Candida albicans, a common yeast, and its links to cancer?
By Chris Woollams
Expert Gerald Green believed that the common yeast, Candida albicans, was linked to cancer and a host of gut illnesses from IBS to Crohn’s and he had an anti-candida diet to beat it.
Do you have a yeast infection?
Mouth ulcers, sweet tooth, bloating after meals, flatulence, cystitis or thrush? Or stomach problems, pain in the stomach, frequent bowel movements or constipation? How about unexplained fatigue, lack of energy, frequent minor infections, fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome?
Most people simply would not think that one of the first steps in a cancer prevention programme might be to cut out excess yeasts or candida infections. They drain you, and poison you. Certainly few oncology doctors would tell a newly diagnosed cancer patient to go on an anti-yeast, anti-candida diet. Moreover, they will probably give you antibiotics, steroids and other drugs that will only make your yeast infections worse!
However, there is a growing body of evidence that yeast infections, and particularly candida, are involved in a number of cancers. They are definitely an acknowledged problem in certain cancer treatments, for example in Multiple Myeloma and Leukaemia, a by-product of the heavy drug routine and the lack of a strong immune system.
But could yeasts and candida actually lie behind many cancers, far more than Doctors would expect? Could they even be the cause of a cancer? Or a factor that could drive the disease as it progresses?
Try this for size: "Cancer patients undergoing radio or chemotherapy did not finally succumb to the cancer itself, but to an infestation of candida albicans". That was taken from Contemporary Oncology Magazine 1993 in the USA.
This is one article about the possibility that common yeasts, which can show as symptoms like thrush, cystitis, yellow toe nails and/or bloating after meals, can develop in the body to become serious candida albicans infections. These thrive in a low oxygen environment (as do cancers) and produce toxic by-products that can both feed and stimulate cancers. This article, about the work of Gerald Green, will even give you a simple anti-candida diet. (Readers might also like to read our book: ’Heal Your Gut, Heal Your Body’, which covers beneficial bacteria, pathogens, candida and all chronic illnesses).
Candida, yeast infection and cancer
I have a wonderful job. I meet so many interesting people, so many experts all on the same mission - helping people beat cancer. One minute it’s Charlotte Gerson, then Dr. Contreras. I may get a complex soon though; none of Britain’s top orthodox doctors ever seem to ring me up to tell me of their latest work, which is very sad because icon now goes out to over 450,000 readers every issue in over 600 hospitals, oncology units, complementary centres and health centres in UK libraries.
It is estimated that 70 per cent of the British population
have a yeast infection
One gentleman, with whom I had been corresponding, was Gerald Green, a medical herbalist and immunologist in Bexhill, Sussex. His grandfather (Professor Fritz Hber 1868-1934) won a Nobel Prize and was one of Germanys finest scientists. Energy and investigative endurance clearly run in the family. Gerald devoted a large part of his life to studying candida, but sadly died a few years ago.
It is estimated that 70 per cent of the British population have a yeast infection. The primary cause of this is our love of antibiotics. Swollen glands? Take antibiotics. Tonsillitis? Take antibiotics. Are you allergic to antibiotics? If the answer is no, that’s fine. Antibiotics have no side effects. Who says?
So would you be surprised if I told you that The Journal of the American Medical Association (Feb 18th 2004; 291; 827-35) has reported a study on 10,000 women in which women who took over 500 days of antibiotics in a 17 year period (dubbed 25 plus doses) had twice the risk of breast cancer as those that took none at all. Even women taking just ONE DOSE had a statistical risk increase to 1.5 times. This followed worrisome findings in Finland in 2000.
Friendly Bacteria and cancer
Apart from a minor problem that they may well be toxic to brain cells (Drs Goldman & Klatz - US), antibiotics kill many strains of bacteria in the body, including the ones you need; the friendly ones in the gut. You see, friendly (commensal) bacteria are fragile.
Friendly bacteria? You’ve probably heard of acidophilus, or bifidobacteria? But they are not even in the top 50. Your gut actually contains about 800 different strains, 400 of which have been identified. Roughly 12 come up time and time again in research and, for example,
- They are known drivers of 85 per cent of your immune system - they stimulate it to produce antibodies.
- They actually make important (and anti-cancer) vitamins like biotin, folic acid, B-12 and vitamin K. And melatonin, glutathione and seratonin.
- They help you eliminate carcinogenic hormones and chemicals like oestrogen, nitrosamines, cadmium and mercury
- They even produce an anti-cancer chemical from your foods
- Their favourite foods are whole foods and whole grains - and candida albicans and microbes
Antibiotics kill most of the bacteria in the body,
including the ones you need
At night they can digest roughly 2.2 kilograms of yeasts and microbes for you. They are your first line of defence.
Go to: How to heal Your Gut
They have inhabited our bodies for thousands of years. They help us, and in return we give them a nice cosy place to live.
