Healing Migraines Naturally - Candida and Migraines - Is there a connection
Leslie: Today I'm talking to Mari, who runs our awesome Facebook community, about candida and does it impact migraines? Welcome, Mari. How are you?
Mari: I'm doing good. How's everybody doing?
Leslie: Good, good. I was going through the topics that we've covered and some of the common questions in the Facebook group, and candida comes up frequently. I realized we've never talked about candida.
Mari: Yeah, I'm actually super interested in hearing about this because it's definitely a topic that I do not know much about.
Leslie: What do you think of when people talk about candida?
Mari: I hope I'm not completely wrong, but yeast in yeast infections.
Leslie: Mm-hmm.
Mari: Stomach issues, overgrowth, that kind of stuff.
Leslie: Yeah, for sure. Yeast infections or some sort of yeast overgrowth in the gut. Candida is called a yeast. It's sort of a yeast species, which is in the class of fungi or a fungus. So yeast is in that category. We don't think of the yeast that we put in our bread as a fungus, but technically it's a fungus.
Mari: Yeah. Well, we don't want to talk about it like that or else it would be very unappetizing.
Leslie: Uh huh, put us off our beloved bread. Candida, it's a yeast, it's a fungus. It's a single cell fungus. So it's not like a mushroom or something like that, that is made up of multiple cells. It's a single cell fungus and it's all over the place in the environment. Everything is completely coded with bacteria and fungi or mold or yeast, spores.
Mari: Especially if you work in a school.
Leslie: Right.
Mari: Like I do, everything is covering something.
Leslie: Exactly right. Some areas more than others.
Mari: Yeah.
Leslie: We are continuously inundated with all of these little microbes, right? There is going to be a certain amount specifically of Candida that's going to be living in us.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: We have a whole host of microorganisms that live inside of the various tracks that we have.
Leslie: The digestive tract, the nasal cavities. All the various parts of us that are going to come in contact with the environment are a spot for these microbes to live.
Mari: Kind of like their favorite condominium. They just want to live there forever.
Leslie: Exactly. We're their host. We're their environment. In fact, they now believe that the number of microorganisms, like if you were to count up all the little cells of these little microorganisms, these little bacteria and little fungi, if you were to count up those cells, they actually outnumber our cells, the cells of our body.
Leslie: So it kind of begs the question, are we here for us or are we here for the microorganisms?
Mari: That does flip our existence upside down for sure.
Leslie: I mean, we know we have some bacteria living on us, but to think that they outnumber our very own cells is a little unnerving.
Mari: I didn't know you were going to get existential on me, Leslie.
Leslie: So this is normal. We have grown up alongside all of these little microorganisms. We are continuously exposed to them and so we should be living in a symbiotic relationship with these little microorganisms. We're getting something out of having them with us and they're getting something out of being on us.
Leslie: In our digestive tract, some of these little microorganisms help us break down our food or convert nutrients into other nutrients and so on. We do get some benefits from some of these little microorganisms.
Mari: Is one of the ones in your stomach considered a positive, a probiotic in a way, like a positive bug in your belly? I don't know how I should word that.
Leslie: Great question. To my knowledge, you are not going to find a probiotic capsule that contains yeast in it. To my knowledge, there's no therapeutic effect to having somebody take supplemental yeast, or supplemental Candida specifically.
Mari: Yeah. So it'll be in there, but it's not necessarily beneficial for our bodies.
Leslie: Right. Yeah. We're going to have some amount in the digestive tract, in the vaginal tract, in the sinuses. There's going to be some amount of it on our skin surface, along with all the other bacteria and all the other fungi and other varieties of yeast, etc. What should develop is the right proportion of these various microorganisms.
Leslie: The microorganisms are suited for particular environments. So if you remember high school biology class, you went around with a Q-tip and you took samples. You know, you took a little sample from the bottom of your shoe and put it on a Petri dish, and you took a little sample from a water fountain and put it on a Petri dish. The teacher put it in an incubator and grew it for a week. Then, you looked at it and saw all the horrible bacteria that you collected all over the school.
Leslie: Right? A lot of people did that in science class in high school.
Mari: Yeah, I think I missed that part. But I'm kind of glad I did because it sounds nasty. I do remember getting cells. I think from the inside of a cheek.
