H. Pylori and Candida: The "Evil Twins" Behind Your Gut Issues

In this episode, Dr. Hugh explains how Candida (a fungus) and H. pylori (a bacteria) can work together and make gut problems much worse. Many people have one—or both—and don’t even know it. If you’ve tried many things and still don’t feel better, this may be a missing piece.

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In this podcast, you’ll learn:

• What Candida is
  • A fungus/yeast that can grow too much in the gut.
• What H. pylori is
  • A bacteria that can damage the stomach lining and digestion.
• Why they are called the “evil twins”
  • They help each other.
  • When you have both, symptoms can feel much stronger and harder to fix.

Common signs of H. pylori include:

• Burning stomach
• Bloating
• Frequent burping
• Nausea
• Low appetite
• Unplanned weight loss
• Stomach ulcers
• Dark stools

How H. pylori may connect to bigger health problems:

• It may be linked with autoimmune issues in some people
  • Thyroid problems (like Hashimoto’s)
  • Crohn’s and IBS-type symptoms
  • Other immune system flare-ups

Common signs of Candida include:

• Frequent UTIs (often in women)
• Gas, bloating, belly pain
• Switching between constipation and diarrhea
• Chronic fatigue
• Brain fog and memory trouble
• Vaginal yeast issues or vaginosis that keeps coming back
• Oral thrush
• Skin fungus (like foot fungus that won’t go away)
• Strong sugar and carb cravings

Why Candida can cause brain fog:

• Candida can make a chemical called aldehyde.
• Aldehyde acts like alcohol in the body.
• That can make you feel mentally cloudy day after day.

The “Gut Defense Trio” (basic starter plan):

• Rebuild stomach acid
• Cut off the fuel supply (especially sugar and processed carbs)
• Repair the gut barrier

The test Dr. Hugh uses to “test, not guess”:

• The GI-MAP stool test
  • Looks for H. pylori, Candida, and other gut problems
  • Checks virulence factors (these can mean a stronger, more harmful strain)
  • Done at home: collect the sample, mail it in, get clear results

A key concept: stomach acid matters

• Strong stomach acid is one of your first lines of defense.
• H. pylori can make an enzyme called urease.
• Urease helps create ammonia, which can raise stomach pH.
• Ammonia is very alkaline (around pH 11).
• When stomach acid gets weaker, it can be easier for Candida and other bugs to grow.

If you feel stuck:

• This episode will help you understand why gut infections can hide, team up, and keep you in a cycle of symptoms.
• You’ll also learn why getting the right test can help you choose the right next steps.

