Tests for Candida and Gut Fermentation

Thomas Willis was the personal physician of Charles II in the mid-seventeenth century. He was one of those brave men who had to practice medicine without the help of laboratory tests, and with nothing to rely on but his clinical skills. He and his colleagues became masters in the arts of history taking, observation and physical examination -skills which they have handed down to us. One day he made a discovery: the urine of diabetic patients tasted 'sweet like honey'! This was one of the first clinical tests ever described, and doctors were advised to use it regularly to help them formulate a diagnosis. Nowadays, thankfully, we don't have to taste urine to diagnose diabetes; we use a nice clean chemical test to detect the presence of sugar in urine and blood. We also have access to many other laboratory tests. These help us to confirm or refute our clinical diagnoses.

For a diagnostic test to be useful it must be reasonably sensitive and specific. The ideal test would be 100 per cent sensitive and 100 per cent specific, but the ideal hardly ever exists in medicine. We are content therefore, in checking for disease, to make use of any test which will be (i) positive in almost all cases where the disease is present, and (ii) negative in almost all other cases. In other words, we are looking for a test which will give very few false positives or negatives. In clinical practice, we combine history taking, observation, physical (and mental state) examination, and the results of reliable tests to make a diagnosis. To repeat the words of my wise old colleague, 'Allergy tests should not be relied upon to tell us what we didn't know; they should be used only to confirm our clinical suspicions.'

If the skin-prick test is negative, you are not allergic to candida! Gut fermentation is a completely different condition and can be easily confirmed by a positive fermentation test. The test procedure is simple, but it needs to be interpreted by a doctor with an interest:
1. No alcohol for twenty-four hours before the test.
2. Observe a total fast for three hours before the test.
3. Take one gram of glucose in capsule form with four grams of glucose diluted in water.
4. One hour later, whilst you are still fasting, a blood sample is drawn, and sent to Biolab, London.
5. It measures the blood levels of various alcohols: ethanol, methanol, propanol and butanol.
6. Fermentation is confirmed by elevated levels.
7. The source of fermentation (bacterial or yeast) is known by the type of alcohol produced.

Source: American Lung Association Family Guide to Asthma and Allergies by Norman H Edelman