5 ms·

I can say with absolute certainty that candida is playing a very strong role in the onset of dementia/alzheimer's like symptoms in my mom. Since going strictly

I can say with absolute certainty that candida is playing a very strong role in the onset of dementia/alzheimer's like symptoms in my mom. Since going strictly on an anti-candida diet it is day and night the difference. Basically she gets significantly more confused when shes not on the diet and it clears up the longer she's on the diet. She would have 2-day migraines from triggers in her diet (that feed the candida). We had this confirmed through lab testing showing exceptionally high levels of D-arabinitol. Needless to say I'm convinced candida or similar unbalanced microbiomes play a massive unrealized role in dementia/alzheimers, likely the primary role. Gut is the 2nd brain after all, neurons and all.

deskamess 3y ago
What would it take to make an 'anti-candida diet'. And do foods have this candida fungus in it?
- coolspot 3y ago
  Low sugar diet with non-starchy vegetables such as asparagus, bean sprouts, beets, cruciferous vegetables (broccoli and cauliflower), leafy greens.
  - touisteur 3y ago
    That diet made me lose 15 kilograms over 2 weeks, 20 in total after first month. Pretty gruesome, because of the privation, the antifungal supplements and the slow die-off (migraines, sweats, general feverish-ness). Didn't feel hunger once I realized there was no portion-size limit and took the habit of getting full ('les dents du fond qui baignent') of whatever kind of food was left from the diet and still oncd the first month passes, felt so much better in every aspect (transit, clarity of thought, endurance, skin, bloodwork and ... fertility - labs results too). I was pretty much skepticism incarnated and just what-the-hell-let's-prove-em-wrong-ed it. Whatever it was, either actually candida albicans infestation, or general bad eating habits, or whatever thing that this accidentally changed, or just the compound placebo of the diet discipline... the change was there.
- canadiantim 3y ago
  An anti-candida diet is just a diet that is very low in sugar or things that digest into sugars (so minimizing anything that would feed populations of candida yeasts in the gut), while simultaneously consuming things (foods, supplements or drugs) that actively fight or kill off the yeast. Interestingly, for my mom, the migraines are a sign of the "die-off" symptoms. So we have to be careful not to kill off the candida too aggressively or else it will cause headaches that are too much (so we do it gradually). Practically, an anti-candida diet is like a keto diet but without the counting carbs and also avoiding dairy - so lots of non-starchy vegetables, meat, fish, avocados etc. basically
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > the migraines are a sign of the "die-off" symptoms It could also be a reaction to the drugs and low sugar.
    - canadiantim 3y ago
      True, but in her case it tends to be when we've gone a bit aggressive on the anti-candida supplements, e.g. berberine could trigger a die-off (but only sometimes, depending on how well she's managed her diet, so if she fell off her diet and the population of candida bloomed then when she takes berberine it has a markedly more pronounced effect)
  - dghughes 3y ago
    Is the diet from a medical doctor (MD) or at least a registered dietitian (RD)? It has a hint of scam like naturpath/homeopath mumbo jumbo. I'm not saying that it is but if it is I detest people who prey on sick, weak, vulnerable people and push their pseudoscience for profit.
    - Scoundreller 3y ago
      The diet might be but the diagnosis often isn’t…
    - InSteady 3y ago
InSteady 3y ago
It's worth noting that practitioners of western medicine have been scoffing at naturopathic doctors for decades over their focus on the role of C. albicans in some chronic, systemic disorders that are difficult to diagnose and treat. The standard wisdom was (and largely still is) that everyone has candida and it is only medically relevant in severely immunocompromised individuals. It is nice to see that researchers are starting to look more deeply into the fungal component of the microbiome and peripheral effects that fungi can have around the body beyond the classically studied and treated acute fungal infections. Although populations are less stable and are in smaller number than the bacteria and viruses, we carry an incredible load of these organisms in our bodies and they are constantly interacting with our microbiome and immune system: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(22)00203-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5... "Dysbiosis (ie, an imbalance in the composition of the microbial community, which includes loss of symbionts, outgrowth of pathobionts or opportunists, and disturbed inter-microbial competition and microbial diversity) of the gut mycobiota has been implicated in a number of diseases, spanning autoimmune, metabolic, and neurological disorders, and cancers. Colonisation and growth of opportunistic fungal pathogens in the gut can induce dysregulated host immune responses thereby influencing the disease course. In addition, gut fungi—particularly Candida spp—sophistically influence the assembly and function of the gut bacterial microbiome (another cardinal regulator of host physiology), through cellular contact, competition or collaboration for available nutrients, production of secondary metabolites and antimicrobial peptides, and physiochemical changes to the gut niche."
