ex cema and candida – long story (sorry.)

[alice78]

hi all,
I have found this website so useful that I thought id post my own story. it's long but if you have what I had you’ll be desperate for information and stories!

In late may this year I suddenly developed excema all over my arms, neck and face. it was itchier than you can possibly imagine (and I had mild excema through my teens but got rid of it with the help of a homeopath five years ago). anyway I thought it was related to hayfever, as I also had very bad runny eyes, stuffed sinuses, etc – it was like something was attacking my body. I went to the doctor and he told me I had infected excema and allergic conjunctivitis – gross, but it happens – and put me on antibiotics.

it got slightly better, the infection went away, but not the excema. in fact, for the next two months my excema steadily got worse, my face was puffy, I felt like everything I ate was making my body insane, it was hard to sleep because of the itchiness, etcetc. I couldn’t wear contacts or anything. over those two months I kept going back to my doctor saying “something is so wrong! help!” and he said and I quote: “get used to it” (thank you NHS, what a wonderful system).

In mid-june I went to a homeopath and he gave me sulphur tincture – a common remedy for excema. it made it so much worse he took me straight off it and on to arsen album which made no difference. it was really very depressing.

then about three weeks ago i read about candida on the internet – here and a few other sites. I thought, may as well try, so I put myself on the yeast and sugar-free diet. four days later I woke up with huge red welts – like some horrible acne scarring or something - across my face and the worst hangover feeling I’ve ever had. my arms, chest, back and neck were covered in thick, red, dry, bleeding excema. all of my skin hurt and burnt. I thought, this thing on my face might be part of the die-off, but everything seemed to be such a guessing game. I started to cry in self-pity but the tears really burned my skin. so I decided to go and see a naturopath and went to the sloane health clinic in London. they immediately gave me a full allergy test and asked me loads of questions, and agreed I had candida, and was just experiencing die-off.

I also had some mild allergies: strawberries, mustard, avocado – all of which I began eating more of in about January this year which would have knocked my system about and made it more susceptible to a breakdown – goose feathers (my boyfriend’s pillow), daisy pollen (terrible winds and pollen this spring) and sulphur (haha, thank you homeopath).

that day I started taking GSE twice a day, L-Glutamine, extra acidophilus (on top of eating loooads of natural unsweetened yoghurt), milk thistle, artichoke extract, loads vitamin C, an antioxidant pill w selenium, zinc, pau d’arco, echinacea and oil of oregano. (I’ve been alternating the anti-fungals every five days in case the yeast gets used to it and learns how to adapt … God its like a Michael Chricton movie isn’t it.). I also take aloe vera juice, lemon tea, nettle tea, and three cloves of fresh garlic a day. (I just cut them up into small pieces and swallow them like pills). oh, and im eating no sugar of any form, only one serving of fruit a day (blueberries), no yeast obviously, no wheat, no vinegar, no dairy apart from live yoghurt, no alcohol (nightmare).

And … drumroll….. my skin is healed. I don’t just mean healed I mean, HEALED! it looks absolutely unbelievable. it took exactly seven days from the welty-face day to waking up to beautiful, peachy smooth white skin. and I feel so much more awake, alert, energized etc – that’s almost a small bonus as I never really felt run-down before the excema attack. it is so amazing. anyway so good luck to you if you’re doing research to see if it might work for you – try it!!

[lovely_me]

omg.

i have eczema too!!!!!!! pls help me!! my neck is like RED RAW and SOOOO dry and itchy and liek wrinkly from the rashes. its god awful.

what is GSE?
what brand of acidophilus do you take?
what brand is the antioxidant you take?


can you pls tell me what you take liek exactly in the am? pm?
and at night?

can i eat ghee? (clarified butter that has no lactose or casein?)

[alice78]

you poor thing! its so horrible i feel like i was under a fog for two months - its all you think about.

the connection between candida and excema, apparently, is that when your body is prone to something - it might be excema or asthma or whatever - candida weakens your immune system, and your body becomes hypersensitive and reacts to everything like it's an allergen - voila mad excema.

ok this is exactly what i do.

in the morning i have two acidophilus pills. the brand is BioCare, i bought them in Fresh and Wild (in the UK). then about an hour later i take about half a litre of water with tinctures of pau d'arco, milk thistle and echinacea drops in (they're seperate tinctures but i just combine them; i've never read not to - they're all from the Sloane Health Clinic but i cant remember what brand).

