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Candida and Pregnancy
When Your Sweet Tooth and Cravings Spell Trouble
By Laura Cone
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.
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 kate london on 06/08/2010 07:52AM
thank you, a very useful article. I've followed a candida diet for some years now- and largely manage to keep the yeast at bay with a few blips when my self control goes wonky. I was going to go and visit a specialist when i got pregnant unexpectedly. now 34 weeks in I've finally found the headspace to start to worry a bit about how my low lying candidiasis might afect my baby and I too had been quite alarmed by some articles on autism and adhd. Dont get me wrong- i imagine I will still go and google the links some more but thanks for an informative and balanced article to keep me calm for hte time being
Candida and Pregnancy by Anonymous on 05/17/2010 08:19PM
Thank you for this informative article! I was in the midst of a candida detox when (surprise!) got pregnant. So glad to have some relevant nutritional advice on where to go from here.
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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Candida and Pregnancy by Anonymous on 08/30/2010 03:59PM
I have been stuggling with this too. I did a cleanse and felt 100% better and want to get pregnant but I have this fear that it will bring everything back and I don't want to pass it to my child. This info makes me feel better about continuing to build my family and sticking to a clean diet and working with this "sickness". I will have bad days but I will get through it! and so will all you other ladies!!