Women and Yeast-Connected Health Disorders

By Pierre P. Gagnon, MD

Pierre-Paul Gagnon, MD

More Allergy, Asthma & Infectious Disease Articles

Women and Yeast-Connected Health Disorders

Yeast often a friend can play a role in causing many baffling health disorders ranging from fatigue, headache, depression and premenstrual tension to hyperactivity, psoriasis and multiple sclerosis.

Although food yeasts are full of nutrients, they can cause allergies. Moreover, Candida albicans, a yeast that normally lives within your body, can make you sick all over.

What Are Yeasts?

Yeasts are single cell organisms which are found on the surfaces of all living things, including our bodies. Yeasts also leaven bread and brew wine and beer. One family of yeasts, Candida albicans, normally lives in your body, and more especially in your digestive tract. This yeast possesses a number of unique traits, including certain animal-like characteristics. And, it must consume other substances such as sugar and fats in order to survive.

Candida has been referred to as a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” sort of critter. Here's why it can switch from a single cell yeast form into a branching fungal form. This fungal form can burrow beneath the surfaces of mucous membranes.

Yeasts normally live on the mucous membranes of your digestive tract and vagina. So do billions of friendly germs. Unfriendly bacteria, viruses, allergens and other enemies also find their way into these and other membrane-lined passageways and cavities. But when your immune system is strong, they aren't able to break through into your deeper tissues or blood stream and make you sick.

When you take antibiotics, especially if you take them repeatedly, many of the friendly germs in your body (especially those in your digestive tract) are “wiped out.” Since yeasts aren't harmed by these antibiotics, they spread out and raise large families (the medical term is “colonization”).

When yeasts multiply, they put out toxins which circulate through your body and make you sick.

Yeast toxins affect your immune system, your nervous system, and your endocrine system. Moreover, these systems are all connected.

So, yeast toxins play a role in causing allergies, vaginal, bladder, prostate and other infections, as well as headaches, depression and other nervous symptoms.

They also play an important role in causing disturbances of hormone function, including loss of sexual interest, impotence, premenstrual tension, menstrual irregularities, infertility, pelvic pain, fatigue, weakness, anxiety and sugar craving.

Here's why women develop yeast-connected health disorders more frequently than men

1. Hormonal changes associated with the normal menstrual cycle promote yeast growth; so do birth control pills and pregnancy.

2. The anatomical characteristics of a woman's genitalia make her more susceptible to vaginitis and urinary tract infections.

3. Women visit physicians more often than men. Accordingly, they're more apt to receive antibiotics for respiratory, skin, urinary and other complaints.