Transcript

0:01

A community. This is Doctor Who and we got a awesome webinar on Candida and H. Pylori and what I believe them to be the evil twins. So H pylori, so H pylori and Candida, they work hand in hand so they can cause havoc on a lot of people's bodies. And when I do, the correct testing on people is a lot of people have Candida and H. Pylori and have no idea that they have it. And that's literally the root cause of people's problems when it comes to, um, you know, not getting wetter, not not getting better. So here we have the comparison side to side. And here we have candida which is a fungus in here. You see this is a fungus. And then we have H. Pylori. And that is actually a bacteria. So there are two different species. One's a fungus and one's a bacteria. But one of the things about these two, the evil twins, they work hand in hand. And if you have both of them, the problems are about 100 fold worse because they each work together and in unison they are even more of a bigger problem to handle and get rid of. All right. So here's the symptoms. The top symptoms of H. Pylori. You can see right here with H. Pylori. So we have burning stomach bloating frequent burping nausea loss of appetite unintentional unintentional weight loss. Stomach ulcers. And then we have dark stools among other things, which is very, very common for H. Pylori. You can have a bunch of autoimmune disease. Autoimmune disease has been linked to Sjogren's disease, psoriatic disease, thyroid, Hashimoto's disease, irritable bowel, Crohn's disease, Crohn's disease. So H. Pylori causes autoimmune disease. So you don't want to mess around with H. Pylori. So if you're out there suffering with mystery diseases and you've never had this advanced stool test, which I'll be going over here shortly, it's called the GI map test. You want to get this done because this can connect the dots for you and you can start to recover, which is ultimately what God designed us to do. He wants us to be healthy and well. Now here we have Candida eight symptoms of Candida right here. So I find this very frequent here. Frequent UTIs especially in women. Digestive issues. So if we look in here so frequent painful urination bladder discomfort, bacteria, bacterial and fungal cases because they go hand in hand. Digestive issues. Persistent gas, bloating, abdominal pain, swelling. Alternation between constipation and diarrhea. So if you're switching from constipation and diarrhea, you could probably have H. Pylori and Candida working together to make your problem that much worse. Chronic fatigue. Yes, Candida can definitely cause chronic fatigue in here. Constantly feeling worn out, lack of energy and difficulty with daily tasks. Brain fog, difficulty concentrating, memory problems, feeling mentally cloudy and spaced out. Now I want to spend some time on this now. Why would you feel cloudy and spaced out? Here's why. Because Candida produces a chemical called aldehyde. Aldehyde. Guess what? Its an alcohol. So if you have a Candida overgrowth it produces this byproduct which is aldehyde which is alcohol. And if you've ever had too many drinks or got a little tipsy, you know what happens to your brain. So day in and day out, if you have Candida, this is what's happening. It produces toxic waste poop. Right. And one of these things is aldehyde. On top of if you have an H pylori case, H. Pylori produces a ton of toxins. So that can that can make your brain fog that much worse. So we want to get to the root cause of this problem right here. Vaginosis I find this very, very common. I find number five and number two very, very common in women. So maybe you've had a long standing chronic vaginosis that you have never been able to get rid of. And it ends out to be it ends up and ends up to be Candida and an H pylori infection that no one actually took the time to figure out. Oral thrush skin funguses right in here. And I find this very common is what I see clinically is I see people that their feet. Right. They have fungus on their feet and they can't get rid of it no matter what they do. And it ends up to be a Candida infection that no one ever checked. And then finally we have eight. We have carbohydrate cravings. Now, why would we have carbohydrate cravings? No matter what, you cannot fight the urge to eat these sugars. Why? Because Candida feeds on that. That's the number one fuel source is sugar. So if you have Candida overgrowth and H. Pylori, guess what's going to happen to this? To your gut, it's going to get overran with a bunch of nasty nasty things. So here this is a very simple protocol that I've come up with. And I'll be going over this as we go through the workshop. So first thing here, what we want to do, we want to build your stomach acid. So you're probably stomach. You probably don't have enough stomach acid. Then what we want to do is we want to cut off the fuel supply. So we want to cut off the fuel supply to the H. Pylori and the Candida. And then finally, what we want to do, we want to repair the barriers. So this is what I've deemed here, or what I call the the gut defense trio. So there's three things that you want to do now. Now when clients come to you one on one, we do very, very specific protocols. But this is a very broad, basic protocol that's helped lots and lots of people. So let's get into this test right here. So this test here, this is a test. Uh, it's it's it's from