There seems to be a lot of controversy on whether a person can ingest forms of yeast and fungi while fighting candida. The Yeast Connection is a very good resource on how to fight candida and even this author says that you shouldn't eat yeast.
I'm obviously not a doctor, or a biochemist, or any kind of expert, but all of my research has led me to believe that all yeasts are not created equal. For example, I do not believe that ingesting brewer's yeast or baker's yeast will somehow make candida thrive in your body.
There could be some little fact to the contrary that I'm missing, but I don't think so. Every author or expert who says not to eat yeast does not state any reason why not. The average person (including me) after reading this from an "expert" would normally just assume, that duh, I'm fighting yeast, so I don't want to eat yeast, but it's more complex than that.
There are literally hundreds of varieties of yeast organisms available in foods and in nature. There should be hundreds of varieties of bacteria AND yeasts (including candida) living in a healthy person's gut at any given time. The balance that comes from so many different strains living together keeps any one population from getting out of control or not performing it's function properly. This symbiosis is beneficial in so many different ways, I'm sure that the docs and the scientists haven't even found them all. Ingesting bacteria and/or yeast in the form of supplements or low sugar probiotics (including those containing different varieties of yeast) is NOT going to cause candida, and it should help you fight it.
Personally, I think that the only reason you should not eat a product containing yeast such as bread or beer while fighting candida is because in order to get the yeast to do it's job in the beer or the bread, you have to feed it sugar. The sugar that might be remaining in the finished product will feed candida just as well as it fed the brewer's yeast or the baker's yeast. If something is brewed or fermented long enough to limit the sugar content to minimum or nil, then ingesting the finished product would not cause your candida to suddenly surge out of control. In the case of baked goods, the yeast is already dead as these little microbials are sensitive to high temperatures and would also be of little or no threat to a person fighting "yeast".
The key to fighting candida is to take away it's food source and attempt to make your body unihabitable for it to survive.
It's food source is sugar in just about any shape or form it can find it. Glucose, sucrose, lactose, gluten, honey, maltose, dextrose, etc. By removing these things from your diet, you are potentially starving these little beasties to death. I've also recently found that candida can convert progesterone to a simple sugar that they can digest.
Most antifungals oxygenate the blood stream. Since yeast is anerobic (dislikes oxygen), it will not thrive and will often die when supplements like garlic and black walnut are regularly ingested.
Now, keep in mind that sugars are needed in the diet to help the good guys survive as well. So, once you've got the candida under control, you can reincorporate sugars into your diet in the forms of gluten (healthy whole grains), lactose (raw milk if possible), honey, maple, etc. So long as you avoid antibiotics which disrupts the gut for most people in the first place and keep the probiotics coming (kefir, kombucha, yogurt, etc), then all should balance well and keep the gut healthy and thriving and free of mutated rhizome footed candida albicans.
All of this information is based only on my opinions of the exhausting hours of research I've put into this topic.
(milking it)
I hope it helps.
~hb
