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Tag: candida diet

  • Candida Diary #12: Ancient Chinese Secret

    June 6

    Up until recently, I had relied completely on Inno-Vite’s products and my restricted diet to cure my candida, but on Thursday of last week, I remembered the many successes I had from a doctor of chinese medicine on Gerrard St.  Traditional Chinese medicine treats candida quite differently.  In traditional Chinese medicine, yeast infections are usually caused by an imbalance in the spleen meridian.  Chinese herbal remedies can be some of the most vile, disgusting things you have ever willingly put in your mouth.  So bad, you might rediscover your gag reflex.

    But, they work.

    Every time I tried an herbal remedy it always did the trick.  The first time I tried it was for a rash that would not go away after useless visits to a dermatologist and tubes of cortisone cream.  The herbal remedy for my rash was especially atrocious including large insects in its ingredients.  But after choking down this vile drink for three days, I was completely cured.  When the rash resurfaced a couple of years later, I didn’t waste any time and rushed to the Chinese herbalist for another course of self inflicted torture and lo and behold, I was cured again by the end of three days.

    With such a good track record, I figured I would try it again, this time for dizziness.  A quick visit to my doctor at Siang Yu Tang at 565 Gerrard St. E. and I was armed with some acupuncture points (spleen 6 and 9, liver 3, stomach 36) and three days of an herbal tea.  I started both the herbal formula and acupuncture as soon as I got back home.  The tea of course was horrendous, but the acupuncture was easy to administer to myself as I watched tv.  By the end of four days, the dizziness had subsided to almost nothing and my skin condition had almost disappeared.  I was back on track again.

    If you are interested in traditional Chinese medicine, you can try the staff at Siang Yu Tang on Gerrard Street East or The Best of Chinese Medicine on the Danforth.

     

     

  • Candida Diary #11: What Now?

    May 24

    Today was not a great day.  My dizziness came back with a vengeance.  I recently suffered from benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) first in October of last year.  It is a terrible condition where a bit of crystal breaks loose in your inner ear disrupting your sense of balance.  It makes walking, standing, and moving about very difficult as you feel like you are completely drunk on a ship caught in a storm.  My last episode lasted until the end of the year when I used a home ear cleaning kit to remove a massive wax plug that had built up in my ear.  I thought that the problem was long gone until today when I awoke to a spinning room and funhouse floors.  I was actually thankful that my morning appointment did not show up.  It gave me time to regroup and figure things out.  I did the Epley Manoeuvre a couple of times and cleaned my ears out with the kit, but no luck.

    As I am on the candida cleanse, I have a tendency to attribute every single positive or negative change in my health to candida.  So, now I am wondering if I am suffering because on the weekend I had barbecued chicken and beef that was marinated in soy sauce.  This cleanse is definitely bringing out the paranoia.  Can such a small quantity of soy sauce cause such drastic effects?  The quantity of yeast in soy sauce must be negligible.  Would breaking my cleanse by such a small bit reverse all of the sacrifice that I had endured the previous 4 weeks?  If that was the case, I need to consider options.

     

    Edit:  A week later, I talked to Dr. Lee Know, the naturopath at Inno-Vite and he assured me that any effects from breaking my cleanse that one time would have been much smaller and gradual.  In other words, the return of BPPV was due to something else, not that one slip up.  Whew…

  • Candida Diary #10: Bigger Faster Stronger

    May 23 2012

    I hit the gym again today.  I can’t believe that I have all the strength that I do considering what I eat. It is hard to believe that when I first started, I could barely get through a short workout, and now, I have lots of energy after my workout is already over.  I am actually stronger now than when I started the cleanse.  Which still makes me pretty wimpy, but less so.  My weight is down to 167 lbs, which is about 3 lbs lighter than when I started.  My biggest struggle is actually to keep the weight on.  I don’t want to lose the muscle I had worked so hard to gain.  This has meant adjusting my diet to include lots of proteins every day and often every meal.  Of course the easiest sources of protein are the chicken and fish, both of which are allowed on the diet.  But there are also lots of other sources of proteins that I am relying on.  Beans, almonds, and tofu are also very rich in protein.   A little juggling with the diet and regular inclusion of proteins in my meals has helped to maintain my muscles and stem the weight loss.

     

  • Candida Diary #9: Turning a Corner

    may 10, 2012

    Today was a good day.  I felt alert and energetic throughout the entire day.  I don’t know where I get the energy from.  When i start to feel this way, I start to doubt myself.  Did  accidentally eat some sugar somewhere?  Was there sugar in the fried chicken I made this evening?  Sounds impossible, but there must be some glucose, fructose, sucrose, galactose somewhere in there if I am feeling this good.

    I felt so good, in fact, that I made it to the gym.  If I can make a few more appearances this month I can justify the cost of membership.  Even in the workout, things felt good.  I never felt out of breath or weak once.  A sharp contrast to my first trip to the gym where I felt like I was a mini version of Niagara Falls.

    In other news, my mind is playing tricks on me.  I swear that my hair feels and looks like it is growing again after years of baldness.  I seem to have this hope deep down inside that this candida cleanse will cure everything that is wrong with me.  I know, rationally, that it is not possible, but when I notice a positive change my mind starts racing to connect the dots to attribute the cause of the ailment to candida, and thus, the candida cleanse to be the cure.  I can hardly be blamed.  The list of symptoms attributed to candida are surprising.  If things like mental fogginess, joint pains, and burning eyes can be caused by candida, why not baldness?  Maybe they wanted to add alopecia to the list of candida symptoms, but just ran out of ink or space?  Well, in the end, I succumbed to reason and accepted the bald truth, but it definitely was fun believing for those moments that at the end of this cleanse I might have a full afro of dirty hippiness all over again.  If only long hair on guys would come back in style again.