Leslie: Yeah, sure. And staining those and looking at those. Yeah. The bacteria that is living on the bottom of your shoe or living in the water fountain is bacteria that can survive in an environment with oxygen in the atmosphere, light hits the bacteria, and it is bacteria that can survive at room temperature.
Leslie: There's a tremendous variety of microorganisms and some of them cannot live in an environment where there's oxygen. Some of them have to have a specific temperature that they live in. Some of them can't be exposed to sunlight. You are not going to pick up just any possible bacteria if you put your little Q-tip on the water fountain.
Leslie: You're only going to pick up the types of bacteria that can survive in the temperature and the atmospheric environment, etc, that the water fountain is also a part of.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: Just taking a sample from the water fountain and saying, oh, this must be all the possible bacteria that can survive, it's going to give us a very incomplete picture. It's only going to allow us to grow in samples and look at the bacteria that survive in that environment.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: The bacteria in our digestive tract are there because they thrive in the particular environment of our digestive tract. Our digestive tract doesn't have oxygen in, it doesn't have sunlight. It is really hot. It's way above room temperature. So if I'm getting a drink of water from the water fountain, and let's say a little bit of bacteria gets into that water stream, that bacteria is not going to overgrow in my digestive tract because it's a completely wrong environment for it to live in.
Leslie: It's going to die very quickly. Similarly, if I took a little sample of bacteria from my digestive tract and put it on the water fountain, it's not going to survive for very long either. It's not in the right environment where it's going to survive. If you think of all of the bacteria and fungi that's coating, say our kitchen countertop. Our kitchen countertops, no matter how much we wash them, are going to be coded with bacteria and fungi in. But again, our kitchen counter is at room temperature in an oxygenated environment where light is hitting it. We could ingest some of that bacteria from our countertop and it's not going to give us food poisoning.
Leslie: That bacteria is not going to thrive in our digestive tract. It's going to die very quickly. That’s one important thing to think about these microorganisms, these fungi and bacteria. Every time you turn on the tv, there's a commercial for Clorox wipes and people are using the Lysol on the countertops and all this other kind of stuff.
Leslie: If we introduce countertop bacteria into our digestive tract, it's not going to survive and it's not going to infect us. Even most viruses, respiratory viruses, somebody coughs on their hand and then touches a doorknob; those respiratory viruses, think about the environment that they're in.
Leslie: Well, they are in an oxygenated environment because there's oxygen in our lungs. They're in a little cooler environment than what's going to be in our digestive tract. The nasal passage is exposed to room temperature, air, or outside air, so it's going to be a little cooler than deep inside our small intestine.
Leslie: Those viruses, they're a little more acclimated to living outside of our body, and so they could live for a little while on a door handle. You can see how the environment on the door handle is a little closer to the environment inside our nose.
Mari: Right. That makes sense.
Leslie: But still, they're not going to last that long in direct sunlight. There's not a lot of sunlight in the lungs.
Leslie: When people start to think about, oh my goodness, there's all these bacteria and viruses and fungi all over the place, I have to disinfect everything. We have to remember the uncounted number of different species of these microbes, and then the particular environment that they're suited for to flourish in. They found bacteria on the ocean floor, miles under the ocean.
Leslie: That type of bacteria, you bring it to the surface with the surface air pressure and the oxygen and everything else, it's not going to survive.
Mari: That's unbelievable. That's so cool to think about on the bottom of the ocean.
Leslie: Right. These microorganisms are very specialized as to the environment in which they will live. That's number one for people to think about. And hopefully that helps people, especially in our post covid era here. We don't need to think that every microbe that we come in contact with is a threat to us.
Leslie: The vast majority of them are not going to have any impact on us.
Mari: Great. So Germaphobe, it's all good. It's going to be okay. I'm a slight germaphobe myself. We're all in good company. Yep.
Leslie: Let's talk about the microbes in the digestive tract.The environment in our digestive tract, there's going to be some constant to the environment in our digestive tract, such as the temperature. It’s going to remain the same. The oxygen levels are going to remain the same, but the nutrient environment in our digestive track is going to change dramatically depending on what nutrients are in the food that we eat.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: Fiber content in our digestive track is going to change dramatically depending on the food that we eat. The acidity or alkalinity is going to be impacted by our stomach's ability to generate enough stomach acid within the stomach.
Leslie: You can have an overgrowth of bacteria in the stomach if we can't produce enough stomach acid.
