Why I Don’t Have Fermented Foods on My Blog

This site is focused on health and wellness, so why do I not talk much about fermented foods?

I've got posts about going sugar-free, about the dangers of gluten, and about heavy metal toxicity and the burden of toxins on our health.

But aside from one post about homemade sauerkraut, there's just not much about cultured foods here.

Read on to find out why.

Remember my series on Candida and Gut Health from a while ago? If you didn't read it, hop on over there. You'll get to see up close and personal the way that candida wreaked havoc on my body and my life.

I had candida in a bad way and if you look around the internet, many people say that kombucha and fermented foods are one of the key ways to rid oneself of candida.

But they didn't work for me; here's what happened instead.

The Candida Diet and Fermented Foods

When I first started to address my candida mess, I went on a pretty strict dietary regimen that excluded all sugary foods, and limited starches. The program included fermented foods in the “restricted” category, stating that often when folks were dealing with systemic candida, their bodies were sensitized to yeast products and fermented foods.  Instead of the body responding positively to the introduction of such “beneficial foods,” their bodies might react negatively instead.

So I followed that prescription and ate no:

• kombucha
• kefir
• vinegars
• mustard
• yeast
• nutritional yeast

The whole thing was pretty complex, but overall I was getting better. Sort of. Actually, there is are reasons why the Candida Diet didn't “do it” for me, but I'll touch on that in a future post.  So make sure you subscribe if you haven't already.

Anyway, I always wondered about the exclusion of fermented foods from the list of allowed foods, because there are many who tout cultured foods as being key to overcoming candidiasis (systemic candida).

Trial #1: Super Fermented Drink

After a while of “doing the Candida Diet,” I was hitting a wall. So I talked with a man who had a lot of experience in candida, heavy metals, and the like, and he recommended my doing a “flush the bad guys out” protocol.

The Plan? Buy a boatload (about 5 2 liter bottles) of heavy-duty probiotic drink, and drink a bunch of it over the course of a few weeks.

It was expensive, but I was desperate to get better.

So I bought it and started to drink.

What followed was very unpleasant and my symptoms worsened a LOT.

Itching everywhere. Intense and uncomfortable, and even frightening.

I really didn't think I could go on and see where this might lead. I felt like my body was rebelling against me and I was ready to surrender.

I packed up the unused portion of the boatload and paid to return it.

Trial #2: Kombucha

Fast forward a few years. I'd made a lot of changes: tightened up my diet and worked on adrenal healing, heavy metal toxicity, and more. It was a hard, hard time for me but I was starting to have more energy and wanted to start making kombucha for my family (and I hoped for me as well).

So I did. And I drank.

Not good. More itching. Lots of it. Skin, scalp, ears, and the dreaded feminine itching thing (sorry for the TMI).

I talked with my practitioner and she said that maybe I was reacting to the fermentation, or perhaps I should just go with fermented veggies since they have no sugar that can remain in them and that I could try again down the road.

Now, to be clear, I fermented my kombucha 'til it tasted like a strong vinegar, so I think there was little to no sugar in that stuff, but I still wasn't tolerating it.

I ended up trying to ferment some carrots, but they didn't turn out well.

So since I couldn't tolerate it, and I was still pretty low on energy, the SCOBY died and I left the dream of fermented foods alone for awhile.

Trial #3: Fermented Superfood Probiotic

I started taking a new fermented superfood probiotic in July of 2012.

I went right into a full serving, but I ended up having some ear itching again and thought I needed to back off. The symptoms went away immediately, so I thought I was having a reaction to fermentation. Again.

I decided to back off, but tried again around October.

Same thing. Ear itching and sinus issues.

I figured fermented foods and I just didn't get along.

Trial #4: Fermented Superfood Probiotic

In March of 2013, I decided to try one more time to see if I could handle the fermented food probiotic.

I really really wanted to add this stuff to my diet and felt like the probiotic was really great for my gut.

There are so many probiotics out there and I've tried A LOT of them. With most of them, I couldn't tell if they were working, but with this one, I could tell for sure that it was.

So I tried.

I started with 1/8 of a teaspoon and then 1/4 and was tolerating it pretty well.

Then I upped my dose of the probiotic to 1/2 teaspoon and my eyes started itching, so once again, I backed off.

Trial #5: Lots of Fermented Foods

By mid-April, I was trying again, determined to get this stuff into my system.

I ramped my dosage up to 1 teaspoon per day and felt great (tons of energy and great digestion), but I ate some other foods with yeast in them on April 15 and woke up with INTENSE itching in my ears.

