In this post I want to touch on Candida in bowel, how it affects your acne and health and what I think is the best way to deal with it.
I haven’t talked about Candida in bowels because I don’t think it’s an issue you should concerns yourself with. Not because I dismiss it but because it takes care of itself when you follow the diet and lifestyle guidelines in Clear for Life.
This was probably a mistake because it left some unanswered questions. Here’s one comment I got few days back.
As I wrote on one of your blogs, you dismissed some valid concerns a few candida sufferers have about following the method of upping carbs and reducing fat. In one lesson I was informed that insulin resistance due to high fat diet was really the culprit of candida, however later this was proven to only be applicable to the naturally occurring candida in the bloodstream- the back up plan our body has as you said. In another lesson you discussed the concept of leaky gut syndrome that could arise in individuals whose intestinal flora is unbalanced, increasing harmful parasites and yeast such as candida. The candida (as i have confirmed through extensive research) then morphs into a more invasive fungal form, and compromises the integrity of the intestinal wall allowing toxins (and quite possibly the fungal candida itself) to enter the bloodstream. Your reply to my query was that sugar has no effect on the growth of candida and the only chance of eliminating hostile candida was to go on a low fat diet…which makes absolutely no sense b/c if as you said the insulin is unable to (at the moment) stabilize blood sugar, blood candida will have to do the job and the sugar will also feed the candida in the gut…so really you are asking all of us with Candida infection to give the lil buggers a feast.
Two Candidas - one solution
There are two issues here.
- Insulin resistance and other blood sugar problems that allow, or demand, Candida in the bloodstream to multiply.
- Overgrowth of harmful bacteria, Candida and pathogens in the digestive track, also called gut dysbiosis. This can lead to leaky gut syndrome, where toxins from the bowel leak into your body and increase inflammation and overload the elimination organs.
Both of these are important for acne sufferers. If you want to permanently cure your acne you need to deal with both of them. Blood sugar problems lead to constant stream of hormones that increase sebum production. Leaky gut syndrome leads to constant stream of inflammatory toxins into your bloodstream. Both must stop before you can get clear.
I haven’t separated these issues because the same solution works for both problems.
I’ve beaten the issue of blood sugar problems and the role of fat to death, but I’ll touch on it briefly here since she (the person sending the comment) was still concerned about it.
First, high-fat diet is not the only reason behind insulin resistance. Your other lifestyle choices affect it also. Anyway, cutting out fat from your diet is one of the best ways to increase insulin sensitivity. This inevitably means eating more carbohydrates. And since fruits are the healthiest source of carbs, it means upping your fruit intake.
Keeping blood sugar levels stable with high-fruit diet
Second, I never said that sugar has no effect on Candida. Obviously it has. But you need to understand that the key is blood sugar levels, not how much sugar you eat. High and erratic blood sugar levels = Candida, stable blood sugar levels = no problems. And as you’ll see eating sugar doesn’t lead to high blood sugar levels, contrary to what 99% of Candida websites tell you.
In her comment she said that upping carb intake makes no sense because insulin cannot transport the glucose to cells. If this were true it eating more fruits wouldn’t make sense. It would be a very stupid idea.
But it’s not true. As you eat less fat, and fix all the other lifestyle choices that affect insulin sensitivity, insulin starts working again. Yes, you have to go through a transition period, but for most people it’s very short. Like few days. New Clear for Life customers frequently email me telling that the oiliness of their skin reduced almost overnight after switching to Clear for Life diet and lifestyle. A clear indication that their insulin sensitivity improved.
19 bananas a day, no effect on blood sugar levels
When your insulin receptors work well glucose won’t stay in the bloodstream long enough to feed Candida overgrowth. You can eat all the fruit you want and your blood sugar levels remain stable. Steve Pavlina commented about this in his raw food diet trial. Here’s what he had to say.
I monitored my blood sugar using a blood sugar testing device, the same kind diabetics may use. It showed no discernible spikes in blood sugar throughout the trial whatsoever — absolutely none. In fact, my blood sugar remained incredibly steady throughout the trial. My highest blood sugar reading of the trial was 94, which is still medium-low. All that sweet fruit in my diet simply did not have any adverse effect on my blood sugar.
