Overcoming Yeast Infections without Antibiotics – Hessed’s Story
Hessed took antibiotics throughout her life to fight yeast infections and developed a yeast allergy. Conventional doctors only prescribed antibiotics and never helped her solve the problem. Watch as Dr. Hotze explains how we helped Hessed overcome yeast infections naturally without antibiotics.
Podcast Transcription
Stacey Bandfield: Welcome to Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution! I’m Stacey Bandfield here with Dr. Steven Hotze, founder of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center. If you haven’t done so yet, then please go to our website to download all of our podcasts, that’s hotzepodcast.com, H O T Z E podcast.com. Well, we have a great guest today, Dr. Hotze. I can’t wait to learn more about her story with our listening audience.
Dr. Hotze: Hello, welcome to Hotze Health podcast, I’m Dr. Steve Hotze and I believe that you need a coach. You need a health coach who will coach you onto a path to health and wellness naturally. That’s a doctor and a staff of professionals who will coach you as they put you, and help partner with you, to get you on a path to health and wellness naturally, without using pharmaceutical drugs, so that as you mature, you have a great, enjoyable life. You’re full of life, you’re full of energy, you’re full of enthusiasm. You got vim and vigor, you got get-up-and-go and you get the things done that you want to do.
On this broadcast today, we’re pleased to bring a longtime guest, friend and ambassador for our practice, Hessed Honstein. Hessed has been a guest of ours since 2007 and she has a very interesting story because she had a history of recurring and chronic infections as a child for which she took antibiotics. That’s kind of my little lead in to this. I’m going to let Hessed tell the rest of the story. Hessed tell us about your health issues and what made you decide to come into the Hotze Health & Wellness Center to see if you could find some solutions to your problems.
Hessed: Hi Dr. Hotze. Thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Hotze: I’m so glad to have you here.
Hessed: Well, as you mentioned, I was very sick when I was a child. I had a recurring infections in my tonsils. There was always something going on there and I did take a lot of antibiotics and, as I grew up, I started developing infections. I had female yeast problems and I also had skin issues, a lot of skin issues where I was having recurring breakouts. I would go to my gynecologist, as well as my dermatologist, and they would give me antibiotics, but I was on this merry-go-around where my issues were never solved. My problems would go away for two or three days, but they would always come back. That lasted for many years and I wasn’t sure what was going on and it was driving me insane because you could never find an actual cure, what was actually causing it. It was very frustrating.
Dr. Hotze: What did they say your problem was?
Hessed: I had bacterial infections
Dr. Hotze: They said you had bacterial infections so, of course, on bacterial infections you’re inevitably going to take antibiotics, right?
Hessed: Correct.
Dr. Hotze: Well antibiotics kill, not only bad bacteria, but they also kill good bacteria in our system. We have good, healthy bacteria that keeps bad bacteria out and also keeps yeast from overgrowing in our systems, in our colon and in a woman’s vaginal tract. There’s a balance between yeast and good, healthy bacteria. When you kill off good bacteria with an antibiotics, which is not intended, that’s not why you’re taking the antibiotic, but it will inevitably kill the good bacteria, which gives you an imbalance between the yeast and the bacteria. So, you get yeast infections, recurrent and chronic yeast infections which is not healthy and it’s a problem all the time, right?
Hessed: Right.
Dr. Hotze: You started seeing these doctors back in 2001. You saw us in 2007 so this is six years. You kept going back to see them. What did they keep telling you?
Hessed: It was the same thing, Dr. Hotze. It was always a bacterial infection. Or maybe sometimes they would tell me it was a yeast infection but more than…with my gynecologist, that’s what he mainly said. With my dermatologist, it was, “Oh you’re having an acne breakout. Here are some pills.” Dealing with that for so many years, can you imagine how frustrating that was
Dr. Hotze: I know, I’ve heard the story many times before. How did you hear about our center and how we address yeast problems?
