Candida & Biofilms - Theory & Protocol

[leela]

@PathogenKiller , as an aside, you could you point me to the microscope you have? I've been looking at getting one, but dunno much about them and so don't really know what features to look for.

 

[Gestalt]

Gestalt: some questions/comments on this thread -- you mentioned seeing somewhere that "candida produces thiamine", but I worry that what the study means is that yeast produces enough thiamine for its own use, not that it spits out much extra. And that would be important (if I'm right about that), because people with candida would be at risk for thiamine deficiency, not thiamine overload. My reasoning is because candida produces acetylaldehyde, which is a toxin our bodies must detox using thiamine; thus the end result is that candida would cause us to be deficient in thiamine, even if the candida cells are making some thiamine on their own.

That doesn't explain your reaction to thiamine though, but I thought I'd bring this up as something to think about. I suffer candida problems, have for years, and am about to trial high dose thiamine, because I have some symptoms and history that I think may point to thiamine deficiency. If I get worse, maybe I do have thiamine overload instead, but we'll see.

There's a graph on this link about how acetaldehyde is detoxified: (granted it's a commercial site, but I've seen this graph on noncommercial sites in the past, so I hope it is accurate) http://www.vrp.com/digestive-health/a-health-destroying-toxin-we-cant-avoid-and-must-detoxify.

You mentioned a symptom that may be due to yeast, sudden overheating of the body -- I get that too. Have been chipping away at the candida problem for years, figuring out some things that do help me, but I still cannot indulge in refined carbs (not even white rice or potatoes if I don't have enough fat with them) without symptoms flaring up. Anyway, many candida forums don't talk about the sudden heat wave symptom, so I thought I'd mention to you that some other folks do get that, and some of us do think it's due to the yeast.

Just one more comment, keep track of things if you try beta glucan. I've read too many stories of it making things worse for people with candida. Not sure if that was die off for them or in fact, aggravation of their yeast overgrowth. I have not tried that supplement.

Thank you for your comment. The information on acetaldehyde is interesting. Ideally I think it would be good to get your B1 levels tested. Anecdotally my gf who had a fungal issue had a NutraEval done and her B1 levels were fine despite most likely having candida.

I'll be curious to see what happens for you trying the high dose B1. However if you are taking it along side NAC, moly, mag etc, you won't know which one is the one that's helping or if its a combination, much like the study linked in that article.

You say Candida use Thiamine....do you have a reference? Sometime creatures produce things without needing it themselves and it's used symbiotically by another organism. Certain gut bacteria come to mind.

 

[South]

...Anecdotally my gf who had a fungal issue had a NutraEval done and her B1 levels were fine despite most likely having candida.

I'll be curious to see what happens for you trying the high dose B1. However if you are taking it along side NAC, moly, mag etc, you won't know which one is the one that's helping or if its a combination, ...

You say Candida use Thiamine....do you have a reference? ...

Well, not that candida uses Thiamine directly necessarily, but that candida creates a toxin called acetaldehyde, and your body's work in detoxing the acetaldehyde taxes the body's thiamine levels:

(a google of candida + acetaldehyde brings up enough to convince me that candida does make that toxin)
Then this page discusses detoxing acetaldehyde:
http://intelegen.com/nutrients/prevent_the_damaging_effects_of_.htm

This is just a quick post, sorry it's not more thorough. Interesting that your girlfriend with a fungal problem had normal thiamine levels.

I'm about to try high dose thiamine (B1) without changing anything else about my supplement routine. When I have anything to report, I'll put it in this other thread, since this other thread is more specifically about thiamine:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...ent-story-focus-on-thiamine-deficiency.24059/

 

[Gestalt]

A quick update on my progress and my next plan of attack.

I am now up to 2-3 capsules of Candex a day. I take 2 in the morning on an empty stomach and 90% of the time I will I get a slight but bearable case of nausea lasting from 1-5hrs. I now take 2 capsules of Activated Charcoal 40 minutes after and this seems to help considerably with the nausea, diminishing it's effects and duration.

Tomorrow I am going to start a 3 day loading phase of Lufernuron taking a total of 9 grams split evenly across 3 days. Baring any dramatic herx reaction shortly after I plan to follow up with Diflucan taking 2x 300mg pills a week apart, or maybe 150mg 4x over 4 weeks. I have a CYP2C9 polymorphism meaning my liver metabolizes diflcuan at a reduced rate so Id prefer to take less at one time. I also have a skin fungal infection of Tinea versicolor so this should affect that as well and remedy that issue.

