Food as
Medicine Pages

Carbohydrates, Candida and Common Sense

I have been doing a great deal of thinking over the past few years. I have talked to a lot of people, including nutritional counselors, naturopaths, and people with all kinds of problems ranging from cancer to Crohn's disease to Candida over growth. I have talked with several naturopathic physicians and counselors who "always win" with Candida. I love to pick people's brains when given the opportunity, to find out what works for them, to hear their stories, to learn something more. You can read all you want and get all kinds of opinions, but you need testimonies to lend credibility to any teaching or claim. Add to that a little science and experience and you can usually come up with something sound. I feel I have done this when it comes to Candida and getting well, but I am not finding a lot of company right now with my beliefs. However, I do see an awareness on the horizon.

To begin with, I believed that carbohydrates were bad for the most part. Many people cannot digest gluten well; grains feed yeast, they tell us. Fruits, grains and starchy vegetables are full of sugars that will greatly increase over growth. Right? You will hear people tell you that you have to get fats and proteins in your diet. They are essential for life. They will note that there are many vitamins and minerals the human body needs as well. But there is no minimum daily requirement for carbohydrates. They say you can live your whole life with good foods and very limited carbohydrates. In fact they will go so far as to say if you do this, you will be much healthier for it.

One reason, they say, is that if you eat mostly fats and proteins your body will break them down for energy rather than using carbohydrates and this method of obtaining energy is actually more efficient. What I have noticed in practice however, is that a low carb diet does not give a person as much energy as a diet that contains carbohydrates. Now before you write me and tell me how wrong I am, I need to say that a diet heavy in grains that can not be digested, a body loaded with Candida, or a person eating any imbalanced diet of any kind has similar problems. When all the raw materials are not present, and the body has to take auxiliary routes to obtaining energy or nutrients, the system is slower and organ systems become suppressed. For example, people with many different types of diets see a suppressed thyroid gland. This lowers metabolism which in turn lowers energy levels. People on vegan vegetarian diets, who change over to an Atkins diet, usually loose lots of weight and at first feel very, very good for the change. So do long time Adkins people when they add back a good amount of fruit and some grains, along with a good potato, rice etc. They have more energy and feel healthier, though the adjustment usually means they will put on weight.

The Negative Effects of Limiting Fruits and Grains

When fruits and grains are cut out of the diet, the main fiber sources are cut out and most people on low carb diets are lucky to have one bowel movement a day. Halitosis (bad breath, especially in the morning) becomes common among low carb dieters (This indicates a fowl smelling, compromised digestive tract). And if a live blood analysis is done on any low carb dieter, it will show rouleaux. Rouleaux is a condition where the red cells stack or clump together. The more acidic the body the more the red cells become "sticky". The less clustered water a person gets in their diet (clustered water is the water contained inside fresh fruits and vegetables) the more sticky the blood is. In addition, the more toxins in the body, the stickier the blood is. And lastly, I personally, after several months on a low carb diet, showed serious signs of low vitamin C. I have tested this out repeatedly and without fail I begin to be plagued with bleeding gums, broken blood vessels in the eye, bruising easily, etc. It seems to be caused from the lack of fruit.

The main reason people do low carb diets is because of counseling for Candida and for weight control. It does no good, however, to go on a low carbohydrate diet if you do not intent to stay on it for the rest of your life. Everybody, without fail, once they leave the Atkins diet, gains weight back and they usually see Candida return. Often their latter state is worse than years before when they originally went on their low carb diet. Because this is the case, my personal belief is that the low carb diet just suppresses much deeper problems that are going on in the body. And the diet does not take care of any of the root causes which allowed the problems to happen in the first place.

Nutritional History in Perspective

30-40 years ago there was Adele Davis and others. Some vitamins were just being discovered and studied. Supplements were in their infancy. This occurred during my childhood and teen years. I remember the health shakes my parents made and the books we read. They are similar in some ways to things we read today, but in other ways much different. These people believed in high protein diets and high vitamin foods. They did not condemn carbohydrate or proteins and they acknowledged the importance of fats as well.

Behind them came all the lies and faulty, misrepresented research "showing" that saturated fat was bad for you. They advocated a very low fat, no meat, high carbohydrate diet. Fat was made to be the enemy and people believed we had way too much protein in our diet. The high protein in our diet, the high amount of animal products, along with saturated fat, was blamed for the rising incidences of heart disease and cancer. To this day these beliefs are pretty well ingrained in many people's minds. There are lots of mainstream people who dogmatically advocate this type of diet. The physicians in our country for years pooh-poohed these beliefs. Today they are dogmatic about their validity.