Hessed: I was actually very blessed to know about the center and find out about it. After so many years of taking these antibiotics and going to these doctors and them telling me the same thing, it just finally dawned on me that this has to be something that I’m eating. It’s something that I’m putting in my body that’s creating these reactions. I started doing research and I came across the center. That’s how I found out about it and it was…I had to be my own doctor and I had to be my own detective to figure out what the heck was going on with me and to heal myself because the doctors that I was going to, I’m sure they had the greatest of intentions, but I was not being healed. That how I found the center. It was through my own detective work.
Dr. Hotze: Well, Hessed is an example of an individual who decided to take charge of her own health. Now, if you’ve been going to a conventional doctor for years and they keep giving you one medication after another and you continue to have the same problems, what would make you think if you continued down that track, that something would change?
Hessed: Correct.
Dr. Hotze: And some point you say, “This isn’t going anywhere.” If you hadn’t have come in to see us and had still been seeing them for all these years, where do you think you’d be right now?
Hessed: I would be in the same place.
Dr. Hotze: So this is a key point and Hessed had enough snap, enough moxie…she said, “You know what? I can figure this stuff out.” Thank God for the internet because now you have…instead of having to go to a library, which I used to have to do as a kid. Go to the library, go to the bookstore and try to find books… Now you can go on the internet and just Google this and you can find a whole host of information, which ultimately led her to the Hotze Health & Wellness Center and what we do for yeast.
Now, it is interesting that Hessed said that she noticed that when she ate certain foods, particularly foods with yeast, that she would have problems. She’d breakout on her skin, she’d get recurrent vaginal yeast infections. This can be due to a yeast allergy. So you can become allergic to yeast within your system. Remember, yeast is in the fungus family, it’s in the mold family. What happens is, the body, if you have a diathesis towards allergies, you’ll start making antibodies. When you take yeast, you’ll start having allergic reactions to the yeast.
So, you decided to come in and be seen and evaluated. Do you remember who you saw first? Who was that
Hessed: Dr. Sheridan.
Dr. Hotze: Dr. Sheridan. He listened to you and what did he tell you?
Hessed: Well, first of all he told me that I was not crazy which really validated my feelings.
Dr. Hotze: What made you feel good about that? Other people made you feel that you’re just making this stuff up, you’re a hypochondriac?
Hessed: I felt like I was crazy all on my own. Imaging going to these doctors and they tell you the same thing, that’s just an infection, here’s a pill. Once you’ve done it for so many years, you start to think, “Well, what the heck is wrong with me? I’m not being cured. I’m not healing this. What’s wrong with me?” To come here and to visit with a doctor, not for five minutes, but I was in here for over an hour. You can’t imagine what that felt like as a patient, having a doctor that actually listened to you and made you feel valued and heard. That’s extremely important because I’m sure, as a lot of other patients know, when you go to other doctors, you go in there and you’re out in five, ten minutes at the most. You’re lucky if you can stay there that long. Coming here and being heard, that was so important for me.
Dr. Hotze: He made some recommendations on an eating plan and on a treatment for yeast. I’m sure he told you this was a yeast problem that you were having.
Hessed: Yes, he did.
Dr. Hotze: He put you on a yeast-free eating program. Now a yeast-free eating program eliminates sugar and simple carbohydrates, which are simply starch molecules. Starch is simply sugar molecules hooked together. When you ingest them, starting right way when you eat them, you begin to breakdown the starch and break the sugar molecules down. Sugar is released into the system. Well guess what yeast grows on?
Hessed: Sugar!
Dr. Hotze: It grows on sugar. If anybody remembers having made homemade bread with your mom or your grandmom…I don’t know if you’ve ever done that or not. You knead the dough and you have to get the dough to rise when you cook it so you have to add yeast to it. You get a glass of water and take Fleischmann’s Yeast, you dump it into there. If you want to activate it, you just sprinkle a little sugar in there and it foams up. Then you add that to the dough and you put it in the oven and it rises. The yeast causes the dough to rise.
