Thanks for checking out the video. What are the stages of Candida recovery? What are the milestones along the way that I’m going to experience when I’m on my way to getting well?
Well, there are various stages and they really vary from patient to patient. Some patients believe you can’t get well from Candida unless you have severe aggravation, die off, or what we call Herxheimer Reaction. That’s nonsense. A small percentage of people have die off. It’s only a small percentage of the sensitive or the ultrasensitive patients which I’ve spoken about. They’re the ones who primarily get Herxheimer Reaction, but most people, 80 percent of people I deal with with Candida, probably some are like you out there, is not generally going to get die off. Even people with severe Candida when they make changes slowly and methodically, they will not get die off.
What are the changes? Generally, what we’re going to experience once we start withdrawing certain foods from the diet, we’re going to get fatigue. Now don’t confuse fatigue with die off. Some people get a mild headache or tiredness and they’ll email me, “Erik, I’ve got die off.” Come on. Wake up to yourself. That’s not die off. Die off is when you’re really, really sick. You can be in bed. You can be incapacitated. I’ve had some patients that go to the hospital to the accident emergency and almost need acute admission into a hospital bed for die off. That’s how bad it can get. So die off is not something like fatigue or tiredness or a little bit of diarrhea or constipation.
These are things that commonly occur when you withdraw caffeine from the diet, a lot of alcohol, pizzas, donuts, bagels, tons of sugar, all these sort of foods. When you slowly make diet changes – many people make a diet change too quick and they accelerate the change in their gut and that can create a problem. If you follow my warm turkey approach, cold turkey is taking everything out straight away. Warm turkey is doing a slow withdrawal of the bad foods; you’re not going to experience a lot of problems.
So the stages of Candida recovery really depend on you, but generally they’ll be what I call a “wash out” period for a few weeks first. So for two weeks, there could be some discomfort, some fatigue, and some sleeping problems. It could be some itchy or scratchy skin on different parts of the body. It could be a bit of flatulence or bloating or bowel change. These are all normal stages as your body is on its way to recovery.
What you’ll notice then is a sense of wellbeing. You start feeling pretty good inside yourself. Punctuated by one or two days where you think “Wow. I’m feeling amazing.” Now I call that the “window” of opportunity. That’s when your health is starting to show. It’s like opening a window and everything’s beautiful out there, but then the window shuts and you’re back inside again. What happens then is your body will just give you a little bit of a show what it’s going to be like in the future, but that door slams shut in your face generally because you stayed up late one night, you ate the wrong food, so the danger period of recovery occurs when you’re starting to improve in health. You can read about this in my book.
I notice with a lot of patients they start to get well and they make changes, and then they decelerate recovery. They go back down once again. These are the things that you really need to be aware of because they are basically hindrances. This is a stage that a lot of people have in recovery as well. They make a partial improvement, then they step back; they get worse. And then usually they learn from their experiences and then they make changes again and then they improve again. These are common things that you’re going to find.
You’ll read my articles. There’s one called “No Smooth Sailing,” where I say that recovery from Candida is like trying to win the America’s Cup for some people. They think it’s all going to be easy until they get out on the open ocean and they get the storms that hit them. They get the broken mast. They get the people on the boat they get sick and tired of them and want them to get the hell off the boat, and that could be your family or friends. They’ve had enough of you complaining about gas or bloating or whatever. There’s a lot of things to learn along the way to recovery, but then you’re going to hit the destination and you’re going to sail through the storms and you’re going to hit the port where you’re meant to be, and you’re going to feel pretty awesome and that will come as well.
Those are the end stages of recovery. Then what you’ll find is the window stays open for a lot longer. Instead it stays open for a whole week at times, but then you’re going to go to a wedding and you’re going to make a dumb mistake. You’re going to have maybe three glasses of champagne and a bit piece of cake and you’re going to go down again. You’re going to go into a tailspin and that happens to everybody. They decelerate quickly and then I’ll get an email or a call and they’re all depressed and I say, “Well, how did you feel?” “Well, I felt awesome. I felt amazing, but then such and such happened. I went to a bridal shower or I went to a wedding or I went to hen’s night or I went to a party or whatever, Thanksgiving, and I felt like crap two days later,” because there was still a little bit to learn.
That’s the terminal stage. When you get over that, you pull your head in and make more improvements, the recovery is long term and then eventually the window stays open permanently.
And those are some stages of recovery. I hope you sort of got some good information out of that bit of a talk. Thanks for your question.