Diagnostic Solutions. So you can see that right down here. Diagnostic solutions. And this is called the GI map test. The GI map test. And you can see here it checks for H. Pylori. So you see right here we have H pylori. And this is high right here you can see right here it is high. Right there you can see the reference the reference range. That's what you want it less than this right in here. Now in here what I like about this test here. It also checks for what they call virulence factors virulence factor. So what are these virulence factors. So these virulence factors the way I would describe this it's like you can have the standard issue H pylori. So H pylori is I'm just going to use an analogy is like a BB gun. So you have H pylori a BB gun. Then you can have this virulence factors in here. And you can see down here this is positive. He has virulence factor. And I describe these things as bigger guns. So instead of have a BB gun you might have a pistol. You might have an AK 47. You might have a bazooka right? I mean, I'm not a big gun gun gun guy, but that's the analogy. So when you do these tests and if you have these virulence factors, what does that tell you about your H. Pylori? It's a lot worse. It's a lot stronger. Your H pylori is doing this to your gut, causing tons and tons of havoc, which we want to get rid of. All right. So this is the H pylori test. You can see right there up there. And then on top of that we have Candida. And you can see Candida is high right in here. So that's the range. So this test right here is very thorough. It's a stool sample. It's very very easy. How easy is this to do this. It's simple. We mail you this kit in the mail. You can get this anywhere in the United States. In fact, in the world. You poop, you mail it in. And it's very simple. And then we figure out exactly what's going on with your GI system. And the research shows this, that if you haven't heard this, check this out. 80 to 90%, 80 to 90% of your immune system is located in your small intestine or located in your gut, meaning your small intestine and your large intestine. 80 to 90%. So if your gut is not well, you are not going to get well, right? So what this GI map test does? It's a very specific road map for you to figure out what's going on with your gut and where things may be failing and what needs to be done. So let's look at this is a normal gut. Like here's, um, we're going to see this normal gut right here, and then we're going to go over a leaky gut. So what I want to do here real briefly is just show you what a healthy gut should look like and what an abnormal gut looks like, so you can have some reality on. Wow, okay. This is what's happening in your gut. Because if you're suffering from any kind of chronic degenerative condition at all, at all, you might not even have gut issues, but you could still have these bugs growing in your body and have no idea this is occurring until you get the proper test. So in here we have these are the good bacteria in here. So you can see this. This is the normal gut. And this is real critical. This line this mucus. You see this mucus here. This is very very critical for healthy gut flora. Now why is this. Just like your tongue here has saliva on it, right. That's a that's a mucous saliva membrane. Your whole entire small intestine and your large intestine has the same thing. And in fact, this saliva, this mucus is your first line of defense. That's your first line of defense. So if you don't have this mucus layer in your gut. Bad bugs and bacteria can get directly into your gut or in your bloodstream and start causing problems. So in here, this is one cell thick. So wait, the way God designed us is this would be your food up here, right? This is the food. So it's one cell thick. And then this is your bloodstream. So imagine that you have one cell thick and then it's into your bloodstream. So the intestinal your intestine is the one thing that's exposed to the outside. There's not any other organ that's exposed to the outside environment except your gut. Right. So this makes it very very critical. So in here we have these what they call these tight junctions. In here you can see this very tight tight tight. You can see the mucous membrane is very healthy. So this is healthy. This is what we want to see right here. Now when people have Candida when they have H. Pylori. Check this out. What happens. What do you see right here? What do you see with the mucous membrane? The mucous membrane is what the mucous membrane is literally gone. So just imagine having a super, super dry mouth okay. If you have a super dry mouth, things are going to start to dry out. What's going to start to dry out? The cells are going to start to dry out. If the cells start to dry out, they cannot produce the functions or the things that they should produce. So here you can see these little hand things right here. These little fingers right here. You see those little fingers right in here. Those little things right here. Those are actually called those little fingers are called brush borders. And you have trillions of these little things right here. And they start to break down food. So you can see when you don't have this, uh, this mucous membrane, these things get irritated. What happens to the tight junctions? You see this tight the this tight junction here, it starts to open up, right? It's open up. It's broken. What