Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
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 have seen an anti-candida diet WORK. I think it depends on which diet you choose and what supplements you take. Dr. Jason Uchida’s diet and supplements CURED my daughter of her horrendous eczema and food allergies. She is now 100% clear and eats everything that she once tested allergic to. His diet is stricter than both the BED and GAP diets, which we tried for a year. She had to take four supplements: enzymes, pro-biotic, antifungal, and liver/kidney support.
So please please don’t think diet does not help. drjasonuchida.com/video.html to see testimonials on video of patients who will tell you themselves what his regimen did for them.
I agree. I’m doing the Dr. Jeffery McCombs plan.You have to do the diet for a long term. I’ve been on mine for 3 months. When it’s done, I probably won’t go completely off of it.
Hi there,
thanks for your information. I live in a country where the Pau D’Arco grows and so have done quite a bit of research as well as growing them. This site has useful information including ingestion.
Available Forms
Pau d’arco is sold as tablets, dried bark tea, and tincture (which contains alcohol). The chemicals that give pau d’arco its medicinal effects don’t dissolve well in water, so a tea is not recommended.
Most pau d’arco products are not standardized, so it is hard to determine whether or not they contain a safe amount of these active substances. It is important to read the label carefully to make sure that the product actually contains Tabebuia avellanedae as an ingredient.
I am now mostly recovered from candida and I am a nutritional therapist.
I agree with this article, that candida diets don’t work, I was on one for 2 years, I even did anti fungals for a long time. I still had recurring vaginal yeast infections as soon as I ate a piece of fruit.
I got rid of it by addressing the underlying causes of candida such as heavy metals, now I can eat fruit, drink a glass of wine and even have sugar on a=occasion and it doesn’t return! Candida is just a symptom, find the underlying cause.
Can you please show me who I can contact for heavy metal detox and what type of detox I need to get rid of chemicals in my body? I have an autoimmune disorder (leaky gut/arthritis/fibromyalgia) after heavy second hand smoke exposure. Now, everything I eat causes me joint pain. I don’t know how I can detox my body to get rid of the chemicals.
Which Candida diet is this article referring to? There is Candida Diet and also The Candida Diet. It seems The Candida Diet has all these things worked out, and is a much more updated resource. Am I right?
There are plenty of diets to irridicate candida overgrowth & the info in this article is not referring to a diet to eliminate candida overgrowth
For those of you that have shared your failures and successes, thank you! Knowledge is power and as clearly stated, one size does not fit all. We are all on this long hard road and one thing only is a fact. Name calling and anger isn’t going to heal you, unless you tested positive for narcissistic disorder. News flash…the Internet is full of conflicting info…If you want to hate, hate the “medical professionals” that have failed us and led us here!
You’re right about one thing: the candida diet alone does not work to rid the body of overgrowth. A person also needs to kill the candida in the digestive tract and kill it in the blood & organs at the same time they do the diet. After that, a gut healing regimen must begin. And while one should never return to a high sugar, high carb diet, there is no need to stay on the candida diet long term either. There is a healthy balance between the two. Thewholejourney.com is an excellent resource for this, & I highly recommend it. We now know so much more than we did 20 years ago.
Dear author,
Had your research been done properly, you would soon find out that candida does not mean giving up sweets. It means replacing sugar with stevia, organic cocoa or carob. People with Candida in the past may have been itching to have sweets, but at this day and age, most health food stores have alternatives. Ricki Heller wrote an excellent book that helped many people I know get through candida and recipes that can satisfy their sweet tooth with or without sugar-tasting ingredients.
Source: Nutritionist.
Dear Nutritionist, your approach of substitution doesn’t work. Been there done that as have many I know who failed on the candida diet.
Well, you’re certainly entitled to your viewpoint, especially since this is YOUR blog! 🙂
But at the same time, I hope you’ll allow me to share another, which, is contrary to the restrictive no-sugars-carbs-grains approach. You’ll find that others have actually improved faster by not being so restrictive.
Why? Because depriving candida of it’s food source actually encourages it to “go elsewhere” looking for that fuel. In other words, it becomes systemic (or more systemic) and just makes it more difficult to get rid of.
Dr. Jeffrey McCoombs, Chris Kresser follow a less restrictive approach (although Kresser does advise restricting grains) and (gulp) even Matt Stone have had many clients recover faster by eating LESS restrictively.
Obviously that didn’t work for you and others, but it has worked for many. Everyone is different. One size definitely doesn’t fit all.