- paulmd 3y ago
  The denial over the role of gut microbiome in producing and modulating neurotransmitters seems like one of the biggest misses in modern science. People are in sheer and utter denial over the idea that some bacteria in the gut might actually affect what's going on in the brain, but now there are potential links to parkinsons and several other neurological disorders. It's entirely possible gut microbiome is a causative factor (even partial) in the obesity epidemic too. Everyone is obsessed with the CICO idea, but humans are not a blast calorimeter and the actual absorption, satiation, or metabolic paths all have obvious links to the gut microbiome (much more intuitive than the links to neurotransmitters). Maybe we are fat because of some additive or ingredient that has changed our microbiomes, or the relative availability of different types food/energy to that microbiome has changed the microbiome. You are your microbiome, at a fine enough level you are just cells doing a fixed role, and the other fauna do theirs too. There is no magic "sentience cell" or magic spark, it's just the synergistic effect of all these systems powering the most advanced biological machine known to exist, each doing their own individual thing. But people find this idea of biologicalism inherently troubling in many respects and tend to downplay it because it leads to uncomfortable conclusions about the nature of consciousness and sentience. Maybe people are actually just reacting to stimuli in accordance with their past training - so that nobel prize winning scientist could have ended up in jail for selling crack if they had been placed in different circumstances. Everyone knows this intellectually but I think it is going to become uncomfortable the degree to which our actions are biological and not conscious etc, and what that means about how we've handled the least of us for the past centuries. This isn't to throw away the "nature vs nurture" debate entirely but it very clearly is passed through a biological lens on both sides - the nature and nurture are just training set and fine-tuning for a net, there's no inherent "ghost in the machine" but just a series of chemical reactions according to some trained weights and biological machinery. Change the machinery, and you change the person (Phineas Gage, lobotomies, psychiatric drugs, etc). And people really don't like that idea, that what they think of as "consciousness" might just be a low-dimensional projection of the unconscious processing, that the brain has developed as this adjunct facility for language and conceptual processing. Surely the consciousness must be the feature, not the projection, right? People dug in their heels against this with antidepressants and other things, and the microbiome is an equally uncomfortable topic because of what it says about how our hardware works. It's not even just some chemicals floating around inside our brain that tell it how to work... it involves more or less every part of the body (or at least the metabolic pathway).
Projectiboga 3y ago
The supplement Candex can help clear candida from the gut and that helps reduce the load on the rest of the body. Candida overgrowth is part of many allergic conditions too. The biggest help I found was in skipping traditional wheat breads as much as possible and eating Spelt bread, while a wheat it doesn't harbor the same kind of yeasts. Good luck with your Mom.
- canadiantim 3y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion for Candex, will look into getting some asap! I've been using one called GI-Microb-X for my mom and otherwise just staying on an anti-candida diet. We so far are just staying away from all breads and mainly eating vegetables + meat + fish + nuts, etc. Going to ease back into some things, like e.g. as you say spelt bread maybe not so bad, but we're still getting over the acute phase of this so being pretty strict to begin with. Thanks again for the recommendation.
  - InSteady 3y ago
    Be wary of taking herbal medicines, such as this product containing berberine, on a long term basis. Especially without first consulting a licensed and trusted healthcare professional.
    - jghn 3y ago
      Agree with the sentiment, but could you say more about your concern of this particular supplement?
alphazard 3y ago
It's worth mentioning that ketogenic diets have also been used to treat dementia and alzheimers. With the proposed mechanism being a metabolic insufficiency in the brain caused by impaired glucose transport across the blood-brain barrier. Ketones are transported via a different mechanism, which appears to be unaffected. There is a common trend of diets which simultaneously produce ketones, and starve bacteria/fungi being used to treat disease. It's difficult to know whether it's the microbial mechanism or the metabolic mechanism which is responsible for the effect.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
voisin 3y ago
What does the diet look like?
voldacar 3y ago
Have you tried using prescription-strength probiotics such as Visbiome to maybe help out-compete the candida? Also, have you tried just getting her on nystatin or some other antifungal? That might make the special diet unnecessary.