Well, this is what happens. Yeast lives and grows on sugar, so when you’re on a simple carbohydrate diet, inevitably you’re going to be feeding the yeast. That’s why, in individuals that come in to the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, with few exceptions, we usually start off guests on a good yeast-free eating program. Then we give some medication to kill the yeast in the colon and in the vaginal area. We give some nystatin that kills it in the spore form. It grows in the mycelium form, there are two forms. We give some Diflucan then to knock it out altogether and this will help clear up the underlying problem.
If an individual, like Hessed, has become allergic to yeast, then anytime she were to eat a product that had yeast in it like breads, wine or alcohol that is fermented with yeast…if she’s had any of those products, that can cause her to breakout again. You went on the yeast-free eating program. How long did it take until you cleared up your problem?
Hessed: I noticed a change within two days, maybe. It was immediate. And let me tell you and let me share with you, that I tried it out. I thought, “This is too good to be true. I don’t believe it.”
Dr. Hotze: Just by changing your eating, that you could cure an underlying problem. Now this is a shame…
Hessed: Right.
Dr. Hotze: She’s had the problem for six years. Did anybody ever talk to you about changing your eating habit?
Hessed: No, of course not.
Dr. Hotze: Never told her about it.
Hessed: So, I thought this is too good to be true, but let me try it out, let me test it out. I did, I cut out yeast and I followed the plan and it miraculously went away. I was like, “Absolutely, no way!” It was too good to be true. Then I ate, I started eating things with yeast and within hours Dr. Hotze, my symptoms came back. Within hours, maybe an hour or two. It was incredible.
Dr. Hotze: This was an allergic reaction to the yeast. On top of having yeast in the system, she had become allergic to the very yeast she had. That taught you a lesson.
Hessed: To say the least, of course.
Dr. Hotze: Now, you’ve been on the yeast-free plan and you’ve been here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center as a guest for now…you started in ’07, we’re in ’18, it’s been 11 years, right?
Hessed: Correct.
Dr. Hotze: Over this time, Dr. Sheridan made some recommendations on your hormones, he recommended a little thyroid hormone, which helps increase your energy level. As you’ve matured, he’s made some recommendations on progesterone.
Hessed: On progesterone, as well.
Dr. Hotze: Because you were having some symptoms, premenstrual…
Hessed: I was.
Dr. Hotze: What kind of symptoms were you experiencing?
Hessed: I was dealing with a lot of depression and anxiety.
Dr. Hotze: Right.
Hessed: It was very interesting how I found out that this was an issue, it was every month.
Dr. Hotze: If you’re having it every month, and it’s the same time every month, then it’s hormonal.
Hessed: There you go. That’s clue number one, right? I remember sitting in my car. I’d come home from work and I was sitting in my driveway and I was feeling very depressed. Just this depression that sucks your soul, it was horrible. I was sitting there crying and it just clicked on me the same about yeast. I said, “You know what? This is happening to me every month at the same time! Hello? Something has to be happening here, right?” I came to the center, I saw Dr. Sheridan. He talked to me about progesterone. Sure enough, he put me on progesterone cream and low and behold, guess what happened?
Dr. Hotze: It solved the problems.
Hessed: It solved the problem.
Dr. Hotze: This is very common in women as they march through their menstrual life. At some point, usually by the time a woman reaches her mid-thirties, the hormone levels become imbalanced. There are two major hormone groups during a woman’s menstrual life. You have the group of estrogens, which are estriol, estradiol and estrone, that are secreted from the ovaries starting on the first day of the period and they rapidly increase. They proliferate the inner lining of the womb. When a woman ovulates at mid-cycle, that day she begins to make progesterone. There’s this balance, it’s like a see-saw and the progesterone matures the inner lining of the womb to help it prepare for potential pregnancy. If there’s no pregnancy…pop! All the hormones completely collapse, you slough the inner lining of the womb and it starts over.
