Return to: Reading Room > Research > Yeast > What is the "Yeast Problem?"

• Summary
• What Is the "Yeast Problem?"
• The Controversy over the Yeast Problem?
• What Do Yeasts Normally Do?
• Yeast: Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?
• Yeasts and the Body
• Yeasts, Antibiotics and Imbalance
• Yeasts Damage the Body's Defenses
• Symptoms of the Yeast Problem

An epidemic of illness visits our culture. It wears the masks of many diseases and is costumed in the symptoms of bad days and uncomfortable nights. This epidemic is related to the widespread use of antibiotics prescribed to treat infections and also used to feed the cattle and poultry that we consume as meat, milk, and eggs. Combined with other factors, antibiotics create an imbalance in the population of good and bad germs that normally occupy our bodies, especially those in the gastrointestinal tract. Daily consumption of foods rich in other kinds of yeasts and molds and the inhalation of moldy air compounds the problem. Reducing intestinal yeast populations offers an answer. Useful steps to recovery are:

1. Avoidance of foods rich in yeast and molds.
2. Prolonged treatment with an anti-fungal medicine to kill intestinal yeasts.
3. Vaccine injections.

What Is the "Yeast Problem?"

The term "yeast" refers to a loose subclass of molds or fungi that share certain characteristics. There are many different kinds of yeasts in nature. A few of them are used for baking and brewing and others live normally on the surfaces of fruits and vegetables, or on and in our bodies.

Certain yeasts and other non-yeast fungi are associated with disease in human beings, animals and plants. Some people suffer from a chronic "yeast problem," which differs from what the majority of doctors define as a yeast infection. The original understanding of the yeast problem came from the clinical observation of a few physicians; it has been confirmed by the experience of hundreds of practitioners and their patients. The problem fits with what we know about the complex biology of fungi and the interrelationship between the yeasts in our food, in our bodies, and in the air we breathe on the one hand, and our immune system on the other.

In clinical practice, yeast has been connected to a host of illnesses, including, among others: psoriasis; depression; eczema; inflammatory bowel disease; multiple allergies to foods, inhalants and chemicals; and endometriosis. It is often the most important among the various causative factors behind such illnesses. In addition, many people who suffer from a yeast problem report difficulty concentrating (also called attention deficit disorder in children), foggy headedness, lack of mental clarity, and mental fatigue. In more extreme cases, individuals may feel as if they are drunk. Anti-fungal medications alleviate many of these symptoms.

The Controversy over the Yeast Problem?

The idea that there can be a yeast problem is controversial. Authoritative medical voices, such as the American Academy of Allergy and Immunology and the Food and Drug Administration, have pronounced that there is no such thing and that those who claim otherwise are perpetrating a hoax. The concept of a yeast problem doesn't fit with the older view that the yeast germ, except under extraordinary circumstances, only produces minor and transient illness. This belief is held by the many physicians who will not look at evidence unless it has been produced by a randomized double blind placebo controlled study. Typically used for validating the effectiveness of a drug or other medical intervention, this kind of study is difficult to design when it comes to clinical problems in which complex dietary changes are an important factor. Also, funding for such research is lacking.

Rather than acknowledging that the observations of hundreds of clinicians and their patients may be based on a very real, interesting, and complex problem in human biology that derives mostly from the after effects of antibiotics, those who question the reality of the yeast problem base their position on two main arguments:

• There is no "scientific proof."
• Those who claim that there is a yeast problem are unqualified because they are interested in nutrition and other "suspicious" fields.

What Do Yeasts Normally Do?

In our culture, yeast is used in two important ways:

1. Getting a rise from yeast

   The bread you eat is made with yeast. The yeast dies as the bread bakes but when it was alive in the dough, the yeast's cells made all the tiny bubbles that helped the dough rise. During the leavening and baking, water, carbon dioxide, and alcohol escaped. (If a sourdough yeast were used, lactic acid and much less alcohol would be produced, giving the bread a pleasant and healthier sour characteristic.) Without the yeast, the loaf would shrink and harden in the oven and the bread would lack its special flavor.

