How the GAPS Diet reversed symptoms of autism in just two years in a young girl who is no longer on the spectrum and living a normal childhood.
I knew my daughter Hannah had autism when she was only 12 months old although she wasn’t professionally diagnosed until age 4.
Now at 6 years old, after being on the GAPS Diet for 2 1/2 years, Hannah no longer carries an autism diagnosis and the progress she has made has been nothing short of life changing.
What’s more, Hannah has successfully transitioned off of GAPS in recent months and is now eating a normal traditional diet which includes grains and starches – with no regression or recurrence of symptoms!
For those of you new to GAPS, it stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome. Â GAPS is a temporary diet that was designed by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride MDÂ to reverse autism in her own son. Â GAPS works to heal the gut lining, rebalance intestinal flora, and help with nutrient absorption.
In a nutshell, the GAPS Diet cuts out grains, sugar, and starch, and adds in foods rich in probiotics, healthy fats, and amino acids needed to heal and seal the gut wall. Once the gut lining is healed, many chronic health problems magically go away- things from autoimmune diseases to behavior problems to eczema.
Yes, even autism!
Hannah’s Story of Reversing Autism
I had been keeping an eye on Hannah’s development from 4 months old when she wasn’t making eye contact, rolling over, or interested in anything other than nursing, I knew something was up, but it was right near her 1st birthday that I looked up the diagnostic criteria for autism, and realized that yes, she most likely did qualify as autistic, though most professionals won’t diagnose it until 3 years. It wasn’t until she was 4 that she received a formal diagnosis from a professional, but I knew I needed to start intervention as soon as possible in order to give her the greatest chance for a full recovery.
I started by keeping her on a Weston A. Price Traditional Diet of all organic, nutrient dense foods as she was weaning, but when I didn’t see improvement with that we tried the gluten free casein free diet, which helped her ability to learn temporarily. Â After awhile, however, she lapsed back into ‘autism land’.
As a desperate young mom with an autistic toddler, and now her infant baby brother, I continued to search for ways to help my child. Googling ‘what to do when the gluten free casein free diet stops working autism’ brought up the GAPS Diet – this was 2009 when GAPS was just beginning to be known across the internet.
It took me a few months to work up the motivation to place my small child on such a restrictive diet, but the waking up every 2 hours all night every night, her not making progress in speech or occupational therapy because she was unable to learn, and wanting so desperately to improve her quality of life pushed me to give GAPS a try. Just after Hannah’s 3rd birthday I said we would only try GAPS for 30 days. And I tried it with her, to make sure I felt okay on such a different diet than typical Americans eat.
Starting GAPS
We started GAPS with the intro diet in November 2009. I saw such great progress with her (and myself- GAPS cleared up a dairy allergy that I’d had since childhood, in just 6 weeks of the intro diet!) that I committed to keep going.
She was able to learn again, and seemed to be starved for GAPS food; she was actually eating more than I was as a lactating mother!
Continuing GAPS as it was needed
We continued GAPS for 2-1/2 years, working to heal the gut lining. Hannah’s digestion improved, and she started eating less after having been on the diet for a few weeks- her body was so starved for nutrients at first that she would eat everything in sight, but slowed back down to a typical toddler amount after a few weeks on GAPS.
The most exciting part of Hannah’s improvement on GAPS was that she was once again able to learn. Â She started making progress in speech, occupational, and physical therapies. She took an interest in other children, was sleeping well at night, and was happier during the day. GAPS gave her quality of life so much improvement, that there was no question that we had to continue the diet as long as it helped her.
As we continued, I got better at cooking GAPS food. In the beginning we ate vegetable soup, cooked chicken, hamburgers, and scrambled eggs nearly every day. GAPS forced me to be more creative with the allowed GAPS food, and I was able to expand to very enjoyable meals!
Hannah knew her diet was different, but she was content with her food. Other parents would look on at me jealously as she gobbled up eggs, meat, fruit, and veggies. The diet took effort to continue with, but once we had been on it about 6 months it just became routine.
Transitioning off the GAPS diet after 2 years
GAPS is intended to be a temporary diet, so after Hannah had been on it and doing well for 2 years, I started trying some foods that weren’t GAPS legal about once a month. We started with potatoes, popcorn, and whole raw milk and she did well. We continued introducing new non-GAPS foods and watched carefully for any reactions (wheat was the last thing we introduced). If her gut wasn’t healed enough to tolerate a food I saw reactions in the form of skin rashes, night terrors, or loss of eye contact- every person’s reactions would be different though.
