Chapter 60, Fork in the Road [October 2004]

As I think about longterm treatments, I really have to know the nature of the microbe, which refuses to show itself.  We run yet another stool sample; results negative.  But it's real, just like black holes are real, even if we can't see them.  To kill it, I have to know if it's yeast or bacteria.  If I take the wrong fork in the road, I could do more harm than good.  Over two weeks I sit like a juror, contemplating the evidence.  Nothing is definitive by itself, but together the evidence is overwhelming, and the answer is unambiguous.  I have no doubt any more, and I throw away the antifungal supplement that I bought last week.

1. His <saliva test> is normal.

2. I couldn't find any strains of yeast (on the net) that produce butyric acid.

3. I found lots of strains of bacteria that make butyric acid, including butyrivibrio, which is named precisely because it makes this compound.  This bacteria lives in the rumin of cows and sheep, and should not be found in humans.

4. Butyric acid is actually somewhat toxic to yeast.  Not as much as octenoic or decenoic acid, the standard antifungal supplements, but still pretty toxic.  If his system is so full of butyric acid that I can smell it across the room, I don't believe candida could survive.

5. Mercaptans are also produced by bacteria, not yeast, nor are they intermediates in any human cycle.  I can smell mercaptans in some situations.

6. Ten years of candida would surely produce leaky gut syndrome, and he'd have all sorts of food sensitivities by now; he seems to have none.

7. My wife had a batch of symptoms that was completely different, yet we found, eventually, that it was caused by an intestinal bacteria that just wouldn't go away.  Antibiotics helped a great deal, but if she eats the wrong foods, it still comes back.  Anyways, I smell some of the same smells on her as my son.  So I think they both suffer from a bacterial colony.  I've commented on this earlier; two individuals from a sample of five, genetically and experientially unrelated, who have the same underlying disorder, with radically different symptoms.  Modern medicine take note.  Wake up and smell the butyric acid!

So it's a bacterial colony.  That's bad news, because I can't buy an antibacterial supplement over the counter.  I have to get a prescription, and all the doctors and specialists think I'm nuts.  In addition, there are no books on the subject.  Go to any healthfood store and you'll see a dozen books on candida; not one on bacteria.  I'm really blazing a trail here.

If you're still awake, after all these pages, you may be wondering how I got an antibiotic for my wife, yet I can't get one for my son?  Well - my wife's symptoms were all digestive.  Cramps, bloting, diarrhea; at it's worst she couldn't leave the house.  All tests came back negative; the bacteria wouldn't show itself; but the doctors knew it was there, and prescribed doxycyclin.  Cleared it right up!  Course the bacteria comes back if she eats the wrong foods, but at least the antibiotic gave us a leg up.  Unfortunately my son has no digestive symptoms whatsoever, and nobody, besides myself, can put 2 and 27 together to get 29.  The relationships are just too subtle.