Why Candida Diets Don't Work

WHAT IS CANDIDA ANYWAY?

All of us are born with different strains of candida in the gut, which is a yeast. That yeast is actually beneficial in certain ways because it manufactures certain vitamins and minerals and it helps the gut’s microbiome. It’s supposed to be there.

The same thing with E. coli – it’s supposed to be there in small amounts because it helps manufacture vitamin B12.

Candida is always part of the body and believe it or not, it actually outlives us. After our physical body dies, the candida still lives as it lives out of the host.

It’s a fungus and it grows just like a mushroom in nature.

We are meant to have these bacteria and yeast in our gut, we just don’t want them to overgrow.

SYMPTOMS OF CANDIDA OVERGROWTH

Anxiety
Bad breath
Brain Fog
Fatigue
Gas & bloating
Hormonal Imbalance
Joint Pain
Lower Libido
Recurrent urinary tract infection
Sinus & chronic allergy-based issues
Sugar cravings
Weakened immune system

WHAT CAUSES CANDIDA:

Alcohol
Antibiotics
Artificial sweeteners
Hormonal birth control
Pain killers
Poor diet
Poor food combining
Stress
Mould exposure
Acid reflux
Tap water (chlorine)

HOW DOES IT OVERGROW

When a lot of the good bacteria in the gut is wiped out, yeast starts to move in and begins to proliferate and spread. So now you have candida overgrowth where you previously had good bacteria. The good bacteria cannot grow anymore because candida has taken it space.

This is what so many books don’t teach, they don’t even teach this in naturopathy school. I’m not the only one that knows this but there are definitely very few people teaching us this right now.

Why do I know it? I had to look into it to this level of detail out of necessity. I mean honestly, I had to know that in order to heal my body.

THE PROBLEM WITH CANDIDA DIETS

Eventually, people on candida diets are going to need some carbohydrates and whenever they reintroduce some fruit or starches, they start to get the skin rashes and digestive issues again.

The only way to truly eradicate candida is to use a diet that doesn’t eliminate all carbohydrates because that is unnecessary.

In my private practice, I do not eliminate all of the starches and still allow for about a dozen different (specific) fruits. I look at the levels of fructose, lactose and sugar alcohols in each individual food. I also take into account the lectins and the body’s ability to produce histamines. Once you have candida overgrowth, you typically have allergies because of the increased intestinal permeability (aka leaky gut).

There are so many different parts involved when eliminating candida overgrowth and this is what so many practitioners miss. It’s not just one product or one diet, it is truly a combination of many different things over a period of approximately 12 weeks. That is how you get long-term results.

This means that when you start to eat carbohydrates again, you have already wiped out a lot of that candida and put a lot of the place markers back in with one specific strain of probiotic. That is exactly how you do it because when you add the carbohydrates in later (even onion and garlic), you are now feeding the good bacteria.

CAN I TEST FOR CANDIDA?

Yes! I highly recommend doing an Organic Acid Test and many companies offer this from the comfort of your own home. It will tell you whether or not you have candida overgrowth. A stool test is amazing for testing for parasites, H.pylori and bacteria. The yeast, however, is often missed in stool tests because they don’t survive in the lab and they have a protective biofilm layer around them which hide them even further.

THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO DO IT

There aren’t two ways to do it, there really aren’t.

You might get short-term relief by doing candida cleanses, but you will keep relapsing until you don’t fully eradicate it.

Have an organic acid test done and, if you want to check for H. pylori and parasites, run a stool test alongside it too. If you’re not able to run that test, you can just follow a protocol that addresses all of them.

FIX YOUR GUT FIRST

You have to do this first because until you fix your gut, your immune system is going to be imbalanced and that’s because you’re going to be spilling proteins into your blood stream (aka increased intestinal permeability).

Your immune system then gets fired up because it detects a foreign object in your blood. The gut wall is only supposed to let individual amino acids in and not amino acid-based strands. So, you simply cannot reduce the inflammation until you do that.

The first step in helping people with IBS, Crohn’s, IBD, Colitis, Candida, SIBO and any other digestive issues is by removing the thick biofilm over the parasites, yeast and bacteria. Once you remove that, you now are allowed to actually access them with herbal-based protocols.

BOTTOM LINE

My goal is to help educate you on why some things work and why some things don’t work. For some people, the candida cleanses work great short-term, but they always end up relapsing.

I do this every day and more than 2/3 of my practice is related to digestive issues.