As women march through their menstrual life, they begin to estrogen dominate, which is a progesterone deficiency. It’s the other side of the coin. As the progesterone levels decline, that has an adverse effect on, not only the estrogen level, which becomes the dominant hormone, it adversely affects the ability to utilize thyroid hormones. It affects a woman’s overall energy level and production. It also affects the neurotransmitters in the brain when there’s not a balance so woman can feel moody. They can feel depressed, anxious or have panic attacks, which often times resolves with the period and they start over again. At the same time every month, they notice these symptoms. The easy thing to do is simply balance that excess estrogen with a little bit of progesterone, day 15 through 28. We tried that. Did that help?
Hessed: Yes. It was incredible. It was a miracle and for me, I’m just so grateful to not feel that way anymore. All it took was a little cream, a little dab of cream and there you go.
Dr. Hotze: Ever since you been coming here, you haven’t been going back to your other physicians, I guess.
Hessed: I have not. Let me tell you something interesting that happened with my gynecologist and why I switched. After coming here and after being put on the yeast-free diet and having those symptoms clear out and seeing it as a miracle…it was a miracle for me and I was feeling great. When I went back to my checkup with my gynecologist, then I mentioned to him that it was a yeast allergy by Dr. Hotze. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that he laughed. He laughed and he said, “That’s not possible.” He didn’t believe me and so that to me, just spoke volumes and I switched doctors.
Dr. Hotze: Well, what you’re not up on, you’re down on, they say. Fortunately, all this is out there, it’s in the literature. I’ve written it in my books for crying out loud. I didn’t invent this. I learned it from other doctors that had been treating this for decades themselves. It’s just not taught in conventional medicine because conventional medicine wants to use a drug to treat a symptom or a problem. That’s the way they handle it. We do believe that you ought to be on a path to health and wellness just like Hessed has gotten onto. Get on a path to health and wellness naturally, with natural substances, vitamins. We also recommend some vitamins and minerals.
We’ve had the program for Hessed. It’s been real simple. Good healthy eating lifestyle. You can tell when you’re not staying on it can’t you? She goes, “Maybe I can eat it now and it’s never going to happen again.”
Hessed: I know, I can’t lie to you Dr. Hotze, I do like my chocolate.
Dr. Hotze: Healthy eating lifestyle is very important and our physicians and providers help instruct on that here. Replenishment of your hormones. As we age, inevitably, our hormones decline and oftentimes become imbalanced. We want to replenish those and balance those. Get on a good vitamin and mineral program to help your body detoxify and to help your mitochondria, the power plants within your cells, produce energy. You have to have good nutrients from your food; you have to have good healthy hormone levels. You have to have good vitamins, minerals and nutrients to detoxify and also to help the power plants in your cells produce energy. If you produce high levels of energy, you’re going to feel healthy and well. Then, on top of that, just do a little exercise.
You’ve kept yourself in great shape. I don’t know what you’re doing, but we recommend you just walk a mile or two every day. A power walk is good. If you want to go to the gym, fine. You don’t need to run a marathon for crying out loud. If you want to do it, more power to you, but just do something reasonable every day that keeps you in motion.
Hessed, I just want to congratulate you on taking charge of your health.
Hessed: Thank you.
Dr. Hotze: That is awesome. You’ve been such a wonderful guest here and have told so many people your story at different times. We’re grateful for your support and for your friendship. We are proud of you for having done a 180 and taking charge of your health.
Hessed: Thank you.
Dr. Hotze: If you want to do a 180 in your own life and take charge of your health and get yourself on a path of health and wellness naturally, get rid of all these pharmaceutical drugs you’re loaded down with, or prevent yourself from ever having to go on those drugs, don’t hesitate to give us a call here. We’ll be glad to visit with you. You can visit with one of our new guests consultants at 281-698-8698. That’s 281-698-8698. Go to our website, which is www.hotzehwc.com. Go to our testimonials and listen to the men and women that have come through…hundreds and hundreds of testimonials of people that have come here, that have gotten on a path of health and wellness and gotten their lives back.
That’s what we want for you so let us know if we can help you. It would be a privilege for us to have the opportunity to serve you.
