# SIBO and Candida and Histamine, Oh my!



## annap417 (Nov 29, 2013)

Hi all,

I'm really hoping for some help here. I've been diagnosed with Candida and SIBO and am on a really strict diet (certain vegetables, hardly any fruits, and meat). I was on Diflucan 100 mg for a month and didn't notice much difference until I started taking oil of oregano (45 mg 2x/day). I was getting so much better, though still stuck to my very limited diet (yes, I did cheat about 3 times with banana chips and dark chocolate). When I ran out of the Diflucan, some of my issues began to return. I saw another doctor who recommended FC Cidal, Dysbiocide, and ADP (oil of oregano but capsule releases contents further into the digestive tract) from Biotics. He also recommended D-Hist because I've been having such strange histamine reactions, though up to that point I was doing fine by taking HistDAO from Xymogen.

My symptoms slowly began returning and the histamine reactions seem to be getting worse. I started to take Quercetin, which my chiropractor recommmended and that's when things seemed to (I say seemed to because I don't know if there is a correlation between the two events) get worse. I was taking 2 HistDAOs with every meal now and still having headaches, flushing/redness in face, prickly and itchy skin, and just becoming nonfunctional. I stopped the Quercetin and things, again, seemed to get a little better though not by much. Now I am back on Diflucan, this time at 200mg for 3 weeks and I'm going to start the ADP soon, and slowly introduce the Dysbiocide and then the FC-Cidal (the one good piece of advice Dr. Gerard Mullin gave me is you don't want to go into the gut guns blazing and kill everything at once because it doesn't give enough time for your gut to heal, making it that much easier for the infections/overgrowth to return).

My question to all you out there is how do you think should I move forward with this situation? I realize that you all may not be licensed medical professionals (though the majority I've seen haven't helped much more than the internet has) but I am curious if anyone else has experienced this same issue. I've considered an elemental diet but they are not cheap or fun. I'm incredibly frustrated and losing hope again. I start school in late August and would really like to have this more under control so that I have more energy to focus on studying!

Thanks all!

Anna


----------



## Mandabear (Aug 28, 2013)

I actually had a similar issue with the histamine when I was younger. I have (and probably still have), eosinophilic colitis. Which means that I had too many eosinophils in my colon.

Eosinophils are a white blood cell that are involved in allergies and parasites (although I came up clear for parasites). They release alot of histamine. This problem is VERY similar to asthma. I was put on singulair for a few years, and it cleared up my histamine problem for awhile.

I highly suggest trying out an asthma medication like singulair to see if it makes any difference! I would also try a lactose-free probiotic after a regiment of antibiotics. And peppermint oil is always a helper too. I carry around peppermint altoids, because they have enough oil in them to help.


----------



## annap417 (Nov 29, 2013)

Thanks! I'll have to test that out. I guess that would be a definitive way to figure out if it's really histamine or if it's something else. I just know that it your body can have a rebound reaction if you stay on antihistamines for too long. I'm currently taking Diflucan and oil of oregano but not other antibiotics. I'm supposed to start other antimicrobials but I'm a little afraid to at this point because of the responses I've been having to everything...I might try to do an elemental diet.


----------



## Mandabear (Aug 28, 2013)

Yeah, I was only able to stay on antihistamines for a few years before it stopped working. And a low FODMAP diet may help in your case. Once you stop feeding the microbials, they won't cause such nasty reactions. I haven't been able to get them to go away, but now I can control my reaction through diet. The problem is, if you deviate from the diet, it will still make you feel really gross. And antimicrobials are meant to be taken for short periods of time. They will make you feel sick, but are meant to correct the problem after you go off of them.


----------



## annap417 (Nov 29, 2013)

I was on a low FODMAP diet for about 3 months and it didn't help. I've only been able to eat meat and carrot puree the past two weeks. I'm going to see a new GI next week to see what his take on all of this is but most people are urging me to get scoped again. I'm going to start on Ketotifen next week as well. I've heard that it acts as an antihistamine but also stabilizes your mast cells to not over react. We'll see what happens!


----------



## CanadianGuy (Aug 11, 2014)

With the longstanding IBS-C that I've had for over 12 years, the abdomen cramping and the upper GI spasm attacks that have come with it, I was just last fall diagnosed with Eosinophilic Esophagitis.

The thing is that the symptoms had only last fall begun to affect my esophagus. Prior to that I had the same type of cramping but lower in what I thought was the stomach itself, low and too much to the left side to be the esophagus. I've since been tested for parasites as well and that came up negative. Food allergy testing came up negative too...

Frustrating to have IBS for so long, a condition doctors don't have a consensus or good understanding of, THEN get stuck with eosinophils which is something else doctors don't know the cause of. When I was younger I used to think science was so advanced, now I think that for as advanced as science is, it still knows very little about a lot of things.

I've wondered if SIBO or dysbiosis can contribute to the increase of eosinophils that people get along their GI tract. I know a doctor would firmly say NO, because they mostly only believe what has already been tested and proven. I wonder if any research doctors have any similar hypotheses.


----------



## Nojokeibs (Apr 14, 2014)

annap417 said:


> Hi all,
> 
> I'm really hoping for some help here. I've been diagnosed with Candida and SIBO and am on a really strict diet (certain vegetables, hardly any fruits, and meat). I was on Diflucan 100 mg for a month and didn't notice much difference until I started taking oil of oregano (45 mg 2x/day). I was getting so much better, though still stuck to my very limited diet (yes, I did cheat about 3 times with banana chips and dark chocolate). When I ran out of the Diflucan, some of my issues began to return. I saw another doctor who recommended FC Cidal, Dysbiocide, and ADP (oil of oregano but capsule releases contents further into the digestive tract) from Biotics. He also recommended D-Hist because I've been having such strange histamine reactions, though up to that point I was doing fine by taking HistDAO from Xymogen.
> 
> ...


My own feeling about dysbiosis type issues is that if you kill them, you make an opening for something else. So it's best to fill that opening with something good intentionally. Lately, I've been preferring sauerkraut and kefir or skyr (skyr if you like SCD concepts of avoiding bifidus bacteria at first). There are lots of other options if you're willing to "sauer" your own veggies and foods at home, I mean in case you're not a fan of kraut. Grape skins also contain beneficial and benign yeasts that can replace candida or you can consider saccaromycetes boulardii as a probiotic to crowd out the Candida after the diflucan course is complete. Yes it's a yeast, but not one that attacks you.

Personally I'm not a fan of oils for any internal use. I had some bad effects from adding oils to Dr. Bonner's soap, it always makes my skin break out in a rash. I'd hate to have that happen internally where I can't see it. At least test the oil of oregano on your external skin first. And put it straight on your tongue and see if it burns. If it burns your mouth, it burns your gut.


----------



## CanadianGuy (Aug 11, 2014)

I worked in a health food store for years and I couldn't believe how many people took Oil of Oregano liquid drops daily, especially during the winter for sore throats or because they said it kept them from getting sick.

I am definitely interested in trying the Saccaromycetes Boulardii too. It apparently helps prevent C.Diff too so it must have some sort of effect on bacteria too, not just yeast.


----------



## annap417 (Nov 29, 2013)

CanadianGuy said:


> With the longstanding IBS-C that I've had for over 12 years, the abdomen cramping and the upper GI spasm attacks that have come with it, I was just last fall diagnosed with Eosinophilic Esophagitis.
> 
> The thing is that the symptoms had only last fall begun to affect my esophagus. Prior to that I had the same type of cramping but lower in what I thought was the stomach itself, low and too much to the left side to be the esophagus. I've since been tested for parasites as well and that came up negative. Food allergy testing came up negative too...
> 
> ...


What is Eosinophils? I could only find so much on the internet. Couldn't find symptoms and such. It is incredibly frustrating but we have to keep pushing forward!

I've been taking Saccharomyces Boulardi for the past 2 months and haven't had any bad side effects, though I don't know if it's helping anything or not.


