Topics:
1. What’s new for you from Diane [1:05]
2. Introducing our guest, Christa Orecchio [2.58]
3. Christa’s introduction to Candida [4.16]
4. What exactly is Candida [7:21]
5. What are some other symptoms of Candida overgrowth? [9:50]
6. What causes the Candida to overgrow? [11:43]
7. Detection of a Candida overgrowth [13:24]
8. What a Candida diet consists of [18:45]
9. How to find a balance with the Candida diet, and die off symptoms [26:31]
10. Treatment options through traditional medicine for Candida [34:16]
11. How are setbacks handled on the Candida diet [38:26]
12. What happens if I relapse after the 8 week Candida diet? [40:35]
13. Efficacy of Diflucan and Candida [47:22]
14. Candida cleanse as a preventative of cancer [49:46]
15. Mercury amalgam fillings and Candida [52:59}
16. Apple cider vinegar and Candida [55:55]
17. Wrapping it up with Christa Orecchio [57:02]
18. Liz’s Baby Making and Beyond tip of the week: pregnancy and your immune system [59:11]
Links:
Subscribe to Real Food Liz!
Subscribe to Dianesanfilippo.com
Click here to listen to this episode!
The episodes are currently available in iTunes, Stitcher & Blog Talk Radio.
Show sponsors:
Diane Sanfilippo: Hey everyone! Welcome to Balanced Bites podcast episode 180, I think. Today I have an amazing guest with me; it’s Christa Orecchio of The Whole Journey, and we are talking all about Candida.
1. What’s new for you from Diane [1:05]
Diane Sanfilippo: But before I get into my interview with Christa, I wanted to update you all on just a couple of things coming up here. I’ve got tour events, book signings with my good friends, Bill and Hayley of Primal Palate. Their brand new book, Make it Paleo 2, is releasing and we’ll be in Alexandria, Virginia on March 13th, and in Charlotte, North Carolina on March 15th, Orlando, Florida on March 18th.
If you are looking to come to PaleoFx, which is in Austin, Texas April 24th through 26th, you can meet all of us, and more. So that will be a really fun event. I’ll actually be speaking about some business related stuff at PaleoFx this year, I won’t be talking about nutrition, which I know a lot of you guys are interested in becoming 21-Day Sugar Detox certified coaches, or you’ve checked out my Build a Badass Business podcast or Facebook group, so that’s a great event to come to in Austin if you’re interested in paleo, and you want to come connect with me about any or all of that good stuff. Check it out, and you can always visit the sidebar at DianeSanfilippo.com to find out when I have upcoming events, or to RSVP, or get tickets to any of them.
Liz Wolfe: We’d like to thank Vital Choice for supporting our podcast today, and we encourage you to visit their online store at vitalchoice.com. You’ll find an amazing array of some of the world’s best seafood, including wild Alaskan salmon, halibut, tuna and cod, as well as sustainably harvested shellfish. These foods are not only delicious, but vital choices for your health. You’ll also find grass-fed organic Wagyu beef, live fermented foods to promote gut health, wild organic blueberries, and dark organic chocolates. Eat better, think better, and feel better with deeply nourishing foods from Vital Choice. They’re offering our listeners 15% off any order using code BALANCEDBITES. Remember that orders of $99 or more ship free.
2. Introducing our guest, Christa Orecchio [2.58]
Diane Sanfilippo: So my guest today is Christa Orecchio. She is a clinical and holistic nutritionist, and the founder of The Whole Journey, a private nutrition practice and informational website established to help people live healthier, happier, and more energetic lives through whole food nutrition, quality supplementation, and healthy lifestyle guidance. Christa’s goal is to holistically heal chronic health concerns from the root cause, in lieu of addressing individual symptoms. She also focuses on elements that nourish other than food, including honest and open relationships, a meaningful spiritual practice, a career or creative outlet that inspires, and physical activity that is enjoyable. Christa has been a TEDx speaker, and we will link to her video. I think that’s awesome, I’m really psyched about that. Welcome Christa, I’m super excited to have you on the show today!
Christa Orecchio: Thanks Diane! I’m really excited to be here.
Diane Sanfilippo: I had a huge response. I only posted to my Instagram followers and Facebook the night before we were going to do this interview, because I already knew I had tons of questions for you, I wanted to see what our readers and listeners all wanted to know, and they just flooded the walls with questions. So I’m really excited, and I know they’re really excited, so thanks for joining me.
Christa Orecchio: Oh, it’s my pleasure. I’m looking at the questions now, and really excited to answer them.
3. Christa’s introduction to Candida [4.16]
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} There’s a lot of good ones. So I think the best place to get started, because I’m sure lots of folks do know who you are, but I’m sure we also have many more who don’t. Give us a really quick background on how you got into this, and how this topic of Candida, this is one of the things I know you specialize in. you’re kind of the go-to gal for this topic. So how did this come to be for you?
Christa Orecchio: Well, I think as health counselors and practitioners, we have to heal our own health before we go and help others, so I have a very personal experience with Candida where I had the worst raging case of it for years. I say affectionately, I was raised on pizza, pasta, and antibiotics. So that’s pretty much the start.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} You and me both.
Christa Orecchio: {laughs} Yeah, you and me both sister, Jersey right?
Diane Sanfilippo: Yep.
Christa Orecchio: Every Friday night was pizza night, and being Italian. And my dad was in the pharmaceutical industry, and bless his heart, he’s fantastic, but we got antibiotics every time we sneezed instead of a tissue, they were literally everywhere. And so my immune system was kind of shot, especially by the time I got to high school. I was tired all the time, I had brain fog, I had bloating, and all these things where a regular medical doctor is going to say, oh your fine, nothing is wrong with you, your lab work is normal. But I felt anything but normal.
