Theoretical discussions related to IHP's story

General Discussion
#241

I believe probably the single most important core issue that contributed to IHP’s recovery is his 10 day fasting. From what I can recall there were 3 or 4 members who did a fast and recovered a good amount or at least partly. Let’s try to forget about whether or not we believe the source of the problem is Candida and focus on what made these guys better. I’m not sure I believe CDnuts completely recovered, but by fasting he seemed to improve his situation significantly. If you look back at his posts, he mentioned some things were still not right. IHP, went several steps further in combating what ails us.

WHile the Nystatin and other things he did after the fast likely improved things even more for him. I have scoured over the Candida forums and websites for months, so I have a good deal of knowledge on the subject. Most sites will tell you simply put there is no antifungal such as Nystatin that is going to simply eliminate the fungus from your body. An etreme diet is required. Even more importantly a cleanse prior to dieting and prior to using a product like Nystatin.

As much as I hat to admit it, there is no better cleanse than a water faste. So again forget wheter it’s yeast that’s the culprit. Fasting allows our body to help remove what is ailing it.

I partly can’t believe I have come to the point of admitting the fast is likely one of best chances to improve our problem at the moment without any real profound medical knowledge of our problem. The sad reality is, there is such an extreme disipline and incredible will power required to complete a 10 day fast, that the majority of us won’t be able to do it. Personally, I admit I am weak to this and give into eating these foods that could be part of the culprit. However, I am determined to do this.

If there are 3 or 4 guys that have completed a fast and have recovered a good amount, this needs to be a primary focus for us. However, it is just the first step in the processs.

#242

Nothing will eliminate candida. It’s a necessary part of your gut biology. The idea is to repopulate your gut with a balance of good bacteria to keep candida in check, and to recuperate your compromised immune system.

I have never seen any site claim that diet can eliminate candida. Diet is sold as a necessary foundation. Now, what that diet is, is not exactly clear to me anymore, as I’ve posted info before on this thread on how candida can thrive on ketone bodies produced by ketogenic (<50g carbs a day) diets. Read the literature, decide for yourself, I dunno.

Fasting does indeed sound interesting. But I wouldn’t underestimate the efficacy of Nystatin. I just wouldn’t. Here you’re stating that IHP recovered and CDnuts did not. Yet you assign more credence to CDnuts’ initiative (repeated, longer fasts) than IHP’s reaction to Nystatin after a modest 10 day fast.

I don’t want to discourage anyone from fasting, though. I think it’s a legitimate area to explore (preferably under medical supervision). I think there are different types of fasts, as well as different diet/nutrition concepts that could potentially help repair us. There are bone broths for gut-healing, there is the GAPS Diet which has saved Ulcerative Colitis patients (who shat 14x a day) from colon-removing surgery, to consider. We might not have to go as extreme on it, but it essentially slowly reintroduces foods after a baseline period of healing the gut/immune system.

#243

Xhorn, I certainly wasn’t stating that a fast would eliminate Candida, as I realize it always exists in our bodies. I’m not even stating that Candida is the source of the problem. I’m saying if we simply focus on the common denomintor, for what improved these guys. That common factor is that they all did a fast. Maybe a broth fast could provide the same result, but we don’t have anyone yet that has tried that yet. So we have no way of knowing that.

No I never mentioned anything about repeated fasts. Actually if you go back and read my post, I give more credit to IHP’s as he took things a few steps further. Look I don’t know the answers and none of us do, but I’m looking for common factors involved with those that recovered. One key common denominator is the fasting.

#244

Point taken. Sorry if I misunderstood you, wan’t trying to be antagonistic. I’m all for dietary exploration (including fasting ideas). I just wanted to be clear that the Nystatin part really ought not to be overlooked or downplayed (because it’s just simply taboo to talk about fungus). Myself, and others have experienced some turnaround with it, so there’s something to targeting the intestines, we believe. And I do also believe that those who saw improvements with fasting were onto something as well.

#245

[Size=4]Fecal Matter Transplants[/size]
Yes, this subject is beyond bizarre if you haven’t heard of it. But in essence, fecal transplants are fast-track probiotic implementation. And although most of the literature focuses on Clostridium difficile (C. diff) cases or other varieties of bowel disorders, the fundamental mechanism is the transplantation of an immune system. I’ve provided links to interesting articles on the matter with a few select excerpts. Read the full articles to fully understand the procedure. It is not without its risks, as the procedure is only as good as the donor’s physiology. But it might be an interesting angle to research if one is concerned with infection / gut / immune disorder.

