Greetings, Eric Bakker, Naturopath.
Thanks for coming back.
We're going to talk about keto, keto diet and the candida.
If you watch videos like Dr. Eric Berg, who does a great job on keto, I just watched recently
one of his videos on keto diet, intermittent fasting and candida, which is a very, very
good video, and it makes a lot of sense.
Keto is an excellent diet for people, which is a bit like the MEVY diet, meat, eggs, vegetables
and yogurt.
So eliminating sugar, the shitty carbohydrates that many people eat like breads and crackers
and chips and junk like that, things that tend to have a quick blood sugar response,
have always been in my opinion a bad kind of choice when it comes to candida.
This is something I've really tried to communicate across on this channel, the Candida Crusher
channel.
So I've done many videos on diet, enough there for you to get a good understanding on what's
good and what's not good when it comes to eating.
So but the keto diet is excellent because the body is now going to start utilizing fat
for energy and ketones rather than glucose or the carbohydrate pathway.
The transition can be quite tough for some people, I've noticed, but does it work for
candida?
It does.
It does work for candida.
There are many dietary approaches when it comes to candida, but the keto approach is
particularly good.
I like the intermittent fasting bit too, because it also trains people to learn to eat differently
from how they normally eat.
It's good to understand that there's a lot of psychology behind eating, and when you
do fasting you learn to push food away and not to always think about food and have the
brain engage, which stimulates the gut to want that food all the time.
So cleansing occurs with fasting, however I've never been a fan of fasting, personally.
I don't really see the need to fast, in my opinion, for most of my clients in the clinic.
What I do like to say every now and then to people, particularly when it's warranted,
is to skip one meal of the day or eat much smaller portion sizes in general.
So many people eat too much food, too often, too frequently, and also people don't really
have a mindfulness approach when it comes to eating.
They just eat stuff for the sake of eating it.
They don't really think.
When you're driving a car, you're thinking all the time.
You're paying attention.
When you're eating, however, going to the refrigerator, you're probably not really paying
any attention.
You'll have some kid screaming in the background, or you'll have a wife or husband yelling at
you or, "Hey, make me a cup of coffee," or there's something going on so you're not paying
a lot of attention.
Especially stress and boredom come into it and tend to precipitate poor diet choices.
So lifestyle, a good lifestyle or bad lifestyle, can certainly initiate that in a person to
create pretty sloppy and crappy eating habits.
I'm a big fan of getting a lifestyle to a high degree where you're happy with how you
live, and to really work a good diet around your lifestyle.
So keto does work well, but as I mentioned, the transition period can be quite rough.
So I'm not a fan of high meat diets at all, so paleo kind of high meat consumptions I
think are just too hard on the gut, too hard on the kidney.
They create too much waste in the body.
I believe in a much lower meat approach, and particularly when it comes to foods like fish.
Very good-quality ocean-caught fish and high-grade free range chicken are two excellent protein
sources, for example, but lots of lamb and pork and beef and bison and venison, all that
kind of stuff, I just think it's over the top.
It's too much overload for the gut.
I prefer people to have lighter protein choices in their diet, and particularly the legumes
and the nuts and seeds.
Again, I'm also not anti-grain at all.
I don't think people should avoid grains entirely in their diet, but a balanced approach.
So if you're wondering if keto is good, it is good but it will not eradicate candida.
Many of my clients who have been on keto diets prolonged, and even with stool testing I've
found candida there.
So it's not going to guarantee that you're going to eliminate candida, but it's certainly
going to clean up your gut and help to burn fat and improve cognition and various other
aspects.
So, here's what you do if you're thinking about going on a keto diet.
Let's say you've got a bit of weight, and you've got issues with your digestion.
As you do a stool test, a comprehensive stool test times three, so three samples on three
days, as you're doing your keto diet or as you're just initiating it.
And then you may want to wait three months and repeat that.
Just do one sample, and then look at the microbiology of your gut when you've been on keto for 12
weeks as opposed to what you were previously doing.
That will give you a good understanding of which direction your gut is heading into in
terms of immune responses, inflammatory responses and things like that.
And you can also see the microbiology to see if it's changed for the positive or negative.
So many people go through a gut kind of a change as they're changing their diet, and
this is quite normal.
So some bacteria will come up, some will come down.
Some yeast species will come up, some will come down.
But look at the signs and symptoms of how you feel, and that will also give you a pretty
good indication to what level the microbiology is changing in the gut.
So, I'm all for keto.
Intermittent fasting is excellent for some people, but for many people I know it doesn't
really do much, or they find it too difficult to work with.
But that choice is yours, all up to you, so yes, a tick for keto and a question mark for
the intermittent fasting.
Thanks for posing the question.