Please help. Biofilm? Hope? Advice?

I’ve somewhat reached a wall and I was wondering if anyone has some good advice.

I got a food allergy Panel test which also included a reaction towards Candida Albicans. I also got a Microbial Organic Acid Test. The food allergy Panel reported severe activity with Candida Albicans and my Microbial Organic Acid Test showed my Arabinose levels off the charts. So my naturopath told me to take Nystatin 3x a day for 2 weeks along with VSL#3 at night and to also go on a diet where I avoided simple carbohydrates, alcohol, and sugars. I was to follow the diet, nystatin and probiotics for 2 weeks, then stop the nystatin and continue the diet and probiotics for 1 week, and then start the nystatin again with the probiotics and diet for another two weeks. During this 5-week period, just the first week I noticed some die-off symptoms (I felt really tired with very light flu-like symptoms). After that, the only symptom I had consistently was this fogginess, or as if my vision was a little glossy, although I could see perfectly fine. And throughout the 5 weeks, I would occasionally experience symptoms that I would experience from before when I wasn’t on the treatment regimen. In a nutshell, if I have a combination of food and alcohol for dinner (for example, spaghetti carbonara and a glass of red italian wine–spaghetti carbonara consists of the spaghetti itself, of course, 1 egg, cheese, homemade ground italian sausage, and asparagus) then about 2-3 hours later, always occurring at night, I would start feeling sick. Namely, I would suddenly wake up and feel like my heart was beating faster, I would have difficulty breathing, I would have a lot of anxiety, I would need to go to the bathroom multiple times, the first time being a regular bowel movement, and then afterwards it would turn into diarrhea, and between all this, I would have to urinate every 10-15 minutes, and it would miraculously be clear as water. I would also start feeling nauseous and feel like I needed to vomit, although I never did. This would last 6-7 hours until I finally felt like the storm passed. Let’s title this occurrence a “Night Episode” for the sake of this post. Before I was diagnosed with Candida, I thought it was low stomach acid and I discovered Betaine HCL, which 7/10 times would allow me to eat the foods and alcohol that I wanted, without having one of those night episodes. But 3/10 times, it would fail and I’d be up all night.

So after the 5-week regimen, I did another Microbial Organic Acid test (the results of which I’m still waiting for because it takes 2 weeks) and I thought I would try reintroducing foods. So one day I had a very small plate of macaroni and cheese (like 15 rigatoni pasta tubes worth). I was fine that night. The next day, I had the same quantity of pasta with a chocolate chip cookie and at night I had the famous spaghetti carbonara with 5-6 sips of red wine. Well…that night I had an episode. Up again all night after being clear of episodes for 3 weeks straight (longest time without one). My conclusion…the treatment plan hadn’t worked. During this time though, on my diet, I was also having whole wheat bread (I have no gluten allergy), some potatoes, and some corn (like corn tortillas).

So I researched and came upon this biofilm concept. By the way, I restarted the diet the very next day after my night episode. So I called my naturopath and told him what had happened. He really was stumped as to how the treatment plan couldn’t have worked. I brought up the concept of the biofilm and he made it sound like it was more for bacterial overgrowth rather than candida. Anyways, he suggested that I get a few colon hydrotherapy sessions as well as start using Interfase Plus while doing the entire treatment plan over again.

Here’s my new daily routine (this time with no complex carbs either):

Morning – 2 hours before breakfast, 3 Interfase Plus capsules + 1 N-acetyl-cysteine capsule. 1 hour before breakfast, 1 tablet of 500,000 nystatin. After breakfast, 5,000mg of L-Glutamine, 1 tablespoon of coconut oil (or 4 capsules of coconut oil), 1 capsule of r-lipoic acid, 1 500mg Vitamin C capsule, 1 capsule of Pantothenic Acid (Vitamin B5).

Between breakfast and lunch, I will pour 4-6 drops of oregano oil in a little water and drink it down.

Afternoon – A couple hours after lunch, I will take another 3 Interfase Plus capsules + 1 n-acetyl-cystiene capsule. And an hour after that, I will have another nystatin tablet. With lunch, I would have had coconut oil/capsules.

Night – most of the time before dinner (if enough time has elapsed since lunch) I will take another 2 Interfase Plus capsules + 1 n-acetyl-cysteine capsule and an hour later 1 nystatin tablet. With dinner, I would have had coconut oil/capsules.

Before I go to bed, I have another capsule of r-lipoic acid, another 500mg of vitamin C, and another capsule of Pantothenic Acid (Vitamin B5) as well as 1 or 2 capsules of VSL#3.

So right now, it’s been about 3 days since I’ve started the Interfase Plus, and still no die-off symptoms. Am I doing something wrong? I just don’t get it. I want to eat normally and enjoy my life again and not be afraid I’m going to have a night episode all the time.

If it helps, the things that I believe led me to this place is the following:

I was born via cesarean section so I think I missed out on the good flora of my mom through regular birth. Then my mom breastfed me but after 6 months or so, she gave me regular milk which I guess gave me an allergic reaction because I was so colicky, I would get ear infections all the time until I was like 8 (remember that pink Antibiotic liquid??) and then after I started having asthma. Meanwhile, every time I caught a cold, I would take some kind of Antibiotics , either Zithromax, or Biaxin, or something of that sort. In high school I had anxiety when going out at night with friends, so my doctor told me to pop a Zantac every time before and it would “calm my stomach.” Ignorant of what Zantac actually did, I popped them like candy. Then my mom passed away and I started drinking, a lot. So I would get heartburn and I would take more Zantac and doctors would sometimes give me Nexium as well. Then I started getting multiple cases of food poisoning and doctors insisted that I continue on Nexium. My bowel movements started becoming irregular and I was straining a lot so doctors thought I had small intestinal bacterial overgrowth and gave me Xifaxan (very strong Antibiotics , but not systemic, only for the gut). Nothing got better, so another doctor suggested I re-do the Xifaxan but this time, watching that I don’t have too much Sugar to feed the bacteria. This time, I took even more doses per day and for a longer period of time (14 days). Nothing was getting better. I started having this constant urge to take a deep breath and I almost always felt this tightness in my sternum (which I still have during my diet and treatment for Candida), I had constant heartburn and I would have those night episodes as well in between. After this is when I discovered Betaine HCL and that helped me for several months until I felt like I didn’t want to take these pills for the rest of my life so I also got the Hiedelberg test which showed me stomach acid levels to be absolutely normal. The only possibility left was Candida and the test results I spoke of before showed I had it.

Please, any help is very much appreciated. I’ve lost 10 pounds. I’m 6’1″ and weigh only 145 now. And it keeps going down no matter how many almonds, almond butter, coconut oil and avocados I eat.

Thank you in advance.

-Jon Tweet