Eating this way gave my blood sugar more consistency than ever. I couldn’t spike my blood sugar on this diet if I tried. Even eating 19 bananas in one day made no difference.
19 bananas a day, and no effect on blood sugar levels! All that evil sugar and yet where’s the spike on blood sugar and insulin levels all those Candida websites claim will happen? It flew out the door with the fat.
So you are not giving the lil buggers a feast by eating lots of fruits. And neither are you feeding the Candida in the bowel, as I’ll explain later.
Note, processed sugar is still evil. It has no nutrients and eating it forces the body to dip into its reserves to digest it. So stay away from processed sugar but eat all the fruit you want.
Candida in the bowel
Now let’s talk about the other issue of Candida. Candida in the bowel.
The prevailing wisdom is that Candida turns invasive because the harmful bacteria in the gut overwhelmed the probiotic (beneficial) bacteria. The solution to the problem is to help probiotic bacteria grown and ‘rebalance’ the colon micro flora.
Bowel dysbiosis can happen for many reason, such as:
- Frequent use of antibiotics and other drugs
- Pesticides and other chemicals in food and water
- Poor diet and lifestyle
I want to focus on the diet aspect here.
Indigestion = leaky gut = Candida
In the Acne 101 lesson where I talked about leaky gut syndrome I explained that indigestion is the main dietary cause for leaky gut syndrome. Undigested food enters the gut where the bacteria ferment and putrefy it, which leads to many toxic compounds. What happens in the gut depends mainly on two things:
- Substances (foods) available for fermentation/putrefaction; for example when bacteria feast on meat they create different toxins than when they feast on vegetable matter. As a rule of thumb, fiber from fruits and vegetables supports the beneficial bacteria, whereas most other foods help the harmful bacteria grow.
- How long the food stays in the gut. Obviously the longer the food stays in the gut the more time the bacteria has to feast on it. Also if the transit time through your digestive system is 48 hours the bacteria have more food than they would if the transit time would be 18 hours.
So your goal is to give the beneficial bacteria as much food as possible and to make sure that the bad stuff doesn’t stay there too long.
Raw food diet helps probiotic bacteria
This just screams for increased consumption of plant fiber. More fruits and vegetables.
First because the fiber in fruits and vegetables contains prebiotics, substances that feed the beneficial bacteria. This article has lots more on the topic (I recommend you read it): http://www.jacksongi.com/DIETS/Colon-Gas-Flatus-Prevention/colon_gas.aspx
Second, plant fiber reduces the time food stays in your large intestine and it scrubs your colon clean of any impurities. So there’s less food for the harmful bacteria.
This is another reason why standard Candida diet advice borders idiotic. By reducing carbohydrate consumption you need to eat more meat and fats - the exact substances that feed the harmful bacteria. And the food also stays longer in the gut. On the positive note they often recommend eating more vegetables, which at least partially corrects this.
Finally, raw fruits and vegetables are the easiest foods to digest. Your meal is completely digested before it enters the gut. Sugar and other things the harmful bacteria and Candida could eat are absorbed before they can get their hands on it. The only thing that’s left is the fiber, which feeds the probiotic bacteria.
Compare that to meats and fats the dominate the standard Candida diets. These foods are hard to digest. Digesting them demands lots of time and effort. And when eaten in poor combinations, which almost everybody does, they are never digested fully.
So standard Candida diet gives plenty of food for the harmful bacteria to produce toxins that just prolong leaky gut syndrome and your acne problems.
Conventional Candida diet is plainly irrational
Here we have the standard Candida diet that:
- Perpetuates insulin resistance by saturating blood with fat
- Feeds the harmful bacteria in the gut and allows leaky gut syndrome to continue
Then we have the diet that makes sense. A diet that:
- Helps to increase insulin sensitivity and reduce blood sugar problems
- Helps the beneficial bacteria to kick bad bacteria butt
None of this information is in anyway controversial or difficult to understand. All of this is easily available from public sources, makes perfect sense and produces very quick results.
But for some reason people have just been blinded with the fear of sugar and cannot see these glaringly obvious and very rational points. And so we have saturated the Internet with Candida websites that offer advice that is irrational and borderlines idiotic - and keeps recreating the very problem they propose to solve over and over.
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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin