Forty ways to recognize a Candida infected patient

Forty Ways To Recognize The Candida Yeast Infection Patient

by Eric Bakker N.D. on April 1, 2012. Updated July 22, 2013

In The Clinic – Recognizing The Yeast Infection Patient

A case of candida well taken is a case half solved. Once you have seen a few thousand of cases of yeast infections, you will begin to see a few common threads running through many of these cases. Are you a health-care professional? Then here are many key points which will assist you in determining a candida case.
Here are forty good tips on how to recognize the yeast infected patient:

1. Candida sufferers can typically have symptoms that are particularly worse in damp, or moldy places or weather that is damp, humid or rainy.
2. Candida sufferers may appear anti-social or develop “people or relationship allergies”; some may have fewer friends than a healthier person would have as they become increasingly reactive to foods and their environment over time.
3. Candida sufferers may appear anxious, talkative and some can prove to be quite difficult to manage in the clinic. Some, especially when chronic, are not the easiest of patients to get along with, and quite a few fail to come back for follow-up visits, this may be generally due to any unmet expectations from the patient or a degree of inexperience on the practitioner’s part.
4. Candida patients may well be referred to you by another practitioner because they are not responding to treatment or have become a “problem” or “hyper-reactive” patient.
5. Candida sufferers can commonly have hay fever, sinus and asthma. ALL asthmatics who have been using an oral (inhaled) steroid should be considered as having a yeast infection.
6. Chronic candida sufferers can be extremist, perfectionist or addictive in their behavioral, dietary and lifestyle patterns. They can be the most health conscious of all patients who eat better than you, yet may feel absolutely terrible. He or she may be quite obsessive about foods yet react to just about everything they eat. A super-sensitive patient? Think yeast infection here.
7. Some candida patients only eat at home, or eat out rarely. Chronic candida sufferers have problems eating out and react to foods, preferring to stay at home and eat in.
8. The candida patient may feel lousy all over; their quality of life can be poor, even after many different types of treatment.
9. The cause can’t be established – both by the conventional doctor and by the natural medicine professional, especially if there are digestive problems.
10. Candida sufferers may be taking multiple skin and digestive drugs at the same time as the yeast infection condition began to set in. Be sure to be very attentive when it comes to case-taking to clearly establish any possible cause and effect of their prescribed drugs & yeast infection, even if it was many years ago.
11. The candida patient may feel that no one is listening or that no one can help her, they may even be taking Diazepam, Prozac, Zanax or another drug to treat depression or anxiety. Because the doctor couldn’t find any cause and felt the problem was in the patient’s head rather than in their digestive system. Are you listening to your patient?
12. Candida sufferers in many cases (too many for me to remember over the years) have had a history of multiple rounds of antibiotics. Suspect any antibiotic prescribed patient to have candida, many typically have and especially after they have been treated multiple times. In most all cases, these patients are completely overlooked and develop candida as a consequence. Some sensitive patients have never been well since taking only round of an antibiotic, even if it was prescribed twenty years ago. Ask the questions, and take a really good case history.
13. Suspect candida in any person who was treated years ago for acne after 6 – 12 months on an antibiotic.
14. Candida sufferers are typically allergic to some of the most common foods such as dairy products (milk in particular), bananas, eggs, breads/gluten, peanuts, oranges, corn, and pineapple.
15. Candida patients can be the ones who especially buy those “hypo-allergenic’ cleaning aids because they react to all conventional cleaning products. They may also buy special cosmetics or make-up because they have found that their skin reacts to just about everything. Check them out carefully, don’t you find it interesting that they also have a digestive problem, and have had so for several years which remains unresolved? Suspect a candida yeast infection.
16. Candida sufferers are often intolerant or allergic to perfumes, odors, fumes, fabric shop odors, cut grass, cats, dogs or other animals, tobacco smoke, chemicals such as pesticides, herbicides, fly sprays, smog, molds, dust mites, dust, pollen, and potentially any other airborne substances.
17. In my opinion, candida patients are the ones who are the most likely to feel unreal or spaced out for absolutely no know medical or psychiatric reason in my clinic. Is it any wonder they are labeled as crazy by their doctor? If you are told by enough medical professionals that you are “nuts” if they can’t find a medical reason why you feel strange, you may even believe this yourself and take a drug such as an anti-psychotic, antidepressant or a mixed cocktail of psyche drugs like the many chronic yeast infected cases I have seen over the years.
18. Candida cases are those GI or digestive system cases you just can’t seem to get right, in spite of everything you throw at the patient. You have recommended a detox, a colonic, or the patient tried the FODMAP diet, paleo diet, Blood-Type diet, Atkins diet, South Beach diet, GAPS diet, or any one of fifty different kinds of diets, they may have tried a strict diet, a low allergy diet, or the patient went on a retreat, the patient went gluten-free, the patient went on an even stricter diet, and all to no avail. Within weeks the patient started to go downhill again. Suspect this person to have a chronic candida yeast infection, dysbiosis, parasites, etc. Patients with candida often have a yeast infection along with other bugs.
