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Tag: Bacteria - Organic Lifestyle Magazine Tag: Bacteria - Organic Lifestyle Magazine

How Long Can Germs Survive on Surfaces?

More specifically, how long do bacteria and viruses live on surfaces at home under normal interior temperatures? It’s complicated. Some microbes could survive on household surfaces like telephones, door handles, countertops, and stair railings for centuries if left undisturbed. But most don’t.

Humid homes are better hosts to most infectious microbes. Bacteria and viruses cannot live on surfaces with a humidity of less than 10 percent.

Bacteria called mesophiles, such as the tuberculosis-causing Mycobacterium tuberculosis, survive best at room temperature and are likely to thrive longer than cold-loving psychrophiles or heat-loving thermophiles. According to Tierno, at room temperature and normal humidity, Escherichia coli (E. coli), a bacteria found in ground beef that causes food poisoning, can live for a few hours to a day. The calicivirus, the culprit of the stomach flu, lives for days or weeks, while HIV dies nearly instantly upon exposure to sunlight. Other microbes form exoskeleton-like spores as a defense mechanism, like the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, which is responsible for toxic shock syndrome, food poisoning, and wound infections. In this way, they can withstand temperature and humidity extremes. Tierno says this bacterial spore can survive for weeks on dry clothing using sloughed skin cells for food. The Bacillus anthracis, the anthrax bacteria, can also form spores and survive tens to hundreds of years.

Popular Science

Speaking of spores, some types of mold can grow on almost any surface in the home. Mold grows best when there is a lot of moisture, but there is no way to rid your home of all molds. Even if you could, mold spores are practically indestructible, though lower humidity will help keep spores from growing into mold.

Related: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections 

Experts recommend home humidity be less than 60, but we recommend below 40 for a home that’s already moldy and potentially causing or exacerbating illness.

Candida albicans as the most important nosocomial fungal pathogen can survive up to 4 months on surfaces. Persistence of other yeasts, such as Torulopsis glabrata, was described to be similar (5 months) or shorter (Candida parapsilosis, 14 days).

NCBI

How Long Does Coronavirus Survive on Surfaces?

Researchers are only beginning to understand how SARS-CoV-2 (the cause of COVID-19) survives on surfaces. Lab results don’t guarantee similar real-world results, but recent research shows the virus’s survival depends on what it lands on and the humidity in the room or on the surface. The live virus is said to be able to survive on various common surfaces from three hours to seven days.

  • Glass – 5 days
  • Wood – 4 days
  • Plastic & stainless-steel – 3 days
  • Cardboard – 24 hours
  • Copper surfaces – 4 hours

Paper and cardboard are very porous. The virus doesn’t like surfaces like that. It likes smooth, even things.

Frank Esper, MDCleveland Clinic

Related: Coronavirus – Your Guide to the CoVID-19 Pandemic

Spreading the virus from products or packaging that are shipped over a period of days or weeks at ambient temperatures is likely to be low risk.

The CDC

There’s no research yet showing if the virus can survive on cloth textiles (like clothing or rags).

How Long Do Other Viruses Last on Surfaces?

Most viruses from the respiratory tract, such as coronacoxsackieinfluenzaSARS or rhino virus, can persist on surfaces for a few days. Viruses from the gastrointestinal tract, such as astrovirus, HAVpolio- or rota virus, persist for approximately 2 months. Blood-borne viruses, such as HBV or HIV, can persist for more than one week. Herpes viruses, such as CMV or HSV type 1 and 2, have been shown to persist from only a few hours up to 7 days.

NCBI

HIV is said to live outside of the body for only a few seconds, but under certain conditions may last for up to a week – though surface-contraction infection is very nearly impossible. Hepatitis C can survive on surfaces without a host for up to 3 weeks at room temperature on common household surfaces. Hepatitis A can survive on surfaces for months.

Norovirus can live on hard or soft surfaces for about two weeks. In still water, it can live for months and maybe even years. Influenza (flu) viruses can survive on the skin for many hours, and on hard surfaces they are able to infect another person for up to 48 hours.

Viruses that cause the common cold include some of the previously known coronaviruses, rhinoviruses, RSV, and parainfluenza. Each of these viruses has many iterations of the virus, so life-longevity on surfaces varies. RSV lasts for a few hours on hard surfaces and up to 30 minutes on the skin. Parainfluenza lives on surfaces for up to 10 hours. Rhinoviruses can survive for 3 hours on skin and hard surfaces. Other coronaviruses are known to last a few hours on most surfaces, which is likely similar to the current, novel coronavirus.

How Long Do Bacteria Last on Surfaces?

Just like there are many types of coronaviruses, flu viruses, rhinoviruses, etc. there are also many types of staph, E. coli, salmonella, etc. Generally, viruses are more likely to survive longer on solid surfaces than on fabrics. But some bacteria seem to prefer fabric.

Most gram-positive bacteria, such as Enterococcus spp. (including VRE), Staphylococcus aureus(including MRSA), or Streptococcus pyogenes, survive for months on dry surfaces. Many gram-negative species, such as Acinetobacter spp., Escherichia coli, Klebsiella spp., Pseudomonas aeruginosaSerratia marcescens, or Shigella spp., can also survive for months. A few others, such as Bordetella pertussisHaemophilus influenzaeProteus vulgaris, or Vibrio cholerae, however, only persist for days. Mycobacteria, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and spore-forming bacteria, including Clostridium difficile, can also survive for months on surfaces. 

NCBI

On that note, if you own a microwave, we don’t recommend using it except to nuke your sponges. Saturate the sponge with water and heat on high for one to two minutes.

Related: How to Cure Lyme Disease, and Virtually Any Other Bacterial Infection, Naturally

Staph typically survives on surfaces for “24 hours or more,” and studies have shown it can survive on some objects like towels and razors for weeks, and Staphylococcus aureus can survive for months on dry surfaces with very low humidity.

Most salmonella lives on dry hard surfaces for up to four hours depending on its species, but a 2003 study found that Salmonella enteritidis can survive for four days and still infect.

E.coli, often found in ground beef, can live for a few hours to a day on kitchen surfaces. 

Listeria infections are responsible for the highest hospitalization rates (91%) amongst known food-borne pathogens. Listeria can last for months on many surfaces, can proliferate inside your refrigerator, and has a very slow incubation period lasting days, weeks, or even months, which can make it difficult to know that contamination has occurred.

Botulism is a disease caused by Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium that produces botulinum toxins under low-oxygen and low-acid conditions. Botulinum toxins are one of the most lethal substances known. Spores produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum are heat-resistant and exist widely in the environment. In the absence of oxygen, they germinate, grow, and then excrete toxins. Botulinum toxins are ingested through improperly processed food in which the bacteria or the spores survive, then grow and produce the toxins. But the good news is that botulism is rare, botulinum spores will not proliferate, and the bacterium will not survive on household surfaces. Homemade canned and fermented foods are a common source of foodborne botulism.

