There aren’t many people who should jump right into the Candida Crusher diet without doing a little bit of body cleansing first. Here are my top 4 reasons for doing the big clean-up first.

Poor Diet

By neglecting to sufficiently feed our lawns, shrubs, trees and flowers, we end up with a poor garden, not unlike somebody suffering with malnutrition. Many who are about to undertake the Candida Crusher Program rely on a diet that contains nutrient depleted vegetables, grains, fruits as well as meats containing antibiotics and hormones.
This type of diet provides an inadequate amount of essential nutrients for the body’s countless metabolic processes, including internal cleansing.

These dietary habits, and the fact that many of us eat a limited variety of foods, consume alcohol and caffeine-containing beverages, can result in the internal congestion of our organs of elimination, in particular the small and large bowel. Even you have been adopting a “perfect” diet for some time but have a yeast infection which you have had for a long time, you will benefit from the Big Clean-Up.

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Poor Absorption Rates

By sweeping the paths, mowing the lawns and weeding the garden you will find that the fertilizer you apply will be that much more effective. (An under-active stomach) We can get better crops, bigger flowers and truly enjoy the fruits of our labor. The other major advantage of this initial big cleanse is that the probiotics, anti-fungal foods, supplements and herbs which I recommend during the Candida Crusher Program will work that much better. The more efficiently your digestive system works, the more efficient will be your body’s ability to digest foods, herbs and supplements, absorb nutrients into cells and excrete wastes.

Poor Bowel Functioning

By neglecting to prune the shrubs and trees, neglecting to weed the garden beds and letting the garbage pile up we end up with a garden that becomes a real eyesore. It also becomes a haven for pests and vermin, just like a person’s bowel that has been neglected for many years. Some gardens have become so neglected that they may even have oil poured onto the soil, and that can mean that the garden is so seriously affected that nothing will grow there for years. This to me is like one of those gardens where you will find a dumped car body, some beer bottles thrown over the fence as well as ice cream wrappers and cigarette butts around the place.

Not unlike bowel cancer, it takes years for bowel cancer to develop and the signs and symptoms have been there for many years and either ignored or accepted as a normal part of that person’s life, symptoms like bloating, gas, constipation and many other digestive issues. Just because there is no pain it doesn’t mean there is nothing wrong, and that’s why so many people are quite surprised when the diagnosis finally comes: “But doctor, I didn’t feel a thing”. Some people live with a dysfunctional bowel for many years and never expect it to eventually turn into cancer. About 80 percent of people I see in my candida clinic have issues with their bowel functioning, and if you skip the occasional bowel motion or have difficulties passing daily motions easily, then you would be foolish to skip this Big Clean-Up.

During the big cleanse your bowel is cleansed and purged to eliminate undesirable bowel matter and bowel plaques and helps to make your whole intestinal tract clean. This process eliminates places where yeasts, bacteria and parasites like to hide and thrive. You will not only eliminate sludge and plaques but also accumulated toxins, helping you to prevent the re-absorption of toxins when we do a proper detoxification program well down the track by allowing a clear and unhindered passage of toxic wastes to be excreted. The benefits of this initial cleanse go way beyond treating your yeast infection, and you will discover that regular bowel clean ups can help increase your energy levels, improve your mood and concentration, and help significantly with weight loss.

Poor Immune System Functioning

A neglected garden over time becomes a sick garden and each year the weeds become more vigorous than the year previous. The lawn, once beautiful, has now become a large tract of weeds that will take a lot of hard work to restore to its former beauty.

Some gardens in fact are all weeds and the birds and other pests just keep on spreading weed seeds until it becomes a difficult task to remedy (ulcerative colitis, leukemia, Non- Hodgkin’s lymphoma, etc.) This is not unlike your immune system, and if neglected can take quite a few years to bring it back to its original and powerful state. Healthy gardens are not only beautiful and a joy to behold, they require only a few hours of work each week to maintain them.

Another concern I have with people launching straight into the MEVY Diet or stage 1 diet without cleansing their digestive tract is that they may have developed potential intolerances or allergies to some of the most commonly eaten foods like cow’s milk, wheat and gluten containing products, eggs, soy, oranges, peanuts, and even banana. And how often do you hear of somebody with a yeast infection suffering from allergies, hay fever, asthma, or sinusitis? Most people I see with a chronic yeast infection have a compromised immune system, and a bowel cleanse makes digestive restoration down the track that much easier, particularly if the person has leaky gut syndrome.

I have outlined below a straightforward and very effective cleansing option below, which is a bowel purge followed by a simple cleansing diet with the option of a juice fast, and followed by a more powerful colon cleanse we call a colonic. Before you begin however, there are a few things that you need to consider.

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Please Read This before You Start Your Big Clean-Up

Before you start on the Big Clean-Up, it makes sense to eliminate any potential causes of your yeast infection. What is the point in cleaning up your digestive system if you don’t address any likely causes of your yeast infection? If you tackle the cause and clean up the problem you have right now then you solve any future recurrence, simple as that, it can be permanently resolved.