NB: after five days of taking pau d'arco i flip and take Oil of Oregano tablets for five days instead (also from Sloane Health Clinic). apparently the candida gets used to one kind of anti-fungal so you need to keep surprising it and rotate them.

after lunch (candida diet ie vegies) i have another acidophilus.

about an hour after lunch - i take the vitamins and antioxidants (i just take Boots ones). i take some more oil of oregano or pau d'arco - whichever im taking at the mo. throughout the day i cut up garlic cloves and swallow them like pills.

after dinner i have another acidophilus.

i drink as much as possible - big pots of nettle tea (just from teabags from a health shop i wandered past), or fresh lemon juice in hot water, and about two litres of cold water. if i am hungry between meals i try to eat some extra unsweetened live yoghurt. oh and i add dessicated coconut to my yoghurt; it has caprylic acid in which helps kill candida - i dont know how strong it is in dessicated coconut but it cant hurt.

before i go to sleep i take Grapefruit Seed Extract (that's GSE) - its called Citricidal or something like that. I put about 10 or so drops in water and swallow it as quick as possible. It is truly the worst tasting thing in the world. [and oh i should say for the first week of the diet i would also take Grapefruit Seed Extract in the morning, but when you do that the worst of the die-off happens at about 3pm, so one's head is pounding, one feels nauseous, and - sorry to be a bit off-colour here - one has really bad flatulence. i had to leave work early. when i take it at night i guess i sleep through the die-off, all that happens is i have very vivid dreams.]

does this help? i dont see why you cant have ghee unless you have any chance of having a serious dairy intolerence (its common among people with excema apparently, but i dont think i have it... Im only drinking soy (apart from the live yoghurt) for a few months though just in case).

i plan on doing this for three months, then relaxing it a bit - whilst monitoring my skin closely of course!

i hope it works for you - remember: for me it got worse (only for a few days!!) before it got better - but seven days after the very worst day was the day it was totally cleared up. it hasnt come back and im not even itchy two weeks later. if you have any more questions dont hesitate to ask. good luck!

[lovely_me]

Thank You Thankk You Thank You Soooooo Much!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[lovely_me]

Hi, Alice78

how's the diet goin?
i cheated last week. i had beer and rice and a whole mess of food that is not allowed. so this week im back on track.

im taking all the supplements you suggested. i was wondering if you are able to include nuts and seeds in your diet?

like almond, cashews, flaxseeds, etc etc...

thanks....

[LilaCotton]

I'm glad I read your post! My daughter has some form of yuckness that crops up in her hair. It was really bad before starting Atkins, and once she started it the flakies and itchies disappeared. Then during the past couple of weeks I've noticed it's coming back. We're working on trying to eliminate some foods she wasn't eating before that she is eating now to see if that helps, but one I didn't think of is strawberries. She's my one child who showed some allergies as a baby, but pretty much outgrew them, but there are some heavy strawberry allergies in my family. If the first foods we cut don't do the trick we'll pull the strawberries, too. Oh, she'll hate that!

[alice78]

hey lovely_me and LilaCotton!

the diet is good. no excema now in about a month. the only thing that happened was i ate some wheat-free bread that i THOUGHT was yeast-free too, but it wasn't. i had immediate stomach pains followed by the most severe bloating for 24 hours, and the next day my face was blotchy and i had excema on my eyelids. i then looked at the bread packet again and realised my mistake. anyway i just ate extra yoghurt that day and the next day it was gone again.

i dont eat nuts much, but that's mostly because i dont really like them. except brazil nuts, which i eat one or two of a day as they're so high in selenium which is incredibly good for excema. and im slightly allergic to flaxseed according to that naturopath. i dont see why not as long as you're not eating heaps and heaps?

i have been reading more and more on this candida thing, and then met a friend's new girlfriend who's a dietitian and bored her for about an hour with questions, and it's actually incredibly unusual to get candida. the results that people get from the candida diet are often because - der - they do a basic detox on the diet. plus they're eating much much less food chemicals, nothing processed and extra vegetables. the dietitian also said that many people who think they have candida or are coeliac, especially those with excema, actually simply have a yeast and sugar intolerance (not allergy!), largely caused by a congested liver - so milk thistle and a basic detox (with all those extra supplements) is always going to help.

either way, im still going to eat the basic candida diet for a few more months - no yeast, no sugar, and no refined carbs. but i am eating a small (ie tablespoon a day) amount of complex carbs like oats or brown rice and one or two pieces of fruit, and a bit of dairy ie butter in cooking or some feta cheese in salad. oh and drinking vodka (with soda water and a squeeze of lemon...) occasionally and it doesnt seem to be doing any harm.

