Yeast issues are a very common problem in my clinic. How do children even get yeast? Yeast lives in all of us. It's under our arms, on our groin, and on our feet. It is an opportunistic organism. That means that it is always on us, but our immune system keeps it in check. That's okay. That's not a problem. But when it grows, it becomes a predominant culture, a predominant organism, it can wreak havoc with our children. Children who have been exposed to multiple antibiotics, say for a recurrent ear infection, sinus infection, or lung infections. Constant exposure to antibiotics changes what grows in our GI tract and those natural protective organisms that keep yeast under control are wiped out and the yeast will flare. Children with excessive yeast growth, typically demonstrate very strange behaviors; giddy, laughing, laughing in the middle of the night, hanging upside down, wanting to jump from the couch to the floor on their kneecaps. They can be crying. They can be irritable. Just a mess. What can we do? We can culture the stool and see if there is any yeast issue. This is all laboratory things. Then we can put them on an antifungal. We've been using antifungals on children now for many years. They are very safe. Then you look for a clinical response. You look to see if the child stops laughing in the middle of the night, no longer trying to run away, elope, trying to drop to his knees. The child improves. The problem is that if we don't fix what's going on in the internal environment that allowed the yeast to grow, very often it recurs. That can be very frustrating for parents. They say, "Why can't you kill this yeast?" I say, "Well, it is part of all of us. His own or her own immune system needs to keep it under check." We can do several things to help that, such as, give them natural antibiotics, natural things to keep yeast from growing. And, of course, probiotics that crowd out the environment and make it a very hostile environment for yeast to grow.