Yeast infections

Suffering from thrush and cystitis for the umpteenth time, I visited a very good chemist, Flora Pharmacy in Uxbridge High Street, to discuss the problem. I asked how could I have got it when I am already taking probiotics which are supposed to combat yeast, and he told me I probably wasn't taking enough. "Imagine your stomach is like the war in Iraq," he said. My eyebrows shot up in surprise. He looked kinda middle eastern himself. "The enemy hide in little cracks and crevices, you shoot them, but there are always more in hiding, waiting to pop out and blast you. The yeast bugs are in credibly tenacious. They hook on with their grappling irons and are very hard to shift."

I told him about how I caught dysentery at the age of 4 and was in an isolation ward being blasted with antibiotics for a month. Then getting ear infection after ear infection between the ages of 6 and 10, and being given dose after dose of penicillin. 50-odd years ago, the medics couldn't see the future of antibiotics They didn't think the day would ever come when superbugs would develop that were resistant to penicillin.

"You were born with a nice, clean, strong immune system," he told me, "but it got completely flattened by the antibiotics and all your good bacteria were knocked out. So the bad ones got a hold and it will take a good year of taking probiotics to have any effect on their numbers." He also said he thought my constant cystitis infections, which began when I was five, were the result of another bug which established a hold in the bladder after the dysentery episode.

He recommended taking a prebiotic powder every night to boost the effect of the probiotics, both to be taken together at bedtime. As soon as I stop taking the homoeopathy (lycopodium now), I shall begin and will report my progress. If only I could combat these constant stomach and bladder problems that blight my life, I would be able to book holidays with confidence, knowing I would actually make it onto the plane instead of languishing in bed with a hot water bottle, having just kissed goodbye to yet another £250.