Get Rid Of Candida & SIFO in 4 Simplified Steps (Works Fast)

let's discuss candida this is a normal resonant for most people in the intestinal tract but it can overgrow or imbalance and cause a number of symptoms so let's discuss what kandida is how to know if you have it and then what I feel to be the most effective way to treat Cananda and hopefully as you've been following the channel for a while you're learning that the health of your gut can impact many distal sites including the brain your skin your joints and your immune system so certainly something that can overgrow or imbalance and cause things like inflammation and damage to the gut lining is something that we want to cue in on welcome to Dr rer radio providing practical science-based insights into Health we break through the bias and the noise to bring you simple trustworthy information that matters so let's start with just defining what is candida and why it can be a problem it's a yeast or a fungus normal to the human microbiome so that's important to clarify because detecting any candida is not necessarily a problem in fact candid is commonly found on your skin in your mouth in the vagina I should also mention that I want to cover in detail with you today candida in the gastrointestinal tract in the gut there's another type of candida which is invasive candidiasis a blood infection of candida which is serious and can occur in critically ill and or imuno compromised patients that's not what we'll be discussing but the terminology does overlap candidasis or invasive candidasis versus candida in the gut so I just want to make that one distinction now in the gut you can have overgrowths in the mouth being the first section of the gut not really our Focus here today today it's more so the small intestine known as SEO or small intestinal fungal overgrowth or in the colon whether it grows overgrows in the colon the large intestine or the small intestine there are data correlating fungal overgrowth with IBS SO gas bloating abdominal pain discomfort diarrhea constipation and even some data correlating with anxiety and certainly as we appreciate the impact of impaired gut Health can have on the immune system and therefore inflammation it's also possible that a broader swath of symptoms might be caused by candida overgrowth in the gut there are about 200 a little over 200 species of fungus so candida being one type of fungus in the GI tract comparing that to bacteria there's about a thousand little over a thousand bacteria in the GI tract just to give you an idea of there's certainly a lot more bacteria than there are fungus and again just want to say this one more time because I do see this being a point of confusion someone had a stool test they found candida and there was sort of a a little bit of alarmism perhaps remember that candida Albin is the most common species and it is found in the gut of most healthy volunteers now there is a way to distinguish is this a normal amount or abnormal and we'll come to that in a moment if this has been helpful Please Subscribe comment and if you wouldn't mind share this with one person you think it would help okay so quickly what are the causes of C overgrowth certainly we want to be paying attention to what causes this situation so we can be proactive and preventative and I would say here there there's nothing new but certainly things that we want to pay attention to and we have made a few additions to this schematic from the journal microorganisms acid lowering medication can be a predisposing factor for canita why well you need to have acidic stomach contents to kill off bacteria and fungus and prevent them from seeding and overgrowing down the rest of the intestinal tract chronic stress remember that these bacteria and fungus including candida live inside of us normally as part of a symic relationship but something has to sort of pce and make sure that there's not an overgrowth of these organisms who are hanging out metabolizing food stuffs and doing other things that are good for us but again without some sort of governing Force they can't overgrow that governing force inart your immune system and we know that stress will suppress your immune system unsurprisingly antibiotics and this is because antibiotics kill bacteria bacteria help police out and sort of keep in check counterbalance levels of fungus and this is why sometimes you will see someone take an antibiotic and then have a rebound fungal overgrowth a sedentary lifestyle we know that when people who are sedentary start exercising they demonstrate richness or an increased abundance of healthy bacteria in their gut so if you're sedentary you're not allowing the world of bacteria to have an input exercise that it needs to be rich and remember the bacterial Colony helps put a balancing pressure onto the fungus that naturally occur in your digestive tract alcohol and processed foods again probably not surprising and additionally smoking these factors somewhat obviously but just to make sure I State this aren't unique to only causing fungal overgrowth they can cause as the schematic here is depicting disbiosis meaning overgrowths or even sibo bacterial overgrowth so it can imbalances in overgrowth or I should say technically disbiosis isn't an overgrowth per se it's an imbalancing in the relationship amongst different bacterial and fungal populations these unhealthy behaviors skew the ecosystem in the gut of the Flora of the life the bacteria the fungus this can co-occur along with increased inflammation as you're seeing the cyto kindes and