A nice summary of research on Fluconazole on Tinea here: http://bestbets.org/bets/bet.php?id=1530

According to Sarah vaughter stacking Lufernuron and other pharma-anti-fungals is ideal for Candida.

Incidentally I also found out Berberine works synergistically with Diflucan in cases where Candida has become azole resistant! This makes me excited because berberine is something I have recently been taking.

Proteomic analysis reveals a synergistic mechanism of fluconazole and berberine against fluconazole-resistant Candida albicans: endogenous ROS augmentation. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19754040

 

[PathogenKiller]

Like I referenced in my earlier post , due to that synergy when I added berberine to the diflucan it helped a lot. Good luck.

 

[Ripley]

I was able to get over the overwhelming majority of my candida symptoms using Jaminet's Perfect Health Diet (which gave you the clues about Candida being fueled by the ketones). Jaminet figured this all out because he suffered from Candida and overcame it by increasing his carb consumption after being on a very low carb diet. In a podcast on ChrisKresser.com, Jaminet said that on a very low carb diet, Candida takes a few months to adapt to using ketones as its main energy source. In the meantime, the diminished immunity and the transition to using ketones as fuel causes the traditional low/no-carb anti-candida diet to fail over the long term.

Jaminet also recommends resistant starch — which is a major component of the Perfect Health Diet diet (found in those "safe starches" in small/moderate quantities). Resistant Starch makes the good bacteria in your stomach bloom, which in turn overpowers the pathogens. Resistant Starch also has the ability to sweep away pathogens that latch onto it and transport them quickly to the colon where it is dealt with by the good bloom that feeds on resistant starch. I have yet to find evidence that Candida are fueled by resistant starch, but if they are I don't think they metabolize it as fast as ketones or pure starch.

I had tremendous success treating Candida with Jaminet's Perfect Health Diet and supplemental resistant starch as described in this thread. It brought my immune system back online in full force. The only symptom I have left is a little dandruff when I eat sugar.

Your milage may vary, and I would only attempt to use resistant starch once you are at the stage of your recovery where you are trying to repopulate your gut with good bacteria. Good luck!

 

[South]

@Ripley, when you said you used the resistant starch at the stage of your recovery where you were ready to try repopulating your gut with good bacteria, do you mean that by that stage you had done some anti-candida products? Or reduced the candida symptoms sufficiently with the Jaminet diet to feel ready to attempt the good bacteria repopulation?

 

[anne_likes_red]

The resistant starch stuff is verrrry interesting. RS is high in bifidus factors. Increasing bifidobacteria should, among many other important benefits, help to take care of candida I think.
If you eat cooked and cooled potato, rice (parboiled is apparently 'best' for resistant starch purposes), or beans, chances are you're boosting bifidus to some extent already.
Given PWME often have VERY low bifidus counts the use of supplemented resistant starch could be a useful experiment. Start low and build up slowly though. And expect increased gas whil the flora is adjusting!

Tim, who writes on Richard Nikoley's site (Free The Animal) has been supplementing with potato starch for months now - before that he was using cooked and cooled potatoes and experimenting with raw potato and dehydrated plantains. According to the testing provided by the American Gut Project http://humanfoodproject.com/americangut/ he has 11 x the bifidus count of the average sample contributor. The testing they're using doesn't break down the exact strains of bidiobacteria. Tim only got to submit a sample late into his experiment so there's a chance he had high bifidus count before he started of course. He'd also been doing Jaminet's diet prior to starting the RS experiment.

Most people seem to be using Bob's Red Mill unmodified Potato Starch, but Frontier Organic has been OK'd after someone asked them about their processing method. I'm trying the Frontier resistant starch with some cultured B Infantis. (I will update in the Gut forum sometime.)

Plantain flour which is also high in resistant starch is another good option. If you're in Aus I know of people happy with Mt Uncle's brand. I'll pick up some myself next time I'm over.

A couple of people have asked me about increasing bifidus counts in the past (in threads relating to culturing probiotics). @aquariusgirl and @RustyJ - just want to make sure you've seen this.
HTH, Anne.