But isn’t an apple a “forbidden” fruit if you have a yeast infection? I don’t find that all varieties are, and I’ve yet to find a person who eats several tart or sour apples like the varieties such as Granny Smith green apples, these are more sour or tart apples. Perhaps some readers may, but generally speaking they would be much more inclined to eat several of the sweeter and newer varieties daily, bred especially for their high sugar content. People don’t normally aggravate on sour or tart apples with yeast infections, and I’ve not seen many aggravations come about with the consumption of one green apple per day.

If your apple tastes very sweet, and in New Zealand we have very sweet varieties bred especially for the Asian market, such as Pacific Rose, then you are best advised to leave them well alone, because you may find that you end up substituting your sugar intake for this sweet treat instead.

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When I wrote this section of Candida Crusher, I did some research and found that the sugar content for different apple varieties isn’t usually published. A lot of the varieties sold commercially are very similar in terms of the amount of sugar but this will be hard to judge by taste as sour or tart flavors can mask sweetness. It is difficult to standardize sugar content of fruit because there can be an enormous variation due to the climate the fruit was grown in, the rainfall, the time of harvest and how ripe the fruit is when eaten.

My guess is that the more sour or tart varieties contain less sugar than their sweeter counterparts and are a safer option. I’ve also noticed that those who eat one tart or sour apple a day tend to have better bowel motions and are increasing the beneficial fiber content of their diet. What many are not aware of is that one apple a day, besides keeping the doctor away, will be giving their digestive system a food containing beneficial pre-biotic fibers to build health levels of beneficial bacteria. And that’s not a bad thing if you have a yeast infection.

Avoid Fruits with Stems

Be careful of fruits that contain stems such as apples, cherries, berries, grapes and certain kinds of stone fruit. These kinds of soft fruits may be more prone to harboring different kinds of molds that are very difficult to see with the naked eye. You are best to leave the softer and sweeter stemmed fruits well alone until you feel much better, particularly grapes.

It is easier to eat a lot of sweet fruit with stems, like grapes, and that means you will be eating lots of sugar too. And do remember, at the sake of repeating myself, wash any fruits and vegetables especially well because of the possibility of them being covered in molds or spores, especially if you have kept them in your vegetable crisper in the fridge for several days. It is these kinds of small but significant things you do in the kitchen that can make all the difference.

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Sea vegetables contain an amazing array of minerals, including calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, and an incredibly large variety of trace elements, some not anywhere else. Sea vegetables may be one of the only dietary ways left to get precious trace elements such as cobalt, copper, chromium, fluorine, iodine, manganese, molybdenum, selenium and zinc back into your diet.

These foods are also a rich source of B vitamins, vitamin C and vitamin K. In addition, sea vegetables are nature’s richest source of iodine, required by your thyroid gland in particular and contain good amounts of a carbohydrate-like substance called fucans that has strong anti-inflammatory properties. Sea vegetables are particularly beneficial for those with autoimmune disease because of their immune-boosting and anti-inflammatory properties.

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I like all patients with adrenal fatigue and hypothyroidism to included some sea vegetables into their diet, and because half the population has some degree of hypothyroidism, and three quarters have varying levels adrenal fatigue issues ranging from mild through to extreme, I guess it just about sums up everybody to some degree. Just like rice bran, oat bran, Jerusalem artichoke, and linseed/sunflower/almond mix (LSA), sea vegetables contain high quality prebiotic fibers and are perfect for those who are interested in re-populating their digestive system with beneficial bacteria, especially those with a yeast infection.

Here are but a few of the many health benefits you can derive from eating ocean vegetables:

• Improve the condition of hair, nails, bones, connective tissues, skin and teeth.

• Inhibit growth and reproduction of pathogenic bacteria, candida and viruses.

• Help chelate heavy metals, especially lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium.

• Increase the diet’s fiber content and encourage daily eliminations.

• Facilitate healthy thyroid function, due to the iodine content.

• Assist with adrenal fatigue, stress and burnout.

• Prebiotic qualities, feeds up the good bacteria.

• Fight the growth of cancer cells.

• Blood pressure lowering action.

• Powerful antioxidant action.

• Anti-inflammatory action.

• Reduce cholesterol levels.

• Anti-inflammatory action.

• Alkalize the blood.

Ocean Vegetables in the Kitchen

So what do you do with seaweed you may be wondering? These foods are very versatile because they can combine with just about any dish you may prepare. Seaweed is alkaline and combines easily with any vegetable, protein or grain dish. You can use them in salads or with cooked dishes and the possibilities are virtually endless. I recommend that you go to your local library or bookstore and obtain a few books about macrobiotic cooking; there you will find many different recipes relating to sea vegetables. The Internet is also an excellent source of more information.

You are unlikely to buy sea vegetables from your local supermarket, apart from nori sheets perhaps. If you want to buy seaweed I recommend that you visit your local health-food store, and the bigger stores will most likely have the best varieties. Don’t forget your local Asian supermarket, they have a surprising amount of fresh, frozen and dried seaweeds on hand. Just like their land-based counterparts, the colors of sea vegetables are incredible and can range from black, green, yellow, brown and even red or purple varieties.

