Pouchitis and Candida - Cure and avoid this painful condition
Since writing my piece on Pouchitis - ten non-medical ways of avoiding and fighting it,
which was a few years ago, I have gained a few
new insights. Again, as before, these are personal observations and analysis on what works for me. I hope it
can also work for you, but it might not. My main hope is for this to serve as a starting point for you to start
your own experiments and observations, and learn what works for you without having to resort to expensive and
frequently invasive medicines. Furthermore, let me qualify the term "Cure Pouchitis," which is misleading. There
is no cure for Pouchitis, there is only treatments. Pouchitis cannot be cured because it's not a disease, it is
a condition brought on by personal behaviour. So, unless you change your behaviour, Pouchitis will keep coming back.
It's an ever-lasting battle that you never win. But hopefully the following will help you to keep it at bay so
that you can go about your daily business and life in general.
I think my main insight into Pouchitis is that there are two different types of conditions that are regularly
diagnosed as pouchitis. One is proper pouchitis, which is a bacterial infection of the pouch. This can easily
be resolved by using anti-biotics, mainly Flaggyl. The other is a fungal growth inside the pouch, also known
as yeast. A common name to refer to this condition is a Candida infection, Candida being a type of yeast. I
shall call this Candida Pouchitis for a lack of a better word, to differentiate the two.
It took me a long time to put this together, but the facts seem to support my observation. First of all, I
noticed that Flaggyl worked really well the first few times, but seemed stop working after those initial
treatments. That would be because, being an anti-bacterial, it doesn't really kill yeast, although it seems
to have a bit on an effect on it, but there are better ways to kill yeast. The other thing is that sugar
was especially bad for causing this condition. I can categorically say that if I eat high amounts of sugar,
especially sugar contained in dairy products like ice cream or tea with milk and a lot of sugar, I will have
a bad case of Candida Pouchitis within a week. The second thing that will cause a similar condition is to
eat potato chips or any other food that is deep fried in cheap oil. There are certain deep friend foods that
I seem to be able to tolerate, but when it comes to the run-of-the-mill type of potato chips, one single bag
will put me into agony. But let's get back to the sugar and the yeast. It's logical that sugar will promote
yeast growth because that's what yeast eats, and if you want to starve the yeast in your intestine, then
you avoid the sugars. This is for maintenance, not as a treatment once you have the condition. Once the
yeast has established itself in your pouch, cutting out the sugars won't do it anymore, then you need to
take more drastic steps. One of them is to go through a intestine yeast cleanse, and you can find a lot
of commercial anti-Candida treatments that will do that for you.
Once you have taken care of those nasty things in your intestine, it is important that you put back the
beneficial pro-biotics, otherwise your intestine will continue to suffer. I hear the name VSL#3 thrown
around from time to time, but a reader informed me that it is quite expensive to take it on a regular basis.
I personally just take Acidophilus pills when required. The seem to do the same thing and are not that
expensive. Other options are to eat yogurt either based on milk for those that can tolerate it, or Soya
based yogurt. Some people advocate taking pro-biotics every day to avoid pouchitis. I personally do
not but I suppose it can't hurt you if you want to. I prefer just to keep my diet clean, and cleanse
when there is a problem.
The fact is that high sugar as well as high fat foods are simply evil, and have no redeeming qualities, yet
cause a huge range of medical conditions. As humans, we are pretty well addicted to anything sweet or fatty,
but when you start weighing the horrible long term side effects this addiction has on our society, it is
something that I have learned to simply live without whenever possible. It's just not worth the pain. And
if you have ever had a serious bout of pouchitis that lasted weeks and week, you know what I mean when I say pain.
Something else I have come across as of late is the beneficial effects of Colloidal Silver on the health of
my intestine. When I have a sore throat, or I have a some other sort of bug in my system, I take drip one
down my throat. Best sore throat killer that I am aware of. Works every time. As well, you can use a Colloidal
Silver spray to disinfect surfaces, light switches and door knobs when somebody in the office or the
home has a cold. Unlike other disinfectants, it keeps working long after it has dried out. In any case,
I noticed that when I took quite a bit of this stuff because I had an intestine flu, it also had a
beneficial effect on my intestine / pouchitis / Candida condition.