then LPS is one marker of leaky gut the takeaway here is that these imbalances in the gut tend to happen together and it's rare that you see just one thing go out of whack now depending on how you interpret that that could be good news or bad news I look at it very encouragingly meaning that if you do have these imbalances the right therapeutic supports will start to correct multiple imbalances simultaneously so just keep that in mind if we intervene correctly Upstream we'll have multiple down extreme beneficial effects okay so regarding testing for oral vaginal and skin this is where you're probably going to get decent evaluations through the conventional medical system in my opinion usually symptoms combined with either a microscopic examination let's say on the skin or a culture maybe of the mouth are used to confirm the diagnosis that's not so much what I want to focus on in this video of course it's the intestinal tract so what what about the small intestine we've discussed on this show in the past how important the small intestine is 22 fet in length the majority of absorption of calories and nutrients where licky gut predominantly occurs whereas the large intestine is only 5T in length and very little in terms of leaky gut or nutrient absorption is happening there so it begs the question how can I know if I have small intestinal fungal overgrowth well there's not a lot of research here I would refer you to a podcast we had with Dr Satish raal from a few years ago he's at University of Augusta he's researched funus the challenge with researching small intestinal fungal overgrowth is you need to do direct sampling from the small intestine which is quite invasive and so it's not routinely done and therefore we don't have a lot of research and there's not really normative data to guide that nor is there a test for this routinely available in clinical practice what is often used is a stool test and I no longer use nor recommend using stool tests to quantify candida for three reasons firstly candida is commonly found in healthy people I'll give you one evidence Point 2023 just under 700 subjects were examined they found candida Albans in the stool of 82.9% of healthy adults reason number two there's no established normal so you may be saying well perhaps there's a way to say even though most people will have candida that some people have too much candida this is not the case we don't have data yet giving us accurate measures or cut offs to distinguish an overgrown person from a healthy person just to try to make this visually apparent here are two paper looking at stool levels of candida one paper one research paper by bernetti and colleagues used a cut off of 10,000 cfu a different paper used a cut off of 100,000 cfu and if you look at a functional medicine lab one of the more popular Labs uses a cut off of 5,000 cfu in fact we try to get the normative values or or the the cutoff values from a different functional medicine lab and no one at the company could tell us what their values were it's easy to think because you have a lab test in hand and it says high that that's based upon good evidence but unfortunately as it pertains to stool testing for candida we don't have good data to tell us well this is normal and that's unhealthy or overgrown and the third reason why I don't use any longer or recommend using stool testing for candida is the inconsistency in commercial testing we've discussed this on the show in the past but here's a split test We performed in office we had one person pass a bow movement put half of their stool in one test kit the other half in a different Labs test kit one test found in overgrowth of candida another test test did not now there's a slight Nuance here in terms of one test was reporting on a specific species of candida and the other test was looking at candida species more globally but nevertheless if one lab is reporting a species overgrown and the other lab is looking at a general candy to screening and not finding an overgrowth in the same person it illustrates the inconsistency of the commercial stool tests if we double click on our split test you see in one test again candid H the one in the second test normal remember this is the same person stool acromania normal in one and undetectable or low in the other klebsiella and pomonis high in the one normal in the other and zulin normal in the one and high in the other and these are two of the best tests in my opinion in the field ones that I use routinely for years and with time factchecking and thinking critically I can no longer Get Behind these tests due to this inconsistency now I'll give you one other data point here I found to be fascinating 2018 observational trial they took one person and they had them alter how they brush their teeth what they had this person do was brush once per day for two days then for two days brush after every meal here's their finding we showed that when a healthy adult volunteer increased the frequency of cleaning of teeth the abundance of candina Albans in the stool was lowered 10 to 100 fold and this is the graph from that study and what you're seeing when they go into the brushing once per day and then they switch to the brushing after every meal again there is a 10 to 100 full shift in the levels of candida they switch their tooth brushing pattern again and again the levels of candid in the stool shift by 10 to 100 fold at least based upon this one data point it's safe to say that depending on how you were brushing your teeth at the time of a test you could see a 10 to 