----------



## SteveInAustin (Aug 22, 2007)

Just out of curiosity... You have a medical doctor (MD) who diagnosed you with a candida infection? Or was it a naturopath or chiropractor or some similar non-MD? And the same or another medical doctor (MD) actually prescribed oil of oregano?


----------



## annap417 (Nov 29, 2013)

I got a blood and stool test done that both came back positive for Candida. I have been told these tests range in sensitivities, so I was warned they may not be 100% correct, but I went with it. The oregano oil was my own choice. It wasn't until I introduced that with the Diflucan that I noticed a difference.

Unfortunately, a week after my Diflucan dose was over things got worse for me. I have also been struggling terribly with histamine sensitivities, so Dr. Mullin recommended I go on D-Hist, amongst the plethora of other supplements I was on, and whether that triggered something in my gut or the immense amounts of Almond butter and Sunflower Seed butter I consumed, I began having bad reactions to almost everything.

Currently, I'm on Ketotifen (a mast cell stabilizer), Nortriptyline (25 mg), Chondroitin/Glucosamine/MSM, and Vit D (5,000 IU). I'm only 100% positive on eating freshly cooked chicken, beef and turkey and very well cooked/soft carrots. I figured I'm responding to salicylates on top of everything else...I'm guessing it's because my gut is so leaky (that's my theory because I got nothing else to work with).

I'm pretty stuck on what to do to heal my gut atm...I saw a new doc this last week who wants me drinking Ensure to make sure I'm getting all the nutrients I need and he wants me to do a breath test to confirm I have SIBO since I was only told I have it though was never tested. If I do have it he wants to proceed with antibiotics (tried Xifaxan twice to no avail and I don't know if my system can take anything more right now).

So, long story short (though I know you didn't ask for the story, just figured I'd fill in some gaps







), I'm truly considering going on Vivonex to eradicate the SIBO and potentially allow my gut to take some time off and heal.

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome!


----------



## SteveInAustin (Aug 22, 2007)

So the blood and stool tests were done under the supervision of a medical doctor (MD)? (As opposed to a naturopath, a chiropractor, a TCM doctor, herbalist, etc.?)

I ask this, because your description of "candida" and using oregano oil, etc. all sound like you have a quack non-doctor, not an MD. If it's an actual, licensed medical doctor (MD), I would be very surprised. This sort of laundry list of things you mentioned, and especially the fact that "candida" was in the diagnosis, is something I only see from naturopaths and chiropractors. Many of them do tests with blood and fecal samples, but the tests are basically bogus. If they're done by a real MD with a real lab, then you can believe it. Otherwise, run. That's my advice. They're not doing real medicine. Their tests are designed to give positive readings on a lot of things, mostly to get you to buy their stuff. Run.


----------



## annap417 (Nov 29, 2013)

So actually it was done by an integrative doctor. The lab tests themselves were done through Quest which is used by my regular docs as well, so I do trust them. I am getting input though from my chiropractor, who, though she's helped me with other issues a lot, I've began to ignore on the digestive front. I'm also seeing a dietician but she seems to be out of ideas for me. I'm trying my hardest to get in to see Dr. Mullin again at Johns Hopkins but it's not easy because his office is the WORST. If that fails I'll see whomever. I truly think I should have another endoscopy/colonoscopy and have been told that I should by my dietician and physical therapist (I know random, their thoughts are if my symptoms worsened after my surgery and I'm this bad then something may have changed and should be checked out again).

I'm losing my mind here and I just started school...I get terrible searing, stabbing and aching pains in my abdomen, for the most part in the same two to three places. I just discovered my mom has colitis and her mother did as well and I'm wondering if that's maybe affecting me but no doctors seem to think beyond "Oh it must be SIBO." My symptoms don't match up though because when things got a lot worse three weeks ago my BM went from diarrhea to constipation and I'm losing weight but not excessively (I was 160 and now I'm 150) and I think that's more due to my restrictive diet. I have read of accounts where people didn't have diarrhea or weight loss and they did have Crohn's so that's where I'm not sure if the doctors are just going off of the "normal" symptoms.

