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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
This article states that the Candida diet downfall is that it allows starches and breads? What?! I have combed the internet and have not found one Candida diet that allows breads/grains and starches/potatoes. Please do some research before standing on your soapbox!
I find this to be less than accurate. Perhaps it failed miserably for you and your husband, or vice versa, but, I only followed the diet poorly, and, for a short period of time, and even so, I was oodles better for years.
It was being under severe stress and returning to the same style of living and eating that changed that. But, it was not because I included moderate portions of foods, occasionally, that are not on the diet; it was because I started binging on many of them, at different times,
The fact of life is that if you are susceptible to yeast overgrowth, you are going to have to change your way of eating and living. It does not mean that you can never have pizza or beer, again, though. It means that you should be careful to only have these things every now and again, and, when you do have them, plan on eating more things like grapefruit, garlic, jalapenos, cutting back on sugar, and other things which you know to be helpful in keeping your intestinal bacteria balanced.
I have found that when I eat meals mostly made of vegetables, then grains, then fruit and use meat not at all or only as flavoring, I feel wonderful and it is very easy to keep balanced. It is not a hardship. It is simply learning to eat differently. In fact, I have more wonderful food, now, than I ever did before. Yes, granted, I don’t eat macaroni and cheese, but, I can eat macaroni and nutritional yeast flakes, which taste very cheesy; and the reason I can’t eat macaroni and cheese is not because of the problem with yeast overgrowth. It is because I am allergic to dairy, so, taking in things that I am allergic to would make me feel miserable. In turn, that would put me under a great deal of stress, and that stress and illness, and digestive troubles caused by allergic reaction, would affect my potential to re-experience yeast overgrowth. Not the other way around!
There is a wonderful world of spices to explore, which make a big deal of difference in how much one would enjoy eating less traditional western foods and more traditional Asian or Middle Eastern foods. Everything doesn’t have to be fat, cheese and yeast laden. Experiment, explore.
It sounds like you two were so busy focusing on what you couldn’t have, that you forgot to learn the joys of what you could have. Try a little positive thought. If you have more positive thought, you have less chance of yeast overgrowth in the first place!
Arletta, a very balanced response. Can u post what a typical days bf, lunch, dinner, and snacks consist for u? Did u continue to eat starches and legumes while beating candida? Are u vegan?
Thanks
This is wonderful Arletta. Thank you! I tell people all the time that attitude and thoughts have direct ties to health and happiness. I recently went vegan and have never felt better or happier. I do not believe I have candida issues, but I want to be the healthiest I can be. I do not feel restricted at all, rather, I am happy and excited every day to eat a balanced healthy diet. I now feel like I am utterly spoiling myself at every meal, with no negative side effects, no guilty conscience, etc. I feel wonderful! The mind, body, what we eat, our actions and thoughts, etc…. all of these things are connected.
The particular Candida program that was done was flawed. A proper Candida program does not allow fruits unttil 21 days after the start of the program and bananas, oranges, and apples are still not permitted on the diet because of their high sugar content. Grains and starchy veggies are also not permitted. If you follow a reputable program in conjunction with detoxification treatments your end results are amazing!!!
Too true. I was wondering about that, myself, because I have the Yeast Overgrowth Cookbook and the companion book to that, and, I am quite sure they took out almost, if not all, grains and fruits for a while.
But, grains are also prebiotic, which means if you eat them, you are helping the good bacteria to flourish. Wheat and corn, white rice , are still not recommended for this approach due to chances of allergies, being harder to digest and/or being more starchy than other grains, though.
Also, don’t use the microwave to cook them, because, microwaves kill the good bacteria in food and sap nutritional value!
I have a rare neurological disorder that causes a need to go to the bathroom 10x/day. Its not autoimmune or inflammatory. My GI tract is healthy, but the nerves overstimulate healthy muscles and cause problems. I have an implanted nerve-stimulator that helps a little, but there are no other medical options. Since getting diagnosed years ago, I’ve been eating extremely healthy. My diet is unintentionally very similar to the Candida Diet. You say the main difference between the CD and GAPS is that the GI relief is temporary with CD and permanent with GAPS. My diet has been excellent for general health but has brought no relief in GI symptoms, so it sounds like the GAPS diet wouldn’t be any more effective for me.
However, I’m desperate and will try GAPS, which mainly means eliminating green tea, organic milk, rolled oats, and oranges. I’ll also switch to the recommended probiotic.
You posted a couple of links to cookbooks, but at the moment I work 70 hrs/week and don’t have much time to cook. Do you have any links to meal plans based more on raw foods or simpler recipes? For example, I commonly eat Fage Greek Yogurt w/ blueberries and rolled oats w/ cinnamon for breakfast. I depend on oats and it’d be difficult to switch to baking bread with coconut flour.
Do you know of anyone offering an equally simple GAPS meal plan?
Also, what’s your opinion of green tea? CD says to avoid it, but I drink 2 cups/day and have excellent energy/concentration after drinking it. Its a very healthy feeling and not at all like a “rush” from a disgusting energy drink.
Thanks very much for your time.
you can drink tea as long as theyre herbal, you arent allowed to eat fruits or starchy veggies, and also, non glutenous grains like quinoa actually help clean intestines because they contain a lot of fiber.
The candida diet does work because it starves the candida. Its up to you to add probiotics and antifungals so that you can permanently kill the candida and restore the good bacteria.
This article is very off.