   It would also lose nutritional value. Yeast itself is nutritious. It produces B vitamins, as well as other essential nutrients. But the small amounts of yeast that give bread its good yeasty taste are not enough to add much directly to the nutritional value of the bread. Instead, yeast's contribution comes from its ability to release minerals present in the wheat. Zinc, for example, is easier for our intestines to assimilate if the wheat is "treated" with yeast.

   The discovery of how to use yeast for baking probably didn't occur until the beginning of wheat cultivation 7,000 - 11,000 years ago. Wheat (and rye wheat) is the only grain whose moist flour is sticky enough (from the gluten content) to permit bubbles to form. The other grains - barley, oats, rice, corn, millet, and triticale - cannot be used for making dough, although they can be used for making beer.

2. Getting high from yeast

   Wine and beer were known before recorded history and surely were discovered before or when people started farming. All that was needed to make them was a pot with a tight lid; inside, deprived of oxygen, yeasts would convert sugars of the fruit, grain, or honey to alcohol, as well as to carbon dioxide (bubbles) and water.

   Early brewers didn't need a yeast starter to do this chemical work. Every fruit, vegetable, or grain provides one on its surface. Yeasts grow there as part of the normal surface population of microscopic beings that inhabit plants and animals. This "microflora" covers the surfaces of all living things and contributes in various ways to the health of its host. Polishing a freshly picked apple removes some of the coating of microflora that inhabit its healthy surface. These friendly germs help protect the apple from other germs that make apples spoil. If you put up apples in a cold cellar for the winter, you never wash them or they will rot for lack of their normal surface germs.

   You can use surface yeasts to make an alcoholic beverage from any sweet plant. But today's breweries and wineries prefer to kill off the natural yeasts and replace them with a more reliable strain, originally from the surface of the fruit, that gives a consistent taste and alcohol content.

   Yeasts from the surfaces of plants are also floating in the air, along with other mold fragments and spores. With a little luck, such an airborne yeast maybe used for brewing and baking. For example, San Francisco sourdough bread is made with a wild yeast that was taken from the air of the Bay Area and is propagated in dough as a sourdough starter. This yeast is just as "yeasty" as any other so sourdough bread cannot be used as a substitute if you are allergic to yeast.

Yeast: Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?

Yeasts live on the surfaces of all living things, they leaven bread and brew wine and beer. They can also overpopulate surfaces of your body and release chemicals that may injure you in complex ways. But what exactly are they?

Yeast is a kind of fungus. The terms mold and fungus are synonymous and refer to a whole group of living things of which there are countless varieties, including mushrooms and the very yeasts--monilia and candida--that inhabit your body. These names describe a kind of living thing that is neither animal nor vegetable.

Of course, mushrooms seem to be vegetables and, without a doubt, any grocer would classify them as such. Like yeasts and other molds (of which mushrooms are simply an above-ground delegate of a large organization of subsurface filaments) mushrooms don't walk around or behave in any but a vegetable-like way.

On the other hand, mushrooms and their relatives, the yeasts, have some very animal-like behavior when it comes down to chemistry. Unlike plants, which only need sun and soil to live, animals need to consume other beings to survive. So do molds, mildews, mushrooms, and yeasts. It's a big difference. Because burning fuel, such as sugars and fats, with oxygen to produce a "smoke" of carbon dioxide (bubbles) and water is yeast's obvious activity, yeast is not plant-like at all. So, yeast is neither animal nor vegetable. The question is resolved scientifically by making a separate category for fungi.

Seen through the microscope, yeasts look as docile and simple as vegetables. But the more we know about the aggressive side of their chemistry, the more they resemble animals. And the more we know about the complex ways they interact with our bodies, the less they appear to be outsiders and the more they seem to be a part of us. It is especially important, then, to view the yeast problem as a state of inner imbalance rather than an attack from the outside by a microbe or a disease.

Yeasts and the Body

Look at yourself. If you stand naked before a mirror, you can see somewhere between one and two square yards of surface skin. It seems at first that this is a major interface between yourself and your environment. Like an apple or other piece of fruit, your skin is inhabited by a microflora of friendly germs, and yeasts are the ones that normally live on more of the different body surfaces than any other germ. Keep in mind that from the viewpoint of a germ, the difference between armpits, scalps, and chests are as great as those between swamps, forests, and deserts. It is striking that yeast germs colonize such diverse domains of our bodies. But yeasts show a similar flexibility throughout nature.

