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Review of the Candida Diet also known as the Anti-Candida Diet and why it typically does not produce desired results long-term with only short-term alleviation of symptoms.
Thinking of going on the Candida Diet to heal your gut and stop sugar and carb cravings?
While this may seem like a logical idea at first, be warned that it likely won’t heal you over the long term.
The article below explains why as well as my personal experience with it.
What is Candida Anyway?
Candida is a term that refers to a large family of yeasts, or one-celled fungi. Under normal circumstances, these organisms harmlessly inhabit the tissues of humans. This is because a balanced intestinal tract from mouth to colon contains a preponderance of beneficial bacteria that keep Candida in check.
When not enough beneficial bacteria are present in given body tissue to keep pathogenic yeasts under control, it transforms from a harmless state into an invasive species. In this rapidly growing state, Candida puts out long stringy hyphae or “roots”.
They have the ability to embed and penetrate through the gut wall and eventually cause leaky gut.
Candida overgrowth can occur in many tissues of the body. Well-known examples are oral candidiasis known as thrush, the scalp as dandruff, and vaginal yeast infections.
What Causes Fungal Overgrowth?
Candida is an opportunistic pathogen that can rapidly take over when a person is under a course of antibiotics. Antibiotics decimate beneficial gut flora but have little effect on Candida. This gives this normally harmless yeast the chance to take over dominance of the gut environment very quickly.
Many women don’t realize it, but oral contraceptives imbalance the gut in the same way as antibiotics. Again, this gives pathogenic strains of yeast an open door to take control.
A diet of processed foods high in sugars and simple carbohydrates also encourages Candida overgrowth as yeasts thrive on sugars.
Babies born via C-Section or to mothers who were treated with IV antibiotics during labor are especially vulnerable.
The reason is that they are not exposed to Mom’s healthy flora in the birth canal prior to birth.
Symptoms
Symptoms of Candida overgrowth are many the most common being fogginess in the morning upon waking (brain fog), digestive complaints of all kinds and a myriad of skin issues.
Many women plagued by yeast infections don’t realize that the source of the problem is actually their diet.
Over time, this leads to a pathogenic state in the gut environment. Using drugs and creams to resolve the problem is only a temporary solution when the source of the problem – gut imbalance – is not addressed head-on.
The Candida Diet
My husband and I tried the Candida Diet to resolve gut imbalance many years ago that had been exacerbated by our stressful and overworked lifestyle at the time.
It failed miserably!
Why?
The Candida Diet only goes part of the way in doing what is necessary to resolve gut imbalance.
It also did not include foods and supplements that help repair the intestinal damage caused by the overgrowth of pathogenic yeast.
For example, the Candida Diet removes sugar from the diet in all forms…even maple syrup and honey. Fresh fruit, however, is commonly allowed.
Candida overgrowth can frequently trigger an allergy to molds and other types of fungi. Hence, beneficial fermented foods including cheese are also eliminated along with any bread and other foods containing yeast.
Other foods excluded from the Candida Diet include vinegar, mushrooms, tea, coffee, dried fruit, and any form of fruit juices.
Temporary Improvement But No Healing
The typical scenario for a person who goes on the Candida Diet goes something like this:
- They feel better almost immediately primarily because all the sugar has been removed from their diet.
- They continue on the diet for some time perhaps many months or even a year. Pleased to see that symptoms diminish considerably during that time, they are convinced that the diet has “worked”.
- After a period of time, they try to reintroduce some of the foods that were removed. Sadly, they usually discover that their symptoms come raging back with full force.
- They realize that it is going to be next to impossible to continue the Candida Diet indefinitely. It is simply too hard to give up cheese and any and all sweets forever.
- They get discouraged, give up and stop the Candida Diet for good.
3 Reasons Why the Candida Diet Fails
The paradox of the Candida Diet is that symptoms greatly diminish. However, the patient doesn’t actually heal from the root cause of the problem which is a breach in the integrity of the gut lining.
Long-term healing is prevented on the Anti-Candida Diet for the following key reasons:
Reason #1
The Candida Diet allows starchy vegetables and tubers like sweet potato, cassava, yams, and arrowroot.
Note that some anti-candida diet practitioners recommend caution with these foods, but others do not.
Reason #2
The Candida Diet doesn’t include a small cup of traditional bone broth with every single meal. This is an incredibly necessary food for proper healing/sealing of the gut wall caused by candida overgrowth.
