Candida or Bart / Lyme?

Celie, I think you need to get your body in a more healthy state before you treat.

You really should treat the yeast/fungus. Without a healthy gut, you can't heal. Nothing will be absorbed into your system with an unhealthy gut. So, I would make that a priority.

There are many ways to help this gut problem. This will depend on the severity. I have seen a friend super adjust her diet and get super well. And, another that had to take meds, hers was so bad.

While you are healing your gut (and this will required diet changes), you should start to detox.

All of this needs to be gently and slowly. There is no slam dunk procedure for healing this. It will take some time and patience.

Oh and the vibrating that you feel. I had this. Lower left side - like the descending colon or sigmoid colon. It feels like there is a cell phone in there and it is on vibrate. For that one, I used Pacific brand organic turkey bone broth. I would drink it in the morning instead of coffee. I would put that broth in everything and drink as much as I could.

I was so sick that I even opened up a can of organic noodle soup and drained off the liquid from the noodles and then heated those noodles in the bone broth. Bone broth is an amazing healer of the gut.

Good luck and let us know how you are doing.

Hi Celie -

I'm sorry you're not doing well. It's a long road but sounds like you have good support w/ your treatment team.

I agree w/ PeteZa - you MUST halt treatment and heal your GI before you will make any progress in any of your treatment. Your GI is likely damaged due to all the meds and possibly from the infections, as well. But everything we take with the exception of IV meds and supplements, we take orally. If you have leaky gut, you have considerable damage. If you have damage -

- you're not absorbing anything you consume very well including food and nutrition, which stresses the body when it has to run on empty.

- you're also not absorbing any of the meds and supplements very well, which can disrupt, delay and confuse your treatment since most of the time we're relying on our reactions to the infections and the treatment in order to understand how to proceed.

- you're also developing more and more reactions to foods if they continue to seep into your blood stream and cause immune reactions because you shouldn't have food in your blood stream

- you're also allowing toxins and fecal matter into your blood stream with unmitigated GI damage from leaky gut.

- and with untreated yeast/fungal issues and leaky gut, the yeast/fungus can also become systemic as it travels through the damage and into the blood stream.

GI damage can get really out of hand and it takes a very long time to heal so you might get started ASAP:

- You'll need to implement drastic changes in your diet that remove all sugars, all simple carbs (white rice, white flour, white sugar, white potatoes), all grains, and dairy--at least for the first couple of months, depending on how well it impacts you. There's probably nothing as important as those restrictions in the beginning. It's not easy - at all. But critical.

- Look for the basics of paleo diets (mostly veggies and animal proteins) to figure out what to eat - the other things you eat depend more on your sensitivities and are less important than being restrictive of the first groups of foods I mentioned.

- Try reducing toxins by going organic and GMO-free.

- Eat smaller meals more frequently - try not to force your digestive tract to work too hard for each meal bit feed yourself frequently. I used to just sip on soup all day.

- Go really easy on the GI - try to avoid roughage until your gut heals a bit (if you have constipation issues, let me know and I can make a few suggestions). Try making your own soups or find the good healthy soups in the store that are not full of stuff (especially SUGAR!). The chicken/turkey/beef/veggie broths are KEY! Like PeteZa I also drank mine like tea - a couple times a day. I ended up not eating a whole lot at first because I couldn't digest the solid food but I also felt so much better with broths because they have a lot of healing nutrients. Organic low sodium is best - Pacific brand has some good ones.

You might need to do a stool test to understand what foods you have sensitivities to and avoid those foods for a couple months.

It took me a year to make progress - I was in very bad shape. But your sx also point absolutely toward leaky gut and yeast/fungal overgrowth so you're right on track. Here is a lot more information about yeast/fungal overgrowth - please review it and we can target specific issues for you if you have questions:

Y/FO post in the "New to Lyme?" thread:
www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=1606610&g=3644275#m3644275

-p

Hi Celie -

The Nystatin is a local antifungal - which generally stays in the GI.
The diflucan is a systemic antifungal - it leaves the GI and enters the blood stream and gets carried throughout the body.

Generally, for most of us on abx who develop yeast/fungal overgrowth, it originates in the GI due to the absence of good bacteria (killed by abx) that keeps yeast/fungus in balance. But if things get really out of hand and/or yeast/fungal overgrowth continues long enough, GI damage can occur and that's where the leaky gut can provide a pathway for the y/f to then also enter the blood stream and cause systemic y/f overgrowth throughout the body.

For these reasons, many people take both a local and a systemic antifungal. I recommend to people who don't have leaky gut or significant GI problems that they might do OK only on a local antifungal--but that it should probably be the PURE Nystatin powder, not the pills. I explain this in the yeast/fungus post in that "New to Lyme?" thread I posted above.

Also regarding the Nystatin:

-- Since it is a LOCAL antifungal it generally does not get processed through the liver. If you have a considerable amount of leakage into your blood stream due to leaky gut, the Nystatin might escape into the bloodstream and reach reach your liver but regardless, it's beneficial to take liver support like milk thistle seed, burdock root to help the liver metablize ALL meds, not just antifungals.