Bacillus cereus is one of the most common causes of food poisoning, though fortunately, it is not typically life-threatening. Bacillus cereus readily forms biofilms on a variety of surfaces, including plastic, soil, glass wool, and stainless steel, thus can last indefinitely.

Germs Aren’t Bad Guys

Microbes, of course, are everywhere. Each square centimeter of skin alone harbors about 100,000 bacteria. The human body contains trillions of microorganisms. Trillions upon trillions of viruses rain from the sky every day. A 2002 report in the Southern Medical Journal found pathogens, including staphylococcus, on 94% of paper money tested. Money is said to possibly carry more germs than a household toilet.

And yet, we don’t get a staph infection 94% of the time we touch money. Why?

Related: Make Your Immune System Bulletproof with These Natural Remedies

Understanding Health – How To Have A Strong Immune System

A lot has to happen in order for us to contract an infection. For viruses, bacteria, amebas, fungi, parasites, and other pathogens, the environment needs to be conducive to proliferation, and the pathogen needs to be of sufficient quantity to infect. The likelihood of infection under the most infection-likely conditions is also contingent upon the number of microbes that are able to make it into the body. Statistically, one microbe is very unlikely to cause infection and then disease, whereas thousands of the same pathogen contaminating a person is more likely to infect and eventually cause disease.

There is no healthy way to avoid pathogens. For instance, you’re not going to catch Lyme disease from your kitchen counter. You might contract it from ticks and other insects, but getting out in nature is crucial for good health. Also, our antimicrobial lifestyles are leading to superbugs and more fungal-based auto-immune diseases (nearly all autoimmune disease is fungal based or exasperated by fungal infection).

To make things even more complicated, many of the bacteria in our bodies that are part of our healthy microbiome can become pathogenic under the right (or wrong) circumstances. E. coli is a perfect example. We all have this bacterium in our gut, but without a healthy gut colony, E. coli can take over and cause infections in the gut and urinary tract. Candida is another one that just about everyone has in their gut. The spores and small amounts of yeast do not cause infection and are a necessary part of our body’s microbial, but without enough of a variety of bacteria to keep fungi in check, Candida becomes a pathogenic fungus that causes or exacerbates many illnesses.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut 

Pathogens inflict damage to us by secreting toxic waste byproducts throughout their lifecycle and death that inhibit normal, healthy cellular functions. A healthy microbiome has thousands of different kinds of bacteria (and other microbes) that can absorb and use these waste byproducts. Basically, to put it in the least scientific terms possible, one bacteria’s poop is another bacteria’s food source. Also, a body full of healthy bacteria leaves little room for infection. The more bacteria you have, both in variety and numbers, the less susceptible a host you are to pathogenic infection.

What doctors and most scientists still fail to understand is this: cells are made up of fats, starches, and sugars. Weak, decaying, and dead cells feed microorganisms. Pathogens, as they feed, produce toxic waste that causes more cellular damage, creating a feedback loop that feeds the infection. Beneficial microbes also feed off of our dead and decaying cells the same way, but their existence, due to their diversity, does not damage the surrounding human cells and does not allow room for pathogenic activity. To be clear, the difference between a bacterial infection and healthy bacteria doing their job is usually all about the variety.

Related:

In order to be healthy, perhaps it is even more important to understand that our gut bacteria resides not just in our gut, but all over our bodies. Our microbiome is everywhere, on our skin and in our hearts, and in our brains. Our gut, when healthy, is a microbiome-producing machine that supplies our entire body with beneficial bacteria. Unhealthy guts deliver pathogens into the body (and undigested foods and other toxins) while a healthy gut provides healthy bacteria to the entire body, bacteria that defend against pathogenic activity.

Now picture yourself as not so healthy. Maybe you smoke. Maybe you drink soda. Maybe both. Your throat feels rough. Your sinuses feel overly-sensitive. You can imagine that these rough surfaces are more likely to “catch” a few pathogens. On your tonsils and in your sinus cavities, where a healthy person has lots of diverse, healthy microbes to keep pathogens from proliferating, an unhealthy body instead has weak, poorly functioning cells that are ready to feed an incoming infection.

This is why we recommend healing the gut first and foremost for virtually any illness. Even a knee injury needs a healthy gut in order to properly heal as quickly and as well as possible. A nagging injury that never seems to heal almost always contains infectious activity. In other words, that nagging elbow pain you have may be from an old injury, from your back being out of alignment, from arthritis, or from something else, but infection will set in sooner or later as cellular degradation accelerates if your gut isn’t well enough to defend your whole body.




Fungal Infections – How to Eliminate Yeast, Candida, and Mold Infections For Good

Most, maybe all of you reading this, have Candida, even if you’re perfectly healthy. You have other fungi too. We all do. When the gut is healthy some fungus and lots of bacterial microbes live in harmony with us. Like bacteria, there will always be some fungi within us. Candida likes the human body. It’s the most common infectious fungus, typically responsible for oral thrush, skin rashes, eczema, psoriasis, athlete’s foot, vaginal yeast infections, and so much more. It’s one of our main microbes. Studies show that up to 90% of the population has Candida Albicans within them, but some (like me) suspect it’s closer to 100%.

Contents

Candida albicans is by far the most commonly known, accounting for about 50% of all cases of recognized fungal infections around the world. There is also Candida tropicalis, Candida glabrata, Candida parapsilosis, Candida krusei, Candida lusitaniae, and probably more, but let’s just call it all “Candida” for simplicity’s sake.

The most important point you should take away from this article is that Candida is not the “bad guys” any more than bacteria or other microbes are. With few exceptions, pathogens are simply responding to their environment. We understand this concept in biology well, but this concept gets ignored regarding the human body as it relates to disease. The fact is that the microbes all around our body are primarily based on the eco-system inside our gut, which is dictated primarily by the food they have to eat, i.e., the food we eat. You can take the nicest, friendliest bacteria from the gut, place it in a sanitized petri dish, introduce some sanitary junk food with simple sugars, and those bacteria are not going to look or act like our friendly little symbiotic fellows much longer. Microbes are very good at evolving to their environment, and we have a lot of different kinds. Even if you’re missing most of the beneficial bacteria that you should have, you still have a huge array of symbiotic microbes.

Candida and Bacteria

This single-cell organism, Candida, reproduces asexually and thrives on dead tissue, scar tissue, dead and decaying cells of any kind, and simple sugars from food. On that note, most all pathogens prefer to feed on simple sugars and dead or decaying cells. They are our garbage collectors. The problem is that their mere presence causes irritation (for various reasons, including gasses they release). This irritation leads to damage, so if a colony of a certain type of microbes has enough to eat in an area where they should not be, this can damage the area, giving the microbes more food, thus the vicious cycle of disease.2

Pathogens like simple sugars the best,1 but when they don’t get as much as they are used to they tend to get irritated and then turn hostile. This causes more nearby cell damage and decay which hurts us and feeds them.

