Yeast Free Diet

Yeast Free Diet - Getting the Yeast Under Control

A yeast free diet – or an anti-yeast diet – is one that is intended to inhibit the overgrowth of yeasts within the body, promoting health and well-being. Over the course of two to six weeks, the yeast free diet can make a radical difference in the way a person feels and and in the overall health of the body.

Causes of Yeast Infections

There are hundreds of species of yeast in the world, found on virtually every organic surface. Of these, six are commonly found in or on the human body. One species in particular, Candida albicans, is very common in the moist areas of our bodies: inside the mouth, the digestive tract, the urinary tract, and the vaginal canal. Most of the time, the other microorganisms in our systems – primarily bacteria – feed on the yeast and keep its growth in check. However, when something throws off the balance between bacteria and yeast, Candida can get wildly out of control. What upsets the balance? When you take antibiotics to fight off harmful bacteria, you’ll find the good bacteria which feed on yeasts are just as susceptible to antibiotics as the bad ones you are trying to kill. Birth control pills and cortisone medication can also affect relative levels of bacterial colonization, as can fatigue, stress, or anything else that weakens our immune system.

Symptoms and complications

Usually the worst symptom we suffer from the assault of drugs upon our useful bacteria is a couple of days of diarrhea, but if the surviving bacteria don’t build back up to a healthy balance quickly, yeast can gain a foothold and cause a widespread overgrowth. In the mouth, this is called “thrush”; in the vagina, it is called “vaginitis” or “candidiasis” (or simply a “yeast infection”), but when candidiasis occurs in the digestive tract, it can remain invisible or misdiagnosed for weeks or months, while causing a variety of uncomfortable symptoms, including constipation, bloating and gas. It can cause a person to feel full even when they haven’t eaten a sufficient number of calories, and since it can also interfere with the extraction of nutrients from the food a person does eat, fatigue, low energy and hunger headaches can be common.

Yeast infections usually remain localized upon a moist surface, but in prolonged cases the yeast can shift to a fungal form which sinks root-like rhizoids under the surface of the mucosa. This usually happens invisibly within the intestinal tract, and when it does, toxins and other substances which are normally prevented from penetrating the surface of the intestinal lining are given a route to invade the rest of the body, causing “leaky gut syndrome”.

This systemic infection can give rise to a wide variety of symptoms on its own, such as thrush, vaginitis, diarrhea, rectal inflammation, flatulence, bladder inflammation, and even worse, it can start triggering the body’s immune system to act against itself.  This can lead to fatigue, muscle and joint pain, dizziness, respiratory problems, menstrual problems, eczema, acne, hives, psoriasis, insomnia, irritability and other system-wide immunological reactions which seem far removed from the source of the problem.

A further complication is known as “invasive candidiasis” or “candidemia”, which occurs when yeast or yeast toxins enter the bloodstream, usually as an aftermath of injury or surgery. Yeast infection in the blood causes fever and chills that are unresponsive to antibiotics, and can spread to kidneys, liver, spleen, joints or eyes, causing additional damage.

Altering your diet

One of the most important steps you can take in combating recurring or systemic yeast infections is to alter your diet to deprive the yeast of sustenance by starting a yeast free diet.  Processed, sugary foods are almost designed to promote yeast growth, and it’s imperative to adapt the body to a more healthy style of eating if recurring or systemic infections are to be defeated. A yeast free diet can help start a person on a path to feeling healthy and well. To eliminate yeast, you need to remove the sugars they feed upon. The most important foodstuffs to avoid are those containing yeasts and molds themselves, sugar, dairy products, and fermented foods, as well as starchy and alcoholic substances that break down into sugars.

Foods to avoid on a yeast free diet

That may seem like a lot of restrictions, and not leave you much to shop for at the grocery store, but when you start to look at it like this, it is amazing to see how much garbage we are used to putting into our bodies every day. A yeast free diet in essence gets back to the basics of natural unprocessed foods that are truly what the body needs. However, you must be wondering what can you eat, with so many common foods off limits? There are a great variety of healthy, tasty foods left to choose from that do meet the yeast free diet criteria:

For best results, the yeast free diet should be followed strictly for at least three to six weeks. In the first few weeks, the lack of food can cause a massive die-off of yeast within the system. Unfortunately, this has the effect of dumping many yeast toxins into the intestinal and vaginal tracts, which can cause flu-like fatigue, weakness and irritability. However, the body quickly rebounds as the toxins are flushed from the system, and the yeast free diet provides much greater short-term and long-term energy reserves.

Once your body has adjusted to the new diet, you will look and feel much healthier. Although in order to maintain long term health and prevent recurring yeast problems you should continue to avoid yeast, sugar and dairy products, you can gradually add sparing amounts of some of the other restricted foods back into your diet once the initial phase of the yeast free diet is complete. Add only one new food at a time, and track your body closely to see if that food causes particular problems for your system.

You may also be able to find some helpful supplements through your doctor or at your health food store. “Probiotics”, which are pills with live beneficial bacteria, should be introduced during the yeast free diet to help restore a more normal balance among your internal flora, and there are also several natural non-toxic anti-fungal agents.

A moderate exercise program can also help to improve your well-being. A twenty-minute session of walking, swimming or other light exercise two or three times a week is enough to make a difference, especially if you do it outside in the sunshine and fresh air. Most importantly is a conscious effort to maintain the health of the body through food intake. By implementing a yeast free diet and making a conscious effort to rely primarily on basic unprocessed foods the body will be healthier and many of the undesirable symptoms of yeast overgrowth will be gone.

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