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CANDIDA ALBICANS & low-glycemic desserts

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coconut-flourWhy, oh why, should we care about the glycemic levels of our foods?  When I was young(er) I fathomed it was more linked to type 2 diabetes and waist lines.  Turns out, having a high level of sugar in your blood stream is a lot more than that.

A problem I recently encountered, and a very un-fun one that results from having too much sugar and caffeine is an overgrowth of yeast in the intestines, called candida albicans.  It’s a pretty brutal thing to rid yourself of, and after 6 months of eating a virtually sugar and caffeine-free diet (no booze, no booze ahhhh) I am now on a round of anti-fungals to hopefully knock it out.  Fingers super crossed.

alcoholic beverage prohibited

The things is, this candida albicans yeast feeds off of sugar, as yeasts do.  So, while it was probably the fact that I simultaneously loved sweets and had to take several antibiotics as a child/adult for constant throat infections, my continuing to eat sugar and appease my taste for wine is just fueling this little big bug inside of me.

We can look at the glass half empty or half full.  Or we can just look at it.  In plain sight, here are the things I’ve gathered from eating this diet that I’ll keep with me after I’ve finished it:

1. I didn’t realize how much sugar I was eating before and how much it can hurt the natural balance of your intestinal walls.  Everyone has a little bit of yeast in their stomach, but you also have bacteria.  That’s why people are talking about probiotics more with more research, because it helps balance out the yeast we feed with our modern diets.  Even if I avoided refined sugar with either agave nectar, date paste, fruits, wine, etc, the case and point is that in your body, it’s still processed as sugar, especially if you have a condition where your body is imbalanced or veering towards being so.

flour-on-table

2. I’ve cut out all products that are refined or full of starch, meaning white rice, white rice flour, potatoes, beans, and their byproducts.  The resulting carbohydrates left are buckwheat, brown rice, quinoa, and coconut flour.  Baking has become a lot more moist, in fact, as these are rich and complex flours while they remain light for the body!

3. I don’t miss real sugar.  I mean it.  I do miss booze, but I don’t miss the pastries I ate before versus the pastries I make myself now.  This is coming from a girl who’s first words were “soda baby” because my mom asked me if I wanted some “soda, baby?” when I was infantile.  Substituting sugar with xylitol and butter with coconut oil has not only made eating dessert a curing experience, but also brought out the other flavors in the dessert that I’ve been missing when it’s simply masked by… too sweet.

So, here comes the question, how do we make desserts, something that is inevitably, in the very sense of the word sweet, sweet?  Here’s how:

rice-flour

1. Choose low-glycemic flours: A glycemic index is based off of 0-100, 100 being the most sugary, in lay man’s terms.  Anything with a glycemic index under 55 is considered low glycemic.  The gluten- and nut-flours with the lowest glycemic indexes are buckwheat and coconut, coming in at around 35!  Then, you’ll have brown rice and quinoa flours, which ring in at about 40.

2. Substitute butter with coconut oil and olive oil.  Butter is made from milk, and therefore has lactose.  Lactose is a sugar.  Period.  Also, if you have an infection similar to that I am experiencing, coconut oil’s caprylic acid and the oleolic acid of olive oil both combat microbes, killing the corporal invaders.

3. Replace real sugar with xylitol or stevia, or if you’re not experiencing an inbalance, use agave nectar.  Xylitol is sugar made from birch.  Attention!  Sometimes it’s derived from corn with companies trying to rip you off, so make sure that if you buy it, it’s definitely from birch.  (you can get it online here: United States or France) Xylitol only has a glycemic index of 8!  (Real sugar has one of 100, so that’s nothing.)  You can also use stevia, which has practically no effect whatsoever on glucose levels in the blood, but it has an aftertaste that many find unpleasant, myself included.  A fond favorite amongst many health foodies is agave nectar, which has a GI level of about 13.  It is made of fructose, however, which is quickly processed by the body, making it inferior to xylitol in the way it affects something like candida albicans.

Want some recipes to put the proof in the pudding?

Here are two low-glycemic Bubble Child dessert videos!

The post CANDIDA ALBICANS & low-glycemic desserts appeared first on bubblechild.


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