-- also, if you're not having some affect from the Nystatin you're probably not taking enough of it. Generally, what's prescribed is too low and also, MDs prescribe the pill form and not the pure powder, which is far more effective. So please try asking about the powder - more info about it in the y/f post above. At the very least, for the next couple of months I'd double the dose and "work it out" with your MD to renew your Rx.

-- Bi-wkly doses of diflucan are also probably not helping much. My rules of thumb: if you already have good evidence of a yeast/fungal overgrowth issue, AND you're on abx, you need to be on an antifungal full-time and for most people this needs to be pharma grade and not natural antifungals (which do a better job at prevention and maintenance than they do after overgrowth has already developed).

I know MDs like to pulse the diflucan but it's not doing enough and COULD promote resistance - the yeast/fungus grows VERY quickly and is very opportunistic and can do a lot of damage. And through leaky gut, it can spread systemically very quickly. Please increase liver support and take the diflucan daily - not forever, just for a couple months until you get your load down. Your liver should tolerate it for a couple months. Then you can step back and do just a local Nystatin antifungal.

-- you might also consider that diflucan might not be effective against your strain of y/f - there are other systemic antifungals I mention in that post. You can do a Doctor's Data stool test that lists susceptibility of about a doz different natural and Rx antifungals - to whatever strains it finds. SO helpful in understanding how to treat. Maybe you can talk w/ your LLMD about this. Generally, Nystatin is effective against most strains.

-- Regardless of which type of antifungal you use, if you continue to consume sugary or simple carb foods, you will grow resistant to any antifungal you take, which can become dangerous. Same concept as abx resistance.

My overgrowth was significant so I took both for about a year (supporting my liver - I was also on abx and antifungals). Then I went off the systemic antifungal and stayed on the Nystatin for another 2 yrs. I recommend to people with systemic sx (I talk about these in that post above) or with significant leaky gut to do both local and systemic antifungals for awhile - at least a few months but then stay on local antifungal (at least) for the duration of any use of abx.

- p

Thank you very, very much! The information you provided is so helpful. I started a gut health protocol and am starting to feel better (at least in my stomach) already.

Since increasing how often I take diflucan and ensuring I take the Nystatin twice a day, I've noticed a big increase in floaters, brain fog, vibration sensations, and sleep disruption. I'm continuing with pulsing the Artemisinin (my LLND wants me to finish the bottle, if I can). Do either of you know if these symptoms could be from candida die-off or is it possible that the anti-fungals could be causing Bart. die off (...or perhaps my body just isn't detoxing well...)?

THANK YOU again!!!

This is very helpful. Thank you! I'm going to buy a big jar of coconut butter tonight....

I'm not sure of the benefits of butter over oil, other than it contains fibre. I use both and like the idea of having a product that I can use in place of nut butter and to make dessert-type treats with. If I learn more, I will post the details.

Celie said...
Thank you all so much for the information! It is both reassuring and a bit daunting (simply because I have a great deal of difficulty keeping up with diet and detoxing, as I'm always exhausted and am on a limited budget, and don't have any help whatsoever--I'm tackling this completely on my own). However, it is in-line with what I was thinking was happening and helps me feel empowered to proceed with making the changes I need to. It's also very helpful to hear that others have had similar experiences. I am very lucky indeed to have a great treatment team, but nobody seems to have identified these issues as serious; everybody just focuses on treatment for the lyme and co infections. Your feedback means a great deal, as I now have a concrete plan to implement that will hopefully help my body begin to heal. I started to incorporate bone broth (mostly because it is the only thing besides water that doesn't cause big GI issues) and will now make it the mainstay of my diet until things start to improve a bit.

Girlie, my treatment plan did include meds for Bart. My LLMD switched them up regularly, initially to ensure multiple infections / forms would be addressed, and then because my body began to slowly reject more and more abx (in the form of severe side effects and immune responses, which is dangerous for me because I have allergic asthma). I had a strong positive for Bart. and Mycoplasma, but inconclusive results for lyme (LLMD believes lyme is likely) and was only tested for one type of Babesia (my LLND suspects I may have a strain I was not tested for). My feeling is that I'm probably dealing chronic Bart, which badly wore down my immune system and body over the years, and the addition of Mycoplasma about eight years ago was the final straw that caused me to crash. Before the Mycoplasma, I was always tired and had intermittent Bart flares (I just didn't know what the heck was going on at that time); after the Mycolplasma, my life as I knew it ended and I became incapacitated. Although I know it's not possible to rule Lyme out, I'm not sure that's what's going on for me (and accept that I may never really for for sure until more accurate

Hi Celie, I'm so sorry you're struggling.

I wonder if your team tested for Molds?

I had constant bronchitis, breathing issues, sinus and chest.
They've all cleared with treatment for those molds in sinus and gut.

Just a thought.

You can do this, hang in ther!

VCL