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Candida and the Alien Connection

Let me tell you about systemic candida, a condition with which I was diagnosed in 1993. 

The experts say. …

Candida is a condition often associated with M.E.  The experts describe candida, short for Candida Albicans, as one of the most common types of yeast living on the lining of the gut.  As long as the gut is healthy, the candida is harmless, but overuse of antibiotics, the modern diet, stress and pollution can change the gut environment encouraging candida to flourish.  They produce toxins and the damage done to the gut lining can cause devastating apparently unrelated symptoms including fatigue, abdominal bloating, food sensitivities and cravings, irritable bowel, recurrent thrush and bladder problems.  Candidiasis is also stated to be part of a general imbalance in the gut known as gut dysbiosis, a condition that develops when the whole digestive system and gut wall is out of balance.

I had all of these symptoms. 

Candida - And the Alien Connection

In 1993 I went to my local library and tracked down a private allergy doctor who diagnosed me with having intestinal candida.  It had badly ravaged my gut resulting in chronic food intolerance.  There were many foods I had to stop eating including wheat, other grains, dairy, nuts, seeds, additives, preservatives and all foods containing yeast and sugar.  My treatment slowly progressed onto herbal anti-fungals and anti-fungal drugs.  The drugs were the only thing that stopped my sinuses from bleeding.

Sticking to this diet wasn’t easy.  I was your average sugar craving chocoholic.  Candida by its very nature turns you into one.  Let me explain.

Do you remember the first Alien film?  You know the one, where John Hurt goes a ghastly shade of grey just before the creature comes bursting out of his chest, putrid saliva dripping from its deadly jaws.  Evil eyes come to rest on the human entities standing agog before it.  You could feel the malevolence and it’s all consuming need to invade and feed and take over the whole of mankind for its ultimate and dastardly ends.

Just like candida!  When did I start to link the two and make serious comparisons between them?  It was to do with the marmalade and the pickled onion cravings.

In the early 1990's I began to have uncontrollable sugar cravings especially in the middle of the night.  I would awake at some unearthly hour craving sugar until the need became all engulfing, tiptoe stealthily to the kitchen and feed the habit.  I never knew what would tempt me until reaching the kitchen cupboards but whether it was pickled onions soaked deliciously in vinegar and brown sugar or sweet succulent home made marmalade, I would wrench off the jar top and gorge on the contents not stopping to collect cutlery along the way.  It was a fix and I needed it.  I thought my excursions were secret from my husband but was outed by the sticky marmalade finger marks on door handles and daubed liberally along the banisters from kitchen to bedroom.

This sorry state continued until the candida condition was diagnosed in 1993 but trying to stop eating sugar was like trying to stop breathing.  I needed a mental barrier and found one.

One day not too long after starting the diet I was watching Alien and it registered.  I knew what was really going on.  How could I have missed something so obvious?  An alien creature was living inside me.  It wasn't me going on nightly excursions to the larder, it was, and it said "feed me”.

How dare this invasive fungus dictate to me?  How dare it monopolise my body and not offer to pay rent?  I saw everything in a new light and war had been declared!  I still woke with nightly cravings but did I succumb?  No, I didn’t.  I gritted my teeth, enforced my will and snarled menacingly "starve yer bugger”, then turned over and went back to sleep.

This new way of looking at things did wonders for will power and general attitude to candida.  It also provided a new insight into the Alien films.  I don't look at them in quite the same way.

Although the anti candida regime stabilized my condition, I didn’t get off the anti fungal drugs until 1996 after having all my amalgam fillings removed and replaced with white ones.  Candida and mercury amalgam fillings – a surprising connection between the two - yet another piece of the M.E. puzzle!   .

Trying to stop eating sugar was like trying to stop breathing