The exploration of Nature for some solutions of these health challenges threw up the orange peel as a cure for some conditions, including inflamations cough, asthma and skin blemishes. So were good, old garlic and onion. I meet later with Mrs. Yemisi Ojo of Zenith Bank and reminded her of the onion juice nose flush for her cough and catarrh a few years ago, and she confirmed it to her colleagues as a cure. These remedies were some of the ammunition in the armoury. In the first part of the series two weeks ago, Shark Liver Oil was easily the star remedy for cold and flu and other ailments which included vision challenge, blood clots, skin conditions and some cancers. In that segment, also, an what may appear as a passing remark was made about a study by the reputable Mayo Clinic which linked the occurrence of Sinusitis to the activity of candida albicans a fungus often classified as a member of the 200 – plus varieties of the yeast family. In today’s part of the series, the Mayo Clinic study is further explored. An outcome of this is the impression that many diseases which are assumed to have different origins actually derive from candida overgrowth the system. Thus, a headache may not be caused primarily by muscle and nerve spasms which, in the case of migraine, may be injecting too much blood into the brain but by another factor, in this case Candida albicans, which bring the muscle and nerve agitation about. The scenario paints for me the picture of a kite fluttering in the air, tugging hither and thither. Does it on its own do this or is there someone somewhere on the ground maneuvering its string? The following column attempts to answer this question and more in respect of the connection between sinusitis, mucus discharge and systemic candidiasis…
THE THOUGHT OF CANDIDA is the beginning of wisdom for many women. For among many of them candida is associated only with embarrassing infections in the vagina which cause itching, thick white discharge, pain during sexual intercourse, and swollen tissue around the vagina, bleeding and burning during urination among others. About seven in 10 women are reported to experience virginal candidiasis at least once in a lifetime. Many others contract it routinely. The causes may range from sexual transmission and the wearing of infected briefs which are not laundered with hot iron to the over use of broad spectrum antibiotics, birth control pills, hormonal changes, especially before and after menstruation, and a diet superfluous in simple sugars. Candida lives naturally in the vagina, mouth, throat and in the intestine along with other micro-organisms which act as a check on one another.
This balance of forces is important to keep candida within its bounds. One of the useful anti-candida operatives in these places is a group of bacteria called friendly bacteria or probiotic. Among other functions already mentioned, they produce lactic acid which makes these candida habitat inhospitable for candida population overgrowth. This count lever is removed through the use of antibiotics which wipe away probiotic. Candida has a field day. Candida has a better field day when the diet is rich in simple sugars because yeast feeds on simple sugar. Any Nigerian in the 1980s or thereabout when Professor OlukoyeRansome-Kuti was health minister of General Ibrahim Babangida’s military government should easily remember KARGASOK TEA. Kargasok is a rural locality in Russia. Kargasok tea, which found its way to Nigeria from there, was known by common local Russian names such as kombucha tea, kombucha mushroom or mancaurian tea or spumonto. It is said not to be a fungus or a mushroom but a gray pancake-shaped patty. The patty grows when it is placed in a mixture of black tea and sugar.
This leads to fermentation of the tea and sugar to a mix grill of yeast and bacteria. It was amazing in those days how a cut of the kargasok yeast (as it was known in Nigeria) not bigger than a beer bottle cap could grow in two weeks to the size of a dining table top that can seat eight persons. In Nigeria as in Russia, drinking the tea was said to cure many ailments. But there was no scientific evidence to validate these claims. Prof. Ransome-Kuti, a pediatrician, waged a one-man battle against the consumption of kargasok tea in Nigeria. Today, with the knowledge of yeast proliferation in the body Prof. Olukoye-Ransome-Kuti immeasurable gratitude for this one-man battle. Today, I wonder about how many yeast cells many of us kargasok tea drinkers would have fed our bodies with, and if this may not account for the proliferation of many diseases today, going by the insight of the Mayo Clinic study. For not all the strands of the pancake patty could be filtered out of the tea.
Mayo Clinic Study
Altogether, mayo clinic examined 210 patients. Of these, 96 percent had fungi in their mucus. An average patient had between three and four strains of fungi in their mucus. This led to the questioning of the traditional orthodox medicine belief that only about 10 percent of sinusitis cases were caused by fungi. That meant that if the assumption of the cause of sinusitis was wrong, the premise of its treatment, that false assumption, would also be wrong.