Fluffy news story video for those with short attention span (doesn’t get as deep into the science): bcove.me/hhjjcclt

[Size=4]Enema transplant works for stubborn infection: study[/size]
reuters.com/article/2012/01/26/us-enema-transplant-idUSTRE80P1PS20120126

(Reuters Health) - For patients with nearly no options to treat a persistent bacterial infection wreaking havoc on their bowels, a transplant of someone else’s fecal matter, delivered by enema, helps heal in nine out of 10 cases, according to a new study.

[Size=4]The Enema of Your Enemy is Your Friend[/size]
[Size=4]Fecal transplants could be a cheap and effective treatment for gastrointestinal disorders.[/size]
slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2011/01/the_enema_of_your_enemy_is_your_friend.single.html

Here’s the basic idea. People suffering from the hardy C. diff bacteria are generally prescribed a powerful antibiotic. Problem is, the drugs don’t just kill the invaders; they also wipe out much of the beneficial bacteria in the gut. With these “good” microorganisms out of the way, any C. diff stragglers have a much easier time regrouping for a second bout of illness. If there were some way to respawn the beneficial bacteria in the intestines, such re-infections could be warded off. Some people, like Ruth, turn to expensive probiotic supplements. (At one point she was spending $350 on them every week.) But in certain cases, a patient who has lost nearly all of her good bacteria will find it nearly impossible to get them back. A fecal transplant seems to work as a sort of mega-probiotic, allowing doctors to repopulate a patient’s intestines with the appropriate microorganisms by placing a robust sample directly into her gut.

And then there’s the do-it-yourself crowd. All you need is a bottle of saline, a 2-quart enema bag, and one standard kitchen blender. Mike Silverman, a University of Toronto physician who wrote up a guide to homespun fecal transplants for the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, says it’s entirely safe to do the procedure this way, provided that a doctor gets involved at some point to screen the donor sample. He felt he needed to draw up the instructions because administrators at his hospital wouldn’t allow their doctors to perform a procedure that hasn’t been validated in a large, peer-reviewed study.

[Size=4]Probiotic Therapy Research Center[/size]
probiotictherapy.com.au/pages/what_is_fmt.html

FMT (Faecal Microbiota Transplantation) uses normal ‘healthy’ human flora introduced into the patients bowel to ‘kill’ the bad bacteria. The use of healthy human flora appears to be the most effective probiotic treatment available today. Healthy human flora acts as a ‘broad spectrum antibiotic’ against pathogens with the added benefit of being able to implant missing bacteria.
• Colonoscopy - Here the routine preparation for colonoscopy is taken and with the instrument deep in the bowel or even in the lower small bowel - the human flora bacteria are infused to cover as much bowel wall as possible
• Enema - this is a simpler method of infusing as a liquid flora mixture in saline through the rectum
• Nasojejunal tube - In this method a fine tube is placed under sedation through the nose, guided by the endoscope into the small bowel, and then allowed to advance well into the small bowel for the infusion to cover any infective pathogens even in the mid-small bowel

#246

Cynical additional note:

slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2011/01/the_enema_of_your_enemy_is_your_friend.single.html

#247

i want to try fasting, but i’m now taking nystatin too and i don’t want to stop the treatment just after 10 days. my question is can i take nystatin and not eat at the same time? isn’t it dangerous?

#248

This is a question you should discuss with your doctor or pharmacist. I wondered about this as well, but nobody can really advise you on this. I have never heard of a medication that does not require food intake of some sort, so officially, fasting and taking medication are kind of polar opposite philosophies. If you were to do it, it would be at your own risk/reward. Just as taking much higher doses of Nystatin would be an off-label approach. As I mentioned before, you may want to look into bone broths or the GAPS diet as a fasting compromise which achieves digestive rest but still provides nutrients. Just an idea.

#249

No biggie, I just want us to beat this thing. If there are 30-40 guys who give IHP’s protocol or a similar anti-candida type regimine a serious run, it would be very interesting to see what percent of us see improvements around Sept-Dec time frame.