PS i invented a recipe for sugar/flour-free flapjacks (there is no stevia in the UK as far as i know, so those recipes are no use!!). i just mix organic oats, grated lemon rind and loads of lemon juice, grated apple, some dessicated coconut and pour over some melted butter mixed with bicarb soda dissolved in boiling water, and bake for 15 mins. i can't lie - it's not great - but it's better than nothing!

i hope your daughters excema gets sorted soon lila_cotton. keep us posted! you know what else it could be - an intolerence to the parabens in shampoo and conditioner. i read that dove is the gentlest shampoo and conditioner and its paraben free - very kind to sensitive skin.

[LilaCotton]

Hi, Alice! I don't think it would be the shampoo--it's the same one she was using months ago. Considering she's eating more types of foods now than she was 10 months ago when it disappeared my bet is on one of the foods. She eats a few Wheaties at times with berries (like 1/4 cup of Wheaties) and has an occasional piece of low-carb bread--which does have yeast. I'm not completely convinced her problem is yeast but possibly something else, likely as you said an allergy to something.

it's actually incredibly unusual to get candida.

That may be, just like Dr. Gott says hypoglycemia is 'rare' yet here on this forum are many people suffering from one or both. I know Dr. Atkins definitely made a connection between hypoglycemia and Candida and offers a pretty extensive explanation in DANDR about how it can stall weight loss and how to go about getting rid of it. I know my poor hubby of 20 years has fought jock itch and athlete's foot clear back into his teens, and so far the only thing that's helped is low-carbing. It never responded long-term to anything else. At this point he still has it but it's much better than it was. I'm also working on psyching him up to get rid of it--he's starting to resign himself to the fact that it will be much like his sister and her flebitis (sp?)--that there will be some foods that if he can eat at all will be very rarely.

I know they put selenium in dandruff shampoos so it stands to reason. Did you know eggs are also an excellent source? I told my daughter maybe we should washing her hair with eggs, too!

It's too bad you're allergic to flax! I could give you an awesome recipe for what my daughter calls flax cake. It's made with a couple tablespoons of flax seed meal, a little oatmeal (I think 1 tbsp), some Carb Countdown and an egg. She cooks it in the microwave and it makes a tasty little breakfast cake!

[pinkpony]

i just read your thread on excema and i wish i could have seen it this winter when i was really suffering and unable to sleep and driving my boyfriend crazy complaining all the time. it went away mostly when the weather changed (we had a bitter winter in nyc). i had NEVER in my life had excema or even very dry skin so it took me a while to get what was goin on. i still dont understand why i got it at age 35-36. i've eaten similarly for a long time. anyway i'm not sure how much the anti-yeast diet has helped. i went on it for a yeast infection which seems to be gone. i'm still taking acidopholis and trying to eat a low carb low sugar diet. i have some spots on my eyelids and around the mouth that reappear no matter what but the elidel seems to work.

the thing i did notice that i thought might be helpful: in june when it was flaring up again on my face i got a massage and felt better for a few hours afterward so if i had money to get regular massages i would and i recommend it once in a while. but the thing that REALLY was remarkable was when i started doing BIKRAM hot yoga. you sweat a lot and it flushes out the toxins. my skin feels soft afterwards. sometimes it gets a bit redder because i have to take a shower right after to avoid yeast infections but overall i think it really helps. i tried to quite caffeine completely but i've had too many mood swings and problems so i cant quit it completely and it doesnt seem to make much dif if i have very little caffeine but drink a lot of water...
does anyone out there know why or if its common to get excema suddenly at such a late age???
thanks :)

[Cobbystock]

I also read to rotate cinnamon with Oil of oregano to help candida problems.-Sorry can't remember where. I also take Allimax which is a concentration from 30/50 garlic bulbs. You can get this from Boots.

[Zuleikaa]

Oil of oregano is good and so is cod liver oil, especially in the winter.

1 tsp. per 50 pounds of body weight.