Occasionally, the medical community sheds light on an issue that has been largely ignored but is responsible for a great deal of suffering. For instance, in 1986, when Dr. William Crook came out with his blockbuster book, “The Yeast Connection,” few in the medical profession considered yeast infections a serious problem. Except in cases of seriously ill patients with compromised immune systems and in women with vaginal yeast infections, the topic didn’t get much attention.
Since then a number of people have written similar books, some quite good and others rather weak. But a tendency to over-generalize shows through in these books. When a new discovery is made, the tendency of laymen is to attribute nearly every malady to that cause.
Physicians think differently. We are taught to examine symptoms and processes on a more particular level. For instance, an inflamed gallbladder causes severe pain in the right upper quadrant of the abdomen, as well as a collection of other clear, well-defined symptoms.
Likewise, appendicitis has its nice, neat little presentation: pain in the abdomen, loss of appetite, swelling, and fever. It makes things nice and orderly for the doctors to have everything in neat diagnostic packages that “go by the book.”
On the other hand, diagnosis is sometimes not so simple — sometimes a disease comes along that seems to imitate everything under the sun. This was the case, for example, with syphilis, often called the great masquerader. It can present as dementia, skin lesions, blood vessel disease, heart failure, blindness, or a number of other disorders.
Infections that are slow to appear and can grow anywhere in the body also present major diagnostic problems for doctors. We see this with Lyme disease, which can have a great number of presentations, including arthritis, headaches, weakness, and muscle pains.
Doctors tend to classify these cases as psychological or stress-related, especially if they affect women. Many modern diseases have languished under such catch-all diagnoses for decades before someone finally proved they were real diseases. This happened with chronic fatigue syndrome, autism spectrum disorders, ADD and ADHD, schizophrenia, anorexia nervosa, chronic Lyme disease, and multiple-chemical sensitivity.
Yeast infections are another of these diagnostic nightmares. One of the diagnostic difficulties is that when doctors attended medical school, they were taught that yeast infections were not a problem unless a person’s immune system was suppressed. (To learn more, read my newsletter "Mystery Diseases That Baffle Your Doctor.")
This was probably true in many cases in the past — but today, people are inundated with a growing list of things that suppress immunity, such as pesticides/herbicides, toxic metals, over-vaccination, stress, a Western diet full of immune-suppressing ingredients, and widespread use of statin drugs. Overuse of antibiotics, not only medically but in foods and water supplies, also plays a role.
Growing evidence suggests that yeast infections are more of a problem than most people think. And because they can invade any tissue or organ, including the brain, these infections can present as a constellation of complaints and vague symptoms that almost defy diagnosis — unless you know what you are looking for.
We have also learned that many microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses, and yeast, can assume essentially invisible forms that make most diagnostic tests ineffective. These so-called “stealth organisms” can hide inside of cells and, when ready, leave the cell and assume a pathologic, or disease causing, form.
A friend of mine, Jane Remington, recently wrote a very useful and fascinating book called
“Recaging the Beast — The Disease Behind Disease: The Yeast-Fungal Connection,” which explains the implications of yeast infections and a lot more. I highly recommend the book.
For more of Dr. Blaylock’s weekly tips, go here to view the archive.
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