I am on the Candida diet now and I can tell I am so much better. Better than I’ve been almost my entire life and I am 65. Had rashes, itching and eczema my whole life. Probably because I lived on sugar, especially when I was young. Been on the diet for only a few months and all ready all rashes and eczema have gone. My skin itched my whole life and it no longer does. So I can say it works for me. And I drink coffee – one a day. I put nothing on my skin at all anymore, not a thing, as yeast grows on anything wet. This was making my eczema worse and worse all my life. Not with using nothing on it, the eczema dries up and goes away. The diet is well worth it to me, I was in agony with severe eczema. I take supplements from the nautorpath, L-Glutamine (for healing leaky gut), probiotics and I also drink Pau D’Arco tea. But I heard you can only drink it for 2 weeks as yeast gets resistant to herbal teas. Then you drink a different one for another two weeks – I drank Black Walnut as that is anti-fungal as well. Then you can rotate the teas with any other that are anti-fungal. The diet is not easy, I am starving, ha, ha. Another thing make bone broth from organic bones and drink that or make soup with it. I make it once a week and have soup for a few days. Bone broth will help heal you gut, I plan to drink it for life now. I try to eat as clean as possible and avoid all body products, no cosmetics, nothing. I use dead sea salts in the bath and that is also very good for the skin since I use nothing else. I drink 3 liters of water a day (or try to). Also a lot of sites say do the diet for 2 weeks, my naturopath told me a year and a half and I am going to try and do it that long to make sure. Works for me!
Man you are in for a world of hurt. You have a systematic fungus infection. All you have done by starving your self is weaker your body immune system and put the fungus in a dormant state.
Trust me the second you start eating carbs and sugar again. By wicth are required for a healthy immune system. The fungus is going to regrow and probably start spreading to your other organs.
Only thing carb and sugar restricted diets do is damaged the small intestine wall even more. So you will start having food allergies and joint pain as well.
I suggest you also take high doses of vitamin c every day 3000 MG. Your body can only absorbe 3000mg a day so don’t go over that.
Just Google vitamin c to cure fungus infection. To research about it. Your kidneys can become infected with fungus and that will cause horrible fatigue.
Also you should know probiotics. The good bacteria that keeps you health has only ONE food source. Wicth is called a prebiotic, it is only found in fruit and vegetables.
That is the main reason the western diet is making people sick. Because it does not include much fiber and allows bad
bacteria to grow. Bad bacteria hate insoluble fiber that is.
I suggest you find a naturopath who actually knows what they are talking about because the road this one is heading down end at a steep cliff.
Also would be wise to work out and lose as much body fat as possible. The toxins released from food and the fungus get stored in fat.
These toxins damage your small intestine. Getting into shape is just as important as eating right. Also if you have high stress you will NEVER get better you will have to find a way to control that and keep it to a minimum. Same goes for sleep if you don’t get enough of quality deep sleep you won’t fully recover.
Just curious if anyone has tried or knows anything about using diatomaceous earth against yeast or a bacterial gut imbalance? Maybe in conjunction with a gut healing approach? I am trying to find the cause of my own digestive issues and why there are reactions to foods growing stronger! Listening to the body is difficult for the moment when there seems to be some delayed reactions and overall foggy, imbalanced and inflamed feelings are playing their toll. It’s a little frustrating when medical doctors dismiss what doesn’t show up in their blood tests. The discussion so far has been very interesting and I would appreciate any advice in what feels like Sisyphus pushing rocks up a hill only to watch them roll down again…
Thanks, wishing all good health!
Hi You might also want to go organici, specially with foods that are doused with glyphosate the most common herbicide (and an antibiotic) that can cause havoc in our gut flora and digestive systems.
Good article, I too have been on a journey to rid myself of candida and he’s leaky gut. Bone broth is a key player in the adventure. I have been feeling almost back to my old self again since changing my diet to organic foods, mostly fruits and vegetables, lean meats and fish once or twice a week, and a ton of fermented foods and drinks with bone broth and a good quality probiotic. I want to share one important piece with you that I feel was key to my healing and maybe it will help you too. Ever heard of oxygen cleanse therapy for your intestinal lining? I use colosan but there are others like oxy powder and others, colosan is just cheaper, about 15 bucks and it lasts months at a time. Anyway, what it does is it oxygenates your entire digestive tract and the oxygen (in the form of magnesium activated with an acid, I use organic apple cider vinegar) completely dissolves parasites, candida, bad bacteria and pathogens and old intestinal/colon build up of plaque, mucousal build up and bacterial biodome build up and flushes it right out of you. The oxygen rich environment it leaves behind allows our good bacteria to flourish and recolonize. Plus it gives you a good fresh start to add new good bacteria to help. I do that for a week or two with bone broth while eating fermented foods and I have to tell you the results are great.
No I don’t work for colosan or have any affiliation , I just wanted to share my story and let people know that everyone reacts differently to healing and health and that sometimes you have to try things out for yourself to see results, what works for some may not work for others, I hope this helps.
Hi Josh
Do you get die off symptoms with this? Bad hypoglycemia
I want to email you to ask questions please?