In June we traveled to California for my little brother’s wedding. She had been transitioning off GAPS for 6 months by then, so I decided to just let go and see if she could eat what everyone else was eating. She did great! No reactions to the food at all. We were officially and successfully done with our GAPS and food allergy journey!
No longer Autistic!
Though Hannah still has some learning disabilities (I believe this is from the long time that her brain was bombarded with toxins pre-GAPS, and we’re trying other therapies to continue to help with this), she just was tested this fall and no longer meets the criteria needed for an autism diagnosis.
She has benefited so much from the GAPS diet, and has come so far from the 12 month old who would just fuss or stare off into space all day. She is toilet trained, loves interacting with peers, talks, learns new things, makes great eye contact, and is getting much better at accepting changes to her routine.
We still eat mostly GAPS at home, since it is such a nutrient dense diet that our whole family thrives on. But being off GAPS means that I don’t have to stress when we’re out and we can just eat what everyone else is eating.
The GAPS diet has been amazing for our family, I am so thankful that Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride wrote the GAPS book in time to help Hannah. I’m also thankful it’s not a diet we have to be on for life, but it was so worth it to stick with it for the couple years we needed to be on it.
About Cara
I’m Cara, and I write at Health, Home, and Happiness. Because I was so overwhelmed when starting the GAPS Diet, I put together some resources to help others who want to do GAPS.
I have GAPS friendly meal plans (full GAPS), a book that helps you get through the more strict Introduction Diet, and even a guide to help you stock your freezer with GAPS friendly foods.
More Information on the GAPS Diet
GAPS Diet: Heal Your Autoimmune Disease Now
Overwhelmed by the GAPS Diet? Â Help Has Arrived
How to Speed Healing and Shorten Time on the GAPS Diet
The Five Most Common GAPS Diet Mistakes
GAPS Diet Heals Ulcerative Colitis
5 Steps to Healing IBS Naturally
FPIES: Resolving the “Other” Food Allergy
Chronic Stomach Pain and Bloating Gone!
It is sad to read the people telling all of you that a child cannot recover from autism. My son is doing it as I type this. In 2009 he was diagnosed with classic autism at the age of 6. By 2011 he had lost so many of his autistic characteristics via diet and careful supplementation that his diagnosis was changed to PDD-NOS and it was indicated to me that he was just at the edge of not having that either. Now we have ventured further into figuring out why his body was so vulnerable to environmental insults that other children take into stride that we have discovered he has quiet but very important problems with the functioning of his liver, pancreas and kidneys (wouldn’t you know it…liver issues run in my husband’s family and pancreas issues in both families and kidney issues in my family….). Now that we are addressing these issues he has improved even further. Is he still quirky? Indeed…as we all are in some way. But is he closed off, unwilling to converse, uncomfortable with eye contact, socially withdrawn, rigid, unable to intuit social cues, in need of routine, prone to meltdowns or tantrums,etc, etc, etc. No. He is delayed….he has much to catch up on…but delayed is not autism. He is catching up in leaps and bounds and is healthier and happier and more energetic, with better focus and determination every day. The future is bright for my son because we looked for answers and would not be swayed by talk of impossibility. He was not autistic as a baby and toddler…I never saw any logical reason why he HAD to be autistic forever…it happened and I was determined to make it “un-happen” the best that I could. And the whole family is stronger and healthier for it. We eat so well now! 🙂
I am thankful and blessed to have these children and my son most of all…his life is always teaching us and, honestly…he is an amazing little boy. All heart, so gentle, so clever…lucky mama that I am. And he is recovering. Truly…THANK GOD.
I have read similar articles in the past, what can you loose by giving it a try!!!
Thanks for sharing, Cara. So inspirational. We have had similar results with SCD/GAPS with our spectrum child. She, too, lost the diagnosis.
I was disappointed to read all of the naysayers comments that spectrum issues can’t be ‘cured’, or ‘go-away’ or ‘reversed.’ For anyone discouraged when reading this stance, the research is pointing otherwise. Simply check out the compelling, award-winning work of Dr. Martha Herbert (Harvard), Dr. Alessio Fasano (U Maryland, work on zonulin), Dr. McBride and countless others. While the research is slow (not easy to get funding for diet-based studies), it is happening and the results are going to change the paradigm of how we think of autism etc. There is an awesome project started (on the heels of the Human Microbiome Project) that is tracking the role of our micro biome, food and our health. The founder of this project ( http://humanfoodproject.com/american-gut/ ) is plugged into so much of the microbiology research (as it relates to disease and health) going on now. His site is a portal to get educated on what is going on. If you were to read any of this, you’d be hard pressed to make a blanket statement that the human body is incapable of healing/curing/reversing disease.
