Antibiotics
Antibiotics & candida. The two go hand-in-hand. Nothing else is guaranteed to create a systemic candida fungal infection in the body as fast, or as effectively as antibiotics. Nothing else but antibiotics cause systemic fungal candida infections on a routine basis for hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
In spite of government concerns and warnings about the end of the antibiotic era due to the development of antibiotic resistant strains, antibiotic use was found to have increased 36% worldwide from 2000 to 2010. The development of antibiotic resistant bacteria is now estimated to kill 300 million people by 2050. The word “anti-biotic” means “against life” and only now are we beginning to see how true that is.
As dim as that outlook is, there is another, more pervasive effect from the use of antibiotics that typically goes unrecognized, the development of systemic fungal candida infections. Antibiotics & candida. The use of one creates the emergence of the other.
The emergence of fungal candida as a growing health problem dates back to the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s. This is clearly outlined on PubMed, the free search engine of the United States National Library of Medicine that references over 23 million scientific articles and abstracts. A search for candida will reveal over 56,000 research papers on this organism. On the right-hand corner of the page, a quick look at the “Results by Year” shows that research on candida as an infectious agent had zero studies in 1944, the year before antibiotics began to be introduced as an emerging medical therapy.
From zero studies in 1940 to 2568 studies in 2014, over 56,ooo studies on candida have been cited on PubMed. As the use of antibiotics continues to increase, so will the number of studies. Antibiotics & candida, an inseparable pair.
In spite of the 56,000 studies on candida and ongoing research approaching 3000 studies a year, the medical field remains woefully uninformed about the magnitude and prevalence of candida in society. Critics cite an unwillingness of medical doctors to look at anything that might be deemed as a side effect of prescription medications, along with a general lack of knowledge regarding antibiotic pharmokinetics and human physiology.
As one pharmaceutical salesman told me, “Doctors don’t know anything about drugs unless we tell them, and we don’t tell them everything.”
This gap between science and medicine leaves patients to fend for themselves, which can produce beneficial results, but it may also leave them wandering without concrete answers while candida creates and contributes to more than 125+ diseases and imbalances within the body.
For those looking for the links between antibiotics & candida, there are over 10 different ways that antibiotics cause candida.
ANTIBIOTICS & CANDIDA
In 5 to 7 days, antibiotics can wipe out all the bacteria in the body. It then takes candida as little as 5 to 52 hours to spread systemically. No other drugs, with exception of chemotherapy, enable candida to multiply and spread so rapidly. Although several articles state that steroids, immunosuppressive drugs, and birth control pills will create candida, immunosuppression alone has not been found to create fungal candida. Only antibiotics via the mechanisms mentioned below will reliably create systemic fungal candida time and time again. Once that imbalance is established, it becomes permanent until it is reversed.
1) Antibiotics cause the loss of bacterial inhibition. Without 100 trillion bacteria present to crowd out and inhibit it, fungal candida grows unchecked. This one of the most powerful inducers of fungal growth. (3) One of the main types of bacteria that inhibit candida are the Lactobacillus species. Once they are eliminated by antibiotics, fungal candida grows and spreads, and will then inhibit the the Lactobacillus species from recolonizing the intestinal tract later on.
2) Antibiotics cause a loss of nutrient competition (4). Without 100 trillion bacteria present, the competition for nutrients ceases to exist and fungal candida has more than enough food resources to fuel its growth.
3) Antibiotics alter intestinal pH. Fungal candida requires an alkaline pH for its growth. Many of the bacteria in the intestinal tract release acids to maintain a healthy pH in the acidic range. Antibiotics eliminate these acid-forming bacteria and this leads to pH changes that stimulate the conversion of candida from yeast to fungus. It is well established that a pH around neutrality (pH ~6·5) favours hyphal development (5) of C. albicans in vitro, while a low pH (pH <6·5) blocks hyphal formation and stimulates growth of the yeast form.
4) Antibiotics destroy bacteria that produce antifungal compounds (6) that help to inhibit and regulate fungal growth. Elimination of the Lactobacillus bacteria eliminates production of long and short-chain fatty acids that inhibit candida’s fungal conversion.(7)