Controlling the candida

It's now been more than a couple of months that I found out about an overgrowth of candida albicans (a yeast that is naturally found in the gut) possibly being the culprit behind alcoholism, or at least the physical part of the addiction.

For the past 2 months I've been on a strict candida diet, meaning: no fermented products, no refined carbs, no sugars, no fruits, no alcohol. Also, I've been maintaining a vegan diet for a while, too. Alongside the diet, I've been experimenting with different kinds of herbal antifungals, of which oil of oregano, caprylic acid and undecenoic acid (formula SF722, manufactured by Thorne Research labs) are the best ones. The problem with most antifungals is that eventually the yeast develop resistance to them, but since the latter 3 mentioned here are actually fungicidal, they will always kill whatever excess yeast are growing in your intestine.

The prediction was that by taking these anti-fungals and by having a restrictive diet that would starve the yeast, that the cravings for alcohol would go away. This turned out to be true. Before controlling my yeast, my cravings for booze manifested themselves in 2 components: the physical addiction and the mental addiction. For the mental addiction, I'd suddenly have a thought, often nostalgic, of how nice it was during the "good old days" when I'd be able to sink in to a false paradise provided by a cold 12-pak. So in this case, the craving was of a cerebral nature. The physical part of the addiction produced a different kind of craving: the kind where my entire body sends me the "I WANT IT NOW" message. This latter kind of craving is always more sudden, more maniacal, and much harder to resist.

So when I did the yeast diet and took the antifungals, the "I WANT IT NOW" cravings went away. (It was at that point that I was able to actually distinguish these two different kinds of cravings.) From time to time I did have the more cerebral kind of cravings, where I'd suddenly think to myself, "right now I feel very _____, so wouldn't it be nice if I had a 12 pak to escape from the world." But the good thing about cerebral cravings is that you can reason with them fairly easily to make them go away, like, "But if I drink, then I'll lose the ability to have good sleep, to have good concentration, to let my body heal completely from all the years of drinking, etc." So my point is that by controling the yeast, half the battle is won, because you are removing the physical part of the addiction. What remains then is the other half, the cerebral part, which has more to do with why you are unhappy, or dysfunctional, to begin with. As far as I see it, it is easier to fight one enemy than two of them. In fact, from personal experience, I'd rarely win a fight against those two, for over the 15 years that I drank heavily.

So as it turned out, I stayed sober for 2 months until last friday, when I treated myself to all of the bad stuff: That morning I had a few doughnuts and a yeast-friendly lunch. Then after work, I picked up a 12 pak of my favorite beer, got a big plate of BBQ ribs and hot wings, and a huge bag of potato chips. I got stuffed and drunk, of course, and this time around, I didn't feel guilty about it. In the past when I used to get drunk, I'd always feel this strong sense of guilt the next day.

So at this point, I'm convinced that controlling the overgrowth of yeast in my body is key to suppressing the urge to drink. If I can easily stay sober for 2 months with a minimal amount of effort (other than to maintain a strict anti-yeast diet), then I'm not worried about anything, really.

I recommend to everyone who might be interested in this alternative approach to dealing with alcoholism to take a look at the Candida Forum on curezone, because there are many valuble insights about how to deal with candida, which seems to be a bigger problem in our society than many people would like to think.

Another trick I learned recently from that forum is how to deal with the curious observation that many people with candida seem to produce low levels of stomach acid (HCl). The idea is that the stomach secretes the acid to digest food, especially proteins, and lower the pH so as to kill excess microbial growth. So if you don't have enough acid, then your food won't be digested sufficiently, and you will have an excess of undigested materials sitting around in your gut. Since it is known that candida acts primarily as a scavenger, mopping up whatever your body can't digest on its own, the hypothesis is that the candida opportunistically proliferates when it is given such a large amount of "free food". The same is true of course when you flood your GI tract with alcoholic beverages, when you go on a drinking binge: all of those carbohydrates/sugars (alcohol is actually a kind of carbohydrate) become a delicious picnic for the yeast, and they will proliferate when given the opportunity. I'm also tempted to speculate that perhaps exposing the cells in your stomach to a constant barage of alcohol might diminish their ability to make acid. That in itself would create a vicious cycle.

So to deal with low stomach acid, you can take HCl supplements as well as Calcium supplements, which are thought to stimulate the parietal cells in the stomach to start secreting more acid again. After a month of this treatment, I have found that I don't need to take as much HCl supplements, so it looks like my stomach is making more of its own acid. I'm very pleased with this development.

Regarding my binge from last weekend (it was just as much a binge and a celebration, as it was an experiment), I noticed that my hangover symptoms were different, or greatly diminished while taking the antifungals (SF722 is my favorite -- it's supposedly one of the strongest non-synthetic compounds available). Actually during the day of the hangover, I made sure I took plenty of SF722. In the past, a hangover would have instantly meant a few days of intense moodiness, anger, sadness, etc. as well as the inability to concentrate and get good sleep. Not to mention much bloating and flatulence. What I noticed this time around is that my mood didn't suffer, and neither did my sleep or concentration. Of course I felt a little weak and tired the day after, but that was it. No bad gas or bloating, either.

Likewise, throughout my previous 8 weeks, of the candida diet, I've noticed that my ability to concentrate has improved greatly. For the past decade, I avoided reading books simply because I thought that I had outgrown them. But now, I've been devouring books over the past several weeks, and I'm even writing one of my own. I feel like a part of my life has been given back to me, like a gift.

Also, my mood is a lot more stable, and my behavior is a lot more rational. Before I got on the candida diet, my mental state was very volatile, and I was more likely to do irrational things, and get upset by small stuff. And as I said before, no more gas or bloating. My digestion has greatly improved through this diet and also through Liver Flushing (which also would be most useful to an alcoholic).

So all in all, as I said before, I'm convinced that a candida overgrowth was responsible for me becoming an alcoholic. The original trigger of course was due to some bad psychological things that happened to me in my crazy family, but what really brought the alcoholism to the intensity and frequency that it got to, at its worst, was the biological dimension, caused by the candida growing out of control in my intestine. If you can control your candida, then you will have a much easier time suppressing your alcoholism.

Wow, what a long letter I've written here today! Tweet