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Hi! I usuallly use earth clinic to find natural remedies but this problem is not too common and wasn't listed here, so I did do reseach and tried many things and seem to be healed. I hope this will be helpful to other breastfeeding mothers who want to treat ductal yeast naturally.
I have a nursing one year old and was suddenly plagued with terrible, terrible pain in the breast. It was a deep, sharp shooting pain. After some studying I realized it was a yeast infection of the milk ducts. I had no visible sings of yeast infection, but that can happen. After I would nurse on the bad side, within 20 minutes I would have pain that about took my breath away. He wasn't nursing a ton and I quickly cut back on nursings on the affected side. I did not want to take Diflucon, I don't respond well to pharmaceuticals, and they are expensive, side effects, etc. Plus, for ductal yeast you have to take it for a month!
So, I started to do everything I could think of or read of that might help. Here is what seemed to knock it out.
- GSE (grapefruit seed extract) 250mg 3x day
- Garlic oil capsules (3, 3 times a day. I am sure a fresh garlic clove three times a day would have been better, but I can't stomach that.)
- Oregano oil capsules - 2, 3x day
- Vitamin C (ideally, tons - to bowel tolerance. ) I did trail off on this at some point as it tends to bother my stomach some.
- Avoid sugar. Limit carbs. (I would have some homemade whole wheat products.)
- Garlic oil - topically (mince a couple of whole bulbs (yes all the cloves in each of two bulbs) and cover it in a combination of coconut oil and olive oil. Let this set for 10 days. Strain out garlic and keep oil in fridge. Apply 3x a day. (Obviously you don't want to wait 10 days for it. Go ahead and get a little out each day- it won't be as strong but better than nothing.)
It took a month or two of treatment. Somewhere in there I found out I was pregnant and cut back the GSE to once a day and quit the oregano oil. My milk dries up when pregnant, so I can't be positive that the lack of food source for the yeast didn't have something to do with this all going away.
Other notes of interest, I think reoccuring mastitis can be cause by yeast. I have mastitis many times with this baby. He is my 9th baby. Only with my first baby 19 years ago did I have this much trouble. (I had at least 75 incidences of plugged ducts in the first year! ) Finally, at a year, nursing was so painful I could barely stand it. The nipple was cracked and bleeding and so painful. (But my baby had food intolernaces and really needed human milk. I couldn't wean him. ) I tried many things. The thing that finally knocked it out was calendula tincture. I would put a dropperful of tincture in a dixie cup of water and hold it over each nipple for a minute or longer after each nursing. It really did work. I could have done that with the ductal yeast and didn't try it. Calendula tinture could also be taken, 1 dropperful 3 x a day internally.
