1. Follow my candida diet guidelines. Most guidelines on the 'net or in books have weird rules that are scientifically incorrect, such as avoiding vinegar. Vinegar is a yeast killer. You can use it to clean and disinfect your house even. It's nearly as thorough as bleach. Avoid foods generally thought to be healthy that aren't, such as soy milk, rice crackers, puffed cereals, fresh raw wheatgrass juice, raw veggies in general except for small cleansing salads.

2. Follow all the guidelines for digestive power. That means making sure you have adequate stomach acids, digestive enzymes, and eat small, easily digestible meals. If you don't digest it the yeast will, so even if you avoid sugar you may still be feeding the yeasties. More info in the FAQ under Vital Health Management. Prepare foods so they are easy to digest with fast transit times. Most people need to avoid short-grain brown rice because it is constipating.

3. Do pungent therapy. That means eating and preparing things that are mostly cooked with hot, pungent and carminative spices such as cumin, ginger, garlic, basil, onion, cayenne, chili pepper, turmeric, curry, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves. In FAQ under VHM.

4. Do two weeks of anti-fungals every 3 months. Take probiotics the rest of the time, preferably as unsweetened kefir, yogurt, sauerkraut, Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar, and live acidophilus supplements from the refrigerated section of the health food store. You can also take Primal Defense in large doses for 2 weeks after the anti-fungals, small doses after that.

5. Do thorough bowel management. That means salt water flushes weekly, candida fiber shakes daily, and the occasional enema/colonic/colema. I did enemas 3x a week for months even tho I have rarely had constipation, and this kept me from getting any brain fog or die off symptoms whatsoever, so a home setup such as an enema bucket is highly recommended. This is essential, probably the most important part of curing candida because it removes the trash that candida is living on. It's also important to oxygenate the bowels, so you should be taking liquid chlorophyll or chlorophyll tabs, and taking a super-green supplement like Perfect Food. It's also a good idea to do 2-4 weeks of Oxy-powder or Colosan before the fiber shake.

6. Practice thorough lymph management. Your immune system needs support! That means daily dry skin brushing, weekly full-body massage or near daily self-massage, and detox baths, near-daily sweating such as a sauna, regular bath, castor oil pack.

7. Oxygenate!!! light cardiovascular exercise will help you cure your candida much faster. Rebounding, walking, yoga, stretching, 5 Tibetan rites, are all good things to do. You can also supplement oxygen by drinking aerobic water and increase circulation with cayenne tincture.

8. Liver management. Since candida excretes alcohol, your liver is very overworked and needs to be dredged. Liv.52 or Dr. Cabot's Livatone Plus are great for that. If you have a fatty liver, then take either Julia's tinctures or Planetary Formula's Bupleurum Liver Cleanse. Links in Sources forum. It would be a good idea to do at least 2 liver flushes after a month of liver herbs. Coffee enemas done every 2 weeks are fantastic.

9. Support the body and every system, especially lymphatic and endocrine, nutritionally. Support electrolytes, and become more alkaline. Super-foods and supplements such as cod liver oil, fish oil, nutritional yeast, Emergen-C, Cal-Mag Fizz and my Protein Shake are highly recommended. Avoid synthetic vitamins for the most part, especially the "one a day" pills. Total junk. See the FAQ for list of good superfoods.

10. See guidelines for Leaky Gut in the FAQ.

Lots of Candida people are taking tons of Olive Leaf Extract and Caprylic Acid to fight off the candida. This stuff actually does kill yeasties, however, when it comes to digestion, HOW you take it is just as important as WHAT you take.

Herbs, oils, probiotics, must be DELIVERED to the site of infection or they simply get digested and absorbed like anything else, leaving the candida still there lining the intestines. The candida must be exposed to the active ingredients for it to work, and candida can bury itself pretty deep into the mucus and tissues.

So don't just swallow a bunch of caprylic acid gel capsules and expect them to do any good. They won't.

The best delivery system for anti-fungals is fiber and oils. The combo creates a glutinous, gel-like consistency that really presses against the walls of the intestines, delivering the anti-fungals where they need to go.

First off, find a bottle of [b]liquid caprylic acid [/b] and add about a teaspoon to a couple tablespoons of good EV olive oil.

Add this new oil (Caproil) to your fiber shake. You can add it to any kind of fiber shake you make - psyllium, ground flax seeds, whole flax seeds, even a commercial intestinal cleanser. Mix it well. This will make psyllium much better for candida people too. Use about one teaspoon of fiber and take 1-3 times a day.

Go ahead and add Oil of Orgeno, Olive Leaf, or any other anti-fungals you wish to add. Grapefruit seed extract is great.

About every four days, instead of adding the Caproil, make the fiber shake with Kefir and open up a capsule of live acidophilus and add that too. That will deliver the friendly microbes where they need to go. They will continue the balancing of the intestines and further reduce yeast. If you have Primal Defense, take it on these days too, but apart from the fiber as all of GofL's products have their own patented delivery system.

