Adapted from episode 64 of The Perfect Stool podcast and edited for readability.
Dr. Michael Biamonte is the founder of the Biamonte Center for Clinical Nutrition. He is a co-creator of BioCybernetics, which is a computer software program that studies blood work, mineral tests and many other lab tests to determine exactly where your body is imbalanced. He holds a Doctorate of Naturopathy and is a New York State certified Clinical Nutritionist and author of the book “The Candida Chronicles: A Manual for Candida Yeast Infections”. He is a professional member of the International and American Association of Clinical Nutritionists, The American College of Nutrition and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Clinical Nutrition Certification Board.
Lindsey:
So why don’t we start with how people end up getting an overgrowth of Candida in their intestinal tract in the first place?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Usually, it’s from taking antibiotics. From taking antacid medications, steroids, and sometimes chemotherapy, but very typically, it’s induced by medications. That’s been the thought for many years. But it also can occur from excessive stress, excessive alcohol and different types of recreational drugs. And we’re now finding out that COVID can leave people with Candida, which is very interesting because a person gets COVID, he goes through that whole syndrome and then thereafter, he never quite feels right. And the reason why is because now he has an immune vality and it’s the immune hit that COVID puts on the person that allows the Candida to overgrow.
Lindsey:
Interesting.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Yeah, essentially, anything that disturbs your intestinal bacteria allows Candida to grow.
Lindsey:
Interesting.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Even to the point where if someone goes in a public swimming pool, or a pool that’s heavily chlorinated, by taking a couple of gulps of that water, it could imbalance their friendly bacteria, because in order for Candida to grow, you have to kill the friendly bacteria that’s in your intestines. The friendly bacteria, the probiotics, everybody hears about all the time on TV, you have to kill those off. And then the Candida moves from being a subdominant growth in your intestines to more of the dominant part of your flora, and then that’s where it starts causing all the symptoms.
Lindsey:
And so why don’t you talk a little bit about what the symptoms are?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Well, you know, there literally can be 150 different symptoms of Candida. It depends on how you want to count them. One article I saw the person was saying gas and bloating, another person, he listed them separately, but the idea is that you can get so many symptoms that it can turn your head spinning, and you would never guess what it is because the symptoms are disrelated. Like as an example, somebody first gets Candida. Normally, the first thing they experience is a decline in energy. They feel like they’re dragging themselves around. And then within the upcoming weeks, they’ll start having either diarrhea, constipation or a lot of bloating and gas, then they could start having allergies, rashes. Brain fog is an extremely common symptom. The symptoms I’m giving you right now will probably be the most common but it can affect anyone in any in any way, depending on their own genetics and where they’re weak. Some people when they get Candida will get arthritis as a result. Some people get MS as a result of Candida. And there are there are overlapping syndromes with Candida that make it even more confusing.
As an example, if someone acquires mercury toxicity, whether it’s from vaccinations or the fillings in their mouth, or eating too much tuna, whatever it is, the symptoms of mercury toxicity are very similar to Candida, and mercury toxicity causes Candida. So in this way, it can get very confusing. Probably the most difficult case and the most severe type of Candida is where the person then becomes what we’ve called for years a universal reactor, which is somebody who’s just chemically intolerant. The term for this has varied over the years, but it’s essentially a person who’s so reactive that everyone around them thinks that they’re playing some joke or lying about it because they literally can’t go to the supermarket without having rashes, breakouts, headaches and things like that. They’re just chemically sensitive and allergic to everything. That’s the worst case of Candida. And that’s a case where the person would typically have Candida and leaky gut syndrome at the same time.
Lindsey:
Right, right, multiple chemical sensitivity is what I’ve heard it referred to as.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Yeah. There you go.
Lindsey:
So just to clarify on the vaccine and mercury question, because I’m a supporter of vaccination for COVID and many other things, the only place in which one would find mercury is in the… What’s the preservative called?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Lindsey:
Thimerosal, right, which is typically only in vaccines that are given in multiple doses, like at a community clinic, for example, not in individual dose vaccines.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Yes, that’s correct. Thimerosal was supposed to be removed from vaccines years ago. But there was a period of time afterwards the use was continued. I don’t know what the present status is. But I can just tell you that the mercury from Thimerosal is something which can induce Candida to. It’s very typical in autistic children that you find that very high in mercury and copper. That’s one of the trademarks, physically. When we look at autistic children, they typically have Candida and leaky gut. That’s a very common thing along with various toxic metals, but most commonly, mercury and copper.
Lindsey:
Okay. Could you point me to a study that connects Thimerosal and autism?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Yeah, actually, actually, I could email you a few.
