If you’ve eaten sweets over the holidays and you are ready to detox, your goal will be to kill Candida and re-balance your gut flora. First and foremost, it’s time for salads. Unless you want to spend considerable money on probiotics for the rest of your life, if you want to be free of Candida, you need to feed the right ecosystem. That means sticking to a diet consisting of lots of raw fresh organic vegetables, void of processed, refined foods. Your intestinal flora affects your life in many different ways. The more raw vegetables you ingest, the more beneficial your gut microbes are to your body. Avoid gluten as well.
If you went way overboard with junk food (and/or had conventional junk food as opposed to organic, healthier varieties), you’re looking at artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, and GMO’s. The good news is, the best way to detox these ingredients is to fix the gut.
Probiotics
The probiotics we take as supplements are not the same probiotics that we keep in our gut, but they are friendly bacteria. Before they decide to check out, they will fight on the side of our beneficial microbes, kill the bad guys, eat the bad stuff, and help digest everything so that the long-term bacteria that prefer to live in our gut will thrive.
The bacteria count is not what’s important when looking for probiotics. You want to make sure the bacteria are designed to pass through the stomach acid. Most are not. Stomach acid is designed to kill bacteria, so it takes a strong beneficial bacteria to make it through.
Other herbal medicines that kill Candida internally include (but are not limited to) wormwood extract, oil of oregano, garlic, turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, and undecenoic acid. But don’t take probiotics with antibacterial herbs. Oil of oregano, for example, can weaken probiotics when they are taken together.
I like fermented vegetables, but I don’t eat them for probiotic properties. I believe the beneficial bacteria from fermented foods is killed in stomach acid. Fermented foods have tons of benefits, and they’re great to take with more powerful probiotics. When the foods hit the gut, the healthy bacteria that made it through has lots of healthy food on which to feed.
Yogurts bought in grocery stores make poor probiotics and typically feed Candida rather than kill it. On the other hand, high quality probiotics can be added to yogurts. Choose yogurt that is organic and free of sugar. Sweetened with fruit if desired.
Eat Salads
Salads are the best way to feed the body a variety of the healthiest foods for balancing the intestinal flora. We’re not talking about iceberg lettuce, some carrot shreds, and ranch dressing. We’re talking about real salads made with kale, collards, cabbage, spinach, chard, and lots of other leafy vegetables to make up the foundation of your daily salad. Add herbs and garlic to them as well.
Conclusion
Those who eat reasonably well on non-holidays and were not suffering from Candida symptoms previously should be able to fix the gut after an Easter candy binge in just a few days by sticking to salads, lots of water, and a high quality probiotic. Be sure to check out Kill Candida and Balance the Body, and see Cheap and Easy Detox for more on detoxifying. For detox recipes including my salad recipe and cranberry lemonade, check out the first few sources below.
Further Reading:
- Inexpensive, Easy Detox – The One Gallon Challenge
- 80% Raw Food Diet
- Total Nutrition – Make your own Homemade Multivitamin and Mineral Formula
- Candida or Celiac Disease – Which Came First?