For more severe cases, short-cooked meat stock needs to be used and NOT bone broth. Some people cannot tolerate the glutamate in long-cooked broths.
Long-term gut healing is quite simply NOT going to occur without using the correct form of stock or broth.
Thus, any candida diet benefits will usually be temporary.
Reason #3
More important than the allowance of starch in the Candida Diet is the inclusion of grain-based foods. Some practitioners recommending the Candida Diet misguidedly include gluten-free grains.
Others recommend none at all (in an apparent scramble to mimic diets that actually work to fix the gut like GAPS and to a lesser extent the bone broth diet).
The bottom line is that there is no uniformity to what is recommended, hence, the protocol’s unreliability in providing relief over the long-term.
Anti-Candida Diet Shortfall
Even if the Candida Diet is used in conjunction with a gluten-free, casein-free diet, it fails in the majority of instances.
The reason is that disaccharides, or double sugars, are present in many carbohydrates including ALL grains – not just gluten-containing ones.
An inflamed, imbalanced gut overridden with Candida is unable to digest double sugar molecules completely. This occurs because the lack of beneficial gut flora has compromised the function of the enterocytes.
According to Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride MD, author of Gut and Psychology Syndrome and one of the key scientists at the forefront of gut restoration research today, the enterocytes are the cells that reside on the villi of the gut wall and produce the enzyme disaccharidase.
This enzyme breaks down the disaccharide molecule into easily absorbed monosaccharide molecules.
When the enterocytes are not nourished and strengthened properly by adequate beneficial flora, they become weak and diseased and may even turn cancerous. They do not perform their duties of digesting and absorbing food properly.
Undigested Food Nourishes Pathogenic Yeast
Weak and diseased enterocytes also have trouble digesting starch molecules. They are very large with hundreds of mono sugars connected in long branchlike strands.
People with weak digestion due to Candida overgrowth and messed up enterocytes have a terrible time digesting these complex molecules.
The result is a large amount of undigested starch in the gut. The putrefying matter is the perfect food for pathogenic yeasts, bacteria, and fungi like Candida to thrive upon.
Even the starch that manages to get digested results in molecules of maltose, which is — you guessed it — a disaccharide! This maltose also goes undigested due to a lack of the enzyme disaccharidase and becomes additional food for Candida.
Biggest Candida Diet Benefit
We’ve established that the Candida Diet usually fails miserably in resolving gut imbalance problems over the long haul.
However, it does include and recommend one fantastic herb that is very helpful for keeping Candida under control if only temporarily…Pau d’Arco tea.
I’ve found this herb is especially helpful during traveling (when the diet is less than optimal) or for a few days after you get home to get back on the wagon.
What is the Best Diet for Candida?
In conclusion, it is best not to waste your time with the Candida Diet. It doesn’t work in the majority of cases and you will ultimately feel frustrated in your efforts to heal over the long term.
The best diets for healing and sealing the gut wall and permanently rebalancing the gut environment are the GAPS Diet or the very similar SCD (Specific Carbohydrate) Diet.
To read more about the GAPS Diet and what the food list includes, check out this introductory post on using GAPS to heal autoimmune disease.
Also, this post The Five Most Common GAPS Diet Mistakes is a review of the most common pitfalls of this approach to gut healing.
Reference
Gut and Psychology Syndrome, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride MD
More Information
Macrobiotic Diet and Extreme Vitamin D Deficiency
Biofilms: Overlooked Step in Treating Candida
Can Candida Sufferers Drink Kombucha?
How to Take Probiotics
I didn’t mention fruit anywhere in my comments – in fact, I said that it is wise to AVOID fruit in yeast infections, and dysbiosis generally, to inhibit pro-inflammatory microbiota. Potatoes are among the potentially problematic starchy root veggies, primarily because they have been hybridized to have very little of the fiber that supports probiotic growth, and the texture, i.e. sticky and heavy, is not ideal for digestion. Best to stick to small, new potatoes, and simply not eat too many. Also, food combining is an issue for many, and so it is wise to keep very starchy foods separate from very fatty/proteinaceous foods, e.g. a steak and a potato.
Seriously? I have a yeast infection and Im researching things to help me and this comes up. You do realize that the cadida diet says do NOT have and fresh, frozen or dried fruits and NO starchy vegetables.. You have the opposite here. Some other things are fishy too… Not cool.
