Meanwhile, the alternative medicine movement had reached a turning point. An increasing number of alternative doctors and healers were rolling out practices or joining established ones. This was a time when conventional and alternative doctors were starkly divided. You wouldn’t find a naturopath or a holistic doctor working in a conventional practice.

This was also a time when alternative medicine wasn’t owned by conventional. Alternative was on its own; conventional medicine hadn’t infiltrated alternative yet. Now we’re in an age where Trojan-horse approaches have introduced conventional thinking into alternative medicine. Conventional and alternative medicine are almost one and the same now, with much of alternative medicine doing the bidding of conventional medicine. This has taken away much of alternative medicine’s ability to think outside the box. Back in the 1980s, alternative doctors were still independent and felt primed to trump conventional medicine—they just needed something to sink their teeth into so they could prove their knowledge. A surge of women frustrated with their regular physicians began filling the waiting rooms of alternative practices.

Problem was, the practitioners didn’t know what was wrong—though they did believe the women were suffering from something. This was the great awakening of the early-to-mid-1980s through the early 1990s. Women and their health complaints were finally being taken seriously. It was an important time, one that should be celebrated, as women’s suffrage is.

Yet this historic shift in women’s lives didn’t make it into any history books. By this point, the hormone movement had already made a major impact. It was a well-established practice in the conventional medical community to blame anything and everything on menopause and perimenopause. As alternative doctors attempted to diagnose the flood of patients with mystery symptoms, though, they weren’t yet on the hormone train. They suspected something else was in play. The alternative medical community landed on the fungus Candida. The label was a breath of fresh air to women who’d gone through decades of conventional medical care and couldn’t find answers. Candida became synonymous with, We finally know why everyone isn’t feeling well.

It was wrong, but it was still an amazing breakthrough. Sitting in the office of her naturopath, chiropractor, acupuncturist, or herbalist and hearing that she had Candida, a woman would feel the blessing of validation: “You are sick with something.” (Keep in mind, it was still a rare occurrence to find these practitioners. There wasn’t one around every corner, and they weren’t usually covered by insurance.) She was still getting a side order of blame as the doctor pointed to lifestyle as the culprit, but it all seemed to make perfect sense. And she might even feel some improvement in her health as she followed the doctor’s instructions to cut out fried and processed foods and rich desserts.

The concern at that time wasn’t gluten. Instead, the focus was more on “white foods”—foods stripped of their nutrients and often battered and fried in grease. By the late 1990s, the popularity of the Candida diagnosis had spread from the alternative to the conventional medical world, in part because conventional medicine was losing patients and its reputation was starting to wane. Now the diagnosis is mainstream, and it’s one of the easiest ways to tell someone, “This is why you’re sick.”

Do women actually recover when they’re treated for Candida? No. And the drastic recommended diet of no sugar but high fat and protein only provides temporary relief . . . and later backfires. In truth, Candida is the most inappropriately maligned yeast of our time. We all have Candida, which is a beneficial fungus residing in the intestinal tract that aids food digestion and absorption.

It’s possible to be virtually riddled with Candida and yet be perfectly healthy. There are people with extremely high levels of it who eat and drink whatever they want without a hint of fatigue or stomach upset. Candida by itself is typically harmless. What isn’t yet fully understood by medical communities is that Candida is a frequent companion, or harmless cofactor, of diseases and organisms such as viruses
and bacteria that are causing the real problem. These include Lyme disease, shingles, EBV, herpes, C. difficile, Streptococcus, H. pylori, diabetes, MS, HHV-6, cytomegalovirus, and many more...

Candida has been accused of drilling through the linings of the colon and intestinal tract, resulting in leaky gut syndrome. This is not true. The worst that can result from a high level of Candida is formation of calluses on irritated portions of the intestinal lining that have been chronically infected by bacteria such as Streptococcus. Wherever unproductive bacteria were, Candida moved in with them. Calluses and scar tissue inside the intestinal tract are from bacteria and viruses that mildly hinder food absorption. Candida tends to make a home in these patches that were created by pathogens.

The best approach to creating a friendlier, healthier environment in your gut—which reduces the need for Candida to have to clean up the mess—is to keep your fats low in your diet.

Book a Healing Session or Healing Retreat with Medical Intuitive Healer Omar Botha.