Last year, I came across an article in which there was a claim made that a medicine called Olibanum
actually cured 80% of people with UC within three month. I figured that if perhaps Pouchitis might actually
be type of UC, or somehow related, it might also do something for Pouchitis. As this is a German medicine,
I got my aunt, who is a medical doctor there to get me a bottle of this stuff. I did take it, but I ended
up having some sort of a reaction to it, and did not continue taking it, but in the few days that I did,
I did have a positive reaction to it. I was suffering from a more severe case of pouchitis at the time.
This was last year. This peaked my interest, so I did some research, and found out that the effective
ingredient in this medicine is basically a cousin to Frankincense, and as I am always interested in the
advancement of human knowledge, I figured why not take some and see what happens. My wife went to the health
food store and got a bag of the raw stuff, which is basically a type of tree-sap. I took a little ball about
3mm or 1/8 inches across, three times a day. And what do you know, it worked.
Now, this comes with a ___HUGH___ disclaimer: I am not endorsing this, I am not saying this is a good thing,
I have no idea with the side effects of it are, and I would never recommend anybody do this unless they take
100% full responsibility for their own actions. I have no medical knowledge of that frankincense does to
your system if take internally. All I know that it worked for me, and
very quickly. I am just sharing the knowledge of what works for me. I believe there is also a refined
version of this stuff that comes in pill form. Perhaps that is safer to take. I haven't tried those.
On the matter of Ulcerative Colitis, there is also something else that I have observed: The people that get
UC seem to be worriers for the most part, or people with large inner conflicts. I am currently wondering
how much of UC is actually psychosomatic. Again, I will venture out and fault modern medicine to always treat
things in isolation, and never look at the human being holistically, and a complicated set of conditions and
circumstances. Again, I know from my own example that stress has an effect on pouchitis, and that I have and
had a lot of inner conflicts. As of late, I have gone about trying to resolve some of those. I listen to CDs
that help establish a more positive attitude, read books on how to improve my mindset, I even went for a few
sessions of Hypnosis. That was fascinating. I had no idea that there was so much hidden pain inside of me
that I was totally unaware, and based of relatively trivial things in my past. I suppose when your inner mind,
your subconscious is unhappy, but has no way of fixing itself, year after year, the damage will show up
eventually somewhere. My special thanks go out to a motivational speaker by the name of Brian Tracy, who
produced a CD set called 'The Psychology of Achievement,' as well as a book called 'The Disciplined Trader'
by Mark Douglas for two wonderful sources of inspiration that have had a huge effect on my mental health,
and consequently also on my financial health. I learned that when you have parts of your mind working
against each other, you will be neither successful, nor will you be healthy. That old saying about a healthy
mind living in a healthy body might just be true, and it could very well be a two way street, or even a
feedback loop.
Living with(out) Ulcerative Colitis, a new hope ...
Living with Ulcerative Colitis - Details of the pull-through surgery
Ulcerative Colitis Medicine - Cure or just Masking Symptoms
For more interaction check out ...
My Colitis / IBD / Pouchitis Blog
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Disclaimer: These as well as all the other documents on this website are based on my own personal
experiences, and are not a replacement of a professional opinion by a qualified physician, for all that this
was worth in my case. The purpose of sharing my experiences with you is to help you get through this, and to
learn of other ways of dealing with your condition. I am not a medical doctor, I don't have any sort of formal
training in this or any other medical field. The only thing I can offer you is what it was like for the past 20+
years and what it is like now, and in the future. Any advice I give is to be taken into consideration, and you are
welcome to act upon it at your own risk. I am not saying it will help you, or that it will not hurt you, all I am
saying is that this is what I learned, and I am wanting to share it with you. After that, you have my best wishes
for success and happiness. And if you find something that works for you, please, share it with the world, because
we need to know more than what modern medicine is telling us, which is not enough. Be well.
Copyright@2000-2011, Juergen Amft, All rights reserved