One of the “cool” things that happen to you when you have a horrible, soul sucking, really gross looking skin rash is that a doctor will take a swab or scraping of your skin to figure out what kind of horrible, soul sucking, really gross looking rash you have.

Or, at least your doctor should. The first doctor I went to didn’t do this. Because, obviously, it was just your run of the mill skin rash. (Possibly, if this had been done the first time I went to the doctors it would have saved me a month of pain but I angrily digress).

When I saw the walk-in clinic doctor, he did his job and took a skin scrape. After a couple of days, the office contacted me and said they confirmed it was Candida. They advised me to go to my primary physician to do some additional testing to see if I had a Candida Overgrowth. After finding a new primary doctor, I submitted to a few blood, urine and stool tests.

While I was waiting for the test results to come back, I flung myself at the internet and grilled my new physician like a CIA Black Ops interrogator to find out all I could about Candida and why the hell it started to eat me.

Candida is basically a yeast – a single cell fungus –  that lives in and on all of us. Being a yeast, its preferred food source is sugar – any kind, its not too picky. Most of the time, it is pretty benign due to other microbes and bacteria keeping it in check in our GI tact and on our skin.  However, when there is imbalance, all sorts of things can go to hell. Here is just a partial list of symptoms of overgrowth:

• Exhaustion (Chronic Fatigue)
• Cravings for sweets
• Bad breath
• White coat on tongue
• Brain fog
• Hormone imbalance
• Joint pain
• Loss of sex drive
• Chronic sinus and allergy issues
• Digestive problems (gas and bloating)
• painful skin rash
• Weak immune system
• UTI
• Cystic Acne
• Weight gain

How an imbalance happens could be caused by many different factors; weak immune system, antibiotics, birth control pills, diabetes (types 1 & 2), stress. The one thing most experts in the field agree on is that a diet high in refined sugars, carbs and alcohol significantly contribute to having a Candida issue.

So, how does one correct a Candida Overgrowth? Well, it really depends on why it happened in the first place. In my case, after diabetes, antibiotics,  and weaken immune system were eliminated, the only things left was diet. Now, I kind of luck out because I don’t drink that much alcohol (maybe a glass of wine once a week tops) and I prefer whole wheat/brown rice as opposed to white bread/rice. The biggest thing I was going to have to give up was refined sugar.

For the first 30 days, I had no refined sugars, carbs or alcohol. However, I ate as much as I wanted of anything else when ever I wanted it. Not one calorie or fat gram was counted during this time. My body was already under a lot of stress  – why add to it? I also ate fruit. It seems on a lot of Candida diets they want you to eliminate fruit as well but for my case – that didn’t seem the right path to follow. Also included was a daily probiotic. This was/is to help get the Candida down.

This uber rash that started this whole ordeal, when I started this new diet, within four days started to improve. By day ten, it had pretty much disappeared. When I went back for a follow up on day 60 of my new diet and the tests were re-ran, the Candida was almost down to normal levels (plus blood sugar levels, heart rate and blood pressure were all down as well). The body is such an amazing thing! Years of unintentional abuse and it can repair itself in just a few months given the right tools.

I will be going for some more follow up tests in a couple of weeks. The hope is that by continuing this diet of low/no refined sugar my overall health will improve. Still have a long road ahead of me considering all the decades of overdosing on sugar but I like how this yellow brick road is starting out so far.