Greetings.
Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand.
Thanks for spending the time to check this video out and also we appreciate your support
subscribing to this channel and checking out the other work that I've completed online,
yeastinfection.org and various other blog sites that I've contributed to.
The question today is "Can birth control contribute to a vaginal yeast infection or a Candida
infection?"
I just did a video previously on intrauterine devices, so I thought it might be quite prudent
to me to do another video talking about the birth control pill and its link with Candida.
Many women today take the birth control pill.
I may have done a video on this previously, but I'm going to expand a little bit on this
one and maybe give a bit more information, which I previously haven't completed.
If we go back a long time ago when I was a little kid back in the 60s, the Pill when
it came out was nothing like the pill that it is today.
One of the first pills that they produced was called DES or diethylstilbestrol, which
is probably about 50,000 times stronger than the current combination pills that they make
today.
It was very, very strong.
Some experts that I've spoken to, people that have done an incredible amount of research,
believe that the breast cancer rates today are still linked to the women back then giving
birth to daughters and they giving birth to subsequent children and there could be some
link there between women taking that kind of estrogen levels back then in the pill.
Even pushing that breast cancer through to today.
It's incredible.
Estrogen is certainly linked with breast cancer and other types of female cancers, particularly
when it's very high in the body and difficult for the body to break down.
Estrogen is definitely linked with Candida.
I've seen this many, many times with women, particularly estrogen dominant women.
And we have a lot of women today estrogen dominant between say mid to late 30s up to
mid to late 50s.
Estrogen is everywhere today.
Even plastics.
Certain types of plastics can mimic estrogen.
We call them xenoestrogens.
There are various chemicals that we have today that can mimic estrogen.
For this reasons, many people like me prefer to talk to patients to say, "Look, try to
get away from plastics and toxic personal care products and things like Styrofoam, those
little styrene cups you drink out of.
BPA plastics, plastic containers."
All these things can contribute to what we call Xeno or foreign estrogens.
Just be careful not to load the body up too much with excess estrogen that you don't really
want.
Estrogen is a perforated hormone, so it grows.
It pushes growth up.
It comes in several days before the period, so it will come in and slowly goes down as
progesterone goes up.
These two hormones really control the menstrual cycle, but there are two other hormones in
the background also called luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone.
I'm not going to go into this whole pathway.
You can look it up on line and study this yourself.
Many women tell me that they get vaginal irritation or itching or discharge.
Anything from two to four or five days before the period.
This is very common as estrogen starts to kick in.
It starts to prepare the lining inside the womb and the uterus for possible implementation.
If the egg becomes fertilized and it implants, estrogen goes up.
It makes that area nice and plump and soft and it allows also the cells to stimulate
glycogen, which is a kind of a sugar that Candida loves to feed on.
Many women can get this vaginal irritation or cervical irritation from the excess sugar
being produced in an area that Candida can feed on.
Candida Albicans is the common one found probably in about 65/70 percent of the vaginal cultures,
but there are other types of Candida that are associated as well.
If you are on a pill and you get problems, my suggestion is to talk to the doctor and
get off the combination pill and look at a progesterone only pill.
Usually, you will have a lesser chance of this kind of vaginal irritation if you go
progesterone only.
There's pills like Yazmin, for example, or various other pills you can get into.
Or you may want to look at other kind of methods of birth control.
Be careful about intrauterine devices, IUDs, because they've got up to four to five times
great risk of making that Candida will hang around than non-users of IUDs.
Check out my previous video I did on intrauterine devices and Candida.
Some women don't get problems with the pill with Candida.
Other women get a heck of a problem.
If you notice that you get a cyclical irritation in that area and you are on the pill, go and
talk to your doctor and do something about it.
Because you can definitely get free from that.
And you may want to give yourself a break from the pill for three or six months or more
and then do a proper Candida diet approach, a proper vaginal cleanout with boric acid.
I've done some videos on this.
And you, too, can be 100 percent free from this most irritating annoying condition.
I spoke a bit before about estrogen dominance.
The important thing to understand is it very much also depends on the health of your liver.
You'll find that by drinking alcohol regularly and eating chocolate and having sweat foods
like candies and ice cream, these foods can really cause problems with your because they're
going to make it harder for the liver to detoxify estrogen.
Estrogen can build up in the body and create a lot of problems for you.
If you are drinking reasonable amounts of alcohol, having all kinds of female problems,
my suggestion is for you definitely to cut alcohol back and high fatty foods and maybe
lose some weight.
Excess body weight in women, particularly, but also in guys, definitely contributes to
estrogen dominance because the fat is very estrogen sensitive.
Weight loss, liver cleansing, very important parts of keeping estrogen at a normal low
rate; otherwise, you could end up with serious health problems when you get older.
Thanks for tuning in.
I hope you got some good information from this video.
Thank you.