Anyways long story short, thanks for the advise, I'm pretty skeptical with everything/everyone now.


----------



## CanadianGuy (Aug 11, 2014)

SteveInAustin said:


> So the blood and stool tests were done under the supervision of a medical doctor (MD)? (As opposed to a naturopath, a chiropractor, a TCM doctor, herbalist, etc.?)
> 
> I ask this, because your description of "candida" and using oregano oil, etc. all sound like you have a quack non-doctor, not an MD. If it's an actual, licensed medical doctor (MD), I would be very surprised. This sort of laundry list of things you mentioned, and especially the fact that "candida" was in the diagnosis, is something I only see from naturopaths and chiropractors. Many of them do tests with blood and fecal samples, but the tests are basically bogus. If they're done by a real MD with a real lab, then you can believe it. Otherwise, run. That's my advice. They're not doing real medicine. Their tests are designed to give positive readings on a lot of things, mostly to get you to buy their stuff. Run.


I've been through seemingly every possible standard medical test and nothing has helped me as much as a licensed medical doctor who practices integrative medicine and functional medicine, mostly treating with targeted nutrient therapies and not necessarily herbals. The standard medical approach is a pill for every condition. How can you consider any doctor who goes beyond pharmaceuticals to be a quack? Most of us on here would never have gone to any practitioner beyond the standard MD if the standard MD could have actually helped us in the first place. The reality is that medical knowledge, while advanced, is still inadequate and people who want meaningful results with conditions that are not well understood are these people, myself included, are willing to look beyond the standard approach if the standard approach does nothing for them.

I'd say run from a doctor who wants to put you on a pharmaceutical that doesn't cure the problem, requires you to take the drug long term, and ultimately doesn't investigate every possible cause as well as try every possible natural therapy before resorting to a pharmaceutical that they've been advertised to push on patients.

The reason herbs and nutrient therapies don't meet the standards of testing for mainstream MDs is because the standards themselves are designed by a pharmaceutical-centered industry. It's idealistic to think that any herbal/natural therapy that has been considered has been rigorously tested and proven or disproven by solid unbiased science, but the reality is that no natural treatments are run through the same criteria because the financial barriers are high enough that only participants in a pharmaceutical for-profit endeavor can justify the cost.

The reality is that when I go into a doctor and ask him about published research about a natural therapy or natural treatment, they haven't even seen the studies and don't seem that interested or seem surprised if I print them out and bring them in. It's not until a big corporation like Proctor and Gamble comes along with for example Align probiotic and pushes the sales and research material on doctors the way that doctors are used to getting their information from drug companies that you see these MDs starting to recommend probiotics. The same MDs who brushed off the possibility that they had any effect for the last decade.

I'm skeptical of a ton of natural stuff too. There's a whole bunch of out there stuff like muscle testing, reiki, etc, but it's worth being just as skeptical of accepted medical standards because they don't always have your best interest in mind either.

If you want to be a skeptic be skeptical of everything.

Science has figured out a lot but humanity will look back in a hundred years and see how far off we were on a lot of things and how in the dark we were, the same way we look back at a hundred years ago.

I say do your own research and be skeptical of everything. Sometimes alternative medicine has more than enough research that a doctor should at least know about it, even though most almost certainly don't.


----------



## SteveInAustin (Aug 22, 2007)

I believe whatever claims can be backed up by evidence, experiment, and sound reasoning. Keeping an open mind does not mean that you should just accept any claims that are uttered. It means that you are willing to change your mind if there's a "good reason" to do so. That is the definition of skepticism as well. There must be a good reason to believe the claims.

A biased mind is one that believes stuff despite a lack of evidence and reasoning.

The more you learn about what constitutes reliable evidence in the world of medicine, the more you realize that only through the scientific method can you gain reasonable confidence in the results. Shamanism, traditional folkloric medicine, and so on, doesn't generally work "for real", when investigated scientifically. This is despite the hundreds of years people have been using it... People believed the earth was flat for thousands of years, too.

