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Candida and Pregnancy

When Your Sweet Tooth and Cravings Spell Trouble

By Laura Cone

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While the word "candida" may sound like candy, the overgrowth of this naturally occurring yeast in your body can lead to more than just cravings for candy. During pregnancy, when your body has all kinds of odd cravings, it's difficult to tell whether your cravings for carbohydrates are a sign of a more serious health issue.

Candida overgrowth is a major factor in the development of leaky gut syndrome, a condition that occurs when food penetrates the bowel walls, entering the blood stream. Many experts link leaky gut syndrome with food allergies and autoimmune diseases such as lupus, diabetes, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, arthritis, multiple sclerosis and Crohn's disease.

Anne Khoury, a certified colon hygienist at Health Connections Center, the oldest holistic center in Philadelphia, Pa., says the most frequently occurring species is candida albicans, which can crowd out beneficial bacteria. In addition to changing their diet, she says pregnant women may take probiotics such as acidophilus strains, which are friendly bacteria.

A Different Kind of Clean

Women may cleanse their bodies of candida by changing their diet and choosing more foods and drinks that cause an alkaline rather than acidic response in the body, according to experts.

"We work with a lot of people who have candida," Khoury says. "Basically what we do is get them on a diet that does not feed the candida, which means taking away yeast products [and] sugar products. They should not eat anything fermented. They should not have any fruit juice or anything with a lot of sugar in it. It feeds the candida."

pregnant, you have these strong desires for certain kinds of food." Khoury says a person's colon should have 85 percent friendly bacteria and just 15 percent "opportunistic bacteria."


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Candida and Pregnancy by Anonymous on 12/17/2009 05:44AM

seriously. another website i saw made me terrified saying that your unborn baby will have a 90% chance of having autism. that has been one of my biggest fears after working with autistic children. i have 1 seemingly perfect baby already who is obviously a handful at 13 months, i can't imagine adding a child with special needs that i could have changed had i known about this before it got so severe. I am self diagnosed at this poiint, but i am 100% sure this is exactly what i have been dealing with for months.

Candida and Pregnancy by Anonymous on 12/02/2009 06:43AM

This article was helpful and encouraging. There should be more articles out there for women suffering from Candida.

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