I have been incorporating some of Peat et al's dietary advice, eg. cutting out PUFA's, and overall eating very healthy however after much research it is becoming highly suspect that Candida (or similar yeast/fungus) is the primary cause of my issues. I'm hoping some others here may have already been through this and able to offer some simple practicable advice.
First a quick history of symptoms:
1. Since teenage years or before I always had some occasional, fairly minor telltale symptoms of candida such as mild dandruff, itchy butt, sinus congestion, and acne. As a teenager (in the 80's) my diet was not good - not super bad, but lots of dairy, cereal, bread, and a fair amount of sugar and processed foods. I could always eat anything though and never had any gut issues or sensitivities or any other issues.
2. About 5 years ago I became intolerant of gluten. I started getting tinnitus which kept getting worse until I was starting to not be able to sleep and only after cutting out gluten did it go away.
3. About 6 years ago I started getting occasional ocular migraines. They would usually mostly subside in < 1 hour but leave a slight dull pain for 1-2 days afterwards (behind right eye). These are definitely caused by some foods such as tapioca, quinoa, more recently corn, soy, and potatoes, and seemingly even white rice now. I still get them 1-2 x per month even though I have now had to cut out pretty much all grains. When I get them I take 4 aspirin and that seems to help them go away faster.
4. I have been eating 99% organic for several months now and was eating ~80% organic for the previous 1+ years. I'm pretty darn careful now with foods and do not eat any processed foods. Peat's advice to cut out raw veggies and PUFAs seems to be helping, I used to have a lot of salads but am now instead steaming a lot of veggies, eating more coconut, raw carrots, occasional well cooked mushrooms and bamboo shoots, and we typically have meat with most meals either grass fed organic pastured ground beef, pork, turkey or occasionally white fish or bison/lamb.
Specific food sensitivities:
1. Ocular migraines: caused by tapioca, quinoa, corn, soy, or potato.
2. Brain fog, fatigue, mild anxiety: caused by increased sugar intake. Once I start getting itchy butt I know Candida is back in force and then all my symptoms get worse for several days. At its worst it can also cause sleep loss and sun sensitivity but I have kept it under control well enough that those have not been issues for the past few years. So pretty simple regulation mechanism, if I start noticing itchiness (area of butt crack /rectum) I know I had too much sugar and need to cut back. So the past few years I have had to avoid any significant quantity of fresh fruit. Can't do fresh apples, or any significant amount of melon, banana, papaya, peach, etc. Apple sauce is fine though... something about the apples being in a jar as a "sauce" makes them much less tangy/tart and less appealing to candida vs. fresh. Berries seem to be fine. Definitely can't do smoothies with banana or any significant amount of other fruit. Pineapple may be OK not sure yet. I read that enzymes in pineapple can kill candida so have been eating a bit and so far that's going fine. However I started taking 3 drops of oregano oil per day also (at the same time which was just a few days ago) so that may be helping also.
3. Regular (non-migraine) headaches: A couple months ago I had not tried gluten in about 5 years so as an experiment tried eating half of a small 100% organic whole wheat danish. Noticed no short-term effect (other than it was quite tasty) but then almost exactly 24 hours later I got a very strong (non-migraine) headache, and had to take about 8 aspirin over 6-8 hours before it finally subsided. It's very rare I get non-migraine ("normal") headaches so that was very very unlikely due to anything else.
4. I'm sensitive to dust, mold, carbon monoxide, perfumes, etc. Car exhaust even in small amounts can make me feel nauseous and drained. Same with stores with a lot of VOCs like furniture or rug stores. Being around dust will make me feel fatigued and even just walking past a sidewalk where someone was sweeping up dust will cause a layer of oil to appear on my face and I start feeling fatigued, but then if I go and wash my face and got all the oil and dust off then about 15 minutes later I feel fine again.
5. Cow milk and cheese give me small but itchy, pimply spots on my legs/buttocks.
6. I think eggs do not agree with me. Been so long since I tried them though (several years) that I don't recall the exact symptoms but I if I recall it was very significant brain fog or something like that.