I have treated hundreds of patients supposedly with “candida”, and usually get results where others have failed. What resources are you referencing? Bloggers that aren’t practitioners, and have no clinical experience, and simply repeat the stuff they have read or experimented with? There is no reason to avoid ALL carbohydrates in a vaginal yeast infection – root veggies (with peels) and properly prepared cereals are fine, and often beneficial because they provide a substrate for probiotic organisms, e.g. inulin. The key thing is to avoid rapidly digesting starches (e.g. bread, sugar, fruit etc), but you don’t have to go onto a strict ketogenic diet to treat something as minor as a vaginal yeast infection. Topical treatments are key, and I frequently recommend sitz baths (e.g. Tabebuia), and application of medicated oils – esp. in a base of coconut oil, which contains the antifungal caprylic acid (e.g. 10% Neem seed oil v/v).
Todd, i like that u don’t take an extreme approach. What is ur opinion on legumes, like lentils, beans, peas for candida and for general health? The nutritional theories tend to be very divided on this food group… Some say they are not healthy at all due to the lectin, phytates, and other so called antinutrients and phytoesteogens. The paleo crowd adhorrs them. But then u have the other side, which views them as one of the best slow-buring carbs (even better than the sweet potatoes and squashes that paleo touts), ey contains many anti cancer properties, and have other high levels of nutrients and blood sugar stabikizing effects.
Some say that they are a food combining disaster due to their mix of pro and carb. Others say this combo is great for insulin regularity and blood sugar stabilization.
Some say beans promote bad flora, while others say their resistant starch content helps balance flora levels and supplies fuel for flora to generate short chain fatty acids
Some say legumes can cause and perpetuate leaky gut and autoimmune problems…. Some say the exact opposite
What’s the concensus?
>>Todd, i like that u don’t take an extreme approach. What is ur opinion on legumes, like lentils, beans, peas for candida and for general health?
There isn’t any reason why someone with a simple yeast infection cannot eat legumes. However, many people mistake “candida” symptoms for other issues like intestinal permeability or autoimmune issues, in which case some legumes – esp. if they have not been properly prepared – may create problems. As you identified, I am not a dogmatist, and so I use a variety of nutritional approaches. But there very clearly is a subset of people, usually those of Northern European or First Nations (Amerindian) descent, in which seed crops are inherently problematic. I have been using a Paleolithic approach to nutrition for such folks over the last 15-16 years with success. But where I don’t see issues, and they are tolerated, I just make sure that whatever cereal or legume they want to eat is properly prepared.
>>The nutritional theories tend to be very divided on this food group… Some say they are not healthy at all due to the lectin, phytates, and other so called antinutrients and phytoesteogens. The paleo crowd adhorrs them. But then u have the other side, which views them as one of the best slow-buring carbs (even better than the sweet potatoes and squashes that paleo touts), ey contains many anti cancer properties, and have other high levels of nutrients and blood sugar stabikizing effects., Some say that they are a food combining disaster due to their mix of pro and carb. Others say this combo is great for insulin regularity and blood sugar stabilization., Some say beans promote bad flora, while others say their resistant starch content helps balance flora levels and supplies fuel for flora to generate short chain fatty acids, Some say legumes can cause and perpetuate leaky gut and autoimmune problems…. Some say the exact opposite, What’s the concensus?
There is no consensus, because there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. That’s why its important to have the practitioners perspective. We actually “practice” with people, and see just how varied and complex the issue can be. Apart from those with a frank sensitivity to agricultural staples (i.e. cereals, legumes, dairy), I employ an Ayurvedic approach to nutrition, which provides a spectrum of options on the basis of both constitutional aspects and disease symptoms. For example, here is how it would break down, according to each type:
Vata: http://www.foodasmedicine.ca/2011/diet-to-balance-vata-wind/
Pitta: http://www.foodasmedicine.ca/2011/diet-to-balance-pitta-bile/
Kapha: http://www.foodasmedicine.ca/2011/diet-to-balance-kapha-phlegm/
best wishes…
Todd Caldecott, Dip. Cl.H., RH(AHG)
Ayurvedic Practitioner, Medical Herbalist
http://www.toddcaldecott.com
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Author, Food As Medicine: The Theory and Practice of Food
http://www.foodasmedicine.ca
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Editor, Ayurveda in Nepal
The Teachings of Vaidya Mana Bajra Bajracharya
http://www.ayurvedainnepal.com
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Author, Ayurveda: The Divine Science of Life
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
tel: 778.896.8894
fax: 1.866.703.2792
email: [email protected]
Well, I definitly do not go to bloggers for my information.. Maybe recipes for supper I do but thats it. Anything I saw that said no fruit or potatoes were Medical doctor based.. or a certain hospital. You are saying we can have fruit and potatoes than, and still get rid of our yeast infection?
