Tag Archives: candida diet

Questions & Answers

What To Expect When You Give Up Junk Food

Let’s talk about junk food withdrawal.

I read an interesting study out of the Avena lab at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. This team discovered that when people eat highly processed foods, particularly those with artificial coloring, they can get quite addicted. These findings refer to foods like donuts, fast food burgers and fries, and deep-fried chicken. You know, the types of foods that are full of sugar, processed fats, artificial colors, and an assortment of preservatives.

When people come off of these foods, there is a certain element of withdrawal symptoms. Not unlike a cannabis withdrawal or a caffeine withdrawal. So remember, when you eat foods that are very sweet, colored, and man-made (rather than naturally occurring), there’s a potential for addiction. In my opinion, the strength of this addiction gets higher as more of these foods are consumed.

This may explain why yourself or someone you know keep going back to that can of pop, that half-eaten donut, or that bag of candy. It can be hard to give up those fake foods. My advice, especially if you have children, is not to get them started on processed food. Instead, please encourage them to eat healthy food. I’ve never seen people have withdrawal or addiction coming off broccoli, brown rice, fish filets, or eggs.

Further readings:

I’ve never heard of an egg addiction, but I’ve heard of donut addictions.
Be careful. When you start eating or drinking junk food regularly, and you try and break the habit, you may have withdrawal symptoms. There could be anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, and other symptoms.

The key thing is not to go cold turkey. If you’re going to start a new healthy diet, I recommend warm turkey. My book Candida Crusher explains what warm turkey is all about. But in short, it’s about coming off of foods over a two to three week period rather than overnight.
My decades of work as a naturopath has shown me that when you eat natural foods rather than supermarket foods, you don’t end up with weight, fatigue, or sleeping problems.

Don’t fall into the junk food trap in the first place. You especially want to avoid brightly colored, highly processed foods that contain a collection of chemicals.

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Questions & Answers

How To Manage Autoimmune Conditions Like Ankylosing Spondylitis

When you have an autoimmune condition like ankylosing spondylitis, it is hard for your gut to function properly because of inflammation and dysbiosis. I believe that it is a matter of time before experts confirm that autoimmune diseases originate in the gut and then spread to elsewhere in the body.

I have helped many people overcome their so-called “incurable” autoimmune disease.
If you’re struggling with an autoimmune condition, make sure you’re working with a practitioner who understands gut health. Next, make sure that you have a comprehensive stool analysis and use this to direct your treatment. Continue to have stool tests regularly so you know how you are responding to treatment and whether anything needs to be tweaked.

If your gut is improving, great. If it isn’t, adjust your supplement regime, your diet, and your lifestyle.

There will be a lot of ups and downs when treating an autoimmune condition. There’s no easy path with this type of health problem.

Further readings:

I strongly recommend that you find a doctor who is willing to work with Doctor’s Data out of Chicago. Doctor’s Data provides comprehensive stool analysis. You need to take the three sample option that includes parasitology. Make sure you have stopped taking probiotics for 14 days before the tests. Also, withhold all your other medications, including supplements, unless they are absolutely necessary.

Before your stool test, make sure you are following your normal diet. Don’t suddenly start adding or eliminating foods from your diet, or your stool test won’t accurately reflect your microbial baseline.

The results of your stool testing will help steer your gut back on track. The test results will include sensitivity panels which identity which natural and pharmaceutical agents are effective against the harmful bugs in your gut.

As a dosing protocol, I usually take the 242 approach. Start with two weeks of a low dose, build up to a full dose for four weeks, and then titrate the dose down again over two weeks. However, some people need a 1-8-6 or 9-4-1 approach. Your healthcare provider must customize the dosing regime to your needs and your tolerance.

When you first start taking antimicrobials, you’re going to experience some side effects. This is particularly true if your harmful bacteria levels or your SIBO counts are high. You may experience gut upset, diarrhea, brain fog, or some pain. It’s usually a good sign that side effects are emerging. It means the treatments are having an impact.

I suggest you focus on reducing the level of the most disruptive microbe in your gut. In other words, take the “big guy” down. When the highest count pathogen gets knocked back, it creates a significant shift in the microbiome and opens up the opportunity to do more gut cleansing.

Ankylosing spondylitis is not insurmountable. Klebsiella pneumoniaa has a known association with this autoimmune condition. Addressing this pathogen with your care provider is a logical part of your treatment plan.

You can improve, but it takes time and patience.

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Questions & Answers

SIBO And Low Fermentation Diets: Yes Or No?