Varied and expansive as your skin surfaces may be, they are dwarfed by your inner terrain. Your digestive tract is a series of folds, wrinkles, ridges, and finger-like projections whose collective surface area is roughly that of a tennis court. Unlike the lungs, another equally huge inner surface, the intestinal tract is normally inhabited by about 1,000,000,000,000,000 germs, some of which are yeasts. Human beings are born germ-free and the yeasts are among the first to climb aboard. Like any "good parasite," they are a friend for life. Scientists have not yet figured out exactly what they do but it is reasonable to think that they help protect us, just as other yeasts protect the many other living things they inhabit.

It has been standard medical teaching that harm done by yeasts occurs only by rare invasions into parts of the body - blood, brain, deep tissues - or by common irritations of the skin, mouth (thrush), or vagina. But clinicians' observations, beginning with Dr. C. Orian Truss of Birmingham, Alabama, who wrote The Missing Diagnosis in 1983, makes it clear that more complicated kinds of imbalance between people and their bodies' populations of yeasts can be a major factor in serious and mysterious illness.

Yeasts, Antibiotics and Imbalance

How could it be that all sorts of illnesses could be connected to a germ that normally lives on our inner and outersurfaces? A germ that is also part of the normal surface flora of all living things? One that we have used since the discovery of brewing and baking to produce a major part of our daily food supply? And one that provides valuable nutrients when consumed in its pure form?

The answer is simple; in fact, it's one word: antibiotics. The quickest way to get some sort of a yeast problem is to take a lot of antibiotics. Within days after doing so, many people may experience symptoms that stem from a change in the flora of the intestine, mouth, or vagina. The reason: the antibiotic kills off many of the good germs (bacteria) that are the neighbors of yeasts throughout the body and allows the yeasts to multiply. Under normal circumstances there may be so few yeasts on most of the body's surfaces that it's hard to get any when you take a culture. But after 48 hours of tetracycline, for example, yeasts can be cultured easily from everyone.

The prevalence of the yeast problem is probably due mostly to the widespread use of antibiotics prescribed for infections or acne. It's also possible that antibiotics in our poultry, eggs, milk, and meat contribute to the problem by shifting the germ population in many people in favor of the yeasts. Although consuming these foods may contribute to the origins of the yeast problem in a given person, avoiding meat, dairy, and poultry products doesn't seem to be essential to restoring the balance. Another contributing factor may be modern forms of malnutrition. Our diet is rich in refined and altered oils and sugars and relatively poor in certain essential nutrients.

But the main factor is the introduction of antibiotics by prescription and in our food supply, which greatly favors the growth of yeasts in the intestine. The yeasts then produce toxins that interfere with your body's chemistry in ways that are still not completely understood.

Yeasts Damage the Body's Defenses

One kind of harm done to your body's defense system by an imbalance of yeast has to do with the way your immune system works. To speak of your immune system as if it were a well-defined part of the body gives a false idea of the separateness of the different activities within you. The basic function--recognition of what belongs in you and what does not--depends on knowing where your boundaries are and how to recognize friendly outsiders such as food and other germs that normally inhabit your body. It also involves the destruction or elimination of foes, such as toxic chemicals and germs that do harm by making toxic chemicals within you.

The rules for recognizing what is friendly, or "self," and what is harmful or "non-self," are provided by a group of cells in the body known as T lymphocytes. You can think of them as the smarT cells or the staTe department of the body. They are given information about molecules found throughout the body by a group of gatekeeper cells - the macrophages. The T cells have representatives everywhere, especially near the openings and surfaces of the body, and each representative can send word to the others within minutes of discovering an unknown enemy.

