Hi Tom and honeypie,
First off, Tom . . . I am sorry that your doctor feels that it is in your mind. If it helps, I believe you and a lot of people in this forum will tell you that they received the same response from their doctors. The problem is, when a doctor doesn't understand something he says "you're a hypochondriac".
I was told that several times, until they discovered I had low thyroid, malnutrition and Vitamin B2 deficiency. Then they said "Ah, look . . . you're not imagining it!". Several years later after a lot of problems and unnecessary suffering on my part. I was less than pleased with those ones.
On the other hand, you should start now to try to find a doctor who will deal with it. You can either try to pursue it with that doctor, perhaps from a more conventional viewpoint ("Ok, so you don't think it's candida, what about an endoscopy or colonoscopy?") You might get somewhere if they can find evidence of it, as in the case of KT12.
Otherwise, this puts you in the circle of alternative practitioners. I have had a few of them now in the past 10 years and they are like ordinary doctors---some are great and some are quacks.
You need to find one of the good ones, not the ones who studied for 3 months and have a mail order diploma from herbal school but a really good qualified one.
Ideally, this person should have gone to medical school (an MD) and then done additional work in nutrition and alternative or complementary medicine. There are some like this if you look around. I found one such doctor and it is possible.
The diet alone will help you feel better but won't cure the problem. For that you will need either pharmaceutical or herbal antifungals and these should be given under guidance. I started mine alone but with guidance from my book (most of my info is from this book, BTW, although some is also from my specialist and the internet---I'm big into research---so if you want a really good book, here it is:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Cand...d/dp/0761527400
This book will give diet information, recipes and treatment information but even WITH the book you should ideally be under the guidance of a specialist.
Honeypie, to find the specialist I'm seeing I emailed the author (Dr Rona, who has contact information on the internet) to ask for a recommendation for a specialist in the UK, preferably in the London area. These chaps all meet each other at conferences, so even if they can't name one personally that they remember, they often have lists of other conference attendees or centres in certain areas that they could suggest.
You may have to pay out of pocket as many are not covered by insurance, BUT they tend to cost less than the ones who are covered by insurance, so they are pricey but if you are desperate, they may still be affordable in the long run, in the sense that at least you may fix the problem and then you can stop having to do the rounds of a lot of doctors ---insured or not---who can't fix it or don't believe in candida.
I don't mind saying whom I'm seeing, although I am not sure where you two are in the world, so you may have to do some reserach in your local area.
Dr Rona's website is:
http://www.heritagehealthcentre.ca/node/31
Dr Rona is in the Toronto area.
As for me, I'm under the treatment from the specialists at
The Centre for Complementary and Integrated Medicine
The website is:
http://www.complemed.co.uk/
This is in London, UK.
Honeypie, if you missed the earlier link I posted about the oxygen therapy, you can look at this, although I make no claims regarding Dr Whiting because, although he is apparently fairly well known in the US, I have no personal dealings with him. He discusses the benefits of oxygen therapy in the video, but again, remember that he is also selling oral buffered oxygen over the internet and so there may be other approaches as well. I find his videos on youtube helpful for information and general ideas but I would be careful about recommending someone I haven't had personal dealings with. I admit he sounds very experienced in the video in dealing with candida, and I have personally found the O2 therapy my specialist put me on worked fairly well, although I was only on it for a week previous to antifungals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN-STK2XvgM
Regarding the tea, Tom, my advice would be to start SLOWLY because I don't know 1) whether you have candida or another condition or two conditions including candida etc.
2) the rest of your medical history
3) how much candida you may have in your body
So the general rule of thumb is, if it's new, start SLOWLY. Don't introduce changes quickly unless you want your body to struggle. Try one cup of the tea in the morning for a day and then the next day, try a cup, preferably ahead of food or away from food. Stay on 2 cups for a few days and then increase to 3.
This is also a good idea with the coconut oil. Bear in mind that coconut oil as an ingredient in cooking may be helpful, but it is almost 90% saturated fat. We also have to think about our arteries on this diet. If you want to try capryllic acid as an antifungal (the ingredient in coconut oil that works against candida) you can buy it in tablet form where it is maximized. Here:
Solgar makes it and you can get it at a health food store.
Here:
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?i...KHcvo-Qak-NnXDA
Before doing this or anything else, though, it would be really a good idea to buy either the book I mentioned by Dr Rona or a similar guide to diet and treatment which has many more details about the diet plan, treatment plan etc. I began this treatment while searching for a good specialist and was one month into it when I saw the specialist, by which time I was able to show him the book I was using to see if he thought it was ok, and also the treatments I was on. You can begin the diet gently, and some of these other things gently but before going on to 3 tbsp per day of saturated fat, you'd want to make sure you didn't have any other health issues with your heart, arteries, blood pressure etc.
As for the tea, once you take it or any other antifungals, monitor yourself for die-off symptoms, improvements, or any changes whatsoever in your main symptoms. Usually this tea will precipitate a change in your symptoms ---although it may be for the better or worse, depending---but if it affects your main symptoms then it is probably working. If you notice no changes at all over a week or two then you may have a different condition.
I hope that helps. It's great to see a few people participating in these discussions since I'm also keen to find out what other people have tried, what has worked, what didn't work and how to fix this as quickly as possible!!!
Anne
PS Sorry for the length of these posts. It's hard to answer all the questions in a short space.