Our supplements for the month
A few months ago I had to take a round of doxycycline to get rid of an infection. Previously doxy never bothered me too much but this time I ended up with almost every nasty side-effect of the drug by the end of the two weeks. Mostly my gut was destroyed and my mouth very sore and full of a horrible taste. After a bunch of pro-biotics and one trip to Urgent Care it started to ease up a bit but still was not right. A bit of research showed the problem was most likely a Candida overgrowth (here’s a handy self-test) thanks to the doxy killing off the good bacteria in my gut as well as the bad bacteria it was sent to go after.
Not wanting to take more potentially side-effect causing anti-fungal prescriptions I decided to try the natural approach to getting rid of this – a cleanse. We chose a 30-Day protocol that uses a three 10-day phases – a Pre-Cleanse, Cleanse and Post-Cleanse. After reading a bit on what foods would be allowed, and especially what foods would not be allowed including caffeine and coffee I more or less did a pre-Pre-Cleanse to prep myself. We decided to taget the day after Thanksgiving to start since we had made reservations at our favorite restaurant, Cafe Flora, for Thanksgiving and didn’t want to miss out on that.
So, in early November I started my pre-Pre-Cleanse phase. I was drinking two grande lattes a day (almond and hemp milk) so began cutting my coffee beans with decaf, cutting out 10% every 3-4 days as I ran out of ground coffee. I only had a headache a few times and by the time we got to actually starting the Pre-Cleanse phase I was down to 1 oz. of caffeinated instead of 4 oz. per day. I had headaches often the night after dropping down another 10% but overall it wasn’t too bad, not like cold turkey. I also quickly cut out the mushrooms and squash which was hard since I’d been enjoying squash stew and Butternut Squash & Chanterelle Risotto a lot in October. Thanksgiving was the exception to the squash and mushroom rule. We feasted that day and I even had a small amount of dairy and a glass of wine (you can tell we really party!)
Pre-Cleanse
Pre-Cleanse began on Friday. The goal of this phase was to whittle down the diet and use the 10-days to get off coffee, fruit, grains, legumes, and high glycemic vegetables. I did this pretty hard core and immediately gave up grains and fruits eating only the recommended millet, amaranth and quinoa. I spent the first six days still cutting caffeine until I was down to full decaf the last four days of the phase. We also enjoyed our last tomatoes and beans during this period.
On top of the diet there were a few other items to the whole cleanse. One was supplements. We used the doTERRA plan for the cleanse and thus were sucking down a small handful of capsules at breakfast and dinner. The Life Long Vitality package provided vitamins, essential fatty acids and essential oils while TerraZyme added digestive enzymes before meals and Zendocrine added detoxification oils. The other item was something to kill off the candida cells. I began taking 1T of raw apple cider vinegar mixed with water before each meal since cider vinegar and candida do not get along well.
The first few days were tough, I was hungry all the time and did have to adapt a bit. I was used to having homemade granola every morning for breakfast, this soon changed to a bowl of millet or a few eggs. The millet was quickly improved with my improvised seed mix that became the topping. Lunches were usually salad with a lot of avocado and homemade dressing from olive oil and apple cider vinegar or lemon juice. Dinners started out more or less normal sans rice but moved to vegetable soups, a small bit of salmon with vegetables or stir fry with no rice. There were no snacks so I had a Vega protein shake at least once a day – the Performance Protein if I was coming off a workout or the VegaOne Shake if I wasn’t. I also took to eating freshly ground almond butter by the spoonful. I kept a bag of mixed nuts and seeds in my car for emergency food. Yes, it looked like bird seed but it did the trick. By the end of the 10-days I had lost 10 lbs. but actually felt fairly good and most days had more energy without caffeine than I used to have with it.
Cleanse
The Cleanse phase had a very restricted diet – no grains except a limited amount of very non-glutenous ones, no fruit, no legumes and no high glycemic vegetables. This meant a lot of salad for me and a few more eggs than we’d normally eat. Catherine made a great vegetable quiche with a quinoa crust that really hit the spot after being hungry for a few days, it was hardy yet within the diet restraints. We scoured through the Thrive Foods cookbook to find recipes that would work within the diet which turned out to be pretty easy since the Thirve Foods guidelines are not that far off the candida diet.
