MS the Candida connection

Return to News Home Page Article Reprint: MS - The Candida Connection Interviewed by CAM Editor Simon Martin Susie Cornell was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1974. She defied conventional prognoses back then and is still doing so. In 1992, as editor of Here's Health, I presented her with that magazine's Achievement Award. She was then the only person in Britain advocating that people with MS should be exercising strenuously. Forced to defend her corner after the resulting publicity brought her condemnation from doctors, physios and MS specialists, she threw herself into research and study. Now 35 years after her original diagnosis, she is an MBE, is Deputy Lieutenant of Essex, is a highly successful practitioner specialising in chronic fatigue as well as MS - and is still advocating measures that orthodox medicine – and the big MS charities – just don't want to know about. In the last couple of years she's come to realise that many MS sufferers need urgent treatment both for Candida overgrowth and for thyroid and adrenal imbalances. CAM: back in the Here's Health days you were the ONLY person doing anything about MS, and I think you were basically weight training, weren't you? Susie Cornell: I'd been to the Peto Institute in Hungary - I was the first British adult to go there - and they taught me that 90% of my problem was lack of use; only 10% was MS. They turned round my whole way of looking at illness. I realised that a lot of it was in my hands and I could help myself, whereas before that I'd trusted the medical profession - I thought they were gods. CAM: How long had you had MS at that point? SC: About 10 years, and I'd been waiting for “the cure”. All the time you're just coping and hoping that the doctors will find the cure. My experience at the Peto Institute was my introduction to self-help. From that point on I improved. When I got back to the UK there was nothing here for me, so I set up my own exercise programme and then put the exercises on a video - which is still the only exercise video with conductive education around for MS people. CAM: Which is one of the things you got the award for. SC: The award from Here's Health launched my career, because the media suddenly wanted to know what I was doing. I was on TV and in magazines and newspapers and I couldn't believe what people wanted to know. I had to find out more so I started training as a practitioner - reflexology, massage, aromatherapy, homeopathy, nutrition, Bach Flower remedies - everything. I wanted answers and nobody could tell me what I wanted to know. Now I use the e-Lybra® Bio-Resonance System, which pulls everything together for me. CAM: Where did nutrition come in for you? SC: It really became important when I realised that the digestive system was the key to everything. I had to become a practitioner in all other areas first before I realised that the digestive system is the link, and if you don't get that right, nothing else will work. CAM: On your website you give a very clear out line of your current thinking on MS, which I'll repeat here and then maybe you could say a bit more about it. You write: “Basically the official line is that no one knows what causes MS - which is why there are almost as many theories as there are people with MS! I have done some research on this and the way I believe MS develops is that a combination of factors all have to come together in a certain way over a set period of time. “In sequence it looks something like this: “A genetic weakness (or 'predisposition' as the doctors call it) “A long-term nutritional deficiency or imbalance (possibly due to malabsorption) “A long-term situation of emotional stress or strain (possibly coupled with a very specific emotional trauma) “A severe infection, particularly of the throat (such as tonsillitis or glandular fever) “A physical trauma or injury (this could be something dramatic such as whiplash, but it could just as easily be something as simple and non-specific as falling off a chair: these sort of minor injuries often go undiagnosed and untreated because there is little or no pain and so the person injured this way doesn't think of it as an injury).” How does that translate into what you actually do with people? SC: What I know - and it's not something I just think, or believe - I know - and you only have to read my case histories to understand this, is that like all diseases, if I can get someone in the very early stages of MS and I can sort out their digestive system, then we will see most of the symptoms of MS disappear. Usually it involves Candida - I would say 90% of the symptoms of MS are Candida-related... CAM: You are kidding? SC: I'm not. And even mine - I think my MS is truly Candida, and I've had MS now for 36 years. I don't think it's the CAUSE of it, but it's a huge area that is not being addressed. CAM: How did you get to that conclusion? SC: Like many practitioners, I'd been struggling to treat Candida, then what happened was that about 12 months ago I started using Bionutri's Ecobalance with clients. Suddenly I had a Candida programme that worked consistently, so I was able to see clear results. I see the difference it makes to my non-MS clients when I treat them for Candida, and I know that they've got a small amount of the problems that people with MS are dealing with. Now I know that if I can balance the endocrine system, the adrenals, the thyroid, get rid of mercury and toxic metals, get rid of Candida then - even in my condition the same thing - 90% of the symptoms associated with MS will probably go away. CAM: So you also made a connection between low thyroid function and Candida? SC: I was screening my MS people and was coming up with Candida and also low thyroid. Then I realised that a lot of my “ordinary” people with Candida had got low thyroid too. The way I got on to that was because my bioresonance system kept throwing it up. I use that system to scan everybody who comes to me. To confirm it I give them the Broda Barnes test - they take their temperature every morning for 10 days. They can do the same test 3 months later to see the improvement. 