Mari: Hmm.
Leslie: Because the required amount of stomach acid, or the optimal amount of stomach acid is going to kill bacteria that require an alkaline environment.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: So if we can't generate enough stomach acid, then we eat some bacteria that likes an alkaline environment… oh, wait a minute. I can live here in the stomach now.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: We want to be able to generate enough stomach acid so we can have the right pH in the stomach and then in the small intestine. The pancreas dumps in all these enzymes to make the small intestine an alkaline environment. It's quite interesting.
Leslie: We go from this acidic environment in the stomach that's going to kill bacteria that likes an alkaline environment. Then we go into the small intestine that's going to have an alkaline environment and that's going to kill all the bacteria that like an acidic environment.
Mari: Hmm.
Leslie: So notice what the body is doing.
Leslie: It's sort of disinfecting our food, because there's always going to be bacteria and fungi coming along with our food. If we scorch it with acid and then blast it with alkaline, well some bacteria like an acid environment, some of them like an alkaline environment, so I've got my base covered if I do that.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: I think that's very interesting how the body does this. Now, we take a lot of medications that interfere with this process.
Mari: Are you talking about antibiotics? Because I've heard if you're on an antibiotic too long, it can make your yeast overgrow or something.
Leslie: Mm-hmm. Yep. Antibiotics are definitely a factor. We will definitely talk about those, but one of the most widely used drugs that are available over the counter are acid blocking medications, like the little purple pill, Prilosec, Nexim, even things Tums, antacids.
Mari: Hmm.
Leslie: What is one of the most common symptoms that Americans experience?
Leslie: Heartburn, acid reflux.
Mari: We've talked about that before. That we just accept it as part of a normal life. I'm just getting old. It must be mid middle-aged heartburn or whatever.
Leslie: Yeah. Or, well, I eat tomatoes. What do you expect?
Mari: Yeah, exactly.
Leslie: Nevermind that the pH in the stomach should be 1, which is enough to take paint off your car. Uh, tomato is nowhere near a 1 pH. We should be able to eat acidic foods. The pH of what we call acidic foods are nowhere near a pH of 1, like our stomach acid is.
Leslie: People are taking a tremendous amount of medication that either prevents the stomach from making hydrochloric acid, so things like Nexium actually prevent the stomach from making stomach acid. Or, after the stomach acid is made, we're taking things like Tums or Alka-Seltzer. We're taking alkaline preparations that neutralize the acid that was made.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: What's going to happen to the bacteria that was naturally coming along with our food that likes an alkaline environment and doesn't get that acid shock in the stomach?
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: They're not going to be killed off. They're going to find a more hospitable environment in our stomach than they should.
Mari: Is that when they start getting out of control?
Leslie: Well, right, right. Now we've got these bacteria that should have been killed off that are now going into my small intestine. Well, the small intestine is alkalized by these digestive enzymes that the pancreas makes.Now they're like, oh, great I made it through the gauntlet party time. The environment of our digestive tract determines what bacteria thrive and survive and overgrow.
Leslie: What we call beneficial gut bacteria are bacteria that have to go through this acid shock and alkaline bath, and they have to survive that. The bacteria and the fungi that live in our digestive tract, guess what their food is... our food. They have to have food to survive just like any other living organism.
Leslie: The food that we eat is their food, what we call beneficial bacteria. They like a certain amount of fiber. They're going to need a certain number of nutrients, they're going to want a certain pH. All of these factors are influenced by either medication that we're taking or the food that we're eating.
Leslie: So if we are eating food that is deficient in the things that the beneficial bacteria thrive on, the beneficial bacteria are going to have a real hard time surviving. Then you're going to have other bacteria that like to eat, you know, they like to eat Doritos.
Mari: Those are my buddies.
Leslie: Right. Then we have these other bacteria that made it through past the gauntlet. They're like, oh yeah, I can live here. Not that much fiber, not so much pesky nutrients. This is my place.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: Then they start to thrive and overgrow. So what does yeast like to live on?
Mari: My understanding is sugar. Is that wrong?
Leslie: No, that's correct.
Leslie: When we're making bread, the grain in the bread, the wheat in the bread has glucose in it. We usually add a little sugar to bread. Yeast in particular needs glucose as a fuel, as an energy source. What is in abundance in the typical American diet?
Mari: I wouldn't know. Having said that, I have not had any sugar since like December, so I'm doing really well.