7. Hot spicy foods do not seem to agree with me and tend to give me brain fog and/or mild headache less than 1 hour later which then lasts several hours.
8. Can no longer do any asian food, as all asian restaurants seem to use MSG or who knows what and I will usually end up with brain fog for days.
9. I'm fine with all meats/seafood *except* for chicken. Nothing else ever bothers my gut itself, even all the above (1)-(8) will not give me an upset stomach, chicken however since about 1 year ago seems to really throw off my gut for over a week, like mild food poisoning where my stomach hurts mildly to significantly for over a week straight.
I have kept the candida reasonably under control the past few years and stayed pretty stable overall, but the food sensitivities seem to just be increasing over time which is not the right direction to be moving in. Just a few months ago I could eat mung beans and rice in moderation just fine but now I seem to no longer be tolerating those and mung beans/kitchari now give me a (non-migraine) headache 1/2 hour later.
I have been seeing an ND but she seems to have never picked up on candida being anything worth serious attention. Which may be partially my fault because I only recently have learned more about it and am just now starting to see that it does indeed seem to be highly underdiagnosed and is a well-known root cause of leaky gut and migraines. One thing my ND did pick up on was that there has been a lot of acetaldehyde in my system, which is indeed known to cause migraines and brain fog and is known to be a toxin produced by candida.
After discovering Peat's work about 1 month ago and starting to reduce PUFAs, and augment sat. fats and sugars, the candida (which I would tend to forget about after avoiding sugar for awhile) came back in force, and I then felt pretty crappy for a few days (i.e. lots of brain fog, stressed & agitated immune system, some restless nights with poor sleep, 2 ocular migraines within 1 week, low energy, sensitivity to bright light, sinus congestion/general inflammation, etc.)
So in the past week I've been reading up on candida full-time, and there is indeed a ton of info out there, a ton of supplements, cleanses, probiotics, etc., and people saying it is not easy to get rid of (takes months), ie. to the point where it is not in the fungus stage attaching its hyphae to your gut lining, as summarized in numerous studies online such as the Abstract below:
"The fungus Candida albicans is often a benign member of the mucosal flora; however, it commonly causes mucosal disease with substantial morbidity and in vulnerable patients it causes life-threatening bloodstream infections. A striking feature of its biology is its ability to grow in yeast, pseudohyphal and hyphal forms. The hyphal form has an important role in causing disease by invading epithelial cells and causing tissue damage. This Review describes our current understanding of the network of signal transduction pathways that monitors environmental cues to activate a programme of hypha-specific gene transcription, and the molecular processes that drive the highly polarized growth of hyphae." - Growth of Candida albicans hyphae - Peter E. Sudbery - Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 9, pages 737–748 (2011)
Now that I'm more aware of the seriousness of candida and how it seems like more than anything to be the likely root cause of the majority of my food sensitivity / leaky gut / brain fog / headache symptoms I would like to fight it off as effectively as possible, while being careful to also preserve other beneficial gut bacteria and not do anything too extreme, risky, or complicated. Some say that's hard to do and best thing you can do is eat well and take a good probiotic (which then create acids which discourage candida from morphing into the fungus form). So I'm open for suggestions on that as well.
Other general notes:
1. I am overall pretty healthy. Haven't had a cold in years. I'm fairly active, slim, 6'1" ~160 Lbs. Work in engineering and architecture. Walk at least 1 mile per day, do a light gym workout 4-5 times/week. I drink a few cups of coffee per day (with a bit of ghee, coconut oil & sugar).
2. I suspect my thyroid function is pretty good, I usually have plenty of energy, though in winter do tend to get cold hands/feet sometimes. Though I got a red 250W incandescent heat lamp 2 weeks ago which now sits under my desk keeping my feet cozier than ever. (Should have bought that decades ago. Big thanks to RP for that subtle but effective suggestion.)
3. My diet is pretty balanced and simple, 99% organic with good quality meat usually fried at fairly low temp in a bit of ghee or refined coconut oil along with steamed veggies. Usually we add some spices such as sea salt, turmeric, ginger, and maybe some cumin and fennel, and more recently I'm adding oregano and thyme and garlic. Then a couple snacks per day consisting of ~1/4 cup homemade organic coconut milk jello, 2-3 Tbsp of coconut yogurt, a few Tbsp of applesauce, and a few blueberries and/or rasberries or bits of other fruit.
