Not a single candida diet works for me, what can I do?

Good day, Eric Bakker again, naturopath, author of Candida Crusher.

A question I get asked all the time is I’ve been on XYZ Candida diet. I’ve tried this diet. I’ve tried that diet. I’ve tried the Paleo diet. I’ve tried whatever type of diet. I’ve still got this yeast infection. Why don’t these diets work? Do I need to go vegan? Do I need to do this or do I need to go that? There’s a lot of confusion out there.

There are a lot of good dietary approaches when it comes to a yeast infection, but I don’t think they are really properly put together in terms of a program, and they’re particularly not followed through with patients. While I have seen some good programs out there and some good dietary recommendations, I’ve seen quite a lot of silly recommendations as well, stupid recommendations. Recommendations that don’t make sense.

Many practitioners, unfortunately, only pay lip service to Candida. Meaning they don’t take this yeast seriously enough to really follow on through and make sure that their patient will stay on the program long enough to get the kind of results they’re looking for.

If you look at my approach, for example, the Candida Crusher diet, I like people to have a bit of a cleanse usually before they go into the diet and to slowly wind their conventional diet down. And then to go on a basic diet where we’re going to recommend ample amounts of protein in the diet, certainly carbohydrates and fats. We avoid the allergy foods, which I’ve covered in other video clips. And we certainly aren’t going to starve people or take a lot of foods out of their diet that they love to eat. But the foods that we tend to take out are the foods which challenge the immune system the most and also the foods which help to proliferate Candida, allow it to really grow in the body. These have to go and go temporarily. People often pick up considerably on this dietary approach with Candida, but they may go through an aggravation stage initially. That’s quite common, so I’m very cautious with patients with supplements in the first few months. I slowly put them in there and then slowly build them up.

Is it possible for you to get a good result the Candida diet? It is. It’s actually possible to get an outstanding result. But the thing is to stick with clearly defined principles and maintain on track with the diet for it to be long enough to give you the benefit that you’re looking for. And then the two danger times with the Candida diet are when people start them and as they pick up, that’s another danger period.

Let’s just analyze this in detail and have a look at what I mean by this. Once they start a diet, often they’ll be a period of aggravation within the first 7 to 10 days. And this is often misconstrued as “Well, it’s not working for me. I’m going to throw it in. I’m going to go back onto what I was eating or I’ll go back onto the Atkins diet or the South Beach diet,” or the Jelly Bean diet or whatever diet’s in vogue at that time. These people usually fall by the wayside, and they maintain a yeast infection for years on end because they’re not good at sticking with one thing.

The second period of danger is when I get a patient through that stage and they pick up and they start to improve. They’re actually getting better. And this is a time where they think “Ah, great, I’ve got to go to my sister’s wedding or I’ve got whatever, though, I’ve got a celebration coming up. It’s New Year’s Eve and I’ll have a few drinks and maybe some cake, maybe some sweet foods”, and then they crash. They go down. Because they weren’t quite ready really to start incorporating these foods back into their diet again. This is a danger period.

It’s very common for people to go through this. And you can read all about this in some of the introductory chapters in my book. I talk about this quite a lot. I’m going to do another video clip on how people think they get well, which I call fantasyland, and how people actually recover, which I call reality check. Those are concepts that I really want you to try to understand.

The point I’m making is Candida diets do work, if you find a good one and you find other people that have a good result with it. If anything is worth sticking to, it’s worth sticking through until you get a desired result. And maybe make some changes along the way. Everybody is different. Everybody will need to refine and change and fine-tune their diet to suit themselves. And that’s what practitioners are all about. We help you to fine-tune those results.

Go and find a good Candida practitioner who can help you get on track and stay on track until you get the results that you’re looking for. If you’re interested in a good program, have a look at my book, Candida Crusher. I spent three years working on this book. It’s helped many people just like you overcome a chronic yeast infection. And also if you want to get more information, please subscribe to my YouTube clips because you’re going to learn a lot more over the following few years.

Thanks for your time.