How Candida Overgrowth Leads to Leaky Gut

The inner ecosystem of your digestive tract is a rich community. It is bustling with bacteria and yeast. As it turns out, these bacteria and yeast do more than help digest food and manufacture nutrients. The bugs in your gut also interact with your immune system, the chemicals in your brain, and your hormones.

Once the gut becomes inflamed, leaky gut can occur. Curbing Candida overgrowth by nourishing your inner ecosystem with daily probiotics, found in a probiotic drink like InnergyBiotic, is one way to balance leaky gut and improve digestion.

Candida albicans is a well-known yeast that is naturally found in the mouth, the gut, and the birth canal. (1)

It is opportunistic, which means that if it has an opportunity to grow and take over an environment—it will.

What goes into your mouth (and into your gut) influences your inner ecosystem. Certain foods can irritate the lining of the digestive tract. Other foods feed disease-causing bacteria and Candida overgrowth. Once this happens, the gut wall—or the landscape of your inner ecosystem—becomes inflamed. An inflamed gut is a “leaky gut.”

What major factors contribute to Candida overgrowth?

• A diet high in sugar
• An imbalanced immune system
• Stress
• Bacterial overgrowth in the gut
• Oral contraceptives use, or an imbalance in estrogen (2)

Unfortunately, Candida is not only opportunistic. It is also aggressive.

What Makes Candida So Virulent and Tough to Control?

Candida has developed a number of ways to evade your immune system and manipulate its environment. This makes Candida particularly difficult to control.

For starters, Candida has the ability to stick to your cells and invade them. It does this with proteins called adhesins, which are found in the cell wall of Candida. (3)

Adhesins act like double-sided tape. They help Candida stick to mucosal tissue (this is the tissue lining the gut wall, the mouth, and the birth canal). Adhesins also help Candida cells to aggregate—or form—sticky, gummy colonies.

Even more troubling is what happens to the tissue beneath Candida once colonies begin to form. In some cases, Candida yeast cells invade human cells and bud inside the cell—undetected and unnoticed. (4) Other studies show that Candida may be able to do this because it turns “off” white blood cells that protect cells from invasion. (5)

Candida Adapts to Stress

Studies also show that Candida thrives under stress. (6)

For example, researchers have exposed Candida to:

• High temperatures that mimic the body’s response to an infection.
• Oxidative stress—a byproduct of inflammation.
• Antifungal stress in the form of a common antifungal drug called fluconazole.

The greater the stress, the more Candida adapts to stressors and to its environment. It turns out that these genetic adaptations are specifically tailored to each stressor.

Candida also shape-shifts. (7) When necessary, it can be a rounded yeast cell or an elongated hyphal cell—which form like long, finger-like threads. Candida hyphae are particularly invasive to the gut wall. In hyphal form, Candida can change the pH of the body. (8) With this change in pH, Candida hyphae can bore through tissue and make its way into the bloodstream, where it can then colonize other regions of the body.

Leaky Gut and Candida: Control Candida Overgrowth and Balance Leaky Gut

Fortunately, you have everything that you need to inhibit Candida overgrowth by optimizing your digestion and nourishing your inner ecosystem.

Your inner ecosystem is healthiest when it houses a wide range of beneficial bacteria and yeast. These good bacteria and yeast not only compete with Candida for resources, they also produce substances that curb Candida overgrowth.

For example, a 2012 study shows that lactic acid—which is produced by good bacteria—inhibits the growth of Candida. (9) Another study that was published in the Journal of Biomedical Science confirms that while Candida overgrowth activates inflammation, good bacteria (or probiotics) inhibit it. (10)

Good bacteria also help to repair damaged tissue. When it comes to leaky gut, this is especially good news since Candida colonizes areas that are inflamed. (11)

So, why does Candida overgrowth happen at all? The key here is balance.

In order to get Candida overgrowth under control, it is critical to harmonize the inner ecology of the gut. Good bacteria living in the gut work in partnership with your immune system, keeping Candida overgrowth in check.

Donna recommends increasing foods that are naturally rich in probiotics, such as fermented vegetables and probiotic liquids.