When the body is in homeostasis, the microbes are balanced and the gut is healthy. When the gut is healthy, the gut doesn’t leak the wrong things into the body.

Gut Balance

When we eat foods that are best for us (like raw vegetables and herbs) the most beneficial microflora go to work. Happy with plenty of food and reproducing, they crowd out everyone else, and these guys help regulate and even produce lots of vitamins hormones as they break down protein molecules. Proteins that have not been digested thoroughly by our gut bacteria will not be digested well by us. These proteins entering the body will be looked at as “foreign proteins” which is antigenic to the body (causes immune response).3

Many of the bacteria that harm us tend to move quickly and come across as generally more agitated under a microscope. Healthy gut bacteria under a microscope look like a decent bunch of fairly slow moving microbes, just doing their thing. There are plenty of slow-moving bacteria and amoeba and other pathogens that move slowly, but looking at good bacteria, you can visually see how they can gently protect the body and crowd out or at least slow down pathogenic proliferation. Gut bacteria and mouth bacteria have a lot in common and bio-dentistry is on to this.

Check out the different behaviors of bacteria and other pathogens under a microscope. A fun experiment is to eat some raw vegetables like a salad, and then take a large saliva sample, put it under the lens in a petri dish, and find the bacteria swimming around in your mouth. See how fast they move. See how many there are. Now drink some soda or something else terrible, and get it all in your gums and everything. If you’re a smoker, do that too. In 10 minutes take another sample. The microbes are different. They’re fast and they seem angry. If you like videos, here’s a video. Note what they say about diet. I find it both wonderful and frustrating how close conventional wisdom has gotten to understanding the impact food plays on our microbes.

But we live in an antibacterial world. And while superbugs are coming to destroy us all, we’ve done a remarkable job of killing off and suppressing bacteria, for both good and bad. I had the urge to type “both good and bad bacteria,” but that’s the misnomer. Microbes are not good or bad (though for simplicity’s sake I will refer to them this way). The “bad” bacteria are just doing their job, and the beneficial bacteria that are friendly to us can mutate and become pathogenic under poor-health circumstances.

Just a quick, barely relevant fact: There are many strains of e. Coli and salmonella that we know of that often exist in our gut and cause us no harm.7 The pathogenic, virulent forms are a result of factory farming. 8 These two superbugs that kill us so often are a result of some badass e. Coli or salmonella that was actually tough enough to survive and escape the incredibly acidic and antimicrobial environment of a factory-farmed cow or chicken, respectively. It’s not only metaphoric of how our gut works. Consider the parallels between how microbes adapt and our justice system, or our drug wars, or how we fight terrorism. We as humans behave like microbes in a myriad of ways. We could learn a lot…

Also, our fruit has much more sugar in it than it used to. Even if one never eats refined foods we get more sugar from fresh fruit than we ever would have in nature before we started selectively breeding our food (hybridization). In other words, even if you’re eating the perfect modern paleo diet, you’re not eating like a paleo at all, unless your bananas look more like this:

So, as a population, we eat fruit with tons of easily absorbed sugar, we eat refined foods, and we do lots of stuff to kill our gut flora, like GMOs, antibiotics, pesticides, and herbicides, etc. But Candida is really hard to kill. We often eliminate most or all of the microbes in our gut and much around our body with antibiotics, but Candida spores cannot be killed so easily. They wait, dormant, patient, just lying around for up to 6 months.4,5 These spores will survive anything we try to do to get rid of them. As soon as they sense a hospitable environment (food, i.e. sugar) they will come to life and proliferate.6

What Causes An Overabundance of Candida?

You get the idea by now, but mostly, it’s an overall poor diet with too much sugar. At least 95% of the problem is sugar. Refined foods are sugar to the body. But there are a lot of other things we do that allow Candida to flourish and run our lives:

  • Chemical birth control
  • NSAID pain relievers
  • Steroids
  • Factory farmed meat
  • Chronic constipation
  • Alcohol
  • Recreational drugs
  • Mercury toxicity (like dental fillings)
  • Other heavy toxicity  (like from vaccines)
  • Extreme stress
  • Vitamin and mineral deficiencies

Here’s How Candida Takes Over

Candida is hanging out in the gut of a person. Said person eats a bunch of nasty food with toxins that kill our most beneficial flora, along with refined foods that quickly break down into simple sugars that do an efficient job of feeding pathogenic microbes. The person gets sick. The person takes antibiotics. The prescriptions may also kill off the Candida in the gut too, but not the spores. Said person then, hopefully feeling better by now, eats as he or she normally eats. Candida reactivates its lifecycle. They proliferate with little to no competition. Once that Candida is feeling crowded and has outgrown its home in the gut, Candida will grow out of its simple single-cell yeast form and into a filamentous, mycelial, virulent fungal form, growing root-like tentacles (hyphae) that drill deep into the mucosal lining of the gut, poking “holes” into already an irritated and inflamed, gut lining, resulting in a leaky gut.9,10 (Click here for more on mycelial fungi.) Now Candida and all kinds of other crap (excuse the pun) can leak into the bloodstream and travel throughout the body. Candida can infect every organ of the body. When it takes the fungal form, it creates a toxic biofilm that protects itself against things that would normally kill it (like antibiotics). It may or may not be Candida that is causing what ails you, but there is at least a very good chance that Candida opened the door to the pathogen at some point.

When Candida makes its escape, it proliferates into the bloodstream, and consequently, all around the body. If you smashed your elbow in a football injury 17 years ago there is still a tiny bit of scar tissue there, and that’s one of the places that Candida will set up a home outside the gut. When they don’t have sugar they will feed off of scar tissue and other “dead” cells.

Now the body is overwhelmed. The Candida will travel all over the body, but it will usually be eliminated from the blood fairly quickly. Maybe said person goes and gets a blood test, but you can read here why tests for Candida aren’t very accurate. The toxins that Candida leave behind get filtered out by the liver, eventually, hopefully, but the virulent Candida itself will be purged from the blood as the body’s immune system goes into high gear. Now the body has satellite infections of Candida all over, spread throughout. Every ache we have from an old injury is most likely hurting when there is pathogenic activity. When we wake up in the morning we are at our most achy in large part because of reduced blood flow and movement leading to more pathogenic activity. And again, this is a good thing in a balanced body, as they are taking out the garbage.

Picture that body full of Candida satellite infections. If the person eats sugars the Candida get fed, gets happy, proliferates, probably does another bloodstream ride to spread out, and that’s that. When one restricts the sugar, what do Candida eat? Us. Dead or weak cells. It kinda hurts. Feed the Candida another burst of sugar (or toxic food that damages the cells enough to feed the Candida that way), and the Candida leaves us alone for a bit. This is obviously overly simplistic, but it should show how easily and symbiotically Candida can cause poor food cravings.

There are antifungal drugs that can kill off Candida, but again, not the spores. Once those spores are all over the body, they will stay hanging around for up to six months, waiting for food.

