Yeast, Yeast Infections, & Candida: What Is Candidiasis?

If you’ve been reading about Candida albicans and Candidiasis, you may already be a little confused about what it is, what causes it, what the symptoms are, and whether you have it or not. this is because conventional and alternative medical sources just don’t see eye to eye on this subject. If you ask your doctor or turn to a big medical website, you’ll probably hear that candidiasis, a widely disseminated yeast infection, only occurs in the very ill: transplant patients on immune suppressive drugs, AIDs patients, and cancer patients on chemotherapy. Occasionally a child, with an immature immune system, will get a bad yeast infection, but this but this is still not true candidiasis. These sources also probably don’t say much about chronic or recurring yeast infections, even though for many women a terrible cycle of antibiotic prescriptions for bladder infections or sinusitis or bronchitis, alternating with anti-yeast medications is a cruel reality.

If, on the other hand, you turn to an alternative health source like a website, magazine, or book, you may be surprised to learn that nearly everyone has candida; that it can cause almost any symptom, but especially the kind of symptoms that many people experience quite often; and that if you’ve ever taken antibiotics or steroids or birth control hormones you probably have it. I may be overstating this a little, but there are certainly authors, as well as natural health practitioners, who believe everyone has “candida” and that it is, apparently, the cause of most ills.

If you have a sneaking suspicion that the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes, you’re correct. Candida is the scientific name for a species of yeast that is a normal resident of human skin, digestive tract, mouth, and vaginal tract. Candida belongs in us, and on us—it’s normal.  although candida overgrowth and chronic yeast infections almost never enter the bloodstream and the organs, as some alternative sources imply, there is a difficult to diagnose condition that is correctly called “Candida Related Complex.” “Candidiasis” should really be used to refer to a severe, life threatening infection, while “Candida” is simply the name of one type of yeast organism. and, to call it a “chronic yeast infection” doesn’t really do it justice either, since it is a normal part of the human ecosystem, or microbiota.

That brings us back to the question, what are candida yeast overgrowth symptoms? and, if you do have it, what is a candidiasis treatment. (That’s a trick question. If you have candidiasis, you’re in the hospital and you probably have clearly visible thrush, a thick white coating of yeast living in the tongue and mouth. the real question is, do you have candida overgrowth or candida-related complex, and if you do, what can you do about it?)

It helps to divide this into three kinds of candida problems: chronic vaginal and other yeast infections, intestinal candida overgrowth, and the more mysterious candida-related complex—even though that is an artificial division, because there is a great deal of overlap among the three.

I’m going to leave this here for today. There’s a lot more to say about this subject, and I’ll be back with more, I promise!