100 full difference in your candida you may be positive or negative solely based upon that so for all these reasons as alluring as the testing can be I just just don't think we have ample data to give us assurances that the results are accurate or reliable you may have also heard of a blood or urine test again testing I used to use namely a marker called d arabinitol a sugar produced by candida and excreted in the urine this is not validated for intestinal candida overgrowth however it is partially validated for that invasive CID dasis we covered a moment ago but only partially validated it does have some data at least giving us some indications in terms of normal or abnormal but this is not what most people listening to or watching this video are concerned with they're concerned with gastrointestinal tract candida and again we just don't know what is normal and what is abnormal and with that in mind there is a paradigm shift I I want to bring you to which I feel will give you the most effective way to treat candida as someone who works with people trying to improve their gut health their food reactivity every day been doing so for about 10 years firstly that symptoms correlate with overgrowth so we can use your symptoms as a barometer for have we gotten an overgrowth under control one evidence Point supporting this 2023 review paper IBS patients and they so IBS they're having bloating gas abdominal pain candida levels correlated with the severity of their symptoms namely bloating and anxiety so we do have data showing that the symptoms and the levels track secondly overgrowth tends to be non-specific usually at least seemingly so I can't say we have an airtight scientific case to be made here but if we look at the data we do find evidence showing that candida and bacteria tend to overgrow together this one 2013 study looked at 150 subjects with unexplainable chronic GI symptoms abdominal pain bloating nausea diarrhea and gas they found candida overgrowth in the small intestine in 21% and they found small intestinal bacterial overgrowth in 25% I think helpful to understand that if you're having symptoms the ecosystem is probably shifting in part two an overgrowth and it doesn't really matter is it candida or is it sibo these are tending to co-occur and the other Factor regarding the paradigm shift is that bacteria regulate fungus two quotes here to help you see the evidence behind that statement the microbot likely plays a role in controlling C Albans or candida Albans growth in the GI tract a healthy bacterial community may keep candida and other fungal populations in check why this matters and something I've seen in some people they get very focused on candida and they forget about the rest of their intestinal tract they forget about the Thousand some odd bacteria and are only focusing on the 200 some odd fungus in the gut and this is obviously hugely important not to make this oversight because these bacteria are a pressure that will prevent overgrowth and keep fungus in check okay so then how do we modulate the ecosystem how do we balance not only candida but also bacteria so that the ecosystem total is healthy and you have a reduction of symptoms the first diet and lifestyle just one quote here on stress I don't want to belabor the point but a 2006 observational study found that psychos social stress may be a primary cause of vaginal candida remember stress impacts the immune system the immune system regulates the growth of bacteria and fungus this is also why we should be careful not to be overzealous regarding diet and unintentionally lead people to be afraid of food and specific dietary recommendations to follow in just one second but one more regarding lifestyle exercise quoting a 2021 systematic review physical activity can increase the abundance of Health promoting bacteria in the intestinal microbiota hindering some negative genre and as we covered before exercise encourages growth of healthy bacteria and remember they police fungus now a few foods to consider and this is not an exhaustive list coconut oil Ginger and kimchi have all been shown in vitro or in animal studies to have antifungal effects there are not randomized control trials but I think it's reasonable to include any of these into your diet if they sit well with you and just to reiterate a western diet that's highin processed food is also not a good idea quoting Western diets promote dispos in the gut as well as fungal overgrowth specifically candida Albans so if you're eating a western High processed food diet that's something that we want to shift and here is a specific data point regarding diet I wanted to impress upon you this study in my mind was fascinating because they found that diet was twice as effective as a medication Li Statin for resolving candida in this 2018 clinical trial they either gave participants netin an antifungal medication or nistatin plus put them on a diet that essentially reduced processed food for three months nistatin alone led to a 42.5% clearance rate of fungus and a resolution of symptoms whereas nistatin plus diet led to an 85% resolution of symptoms and candida in the stool leading these researchers to comment as follows in the subsequent 3month period significantly more patients who continued with the diet were cured now what was a diet was it a anti-and diet no it wasn't I'll queue in on a visual here but I'll walk you through it in case you're just listening the individuals were instructed to avoid refined carbs and sweets seems reasonable high sugar fruits starchy foods like white