Is caffeine allowed when following a Candida diet? There is so much information about Candida on the internet and the same is true in regards to caffeine containing beverages such as coffee and tea. Most food lists would tell you to avoid coffee or caffeine and in fact my list said the same which I have now amended. After looking at the reasoning behind excluding caffeine from a Candida diet, as a biologist, I don't exactly buy it. I would tend to place this in the Candida fiction category.
OK, now most caffeinated beverages would contain lots of sugar and other unhealthy ingredients, but after looking at all the evidence I believe that an unsweetened coffee or tea is acceptable. Coffee and tea contain many healthy antioxidants and the recent studies show so many health benefits from them, that it would be unwise to totally remove them from the diet. Sources on the net cite and article from the International Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine in 1993, which states that caffeine is an adrenal stressor and this in turn hurts the immune system, therefore leaving the body open to Candida overgrowth.
While there is truth to this, one coffee or a couple teas will not have caffeine amounts high enough to cause this. In fact the antioxidants found in the coffee or tea have been shown to prevent disease. This research is quite frankly out of date and really shouldn't be used as a reason to avoid all caffeine while on a Candida diet. Another myth is that just like caffeine energizes us, it in turn energizes yeast cells. This is fiction because Candida feeds on sugars alone and caffeine works on the central nervous system which yeast do not have as they are one celled organisms. So what's the bottom line? Caffeine via natural products such as coffee and tea are acceptable in moderation and if consumed unsweetened. Natural sweeteners such as stevia would be acceptable. The benefits of moderate coffee and tea consumption far outweigh any of the negatives associated from caffeine's effect on Candidiasis.