Okay, there are many reasons, but here are a couple facts that people really must understand in order to appreciate why they feel the way they do. It is confusing that a yeast infection can make a person feel so bad. Some of us end up feeling like hypochondriacs. Well, we're not!

Candida Albicans is a yeast fungus, that you probably already know. You may even know that it eats sugar. Okay, after it eats sugar, it produces alcohol. One of the myths out there is that it EATS alcohol, but alcohol is candida's excrement. Can anything eat its own excrement and enjoy it? Well, a couple vegetarian animals do to get enough B12 in their diet, but that's another story.

ANYway, one of the byproducts of alcohol metabolism is Acetaldehyde. People, whenever you see a chemical word ending in "hyge," think Dr. Jekyl, Mr. Hyde. Chances are it's not a compound you want in your body.

Acetaldehyde is a carcinogenic chemical (meaning it causes cancer). It is a component of - get this - cigarette smoke, exhaust fumes, and embalming fluid. So if you have an overgrowth of candida, your blood is full of embalming fluid. Gee, not a great way to feel good, is it?

Acetaldehyde interrupts nerve signals to the point of brainfog, memory lapses, inability to recall words, and eventually kills the liver. Thus, blackout drunks and cirrosis.

The liver, our best pal, filters out acetaldehyde and converts it into a much more harmless acid, acetyl acid. But to do that, it needs enzymes, which are protiens, and those enzymes need zinc. If the liver doesn't have either one, acetaldehyde is left in our bloodstream to tamper with our brains and bodies.

Most of us don't get enough zinc in our diets. One of the reasons a night on the town gives us a hangover is the depletion of zinc stops energy production.

You know you've reached the point of alcohol addiction when you get sugar cravings. Stopping sugar at that point results in less alcohol, so you're not getting your fix, and you start "jonesing." Alcohol withdrawal symptoms include negative thoughts, anxiety, shakiness and fatigue.

So that's why one of the principles of Vital Health is "microbes are always involved in sickness and health."

So when people ask me what they should do when they or their loved ones feel depressed, suicidal, brainfogged, fatigued, or achy, my first best answer is always cleanse, detox and go on my candida diet. They think they have to keep looking for a more serious reason for why they feel bad, such as a seratonin uptake issue or some kind of syndrome, and they really don't. Cut out sugar, eat right and start cleansing and detoxing and see if you start feeling better. If you do, then you know that's what's going on!

Primal Defense and Fungal Defense are two products offered by Garden of Life. No one else does anything like Primal Defense, it stands alone both in terms of what it is and in terms of its patented delivery system.

Primal Defense is a probiotic, and all probiotics need to do two things: they need to keep the organisms alive somehow, and they need to keep them alive despite the fact that they're going to be eaten and go thru stomach acids before they reach the small or large intestine where they can safely live and populate mucus membranes. Primal Defense has found a way to do this effectively, most companies do not.

PD must be taken orally, it will not do anything if you put it in an enema solution. It expects to hit those stomach acids and is prepared for that.

What Primal Defense is in fact are a few residents (acidophilus) but mostly Soil Based Organisms (SBO's). Modern farming techniques rob us of our daily dose of SBO's even if we eat organically. SBO's are transient microbes who come in and help the residents win the war against invaders, the baddies. They clean house and create enzymes, restoring a normal environment in the intestines - one that supports acidophilus and keeps yeast in check.

It's not a good idea to take PD when you have leaky gut, as then the organisms end up in your bloodstream to go anywhere willy-nilly. This is not a great thing to happen, it often leads to icky symptoms like skin rashes.

PD can be taken for months on end, but you don't really have to. After a first thorough cleansing, which can take anywhere from one month to three depending on how systemic your yeast infection is, all you have to do is periodic cleansing, perhaps twice a year. Or take one caplet a couple times a week, whenever you think of it. Work slowly up to the recomended therapeutic dose, for instance, just take two caplets a day for four days, see how you feel, then increase the dosage and take for another four days, etc. Don't just start out with 12 caplets, you'll be quite miserable!

PD can be taken while doing regular bowel management such as fiber shakes or Oxy-powder, you just can't take them at the exact same time. PD needs time to dissolve. Oxy-powder may react with it.

Fungal Defense is a good combination of the most effective yeast busters. It should only be taken for 2 weeks at a time so that it doesn't start killing off the friendlies, as not all of the compounds differentiate between baddies and friendlies. It's best to start out with FD and then do the PD for one month, then another two weeks of only FD, then PD, repeat the entire cycle again if needed.

You should definitely be doing some kind of bowel management and lymph management while taking FD or you'll go crazy from die-off. Colonics, enemas, fasting, SWFs, fiber shakes, rebounding, detox baths, are all good ways to ensure that your healing crisis is minimized.

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