19. The patient will have been to see many different practitioners with little success; we sometimes call them “doctor-hoppers”. Some will only visit you one time because they are so used to “giving practitioners a try” and then move onto somebody else for advice. I’m always suspicious of any patient who has seen up to half a dozen practitioners in any one year, especially the patient who is quick to speak out of turn about a doctor. If they speak like this about a doc, they’ll probably speak about you to another doc.
20. The patient may have several different products to solve digestive problems, this could range from just a pro-biotic and a few parasite, liver or stomach products right up to three dozen or more products targeted at many different symptoms they will have be experiencing over the months or years leading up to their visit to your rooms.
21. The patient will have gone through stages of feeling reasonably fine, thinking that their health is finally turning the corner, only to discover that within days or weeks they begin to feel terrible all over again. Suspect candida if the patient constantly relapses, this is because bugs lives in cycles, more sometimes, less other times.
22. The patient comes to you with a long history of one chronic complaint, e.g.; sinusitis, bronchitis or perhaps diarrhea. Suspect candida.
23. The patient may have a strong carbohydrate craving, or even a “subconscious preference” for a food like chocolate, biscuits, sweets/candy, ice cream, pastry or cakes, etc. Suspect candida.
24. The patient has “strong sugar cravings”, especially after the evening meal. This can be a real red flag for you, and in some cases can point you straight towards the cause – a yeast infection.
25. The patient may have followed a particularly restrictive diet for some years and as soon as they go off track they crash.
26. The patient was taking antibiotics, even though it may have been several years ago it was for several months in a row. Suspect Candida, regardless whether it was one or twenty years ago.
27. The patient only took limited antibiotics year ago, yet has not felt really well since.
28. The patient who received chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy for cancer many years ago and has never been well since.
29. Chronic candida patients most often have food allergies and leaky gut syndrome and are best placed on a low-allergy diet for some time.
30. Some candida patients don’t always turn up for repeat or follow-up visits, some expect a quick fix and others have been to see so many practitioners that they become disillusioned quite quickly.
31. The woman who has a long history of taking the birth control pill or has had multiple pregnancies.
32. A person with a long history of taking a steroid medication like cortisone, prednisone, hydrocortisone or other anti-inflammatory or immune-suppressive steroidal treatments.
33. A female patient who is frequently troubled by abdominal pain (undiagnosable), vaginal infections, premenstrual tension, menstrual irregularities, menstrual pains, pain or discomfort during sex, a loss of interest in sex.
34. A male patient who is troubled with jock itch, prostatitis or impotence.
35. Any patient who is persistently troubled by athlete’s foot or a fungal infection of the toenails (thickening, discoloration or splitting).
36. Any patient with any fungal infection of the skin (like ringworm) which may include blisters, peeling, dry scaling or skin color changes.
37. The patient may have a digestive problem which has baffled the medical profession and has had scans, x-rays, endoscopies and more all to no avail.
38. The hypoglycemic patient (low blood sugar) who only partially responds to a very strict diet, and frequently relapses. These cases can have you truly baffled and in some cases you may never suspect candida. The patient may well have the typical signs and symptoms of hypoglycemia – fatigue, sudden hunger, weakness, trembling, lethargic and a weakened mental state, headache, cold sweats, dizziness, rapid heartbeat/tachycardia, numbness, irritability, blurred vision, and more symptoms.
39. The heartburn patient (you have excluded a helicobacter pylori infection, haven’t you?), the arthritis patient, the hemorrhoid patient, the bronchitis patient, the asthmatic patient, the sinus patient, the ear/nose or throat patient, etc,. These can all be potentially patients with a yeast infection underpinning the problem. The candida patient may not necessarily come to you complaining of a yeast infection as it may be masked or hidden and underpinning their primary complaint such as sinus or hay-fever. It is up to you to work this out with careful case taking.
40. The patient who comes to your room with a medical file as thick as a brick, with an extensive array of completed tests including hospital and specialist doctor visits spanning twenty years plus. These can be the kind of patients who you think you can never help in a million years. You certainly can, but you need to break through to them. The only problem is that the longer they have been unwell for, the more health care professionals they have seen over the years and the more “baffled” the practitioners have been about this patient, then harder they will be to break through to. You don’t need so much the clinical medical experience  as you would the counseling and behavior modification experience to break through to this person. The standard medical approach didn’t work for the past 20 doctors, why would it for you, you need to do things differently with these patients. You will likely have a ONE HOUR shot at breaking through to this person, so it better be a good one then. If this patient has seen more doctors than you have had hot breakfasts, always suspect an underlying and completely unresolved digestive problem, and candida won’t be far away. And, if that’s the case, do me a favor and get this patient to complete a comprehensive digestive stool analysis including parasitology. It will be the best few hundred dollars this person has spent and may well help to entirely solve this case. I have helped many hundreds of “impossible” cases just like this for this reason.

Regardless if you are a person suffering with a yeast infection or are a health-care professional who treats patients with yeast infections, you are certain to get a lot of useful information from my book Candida Crusher, be sure to get a copy.