[Mercury and autism: accelerating evidence? (Sent by guest, note this is a letter, not a study)
Environmental risk factors for autism: an evidence-based review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses – Most recent meta-analysis of meta-analyses I could find on the topic of mercury and autism, whose conclusion was: “Current evidence suggests that several environmental factors including vaccination, maternal smoking, thimerosal exposure, and most likely assisted reproductive technologies are unrelated to risk of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) . . . . The studies on toxic elements have been largely limited by their design, but there is enough evidence for the association between some heavy metals (most important inorganic mercury and lead) and ASD that warrants further investigation.” (Note, there are many more subsequent studies, so in my opinion this is not a settled question, but I don’t have the time to thoroughly research it. Lindsey)]
Lindsey:
That would be great. I would, I would like to include those in the show notes to back that up. Okay, so let me ask you, why do you think that Candida isn’t recognized in western allopathic medicine except in the case of severe immunosuppression?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
It’s an interesting question. If you think about it, if a doctor is giving somebody antibiotics and then if a woman takes an antibiotic, it’s not unusual that she’ll get a yeast infection.
Lindsey:
Right.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
So that’s something that can be tied very, very easily. And it’s sort of accepted. It’s different for a person when they take an antibiotic and get a vaginal yeast infection, that’s something that is very common and people are used to having. But when a person takes antibiotics, and then thereafter develops chronic fatigue syndrome, which goes on for years and years, that’s, that’s a tough nut. And that’s something that gets somebody very angry. So I think you’re going to find that a lot of practitioners who use antibiotics, especially indiscriminately, are going to shy away from wanting to take responsibility for the situation.
Lindsey:
So how do you differentiate candidiasis, say, from SIBO, or other gut conditions?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
They all fall under the heading of dysbiosis. And the word dysbiosis simply means you have an imbalance between the friendly bacteria in your gut and harmful bacteria. And under that umbrella of dysbiosis, you then look to see what specifically is the imbalance and that’s where you would then come up with something like Candida, a parasite infection, or SIBO, which SIBO itself has two different types.
Lindsey:
But in terms of symptoms, are there symptoms that differentiate for you Candida from SIBO, or parasites?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Yeah, well, all of them have gastrointestinal symptoms, bloating, gas, potentially constipation, diarrhea, IBS-like symptoms. All of them have fall into that category. But the one thing about Candida which is a little bit different is because Candida actually ferments alcohol in your intestinal tract, it tends to give the person the brain fog and the cognitive problems. So that’s one symptom that would stand out. That’s quite different. As a matter of fact, there is a Japanese strain of Candida that produces so much alcohol that one man at one point was actually found legally intoxicated.
Lindsey:
So what tests do you use to diagnose someone with Candida?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
I primarily use three tests, we use DNA stool tests that exist nowadays, but we use them in a little bit of a different way than how you would take them face value. We found that if a stool test shows that the person has no friendly bacteria in their intestines, or they’re deficient in it, it would be an automatic diagnosis of Candida whether the Candida shows on the test or not. And that’s because Candida is much harder to find and detect than bacteria. Gram positive and gram negative bacteria are rather easy to find, but Candida is harder to find. So we can go about it that way, the plus point in going about it that way, is you also selectively see all the other strains of bacteria the person has. Then we use Organic Acids Tests. This is a test made popular by Great Plains and Genova labs. The Organic Acids Test will tell you all the organic acids that are there for different bacteria, and particularly Candida, and then different types of mold. And then the other tests we have that I probably use most frequently is a urine test that I developed myself many years ago, when I was very upset with the lack of accurate Candida testing. And this urine test identifies some of the key organic acids, but very importantly, some of the free radicals that Candida releases into your body. So those are the three tests we use.
Lindsey:
Oh okay, so tell me a little bit more about this urine test you’ve developed? Is that something other people can access?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Yes, most important thing about the urine test is that it can be done at home using the patient’s first morning urine. When we originally developed the test, we were doing it in my office, and people were coming in at all different times of the day with their urine samples. And we were finding that the urine samples that were acquired later in the day were not as accurate as the ones that came in in the morning. So we switched it so that the person can do it as a home, self-administered urine test.
Lindsey:
And is this using some of the similar markers to the organic acids like arabinose, or is this different markers?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
It’s using different markers, but it’s using markers that solidify. You don’t actually get a score like you do with the organics test. You visually see the albumin in the urine, solidifying with Candida antigens and antibodies. So you rate the test based on how much how much it curdles. You get a strong curdling reaction in a person who’s positive. So it ranges from being very heavily curdled to just a curdling that kind of floats to a slight curdling and then to a cloudy milky reaction, which would mean the person has a normal response. Then we have a test in the kit, which is a free radical test, which turns very red in the presence of the free radicals that Candida releases, which are alcohol driven free radicals. Then we also do an Indican test on there. Indican more relates to SIBO. Indican is a test, which tells you that you have putrefying bacteria in your intestinal tract, which is releasing harmful chemicals which are very toxic. It’s essentially a substance called indole. Indole is sent to your liver where it’s detoxified and it’s the placed in your urine and at that point, it’s called Indican. So these are three markers of an imbalance related to Candida or SIBO. And as I said, we use that test very frequently because it’s very convenient and very accurate. And it’s not as expensive as the others.