36.5 or below on consecutive days suggests low thyroid function. With my MS people, if their thyroid is disturbed, the Candida won't go or it won't stay away, so you have to balance the endocrine system. Now I think most people with Candida have got low thyroid. CAM: So do you go for the Candida first? SC: No, you have to balance the adrenal and the thyroid first. If you think about someone with chronic fatigue - and I see a lot of people with that - it probably is easier to get. If you put them onto a detox programme they'll probably fall down a little bit. So I usually put them on a Nutri thyroid or a Nutri adrenal glandular for about a month or six weeks. At the same time we look at their diet, do a food intolerance test and remove problem foods. Doing things this way helps them feel a lot better to start with because their energy usually picks up. The problem foods have been taken out and then after that month, they go on the anti-Candida programme for at least 2 or 3 months. If they're using Ecobalance, then I've found their diet doesn't have to be as strict. It works a little bit more slowly, but the diet doesn't have to be so restrictive. The glutamine in it is absolutely essential, because they all seem to have leaky gut and it's imperative to heal the gut wall. CAM: Looking through some of your case histories, it seems like people start feeling better pretty quickly - within 2 or 3 weeks. SC: I know, it surprises me sometimes, too. One of my clients said that the numbness that she'd got on the left side of her face, which had been there for two or three years, within 10 days of doing the programme, it all went. Her doctor had told her that the numbness was MS-related. I think that's incredible - there are people with the numbness and tingling associated with MS - and all of a sudden it's gone! CAM: I suppose that's when the work really starts. SC: Yes, it's up to them then to go forward with the programme, because it's a long-term programme and there may be other areas they need to look at - for instance the bioresonance assessment may suggest they need cranial work, or their back needs looking at - in which case I refer them to an osetomyologist who works with me and looks after their physical or exercise programmes. CAM: Is this just people with MS or everybody? SC: Everybody, because “ordinary” people have these problems too! CAM: You've made this link between Candida and MS but also between chronic fatigue and MS - do you find them a similar to deal with? SC: I wrote an article for What Doctors Don't Tell you and Lynn McTaggart told me, “Susie, you're the first person to ever put leaky gut and MS in one sentence!” So yes, I'm probably the first person to put Candida and MS together, because I strongly believe that everybody who has MS has got to be treated for Candida, but I also think that most people in the general population needed to be treated for Candida, too. I've noticed with some of my clients that the Ecobalance and anti-Candida programme often have fantastic results on people with mental health, emotional problems. Chronic fatigue and MS are similar, but with chronic fatigue you don't get the numbness and tingling, you don't get the devastating mobility issues like the walking problems There's a nerve imbalance with MS, so it's a lot more difficult to treat and needs a lot more perseverance... CAM: You were wheelchair-bound at one time, weren't you? SC: Yes, and I still use a wheelchair - but not all the time. CAM: Where do you think you'd be if you hadn't discovered all this? SC: I was diagnosed in 1974 and they told my mother that within two years I would be in a wheelchair. My prognosis was very bad because I had a type of MS they thought was quite severe. You can lose your sight; you can lose feeling, can be numb; bladder and bowel control can be poor. Obviously I haven't gone that route. My walking is impaired, but I have no other symptoms of MS. I work full-time. If I'd listened to what the doctors were telling me, I've no doubt I would have continued to get weaker and weaker - as I was doing before I went to Hungary and got turned round. CAM: So MS is one of those things that you can't consider as “cured”? SC: Well, I'm still working on it! I'm never going to give up and I haven't really got the answer yet. I'm working on my own. There's no medical practitioner who's going to support my work and other practitioners are also struggling, just as I am, to find answers. It's all money-orientated. Many of my clients don't have the finances to keep it all going - the supplements make it an expensive, long-term programme. CAM: Now you've been doing this for 36 years, you've got your awards, you've got an MBE, you have a royal appointment as Deputy Lieutenant of Essex, so you must have some credibility, surely, but from what you're saying it seems like the MS community, let alone the orthodox medical community, is still not interested in what you're doing. SC: I don't really speak with them about it any more. I've worked with the MS charities for many years and I just get disheartened, because they really don't want to hear anything that's going to rock the boat. They want what's safe and what people feel comfortable with. And let's not forget that a lot of their financial support comes from drug companies. I think the cure for MS - and a lot of other conditions - is going to be a very simple cure, not something that will make millions of pounds in profit. CAM: I can't understand why they would find the Candida connection hard to talk about - or even to test - but I have some sympathy with them about the bioresonance aspect of your treatments - not only because of what it reveals about physiological processes, but also the fact that you can treat remotely. I still find this aspect of energy medicine difficult to accept. SC: But look, this is just where I was with exercise 30-odd years ago! I told people with MS to get up and exercise and the doctors and what felt like all the physiotherapists in the country got on to me after I appeared on tv and were saying “You can't do that! It's wrong!” All I could tell them was, “I'm sorry - it works for me”. It's exactly the same with bioresonance. I wouldn't put anyone on a programme or a supplement that I haven't tried myself. All my MS people and my other clients too do a remote session once a month for half an hour and I can then rebalance and put a new program into their e-capsule... CAM: That being a kind of charged-up capsule that they carry around with them. SC: I find the treatments are actually more accurate when they're remote - probably because it is less stressful for the clients. I have people travelling to me from all over Europe - flying into Stansted and then getting a taxi - by the time they get to me they're stressed and they're also stressed because they don't quite know what they're getting into. So I've stopped all that; I tell them to stay where they are and we'll do it remotely CAM: How on earth do you explain it? SC: It's hard! We don't want to get into quantum physics or whatever. It starts out with them just having to trust my credentials - and then it works and they see the difference and they can't believe it's so accurate. That's a bit mind-blowing for me too! The only thing I can say is that it's a bit like a mobile phone, or a computer or the Internet - I don't know how they work, but they do! More Information Susie Cornell MBE, DL is a Clinical Ecologist and Natural Health Consultant. Her clinic is at: The Cornell Centre at Springhealth Leisure Club, Brian Close, Chelmsford, Essex CM2 9DZ Tel: 01245 268098 email: info@susiecornell.com, web: www.susiecornell.com This article is reprinted with the kind permission of CAM Magazine, the magazine for Complementary and Alternative Healthcare Professionals. Available monthly. For more information please see their web site at http://www.cam-mag.com Click here to read the original CAM magazine issue (article starts on page 28)