The Dr. Hyman Show - Fungus Among Us: Diagnosing And Treating Yeast Problems with Dr. George Papanicolaou

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Fungus Among Us: Diagnosing And Treating Yeast Problem | This episode is sponsored by ButcherBox and Athletic Greens Yeast overgrowth, including but not limited to candida, is quite common and can be ...triggered by a number of things. These include a high-sugar diet; impaired immunity; use of drugs, like antibiotics, birth control pills, estrogen, and steroids; and psychological stress. The symptoms of yeast overgrowth vary from person to person and some people may require aggressive treatment, while others many need only simple changes to make a significant difference in their health. In this episode, Dr. Hyman sits down with Dr. George Papaicolaou to discuss the functional medicine approach to diagnosing and treating yeast imbalance. They also share specific cases in which they have treated patients for candida and other fungal problems. George Papanicolaou is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and is Board Certified in Family Medicine from Abington Memorial Hospital. He is also an Institute for Functional Medicine Practitioner. Upon graduation from his residency he joined the Indian Health Service. He worked on the Navajo reservation for 4 years at the Chinle Comprehensive Medical Facility where he served as the Outpatient Department Coordinator. In 2000, he founded Cornerstone Family Practice in Rowley, MA. He practiced with a philosophy centered on personal relationships and treating the whole person, not just not the disease. He called that philosophy “Whole Life Wellness”. Over time as the healthcare system made it harder for patients to receive this kind of personal care Dr. Papanicolaou decided a change was needed. He began training in Functional Medicine through the Institute of Functional Medicine. In 2015, he established Cornerstone Personal Health – a practice dedicated entirely to Functional Medicine. Dr. Papanicolaou to join The UltraWellness Center in 2017. This episode is sponsored by ButcherBox and Athletic Greens.  When you sign up for ButcherBox today, you can get 2lbs of wild-caught Alaskan salmon free in your first box. Just go to butcherbox.com/farmacy.  Athletic Greens is offering Doctor’s Farmacy listeners a full year supply of their Vitamin D3/K2 Liquid Formula free with your first purchase, plus 5 free travel packs. Just go to athleticgreens.com/hyman to take advantage of this great offer. In this conversation, Dr. Hyman and Dr. Papanicolaou discuss: What is candida, and why is it prevalent with autoimmune issues? How do you know if candida overgrowth is causing your symptoms? Common drivers of and reasons for fungal overgrowth and imbalance The role of stress in triggering yeast problems Testing to identify yeast overgrowth Pitfalls of the anti-candida diet Autism and yeast overgrowth Additional Resources Is Hidden Fungus Making You Ill? https://drhyman.com/blog/2010/07/23/is-hidden-fungus-making-you-ill/ Heartburn and Candida: What is Your Gut Trying to Tell You? https://drhyman.com/blog/2017/04/06/heartburn-candida-gut-trying-tell/

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. It's usually gut dysbiosis or imbalances of the bacteria to begin with. It's the fact that your nutrition has been really poor and they have multiple nutritional deficiencies. They live that really stressed out life. And that stress changes the gut microflora in such a way it makes you more susceptible to candida. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. One of today's episode sponsors is ButcherBox. it makes you more susceptible to candida. means caring for the lives of the animals and the livelihoods of farmers and also reducing our impact on the environment and climate and also feeding our bodies real food to promote optimal health. This is the huge caveat of eating meat and seafood. It has to be clean to be a beneficial part of our diet. ButcherBox delivers 100% grass-fed, grass-finished beef and wild-caught
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Starting point is 00:01:50 ButcherBox sticks to strict fishing and handling practices when it comes to wild caught, sustainably harvested seafood. So you can feel good knowing you're eating the highest quality salmon available. I hope you'll take advantage of this great offer. I know you're going to love ButcherBox as much as I do. My main goal with diet is to use food as medicine, but even when we eat super well, most of us are missing out on certain essential nutrients. Our soils have become depleted and our digestive tracts just aren't working so great. They're compromised by stress and toxins and they just can't absorb nutrients as efficiently as they should. And that's why I always use, and I recommend to my patients,
Starting point is 00:02:25 a multivitamin mineral as nutritional insurance. It covers the basics for all our day-to-day body functions, all the things that we need that our food might be missing. But there are so many products out there I wouldn't go near because they contain artificial fillers or inactive ingredients, and you have to be pretty picky. The one I trust and take myself is Athletic Greens. They use high quality, highly absorbable forms of vitamins and nutrients from real whole foods. Athletic Greens comes in a powder that