So I kind of went on this whole crusade to figure out what was going on, because I knew I could be living maybe 5 levels of wellness higher than I was. I developed a passion for health and nutrition, and of course, we use ourselves as our own lab rat. And really started studying this organism every which way from Sunday, and started to understand it, and figure out how to eradicate it, eradicate the overgrowth. It was totally and completely life changing for me, so I started really documenting the process, and I just started attracting so many clients who had the same issue. Because we know that all disease begins in the gut, and we have to take care of gut health if we want to take care of any other aspect of our health.
So that’s how it kind of came to pass, and there are so many people. Diane, I know you know, you guys are going through 21-Day Sugar Detox, and then the next step is to get rid of this Candida because of our world today. Not just because of antibiotics, but because of stress, because overconsumption of sugar, that’s going to the yeast overgrowth and imbalance, and it’s just doing our due diligence to do some cleanup work around it.
Diane Sanfilippo: Awesome. Yeah, we have a ton of questions about it. A lot of folks come to the 21-Day Sugar Detox, and they ask is this a Candida diet, and I let them know that while it’s actually very similar to it, I think most people would “prescribe” as a diet for a Candida cleanse, it’s not designed that way. So it can kind of, like you said, they might do the 21-Day Sugar Detox, and then roll into a program that you might offer. So I think that’s a good point to make.
4. What exactly is Candida [7:21]
Diane Sanfilippo: Why don’t you give folks who are listening an idea of what are the symptoms of Candida, and how would somebody know if they have it, and what is it? What really is it, because I think some people hear about it, and they’re like, that just sounds very nebulous, it’s just out there. So give us an overview.
Christa Orecchio: {laughs} Yeah. Let’s start with that question. What is Candida? When I’m talking about Candida, I’m talking about an opportunistic organism called Candida albicans that lives inside our GI tract and it lives inside all of us. When it’s in balance, it’s no problem, it’s meant to be there. Just like we need pathogens to challenge our immune system and to keep us on our toes, keep us strong. It’s when it gets out of balance that it becomes a problem. What it is is a systemic yeast overgrowth, which starts to crowd out oxygen in the intestinal tract, which thwarts your ability to convert your thyroid hormones, anything when it gets out of control can really start to cause problem.
But here’s the thing; it’s an opportunistic organism, which means that the chips have to be low. So you have to be weakened in some other place to allow for this organism to kind of latch on and start to proliferate. That’s really what Candida is, when we hear about this nebulous term, and it starts to give you all these symptoms.
The biggest symptoms, which you and I know very well, is out of control sugar cravings. Because it’s opportunistic, and it wants to live. And I always say, there’s more of them than you, and the sugar cravings are so great.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughing}
Christa Orecchio: {laughs} That you’re going to go out in you pajamas at 11 o’clock at night to 7-11 to get something sweet.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Christa Orecchio: Because you just can’t…
Diane Sanfilippo: That’s such a Jersey thing, 7-11. {laughs}
Christa Orecchio: It’s a Jersey thing, yeah. It would be like, I need gummy bears now! And you would go out in your pajamas and go get them. That’s not really a normal response to a craving. {laughs}
Diane Sanfilippo: So the reason why those sugar cravings would happen is that yeast is feeding on sugar, and so it’s almost like it’s not you having the craving, it’s the overgrowth of this yeast, right?
Christa Orecchio: Exactly. It’s having basically a parasitic organism inside you almost taking you over because it wants to stay alive.
5. What are some other symptoms of Candida overgrowth? [9:50]
Diane Sanfilippo: It’s pretty crazy when we think about what happens just with bacteria and yeast and all that stuff in the body. So, besides sugar cravings, what are some other symptoms that people might have, even if they’re secondary symptoms. You had mentioned issues with the thyroid that could be caused by having this Candida overgrowth. What are some others because I know people are asking about skin issues, and other basic fungal infections, and things like that. What might people see that’s being caused by this.
Christa Orecchio: It’s a great question. Definitely skin issues. Here’s the thing; Candida, left untreated, can split off and become fungal and just lead to whole host of other things. So you start getting things like eczema, psoriasis. Maybe you get acne, cystic acne that won’t go away. There’s only so many ways for the body to detox. If you’re not doing it appropriately through the bowels, it’s going to come out through the skin to try to keep you safe.
On the same vein of the thyroid and of the conversion, what’s happening is if you have Candida, then you’re going to have mental fog. You might have temperature issues and be kind of cold. Definitely constipation is a major issue for people who have Candida. The bloating, where you feel like you’re bloated all the time, sometimes to the point of being 6 months pregnant. And then you’re getting nutrient deficiencies because your bacteria is off. So you’re not converting your B vitamins. That leads to things like adrenal fatigue and that chronic exhaustion. So the whole system is kind of brought down.
If you have any type of underlying viruses, they go from dormant to active, and I saw some questions on your Instagram page, Diane, about how is the connected to fibromyalgia and Epstein Barr, and so that’s the way that it is. These things that are living in our system, they can become active again.
6. What causes the Candida to overgrow? [11:43]
Diane Sanfilippo: Fascinating, all of that, because of this overgrowth. What are some things that do trigger, as you said it can be the Candida, it’s something that we might all have in our system, but it’s a matter of when it becomes imbalanced. So what are some things that happen in our bodies, in our lives, in our environment that causes, or can cause, the Candida to become overgrown. What’s pushing that to happen? Because if we all have it in our system in some way, but we don’t all have this overgrowth, what’s going to push it?
Christa Orecchio: It’s anything that really will feed the Candida. First of all, we have good guys and bad guys. It’s kind of like open warfare inside the microbiome, and as long as you have the right amount of good guys and bad guys, things are fine. But one full spectrum round of antibiotics, if you don’t also take your probiotics and do the work to repair the leaky gut that the antibiotics can cause, that is enough to get this Candida overgrowth going.
When you have a sugar addiction, when you have too much alcohol, too much stress, all of these things can proliferate the growth of Candida and start to turn the terrain in a different way.