The Cleanse phase also added anti-fungals to the mix to try and kill off the candida. In our case we added the doTERRA GX Assist to our supplements which is a blend of anti-fungal essential oils and caprylic acid. On top of this I started eating coconut oil (source of caprylic acid) by the spoonful with meals and cooking with it.
I did have a few days during this phase where I felt like crap. I was experiencing die-off symptoms and would just be a bit out of it. My gut felt bad, my head hurt, my mouth tasted terrible and overall I just felt like I’d been poisoned which, in fact, I had by the toxins released by the candida cells as they died. Not fun but usually when I went to bed and got a good nights sleep I’d feel fine the next day. Most days, however, I felt great. I was sleeping better than normal, had more energy during the day and enjoyed my light self again. I managed to drop another 3 lbs. during the cleanse phase getting my weight back to where I wanted it before I had to stop running and gained weight.
Post-Cleanse
By the end of the 10-days we were counting down the days to the Post-Cleanse phase since we knew we’d be able to introduce a few new foods again. The idea here was to re-introduce something in a small amount and see if it causes a recurrence of symptoms or not before adding it back regularly. The first night we made Minestrone Soup and put in some garbanzos, it was so nice to have a few beans back. A few days later I made the Thrive Eggplant Rollatini with a white lentil/sesame butter/coconut oil stuffing – oh so good. I decided to stay off rice, oats, fruit and high glycemic vegetables through the Post-Cleanse phase too since I was still having some remnant candida symptoms.
I did decide to find some snacks that I could add in instead of just a bag of nuts and seeds. I made Kale Chips from Thrive Foods which were fantastic. I then experimented with the coconut recipes on TheCandidaDiet.com and found them to help with my snack cravings without resorting to anything sugary. I also was craving my morning latte but did not want to go back to even decaf coffee yet. Grabbing some of my usual tea at Whole Foods I mentioned my dilemma to the worker stocking the tea shelves. She recommended a Numi Rooibos Chia which I found made a pretty acceptable morning drink if I steeped 2 tea bags worth in 1/2 c. water and then added the steamed almond milk.
Supplement wise after a few days we stopped the GX Assist and began using the PB Assist+ at each meal – a time release pro-biotic that is to replenish the gut with good bacteria after the cleanse. We were continuing with the other vitamin, essential fatty acid and essential oil supplements. I kept up with eating coconut oil heavily during this phase though just to be sure.
The only real problem I encountered during this phase aside from die-off symptoms a few days was some constipation near the end of the cleanse from the high fat/protein diet with not enough carbs. Luckily a few days of psyllium husk seems to have cleared that up.
I lost another 2 lbs. during the Post-Cleanse phase. For the 30-Days as a whole I dropped from 183 lbs. to 168 lbs. so am back to where I want to be in the 165-170 range which seems to be my idea running weight.
What next?
The 30-Days is over but where to go from here? I was still having occasional candida die-off symptoms during the Post phase so I’m going to do another round of 10-days of GX Assist followed by 10-days of PX Assist+ right away and not add in too much new food too quickly over that time period.
What we really discovered is that the candida diet was not really all that far off our normal diet, at least not the Pre and Post cleanse phases. Our normal diet is vegetable heavy anyway, with beans and rice for protein and occasionally an egg or some wild salmon. We were totally vegan for quite a while but my leg injury prompted me to add a bit of animal protein back in my diet and I must say I seem to be healing faster since I did that. I had, of course, let sugars creep back in which needed to go anyway and now I’m not really craving them. I’ll add back in berries and apples over the next month since those are allowed and really the only fruit I eat for the most part anyway.
What about coffee? This is a tough one. I love my lattes and yes, I was a coffee addict. I like making them, smelling the freshly ground beans and drinking one while reading Flipboard on my iPad each morning. Right now my plan is to stick with the herbal chai for the foreseeable future and maybe have a real latte now and then when I really do need a caffeine boost, like driving home in the dark from the Yakima River or having to do a pre-dawn drive. I actually do have more energy and sleep better without the caffeine. Maybe I’ll just do decaf once I feel I’m totally clear of candida, at least I’ll get the good coffee smell and flavor.