Mari: Usually I would be just as guilty as everyone else, lots of sugar.
Leslie: Everybody knows that sugar is not a healthy food. I don't think I'm breaking any news here.
Mari: Breaking hearts, but not breaking news.
Leslie: Right, right, exactly. Yeast in particular really like glucose. The beneficial bacteria, they start to get crowded out. So again, if you think of that Petri dish when you did this experiment in high school where you took these little samples on a Q-tip and you rubbed a Q-tip on the Petri dish, so the Petri dish only has so much space.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: The Petri dish is a little circle, maybe four inches in diameter. Once the bacteria fill up that Petri dish, there's no room for any more bacteria.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: Bacteria take up a space. Fungi take up a space. There has to be space for the bacteria in our digestive tract as well. So when we have a food or nutrient environment within our digestive tract that feeds certain microbes more so than others, those microbes are going to start to multiply. They're going to thrive and multiply and be very successful, and they're going to start taking up space in our digestive tract. They start crowding out the beneficial bacteria in our digestive tract.
Mari: I wonder why it is like that there. If you pictured the helpful bacteria and the yeast in your tummy arm wrestling, why does the yeast get to win? You know what I mean? Why is it stronger?
Leslie: The yeast will only win if the environment for them benefits them.
Mari: Yeah.
Leslie: Mm-hmm. So it's not something like the yeast is this big, bad, strong armed thing. It's if I'm providing the environment in which they thrive in, they're going to thrive.
Mari: Right. Okay.
Leslie: Again, and this is life on earth, things thrive. You know, you don't see polar bears at the equator.
Mari: Right,
Leslie: Right. They're not going to last too long at the equator. They thrive at the North Pole. You're not going to see a parrot at the North Pole. They thrive at the equator. Bacteria are no different than any other life on Earth. There are certain environments that they thrive in. If you put them in the wrong environment, they're not going to make it too far.
Leslie: There has been a lot of talk over the past few decades within the natural medicine space. Within the past 10 years, conventional medicine has acknowledged the known fact that we have all of these bacteria and microbes living on us, and that they do things that could be health supporting or health undermining.
Leslie: This is not just new news. In the past 10 years or so, you could have opened up any physiology textbook or gastroenterology textbook. This has been well known for decades. But in conventional medicine, they don't really think about how the body is supposed to function. They just think about how can we shut off these symptoms.
Leslie: But in any case, you're hearing a lot more within the past 10 years about the microbiome, all of the microorganisms that live on us. That's what they're referring to when they talk about the microbiome. It's the some total of all of the microbes that live, it’s particularly in our digestive tract that they're talking about the microbiome.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: That’s the way that this is presented to the public by conventional medicine now and by supplement companies. Let's not forget that the supplement industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. It's not as big as the pharmaceutical industry, but it's not a small industry by any stretch.
Mari: And it's not a charity in industry either, right? They're there to make money.
Leslie: Correct. What you are finding now is that people are talking about the microbiome or they're talking about the bacteria that's living in our digestive tract as if it just somehow got there one day. Particularly if we're going to now hone in on candida. I would say 15 years ago, candida was blamed for everything.
Leslie: In the natural medicine space, we have these fads. Every five years we kind of have a new fad where everything is blamed on the new thing. Every health condition is blamed on the new thing. And I would say 15 years ago, everything was blamed on candida.
Mari: Yeah. Isn't it gluten right now?
Leslie: Yeah. Gluten, 15 years ago, became really prominent too.
Leslie: For sure, it has lingered. Gluten is now being blamed when people talk about candida overgrowth.
Mari: mm-hmm.
Leslie: It's talked about as if the candida just fell out of the sky and just got into our digestive tract and now it's overgrown, who knows why. How'd that happen?
Leslie: Therefore you need to purchase probiotics or even go on antifungals. It could be prescription antifungals or natural antifungals, these types of natural antifungal, wormwood type of thing to kill the candida. That, how'd that get in there mystery is how it's presented. As you know, you kill the candida, you get that out of there, and then the nice little bugs, they're just going to come back and you won't have any problems.
Leslie: There's a total disregard for the environment within the digestive tract that made it hospitable in the first place for the Candida. You go in there and you just kill the candida. Which could be done with an antifungal, prescription antifungal herbs, or the notorious Candida diet.
