Ever wonder which anti-candida products also kill the good bacteria? And which don't? So did I. So I did culture experiments using each of the products in the list at the bottom of this message, testing each one in milk with probiotics added, in a yogurt maker. I did a plain milk/probiotic culter each time as a comparison, in side-by-side containers.

Surprise! All three of the caprylic acid products I tested killed the good guys, despite the fact that manufacturers often say caprylic acid doesn't harm them.

Another surprise! Raw garlic completely killed the probiotics - not one speck of yogurt showed up in that batch! So if you take raw garlic, you better be also taking probiotics to replenish the good guys you are killing, and take that probiotic at a different part of the day than you are taking the raw garlic. Note that cooked garlic fell into the mostly safe result - that container looked totally different than the one with the raw garlic.

Another surprise (to me): the prescription Diflucan, which kills candida, only slightly reduced probiotics. Same thing with nystatin. Both of these prescriptions were much, much safer on the probiotics than raw garlic was.

And further shocks to me were the results of the enzyme products: the only enzyme product that I tested that was completely safe for the good guys was the one that only has cellulase, with no other enzymes in it. All of the other enzyme products I tested, that have protease, lipase, or other enzymes, killed the probiotics. Shees, so every time we take a digestive enzyme that has protease or lipase in it, we are risking our good guys...although healthy people would have enough good guys that the benefits of enzymes outweigh any risk, those of us with severe depletion of probiotics in the candida battle need to consider this carefully.

1. Products that tested "completely safe" on probiotics (they allowed the entire container to form yogurt, and resulting yogurt has a strong yogurt smell, with no off smells at all):

Enzyme product that has cellulase and amylase as its only enzymes
Raw onions

2. Products that tested "mostly safe" on probiotics (they allowed at least 60% of the container to form yogurt, and resulting yogurt had at least some yogurt smell, with no off smells at all):

Lamisil
Diflucan
Nystatin
Iosol Iodine drops
Tea tree oil
Peppermint oil
Cooked garlic

Note: I didn't find that I had any "grey area" between categories 2 and 3: the containers were either very obviously in category 2, or very obviously in category 3.

3. Products that tested "Not safe" on probiotics (they either didn't allow any yogurt blob to form at all, or they allowed a small blob to form but that blob had a very "off" smell, with no normal yogurt smell at all, indicating that the result wasn't really yogurt)

Several types of Antibiotics (no surprise that these didn't allow yogurt to form)
Goldenseal (an herb that fights infections and possibly fights candida)
Raw garlic
Mycopryl brand time-released caprylic acid
Caprystatin brand time-released caprylic acid
Capryl brand caprylic acid
Nattokinase enzyme supplement
Pancreatin
Zyme-prime brand multi-enzyme supplement
Lipase enzyme powder