Medical Director, Infectious Disease Clinic, Lagos, Dr Francis Ohuabunwa, discusses candidiasis, risk factors and treatment with SIMON UTEBOR
What is candidiasis?
Candida or candidiasis or candida albicans is not a bacteria. It is fungus. It is opportunistic pathogenic yeast, a common member of a human gut flora. It can survive outside the human body. It is deposited in the gastrointestinal tract and in the mouth in about 40 to 60 per cent of a healthy adult.
It has a family name called saccharomycetaceae. It causes thrush – producing foamy substance in the mouth and in the throat. People with candida have foamy substances and mucous membrane in their throat or in their mouth. Sometimes, they cough out mucous membrane in a profuse manner.
Which types of candida are more dangerous?
The invasive and systemic candidiasis is the most dangerous type of candidiasis. Invasive candidiasis is an infection caused by a yeast (a type of fungus) called candida. Unlike candida infections in the mouth and throat which is also known as ‘thrush’ or vaginal ‘yeast infections,’ invasive candidiasis is a serious infection that can affect the blood, heart, brain, eyes, bones, and other parts of the body.
Which people are more at risk of contracting candidiasis?
The people that are at risk of candidiasis are people who abuse antibiotics – it depresses the immune system and the person is easily infected by a yeast infection. Also, people that have uncontrolled diabetes and pregnant women are mostly disposed to getting the infection. Similarly, people with suppressed immune system, people taking oral contraceptives or who are on hormonal therapy are also at risk, among others.
How do people know they have candida?
If you are having oral thrush in the mouth or in the throat, you have to go for diagnosis. A recurring genital or urinary tract infection, people with digestion problems – they eat but the body finds it difficult to digest or people who throw up while eating, people going to toilet frequently, etc. are some of the ways one may know the person is suffering from candida.
Is joint pain, arthritis or rheumatism also associated with candida?
Many people when they have some joint pains will rush to buy analgesics without knowing the cause. That is why I always recommend and advise that you must diagnose yourself before you start taking any medication.
Is it sexually transmitted disease?
Candidiasis is not mostly considered as sexually transmitted disease but people get it through sex – male and women get it through sex, but it has so many ways by which people can get affected. Because it is not bacterial infection, it is not considered to be an STD, not minding that people easily get it through sex. But people can get it through mostly exchange of hospital equipment and needles, personal contact with fluid from another person, and so on.
When people engage in deep kissing, can it cause candidiasis?
Yes, even if it is not a deep kiss. If you are dealing with an infected person, the thrush is present in the mouth and in the throat. Kissing is a dangerous practice. One lady patient came to our hospital recently. She told me she wanted to do blood test.
As I was discussing with her, I noticed in her mouth that she was infected either by candida or syphilis or HIV. I did not want to tell her because she was not a serious patient and I wanted the lab to tell her what she was suffering from.
What diet or fruit should be avoided by people suffering from candida?
Sufferers of candida should avoid wheat, mango, banana, excessive use of antibiotics, yeast (used in baking bread), and so on.
Are you invariably saying that sufferers should not eat bread?
That is why the treatment for candida is usually prolonged. People don’t know what to do and what not to do – they don’t know the dos and don’ts of candidiasis. They will be treating it and eating fruits and foods that suppress the drugs they are taking. That won’t allow the medication to function properly.
How is it treated?
What I recommend for treatment mostly is diet. There are medications called anti-fungal drugs and then the patient needs good food. Eat very well and drink hot water every morning. First thing in the morning before you eat, drink hot water.
Secondly, take olive oil and nuts – groundnuts, walnuts, cashew nuts, and so on. Walnut is very good. People think that it is only when they spend millions of naira that they can get cured but walnut is good.
People should eat right like taking vegetables and fruits. They are multi-medicinal agents. You cannot determine what fruits and vegetables contain because they are natural things.
What is the nexus between candida and vagina yeast infection?