The key thing is to know how to enkindle digestion. It’s not just about the food! This is a practice long established in Ayurvedic medicine – in fact, I don’t think there is any system of medicine that regards the importance of digestion in quite the same way. The concept to restore digestion is called ‘samsarjana’, or the ‘graduated diet’. It isn’t a difficult concept, but it does require a little skill and can take some time – just like you can’t rush a fire that you are trying to build, otherwise you might blow it out. This can take time (2-16 weeks, or more), depending on how long someone has been imbalanced, and sometimes it may even worsen their symptoms initially (esp. in the beginning). In Ayurveda, the process starts with a very thin rice soup called manda, prepared at a ratio of 1:14. What is traditionally used is powha, which is a flaked partially milled rice – I get a red rice variety from Sri Lanka. Basmati rice will do – the trick is to cook it into a thin white liquid. After this comes a slightly thicker version called peya, and so on, until the rice is cooked at a 1:2, and then given with a washed mung bean soup, prepared at a 1:14. Following this, if the appetite improves, the next food is a meat soup (just the broth). Then in the meat soup, various starchy veggies are added, along with rice, and then eventually small bits of meat, and then eventually, even fattier pieces of meat. This becomes the “go-to” diet when things go wrong, but from there one can branch out into eating different foods.
It isn’t absolutely necessary to start with manda, and also, you don’t need to use just rice – oats work too. And some people (many N. Euros) after a lifetime of exposure to antigenic compounds found in improperly processed cereals end up having MAJOR immune reactions to them, and so we would start first with vegetable broth, and then move to a meat broth. However it is possible to get people to tolerate carbs again, but its important to understand unique metabolic differences between us. This is how from all the measures described, someone might use only a particular approach.
Regarding all the fungus stuff – yes its true, but its A LOT more complex, and so much of the language here is speculative. In order to know what you’re dealing with you have to biopsy and culture it. Many issues y’all are attributing to CANDIDA are caused by other things too. Like being stressed out, sitting at a desk all day, or eating antigenic storage proteins in improperly processed cereals. Thus for the rice soups above, the cereals should be fermented before cooked if they’re whole grain.
Btw, if anyone wants to study nutrition and Ayurveda, I am a Western Medical Herbalist and practitioner of Ayurveda, and I developed a distance learning course for both lay-people and practitioners alike: http://eepurl.com/vA2l1
My goal is to provide people with the real information to restore digestive health. It truly works, as it has for the last 4000 years.
I should add that with the rice and mung bean soup, more and more above-ground veggies can be added to the diet – ideally – lightly steamed or stir-fried (with a little fat). My goal is to have the volume of my patients diet to comprise at least 50% above-ground vegetation. If properly prepared, and with the use of herbs and spices and fat, they can effectively satiate hunger, and load the body with nutrients, but not the calories.
Fermented veggies too can be added during this phase
Todd Caldecott, Dip. Cl.H., RH(AHG)
Ayurvedic Practitioner, Medical Herbalist
http://www.toddcaldecott.com
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Author, Food As Medicine: The Theory and Practice of Food
http://www.foodasmedicine.ca
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Editor, Ayurveda in Nepal
The Teachings of Vaidya Mana Bajra Bajracharya
http://www.ayurvedainnepal.com
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Author, Ayurveda: The Divine Science of Life
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
tel: 778.896.8894
fax: 1.866.703.2792
email: [email protected]
Hi Todd,
I have tried reaching you at the email provided on the site but it’s bouncing back. Could you please reach me for a consolation? I’m highly interested in taking your course. Id love to learn how to make those fermented healing soups.
[email protected]
Thank you,
Alicia
consultation , and not consolation 🙂
I would be interested in further explanation about the avoidance of ferments, and mushrooms. I have my son on the GAPS diet right now, and the use of fermented veggies and dairy (if tolerated) is very important. It’s my understanding that they introduce “good” bacteria for gut health. And mushrooms? I realize they are a fungus, but does it follow that they contribute to fungal in the body?