Diane Sanfilippo: So, it sounds like it’s pretty much anything that can also promote leaky gut, anything that I talk about all the time, and I know in Practical Paleo I detailed things that promote leaky gut. It’s pretty much all the same thing. So the reason that the leaky gut happens is I think pretty much the same; it’s this imbalance in the gut bacteria, and then pretty much everything starts to deteriorate.
7. Detection of a Candida overgrowth [13:24]
Diane Sanfilippo: It’s really interesting, and I think one of the things that happens in natural medicine is that some people are just convinced that Candida, or Candida overgrowth, is the root and the cause of everything. So I know that that’s something that I’m sure you come up against that, where people are like, oh you always think it’s Candida because that’s what you specialize in. But what have you seen in terms of when this Candida imbalance, at what point in somebody’s journey is it appropriate to be like, ok. You’ve done all these other things, now let’s troubleshoot and really try and figure out if you have Candida overgrowth, and how can they detect that? What kind of methods can they use to figure that out?
Christa Orecchio: That’s good, it’s a lot right there, and I also want to say, you’re right. Just because you specialize in something, then all of a sudden everyone walking through the door looks like they have it. But you’re right; the body is a systemic organism, so everything affects everything else. My Candida cleanse is certainly not just about Candida. Because if you don’t address the leaky gut, if you don’t look at other pathogens that are in the system; I know you know a ton about SIBO and you have to look at protozoa, you have to look at parasites, you have to look at the entirety of the digestive system, not just that one organism. Otherwise, you’re remiss to get to permanent healing.
In terms of testing to see if this is your problem, there are lots of lab work that you can run. I like the Cyrex IgG and IgA, when we run food sensitivities and we start to look at the antibody tests. Or there are stool tests that you can run for Candida. Honestly, Diane, I have run those in tandem with an easy, free, DIY test at least 150 times, and I’d say 90% of the time it’s accurate. I would say start there, instead of going down this big long detective tract. Have you ever heard of the Candida self test?
Diane Sanfilippo: Oh, of course I have, because I’ve heard your interviews a million times. But why don’t you tell our listeners about the self test. It’s a spit test, right?
Christa Orecchio: Yeah. It’s a spit test that you guys can all do at home. What you do is fill up a glass of water halfway, maybe 4 or 5 ounces. First thing in the morning, before you eat or drink anything, and before you brush your teeth, for 6 days in a row, you work up a dime-sized amount of saliva, and you spit in the glass .And then you watch it. You don’t have to stare it down, but you watch it for about 45 minutes, check it two or three times.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Just stare at it for 45 minutes.
Christa Orecchio: {laughs} Yeah! I get a lot of questions about the accuracy and how to make sure. No, it’s ok. Just look at it three times over 45 minutes, and you want to see; does that saliva sink to the bottom? And if it does, then hey, there’s more of them than you. You must address Candida. Does it grow legs? That means that Candida is an issue for you, it’s out of balance, we have to get it in balance. Or does it stay floating on top? If it stays floating on top, then you are fine and that’s not necessarily your issue.
But, there’s two caveats for the accuracy of this test. One is, you have to make sure that you’re hydrated while you’re taking it, because if you’re dehydrated, that can give you a false positive.
Diane Sanfilippo: Mmm. It would concentrate whatever is in your saliva, right?
Christa Orecchio: Yeah. Exactly. And so what is hydrated, right? About a liter of water, so 33-34 ounces, for every 50 pounds of body weight. That would keep you hydrated enough. And you cannot be on dairy for 3 days before you start the test, and through the whole test. Because that will thicken your mucosal membrane, and give you a false positive. You’re saliva will probably sink if you’re having dairy, even if you don’t have Candida.
Diane Sanfilippo: Interesting. So there you go, that’s the free at home test. So, what generally happens over 6 days? Is it pretty much they’re seeing the same result every day, or will somebody maybe see 3 or 4 out of those 6 days they see it starts to sink, or the legs are growing; or does it just need to happen once or twice? How would that happen over those 6 days?
Christa Orecchio: You’ll get, some of it can be subjective based upon what you’re diet is like. So you should get at least 4 days. That’s why we do this whole average of 6, but 4 days in a row you’ll get very similar results, or 4 days of the 6 you’ll get very similar results.
Sometimes I back it up, and I have people do a urine and saliva pH test concurrently when they’re doing that, and that’s another free DIY test at home, because if you have pathogens and you’re out of balance, you’re definitely going to have an over acid environment, and it’s going to be very up and down. There won’t be any consistency to it. So the two of those is usually enough information for me to say, ok, here’s your level of Candida, and here’s where we’re going with this.
Diane Sanfilippo: Awesome. And the pH paper is something that people can usually find at a natural health store, or they can order it from Amazon, right?
Christa Orecchio: Exactly. Any Whole Foods nationwide is going to have those, any health food store, and then on Amazon you just type in pH paper and it will come right up.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yep. {laughs} Every holistic nutritionist has had fun experimenting with that stuff at some point in their studies and their career.
Christa Orecchio: {laughs}
8. What a Candida diet consists of [18:45]
Diane Sanfilippo: So let’s talk a little bit about what people can do about it, at least at a high level here. I know you have a whole protocol that you put people through. Let’s just talk a little bit about the diet, because I know from my experience with the 21-Day Sugar Detox, there are a lot of similarities about the way that program looks and how a Candida diet looks. But what are the basics of what you generally have people eat, and then I have a couple of follow up questions to that. {laughs}
Christa Orecchio: Ok. Well yeah, that’s why I’m just so excited to be with you this morning, because we are so in alignment with the diet. So you are setting people up perfectly. So many people are afraid of a Candida cleanse, because they’re going to go through die off, and pain, and struggles. But it’s really nice if you can get yourself set up so you can go through it gracefully. And you’re already setting everybody up really well.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} I’m giving them the painful part, and then they can come over to you {laughing}
Christa Orecchio: They can come over and then knock it out fast, yeah. So the diet, it’s obviously no sugar. The only sweeteners that are allowed on the Candida diet are dark liquid stevia and monk fruit. So you’re really going away from all other…
Diane Sanfilippo: That’s interesting, the monk fruit. What is it about monk fruit that kind of …
Christa Orecchio: It’s the glycemic index, and how it doesn’t feed the Candida at all. I used to allow xylitol in the cleanse, but so many people also have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, that we had to get the sugar alcohols out, because again you’ve got to address the whole gut, right?