In that wrong premise, the mayo study suggested, were the following wrong prescriptions for acute sinusitis.
- Antibiotics, to kill bacteria
- Analgesic, to reduce pain
- Decongestant
- Corticosteroid
According to a publication of MAYO CLINIC: “Mayo Clinic researchers have proposed that most chronic sinus infections maybe caused by an immune system response to fungi.
Many studies at Mayo Clinic have added evidence to the thinking that chronic rhinosinusitis is caused by an immune reaction to fungi in the nose. Our original study linking rhinosinusitis to fungi in the nose, which was published in the Mayo clinic proceedings in September 1999, has been reproduced and confirmed by a sinus centre in Europe (ENT University Hospital in Graz, Austria).
There are currently 16 studies at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, to further investigate the role of fungi in inflammatory disease of the respiratory tract. In addition, researchers from the Allergic Disease Research Laboratory at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester found that certain white lood cells called T-Lympocytes are reacting to the fungi and were producing the kind of inflamation we see in the sinuses, and that healthy people did not react in that way. This work was presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology and will be published soon. The evidence was so convincing that the National Institute of Health (NIH) has given Mayo Clinic a S2.5 million grant to further investigate the mechanisms behind this immunologic response to the fungi. If you have chronic sinusitis, that is, a sinus inflamation that persists for three months or longer, we recommend that you see your personal physician or an ear, nose and throat specialist (otorhinolaryngologist) for the pronate treatment for this disease many times, the disease is associated with asthma or allergies and treatment of those associated problems tends to help the chronic sinusitis.
Antibiotics do not help chronic sinusitis in the long run because they target bacteria, which are not usually the cause of chronic sinusitis.
Antihistamins, nasal steroids, sprays and systemic steroids are the mainstays of treatment today, depending on the symptoms of the patients. Over the counter medications, including salt water nasal washes and must sprays are useful in treating the symptoms of chronic sinusitis, but do not eliminate the inflammation.”
Harvard University, community on the Mayo Clinic study, produces a link to LISA RICHARDS on www.the candidadiet.com Richards says:
“Treating a chronic sinusitis with antibiotics could actually make it worse, because the balance of the intestinal flora would be further disturbed. Even though the evidence might seem clear this wasn’t filtered through to common medical practice. Just take a look at the list of most common treatment for sinusitis on webMD.com first on the list is antibiotics (even through a chronic infection is far more likely to be fungal than bacterial). Next up are Decongestants, to relieve nasal congestion, Analgesic, to relieve any pain, and, finally, Corticosteroids, to relieve inflammation. These treatments are either addressing the wrong problem (i.e. the antibiotics) or simply attempting to relieve the symptoms. The one thing that is totally absent from this list is any kind of treatment for fungal infection. And according to the research from the mayo clinic, there is a 96 percent chance that fungus is the underlying cause of your chronic sinus problems.”
Candida beyond chronic sinusitis
There is increasing scientific evidence worldwide that Candida is at work in many diseases, including cancer. Even when the low thyroid gland is blamed for about 250 degenerative diseases or more, can the thyroid gland, like the kite fluttering in the air, not be responding to an agitation, say, from Candida? Italian Dr. Tullio Simoncini says in his book, CANCER IS A FUNGUS, that he routinely treats it successfully in many cases with bicarbonate of soda. Under the section titled Baking soda treatment for cancer, he advises that:“this treatment should not be used for more than three weeks at a time. During the first week, no more than two teaspoonful’s a day of baking soda should be taken orally. During the second and third weeks, no more than one teaspoon of baking soda should be taken orally. Only under the care of a medical practitioner should this maximum internal doses be exceeded. For skin cancer and other external cancers (including a rectal enema), where the baking soda solution comes into direct contact with the cancer, the restriction does not apply. This treatment is primarily used for cancer of the digestive tract, including cancers of the throat, colon, intestines, rectal area, and other cancers in-between. Cancers outside the digestive tract generally need a health practitioner to inject the baking soda solution.
Dr. Simoncini has been persecuted as a quack and his license has been withdrawn. He is even not permitted to answer questions on baking soda therapy in his email.