At this point we really need to be sharing information as regularly as possible as to what is working. I never saw the exact details in terms of what IHP’s diet consisted of after the fast. Did he eat meat & eggs along with vegetables? The only thing I recall reading is that his caloric intake was very low. What’s real confusing is the conflicting information in terms of what is allowed on a Candida diet anyway. Some say meats are allowed others say eggs and just fish. I read eggs are very good for the Thyroid.

Since we really are even speculating that it’s even Candida, it’s entirely possible the Nystatin is fighting off some other organism that it wasn’t initially targeted to. I definitely am not minimizing Nystatin’s effect. I guess I was hoping for a natural recovery, as I have learned my lesson with pharma drugs. Maybe we can’t beat what is ailing us without the Nystatin. Does Nystatin kill off our intestinal flora? If so, that would be my other concern with it.

For now, I’m going to try the natural Anti-fungals and see how It works for me. Yeast can alter itself to deal with almost any type of food, so most of these would need to be rotated. However, it seems it does not have the ability to deal with Coconut Oil.

coconut oil
SF722 undecenoic acid
Caprylic acid
oil of oregano
fresh garlic and garlic pills containing allicin
liquid grapefruit seed extract

#250

IHP at loads and loads of Kefir initially.

Kefir is a very easy food to make at home. And easily beats any commercial probiotic in amount of live active cultures.

Here’s a brief, simple guide to making it at home:
youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g8inJzX-6yE

Sources of Starter Kefir “Grains”. Free and Commercial:
webaware.com.au/ferment/finding_kefir.php

#251

this is sold at whole foods:
inner-eco.com/

#252

richardweinsteindc.com/disorders.htm this explains ALOT

#253

A light for you…

Depression:

Unbalanced levels of cortisol, either too high or too low, alter the activity and chemistry of the brain and can result in depression. Of equal importance, 99% of the chemicals (neurotransmitters such as serotonin) that determine your mood are made in the intestinal tract from the food you eat, and only 1% of them are made in your brain. So if your intestinal tract is inflamed and unable to function normally, you may not be able to make enough of these chemicals to keep your moods stable.

we had a intestinal infection… because this … our body produce a lot of cortisol… that lead… to sympthons like impotence… because the first thing that the body cut is sexual hormones in case of infection… after a time… our adrenal became tired… so we had… adrenal fatigue too… this complicated the things a lot…
and that’s it folks… … with the leaky gut… our strogens… back from bloody because… the liver discharge the estrogen in the intestine… with a inflamattion and posibly leak gut… the estrogen… back to our bloody
thats the healing theory

#254

Spam sites and mindless ramblings… yes, how much more evidence do you need? :unamused: Not one shred of scientific evidence to support such concepts whatsoever. If you guys from Brazil think this is the cause of your issues, go get treated for them and enjoy your life.

In the meantime, want to do something that could REALLY make a difference? Instead of posting speculation on a web forum, contact media and regulatory agencies in your country to generate awareness about the problem, that could translate into real-world research and investigation or labeling changes/legal action.

Here’s a good place to start (search for your country): pharmweb.net/pwmirror/pwk/pharmwebk.html

#255

Silly Brazilians! Cortisol is not a Mew-approved hormone.

D.C. credentials are also not Mew-approved. D.O. credentials (hint, hint) are okay if you support Mew, otherwise that would not be okay.

This forum is not a forum in the typical sense of the meaning of the word forum. It is a place where we can all come to agree with each other as long as we agree with the state-sanctioned—err—Mew-approved version of PFS. If you are experiencing persistent sexual and cognitive side effects after using finasteride but believe in a divergent theory; if you want to do silly things like “eat healthy” or treat infections you feel you incurred as a result of finasteride messing with your physiology, then you do not suffer from MewPFS and you cannot freely discuss potential treatments. You are also discouraged from reporting back your recoveries. Recoveries will not be filed in the recovery section, and every attempt will be made to ostracize you and marginalize your recovery so that as few of you as possible report back, and you’re forced to communicate offline, where there is less chance of distraction from funding our pet theory which trumps all other anecdotal evidence.

1 Like
#256

Xhorndog, nobody is forcing you or anyone else to come here.

