After the Candida Cleanse
 

Hello,

I have been doing thsi diet for 1 1/2 months now and I am feeling a thousand times better. Let me tell you it is harder to remain on the diet when you feel back to normal!!!! That said I have swayed a bit for the past week and didn't notice any immediate return of symptoms.

However I have now gotten myself a cold and it is in my sinuses (curtoesy of my toddler). I haev a headache and woke up after an excellent nights sleep tired and shakey. That is not due to the cold. I don;t think anyways.

So getting to my quesiton is how do you return to eating after this cleanse. I understand that I need to eliminate sugar but I do nto weat sugar regulaity. It was the antibiotics that set me off. How do you start to introduce foods again? How long before adding additional ones? Any tips would be helpful.

Hi peteranac

I'm not really post-candida diet yet, although most of my symptoms are a lot better when I stick to the diet. Like you, I found the holidays more difficult and noticed the return of symptoms when I tried a few more "normal" foods, although I kept away from mushrooms, cheese and most of the especially bad-for-candida foods.

From what I can gather, the usual post-candida advice is to follow a very careful type of diet which allows more scope for normal foods, but very rarely allows the really "bad" foods like mushrooms etc.

I've also heard that you should stick to the diet for another month or two after symptoms disappear because candida is a microorganism and so can remain in your body for quite some time afterwards and is quick to reassert itself if given an opportunity to do so.

My naturopath says that eventually, symptoms will subside but then, during a stressful patch or a time when I am not watching what I eat etc, it can all come back.

He also said a time will come when I can eat some normal foods again, but from what I can gather in my book, the idea is still to stay low-carb as much as possible. It's kind of like the "Atkins for life" diet, where you avoid junk foods and can reintroduce carbs but just not very starchy ones all the time. Like in restaurants, you might be able to have, say, pork with applesauce made with white wine, vinegar etc . . . but that might be a better choice than, say, cheese and mushroom pasta. Choose mineral water with lemon instead of wine, or save wine for a special occasion rather than having it with every meal out. That kind of thing. (This is just an example, so don't quote me and of course discuss specifics with your doctor).

To put it another way, I think eventually, you might be able to resume some more normal eating habits but within that, you might still have to look at which choices would be better for the underlying condition and which would be worse.