yes. i am battling an 11 year case of candida an fungal issues as well as leaky gut. i feel that a raw food diet is the way out for me but also feel strongly about taking an excellent probiotic to replenish my friendly bacteria. there are so many products out there and i would like to know what people have found to be the most effective and potent given personal experience or research. thank you.

dancerinthenight,

Here's an article I wrote that was published in Fred Patenaude's ezine. It talks about how to prevent your flora from dying so you don't constantly need to use probiotics.

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Letters From the Readers: the probiotic debate
The Probiotic Debate


People use probiotics for various reasons; their digestion is impaired or sluggish and probiotics help. They may have candida overgrowth from continuous uses of antibiotic or anti bacterial/antiseptic agents.While consuming a probiotic restores the bacteria flora that lives in the digestive system, continued use of the probiotics relieves the symptoms while masking the original cause of the problem, and the continued ignoring of the cause of the problem will ultimately result in poor health down the line.

If a person finds herself with little flora remaining in her digestive system, a single dosage of probiotics should help restore the flora, and no successive applications of the probiotic ought to be necessary. But this is usually not the case. Instead, the probiotics work after the application, but are quickly killed and are no longer effective, since they are no longer alive.

What is it that kills the beneficial flora?

For folks on the SAD diet, regular use of prescription/pharmaceutical antibiotics is known to kill both the beneficial and harmful bacteria in the digestive system. But most raw/live foodists dont consume pharmaceutical antibiotics.

Instead, raw-foodists kill their beneficial flora with herbal antibiotics and natural spices that in historical times were uses for their food preservative qualities. Certainly herbs such as echinacea and goldenseal are well know antibiotics, which are often used to fight the symptoms of colds and flus. These antibiotic kill bacteria, and are unable to distinguish between beneficial and harmful bacterias. Garlic and onions are another antibiotic that will kill bacteria in your digestive system, especially when consumed in their raw state. In addition to garlic and onion, the following herbs and spices are known for their antibacterial properties: allspice, oregano, thyme, cinnamon, tarragon, cumin, capsicum, white and black pepper, ginger, anise seed and celery seeds.

Salt throughout history has been known as a food preservative. It preserves food by creating a saline environment that is hostile to bacteria. Again, beneficial bacteria can no more survive a saline environment than a harmful bacteria can. Salt can come into the diet from using refined salt, celtic sea salt, Braggs liquid aminos, nama shoyu, tamari, and regular soy sauce. It can also be introduced with unwashed sea vegetables like dulse and nori.

Another matter of importance is improper food combining. Not only does improper food combining use more energy and time to digest food, but if fermentation of sugar occurs, toxins such as alcohol are created that will also kill your beneficial flora.

Rather than having a lifetime dependence on store-bought probiotics and supplements, it is much healthier and cheaper to remove the causes of the death of the flora.

San Francisco, California

Thank you Brian. I thought that was a very interesting and informative article!

Bryan,

I wonder if you would be willing to venture an opinion about something.

Back when I was undergoing my chemotherapy, my oncologist decided that I was going to need to take large doses of anti-biotics for the entire six months of my protocol. This isn't always done, but since I had four kids in the home, bringing home who knows how many germs from school - exposed to hundreds of other kids daily, it was felt that I needed to do this. It's crazy, but the doctor had a point - an infection, even a minor one could have killed me.

But - if anti-biotics are damaging to a healthy person, I can only imagine how damaging they must be to a person taking three very strong chemotherapy drugs, not to mention half a dozen other drugs to combat the side effects. And to take them every single day for six whole months - well....

So my question is this - how long do you suppose it would take before a person's body could revert back to good healthy levels of beneficial flora?

This isn't really a medical issue - as far as my doctor is concerned. He feels there's nothing wrong with me, and to tell the truth, I feel ok. I would just love to know that all aspects of my health are as much optimized as I can manage,

Thanks!
Sapphire

Your body ought to return to health as soon as those antibiotics are eliminated from your body. How long this takes depend on your lifestyle habits. The fastest way to clear your body of toxins is to participate in a long supervised water fast. Under these conditions, your body could be relatively toxin free (at least of the medication you took in your past) in a month. Or it might take a few such fasts to get it all.