Mari: That's a thing.
Leslie: Oh, that's a thing. Let me tell you.
Mari: Wait a minute. There's a thing.
Leslie: So because yeast like glucose, the Candida diet is eliminating glucose from your diet. Now, you cannot completely eliminate glucose from your diet, but you are significantly cutting out glucose dense foods. Which would be things like sugar, anything with added sugar in it, obviously. And then things like grains, that would be things like rice or corn or wheat or things made out of those things that a lot of people like, like bread and pasta and cereal.
Mari: So basically all of the things that we enjoy and want to keep doing are off limits?
Leslie: Correct. Right.
Mari: Oh boy.
Leslie: It's a very, very restrictive diet because you've got to get the glucose level down so that you starve the yeast. Okay? So kill it with antifungals and starve it by not providing so much of the food that it needs.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: You do all of that. You go through the pain of this very restrictive diet, and then you have to take all this stuff.
Leslie: Then what happens? Well, people are going to go back to eating what they ate before, because life isn't worth living if you're going to have to stay on an anti-candida diet for the rest of your life.
Mari: Right. Without bread, we know.
Leslie: Exactly right. Then people say, “Well, okay, I killed the candida, now I'm going to live my life.”
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: Let's say there's somebody that needs to take Prilosec because of heartburn.
Leslie: Well, nothing about this sort of candida cleanse or candida treatment does anything to solve the reason why people are getting heartburn.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: So you've got somebody that takes Prilosec routinely for heartburn. Well, okay, I killed my candida. Oh, I've got heartburn again. I'm going to take a Prilosec. So we're right back where we started, where we don't have a properly functioning digestive tract.
Leslie: We don't have the proper acidity and alkalinity. We go back to eating the types of foods that we were eating before with their particular nutrient profile, fiber profile, food additive profile. There’s a lack of vitality in the food profile. What do we think's going to happen? There's candida on everything.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: If we continue to have a hospitable environment for candida in our digestive tract, the candida is going to come right back.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: Okay.
Mari: Isn't it interesting that certain people seem to be very, very, very susceptible to this issue too?
Leslie: Yes. I've talked about the food that we're eating and how it impacts the environment in our digestive tract. I've talked about medications that impact the environment in our digestive tract. I've talked about the stomach's ability, the pancreas, the organs within our digestive tract have to be functioning properly for us to have good digestive function in an environment for the beneficial bacteria.
Leslie: Let's just take the stomach. Okay. We have to have enough acid in the stomach, and then we've got to have enough motility within the stomach to really churn that food up. Before the food goes to the small intestine, the stomach has to break it down adequately. It has to be prepared adequately. Let's say we can't really make enough stomach acid and then we have poor motility or movement within the stomach, we're not going to break that food down properly.
Leslie: Then when it goes in the small intestine, the small intestine is not mashing and grinding our food like our stomach does. It's expecting the food to already be mashed up. Well, what if we still have a lot of chunks of broccoli? The small intestine isn't going to be able to churn it up and break it down like the stomach was supposed to.
Leslie: Then it has to work even harder to try to break those broccoli chunks down. But it's really in a bad spot. It really doesn't have the capacity to do that. Then we're going to have broccoli actually starting to rot within our digestive tract.
Mari: Yeah, gas.
Leslie: You forget to put the broccoli away and you come down in the morning and you say, oh shoot, I left the broccoli out all night.
Leslie: You're not going to eat that broccoli. It's already rotted. It's starting to rot on the counter.
Mari: I feel like broccoli gets a bad rep in so many ways. I've heard so many say it makes me stinky or whatever.
Leslie: If our stomach is not up to the task, our small intestine can only do so much. If we've got these little chunks of broccoli rotting in our digestive tract, well guess what type of bacteria and fungi love rotting food. It’s not the beneficial kind.
Mari: Not the good guys.
Leslie: Our digestive function has a tremendous impact on the bacteria and fungi that are going to find a beneficial or suitable home.
Leslie: So there's so many factors that go into this. The other thing is… once the food goes into the small intestine, then the small intestine slowly is moving it through, moving it through. Then it's got to go into the colon. There's a little sphincter between the small intestine and the colon. A little ring of muscle that closes the small intestine off.
Leslie: Because once stuff goes into the colon, we don't want it to come back up.
Mari: Yeah, no, I've heard that's not pleasant.