 

[Ripley]

@Ripley, when you said you used the resistant starch at the stage of your recovery where you were ready to try repopulating your gut with good bacteria, do you mean that by that stage you had done some anti-candida products? Or reduced the candida symptoms sufficiently with the Jaminet diet to feel ready to attempt the good bacteria repopulation?

By the time I started eating more carbs and resistant starch, I had already started some anti-candida herbal formulas and seen some excellent benefit from them. But, if I could do it over, I would have added the carbs in immediately, because it was quite clear that my Candida had already adapted to ketones by that stage.

So, if I had to do it all over again, here's how I would do it:

Step 1: Start the Perfect Health Diet — be sure to weigh your food for a few days to make sure you are getting the proper amount of carbs. It feels like you are eating a ridiculous amount of carbs because when you cut out sugar and refined carbs — which are extremely carb dense — you have to eat a huge volume of "safe starches" (complex carbs) in order to just get to a moderate level of carb consumption, which is crucial. So, weighing your food and entering it into a calorie counter like cronometer.com is a must when you start out. The diet is fantastic because you get to eat lots of real food. Butter, eggs, mashed potatoes, rice, etc. If you are trying to lose weight, you just avoid the extra dollops of fat (as explained at the very end of the book). Many people will see a reduction in Candida symptoms just by going on the PHD — so it's a great place to start.

Step 2: Take some form of anti-fungals or bio-film disruptors for a few weeks. Preferably something that doesn't kill your liver. (I used Byron White's A-FNG formula, which is a bio-film disruptor, through a knowledgable practitioner — and only available through approved practitioners — and I felt an immediate improvement).

Step 3: After a few weeks of anti-fungals, it's usually time to begin taking probiotics. And that's when you want to take the extra resistant starch (it's a powerful prebiotic). Why? Because by that point, you will have already been getting ~8 grams of resistant starch per day from all the "safe starches" in the Perfect Health Diet. In other words, you've already been getting more resistant starch than you've ever gotten in your life and that's probably why you're feeling so good on the Perfect Health Diet. However, taking supplemental resistant starch, on top of a diet rich in resistant starch (like the Perfect Health Diet), is usually necessary to get to the doses of resistant starch that have proven to give the greatest benefit in clinical studies over the past few decades (~35g—40g/day). The resistant starch super-foods (highly specific bulbs, corms, tubers, cattails, cactuses, and medicinal barks) aren't in our modern food supply, so supplementation is necessary unless you want to start digging up a specific breed of cattails that are safe to consume raw.

Additionally, most probiotics don't really work that well on their own. Most of the time, the probiotics die in your stomach. But, if you eat a fermented food or take a probiotic with resistant starch it latches on to the resistant starch granules and carries the beneficial bacteria safely through the stomach and small intestine, to the colon, like it's riding a bus. Anecdotally, people are finding that a good Soil Based Organism (SBO) probiotic (like Prescript Assist, Body Biotics, Primal Defense or Primal Flora) works best with resistant starch. That makes sense since resistant starches are naturally found in the soil in roots, bulbs and tubers. I used Prescript Assist in my recovery.

I think those are the basic steps for most people.

However, I have a few other recommendations because I discovered that my Candida was also linked to heavy metal contamination. And here's the simple steps that worked for me to get the heavy metals out of my brain.

Heavy Metals: Step 1: Acupuncture. This was the first thing I did even before dietary changes. And it was a huge help. Whether you believe in it or not, acupuncture has been shown to increase blood flow to the brain. Redirecting blood flow to various parts of the body is basically how it works. This can dislodge the heavy metals that are stuck in the brain. I saw tremendous reduction in brain fog and cortisol/blood sugar disregulation within minutes of having my first acupuncture session (and I was convinced it was a waste of money upon showing up for my first appointment). My recommendation is to find an acupuncturist who has a Masters level, or higher, which means at least 3,000 hours of training. Don't settle for the doctor or massage therapist who only got 300 hours of acupuncture training.