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Try different varieties and you will soon settle of two or three and include them regularly into your diet. Most varieties of seaweed require soaking so that they can be reconstituted before use. Generally a half an hour of soaking is all that is required, and you will find that seaweed will greatly increase in size the longer you leave it soak.

Some varieties like kombu are just flat leaf, whereas other varieties like hijki are long thin strands. Varieties like wakame have inedible stems that are discarded after the leaves have been removed. Some types of seaweed like wakame or dulse do not necessarily require soaking and can be crushed easily and sprinkled onto many foods to add a salty taste and a crispy texture.

I rarely find that any books on diet and nutrition, let alone yeast infections, focus much if any attention to this particular category of foods, the amazingly healthy sea vegetables. Just like the fermented and cultured foods, once you start to eat these foods you will notice that you can take your health to a whole new level. I’d like you to consider adding this group of vegetables into your diet slowly, just start with only one addition like hijiki, kombu or wakame and take it from there.

I first got introduced to ocean and sea vegetables when I was a naturopathic student after completing a cooking class that included Japanese cooking and got hooked right from the start, since then I have enjoyed many different types of seaweed in my diet. If you have ever eaten sushi or are familiar with miso soup which often includes pieces of seaweed, then you will already have eaten seaweed of some kind and be already familiar with these foods.

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There will be no looking back once you finally adopt a diet that regularly includes ocean and sea vegetables, because you will have rounded out your diet by including some of the healthiest of foods you will find in your health-food shop.

If you adopt all of the healthy food suggestions as outlined in this first section of the book, your Candida Crusher dietary food suggestions should include foods from the following groups:

• Land-based vegetables, especially leafy greens and the colored vegetables.

• Fruits such as blueberries, avocado, kiwi, lemon and lime.

• High quality protein sources like fresh fish and lean meats.

• Free range eggs and chicken.

• Nuts, seeds like almonds, Brazil nuts, sesame and pumpkin seeds, etc.

• Alkaline grains such as quinoa, millet and buckwheat.

• Fermented and cultured foods including yogurt, kefir, kimchi, tempeh, etc.

• Sea-based vegetables, including agar, kombu, hijiki, nori and wakame.

Seaweeds have been harvested for many hundreds if not thousands of years and used as a very important part of the daily diet in many traditional cultures around the world. Most people think of Asia when they think of seaweed, and countries like Japan in particular, but seaweeds were and still are an important food source for almost every country that has an ocean near it. In New Zealand, the Maori used wakame for centuries as a food source long before the white man came to its shores.

The seaweed called nori which you may be familiar with if you have tried sushi, was once only reserved for royalty only in countries like Japan and Hawaii.

I’ll explain more about each kind of seaweed soon, but first, let me explain a bit about why these sea-weeds are so beneficial for your health.

The Most Mineral Rich Natural Food Source

Unlike land-based vegetables, seaweeds cannot obtain their food supply from the soil through their root systems, and they have to rely on obtaining all the nutrition they need from the ocean’s water. There are almost 60 different minerals found in seaweeds, and every single mineral and trace element your body requires can be found in sea and ocean vegetables. Does your multivitamin contain this level of minerals? I doubt it.

In many Western countries, soils are becoming increasingly stressed and gradually depleted of many of our essential minerals and trace elements due to modern farming methods. This is certainly not the case with seaweeds because these mineral abundant foods contain hundreds of essential trace elements and minerals in the most assimilable forms that can nourish the cells of our bodies. Some nutritional experts in fact believe that these aquatic groups of foods are nutritionally among the densest on the planet, because they contain the highest concentration and broadest range of minerals of any currently known food. Are you starting to pay attention now, to this class of superfoods?

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Perhaps you should consider adding some of these foods to your diet, especially if you want to boost your overall health and wellbeing to the highest levels and get rid of that yeast infection permanently.

Kim chi is sometimes spelled “kim chee,” but I prefer the “chi” spelling because that is the spelling of the oriental word chi (gi, ki) that means “natural energy” or “vital force”. Of the countless varieties of kim chi that are made in Korea, by far the most common version is the one made with Chinese (wong bok) cabbage.

Just like sauerkraut, kim chi that is made with cabbage is loaded with indole-3-carbinol (I3C), a compound that is well recognized as a powerful cancer-fighting compound.

Numerous studies indicate that I3C can offer protection against many different types of cancer and may even stop the growth of existing tumors.

I learned about kim chi when I was a student and completed a Cooking For Health course many years ago at naturopathic college. A great thing about this dish, like with all fermented foods, is that it keeps for many weeks in your refrigerator, yet still tastes fresh.

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The garlic and vinegar are natural preservatives that keep the raw vegetables and fruits tasting great for a long time. If you have one of those keep warm crock or hotpots in your kitchen, then a wholesome snack or even a full meal is not far away. Kim chi is like sauerkraut, it is not only a health food, it can be regarded as a convenience food, and both of these foods can be served cold, warm or hot. An important point to bear in mind is that kim chi must be fermented properly.

There are a lot of great recipes out there for preparing kim chi. I cover one in detail in the Candida Crusher book and you can find several others online as well. You’ll find a great recipe for sauerkraut in there as well!