i've been trying to follow the candida diet for a couple months now which is incredibly hard for me. with me, i'll go a week and a half or so and get so depressed, exhausted, and have such intense cravings that i just say, "f&^# it!" and binge for like an entire day. i've done that like 3 times in past 2-3 months. i'm not gonna make any progress like that.

so i talked to the woman who wrote this article on weston price website:

http://www.westonaprice.org/moderndiseases/copper-zinc-imbalance.html

she said she still made progress even eating some carbs. would u guys agree it would be better for me to eat some carbs rather than come to a point where i totally binge? i'm trying to be as mind strong as i can be and like i said have been fighting for a few months now with getting this diet right. but i realistically don't know how well i can be perfect just eating fats(butter and virgin coconut oil) and meats along with occasional vegetables. my appetite is horrible too which makes it totally unsatisfying.

so anyways, i also asked her how come i never react to anything like everyone else. cuz her and lots of people on this group and all the others have reactions. either detoxing or a supplement does something or whatever. but i don't get anything. nothing happens. she thinks and i feel also my adrenals are so exhausted that i'm just in this zombie state.

i just hope and pray i can still heal while eating a little bit of carbs a time or two a day. the carbs she said i could have were some potato, plain "kettle brand" chips, brown rice, corn tortilla chips. that's a hella lot better than the options i did have which was nothing.

From my experience and others that I've talked to, the only way for many to completely cut cravings for carbs is to eat very large amounts of butter with your meals. I mean a lot of butter, more than most people would even dare eating. I ate like this for a while and could eat 2 meals a day, without any carbs, no snacks in between, and zero cravings for carbs.

But it may not be bad to eat a small amount of carbs either. I had to eat something strongly probiotic with each meal to get away with some carbs such as homemade kim-chi or sauerkraut.

I can now handle a lot of carbs as long as its from raw milk, but still can't touch carbs from other sources, except for some berries. If I do eat carbs from another source I just feel dull and tired for a day or two.

Good topic as i tried to reintroduce carbs last week into my diet. I tried gluten and i simply couldnt hack it. It tasted real good though. If you're going to do carbs make sure the carbs are high in protein too...try eating beans and pulses. That might balance things out and your adrenals will say thank you also. I tried non gluten grains and brown rice and still got bad reactions.

that's the thing is i have no reactions. i just feel the same all the time. the only reaction i get is more itching from what i know is candida and sometimes i even get that when i eat foods that are on the ok list.

gdawson how do you make your homemade saurkraut? i was gonna start making fermented veggies because a friend gave me some culture starter packs from the body ecology diet brand or whatever. i figured it would be good to eat some of that with every meal.

Hows your energy? Thats really the only symptom I get from carbs, a drop in energy.

To make sauerkraut I follow the recipe from either book, 'Nourishing Traditions' or 'Wild Fermentation', neither require a starter culture, as long as you get organic cabbage it should have the bacteria required naturally on the cabbage. I recommend those books, most libraries should have them, they have lots of interesting fermented veggies that are really good for digestion.

If you don't have any symptoms besides some itchiness I wouldn't worry about restricting too much. I rememeber getting really paranoid that gluten and dairy could have been affecting me but it turned out I can handle both, so you may be fine with some carbs just make sure they are healthy carbs.

Sean, my first candida diet that I went on still included some high carbs. All I did was cut out sugar/wheat/gluten/yeast. See if you can steer clear of foods/products containing any of those at the very least.

I used to be able to include potatoe, rice wafers (gluten free), fruit (limited amounts), sugar free carob (my substitute for chocolate and what I ate as a treat). Potatoe chips, potatoe fries etc. Any wheat/gluten free cereals. I could still handle some milk in my cereals and teas etc.

I'd advise against coffee. Even then when I could handle those carb foods, coffee was always an issue. And still is today for me and I hear it contains cadmium?

So why don't you go on a sugar/wheat/gluten/yeast free diet and see how you go with including some carbs? You may need to do this if you find you are throwing the diet completely away by cheating on the major stuff, which will impact you greatly and will not allow progress.

If you include some healthy carbs, as suggested above, you maybe ok. Just excluding the major stuff as I mentioned maybe enough for you to make some progress. It was for me back then. I made GREAT progress after a few weeks of this.

