If you have a yeast infection with symptoms of itching, and irritation, this probably means that Candida albicans, which is a fungus, a type of yeast, in fact, is growing out of control in your body.
The causes of Candida overgrowth are basically:
- an imbalance in your body caused by dietary deficiencies or excesses; a weak immune system
- excess acidity or alkalinity in your body chemistry
- the presence of too many toxins in your body
- the loss of friendly bacteria (known as probiotics) often due to antibiotics
- excess cortisol produced by stress
- repeated infection by Candida due to sexual intercourse with an infected partner
- needless to say, of course, there are other things that can cause Candida overgrowth – it’s been suggested, for example, one factor is meat and milk products which contain residues of antibiotics given to animals to promote growth.
As you may already know, every one of us normally has a natural level of Candida: it’s a natural part of the microscopic organisms that live on (and in) every human body.
The problem is that under certain conditions Candida “overgrows” – because the factors that should keep it under control cease to function for some reason.
Those reasons include using antibiotics, having a low acid level in the vagina, ill-health, stress, using prescription medications, tiredness, eating the wrong food, and so on. Yeast Infection No More describes them all – and tells them what you can do about them.
When Candida rapidly grows massively into huge colonies, it becomes a rampaging monster that takes over the tissues of your body and produces all the symptoms we’ve mentioned above.
You can see some pictures of yeast infection on all parts of the body by clicking on the link below. These pictures from the results page of Google image search and so I cannot guarantee that they all show Candida: however, they are indicative of serious infections that look like yeast, aka Candida. NOT SAFE FOR WORK (or the squeamish).
There’s More Than One Kind Of Candida
When Candida grows rapidly in the body, it tends to change form.
This is known as dimorphism. It stops being a harmless one-celled organism, meek and mild, and becomes a huge colony of inter-connected cells, all forming part of a mycelium, a network of tiny microscopic tubules penetrate the tissues of your body. Not nice!
This information board shows you more. Click on the picture to enlarge it or see the website from which it is taken here.
That’s when you get more severe symptoms, including discharge from the tissues, leaky gut syndrome, and the production of chemicals by Candida which infiltrate the tissues of your body and make you feel ill. Acetaldehyde is one of these chemicals, for example.
When this overgrowth happens, it’s almost certainly the result of some imbalance in your body chemistry.
This might be due to excessive consumption of sugar, a poor diet, excess fat in the diet, lack of nutrients, excessive consumption of alcohol, or it may be due to the excess production of cortisol in response to stress … and indeed many other things as well.
Causes and signs of yeast infection
It’s not, for example, particularly well-known that contraceptive pills can change the acidity of the vagina, which makes it oh-so-easy for Candida albicans to grow.
Obviously, any home remedy for yeast infection needs to take account of these factors.
But one of the great things about doing my Yeast Infection No More review is that I found it contains specific remedies for the symptoms of Candida AND it shows you how to change the environment in your bodily so the growth of yeast cells STOPS!
- Notes for the scientist among you…from this source.
Candida albicans is a dimorphic fungus that grows at 37oC. Its normal habitat is the mucosal membranes of humans and other warm-blooded animals, where it grows as a yeast and causes little or no damage. In fact, it can be isolated from the mucosa of up to 50% of humans – from the mouth, the gut, the vagina or, less often, from the surface of the skin.
In some circumstances, however, the same strains of C. albicans that grow as harmless commensals can become pathogenic, invading the mucosa and causing significant damage. This usually happens when a variety of predisposing factors cause the yeast population to multiply, escaping the normal competition from resident bacteria which keep the yeast population in check. Then the yeast cells sprout a hyphal outgrowth which locally penetrates the mucosal membrane, causing irritation and shedding of the tissues.
One of the best examples of this is the disease termed thrush – a white speckling of the tongue and the back of the throat, resembling the speckling on the bird’s chest. This is common in newborn babies, perhaps resulting from passage through an infected birth canal. It is also common in AIDS patients and people who have had a prolonged course of antibacterial therapy, reducing the normal resident bacterial population.
C. albicans also causes vaginitis – inflammation and invasion of the vaginal mucosa, especially during the third trimester of pregnancy and in women who take the pill. The predisposing factors seem to be hormonal, associated with changes in the balance of cell types in the lining epithelium of the vagina. A similar condition termed stomatitis is common in people who wear dentures. Candida can adhere to denture resin, and high sugar levels in the diet can also increase the adhesion by enhancing the production of a mannoprotein adhesive on the yeast cell surface. Systemic candidosis is a more serious condition, when yeast cells proliferate in the circulatory system. This can occur after invasive surgical techniques, including the insertion of intravenous catheters to which the yeast cells adhere, providing a base from which the cells can bud and be disseminated.
All these examples illustrate that C. albicans is a classic opportunistic pathogen, normally kept in check but capable of flaring up in specific, predisposing conditions. It can be identified quite readily from clinical specimens by its ability to sprout hyphae when yeast cells at 37oC are transferred to tubes of horse serum and incubated for 3-5 hours. Only C. albicans and a few related pathogenic Candida species do this. But the fungus has a strong tendency to revert to the yeast phase after only a short period of hyphal growth. The hyphae themselves have a beaded appearance, and they give rise to budding yeast cells at the sites where the hyphae of other fungi would form branches.