Is Low-Sugar Diet Good for Candida Eradication?

Hi there. It’s New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker. I’m the author of Candida Crusher and I’m also the formulator of the Canxida range of dietary supplements. Thanks for checking out this video today. I receive a nice Facebook message from a person here in the United States. I’m just going to read that out now. This gentleman has got a question for me, which I’m going to reply to in this YouTube video.

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Philip is saying here, “Eric, you’re like a celebrity to me and my wife. We have watched over 30 of your videos and we’re huge Bakker fans.” Thanks for that, Philip. “What’s your current take on low sugar fruits? You seem hesitant with low sugar fruits as time goes on in regards to your opinion on them. My wife and I eat pomegranates, blueberries and raspberries. We’ve been on your Candida Crusher diet for two months now. We’re 30 years of age and 27 years of age. She’s lost 40 pounds. I’ve lost 8. We still have some symptoms, but not as bad. I would say maybe 70 percent of the symptoms. And cranberry juice. Is that okay? Seem to get rid of the infection for a little bit, but now it seems to bring back the heartburn.”

Let’s go back, Philip, and talk about the low sugar fruits and my take on the low sugar fruits. There are a couple of reasons why I tend to recommend be careful with fruits, particularly at the beginning of the Candida Crusher diet approach. And also in some cases, but not all, be careful of the starchy vegetables, the starchy carbohydrate vegetables. Let’s look at the fruits.

Well, either people eat way too much fruit or they don’t eat enough fruit, and I find that typically so. In England, apparently, not many people eat a wide variety of fruits at all and that could be because of the cost of eating fruit because it can be more expensive there. But it could also be habitual because not many people, I think, eat fruit and pass that kind of a trend down into the generations. Fruit doesn’t seem to be a big thing in the UK. Meat and vegetables seem to be the staple.

Many countries like New Zealand and Australia where fruits are cheaper, people do eat fruit, but people don’t quite eat enough fruit when they’re really healthy. And there’s a lot of confusion about fruit. How many pieces can you eat? Can you eat it with meals? Do you have to eat it away from food? Food combining. Maybe these are some things that I’ll address in this video as well.

When you’re healthy, I think that eating fruit every day is a very smart move. But I really believe in my personal opinion that any more than two or three pieces a day is a bit over the top. Fruit does contain a lot of sugars in it and many different kind of sugars. They have to think back a long time ago and throughout history, people did eat fruit, but I believe that today we’ve got a much wider variety and we either eat in excess as I mentioned or not enough. Common sense, folks. You need to eat regular amounts of fruit all the time and pick fruits that make you feel good, improve your bowel function and digestive function. Fruits that don’t make you bloat or burp or fart that create problems.

Personally, I like green apples. I tend to eat one green apple every day. I quite like them. I like berries, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, we grow a lot of strawberries. We’ve got lots coming up at the moment with springtime. Pomegranates are a fantastic fruit. And we’ve got two avocado trees because I like avocados. I believe that an avocado every day is a very good investment for your health long term.

If you’ve got Candida, you need to be very careful. Not just of fruits, but of sugars in general. Some fruits tend to have a stronger reaction with yeast infection than other fruits. From my experience in the clinic for many years, I found the citrus fruits not to be very good with people with yeast infection. Some citrus is. The citrus, I think, that are okay will be limes and lemons. I’ve never found those to be an issue with people, but you need to be particularly careful of mandarins and oranges and tangelos, you know, the orangey kind, the sweet kind of citrus fruits. Be careful of those.

Watermelons, pineapples, mangoes, guavas, any kind that’s like really sweet to eat, particularly watermelons and melons in general tend to aggravate a lot of people with yeast infection. Passion fruits are a fruit that are quite interesting and I’ve not found them to be a problem with most people. Again, that could be another one you can introduce. Kiwi fruit, I think you guys in the States call them kiwi. We call them kiwi fruit here. I find kiwi fruit to be quite an acceptable fruit for most people with yeast infections, especially if they have just a small amount per day.