This same sort of thing happens with other pathogens too, but Candida is the key. It literally opens the doors for other pathogens (and food particles that needed more digestion, and lots of other “crap”) by creating the holes in the gut. Other things can create this extra permeability as well, but Candida opens the gut fast and typically does it often.

Candida and Wheat

Candida causes lots of unexpected and fascinating problems that connect a lot of dots for those with chronic health issues. Take wheat for instance. A protein found in Candida called HWP-1 is identical or highly homologous (nearly identical) to two gluten proteins, alpha gliadin and gamma-gliadin. These proteins are known to stimulate immune cell responses in people with celiac disease. In other words, Candida, the yeast responsible for oral thrush and vaginal infections (and so much more), contains the same protein sequence as wheat gluten and therefore could trigger celiac disease.

It gets worse. The gluten protein is similar to protein structures in the nervous system and the thyroid tissue. The body will turn on these proteins shortly after it begins reacting to gluten. This is the essence of chronic autoimmune disease.

How To Know if You Have Candida

This is a hard one for most people to swallow, but if you’re sick, you’ve got Candida. As we’ve established, it’s not about “catching it.” If the gut is not balanced the gut has an abundance of Candida and other less-than-beneficial microbes. If any of the following pertain to you, Candida or not, it’s time to balance the gut by fixing the diet.

  • Allergies
  • Skin issues
  • White tongue
  • Floaters in vision
  • Itchy feet or hands or ears
  • Prone to any other infections

The allergies concept is especially hard for many, but it’s true. If you have food or seasonal allergies, stop blaming genetics and accept that the body’s biology is out of balance. For more on this, check out Candida Overgrowth Symptoms.

How to Prevent Candida Overgrowth

First of all, stop thinking of microbes as the bad guys. That’s not the case, not at all. Think of them more like humans. Picture yourself as you grow up in the worst war-torn part of the world you can imagine. Drone strikes, little food, toxic water, and a brain that functions half as well as yours does. How would you react to your environment? What’s the best way to fix the problem? Fix the environment. And it’s also the only way to prevent the problem in the first place.

Drink lots of water, and feed the body foods that the friendliest microbes love. Flushing the body is critical because there are lots of gasses and other toxic substances that accumulate in the body with an abundance of Candida. It slows the bodily systems, causing sluggish liver and kidney functionality.

Here are three articles on diet. The information will prevent Candida infestations in the body, as well as any other pathogen, and in most cases, with patience, this diet/lifestyle will eliminate Candida and other diseases as well.

The first one has my salad and cranberry-lemonade recipe. I suggest everyone eat and drink like that every single day.

The Best Supplements for Killing Candida, Yeast, Molds, Other Funghis

First and foremost, just pack the gut with good food. Eat a big salad. Picture the intestinal tract and imagine it being packed full of vegetables and herbs. If you’re one of those health-food hating virulent microbes, you’re at least not going to be reproducing while you’re being squeezed out by salad and salad loving microbes.

Cut out all refined foods because they feed pathogens. Cut out all toxic foods because they kill the good guys and damage the gut which feeds the pathogens. If you suffer from allergies, you eat too much sugar and/or refined foods (or drink alcohol regularly). Cut out the sugar and the allergies go away. See the above articles for more on diet. Most people don’t need supplements and can get rid of every single health issue they have with just diet. On the other hand, with the intense sugar cravings that Candida causes, supplements can not only speed up the process of getting well, they can balance a person’s body just enough to help ensure better choices are made and the supplements also compensate for the bad choices. But therein lies the rub. Most people are just looking for that one supplement that’s going to ease some of the pain their lifestyle causes. And while that one supplement should be SF722, in my opinion, the most common way someone uses such a supplement is to take enough to feel the pain relief they seek while they keep making poor food choices until more pain relief in one form or another is needed. The only difference between supplements and prescriptions in the way most people use them is that supplements don’t have the toxic side effects. But my point is that without the right diet, just consuming supplements will not create homeostasis. That said, here are the top supplements to take for Candida control:

SF722

This is my favorite for killing anything fungal. There are tons of other choices (click here), but I don’t know of anything that does a better job for the money than SF722. Candida can become fairly immune to many other antimicrobials but studies have shown that this does not happen with SF722. SF722 is antimicrobial so it can kill some of the good guys, but it doesn’t seem like it’s very good at killing bacteria compared to some other compounds. This is a benefit when dealing with Candida.

How to Take SF722

I’ve known people that take more than 60 in a day. It can acidify the body temporarily, but the acids are dispelled easily and Candida doesn’t like acidity (I wonder how many people will feel the need to check on this fact). Obviously, you want a slightly alkaline body for health, but Candida is not one of the ones that like acidic environments. The bottle says to do 15 (5×3) and I recommend moving up in dosage if need be, depending on the die-off symptoms. Take it until Candida symptoms are gone, and then have it on hand to compensate future indulgences with poor food or drink choices. I usually take 20 when I eat at a restaurant.

Berberine

Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis), barberry (Berberis vulgaris), Oregon grape (Berberis aquifolium), and goldthread (Coptis chinensis) contain the broad-spectrum antibiotic alkaloid berberine. Berberine is effective against pathogens including bacteria, protozoa, and fungiBerberine has been proven in some studies to be stronger than many common antibiotics.

How to Take Berberine

Take it separately from probiotics, and follow the instructions. I tend to always take twice as much as they recommend, but I also weight 220 pounds. There should not be a need for high doses while taking the other supplements.

Oil of Oregano

Oil of Oregano is one of nature’s most powerful antibiotic supplements, but I don’t think it’s all that great against Candida. Plus, it works so well that the body can’t maintain healthy bacteria. It’s a great supplement to have on hand, but it is one I reserve for the acutest cases where killing the bad guys is the primary and urgent focus.

Probiotics

Often touted as the cure everything supplement for the well-informed, probiotics are something most everyone is familiar with these days. What most do not know is that the vast majority of probiotic supplements on the market are ineffectual at best, and many actually feed yeast. How the probiotics are processed and preserved make all the difference. It’s not an easy task to produce good probiotics; our stomach acid is designed to kill it. Two of my favorite are FloraMend and Bio-K (the latter is not available in our store, but it is at most health food stores and Whole Foods). I don’t recommend taking a probiotic with antimicrobials. A really good probiotic should come out on top, but you are reducing its effectiveness when you combine it with compounds that kill. For instance, I would take SF722 all day and a probiotic at night and early morning, or vice versa, where I take the probiotic with food and the SF722 late and early. Different digestive issues can favor one over the other so try both ways and see what works for you.

How to Take Probiotics

Don’t take them with antimicrobials, and make sure they are high-quality supplements. Anyone without an appendix should take a probiotic every day with every major meal for the rest of their life. Your appendix secretes out beneficial bacteria when you don’t have enough.

One antimicrobial you can take with probiotics is Olive Leaf Extract. It’s great for maintenance but it’s not a yeast serial-killer like SF722 (otherwise it would damage the probiotic). It’s a fine supplement, but it’s not going to do much of anything all by itself.