Leslie: Mm-hmm. There's a whole different set of bacteria that live in our colon, because the environment is very different. We're getting nutrients out of food in the small intestine. In the colon, we're working on waste material here.
Leslie: It's a different type of bacteria that lives in our colon. So that sphincter, that little muscle ring is between our small intestine and our large intestine, it should be closed. We only want to open that up when we're going to move stuff into the colon, and then we want to shut that right away. Now, let's say we have a weak sphincter.
Leslie: The cells in that sphincter, they're getting a little lazy. They don't have the nutrients they need to function. There is not enough vitality in the area. That little door doesn't shut all the way.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: Well then when our colon is moving stuff around, it's going to squeeze a little bit of that colon bacteria into the small intestine.
Mari: Hmm.
Leslie: Well, that's not supposed to be there.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: But hey, you know what? Maybe they come in from the colon and they say, “Hey, well this small intestine's not doing so hot. It's nearly the same environment as the colon. Maybe I'll live here.”
Mari: Hmm.
Leslie: I'm not seeing a big difference, right? A lot of people have an environment in their small intestine that's so much like their colon, that the bacteria from the colon have taken residence in their small intestine.
Leslie: This is one of the fad diagnoses within the past, uh, five, seven years, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.
Mari: Oh.
Leslie: Well, the bacteria that are overgrowing are the bacteria from the colon, from the large intestine. So again, if I have the proper environment in my small intestine and the door is shut between the two, I might get a little backwash of a little colon bacteria back into my small intestine. But they're going to say, “Oh, wait a minute. This is not the place for us. I need to get back in the colon. This is not the right environment for me.”
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: We’re going to have an overgrowth of bacteria depending on all of these factors within the digestive tract. We have to have proper digestive function of all of the organs of the digestive tract.
Leslie: We have a sphincter between our stomach and our small intestine because we're supposed to keep the food in the stomach until it's ready to go in the small intestines. There's this same type of muscle ring. We have a sphincter between the esophagus and the stomach. Because once the food's in the stomach with all that acid and the stomach is churning and pumping, we have to keep the door shut to the esophagus.
Leslie: Otherwise, all that acid in food is going to come back up in our esophagus. When people have heartburn, that little sphincter is not shut, the door is not staying shut. We're getting all this reflux of acid and food back into the esophagus. There's all these little parts and pieces of our digestive tract that have to be functioning properly, that wall off different areas, different bacteria and fungi are going to live in the different areas and thrive if it's the right environment. If it's the wrong environment, we're going to have the wrong stuff taking up residents and finding a great place to live.
Mari: What are the symptoms that you might have if you're having all of this overgrowth in your gut?
Leslie: So particularly with candida, but this is true for all of these microbes. Every living organism generates metabolic waste material. So all the cells in our body generate metabolic waste material as they're doing their work. Bacteria and fungi are no exception to that. When we have an overgrowth of the quote unquote bad bugs, they are going to be generating their own metabolic waste material, candida in particular. What happens is, you've got these bacteria and these little fungi cells. They pump out their waste material. They don't keep it in the cell. They pump it outside of the cell, they get rid of it. It's like, “I don't want all this trash in here. Get it out of here.” So they pump it into our digestive tract, which we then absorb into our bloodstream.
Leslie: With candida, there's a pattern of symptoms that happen when people have a candida overgrowth because the candida metabolic waste material, when it is absorbed into us, the body generates certain symptoms when that happens. They're toxic molecules, they damage things. They don't make us feel very good.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: This is the effect of having the wrong bacteria or the quote unquote bad bugs in our digestive tract. We're going to have this metabolic waste material that's going to cause us problems. The beneficial bacteria, they have metabolic waste material as well, but it's not harmful for us. We have coexisted with these bugs.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: You have sort of the blatant symptoms of a candida overgrowth, and so this would be actually like a white coating in the mouth or on the throat, that's called thrush. Infants can get that. People can get infections from candida. Breastfeeding women can get mastitis. It’s a candida infection in the breast, then usually the baby will get that too.
Leslie: Their mouth or their throat will get coated with white and it's very painful. You can have a yeast infection in the vaginal tract, so you have a discharge, you have itching, inflamed symptoms. Unpleasant symptoms. But you can have a lower level of overgrowth. You have to have a pretty significant amount of overgrowth to have white coating on your throat.