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Starting point is 00:03:31 love having it with me whenever I travel. I also love that it's diet-friendly, whether you're vegan, paleo, keto, dairy-free, or gluten-free. Right now, Athletic Greens is offering my audience a full year supply of their Vitamin D3 K2 liquid formula free with your first purchase. Now, these two nutrients are also so vital for a strong immune system and strong bones, and many of us are not getting enough of them. I use the Athletic Greens powder and their D3 K2 formula to make sure I get extra nutrients that complement my diet. They're also going to give you five free travel packs as well. Just go to athleticgreens.com forward slash hyman to get your free year supply of vitamin D3 and K2 and five free travel packs with your first purchase. You'll get it delivered
Starting point is 00:04:16 straight to your door and I promise you'll feel the difference Athletic Greens can make in your daily wellness routine. Again, that's athleticgreens.com forward slash Hyman. Now let's get back to this week's episode of the doctor's pharmacy. Welcome to the doctor's pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman and that's pharmacy with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. And if you've ever heard of yeast issues or candida, or you think you might have some weird bloating after you eat or some weird going on with you related to yeast or fungus, or maybe you have athlete's foot or vaginal itching or anal itching, this is the podcast for you because we're going to talk about what this is all about, what's true, what's
Starting point is 00:04:59 not true, how to deal with it, and why it's such a problem with none other than my friend and colleague at the Ultra Wellness Center, Dr. George Papanikolaou, who's a rock star in his own right and has been just such a great contribution to the center here and has the second most popular podcast of all my podcasts, which is pretty awesome. I love that. I love that too. He beat out everybody. And he's just a great guy. And I think we've been really digging into some great issues here on the house call version of The Doctor's Pharmacy, which is a special episode dedicated to looking at some of the
Starting point is 00:05:34 intractable conditions that people suffer from, and they're not getting answers about with traditional medicine. So we're going to talk today about all things yeast and fungus. So welcome, George. Glad to be here, Mark. Okay, so what is the deal with fungus and yeast? We've been hearing for years about Canada, and I got to go on the Canada diet and all this stuff.
Starting point is 00:05:51 Is this true, or what's the deal? What's the deal? So Canada is, first off, it is a yeast, which is a type of mold, okay? It just happens to be the most common yeast to cause infection in humans yeah like women get canada infections of their vaginal tract which is the most common thing yeah yeah you get yeah and you know we have other fungi other fungi that cause athletes feet and you know other other types
Starting point is 00:06:17 of skin infections it's just like bacteria there's lots of different fungi there's not just like one thing like canada yeah um and canada is a normal part of our gastrointestinal tract and so It's not just like one thing like Canada. Yeah. And Canada is a normal part of our gastrointestinal tract. And so it's not some foreigner. It lives naturally in our gastrointestinal tract. So that's a really fundamental thing to know. And it's part of the balanced ecosystem. Yeah. So, you know, as we talk, we're going to talk eventually about like, well, when it overgrows, we got to kill it, right? Well, you need to rebalance it. You don't want to completely destroy it because it is a part of the ecosystem. So it's a normal part of our ecosystem and it can be problematic. And in conventional medicine, it's very well accepted and understood in immunocompromised patients. 90,000 Americans per year have what we call candidiasis or systemic candida, meaning they
Starting point is 00:07:08 have a blood infection because they're immunocompromised. Like you have AIDS, or if you're on immunosuppressive drugs, or you're on chemo drugs. Exactly. Or you've taken steroids. Or if you're diabetic, right, you tend to get more yeast issues. Yes, you do. Because your sugar's high because there's yeast in sugar. And so in those cases, it's very well accepted. Where it becomes a problem is when people begin to, particularly practitioners, begin to listen to somebody's symptoms. I have a headache. I have brain fog. I have fatigue. I have thrush in my tongue i have body aches um i have menstrual irregularity um uh i have a itchy anus um i have um uh joint pain um and i can't sleep and my libido is low right oh it must be candida right no no and it might be right it might be but but
Starting point is 00:08:04 now that person you know oh you person will go spit into a cup, and if you see strings, then it's candida, right? No, those are very nonspecific symptoms, and that's not a very good test. But people who are desperate, who are really sick, and are looking for answers, right, will gravitate and will do that. And sometimes it works, but we need to be really careful
Starting point is 00:08:30 to know that they may be dealing with a totally different organism. It might be another yeast or another mold, right, that needs to be treated a different way. And so that's one thing. It could be, you know, you have general dysbiosis. You may have something- Something in balance in your gut flora.
