Confirmed case of candida albicans overgrowth following antibiotic treatment for clostridium difficile here. So in addition to the fungus, I was also dealing with opportunistic bacterial overgrowth.

Despite my symptoms being relatively severe, I had read that treating with antifungals were very hard on the body and didn't guarantee permanent success in eradicating fungal overgrowth. So, I changed my diet. Permanently.

I've gone back and forth on how I feel about Dr. Jaminet's opinion that carbs need to be at certain levels to treat efficiently. I've seen more anecdotal success by treating with a relatively low-carb diet. I am an example of this. I started out very-low carb (< 50 g) and this improved my symptoms markedly. I would at least try this first, understanding that you don't want to stay at < 50 g forever.

As symptoms improved, I slowly started to add in additional carbohydrates in the form of some berries (~ 1 serving a day) and began to juice leafy green vegetables. I currently don't go above 70 g of carbohydrates and I would say I'm about 90% back to normal after five months. Don't kid yourself about the time it will take to self-treat Candida. They are extremely stubborn and the toxins that they give off incapacitate your immune system. They elevate cortisol levels and wreak havoc on your endocrine subsystem, for example. Vitamin D is a great supplement and I highly recommend it. If you can tolerate it, green tea catechins are fantastic along with building up to a therapeutic coconut oil dosage (> 5 tablespoons a day). I would lose the 85% dark chocolate for right now. It contains sugar and any amount of it can be really counterproductive until you're a bit farther along. If that's an absolutely impossibility, do the 99% Lindt dark chocolate. It's very tasty. Make your own yogurt, eat fermented veggies, intermittently fast -- it all helps.

If it really is Candida, and even if it isn't, all of the above should help quite a bit. I happen to subscribe to the thought process that Dr. Campbell-McBride (creator of GAPS) and Dr. Art Ayers preach about food intolerance and that is that by healing the gut, you can resolve what most people refer to as food intolerances. Dr. Campbell-McBride talks about ways to diagnose true food intolerances in the GAPS book. I highly recommend it.

A concluding thought: healing and detoxifying your body is not a linear process. You may not be doing anything wrong but use slow self-expiramentation to find out if there is a symptom trigger. Gut ecology can shift every so often, leaving you with what seems to be regression. Do not lose hope. I wish you the best of luck and please don't hesitate to update us on your progress.

I notice some of the answers are saying you should try more carbs: "I've also been bingeing quite a lot this last week or so - Nuts, chocolate, potato crisps - Anything I can get my hands on, I'm eating."

Looks like you are already trying it. I think the most important thing here is to find a diet you can stick with, be it VLC or Perfect Health Diet.

Also, while I do believe fungal overgrowth is an issue, candida is just one of many funguses. Unless you have been tested, it's just a possibility you have fungal issues, not "candida," which is unfortunately a term that's been co-oped by a lot of questionable dietary gurus. I know these issues exist (since I've had them), but I can't peg them to specific fungi.

Also, don't rule out other issues like bad bacteria, food interolances,etc. A FODMAP-free diet, for example, covers both gut fungal and bacterial symptoms like gas.

Drastically increase your intake of fresh green leafy vegetables. This will feed competing, beneficial microorganisms in the gut while flooding your system with the micro-nutrients that you'd be lacking due to an overgrowth of yeast. To get the ball rolling, I would add a drink like kefir to your diet. Kefir is jam packed with many different strains of beneficial bacteria, more so than any other fermented dairy product.

hey thanks for posting up this, i am in the same boat...really let myself get into a bad position healthfully due to ahem...old patterns of bingeing, even on healthy foods it really does a number to my body and i am struggling with a number of symptoms that correlate to too much candida. any how its really helpful to see that others feel the same and that perhaps initially i was making up all of these things in my head, but now my actions have made physical my negative emotions and habits and that its necessary to change:)

The thing that stops my cravings dead is green leafy vegetables.

I believe the desire for crisps is a misplaced desire for salad leaves.

That is how I got here--searching for answers about candida. I am sure I must have it. I am really glad too that people here are talking about this. I am not trying paleo to lose weight, I just feel awful and want to feel better. Good luck!

