Definition: Thrush is a Fungi Infection of the Tissue of the Mouth. Thrush can occur in children and adults when conditions permit too much growth of a fungus called candida in the mouth. Thrush may appear as a Creamy white lesions on the tongue, inner cheeks, and sometimes on the roof of the mouth, gums and tonsils. Slightly raised lesions with a cottage cheese-like appearance. Redness, burning or soreness that may be severe enough to cause difficulty eating or swallowing.
Herbal Aids & Suggestions:
Plantain: Make a decoction, simmering one ounce of seeds in one and one half pints of water and reducing to one pint; sweeten with honey and give one tablespoonful three or four times daily.
Bayberry: Spray mouth and throat with tea in atomizer. If too young or throat too sore to gargle, then drink 1 or 2 tablespoons each hour until relief.
Red Raspberry: Use the strong infusion as a wash and gargle.
Thrush Infection in Babies: If your baby has thrush, which you can determine from white spots on the sides of the mouth, a white tongue, or soreness during nursing, you can try several remedies. Dip a Q-tip in X-ceptic (an herbal extract) and swab the area several times per day, then give raspberry tea in a bottle. Other remedies may include washing the white parts with a Q-tip soaked in yogurt or, from a drugstore, purchase Gentian Violet, which is an inexpensive germicide, not necessarily an herb but an old-fashioned and effective remedy. With a Q-tip dipped into the liquid, don’t soak but just coat the infected surfaces. Gentian Violet will stain anything it comes into contact with.
In order to get to the source of the problem, you need to help the baby feel no stress, make sure your own yeast infections are under control…and help restore the baby’s proper bacteria composition in the intestine. Use acidophilus freely yourself, and give the baby acidophilus, either the liquid or a capsule dissolved in a little sterile water.
Blueberries: The Blueberry has a substance, myrtillin, which combats the bad bacteria in the intestinal tract. Because of this the berry is useful in bowel diseases and diarrhea. A tea made from the berries has been used in cases of thrush or other mouth and throat infections…A half of a cup of berries in a quart of water boiled to one pint will yield a solution that can be used internally or externally such as in cases of eczema or other skin disorders.
Testimonials Shared by Dr. Christopher
Small Boy Quickly and Totally Healed of Thrush: We had an interesting case in Taylorsville, Utah. The patient was a little boy about 18 months of age. As I stepped into the house the stench of Thrush was so strong it nearly staggered me, yet the child was across the large living room from the entry.
Quickly we mixed oak bark tea and concentrated it down to half its original volume. With the little boy on my knee, an atomizer was used to spray oak bark tea into his mouth through his swollen lips, white sores and swollen tongue. Since he couldn’t swallow well because of the sores and swelling in the throat, it was necessary to tip him over so that the liquid would run out of his mouth. This procedure was repeated several times. This child could swallow only small amounts of fluid that would seep down his throat. Instructions were given to the parents to give him only red raspberry tea to drink and as much oak bark tea as possible until he healed. I was called back the next day because of an injury to an older boy, and as I stepped in the house, the little boy who had been treated for Thrush came rushing over, threw his arms around my leg and looked up with a big smile. His lips were down to normal size the white sores showed a healing pink. He was happy.
During a lecture, a student related the details of another case of Thrush in Flagstaff, Arizona. She told how two men took turns holding a little girl afflicted with Thrush 24 hours a day for two weeks to comfort her in her agony. Another woman told of her personal acquaintance with Thrush. She had suffered over six months with the disease of the gums, and her gums had been trimmed down to the bone. She has lost all her teeth and now was wearing dentures that were sitting on the bone of the jaws with no suction. Yet our little patient healed rapidly in less than 24 hours with herbs.
Bayberry and Thrush: An architect called his medical doctor about a child with mouth problems, which the M.D. diagnosed as thrush, sometimes called trench mouth or hoof-and-mouth disease. The physician was dubious about clearing the case at all, perhaps, he said, in several months, although the child might be in danger of losing his teeth. Unhappy with this news, the architect called Dr. Christopher, who lived about forty miles away.
When he arrived, Dr. Christopher nearly reeled from the stench in the house. The child, only eighteen months old, just stood there crying, with a mouth so full of sores that his tongue was sticking out, all swollen up. Dr. Christopher had asked the parents to boil some water, and he made bayberry tea, and, putting the child on his knee, sprayed some of it into the boy’s mouth and let it run into a pan, as the child couldn’t swallow. He continued this many times, and told the parents to keep doing it, adding that they should give him raspberry tea to drink later, as well as more bayberry tea to drink.
In less than twenty-four hours, instead of in months as the M.D. had predicted, the child was smiling and the case was nearly cleared up.
Bayberry is an astringent; it promotes greater density and firmness of tissues–as contrasted with laxatives, for instance, which open up tissues. Astringents cleanse mucus and lessen or arrest internal hemorrhages by coagulating the albumin. As in the case of thrush above, they contract and strengthen the tissues weakened by disease.
