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| infections . . . either Candida or the more complex syndrome of bacterial vaginosis. All three conditions share a local deficiency of lactobacillus bacteria, and all can be aggravated by the frequent shifts in blood sugar that result from both bingeing and adrenalin stress, with infectious bacteria able to initiate membrane attachment because of abnormal sugar residues on the mucosa. |
| Prevention Philosophy |
| In terms of prevention it is good, for starters, to examine your image of yourself as a viable and robust organism. We all have orifices where things go in and things go out. It's normal. These openings are populated with a fierce variety of organisms. They reflect the secretions, excretions and environments of those openings. They belong there and need to be there. We are, in a manner of perception, walking colonies of friendly organisms. We cannot and should not be clean, slick and sterile; we must, however be in balance. If we are in balance, so are our friendly organisms. They act as a living shield against outside organisms that can cause infection. |
| A consistent environment and lifestyle, coupled with reasonably good health, allow every surface of our body to harbor complex mixtures of microorganismsthose specifically evolved to live on our secretions and excretions and whose health and dominance depends intimately on our maintaining a consistent internal metabolism so that what comes off our body maintains a consistent culturing medium. |
| This may seem like a peculiar vision of ourselves, given our culture's obsession with cleansing, cleaning, washing, brushing, spraying, douching and disinfecting all parts of the body as if we were under constant bombardment by noxious evils. We are. Normal, healthy, "clean" people like you and me have mites living on their skin, in their eyelash follicles, in their hair and bacteria and fungi every- |
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