Lindsey:
Oh, okay. Do you find that correlates well with the Organic Acids Test?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Directly yes. Many years ago, I did studies with all of these all three together to watch the correlation. So we found that if interpreted correctly, they match identically.
Lindsey:
Okay, so can people order that test if they’re not working with you? Or do they…
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
No. They can’t. And the reason why is because we tried that once. And we got a flood of phone calls from people who were not patients who were asking questions about interpretation.
Lindsey:
Okay.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Questions that you couldn’t really answer unless you were able to spend time with the person and explain the whole process to them.
Lindsey:
Right. Okay. So how long do you find that it typically takes someone suffering from Candida to get back to normal?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
It depends on various things. In most cases, you can normalize the person’s intestinal flora in six to eight months. So that would mean you can completely disinfect and kill all the bad organisms there and then get the probiotics to grow again. The problem after that is what might have caused the Candida that might still be in the body as an underlying cause and that’s where we go back to the toxic metals. It’s very common that people with copper and mercury, iron, aluminum, and arsenic toxicity, develop Candida as an underlying cause. So if those metals are still present in the body, when the Candida is handled, you’ve had to correct those metals. If you have a woman who’s very estrogen dominant, or even a man who’s very, very high estrogen that causes Candida as well. Estrogen tends to be very stimulating to Candida’s growth. So if you have that problem, then you need to balance those hormones before you can consider you’re done. And there are some various other issues that can be an underlying cause. So if you eliminate the Candida, but you don’t eliminate these underlying causes, the person could just relapse in a couple of months when they start returning back to a more normal diet. As you know, and most people know to get rid of Candida, you also have to follow some diet restrictions with carbs and sugars to starve the Candida while you’re killing it with the medicines.
Lindsey:
So I’ve actually heard at least one functional medicine practitioner who I really respect, say that diet other than sort of the basic, yeah, get off of the white carbs and the sugar, but just the diet doesn’t seem to have a big impact in their Candida treatment in their clients. So I’m curious how strict of a diet do you find is necessary, and for how long for people to get rid of Candida?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
We have three different degrees of strictness depending on what how bad the test is. So if a person’s test is very heavy, we have a stricter diet that we call the caveman diet, which is along the lines of what the doctor was saying. And then as the test becomes less severe, the diets are more plentiful in some selected starches and sugars. But generally speaking, the person never is going to get rid of Candida unless they follow to some degree, the dietary restrictions. And you can tell, actually, we have a doctor who worked with us once who used to have his patients do what he called the spaghetti test. When he thought their flora was good and sound and the Candida was gone, he would send them out for a big spaghetti meal, and then see how they felt the next few days.
Lindsey:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
That’s before we had any real testing back in those days. But you have to follow the diet. I would disagree with the doctor to the extent that he’s portraying this because the diet is very important. Depending on the person, there are some people that if they even eat artificial sweeteners, or alcohol sugars, which years ago, we used to a permit on the diet, they will react. It’s as though Candida has learned and evolved to react to the sugars and consume them. So it’s really, what the doctor said is not totally accurate. And I can say that, because I see hundreds of Candida patients a week. It depends on the person, I would say he’s mostly correct that you’ve got to follow the basics of the diet, but that’s not going to handle it. See that’s the other side of the coin. You’ll get people on the internet and on YouTube, talking about these Candida diets, and some of them are insane. And some of them are so restrictive, but that’s because that’s what they found worked for them. That doesn’t mean everyone has to be that strict. So it’s really it’s a case by case situation many times. Some people need to be strict, some people don’t.
Lindsey:
So what are the different layers of strictness? What is the least strict diet look like versus the most strict diet?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
The most strict would be no more than 40 to 60 grams of carbs a day. And it’s mostly things that walk, crawl, fly, climb, meaning animal protein, swim, you see, and then vegetables. That’s mostly what those people need. The most lenient diet is maybe 90 to 110 – 120 grams of carbs a day, and that includes some complex carbohydrates like beans and lentils and Granny Smith apples and berries and an occasional root vegetable, but not that much.
Lindsey:
Okay.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
That’s probably the distinction between those two opposite ends.
Lindsey:
Okay, so tell me about your protocol and the different stages of it?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Well, you see, when I first discovered Candida, I didn’t really know much about what it was. This was back in 1986 -1987. I didn’t know much about it. I would refer to people to their doctor to try to handle it, because I determined that one of the odd things about Candida is Candida causes people to react strangely to medications and vitamins. When they take vitamins that should be good for them, they actually get very bad, bizarre reactions. So when I had this happening with people, I referred these people to their doctors to handle the Candida, and they were met with “Well, I really don’t know much about that”, or “it doesn’t exist”, or “I can’t help you” or some story. So then I started referring them to some of my colleagues at the time in New York City like Dr. Bob Atkins and Ronald Hofmann and some of the very well-known functional doctors and they had much better results with those doctors, but still not where I wanted it. So I had to take it upon myself to figure out what it was all about that to come up with what the treatments were.