happens in here? This is a little toxin, right? This is a toxin. Gets in your bloodstream right here. Goes in your bloodstream. We have gluten, right? So gluten is really bad in your gut for some people. It can tear these tight junctions apart. Then you have these big gluten particles. That's a gluten particle right in there that that that gluten gets in your bloodstream. And then we have the bad bacteria in here. The bad bacteria gets in here. And guess what? Do you are you healthy or sick. You are sick now. For some people they don't even have issues. Or maybe they have like little slight bloating and that's it. But they have tons of bad bacteria, tons of Candida H. Pylori. They have no idea about it. And it's literally tearing their gut apart. So you can really see what's happening here. And then when this stuff gets in your bloodstream, because your bloodstream is not used to seeing bacteria and big food particles, it's not used to seeing that. What happens to your immune system is it gets it gets revved up. You get chronic inflammation and every disease known to mankind. Guess what grows in a body that is inflamed. So this is really, really bad. So these are just some, um, comments I want to go through right here. So in here. So when H. Pylori and Candida, specifically Candida albicans, co-inhabit the GI system tract, they co-inhabit the gastrointestinal tract. They don't just exist side by side, they form a synergistic relationship that makes each pathogen more resilient and damaging than it would be alone. So what's it's saying? It's saying if you have both of them, the effects are ten times worse. They call it the Trojan horse. Strategy. One of the most fascinating and problematic interaction is that H. Pylori can actually live inside Candida. Yes, H pylori can actually live inside Candida. Let me show you this slide right here. So this is the size of Candida. So this is the size of candida. This whole thing is candida right here and in here you see this is H pylori. So H pylori can literally get inside a Candida there and it can hide in can in in the Candida. And guess what? If it hides in in the Candida, your immune system can't find it. This is why it's stealth. Like you don't actually know that Candida is there because it or the H pylori is there because it hides in the candida, right? So in here, protection from antibiotics inside yeast H. Pylori is is shielded from the stomach's immune response and more importantly, from antibiotic treatment. Environmental stability. Candida provides a stable home for the bacteria, allowing it to survive even when environmental conditions in the gut are unfavorable. So we really want to figure out what's happening with Candida. And if you have Candida, here's one things that they do. They create biofilms. Both both organisms Candida and H. Pylori produce biofilms. Right. They are master biofilms builders. And what biofilms are is basically shields, their shields around Candida, their shields around H. Pylori. That doesn't allow you to get in there and actually kill the bacteria. This is why you need a systemized approach when we're talking about, um, they have their shield that your immune system can't find that. Right? So this is where if you do a functional medicine approach, we can actually get in there and we can bust these biofilms up so we can actually get rid of the H. Pylori. Chronic mucosal inflammation. Both pathogens trigger the immune system. But together they create a double hit in the gut. And they call this leaky gut. And if you have leaky gut, you're also going to have what they call leaky brain. So leaky gut and leaky brain go hand in hand. Now another critical step that I want to go over here is H. Pylori survives by producing an enzyme. All right. This enzyme is called urease. So just stick with me, all right? Just stick with me. This is one word I want to make sure you understand, which neutralizes the acid around it. So the H. Pylori produces urease, which neutralizes the acid around it. This creates a major problem because strong stomach acid in is the body's primary defense against fungal growth. So let me just go over this. H pylori produces this thing called urease, which is pneumonia. If you ever, like, smelled like cat urine that's been sitting around time you feel that you can smell that ammonia, or if you've ever gone into a nursing home and they smell that smell that is actually ammonia smell right from urine. H pylori produces urease, which produces ammonia. Now, why is this so significant? Here is when H. Pylori. When H pylori successfully weakens the stomach, causing the pH to rise from a healthy 1.5 towards a more neutral 4 or 5. It removes the acidic barrier. This creates a perfect alkaline learning greenhouse that allows Candida to bloom in the stomach and migrate into the small intestine, potentially leading to small intestinal fungal growth or small bacterial overgrowth. So let me show you a picture of this. So I want to make sure that you can understand what's happening. So this is your stomach acid. This is stomach acid. So in your stomach it has a pH of two right. So this is acidic. Now in here you can see this. This is ammonia right in here. So the urease right here the urine the urease will cause increased levels of ammonia. And you can see here ammonia has a pH of 11. So ammonia has a pH of 11. And we have stomach acid which has a pH of two. So