I read an interesting paper about using a low-fermentation diet for SIBO. This diet comes out of a laboratory at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

I don’t agree with all of the recommendations out of this diet. For example, it recommends against yogurt, and yet, in my experience, yogurt is one of the best foods to help clean up the gut. Of course, I’m talking about high-quality, sour, Greek yogurt, not the artificially sweetened industrial type that fills the supermarkets. The yogurt I eat contains plenty of beneficial bacteria. Most of the lactose has already been digested by bacteria.

I’ve yet to meet a sick person whose gut can’t tolerate a teaspoon of yogurt. I’ll often start with that dose. If even that amount is hard to tolerate, we’ll work on cleaning up the diet in a different way.

The low-fermentation diet describes rice, potatoes, and sweet potatoes as the best carbohydrates for SIBO. That’s true but they should also clarify that it is best to cook these carbs first and then bake or fry them the next day. This allows the starch to become more digestible. If you have a gut issue, baked rather than boiled or mashed potatoes are much more tolerable.

Further readings:

Peanut butter is compatible with a low-fermentation diet. I beg to differ as I consider peanut butter to be an unhealthy food choice. The mold and aflatoxin found in peanut butter pose a risk to liver health. In my experience, peanuts are particularly allergenic for people with SIBO or leaky gut. If you want a gut-healthy nut, have a serving of almonds or Brazil nuts.

Although chocolate is deemed acceptable on the low-fermentation diet (with a warning to watch out for milk chocolate), I disagree. Dark chocolate is fine for healthy people, but if your gut is giving you any trouble, I’d stay away.

What really surprised me was reading that Rice Krispies are considered an ideal breakfast on the low-fermentation diet. I would never recommend refined, starchy rice. Oats or eggs are definitely better breakfast options to my mind.

There’s a warning to watch out for butter, but I personally have never seen clients run into problems from using a high-quality butter.

If you have SIBO, my recommendation is to follow a common-sense diet. If a particular food causes you distress, eliminate it from your diet. Once your gut has improved, you can always rechallenge yourself.

I’ve been working in the field for over thirty years, and I’ve seen hundreds of diets. In my experience, they aren’t individualized enough to help people. The best diet for Mary Jo is Mary Jo’s diet. Our guts are unique, which is why I recommend avoiding cookie-cutter, one size fits all diets. I’ve yet to meet two people with SIBO who have identical microbiomes.

Please don’t fall for the line that we all have to be gluten-free, lactose-free, and dairy-free. Modify your diet to meet the needs of your gut, particularly if you have SIBO or inflammatory bowel disease.

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Questions & Answers

Can I Catch SIBO From Someone Else?

Is SIBO a contagious disease?

No, not at all. It’s a digestive condition in which there is an overgrowth of bacteria in the small bowel. SIBO can’t be passed from one person to another.

Many people worry about contagion when it comes to digestive disorders. Helicobacter pylori can indeed be passed by sharing utensils, but it very rarely happens unless someone is immunosuppressed. However, SIBO is not contagious under any circumstances.

Further readings:

Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, believed that people attracted disease to them a little bit like iron. A magnet and iron are attracted to each other. For you to attract illness, you have to have a certain susceptibility. His idea is that if your energy is vibrating at a certain level, your body will reject rather than attract a disease. It follows from this theory that if you keep yourself in pretty good shape, you’re less likely to get sick. Healthy people have a much lower chance of getting sick than someone who is already unhealthy.

SIBO, inflammatory bowel disease, and constipation are all examples of GI conditions that are not contagious. You don’t “catch” these illnesses. However, when your body is susceptible, you’re much more likely to develop a health condition.

Stress often contributes to reduced resistance to illness. It’s stress and a lowered resistance rather than catching SIBO from someone else that should worry you.

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Questions & Answers

The Best Gut-Health Tests

The lactulose breath test and the comprehensive stool analysis are two tests used to determine what’s going on in your gut.

Many people these days are quite keen on doing breath tests such as hydrogen tests, methane tests, and lactulose tests.

Are breath tests better at telling you what’s going wrong in your gut and what to do about it? Or, does the comprehensive stool analysis have more to offer?

In my opinion, a comprehensive stool analysis (CSA) is the gold standard in gut investigations. With a CSA, you not only get the species but the levels of each. The CSA provides a measure of the diversity of the gut flora while the breath test just tells you whether a specific bacteria is present or absent. A breath test tells you a little, not a lot.

Further readings:

In contrast, the CSA also provides measures of inflammation and your immune system. Because the CSA provides so much more information than a breath test, it allows for a much more evidence-based treatment plan.

Finding someone to interpret the CSA shouldn’t be too difficult.

If I were to start my career again as a naturopath, I’d probably only focus on stool testing and do nothing but, because that test has given me more results than all of the other tests put together. I genuinely believe a CSA is worth every penny.

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