rice lentils white beans and potatoes process meat milk dairy and alcohol they were encouraged to consume low sugar fruits think berries and remember back to our podcast on cognition how blueberries actually have impressive data showing their ability to improve cognition so this is a simple one vegetables fish and lean meats yogurt artificial sweeteners and here's three I really want to cue you in on whole grains cooked potatoes and brown rice so this was not a lowcarb diet and I think this provides a very important evidence point that we don't need to be telling people who are suspicious of candida to go onto a low carb diet now I say suspicious of candida very intentionally I don't think we can rely as we outlined a moment ago on a stool test to tell us if we have candida this is so important because I have seen a number of people who clearly don't do well low carb who are following low carb because of a stool test from 1 2 3 years ago and when we get them on the appropriate amount of carb I'm not saying to have a ton of maple syrup and sugar and garbage but we get them on potatoes and rice and some fruits they come back to life and I can say myself when I go too low carb I don't sleep well and if you've ever not slept well for a period you know how decimating that can be on so many other things like cognition like mood Etc so just wanted to make sure to drive this point home from the Journal of medical micology that we don't seem to need to go low carb to resolve fungus and also to piggyback on that we have some amazing natural tools to address fungus so this brings us to treatment step two first diet and lifestyle second probiotics 2023 randomized control trial found that for vaginal candida probiotics were as effective as the antifungal medication fluconazol in fact in that conversation with Dr Sati raal his drug of choice for SEO small intestinal fungal overgrowth was fluconazol so very interesting to see according to this randomized control trial that probiotics were as effective as fluconazol the there's other similar data a 2019 met analysis of eight randomized control trials in patients with oral candida found success with probiotics whether it was a blend of lactobacillus and bio bacterium or a sacr myces poity and to quote we are confident in declaring that probiotics can have a beneficial effect on reducing oral candida counts so pretty remarkable the power of probiotics and I just want to quickly share with you that probiotics do not only have antifungal action probably obvious but just to make sure to State it this 2023 metaanalysis found that probiotics reduce leaky gut as measured by zulin or by LPS reduce inflammatory markers and reduce disbiosis this is relevant when we come back to this concept this Paradigm of ecosystem modulation I feel a probiotic has such Merit because of the antifungal antibacterial anti-y gut anti-inflammatory and anti- disbiosis impact and this is why I'm so keen on probiotics because of the pleotropic effects they will positively modulate multiple different facets of your gut and I'll just put up on the visuals here briefly our meta protocol we discussed this at nauseum on other episodes so I don't want to belabor the point here but you're essentially looking at anywhere between two to 50 billion cfu per day of a probiotic for a trial period of two to three months and you can use a blend of lactobacillus and bi bacterium or you can use a healthy fungus sacr spari remember that if you have fungus you can fight fungus with fungus which is why sacr my bardi was one of the probiotics found to resolve and treat successfully candida and then the third type of probiotic is a soil-based probiotic okay what is the third element well the third element I guess a little pun not intended there is an elemental diet an elemental diet is a hypoallergenic liquid meal replacement the most novel component of an elemental diet in my view is that it absorbs in the first two to three feet of the small intestine remembering but the small intestine is 22 feet so if your intestine is inflamed irritated has overgrowth if you can give it a a rest with an elemental diet if you can absorb this solution the first two to three feet and the remaining 19 ft don't have to work that can be very regenerative now we don't have really much research at all on the treatment of fungus with an elemental diet I would be cautious in in one population and that is if you have oral thrush oral candida it might be a problem for you because of the maltodextrin in the solution outside of that one population if it's digestive that you're worried about I've speculated that because the formula absorbs in the first two to three feet and we know this leads to reductions in inflammatory bowel disease reductions in inflammation improvements in sibo it would stand reason that it would also help fungus and because of this I'm really excited to share this study with you that we just came across it was published in 2019 61 children with inflammatory bowel disease were given either biologic therapy immunosuppression or an elemental diet after two to four weeks they found first and foremost decreased disease activity but secondly they found a small but non-significant decrease in candid levels I want to be careful again to say this was not significant but if nothing else this shows us we can reduce inflammation and disease activity improve symptoms without causing any overgrowth candida and this is what we see sort of intonated in a 2017 systematic review the bowel rest induced by the elemental diet May induce