It is called genital candidiasis which is a fungal infection that causes yeast. It causes profuse discharge in the genital organ of both male and female. Candidiasis causes itching, discharge and foul smell and it is one of the reasons people’s mouth smell.
This is because the incubation – the body temperature is 37 degree centigrade. They find our body habitable for all bacterial and yeast infections. When one has slept and woken up in the morning, one notices that one has accumulated some foam in one’s mouth and when one smells it, it has a foul smell.
To check whether one’s mouth smells, one should place one’s hand in the front of one’s mouth and breathe out, it will go to your nose. You will perceive how your mouth smells. The smell is caused by fungus.
When is candidiasis said to have overgrown? When you go to a lab, you’ll notice that they’ll write overgrowth; that means it has hit the roof. They have a method of assessment. We have scanty growth, moderate growth and heavy growth. That’s how they rate it in the lab.
So when it has hit the roof, you realise that people don’t know how to monitor themselves or diagnose themselves because of not having that health background or education. When such things start happening and they go to the lab, the lab will quantify it.
Is candidiasis fatal?
It depends on how one responds to the symptoms they are having in their body. When anything gets out of hand, it kills. It is not rated already; there’s no school of thought that has rated candida, to know the rate at which it kills such as some other diseases like HIV, malaria, typhoid, Hepatitis B and C and the rest.
It has not been rated but it is not good to allow any illness in the body. But due to poverty and lack of knowledge, people don’t get themselves examined medically.
When candida keeps coming back, what can one do?
It depends on who is managing it. If you are taking wrong treatment, it will keep recurring because you will not be able to know how long you should take treatment and what you should avoid and what you will do when it is out of hand.
There are some ailments you can take some tablets for and not take so seriously but there are some, like staphylococcus, candida and some other infections, that because of their stubborn nature, you will have to know how to handle them.
People are made to go to hospitals, clinics to get diagnosed and get treatment. People should not be taking anything they see on the streets; that is only getting treatment and not cure.
Cure and treatment are two different words even when they are interwoven. Cure is an end to the illness, while treatment is the process towards getting the cure.
Between men and women, who are more at risk of candidiasis?
Women are more at risk of getting candida because the toilet they make use of – both in public and private places. Due to the nature and position of their sex organ, they are more likely to contract it. In fact, they have yeast more than men.
What is your advice for sufferers of candidiasis?
So many diseases come with similar symptoms. Hepatitis, typhoid and malaria for instance, have similar symptoms. One woman came to the clinic one day and asked: “Can’t this my typhoid be cured?” I asked her why the question. She said she had been taking medication and been to hospitals but and nothing appeared to be working.
Then I noticed that something was wrong so I had to diversify my diagnosis. I did some liver functioning test and we discovered her liver was no longer functioning properly. So, that was what was wrong with her and not typhoid or malaria. But the symptoms she was having appeared like those of typhoid and malaria.
So, I advise people to go to a very nice medical laboratory and get properly diagnosed instead of doing the wrong thing.
People have candida and take medications that will not cure it. They eat what someone suffering from candida should not be eating. I advise that once in every six months, people should go and check themselves. It is supposed to be every three months but because of the state of the economy, they can do it every six months.
How is it diagnosed?
There’s a method called HVS – High Vaginal Swap. For throat swap, there’s a swap you can insert into somebody’s throat to collect the samples. You can culture urine through a process called urine microscopy culture sensitivities. Clinically, I can diagnose candida even when there’s no light or medical facility to do all these things. By the time you bring out your tongue, I’ll look at the mucus and ask you some questions. I can clinically diagnose the person.
What is the difference between fungus, bacteria and virus in this matter?
They are all infections that can be contracted through sexual intercourse and body fluids. But yeast infection and bacteria are not the same. Virus is a living organism that is adapted to the body which is mostly contracted through sexual intercourse and blood transfusion like HIV and the rest. Some are more dangerous. Virus is more dangerous than bacteria and bacteria is more dangerous than yeast infection and fungus.
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