Now in a lot of the things I learned by listening to my patients and hearing what they were doing that wasn’t working. And when I would hear these things, like one of the first things was a patient would tell me, and I heard this a million times a patient come in, well, “I went to the doctor, he gave me Nystatin, he gave me this other drug. For the first month or two, I felt great, I thought I was cured and then gradually it started to come back.” So I said to myself, “why would that be?” So I would listen to the patient, I would go hit the medical textbook on mycology and yeast. And what I found that was Candida was very, very sensitive to mutation. Candida could mutate very easily, it would genetically switch is what we call it. So I found that what was happening is, the longer the person was on the treatment, the Candida would genetically switch and mutate and then become resistant to the treatment. So this is where I then determined that what we had to do is we had to come up with a way of rotating the antifungals, so the Candida wouldn’t become resistant to the one that you were using. So we came up with the policy of having the person use four different antifungals. And I will have them rotate them every four or five days. This way that ensured the Candida could not mutate. So this is one major thing that’s different in how I treat the Candida than another person.
The other thing is we don’t use probiotics at the beginning, because they determined thanks to Genova labs many years ago in doing the lab (my patients do some free stool testing) and we determined that the probiotics do not work in a person until you’ve eliminated a good amount of the intestinal yeast. Probiotics are repelled by Candida. So when you have dysbiosis, whatever it is parasites, Candida bacteria, whatever, they tend to repel the probiotics and prohibit them from sticking to the gut lining. So you’ve got to first eliminate those organisms before you can put the probiotics in it.
We also, very early on when I was researching, found that a great amount of people with Candida had parasites, which is kind of an ugly thing to say, but nonetheless true. And it’s because when you have an imbalance in your intestinal tract, that lack of friendly bacteria that normally protects you from all types of organisms, it’s not there. So we would tend to see in people, you can imagine this, if you could walk through someone’s intestinal tract with a flashlight, you would go through areas where there’s friendly bacteria, everything looks kind of normal, but then you would come across an area of the intestinal tract where there are colonies of bad bacteria, yeasts, and parasites all harbored together, because they all tend to be synergistic in how they work together. So they live that way. So we started to do the very first thing with a Candida patient is a parasite cleanse, not anything grossly elaborate, but something like a colon cleanse that had black walnut, wormwood, cloves, some of the typical things that are used for Northeastern parasites. And we found that we got much better results when we gave the person the parasite cleanse first, then got them into the Candida treatment, the results were quite different. And that became then part of the protocol. So the protocol that I use, that’s explained in the book. And there are many other axioms and logics to it. But all of these things were arrived at by watching people respond, watching what they were doing that was wrong, and then not making the same mistake twice with them, coming up with a different way around it so that it actually worked.
Lindsey:
And you mentioned the book, what is the book?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
The book is called The Candida Chronicles*, and it’s available on Amazon, and it explains the history of my research into Candida, how I determined these different modalities and treatments, and it goes over quite a few different examples of treatment plans that a person can use. Plus, there’s a whole section in there on diet and recipes.
Lindsey:
Oh okay, perfect. I’ll link to that in the show notes. So what kinds of parasites are you seeing on stool tests with Candida?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
The most typical one is Blastocystis hominis, which is a very interesting organism. Back in the 80s, Blastocystis was classified as non-pathogenic by the CDC. And then they, with the advent of all the research into AIDS, looked at differently, and they started to reclassify it as a pathogen. Blastocystis is actually a kind of combination of a yeast cell and an amoeba at the same time. It’s like half protozoa, half yeast, and it’s interesting because on its own, it really doesn’t do that much to you. The symptoms of Blastocystis mostly come about because it weakens your intestinal immune response. So intestinal IgG, IgA, all these antibodies tend to weaken when you have Blastocystis, and that allows other organisms that are there, it magnifies their negative effects. So it’s very common to find Blastocystis and Candida together. It’s also pretty typical that you would find someone who’s had giardia, or who has had any type of amoeba, would then afterwards have Candida as a result of the giardia of disturbing their intestinal flora. Roundworms, tapeworms, flukes, all very common in people with Candida.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
So basically anything that impacts your gut immunity and causes dysbiosis.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Yes.
Lindsey:
Yeah.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
That’s the simplicity of it. Yeah.