I then started including raw vegetable salads and my progress increased even further. It was like major cleansing. I was lucky enough to be able to also have raw fruit, which is also very cleansing. But I'd still be a little careful with fruit in the early stages. It's very healthy, but may still be a little too much natural sugar....again it maybe ok, but I'd keep it limited at first until you're a bit more confident to have more.

If you can knock out the sugar/wheat/gluten/yeast products and do that for weeks, THEN you should be in a better position to see if excluding just these alone have made a difference in your condition. If they have and you do well? You will still have ample foods you can consume. Moreso than myself!

The carbohydrate cravings are probably due to low serotonin levels. You can boost your serotonin levels with licorice root. Licorice root tea has no calories. It also has other medicinal properties.

http://www.herbwisdom.com/herb-licorice-root.html

gdawson,

that's the biggest problem is i literally have no energy. i'm in chronic burnout and fatigue. it's been that way for so long. for my entire life all i lived on was carbs, processed foods, sweets, and sodas. and i know i was born with major toxicity so those foods i'm sure just were the last straw. i do have a lot more symptoms other than itchiness. it's just that because i'm in such a chronic state of fatigue that i don't really react to things i don't think and that's the only thing i can gauge whether or not the food is bad. but like i said, sometimes i get itching even when i eat good foods.

bex,

thanks for writing me. i really feel it would be better to eat some carbs too rather than binge. so maybe i can keep trying to eat the really strict diet and when i get a really intense craving i'll go to the carbs you listed. that would be a lot better than before. the woman in the article made me laugh because she said she was really trying and next thing she knew she went to the store and was drinking a bottle of chocolate syrup. that's about how i get sometimes.

Shawn, i am not familiar with your story... Do you have a toxicity problem?

Mercury?

Have you tried an active detox like ALA? What are you doing to get better?

hey jammes,

according to hair testing and my symptoms i've had since birth, i was shown to have major copper toxicity. but what i've learned is if you have fatigue like i do and stored metals even if copper MAY be the primary one, i still have other metals too. like a lot of aluminum showed up too.

i never did get amalgam fillings and neither did my mother. i'm sure i have mercury but i feel copper is the biggest concern like in this article from weston price:

http://www.westonaprice.org/moderndiseases/copper-zinc-imbalance.html

i feel all the same stuff though as everyone on here. as far as diet, i'm just trying to eat the candida diet that bex has described before, now taking basic vitamin/minerals, and using a infrared sauna.

i'm just starting really to try and get better past couple months.

I know plenty of people who are mercury poisoned and have symptoms of mercury even if they never had any fillings. One person ate excessive amounts of tuna at one time, another just had vaccines and ate fish occasionally.

Did your hair test show deranged mineral transport? I know you showed a lot of copper but mercury and copper go hand in hand many times.

Have you seen a doctor for your copper toxicity?

There are certain genetic diseases that can make you copper toxic... like this...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson's_disease

Mainstream medicine can help you with this.

Some people have high copper because of mercury toxicity. Mainstream medicine cannot help you with this. This is treated with Cutler ALA chelation.

Have you seen a MD to make sure you don't have some kind of genetic copper problem?

Maybe it can help if you post your hair test here...

If you are sure you have excess copper, you could take 1 mg a day of molybdenum and 50-80 mg a day of zinc. Those should help decrease your copper levels. Perhaps you should also have your tap water tested for copper, or else switch to drinking bottled water.

gdawson,

i probably do have mercury too because i did have vaccines when i was little. i'm not sure about derranged mineral transport. it didn't say anything about that. basically, i'm deficient in all the good nutrients and loaded with toxins.

jammes,

i haven't seen a mainstream medical doctor becasue it's just like mercury toxicity. they would only give me drugs and wouldn't even know what i was talking about.

yea, wilsons is more of an acute and genetic problem while mine is more of an accumulated chronic problem. basically, it is was passed down congenitally becasue my mom has high copper to a lesser degree and passed it down when she was pregnant. the books on high copper and test told me that the toxicity is passed down in the placenta. since i've had these symptoms since my earliest memories, it makes the most sense to me that's where i got my toxicity.

as far as the test, it is more complicated than just reading the numbers so i dunno how beneficial it would be to post it. the whole test is interpreted by ratios of other minerals and basically what your metabolism is. because my metabolism is really slow, it says i have other toxicities other than copper which mercury is probably one. even the copper didn't show up but the lab has been doing this for like 60 years so they know based on interpretation that as soon as my body starts building energy and able to excrete toxins, the copper will start rising on the test along with other toxins too like mercury or aluminum. they said that is the primary goal to start eliminating and building my adrenals so that i can do that.

it's pretty fascinating way of testing. i've had 3 tests myself, my mom has, and like 3 other friends from www.arltma.com and it was very accurate as far as reading our symptoms, energy level, etc based on the interpretation.

so i decided to take college level courses on it.

yea, wilsons is more of an acute and genetic problem while mine is more of an accumulated chronic problem.

