Food as Medicine
So, I was looking up recipes, perusing my favorite clean-food sites, and I found an interesting link on Elana’s Pantry. Elana and her son have celiac disease, so she has many great gluten-free recipes that are kid friendly. In addition, she has been experimenting with Paleo recipes.
She has a tab called Special Diets. I was familiar with all of them but the Candida Diet.
Candida albicans is a fungus that naturally occurs in the human gut. Unfortunately, Candida can get rabid and change into a Dr. Jekyll version of itself causing thrush in children and yeast infections in adults.
Among the medical community no one disputes the above, but some medical researcher have found a connection to the harmful form of Candida and depression, some allergies, chronic fatigue and chronic illnesses: CRC (Candida Related Complex). The medical community is divided on the validity of these claims.
The site where I found this information has exhaustive sections about the symptoms and treatment of CRC. There is a symptoms list and assessment, a section about detox and a section about their diet protocol. I found the latter most interesting. I downloaded the Food List.
I did not read research articles about Candida; I did not even read all sides of this story from the medical community. All I did was look at the Food List, and I have to say, that ANYONE would benefit from eating unlimited amounts of the green foods, limiting the servings of the orange foods, and avoiding all of the red foods listed.
If I though I had CRC, I could read those that support the findings and those that don’t. I could read the original research, but frankly, it is probably better to just follow the food list if you think you have any of the symptoms of CRC. It certainly will not hurt you, and it will have many other benefits.
People usually like to debate about diets, “Well, I heard that eating cabbage is bad for you”. Mostly, this debate comes from an unwillingness to look at food as the powerful chemical agent it is. It can be restorative and healing or it can be the death of you depending on your choices. No amount of researching and reading online is going to tell you what the best food choices for you are. Research is a good start, but at some point you need to start experimenting with your diet, eliminating foods that are potentially bad for you and increasing healing, healthful foods.
What is interesting to me is that if you followed a very strict Paleo (more like the challenges we have done in the past), you would be following the above food list. This food list is a great start for anyone, and I am so happy to see it pop up in non-CrossFit circles.