Jamie tee, so what carbs are ok and how much? Most sources say even gf grains aren’t good… But then some say small servings of squash peas, and sweet potatoes are ok. This is all so confusing
Can u layout the proper anti candida diet and what would be a good plan to follow for bf, lunch, dinner snacks?
I find the information here erroneous as far as the candida diet is concerned. It does NOT allow fruits, although some low sugar fruits have been deemed “okay” for some but not all candida sufferers, also starchy vegetables are not allowed. If the diet did not help you then it is because you did not adhere properly. If you ate anything like potatoes, yams, apples etc.. then you were not following the diet.
You are absolutely right. This Report has a lot of flaws that by no means define the true candida diet. People should research….
the so-called candida diet worked beautifully for me:
I was battling 72 hour migraines and constant yeast infections that wouldn’t go away even with Fluconazole and the likes.
It sucked bad.
after 6 months of no gluten, no sugar and partially no dairy I am yeast infection free and migraines are very sporadic and much lighter in intensity.
I lost about 15 pounds (they are creeping back as I slowly introduced more foods..) and for the most part I felt wonderful.
It was hard, but so worth it – I stopped the severe diet over 6 months ago, still feeling great.
What I avoided:
– nothing gluten – including soy (used the gluten free one) and oatmeal
– No sugars / sugar substitutes / honey – that includes banana, mango pineapple, grapes and dry fruits, no tomato sauce with sugar, tried to cook mostly at home, but whenever we went out i would ask about sugar and they prepared it without
– for 3 month no dairy, then goat products in moderation
– alcohol
What I ate:
– organic vegetables
– fish (i don’t eat meat)
– organic rice, millet, quinoa and corn (quinoa pasta and rice noodles were great)
– organic legumes
– eggs
– nuts
– in moderation: organic berries, pear, apple
– in moderation: potatoes and sweet potatoes
– less than 1 cup of coffee a day with unsweetened almond milk
Important: it’s not easy, but if you decide to go on this diet you need to be very strict. Some suggest to go even stricter than I did, but it worked for me. I decided to introduce goat dairy again because i felt week at some point but everyone obviously is different.
I can’t stress the strictness enough. i dabbled with the diet before i went full-on, and each time I mildly lapsed the symptoms would come back with avenges. It was hard at times but living with migraines and yeasts was much harder. Feeling so clean and light is an amazing sensation. As a sweet tooth – noticing cravings diminish and flavors get stronger (an apple is so sweet when there’s no sugar around!) is mind blowing.
I now know sugars are evil – the more you have it them more you crave it. gluten is a problem since we eat bad wheat. I use them both in moderation and contemplate removing them altogether again although I’m symptom free. I just felt healthier without them..
http://www.thecandidadiet.com/foodstoeat.htm
I find it odd that gf grains are allowed, but not legumes. Stupid bioscience if u ask me
The key thing to realize in any digestive disorder, no matter what the label, e.g. candida, SIBO, leaky gut, dysbiosis, etc., the problem is still one of poor digestion. Alterations in the gut ecology occur as the RESULT of poor digestion, not vice versa. Labels are thus unimportant when we know how to restore digestion. Any additional therapy, whether to kill parasites or yeast cells, to inhibit or stimulant various secretions, to stimulate or inhibit movement – are secondary to the restoration of digestion. Otherwise we we might end up playing a game of whack-a-mole, treating labels instead of causes.
We simply cannot digest much of the sweet foods we eat, and thus we have acquired a microbiome that helps us out – except that it is pro-inflammatory. It has yeast and many other types of pro-inflammatory bacteria, with some variations person to person. Withdrawal of these sugars naturally inhibits some of the proinflammatory organisms, and with fermented veggies and properly-prepared complex carbs, we can encourage a healthy gut ecology. But some folks clearly can’t handle much starch – especially if they are diabetic (kapha type) or hypoglycemic (vata type), or have profound sensitivities, which are easy if not a little time-consuming to test for (paleodiet->elimination/challenge).
Btw, a simple and excellent remedy for weak digestion and the problems associated with “candida” is an Indian (Ayurvedic) remedy called Hingwastak:
Ingredients: Åšuṇá¹hÄ« rhizome (dry ginger), Marica fruit (black pepper), PippalÄ« fruit (long pepper), AjamodÄ fruit (wild celery), Saindhava (pink salt), ÅšvetajÄ«raka fruit (cumin), KṛṣṇajÄ«raka fruit (nigella or caraway), Hiá¹…gu resin (asafoetida)
AnupÄna dravyÄṇi (vehicle): clarified butter
Indications: digestive weakness, poor appetite, colic, malabsorption, bowel disorders, bloating
Dose: 1/4-1/2 tsp, mixed with a little ghee, before meals; or eaten with food, 3x daily
As can be expected – it has a very “indian” odor, so if you are new to curry it might seem a little strange. But this formula has a great ability to dispel coldness in the gut and stimulate a good appetite, and a mild but nonetheless efficient activity to inhibit parasites and pathogenic bacteria. It would only be contraindicated in folks with heat and burning sensations, like GERD or an ulcer. If which case, another remedy is used, called Avipattikara churna.
where do you find pippali, ajamoda, krsnajiraka and hingu resin?
“The key thing is to avoid rapidly digesting starches (e.g. bread, sugar, fruit etc),”
“I didn’t mention fruit anywhere in my comments — in fact, I said that it is wise to AVOID fruit in yeast infections, ”
Well this just confused me more. Thanks anyway. 🙂