Candida

jennaroberts

Crack in the Sugar Cube

Sugar Skull CubeMy father still eats like a pre-teen on vacation. He will go through bags of cookies and chocolates, washed back by sodas, then refuse dinner. He rejects the idea that his arthritis or fibromyalgia will be affected by a change in his diet, or by a more active lifestyle. He isn’t fat, pills regulate his acid reflux and gerd, and his stomach doesn’t ache from the candy. So he doesn’t associate the sugar with the suffering, or, like most, he chooses not to.

When I think of his eating habits and health, I feel grateful for that little protozoan parasite that forced me to face my food. Due to candida and SIBO challenges, I have had to remove sugar from my diet multiple times, including all carbs that can be turned into sugars that feed yeast and bacteria. Amazingly, no matter how much fat I eat in the form of nuts and meat, I lose weight whenever I quit sugar.

Internal Guardians

This week, I ate my first pear in 6 months, and it was sheer decadence. As I ease slowly back into allowance, I notice how quickly my mind impulses for ice cream and chocolate. I am still just a child who yearns for her treats. I simply have also grown into the mother who sets loving boundaries.

There is a part of that motherly self who is scared that I will slip back into old habits someday. This makes me feel like an addict. This, in turn, makes me feel like a control freak. It is likely a bit of both.

America’s Fix

Sugar is the innocent party drug that soon becomes the all-consuming heroine. America is hopped up on it far worse than any narcotic. Then the subsequent candida’s neurotransmitters add to this vice by creating an actual urgency to consume more of the sweet stuff. Our country is being controlled by a fungal parasite that is causing far more actual anxiety than any terrorist threat.

This is not true everywhere. When I gave my Taiwanese elementary students a taste of Jelly Bellies, they made faces of disgust and said, “Tai tien!” for ‘Too sweet’. Can you imagine American children, or even many adults, uttering those words?

People try to lose weight by going “low-fat”, only to find hopeless results. The cruelty of American diet foods is that they are often higher in sugars, or worse, chemical sugar substitutes. It is nearly impossible to quit sugar without quitting all processed foods. It might be mind boggling to have that much time to cook, but it is the most effective way out.

Dependence Enablers

Mainstream doctors often refuse to see this association between food and health, and do not request that their patients make a dramatic diet change. It’s “cheaper” and easier to take a pill. I have been told that I would need to take Prilosec every day for the rest of my life. I went on the anti-inflammatory diet for a month and that particular health issue went away. A dermatologist recently informed me that eczema has no relationship to food. Then why does my skin get more red and itchy after eating certain items?

This blindness confounds me, especially from those who have taken the Hippocratic oath. Doctors today are afraid to ask their patients to do something that they themselves cannot conceive of doing. Have more faith in yourself than they have in you.

Anything You Cannot Quit, Owns You

It has been one of the greater challenges in my life to give up sugar. Over time, I will most likely return to this sullen mistress, and then build up the will power to tear myself away again. I may even delay until the necessity arises if my system loses a fight with the side effects of high sugar intake again. I aim to make peace with balanced choices as I move forward.

If you consume sugar daily, be brave enough to face this slave driver head on. You can start slowly, by maybe taking one little month off of only refined sugar. Even if you still allow carbs, fruits and honey, you will notice a difference. Anything that you cannot quit, owns you. Take your body back.

sugar coffee skull

jennaroberts

Down the Tube: A History of Health Haphazards

“Don’t make me be gluten free. I know how you people always tell everyone that they have to be gluten free.”

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.
You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.

This was my first clarification at the initial visit to the naturopath. It seems that any ailment can lead to this burdensome dietary restriction. If a planter’s wart was risky, my broken lips were a definite threat to cookie consumption.

I had come to a naturopath to sort out my angular cheilitis, the chronic cracking at the edges of my lips that had gone on for 6 years and was getting worse. The appearance of having constant oral herpes, when I didn’t, fell suspect in my lack of a love life. Allopathic MDs only offered topical steroids, and I needed a real solution.

The doctor pointed to her own healthy smiling mouth and replied, “Well, this is the end of your tube. So if something is inflamed here, it might also be down the line. Don’t worry though, we won’t do anything until we get some tests done.”

I pondered for a moment on this tube she was talking about, almost as if it were an epiphany that my mouth and anus were related. Sometimes the most obvious things are the most remarkable.

Two weeks later, the GI Health Panel results were in.

“You are definitely going to need to be gluten free,” she said. I slumped and groaned

“And dairy free. You have a parasite called cryptosporidium and your saliva shows extremely low immunoglobulins.“

A new vocabulary was upon me, as anyone who has had gut troubles knows. At least this pest had a fun name that sounded like a dark and mysterious, erm, spore. Nice nemesis for a superhero to step up to. “You’re going down, Cryptosporidium!”

Better yet, being protozoan, it had no eyes or legs, which spared me the deeper creepers. Little did I know yet of the havoc it had wreaked since it had become a stowaway on a trip to Central America.

For the next three months, I was put on a regiment of a strict diet with caprylic acid, homeopathies, and immune boosters like glutamine. It was an incredible challenge to give up so much of my standard food so quickly. I succeeded in ridding myself of the crypto, but this little freeloader colony had lived in my intestinal tract like an unemployed hippie in his enabling mom’s basement. Thus the journey to clean and heal began.

If I understood that I would be still riding this challenge four years later, I might have had an emotional breakdown. First, I would rid myself of the parasites, then the yeast came. I would eradicate them with the challenging candida cleanse and anti-fungal meds. Yet again, a new candida variant would emerge like the opportunistic bastards they are.

These reoccurrences led me to find that I had heavy metal poisoning, a relationship common in many chronic candida sufferers. I chelated, and the yeast finally seemed to go away, but my lips were still inflamed and eczema had cropped up along the way on my hands.

Most recently, I tested positive for SIBO, small intestine bacterial overgrowth, and found that the crypto and the yeast had left behind a resort town for bacteria in my small intestines. I have just completed my second round of antibiotics, and decided to protect myself further from yeast by cutting out fruits. I am presently on an incredibly strict diet that consists primarily of meat, green vegetables, and nuts.

Come to think of it, I have had some pretty powerful emotional breakdowns along the way. I also have learned to cook, to refuse sugar treats, and to honor that I have impressive patience. I also shamelessly share about my intestines at parties. Thus, the blog.

I hope that this place will become a haven for those of you who are diving into your guts to find freedom from ailments. Come by to remember that you’re not alone in your experiences. Even if you’re gassy today, you’re still welcome here.