4. Even when I don't have much brain fog, I feel like my system can't handle the level of activity it used to. I used to be able to jog for miles or do an intense gym workout no problem but now if I do just one set of weights it feels like my head doesn't have the blood flow it used to and like if I were to not rest for a few minutes between the few sets of weights I do (pullups, dips, bench press, curls, situps, basic stuff) my head starts feeling hot, I can hear the blood rushing through and I feel like I'm going to get a migraine if I push any harder. Hopefully the RP diet changes I've made and staying all organic and as clean as possible start helping that.
I'm probably missing some other details and may add to the above, or if there is any other helpful info I could provide let me know.
What I've started trying for supplements:
1. Now taking 3 drops oregano oil per day. I have been feeling better the past couple days but that may just be because I've been minimizing sugar again, which usually gets the candida back to its slightly less (ob)noxious state within 2-3 days.
2. Ordered some "Bug Buster Anti-Candida Formula, 618 mg 100 capsules by Dr Clark Store" on amazon, which has Pau dâArco, Oregano Leaf, Thyme Leaf, Wormwood, & Cinnamon and seems to be free of other potentially bad things like micro-cellulose, silicon dioxide, etc. This should be arriving tomorrow.
3. Picked up some "Solaray - Yeast Cleanse, 180 capsules" at whole foods but have not opened it yet and may return it as some reviewers seem concerned about it having tea tree oil as well as magnesium stearate, cellulose, etc.
Probably there are no simple answers or quick fixes to get this candida out of the picture and thereby hopefully fix the root cause of the leaky get and all the food sensitivities, but hopefully someone has seen similar cases to mine before and can offer some simple practical tips or suggestions on how to best get back to full health. I would also note that one of the biggest issues in sorting out health issues these days seems to be too much information... some of the threads on this site get super scientific and next thing you know 100 different studies and biochemistry processes are being cited so I am definitely hoping for simpler more practical suggestions hopefully from people who have fixed the above types of issues.
First a quick history of symptoms:
1. Since teenage years or before I always had some occasional, fairly minor telltale symptoms of candida such as mild dandruff, itchy butt, sinus congestion, and acne. As a teenager (in the 80's) my diet was not good - not super bad, but lots of dairy, cereal, bread, and a fair amount of sugar and processed foods. I could always eat anything though and never had any gut issues or sensitivities or any other issues.
2. About 5 years ago I became intolerant of gluten. I started getting tinnitus which kept getting worse until I was starting to not be able to sleep and only after cutting out gluten did it go away.
3. About 6 years ago I started getting occasional ocular migraines. They would usually mostly subside in < 1 hour but leave a slight dull pain for 1-2 days afterwards (behind right eye). These are definitely caused by some foods such as tapioca, quinoa, more recently corn, soy, and potatoes, and seemingly even white rice now. I still get them 1-2 x per month even though I have now had to cut out pretty much all grains. When I get them I take 4 aspirin and that seems to help them go away faster.
4. I have been eating 99% organic for several months now and was eating ~80% organic for the previous 1+ years. I'm pretty darn careful now with foods and do not eat any processed foods. Peat's advice to cut out raw veggies and PUFAs seems to be helping, I used to have a lot of salads but am now instead steaming a lot of veggies, eating more coconut, raw carrots, occasional well cooked mushrooms and bamboo shoots, and we typically have meat with most meals either grass fed organic pastured ground beef, pork, turkey or occasionally white fish or bison/lamb.
