Question

Candida cleanse: What does it treat?

A nutrition counselor told me a "candida cleanse" diet would cure my fatigue, headaches and weight gain. What conditions does a candida cleanse diet treat?

Answer

from Brent A. Bauer, M.D.

Some alternative practitioners blame common symptoms such as fatigue, headache and poor memory on intestinal overgrowth of the fungus-like organism Candida albicans, or yeast syndrome. To cure the syndrome, they recommend a candida cleanse diet, which includes no sugar, white flour, yeast and cheese, on the theory that these foods promote candida overgrowth.

Unfortunately, there is not much evidence to support the diagnosis of yeast syndrome and many conventional practitioners doubt its validity. And there are no clinical trials that document the efficacy of a candida cleanse diet for treating any recognized medical condition.

Not surprisingly, many people note improvement in various symptoms when following this diet. If you stop eating sugar and white flour, you'll generally wind up cutting out most processed foods, which tend to be high in calorie content and low on nutritive value. Within a few weeks of replacing processed foods with fresh ones and white flour with whole grains, you may start to feel better in general. That, rather than stopping the growth of yeast in the gastrointestinal tract, is the main benefit of a candida cleanse diet.

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