When should you reintroduce these fruits? How many should you eat if you’ve got a yeast infection? For the first month or two, I think you should take all fruits out of the diet apart from berries, as I mention in my book. Berries, apple, pomegranate, kiwi, avocado, these seem to be probably the preferred fruits. And then you need to work out which of those fruits I just mentioned potentially aggravate you. Because some could aggravate you still. If you’ve worked out that certain fruits don’t aggravate you, you’re quite okay to eat them on a regular basis.

Can you combine with meals or not? Well, I’m not a huge fan of food combining at all. I never have been and I never will be. Mainly because most foods you eat to a degree have some combination of proteins, carbs and fats. Food combining is good for people with very sensitive digestive systems or people who are very unwell. People who have got multiple food allergies or serious irritable bowel may need to get into avoiding starchy foods with proteins, for example. Eating fruits all on their own.

But I’ve tried those diets, guys, and I’ve tried them with many people. I’ve tried food combining with many patients and I found just as many people have got aggravated by doing careful food combining as they didn’t when they didn’t do food combining. In my opinion, it’s a load of bologna all this food combining stuff. It’s almost like paint by numbers. If you’re eating this, eat this. Be careful.

I mentioned before, there’s so many gurus out there telling you how you should and you shouldn’t eat. It’s really experimental. It’s something that you need to work out yourself, what suits your digestive system. Because your digestive system is different from somebody else’s. Not anatomically or the physiology of it, but the bacteria are different. Everybody will carry around their own particular line of bugs that vary to a degree from person to person. And what you’ll find is that some fruits that can seriously aggravate you can be totally okay with the person right next to you. It’s something you need to try yourself.

If a fruit does aggravate you or you really want to have that fruit, what you could also do is try that fruit before meals, after meals, or even with meals, as opposed to totally separate from a meal. I mentioned before. Fruits in different stages of ripeness can also affect you or if fruits are cooked. I’ve got a very good book called The Fruit Cookbook and it’s got many recipes in it. Avocado, for example, can be boiled. It can be baked. It can be stir fried. It can be made into ice cream. You can do everything with fruit. Fruit can be cooked as well. Bananas are very nice when their cooked up when their green and starchy. They’re delicious cooked up with vanilla and coconut cream, for example. Don’t always think that fruit has to be eaten totally raw. It could be steamed. It could be stewed. There are many ways you can prepare fruit as well. If you’re hell bent on having that fruit and you think to yourself, “Eric, I really want that fruit.” Try eating it in a different stage of ripeness slightly or preparing it in a different way because that may agree with your digestive system.

When you start to improve, you can slowly add a little bit more fruit into your diet, but you need to be very cautious. Fruit can be one of those items where people have way too much of, as I mentioned. It’s not unusual for someone to tell me that I have six oranges in a day or four kiwi fruit. Fruit you need to be very careful of with your gut in terms of going to the toilet too often, will be kiwi fruit. Pineapple can create that as well.

The three core fruits in terms of improving digestive function when you’re healthy and keeping it in great shape, kiwi fruit, pineapple, and pawpaw. Pawpaw are yellow fruit from the tropics with the black seeds in it. Pawpaw contain digestive enzymes called papain, which is great for protein digestion. Pineapple contains bromelain, which is a very, very good anti-inflammatory and also a good digestive enzyme. And kiwi fruit contains multiple enzymes in them and prebiotics. Kiwi fruit is one of the healthiest fruits you can eat. But be careful because it can irritate the delicate oral mucosa. Some people get funny lip sensations or tongue sensations, so be careful how you eat kiwi fruit, too, they can create problems in that area if you’re sensitive to fruit.