Following behind the low-fat advocates came the low carb revolution. It is almost like a back lash. The low carb diet, in many respects, is almost the opposite teaching of the vegetarian diet. Now carbohydrates are the culprit for sickness and disease and proteins and fats are the good guys!

I believe the perfect truth does not lie in either camp (So have I now made enemies of every reader?). Please bear with me and I will explain how I have come to these conclusions.

I use to be a Vegan Vegetarian:

When I first met my husband, in 1987, I was a vegan vegetarian. My father had died from a heart attack (at the age of 51) earlier that year, and I had come under great conviction that I would follow in his steps if I did not do something soon. At the time I was 28 years old. I went on a strict no fat, vegetarian diet. I did not eat anything with fat in it, not even avocadoes. I eliminated all dairy, meat and animal products. My diet was about 1/2 raw and 1/2 cooked. I did use low-fat salad dressings, but most of our diet was not processed food, but rather things made from scratch, and most of it came from the produce section of the grocery store, was raised on our acreage, or from a whole foods buying club.

After we had been married for about a year, my husband, who is 6'5" had lost about 40 pounds, and was beginning to look more like a concentration camp victim. He asked me earnestly to please change what we ate. After much convincing we slowly added meat and animal products back into our diet. Most of what we ate was organic and very high quality. At first it was one meal a month. Later it was 2 meals a month and then 1 meal a week...etc.

To my surprise I began to have digestive problems every time I ate meat. My stomach would sometime bloat up in the night (especially if we ate late) with so much pressure that I could not lay down, sit up, or even walk without feeling pressure on my heart and lungs. I was in very serious pain, no matter what I did. Charcoal did not work; digestive enzymes did not work. Nothing worked, but vomiting. It was awful. I can still remember how terrible it was. I often times would have preferred death to the pain.

In the past the vegetarians I knew would often tell me that they knew they were not to eat meat because if they ever did, they always got sick or they could feel the pull on their body, and how hard it was to digest. Well I was experiencing that, but in my own mind I could not believe it was because meat was not good for my body. And all the years prior to my vegetarian year I did not have this digestive problem. Something had happen in my body, but it took me years to find out what.

Over the course of the next 10 years I had to be very careful when I ate and what I ate. Slowly, I had more and more digestive problems. Eventually I could not digest wheat, and later other grains. I could digest goat's milk at first, and later I had to discontinue eating cottage cheese, cheese and other diary products until finally I could eat only yogurt, and lastly I could not digest any dairy products at all. Prior to my vegetarian year I could eat anything. I may not have always eaten things that were healthy, but I did not have these serious digestive issues. Now I was eating very healthy and I had serious problems! That is probably why many people who have terrible diets look at people who eat very healthy, and find them to be some of the least healthy people in America!!

Another issue that crept into my body with the digestive problems was arthritis. By the end I walked like an 80 year old lady.

What I learned working with Cultured Foods

In 2000 we an natural foods internet company. At that time I discovered cultured foods and coconut oil. Between these two products I regained digestive health, and my arthritis went away.

I learned from making cultured foods that when you make a cultured drink, the good, friendly pro-biotic flora grow the fastest in media (juices, milk, etc) that are high in available sugar. And when you make cultured vegetables, if you are using a packet of culture, it works best to take a quart of water and add several tablespoons of honey or a natural sugar to the water, along with a packet of pro-biotic organisms to make a cultured water. Later you pour this cultured water over the grated veggies, and then let them sit to "culture". In doing this I realized that good probiotic flora thrive on natural sugars, too. It is not just Candida and other pathogens that like those types of foods.

All bacteria and yeasts (good and bad) need food and nutrients.

Okay, so what happens if a person has a low carb diet? Well, Candida growth is repressed when carbohydrates are limited, but so is the growth of good flora. What seems to happen is all flora in the intestinal tract struggle. Bowel movements become sluggish. Digestion is not as good because of reduced flora. Foul smells occur from poor digestion, etc. When a person goes off the low carbohydrate diet the organisms that have struggled along and still live there now "rise" to the occasion with rapid growth. This is usually Candida and other pathogens, because they are often times better at survival. That is why you usually see them in a polluted body that is spiraling down hill. The body is often too toxic for good flora, but the bad organisms somehow survive, and since the body is so compromised, it can't fight the unwelcome visitors off.

The underlying root cause was not the carbohydrates in the diet, even though they may have greatly aggrivated and promoted the candida and other pathogens. The underlying root cause is the toxic digestive tract that kills off good flora but is not toxic enough to kill off pathogens.