My son suffered with severe effects from candida overgrowth. We were blessed to find an herbalist (The Green Herb) that has highly effective products for this. They say the main mistake people make in fighting candida is not realizing that it mutates between a yeast and a fungus. Therefore, every 1-2 months, you switch between an anti-fungal and an anti-yeast, combined with a detox/cleanser at night, and a strict diet for about 2-3 months (avoiding all sugar, grains, fermented foods, mushrooms), and also taking acidophilous or a good quality plain yogurt with live culture. This program quickly cleared up his yeast and symptoms, which he had had for his entire life (about 13 years). He will always be more susceptible and have to watch his sugar intake. Periodically we go there for a live blood cell analysis (prick finger and immed. look at blood on computer) to see if the yeast has come back. Yes, you can see the overgrowth in your blood, as well as parasites that escape a leaky gut caused by the yeast. So easy and I am so grateful! They are in Colorado.
A yeast is a fungus, so this makes no sense.
You are correct. I suppose they use a generic explanation. However, yeast does mutate into different forms, and treating it successfully requires, therefore, attacking the different forms BEFORE the yeast stops responding to one form of attack. It apparently takes only 2 months or so before a yeast becomes ‘immune’ to one attack, which is why it is necessary to switch back and forth every 1-2 months. The Green Herb describes their two products, which include a mix of herbs, as an anti-fungal and an anti-yeast; however incorrect the description, they work wonders combined with the other protocols. There are myriads of products out there, but this combination approach works amazingly well and FAST.
Well, many things are effective for the wrong reasons. It just doesn’t help the integrity of a practitioner or the field of CAM for someone to make misleading, contradictory statements. Treating these sorts of issues isn’t all that difficult for a trained, experienced herbalist, which I note by the way, that the folks who run The Green Herb are not. You can find experienced herbalists in your area by checking out http://www.americanherbalistsguild.com.
todd, i think you’re splitting hairs. yeast has a separate name because its a class of fungi that exist as single celled, independently operating organisms, while the rest of the fungi kingdom exist as multi-celled organisms. different chemicals and molecules probably act on these forms differently, as they have differing life cycles. Its worth being informed of and inquiring about but you don’t have to be so snarky 😛
where did you go to get bloodwork done? i dont have insurance so having my blood tested for parasites could be expensive?
i am also in colorado is why i ask
Sorry, that is William Wolcott, not Colin. And I don’t mean to suggest that Wolcott was right in every respect, but his system acknowledges that there are a range of metabolic types.
Bee: there is no one size fits all approach. Generally, I am an advocate for removing excessive CHOs from the diet, but not everyone needs to remove all, and some (most) continue to benefit from some CHOs. As I practice Ayurveda, you would need to understand the basis of how this 4000 year old system of medicine works – but in the meantime, you might review Colin Wolcott’s metabolic typing diet.
what is a CHO?
cheers
Hi Sarah
Candida is a human commensal, which makes testing very difficult. Having been familiar with the “diagnosis” of candida for 20 years, unless I can see it, i.e. the cheesy concretion on the buccal mucosa, genitalia, nipples etc, I regard it as a wastebasket diagnosis. And yes, some practitioners prefer to be garbage men. But while outing the issue, the article is all confused on the subject, and repeats the same GAPS/specific-CHO diet stuff that has an irrational fear of polysaccharides. Humans very clearly evolved eating a huge variety of sugars – in fact – usually a much greater variety than the modern diet. For e.g., where I live, the local Salishan diet that was rich in fish, also ate lots of dietary CHOs, like springbank clover and the inner bark of hemlock. Apart from the Inuit and other circumpolar peoples, you would be hard pressed to find any traditional people not eating some kind of starchy food, or herb used as medicine, on a regular basis. We also synthesize all the enzymes necessary for digesting various starches. The GAPS/specific-CHO is clinical diet, and yes, it does get results in some people, but not for the reasons practitioners think. Properly processed cereals for e.g. are very well-digested, but most people who eat cereals don’t know how to properly process and prepare them. Similarly, in their ignorance, they buy pre-packaged food and end up eating a lot of CHOs, which increase the risk of CVD, cancer, and diabetes. Reducing CHOs is a good idea – especially the rapidly digesting ones. But if someone can’t tolerate any CHOs, the problem is that they have bad digestion. And there is a way to treat this, but its not the GAPS/specific-CHO, and nor is it the Candida diet.
Todd, how Do u suggest poor digesting is treated? And what percent of the diet ought to come from carbs fats and pro?
yuk nasty
@Heather Schroeder Zwicker – how do you administer the oil of oregano? My daughter gets occasional flare-ups which keep her itching all night 🙁