Starting point is 00:08:49 Which is in balance in the gut flora. You may have something called SIBO, which is bacteria growing where it shouldn't. In the small intestine. Up in the small intestine. And that needs to be treated differently. So we need to be really careful when we talk about candida, we just talk about yeast and mold as the cause of everything. It's not the cause of everything, but it's the cause of
Starting point is 00:09:11 many things. And I think it's important to understand that because all doctors should understand the importance of certain maladies. And we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Candida does exist. It can make people sick, but you have to understand how, when, and where. Yes. And have appropriate ways to evaluate and test. That's right. In functional medicine, it's what we focus on. It's how do we get to the root cause or causes. And in some patients, it might indeed be candida causes and in some patients it might indeed be candida and other patients it might be other fungus and other patients the same symptoms might be caused by something entirely different so so let's talk about what are the common reasons
Starting point is 00:09:56 we see fungal problems in our patients because they are really common. What are the common reasons we see this? The biggest issue in our world today is our nutrition. We have a huge amount of sugar, high fructose corn syrup, processed carbohydrates. Starch, flour, right? All of that, right? We have GMO, which alters the microbiome. All of these things cause an enormous shift. It shifts the bacterial balance.
Starting point is 00:10:33 So now organisms that are commensal, meaning that they live. They live in our gut. They're normally there, but they tend to like bloom if you feed them what they like to eat, right? Yeah, they bloom. And once you start feeding them and they bloom and you have E. coli as a normal part of your gut, but if you shift the ecology of your gut, you're going to get an enormous overgrowth of E. coli or Clostridium or Klebsiella. And now all of you have probably heard that you've had an infection and I'm sure you've heard the term E. coli. I'm sure you've heard Klebsiella or Clostridium,
Starting point is 00:11:03 which causes C. difficile, the diarrheal illness. Guess what? They all live in our gut. And when our diet is really poor, they bloom. And the thing about sugar and flour, which is 60% of our diet is essentially refined carbohydrates, right? That stuff is jet fuel for the yeast in your gut and for the fungus. So you're fertilizing all that stuff and you're starving the good guys, which feed on what? They feed on phytochemicals like colorful fruits and vegetables and fiber and all the good stuff. So you're starving the good guys,
Starting point is 00:11:37 you're feeding the bad guys, and that's when you start to get this imbalance or overgrowth. There's actually a term for it now called SIFO, or small intestinal fungal overgrowth, right? But it can cause a lot of systemic symptoms. So how would you know that people might be at risk for it? And how would you look for the symptoms
Starting point is 00:11:56 that give you a clue that they might have a fungal issue? It's, you know know i look at uh canada as a sort of comes along for the ride right and sometimes it's going to be it's going to hijack the ship and become the main player and sometimes it's going to be lurking there in the background and you're not going to realize it's creating a problem yeah do you fix some things, or you can't fix those other things. So I suspect that most all the time I'm dealing with gut issues. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:32 The kind of gut issues that we see when people come in with longstanding constipation, longstanding eczema, longstanding yeast infections, recurrent vaginal yeast infections, recurrent vaginal yeast infections, recurrent UTIs, athlete's foot that's recurrent, as I said, allergies. I start to suspect there's inflammation going on. And then we know there's inflammation. We know we're going to find something in the gut.
Starting point is 00:13:02 And candida needs to be on that list. Yeah. And I think, you know, I go through, like when I think about it, I go through, what are their risks, right? Have they been on antibiotics that will cause fungal issues? Have they been on hormones like the birth control pill? Have they taken steroid drugs, right? Have they eaten a diet that's tons of sugar? Those are the four big players right there. Yeah, sugar and starch. Are they drinking a lot of wine and alcohol and beer? These are all things which promote the growth of the fungus. It's like feeding the bad guys. And then if they're at risk for that,
Starting point is 00:13:34 then I go, wait a minute, what are their symptoms? And like you mentioned a lot of them, but they can be really common things that people just kind of think, oh, it's not a big deal. I got a fungal toe growth, or I have an athlete's foot, or I have vaginal itching and yeast issues.
