A revolutionary diet says it delivers better health and more energy.
It's commonly called the "Candida diet." Candida is a yeast-like fungus that can cause infections. Dr. Oz has featured the topic on his show seen on NBC25.
The diet removes all dairy, grains, sugar, and artificial ingredients.
When you go to the grocery store, you have a choice of which items to buy. Dr. Paul Lepor of Lapeer's Total Family Health clinic supports a diet that kills off the yeast in your body.
"The diet that we recommend is a whole food diet. So these are foods that spoil," says Lepor.
Those foods that can spoil include mostly fresh vegetables, some meat, and some fruit.
The reason they spoil is because bacteria breaks them down.
Your body does the same thing with these foods inside.
However, for processed products and artificial items Lepor says, "There's no bacteria action because all the nutrients have been removed and so they're really high calorie foods with low nutrient content."
Heavy consumption of these foods can lead to obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes.
The foods recommended to fight the "Yeast Syndrome" include eggs, vegetables, meat, beans, nuts, and seeds.
The foods not recommended are cheese, grains, processed items, mushrooms, sugar, and carbonated and alcoholic beverages.
Dr. Lepor says what you eat is just as important as how much you eat.
"The problem with counting calories is you're not counting nutrition. So yes, you can get your daily calories out of a handful of doughnuts, but you don't get any nutrition. So when you convert over to vegetables, some meats, some fruits, then you're getting more nutrients and fewer calories."
NBC25's Dan Armstrong has been on the diet for less than a week and has already lost six and a half pounds.
NBC25 asked area hospitals for their take on the diet. They either did not know enough about it or were unavailable.
Dr. Lepor says the diet keeps people from being hungry after eating because the body takes longer to digest the natural foods.