Unless the body becomes cleaner from colon cleansing and mercury detoxification, unless it then receives lots of good flora, gets lots of raw fresh fruits and vegetables, and becomes more alkaline, the body will remain in the same acid ph, the same deficit of nutrients, and the same mucked up, toxic state, often loaded with mercury or other heavy metals. The low carbohydrate diet does not change this state; it just keeps the pathogens at bay by suppressing their growth. Once carbohydrates are added to the diet, even if it is years after the diet change, the pathogens are still around to take over once they have the opportunity.

And the later state is often worse than the former state (their health usually becomes worse than it was prior to going on a low carb diet).

I have done both the vegan vegetarian (high carb, low fat) diet and the low carb (high protein, high fat) diet in recent years. Here is my conclusion: Whatever you eat, you will be feeding the flora living in your intestinal tract. The flora living there are determined by how toxic the intestinal tract is and if good flora foods or supplements are ever eaten.

I have discovered that if you eat a high carb diet, even a futilitarian diet, and are bombarding your body with good flora, you will not have Candida over growth. If you restrict your diet, you are harming both the good and the bad flora.

In thinking about this, it makes sense doesn't it? So whenever I make a fruit salad, I chop up fresh fruit and pour kefir or yogurt over it enough to coat the fruit. When I eat meat, I try to have cultured coconut water, another cultured drink or a cultured vegetable. The good probiotic flora love the way I treat them.

Do you know there are hundreds of people who tell me that they cannot seem to get the good flora to take in their intestines, even though they are doing lots of probiotics? They feel no matter what they do they are not getting rid of the Candida and the good flora is not taking root in their intestinal tract. I believe it is because they are not feeding their good flora.

Some of the things I learned from limiting fruit in my diet

This last summer I ordered fresh cherries from Washington State by the 40 pound box when they were in season. I ordered a 40 pound boxes of pears, of blueberries, apples, etc as each fruit was in season. When watermelons were in season, I purchased 3 or 4 at a time. You know what I discovered? Fruits are very bowel loosening.

Most people with Candida struggle with sluggish bowels. They are lucky to have one movement a day, and many use herbal laxatives to stay regular. Whole grains have lots of fiber; fruits have lots of fiber, too. But in addition to the fiber, fruits have so many other phytochemicals, as well as nutrients, anti-oxidants, and minerals, that whatever may be lacking in the diet to cause the poor performance of the intestinal tract can be remedied just by giving it the raw materials it needs to work properly. For example, take a look at the freeze dried berries offered at Wilderness Family Naturals. There are antimicrobial properties in berries like blueberries and strawberries including anti-Candida properties!! And there are so many benefits from eating berries. It is such a detriment to eliminate these from the diet.

Bleeding gums, bleeding capillaries in the eyes, and bruising easily, can just be the beginning signs of low levels of vitamin C in the body. Low vitamin C, vitamin E, and vitamin B levels have been shown to be linked to nutritional causes of the degenerative killers like cancer and heart disease. It takes years of living with deficiencies to see these killers take over and end a person's life, and other problems will likely occur on the road to death, but who wants to go that route? I have tried and I can not get enough of all the vitamins and minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, or fats on neither a vegetarian nor a low carb diet. We need a multitude of things from our food. Limiting healthy foods that are unrefined, raw, unprocessed, and preservative-free is harmful to your health. Fruitarians only eat fruits, Vegetarians do not eat animal products, low carber's do not eat carbohydrates, etc. But limiting proteins, fiber, fats, vitamins or something else in the diet over the long haul creates an imbalanced diet that has long range consequences.

Isn't it interesting to look at Dr. Weston A. Price's work and see that there were no traditional people groups who were vegan vegetarians that were healthy by his standards? And that the fat soluble vitamins are so important? And that most of the truly healthy populations had raw dairy or some type of raw animal product as well as grains in their diet? And they all had cultured foods!

Something I learned from the Mosquitoes in Minnesota:

In Minnesota we jokingly call the mosquito the state bird. There is an outhouse on a lake near us that does not have a roof, or any walls. It is just a bench with a hole in the center and a small hole in the ground underneath it. In June and July we tell people to be careful that the mosquitoes do not come along and carry them off. You can actually be working in the garden and have you arms so covered with mosquitoes that there is more black on your arm than pink skin. In June I use to wear a mosquito net on my head, gloves, long pants and long sleeved shirts every time I went out side and I would still get bit! They would be all over you! So how did the Ojibwa Indian survive up here? Well, I finally got my answer a year of two ago.

