Whenever you make large changes in life, the first week can be the most intense; our experience was no different during our candida cleanse. 

Some potentially uncomfortable side effects are extremely common when undertaking a candida cleanse, as large amounts of fungus die and release their toxic metabolic byproducts into the human body all at once. 

This is so normal that it has a name (a Herxheimer reaction), but it can cause symptoms that lead some people to prematurely abort their full cleanse protocol. 

Since all people are different and have various factors affecting their lives and health, our group experienced a whole cascade of symptoms. However, there are a few reoccurring symptoms that all of us experienced. We want to share these with you so you will have an idea of what to expect if and when you decide to embark on this same journey of health! 

Let's start off with Day 1 and take a look at our most common symptoms:

The chart above shows the top three occurring symptoms are 

1. Tiredness
2. Excessively strong feelings or emotions, and 
3. Increased appetite

Now let's dig deeper into each one!

Tiredness / fatigue while detoxing

We were actually anticipating that the top symptom while doing this cleanse would be decreased energy levels, as it is commonly known that energy levels are often affected when your body goes through change - especially when cleaning out things that should not be in our body. Fatigue is very commonly experienced in these times.

It is much like being sick when your immune system and white blood cells are working very hard to clear out a foreign invader: you might feel the need to sleep a lot more to give your body the energy it needs to keep working hard on the task at hand! 

Excessively strong feelings or emotions while detoxing

Candida overgrowth usually effects the digestive tract first. The gut has more nerves than the spinal cord and more neurotransmitters than the brain; in fact, research shows that 95% of the body's serotonin is located in the guts. Some even refer to it as the body's second brain, so it may come as no surprise that intense thoughts and feelings may be stirred up when cleaning out this system (or that candida overgrowth is linked to depression, anxiety, and ADHD, but that's a topic for another post).

Our physical bodies are much more connected to our emotions and memories than most people realize! If people have emotional issues they are working through, it will often cause them physical pain or ailments. In turn, it makes total sense that when you are cleansing your physical being you might release some clogged up emotional aspects as well. 

The most common trait our group has seen from these emotional cleansing of feelings is either extreme sadness, a little bit of old frustration/anger, and in some cases extreme happiness. Many of us have remembered old traumas vividly over the last week, and this really is a blessing if you don't ignore what is happening - which is might be what caused it to get stuck in the first place! If you look at past trauma from an objective point of view, it is usually easier to understand why that might be coming up during this cleansing process, and it can help to release the trauma. 

This is where the support of a group cleanse is especially wonderful! We highly recommend undertaking this cleanse over an extended weekend with friends, family, or other trusted confidants, so you may support and motivate one another through it.

Increased appetite

This was a very interesting and somewhat unexpected side effect of the cleanse. For most of us, the increase in appetite only came for the first day or two of the first week, after which everyone reported a steady decrease in appetite. 

The temporary increase in appetite can be attributed to a few things:

1. Any dietary changes can lead to fluctuations in appetite. Many of us had pretty clean diets before this, but removing meat and dairy was a huge step for some that had never gone without one of those on a daily basis our entire lives, let alone both of them.
   
   
2. More likely the increased appetite was caused by our body signaling it wanted nutrition, because for the first time in a very long time none of us were eating anything that was feeding the candida. Instead, our bodies were telling us that they needed the nutrition from the food being eaten. 

This increased appetite requires some conscious awareness; it doesn't mean we can randomly eat just because you feel unsatisfied. Some of us had not had actually hunger pains in YEARS (which is a sign your stomach is shrinking), even though we were consuming the same quantity of food during the detox - but the quality and types of food are much different once you are only feeding yourself and not candida. 

You have to keep in mind that when you are detoxing things are actually happening - your body has to awaken and identify all the toxic garbage that needs to be removed, and then it gets filtered to your organs that support detox, such as your kidneys and liver. Once they do their job, there are only a few ways that toxins make it out of the body: bowel, urine, the skin, and the breath.  

Now take a look at how our symptoms decreased over the first 7 day period of our cleanse:

After day four - when we took a break from the 100% Gum Spirits of Turpentine protocol - our symptoms decreased dramatically, and some community members went back to zero symptoms! You will see in later results how they felt even better after most of the detoxing side effects wore off. Many of us also experienced beneficial symptoms while detoxing; such as an increase in mental clarity and mental energy! 

Take a look at our percentages after day seven of the candida cleanse:

The important thing to keep in mind is that the detoxing portion of the cleanse does not last forever, and is very minimal discomfort to most people, especially when you consider the long term benefits! You also need to make sure you are supporting your detoxing organs to maximum results with minimum die off:

• Stay hydrated! 
• Have at least one bowel movement a day (and potentially multiple!) so those toxins aren't sitting in your intestinal track and reabsorbing.
• Sweat as much as you can to help your skin detox - it's the largest organ on your body.
• Consider adding some conscious breathing techniques to your day; even taking just 10 deep breaths makes a significant difference.

We encourage you to stay the course and pay extra special attention to self care if you too have die-off symptoms! 

We hope this will inspire you to do additional research and work towards the best possible health for yourself! 

Cheers to your health and happiness!

For additional resources on this topic, please check out some of these links and the ones above:

https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-3461/Dont-Try-a-Detox-Without-Knowing-This.html

https://www.nikigratrix.com/healing-emotions-dealing-with-emotional-detox-reactions/

*This information is not intended to be medical advice; it is just shared research & experience.