Lindsey:
Yeah. So going back to the Blasto. I’m curious, because I’ve heard that there are strains that are pathogenic now and strains that are not and also, you know, heard about studies where they’re finding it present in plenty of healthy people.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Yeah. The difference is whether or not they have other microbes that are there that are possibly pathogenic, that pairing them off makes the whole difference. And that’s what I’ve never seen made clear in any study, because that’s the simplicity of it, the presence of Blastocystis is not a really a big deal, it doesn’t have to be a big deal unless there’s some other pathogen for it to pair with. So if you have Blastocystis and the rest of your flora is healthy, you could be fine. But then if you acquire food poisoning, somehow someway, and you have that Blastocystis there, now you’re going to have something which could go on and on and on. If you develop Candida, well, you have Blastocystis. Now that’s increases the impact of it. So it’s really the pairing that needs to be looked at. That’s what I observed on my own. So if I see someone has Blastocystis, that’s definitely a red flag. But I look and see what else they have in the test and what else they’re manifesting symptomatically to understand how that’s impacting them. Not a good idea to have it in any case, because it does have that ability to weaken your immune response eventually.
Lindsey:
So the parasite cleanse that you described, the colon cleanse, is that effective in eliminating Blasto?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
No, it’s not.
Lindsey:
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Yeah, it’s very hard to get rid of, I actually had a formulate a product, which we called at the time Blasto Off or something like that. I don’t remember, it was very long ago. But the product was meant to remove the Blastocystis because Blastocystis adheres to your intestinal lining; it’s very, very hard to get it off. So I had to look into what nutrients what substances would break the protein bonds that the Blastocystis makes to hang on, and we formulated that product and started using it with some other things. And it worked really well. But then the funny thing is, we found that it had the same effect on Candida, so we changed the name of it, we called it Candi-Loosener. And we made it part of our regular Candida protocol, but the product eventually had come from this research into Blastocystis.
Lindsey:
Okay, so you still have the product called Candi-Loosener?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Candi-Loosener, which really was meant to help people eliminate Blastocystis because it’s so hard. See killing Blastocystis is not such a tough thing. It’s getting it to come off the lining of the intestinal tract where it hides in the mucous membranes. That’s what’s tough. And that’s what the Candi-Loosener does.
Lindsey:
Okay. And are there like biofilm busters of some sort that to do?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Yes, you called it. Half the product is a biofilm buster, and the other half of the product contains different substances, which break the bonds that the Blasto makes. One of them is MSM sulfur. MSM sulfur dissolves the proteins that most parasites make including Blasto to be able to stick to the lining of your intestine.
Lindsey:
And how long will people typically have to take that in order to get rid of the Blasto?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Six months.
Lindsey:
Six months? Wow. Okay, so not a quick process. So that’s kind of part of the protocol for Candida the whole way along?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Yes, it is. But at least you get rid of it. Because I’ve had people come to me saying they’ve had Blastocystis for years, and they kept bouncing from one doctor to another and they’ve never able to get rid of it. And that’s the challenge with Blastocystis. Yes, you need to try to kill it in a drug or herb fashion. But you also need to be able to get it to loosen up and fall off the intestinal lining. So it’s not affixed.
Lindsey:
Okay, so back when you were talking about the metals, I meant to ask, what do you use to test for those heavy metals?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Well, you can do it in quite a few ways. The way I like and I’ve always traditionally done is with hair analysis. And the reason why I’m a proponent, I’ve been using hair analysis since 1985. And I’m a big proponent of it because the hair is a tissue and as a tissue, it’s showing you storage. If you take a blood test on someone for minerals, you can have them eat a banana and then take a blood test and their potassium levels will be high. And yet if they go fasting they won’t be high like that. You see. So a hair doesn’t give you this reading that could occur based on an exposure, which is temporary. We had a patient once who went for bloodwork on the same day he went for a jog under the Brooklyn Bridge, and they happened to be repairing the bridge. So there was all kinds of iron being thrown out into the air. So his blood tests said that he had high levels of iron, but when we had him repeat it the next week, it was fine. So it gives a false reading sometimes. Now so the hair is a tissue that you’re looking at, and you’re looking at tissue storage. And tissue storage means when you find something that’s in the hair, it’s not something that just is there temporarily, it’s been there for a long time.
And when you have experience with hair testing, and you do it for many years, and especially if you’re, let’s say you’re following one patient, you have a patient do the test every three months, you start to see that they have a pattern to their hair. This was used in forensics, which is where we got the idea as nutritionists to use it, because in forensics, they would take care and they would look at it. And this is how they discovered that Napoleon was killed by arsenic poisoning, and how they discovered that Beethoven died from lead poisoning. So when you look at the hair, and you’re following it, you see the pattern that’s there. And as you work with the person’s biochemistry, you can gradually change that pattern and optimize it. But when you look at hair, the bottom line is you’re going to see something that’s in the hair, it means it’s in storage, it means it’s in your tissues. It means it’s not just a very temporary thing; it means you actually really have a buildup of this in your body. And you know to take that seriously. And you know that you can follow it when you detoxify the person.
