Most, perhaps all antifungal, and in particular the most common, he azols, clear through the CY P450 pathway in your liver, unfortunately a very important pathway. Fungal diseases are hard to treat in part because doses high enough to be efficacious can lead to liver failure.
I would be wary of gratuitous use of antifungals (and I am a developer of an antifungal treatment that entered clinical trials). I would use an anti-dandruff shampoo if I had that problem but that’s about my limit.
Does this apply only to oral pharmaceutical antifungals? Or does it also apply to topical ones like clotrimazole for yeast, or food based oral antifungals like garlic?
Your dermis is designed to keep stuff out so though some of the topical will enter your system the amount is likely to be negligible (note: I am not a physician!!). Anyway topicals are used to treat fungi that attack dermal and nail tissue (e.g. tinia mentagrophytes or tinea pedis) so the whole point of using them is that you're applying the drug to the invader. This is why dandruff shampoo supposedly works.
I wouldn't worry about eating garlic although I haven't seen any studies suggesting it might actually be efficacious. But it is delicious!
Thanks! That's what I figured about topicals. As for foods, I guess the question would have been better framed as IF a food has any antifungal effect, would it thus necessarily also stress the liver? Or is that merely a common property of anti-fungal meds so far, but not a property of things that kill fungus per se.
At least in the context of toenail fungus, the topical treatments avoid risk to your liver (but generally don't work because it's hard to penetrate the nail and nail bed). However, even assuming a carcinogenic role for fungus, topical treatments are very unlikely to be useful for preventing internal cancers like pancreatic cancer.
Just curious, not trying to argue with you at all, but does that mean you’d discourage the occasional consumption of raw garlic (3-4 cloves)? I eat probably a few cloves of garlic whenever I eat Korean BBQ which is probably at least once or twice a month.
I haven't seen any study even suggesting that garlic might have any antifungal effect. And I find raw garlic too sharp, though I love it cooked various ways. But if it gives you pleasure why not?
I would be wary of gratuitous use of antifungals (and I am a developer of an antifungal treatment that entered clinical trials). I would use an anti-dandruff shampoo if I had that problem but that’s about my limit.