Personally speaking, I've tried alternative medicine many times (hundreds of times) throughout my life. At one point, I was even apprenticing to learn Traditional Chinese Medicine. I never once found that any of the things I tried actually worked for me. They all turned out to be bogus. And the more I researched the effectiveness of alternative medicine (and TCM in particular), the more I realized it was all junk that either hasn't been studied or has been studied and shown to not work.

That is the definition of alternative medicine. It's stuff that either hasn't been studied, or it's stuff that has been studied and proven to be bogus. There is no good reason to believe it works.

Naturopathy, homeopathy, chiropracty, etc. (alternative medicine) is like someone searching a completely dark room for a cat that is not in the room to begin with, and then emphatically claiming they found it.

Science-based medicine is like using a flashlight in a dark room to find a cat that may or may not exist.

If alternative medicine was indeed tested and proven to have some medicinal effect, it wouldn't be called "alternative medicine". It would just be called "medicine".

Final advice: stop believing in magic.

Sorry to be so blunt. Really, this needs to be said. Especially here.


----------



## CanadianGuy (Aug 11, 2014)

The problem is that most of what falls within the realm of alternative medicine does have research and solid evidence behind it, *not because it has faced and failed to prove effectiveness, but just because nobody is willing to spend the money to do the types of tests that would match the standards of what a pharmaceutical would have to go through*. Look at cannabis which scientists have claimed forever holds no medical benefit to cancer patients who claim it helps with symptoms. It might not cure cancer but there are plenty of drugs that just help with symptoms cancer patients deal with. Drug companies are now creating synthetic versions of the same cannibinoids and selling them to doctors for the same reasons that people claimed cannabis was benefiting them in the first place! *The scientific method is just as idealistic as any other concept humankind has dreamed up and it is just as corrupted because there is a human element to it even though scientists believe that it's been programmed out of the method itself. *

Nobody is willing to spend the amount of time and money researching something that cannot be turned into a profitable product with a distinct advantage as a money making product and when they do their research falls on deaf ears and other scientists seek to prove them wrong. When someone does come along and do this research someone else with a motive can easily come along and come up with science that points in the other direction, for example with the impact of Vitamin D. One week it's great according to these published studies and the other week it's useless. Who funded these studies? What was their motivation?

Some things that are considered alternative therapy in one country by our medical standards are considered to be drugs and treated as pharmaceutical drugs in other countries with plenty of research to support them.

I agree that there are plenty of quacks with wacky therapies that are bogus,* but to take the stance that the scientific method and economically driven scientific community at the other end is good and pure is just as ridiculous as believing in every snake oil salesman.* Both sides are corruptible because both sides have people with ulterior motives.

On top of all of this placebo itself is powerful and why does science dismiss its usefulness and try to equate the word placebo with the words scam, bogus, or useless. Drugs produce effects above and beyond placebo but if something like acupuncture produces a placebo effect that ultimately benefits the person who is doing it, then why is that a bad thing?

Isn't it a fact, and correct me if I'm wrong here, that people with cancer that have a strong belief in something have a statistically significantly better outcome than people who don't believe in anything? Regardless of whatever belief system? Isn't this reason alone to hang onto belief in magic? Hasn't this been measured and verified according to these same nearly holy scientific criteria?

If your advice is to stop believing in magic, my advice is to stop believing you know anything for sure. Socrates questioned everything, but it was the people after him that started to believe they could come up with reasonable methods to be absolutely sure of things which is potentially even more dangerous because they believe that their ability to reason and judge things effectively is incorruptible. Just like how humans can never draw a perfect circle but only approximate the perfect circle, our scientific method is just as imperfect. That's not to say it hasn't gotten us anywhere, but that's not my point.

*Magic *- Things that happen which cant be explained.

*Reality *- What actually happens or the actual truth.

*Science *- Human validation of a close (sometimes) approximation of reality, or the truth. If the approximation meets our own less than perfect and potentially corruptible criteria then it must be true. Somehow this leads science worshipers to believe that anything that hasn't been validated and every unproven hypothesis couldn't possibly be considered true until also validated, and if nobody is willing to study it at the same standard then it must be bogus. That's flawed logic.

