HI Tom

Well, if you have had bad symptoms for years, I doubt if you begin the diet early it will necessarily affect the test results much. Having said that, as you say, it may be best if you wait to see the doctor and see what he says.

In my case I couldn't get an appointment with the right doctor for a month and I began the diet but he was still able to determine quite a few things were still wrong even so, although my case was very advanced when I saw him.

Not all vegetables have to be eaten raw, although certain veg have extra digestive enzymes which mean they are very beneficial when eaten raw.

There are some great recipes in "The Complete Candida Yeast Guidebook" second edition by Dr Zoltan Rona and Jeanne Marie Martin. I have been using it to treat this and the advice is sound, thorough and really really great, plus there are recipes and whole sections discussing some of the finer points of the candida and what not to do.

The idea is, basically there are several phases to the diet ---a pre-treatment phase, a treatment phase, and a post-treatment phase, and then a "diet for life". During the treatment phase, foods are greatly restricted to meat, fish, veg and low carbs only. After that other fruits are reintroduced gradually, starting with the least sugary and moving on towards more sugary later on in the "diet for life" phase.

Hope that helps.

Annajen