One thing I never got around to posting about, due to the personal nature of the issue, was a super severe candida problem that I've been struggling with since about this time last year in 2025 or sooner. For those not aware, candida is a gut bacteria which sometimes gets out of balance with the rest of the bacterial ecology of the gut — and when this happens, it can cause yeast infections in women (and even men), along with other issues. The type of issues vary, as you will hear about here.
What happened was, I had a couple especially severe dental infections due to not being able to afford the surgeries I needed for 2 of my teeth. The problem was not that I couldn't afford a $500 surgery, but that I couldn't afford to take a week off work to recover, on top of that. Because the infections had gotten so bad, I had to take far more antibiotics than is normally advisable, and sadly this caused the worst ongoing candida imbalance I've ever struggled with in my life. Antibiotics kill many bacterias in the gut, including healthy ones that are normally responsible for keeping candida in check.
It was such a nightmare at first with yeast infections, although thankfully the ongoing constant, nonstop yeast infections did eventually stop after a double-prolonged treatment series with fluconazole over the counter from pharmacies. Generally for these more serious infections, you would take 3 fluconazole in one week, followed by one a week for several weeks. That didn't work for me and I had to continue doing that same thing repeatedly, which eventually calmed down the yeast infections.
It reached the point where I only needed to take a single dose of fluconazole for the rare return of a little yeast infection, and today thankfully it's even more mild than that. Fluconazole is an anti-fungal pill that is sold at the drug store for women's yeast infections (and can also be used for male yeast infections as well). It kills candida.
But that wasn't all. Unfortunately, although this was not classified as systemic candida (which is defined by candida discoloration in the fingers), the imbalance starting affecting more of my body. One problem I was having included tongue infections. I've always had just a tiny bit of whiteness on my tongue most of my life, and never thought much of it, but I'm now educated on tongue hygiene and thrush. At first, I started getting small tongue infections, often. But then I started getting a huge tongue infection and noticing lots of white on my tongue.
I was scraping my tongue, but of course, my tongue was really swolen and hurting, so I went to the doctor about this and got treated with a massive dose of fluconazole, far greater than the 3 times a week. The amount you'd take over the counter in one dose was prescribed twice a day for 2 weeks. This is very hard on the liver and causes exhaustion, but it helped so much. The white tongue was quickly resolved, but the infection was stubborn. Though it did improve so much, it was not fully resolved
It's a good thing this was treated properly with fluconazole and not antibiotics which would have made the problem so much worse. This was the moment when I was so grateful for having a good doctor.
The doctor had to keep prescribing continual runs of fluconazole, unfortunately. And that's why at one point I was sent to a specialist. The speciaist was just trying to understand if I have any diseases which would explain my resistence to the fluconazole. In the end, since I didn't have anything like that, my family doctor decided that the tongue infection being so stubborn was because it had been such a longterm infection which had gotten way out of control.
Currently, I'm on what will thankfully (likely) be my last run of fluconazole for this tongue infection. Finally, the pain in my tongue is down to the lowest it's been now on the third day of a 7 day fluconazole run (only the slightest left), and that should mean it will be fully resolved. I'm looking forward to talking to my doctor about tongue after care and tongue hygiene, just to clarify better what a healthy tongue should look like and what it means with the colors you see. I do look that up too, but I am now open as well to the doctor's ideas, if any.
Observing this huge — unreasonably extensive — candida issue, I've assumed that the most likely reason why I also struggle with so many constant pesky infections (such as on my fingers etc) seems to be due to this candida issue. It's not well understood by medical science about gut health. I've had incredible results from taking 80 billion strain probiotics daily. This has stopped my tendency to get colds quite often, and helped me control food cravings. But at the same time, it has not resolved my tongue. The results from probiotics to balance out gut flora seem to work in layers throughout the body — not just straightforwardly like one issue and one solution.
Doctors don't understand this well, which is my only explanation for what's going on with me with infection at the moment. I'm thinking it's a result of the earlier candida imbalance why I've been having this problem. At least, that's my only clue, since so far it's not understood by my family doctor or the specialist of infectious diseases.
I'm thrilled to have the tongue resolved finally, but I sense that there is more, further, unresolved candida issues that I'm still facing. My liver has been checked routinely and has done just fine through all this fluconazole, but I do worry about taking so much. It causes severe exhaustion. That said, it might be true I would still benefit from more even now that the tongue is healed, but that won't be an option. So, I'll be hoping the probiotics can slowly work the problem out. I would double my dose if I could afford it, but this is not within my budget. That said, the benefits seem to happen over time.
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