Except we don’t anymore. We have broken our lifetime deal with them. We no longer feed them their favourite fibre-rich, whole foods. And, we eat too much salt, pickled foods, drink excess alcohol and chlorinated water, which each can change our stomach’s acidity and so harms them and reduces their growth, multiplication and action. Worse we eat food with antibiotics in it and take drugs, which can kill them.
And to make matters worse we feed their enemies - yeasts and candida love sugar and dairy!
Stress and poor diet can reduce levels of good bacteria in just a few days, so you are wise anyway to take an effective daily probiotic.
It is no wonder there is a growing volume of research linking your gut to the encouragement, or prevention, of cancer.
Go To: Gut Bacteria and cancer - from Breast cancer to liver and colorectal cancer
An anti-candida diet
It is easy to see how yeasts have taken a hold in the Western world. The US and UK diets are simply weak in the foods that keep yeasts under control. My Thai wife used to live in a country with a trillion such microbes lounging on every street corner, but in a Thai diet rich in coconut (caprylic acid), garlic, chillies and bee propolis, foods are natural controllers of yeasts. Once upon a time in England, we ate cloves and raw honey, but now our diets merely help to propagate yeasts. High sugar drinks, snacks, fast food, alcohol, refined wheat, indeed any high glycaemic food, feed the yeasts. And we live in a high glycaemic world in the West. Gerald Green believed there is a ’Super-Herb’ that could kill off yeasts like candida, and pathogens like E. coli, viruses, and parasites. It is called Artemisinin.
Go To: Super-herb artemisinin kills yeasts, pathogens, parasites and even cancer cells
Yeasts Are Parasites
Over the last 80 years several people have had theories about parasites and their cause of cancer. By and large they have been ridiculed. Hulda Clark, Royal Rife and others. I helped Geoffrey Boycott beat his mouth cancer by killing off a parasite and his yeasts. They both weaken you, and they both produce toxins.
So why ignore yeasts?? Maybe because antibiotics are the big blame factor that no one dare own up to??
Yeasts Cause Other Illnesses
Diabetes is a well studied disease. Arthritis is probably less clear. But recently research in the USA showed that taking cinnamon could - in some people - significantly reduce the symptoms of both diseases. Why? Well yeast infections eventually move across the gut lining (Leaky Gut) and into the blood system. Every cell has large numbers of receptor sites on the cell wall which it needs to function properly. In non-diabetics, insulin alights on some receptors, for example, to take glucose out of the blood and into the cells.
But what if the receptors are blocked with yeasts? In the past 5 years two Nobel prizes were won by people showing how these receptor sites could become blocked and thus cells could not communicate very well. One reason for this blocking was that carbohydrate could make them sticky and what stuck to them? Yeasts.
Now, there’s many a nutritionist that knows what these scientists don’t know. Namely that cinnamon will help kill yeasts in the blood stream. So now you can see why some people may well benefit. The receptor sites for insulin become unblocked. And although taking cinnamon is officially credited with glucose control in the blood stream, you can see that the research results that cinnamon benefited 25 per cent of diabetics may have had nothing to do with sugar directly, but by unblocking receptor sites the insulin could suddenly work again and thus, indirectly, blood sugar was lowered.
Yeasts - a cause of Cancer?
I recently went to a cancer clinic in the USA, and to the Dove Clinic in the UK. At both I talked to the nurses.
Every Cancer patient they see, man or woman, has bad candida
They were unanimous. Every cancer patient they see, man or woman, has bad candida. Whether it is breast cancer or prostate cancer. (It is most definitely true for my daughter with her brain tumour too).
The problem is that these yeasts get everywhere. Whilst they might start off in your gut, they soon pass into the blood stream and then, like Alien, they are loose in the mother ship. And they make an alcohol as a by-product of their very existence, and this alcohol feeds cancer cells. Moreover, yeasts are anaerobes - they don’t use oxygen to metabolise and survive. If they move round your body and colonise an area of your breast or prostate they set up anaerobic conditions. And cancer thrives in situations where oxygen levels are lowered.
Cancer Treatments Make Matters Worse!
To repeat: "cancer treatments make matters worse!" Steroids, antibiotics and chemotherapy, for example, kill the good bacteria and thus help the growth of the yeasts. Once they dominate, they are like mushrooms, having roots which punch holes in the gut wall. If you eat gluten it increases levels of zonulin, which in turn makes the holes formed by the roots, even bigger. This allows food molecules into the blood stream and even yeasts. Result? Fatigue, lethargy and even reduced oxygen, with yeasts sticking to cell membranes and blocking important cell receptor sites creating deficiency inside cells. This is leaky gut.
