Tag: candida

Aim to be the Master of your Universe

Aim to be the master of your universe

Amazingly, we can be the victims and masters of our own minds at the same time!

Remember, we are in charge of how our mind chooses to busy itself. We have the option to be the master of our universe.

I don’t always hear that recognition in the voices around me?

Aim to be the master of your universe

Before we continue I’d like to extend my condolences and best, best wishes to Ann Boroch’s  family and friends at this sad time.

I was writing this post when I heard about the suicide of a compassionate, determined and skilled naturopath in the US who, over a decade ago started to heal herself of MS. She was facing a life of increasing immobility but instead of accepting her fate she researched and found a form of no sugar diet to rid herself of overgrown candida could go a long way to keeping herself well!

Sadly, Ann Boroch seemed to have lost her fight in being the master of her own universe.

We all face a range of challenges every day.

Some of which can sink us but others we seem to be able to skip through.

Aim to be master of your universe.

What is it that can make that difference?

We know nothing of Ann’s personal demons but these

5 strategies can smooth life out and we can start to feel like the master of our universe, again.

  • staying in charge of our breathing can help knock the edges off a rising panic.
  • Feeling like we’re being listened to can make all the difference, too.
  • Finding something we like to do whether that be crosswords, jigsaws, catching up with friends, taking a walk in the park or pirating knitting patterns (illegal distribution is not recommended).
  • Visualisation: The first job of our brain is to keep us alive and has been for  a very long time. The brain goes through some mental gymnastics to stop us getting damaged, again. We imagine ‘what might happen if…?’

When we can feel in charge of something in a world where that’s often not the case life generally flows more smoothly. The image below shows it can be taken too far and we can feel isolated… but safe.

master of their universe?

 

I appreciate this is sounding very US West Coast/Californian especially to a society that’s just finding out what Brexit might mean for us and our universe but still, we’re in charge of what goes on in our heads.

‘Coping’ with stress is an adaptive function that has helped keep us alive.

The same turning over of ideas that so far has saved the human race can also work against us.  Be aware of any shifts in thinking.

We’re wired to worry and it takes conscious effort not to follow the same path. Endlessly going over stuff doesn’t serve us and can become addictive! Even more so if we don’t make any changes in response to the fretting.

One trick (easier said than done) is to get out of the habit of stressing about stuff!

How can we stop the release of cortisol that accompanies the fight or flight response? We become primed for action, our body stops digesting food, gives us a natural boost of anti-inflammatories to reduce possible pain, our arms and legs are ready to get us out of danger.

  • Before blind panic sets in write everything down and perform a mind dump. This simple action can nearly literally take the thoughts out of our heads.

Learning ways to reduce our worries is the first step toward leading a calmer life. as a 20 minute interview with Dr Rossman spells it out for us.

With some tweaks to what and when we eat life can feel a lot more rosey!

cracking the wellness code?

This post like many of the others on this site will look at alternative ways of avoiding or possibly lessening lingering unwellness. This applies whether you have a chronic condition or not: After we’ve tried adjusting what, when and how much we eat as well as what, when and how much we move (or be still) we can start to try and address other energy sapping intestinal hitchhikers.

These are approaches I’m trying at the moment to help crack the code of monochrome vibrancy, including the presence of candida and other naturally occurring alien invaders!

  • It’s refreshing to see a doctor acknowledge that yeast overgrowth is a problem and not all in the patient’s head.
  • Shingles (one type of virus we carry, usually without problem) might be an issue for you? If you had chicken pox as a youngster it’s with you for life. When we’re feeling fighting fit this is fine as our immune systems keep it under control but if we have a series of stressful events and life just generally is not feeling like it’s under control the virus that keeps itself to itself most of the time can come out to play by travelling along nerves to make sore blisters/lumps on our skin.

 

 

If you’re one of our regular readers, you may have noticed a change in the way the site looks?

We’re getting happier with its usability. As the volume of posts increase, some visitors had been finding it hard to navigate once they’d reached us.

Let us know what changes you might like to see and we’ll continue to do what we can to make change happen.

 

 

As part of the next installment of my ongoing candida campaign I’ve been taking a biofilm disruptor (between meals) alongside a set of antifungals (with meals) reduced from last autumn.