Heavy Metals: Step 2: One or two drops of 400mcg Nascent Iodine on the forearm once a day. That's a very low dose of transdermal iodine, but I rapidly noticed a reduction in brain fog. Within a few days my throat began to feel tight, as my body began to detox. But, that soon subsided after a week or two. My brain fog was noticeably reduced within an hour or two of taking Nascent Iodine transdermally. If I missed a day of transdermal Nascent Iodine, the brain fog would return with a vengeance. For some reason, taking oral Nascent Iodine or other forms of oral iodine did not work as well as a simple drop or two of Nascent Iodine on the forearm. No idea why that was. In any event, it became clear to my doctor and I that I was detoxing and seeing a significant benefit.

Heavy Metals: Step 3: A dose of Bentonite clay once or twice a week, on an empty stomach, taken with 1 Tbsp of Resistant Starch instead of the recommended psyllium husk fiber.

Heavy Metals: Step 4: By this point, hopefully you are already seeing benefit from resistant starch either from food or supplementation (when ready), as outlined in the first part of my post. Resistant Starch seems to help detoxing by keeping the colon working well and sweeping away some heavy metals through your bowels. Resistant Starch took my brain to another level as the serotonin receptors kicked in to high gear.

Heavy Metals: Step 5: If after a few weeks/months you have seen tremendous benefit from the Heavy Metals steps, outlined above, try rubbing some Magnesium Oil on your neck, forehead and your underarms before bed. If you are taking resistant starch, you will have some very vivid dreams. I wasn't able to do this step until the end since Magnesium Oil initially made my brain fog worse at the beginning of this protocol.

All of the steps above, (acupuncture, the Perfect Health Diet, transdermal Nascent Iodine, and resistant starch), seemed to work synergistically in that I was detoxing and the resistant starch was likely sweeping some toxins out of my colon. For me, I saw a huge benefit from detoxing through iodine/acupuncture and taking resistant starch through food and supplementation.

Hope that's helpful, but that's how I fixed Candida over a few months time. It was a big deal for me, because I now feel better than I've ever felt at any time in my life. I honestly didn't know it was possible to feel this good.

 

[Gary1001]

One thing I have recently found very helpful is MCT oil. I know there are a 100 and 1 different supplements which work for different people, but this one has really helped me. Specifically, I just a type which is only carbon 8. The main benefits are its a strong anti-fungal / microbiol in its own right but it also provide a clean easy access energy source. The MCT doesn't need bile to be used by the body thus it is often used in a medical setting for malnourished patients. This means I can reduce my carb intake and further "stave out" bacterial and fungal overgrowth's.

The key is start really slowly as it causes the runs (its just oil) but I have found once use to it, I have several tablespoon on an empty stomach without issues. It allows me to fast without crashing while killing microbes in my small intestine.

 

[Ripley]

This means I can reduce my carb intake and further "stave out" bacterial and fungal overgrowth's.

If you've been following this conversation, you'd know that a ketogenic diet only works until the Candida adapt to ketones as their primary fuel source. Very low carb diets often promote fungal infections over the long term because yeast and fungi are eukaryotes that have mitochondria which can rapidly absorb ketones once they adapt to ketones as a primary fuel source. The adaptation is very slow and can take months. But, once they adapt, that MCT oil may make your symptoms worse because the resulting ketones in conjunction with a ketogenic diet will be like rocket fuel for the mitochondria within the Candida. MCT oil made my brain fog worse for that very reason.

Additionally, you need fermentable carbohydrates to keep your gut flora in prime shape and to keep mucin production up, which is crucial for your gut barrier and immune system.

The very low carb approach will backfire over the long term. It may be helpful over the short term if you are coming from a high-carb diet and it's before the Candida has a chance to adapt to ketones. But after a few months, the Candida will adapt if it hasn't been irradiated and your body will be more susceptible to fungal infections by the impaired immunity from not eating enough carbs.

In that case, my suggestion is to follow the Perfect Health Diet, eating lots of complex carbs, fermented foods, and resistant starch — which it's author used to combat ketone-adapted candida successfully. The diet only seems like a lot of carbs but in reality it's a moderate carb diet because complex carbs aren't very caloric and tend to have a lot of water in them. Most people struggle to eat just ~30% of their energy from complex carbs, which equals roughly a pound of cooked rice/potatoes.

 

[Gary1001]

Very interesting. I didn't know about Candida adapt to ketones as their primary fuel source. For me, the carbon-8 MCT oil still seems to work well. I am also managing a SIBO overgrowth which goes crazy with FODMAPs or resistant starch so I'm a little in no mans land with that one.

