Until there is a better medical understanding of them, patients are likely to look outside of conventional medicine. The public response to the description of chronic candida has been substantial. The most popular book on the subject has over 1 million copies in print 1 . If the disease is a fiction, it is a popular one. The demand for treatment for this condition has produced a substantial number of books, nutritional supplements, and therapies.
Some practitioners actively solicit clients seeking help with chronic candida.
They oppose anti-candida treatment, even if empirically effective, because research support is absent. This is not scientific proof, but it is evidence. When patients are denied the option of anti-candida treatment, they are offered the alternative diagnosis of somatization disorder . This attributes the patients symptoms to psychological causes, not because of proof of mental illness, but lack of medical proof of physical illness. Somatization disorder has no effective treatment, and is often found later to be an undiagnosed physical illness.