Diane Sanfilippo: Mm-hmm.
Christa Orecchio: Yeah. So the monk fruit is working really well in some of the recipes. I always say, when you take something away, you have to give something else so people don’t feel like they’re compromising and sacrificing too much, so that’s where we have dessert recipes, those are the sweeteners we use. So you’re going off of all sugar, going off all refined foods, which all of your people are already going off of. For some people, that’s a major life change in and of itself. So no pasta, no bread, no rice, none of that stuff. And we’re going off of all gluten, we’re going off of all dairy; I’ll start with every that we take out, right? And then we can start to talk about, ok, what can you eat.
And really, we only go through very low glycemic fruit. So the only fruit allowed on the Candida diet, and it’s only one serving a day, is either green apples or low glycemic organic berries. Because they’re the lowest. Pomegranate, lemon, and lime. Those are really the only fruits that are allowed. I don’t allow any fermented foods at all, which is very different than a lot of other Candida cleanses.
The idea behind that is, if you look at Otto Warburg’s research from the 30’s; he’s a 2 time Nobel prize winner where he really talked about cancer, GI cancer and the fermentation and a lot of research on Candida. And we have oxygen within our GI tract, and that’s what we’re trying to do, is create a healthy, thriving, oxygenated environment and when we have fermented foods, it can, when you’re imbalanced, they’re wonderful for you when you’re balanced, but when you’re imbalanced it can snuff out oxygen.
In respiratory cell chemistry, that is really dangerous, to snuff out oxygen and replace it with fermentation. That becomes food for Candida, that becomes food for cancer down the line, which is why doing a Candida cleanse, just like you change the oil in your car to extend the life of it, doing any kind of cleanse once a year is really important, but doing a Candida cleanse can slash your lifetime chances of GI cancer by up to 75%. It’s really powerful, life changing stuff.
So we don’t have any fermented foods, no vinegar, no soy sauce, no tamari.
Diane Sanfilippo: Alcohol.
Christa Orecchio: No alcohol.
Diane Sanfilippo: People hate me with the Sugar Detox when I say no alcohol! I’m like, did you really think alcohol was going to be allowed on this program.
Christa Orecchio: I know! Well, you think about it, a lot of people, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from clients. What, no alcohol for 8 weeks? I haven’t done that since…
Diane Sanfilippo: And I’m only telling them 3 weeks {laughing}
Christa Orecchio: Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, I think that’s a big one for a lot of people.
Christa Orecchio: It’s a big life change, yeah. And then you have to shift your social interaction, and that’s interesting to say, I want you to still go out and have fun.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughing}
Christa Orecchio: See how you can do that. Yeah, so no alcohol.
Diane Sanfilippo: Ok, so let’s talk about what they are eating then. Or is there anything else I didn’t let you squeak in there about what they’re excluding?
Christa Orecchio: No, those are the biggest bricks of what we’re excluding. And so what they’re having, I have them do a balance, because you have to find the right balance, of 40/40/10/10. So 40% high quality clean animal protein, so that’s going to be very important. Because, again, when we have Candida, our adrenals are usually pretty tired, thyroid is not working, so that’s wonderful to add in the high quality animal protein at 40%. And then 40% nonstarchy veggies, leafy greens and things like that. Then 10% would be the fruit that you’re adding in, so that’s one serving a day, or and what also falls within that, nuts. It depends on the state of your health how many nuts you can have, but nuts and seeds and things like that fall in the 10%. And I really like extra credit to have my cleansers to soak their nuts and seeds to get rid of the antinutrients to make them more digestible.
The idea as we go through the cleanse if we can make this as easy as possible on your digestive system, you’ll get a lot further a lot faster. The other 10% are the carbs. Things like sweet potatoes, and parsnips, and plantains, and acorn squash, butternut squash. Some people can handle wild rice. Some people can handle quinoa, as long as they soak it first. So they kind of find their balance there.
We were talking before we got started with, what’s the deal? If you can only have such a low carb, a lot of people don’t feel good on that because of the thyroid issue, so there are caveats within my cleanse so you can customize to what’s going on with your current state of health. There’s ways to work the cleanse to where you can add more carbs in or stage them to keep your blood sugar balanced, to keep yourself feeling fine as you go through it, and the benefits far outweigh the risks for some cases like that. So that’s kind of the crux of the diet.
Liz Wolfe: Pete’s Paleo is a friend of the Balanced Bites podcast, and they also are fans of the 21-Day Sugar Detox. The 21-Day Sugar Detox is great for your body in so many ways, but consistently feeding yourself right can be a challenge. Pete’s Paleo makes delicious, seasonal, ready to eat meals that strictly follow the 21DSD program. They’re shipped directly to your door, ready to go. Let Pete’s Paleo help you with your 21DSD success. And don’t forget that their bacon is also sugar free. 5OFF21DSD is your coupon code for $5 off 21DSD meals, and 5OFFPETESPALEO is your coupon code for $5 off regular Pete’s Paleo meals.
9. How to find a balance with the Candida diet and die off symptoms [26:31]
Diane Sanfilippo: Awesome. So, when it comes to the carb intake, because this is always one of the hottest topics. People have so many questions about it, and I know this happens a lot on the 21-Day Sugar Detox where people always assume that if a little bit good, like they don’t want to have too much, then less is better. So they always want to pull down on the carbs more, even if they’re exercising a lot or they have a very active lifestyle. I always let people know on that program, for example, it’s not more successful just because you restrict the carbs more. Actually what ends up happening is you’re more tired and you can’t function in your everyday life the way that you would. You can’t continue to exercise the way you would, because you’re not following the modifications that are put in place.
