Hi there, Eric Bakker, naturopath, author of Candida Crusher.
The longer I have a yeast infection does it make it harder to treat?
That's a funny question.
I think what the person's trying to say is, is this infection hard to treat if I've had
it a long time?
Well, it certainly can be.
And the reason why this would occur is, I think, for psychological reasons and also
physiological reasons.
When you have an infection a long time, you will have tried many treatments.
You may become despondent, anxious or even depressed because you can't beat the infection.
You may have talked to a lot of people about the infection.
You start to wonder whether you are really ill or not, and this is what happened to me
when I was in my 20s.
I was sick for a long time and nobody would listen.
In fact, some people might even tell you to go see a psychiatrist because they may think
the problem's all in your head.
So physiologically, what you'll find is yeast can get stronger and change and multiply.
You can end up with a lot more of the fungal form of yeast throughout your body.
Yeast can end up in places where it can become quite hard to eradicate from the body.
Yeast also keep bad company, so you will produce potentially a toxic digestive system with
many other bad bacteria and parasites.
So you can end up with quite a bad leaky gut, multiple food allergies, quite a raised immune
response.
You could feel quite ill with a continued long yeast infection.
And my concern with such chronic cases is that the person will feel emotionally despondent
and physically despondent, and it can be very hard to get on top of a yeast infection that
you've had for many years.
So what do you do?
What's the solution when you're feeling quite ill?
Well, the solution is to take it easy.
Get the right information and make good decisions.
And as you slowly start to improve, which you should, is find treatments that are going
to work for you.
Avoid strong kill treatments that aggravate you.
These are quite common and I read a lot about these on Kill Zone and see them on the internet
where people are trying to quickly kill the yeast infection.
Well, these treatments don't really work that well because you'll soon find that you'll
be back to square one again.
So I prefer people to go very slowly and to forget about this idea of killing, but rather
look at this idea of encouraging the friendly bacteria by changing lifestyle and dietary
habits.
By looking at stress levels in particular, by looking at a holistic approach and by holistic,
I'm talking about looking at the areas in your lifestyle and in your diet that are weak
and need strengthening up.
My Chapter 7, the fifth section in my book, Candida Crusher, explains quite a lot about
the concepts I'm trying to explain.
There's over 100 pages in my book about lifestyle changes.
There's over 50 pages in the book about immunity, stress, and a yeast infection.
And once you really start to understand the importance of the stress connection, it may
hold the key for why you are not recovering.
So don't focus on killing, look more at improving your diet and lifestyle and gently encouraging
the right bacteria back in place, and this will discourage the bad bacteria.
This treatment has worked for thousands of patients and I'm sure it can work for you,
too.
So give it a go and have a look at my book.
It will explain a lot more about these concepts in great detail.
And many more of video clips will also explain more details of the point I'm trying to make.
So the longer you have a yeast infection, the harder it can become to eradicate.
But never give up because I've seen many people with yeast infections even of 20 years' duration
beat the infection within 12 to 18 months with the right treatment.
So I hope that answers your question.