The resistant starch is an interesting one. I agree it is the key to good gut health but its all about timing. Richard Shoemaker has an interesting view on it (here: http://www.livestrong.com/article/335261-the-no-amylose-diet/) He believes it plays a major role in recovering from toxic mold. From my personal experience, as I got very sick I have major trouble with this type of carb while when healthy it was excellent.

 

[Ripley]

I am also managing a SIBO overgrowth which goes crazy with FODMAPs or resistant starch so I'm a little in no mans land with that one.

Gary, you will want to listen to this podcast with Chris Kresser and Jeff Leach (of the American Gut Project) about the importance of eating fermentable carbohydrates ("safe starches") to maintain a healthy gut barrier and healthy gut flora even in those with SIBO/FODMAP issues:

RHR: You Are What Your Bacteria Eat: The Importance of Feeding Your Microbiome – With Jeff Leach

Chris Kresser: ...I had a lot of patients coming to me who had been on the GAPS diet. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, Jeff.

Jeff Leach: Yeah, I’m very familiar with it.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, and they had done the GAPS intro, which for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s essentially just meat and broth for a period of time, and it can be tremendously effective and therapeutic for people who are dealing with gut pathogens and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, and one of the reasons is that it literally starves the bacteria because they have nothing to eat or very little to eat. But what I started to see is that people who stayed on that kind of protocol for a long period of time, they would improve and feel better, and then after a while they’d start to feel worse and worse and worse. And I began to suspect that part of the reason that they were feeling worse is that the thing that they did, which was therapeutic initially, i.e. starving their gut bacteria because they had a lot of bad bacteria, then actually became harmful over time because they weren’t only starving their bad bacteria, they were also starving their good bacteria. That’s when I started to advocate for GAPS being looked at as a more temporary therapeutic approach, and in fairness, even the creator of it, Natasha, has talked about it that way for the most part. But I saw a lot of issues with people who were staying with that really extreme early intro approach and started to recommend that people add some more starchy tubers and other starchy types of plants and resistant starch into their diet as they improved in function so that they could preserve their good gut bacteria without completely decimating it.

If you're not familiar with GAPS, it's basically a nutrient-dense no carb diet — it can work wonders, over the short term, for people with severe gut issues. Anyway, in the public comments below the transcript, Kresser says:

I’ve found that starting with a very low dose of prebiotics or resistant starch and building up slowly over time helps with SIBO over the long-term, even in those with FODMAP intolerance. It seems counterintuitive, and perhaps it is, but as I mentioned on the show the key to healing the gut ultimately is restoring a normal microbiota… and that’s hard to do without these fermentable fibers.

So, that's my overall point. Going very low carb will only work for so long. If you stay very low carb for too long, you will eventually diminish your gut flora as the good bacteria are starved out, you'll feed fungi/yeast as their mitochondria adapt to all the ketones, you'll reduce mucin production that keeps your gut barrier intact and immunity up, and you'll encourage mucin degraders to proliferate as the bacteria eat up your gut's remaining mucus barrier when they have no food to eat. It leads to further gut permeability, poor gut flora, diminished immunity and promotes yeast and fungal infections.

This is why a very low carb diet will likely never permanently solve SIBO/FODMAP issues. At best, a very low carb diet can only be used as a temporary therapeutic approach. A much better approach for the long term is probably to work slowly up over time to ~30% energy from complex carbs to feed a healthy microbiota.

Obviously, you need to do what you can tolerate and work towards that goal slowly. But, I think you at least need to consider the fact that starving the good bacteria is not a long term strategy.

Chris Kresser, just yesterday, expanded on this paradox of going too low carb in another podcast.

 

[Gary1001]

All good information. I've been following Jeff Leach from the American human gut project, Chris and Steve (from SCD life style) for quite a while. For me, I believe the message is timing. You need to treat any yeast and/or bacterial over-growths for the a period and then expanding to other nutrient dense foods and prebiotics. For me that means limiting the amount and type of carbs (and other groups such as FODMAPS). Its just a timing thing, taking the patients current situation into account such as food allergies and documenting what works (testing to recheck SBIO and yeast growths).

