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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
No I’m not happy with the conclusion that THE candida diet doesn’t work. There are many candida diets and they can we tailor made. There is zero need to purchase products to make this happen. A candida diet will surely work and the addition of fermented foods 2-3 times a day will have a huge impact. I disagree with the findings.
Good news, Sarah. Diet helps, it doesn’t cure. Candida however can be ridden. Candida causes leaking gut; leaking gut causes Candida. It’s a vicious circle. I got it on my neck for 5 months until I started taking MSM (Methylsulfonylmethane) supplement__big time, drunk lot of milk and being out in the sun. It took about a month for it to work but now I only have to keep a healthier diet and some MSM sometimes. Oh, and Clotrimazole cream as directed.
You can’t just say “The Candida Diet.” It isn’t like GAPS. There is only one GAPS, but TONS of contradictory versions of candida diets easily found online. The candida diet that we use at our clinic is A., customized to each person, taking into account their allergens and other considerations and, B., not like the one that you described above. There is no fruit or starchy vegetables at all. Grains are strictly limited as well. Anything that converts quickly to glucose is out. We focus on fiber and gut-healing foods like pre- and probiotic foods and bone broths. We also encourage a much higher proportion of folks’ calories come from fat than you are likely to see in most of the popular versions found on the internet.
When you headline an article by saying that nutritional therapies are a waste of time, you discourage folks from trying anything and they are more likely to just keep eating whatever nonsense got them into this mess in the first place.
Will the GAPS diet work for someone without a spleen? I have recently been diagnosed wit. Candida after being treated for amebic dysentery. The meds that killed the amiba, killed everything and then the fungus began to take over. I had a spleenectomy in 1986 and have taken antibiotics all my life ssince, never having this problem. I have always followed up after completing a round of antibiotics with acidophilus. Now I am having digestive tract problems and skin problems. Please advise on my situation. I am 59 currently and even without a spleen, have never had this happen. Thank you for your time and assistance.
Sincerely
Randy Parker
You will have to consult a GAPS Practitioner or a functional medicine practitioner who works with patients with gut imbalance to find out.
Hi Sarah,
Thank you for your article, your knowledge has been a godsend as my family works our way back to health! Do you have any tips for healing an infant of candida? My 9 month old is struggling with an overgrowth after 2 rounds of antibiotics. She gets breast milk, and probiotics in powder form. We’ve never done grains and are eliminating fruits and starches from her diet. Do you have any suggestions on what to feed or avoid in terms of food or supplements?
Thank you in advance if you reply!! 🙂
Amy
Sarah the candida diet does not allow grains and starchy vegetables in the beginning of the diet, you are misinformed and need to look to the pioneers, William G. Crook and C. Orion Truss for education!
If you read through the comments, how people are being told to implement the candida diet is all over the board. Some are told gluten free grains are fine. Others are told not to eat any. When my husband and I did it, we were counseled that rice was fine (wheat was not). This diet is whatever people who advocate it want it to be … except effective!
I’m not sure that GAPS should be attempted before candida is eliminated. One of the authors from the GAPS cookbook specifically noted in the introduction that she had to address her candida before she could do GAPS.
GAPS gets rid of candida .. you don’t need to get candida under control before starting it.
We were able to wipe out candida without following a strict diet. I did cut out alcohol for a long time and I was cognisant of what I was eating, but not to a point where I felt like I was missing out on too much. Not going to lie, I used a lot of grapefruit seed extract, and coconut MCT along with a lot of probiotics and Magnesium oxide. I went in with a scorched earth attitude, which was make sure I kill the fungus and not worry as much about the hex reaction. I know this is not advisable for your liver but I’m pretty hard headed. I had success with a little bit higher than recommended doses of the above supplements, I really didn’t have any hex reaction. I think the Magnesium(mag 07) kept everything flowing so I didn’t have a toxic buildup.
I feel absolutely great now. I’m actually angry that I wasted so many years with extreme fatigue, acne, and the damn mental fog. It has been a few months now and I’ve cut back on the supplements besides the probiotics and I still feel incredible. When I say “incredible” may be just normal for other folks, but now I have energy all day, memory recall is 100% better, much more outgoing and the kicker is 20 years of adult acne is totally gone.
The diets have to work as yeast needs food but I went with the drop nuclear weapons on the candida and it worked for me and I feel great. The only residual candida is occasionally it appears that I have a little thrush coming back. I’ll use coconut MCT for a couple of days at least and it calms down. I’m using my tongue as a gauge, and if get’s back white again, I’ve got no problem breaking out the grapefruit seed extract and doing the whole regiment again.
All that being said, I don’t know what the best answers are. I only know what worked for me. Listen to your body. Also, I doubted I would even know when the candida was gone before I started. Boy was I wrong. For me it has been like being reborn and I don’t mean to overstate anything.
Interesting article. I found a candida diet for 40 days followed by paleo style with very little sweets and limited starches to be very effective. I guess I should look into the GAPS, maybe it would fill the “gaps” between the 2! But I also need probiotics to heal, and so potatoes, cassava, parsnips, etc, when prepared properly, made my gut so much happier.
Sarah, you mention that “all grains must be excluded” for the gut to heal. Funny that, this is certainly not my experience with patients spanning three deacdes. After 30 years of clinical practice (including the treatment of tens of thousands of patients with SIBO, Candida, parasites, LGS, IBD, etc.) I have come to the conclusion that “one size” certainly does not fit all with carbs. I have worked with countless clients who have healed (and thrived in fact) when “all grains were NOT excluded”. Most patients end up painting themselves literally into a corner with these ultra-strict grain free and starch free diets. The problem in these kinds of situations is that lip service is often paid to a person’s lifestyle (esp. stress, low cortisol, hypothyroidism) while the lion’s share of attention is paid to what people eat, as if “grains, starches and gluten are the enemy”. I have worked with well over a hundred failed GAPS and SCD clients just in the past year alone who went weak and felt unutterably miserable after being on these strict exclusion diets, in some cases for years. Please remember one important thing – when a practitioner becomes the “food police” with people, many will tend to look elsewhere for help, and many of these people will never tell you how they failed with these kinds of very tough dietary approaches, especially those who live under plenty of stress. There are many roads that lead to Rome.
Sounds like you should have a conversation with Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride MD who has decades of clinical experience in the area and who says that excluding ALL grains is the way to heal the gut. From personal experience, the candida diet is a total fail .. the GAPS diet which excluded all grains worked for us. Many readers have emailed me with the same story. Funny how the candida diet has changed over the years too .. it continues not to work over the long haul, so it continues to be tweaked and it gets closer and closer to the GAPS diet. Best to just do the GAPS diet and not waste time with the candida diet.