on
 Candida Diet
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: Up the Intake of 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. It really depends on the individual and a few key variables:
  • 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
Once you’re free of your candida symptoms and the candida itself, then what? As I’m sure you guessed, going back to your old habits and ways of eating will likely just bring the candida back all over again. However, 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

Here are some of the foods you should eat on the candida diet.
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 kimchi contain microflora that help protect the intestines. Regular consumption can help improve the immune system, making the body less hospitable for candida. (2)
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)

Candida Diet Foods to Eat & Avoid - Dr.Axe

8. Unsweetened Cranberry Juice
Cranberry juice without added sugar helps to correct the pH levels of urine, helping to prevent the overgrowth of fungi like candida. (8)
9. Cultured Dairy
Having cultured dairy, preferably goat milk kefir, for healthy probiotic foods can effectively kill the candida in your system and increase your healthy flora. (9)
10. Spices like Turmeric & Cinnamon
Turmeric contains an active component called curcumin that has been shown to completely inhibit the growth of Candida Albicans (as well as lots of other fungal strains). (10) Cinnamon can heal oral thrush because studies have shown that people who supplement with cinnamon generally suffer from less candida overgrowth than those who don’t.
11. Cooked Vegetables
Non-starchy, cooked vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus provide valuable nutrients that fight candida. (11)
12. Organic Meat
Protein plays a key role in candida. If you get your protein from factory farmed meats, you could actually feed candida, while foods high in healthy fats and protein protect against candida. (12) That’s why it’s so important to consume only organic, free-range meat.
13. Bone Broth
Bone broth benefits so many different aspects of our health, and you can add treating candida to the list. In fact it’s one of the best food sources to destroy candida due to its positive effects on gut health.
14. Pau D’arco Tea
Pau d’arco tea is probably the No. 1 thing to add to your candida diet. It helps the body fight candida the natural way. That’s because it has antifungal compounds like lapachol, which has been shown to combat candida. (13)

Foods to Avoid on the Candida Diet

Here are the foods to avoid on the candida diet. (14)
1. Sugar & Sugar Alternatives
These sweet items feed yeast, so you should avoid them at all costs.
2. Fruit & Fruit Juice
Even though fruit is generally healthy, it’s high in sugar and can make candida worse.
3. Alcohol
Most alcohol contains yeast so it’s not surprising that it produces more of it when consumed and should be avoided.
4. Grains
Grains break down into sugar and can feed candida, yeast and bad bacteria.
5. Vinegar
All types of vinegar should be avoided with candida overgrowth, except for apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is the only vinegar that provides an alkalizing benefit for the body and actually causes candida to die.
6. Peanuts
Peanuts can often carry mold, which only encourages the growth of candida. Plus, the peanut allergy is one of the most common food allergies on the planet, providing another reason to avoid peanuts.
7. Dairy
Unless it’s fermented, you ideally want to avoid dairy at least in the early stages of your cleansing. Milk contains lactose, which is a sugar.
8. Food Intolerances
Some yeast infections are due to food allergies. Try to avoid foods that cause negative reactions of any kind. If you think you have a food allergy or sensitivity, try an elimination diet to figure out what foods are causing intolerances.
Other foods to avoid include:
  • Dried Fruits
  • Bananas
  • Ice Drinks

Best Essential Oils for Candida

Some of the best oils to fight candida are:
These five all help to kill a variety of parasites and fungi, including candida, in the body. Lavender oil also inhibits the growth of candida and is effective at preventing the spread of the infection. (15, 16)
By mixing a couple of drops of clove oil or lavender oil with coconut oil during your cleanse, you can help to kill off the offending candida. However, since these essential oils are powerful, they should only be taken internally for 10 days or less. For oral thrush, you can use three drops of clove oil with one tablespoon of coconut oil and swish the mixture in your mouth for 20 minutes. This oil pulling is excellent for killing candida and overall detoxification of the body.

Top 5 Candida Supplements

  1. Probiotics (50 billion units daily): Will give your body healthy bacteria, which can help reduce the presence of yeast.
  2. Oregano oil (2 drops 3 times daily for 7 days then stop): Oregano oil is naturally antibacterial and antifungal.
  3. Garlic (2 caps or cloves daily): Helps fight fungal infections and boost the immune system.
  4. Vitamin C (1,000 milligrams, 3 time daily): Boosts immune function and helps fight off infections.
  5. Grapefruit seed extract (200 milligrams, 2–3 times per day): This herb has specific properties to fight candida.
In addition, you can use the following herbs to treat candida:
A 2003 study out of Israel proved that olive leaf extracts have an antimicrobial effect against bacteria and fungi. Olive leaf extracts killed almost all bacteria tested, including dermatophytes (causing infections on the skin, hair and nails), candida albicans (an agent of oral and genital infections) and Escherichia coli cells (bacteria found in the lower intestine). (17) 

Candida Diet Recipes

You definitely want to eat a mix of raw, fermented and cooked vegetables while on the candida diet. When it comes to recipes, you of course want ones that leave out all of the candida-promoting foods above while including as many of the candida killers as possible.
One recipe that I absolutely love is for kimchi, a traditional fermented probiotic food that is a staple Korean side dish. If you follow my Homemade Kimchi Recipe then you will have one delicious, high-quality fermented vegetable on hand at all times.