  • Candida Diary # 7: I’ve Become one of Them

    Friday April 26, 2012

    I haven’t yet mastered the art of cooking at home, but I have finally developed an understanding of how to cook for myself to avoid starvation.  It’s not pretty, but it’s legal.  Having conquered my apartment kitchen, I thought I might try my hand at venturing outside to eat.  Choosing the right place would be the most important part of this adventure.  Toronto restaurants are pretty familiar with vegetarian or vegan diets and can usually accommodate that vegan in your group, but what kind of reaction could I expect with a request of yeast and carb free?  I imagine it would be like trying to order vegetarian in the 60’s or My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Vegetarian? ….. It’s ok, we have lamb).  Fresh at Bloor and Spadina, was a popular vegan restaurant that surely would be able to accommodate my unique diet.   Full of confidence we set out that windy night to see what food tasted like when it didn’t come from my wok.

    The menu quickly dimmed my spirits.  This was going to be tougher than I thought. Most of their staples and standards were off limits.  Sandwiches were verbotten because of the bread.  Salads, for the most part were made with a vinaigrette or cream dressing.  Pasta and rice were not allowed, so that got rid of that part of the menu.  Their popular smoothies were all not allowed either for obvious reasons.  I gave up and asked the waiter for help, or rather HEEEELLLLLPPPPP!  With his advice, I ordered a Powerhouse Big Bowl with avocado, chick peas & grilled tofu steaks with sunflower sprouts, Toasted Nut & Seed Mix, tomato, red onion & spicy tahini sauce.  I was horrified to find myself asking him if the salad dressing contained any sugar or vinegar.  I really couldn’t believe what I was saying, or more importantly what I was becoming.

    I have always taken a personal self satisfaction in quietly mocking the hipster foodie.  Those people that believe being conscious of what you eat is worthless unless you can ask, in your loudest voice, “is the coffee fair trade?”, “is the spinach organic?”, or “was the chicken raised free range?”.  All those hipsterisms seemed to pale in comparison to “is there sugar or vinegar in the salad dressing?”.  Does this make it official?  Will I have to buy big black rim glasses?  Are my t-shirts ironic enough for this new diet I am embarking upon?  Will I have to now insist on eating chicken that was fit and free enough to cross the road? (BTW, the answer to “Why did the chicken cross the road?” is “because it was raised free range in a caring and humane environment that emphasized empowerment and following your dreams”).  My diet was soon to become far more hipper than any other part of me has ever been.  Any pansy can be vegetarian, lacto ovo vegetarian, or even vegan, but it takes guts to do the candida diet.  Salad dressing is suddenly poison. Popcorn could cause a relapse.  If you want to make a vegan cry, tell them they can’t have hummus because of the dangers of lemon juice.

    In spite of all the care and caution with which I ordered, the dinner turned out to be lethal.  My troglodyte vocabulary proved ineffective in understanding that tahini sauce was made from soy sauce which is filled with yeast and thus verbotten.

    Back to my kitchen I go.

  • Candida Diary # 6: Skin and Bones

    Wednesday April 25, 2012

    After only three days, weight is dropping off me. It is like seeing a new face staring back at me every time I look in the mirror.  I am discovering that I have cheekbones and a jaw line.  Who knew?  I haven’t seen them in years.  For the most part, I am enjoying it.  Who would complain about losing face fat, belly fat and back fat?  But  I can’t say I’m a fan of losing all the bulk I had built up at the gym.  Adding muscle and size to my skinny frame seems to take forever, but in the blink of an eye, I found myself suddenly skinny.

    The truth is that I really don’t know what I am doing.  I have my own way of cooking and eating.  I am used to throwing ingredients together to make a pot full of yummy.  And now that some of my standards like honey, maple syrup, Trinidadian browning, carrots, sauces, soy sauce, potatoes, and rice are suddenly off the menu, I am totally at a loss for how to whip up a quick meal or snack.  The result is that I am honestly not eating well at the moment.  It will take a bit of training and some trips to the super market to get the hang of this new style of eating.

    The one silver lining is that my taste buds are in overdrive.  Whenever I cleanse, the effect of taking all the strong manufactured tastes from my diet leaves my taste buds extremely sensitive.  Previously bland, boring food suddenly tastes amazing.  My taste buds can pick up just about every morsel of flavour in everything I eat.  So, yes, the diet is kind of boring, but my taste buds are not complaining at all.

    The other big deal is the brain fog.  That sense of confusion, dizziness or otherworldliness, has already lifted off like a veil.  My body is completely exhausted.  I have no energy.  Walking up a flight of stairs requires incredible amounts of super human effort at the moment, but in spite of it all, I feel more mentally alert than I have in ages.

    I should note that my excessive yeast die-off symptoms or healing crisis symptoms are exaggerated due to a few factors. Considering the number of years I have had candida, I thought it would be a good idea to start as fast and strong as I could.  This means that I am not easing into the cleanse, but rather jumping in with both feet.  Full doses of psyllium, caproil and bentonite.  Also, I took three daily doses of fluconazole, a pharmaceutical fungicide to help.  So, the yeast die off symptoms are a bit extreme at the moment, but so are some of the positive changes.  The changes in mental alertness came almost right away.  The sugar cravings completely disappeared after one day on my accelerated cleanse.  And kids, remember, “do as I say, not as I do”.  It is not recommended to take fluconazole or speed up the yeast buster schedule.