Candida diet & supplements

I get a lot of questions about the best diet to combat Candida. Often, the person asking is already on a complex, exotic and expensive regimen of a wide variety of cleansers, detoxifiers, immune-boosters, antioxidants, probiotics and natural antifungals.

Surely, as an expert in the field of nutrition, I would be able to comment on their list of supplements, advise on better ones and come with an impressive list of guidelines for an anti-Candida diet? I am well aware that wherever you go on the Internet, such advice is plentyful - dispensed by casual forum participants, nutritionists, supplement pushers and armchair doctors.

I don't believe that any of the currently available "anti-Candida" supplements are worth their price. I consider the great majority to be absolutely useless, and some even dangerous. There are exceptions, and I will talk about those later. First I want to address diet.

I have already written on how there is a lot of misunderstanding about what food to avoid in my general Candida information and article on mushrooms and Candida. I also gave a recipe for homemade probiotic yogurt.

Candida-dietHere comes my dietary advice for Candida sufferers: Keep your blood sugar level as low and even as possible - of course without starving yourself or depriving yourself of essential nutrients. This rule should be religiously followed by Candida patients (it's also very healthy for others). For the rest you can eat anything agreeable to you, as long as you get sufficient essential nutrients and are not poisoning yourself with environmental pollutants in your food (no daily tuna!).

The key here is "sufficient essential nutrients". Candida sufferers don't get enough of them. I know that for a fact, because it's simply impossible that modern man gets enough essential nutrients - because the soil has been severely depleted since modern agriculture started. Micronutrient-poor soil results in veggies with only half the original amount of vitamins and minerals. Nothing is more important to maintain a healthy immune system than good sleep and the avoidance of stress and environmental pollutants. Immediately after that come vitamins and minerals. It is essential to first spend your money on the proper vitamins and minerals in the proper dose and in their optimal formulation. Because your food can't contain enough of them, unless you have access to a home garden. The food we buy in the supermarket or the greengrocers' looks nice, but is woefully nutrient-deficient due to soil depletion and modern farming methods.

I forgot to explain how to keep the blood sugar level low and stable: Eat 6 to 7 small meals during the day and avoid large amounts of food with a high GI (Glycemic Index). It might surprise you that there are potatoes with a higher GI than table sugar - as can be found in Hilary Ross' GI table (PDF). Control your intake of low-quality carbs and Candida won't be able to benefit from a sugar rush. The lower the number in the second column, the better.

Back to the vitamins and minerals. Mundane, I know, but you can't get around them. "Vitamin" means "essential to life". They're even more essential to people with a potentially lethal infection. Candida kills people with impaired immune systems. You need to get rid of it before old age. An immune system that battles Candida needs greater quantities of certain vitamins and minerals. These nutrients are essentially cheap because they can't be patented. Hence their marginalization in the commercial sphere. The vitamins we need to supplement are the first five of the alphabet: A, B complex, C, D and E. The minerals (elements, actually - to be more specific: Metals) we need are Iron, Selenium and Zinc. These metals are essential to a proper functioning immune system. Choose formulations with a high biological availability, such as picolinates. Don't take fancy schmantzy vitamins - stick to cheap brands with a good reputation. Forget about RDA 's (recommended daily amounts) - read up on what you really need and don't be fooled into buying pills that only have a few times RDA. The fearmongering on how dangerous vitamins are when overdosed even a little bit is Big Pharma FUD, intended to shove Codex Alimentarius down our collective throats. Don't overdo the vitamin A when you're pregnant, don't go crazy on the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D & E) because they're harmful in extreme doses and are cumulative, but don't believe that RDA baloney either. They do not pertain to sick people or people who genetically need higher doses. Remember: RDA's have been established to prevent vitamin deficiencies in average, healthy people, not to achieve optimal health in non-average, sick people. Google the double-Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling and his research on vitamin C if you want to learn how vitamins can even cure cancer in some cases.

These are some supplements that help the immune system work better:

  • Andrographis
  • Astralagus root
  • Elderberry
  • Ginseng

..only bother with those when you're on the best possible diet, and taking the best vitamin and mineral supplements.

It may be controversial, but I do not think that many anti-Candida remedies help much. There may be a few exceptions for certain Candidases, such as colloidal silver for intestinal Candida. A fresh, living yogurt or kefir is very, very good, if you can digest diary. I base my low opinion on the myriad of expensive "anti-Candida" supplements on the simple fact that I receive several emails a day from people who tell me that they tried XYZ and when I ask them about its efficacy, they usually say they didn't notice any improvement. Candida is so hard to kill, that the only way it can be conquered is by helping your own immune system. Antifungal medicines greatly help, but in the end, your immune system has to prevent it from coming back. Mycelial Candida can never be eradicated 100%.


1.  Michael Adonis    Tuesday, December 3, 2013

What is your opinion on raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar as a treatment?



2.  Sarah Vaughter    Tuesday, December 3, 2013

For chronic mycelial Candida infection in the mucous membranes?

That would be like believing in magic. Do we treat AIDS or Tuberculosis with foodstuffs? No. Because it doesn't work.



3.  Kirki12    Monday, January 20, 2014

Your site is very interestingly informative and a relief to find out certain myths about candida foods. I would like to also ask you what do you think about Ceylon black tea? It is fermented tea and I have read that combined with cinnamon it has an antifungal effect.
In addition, one naturopath's site I found, does not recommend fermented vegetables to be used as probiotics,because it makes the body too yin.....This is all very confusing.. I would really like your opinion on this. Thank you!

PS. I have made my own fermented veggies with not much success killing the candida. I did feel though that my digestion was a lot better! I only have seen improvement by eating natural yogurt with raw honey and cinnamon and lots of olive oil, oregano and thyme. Eating clean and avoiding gluten and sugar is a must. I tried it for 8 months-it went away but as soon as I cheated, it came back...As far as garlic..my stomach cannot tolerate it much-I cannot digest it. I love it though...:)



4.  Sarah Vaughter    Sunday, May 15, 2016

Well, that's the unfortunate reality. With a variety of "medical" antifungals, it still takes years to get rid of the symptoms, but the fungus remains dormant in the tissues and will flare up when your immune system is weaker. I am not one of those people trying to sell a product, I'm here to spare you the trouble of wasting money.



5.  Sarah Vaughter    Sunday, May 15, 2016

There are many substances that address topical Candida but when it becomes ingrained in the mucous membranes it's nearly impossible to get rid of. Essential oils kill topical Candidiasis, for example.



6.  thehungergames    Monday, November 14, 2016

So how to get an immune system to the place that you can kill of candida with antifungals in your rats? Is it ever possible or are you just always managing it over time?



7.  Sarah Vaughter    Monday, November 14, 2016

It took me many years of using antifungal medication before my immune system could keep Candida under control for the great majority of the time. The rest of the time I would suffer increasingly less severe topical/mucous membrane infections that were increasingly easier to treat with topical remedies such as oil of Oregano resp. Cinnamon.

Even a bad night of sleep initially caused infections to flare up again, because the Candida lives onm indefinitely in warm, moist skin and mucous membranes. In spite of whatever antifungal medicines you take, in what dose and how long. I was on Lufenuron, Fluconazole, Itraconazole, Voriconazole, PLD118 and even tried sulphur, Azoxystrobin and Diflubenzuron, both agricultural antifungals imported from Thailand, I was that desperate/close to death.. The latter three had no effect at all, neither did they cause significant damage to my liver (values were monitored, I ate hundreds of grams of these pesticides in a week!).




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