what does this mean. Our first line of defense for any bugs viruses, whatever it is, is the stomach in? Is the acid in your stomach? Now, if you have H. Pylori, the H. Pylori produces this enzyme called urease, which produces ammonia, which basically eliminates your first line of defense, which is your stomach acid. This is very, very critical. So instead of having a pH of two right here, you might have a pH of five. And if you have a pH of five, guess what. Bugs grow H pylori grows more, Candida grows more, pathogens grow more. So stomach acid of two right. Which is right here. The stomach acid of two is very critical. Stomach acid of two is very critical in here to kill bugs. And if we don't have that it goes up to five. This is where things can cause major, major problems. So when we look at this person right here, you can see I showed this already H pylori positive. So what do we know. We already know that because it's positive H. Pylori that this person is is producing massive amounts of ammonia. It's killing or decreasing or eliminating the stomach acid. And when that happens, bugs can grow. So just imagine stomach acid is like the weed killer, right? If you've ever put weed killer on your yard, it kills all the weeds. This is what H. Pylori or this is what stomach acid does. It literally kills the bugs so that weeds don't start to grow. All right. And in here this is the GI map test. Again it's very, very simple. It's very, very easy to get. If you want to get this test reach out to our clinic. The test is, uh, it's about $320. And then there's an add on which pushes it about $400. So what the labs cost me is what I charge. What is what I charge all my clients. Here's another great visual. You can see the H. Pylori right in here, right H pylori you see the tail there. And this is your stomach. So this is the mucus lining that I was talking about the mucus layer. And you can see how H. Pylori burrows into the mucus. It burrows in there. And then this right here. This causes that gel like material to start to dissolve. Right. So if you get H. Pylori that's in in the gel material and it produces urease which is toxic, it literally will dissolve that mucus layer in the stomach and in your intestines. So the mucus layer that we're talking about here is this beautiful layer that we want right here. We need to have that mucus layer because this is our first line of defense. And when we have H. Pylori it burrows it in. And this is another great, great picture. As you can see right here. You can see that there's just a small little H pylori the mucus layer. Then you get more and more. You can see that mucus layer start to diminish. And then when it gets really, really, really bad, it starts to eat away at the tissues. Because these tissues right here, they don't they can't survive with acid eating them. Right. They can't survive With, um, with all the gastric juices literally touching in these cells here. So this is why these cells will eat away and start to degenerate and get really, really, really bad. So in my experience, very few people that I see have like, uh, tissues in the stomach that are bleeding and very few people have that, right. But of course, some people do actually have that. So again, here's the top symptoms of H. Pylori. We kind of went over there over that over those already. I just want to kind of go over these real quick to get. You can see another view of this right here. Here's another great picture of this. You can see here. This is the H pylori right. It's coming in. It's eating this in here. It starts to burrow into the tissues. It cause problems. And then in here H. Pylori creates urease which turns into ammonia. So this neutralizes the stomach acid, causing poor digestion and allowing H. Pylori to thrive in the stomach. And then when it thrives in the stomach, it can get in your small intestine, and then it can go down in your colon. And then if you don't have enough, uh, if you don't have enough stomach acid, stomach acid is the first thing that starts to turn on your gallbladder and your pancreas to produce digestive enzymes. And if that doesn't help, if that doesn't happen, your whole GI system is all messed up. So the approach I take is north, your mouth to south like your your rectum. So mouth all the way south. You want to start with the mouth and go all the way down. So these are the first things that you want to start at. And you can just see right in here. This is just kind of more a chemical reaction right here. Urease is right in here. And you can see this produces ammonia. So again just getting to the the scale right here is we want to have the stomach acid in here at two. So when you have the stomach acid there at two this is when things start to function better. Your your acid is there. Your digestive enzymes work, your gallbladder works, your liver works. And if you have H. Pylori it's not working. It's not you're not getting that good concentration of acid. All right so that's H. Pylori. And then we have yeast right in here. We have yeast. And you can see this is a great graphic on what's happening. You see here yeast just starts off. And one little like cell right here. And then it starts to grow these hyphae these hyphae in here. And these hyphae dig down into the one layer by layer of your gut. And then when that happens it starts to cause inflammation. And then big particles of food can get in