How will I know when I'm well enough to discontinue the program and how can I healthfully approach this?

Congratulations on all your hard work and success!

It is important to think very carefully at this stage to be absolutely sure you want to make a change in your self care. It's important not to go off the program too soon. What is too soon? Well, the answer to this question will be based on your own experience.

Your results on the questionnaire will help you to keep track of how resiliant your feelings of wellness are and whether you can afford some relaxing of your supreme quality diet standards. Your feeling of well being and your improved score on your questionnaire as you carefully reintroduce restricted foods (if you DO want to reintroduce them) will be an indicator how close to finishing the program you are.

If you’ve progressed through the program phases and the diet stages and your candida related symptoms have been lowered to a zero score on the questionnaire (keeping in mind that if you have other health complications you may have still exhibit some of the symptoms on the questionnaire for reasons unrelated to candida overgrowth), then it is time to re-assess your situation and perhaps to do a “trial-finish.”

Can I reintroduce restricted foods now?
Presumably at this time you have progressed through the stages of the diet and reintroduced some of the restricted foods. However you don’t have to reintroduce any of them if you feel great on the stage one or two diet and want to stay on it. While you are experimenting with your trial finish, to avoid a relapse try not to reintroduce foods too quickly nor discontinue the support of the products suddenly.

Some people find the diet helps them feel so good that they choose to stay on it long term and so they will choose not to phase restricted foods back in. The Whole Approach candida diet can help you to maintain healthy weight, balance your blood sugar and help steer you away from binge eating or food addictions.

Can I phase out the products now?
If you have opted to phase the diet restrictions out and you have transitioned to the maintenance diet (or your own modified, lower carb or hypo-allergic version of it), and your questionnaire score has not worsened at all after three full months, then you may be able to phase out the support of the products.

If your score has worsened then you will need to move to the next anti-fungal in the protocol and move back to stage one, two or three of the diet, depending on how much diet therapy support your situation warrants. If your score has increased more than ten points, you may want to use the lower-carb. stage one diet for a little bit until you bring your symptoms back to your lowest score again, at which point you will want to stabilize your low score by keeping your diet extra healthy for a bit. When you are ready, you can re-attempt the “trial finish” described above.


I think I’m finished my program, what is the best way to do a “trial finish” with the products?

It’s important to stop both the psyllium and your anti-fungal gradually. If you can, it is ideal to give yourself two to four weeks to gradually reduce your anti-fungal and up to two weeks is also ideal for weaning off the psyllium. This weaning off period is particularly important for the discontinuation of psyllium. After extended use of psyllium, the colon will need time to adapt to a lower fibre intake before you stop the product altogether. Otherwise, you may become constipated.


Finished!
When your symptoms have been cleared and you can sustain this level of wellness without the support of an anti-fungal and while eating what will be your long term maintenance diet you may consider yourself officially finished. You will notice that your tolerance to restricted has increased. However this does not mean that just because you CAN tolerate the restricted foods, that you will feel as good eating them as you have while eating an exceptionally healthy diet. In fact, if your priority is to feel (and look) as good as you possibly can while preventing future illness, there is no real reason to reintroduce some restricted foods. You will likely discover that some of the sweet and starchy foods that you’ve been looking forward to enjoying may not be so appealing to you any more. Your body has learned a lot during your healing program and your taste buds have wisened up to be more in line with the food choices that are for your greatest good. You may find that the junk just isn’t so attractive any more and that you are quite happy to stay on the healthy path. After all, you deserve to feel fantastic living in your body!


Can I continue using the Attogram products to bolster my health even though I’m well now?
Even once you’ve resolved your high candida populations, if you have further healing to accomplish or if you just want the added immune and energy boost that you can enjoy from maintaining a healthy intestinal flora, it can be helpful to support colon hygiene by continuing to use the Bentonite, Psyllium, Probioplus and SBX. Of course, as you likely know by now, psyllium and bentonite should not be used without probiotic supplementation since through their absorptive action they can reduce the levels of friendly bacteria.


I’m finished, does this mean I am cured of CRC for good?
During the program you will have learned a whole lot about how to identify the foods that strengthen you as well as those that don’t. Your new knowledge will make it easier for you to maintain glowing health and avoid the Candida and food allergy related pitfalls. Some people are much more prone to yeast overgrowth than others, for various reasons (immune strength, health history, diet, stress level, lifestyle, constitutional type). If your individual susceptibility is high, keeping the yeast populations down may pose more of a challenge for you than for others. The questionnaire can help you monitor your condition for the first few weeks after you stop the program. If your scores go back up then you may have stopped prematurely.

If you are highly prone to CRC, you may need to adopt permanent lifestyle modifications to maintain your new found level of wellness. However, if you normally have a strong immune system, eat a healthy low-sugar diet and merely had a mild, short term case of candida overgrowth, you will likely be able to wean off the Whole Approach program and leave the candida issue behind for good.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Tarilee,