There’s a huge amount of confusion on the web about candida & die-off.
If you’ve had a yeast infection for a while, you’ve probably read that if your symptoms get worse while trying to get rid of candida, it’s a sign of “die-off” or what we call a Herxheimer reaction.
Maybe you’ve read that as candida cells die, they release toxins into your bloodstream.
And that these toxins can cause a variety of symptoms including increased brain fog, nausea, skin breakouts, irritability, fatigue and more. . .
Or that die-off is a necessary and inevitable part of the recovery process & that “you have to go through the bad to get to the good” or “tough it out” to get well.
We gotten many emails from customers that said things like,
“Oh I had terrible die-off. I had a bit of pizza and had die-off.”
“I took supplement xyz, I had immediate die-off.”
“I changed my diet. I started to eat more eggs. I got die-off.”
“I took a probiotic, I had die-off.”
“I went to the museum, I had die-off.”
Die-off, die-off, die-off. We hear this die-off stuff all the time.
People are always telling us they’re getting die-off. We think people are getting confused. They don’t understand what die-off is or how it really occurs.
Because true die-off is very rare.
We’ll explain why this is in a moment.
There’s many reasons why you could be feeling the way you are. And you may mislabel these symptoms as die-off or a Herxheimer reaction when in fact you’re experiencing something else entirely.
You’re experiencing an aggravation.
Listen carefully as we explain why this occurs and what the difference is between classic die-off & what 99% of people experience but call die-off. . .
What True Die-Off Feels Like
True die-off occurs when large amounts of yeast cells die & the immune system starts attacking them. Various chemicals (at least 79 according to studies) get released during this process & these create a lot of havoc in the body.
Some people get minor reactions that last for a few days or a week, while others can stay sick for weeks or months suffering from severe brain fog, pain, vomiting and nausea.
Our team has only seen true die-off probably a dozen times in over 20 years of working with patients.
That’s not a lot, but when it did happen it’s always been very severe. In most cases, it resulted in the patient being hospitalized because they actually felt like they were going to die.
If your symptoms include chills, fever, lots of sweating, fast heart rate, and terrible skin rashes, it’s probably die-off.
If you feel like you’re dying, it’s probably die-off.
Most patients who contact us thinking they’ve got die-off don’t feel like they’re dying. They just feel bad or sick.
There’s a big difference in between. So please don’t get die-off confused with something like a detox reaction or a change in diet or an improper use of a supplement (more on this in a moment).
These are aggravations.
Keep reading & we’ll tell you how to avoid feeling sick while recovering from candida.
How to Avoid Feeling Like Crap During Your Recovery From Candida
There are many reasons why you may experience symptoms which you believe are die-off. It could from of a detox reaction, an abrupt change in diet or from taking too many supplements too fast.
The #1 reason people feel ill at the start of an anti-candida program is because they make too many changes too quickly.
Let’s say you were drinking 3 or 4 cups of coffee a day & one day all of a sudden you stop. You radically change your diet & remove all gluten, all processed foods & everything else your bowel flora is used to you eating. Then in the same week you start taking an anti-fungal & perhaps a probiotic.
Then when you feel sick you email us and say, “It’s die off!”
Hang on a minute. What about the caffeine withdrawal?
What about the fact that you stopped eating bread or gluten & doubled your intake of meat or fish? This can trigger a rapid change in bowel flora & make you feel spaced out, tired or bloated.
It can also upregulate your kidneys and liver.
Because as soon as you start drinking more juice or water or taking B vitamins or minerals like magnesium it’s going to activate your body’s natural cleansing responses. This can make you feel washed out & cause sore muscles, bad breath, bowel changes and more.
All these things can occur just by taking dietary supplements.
Are you killing candida? Are you feeling sick because candida is dying?
No.
It’s not the candida. It’s your body finally starting to cleanse.
If you’ve got severe candida where you’ve been sick for a long time and have major brain fog, joint pain, fatigue, & lots of gut problems, you need to be very careful when you start a course of treatment.
You need to make changes slowly, particularly if you’re in your 40’s or 50’s or 60’s.
This especially applies to supplements.
Some patients think if you take a huge dosage of something, it’s going to hurry up & kill all the candida in your body.
This is a stupid way of thinking.
If you want to see what true die-off feels like, go ahead, make lots & lots of changes abruptly. Take 15, 20, even 30 antifungal tablets a day like some folks we know did thinking they were going to get rid of candida fast.
All you’re going to is make yourself feel sick & get bad aggravations.
You don’t need to feel terrible for weeks or the entirety of your treatment.
You just need a bit of common sense & the correct protocol. Then you don’t have to experience die-off or any of the symptoms you think are die-off.
Candida Die-Off & Diet
Another topic we want to talk to you about in this article is diet.
If you’re planning to start an anti-candida diet & don’t want to feel sick, you’ve got to ease into it slowly over a period of two to three weeks.
If you want to feel sick, go from zero to hero over night.
Because let’s just say, for example, you’re reading this and you’re not eating a very healthy diet. You’re eating a poor diet or you’re eating healthy here & there but still making poor decisions around eating good food.
Then all of a sudden you cut all the bad stuff out and go on a health kick.
How do you think your body is going to react?
It’s not going to like it.
It’s based its whole digestive system (including the output of enzymes of the stomach & pancreas) around what you’re currently eating.
You’d get bloating, gas, fatigue and headaches. Never go from a crap diet to an incredibly healthy diet with take a lot of supplements over night. You’re going to feel sick.
If you want more information on how to structure your diet to avoid aggravations during a candida cleanse, check out our Candida Crusher Shopping Guide PDF.
You can access it for free here.
Our CanXida formulas of course do NOT cause die-off OR aggravations (assuming you follow the dosage instructions in the CanXida User Guide).