We use urine tests when we get the person on the program to check their excretion. And this is the best way to look at it. Hair shows you storage, a urine test for toxic metals and a stool test because both of them exist, would show you excretion. So if you have somebody and you’re detoxing them, because you see they have high metals in their hair, how you can tell the efficacy of your program is by looking at their urine and stool and see how much of this metal’s now coming out. Because what you’ll do is you’ll get an increase coming out in the urine. So if you did it a hair test and a urine test, let’s say it showed high mercury, as the person is on the program, when you do subsequent urine tests that mercury is going to elevate because the body’s pushing it out. It’s dumping it.
Lindsey:
Okay. And that’s essentially what you want to see when you’re when you’re getting rid of it.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
You don’t want to see it low. Not at all.
Lindsey:
Right. Okay, and what do you use to chelate those metals?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
We use EDTA, DMPS, a lot of the standard chelators that have been used for quite some time. But we also have a particular way that we do it. We like to use like three or four things categorically. This way you get a better, cleaner detoxification. We always use a chelator, so let’s say that would be in the case of mercury, it might be DMPS or DMSA. Then along with the chelator, we want to use elements that are antagonistic. So what I mean by that is all vitamins and minerals have an opposition with each other or a synergy. When it comes to mercury, zinc, iron, and selenium are very antagonistic to mercury, they actually help nudge the mercury out of storage in your tissues. Vitamin C is like a natural chelator of mercury. So when we have somebody on a mercury program, we have them on a chelator. We have them on the nutrients which also tend to be antagonistic or supportive to bringing it out. And then we have them on binders. There are different types of substances, which helps bind the metal and take it up differently than the chelators. That would be things like citrus pectin. Typically, it’s called modified citrus pectin, and modified citrus pectin, cilantro, sodium alginate, bentonite, all these different clays also help bind the metals and pull them out. So when you use these things in combination, you get a much more thorough detoxing, because the thing you want to avoid (and this is what happens if the person doesn’t have all these things in the proper balance going for them when they’re chelating the metal), there’s a certain amount of reabsorption of the metal and most of the bad reactions the person has when they’re on a metal program are from the metals being reabsorbed back into their system. But when you have them taking all three of these items together, you get a minimal amount of reabsorption so the person gets through it without feeling horrible.
Lindsey:
And I am curious about the cilantro. Are you talking about as a food or is this like an extract?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
You can do it either way.
Lindsey:
Okay. Yeah, I’ve often sent people to eat a lot of cilantro. But I’m not sure how compliant they are with that.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
I hear you.
Lindsey:
Yeah. Okay, so once you’ve gone through this six to eight month, or how long is your protocol, typically last? You said six to eight months, right?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Some people six to eight months, some people 6 to 8 years depends on what’s going on. There are genetic tendencies towards Candida. There is a particular SNP called MMP-1 which predisposes the person to Candida. It’s a SNP, which affects the collagen in the person’s intestinal tract. And it makes it easier for the Candida to permeate that collagen and stick. Those people are people who need to manage Candida as opposed to treat it because their Candida is really never going to go away in that way because of the genetics. So they’re managing it. And then you have other people who don’t have that SNP who you can clear of the Candida within six to eight months. And then you can work on as we said before, what the underlying issues might be. Do they have toxic metals that are underlying this? Do they have hormone imbalances, do they have low stomach acid, which is another reason you can get Candida. And as you said, as you mentioned before, there’s being amino deficient, which is also a possibility. So normally we expect with the surprises of life, we expect it to take about a year for us to handle the typical person with Candida, the person who developed Candida because he was minding his own business, he got hit with a lot of antibiotics, let’s say he had dental work, he was in a car accident, he developed some type of infection, something happened, he got hit with all these antibiotics, he developed Candida, that’s the kind of person that’s the easiest. This, they’re going to take maybe eight months, something like that, to a year, they’ll clear it up, they don’t have really very strong underlying problems.
Now, when you have women who had problems conceiving who have Candida, they usually have lots of underlying hormone problems. And very often I find that they’re copper toxic, and those type of people are going to take a few years to handle because depending on their ability to detoxify, you’ve got to get the copper out for things to be normalized. So I always look at it this way, there’s two parts to my Candida treatment. The first part is getting rid of the Candida, the second part is handling why you got it, and why it became so persistent. Those are the underlying reasons that we look for there.
Where we’re looking at metals, hormones, stomach acid level, or, you know, parasites, it could be quite a few things, but you’re really looking at two kinds of programs here when you’re dealing with a chronic case of Candida. The typical person that we get, I would say, has been fighting Candida for at least 10 years, they’ve been to at least 5, 6, 7, 8 doctors, and they’re bouncing around. And they’ve never really gotten the correct results. Because you know, everybody that they see has their own hobbyhorse or their soapbox that they get on about Candida. And they don’t really have the whole picture like I’m giving it to you.