Well, I know this is kind of gross, but my ears were peeling inside a little and the discharge from one of my ears smelled like yeast.

Was this my body trying to get rid of candida?

Or was this a reaction to the fermented foods?

Regardless, it seemed I was doomed.

Trial #6: The Big Guns

Just 3 days later, I was given the chance of a lifetime.

The chance to talk with someone who really knows his stuff about probiotics: an expert in the field of probiotics and superfoods.

I figured he'd be super busy and I'd get about 5-10 minutes, but I got over an hour.

And this was not just some health food guy who thinks probiotics are important.

This is the man who developed the fermented superfood powder that I'd been taking since July 2012.

His name is Czerral, and here's just a peek at his resume:

• in 1979 became well known for his role in bringing spirulina to the world market
• in 1994, he introduced the first and only “Certified Organic Spirulina” to the
  Southern Hemisphere

Pretty impressive, no?

I went through the whole story with him about my adrenal and candida issues, and how I'd tried over and over again to add fermented foods to my diet with no luck.

His thinking?

Histamine or Die-off?

Czerral said that it was unlikely that I was reacting to the powdered superfood probiotic (or that I would react to the liquid one) because:

1.  The probiotic powder and the drink are made up of foods.

2.  They are fermented in a similar manner to how the foods are dealt with in the body, so the resulting product is predigested foods that have been acted upon by bacteria similar to how our body digests them.

3.  The probiotics are both fermented in carefully controlled environments to make sure the resulting products are pure and not contaminated with stray yeasts or bacteria.

So unless you react to the foods in the probiotics, you shouldn't react to the probiotics.

(And even then, since the foods are predigested, people often can tolerate the foods in these products even if they are sensitive to them.)

The Plan for Introducing Fermented Foods

Czerral said I should “pound the heck out of my gut with a heavy saturation of good bacteria (yes, those were his exact words).

The powder I was already taking was good, but he recommended a liquid drink (formerly called Fast Tract) that has higher bacteria counts so it would have a more intensive effect on my gut.

Here are the nuts and bolts of his recommendation:

1.  Buy 4 bottles of Fast Tract

2.  Drink 1 bottle per week. Each bottle is supposed to last for 1 month so this was very intense.

His thinking was that my gut is still really overrun with the “bad guys” and that I needed to totally overwhelm them with beneficial bacteria to get my gut back in balance.

Well, I was pretty nervous about:

• spending that much money
• about what I might experience (I'd had enough bad experiences with itching and the like. If I drink a whole bottle in a week, what might happen to me? Might I become one giant itching, flaky mess?)

I talked it over with my husband, and we decided to purchase 1 bottle for a trial run to make sure it didn’t kill me.

So, I bought it and drank it.

The Results of Intense Fermented Food Trial

I started with about 1/2 the daily dose.

I had a pretty intense reaction immediately.

Terrible itching in my ears, but then nothing. No other itching or side effects.

The bad itching happened once or twice over the next few days, immediately after taking the probiotic drink. But after about 2 weeks, the ear itching was almost gone.

I kept upping the dose a little and eventually got brave and just downed the daily dose plus a little.

Then I added in a full dose of the fermented superfood powdered probiotic on alternating days, with no bad effects.

I also had a few swigs of water kefir (homemade) now and then.

I had some constipation (sorry for the TMI) and some fatigue and nausea that was resolved by liver support and zeolite.

So it seemed that Czerral was correct and that I just needed to really be aggressive to get the “bad bugs” out and the “good bugs” in.

Conclusion

Healing is a balance and determining what is going on with your health can be tough. However, good bacteria are important for sure and fermented foods are a great option for just about anyone.

A few things to keep in mind, however, is that sometimes, when dealing with histamines, one should be cautious. Histamine intolerance is something that you can recover from, but while you're dealing with the condition looking into low-histamine probiotics can be helpful.

But now, I DO have fermented foods on my site: Easy Homemade Sauerkraut and Gluten-free Sourdough Starter, and there will be more to come!

Fermented Foods Teleseminar

While all of this was going on, I had a teleseminar with Czerral about this whole topic.

Czerral and I were joined by Lacey of KV Organics. She's a gem of a gal and she and I have talked about probiotics and gut health and natural clean products for a long time.

When you sign up for the teleseminar, you might get communications from Lacey, but she isn't sending any or many emails out these days as she's very busy doing ministry in the UK these days.

Have you had reactions to fermented foods?

By the way, the photo up there was taken by Michaela of Vicariously Vintage.