At 08:03 AM 5/9/06 -0700, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>Have a friend up here at work who has fibromyalgia. I know nothing
>about the condition but suggested that changing her eating habits might
>help.  So she'd like to start a paleo diet

There are those who believe Fibromyalgia is an effect of Candida Albicans, 
or maybe even the same thing.  There are others who say they're different 
but both caused by bad nutritional habits and weakened immunity, therefore 
they both respond to similar dietary approaches.  And then there are those 
who say that neither condition actually exists.  I don't know enough to get 
authoritative, but your friend might want to look it up.  If she scores 
high on Dr Crook's test 
<http://www.drpodell.org/yeast-infection-treatments.shtml>, if she has had 
a lot of antibiotics in her lifetime (especially shortly before periods of 
unexplained illness), if she is prone to yeast infections or athlete's 
foot, then Candida should be considered as a possible cause.

If a Candida connection is suspected, she will need a much stricter diet 
than Paleo until the Candida overgrowth is under control.  This may take 
many months.  In particular, fruits will cause problems and must be avoided 
until they can be slowly reintroduced to the diet.  Nuts should be 
avoided.  Even vegetables are strictly screened based on complexity and GI 
(high complexity and low sugar = better).  She'll also want to take 
antifungals early in the diet (to kill the bad guys), and probiotics later 
on (to reintroduce the good guys).

Other than that, the Candida Diet is very similar to hardcore Paleo.  A 
good resource is Bee Wilder's group "CandidaSupport" at Yahoo Groups.

- S.



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Getting Primitive
A Natural Inquiry
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