I don't believe this. Some people with a genetic problem will accumulate copper. This is a lifelong condition but can be treated well. In this case they don't suppress your symptoms but give you (chelating)drugs that help your body with elimination.

If i were you i would see a MD to make sure you don't have this problem because it cannot be treated with herbs or diet.

You also need to make an other hair test to confirm/exclude mercury poisoning.

Here is more information:

http://home.earthlink.net/~moriam/HOW_TO_hair_test.html

I recommend that you do more testing to find out what toxicity problem you really have.

Both mercury and copper poisoning can be treated well and you can recover but first you need to find out what you really have.

This book is also useful:

http://www.noamalgam.com/hairtestbook.html

Good luck.

I can so relate to what you are talking about with the candida diet. I don't do well on dropping all carbs. I cannot do it. I get VERY weak and just can't keep it up. I also get the urge to binge, and do... usually on fruit, but it's still sugar. I'm actually in a catch 22 with my diet right now, and it's because of the metals, and until they come out, all i'll be able to do is manage things the best I can. If I eat mostly simple carbs, my adrenal fatigue and hypoglycemia are a problem, but my colitis seems better. If I eat complex only, my colitis seems worse, but my adrenal fatigue and hypoglycemia are better. I can't drop to a low enough level of carbs for those things to improve, because I don't digest protein well enough and apparently can't convert it energy very well either. so... danged if i do... danged if I don't.

I've been reading a lot about copper tox lately because I'm starting to suspect I have a problem with it. I go nuts when I consume too many nuts, and get this joint pain. It could be something else, but the symptoms fit Cu tox symptoms. I do this to nuts I'm not allergic to as well as ones I am, so it's not allergy (IgE or IgG reaction). I also fit some of the symptoms and have high copper amalgams, so it wouldn't be a far stretch. Anyway, I have recently been diagnosed with lymphocytic colitis, and one of the diets that seems to work well for LC people is the paleo diet, which is very low in carbs. I've tried cutting back my carbs heavily and my body doesn't make energy very well from protein, like others' seem to do. One of the side-effects of Cu tox can be problems with digesting protein because of the zinc depletion that is associated with it, and Zn is required for at least one of the enzymes involved in protein digestion. Those who do well on diets low in carbs, probably digest their protein pretty well.

If it is Cu tox, like others have suggested, Zn supplements can help, but don't take them at the same time as Calcium. Also, Vit C is supposed to help with Cu tox (I believe it is a direct antagonist). I'm assuming that the sodium ascorbate form would be the best to use. Other things I've seen listed as helpful for Cu tox is B6 (I never like to take the Bs in isolation though; I'd rather use a complex. I also found the coenzymated form much better for me, because I wasn't converting the regular form to a bioactive form very efficiently), molybdenum (no idea how much),and things that improve bile flow, since it is mainly excreted through the bile.

Hope you find out what your toxicities are soon. I'm in the process of trying to find out now about mine. I'm not sure what I think about the hair test, and what it means. I have and have read Cutler's book on Hair Test Interpretation, but haven't so far tested mercury toxic on the test, and there is no doubt in my mind I'm Hg toxic; my copper reads perfectly normal on it. Well, the last one was anyway. I've got a new one on the way right now, so we'll see what it says. I'm thinking of doing the red blood cell test for copper and adding a ceruloplasmin level to that (if you can actually have that tested). I know I'm Hg toxic, and strongly suspect copper, and possibly lead (although there's really no good way to test that that I know of). Any others would be a surprise.

Shonda

Sean ,
You say that you get joint pain from eating nuts . I was watching TV the other day and a doctor was saying that nuts cause immflation and joint pain . I wonder why that would be considering many of them have omega 3 and vit E .