I’m giving you today the whole picture of what happens with Candida from start to finish. Most doctors know a part of this, or they specialize in one part of it. Like there’s a very famous doctor who was in the Midwest, not of course going to mention his name, but he’s very well-known because he preaches that you’ve got to get the mercury out of your body or the Candida will never go away. And what I learned from his patients, when they started coming to me was that the last thing you want to do is touch the mercury first, because all the patients that were going to him and it all made sense, it makes sense to me that you want to get rid of the mercury in order to resolve the case. But when you address the mercury first, what you’re doing is you’re pulling this mercury out of the person’s tissues, it’s coming down the intestinal tract where the Candida is sitting, and you’re basically giving the Candida a bath of this mercury. And not only is the mercury immunosuppressive so it reduces the immune response in your gut. This has been observed for a while. No one’s really fully got a grip on why this is. But Candida absorbs mercury. When you start killing Candida in a person who’s mercury toxic, as the Candida decomposes, it releases Mercury ions into the body. So if you do this as the first action on the person, they’re going to be so sick, they’re not going to be able to continue. And that’s what ends up happening. And that’s how I ended up having all these patients come to me, because they were trying to go through this doctor’s protocol, and it just made them so sick, they couldn’t handle it. So I learned the hard way. Again, from that, there’s a college of hard knocks, I learned at that point, you don’t touch the mercury first, you first reduce the Candida as much as you can, then you gradually pull the mercury out while you’re maintaining the person on a program that will suppress that Candida as the mercury is coming out.
Lindsey:
And so you mentioned that women who had trouble conceiving are often copper toxic. Is there a relationship between those two?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Well, copper is estrogenic.
Lindsey:
Okay.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
In the body, minerals are very interesting. Anyone who wants to make a good study of minerals I would refer them to Trace Elements Lab. Dr. David O Watts has written a great book about trace elements*. And he is the world expert, as far as I’m concerned. Watts has shown in many studies that copper itself as an element tends to be estrogenic. Copper is what stimulates estrogen receptors. Copper also stimulates the production and release of estrogen. Zinc, on the other hand, more stands for progesterone. And while we’re on the subject, manganese is the one that more stands for testosterone. So if you have a woman who’s accumulated copper, for whatever reason, it’s like her body is walking around with more sensitive more estrogen sensitivity or estrogen dominance than one who doesn’t. And that’s the case where Candida loves that; Candida loves estrogen, and estrogen makes babies grow, it makes Candida grow.
Lindsey:
And where are they getting the copper from?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
That’s a very good question. Many years ago, we had a lot of cases of copper toxicity from people who lived in cities, particularly who lived in old brownstones and what we found was that the copper plumbing after a while it gets old. It leeches copper in the water and people will notice this when they look in the sink or they look down at the drain and they see green stains in that drain. That’s copper.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Now you could also have a vegetarian diet, also very high in copper. So if a woman is, let’s say, a blood type O, who normally would be more of a paleo diet, if they’re being a strict vegetarian or a vegan, they’ll develop a copper toxicity from the diet. And there are some other sources of copper you can acquire but that’s kind of individualized to someone’s hobbies or their profession where they’re coming in contact with the metal. For the average person plumbing is a major reason why they have copper. And then also you have to remember to have amalgams, like everyone thinks of mercury amalgams. Mercury amalgams are actually an alloy of zinc, copper and mercury. It’s not all mercury in there. There’s copper in there, too. So if someone’s amalgams get old and they start leaking mercury, they’re also leaking copper.
Lindsey:
Yeah.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
What about a copper IUD? Are those problematic?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Highly.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Okay.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Highly, that’s sometimes the underlying reason for a woman’s Candida problem.
Lindsey:
Yeah. Okay. So can you talk about the major categories or types of herbal products that are used to treat Candida and explain why you use the ones you use?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Yes, there’s one particular group of products, antifungals, which work better systemically. And there are formulas nowadays made with some of those. A key herb is lomatium, which was used by the North American Indians. Yes, they used it for a condition they called Fairy Tongue, which we now know of as being thrush. A companion herb to that is called spilanthes, which is a little different, but works virtually in a similar mechanism. And as I said before, there are formulations now that exist from different companies. There’s a particular one we use a lot called Biocidin*, which there are three or four different versions now of Biocidin. Biocidin is very effective to kill for killing Candida. But then keep in mind as I said in the beginning, we would rotate these, so would it would not be unusual for us to give someone a rotation where they would take Biocidin, and then they would take lomatium, then they might take spilanthes, then we might use one of the herbs from South America called Kolorex*. And we might we might use something from Metagenics like Candibactin then. There’s Candibactin AR and BR (find in my Wellevate Dispensary*). It wouldn’t be unusual for us to rotate these things. Berberine combined with citrus extracts, then grapefruit seed extract when you combine Berberine and grapefruit seed extract, it’s very effective against Candida. That’s a product that’s called Tricycline, it’s made by Allergy Research Group (find in my Wellevate Dispensary*). So these all these can be used while you have the person on what we refer to as our basic phase zero. Phase zero was what the parasite cleanse that I told you about originally evolved into. And phase zero was a combination of diatomaceous earth, Candi-Scrub, Candi-Loosener and an enzyme product, which helps digest the Candida. A lot of the Candida patients I’m sure are familiar with CANDI-zyme and other products that physically digest the Candida. We use those enzymes with diatomaceous earth and with our Candi- Scrub and Candi-Loosener as our phase zero. That’s our first phase for Candida elimination, that’s what helps get rid of the parasites, it helps get rid of what I would refer to as the top layer of Candida. And then we would graduate the person into the first phase, which is where they use those herbs I just mentioned, which tends to work very well systemically.