His therapy goal is similar to that of many alternative medicine physicians who, like him, believe Candida and even cancer manifest when the internal environment is grossly acidic, and that a reversal to status quo ante is possible hen the intestinal environment is alkaline. Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) is alkaline. But too much of it may over alkalize and cause hyper alkalinity problems.
In our time, it is possible no one has pushed this need to alkalize and fight Candida, yeast or mold harder than Dr. Robert young, author of pH Miracle , a book which teaches the reader how to prevent his or body from becoming acidified and prone to diseases. Dr. Young makes a distinction between bacteria and Candida along the thinking of science and medicine greats as naturopath Stephen Huer of Sonny Vale, California who said they evolve from microscopic proteins in the blood. “Much like the butterfly starts out as an egg, becomes a caterpillar, and finally becomes a butterfly”, says huer, “so, too, can this microscopic blood protein called the symprotit\prion become a bacteria in the blood and then a fungus in the tissues.” He adds: “monitoring the life cycle of this protein can give you the correct understanding of biology to help you heal cancer, arthritis, Candida, chronic fatigue syndrome, prostate issues, multiple sclerosis, bacterial, viral and yeast infections, depression, sleep disorders, headaches, constipation, excess body fat, potency or fertility problems, premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and menopause” Dr. Robert Young speaks of a microscopic organism inside every living cell, human, animal or plant, named MICROZYMA which is inert in the cell for as long as the cell is alkaline. At varying stages of acidosis in the cell, microzyma evolves, he says, first into bacteria, virus, or yeast (fungi, Candida, mold etc).
These various stages generate various levels in the severity of symptoms. To reverse the symptoms to status quo ante calls for removal of toxins which caused the acidosis and them alkalizing the system. Modern orthodox medicine adopts, rather, the position of destroying the bacteria or fungi or yeast with antibiotics and antifungals without detoxifying the cell and alkalinizing it. The result is that bacteria, yeast and virus die, anyway, why the drugs leave the system not only more toxic and acidic, but with an impaired balance in the crucial balance between friendly (probiotic) and unfriendly bacteria. Some other day, the toxicity and acidosis would make more microzyma devolve that are more resistant to those drugs. And, with little or no check by friendly bacteria, the emerging, more virulent bacteria or yeast would easily over run the body.
That is most probably why, today, there is more Candida albicans in the vagina, mouth, throat, stomach, and intestine of many people. Studies worldwide suggest that more than 70 percent of the world’s population is afflicted with an overgrowth of Candida albicans. If you check your tongue in the mirror, it is likely to be heavily patched with a gray carpet over the pinkish-red tongue. Viewed under a microscope, the tongue presents like a garden bed of mushroom. The cap is visible at the top. The mycelium has dug deep into the tongue tissue with long roots. In the throat, Candida may grow similarly, causing such infections that predispose the sufferer to, say, sleep apnea, in sleep apnea, the sufferer finds it difficult to breathe in his sleep and may experience near-death situations often attributable to witches in this part of the world. What happens in sleep apnea is that infection at the back of the throat causes inflammation there which narrows the air space passage. It may also be the cause of snoring. In the brain, Candida may cause autism in infants and brain fogginess in adults. In the throat, it has been the cause of malignancies which may warrant the entire throat being removed and replaced with a section of the intestine. In people not so lucky, the vocal cord may be removed as well.
Where this happens, the patients may be unable to produce a sound, let alone speak for life. In the intestine, roots of Candida may bore such holes in intestinal wall through which leakages may occur into adjourning cavity. This is called leaky gut syndrome. If the leakage falls on the adjourning prostate gland in the region of the rectum, prostate enlargement or prostate cancer may occur. If undigested food particles leak out of the intestine, immune cells may recognise them as foreign bodies and purse them. The immune system may therefore open fire on tissue which incorporates these molecules, damaging them in auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. Some headaches follow this pathway. Ditto many organs, including the kidneys, the lungs and the heart, not to mention the pancreas (diabetes) the eye (vision questions), the reproductive organs (fertility questions), we cannot forget digestive problems, abdominal cramps, bloating, food allergies etc.
So, how do we rid our bodies naturally of candida? That’s a question for another day.