Without any other influencing factors that might trigger a change, you would continue to feel symptoms or symptoms would return while on the antifungal. Maybe new symptoms develop. It's a little tough to say but generally, you'd be on a particular antifungal for awhile (a few months?) and not make any progress during that time.
Antifungals work against yeasts/fungals differently - kind of like antibacterials act differently. Some people go on an antifungal and it doesn't work so they assume they've become resistant but often, that particular antifungal was just ineffective against the strain present. Or, people can have more than one strain going on and the Rx is effective at reducing some symptoms but not all and they incorrectly assume that it's built resistance but they just needed to treat it more comprehensively.
I've also read that resistance can be invited if you continue to ingest sugar or the simple carbs while taking antifungals.
No - diflucan is not the only option. In an ideal world, you would find out which antifungals (rx and naturals) might be effective against the strain(s) you have. That puts a lot of faith in the testing to
a) pick up the strain(s) effectively and
b) indicate the effective antifungals that you haven't used yet.
I don't have a lot of faith in the testing but it did help me.
You can give various antifungal Rx a try if you can get them prescribed. Or you can order them from a foreign pharmacy that doesn't require Rx. If you've been on diflucan/fluconazole, then you can try something like Ketoconazole, Itraconazole, and others.
ETA: Some MDs might be hesitant to prescribe w/out testing. Maybe you can buy a few wk's supply yourself, if it works then you're better positioned to get the MD to prescribe them w/ insurance coverage, etc.
Here's more of my story:
Back in 2013 I spent 13 months dealing with chronic sinusitis and bronchitis, for which 8-9 different MDs kept putting me on various courses of abx. FAIL. I just kept getting worse...I finally figured out that it was yeast/fungal so I started Diflucan and Nystatin. Presto - all better in a few days.
However, all of the various abx courses started another yeast/fungal overgrowth w/ different symptoms and probably different strains (this was before I understood much abuot y/f or abx and probiotics, etc.). And a few months later I started working w/ my LLMD and we started on antimicrobial herbs and in time I developed new yeast/fungal sx that were really bad. I went back on just the diflucan (this was before I knew about
the Nystatin powder) but it didn't help.
So I consulted a Doctor's Data Stool test I did a few years prior (I think it was $400 in 2010), which indicated that diflucan (and a few natural antifungals like GSE I was taking) were not effective against the strain it found but Ketoconazole was. So I tried Ketoconazole and it was very effective, very quickly. I went off the K and started on Nystatin powder, stayed on it for about
a year.
Then I went off all antifungals and was able to rely on the cholestyramine, had no issues.
Fastforward to this Dec and I started on the biofilm busting. Sure enough, not only did the sinusitis and bronchitis explode, it released some other hidden yeast/fungus pockets and I restarted the ketoconazole and Nystatin. It addressed most sx but not entirely. I tried kicking up the cholestyramine to a high dose, which seemed to work.
All that to say - it was a bit of trial-and-error for me and I was clearly dealing with multiple strains that required different Rx. And I've been on the Rx for months - sometimes a year and never developed resistance.
-p
Post Edited (Pirouette) : 5/8/2017 6:12:17 PM (GMT-6)