fighting candida on raw diet AND coconut oil

Question
Hi,

I've been on the raw paleolithic diet since about 6-8 weeks. Since about 3 weeks now, I've been on a more restrictive diet consisting of only meat, olive oil and coconut oil (added 3 weeks ago) in an attempt to fight off candida. I do not eat seafood or anything (such as fruits, also feed candida) that increase histamine levels as I am very sensitive to that and get tired soon after its consumption. I plan to reincorporate fruits and seafood into my diet in about 3 months or as soon as I see some of my yeast symptoms improve significantly (vaginal yeast, dark circles under eyes, atopic dermatitis, occasionally blocked right ear due to mucus, hives here and there, body odor, etc.)

To elaborate on my diet:

- meat (100% grassfed bison and beef), all prefrozen:
  - 48% muscle (loin and round)
  - 48% organs (mostly liver, heart, tongue, kidney)
  - 4% wild hare or caribou when I can find
  - about 0.5-0.8kgs of meat daily
  - 2 big meals daily
- virgin, unrefined, organic coconut oil, about 6 tbsp daily to fight off candida
- extra virgin organic olive oil, about 6 tbsp daily to substitute for the fat I would get from bone marrow and also good against candida

As you can see, there is not much meat variety. However, should I decide to buy organic but not necessarily 100%grassfed or even mostly grainfed, then I would have access to much more variety in terms of species (veal, lamb, pork, duck, chicken, etc) and organs+muscle parts. Also, I would probably be able to get hold of bone marrow and most of the meat would not be prefrozen. In addition, I could incorporate eggs into my diet, from time to time, like duck or chicken eggs (grainfed but organic). I also know of a place where they sell horse, elk, ostrich and all kinds of rarer animals but all non-organic and 100% grainfed. Do you think I should stick to my current 100% grassfed meat diet or add some organic and possibly non-organic meat to increase variety? What would you do in my position?

Since about 3 weeks on my exclusively meat diet with coconut and olive oil, I've noticed the following:
- rarely go to the bathroom (once every 5 to 6 days) but stools are good. And I don't feel heavy or bloated.
- fatigue 30 mins-1 hour after eating a meal (meal always includes coconut oil), not always but often and has been like this for 3 weeks now. I've also gradually increased coconut oil dose. In the beginning, it was giving me more symptoms such as nausea and stomach aches which subsided after a few days.
- cravings, especially for sugar but that recently subsided when I increased mostly fat intake and protein
- increase in hives (on face) since increasing my coconut dose
- on the positive, vaginal discharge improving and much less

Considering all these symptoms, my current diet and my situation (candida, histamine-sensitive, allergies), should I be changing anything about my diet, eliminating coconut oil, introduce fruits but only occasionally or certain fruits, etc? What would you do?

Two things concern me most:
- lack of variety in my diet
- lack of energy that still persists after 3 weeks, always after I eat, more often after my 1st meal of the day (at about noon). Both meals of the day include the same thing and same quantity of oil. Am I really experiencing a detox from coconut oil or does this indicate a problem with coconut oil? I've been consuming olive oil for much longer and never experienced any problems with it.

Thank you very much for your help in this matter.

Kristelle

Answer
Well, if I were in your position, I would definitely have most/much of my meats 100% grass-fed/organic, but I would definitely also want to have some variety in my diet, as well - after all, regardless of good or bad nutrition of the animals concerned, eggs/elk-meat etc. will always have a widely different nutrient-profile to bison/beef.  When I first started the diet, the one thing that kept me going with it was the sheer variety of foods I chose - granted some were less than ideal,  as I hadn't managed to find the right high-quality-sources at the time, but I don't think I could have sustained this diet, in the long-term, without the wide variety of tastes of the various organ-meats/shellfish etc. that I experimented with.

I'm surprised that you stated that elk-meat was 100% grain-fed. When I've looked at such sites on the Web, they usually state that domesticated game-animals are often left out to feed on grass for the summer, and then fed on hay and grains/cereals during the winter-months(winter usually meaning roughly  from October to March).

You should also consider one other possibility. The term "organic" is actually rather loose - there are a number of big agricombines who sell very low-quality but organic-labelled food, just as there are some small-time farmers who can't afford to undergo the expensive conversion to organic status, but whose meat is free of hormones/chemicals and whose animals are fed 100%  on grass etc., and whose food is of much higher quality than the former  - sometimes these latter small-time farmers will use the term "naturally-reared" to describe their meats(as opposed to organic), but most often, not.

Re bathroom visits:- My guess is  that " once every 5 or 6 days" is rather excessive - on the other hand,  you don't seem to feel any typical symptoms of constipation, and Aajonus and others have stated that "regularity" of stools is quite varied among RPDers.

Re Candida etc:- The usual recommendation with candida is to lower carb-intake to below 60g a day for some time. As symptoms gradually improve, you're allowed to  slowly add higher amounts of carbs. Fruit would be fine, but, obviously, raw honey and the like would be a bad idea. Berries, such as strawberries  aren't generally recommended on low-histamine-diet sites, so might be an idea to avoid them. Here's a more detailed website which focuses on which exact  fruits should or shouldn't be eaten on a low-histamine diet:-

http://tinyurl.com/2wwhrw


Re Coconut-oil/Fatigue:- Generally speaking, a genuine detox is usually short-term in nature, occurring rather infrequently, and gradually diminishing to zero, over a period of months/years - if the negative symptoms keep on increasing and are constant, and/or  always coincide with the consumption of a particular food, then it's unlikely to be a genuine detox. What I would suggest is that you experiment a little. Try eating no coconut-oil at all for a week or two to see if the fatigue(or the hives on the face) diminish in effect - or you could significantly increase coconut-oil-intake as a percentage of your diet, to see if the fatigue/hives  increases in severity.

Another point to consider re fatigue is that there is a transitional period(said to be anywhere from  c. 2 to 9 weeks) which is commonly experienced by people following a zero-carb diet.  This transitional period often involves a certain level of fatigue. When I tried zero-carb(c.5-6 week-long experiments) I too experienced fatigue after 3 weeks, along with a certain loss of appetite, so I went back to low-carb instead. Of course, since you more or less have to eat as low a carb-intake as possible(for a few weeks/months)  to fight off the candida, this might be a little awkward for you.

Hope This Helps,
RPG  

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