Welcome back to the weekend Cabral HouseCalls! It's great to have you and I can't wait to get into today's community questions - Let's get started! Anonymous: Hi Dr Cabral, Long-time listener (and asker of questions). Here’s my entire health history, in a TINY nutshell: - Lifelong history of terrible nutrition: I was raised on sugar and have craved (and consumed) sugary, fatty, terrible food for as long as I can remember. Despite this poor diet, I have always been athletic and obsessed with strength and fitness. - For my entire adult life (I am 37) I have experienced recurring fungal skin infections, all over body, and bloating. - 5-6 years ago, I started suffering from persistent anxiety attacks. I did nothing to treat the anxiety, other than learn not to freak out during an attack. Over time (6-7 months) the attacks, pretty much disappeared. - 9 months ago, out of nowhere, I developed a nasty wheezing cough, that would come and go, and which was, eventually, diagnosed as LPR. I started to rely on an albuterol inhaler for my asthma. I have tried many approaches to treating this, including eliminating stress, taking melatonin at night, and drastically changing my diet, all to limited success. SO…anxiety, fungal infections with bloating, LPR. I am, now, one month into your candida and bacterial overgrowth protocol. Without doubt, this has made a difference: I’ve lost fat, I don’t tend to need my inhaler, my fungal skin infections seem to be pretty much non-existent, and (this is a little embarrassing) my wife no longer suffers a yeast infection EVERY time we have sex: this was the case for years. (Is this a definite sign of candida?) I work out 6 days a week (weights 3 times, cardio 3 times), practice intermittent fasting (16/8), and am allowing myself 1 (healthy) cheat meal per week, including a small dessert. (I do, also, have 1 cup of black coffee every morning...I hope this is okay?!) Anyway, all in all, I am doing much better than I was. However, I do find that these symptoms persist: tension in diaphragm (anxiety?), lump in throat, excessive burping, and tightness in lungs. But, here’s the interesting thing that I hope you can shed some light on: my symptoms seem to be (and this has always been the case) manifesting as part of a cycle. What happens is, I’ll go about a week with virtually no symptoms, and then the symptoms start to kick in, and gradually worsen, over the course of about 7-10 days. Typically, it’ll start with the tension in the diaphragm, then burping and throat issues, then some asthma-like symptoms of tightness in the lungs (although I don’t seem to get the wheeziness that used to be there), and anxiety is always accompanying these. After this 7-10 day period, the symptoms start to slowly go away, and I have a decent week or so. I don’t change my diet or lifestyle, in any way. It feels like as soon as I start to think “hey, maybe I’m starting to heal,” the symptoms return. It’s incredibly frustrating and demoralizing. With all of that being said, I wondered if this persistent cycle of symptoms is something you’re familiar with, and/or if my description tells you something that I haven’t considered. Also, how much of a role do thoughts (both negative and positive) play in this? Is it possible that ALL of my symptoms are caused by stress/negativity? I ask because I have tended toward negative, depressed, thoughts for as long as I can remember, and I definitely feel physically worse when I’m depressed/stressed. At this stage, I feel that my best course of action is to continue the candida/bacterial overgrowth protocol, work on stress-reduction, and hope that the symptoms start to become less and less over time. Thanks so much for doing what you do. Your podcast has been an absolute life-saver and continues to help me through some very dark times.    LaSandra: Hello, Dr. Cabral! Thank you so much for your commitment to helping everyone you possibly can. Your health recovery story is such an inspiration to me!