Systemic Enzymes

I am in love with a fairly new supplement called Abzorb. It’s one of the only four I regularly take (I’ll mention the other three as well in a moment).

As we age, our pancreas produces fewer enzymes for the body. We need enzymes to survive. We need enzymes to do everything, not just break down proteins. If you are healthy, you have an abundance of healthy enzymatic activity. When enzymatic production yields are low enough, the body will break down within hours with a heart attack or a stroke.  They are the catalyst for almost anything the happens at a molecular level in the body. Without enzymes, we would not be able to do anything with our vitamins and minerals.

Enzymes break down proteins. They do this with foreign proteins (which those with Candida issue have in abundance) and fibrin, the protein that makes up scar tissue. Fibrin feeds Candida and other pathogens if you didn’t skip all that ecology knowledge up above. These enzymes also reduce toxins in the blood and help balance cholesterol. Our body produces fibrin in response to trauma and enzymes help take it away in time. Anyone working in a morgue can tell you that one of the most obvious differences between a young body and an old body is that the older person has lots of fibrin all over the inside of their body. Strokes, heart attacks, aneurysms, and other often deadly ailments can be attributed directly to this.

Inside the gut, if food is not digested, it rots and feeds pathogens (ever notice how when things rot they smell sickly-sweet?), and Candida makes it hard to digest food properly.

The more enzymes we have to break down food, the better we digest and use the nutrition. Digestive enzymes help digest food in the stomach. Systemic enzymes don’t break open until they reach the gut. So, taken on an empty stomach, the systemic enzymes will go to work to repair the body and kill some viruses while they’re at it (I forgot to mention that enzymes kill viruses).

On the other hand, if you take a systemic enzyme with food, the enzyme will go to work to digest the food inside the gut.

And this brings me to Abzorb. It’s a probiotic and systemic enzyme. If you take it with food it will help you digest the food, and it works very well for this, much better than just taking one or the other. And while the product is more affordable than some of my other favorite probiotics, I find this probiotic is just as effective at colonizing in the gut. Usually, you need to spend considerable money on probiotics and enzymes for quality, but Abzorb is affordable. It is very effective, and you get two very important and synergistic supplements in one.

How to Take Systemic Enzymes

Take them on an empty stomach as noted or with food to help digest food inside the gut. I recommend mixing it up each day, but I do recommend caution when taking systemic enzymes. Too many systemic enzymes can cause issues, they can start to eat away at the body, so I don’t just grab a big handful like I do with SF722. I personally take 4-6 a day on an empty stomach, and I take more with food as needed.

Magnesium

The byproducts of Candida albicans include ethanol, uric acid and ammonia, acetaldehyde, and about 75 other toxic gases we know of. The big one on the list is acetaldehyde.12 Acetaldehyde is also produced when you drink alcohol, smoke, or breathe in car exhaust. It’s in large part responsible for the “hungover” feeling we get after a night of debauchery.13 Magnesium is required to break down acetaldehyde. It’s unclear if magnesium deficiency can cause more Candida growth in any way, but a lack of this mineral does exacerbate the problems associated with Candida. Without enough magnesium, the body will sustain a lot more damage, which feeds the Candida overgrowth cycle. Candida causes magnesium deficiencies too, and anyone who has Candida overgrowth is low in magnesium.

How to Take Magnesium with Candida Issues

Candida causes the body to require more magnesium than the recommended daily dose of 400mg. Often a Candida cleanse can cause the magnesium levels to become dangerously low, and then the individual may suffer from sluggish bowels which just compounds the symptoms of  Candida die-off further.

Biotin

Like Magnesium, B vitamins are always low in those dealing with Candida overgrowth. Candida makes it very difficult for good bacteria to give us the b vitamins we need to make good decisions. Impulse control is severely hampered when there aren’t enough Bs. Too much fungi = not enough good bacteria = not enough b vitamins = poor food choices.

But biotin has a trick up its sleeve that causes it to make this list. Biotin is a coenzyme and a B vitamin. It is also known as vitamin H and vitamin B7. Because biotin is present in so many different kinds of foods, a serious deficiency is rare. But those who have had health issue due to Candida for a long enough period of time are likely going to be low in all Bs including B7. And B7 actually inhibits Candida from transforming into its mycelial, pathogenic form.

How to Take Biotin

With B vitamins it’s usually best to take a complex, not a single B. If one takes too much of one B vitamins it can inhibit the assimilation of other Bs and throw all the vitamins out of whack. Another option is chlorella, which has lots of B vitamins, including biotin, and it kills Candida in some other ways too.

I wanted to keep this article a bit more specific and focused. But the reality is, if you suffer from an abundance of Candida, you also suffer from many other pathogens. And the aforementioned salads can take care of the vitamin and mineral need. For people who need to heal their gut, I recommend a healthy diet void of refined and processed foods, salads every day, and the following supplements:

The first three should be plenty for most people, but for really prominent fungal issues or for impatient people with a bigger budget I’d recommend all of them. For more on diet, including salad recipes, check out:

My Supplements

Total Nutrition Formula is my multi-vitamin/mineral formula. I take it once a week, but I used took it every day with smoothies. Now I eat enough salads I don’t feel the need for it as much. It has chlorella and spirulina and lots of other good stuff. Spirulina isn’t a big Candida killer but it goes hand-in-hand with chlorella, so I figured I’d add it in. A study in 2001 found that spirulina supports our beneficial microflora which leads to less Candida,13 and an experiment from 2010 shows that spirulina enhances immune system response to Candida and other pathogens. 14 It’s said that chlorella does a similar number on Candida, and it’s rich in B vitamins including biotin, and I also read somewhere about how chlorella can break down the cell walls of fungi, but I cannot find that anywhere.

I always have SF722 on hand but I don’t take it very often. I take Abzorb in the mornings on an empty stomach, 3-4, and I take 1-2 with every cooked meal I have when I remember. I also take Liquid Light every now and then, just when I have a feeling I need a mineral boost.

When I was smoking marijuana  I constantly sipped on Mother Earth Cider. It kept me from getting sick. Now I just sip once or twice a day. Just read the ingredients and you’ll see why. This is by far my favorite supplement on the market, but it’s not here as a Candida fighter. I’m sure it does a little, but not like the aforementioned.

Conclusion

Two other big causes of Candida overgrowth that we did not touch include vaccines and amalgams. The damage these medical products cause will feed Candida indefinitely. If you have heavy metal toxicity, the only thing I would do differently in this protocol is to add the Total Nutrition Formula and take additional chlorella and spirulina daily. It’s hard to eat too much of these seaweeds, and they have tons and tons of benefits, so get them in you any way you can. I think they’re disgusting so I prefer tablets or strong smoothie concoctions to bury the taste.




Bacteria Resistant to All Available Antibiotics Has Claimed Its First Victim

The doomsday predictions about antibiotic resistant superbugs sound like the plot of a science fiction movie. The bacteria are coming! Who will save us when we don’t have any options left?

Conventional medicine has allowed us to put much of the onus of taking care of ourselves on someone or something else. Why take care of yourself and build your immune system naturally (it’s hard work!) when an antibiotic can knock an infection out with a snap of the fingers? The same principle has been applied to our food supply. Rather than raise animals in humane environments on a diet designed to keep them healthy (also hard work), our food system chooses the easy route and pumps cows, pigs, and sheep full of unnecessary antibiotics.

Now a Nevada woman has died. Her death from an antibiotic-resistant superbug, the bacteria New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM), is not notable on the surface. As of 2014, an estimated 23,000 people in the U.S. have died from bacteria like these, according to the CDC. The patient in question was a lady of 70, who had been in and out of hospitals for a two-year period in India with the last stay being in summer 2016. Not an unusual story, in and of itself. But here’s the worrying part. The CDC has determined that the NDM that the woman was infected with was untreatable by all available antimicrobial drugs in the U.S.

The Last Resort…Has Failed

There are a few antimicrobial drugs of last resort. One of them is colistin, a powerful antimicrobial not regularly used due to its damaging effect on the kidneys. While select bacteria that contain the mcr-1 (mechanism of colistin resistance 1) gene are immune to another drug, colistin functioned as a cleaner of sorts for anything else. That worked because the bacteria were not exchanging the gene. That is no longer the case. Bacteria are now exchanging the mcr-1 gene, and cases, where colistin is ineffective, began showing up in the U.S. in summer 2016. If that wasn’t enough to cause a deep and profound uneasiness, the NDM bacteria resistant to all available antibiotics didn’t even have the mcr-1 gene. This bacteria didn’t even need the gene we’ve identified as the one resistant to powerful antibiotics.

The Tipping Point

Is this the point where we find that we can’t go back? Is worldwide health going to spiral out of control, chased by ever stronger and more evolved bacteria? Indigenous tribes of foragers give us a glance at what the first line of defense, our intestinal flora, used to be. In a comparison of the microbiome of a small group of Italians and a group of Hadza foragers from Tanzania, the Hadza’s lack of exposure to antibiotics and highly seasonal, largely plant-based,  diet resulted in a much greater and more diverse microbiome. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to fend off one of the new superbugs, but they likely would not have developed them in the first place. How do we get those microbes back? Can we get those microbes back? No one seems to have a good answer for that, but it’s clear that antibiotic resistant bacteria keep putting their star players in the game while the Western diet keeps yanking any and everybody out.

Eat Your Veggies

There is magic in a well maintained digestive system. Get your fiber may be a funny old people joke…until you haven’t pooped in a few days. A diet lacking in raw, organic plant matter is never going to provide the tools needed to move things through the digestive system, which gives harmful bacteria a greater chance to develop and take over. The Western diet in its current form provides them with the food they need to thrive. If the digestive system is compromised, bacteria takes advantage of that. In that system, antibiotics will be the answer at some point, making it that much harder to cultivate the natural defenses the immune system needs.

Antibiotic-resistant bugs are not only the health industry’s fault. Factory farms cannot be assigned all of the blame either. The decline of our natural bacteria and immunities has created the perfect hosts for the bacteria strong and adaptable enough to survive modern medicine and an increasingly unhealthy way of eating.

Recommended Reading:
Sources:



How Bacteria Is Evolving – Should We Be Worried? (the answer is yes!)

Ah, bacteria, the original cockroach. No matter what you use to try and annihilate it, it keeps coming back, stronger than before. Strains of bacteria like listeria, campylobacter, and salmonella caused food poisoning affecting one in six people in the U.S. The bacteria resistant to the “antibiotic of last resort” has arrived in the U.S., and researchers in Canada have discovered a newly evolved, heat-loving strain of E. coli that survives temperatures high enough to cook meat medium-well. If harmful bacteria were to go into business, the stock would be climbing and the future would look terrific.

Dealing With the Usual Suspects

Gonorrhea is showing signs of resistance to last resort treatment in 10 different countries, and there are no new antibiotics in development to treat it.

Chipotle has suffered business setbacks. Blue Bell Creameries are permanently closed. Most recently, General Mills has recalled a full lot of their Gold Medal flour. The common thread? E. coli, listeria, salmonella, and all of those pesky bacteria responsible for over four million pounds of food being recalled in the U.S. in 2015 and food poisoning affecting roughly 48 million people.

The methods for detecting bacteria and pathogens in our food have become more sophisticated, so it’s likely there have been many unrecorded outbreaks in the past. But then again, the number of cases attributed to the most well-known bacteria that cause food poisoning (like listeria, salmonella, or E. coli), have remained steady over the years, while campylobacter bacteria and rare Vibrio infections are on the rise. When increased detection and better food safety standards still do not result in a decline in pathogens, where does that leave us?

Soooo…Fire?

From food safety 101 we know that food is only considered safe when we heat it enough to kill off harmful bacteria. But what do you do when the bacteria has mutated to withstand those temperatures, like the strain of E. coli discovered by Canadian researchers?

Food safety literature recommends heating beef to 160 degrees, although they also note that 140 degrees is a sufficient temperature to kill harmful bacteria in less than a minute. But the new strain of E. coli does not die. In fact, it lived for over an hour at a temperature of  140 degrees. Right now, 16 genes with this mutation are present in about 2% of E. coli strains (good and bad), but with the other evolutionary strides bacteria have been making, who knows what will happen!

Fire’s Out. Soooo…Antibiotics?

People in the U.S. can now look forward to the newest shot fired in the bacteria vs. antibiotic war, now that bacteria has been found to be immune to colistin, a long-acknowledged “antibiotic of last resort”. Constant use of antibiotics has encouraged bacteria to evolve, to build up an immunity to these drugs.

An entire group of antibiotics – sulphonamides – is being phased out due to bacteria resistance. Gonorrhea is showing signs of resistance to last resort treatment in 10 different countries, and there are no new antibiotics in development to treat it.  Stories like these are becoming more and more common as our extensive use of antibiotics continues to breed stronger bacteria. We respond with new antibiotics and the next generation of the bacteria is more resistant than before. When it ends, do you really think we’re going to end up on top?

Can We Actually Control the Bacteria?

If your reaction to hearing all of this bad news about bacteria is to scream something along the lines of, “Kill it with fire!” you’re not alone. Solutions like antibiotics, antibacterial soaps, and hand sanitizers came with a price. They became part of the problem.

There are no easy answers here. Ideally, we will stop treating livestock with unneeded antibiotics. We will stop the indiscriminate use of antibiotics to treat infections and seek alternative treatments whenever possible. Maybe we will go so far as to change our diets to build immunity and encourage our natural, protective bacteria to thrive.

Are we past the point that these changes will be enough. Is our microbial world going to end up a cautionary tale a la Jurassic Park? Keep in mind that we can’t just seal off the island.

Related Reading:
Sources:



Candida Overgrowth Symptoms

Chances are, you have Candida overgrowth. We all have Candida, just like we all have bacteria. And like the microbes in our gut and the rest of our body, it’s all about balance. The problem is that in this day and age, our modern diet feeds Candida.

Candida is a fungus, a kind of yeast. Candida is as opportunistic as they come.

I know very few people without Candida overgrowth. I know lots of health nuts who are aware of it. I know lots of people who take probiotics, who eat the alternative, healthier sugars when they do eat sweet foods. The thing is; I know very few people who don’t eat too many processed, refined foods. If it’s not whole, completely unrefined food, it’s likely to feed fungus. Even fresh, slow pressed vegetable and fruit juice will lead most people to an overabundance of the fungus.

Check out our latest: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

In nature, way back in the day, we didn’t have fruit juice. We didn’t have refined foods. Fruit was seasonal and much harder to get than vegetables. We ate pounds and pounds of vegetables. We pulled up leaves and roots from the ground all day. We got meat when we could, but there were times when that was hard to come by. Our brains need a lot of fuel, and before agriculture, it was much harder to meet our needs. Today we tend to think of balance as whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and meat for those who eat meat. But most people are shocked to know that a true Paleo diet would consist of more vegetables than most people would have time to eat in a day.

Here is an incomplete list of symptoms and other clues that are likely to be caused by too much yeast in your body. And while most (not all) of these can be signs of something else being out of balance, more often than not, if you regularly have even one of the symptoms, you’ve got too much Candida in your inner ecosystem.

Most Skin problems are a Sign of Candida Overgrowth

Skin problems such as acne, Keratosis pilaris, dry skin, hives, rashes, dandruff, and eczema are a sign of too much fungus in the body. You know all those white bumps on the back of your arms? You’ve got Candida overgrowth. I’m not saying that whiteheads are fungus. It’s much more complicated that that. Sometimes aforementioned skin problems such as rashes are a direct result of fungal abundance, but other times, the issues are an indirect result of the colon microbes being out of balance. For instance, acne is often caused by hormonal issues. Hormonal issues are often caused by, exacerbated by, or at the very least virtually always are accompanied by, out of control Candida.

Athlete’s foot and even an itchy arch are also a sure sign of too much Candida.

Diaper rash is almost always candida.

Itchy crotch, itchy vagina, yeast infections, and a funky discharge from the vagina and anus are sure signs of too much Candida

If you need a shower every day in order not to itch, you’ve got too much yeast in your body. If you itch or feel a stinging sensation around your anus or your perineum when you wipe after bowel movements, that’s another sure sign. If it smells funky down there, while this may be perfectly normal, it’s also a sign of Candida overgrowth.

Body Odor

Yes, bacteria are one of the primary causes of body odor. But what many people don’t know is that “bad bacteria” (what we call bacteria that doesn’t benefit us) coincides with too much fungus in the body. If you need antiperspirant or deodorant and daily showers, again this is totally normal, but it’s a sign of too much fungus.

You may be thinking, “This writer must be some kind of non-showering hippie or something!” Yeah, well, let’s just say I don’t smell bad at all if I miss a shower. And while traveling the country I have gone weeks without one and smelled just fine. I still love a good shower as much as the next person. But I just don’t feel like I need them unless I am dirty and grimy.

Trouble with Digestion, Gas, Bloating

Digestion problems, gas, and bloating can be signs of other issues such as kidney problems, allergies, and more. But typically, whenever someone is unhealthy in one area, they also have Candida issues.  Too much Candida in the gut means not enough beneficial bacteria to digest food properly, and this can cause fermentation. Too much Candida in the whole body and even the stomach and kidneys are affected. While we’re on the subject of gas, slow kidney function causes flatulence, and as mentioned, this can be caused by too much fungus.

Allergies and Allergic Reactions

Many times when people think they are having an allergic reaction due to a rash with hives, this is actually a spike in fungus that is out of control. Antibiotics cause these reactions in people regularly because they cull all of the beneficial bacteria that balance our body’s ecosystem.

Seasonal allergies and food allergies tend to vanish when Candida is brought completely under control. It sounds radical, I know, but it’s true.

Other signs of too much Candida include thrush or a white tongue, itchy ear canals, and sugar cravings. Candida overgrowth also leads to a host of other health issues from insomnia to severe mood swings. While Candida is not the sole cause of most health issues, it accompanies almost every health issue.

For more information on how to get your body’s inner ecosystem balanced,

Further Reading:

Supplements we Recommend:




How to Kill Candida and Balance Your Inner Ecosystem

Most people ingest too many refined, processed foods. Even us health nuts have a tendency to do this. In this fast paced world, with the body biologically programmed to desire sweets and other easy carbohydrates that are so much harder to find in nature, it’s common and totally normal to have too much Candida in our body.

If you experience this problem, and again, most people do, here are some ways you can balance your gut flora. Balancing the flora will alleviate many health issues, even little annoying ones you thought you were stuck with for the rest of your life such as itchy ear canals, body odor, and eczema.

Garlic

Most people know that garlic is antifungal, antiparasitic, antibacterial, and antiviral. It also helps with a host of other issues including the removal of toxins in the body. If I could only choose one single item to work with when it comes to healing and treatment modalities, I would choose garlic. Unfortunately, many people don’t know exactly how to use it to reap the benefits.

First and foremost, don’t cook it. It loses all its Candida fighting properties when you do. Secondly, cut it up and give it a minute before ingesting it. Or, if you’ve got a strong stomach and an even stronger mouth, chew it up for a minute with your mouth open, breathing in and out. This is also an incredibly effective treatment for tooth and gum problems, and even bad breath; though swallowing it, of course, can lead to garlic breath for many, but garlic breath is a sign of a toxic body.

Don’t use garlic from China, even if it’s organic. One way to tell, is those smaller, bright white garlic bulbs are almost always grown in China. China’s soil is just too toxic.

Essential oils

Oil of oregano has antifungal, antibacterial, and antiparasitic properties as well. Oil of oregano is exceptionally powerful and can be taken in tablet form.

Some other essential oils that kill candida include lavender, thieves, tea tree, and peppermint, though I don’t recommend taking these oils internally. They are a good solution for Candida skin rashes, though they can be painful to use. In most cases, they will not harm the skin even though you will feel a burning sensation.

Oils

Coconut oil is known for its antibacterial, antifungal, and antiparasitic properties, though it’s efficacy with Candida control is weak compared to other ingestible choices. Neem oil is an oil with similar antiparasitic properties, a bit stronger at parasitic control than coconut oil, but it should only be applied topically.

Other notable items that are known to combat fungus include wormwood, black walnut hull, Spanish black radish, Pau d’Arco, goldenseal, coptis chinensis, ginger, cinnamon, and olive leaf extract. All of these are great to have around, and a few of them are exceptional at killing parasites, viruses, and bacterial infections (coptis chinensis, wormwood, black walnut hull, Spanish black radish) but while they are certainly antifungal, they’re not the strongest solution.