If you’d rather waste time theorizing online all day instead of generating real-world impacts and awareness, that’s your perogative. But some guy posting a rambling monologue of concepts he just came up with out of thin air is not only NOT going to solve anyone’s problem, it’s simply wasting more of our collective time in getting things done – the time and effort people put into arguing and coming up with “theories” would be better directed at contacting media, regulatory agencies and researchers to get this problem on the map and investigated. Further, there is also legal action which could be undertaken.

I am growing tired of your snide retorts (“Cortisol is not a Mew-approved hormone”) when I and others are putting efforts and energy into generating media & medical awareness, while you have nothing better to do than sling mud on some anonymous forum. I’m not going to argue about this nonsense any further, I’ve got better things to do with my time trying to get this collective problem solved on all of our behalfs.

#257

I was prescribed this terrible drug by my medical doctor in [Size=4]MAY 2011[/size]. After all the shit and countless suicides this drug has caused, I was prescribed this poison by my doctor, who neversomuch as even hinted at side effects (let alone permanent).

Why was I prescribed this drug?

Because the people who suffer from this drug would rather theorize all day and talk about how Propecia gave them fungus than report side effects.

According to my poll, only one other person besides me contacted Merck to report finasteride side effects.

If more action was taken and less theorizing was going on, my life could’ve been saved. It might be too late for us, but we could save others’ lives if we work together to get the word out how dangerous this drug is (and I’m not talking about how Propecia gave us fungus), and possibly, get us a cure.

#258

Mew, all your efforts are greatly, and i mean greatly, appreciated.

But I have to say - it’s deeply unhelpful the manner in which you persist to post things as objective fact just because it doesn’t form part of your “school of thought”.

The whole PFS thing is pretty much left field - your dismissive attitude genuinely confuses me. You consistently imply like our current science has any tangible grip on PFS (which it doesn’t) and therefore we are in an enlightened position. Instead, we clearly are miles away from that point and therefore theories on here, including your and Awor’s paper etc, remain very much theory and hypothesis. None of these theories are necessarily exclusion of one another and i suspect things are complex than even you seem to believe at this point…

#259

Theories need to be tested by scientists. Things are in motion to have this done. All other hypotheses unfortunately will remain as such until tested in a clinical, controlled setting by qualified researchers.

While anonymous anecdotal reports of treatment attempts etc are of value, they are still anonymous and anectodal. This includes users just concocting a “theory” without any scientific footnotes as references, simply because they decide today the problem is X, and tomorrow it’s Y. There is no way to verify or test such things, in the end it would be more constructive to put that time and effort into initiatives which generate REAL WORLD outcomes such as contacting lawmakers, lawyers, regulatory agencies and the media.

If you cannot see this or would be more content to argue online all day, instead of taking action that could lead to REAL-WORLD outcomes that could help your situation, I’d say you may have your priorities messed up. In fact, perhaps this entire THEORIES section should be shut down to prevent people wasting too much time on this stuff.

#260

We can’t afford to have one study or one viewpoint. We ought to take our cues from other forums which encourage free thought, polite debate and endless theorizing and reporting back of results with no fear of ridicule. People on this forum are rude and deserve to be called out for it. Some people would rather die with PFS than admit that they could possibly be plagued by infection or anything but their decided-upon explanation for the PFS mechanism. They criticize MDs for prescribing them unnecessary, powerful prescription cosmetic medications and then assail alternative doctors. They call for scientific inquiry but then report that if people didn’t answer their non-scientific survey that nobody else must’ve contacted the FDA (as if the FDA ever cared!). They lament that they could have been saved when others feel the same way about threads and information that were locked from public view; just imagine being a lurker on this forum when PFS first hits you and instead of being directed towards more conservative natural dietary interventions and detox protocols, the attention is all on hormones. They offer no value themselves, yet criticize old-timers, long-time PFS sufferers with proactive treatment track records who report back on their treatments, even when they have failed, as a service to the community. They complain that we’re wasting effort and time making posts on hidden threads, and then spend their time making 20 disparaging posts on these very threads. They claim to value scientific exploration but throw out all positive results that do not jive with their favored theory. They cite research results and make conclusive assertions before they have been published. And they are not interested in other concurrent research initiatives (neurological, prostate, etc.). If this were the 17th century, these people would be the ones condemning Galileo for daring to say that the earth was round, because as far as they were concerned, it had already been figured out that the earth was flat, and this was heresy.