here. Bacteria can get in here. Um, gluten can get in here. Proteins can get in your digestive system. This is your blood right here. And when this happens, this causes leaky gut and inflammation. So the Candida can grow and cause more of a significant problem. And as we talked about the H. Pylori and Candida, they go hand in hand. So if you have H if you have H pylori there's probably a high probability that you actually have Candida. Okay, now I hope this starts to make sense here. This is the infographic on Candida and really the brain fog. I mean, I see this so many times with brain fog, chronic fatigue, uh, and the guts just really never addressed and handled. And you really want to test and not guess. This is a really a principle is you want to test and not guess. You want to test and not guess. So here's another nice graph I like this here's healthy gut. You see this bacteria right here. And then you see the candida. You can see this is the candida. And the candida is producing byproducts aldehyde among a lot other things that cause, uh systemic inflammation. And then you can see here how the candida starts to grow down in here and starts to dissolve all these layers in your entire gut. And this right here, this is just another great picture of what it should look like. Again, this is healthy music. The mucin layer in here. And then when you have the leaky gut syndrome caused by H. Pylori or Candida or many other different bad guys. In here. You can see the bad guys swimming in here, you can see the inflammation in here toxins. So that's what we want to try and avoid. Now very simply I want to go over this protocol. So this is this protocol. Right here is the gut defense trio. The gut defense trio is what I call this. And this is kind of just a very broad kind of protocol. Like when clients come to me, you have to really do specific protocols. But these are some of the protocols that I do on my clients when they have bad gut. So the first thing that we want to do is you want to do the HCL challenge right here. And this is all the stuff is on my website. I'm not going to spend time going over the protocol because I've already developed lengthy videos on this, which is the HCL challenge. So it's a very simple protocol. You can do this at home and you're just going to verify verify if you have enough hydrochloric acid or not. Right. It's very simple. The next thing that we want to do is I recommend the majority of my clients go on what I call a carnivore ish diet, which I recommend people do, which would be basically meat and fruit, um, for anywhere from anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks. And this is going to really eliminate all the processed food, um, all the sugars, all the gluten, all the dairies, all these things. So this is the diet. We want to starve these things. Right. So one of the things in here, we want to rebuild the rebuild the stomach acid, which is which is this protocol right here. Rebuild the stomach acid. So this establishes stomach acid and it helps eliminate H. Pylori. You can actually kill the H. Pylori by putting HCl in there. And then in here. This is eliminates the fermentable carbohydrates. It reduces the Candida and small bacterial overgrowth for fuel and promotes gut lining healing. And then finally, here's a product that's very, um, has tons of research is butyrate. And butyrate is a short chain fatty acids, acid. And this is what your small intestine cells use and your large intestine cells use for fuel. So if you have bad bacteria in your gut, you're probably not producing enough fuel, short chain fatty acids. And that's the fuel that's going to drive your cells to function and heal much better. So this is the basically the three system approach that I apply. And this is this is really we're talking like a broad kind of scope to get better. But if you want very specific treatment plan you want to schedule a zoom call. And we can see if we can help you. Also the GI map test is very, very critical, um, to know what's actually going on in your gut. So a couple of things here. If you want to find more about this, you can go to my website right in here. Or you can just Google my name, doctor Who and my website will pop up. And this right here, this is the first, uh, this is the home page right here. And then if you go to this right here, click this here and then hit blogs, you're going to want to hit the blog right here. And then when you go to the blog this is going to pop up. This is going to be pop up. And then you just put the shell challenge. Put the shell challenge in there. And that's where this is right here where I talk about the shell challenge. If you go in here and you put carnivore right in here, you put that word carnivore in here, the carnivore diet is going to show up. If you put, uh, butyrate in here, butyrate is going to show up. So you're going to have access to all the different recommendations that I recommend to start healing your gut, which is very, very critical. Okay. So with that being said, um, if you've liked the video, give me a thumbs up if you found it on YouTube somewhere, if there's going to be like a description or something like that. I'll provide the links below so you can get more specific content. And remember, this is where there is help. There's hope. Where there's help, there's hope for you to get better, for you to get better. Take care. Bye bye.