So, how would people know, if they get into your Candida cleanse. And of course, if they just come to your cleanse, they haven’t done the Sugar Detox first, which I know the Sugar Detox first will kind of ease them in and that first 3 weeks on my program would really get rid of a lot of their carb flu, and all of that frustration around figuring out that balance. But if they were to come to your program, how do you let them know, ok this much time is going to be kind of a struggle, and it might be kind of painful when you reduce carbs a ton, especially if they’re coming from more of a standard American diet, or eating lots of grains for example, to find the place where, ok these few days are not going to be comfortable and now you need to figure out how much to add back. When you see that happening with people, how do you stage that with them in terms of how much to add and what they should expect to feel, because they’re going to have negative feelings, they’re not going to feel great for some of it, right? There’s going to be die off, and I want to talk more about that, but how do you balance that with, ok, this is not supposed to be totally pleasant, but I don’t want you to be flat on the couch, you know what I’m saying?
Christa Orecchio: {laughs} Yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: That balance is really delicate.
Christa Orecchio: It is a really delicate balance. You can’t escape die off, you’re right, so I prep people for the worst, and usually it’s not even that bad. But the first week, and especially again, you’re totally right, Diane, it depends on what kind of diet you’re coming from. So the first week to 10 days could be kind of rough, where you get flu-like symptoms, you get some skin breakouts, and you feel mental fog and things actually get worse before they get better. But then you should start to level out. You should start to get some energy and get in a groove within 7-10 days.
If you’re not, a lot of people, and I know especially a lot of your people are so savvy; they already know about their health. They already know. If you’re in adrenal fatigue, if you’re hypothyroid or you’re Hashimoto’s, then you’re going to need some more carbs. So I kind of let people know, ok here’s where we’re going to begin, if you already know some things about yourself, then you might start off with 20% carbs, to stage it and see where you are. So everyone kind of has to decide, based on how they feel, but the first week is kind of a wash because you can’t separate, necessarily, die off from the carb situation.
Diane Sanfilippo: So let’s talk about die off a little bit more, what are some of the symptoms that people can expect. You mentioned a few; obviously fatigue and flu-like symptoms, which a lot of that is also really similar, and the skin breakouts, really similar to what happens to folks on the first week or so of the 21-Day Sugar Detox. It’s like, is this normal, I have a break out, or I have this new eczema patch, and they’re like is this normal? And I’m like, yes, this is normal. But what else do people usually feel?
Christa Orecchio: It is so normal. You know I’m running this gut thrive program with a lot of people around the world, they’re going through with getting rashes and all kinds of things, and it’s like, unfortunately that’s just the way the body works, is you sometimes have to get worse before you can get better. Candida and sinus infections are highly connected, and so if that’s your weak point, you might get a sinus infection that you’ll have to come through. Nail fungus might get worse. You might get a new eczema patch, and the body is starting cleansing mode of, hey, we’re getting rid of this now.
The whole mental fog, it can get bad, for some people. I try to set everyone up in a way where die off is as minimal as possible. But you know, we’re all our own unique world of biochemistry. The mental fog can be the worst for some people, where you just feel like there’s a screen in front of you and you can’t pull it together mentally. I always say, it’s really a lot better if you could take a day off or two. Maybe start Friday through Monday when nothing is expected of you, no other responsibilities of life except to prepare your food, and take care of yourself, and so much of it is about preparation.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Yeah. Send the kids to the grandparents of something, and clear the decks because you might be knocked down for a couple of days. But yeah, I see exactly the same thing where the first few days, I’ve always told people the same to really prepare, or if they’re really worried about it, start exactly the same way. Start on a Friday, and then Saturday and Sunday you’re home, and the same thing where it’s about that 7-10 days that it’s that first week where there are so many changes happening. And from my experience I’ve seen, and you can probably back this up too, that the first two weeks is really when the biggest changes are happening just in the gut lining, and all of the healing, and then I’m sure as your program continues, there’s more that’s being done to keep starving that Candida. But the first couple of weeks is the most intense.
Christa Orecchio: Exactly. So much is happening. And the body likes to take nutritional directives slowly, {laughs} which is why it’s so good to do the Sugar Detox before coming into the Candida cleanse. It’s a 5-step process, is what it is Diane, and step 1 is to slash inflammation. We go in there, and we use a lot of really powerful; I am all about using food as medicine, so we’ve got things in our cleanse, like a cilantro/oregano cleansing pesto, and turmeric/ginger lemonade, and we’re going in there and we’re getting rid of inflammation. And then we start doing the pathogen purge, which is step 2, and that’s where you’re really disrupting that intestinal milieu in there, and these guys are going to fight a little bit because these guys want to stay alive. You’re basically kicking them out of the party, you’re asking them to leave their home!
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughing}
Christa Orecchio: So in that pathogen purge, we’re using things like diatomaceous earth and bentonite clay to disrupt their biofilms. Biofilms are the forts these guys build, because they want to stay alive and they want to be protected, so they’re going to build forts to protect themselves and we have to go in, like our wrecking ball crew and dismantle the forts and start to have them leave. Here’s the thing, it’s never just about the Candida, right?
So if you have heavy metal toxicity, you’re body is going to produce a lot more Candida as a safety mechanism to keep you safe from it, and as you start cleansing, you’re going to need to get rid of those metals. There’s viruses that go hand in hand with Candida, so we’re really doing a lot of unpacking and a lot of disrupting, and that’s the period where you just kind of have to expect. Basically, if you’re having a party and all the people show up who didn’t belong there, you call the cops and it’s going to get messy for a little while.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Before it cleans up.
