Benefits of the Candida Diet

Comments: 9 | January 11th, 2016

Are you struggling with constipation, heartburn, indigestion, fatigue, skin rashes, yeast infections, or depression? Do you feel bloated and unable to get rid of that extra weight? Does your diet still consist of foods such as pasta, bread, chips and fast food? Do you wish you felt better? Hear from candida expert, Dr. Donald Ellsworth, about how a candida diet, also known as a yeast-free diet, can do wonders for your health!

Podcast Highlights:

0:21 “How do you know I have yeast?” Well, anyone who’s had antibiotics is really at high risk for having candida overgrowth because just one round of antibiotics kills off the friendly bacteria and allows yeast to overgrow.

2: 03 If you don’t feel great, there’s a good chance it’s related to candida. If you have issues related to say reflux, that’s a common yeast symptom. You might have issues with itchy skin, you might have brain fog, you might have fatigue, you might have a lot of funny reactions that you don’t really know what’s causing it but you’re actually reacting to foods because that’s common.

3:54 There are literally little holes in the gut from the candida and the yeast will make 180 different toxins and those toxins are going to interfere with your health, plus you’re going to incompletely break down food before it gets into your bloodstream.

4:41 It’s often said that autoimmune diseases begin in the gut, and autoimmune diseases are very common today, and we’re seeing more and more of them such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, hyperthyroidism, type 1 diabetes, celiac disease, Lupus, MS,
ulcerative colitis, vitiligo, and that’s just autoimmune issues.

5:23 Hypothyroidism can occur due to the toxins disrupting thyroid function. You can get hormonal imbalance and disruption from yeast itself and the liver actually gets overloaded with a lot of these toxins and just basically you’re putting a lot of extra stress on your body.

5:43 Irritable bowel syndrome is largely synonymous for yeast and food sensitivities. Eczema, psoriasis, asthma, airborne allergies, food allergies, chemical sensitivities, headaches, PMS – these are all yeast-related conditions, or at least they’re conditions that have a significant yeast related components.

Listen to Dr. Ellsworth’s podcast on the candida diet here:

Podcast Transcription:

Dr. Ellsworth:Hello, this is Dr. Don Ellsworth and we’re going to be talking about yeast, also known as candida. For those of you doing Yeast-Free with Me, this is your opportunity to get rid of the yeast and get healthy. Now several questions come up very often and I just want to start with some of the most common. “How do you know I have yeast?” Well, anyone who’s had antibiotics is really at high risk for having candida overgrowth because just one round of antibiotics kills off the friendly bacteria and allows yeast to overgrow. Most of us, though, aren’t dealing with the question of have we ever had an antibiotic. We’ve not only had an antibiotic, but we’ve had another antibiotic and another antibiotic and each one of those is leaving behind candida which is going to inevitably make you sick.

So, if you’ve had multiple rounds of antibiotics, you should assume candida is there in large amounts and we need to get rid of it. There’s not a perfect test for it, but imagine what would happen if you had something that promoted the growth of mold, say you had a flood in your house multiple times. What would happen there? You’d have a moldy house, no doubt about it. Or if somebody threw roundup on your front yard, killed off the friendly grass, didn’t do anything about it, would you have a bunch of weeds growing in those spaces a year later? Absolutely. How do you know that? Well, weeds are everywhere and when you give them a good culture medium of having a lawn with nothing to fight against it, not having the good grass, you’ll get an unhealthy lawn. That is actually very much what your GI tract starts looking like with yeast overgrowth. It has clumps of candida, and this is at a microscopic level of course, and you’ll have some bare spots and it all amounts to a very, very unhealthy place.

How Do You Know if You Have Yeast?
Now it’s inside. You don’t see it and you might not even have GI symptoms, so how do you know you have yeast? Well, if you don’t feel great, there’s a good chance it’s related to candida. If you have issues related to say reflux, that’s a common yeast symptom. You might have issues with itchy skin, you might have brain fog, you might have fatigue, you might have a lot of funny reactions that you don’t really know what’s causing it but you’re actually reacting to foods because that’s common. The list of symptoms that go along with yeast overgrowth is so long, that’s one of the reasons why skeptics often think, “There’s no way yeast can cause all that.” That’s because they don’t understand that if you interfere with the GI tract, you’re going to so fundamentally transform the body negatively that you have no idea what the symptoms are going to be, but I do want to tell you a bit of what some common problems are so that you’ll know to look for these.

Basically, it makes us sick, but it’s a strange thing that in some ways candida is natural because it is everywhere, but when it overgrows in our colon, this, which you might think of as a guest that doesn’t cause problems in very small amounts, actually becomes our enemy. This is a fungi, and again, the other name for yeast is candida albicans. There are actually a few other strains that are related to it that do the same thing. Now, I mention antibiotics as a cause for yeast overgrowing, but you know what else will feed it is sugar and things that break down to sugar like bread, even if it’s whole grain. Birth control pills, steroids, pregnancy, a weak immune system, diabetes, low thyroid. When yeast overgrows, it actually begins to injure the GI tract and to hold on candida sends down some little roots that literally perforate the GI tract. There are literally little holes in the gut from the candida and the yeast will make 180 different toxins and those toxins are going to interfere with your health, plus you’re going to incompletely break down food before it gets into your bloodstream.