I dont think GAPS or SCD is non carb diet. Even in the intro phase liberal amounts of includes pumpkin, zucchini and carrots are included. They just limit the carb structure to monosaccharides but you can easily eat 70% carbs which many people do as pumpkin is one of the main solid foods to start with (even if it is boiled for an hour).

 

[PathogenKiller]

@leela
http://www.amazon.com/AmScope-40X-2...89287595&sr=8-1&keywords=darkfield+microscope

 

[leela]

Thanks, @PathogenKiller -- this looks great!

 

[PathogenKiller]

@leela

Here's the quality of picture I can get. This is with my Nikon d2000 and the amscope attachment. I remove an eye piece and put the camera there, then focus through the view finder. This is a whole lot of mycoplasma from when I first started treating.

 

[Gestalt]

I was able to get over the overwhelming majority of my candida symptoms using Jaminet's Perfect Health Diet (which gave you the clues about Candida being fueled by the ketones). Jaminet figured this all out because he suffered from Candida and overcame it by increasing his carb consumption after being on a very low carb diet. In a podcast on ChrisKresser.com, Jaminet said that on a very low carb diet, Candida takes a few months to adapt to using ketones as its main energy source. In the meantime, the diminished immunity and the transition to using ketones as fuel causes the traditional low/no-carb anti-candida diet to fail over the long term.

Jaminet also recommends resistant starch — which is a major component of the Perfect Health Diet diet (found in those "safe starches" in small/moderate quantities). Resistant Starch makes the good bacteria in your stomach bloom, which in turn overpowers the pathogens. Resistant Starch also has the ability to sweep away pathogens that latch onto it and transport them quickly to the colon where it is dealt with by the good bloom that feeds on resistant starch. I have yet to find evidence that Candida are fueled by resistant starch, but if they are I don't think they metabolize it as fast as ketones or pure starch.

I had tremendous success treating Candida with Jaminet's Perfect Health Diet and supplemental resistant starch as described in this thread. It brought my immune system back online in full force. The only symptom I have left is a little dandruff when I eat sugar.

Your milage may vary, and I would only attempt to use resistant starch once you are at the stage of your recovery where you are trying to repopulate your gut with good bacteria. Good luck!

I have been doing a lot of reading through your thread on resistant starch as well as all the things you have linked. Excellent work by the way. I must say I am very, very impressed. Yesterday first thing I went out and bought some of "Bob's Red Mill Unmodified Potato Starch" and am starting with 1tsp and am planning on increasing by 1tsp every day until I get to 4 tbsp. Hopefully that should be slow enough. I am also switching my staple carbs to parboiled rice, plantain chips & cold potatoes.

There are several things that really stand out that make me think this will help me. First the issue with insulin and blood glucose levels. I am a bit confused about the mechanisms on how this works but I know it's a factor with what I am dealing with.

When I first began the Candex one of the main things I noticed was I could go three+ hours in the day without feeling like my blood sugar was crashing. Also upon waking I didn't feel all light headed and starved out of my mind. My appetite completely changed! Normally I find I have to carb feed all day long in order to keep my blood glucose stable. I also felt like I have terrible muscle endurance. That all changed when taking the Candex.

Also, that blood glucose crashes when sleeping (which is almost like fasting) and then trigger cortisol production makes sense, in that I usually wake up feeling exhausted and have terrible nightmares in the latter part of my sleep cycle. I will therefore be sure to take RS before sleeping and am excited about the reports of people having better sleep and more vivid dreams.

My theory/speculation is that Candida had tunneled directly into my blood supply and were actively feeding of glucose in the blood stealing it from other parts of my body that needed it. Including continually depleting muscle and liver glycogen reserves. I swear I can feel my blood sugar crash and If I don't carb feed feel my body go into ketosis. Once the Candida began dying and not needing/taking so much glucose from my blood it stabilized my blood glucose levels.

Reading through the studies done on RS I see a lot about how it stabilizes glucose and insulin, however by what actual mechanism does it do this? Is it because it's boosting bifido populations which kill candida, which in turn stops them from leeching glucose from the blood? Or is it another mechanism?

