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Bessie Jo Tillman
After a life time of eating the Standard American Diet (SAD - appropriate acronym), I found my body overwhelmed by puzzling symptoms in my late thirties. Turned out a lot of those symptoms related the overgrowth of the yeast organism Candida. That was also the era that birth control pills became available, so it seemed perfectly smart to take them for family planning so my husband and I could get through professional training before starting our family. After I finished my internship and he passed the bar exam we moved to the mountains, a great place to live except for the poison oak which caused me to take some courses of cortisone to quell the terrible itch and misery of oozing poison oak dermatitis. Then too there were the normal stresses of life that we all faced in the twentieth century. Those 12 hour shifts as an emergency room physician was certainly one of mine. Since free doughnuts and coffee awaited me in the doctors' lounge, I imbibed while chatting with the other doctors if nothing was going on at the ER in the mornings. (Just thinking of eating doughnuts and drinking coffee grosses me out now.) Our two lovely daughters were also born in those years that I worked as an emergency room physician. Somewhere in the midst of all of that I developed recurrent bladder infections. Not knowing any better at that point in time, I took lots of courses of antibiotics to try to control them. (Trained in standard medical care that was the only thing that I knew to do at the time.) That was the tipping point. All of those antibiotics added to eating the SAD, sweets, taking birth control pills and cortisone and my stressful lifestyle finally tipped me into that vicious cycle. Candida overgrowth sets up the opportunity for bacterial overgrowth leading to treatment with antibiotics, which causes more yeast overgrowth. At the time I had no clue about the role of Candida, the yeast overgrowth, in my problem or what to do about it. But I did know that I was feeling miserable. I continued working, caring for my family and doing all of those extras that I thought I needed to do at the time only by pushing myself. My gut started rebelling. At first when it acted it up, I thought that the cottage cheese had gone bad. Turns out it was not the cottage cheese but rather my gut that had gone bad. My stomach and intestines were fouled up. Up until that time I had a gut of steel, nothing bothered it. Unfortunately, my GI tract became very uncomfortable with heartburn, bloat, gas, alternating diarrhea and constipation. Then I developed "food allergies" and had to cut many of the most common American foods out of my diet such as: all sweets for sure, including fruit for awhile, dairy, wheat and later all gluten grains, tomatoes and tomato products, and all alcohol. At the same time my brain at times felt in a fog and when that pre-menstrual time came around you might as well put me in a hole with a lid on it since I could get so crabby and irritable. Although my doctor colleagues tried to help me with the recurrent bladder infection problems, I knew that main stream docs did not have the answers to these puzzling things that were going on with my body. That's what launched me into the quest for answers. My research lead me to physicians, dentists and other health practitioners and researchers who looked for more natural healing approaches, who went beyond treating symptoms and sought for the cause of diseases. In my quest to reverse my discomforts, I became equipped to help others with similar distress. When God gives us victory in our trials, he then gives us the authority as overcomes to take the spoils from the deceiver by helping others to overcome their challenges in the same area we have suffered through. He empowers and supports us in this process. So, I became an expert in the field of Candidiasis, the overgrowth of the yeast organism named Candida albicans. If you recognize yourself in this story, you may be looking for answers to your problems too. I took the first step in overcoming yeast, Candida, overgrowth by changing my diet to one that served my body well, that fed me optimally without feeding the yeasty beasties, candida. Join me in taking this very best first step.
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