Starting point is 00:13:46 I have anal itching. I might have some eczema. I might have some psoriasis. I might have dandruff on my head. I crave carbohydrates. I crave carbohydrates. I can't lose weight. I can't lose weight.
Starting point is 00:13:56 I'm constipated, like you said. To begin to sort of create this whole thing. And I remember I had this one patient. She was like a walking mushroom. She had like dandruff and eczema and anal itching and vaginal itching. And she had athlete's foot. I mean, she pretty much had everything. And she had these like tinea patches, which is another kind of skin, which is a well-known fungal infection called tinea versicolor, which is common. And so she had all these issues and she was also feeling like crap and people can get other issues from it. They can get depression, they can get fatigue,
Starting point is 00:14:29 they can get brain fog, they can get inflammation, they can get joint issues, they can get all these weird symptoms. So I'm always on the alert. And that's not to say that everybody who comes in has a fungal issue with these issues, but you have to make sure you don't overlook it. And that's really what we focus on in functional medicine. Yeah, yeah. And so when somebody comes in that sick, and that's how we see them, they do come in that sick, and they come in almost despairing sometimes because they've been fighting these symptoms for years, and they're being treated with antihistamines, and they're being given topical steroids for their rash, and they're being treated with antihistamines and they're being given topical steroids for their rash and they're given PPIs for their heart.
Starting point is 00:15:08 Acid blockers. Acid blockers for their heartburn or the regurgitation. And they're taking some over-the-counter Senna for their constipation. So they come up with these long lists of pills to combat every symptom that was put in its own silo. And nobody stopped to put together the fact that maybe these all belong together as one
Starting point is 00:15:34 problem. So we see this a lot. And we treat it usually in the context of everything else. It's not only often just the yeast, but it's their overall gut flora and their imbalances. But you had a patient, Julia, who had all these issues, and she had a big yeast issue. Tell us about her and what you found and what you did and how you helped her. Yeah. So, you know, Julia, you know, sort of, she represents the symptoms that I was just talking
Starting point is 00:16:00 about. She came in with fatigue, brain fog, recurrent vaginal yeast infections, anxiety, carb craving, inability to lose weight. She, let me make sure I got it all. Oh, she had migraines as well. She was also under an enormous amount of stress. And I think it's important, and we're going to talk about that in the role stress plays with candida, but she had an enormous amount of stress, which I came to find out came from some childhood trauma that was significant. Her recent stress was a divorce that had just drawn out over four years.
Starting point is 00:16:38 It was really difficult. There was a custody battle, and it was during this period of time that all these symptoms really worsened, and she was not getting any relief from the multiple doctors she's been seeing. And so she arrived here. Her symptoms were really at this point, like anxiety and bloating and constipation. Secondarily, she was talking about, I also have had this longstanding rash, it comes and it goes, and I get migraines. So of course I do a gut microbiome test. And I'm already,
Starting point is 00:17:16 because of her symptoms, I was already thinking that, yeah, this is definitely a gut issue, but the yeast vaginitis, the recurrent rash, the bloating, I was definitely thinking she had dysbiosis or imbalance. But I did suspect that she might have candida because of the carb craving and the bloating and the rectal itch. So it was there. So I did additional tests. I did candida antibodies. So candida can be hard to find. And I really like to have something to hold on to when I make the diagnosis, something that is real. So here are the places I look.
