The Yeast Beast

Many parents are familiar with chronic yeast overgrowth. I have nicknamed i the "yeast beast" in my house because it's often rears it's ugly head out of no where. Learning to manage fungal overgrowth is important and helpful to reducing symptoms.

First is it helpful to become familiar with the common symptoms of fungal overgrowth also called "candida".  Some common symptoms are:
constipation, rashes, hyperactivity, stimming, self-limiting diets, congestion, thrush, and ear infections. We actually have a free symptoms worksheet to help you out because there are actually a lot more symptoms that can occur. This is it's such an annoying thing that parents want to avoid. 

Most of us are familiar with a "yeast flare-up" which can happen for a variety of reasons  but when parents hear that yeast might flare up with chelation, their apprehension to start chelation is completely understandable.

While this is very understandable it's important to know that fungal overgrowth is actually a symptom of other issues and it's common in mercury poisoning.

Thankfully there is a solution! While removing mercury does eventually lead to resolving this problem in the interim you do want to treat it to reduce symptoms.

You can safely and naturally manage fungal overgrowth and reduce or eliminate symptoms while you work on chelation.  It does take time to learn to recognize what symptoms yeast causes for your child but these become clearer when you start treating yeast.

Getting Started:

• Choose a probiotic. Start low and gradually increase to the recommendation on the bottle. We say slowly to reduce the die-off response that usually happens.
• Then choose and start a natural anti-fungal. Choose just one and start with a low dose and gradually work up to reduce the die-off.

Yeast may not go away entirely early on in the protocol but you can control the flare-ups and reduce symptoms.  If you see negative symptoms, ie: die-off it's confirming they do have too much yeast.   You might see this anytime you raise the dose. You may also need to raise or lower the dose in response to symptoms and whether or not they are on a round.

One important thing to remember is that probiotics are bacteria too, just good bacteria. Some of the natural antifungals are not selective enough to only kill bad bacteria so make sure probiotics are doses at least 4 hours away from antifungals.

Key Points:

• Prorbiotics and anti-fungals can be raised and lowered giving more when yeast flares up. 
• Treating yeast is a daily ongoing process until enough chelation has taken place that the immune system is able to normally balance the yeast at healthy levels.
• Some children benefit from avoiding dietary foods known to feed yeast like sugar and bread.  Children in this category seem to crave these foods and don't want to eat anything else. While doing this is not required, in some cases of really stubborn yeast, it can help.
• Super stubborn cases of yeast that are not responding to the higher doses of anti-fungals may improve with the low-sulfur diet may be helpful.

Either way, remember to start only one thing at a time and go slow! Always raise slowly to avoid unpleasant die-off symptoms!

It does get better with adequate chelation. but it takes time. Yeast will become much easier to control with less anti-fungal and eventually it will go away entirely.

*for further information on treating natural fungal overgrowth see the Yeast Chapter in our second edition book.