Definition of "Candida Albicans"

What are yeasts? Yeasts are single cell fungi which belong to the vegetable kingdom. And like their "cousins" the molds, they live all around you. And one family of yeasts, "Candida albicans", normally lives in your body and especially in your intestines and other parts of your digestive tract.

Candida albicans is a yeast 'overrun', a fungal proliferation, into an area that can be far removed from its normal feeding grounds which is of course the digestive tract.

In his book, "Medical Mycology", John Willard Rippon, Ph.D. said in effect:
        "Yeasts (including Candida albicans) are mild-mannered creatures incapable of producing infection in the normal health individual. They only cause trouble in the person with weakened defenses. [read: with a destructive life style - J.B.]

        "...The severity of the disease [I'd call it an 'infestation' - J.B.] will depend on how weak a person's resistance is [read: how destructive a person's life style is - J.B.], rather than on any disease-producing properties exhibited by the fungus... because of its rapid ability to make itself at home on mucous membranes (the medical term is 'colonize") and take advantage of many types of host alterations, the clinical manifestations of Candida infection are exceedingly variable ... and Candida albicans accounts for the vast majority of diseases caused by the yeast. [one of these is 'thrush' - J.B.]"

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