Starting point is 00:17:56 I did the candida antibodies. The complete diagnostic stool test that I did is going to measure, is going to actually look for candida using PCR testing. And then the other place I look- And these are tests you just don't get at your regular doctor. You do not. That's what we do at the Ultra Voluntary Center. We look at things like antibodies to different
Starting point is 00:18:16 foods, antibodies to yeast. We look at the stool test. And then you can also look at what we talked about earlier was the organics acid test. The organics acid test can actually look for metabolites of gut bacteria in your urine. Or fungus. Or fungus. Or fungus. And one of those metabolites that Candida makes and makes alone is D-aribinitol. And so I checked for D-aribinitol in her organics acid test, and that was enormously
Starting point is 00:18:46 elevated, off the chart. And so that's all I needed to understand that she had candida. So what you're saying is basically there's tests that you can do where you can see if it's growing in the stool, whether there's the genetics of it in the stool, whether there's actually indicators in your blood from antibodies, but also you can look in your urine to see that these metabolites of fungus or even bacteria can be absorbed from your gut and then they end up in your urine. So they're not human metabolites. So if you see this thing in your urine, it's not coming from you, it's coming from that critter in your gut. And that can be an issue. So we use basically the history, which is really important.
Starting point is 00:19:27 All the symptoms we talked about, we have thrush, or you have a white-coated tongue, or all these things. I just have to emphasize one thing. Everybody gets a really, really, really deep history and a physical exam, right? And you know what? And it's out of that that I cognate, and I begin to put the pieces together.
Starting point is 00:19:44 The narrative comes together, and it can't come together unless you do those two things. Yeah, it's really the story. And the test confirmed it. And then the test confirmed where I was going and what I was thinking. And in this case, if the test didn't come back positive, right, then I wouldn't have, I, you know, maybe she didn't have candida. But I will say the final thing is that on how do you you make that final decision they have candida or yeast or yeast or yeast can you can i agree fungus i think it's
Starting point is 00:20:13 not just candy it's not candy it's the most common but it's it's uh we can use the term yeast or fungus i i may i may say you know what i know the test came back negative. I know how hard it is to find, but clinically, I think this person has fungus. I'm going to treat them. Absolutely. Some of them walk in mushroom. They have a white coating on their tongue and vaginal yeast infections and itching in their anus,
Starting point is 00:20:36 and they have eczema, and they have blepharitis, which is crusting around the eyes. They have itchy ear. I mean, there's a million symptoms that are from overgrowth of fungus or yeast. And even if their tests are normal, you still have to treat them. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:50 And what's amazing is these people really get better. They get better. It's like one of those miracle things in functional medicine. When you get it right, it is, you know, and that's why it's really important because maybe 10% of the people that come in have a fungal origin for their symptoms. And I will tell you, most of the time it's just not that. It's usually just not that. It's usually gut dysbiosis or imbalances of the bacteria to begin with. It's the fact that your nutrition has been really poor and they have multiple nutritional deficiencies. They live that really stressed out life.
Starting point is 00:21:27 And that stress changes the gut microflora in such a way it makes you more susceptible to candida. Absolutely. And I think, let's get into what we do for these patients. Because we talked about the kinds of symptoms that people have, the kind of testing we do that's a little bit different here at the Ultra Wellness Center. But this is not a hard problem to fix if you deal with the causes, right? And if you know what you're doing. So tell us, how do you approach these people through diet and the right supplements and maybe medications? What do you do?
Starting point is 00:21:57 Yeah. So, yeah. So those are the things that I look at. So again, I look at the general lifestyle and I start to think about, you know, where, what's going to work. And I, I look at the general lifestyle and I start to think about what's going to work. And it's going to be all the lifestyle issues. So it's going to be nutrition. It's going to be sleep. It's going to be exercise. It's going to be stress reduction. Those are right at the top of the table. Those are key for anybody. Key for anybody. So nutrition becomes a key place. So when I think about candida, I think about changing the diet. I think about treating it. What do you do to the diet? So the diet.
Starting point is 00:22:27 So the diet, we want to take out sugars, processed carbohydrates. We want to take out, because those are the things that feed your candida. So there's some specific diet. Stop feeding them. Yeah, stop feeding them. Starve them. So we're getting rid of all the processed foods, all the sugar. We're going to limit alcohol and reduce stress.
