Candida Relapse – Don’t Make the Same Mistakes I made!

I hate to admit it, but my Candida symptoms have reappeared. And why am I even sharing this here with you? 

The reason is that I want you to heal quickly and fully – without any relapses. So perhaps it will help if I openly shared with you what I did wrong.

It is surprisingly simple – I ate sugar. Real sugar. Unrefined sugar. Fruit sugar. And plenty of it!

So my Candida overgrowth re-appeared, just one month after I had been continuously symptom free. Blech!

Everyone knows that you’re not meant to eat sugar on the Candida Diet. Me included. Not even when you are symptom free.

So how come I did consume sugar, knowing what it can do to you?

First of all, Candida sneaks up on you – it doesn’t happen over night. In my case I ate a bit of apple here or there, lots of starchy vegetables, such as butternut and potatoes and I ate plenty of spelt bread. I was fine doing that, mind you. But this set the scene for what happened next.

Over the course of a couple of months I had weekends where I went completely outside the scope of the diet. Ice creams, coffee and cocktails found their way into my body. Even that in itself didn’t tip me over the edge. I only got a bit of thrush, which responded well to natural remedies and disappeared after a few days.

What else did go wrong and promoted a new onset of Candida Symptoms?

• Then I had a prolonged period of stress, which zapped my immune system’s capacity to keep the Candida in check.

• I took too low a dose of probiotics, often I even forgot the evening dose.

• I ate late evening meals – promoting undigested foods to encourage Candida growth.

• I ate wheat, which aggravated my gut and intensified the Leaky Gut symptoms.

• I left first signs of Candida untreated. Ok, I quickly intervened with the thrush. But other than that I was lapse. I noticed a bit of discharge in the corner of my eyes, and I developed itchy patches of skin (precursor of eczema or possibly even a fungal skin condition) – both signs of Candida in light of my background of having had systemic Candida, meaning the yeast traveled everywhere in my body, even my eyes! Damn it!

So when I finally spent ten days with my family, eating an inordinate amount of foods rich in refined sugar and sweet fruit (a first in three years of Candida Dieting!) my immune system finally caved in, displaying the usual symptoms with a vengeance.

Candida relapse here we come!

Now all of a sudden I could not shake off a cold in a day, nor could I get rid of thrush in a couple of days. Opening the door to my former eczema issues to resurface, which in turn undermined my immune system further. All of a sudden I couldn’t even eat the foods that are normally ideal for Candida sufferers such as meat and eggs.  See my Candida Diet October Update for details.

The reason I am writing this is to open your eyes to the fact that the battle is not over when you are symptom free.

It is tantamount that you carry on with the candida diet to solidify your newly found health even when you are symptom free. Don’t presume that you can get away with eating sweet foods just because you might not have experienced the usual die off symptoms after eating something sweet. It all adds up. I’m not saying you have to do that forever. Just initially. The first few months at least. Preferably a year!

It’s easy to presume that you can straight away start eating fruit, if not use coconut sugar, agave or even regular sugar.  You could think that it’s fine – it’s not!

So please don’t take any risks. Enjoy the fact that you feel great – without indulging on the foods that made you ill in the first place. Have you had a mini relapse yet? Tell me in the comments below. And likewise if you have been following the candida diet diligently and are seeing good results, tell me that as well. I thrive on success stories

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