  • Since reading this page, stumbled into after much searching in frustration at what seemed to be a stall in my chance to get a seat at the wellness table I’ve been taking a disruptor (not dementor). Biofilms are everywhere, apparently: what we brush from our teeth every morning is made up in part from biofilms being created by the bacteria that like living on our teeth.
  • I’ve also started a parasite cleanse consisting of a short course of clove, wormwood and black walnut extracts (read on to find out why).

Yeast (singular or plural? I’m not sure) create Harry Potter style cloaks of  invisibility which leave the yeast impervious to an increasingly inhospitable intestinal tract. It’s one of the reasons antibiotics can sometimes lose their effectiveness (perhaps part of what makes a bug super, too?) After a time, the antifungals including oil of oregano, Uva Ursi, Pau D’Arco, Olive Leaf Extract (amongst others) also stopped working.

My candida reduction protocol started in earnest last August following Christa Orrechio’s suggestions  (mentioned and linked to in another post here) and had been going very well til Christmas.

Things seemed to slide a little as life happened, seasonal celebrations were had and more sugar came into my diet. Shame on me, time to get back on the sugar free wagon, I thought.

Is it blind arrogance to imagine we, as humans are able to gain control of these  opportunistic, hugely successful invaders?

Yeast (in many forms) has been on earth for longer than us and has developed a trick or two to make sure it stays alive. Perhaps we need a certain amount of respect for these immigrants and learn how best to live alongside them?

Whilst facing the yeast shaped beast, we most likely, are also dealing with our addiction to sugar.

I have a handful of skin eruptions on the fingers and thumb of my right hand. It has been suggested to me they could be viral in nature and not, as I’d previously thought: A sign that deeply embedded yeast was on the move in my slowly healing body.

 

makers mark on a building construction

 

This life stuff doesn’t seem to have an easily crackable code to me, yet. But whatever the cause I’ve been feeling pretty good in myself. Sometimes it can be best NOT to look for the code but be glad SOMETHING is working (also referred to as not looking a gift horse in the mouth).

A future post will be about PsychoNeuroImmunology. I was recommended Jo Dispenza’s ‘You Are The Placebo’ as a worthwhile read. It is very worthwhile and also a fascinating, inspiring and empowering way to consider an uneven system.

A nutritionist friend is taking a cPNI training at the moment. I’m excited to see what’s to come, her trainer said he saw people with MS leave him without MS!

Candida Overgrowth Part 2 and/or SIBO?

two cups of hot drink on desk

This is the second part of my candida cleanse collection of posts.

What can we do after finding our spit sinks first thing in the morning? (please see the previous post for details on sinking spit here).

I’ve entered into this protocol with a bit more vigour than in the past and am now into my 3rd month of a daily diet of pretty much no sugar, booze, yeast and/or vinegar but lots of fresh veg (mostly greens less starch) and no sweet fruit (green apples and blueberries are ok in moderation). Recently I have reintroduced fermented vegetables (I describe the making of them here).

I checked my spit this morning as I’ve been feeling slowly, slightly a little better in a number of areas.

  • My limbs feel more… reliable,
  • my balance seems more centred (I don’t feel like I might overbalance and fall over as much and
  • my head feels clearer. I appreciate none of those statements sound like gamechanging successes but
  • I no longer crave sugar! That I consider to be a resounding success.
  • I treated myself with a square of 85% dark chocolate and there’s still a quarter of the square left this morning!

I’m still not great at carrying two cups of hot liquid in both hands at once (a few drops spilt but neither cup tipped) these are all tiny signs (to me at least) that things are changing. Grated ginger in one and loose leaf green tea in a yellow submarine in the other are both I believe, polyphenol rich and therefore, desirable?

I have a question mark as there are so many things I don’t myself have proof of and have to take it on trust that various people on the internet aren’t lying to me and as far as I know, I’m not lying here either but like I mention in various other posts, your best bet is to do lots of reading from lots of different places and become your own research and/or researcher.

Anyway, let’s get on to how these happy changes may have come about.

In the previous post I spoke of hugely reducing my sugar intake, stopping booze, vinegar and generally what could be considered as excess starch consumption. It’s not like I was a booze hound or I ate all the cakes every day but even a tiny amount was giving fuel to the yeasts that I felt had grown out of control in me resulting in recurrent UTIs, fatigue and fierce sugar cravings.

Along with those dietary changes I followed the regimen of antifungals as suggested by Christa Orecchio when talking to Sean Croxton (both of whom I believe I mentioned in the previous post. So, I’m hoping to try and get rid of

  • recurring yeast infections
  • remorseless fatigue
  • bloating and gas
  • poor memory
  • brain fog.