Starting point is 00:22:44 Those are my top four things I do. Okay. And you don't have to go on this super extreme anti-candida diets that everybody talks about. Well, they're dangerous. I mean, not that they're dangerous, but if you think about the anti-candida diet, it restricts too many sugars, right? And the same thing with the, there's a diet called the GAPS diet. There's a diet called the SCD diet and the anti-candida diet. One thing they have all in common is they're very restrictive of carbohydrates, almost to a fault,
Starting point is 00:23:10 to the point where you might go into ketoacidosis or ketosis. You wouldn't go into ketoacidosis unless you're a diet. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I mean ketosis, I mean ketosis. You may go into ketosis. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's not. However, there are some studies that have shown that the antel the antifungals we use both um uh the
Starting point is 00:23:31 pharmaceuticals and the um herbs that we use um do not work as well in a fasted state interesting and also neutrophils don't function as well And neutrophils are very important in fighting the candida and keep it from adhering to the intestinal wall. Those are your white blood cells, right? And so those diets, that's one of the, there's some research that points to them doing that. So I'm a little cautious about wanting to use such strict reduction. Yeah, but just getting rid of the sugar or the starch and processed carbs and junk food.
Starting point is 00:24:06 So that's what we do. So what we do basically here is we— And you probably don't want to eat any blue cheese, right? Right. So we do those things. We get rid of the processed carbohydrates. We get rid of the starchy carbohydrates. We get rid of the sugars.
Starting point is 00:24:17 We limit the alcohol, reduce the stress. And, you know, there's—so we do something a little bit like a low FODMAP diet. So we reduce those foods that are easily fermentable. It's like onions and asparagus and wheat would be examples of some of those foods you want to restrict. So now, that's a great place to start because good nutrition is good for everything. But generally, we find, I find in my patients, it's usually not enough. Candida is hard to treat and we need to then treat it. And typically, we'll- You need a weed killer. You need a weed killer. Yeah, you really do.
Starting point is 00:25:01 And what do you use? So I'll typically start with herbals. So there's caprylic acid, there's undisilic acid, there is lauric acid. Which is in breast milk and coconut, right? Yeah, breast milk and coconuts. And then two spices that are very potent, and I think you need to be careful when you use them, are oregano and thyme. Yes. And they can be very, very helpful. Yeah, oregano is a great antifungal.
Starting point is 00:25:32 Berberine can also be effective, and berberine also is an antibacterial, so it can be used to treat a bacterial overgrowth as well as a fungal overgrowth. So I will generally start there. I'll also add in some biofilm busters because these candida, like other bacteria, they will congregate together. They will form a little town. They'll put up their umbrellas and be invisible to the immune system. So what is a biofilm buster? What is a biofilm? What is a biofilm? So biofilm is that. It's when they gather in a, it's like a big village of these candida. They throw up their umbrellas.
Starting point is 00:26:07 So it's like a protective tent over them. Tent over them. So they are invisible to your immune system, and they protect themselves against the antibacterial that you're going to use or the antifungal that you're going to use. So biofilms, when I have a patient that's not getting any better, I'm going to pull out the biofilm busters, So biofilms, when I have a patient, it's not getting any better. I'm going to pull out the biofilm busters. And those are going to be things like seropeptidase, nanokinase.
Starting point is 00:26:33 And there's one more that I use that's slipping my mind right now. That's okay. So we've got the antifungal herbs. We've got biofilm busters. And when do you decide to use medication? And what do you use? So when that's not working, then we oftentimes do have to go to medication.
Starting point is 00:26:52 So I'll use Diflucan, Nystatin. Nystatin is sort of like the Xifaximin. If people have heard of SIBO, Xifaximin is an antibiotic. It's not systemically absorbed. It just stays in the gut. You give Nystatin to babies. Yeah, yeah. And pregnant women, babies can use Nystatin.
Starting point is 00:27:11 And so Nystatin's a good choice if you're concerned about a patient's sensitivity to medications. So Nystatin might be one of my starting points. The most effective treatment I use is Diflucan. Yeah. Now, Diflucan is one of those drugs that we hear is bad and bad for your liver. Doctors freak out about it. They don't want to take it for more
Starting point is 00:27:28 than a day. But you know, the old fungal drugs were dangerous. We used to learn about this in medical school. It was a drug called Amphotericin. We called it Amphoterrible because it had all these side effects. But these newer drugs don't, especially if you're not taking a lot of other medications or these drug interactions. And I prescribed probably more Diflucan than any other drug I've ever prescribed in my entire medical career. And knock wood, I really had no problems with it. People do get die off, where they can feel like
Starting point is 00:27:52 the yeast gets killed and then they'll get an immune response to that and they can feel kind of like flu-y for a little bit. But that you can kind of cut out with getting charcoal afterwards, a few hours later. And I think that this is really a very effective treatment for people who really need it. And I think I wouldn't be afraid of using it.