The decision to make war or keep the peace with outside molecules is passed on by the T cells to another set of cells, the B cells, that make antibodies that cling to the invaders and help destroy them. This defense department is dumB because it relies on getting the signal from the T cells, and sometimes fails to show much judgment on its own. Situations can arise in the body in which injury to T cells leaves the B cells unsupervised. Under such circumstances, the B cells may mistakenly mount a defense against friendly molecules, according to the rule: "If you don't hear from headquarters, make war." The wreckage from such ill-begotten wars causes symptoms that may affect any part of your body. The names for the diseases that result - colitis, arthritis, dermatitis, vasculitis - are often a translation from the Greek for "inflammation of the ..." The similarity in their names describes this war in ways that remind us of the common mechanisms involved.

T cells have a particular relationship with yeasts. Proper functioning of T cells has to do with keeping yeasts under control, or in their proper place and numbers. It is as if the "state department" had a special force available to deal more or less directly with yeasts without needing as much intervention from the "military" (B cells) as is the case with most other germs. Yeasts, on the other hand, appear to have a special ability to attack the T cells, to the point where the B cells notice the lack of supervision. So they make war against your breakfast, your lunch, your dinner, and even your own tissues. In other words, allergy to a wide variety of substances, including foods, environmental chemicals, and parts of your own body, has a basis in this imbalance between the function of B cells and T cells. Certain viruses, such as "mono," exposures to toxic chemicals and radiation, and other stresses have an impact on T cells similar to the one that comes from an imbalance of yeast. T cell injury from such stresses may require months for recovery. In the meantime, your body is waging war on a variety of relatively harmless (molds, pollens, and dust) or even helpful (foods and your own tissues) targets.

Yeasts also commit sabotage, harming you by manufacturing and releasing chemicals that interfere with those made by your own body. Some of these chemicals are just plain poisonous-toxins able, for example, to provoke seizures. Yeasts also make hormones that can mimic your normal human hormones. These look-alikes are able to carry a false message to a particular tissue in the body. Or they may simply go and sit on the receptor for the message and prevent the true hormone produced by the body from having its desired effect.

The combined effects of look-alike hormones, toxins and T cell confusion caused by an imbalance of yeasts produce an infinite variety of symptoms in different people.

Symptoms of the Yeast Problem

It's important to watch out for symptoms of yeast overgrowth, especially if you have a history of taking antibiotics to treat a regular infection such as strep, or a long-term problem, such as acne. Remember that we all consume some antibiotics in meat, dairy, poultry, and some fish products. Likewise, if you have a history of pregnancy or the use of hormones such as birth-control pills which, like pregnancy, tend to encourage yeast infections, you should also be vigilant. Common symptoms of a yeast overgrowth are:

• An increasing fondness for yeasty foods such as bread, wine, vinegar, beer, fruit juices, cheeses, and other aged or fermented items.
• An intolerance to some yeasty foods, such as wine.
• A tendency to retain water, producing a feeling of puffiness, bloating or swelling of the face, hands, feet, or, especially, the lower abdomen.
• Recurring fungus infections of the nails, skin, or vagina.
• Increased sensitivity to a variety of chemicals such as diesel exhaust, cigarette smoke, perfumes, and, especially, moldy odors.
• Gas or digestive discomfort.
• Diarrhea, constipation or a change in bowel habits or in the color or odor of your stool.
• Urinary symptoms.
• Wheezing, sneezing or stuffiness.
• Fatigue.
• Depression.
• Skin rashes.
• Difficulty concentrating, a feeling of spaciness or short-term memory problems.
• Symptoms affecting different parts of the body in ways that cross boundaries between medical specialties and frustrate attempts to find a unifying view of things. For example, rectal itch, impaired concentration, and nasal stuffiness would be greeted by the respective specialists as unrelated.

Citations:

• Crook, William, M.D., The Yeast Connection, Professional Books, Jackson, Tennessee, 1986
• Crook, The Yeast Connection Handbook, Professional Books, 1999
• Crook, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the Yeast Connection, Professional Books, 1992
• Crook, The Yeast Connection Cook Book, Professional Books, 1989
• Truss, C. Orian, M.D., The Missing Diagnosis, (P.O. Box 26508, Birmingham, Alabama 35226, 1983
• Shaw, William, Ph.D., Biological Treatments for Autism and PDD, Sunflower, 1998

Published August 25th, 2000.