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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 don’t know which candida diet this article is about, but it’s obviously different than the one i am aware of…. stage 1 is CLEANSING(to rid yourself of parasites, yeasts, and heavy metals then reintroduce gut flora, etc): http://www.thecandidadiet.com/candida-diet-stage-one.htm and during stage 2 there is NO FRUIT… http://www.thecandidadiet.com/foodstoeat.htm .. then after you’ve been on stage 2 for however long you need to be, you can move to stage 3 which does re-allow some fruit……. candida stage 2/3 diet is VERY similar to body ecology, paleo and more….
Every time I hear or read candida, I’m reminded of my husband’s boss’s wife who said, “Have you tried the new Candida Bowl at Taco Bell? It’s sooooo good.” Her daughter replied with, “Mom, that’s gross. And it’s Cabana Bowl, not Candida Bowl.” Blah lol
That is too funny! Sometimes people only hear what they want to hear, right?!
Maybe this is related – every time I read an article about candida I start hearing an old Tony Orlando & Dawn song. 😉
detox, detox, detox! i have a crystal heat (bio mat mini) that can heat up to 160 i use it daily to sweat. ive done alot of diets and glad i did, because its a great foundation but fir heat mat has to be at the top….well YAH (God) is really at the top
Bikram Yoga would work well for this purpose too 😉
I agree with checking for mercury too. Candida chelates mercury so as long as you have elevated levels of mercury in your body you will keep inviting candida in to sort it out. You need to remove the mercury before you can overcome the candida.
Honey is okay because it is a monosaccaride. Only raw honey is allowed so that the enzymes are still present and it is to be eaten very minimally.
WRONG. Honey, yes even raw honey, immediately aggravates oral thrush and gut candida symptoms in many people who have candida gut problems. Just because it is “raw” does not mean all the fructose in that honey somehow magically does not feed candida.
Honey and fruits not allowed in GAPS until one has completed the introductory cleansing stage. Its interesting how little many people know about the GAPS diet here and yet they are so eager to criticize it. I feel sorry for those who will not give it a try even though it could really heal them from the inside out.
I found the GAPS DVD set so helpful when starting this diet as it shows how to make many of the foods like bone broths, saurkraut, using almond flour to make pancakes, etc. and answered so many of my questions. Also you can purchase the GAPS book and cookbook, and supplements on their website. One stop shopping! And there is a list of practitioners on the site. Another hint for those wanting to start the diet. Contact your local Weston Price chapter and see if there is someone in your community who is on the GAPS diet who can be like a mini support group for you as you start this journey. So helpful to me as I live by myself and finding the courage to not grab a small bag of chips or whatever when I got tired was difficult before I found someone to talk to who was on the journey ahead of me. Thanks, Sarah, for reposting these 2 columns.
I do think that sometimes more is needed to heal the gut than just a diet change but this infomation, from my experience, is a little misleading. I have gone on several candida diets (and really do continue on one to this day – sometimes really following the SCD diet without meaning to :-)) and I have personally been advised by several practitioners and sites not to eat fruits on the diet and to severely limit grains.
I know that there are doctors who think you can eat fruits on the diet but I didn’t think that worked for me. I do wonder about GAPS and SCD since they allow fruit and honey. I don’t think I could handle honey at all. I would love to hear from others who have candida and have looked at these diets.
I don’t know if folks who get candida in a moderate to severe way are ever cured. I would be interested in hearing from folks in this situation as well.
Look into GAPS more closely. If you do it properly, there is an intro period where fruit and honey aren’t allowed. It is a time of cleansing and is designed to stave pathogens while doing maximum gut healing and slowly introducing more and more good bacteria. Honey and fruit are slowly introduced right at the end of this intro period.
I agree Adrienne. There are many ‘so called’ Candida Diets. Unfortunately it seems everyone who’s written a book on the subject has a different protocol to follow. Some say yes to fruits, potatoes, and grains, but if you dig deeper there are others out there who say that a true candida diet eliminates all grains as well as all sugar forms, including fruit.
This article is not really fair to say in general that a candida diet doesn’t work. I’m not saying a GAPS diet wouldn’t heal either but I have also been hearing about the importance of copper and getting mercury fillings removed for any diet to be effective.
http:// please dont burst my bubble im jus getting started on my sugar detox regamine so tired of the revovling doors of the medical hype ask my last dr questions esp what is causing my weight gain no honest answer dump the dr if there not a naturopathic out with the old in w the new. i think to say the least i should feel better once my body in not starving to death even thou i eat good foods jus wondering how long the evil dr’s are gonna let us suffer and get the message out keep in touch everybody i need to smoke some weed god bless all the honest good caring people and now the so called gateway drug is not such a bad drug after all it never was !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so glad i have a computer off to gut restoration ill get bac to you adrianne sometime now i no why my aunt died of not kidney failure but the true cause starve to death a candida infection of the body wish i known about this gut imbalance 30 years ago now i can thro it bac in the dr’s face and i will heal my own family now all my kids no more dr’ amen and even think about sueing definately malpractice going on in america kevin traduea is right natural cures why are we paying dr’s to make us sic
Fully agree about fruits… I noticed that I would get slightly bloated after eating fruit.. sugar, in any form, ignites that devilish fungi.
I found the diet “healing naturally by bee” to be successful. very strict but effective.
Why is it ok to eat honey on the GAPS diet?
Because it is a monosaccharide and thus more easy to digest for people with gut imbalance. By contrast, cane sugar, maple syrup, etc. are disaccharides and are more difficult for people with gut imbalance to digest.
Another example of why the GAPS diet does NOT work for many people with candida: honey immediately gives me a raging case of thrush and bowel symptoms from the massive candida overgrowth all the fructose in the stupid honey. Shees people, honey? do some research.
Check out Bee Wilder for a great Candida diet that includes no carbs…and it does heal, completely.
I’ve been following Bee for years! Glad to see someone else mention her work. I don’t necessarily eat the way she recommends but I try to follow her logic and see where it goes. I do agree with her about fermented foods, however, and have done so for years. Whenever anyone in my family (while growing up) had heartburn they drank pickle juice or ate sauerkraut, homemade when it was available.
I also had heard YEARS ago about the copper imbalance and the zinc problems when I was studying some work by Ann Louise Gittleman. She’s been connecting the dots for quite a long time.
One of the best pieces of dietary advice I ever stumbled on was something I did by accident about 14 years ago, and that was adding sea salt to my first afternoon glass of drinking water (filtered with a ceramic filter in our home). Great for the gut and helps to supply those trace minerals we all need.