This month, I will be hitting the one-year mark since I have been diagnosed with Intestinal Candidiasis. Despite the official one-year being on August 18th, I completed my one-year checkup today and felt the need to recap and update what has been going on.

One year ago, I was diagnosed with Intestinal Candidiasis, an overgrowth of yeast in my digestive tract. Also known as "the Leaky Gut", it is a major gastrointestinal disorder that occurs in the gut wall.

In my last update, I shared the excitement of allowing corn back into my diet. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. Shortly after publishing that blog, and continuing on eating corn in small doses, I started to react to the ingredient. I was able to have corn back in my diet for about one month before it was put back on my restrictions list again. Even during that one month of corn-freedom, I still found myself looking for it in ingredient listings. I guess that habit will never go away.

Despite the turn of events going sour, I did learn more about my food allergies. I learned that when your immune system mistakes the food you are eating for something harmful, it begins to release antibodies called immunoglobulin E to neutralize the allergen. Being that one of my main problems is my immune system being weak, this may seem to go hand and hand. Something new I learned about my corn allergy is that it often occurs alongside a soy allergy, which was another food allergy we discovered with my Candidia.

Overall, I have gotten a good amount of food back within the year:

• organic sugars, including organic cane sugar

• oats

• grains, such as rice and quinoa

• alcohol, as long as it is free from gluten, nightshades, and corn

• arrowroot

• millet

Currently, I was informed that I have cleared up a majority of the overgrowth of yeast that was in my stomach and it is finally reaching a normal and healthy level. This means I will now be able to gradually introduce yeast back into my diet, which works out for me since I have been craving garlic knots for the past couple of weeks! I have also scientifically strengthened my immune system, adrenal glands, and sinuses, but they are not at levels my doctors would like to see.

The biggest mystery has been solving which foods I can and cannot eat. As we are [hopefully] dwindling to the end of this journey [but possibly not], we are beginning to get an idea of what foods I will probably have to always avoid: Gluten, Soy, Dairy, Nuts, Nightshades, and possibly corn. At the moment, they are starting to become certain these will be my everlasting food allergies, but I am hoping more will come off that list once I strengthen my immune system to a better level.

While the journey continues, I will be subsiding from creating more entries However, feel free to continue following our recipe updates! I think those tell a better story anyway ;)