To describe why fungus, and the battle against it is so critical to recovering and maintaining health is going to require me to change the way you think a little bit. I hope you will bear with me to the end, and I pray that I can effectively communicate a whole new microscopic world to you.

I always thought, and was taught, that microscopic organisms are what they are – no changing involved. This is known as “monomorphism” (mono = “one”, morphism = “condition or quality of having a specified form”) For example, a virus is always a virus, a bacterium is always a bacterium, and yeast is always yeast. This belief, coupled with another widely-accepted view – that the cause of disease is these invaders, not the terrain (our body) they find themselves in, has led us to battle these foes with differentiated, and often ineffective weapons.

There are now microscopes powerful enough (30,0000x magnification) to observe live blood samples. Typically, without microscopes this powerful, blood samples must be stained before being observed, essentially killing the contents. What a world has unfolded now that life can be preserved to see!!

Even a healthy person has fungal spores sitting in their blood, doing no harm. However, the first change that occurs as a person’s vitality declines, is that the fungal spore sheds its coating, making it virtually indistinguishable from a virus. This form then changes into a cocci (or dot-shaped form). Methycillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) has been all over the news lately, and is a good example of this form. From this form emerges a rod-shaped bacteria. One familiar example of this would be E. Coli. The rod-shaped forms then changes into a yeast form that resembles a gourd with little round spores on the bottom which it shoots off to replicate itself. Finally, this gourd-shaped yeast changes into a yeast with tentacles that is able to invade cells and either damage the DNA which produces improper cells or co-opt the DNA to produce more yeast forms. This take-over is commonly known as cancer. So, the fight for our health really boils down to a fight against fungus. I have seen this process in slides that I am hoping to post at this site soon.

In addition to the challenges presented to the body by each of these different organisms, every fungus in the body excreted somethingy called “mycotoxins”, which, as the name implies, are toxic to the body. According to Doug Kaufmann, a prominent fungus expert and host of the syndicated daily health show, Know the Cause!, "Mycotoxins cannot presently be discerned inside the human body. All we can do is see the track of damage they cause." Fungi are ubiquitous, and easily find their way into our systems. A fungal overgrowth in the body can mimic many diseases, such as diabetes, sinusitis, eczema, digestive disorders, and even cancer. (http://www.bioactivenutrients.com/FungusFree.html)

What is the mediator in the changes of form? Voltage. The above changes occurred as the voltage in the solution dropped. Obviously, then, being at low voltage makes us susceptible to all sorts of infections, but there are also other variables in our fight against fungus.

Intake of fungus is one we can control. Critical to realize is that antibiotics are made from fungus. So, at the same time that you are wiping out the friendly bacteria in the gut, you are introducing loads of the enemy to the body. Those yeast overgrowths after rounds of antibiotics aren’t nearly as benign as we’ve all thought. They are a huge red flag that our body has been overrun, and since we now know that the yeast is “pleomorphic”, meaning it can change forms, we ought to treat it as seriously as it deserves. I no longer give or take antibiotics unless it is absolutely required (read: “forced”), such as during inpatient surgery recovery. I rely instead on maintaining a healthy inner terrain that is inhospitable to fungus, and then using silver, homeopathic remedies and essential oils when called for.

Abbie was diagnosed with MRSA colonized in her trachea in June 2005, back when she was still getting all her “nutrition” (sorry, it really does deserve quotations) from a can, not receiving much supplementation, and enduring rounds of antibiotics. She was also very low voltage. Now she is on a terrific, mostly raw, anti-fungal diet and her voltage is normalizing. So, once I learned about pleomorphism I asked if it could work in the opposite direction – could a rise in voltage and improvement in terrain change the MRSA back to innocuous fungal spores. The answer was “we don’t have the slides to prove it yet, but it would seem that would be true.” This makes complete sense to me, and I am hopeful this will clear her infection (which right now is not dangerous because it is not in a sterile field like her blood or urine). So, when you see those scary news stories, remember that we aren’t necessarily limited to antibiotics to win this war.Another major source of fungus is our food supply. Corn in particular is riddled with an especially dangerous fungus, aflatoxin. It is virtually impossible to destroy, and is the most potent carcinogen known. You may think you don’t eat a lot of corn, but check your cupboards and think again. I am not just talking corn on the cob and corn chips. I’d like to include a fairly long passage from a most interesting book to make this point.

From The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Micheal Pollan

p.18…”Corn is what feeds the steer that becomes the steak. Corn feeds the chicken and the pig, the turkey and the lamb, the catfish and the tilapia, and increasingly, even the salmon, a carnivore by nature that the fish farmers are reengineering to tolerate corn. The eggs are made of corn. The milk, and cheese, and yogurt, which once came from dairy cows that grazed on grass, now typically come from Holsteins that spend their working lives indoors tethered to machines, eating corn.