Leslie: That's a pretty significant overgrowth. Less significant overgrowth can still cause symptoms because of this metabolic waste material. And so people can feel tired, they can feel fatigued, they can have muscle pain or joint pain. They can have digestive symptoms because the toxics are right there in the digestive tract first.
Leslie: People can have gas and bloating and belching or just not feeling so good. You can have these symptoms that are not obviously a yeast overgrowth. They're sort of maybe coming and going. Some days my muscles hurt or my joints hurt. Some days they don't. Some days those candida are going to be really gorging themselves on the glucose and really pumping out metabolic waste materials.
Leslie: Some days your liver is going to be more able to clear those candida waste materials from your body, and then you'd feel a little bit better. The symptoms can go up and down. They're much more subtle symptoms than, “oh, I've got a white coating on my throat.”
Mari: Can people confuse some of this stuff? Like, will I have celiac issues, or can some of these be confused with these issues?
Leslie: For sure. Right. Because how many Americans are fatigued and feel a little foggy?
Mari: 98%,
Leslie: Yeah. Throw a stone and you're going to hit somebody that's foggy and fatigued.
Mari: Exactly.
Leslie: It can generate symptoms that are not really characteristic. And then again, you know, feeling foggy and fatigued. Well, I am getting older or this and that.
Leslie: A lot of people think that's normal aging, things like that. A lot of times people may not even associate that they have a symptom. If they have fatigue or muscle pain or something like that, a whole host of conditions have muscle pain. A lot of drug side effects have these symptoms too, right? So if somebody's on medication, is it a drug side effect?
Leslie: I mean, the list of things that you could go down if somebody is fatigued, foggy. has muscle pain, that's a tremendous list of potential diagnoses.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: Is candida a factor for migraines? If we have an overload of metabolic waste material and toxins, that is a blocker or an overload within what I call the second principle.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: For those of you that have been following the podcast, I talk about the three things that we have to do to restore and maintain our health. I call these the three principles. The second principle to restoring our health and maintaining our health is that we have to clear metabolic waste material and toxins.
Leslie: If some of the metabolic waste material that has accumulated in our body is from candida, that's going to cause us problems.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: Candida is not a direct quote, unquote cause of migraines. One of the reasons why people have migraines is because they have an overload of metabolic waste materials and toxins.
Leslie: If you have chronic migraines, you have a deficiency or you have blockers or missing pieces within all three of these principles. That includes the second.
Mari: So in a very roundabout way, candida has something to do with migraines, but it's not the cause of your migraines?
Leslie: Correct. If you have a candida overgrowth, then we have a dysfunction within the digestive tract. We have an environment within the digestive tract that's conducive to candida.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: If we have a digestive tract that is beneficial and life supporting to candida, that is a blocker within the first principle. The first principle is getting the nutrients that our cells need to every cell in the body.
Leslie: Well, what does that have to do with my digestion? Well, guess what. How do we get the nutrients out of our food? Through our digestive process. So, if we don't have good digestive function, no matter what we eat, we could be eating the most pristine, nutrient dense diet on the planet but if we don't have good digestive function, we're not going to be able to get those nutrients out of the food.
Leslie: We're not going to be able to get the nutrients into the body, and we're not going to be able to get them to the cells. If we have a candida overgrowth, we know that we have an issue with the digestive function. We've got a blocker within that first principle. If we have a blocker within the first principle and the second principle, we are going to develop a blocker within the third principle. The third principle to restoring and maintaining our health is increasing our resiliency and vitality.
Leslie: Okay, this comes down to the cellular level, the proper cellular voltage for good cell function. In order for our digestive tract to function properly, those cells have to be at the right voltage. In order for our liver to clear metabolic waste material, our own or candida waste material, those cells in the liver have to have the right cellular voltage.
Leslie: All three of these principles are at work here, even when we're talking about candida.
Mari: I think if I've learned anything from all of these podcasts, it's just how interconnected everything is. You can't separate one part of your body from the other and expect it to function properly or not to have an effect on each other.
Leslie: Correct. We are a very, very complex system. Complex systems have organizing principles and the organizing principles to the body are these three principles. When we are dealing with a complex system, whether it's an ecosystem or our body, you want to intervene, not by trying to manipulate the ecosystem, how many fish are in the pond, and how many species of plant life are in the pond, and I'm going take these fish out, I'm going to add these plants.