This was before the “experts” started people eating processed and hydrogenated oils instead of lard and butter and skim milk that was pastuerized and homegenized and heat treated. The oil companies started pushing unhealthy oils in the early 1900’s, but a lot of people held on to the traditions of butchering their own hogs and rendering their own lard and making their own butter and buttermilk and sweetmilk and many of them grew their own food or bought from a local farmer they knew. With the advent of tv and all the so-called experts saying you need to eat this and not that the transition began and snowballed into the unhealthy foods and fats and mercury in the vaccines that we have today. I thank God I started reading Acres magazine and learned about the Weston A Price foundation. I had read some of Udo Erasmus books: Fats and Oils and Fats that heal and fats that Kill, but Acres and WAPF put things into a format that even I could understand. This site has helped me a lot, especially with the videos that Sara does and the guest blogs such as these.
Glad this diet helped your little girl and I’m praying for continued success for her. One of my autistic role models is Temple Grandin. I’d like to try this diet sometime in the future, but I want to read the GAP’s book first. A lot of children are just given medicine to sedate them and keep them quiet, but I feel that’s not in their best interest. I firmly believe the industrial food model and the chemicals in our food and medicine and the lack of healthy fats are the reason for the collaspe of the health of not only this country, but every country who follows the industrial farming and food preparation schemes and the anti-fat bias of big medicine and the industrial oil companies. I don’t base this on what other people say, but my experience from the early 1950’s. I never saw 1 child with autism or one senior with alzheimers or dementia or bone problems like the epidemic we are experiencing in this country now. My grandpa was mentally sharp to just before his death at 97 years old and my grandmother who died at 83 was alert and had all her coznitive function right up until her death.
My 9 year old daughter has Tourettes Syndrome, agression and OCD, do you think the GAP diet would help her? I would love to try it, but am afraid it would be hard to follow the plan while she is at school and at friend and family gatherings. Is there a book with the GAP diet plan? So glad that it helped your daughter!
Read this and just wondered to myself what else could our unhealthy diets be doing to our bodies and emotional health as well. Wondering if it is helpful for adults too with all kinds of different digestive issues and nutritional absorption problems. I am thinking everything from skin problems to depression?? If it helps Ulcerative colitis could it not also be possible for other issues ??????????
Eliza,
There are many ways gut flora can become compromised in our modern world, and damaged gut flora creates a cascade of malabsorption and malnutrition. Good bacteria is essential for life, but sometimes pathogenic bacteria overtake beneficial bacteria, leading to immune system suppression, toxin build-up, and something called Leaky Gut Syndrome. The weakened walls of the digestive tract allow partly digested food and harmful microbes into the bloodstream and body, triggering many auto-immune and allergic conditions as well as behavior and mental problems if the pathogens pass the blood-brain barrier.
The list of ailments that have been helped or healed with GAPS includes asthma, allergies (all kinds), autism, auto-immune diseases, acid reflux, constipation, digestive issues, ADD/ADHD, OCD, schizophrenia, depression, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, MS, eczema, anaemia, IBS, the list goes on.
These ailments can be triggered by a wide array of factors, from pollutants in the environment to toxins in the body such as mercury fillings. Impaired immune function is often handed down and compounded from one generation to the next NOT through genetics but through the transfer of compromised gut flora. Leaky Gut Syndrome can be exacerbated by things like antibiotics, vaccine ingredients and nutrient-deficient processed foods (especially sugar and white flour foods).
I highly recommend reading the Gut and Psychology Syndrome book for further exploration of this topic. Dr Campbell-McBride describes the mechanism of GAPS patients, including vaccine injured people which is often a final straw in a series of cascading gut and health issues. Also see the excellent articles on her website, www dot gaps dot me.
Thank you, Beth!
and then of course we have to worry about the metals from the chemtrails that we are breathing in. (as shown in the picture above Hannah’s head!)
Nope. Actually you don’t have to worry about the chemtrails. Simply by living a healthy life (healthy food, healthy home, healthy relationships), and doing an occasional whole body detox, the body will be able to ward off any pollution dropped by airplanes.
Worrying about trails every time you see them in the sky will stress you so much that it will harm your health more than any chemicals they can drop from the sky.
AAAAAMAZING! 🙂