My favorite combination for eliminating excess yeast in my body is undecenoic acid (Thorne SF722) and very high quality probiotics. Combine this with Shillington’s intestinal cleanse and with big salads everyday with lots of different vegetables, and you’ve got yourself a clean colon free of excess Candida in days, often in just one day. What I love about undecenoic acid and probiotics is that they don’t kill off good bacteria. They only eliminate Candida and other fungi. If I want to knock out parasites as well, I use MicroDefense – Pure Encapsulations, which has wormwood and black walnut hulls (and other good stuff that parasites hate).

Whatever approach you take with intestinal maintenance, a diet with a diverse selection of lots of raw vegetables is the most important thing you can do for your colon and your whole body.

Recommended Supplements:

(You can take these altogether)

Further Reading:



The Fascinating Bacteria in our Gut, and How it Affects Our Whole Lives

We are host to somewhere between 300-1000 different species of bacteria, each of which has one goal—to survive and multiply. While they live and thrive in our gut, beneficial bacteria provide many necessary and health-related functions. They help us digest our food. They line our intestinal wall, providing a physical barrier against bad bacteria and fungi that may damage or inflame the tissues. Some produce vitamin K and B vitamins, while others aid in synthesizing vitamins. They produce 95% of our serotonin as well as other neurotransmitters. They make up 80% of our immune system, and more. The by-products of their lifecycle benefit us through a harmonious, symbiotic relationship.

We classify bacteria as bad bacteria when their byproducts or functions can harm our bodies.   For example, most of the E-coli bacteria strains are harmless. In fact, the harmless strains help prevent colonization of pathogenic bacteria and produce vitamin K2, whereas the pathogenic E-coli strains cause a variety of infections and may even cause death.

Related: Candida, Gut Flora, Allergies, and Disease

Aside from illness, researchers are learning that specific species of bacteria exert different influences on their host bodies. One example is our metabolism. The bacterial makeup of a lean person is different than the bacterial makeup in someone who is obese.

One study showed that Enterobacter, an endotoxin-producing bacterium, taken from the gut of a morbidly obese human, induced obesity and insulin resistance in healthy mice. In a volunteer with an initial weight of 385 lbs, Enterobacter made up 35% of the gut bacterium. After 23 weeks of a diet of whole grains, traditional Chinese medicinal foods, and prebiotics, the volunteer lost 113 lbs and all traces of Enterobacter. The conclusion was that this endotoxin-producing bacterium creates inflammation that causes insulin resistance resulting in weight gain.

Another recent study showed a direct correlation between a high or low level of bacterium in the gut and the subjects’ weight. A high level of bacterium, with a high level of diversity, was linked to a healthy weight, whereas a low level of bacterium was linked to overweight individuals.

Related: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

The amount of bacteria in the gut relates to more than weight, it is also an indicator of overall health. Our actions affect the amount, the diversity, and the ratio of good to bad bacteria. For example, antibiotic use indiscriminately kills bacteria. Antibiotics do not just target the one pathogen causing an infection in our body; they kill off much of the bacteria in our gut as well. Not only do we need the good bacteria to do its work (including keeping the bad bacteria in check), we need to maintain the delicate balance between bacteria and fungi. Candida is opportunistic. Given a chance, it will quickly mass-produce, wreaking havoc in the digestive tract and, in time, the entire body.

As research continues to reveal that diversity in gut bacterium is essential to good health and can influence bodily functions such as serotonin production (a huge factor in depression) or metabolism (a factor in weight control), researchers are learning more about which particular bacteria are beneficial and which bacteria have an unhealthy effect on the body. The day may soon come when we choose our probiotics to manage our weight, to maintain our mental health, or to treat a variety of diseases. Until that day arrives, our diet choices can and will alter this internal balance.

We do have a basic knowledge of which foods promote beneficial bacteria and which foods and medications promote bad bacteria, and we know how to increase the beneficial organisms to crowd out those that do not serve our health.

Related: Hypothyroidism – Natural Remedies, Causes, and How To Heal the Thyroid

The first and most important step to increase health inducing bacterium in the gut, is to eat a diet rich in prebiotics—in other words, lots of raw vegetables and fruit. A large salad each day, filled with a wide variety of vegetables, provides the healthy bacterium in our gut with the food it needs to thrive. Insoluble fiber also houses good bacteria, giving it a structure upon which to multiply. Raw, whole, organic vegetables and fruits (more vegetables than fruit) should always comprise 80% of our diet.

We not only know what to feed good bacteria, we know what feeds or promotes bad bacteria: processed dead foods, acidic foods (factory raised meat and dairy), pasteurized foods, irradiated foods, sugar, antibiotics, antacids, and anti-inflammatory drugs. Choose only organic grass fed beef, organic free-range chicken, and raw dairy. Never eat farm raised fish. Avoid all GMOs, including second generation GMOs from animals raised on GMO feed.

If we were to believe the advertisements, one or two servings of sugar filled, pasteurized, yogurt (often with other ingredients added to thicken, stabilize, preserve, and/or add artificial flavor)  would provide all the beneficial bacteria we need. If any beneficial bacteria from this yogurt survived our stomach acid and made it to our intestines, the dairy and sugar content alone would negate its benefits (pasteurized dairy and sugar feed Candida and “bad” bacteria). There are better ways to include probiotics in our diet.

Related: How to Kill Candida and Balance Your Inner Ecosystem

Probiotic foods such as coconut kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi, and raw, organic apple cider vinegar all increase healthy bacterium in the gut.  There are also excellent probiotic supplements formulated with very strong bacteria strains that have the ability to make it past the stomach acid before releasing the bacteria into the intestines. These probiotics are rare; most on the market are useless. But the good ones are powerful and can help reset your ecosystem. Remember, while probiotics can be very helpful, more benefit is gained from prebiotics, vegetables in particular. Conversely, if your appendix has been removed, you may need a daily probiotic supplement for the rest of your life. FloraMend Prime by Thorne Research is a very strong and stable probiotic that we highly recommend.

Every choice we make to detox, cleanse, and properly feed our bodies will affect the microbes in our gut. Though we were born with a particular balance of bacteria, it has been influenced throughout our lives by toxins, antibiotics, vaccines, and the foods we have eaten. But we do have the power to change it. We can increase the amount and the type of bacteria in our bodies primarily by the foods we choose to eat and the foods we choose to avoid.

If you want to reduce Candida and harmful bacteria in your gut be sure to check out Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases, and we recommend the following:

Recommended Supplements:

Further Reading:

 Sources: 

  • Na Feiand Liping Zhao, An Opportunistic Pathogen Isolated from the Gut of an Obese Human Causes Obesity in Germfree Mice; The ISME Journal (2013) 7, 880–884
  • Q. Aziz, J. Dore´,A. Emmanuel, F. Guarner, & E. M. M. Quigley; Gut Microbiota and Gastrointestinal Health: Current Concepts and Future Directions, Neurogastroenterol & Motility (2013) 25, 4–15