deskamess 3y ago

What would it take to make an 'anti-candida diet'. And do foods have this candida fungus in it?

coolspot 3y ago
Low sugar diet with non-starchy vegetables such as asparagus, bean sprouts, beets, cruciferous vegetables (broccoli and cauliflower), leafy greens.
- touisteur 3y ago
  That diet made me lose 15 kilograms over 2 weeks, 20 in total after first month. Pretty gruesome, because of the privation, the antifungal supplements and the slow die-off (migraines, sweats, general feverish-ness). Didn't feel hunger once I realized there was no portion-size limit and took the habit of getting full ('les dents du fond qui baignent') of whatever kind of food was left from the diet and still oncd the first month passes, felt so much better in every aspect (transit, clarity of thought, endurance, skin, bloodwork and ... fertility - labs results too). I was pretty much skepticism incarnated and just what-the-hell-let's-prove-em-wrong-ed it. Whatever it was, either actually candida albicans infestation, or general bad eating habits, or whatever thing that this accidentally changed, or just the compound placebo of the diet discipline... the change was there.
canadiantim 3y ago
An anti-candida diet is just a diet that is very low in sugar or things that digest into sugars (so minimizing anything that would feed populations of candida yeasts in the gut), while simultaneously consuming things (foods, supplements or drugs) that actively fight or kill off the yeast. Interestingly, for my mom, the migraines are a sign of the "die-off" symptoms. So we have to be careful not to kill off the candida too aggressively or else it will cause headaches that are too much (so we do it gradually). Practically, an anti-candida diet is like a keto diet but without the counting carbs and also avoiding dairy - so lots of non-starchy vegetables, meat, fish, avocados etc. basically
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > the migraines are a sign of the "die-off" symptoms It could also be a reaction to the drugs and low sugar.
  - canadiantim 3y ago
    True, but in her case it tends to be when we've gone a bit aggressive on the anti-candida supplements, e.g. berberine could trigger a die-off (but only sometimes, depending on how well she's managed her diet, so if she fell off her diet and the population of candida bloomed then when she takes berberine it has a markedly more pronounced effect)
- dghughes 3y ago
  Is the diet from a medical doctor (MD) or at least a registered dietitian (RD)? It has a hint of scam like naturpath/homeopath mumbo jumbo. I'm not saying that it is but if it is I detest people who prey on sick, weak, vulnerable people and push their pseudoscience for profit.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    The diet might be but the diagnosis often isn’t…
  - InSteady 3y ago

InSteady 3y ago

It's worth noting that practitioners of western medicine have been scoffing at naturopathic doctors for decades over their focus on the role of C. albicans in some chronic, systemic disorders that are difficult to diagnose and treat. The standard wisdom was (and largely still is) that everyone has candida and it is only medically relevant in severely immunocompromised individuals. It is nice to see that researchers are starting to look more deeply into the fungal component of the microbiome and peripheral effects that fungi can have around the body beyond the classically studied and treated acute fungal infections. Although populations are less stable and are in smaller number than the bacteria and viruses, we carry an incredible load of these organisms in our bodies and they are constantly interacting with our microbiome and immune system: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(22)00203-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5... "Dysbiosis (ie, an imbalance in the composition of the microbial community, which includes loss of symbionts, outgrowth of pathobionts or opportunists, and disturbed inter-microbial competition and microbial diversity) of the gut mycobiota has been implicated in a number of diseases, spanning autoimmune, metabolic, and neurological disorders, and cancers. Colonisation and growth of opportunistic fungal pathogens in the gut can induce dysregulated host immune responses thereby influencing the disease course. In addition, gut fungi—particularly Candida spp—sophistically influence the assembly and function of the gut bacterial microbiome (another cardinal regulator of host physiology), through cellular contact, competition or collaboration for available nutrients, production of secondary metabolites and antimicrobial peptides, and physiochemical changes to the gut niche."

