Hello,

I'm new to the list, I'm 45 years old, generally a health and
exercise enthusiast, have had to increasingly modify my diet (cut
out wheat, cut out sugar, etc) Some recent physical changes made me
concerned and get serious that I had to do something about my
candida condition. How do I know I have candida? I gone on maybe 6
rounds (maybe more) of antibiotics for the last 5 years or so for
uti's (for some reason I couldn't bring myself to take cranberry
caps like my vitamins, now I the cranberry everyday, can't afford to
get another uti, antibiotic resistance would be absolute hell.) I'd
been allergic to the standard treatment, sulfa, so the ER usually
would be me on Cipro, a very powerful broad spectrum antibiotic,
what a mistake) I've had first been on antibiotics when i was 6
years old, have had itchy dry skin my whole life, and now beginning
to understand that I've probably had this illness my whole life.

A couple of years ago, I went on a veggie diet for 2 days and got
sick as a dog, flu symptoms, explosive diarrhea, I didn't really
understand what was happening at the time but I ate a bunch of sugar
and got well fairly fast. I've been dreading having to a non carb
sugar diet because I thought i would get sick as a dog with the die
off, but recently I developed inflammation in my body (the lining of
lungs, breasts inflammed month round, severe back pain around my
period)can't sleep thru the night, got a strange feeling of dryness
and dehydration which is associated with systemic candida. What has
scared me most is that my heart was palpating in a different way...i
started to really think that the candida was spreading systemically
and more insidiously. I had gotten so carb sugar addicted I couldn't
stop my eating habits, until the last month when I got scared.

I did add organic fish/flax oil (in a bottle) with primrose/borage
oil(also bottle seems to absorb better than the caps) and the
inflammation has abated alot. I also started vegetable juicing daily
(a whole bunch of parsley/carrot/cucumbr/kale/celery) the parsley is
supposed to be a wonderful blood cleanser. I never stopped
exercising and sweating 4-5 days a week, so my overall energy is
pretty high though i have been staying home and resting alot more
lately. It's like i have to really turn inward to make the kind of
change I'm about to do. I've been doing alot of written affirmations
and it has brought me to this point where I know I need to make the
big change.

Recently I bought grapefruit seed extract and with only 5 drops in a
glass of water, i started to have brain fog (never experienced that
before and the creepy icky itchy feeling when you start to get the
toxic overload. I had to chug water with lemon and went for steams
and that seemed to help.

My question is do I just go on a veggie diet (i'll need to read more
about kefir and cultured veggies, never heard of them before) for a
month, suffer thru the die off, then start the grapefruit seed
extract for a couple of months? How often do I need to do colonics
to keep from having a toxic overload. I know my liver had been
congested from the increasing burden as I started to get constipated
consistently even though i always had a high fiber diet.

I'm not seeing a doctor or naturopath about this, I should probably
get a referral. I'm in Sonoma county, no calif.

I'll be reading the archived posts for info, but any info would be
appreciated.