Specific food sensitivities:
1. Ocular migraines: caused by tapioca, quinoa, corn, soy, or potato.
2. Brain fog, fatigue, mild anxiety: caused by increased sugar intake. Once I start getting itchy butt I know Candida is back in force and then all my symptoms get worse for several days. At its worst it can also cause sleep loss and sun sensitivity but I have kept it under control well enough that those have not been issues for the past few years. So pretty simple regulation mechanism, if I start noticing itchiness (area of butt crack /rectum) I know I had too much sugar and need to cut back. So the past few years I have had to avoid any significant quantity of fresh fruit. Can't do fresh apples, or any significant amount of melon, banana, papaya, peach, etc. Apple sauce is fine though... something about the apples being in a jar as a "sauce" makes them much less tangy/tart and less appealing to candida vs. fresh. Berries seem to be fine. Definitely can't do smoothies with banana or any significant amount of other fruit. Pineapple may be OK not sure yet. I read that enzymes in pineapple can kill candida so have been eating a bit and so far that's going fine. However I started taking 3 drops of oregano oil per day also (at the same time which was just a few days ago) so that may be helping also.
3. Regular (non-migraine) headaches: A couple months ago I had not tried gluten in about 5 years so as an experiment tried eating half of a small 100% organic whole wheat danish. Noticed no short-term effect (other than it was quite tasty) but then almost exactly 24 hours later I got a very strong (non-migraine) headache, and had to take about 8 aspirin over 6-8 hours before it finally subsided. It's very rare I get non-migraine ("normal") headaches so that was very very unlikely due to anything else.
4. I'm sensitive to dust, mold, carbon monoxide, perfumes, etc. Car exhaust even in small amounts can make me feel nauseous and drained. Same with stores with a lot of VOCs like furniture or rug stores. Being around dust will make me feel fatigued and even just walking past a sidewalk where someone was sweeping up dust will cause a layer of oil to appear on my face and I start feeling fatigued, but then if I go and wash my face and got all the oil and dust off then about 15 minutes later I feel fine again.
5. Cow milk and cheese give me small but itchy, pimply spots on my legs/buttocks.
6. I think eggs do not agree with me. Been so long since I tried them though (several years) that I don't recall the exact symptoms but I if I recall it was very significant brain fog or something like that.
7. Hot spicy foods do not seem to agree with me and tend to give me brain fog and/or mild headache less than 1 hour later which then lasts several hours.
8. Can no longer do any asian food, as all asian restaurants seem to use MSG or who knows what and I will usually end up with brain fog for days.
9. I'm fine with all meats/seafood *except* for chicken. Nothing else ever bothers my gut itself, even all the above (1)-(8) will not give me an upset stomach, chicken however since about 1 year ago seems to really throw off my gut for over a week, like mild food poisoning where my stomach hurts mildly to significantly for over a week straight.
I have kept the candida reasonably under control the past few years and stayed pretty stable overall, but the food sensitivities seem to just be increasing over time which is not the right direction to be moving in. Just a few months ago I could eat mung beans and rice in moderation just fine but now I seem to no longer be tolerating those and mung beans/kitchari now give me a (non-migraine) headache 1/2 hour later.
I have been seeing an ND but she seems to have never picked up on candida being anything worth serious attention. Which may be partially my fault because I only recently have learned more about it and am just now starting to see that it does indeed seem to be highly underdiagnosed and is a well-known root cause of leaky gut and migraines. One thing my ND did pick up on was that there has been a lot of acetaldehyde in my system, which is indeed known to cause migraines and brain fog and is known to be a toxin produced by candida.
After discovering Peat's work about 1 month ago and starting to reduce PUFAs, and augment sat. fats and sugars, the candida (which I would tend to forget about after avoiding sugar for awhile) came back in force, and I then felt pretty crappy for a few days (i.e. lots of brain fog, stressed & agitated immune system, some restless nights with poor sleep, 2 ocular migraines within 1 week, low energy, sensitivity to bright light, sinus congestion/general inflammation, etc.)
