Don’t Waste Your Time: Why the Candida Diet Doesn’t Work

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 (one celled fungi) that under normal circumstances, 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 a given body tissue to keep Candida 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” which can penetrate through the tissues of the body.

Candida overgrowth can occur in many tissues of the body such as oral candidiasis known as thrush,  the scalp as dandruff, or vaginal yeast infections.

What Causes Candida 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, giving 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 giving Candida 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 to the ravages of Candida overgrowth as they are not exposed to a healthy balance of gut flora from their travels down the birth canal prior to the moment of birth.

Symptoms of Candida Overgrowth

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 and the pathogenic state of their 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

Some 20 years ago, my husband and I tried the Candida Diet to resolve gut imbalance that had been exacerbated by our stressful and overworked lifestyle at the time.

It failed miserably.

Why?

Because the Candida Diet goes only part of the way in attempting to resolve gut imbalance by removing all food sources for Candida.

For example, the Candida Diet removes sugar from the diet in all forms – even maple syrup and honey.  Fresh fruit, however, is allowed.

Candida overgrowth can frequently trigger an allergy to molds and other types of fungi, so fermented foods including cheese and dairy are also eliminated along with any breads 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.

People Get Better on the Candida Diet (psst … but they don’t heal)

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 or more and are pleased to see that their symptoms of Candida overgrowth diminish considerably during that time.
• After a period of time, they try to reintroduce some of the foods that were removed only to 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 as 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.

3 Reasons Why the Candida Diet Doesn’t Work

The paradox of the Candida Diet is that symptoms greatly diminish but the person doesn’t actually heal from the root cause of the problem which is a breech in the integrity of the gut lining.

Long-term healing is prevented on the Candida Diet for the following key reasons:

Reason #1:  The Candida Diet allows foods like potato, yams and other starchy vegetables.

Reason #2:  The Candida Diet doesn’t include traditional bone broth. This is an incredibly necessary food for proper healing of gut issues causing Candida in the first place.

Reason #3:  More important than the allowance of starch in the Candida Diet, however, is the inclusion of grain based foods. Some adherents of Candida Diet 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 point is, there isn’t uniformity to what is recommended, hence, the protocol’s unreliability for working long-term.

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, inbalanced gut overridden with Candida is unable to digest double sugar molecules completely 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 which 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.

The critical importance of the enterocytes to health cannot be overstated!

Weak and diseased enterocytes also have trouble digesting starch molecules which are very large with hundreds of monosugars 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 leaving large amounts of it undigested- 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.

Therefore, when one follows the Candida Diet and yet still consumes grains and starches, food molecules that are not fully digested continue to putrefy, inflame, and provide food for Candida thereby preventing healing even if some improvement is noted from the removal of all sugars.

One Great Tip from the Candida Diet

While the Candida Diet fails miserably in resolving gut imbalance problems for many of the folks who try it, it does include and recommend one fantastic herb that is actually very helpful for keeping Candida under control:  Pau d’Arco tea.

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, Autoimmune Paleo (AIP) or the very similar SCD (Specific Carbohydrate) Diet. And the one tip from the Candida Diet to include while you’re on GAPS, AIP or SCD diets? Pau d’Arco tea!

To read more about GAPS, check out this introductory post on healing autoimmune disease effectively. Also, the post The Five Most Common GAPS Diet Mistakes is a review of the most common pitfalls of this approach to gut healing.

Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist

Sources and More Information

Macrobiotic Diet and Extreme Vitamin D Deficiency
Gut and Psychology Syndrome, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride MD
Biofilms: Overlooked Step in Treating Candida
Can Candida Sufferers Drink Kombucha?
How to Take Probiotics

Sarah

The Healthy Home Economist holds a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Mother to 3 healthy children, blogger, and best-selling author, she writes about the practical application of Traditional Diet and evidence-based wellness within the modern household. Her work has been featured by USA Today, The New York Times, ABC, NBC, and many others.