Yeast and Allergies
This page is based on Dr. Bruce Semon’s clinical experience and research. This page discusses how yeast can affect allergies. For detailed explanations, including an more case studies, and how you can treat allergies–we recommend that you read An Extraordinary Power to Heal.
Dr. Semon is available to see patients and for consultation. For more information about his medical practice, call 1-877-332-7899, or click here.
Allergies cause many people to suffer. Some people have food allergies, some sneeze, cough, have teary eyes. These are respiratory allergies. How are these related?
Allergies are related to yeast. How can this be?
The yeast Candida albicans is a normal resident inside of the intestinal tract. This yeast can also be found at times in the mouth. Sometimes this yeast overgrows and the doctor recognizes this overgrowth of yeast as a yeast infection.
In the mouth, this infection is commonly called thrush.
Bacteria are also resident inside the intestinal tract, sharing space with the yeast.
After the use of antibiotics, the yeast grow to fill in the space left by the removal of the bacteria. After the antibiotics have been stopped, the bacteria would like to come back but they cannot. The yeast make chemical factors which keep the bacteria out. So after antibiotics, the yeast continue to grow at a higher level.
Pregnancy and the use of birth control pills can also make yeast grow more. Yeast grow better when there is more progesterone, the hormone of pregnancy and of the birth control pill, circulating.
After antibiotics the yeast continue to grow at this higher level. The body still must contain the yeast so that the yeast does not invade the rest of the body. If the yeast Candida albicans invades the body, the person often dies.
Even today, there is not a good quick test for systemic yeast infection. In a cancer patient in which the linings of the intestinal tract are broken down by chemotherapy, yeast can invade and kill. In a person with an intact intestine, such invasion does not occur but the presence of Candida in the intestine poses a challenge to the body’s immune system. Yeast are very difficult organisms for the body to handle. They have a capsule on the outside which prevents the first line (phagocytic) white blood cells of the body from engulfing the yeast and killing it. So the body must rely on the other parts of the immune system.
These parts of the immune system apparently are also not able to kill the yeast, rather only to keep it from invading.
The remainder of the body’s immune system fights the yeast but sometimes at the cost of a full blown inflammation rather than a neatly contained regulated immune response. When the linings of the intestinal tract become inflamed, they are more porous and allow more, bigger compounds to get through. Instead of only fully digested food molecules getting through the intestinal wall, incompletely digested compounds from food can get through.
The body can react to these compounds as if they are foreign and the body can make antibodies as if the body is being invaded. These responses are commonly called allergic responses.
The way to reverse these problems is to clear the yeast from the intestinal tract. Then the yeast is no longer a target for the body’s immune system. Once the yeast is gone from the intestinal tract, the yeast induced inflammations of the intestinal tract clear up.
The way to clear intestinal yeast is to take the anti-yeast drug Nystatin and to change diet.
Nystatin is a safe medication. It is not absorbed and kills the yeast living in the intestinal tract.
Dietary change is necessary, too, because the diet contains many foods which contain yeast compounds. To treat yeast these foods must be removed from the diet. Removal of these dietary yeast compounds enables the body to clear itself of yeast chemicals. Some of these yeast chemicals are toxic to bacteria and will clear space for the yeast to grow again. If these yeast chemicals are left in the diet, nystatin will not do much good because the yeast keeps growing back.
Fortunately, because nystatin is not absorbed, nystatin causes no side effects except for a little nausea. No harmful side effects have ever been caused by the use of nystatin. Therefore there is no risk to this therapy.
Food related allergies improve when yeast is treated. Strong food sensitivities may not disappear but they improve.
Respiratory allergies work in a similar manner except that the yeast related inflammations are on the insides of the breathing tubes. Again inflammations can result after antibiotics, which clears space for the yeast and again the body tries to clear the yeast but cannot leading to inflammation. Inflamed lining allow larger compounds to pass through, for example, molds and pollens, leading the body to respond to these compounds in an allergic way, such as production of mucus.
The treatment for the yeast is the same as described above. Yeast may make other factors which directly affect the immune system and these factors may cause the body’s immune system to produce exaggerated allergic responses, instead of more moderate immune responses.
The diet for Candida problems consists of removing fermented foods from the diet. The worst offenders are alcoholic beverages and non-alcoholic beer, vinegar, barley malt, chocolate, pickles, and aged cheese. I explain the diet very thoroughly, including how to implement the diet for children, in An Extraordinary Power to Heal and Feast Without Yeast:4 Stages to Better Health. Feast Without Yeast has more than 225 recipes that are easy to make and taste great! Our new cookbook, Extraordinary Foods for the Everyday Kitchen contains more than 125 additional new, original recipes and more than 60 menus to help you plan meals.