Hydrogen peroxide is not an herb, but food grade hydrogen peroxide works very well at destroying Candida systemically. We would then eventually graduate the person to phase two, which is where we handle the intestinal candida. This is the Candida that usually will come back and cause the person to relapse if it’s not addressed. And it’s also the Candida layer, which tends to stop the probiotics from being able to stick. Now, when it comes to this, the only thing that’s going to work on deep in the intestinal tract are antifungals, which are fatty acid based and they are primarily just two, which are effective, but you have to get really, really good quality products, you have to use caprylic acid, and then undecylenic acid (find Thorne SF722 undecylenic acid and many options for caprylic acid in my Wellevate Dispensary*) . Because they’re fatty acids, they’re able to enter the cells and enter those tissues where the Candida grows deep into and then eliminate it, just sear it right at the edge. And this will kill it deep enough for the probiotics to be able to stick.
Now what we found with probiotics is interesting. It’s not as simple as going to the store and buying a probiotic. Once you’ve had Candida, it’s difficult to get the probiotics to stick in your intestinal tract again. So you need to use a probiotic for your small intestine which would be some acidophilus strain, and then a bifido strain for your colon, because the colon is represented by bifidus and the small intestine acidophilus. Then you need to use a host of different things that we call prebiotics, which serve as food for the probiotics to get them to grow. It’s almost like you had a lawn and your lawn was hit with so much sun and bad chemicals and bad things. It just killed the grass and it made the soil infertile to grow grass again. So you have to literally supplement that soil to be able to get the grass to grow. And we find that sometimes we need six or seven different prebiotics in the person’s case. One of the most important prebiotics is fiber, because fiber is with friendly bacteria feed also have in order to make sure chain fatty acids which help regulate your intestinal tract. So when you’re looking at a probiotic, if the person takes probiotics, and they don’t work, it’s number one because they still have too much Candida and number two, it’s because they’re not using enough of the prebiotics to feed the probiotic to get it to grow.
Lindsey:
And are you using a premixed prebiotic with different prebiotics in it or are you…
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Well, we use about 12 different products on the on the Flora program. One of the important probiotics is Saccharomyces which is a yeast. So it’s also very often referred to as Casper, because it’s a friendly yeast. And it actually it helps other probiotics to grow. And it protects the probiotics so that Candida doesn’t repel it. It is a yeast itself, but it’s not a pathogenic yeast.
Lindsey:
Okay, so I’m wondering where people can go to find you.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Very easy, they can search me on the internet. My website is health-truth.com. And I also have another website, which is NewYorkCityCandidaDoctor.com. And probably if they just search my name, and then put the word Candida next to it, they’ll come up with hundreds of hundreds of pages.
Lindsey:
Okay, great. I’m sure they’ll have no problem. And the products that you mentioned that you created, I am assuming they can find those on your website.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Yes, they can.
Lindsey:
Okay, great. Anything else that I didn’t ask about that I should have?
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
I think within reason no, I think we have a pretty good, I think as far as for the average public who’s suffering with this condition to become more enlightened and to understand why what they’ve been doing hasn’t worked, I think we’ve hit the main things.
Lindsey:
Okay, great. Well, I appreciate all this in-depth information that you’ve shared with us. And I’m sure people will be looking for you after this if they’ve been struggling with this this issue.
Dr. Michael Biamonte:
Very good. Okay, great. It was great to talk to you.
Lindsey:
Thanks so much.
If you’re suffering with candida or any other gut issue, you’re welcome to set up a free, 30-minute breakthrough session with me (Lindsey). We’ll talk about what you’ve been going through and I’ll tell you about my gut health coaching 5-appointment program in which I recommend lab tests, educate you on what the results mean and the protocols used by doctors to fix the problems revealed. Or if you’re ready to jump in right away or can just afford one appointment at a time, you can set up an 1-hour consultation with me.
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