mucosal healing by limiting the activity of potentially pathogenic microbes so this concept of rest and this is one of the reasons why I have found and many people anecdotally have found Elemental diets to be so helpful and there's a lot of research in inflammatory bowel disease showing again reduced disease activity and reduced inflammation the fourth step in treating candida would be antimicrobials these are herbs or medications that are antifungal and in many cases the herbals are antifungal antiparasitic and antibacterial which is why I favor herbs why don't we do these first because the concept of ecosystem modulation is Paramount if you do not have these positive forces modulating the ecosystem and you just zap someone with antimicrobials the likelihood that the ecosystem is going to Rift back to that imbalance in my view is quite high so we want to Prime the system so to speak and have all these healthy inputs diet lifestyle probiotics potentially rest with the elemental diet priming the system for balance and then if you need that last nudge toward balance toward healing this is when in my view and my clinical experience has really bored this out the best time to integrate antimicrobial is then so enter a 2015 randomized control trial they gave subjects either 1500 milligrams of garlic tablets or they gave them fluconazol this is for vaginal candida and they found nearly identical results in the garlic group as compared to the fluconazol group 60% as compared to 71% so pretty amazing again seeing another trial showing us that natural agents whether it be probiotics or in this case garlic tablets are about as effective as the antifungal medication fluconazol now routinely what I've used and many in the field will use is a blend of various antimicrobials so this might include something like oregano berberine black walnut artemisinin peppermint uy caprylic acid and we do have currently under peer review a Interventional trial we did in office documenting that these herbal Blends can successfully treat sibo there's also a study from back in 2014 by Jerry Mullins and he found equivalence in treating sibo with raax the antibiotic as compared to a different herbal blend so even though there's really not any as as I have been able to find clinical trials other than the one with garlic using these herbal Blends we see results at least emerging in the treatment of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth and when understanding that the fungus and the bacteria tend to overgrow together I think it's reasonable to conclude that what's worked for sibo bacterial overgrowth will likely also work for SEO fungal or candidal overgrowth that all being said the research consensus here is these various natural compounds do have antifungal properties but there's no good data in rigorous clinical trials for gastrointestinal fungus so it is an inference that we're drawing there's certainly a lot of anecdotal reporting of people experiencing benefit and my personal and clinical experience reinforces this however if you really wanted to use what their is the best the most evidence for then fluconazol or nistatin are options again bearing in mind in the small handful of studies that have compared either probiotics or garlic to fluconazol we see very similar results so then in recap of the treatment hierarchy and by the way you want to take these one step at a time because ideally One Step improves your symptoms and therefore should be rebalancing your gut but the first is diet and lifestyle be careful not to mistakenly think you have to go low carb because not only does this not appear to be necessary and if you feel good on low carb and function better on low carb totally fine right I just want to be careful that you don't pigeon hole yourself into low carb forever and you also don't stress yourself out and every time you have anything with carbs you're going to have an apple you're going to have some blueberries you're going to have some rice you're going to have some potatoes you think you're doing harm because I don't think the evidence supports that as an antidote to stress consider time and nature and also remember the importance of exercise as it pertains to diet and lifestyle and specifically on diet I think any diet that is going to limit processed food as a prior study indicated should be sufficient two probiotics three a reset and rest with your Elemental diet and then four either herbal antimicrobials or a prescription so in summary candida or fungus can overgrow and cause both imbalances and symptoms usually doing so along with bacteria remember the importance of modulating the entire ecosystem the limitations of testing and that none of these things will work for everyone all the time so trial them one step at a time listening to your body and making adjustments along the way all right guys well again I hope this helps I hope you will comment and I hope you will share this video with one person you think it can [Music] help

Channel: Dr. Michael Ruscio, DC, DNM

Views: 252,749

Keywords: candida & SIFO, candida, SIFO, fungal overgrowths, cure candida, heal candida, colon, small intestine, large intestine, IBS, gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, anxiety, small intestinal fungal overgrowth, fix candida, candida relief, SIFO relief, gut health, gut healing, digestion, stool test, dr ruscio, candida albicans, candida causes, candida symptoms, microbiome, dysbiosis

Id: EenuIwuJ7h0

Length: 33min 48sec (2028 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 19 2024