What is Candida? And Can it Be a Problem?

What is Candida?

What is Candida? And can it be a problem? Absolutely. Knowing what Candida is and how Candida works goes a long way towards general wellness and skin health in particular.

Candida Albicans is a gut microbe that helps in a variety of tasks such as protein digestion and vitamin synthesis. As noted on Begin Within Natural Skincare's Causes of Candida page, in modest amounts, Candida is not a problem. It is when it increases in volume and/or converts to a more invasive form that Candida creates imbalance in types of gut microbes (i.e. dysbiosis), moves into the bloodstream and can begin to create a variety of common, problematic Candida Albicans symptoms.

For a slightly more in-depth answer to the "What is Candida?" question, read on. Your small intestine and colon contain hundreds of different types of microbes that balance wellness and keep skin healthy. For the most part, these microbes—mainly bacteria—live in harmony with the rest of your body. There are three groupings of gut microbes:

good microbes (a.k.a. symbionts) that help with tasks like protein digestion and vitamin and/or enzyme synthesis. Candida Albicans is part of this grouping.
pathogenic microbes such as viruses, parasites and certain types of fungi, that live off the host body and are harmful
neutral or commensal microbes that live off the host but do it neither harm nor good.

While most everyone has a selection of all three types of microbes in their digestive tract, it is the right ratio of the different types of microbes that is important to health generally and skin health in particular. A good balance leads to good health, an imbalance is one of the causes of yeast overgrowth and in turn, often a deterioration in skin health.

If you haven't already, be sure to check out Begin Within Natural Skincare's other Candida pages:

Start at the beginning with Causes of Candida Overgrowth
Then Candida Symptoms and a helpful Candida Survey
How to do a Candida Spit Test
A Candida Cleanse, an Anti-Candida Diet and a Candida Colon Cleanse
Candida Die-off Symptoms and how to deal with them
and some general Skin Detox information

For supplement and skin care shopping pages related to Candida see:

Candida Pack
Skin Vitamin Shop and if you live outside of North America,
International Skin Vitamin Shop

Soon there will be additional Candida information such as Candida Diet Recipes and Candida Symptoms in Males. Interested? Sign up for the RSS feed and be notified when new website content is posted.

Return from What is Candida to Candida Symptoms & Survey

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