At every meal, I have been starving the yeast of its favorite food (by not eating those foods) aswell as, in 4 day rotations, taking two at a time of:

  • pau d’arco
  • olive leaf extract
  • oil of oregano (this one is cruel as the smell reminds me of Italian food!)
  • grapfruit seed extract
  • uva ursi

As well as my

  • Betaine HCL supplements with every meal (the dosing of this supplement deserves its own post – watch this space).

This supplement enhances the amount of stomach acid to help digest a meal. When things are ticking along nicely Hydrochloric acid should be your first line of defense in killing pathogenic bacteria from food but age, a history of disordered eating, antibiotic use, stress and low salt diets can all interfere with our body’s natural ability to produce it. Every morning, before food I take a spoonful of

  • Diatomaceous Earth and
  • Bentonite Clay mixed with water.

The clay has a positive charge which can be lessened when it comes into contact with metal. Luckily the company I bought it from supplied a wooden spoon. The DE (food grade) has really sharp edges that scour out your gut and the clay clings to particles. Essentially the two products together behave like Harvey Keitel in any number of his roles as a ‘cleaner’ in films. Combined they remove the evidence of the bacteria’s presence in your body.

I think this subject could be spread into a third post but for the moment I’m stopping here. My spit was floating and I thought it might be safe to have a glass of wine, it wasn’t. So, I’m back to ensuring my spit doesn’t drown! I’ll keep you informed of changes.

I mention SIBO in the title and honestly have little idea of the difference in action of an opportunistc yeast and a Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth as I haven’t gone as far as sending my stool off to be analysed. I’ll see what I can do on my own for the moment as I understand there is some overlap between having an overgrowth of one organism when compared to another.

Is feeling a bit better as good as a cure?

pathways

I remember when as youngsters who knew no better, we used to wave our inebriation like a badge of honour; happy happy days but not really suitable as a long term strategy!

I think a bit differently about life now and have different priorities.

Whilst I’m with Dylan Thomas on this one and all in favour of not going gently into that good night I don’t like the fight, struggle and battle analogies common with various types of illness. Why would you want to create further imbalance in your body than it obviously already has?

We’re here, let’s get invested into making life as good as it can be. We may as well investigate how we can make life a little better. To use a lottery saying and adapt it to life – We’ve got to be in it to win it.

Receiving a chronic diagnosis changes everything.

It can change everything in a number of ways depending on the choices we make:

We can choose to see the future as an everlasting dance with our own body.

we are after all, hopefully in this for the long haul so conserving energy isn’t the choice of a wimp rather the enightened individual.

Does the dusting need to be done as regularly as before?

Does it matter if the kitchen floor isn’t clean enough to eat off of?

Realising what’s important (and what isn’t important in life) somewhat focuses the mind. Listening to our bodies is something that might make our life a little easier. There’s at least one school of thought that puts unattended issues in your mind and the always interconnected body at the heart of later chronic disease. A recurring fungal infection is a sign that you’r body is not working optimally. Usually we coexist with a variety of parasites living in our body quite happily – it’s a beautifully functioning, symbiotic relationship – they help digest our food, make vitamins, form an immune response to foreign invaders and perform other vital services but if you have recurring bouts of athlete’s foot or UTIs for example, your immune system is not strong enough to be able to keep everything in balance.

If you don’t address this issue it can develop and eventually become something else after years of putting off doing something about it. Possibly an autoimmune disorder?

It’s worth listening to what our often ignored bodies are trying to tell us. People found here can help us sort through the unknowns about our health. They dig a little deeper than our GPs have time to.

In the spirit of paying attention to things to advantage ourselves I was finding out about the 9 circles of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. This goes into it in a little more detail. The 8th circle interested me most – fraud (which includes flatterers, sorcerers, seducers and liars). I can think of two professions that could fit the bill but which ones have you come into contact with that would fit right in to your circle of hell? Advertisers, marketeers and certain parts of the contemporary scientific process fit into mine!

My dissatisfaction with the scientific process may be related to the fact that not only has mainstream science not come up with a cure for ms but they also are not aware of things that could make life a little better. In the spirit of focusing on what’s important in life (making life a little better to be up there in the top 10) I am into my 2nd week of a candida cleanse (my eating habits have rarely been exemplary and I took antibiotics last year) I will post details soon. Acknowledging candida is just one part of getting on board with the existence of a microbiome.