Christa Orecchio: Yeah.
10. Treatment options through traditional medicine for Candida [34:16]
Diane Sanfilippo: So obviously your program takes people through a whole healing protocol, but are there treatments that are considered to be more like traditional medical approaches to healing this, or are natural treatments really the only and best way to do it?
Christa Orecchio: If you want to do it permanently, where you don’t want to have to deal with this again, taking full courses of antibiotics again notwithstanding, I see that the only way to do it right is to do it naturally. And from my own experience, and with hundreds of private clients, when you start getting on the pharmaceutical antifungals, Nystatin and things like that, it’s great. It will knock it down, it will take it away, but you kind of stay at this certain basal level of health.
So what we’re doing is, we want it to be finishing work, so within my pathogen purge, instead of just hitting it hard with an antifungal, I use 4 different antifungals, because a lot of people are becoming resistant. Candida is smart, it’s opportunistic, it wants to stay alive, it’s going to morph forms if it keeps getting hit with the same antifungal. So what we do in our cleanse, we get rid of the biofilm, kind of slice open the exoskeleton, we carry them out of the body, and then we do a 16-day rotation with 4 different antifungals. I use olive leaf extract, pau d’arco, oregano oil, and grapefruit seed extract, but there are plenty of others you can use if you’re resistant to any one of those 4.
So that’s the way where it can implant deep within intestinal tissue, and those are very strategically picked antifungals. They’re also going to address the metals. They’re also going to address parasites. They’re also going to address a lot of other things that are happening within the body; viruses, and they’re also going to be building to the immune system. So we want to do that whole dance of, not just being really hard with detox, but how do we build and nourish the system at the same time so we have the wherewithal to get through this cleanse. So that’s stage 2.
Stage 3 is really important. You’re never going to get this with the traditional western approach; is the reseeding phase. So you can’t plant flowers in a junkyard, so we have to do our weeding in step 1 and 2; step 3 is we add in the right strains of probiotics to start tilling the soil and getting the good natural life to flow again. So when we start planting that garden, and in step 4 we go heal and seal the leaky gut. We’re doing this across the entire portion of the Candida cleanse, but we really kind of hit it hard with the botanicals in stage 4. And then 5 is we train the body to produce its own hydrochloric acid again, which is the first form of defense to let anything in your body. It’s like the guys on the front lines of the army. So that’s where you lead to permanent healing.
Now you’ve retrained your whole system, and it’s ready to tackle anything, not just Candida, and you’re immune system is truly informed in a positive way, and that can go on and really last, hopefully for the rest of your life. I say, if we do this right, we only have to do it once versus going another route, even in the natural route when you’re just going to address and do that one portion of the pathogen purge. You’re going to have to keep going back and doing it over and over, because you didn’t do the building work that you needed to do, so now the body is informed and knows what balance is so it doesn’t have to go back to that.
Diane Sanfilippo: That’s awesome. That was really, really well rounded answer. I know that we had a bunch of questions that people were asking about, if I have it once, will I have it again, and how do I keep it from coming back, and I think you answered it with that response right there. Because that really is the answer; it’s not about just killing it off. It’s really about setting the stage, doing what you can to attack all the different types of fungus, and then the healing and every step in that process is so critical.
11. How are setbacks handled on the Candida diet [38:26]
One of the questions that we also got was, what if I’m on a cleanse, so let’s just say, yours is 8 weeks. What if they’re on it, and then they have a vacation that’s planned, and for a week, they’re just not on it. Are they going to have to start all over again, are they going to be able to jump back into it? What if it’s even a day or a couple of days where they just mentally, emotionally needed a break, and they had some alcohol, and they had some things that they shouldn’t have eaten for that weekend. Where does that put people, in your experience, what have you seen?
Christa Orecchio: Yeah. So, we’re human, and that’s going to happen. Nothing about my work or the whole journey is about deprivation, denial, or willpower, except the Candida cleanse.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Christa Orecchio: Because seriously, we’re on a mission, you’re doing it once. Unfortunately, it is a one step forward, three steps back with cheating. But it’s more important the first 4 weeks to not cheat than it is the second 4 weeks. And it depends what we’re talking about, Diane. Are you talking one glass of wine and a bite of chocolate cake? Can you dip without diving?
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughing}
Christa Orecchio: Where are we really headed?
Diane Sanfilippo: I don’t know. I know that we’ve had a lot of questions about that. I actually had a friend who was on a Candida cleanse, and it was kind of, like how you said, go out and have fun still, but that was a real struggle, because the type of social activity that surround food, especially when you’re kind of a foodie, and you have friends who really take pleasure. We always laugh when I get together with my paleo friends, that we’ll each be in our own homes, never really eating treats, and then when we get together, we were eating all these treats, just because we’re kind of celebrating being together. And it’s so funny, because we’re like, we don’t normally eat like this, what happened?
So I’ve definitely seen the questions come in, and I’ve seen it happening in everyday life. But I think that’s really important for people to hear that you’ve done this enough times, and the way that you like to run people through it, it’s intense but it’s intended to be once, really.
12. What happens if I relapse after the 8 week Candida diet? [40:35]
Diane Sanfilippo: So what happens if somebody does have a relapse after they go through a full 8 weeks of being really on the program. They really did it, they followed everything, what happens if that does come back? Do they have to go through the 8 weeks again, or is there kind of a short cut that happens once they’ve probably already primed their system.
Christa Orecchio: Yeah, there’s always short cuts that can happen. And I do want to speak to what you said, is that before jumping in is that eating is so ceremonial, and it should be a celebration when we get together with people. I wish that the cleanse wasn’t so austere. It’s terrible for me to go out and get club soda, and lime, and a boring meal. You do have to be like, ok it’s going to be a little boring, and if there’s any way to still get the joy out of the social interaction. I think that’s really important. There are, I call it under the radar, nutrition things that you can do.