The Ojibwa Indians took over this part of the country many years ago. Many of them still live here today. They lived in teepees that contained fires in the center and the smoke rose out through the top. There is a flap that comes down in a circle inside to hold the warmth down during the winter and there is air that comes in around the bottom of the teepee. I am sure the smoke helped some to deter the mosquitoes, but most of the time these people were outside. Finally, after years of living up here, I found out that they did not eat meat most of the summer. The Indians hunted game in the fall and preserved it for winter. They also hunted in the winter. Any game they took in the summer they preserved. And they ate meat most of the year, except during mosquito season (spring and summer). During this time they ate mostly roots, berries, fruits and vegetables. In thinking about this I decided to see if it is an alkaline vs. acid issue, because that might make the mosquitoes not bit or at least make them bearable. It could also be all the antioxidants from the fruits, or it could be the vitamins.

Here is what I found. If we were alkaline in pH the mosquitoes did not light on our arms or if they did they flew off without bite. This would fall in line with Dr. Young's teaching on pH. He believes pathogens will leave the body as you get alkaline and that is the key. Becoming alkaline is definitely important. Watching what the mosquitoes do if a person is alkaline has really made me wonder what happens to other pathogens in our bodies.

We also found that taking supplements such as the B vitamins and minerals helps to keep the mosquitoes from liking you! Fruits and vegetables make the body more alkaline. They are also full of phytonutrients, essential vitamins and minerals. These things help you to be an unfriendly host to pathogens.

What about grains?

Grains are high in fiber, high in vitamin E, B vitamins, and lots of other substances. I still do not find them easy to digest if I eat large quantities, but they are a good compliment to a meal and "round out the corners" of a growing child's tummy. Pregnant women who have Candida or weight problems, and go on low carb diets, harm their children. Most of the time they have children with mental and/or physical handicaps. A body that is growing, and a body that is using a lot of energy has to have the carbohydrates.

Once a person has good flora established in their intestines again, the grains in moderation will be a good, important and welcome addition.

The key is to get the good guys into your system and then to feed them the foods and nutrients that will make you both grow big and strong.

One week a few years ago I had the opportunity of talking with two different health professional who "always win" with patients that come to them with Candida. The interesting thing is that upon asking questions, I discovered that they have lots of different ideas about what you can and can not eat. One of them allows their patients to eat all grains except for quinoa, amaranth, millet and buckwheat. This person says they turn into starches more quickly that all other grains. The other individual says they do not allow any grains except for quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and millet. They say these are the only alkaline grains. They are ancient grains and more nutritious, as well. Two totally opposite mandates for their patients, yet they both "always win" with Candida. So you know what I think? Eating grains, or what grains you eat are not all that important. At least they are not critical to overcoming Candida.

The two things both these health care practitioners had in common is they both advocate whole unadulterated foods and not white sugar, white flour, processed, and preservative laden foods. And secondly, they use probiotics that contain friendly yeast. Yes, that is right, friendly yeast. They have both found out that good, friendly bacteria are wonderful at ousting bad bacteria, but to be truly effective with Candida you need friendly yeast. Yeast fight yeast, bacteria fight bacteria. There is some overlap, but the need for like to like seems to be very important. And once the Candida is gone, if there are not other yeast and no good flora to take its place and clean up house, then the Candida will come back and often times worse than ever.
All the cultures and probiotics we carry are specially formulated for getting rid of Candida and they all contain friendly bacteria and friendly yeast. Wilderness Family Naturals carries Kefir and Vegetable cultures and Kefir Capsules from the Caucasus Mountains. We recommend all of these products.

If you can not tolerate eating grains, work on your flora. A compromised digestive tract can not digest a great deal of what it is designed to digest. If you keep eliminating foods from your menu as you become more and more compromised/allergic you will just get less and less nutrients, you will likely become weaker and weaker, and the pathogens will grow stronger and stronger. People who do this wake up one day realizing there is so little they can eat and that they are so health compromised. It is too difficult for them to see their way to regaining their health. The longer you let this downward spiral go, the harder it will be to recover.

The Bottom Line:

My bottom line? Fruits are just as important as vegetables and grains should not be totally taboo. They are not harmful, but actually helpful to the body. When you eliminate them from your diet you only hurt yourself. The key is to bombard the body with good pro-biotic foods along with the fruits, vegetables, grains and protein foods. This is truly a balanced diet.  Variety is the key. The good flora will thrive on this type of diet. Eliminating healthy whole foods from the diet causes imbalances. Eliminating nutrients you need causes the probiotic flora to struggle along with the pathogens.

If you do not introduce your body to good flora, and then in turn feed your body and your flora all the nutrients you need, then these flora will become weak and die off or they may not choose to hang around your intestines. In return pathogens take over and eventually your own body will struggle as well.

We recommend Wilderness Family Naturals products because of their integrity and quality. However, other online retailers and natural food stores may also carry similar goods. Whenever, possible we have tried to give you information on how to recognize superior products. Wilderness Family Naturals products can be found at: www.wildernessfamilynaturals.com or by calling (800) 945-3801.