My Candida Plan: Stage 1

Rachel's January 2010 Anti-Yeast, Healing Quest
(attaining balance in my gastrointestinal ecology and correcting my body's inflammatory responses)

1. Dietary Changes as listed below.
2. Nu-Zareba from Thaumaturge 21-day course to eradicate yeasts, fungus and parasites. I take 3 capsules, twice per day on an empty stomach. Can add garlic capsules to this.
3. Swish mouth with coconut kefir or other probiotic food of choice.
4. About an hour after a dose of Nu-Zareba, I follow with a digestive enzyme and some food. The digestive enzymes should help with yeast "die off" in that cellulases break down the outer wall of the yeast and the proteases digest the proteins inside and combat any protein that's foreign to the body.
5. Digestive enzymes before each meal.
6. After the meal has been digested I take a probiotic: Garden of Life Brand: Primal Defense
7. Do step 2 again late in the day whenever stomach is empty, probably before bed.
8. Do steps 3-6 several more times per day. I get as many probiotics on empty stomach as I can.
9. Oral habits to help get the good bacteria levels established: toothbrush and plastic tongue scraper in glass of hydrogen peroxide. Floss daily. Xylitol gum whenever you want.
10. Supplemental daily checklist as below.
11. 20 minute Bath, daily, with 2 cups epsom salt and just enough water to soak in (keep concentration of magnesium sulfate high). Helps detox and get the sulfate bypassing the gut where yeasts like to eat the sulfate.
12. Sleep to allow detoxing to happen.

Rachel's Symptoms Updates

Dietary changes:

I am personally off of eggs and ALL dairy including butter until I can experimentally re-introduce. You might choose raw milk (goat or cow or sheep?) and/or cultured dairy products, and maybe butter. If you are allowing dairy and eggs, you have no room to complain to me! Dairy and eggs make life much easier. If you have any mucous issues, stop dairy for several months until you get to baseline and can then scientifically experiment with re-introducing one food at a time.

Best book for Dad: Eat Fat Lose Fat by Enig and Fallon (Dad, come on over and borrow it!)

For people with allergies or yeast read The Yeast Connection Cookbook by Crook and Hurt Jones.

A) No sugar added in any form to foods. I was strict at first and now sometimes I get a little tiny bit of added sugar. To pin it down, I'd day it's best not to go above 10 grams of added sugar in a sitting and to do this only every so often.
ALLOWED: Stevia and Xylitol.
I like KAL brand stevia white powder.
Go easy on the xylitol and work your way up with it.
If you must, the next sweetener to use would be [raw honey]. Limit it. None in the first couple of weeks.

UPDATE: I'm interested in erythritol, since it seems it would be very similar to xylitol. Also, right now I'm favoring evaporated cane sugar just because it's simple and added to many natural food products. I still keep my total intake very low. Remember to check the ingredients as well as the grams of sugar on labels.

B) Limited fruit for the first few weeks. (I did none for at least a week, so my sugar was down to near 0). Now I have a small amount a few times per day. A few bites of pineapple, half an apple, orange, banana, etc. Fresh and frozen berries - as many as you can afford. I do NOT buy from the country of Chile and I get organic if not price prohibitive. Maybe best to blend some blueberries up in a blender. Try mangos.

C) Probiotic foods. Tricky if you go dairy free. Learn about Wild Fermentation. GT's Kombucha in bottles is one of my favorites that I am just about ready to re-introduce. I focus on my tablet several times per day and swishing with coconut kefir.

D) Lots of fats: Coconut Oil, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, grapeseed oil
You might also want to use: walnut oil, sesame oil, palm oil
Spray with Grapeseed Spray oil

E) Lots of Coconut Milk and Coconut Oil. Every Day! Every Meal! I cannot digest the coconut meat very well, so I only use a little coconut sprinkles. Coconut fat works in synergy with cod liver oil. Eat Fat Lose Fat book is all about coconut. I'll be experimenting with lots of new coconut recipes this month. Coconut milk and oil are now mainstays of my diet. The benefits of coconut are too numerous to list!

F) LOTS LOTS LOTS of vegetables of all kinds. In the first few weeks you might be avoiding all kinds of green beans and carrots and white potatoes. Look for frozen bagged Okra at Meijer. Cabbage, spinach, dark greens. I find salads to be difficult because of the dressings. I end up doing a steamed or cooked veggie, often with canned tomatoes, onions and garlic.

G) Avacados. These seem to deserve a special category. They are highly nutritious vegetables that are high in healthy fats. They can be made into guacamole or my favorite basil salad. Or, you can mash them up with banana and cocoa and a sweetener.

H) I take Barlean's Greens. You can take green smoothies if you have a blender or Vegetable juices if you have a juicer. Be careful to ramp up in 2-week increments so that you don't over-detox and overload your detox pathways. I like Barlean's Greens because of the blue-green algae and the sea vegetables (kelp has nutrients to help bind mercury). You might also like a product called Amazing Grass.

I) WATER
1) Quality water. Non-municipal source. No flouride, no chlorine. Add a little pinch of sea salt and lemon juice. If you are taking magnesium you might want to add it to your water. Make one big batch of this water in the a.m. to sip all day long.
2) A little water with each meal, but not so much as to water down your stomach acid. You need that stomach acid in order to break down the food and trigger the pancreas. You need some water in order to make bile, so drink a little.