Sorry, only read through the first half of these answers, so if I'm being redundant -- my apologies. I find that my hunger spirals out of control when I start eating sugar. Seriously. I go from no cravings and then, if I'm being polite at someone's dinner and have just a little bit of desert, I crave sugar for days. Four squares of dark chocolate a day would be enough to cause me to go insane with sugar and junk cravings. So it could be yeast, but it could also simply be that you've thrown your system off by the sugar consumption. I don't think this is an unusual occurrence.

That said, I have been thinking about treating myself for yeast for years but it's a daunting process. Dr. Teitlebaum (nation's leading chronic fatigue doctor) once told me that I should try a drop of citricidal in water and increase the dose slowly. Also, no sugar, alcohol and limit one piece of fruit a day. I started that process and got a "die off" reaction and backed off of the treatment. I'm hoping to try again at some point. The reason I think I might have candida issues is because I have chemical sensitivities, year round allergies plus chronic sinus congestion. Those are symptoms apparently.

Anyway, good luck.

Candida is just a symptom of an underlying health problem. Probably your body being unable to detoxify itself. Personally I am leaning towards that the "Candida diet" is contra-productive. You don't need to kill the fungus, the fungus is a part of you. What you need to do is to help your body detoxify itself. When the body has gotten rid of all the toxins, all the problems and symptoms associated with Candida will go away by themselves. Which is what I think happened to you.

Now since you're problems came back, it is probably something you have re-introduced into your diet. You mention that you eat potato chips. I would stay away from all oils except olive and coconut oil.

And it's important that you know that it's not the amount of food that you eat, but what it is you eat. It's also important to eat a balanced diet. Don't cut out carbs and fruits completely, your body needs it.

I have had candida problems for at least 12 years probably longer that is when the natropath diagnosed me with it. Try cutting out the carbs and sugars for 2 wks and see what happens. As yeast die you will crave the crap that keeps them alive. I used the yeast busters kit when I did my first cleanse and it really helped. I found my cravings worse when I had eaten some yeast free, sugar free bread. This time I eat some fruit but no dairy or other carbs and the cravings are non existent. I found before I started this diet I craved food constantly and was always hungry but that has completely subsided. Good luck

One thing that really struck me here is the dark chocolate. Dark chocolate contains high quantities of the metal Copper. While copper is vital in our systems in VERY small amounts, some people get too much in their diet or other source and an excess can wreak havoc with their bodily functions from digestion to brain transmissions. Have a look on the internet for Copper Elimination and Copper Toxicity. Dr Wilson's pages are very informative. I have read reports of a woman only ingesting 4mg per day in supplement form and getting copper toxicity after a few weeks. I am carefully eliminating copper from my system after consuming at least 4-8 mg per day for more than a year - tanning tablets to protect my skin (didn't protect the rest of me). Symptoms for me? Insomnia, anxiety and hypoglycemia. Copper is actually a 'heavy' metal, and so is rather poisonous, yet remarkably we need trace amounts of it to function. Copper also has a unique relationship with yeast in the body. It is so easy to get too much from water pipes to copper rich foods. I can actually taste it in my mouth at night as I leech it out of my system with diet and some natural chelators. If anyone thinks copper is a dodgy subject in health confined to pseudoscience... I am 44 and lifting heavy weights 4 times a week, sprinting 100's, running ten miles a week - and excess copper nearly wrote me off for 5 months. It started with raised BPM, pounding heart, racing thoughts, and waking at 4am - wide awake. Then I had huge blood sugar swings after normal carb meals. It was like being on amphetamines for months! Elimination is like that of yeast - it gets worst first, then slowly improves. So look, why not check this out and eliminate it from your scenarios. Apparently chocolate cravers, especially women, are 'high copper' suspects. Hope this helps. Nick, N Ireland.

I don't know if candida is a myth, but perhaps your ability to self diagnose is a myth.

You may have felt better because pre-diet change you were eating a ton of crap. Once the effects of crap elimination were done you feel like a new crap because your crap elimination diet, although not complete crap, is not as crap free as it could be.

Perhaps the foods are perfect, but the combination/ratios is crap, therefore crapifying your crap free diet.

I'd go to the doctor and follow a proven diet, like MDA, for a while to see if your causing the problem or if you are wrongly treating an existing problem.