Fruits tend to be a little bit dicier and more difficult to integrate into the diet when you’ve got Candida than starchy vegetables do. Starchy vegetables tend to be cooked and prepared differently, whereas, fruits we tend to eat raw. When you eat fruits raw, remember also, they don’t just contain a higher sugar content, they’re potentially highly allergenic for many people and they can cause issues with your immune system, with your gut, and with your bacteria. Because they’ve got so much sugars in them, the bacteria can react quite quickly to them causing bloating or gas. So it’s not just Candida that will play up in the sugars in the fruits, essentially the sugar content, because many people with Candida yeast infections also forget that they’ve got dysbiotic bacteria or they’ve got bad bacteria and potentially parasite. Parasites love fruit and so do bad bacteria. And that can create lots of symptoms, brain fog, joint pain, gas, bloating, irritable bowel. Many things can be caused.

If you are eating fruit and you don’t seem to be recovering, put all the fruit out of your diet entirely for at least four to six weeks because it can be a very reactive food when it comes to Candida. I don’t eat any more than two pieces of fruit per day. I tend to get most of my fiber and nutrition from the vegetables that we grow. I’m more of a vegetable than a fruit fan. But when I do eat fruit, I tend to includes some fruits into the diet. We are growing a lot of fruits at the moment on my property, so I’ll be able to let you know in years to come. I’m growing nectarines, peaches, plums, apricots and many different fruits. I’ve got about five apple varieties I’m growing. I prefer the old fashioned varieties of apples rather than the new ones. We’re quite lucky. My wife and I live here in New Zealand. We live in a great region for growing fruits and vegetables. I’ll let you know in time to come.

I hope that answers your question, Philip, about the fruits. Pomegranates are a great fruit. I’m glad you’re eating those. They’re a very good fruit to eat. What about the cranberry juice? You mentioned here. “The cranberry juice seems to get rid of the infection for a little bit, but now seems to bring back the heartburn.” If you’re drinking cranberry juice, Philip, be careful that it’s got no sugar in it. And also, buy the cranberries whole, dried cranberries, and just get probably about a dessert spoon and simmer them in a bit of clean, pure water probably for about 20 minutes and then try a little bit of that juice to drink or dilute that with water. I don’t think that will cause the heartburn. I assume that you’re drinking a commercial cranberry juice. I’ve never been a fan of any kind of commercial juices. Because usually they’re not really made properly. They’re made with sugar. They heat them up too much. Try making your own cranberry juice if you like cranberries. They’ve got a nice quite tart flavor about it.

Thanks again for the kind words, Philip. I’m glad that you’ve been watching my videos and that’s the whole idea of this YouTube channel is to create a good educational source for people out there to look at and to get some good information from. Let’s summarize these points on the fruits, the fruits and the yeast infection.

Fruits are okay as your digestion improves, so don’t include a lot of fruit at the beginning. Usually after eight weeks, you can start including more and more fruit. Don’t eat any more than about three pieces in one day of fruit until your digestion is very, very good.

Should you eat fruit with food or not? That’s up to you. As I mentioned, it’s experimental. Some people tend to eat a fruit directly after a meal as a dessert. Some people may have it at the beginning with a bit of yogurt or as an entrée. Some people may decide to actually cook with fruit. If you look at a lot of countries in the Caribbean and many tropical countries, it’s normal for people to cook with fruits. That blows that whole food combining thing right out the window.

Be careful that you don’t overeat fruits. Don’t have too many fruits to eat when you do get well because they are a big source of problems for a lot of people and they’re not unlike cookies. Even though they’re not refined and processed, they still contain a lot of sugar, so just be cautious of them.

Don’t forget to subscribe to my channel. I really appreciate that. Also, please check out my CandidaCrusher.com and my yeastinfection.org websites. I’ve got a very good quiz I’ve created for people to determine if they’ve got mild, moderate or severe Candida. And don’t forget I make a really nice range of dietary supplements as well. You’ll find those links to those on yeastinfection.org or CandidaCrusher.com.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

Before you leave the page make sure to watch My TOP 5 Candida Fighting Foods. I share my 5 favorite foods that beat candida overgrowth. The video is on my youtube channel and you can click here to watch it. Let me know if you have any other questions.