J) FISH - seafoodwatch.org - The BEST fish list: http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw_health.aspx
Other options are listed under "Pocket Guides."
-Sardines or any canned fish can be very handy. Smoked oysters if you like those better. I like the sardines the best, to get the bones for minerals.

About Protein: I like to get a high amount of Vitamins A & D into my diet, through nutrient dense sources. I do eat liver, bacon, fish and shellfish, chicken, buffalo and beef. I try to source local, grassfed and wildcaught whenever possible. However, I am also learning to eat smaller amounts of protein so as not to overload the pancreas, which must produce a lot of enzymes in order to digest cooked foods. I believe all the clean animal sources of food are great nutrition, but you must choose for yourself.

K) Lots of Nuts and Seeds: Soak raw nuts and seeds overnight in salt water. **2 Brazil Nuts per day as a supplement. Pumpkin seeds for sure. Sunflower, sesame. Grind flax seeds and put on top of food. Walnuts. Nut butters are convenience food: Sunbutter, Almond Butter. Cashew butter is my favorite. Macadamia Butter.

L) Yes to whole grains you cook yourself: GLUTEN FREE (GF): Brown rice and millet are my favorites. Oats are actually gluten free but they are notoriously contaminated by wheat. Bob's Red Mill has GF Oats (rolled or steel cut). Quinoa, Amaranth, Buckwheat, "wild rice" which is actually a grass.
Note: If you want to skip soaking grains overnight, use Brown rice and "wild rice." Definitely soak oats overnight with a probiotic or acid (vinegar or lemon juice) added to the water. All others should be soaked also. Do NOT add salt to the soak water.

Other non-soaked grains in limited quantity:
You can also get some tortillas and some breads Gluten free.

Yes to Brown Rice Pasta (Meijer has Tinkyada in the GF section). But, make sure you are eating this with meat or nuts and lots of veggies.

Crunchmaster crackers are very tasty. Mary's Gone Crackers can work but are not so tasty.

M) Lentils, Legumes and Beans. I have tended to avoid this category because in the past I had a hard time digesting them. Try them with your enzymes and see if you get gas. I do not eat them every day. If you tolerate, you can have hummous and Crunchmaster crackers for a special snack. Lentils are the most nutritious of this category, so see if you can master these. You should soak them overnight, but drain and cook in fresh water. Do not add anything acidic to the pot until later in cooking--acids will prevent beans from softening--best to cook the beans and add everything after that. Cook slow and low.

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I DO use the following:

• Fresh lemon and lime juice (not from a bottle). I use a wooden hand reamer several times per week.
• Teas - Peppermint tea is supposed to be great. Alvita (white box with blue band) is a good, inexpensive brand
• Garlic and lots of it. In capsules if you want.

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AVOID (I am avoiding):
vinegar - after several weeks, I am going to be adding raw vinegar with the "mother"
coffee
corn
dried fruit (lots of yeasts and molds)
fruit juice unless fresh
black pepper
No raw egg whites - high in histamines
"Foods reported to release histamine directly from mast cells are uncooked egg whites, shellfish, strawberries, tomatoes, fish, chocolate, pineapple and alcohol."
peanuts and pistachios
Pasteurized dairy products
MSG in all it's forms - it causes food cravings and is toxic to neurons - masquerades as "natural flavors" and "yeast" in ingredient labels.
Artificial colors and flavors
Artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose
hydrogenated oils

LIMIT:
White potatoes. Eat yams instead.

I've chosen to allow chocolate once per week. Only dark, and I try to do some form of cocoa so that I can control the sweetener.
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SUPPLEMENTAL REGIMEN:
I have a Word document with a table in it that I am constructing for myself. Here are the highlights. Keeping this checklist helps me stay on track with my plan.
Your supplemental regimen is your own. You should develop it over time. You may be able to correct a nutritional deficiency with diet and supplements and then go off the supplement with continuing target foods. From this point forward you will no longer be doing someone else's prescribed diet plan. You will learn your own body and find your own convictions about what is best for you. Every person has a digestion-absorption-and-detox profile. Shannon's site to help you be your own doctor!

If you eat beets and then pee pink, you need Betaine HCL to re-train your stomach to make stomach acid. How to Take Hydrochloric Acid Supplements (HCl). Also take Sublingual B12 and Zinc. I take Peter Gillham's Calm Kids which has zinc added to it; also pumpkin seeds and squash.

Pursuit of Happiness. Please read this article if you want to understand the relationship of all the most important nutrients in the body

Digestive Enzymes - Enzymedica from vitacost.com Dad click here.

Cod Liver Oil - EPA and DHA, Vit A and D will help in the conversions of arachodonic acid (from animal foods) into...

Additional Vitamin D3 - Carlson D Drops from vitacost.com

Vitamin C - 2,000 to 5,000 mg per day. Cheap, easy and helpful in detox and bringing down histamines. Ascorbic Acid. Thompson powder from vitacost.com

Gelatin greatlakesgelatin.com from health food store. This has several amino acids important in detox and many other basic processes. You can add it to cooking grains, drink in beverages, add to broth or soup or desserts, or in any way you want.

Doc's Best Multi - drrons.com

May need biotin supplement in 5-16mg range (not mcg)

2 Brazil nuts per day. Do not take with multi-vitamin or calcium.

Epsom Salt bath daily (as above #11)

I will be happy to answer any questions! Please email or comment on the site!

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Putting It All Together!

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