Head over to the processed foods and you find ever more intricate manifestations of corn. A chicken nugget, for example, piles corn upon corn: what chicken it contains consists of corn, of course, but so do most of a nugget’s other constituents, including the modified corn starch that glues the thing together, the corn flour in the batter that coats it, and the corn oil in which it gets fried. Much less obviously, the leavenings and lecithin, the mono-, di-, and triglycerides, the attractive golden coloring, and even the citric acid that keeps the nugget “fresh” can all be derived from corn.

To wash down your chicken nugget with virtually any soft drink in the supermarket is to have some corn with your corn. Since the 1980s virtually all the sodas and most of the fruit drinks sold in the supermarket have been sweetened with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)—after water, corn sweetener is their primary ingredient. Grab a beer for your beverage and you’ll still be drinking corn, in the form of alcohol fermented from glucose refined from corn. Read the ingredients on the label of any processed food, provided you know the chemical names it travels under, corn is what you will find. For modified or unmodified starch, for glucose syrup and maltodextrin, for crystalline fructose and ascorbic acid, for lecithin and dextrose, lactic acid and lysine, for maltose and HFCS, for MSG and polyols, for the caramel color and xanthan gum, read: corn. Corn is in the coffee whitener and Cheez Whiz, the frozen yogurt and TV dinner, the canned fruit and ketchup and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting, gravy and frozen waffles, the syrups and hot sauces, the mayonnaise and mustard, the hot dogs and bologna, the margarine and shortening, the salad dressings and the relishes and even the vitamins. (Yes, it’s in the Twinkie, too.) There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn…

p.23 (talking about carbon isotope tests that can determine what people eat)..”But carbon 13 doesn’t lie, and researchers who have compared the isotopes in the flesh or hair of North Americans to those in the same tissues of Mexicans report that it is now we in the North who are the true people of corn. ‘When you look at the isotope ratios,’ Todd Dawson, a Berkeley biologist who’s done this sort of research, told me, ‘we North Americans look like corn chips with legs.’”

Ouch! I’ve never exactly imagined myself as a Frito in heels. Corn is insidious, and rooting it out of our diets is takes a conscious effort and willingness to change our eating habits. Ray was initially concerned when I banned his favorite dressing, but now claims to be “addicted” to the simple mix of lemon juice, sea salt, fresh garlic and olive oil that I whip up in the Vitamix. Eat more simply. Eat fresh – raw is even better. Buy meat and milk from animals grazed on grass.

Some other favorites also must go in this battle against fungus: vinegar (hence, the lemon juice in the dressing); and soy sauce (almost a crime here in Hawaii) being notable condiments.

Here is short list to create an anti-fungal diet, called the Kaufman Diet. The creators, including Doug Kaufman quoted above are the authors of a book called The Germ that Causes Cancer.

In addition to dietary changes, there are some supplements that are helpful against fungus. My favorite is sodium bicarbonate because it is both very powerful and very inexpensive. You may know it better as baking soda, the white powder in the yellow box. You can take _ - 1 tsp dissolved in a little bit of warm water morning and evening to help cleanse out fungal overgrowths. Abbie gets _ tsp in her overnight drip of clear liquids. Be prepared for the results of cleansing, which could be foul smelling sweat, breath, or bowel movements. Abbie had all of these when we first started using baking soda. I also use baking soda topically for her ingrown toenails, which prevents fungal infection there. We use it to brush teeth, which promotes exceptionally healthy gums and overall good oral health.

You can purchase capsules of supplements such as olive-leaf extract, caprylic acid, or apple cider vinegar, but I’ve not tried any of them because the sodium bicarbonate has proven so effective, is easy to get, and cheap, cheap, cheap. It is recommended, though to vary your anti-fungals to maintain potency.

Another important supplement to take is a good probiotic. Just as you don’t want to add any more “bad guys” by consuming fungus, you want to add “good guys” to help tip the balance of power in your favor. Abbie takes a probiotic that includes lactobaccilus sporogenes, because of its interaction with organic silica.

As we have gotten down to the root challenges in Abbie’s recovery we have found three, which are interrelated. First is voltage, which is required for healing/regeneration. Second is fungus, which when allowed to get out of control creates a toxic environment and infections. Lastly, the thyroid, specifically hypothyroidism. This suboptimal functioning of the thyroid system lowers voltage, which opens the door for fungus, infection, and a whole host of other issues. It really is a web – as the thyroid, which appears to be the voltage regulator in the body malfunctions, voltage drops or is erratic, which gives plenty of leeway for fungal overgrowth, further stressing the body. It’s difficult to fix one without fixing the other two, and we have seen amazing and rapid progress once we began a three-pronged approach: thyroid, fungus, voltage.

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