Another thing I found interesting was how RS lowers ammonia in that one study. Ammonia is a huge problem for me, and I always take ample yucca to bind it. It's a potent excitotoxin which had a significant negative effect on my health. Again I am wondering about the mechanism by which RS reduces ammonia. Is it because it kills the candida which produce it? Or is influencing some other factor?

http://freetheanimal.com/2013/11/resistant-american-comparison.html

The above image blew my mind. That you can so drastically alter the gut microbes with RS is pretty awesome. Compared to his wife, I think it really shows how enormously beneficial adequate RS can be to gut balance. That sold me right there.

"Bifidobacteria -A natural part of the bacterial flora in the human body and have a symbiotic bacteria-host relationship with humans...promotes good digestion, boosts the immune system, and produces lactic and acetic acid that controls intestinal pH. These bacteria also inhibit the growth of Candida albicans, E. coli, and other bacteria that have more pathogenic qualities than Bifidobacteria. Exert a range of beneficial health effects, including the regulation of intestinal microbial homeostasis, the inhibition of pathogens and harmful bacteria that colonize and/or infect the gut mucosa, the modulation of local and systemic immune responses, the repression of procarcinogenic enzymatic activities within the microbiota, the production of vitamins, and the bioconversion of a number of dietary compounds into bioactive molecules."​

Super cool.

One question I had was how does "Resistant starch number 2" compare to 1, 3 or 4 In terms of it's effects on bifido populations? Also how does RS compare with FOS? It seems that from all the reading that RS is more "magical" than FOS and inulin and that there is seemingly now downside to RS but that there could be with all the other pre-biotics.

One thing I have always wondered about myself is that eating high "fiber" food gives me tremendous bloating and gas. A spinach salad seems to be the worst offender and if I eat fiber foods earlier in the day it also seems to make it worse. I love salads but now avoid them. Does anyone know what specific fungi or bacteria in the gut feeds off lettuce causing bloating and gas? Is it a SIBO effect or candida or something else? I am curious to see if the RS will alter the bacteria balance eliminating the offenders and allow me to begin eating salads again without getting abdominal bloating discomfort....

Another thing I am wondering about is if RS has the ability to flush out candida out of the large AND small intestine.

"It was surmised that the RS in the solution caused a buildup of butyrate/SCFA/etc... and helped the body rid itself of cholera. However this study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1183348/ examined the effects and found out that the vibrio cholerae attaches itself to the RS granules as soon as they come in contact, and the this slowly digesting substance takes the vibrio for a ride out of the SI and into the LI where it can be eliminated.

Apparently, RS has surface structures that appeal to certain pathogens like vibrio cholerae, a. hydrophila, e. coli, and p. aeruginosa. These pathogens cannot utilize RS as a food source, or even begin to ferment it, but yet withing 2 minutes, 98% of the vibrio growing in a petri dish leaves it's attachment to the agar and binds to the RS.

As the study concluded:

"In accordance with our findings, we suggest that adhesion to the starch granules might compete with sites in the lumen during colonization. We suggest a model where V. cholerae adheres to the ungelatinized starch granules, which are practically indigestible in the intestine and are secreted from the intestine.""
​

The fact that cholera will latch on to RS and get flushed out of the body makes me think perhaps Candida may as well. There is another "sugar" molecule which supposedly has this kind of ability when it comes to Candida and that is D-mannose. Similar to RS, E.coli will attach to D-mannose and get flushed out of he body and this is why it cures bladder infections.

"Thus, mannose-containing moieties on the surface of C. albicans and buccal cells could mediate the adherence of this yeast to human epithelium. http://iai.asm.org/content/35/1/79" & also this other paper http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/190/3/632.full.pdf​

In the case of D-Mannose I am bit confused in that elevated mannose levels were seen as a sign that people had a candida infection, and I believe Mannose as mannin makes up part of the cell structure of Candida so it makes me second guess whether D-mannose would be a good thing to supplement similar how people get freaked out that RS is a starch. Perhaps RS may be superior and also it may be a quantity thing. I only ever took 3g max of D-mannose per day, where as with RS beneficial effects aren't seen until 20g a day. Needles to say there are many more studies showing the benefits of high dose RS compared to D-mannose for the time being.

 

[Ripley]

My theory/speculation is that Candida had tunneled directly into my blood supply and were actively feeding of glucose in the blood stealing it from other parts of my body that needed it. Including continually depleting muscle and liver glycogen reserves. I swear I can feel my blood sugar crash and If I don't carb feed feel my body go into ketosis.