If you are going to cheat a little, or say, ok I have one wedding to go to. A week vacation, you’re going to have to start all over, if you’re going to go off the grid for a week. But if you’re going to go to a wedding, and you know you’re going to have a glass of wine, you know you’re going to have a piece of cake, something like that, Saccharomyces boulardii is my only probiotic that I use in the beginning. I don’t add any other probiotics in until the end. That’s a yeast eating strain of probiotic, so we increase the dose, and we increase the dose of antifungals before and after a “cheat”. So you can plan your cheat days.
Now, when you say if they have a relapse after 8 weeks; you shouldn’t have a relapse necessarily unless you’re going on, let’s say a broad spectrum antibiotic, you know, a bactericidal antibiotic that’s going to wipe out everything; good, bad, and indifferent. And even then, you’ve done so much cleanup work that as long as you’re taking the right botanicals, and using the bone broth, and taking care of your gut lining, and also the good flora, adding it back, you should be fine.
It’s when something happened, where maybe they had a large intestine parasite. Maybe they have H. pylori. Maybe they have some sort of protozoa, like blastocystis hominis where they need something else. Or SIBO where they needed more different types of burberine botanicals, or they need black walnut, or they need wormwood. That’s the only way that people would get a relapse, so to speak, is if it didn’t address everything else going on. Because it will have addressed the Candida and the fungus, completely.
Diane Sanfilippo: So even for people who, what if they finish a cleanse, and then a couple of months later they really go on a nasty sugar bender; that shouldn’t push them?
Christa Orecchio: Oh, yeah.
Diane Sanfilippo: Or maybe it will, right, because if it’s a high stress situation, plus the sugar, that could really push them back. I know that you ease them back into, ok, how do you eat after this to continue to prevent it, but have kind of getting your life back.
Christa Orecchio: Yeah, you have to get your life back.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}
Christa Orecchio: Thank you for bringing that up. It’s not like you do this cleanse, and you go right back to the way that you were living.
Diane Sanfilippo: It’s nice that you’re so pleasant and kind, because I’m sure putting people through this pretty intense cleanse, it’s a little rough. But guess what, they come out the other side. And I have people already commenting. I’m doing it, and I’m already starting to feel so much better. I think that’s amazing. But, go ahead. I’m sorry.
Christa Orecchio: Thank you. Yeah, the idea is, I mean we have to create a healthy lifestyle and so the last part of my Candida cleanse is, how do you live an 80/20 balance, and really determine what is your 20%. For me, it’s duck fat fries.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} I saw that picture on Instagram!
Christa Orecchio: You saw that post?
Diane Sanfilippo: I was like, mmm.
Christa Orecchio: {laughs} I know, so good. And you know, you choose a couple of glasses of wine a week, if you want a piece of chocolate. But you’ve changed your lifestyle; you’re never going to go back to the hardcore sugar stuff. You’re going to start cooking with coconut sugar, and you’ve changed your lifestyle. But the idea is that you will naturally, now that your biochemistry is in balance, you’re not going to have those cravings anymore.
Here’s the thing, and I think you would probably agree with me, Diane. The body is hardwired to adapt and survive. So if we can strengthen it and really restore order to it instead of just keep whatever health issues at bay, then we should be able to be a fat burner when there is fat available, and a sugar burner when there is sugar available. The body should be smart enough to toggle back and forth through that if you strengthen your entire constitution. So yeah, it’s learning to live a balanced life and still enjoy your food, and celebration, and all of that. But you definitely can’t go back to the way things were.
Part of the last part of my Candida program addresses the adrenals, and addresses the thyroid, because that’s the rest of the cleanup work. If you start to address those before, it’s good. It might give wherewithal to go through it, but it’s going to be a Band-Aid until the root cause is fixed, and so you’ll start to get more and more strength as you basically start to fill up the life force of the adrenal glands, you’re converting your thyroid hormones now, you can think clearly, and that’s really exciting. Hormonal health comes after digestive health if you want to make it a permanent thing.
Diane Sanfilippo: I thought also, this was something you touched on just a couple of questions back, but I was thinking about it again as you kind of went through, you know how this affects your health in its entirety when you mentioned sinus infections being something that’s super common associated with Candida overgrowth. I was just like, I used to get sinus infections all the time. That was my big thing, I would say probably every 6-8 weeks I was getting a sinus infection, and this was back when I ate a low fat diet, so of course I was eating lots of carbs and definitely wasn’t eating low sugar, particularly. Now it’s like very, very rare that it happens. It’s so interesting to always look back on yourself and what was going on. You’re like, oh, that’s probably what was happening, you know?
Christa Orecchio: Yeah, you become your own health detective.
Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} That’s crazy.
Christa Orecchio: You’re like, oh that makes perfect sense now.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, and everybody knows that certain foods are promoting illness, and too much sugar is not good. But then it’s really looking at, well why wasn’t it good? What was really happening? So it’s just interesting stuff. We have a couple of other questions from Facebook that I wanted to throw at you.
Christa Orecchio: Sure.
13. Efficacy of Diflucan and Candida [47:22]
Diane Sanfilippo: A bunch of people are asking about, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing it right, Diflucan? It’s a prescription. They want to know what’s the deal with it, and how does it work, and I feel like people get to the point where they’re just frustrated, and they want to know is that really going to help me or not? And obviously, we’ve been talking for 45 minutes so I think we know what’s really going to help is this full staged program, but what’s the deal with it? What have you seen, what can it do and not do?
Christa Orecchio: It’s similar to Nystatin, what we were talking about. I’m not against western medicine, I’m really about the bridge and the marriage of both. So if you’re having recurrent, really uncomfortable yeast infections, and you know you’re suffering a lot, I think there’s nothing wrong with taking it just for that. But keep in mind that it’s a Band-Aid of sorts; you still have to change your lifestyle and go through a full and proper excavation of sorts. That’s kind of my same answer of, you’re just going to hit it hard.
