Hi there, Eric Bakker, author of Candida Crusher.
Thank you for tuning into this YouTube video today.
Today, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about testing for Candida yeast infections.
Many patients who come to see me want to know whether they have an infection or not.
They go to their doctor or they go to their naturopath and they're told that they've got
all these problems, but then they reply, What are these problems?
Can we do a test for these problems?
What are they?
So the medical doctor will have a few tests that he or she may perform, but not many patients
with Candida yeast infections are really tested when they go to their medical doctor.
If the doctor suspects a vaginal yeast infection or thrush, then he or she may perform a test,
a smear test, to determine that, and that will be sent away and those cells will be
checked out.
They'll be cultured.
They'll go to a special lab to see whether it's bacterial vaginosis or a yeast infection.
But generally, a doctor won't test any further than that in terms of digestive problems or
inflammation or brain fog or any of the other subtle signs and symptoms of a yeast infection.
The patient may be given a digestive product, maybe an acid blocker.
They may be given a sleeping pill or an anti-inflammatory, but I don't usually find that medical doctors
will test any further than perhaps doing a vaginal check.
Or maybe in some cases with a male, they may do a skin scraping of a particular area and
then get that checked.
The issue I have with the medical test to determine yeast infections and many other
health conditions are that they are defined more by statistical norms rather than physiological
norms.
By that, I mean they really work on a sliding scale from say 1 to 10.
If you come back as 1.5 in the bottom end of that reference range or 9.5, you're deemed
to be perfectly normal.
In natural medicine, we don't really look at it like that.
We look more at the physiological norm.
We're going to be more interested to get you around four, five, or six, which will be more
of a midpoint, which we deem to be a really good range for you to be in.
That's one concern I have is looking at these norms.
The other concern I have, really, with the medical testing is if a test comes back positive,
it will often lead to the prescription of a pharmaceutical drug.
And in many cases, it will be an antibiotic or anti-fungal; it will be an "anti" type
of a drug, which will only create further problems.
And if the doctor can diagnose you with any particular test, then he or she may even think
that you've got depression or anxiety and send you to a psychiatrist.
And that's what happened to me.
I was told to go to a psychiatrist when I had Candida because my problems were all in
my head.
Well, they were in my head partially because I had brain fog, but what the doctor didn't
know is I had a lot of digestive problems that he really should have gone further in
looking at.
And for that reason, now I do a lot of stool testing, comprehensive digestive stool testing.
You're going to see a lot more videos on stool testing.
I'll explain to you a lot more about the markers and what they mean, and how to interpret this
very, very important test.
In my book, Candida Crusher, I call the comprehensive stool test the "Rolls Royce" of tests because
you can determine a whole bunch of stuff from this test.
You can look at digestive markers, inflammatory markers, and immune markers.
It goes on and on and on; there's a whole lot of information that we can acquire from
this test, which can give us a very accurate indication of the health of your whole digestive
system.
It also shows me where to pinpoint the treatment.
It gives me a good idea on the severity of your condition and how long it's going to
take to get well.
There are various tests that the doctor and the naturopath will perform to determine a
yeast infection.
As I mentioned, the doctor may perform a smear test to determine whether it's vaginal thrush
or vaginosis or an STD of some form.
A doctor may perform a stool test on the odd patient to determine whether it is a parasite,
but they generally are not really going to be interested in looking at the Candida through
the stool like naturopaths are.
Some doctors perform blood alcohol tests.
Particularly in Japan and Asian countries, these tests are performed probably more so
than in America.
This will actually determine your alcohol level, aldehyde level in the blood.
You can be given a particular substance to take and then the blood will be tested to
determine if there's a BAC or blood alcohol concentration.
And in Japan, severe Candida is actually called "drunk disease."
Some people can actually appear quite drunk when they have severe Candidiasis.
The two tests, generally, that may be performed would be a stool test and maybe a blood test.
Some doctors will perform a blood allergy test on the patient, and these are functional
medicine doctors, generally.
But natural doctors like me; we would prefer to do a stool test.
We may also do a urinary metabolite test.
There are particular sugars that when they become metabolized in large amounts in the
urine, if they're elevated, we know that you've got quite a high amount of Candida in the
GI tract.
We can do the urinary test.
We can do the stool test.
We can also do another urinary test called "urinary indicant," which is really a marker
of SEBO or small intestinal bowel overgrowth giving me a scale of 1 to 4.
Those would be the three or four tests I would generally perform on patients if need be.
I hope this has given you some indication on testing and yeast infections.
Please tune into more of my videos to get more information on other forms of testing
and more information on these tests.
Thank you.