So then alternative therapies are:

*Alternative therapies* - Methods that are hypothesized to have various effects but have not or will not be studied enough to validate or invalidate or the research that exists either points in both directions meaning it cant be validated and therefore must be false. Who's doing these studies again? At least until a drug company figures out how to synthetically create an isolated compound from one of these natural therapies and can sell it at a huge profit, then it's apparently acceptable and legitimate... Then it apparently graduates from alternative medicine to medicine. So does that mean it wasn't working until so-called unbiased science with no motivation decided to focus on it and "prove" it was working?


----------



## IbanezRG (Oct 31, 2014)

annap417 said:


> So actually it was done by an integrative doctor. The lab tests themselves were done through Quest which is used by my regular docs as well, so I do trust them. I am getting input though from my chiropractor, who, though she's helped me with other issues a lot, I've began to ignore on the digestive front. I'm also seeing a dietician but she seems to be out of ideas for me. I'm trying my hardest to get in to see Dr. Mullin again at Johns Hopkins but it's not easy because his office is the WORST. If that fails I'll see whomever. I truly think I should have another endoscopy/colonoscopy and have been told that I should by my dietician and physical therapist (I know random, their thoughts are if my symptoms worsened after my surgery and I'm this bad then something may have changed and should be checked out again).
> 
> I'm losing my mind here and I just started school...I get terrible searing, stabbing and aching pains in my abdomen, for the most part in the same two to three places. I just discovered my mom has colitis and her mother did as well and I'm wondering if that's maybe affecting me but no doctors seem to think beyond "Oh it must be SIBO." My symptoms don't match up though because when things got a lot worse three weeks ago my BM went from diarrhea to constipation and I'm losing weight but not excessively (I was 160 and now I'm 150) and I think that's more due to my restrictive diet. I have read of accounts where people didn't have diarrhea or weight loss and they did have Crohn's so that's where I'm not sure if the doctors are just going off of the "normal" symptoms.
> 
> Anyways long story short, thanks for the advise, I'm pretty skeptical with everything/everyone now.


Have you had any luck with your treatment? I've had the exact same symptoms for over a year now, and it's gotten to the point where all I eat is boiled chicken and white rice. Anything else sets off a reaction. I've tried just about everything you've mentioned and some more. I found a little relief from Rifaximin, but my symptoms came back right after. Oh well.

Have you tried Goldenseal root and Licorice root? They helped a bit initially as well.

Hope you're feeling better now


----------



## annap417 (Nov 29, 2013)

IbanezRG - I think I have found the answer which you may or may not like. It's called MCAS, mast cell activation syndrome. Once thought rare, doctors believe it's fairly common, especially amongst those with GI issues or connective tissue disorders. Some doctors to check out are Dr. Afrin, Dr. Vas tells and Dr. Theoharides. I'm seeing Afrin in January. Also check out the Low Histamine Chef. I'm also on the forums on www.inspire.com and there are tons of knowledgable people there to help answer questions. Let me know if this helps!


----------



## annap417 (Nov 29, 2013)

That should say Dr. Castells not Vas tells lol


----------



## annap417 (Nov 29, 2013)

And for the record I do still believe I have Candida and dysbiosis. I just unfortunately have a much bigger issue. I agree with everything CanadianGuy has said. Modern medicine is very particular in what it researches and treats. I think there is a place for both modern and naturopathic medicine and I hope someday they can become one instead of two distinctly separate entities.


----------



## jillfusia** (Dec 1, 2015)

Hi Ann,

I am new to this group and have you finally gotten well? I do not see a post since 2014? I hope the answer is yes.

If so tell us what you did.


----------



## annap417 (Nov 29, 2013)

I actually got severely worse....but I'm fairly certain that my main issue is Mercury toxicity. Conventional medicine is unable to find anything wrong with me but I've been sensitive to so many medications and supplements, so much has changed. I've been following Andrew Cutler's Chelation Protocol though and hoping that it will work.

Remi


----------

