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 markedlyso . I chosewould 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.