Diane Sanfilippo: Right. If they’re dealing with an acute situation, and it’s really painful then that could be the time to turn to that, but it’s probably not going to create a situation where in your body, you’re not going to experience it again. It sounds like it might just come back.
Christa Orecchio: Exactly. You’re just knocking it back. It’s temporary. It’s a Band-Aid, but it’s a Band-Aid that will make you a lot more comfortable, but just know, and that’s unfortunately that’s what I want to reverse and shift, is people doing that. And they just keep going, oh I’ll just take Diflucan 3, 5 times a year. Something like that. And the thing is, you’re body is speaking to you. It really needs help. It needs a total reboot instead of just kind of giving it a Band-Aid. And when you keep letting it go, yeast for longer and longer periods of time, and years, like I said, it splits off and it becomes more fungal, and it causes more and more damage.
The studies are showing, the longer it goes, the metabolic waste it’s excreting is as toxic to the body as if you had nail polish remover in there. So, it’s just something to consider that you can use it to feel more comfortable, but get to the root of what’s going on.
14. Candia cleanse as a preventative of cancer [49:46]
Diane Sanfilippo: So I know that you talk a lot about this type of cleanse as a way to help prevent cancers, I’m going to guess you mean specifically gut cancers, but I know that can really spread to anything when things really start in the gut, when our whole immune system, really the foundation of it is there. That seems to me like, if you’re hitting it with these antibiotics over and over, that’s a situation where getting rid of it that way is not actually going to help prevent cancer of the digestive tract, because you’re not actually healing the whole system, you’re really just creating more imbalance, in a sense, over that period of time.
Christa Orecchio: Yep. I call it trading dollars for pennies in the long run, and it really is. It’s a belief system shift that we need to build true health. We’ve really gotten away from honoring and respecting the power of the human body. We’ve gotten away from trusting our bodies, and this is why we have raging autoimmune disease everywhere, is the wires are so crossed and we’ve hit our poor bodies with so many different things, we haven’t given it a chance to rework itself so to speak. So doing a holistic 5 step approach like this is going to get people back to, or maybe to a level of health they’ve never experienced.
But it’s almost like resetting your genetic code, and trusting the inherent wisdom of the body. Especially in the reseeding phase, when you’ve cleaned up the system, and now you’re planting flowers in the garden, the idea is the body is so smart, the microbiome is so amazing, that when you start to reseed, it’s like a starter log so to speak. The wires are no longer crossed, you’re not confused, you will start to make the specific strains of probiotics unique to wherever you originally came from, be it Europe, or Asia, or Africa. You’re body is so smart it will know to make strains specific to you that you can’t buy in any supplement from the food that you eat, from the air that you breathe, from the water that you drink, and just from your environment. That’s just a level of respecting the body and trusting it that’s an entirely other level, but I’m seeing these changes with real life people over and over again, and it’s incredible, and it’s long lasting.
Support for this podcast is provided by Dragonfly Traditions; natural, nourishing skin care with absolutely no unnecessary chemicals. It’s natural nutrition for the skin. I am a huge fan of Dragonfly from their serum, to their night cream, and everything else the owner, Phoebe, has created. Your skin will be soft and happy with Dragonfly Traditions. If you head over to DragonflyTraditions.com and make a purchase of one or more of their skin care products, you can then add Balanced Bites to your shopping cart for 1 penny. Phoebe will not only send you 2 free lip balms with your order, she’ll also send you that penny back. Remember that’s 2 free lip balms with purchase from Dragonfly Traditions.
15. Mercury amalgam fillings and Candida [52:59}
Diane Sanfilippo: That’s awesome, I love it. We have a couple of other little one off questions here. Is it possible to heal Candida while I still have mercury amalgams? That’s one question that someone had, so it’s a heavy metal related question.
Christa Orecchio: It’s a great question, because again sometimes people don’t necessarily have an issue with Candida, they just have methyl mercury toxicity, and the body is producing Candida as a way of keeping them safe. So not until you get rid of the metals should you try to get rid of the Candida. You don’t want to remove your protective layer. So my answer would be, is to see is that mercury leaking, and how much is it leaking? A hair test is going to give you about 2 months, and let you know in the last two months what kind of metal you’re exposed to, and then a urine test will let you know how much metal is stored in the tissues. I would basically look at those. You can also do a blood test to see just acutely how much metal are you dealing with on a regular basis, that’s metal coming through the blood stream, and then I would address it from there.
Because it can be a chicken or egg issue; detoxing from metals can be really hard on the body, and so you have to make sure the channels of elimination are open. And if you’re going to get amalgam fillings removed, maybe you start a cleanse, you improve the liver’s ability to handle the metals, you improve the kidney’s ability, and you make sure the bowels are flowing so you start a modified cleanse before you let the metals that are released get their way out of the body.
Diane Sanfilippo: Awesome. I know on a previous episode, for anybody who is listening who is interested and curious about mercury amalgam removal, I talked about this with Dr. Amy Myers where she recommends, obviously, looking for a biological dentist because they know how to remove the amalgams safely. She was talking also about MTHFR gene mutations, and some people who have issues with too much mercury or any heavy metals in the body, the exposure itself is not always the number one issue, it’s the body’s inability to detoxify it, which all kinds of feeds into everything we’re talking about today, but that’s kind of seeking out, why is my body having trouble detoxifying these metals. Is it because there is just way too much of it in my body and the environment, or is it because my body is actually impaired running through this detoxification. So that’s kind of a separate issue. I just wanted to recommend that people go back to that episode with Dr. Amy Myers where we talked about it in that episode.
Christa Orecchio: It’s so important. It really is pivotal; you have to address your body’s ability to detox at any given point in time. We’ve got coffee enemas, colonics, infrared saunas. We’ve got lots of different salt flushes, ways that we’re making sure that you’re cleansing on