So in the past week I've been reading up on candida full-time, and there is indeed a ton of info out there, a ton of supplements, cleanses, probiotics, etc., and people saying it is not easy to get rid of (takes months), ie. to the point where it is not in the fungus stage attaching its hyphae to your gut lining, as summarized in numerous studies online such as the Abstract below:
"The fungus Candida albicans is often a benign member of the mucosal flora; however, it commonly causes mucosal disease with substantial morbidity and in vulnerable patients it causes life-threatening bloodstream infections. A striking feature of its biology is its ability to grow in yeast, pseudohyphal and hyphal forms. The hyphal form has an important role in causing disease by invading epithelial cells and causing tissue damage. This Review describes our current understanding of the network of signal transduction pathways that monitors environmental cues to activate a programme of hypha-specific gene transcription, and the molecular processes that drive the highly polarized growth of hyphae." - Growth of Candida albicans hyphae - Peter E. Sudbery - Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 9, pages 737–748 (2011)
Now that I'm more aware of the seriousness of candida and how it seems like more than anything to be the likely root cause of the majority of my food sensitivity / leaky gut / brain fog / headache symptoms I would like to fight it off as effectively as possible, while being careful to also preserve other beneficial gut bacteria and not do anything too extreme, risky, or complicated. Some say that's hard to do and best thing you can do is eat well and take a good probiotic (which then create acids which discourage candida from morphing into the fungus form). So I'm open for suggestions on that as well.
Other general notes:
1. I am overall pretty healthy. Haven't had a cold in years. I'm fairly active, slim, 6'1" ~160 Lbs. Work in engineering and architecture. Walk at least 1 mile per day, do a light gym workout 4-5 times/week. I drink a few cups of coffee per day (with a bit of ghee, coconut oil & sugar).
2. I suspect my thyroid function is pretty good, I usually have plenty of energy, though in winter do tend to get cold hands/feet sometimes. Though I got a red 250W incandescent heat lamp 2 weeks ago which now sits under my desk keeping my feet cozier than ever. (Should have bought that decades ago. Big thanks to RP for that subtle but effective suggestion.)
3. My diet is pretty balanced and simple, 99% organic with good quality meat usually fried at fairly low temp in a bit of ghee or refined coconut oil along with steamed veggies. Usually we add some spices such as sea salt, turmeric, ginger, and maybe some cumin and fennel, and more recently I'm adding oregano and thyme and garlic. Then a couple snacks per day consisting of ~1/4 cup homemade organic coconut milk jello, 2-3 Tbsp of coconut yogurt, a few Tbsp of applesauce, and a few blueberries and/or rasberries or bits of other fruit.
4. Even when I don't have much brain fog, I feel like my system can't handle the level of activity it used to. I used to be able to jog for miles or do an intense gym workout no problem but now if I do just one set of weights it feels like my head doesn't have the blood flow it used to and like if I were to not rest for a few minutes between the few sets of weights I do (pullups, dips, bench press, curls, situps, basic stuff) my head starts feeling hot, I can hear the blood rushing through and I feel like I'm going to get a migraine if I push any harder. Hopefully the RP diet changes I've made and staying all organic and as clean as possible start helping that.
I'm probably missing some other details and may add to the above, or if there is any other helpful info I could provide let me know.
What I've started trying for supplements:
1. Now taking 3 drops oregano oil per day. I have been feeling better the past couple days but that may just be because I've been minimizing sugar again, which usually gets the candida back to its slightly less (ob)noxious state within 2-3 days.
2. Ordered some "Bug Buster Anti-Candida Formula, 618 mg 100 capsules by Dr Clark Store" on amazon, which has Pau dâArco, Oregano Leaf, Thyme Leaf, Wormwood, & Cinnamon and seems to be free of other potentially bad things like micro-cellulose, silicon dioxide, etc. This should be arriving tomorrow.
3. Picked up some "Solaray - Yeast Cleanse, 180 capsules" at whole foods but have not opened it yet and may return it as some reviewers seem concerned about it having tea tree oil as well as magnesium stearate, cellulose, etc.
Probably there are no simple answers or quick fixes to get this candida out of the picture and thereby hopefully fix the root cause of the leaky get and all the food sensitivities, but hopefully someone has seen similar cases to mine before and can offer some simple practical tips or suggestions on how to best get back to full health. I would also note that one of the biggest issues in sorting out health issues these days seems to be too much information... some of the threads on this site get super scientific and next thing you know 100 different studies and biochemistry processes are being cited so I am definitely hoping for simpler more practical suggestions hopefully from people who have fixed the above types of issues.
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