But don’t take my word for it, as I started the article above, try this comment from the prestigious US magazine Contemporary Oncology as long ago as April 1993: Cancer patients undergoing radio or chemotherapy did not finally succumb to the cancer itself, but to an infestation of candida albicans.
The anti-candida diet
So back to the late expert Mr Green. (And he is an expert. I have seen the letters he receives from hospitals and microbiology units saying he knows more than they do). He believes even terminal cancer patients can be saved if the root cause is candida.
He believes sufferers must immediately ELIMINATE THE FOLLOWING FROM THEIR DIET:
All cows’ milk products:
cheese, yoghurt, whey. And all cows milk derivatives which are everywhere in processed food.
Yeast products:
alcohol, bread, Marmite, Oxo, Bovril, vinegars, mushrooms, processed and smoked fish and meats.
All sugar products:
honey, fructose, lactose, glucose, dextrose and sweeteners like Nutrisweet and Canderel.
Nearly all fruit:
overripe fruits are full of sugar and yeasts. Plus vegetables like courgettes, pumpkin, squash, marrow.
High sugar root vegetables:
carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, beetroots, (maximum 1 potato per day).
Personally, I would add all high glycaemic foods to this list, e.g. refined wheat, rice, pasta, fizzy soft drinks, fruit juices and squash, biscuits, pastries, pies and corn. Gerald mentions most of these too in his diet and he suggests you avoid all pulses, processed meats, high salt foods and hydrogenated vegetable oils too.
Below you will find his list of Good Food Choices.
His sweetener of choice is Stevia, a herb 100 times sweeter than sugar but a natural anti-fungal agent.
He recommends astragalus and echinacea pIus 1 gm vitamin C daily to boost the immune system. (Gerald does a lot of work with cancer patients, MS, Crohn’s and Lupus sufferers too).
Good Food Choices
EAT PLENTY OF THE FOLLOWING FOODS:
Alfalfa sprouts
Bean sprouts
Bell peppers (sweet peppers)
Bok choy
Broccoli
Brussel sprouts
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Celery
Cucumber
Endive
Fennel
Garlic
Green beans
Hot chilli peppers
Kale
Lettuce
Onions
Parsley
Radishes
Spring onions
Spinach
Swiss chard
Turnips
Yellow beans
FATS (in moderation):
Granose sunflower margarine
Tomor kosher margarine (both these margarines should be available at your local health food shop)
Avocado oil
Fish oil
Flaxseed oil
Grapeseed oil
Hemp oil
Mayonnaise
Monounsaturated fats
Olive oil
Primrose oil
FLUIDS
Try to drink eight glasses of water each day.
Herbal teas are acceptable
PROTEINS
Free range eggs
Fresh fish and seafood
Pork, lamb, veal
Poultry: chicken, turkey (particularly skinless white meat)
Game
Tofu
Quorn
5oy milk/cheeses (in moderation)
Rice milk
Sheeps milk/cheeses (dilute sheeps milk 50/50 with water and it will taste the same as cows milk)
Goats milk/cheeses
Culinary herbs and spices
Not that far from the excellent CANCERactive diet. Go To: Rainbow Diet
Personally, I would add that garlic, caprylic acid, oregano oil and Pau D’Arco are all excellent yeast killers. Cinnamon can kill yeasts in the blood.
Gerald Green’s favourite natural destroyer was Artemisinin, or Sweet wormwood, and again I agree and want it in my pathogen and parasite course. It kills yeasts, pathogens, parasites, E.coli, and even some cancer cells. Wormwood is a natural herb and is now fast replacing poorer performing anti-malarial Drugs in the world. It is very efficient.
Go To: The Super-Herb that kills yeasts, pathogens, viruses, parasites and some cancer cells
Finally, I believe people don’t understand probiotics - you don’t need 45 strains and 250 billion. You need probiotics that deliver - and 8 billion of them. You need one that contains L. Acidophilus, L. rhamnosus (to heal your gut wall) and Bifidobacteria. It should also contain a delivery system to get the bugs through the dangerous stomach, and specific foods to feed the bacteria immediately the bacteria arrive at their destination. I use a probiotic called Modere protozymes. To read more about toxin-free products and advanced supplements like protozymes go HERE to buy.
Chlorella is a supplement that seems to enhance the action of probiotics and the natural flora in the gut. And I believe fish oils can help too, as can vitamin D.
Astragalus and Echinacea tinctures, plus Wormwood, parasite killer and protozymes are all available in the Natural Selection Products of Choice shop - simply click Natural Selection Shop at the top of this page or CLICK HERE.
Reviews of herbs etc. can be found in our Nutritionals section, under Complementary and Alternative Treatments.
Readers are also advised to look at our article on Beneficial Bacteria.
Gerald published a book called "Breaking Through the Untouchable Diseases". This along with multi-strain probiotics and other products mentioned here can be found in the NATURAL SELECTION SHOP