CANDIDA!
When I first heard that word I thought it sounded funny. I had no idea what it is. I know now that candida is a bacteria that is in our bodies naturally, one that CAN help us digest food, absorb beneficial vitamins and nutrients, break down toxins and bad bacteria, and do soooo much more. The down side is that like anything else, candida can grow and multiply too fast in our digestive systems! Of course, the symptoms of candida overgrowth are things we have been taught by society and medicine are NORMAL and to be expected of getting older/experiencing stress/living. Exhaustion, weight gain, ezcema or psoriasis, insomnia or other difficulty sleeping or staying asleep, moodiness or irritability, cravings for or dependency on sugars or caffeine, development of age spots or liver spots, the list goes on. We are told these things are just a result of aging, of having kids, of being stressed, and that there is nothing we can do but try to get more sleep (hard to do when you don't feel like you sleep well and don't have time to sleep longer!) or lose weight (which we ALL struggle with) or try to eliminate some of the stress in our lives (impossible!).
These things are all often a result of candida overgrowth.
Funny how having a little too much of one tiny bacterium can throw off your system so much, isn't it!?
But it's true! When I first went to my doctor I told her about all my problems. About my trouble sleeping, my sleep apnea (caused by my weight), my inability to lose weight, my moodiness and depression, my skin problems, my need for sugar and caffeine, my stresses and so much more. She told me I could go on a bunch of medications and get a special machine to help me sleep at night and take dangerous drugs to help me lose weight or even have major surgery (EXPENSIVE and scary) to lose weight but that I would need to do some or all of these things in order to solve my problems. She told me to get more rest (I have three kids!) and see if I could eliminate some stress (I worked in corporate America in a call center for a major company, yeah right!) and maybe those things would help. Basically, she didn't have an answer that I could follow through with without feeling like I was further compromising my health, or masking the symptoms without dealing with the actual problems. To make matters worse, my cholesterol was troublesome and my fasting blood sugar was higher than it should be, a sign that I might be becoming a prediabetic.
I was SO FRUSTRATED.
A friend turned me on to Plexus, and after researching the things they might be able to help with I said, why not? I started on Plexus Slim (The Pink Drink!), Accelerator+, ProBio 5, and BioCleanse. Slim and the Accelerator+ (now BOOST) were for weight loss and balancing out my body but the ProBio 5 and BioCleanse were to help with candida overgrowth! BioCleanse flushes the system gently without causing the nasty side effects of some supposed cleanses and ProBio5 helps you balance out your gastrointestinal tract with all the probiotics many people just don't get anymore because we have become so dependent on fast food and unhealthy snacks.
Within a week, I noticed that I was having less trouble getting to sleep at night. I wasn't quite as tired during the day and I felt like my clothes fit a tiny bit better. I spent a month on all of that instead of the medications she had indicated I would surely need to take in order to control the symptoms I was experiencing, then went back in with ingredient lists and told her what I had been doing instead. She looked everything over and then insisted we do a sleep test (to see if I still had sleep apnea), weigh me and check my blood pressure, and run blood tests. Sure enough my cholesterol was lower, my fasting blood sugar was lower, my blood pressure had dropped from 140/89 to 130/80, my sleep test came back MUCH better and I had even lost five pounds! She told me to KEEP DOING WHAT I'M DOING!
Tomorrow: HOW to test for candida! This is THE most important thing to be able to do!
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