The Candida Diet
Candidiasis, commonly referred to as “candida,” is a fungal infection that can affect men and women of all ages in various parts of the body. It most commonly occurs in the mouth, ears, nose, toenails, fingernails, gastrointestinal tract and vagina. Possible symptoms are comprise a true laundry list ranging from bad breath to persistent heartburn to arthritis. Due to its many and varied symptoms, candida is often ignored, undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.
If you have candida or know someone who does, the good news is that there are many candida natural treatments. The main natural treatment is a change in your diet to discourage the overgrowth of yeast. Before embarking on your new diet, though, it’s a good idea to start with a candida cleanse to help rid the body of excess candida through the flushing of the digestive tract.
You have two options for a cleanse: a liquids-only cleanse or a more gentle cleanse with food. You can also start with the step one cleanse and then move to the step two cleanse.
Cleansing Step 1:
Liquids-Only Candida Cleanse (Duration 1–2 Days)
Start by making a vegetable broth from organic onions, garlic, celery, kale, sea salt and pure water. Let simmer and strain. Discard the vegetables and refrigerate the broth.
Throughout the day, sip on warm broth. It’s imperative that you drink lots of water to help your body expel all the toxins in your system. While this is not a long-term cleanse, it can be repeated as needed every few weeks. It can also be used as a jump-start to the food cleanse below.
Cleansing Step 2:
Steamed Vegetables (Duration 3–5 Days)
By eliminating grains, sugars, fruits, starches and alcohol from your diet for three to five days, you can make great headway in your fight against candida overgrowth.
You should mostly eat fresh, organic vegetables that have been steamed. For this cleanse stage, keep away from any starchy vegetables like carrots, radishes, beets, sweet potatoes and white potatoes, which may contribute to sugar levels and feed the candida. Continue to drink plenty of pure water, a minimum of 72 ounces per day, to help flush the candida and byproducts from your system.
During this time, no more than once a day, you can eat salads made from leafy greens (like romaine) or bitter greens (like chard) and topped with just a bit of coconut oil and apple cider vinegar (or lemon juice).
During either of the candida cleanses above, you can use bentonite clay to help surround the toxins and efficiently remove them from your system.
Once you’re done with the cleansing stage, you can then move on to an antifungal diet that doesn’t just discourage candida — it helps your body get rid of candida for good! Here are the dietary steps I recommend to have you on the path to being candida-free:
Diet Step 1: Remove the Problem Foods
First and foremost, you need to continue to remove the foods from your diet that literally feed the candida and encourage it to flourish in your body. The top offenders include sugar, white flour, yeast and alcohol. These items are believed to promote candida overgrowth. If you avoid eating sugar and white flour, then you will easily cut out most processed foods, which tend to be higher in calories and unhealthy ingredients and low in nutrition.
Avoiding sugar in all of its various forms is truly key to fighting candida. The candida yeast cells need sugar to build their cell walls, expand their colonies and switch into their more virulent, fungal form. This is why a low-sugar diet is such a necessary part of your candida treatment. If you need some help, here’s how to kick your sugar addiction.
Going forward, you want your diet to be centered on vegetables, high-quality protein foods, and gluten-free grains like brown rice and millet. Avoiding fruit at this time is also commonly recommended because even though fruit is very healthy, it does get turned into sugar in the body.
In terms of vegetables, you also want to avoid these somewhat sweet, starchy varieties: potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, yams, beets, peas and parsnips. These vegetables are banned from a strict anti-candida diet because of their high carbohydrate content, but they’re certainly nutrient-dense and can be reintroduced later on in your treatment.
Diet Step 2:
Candida Killers & Boost Your Immune System
You want to make sure you include the items from my top 10 list below on a daily basis, including apple cider vinegar, sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables, green veggies and green drinks, coconut oil, Manuka honey, garlic, ground chia and flaxseeds, unsweetened cranberry juice, cultured dairy, as well as spices like turmeric and cinnamon.
How long do I need to eat like this?
In order to have success with the candida diet, it will take anywhere from a few weeks to several months.
- how strictly you follow this diet
- the intake and effectiveness of probiotics and antifungals
- the severity of your candida
Diet Step 3: Reintroducing Off-Limit Foods
You can gradually reintroduce certain foods into your new candida diet.
Low-sugar fruits like green apples are a great example of a smart choice. If the reintroduced foods don’t cause flare-ups of candida symptoms, you can move on to reintroducing more foods that you have been avoiding. I recommend doing this reintroduction slowly and one item at a time.
Top Candida Diet Foods
1. Apple Cider Vinegar
The acid and enzymes in apple cider vinegar help to kill and get rid of excess yeast in the body. (1)
2. Sauerkraut & Fermented Foods
Fermented foods like sauerkraut and kifir contain microflora that help protect the intestines.
3. Green Veggies & Green Drinks
Leafy green vegetables help alkalize the body, which fights against the acidic nature of yeast overgrowth. Greens contain no sugars but high amounts of magnesium that naturally detox the body, vitamin C to build the immune system, chlorophyll to cleanse the body, B vitamins to energize the body and iron to give the body full support. (3)
4. Coconut Oil
Coconut oil has antimicrobial properties and the combination of lauric acid and caprylic acid found in coconut oil kills off harmful candida through ingestion and topical application. (4)
5. Stevia
We know that sugar feeds candida. That’s why it’s important to use different sweeteners, and stevia is the perfect choice for those on a candida diet. Not only is stevia an antifungal, anti-inflammatory and antibiotic agent, but also helps balance the pancreas, which is often comprised when someone has candida. (5)
6. Garlic
Garlic contains a large number of sulphur-containing compounds that have extremely potent, broad-spectrum antifungal properties. Raw garlic benefits the fight against candida specifically. (6)
7. Ground Flaxseeds & Chia Seeds
Polyphenols found in flaxseeds and chia seeds support the growth of probiotics in the gut and may also help eliminate yeast and candida in the body. (7)