Hi Patty, this is one area that I think just about EVERY other health professional would disagree with Huggins. Candida alone, even without the added toxicity of mercury can cause horrific suffering, symptoms and even suicides. Far from saving a person's life, it has been the opposite.

Yeast overgrowth is a result of a body that is unable to keep the yeast under control any longer, so now the body is battling more than one problem and the toxicity of this and whatever else is going on can be the straw that breaks the camel's back. It overloads the gut and liver with yeast toxins, affects the brain, weakens the immune system and allows the body to become even more suspetible to mercury and other toxcity in the process, as well as adding to it.

Every other article I have read talks about yeast and bacteria methylating mercury, not yeast saving the day! The reason killing yeast can be dangerous in someone with mercury is because yeast has the ability to absorb mercury. Like any cell in the body, yeast cells too can become loaded with heavy metals. People like to think of this as "protection", this is not so. The mercury continually gives off its poisonous effects and is excreted by the yeast as methyl mercury. This is how the yeast survive!

This is why using antifungals to kill off candida can be risky because they act on yeast cells directly and split them open. This means if the yeast happen to contain a storage of metals, that metal is then re-released back into the system and can cause acute symptoms of metal toxicity.

But leaving the yeast overgrowth as it is is also NOT the answer or a good option. The safest way is by eating a healthy diet and simply excluding junkfoods/toxic foods sugars etc. This can be nothing BUT good because it at least allows the body to heal and reduce the yeast as well as aid detoxification healing and building the immunity. The yeast reduce naturally with this, when they are unable to feed on sugar in the diet and too many high carbs.

So in a toxic person, this can at least allow the body to gain maybe "some" further control over yeast and help the immunity in the process and lessen the load on the gut/liver and brain.

I have done the candida diet and I have used antifungals. The diet alone gave me yeast die off, made me sick temporarily becuase of dying yeast and their toxins and then I improved after 3 weeks. This actually saved my life I believe.

Using antifungals? I got symptoms of acute metal toxicity and was EXTREMELY ill and had to take chelation to get the newly released metals back out. I improved again once I did this. As acutely sick as I got from a release of metals from the yeast, which could have put me in the ER also. I have to admit to you here that the suffering from this was not even as bad as the suffering from the ongoing overgrowth which was causing me symptoms that were excrutiating. Not enough to ever put me in the ER, but enough to cause suicide easily.

But saying that candida is healthy is incorrect. There are enough people mercury toxic on this forum that can contradict that. Many of us are pushed over the edge when we try and resume a diet with sugar. For example, one lady I know who was and still is mercury toxic is on a candida diet. She can now work and live her life pretty well and is healing gradually. Everytime she goes off this diet, she is plunged back into a nightmare and been close to ending her life. Once back on the diet she gets back on track and feels better.

This is the same with others. The diet alone can be a life saver. I am very sorry about what happened to yu and do understand the dangers of killing yeast aggressively or in a way that is too quick to start off. In fact one article mentioned that antifungal use (at least initially) can be foolish or downright dangerous in a mercury toxic patient due to yeast being able to hold its own weight in mercury. This is why the diet is safe because it simply starves the yeast slowly to death instead.

I wish Huggins would realise what he is saying in these statements. It is misleading and gives the person the idea that if they keep feeding yeast in their body, they are actually "protecting" themselves, when this could not be more wrong. A certain amount of overgrowht will always be present in a mercury toxic person whatever the diet, but consuming sugar and allowing that to easily get out of control in a person who cannot fight it, is one of the worst things a person can do in my opinion.