paulmd 3y ago
The denial over the role of gut microbiome in producing and modulating neurotransmitters seems like one of the biggest misses in modern science. People are in sheer and utter denial over the idea that some bacteria in the gut might actually affect what's going on in the brain, but now there are potential links to parkinsons and several other neurological disorders. It's entirely possible gut microbiome is a causative factor (even partial) in the obesity epidemic too. Everyone is obsessed with the CICO idea, but humans are not a blast calorimeter and the actual absorption, satiation, or metabolic paths all have obvious links to the gut microbiome (much more intuitive than the links to neurotransmitters). Maybe we are fat because of some additive or ingredient that has changed our microbiomes, or the relative availability of different types food/energy to that microbiome has changed the microbiome. You are your microbiome, at a fine enough level you are just cells doing a fixed role, and the other fauna do theirs too. There is no magic "sentience cell" or magic spark, it's just the synergistic effect of all these systems powering the most advanced biological machine known to exist, each doing their own individual thing. But people find this idea of biologicalism inherently troubling in many respects and tend to downplay it because it leads to uncomfortable conclusions about the nature of consciousness and sentience. Maybe people are actually just reacting to stimuli in accordance with their past training - so that nobel prize winning scientist could have ended up in jail for selling crack if they had been placed in different circumstances. Everyone knows this intellectually but I think it is going to become uncomfortable the degree to which our actions are biological and not conscious etc, and what that means about how we've handled the least of us for the past centuries. This isn't to throw away the "nature vs nurture" debate entirely but it very clearly is passed through a biological lens on both sides - the nature and nurture are just training set and fine-tuning for a net, there's no inherent "ghost in the machine" but just a series of chemical reactions according to some trained weights and biological machinery. Change the machinery, and you change the person (Phineas Gage, lobotomies, psychiatric drugs, etc). And people really don't like that idea, that what they think of as "consciousness" might just be a low-dimensional projection of the unconscious processing, that the brain has developed as this adjunct facility for language and conceptual processing. Surely the consciousness must be the feature, not the projection, right? People dug in their heels against this with antidepressants and other things, and the microbiome is an equally uncomfortable topic because of what it says about how our hardware works. It's not even just some chemicals floating around inside our brain that tell it how to work... it involves more or less every part of the body (or at least the metabolic pathway).

Projectiboga 3y ago

The supplement Candex can help clear candida from the gut and that helps reduce the load on the rest of the body. Candida overgrowth is part of many allergic conditions too. The biggest help I found was in skipping traditional wheat breads as much as possible and eating Spelt bread, while a wheat it doesn't harbor the same kind of yeasts. Good luck with your Mom.

canadiantim 3y ago
Thanks for the suggestion for Candex, will look into getting some asap! I've been using one called GI-Microb-X for my mom and otherwise just staying on an anti-candida diet. We so far are just staying away from all breads and mainly eating vegetables + meat + fish + nuts, etc. Going to ease back into some things, like e.g. as you say spelt bread maybe not so bad, but we're still getting over the acute phase of this so being pretty strict to begin with. Thanks again for the recommendation.
- InSteady 3y ago
  Be wary of taking herbal medicines, such as this product containing berberine, on a long term basis. Especially without first consulting a licensed and trusted healthcare professional.
  - jghn 3y ago
    Agree with the sentiment, but could you say more about your concern of this particular supplement?

alphazard 3y ago

It's worth mentioning that ketogenic diets have also been used to treat dementia and alzheimers. With the proposed mechanism being a metabolic insufficiency in the brain caused by impaired glucose transport across the blood-brain barrier. Ketones are transported via a different mechanism, which appears to be unaffected. There is a common trend of diets which simultaneously produce ketones, and starve bacteria/fungi being used to treat disease. It's difficult to know whether it's the microbial mechanism or the metabolic mechanism which is responsible for the effect.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

voisin 3y ago

What does the diet look like?

voldacar 3y ago

Have you tried using prescription-strength probiotics such as Visbiome to maybe help out-compete the candida? Also, have you tried just getting her on nystatin or some other antifungal? That might make the special diet unnecessary.