I’m preparing a presentation on candidiasis, and I’m running across treatment recommendations that call for avoiding sugar, artificial sweeteners, dairy, alcohol, cheese, caffeine, gluten, bread, nuts, mushrooms, and vinegar.
Now, I’ve found one small study that found a reduction in vaginal candidiasis when participants reduced dairy, sugar, and artificial sweeteners. I can only access the abstract, so I have no idea how the study was constructed, but I’m willing to include a mention of it, with the caveat that it’s more of a call for further study than a conclusive study itself, given there were only 100 subjects.
Now, as for the rest of the list. My experience and instinct tell me that this is a load of woo crap being peddled to the gullible. And further, that the items chosen are based on magical thinking and ignorance. I.e., mushrooms are fungus, and candida is fungus, therefore, mushrooms “feed” candida and must be eliminated. Likewise, because candida albicans and saccharomyces cerevisiae are both called “yeast,” bread and alcohol are no-nos.
But I don’t have a lot of concrete evidence. Is anyone aware of any research or scholarly articles addressing this stuff?
In the absence of publications supporting or refuting my conclusion, am I making sense here? If I can’t find something substantial to refer people to, I can either ignore these suggestions entirely (there are plenty of other reasonable treatments to discuss) or I could mention that I see these suggestions in some of the literature, but aside from the sweeteners and dairy, they do not seem to have any basis in fact, but from misunderstandings as outlined above.
Help me fight some ignorance here!