Candida even when I wasn't having sugar, gluten or even rice?

And then it hit me.

PPIs!

NEXIUM.

20 years of Nexium off and on. I've had GERD since I was 19. And I'm 40 this year. It's been break-up and then make-up with Nexium. I hate it, can't stand it but when it's gone, my stomach goes bonkers, has a breakdown and meltdown and Nexium is back in my life again. 

Click on LINK to read about GERD.

Nexium is a PPI (Proton Pump Inhibitor). It reduces acid in the stomach so that the acid reflux would not injure the stomach lining and esophagus. 

And that is when the sinister characters are able to infiltrate the gut. Bacteria and fungi are able to create havoc in the gut. Especially H pylori and Candida. 

So the million dollar question would be "How shall I get rid of Candida"?

Do I even have Candida in the first place? Why was I never tested for Candida?

I then decided to see Dr. Yadav about it. Maybe this Candida thing had something to do with screwing up my immune system. 

The night before I saw him, I had a terrible episode of IBS. This time I broke out in hives! This has never happened to me before. I started itching from head to toe. It was as though I had hundreds and thousands of ants crawling all over me. I felt so terribly sick that I woke my hubby up in the middle of the night and told him that something was so very wrong. He of course went into panic mode. (The anaphylaxis episode 8 years ago flashed before his eyes.) I swallowed a Piriton antihistamine and then monitored myself. The hives and itch disappeared. 

Morning finally arrived. We went to see Dr. Yadav. Stoned and groggy like the Walking Dead, I stumbled into his office and related to him what had happened. He said that I had eaten something which had some bacterial activity and I had a reaction to the toxin that the bacteria produced!

What did I eat? And then it struck me. I had forgotten about some food which I had cooked and left it on the dining table for a few hours. Even though it smelt good and tasted good after reheating it to boiling point, the bacteria had taken a foothold in the food. And I basically had food poisoning (with no diarrhoea)!

So we talked about Candida. I told him I read about Nystatin being a good medication for Candida. He said that it is and it's one of the pioneer drugs for Candida. The good thing about Nystatin is that it does not get absorbed into the blood stream. It enters the stomach, cleans the gut and out it goes!

I also brought up about being bitten by ticks back in November when we went on a vacation. The bites were still flaring up 5 months later! And they flared up pretty badly whenever I had chicken eggs or prawns. I could have chicken eggs and prawns prior to these bites. Dr. Yadav explained that shellfish and ticks have a similar chemical compound. So that could be causing the flare ups whenever I had prawns. Chicken eggs are high in histamines. So he took some blood for some tests.

We went to purchase Nystatin after seeing Dr. Yadav.

It is supposed to be taken three times a day; 5ml each time. I remember about 10 years back ago, a doctor at the ER in a hospital adviced me that whatever medicine I took, I should take a small amount and wait to see if I had any allergy reaction to it. And if I didn't, then I would take a little more the next round and waited.

So I took 2ml of Nystatin in the evening and waited. And I was fine. I took 5ml the next day in the evening and continued with one dose only. By the third day, all the bloated feeling and gassiness were gone. I could eat food that were on the high side of the FODMAP diet with no issues. I continued Nystatin for two weeks.

The Candida problem was finally solved!

But the nagging pain in the stomach didn't go away....

(...to be continued)



2 comments:

  1. Wow. But it sounds like this doctor has some answers. Did he ever test you for Candida? I know they do stool tests for that. Yeah, no acid is not good since you need it for digestion, but GERD is not good either. It's like a catch-22, damned if you do, damned if you don't. Good luck with everything and hope you find answers. My constant problem with health care is no one ever has any answers. They are all so incompetent.

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    1. Thanks! Oddly, I was never tested on Candida! I don't think anyone thought of that. I didn't even know about it.

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