Starting point is 00:28:09 And it's used for more than just a day. We use it for a few weeks or sometimes even a month. Yeah, this, you know, candida is one of those controversial areas in conventional medicine. But in functional medicine, you're going to come across people who have fungal infection, who have yeast infection, and it's having an enormous impact on their life.
Starting point is 00:28:28 And you've got to be really cognizant of that. You need to test for it, and then you need to treat it appropriately. It is not that easy to get rid of. It can recur. And so we have to be really diligent in helping our patients not just get rid of the candida, but rebalance their nutrition, rebalance all of their lives, because it's those things that led to the candida infection in the first place. So that's a big part of what I do, is when I'm treating that, they're happy to feel better. They're glad that we figured it out. But that change in diet needs to stay that way.
Starting point is 00:29:02 Yeah. I mean, if you go back to eating all the starch and sugar, you can just get a problem again. Yeah, and so I think it's really important. It's an important topic. It was important enough for me to want to talk about it because I see it enough and see the impact it has and how wonderfully people can do. One of the places I see it most often, and I see some of the most dramatic turnarounds,
Starting point is 00:29:26 is in our autistic kids. Yes. I was just thinking about that. You know, so autistic kids, one of the hallmarks of autism, or part of their complex, is gastrointestinal issues, bloating, distension, diarrhea. That is like one of the biggest things that an autistic kid will struggle with. And it goes ignored by their primary care and their pediatrician. Or their psychiatrist.
Starting point is 00:29:50 I mean, 95% of these kids have gut issues. How is it not relevant? And how is the brain and connected not connected? So we do the testing and we find that they have, you know, a diuribinitol like off the charts. Yeah. And so- That's that urine marker for yeast. That's that urine marker for yeast.
Starting point is 00:30:06 That's a urine marker for yeast. And sometimes they have nothing that shows yeast, but they're testing for their gut, their complete diagnostic stool evaluation comes back. They have a huge imbalance in their gut bacteria. And so we're going to treat that. And those kids, if they're not getting better when I'm trying to fix their gut
Starting point is 00:30:26 and I don't have positive testing for candida, but I have all the others, you know, I have other symptoms, I'll put that kid on Diflucan and I can't tell you how many kids have had, you know, amazing breakthroughs on their Diflucan. It is, it's amazing. When you hit it right and it's the right patient and the right condition,
Starting point is 00:30:46 it can be one of those miracle treatments. Yeah. So I think this is an incredible conversation about a very common condition that's often ignored or actually almost completely ignored by traditional doctors. It's one of those hot button issues that they freak out about and think you're a quack if you're talking about it. And I think there's been an overemphasis on Canada,
Starting point is 00:31:03 but I think this in general, people who have this collection of symptoms by history, who have the right test, when you hit it right, these people really get better. You cut out the starch and sugar, use the herbal protocols. You sometimes use the medication in combination with an overall treatment of their health. And it's amazing how people get better. And that's what we do here at the Ultra Wellness Center. It's what you do, George, and what we've been doing for decades. And I think for people who struggle out there and are not getting the answers to their health issues,
Starting point is 00:31:30 we're here for you at the Ultra Wellness Center. And we see people from all over the world. We have all virtual consults now if you want. So if you want to come here, we can do great video consultations in telemedicine. Which has been great. Everybody loves it. Yeah, people love them.
Starting point is 00:31:43 And we can do all the diagnostics we need. We figured out how to do that. And just go to ultrawellnesscenter.com to learn more. And we'd love to see you if you're struggling and you can't figure out how to get better yourself. Maybe just cut off the starch and sugar and take some probiotics. There's a lot of other things we didn't talk about, but this is really an important topic for people to understand that there are ways to get better from things that are struggle street for them that that aren't getting answers through traditional care uh so hopefully we'll see you at the ultra wellness center um um thanks for joining us for this podcast a special episode of house call thank you george thank you mark it's always a pleasure and if you love this podcast please share with your friends and family on social media tell
Starting point is 00:32:19 us how you might think you have an issue with yeast we'd love to hear and leave a comment and subscribe wherever you are your podcast and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introduce to you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter.
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