Leslie: That doesn't work. You want to operate on the organizing principles of the ecosystem, and then the natural intelligence of the ecosystem is going to take it from there. It's going to put the right amount of fish in there and the right amount of plant life in there, etc. The same as with our body. You cannot go in there and expect to micromanage the interplay between the 30 to 40 trillion cells of our body and likely even more trillions of bacterial and fungal cells that are on us.
Leslie: You're not going to be able to play God with that level of complexity.
Mari: You are severely outnumbered there.
Leslie: Correct. Yeah. We're not that smart. But there are organizing principles to the complex system that is our body. When you intervene within those principles, the body responds and evens out and does what it is supposed to do.
Leslie: What we are used to thinking about when it comes to our health, and even when it comes to interventions and ecosystems; we are used to thinking about what is the one thing that's causing this, and how do I fix that. One thing, and we did a podcast last year on this, we can link it in the notes, the title was What's the one thing I need to do for my Migraines.
Leslie: This is what we're always looking for. What is the one thing that's causing my migraines? If I could just find that one thing and fix that one thing, then I wouldn't have the migraines. But it's not one thing that's causing chronic migraines. By the time we have chronic migraines, we have deficiencies or blockers or missing pieces within all three of these principles.
Leslie: They're highly interrelated. We can't have a candida overgrowth unless we have deficiencies in blockers within these three principles. What do you think, Mari? Did we cover it? Do you have any other good questions for me?
Mari: Gosh. I never knew I could talk for almost an hour about candida, but here we are.
Leslie: About a fun guy.
Mari: Yeah. So amazing that I just didn't realize it was going to be such an involved conversation about that. It's interesting.
Leslie: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mari: And the complicated way our bodies work is really fascinating.
Leslie: Isn't it though?
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: One thing that I will say, actually, just as we end here… when I was in naturopathic medical school around 15 years ago and when candida was the big thing in the natural medicine space, I was taught that you have to put people on a severely restrictive candida diet. Where they eliminate all of the foods that they like to eat, for months.
Leslie: You don't do this for a weekend. It takes months to starve these yeast. Then adding in natural antifungal agents and even sometimes writing a prescription because I can write prescriptions as a naturopathic physician, sometimes even writing a script for a prescription antifungal.
Mari: Great.
Leslie: This is how I was taught.
Leslie: Now when you go through all of this, the candida fungi are going to die off. So guess what happens when they die? They burst open and release all their metabolic waste material at once.
Mari: Eww.
Leslie: Oh yeah.
Mari: I was like, wait a minute. What?
Leslie: Uhhuh. When they're alive and they're doing their work, they're eating their glucose, they're generating their waste material and they're pumping it out. They're pumping it out at a slow pace. We're kind of being slowly poisoned when they die. When a cell dies, it splits open.
Leslie: So when you kill the candida at a rapid rate, then they all die. They all split open and then they all dump all of their metabolic waste material into your digestive tract and then it goes into your bloodstream. Boy, is that a great way to get a migraine.
Mari: Right. I'm sure most migraine sufferers would be like, well then this diet's not working. So then they stop and then they go back to it and it's like just repeat cycle, repeat.
Leslie: Exactly when I was trained on this approach, the caution was you have to figure out just how slowly you can do it so that people don't get sick. People who've never had a headache in their life can get a rip roaring migraine doing a candida cleanse or candida diet, let alone somebody who's prone to migraines.
Leslie: Forget it.
Mari: Why is it that all of these solutions seem to like carbon copies of each other? Just a very tiny difference. Take all of these things out of your diet, X, Y, and Z things out of your diet. Take these supplements and like you said, it's just searching for that one thing that will work.
Leslie: Exactly without thinking about, “Wait a minute here. If everyone is surrounded by candida spores at all times, how come it has overgrown in some people and not in others?”
Mari: Great.
Leslie: This is what we don't think about when we are thinking about our chronic health conditions or our symptoms. We need to think about the environment that the body is in.
Leslie: That is going to be a tremendous determining factor, and we have a physical environment and a mental and emotional environment that our bodies are in also. Talk about how complex the physical environment is. We won't even get into the mental and emotional environment on this one.
Mari: Right. Yep.
Leslie: Well, thanks again Mari, for joining me and asking me your good questions as usual.
Mari: Thank you. Yep. We'll see you guys next time.