That could very well be. But, I think it's more complex than that. For instance, diabetics tend to get Candida (it happens a lot), but you don't see diabetics plagued with low blood sugar problems from their Candida.

More likely, the Candida throws off the HPA axis and messes up the autonomic nervous system. This, in turn weakens the adrenal glands, which regulate blood sugar. It's the usual adrenal fatigue story. Luckily, I was able to reverse it with the PHD and RS. Interestingly, many PHD followers discover that it's the non-glucose sugars, such as fructose, that really ignites Candida. Glucose from food (found in the "safe starches") doesn't seem to ignite Candida the way the other sugars do (perhaps it's rapidly absorbed by the body before the Candida can intercept all of it).

Reading through the studies done on RS I see a lot about how it stabilizes glucose and insulin, however by what actual mechanism does it do this?

Believe it or not, nobody really knows the exact mechanism.

Is it because it's boosting bifido populations which kill candida, which in turn stops them from leeching glucose from the blood? Or is it another mechanism?

It's got to be another mechanism. Again, if that were true, Candida would cause low blood sugar issues in diabetics (but it doesn't). And, more importantly, RS improves blood sugar regulation in diabetics by lowering blood sugar. RS lowers blood sugar in everyone — whether you have diabetes, candida or you are perfectly healthy. RS can even cause some hypoglycemia if you take too much, to the point where even diabetics have to use less insulin.

For all we know, RS is feeding bacteria that switch on genes that maximize glucose utilization and lowers blood glucose and therefore reduces the available food source for Candida. But that's just another hypothesis. Nobody really knows.

Another thing I found interesting was how RS lowers ammonia in that one study. Ammonia is a huge problem for me, and I always take ample yucca to bind it. It's a potent excitotoxin which had a significant negative effect on my health. Again I am wondering about the mechanism by which RS reduces ammonia. Is it because it kills the candida which produce it? Or is influencing some other factor?

Again, I don't think you can link much of the benefits of RS to Candida. There are too many people without Candida reporting dramatic changes in their health and gut flora. The fact of the matter is that we are more bacteria than we are human — to the tune of 10 to 1. In other words, there are far more gut-bug genes being switched on and off than human genes. And these gut-bug genes may even be rewiring our human genes as we modulate our gut flora. Whatever is happening, it's too complex for anyone to figure out just yet. We are just scratching the surface of what we know about the gut and its effect on health.

One question I had was how does "Resistant starch number 2" compare to 1, 3 or 4 In terms of it's effects on bifido populations?

RS2 seems to be the key to blooming big bifido — and, as you now know, it's pretty much non-existent in the modern diet and it was probably a key part of our evolutionary history. RS3 is the next most important and would have been another mainstay of our evolutionary history (any cooked and cooled starchy vegetable). But most people will do very well on RS2 alone.

RS1 seems like it would be worth avoiding since there are lots of toxins in grains and I doubt our gut flora was influenced by much RS1 before the neolithic period (pre-agriculture). RS4 is synthetic, so I'm not really enticed by it either.

Also how does RS compare with FOS? It seems that from all the reading that RS is more "magical" than FOS and inulin and that there is seemingly now downside to RS but that there could be with all the other pre-biotics.

Correct. As Grace/ Dr. BG put it...

The fertilizer for microbes is inulin, FOS/GOS, fodmaps, NSP and resistant starch, no? RS is the bionic fertilizer!

Another thing I am wondering about is if RS has the ability to flush out candida out of the large AND small intestine.

I believe it does. But, what I think probably happens is that the pathogens are swept out of the small intestine (curing SIBO over time) and those pathogens are either pooped out or pummeled to death by the bloom of beneficial flora in the large intestine. The granules are then fermented in the colon to further bloom the beneficial gut flora. Of course, this only works if you have the keystone beneficial flora in your gut — which is why SBO probiotics and fermented foods go with RS so well (they make sure the keystones are in place).

The fact that cholera will latch on to RS and get flushed out of the body makes me think perhaps Candida may as well.

It's certainly possible. All I know is RS helped take my recovery to another level, so I wouldn't doubt it. But, to my knowledge, I haven't seen any proof of it yet.

 

[knackers323]

Hi Gestalt

Does it matter what form the yucca is in? I have seen whole plant, root, liquid extract etc. thanks