Signs of a nightmare

It is timely, therefore, that Jane McWhirter should be holding a workshop to raise awareness of candida albicans, the disorder which can so severely upset the flora resident in the gut, the vagina, or the throat that it can wreck lives. In the company of many complementary

therapists, McWhirter lays a large part of the blame for these bosky woods being transformed into hostile jungles at the door of the antibiotic.

People suffering from the disorder may well feel they have had every test in the book without getting an answer to why they feel so ill.

Their symptoms may include recurrent thrush or cystitis, PMS, or endometriosis; irritable bowel syndrome; headaches, asthma; fungal or allergic skin complaints; chronic back or neck pain with no physical cause; an inability to lose weight; hypoglycaemia; ME or chronic fatigue syndrome; and, in children, recurrent ENT infections, hyperactivity, and attention deficiency.

These symptoms can, of course, be indicative of other problems. Signs that candidiasis is an underlying cause are abdominal pain, bloating, flatulence and/or heartburn, IBS-type symptoms, or a noticeable change in the type of stool and frequency of motion; waking up tired, even after more than nine hours of sleep, constant lethargy or energy dips; food cravings, particularly for sugar, bread, alcohol, and chocolate; fuzzy-headedness, memory lapses, poor concentration; chronic aches and stiffness, often feeling ''ill all over''; allergies, sensitivities to fumes, or dark rings under the eyes; a change in health following antibiotics or steroidal medication; and sufferers being unable to lose weight and looking ''puffy''.

This may seem like an inordinately long and diverse list of symptoms. Many patients, however, suffer from the greater part of them, yet are told by their GPs that it is either due to their age, their gender, or their psychological condition. This last salvo is usually fired after tests have failed to come up with an answer, and the patient is referred to a psychiatrist.

What therapists like Jane McWhirter (and to give credit where credit is due, a rising number of more sympathetic GPs) would suggest is giving your gut a chance. Yeast, refined sugars, alcohol, and caffeine become no-go areas and, as the flora of the gut is allowed to get back to normal, the long list of symptoms begins to diminish.

McWhirter has experienced some of these nightmarish symptoms herself. While studying for her MA at St Andrews University, she says that the most wonderful years of her life were blighted by the fact that she just could

not lose weight, although she subjected herself to strict diets. Her career as a sprinter came to an end as she struggled with the problem, but says that since she stopped eating wheat and dairy products, she has the problem under control.

She became a McTimoney chiropractor and set up All Hallows House, a multi-disciplinary complementary clinic in London in 1990, and it was there that she became aware of people whose chronic back or neck pain didn't get better when she felt it should. She referred such patients on to a colleague, who diagnosed candida and, after six weeks of treatment, had them bouncing back to health. McWhirter confesses: ''I had never heard of candida, but I came to see it as an underlying factor in a huge range of conditions,'' she says, ''and the bottom line was down to the gut flora being affected by prescribed antibiotics and antibiotics in the food chain.''

Rather cynically, she suggests that when the orthodox medical fraternity actually comes to recognise candida (or, more to the point, to suffer it themselves) they will treat it ''as if they had discovered it yesterday''.

Until more doctors do recognise the full implications of candida, however, she believes she will go on treating patients like the 35-year-old woman who was told by her GP that this was part of being a woman, or the patient in the same age group told by a consultant that she was going through an early menopause. Those patients she sees suffering from ME seem to have had a particularly raw deal, and some consultants insist that ME just doesn't exist in children. The effects of candida, such as ME, or severe bowel problems, are particularly debilitating. McWhirter says: ''There are those who fall asleep if they so much as look at a slice of bread, and those who have suicidal thoughts, but the last thing a doctor would connect with beasties in your gut would be depression.''

She believes there are links between thrush and post-natal depression, and that women who suffer in the early weeks of pregnancy may have ''real problems'' with their babies, ranging from recurrent infections to hyperactivity. Although some doctors do take all of this on board and, says McWhirter, get ''fantastic results,'' she believes that until candida makes it on to the medical school curriculum, ''it won't be given the time of day''.

One problem in gaining recognition of the seriousness of the problem is that only three decades ago, friendly bacteria kept candida under control. The frontline defence against infections such as E-coli is healthy gut flora, but immune mechanisms have been damaged so much by antibiotics and the chemicals which also enter the food chain through crop spraying, seed preservation, and the like, that today the defences are down.

McWhirter says: ''I am always banging on to everyone about how important it is to eat as much organic food as possible, and it is not true that it is more expensive or hard to get. The supermarkets have organic policies now and, if you pester the manager, it will be on the shelves.''

Organic food means that you are not adding to the overload of chemicals the gut already has to cope with, she adds.

That the West of Scotland has a dire diet almost devoid of vegetables means that the population is more at risk from candida, and McWhirter says that people can recognise that they may have a problem if they crave pizzas and Irn Bru and suffer from bloating and fatigue.

Other signs to look for are a sensitivity to smells, and allergies such as hayfever, excema, and asthma. She says patients often notice a worsening of symptoms after a course of antibiotics, and women on the pill or HRT often have the full range of classic symptoms.

How does candida lead to such diverse symptoms? McWhirter explains that once the candida has damaged the gut, the gut lining becomes leaky and the whole system can become poisoned. Partially undigested food gets through and goes straight to the liver which can't cope with its own job and this extra overload. The more tired the patient becomes, the more they try to combat the fatigue with coffee, alcohol, or caffeine-rich fizzy drinks which all affect the liver, as do the drugs they are prescribed by a puzzled GP.

McWhirter won an award from the Research Council for Complementary Medicine to research the holistic treatment of recurrent thrush, which will be completed next year.

Her approach to the whole candida problem is holistic and involves diet and lifestyle, but she reassuringly says that she would never suggest removing items from anyone's diet without making sure that they would substitute the proper nutrients. She believes that people must start taking responsibility for their own health by making diet and lifestyle changes, and wants to promote the concept of health as not being the absence of disease but a continuum which we can control.

n Jane McWhirter's book The Practical Guide To Candida (AHHF, #8.99 + #1.25 p&p) is available from Green Library, 9 Rickett Street, London SW6 1RU, tel 0171 385 0012. Her workshop, organised by Grassroots, Woodlands Road, is at St Mungo's Museum, Glasgow, on July 12. Contact Grassroots on 0141 353 3278 for further information.