Autoimmune Conditions Caused by Candida
In addition to these 180 different toxins getting out into your body, you have incompletely broken down food getting into your bloodstream, which all of these things make your body react adversely and the way it looks is very different depending on the major effect. This leaky guy inevitably leads to some degree of food intolerances and immune abnormalities and a lot of autoimmune conditions come from this particular issue. In fact, it’s often said that autoimmune diseases begin in the gut, and autoimmune diseases are very common today and we’re seeing more and more of them such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, hyperthyroidism, type 1 diabetes, celiac disease, lupus, MS, ulcerative colitis, vitiligo, and that’s just autoimmune issues. That’s just a small taste of some of the problems you can get into with yeast overgrowth.

Symptoms of Candida
Most people have something a little more subtle. They’ll have food cravings. They might feel bloated. They might have fluid retention. They might gain weight as their body’s basically trying to dilute some of the toxins that it’s absorbing. Hypothyroidism can occur due to the toxins disrupting thyroid function. You can get hormonal imbalance and disruption from yeast itself and the liver actually gets overloaded with a lot of these toxins and just basically you’re putting a lot of extra stress on your body. Heartburn – very common with yeast overgrowth. Irritable bowel syndrome is largely synonymous for yeast and food sensitivities. Eczema, psoriasis, asthma, airborne allergies, food allergies, chemical sensitivities, headaches, PMS – these are all yeast-related conditions or at least they’re conditions that have a significant yeast related component. Depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, brain fog, fibromyalgia – so you can see that a lot of people walk around with yeast overgrowth and you know what they think they have? “Oh, I don’t have a yeast problem. I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. I have lupus. I have vitiligo. I have GERD so I take this proton pump inhibitor.”

The Candida Diet Solution
You know what? When you treat the yeast, a lot of these conditions will actually go away. Those that don’t will almost always improve so you really are doing yourself a huge favor to do the yeast cleanse. It’s a three month program oriented towards changing the conditions so that you’re no longer feeding the yeast so it can grow easily. What you want to do is completely avoid all sugars and starches, especially month 1, and what that means is if it’s white, just don’t bite. That’s no sugar, that’s absolutely no gluten, which is wheat, barley or rye, even if it’s whole grain. You want to avoid milk completely. You want to avoid yogurt and soft cheese month 1, and the first month you’re avoiding potato and rice and there’s a list of things that you’ll be receiving of other additional information, but those are some of the main ideas.

Sugary, starchy foods you want to avoid and after you’ve been eating this way for about five days, you can take the yeast killer nystatin and the probiotic blend and those of you who aren’t using the prescription form nystatin which is the stronger form, you can also use things like the natural yeast cleanse which will actually reduce your load, not quite as effectively as the nystatin but definitely you’ll have a benefit. Later on in the program for those of you on prescription products, you’ll be taking fluconazole about a month into it.

The beauty of this is you’re no longer feeding the candida and when you stop feeding the yeast, it’s like it drops its shields. Think of like the Star Wars type of situations when the shields drop, you can actually get some effective eradication of them, whereas if you’re feeding the yeast, their defenses are fully up and there’s no really way to get rid of the candida. You can use very strong medications and they’ll be ineffective. When their shields drop, you can start making progress and in the second month it gets easier, you can add back in some potato and rice and a few other things, and after three months of doing this, you’ve now transformed that lawn from that lawn that had a bunch of bare spots and clumps of weeds to just being a nice bed of good bacteria, nice, lush lawn of what you want and because it’s healthy. The yeast won’t be able to come back in and get implanted easily. Generally, if you just eat reasonably and every once in a while a little bit of the foods like sugars would not be the end of the world as far as yeast goes once you finish the three month program.

The things that really undermine keeping yeast out of your body are usually antibiotics and steroids, and I’d also add birth control pills and sometimes even when you do everything right, symptoms gradually come back and that would be another indication to do the yeast cleanse again in the future. The benefit that you will have by doing this is by just putting this effort in for a few months, you’re permanently improving your health. If you never take another antibiotic, if you never take a steroid, you may never have to do this again. You will experience an enhanced level of health, better mental clarity, more energy, less GI symptoms, less skin irritation. You can just go down the line of different issues that are very common and people will experience , and to think of all the issues that we have to deal with in life that are hard to do something about, this is actually not that hard to do something about and it really has a big benefit to you so it is so worth the effort.

Let me encourage you to give this 100% because you deserve this, you deserve the health that could result from this. We are here to help you, those of you who are guests can contact us, we’re going to encourage you, we’re going to be sending you emails and you can do this. This is not hard. You know what is hard? Being sick every day. Don’t stay there. You can do this. This is life transforming and you will benefit from getting rid of that yeast and by getting rid of this candida, you’re going to be able to enjoy the health that you deserve. This is Dr. Don Ellsworth, looking forward to your health.