I have been fighting off some form of mild, but persistent yeast infection for about 5 months. Tried everything to get rid of it. Recently, I have looked into the candida diet and realized that the diet is really just a more restrictive low-carb diet. I have had past experience doing a "healthy" form of low-carb/Atkin's diets, so what came as a surprise were a few things on the "bad" list that make it unnecessarily restrictive: cheese, alcohol and mushrooms.

The logic behind these being prohibited is completely wrong. All of these should be okay to eat... in moderation. Here is why:

Candida albicans: consumes monosaccharides (sugars). Produces acetaldehyde and alcohol as a byproduct of metabolism.

Cheese - on a low-carb diet, cheese is accepted as a low-carb, moderate protein, high calorie alternative. There are few carbohydrates in cheese for candida to metabolize. The layman's logic that mold grows on it, so it must support candida is faulty. Mold consumes starch, cellulose, lignin (sugars), just like candida. Mold/candida, both consume the sugar in the cheese - not everything else (protein/fat). The good doctor here agrees about eating cheese.

It is extremely difficult to survive on a low-carb diet without cheese as one of the ingredients, unless you are replacing it with massive quantities of unhealthy butter, bacon or other fatty foods. It is also difficult to get enough calcium in your diet without it. Put cheese back on the menu!

Alcohol - Alcohol is generally considered bad on a low-carb diet and bad on candida. Atkin's restricts you to 20g carb/day. However, this is mainly, because alcoholic drinks often contain a ton of carbohydrates:
-1 Mixed drink - Boatload of carbs
-1 Ale averages about 15 carbs
-1 Beer averages about 10 carbs
-1 Glass of wine averages about 4 carbs
-1 Shot of hard liquor has none
See where I am going? Drinking hard liquor (shots) should be perfectly fine on the candida diet. Even better, since the objective is to avoid a yeast infection and not to lose weight (1g of alcohol has ~7 empty calories). A single class of wine or one low-carb beer (Mich. Ultra, Miller Lite or regular Bud Select) per day is also doable. Good mixed drinks are diet vodka tonics and diet Redbull vodkas.

Also, the idea that beer has yeast, candida=yeast so alcohol must be bad is total garbage. As mentioned earlier, one of the byproducts of candida's metabolism is alcohol. This means that it lacks the enzymes necessary to convert alcohol/ethanol further. You and I possess these things called "livers" that contain the enzymes necessary to metabolize alcohol. Candida and brewer's yeast don't. Just know the carb content of beer you are drinking.

Mushrooms - Mushrooms have about zero calories and zero carbs. There is nothing for candida yeast to eat! On top of that, I have read that different fungi have natural anti-fungals to each other. I don't know if this is true, but I have not seen any mushroom cannibalism.

Of course, some people are going to come along with their sample size of 1 and anecdotally claim that they started eating cheese/doing shots/gobbling shrooms and their candida came back like crazy. Sorry guys, but the science does not support it.

Quit torturing yourselves and start allowing cheese, alcohol and mushrooms into your diet!

What kind of benefit can you get drinking alcohol during an anti-candida protocol ??
Do you want to add more load to your liver ??
Does the alcohol is providing you with some specific nutrient that you lack ??
Are you considering that cheeses have lactose and casein ??

Lactose feed the fungus. Casein is a high allergen that contributes to intestinal inflammation.

What the other poster said is correct, people who suffer CRC are allergic to molds, fungus, yeasts, etc.

This syndrome isn't only an overgrowth but a hypersensitivity syndrome too.

By the way, if I were followed Lawrence Wilson's treatment, I were probably already death.
Jorge.

@MyButterflyEffect Thanks for your response. Alcohol does mess with your blood sugar levels and sleep cycle, as you probably know. Alot of it may be just psychological, though. Not encouraging people to drink more alcohol, but just trying to give people the option. It makes the diet more tolerable if people realize they can have a drink and socialize with friends, once in awhile.

If mushrooms are triggering an allergic response, then I can see the logic in keeping them off the menu. My understanding was that the immune system was failing to recognize candida as a threat, though.

@dvjorge - there is little lactose/carbs in cheese remaining - that's the whole point. Bacteria converts the lactose in milk into lactic acid - that's what makes it cheese! As for casein, you would know if you are allergic to casein already and there are many allergens out there. No sense in avoiding healthy proteins.

As said before, alcohol is not necessary, but makes life easier and the diet more likely to be followed.

I appreciate that some of you may be suffering from far worse symptoms than I am and good luck to all.