If water fasting is out of the question, then your best bet is to eat a healthful raw diet and to get as much rest and sleep as possible, incorporating as many health building habits into your lifestyle, like reducing stress, more rest and sleep, exercise, sunshine, breathing fresh air, drinking purified water, eliminating household toxins and personal toiletries, using a shower filter, acquiring and practicing balanced mental and emotional habits, etc.

I don't know how long you've already been raw, or how much raw you eat, but if you been doing all raw for a few years, you may have already removed much of the toxins that came in with your treatments, again assuming you have been practicing the health building habits.

Have you had some detox symptoms, that led you to believe that you were detoxing those antibiotics? When they are coming out of your body, you can sometimes taste or smell those medications. If you have not had a major detox yet, perhaps not much has been eliminated yet at this point.

Bryan:

Thank you so much for your response and the information. As always you have been very helpful and informative. Blessings.

Thank you so much Bryan - everything you say rings true to me.

Sadly, I don't dare do any more fasts until I am able to stop taking the post-chemo drugs (tamoxifen) that I have to take until the end of August 2008. I don't think it's okay to do too much fasting while taking any kind of medication, and I don't dare stop taking it either.

I did go off it a couple of times and did a couple of Master cleanse (s) over the past year. I do think that was helpful to me, but there is still much to be done.

One other challenge for me is sleep. One of the side effects of this darn tamoxifen is menopausal symptoms, which means any time I slow down and relax, my body will suddenly overheat, and have a panic attack at the same time. I don't think I have ever managed more than three hours sleep at a time since I started taking this in Sept/03. So I get woken up at least five or six times a night with my heart pounding out of my chest and feeling like someone put me in a hot oven for too long! I spoke to my doctor, and he suggested that I should probably take anti-depressants, but I refused (I don't see the connection, and I think I have had enough drugs, thank you very much!). And if I slow down and rest during the day at all, it's twice as bad.

Before I was diagnosed, I was a cooked vegetarian (not vegan), but once I found out I had cancer, I realized that this was not working for me. I looked around at all my friends and relatives still on SAD, and couldn't understand why they were all fine and I was sick! So for a while, I went back to SAD - for a couple of years, although lots of veggies, raw and cooked. Only about a year ago did I discover raw, and have been on and off since. But now I am determined to be true to this, I am convinced it could be so helpful to me.

Stress - well, there is a certain amount of stress connected to being the parent of four teenagers, and it doesn't help to be chronically sleep-deprived, but I am trying hard. I know I have to learn that many of the decisions my kids make now in their late teens are not in my control, and I must step back and allow them to experience their own consequences (for instance, if they skip school, etc.) It's hard to step back, but if I continue to take personal responsibility for every single mistake made by every single person in this family, I will break.

Before I was diagnosed, I was working three part-time jobs, parenting four pre-teen kids, was acting like the community mom, car-pooling, and having kids at my house all the time from all over the place. Trying to keep the house in some semblance of order, and not to let my husband feel like the forgotten family member. I was also volunteering for eight different volunteer groups - bad idea! It was just too much.

And you know, I never spent any time outside - never had time! So now I have a dog, and we try to go and walk the trails around the lake at least three times a week. It's wonderful! The sun feels glorious!

Detox - I think I've had some detox symptoms - like having the flu, feeling very run-down and stuffy, but that seems to have passed for now. I suspect that with all the poisons that have been put into my body, this whole detox thing will probably be something that will visit me a few times before I am done. When I had my last chemo, the nurse pointed out to me that I had now received my lifetime maximum dose of one of the drugs. She said even if I got cancer 20 years later, I could not ever use this drug again, it would be too dangerous. So I don't know if this stuff can ever be completely eliminated. But we can only do what we can do, so I will make the best of it.

Thank you again so very much for all that you contribute to this site. It is such a pleasure to read your posts, you have a way of expressing yourself that is so helpful and supportive to all who want to hear what you have to say.

Sapphire

OK. I have taken in what everyone says. And, being the nervous girl I am, I would still like to supplement with a probiotic shortterm. Can someone please share with me a highly effective and potent brand?

check out "threelac", google it

i never tried it, but heard it's really good

specifically for candida sufferers

good luck

: )

Natren Healthy Trinity is very powerful.

Good Luck!