An increasing number of folks that I know seem to be trying out the GAPS diet in order to solve autoimmune issues. Many are unwittingly making mistakes that are making success more difficult and time on the diet more lengthy.
GAPS, as it is commonly known, is a short term protocol to rebalance and heal/seal the gut wall. This halts the flood of toxins from pathogenic strains dominating the gut environment from pouring into the bloodstream 24/7. It is this unpredictable mix that triggers autoimmune symptoms.
The diet is described in detail in Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride MDs book Gut and Psychology Syndrome. It is based on the century-old Specific Carbohydrate Diet.
The autoimmune disorders significantly alleviated or healed by the GAPS Diet include the simply annoying, like seasonal allergies, to the more life-altering such as autism, fibromyalgia, MS, lupus, and the list goes on and on…
Ok, let’s get real for a minute. Does the GAPS diet as outlined in the bestselling book by Dr. Campbell-McBride MD really work for alleviating allergies and other autoimmune disorders?
Absolutely it does.
My husband used to be the poster boy for allergies. He was allergic to every single prick the allergist tried on him some years ago. Today, he is allergic to nothing. Absolutely nothing. His asthma (during respiratory illness) and eczema resolved permanently as well.
Another person I recently talked to has arrested the progression of her IBS symptoms and gotten herself off the medication using the GAPS Diet. In fact, I know many folks who have received significant relief from their autoimmune disorders from the GAPS Diet.
How empowering to know that there is an answer for autoimmune illness and that something as simple as the GAPS diet can make it happen!
The trouble is, GAPS is simple but not necessarily easy. When folks go on GAPS, a number of common mistakes seem to be made. Here is a rundown of the five most frequent mistakes I’ve encountered coaching folks at various stages in the process:
Mistake #1: Going off Grains but Not Starches
The most important premise of GAPS is to eliminate all sources of disaccharide containing foods from the diet until the gut wall can heal and reseal. Most sugars and all grains, even those not containing gluten, are disaccharides and hence must not be consumed while on GAPS as a compromised gut wall is unable to digest them. Undigested food in any form provides the perfect environment for pathogenic viruses, bacteria, and fungi to thrive.
Talking to people on GAPS, I have frequently encountered those who have eliminated all disaccharides from the diet but not all the starches in the form of potatoes, sweet potatoes, arrowroot flour, potato flour/starch, carob powder, cocoa powder, chickpea flour, all other gluten-free flours and almost all beans and legumes (navy beans and lentils are ok).
This can be confusing, as resistant starch is food for friendly gut flora and overall, good for the gut! Thus, don’t take this to mean starch is “bad”. It definitely isn’t! It just isn’t something to eat while on the GAPS Diet.
Why is this?
Starch is a very complex food molecule comprised of very long strands of hundreds of mono sugars that are very difficult for an imbalanced gut to break down. Undigested starch feeds gut pathogens. Even worse, the starch that does manage to get digested results in molecules of maltose, which is a disaccharide!
As a result, for success on GAPS to be achieved and long term results attained, grains and starches must be eliminated on a short term basis.
Mistake #2: Taking a Cheaper Probiotic or No Probiotic at All
GAPS success requires an infusion of strong, therapeutic strength probiotics to reseed the gut with dominant, beneficial flora at the same time the GAPS Diet is starving out the pathogens. Unfortunately, a number of folks I’ve talked to who claim to be on GAPS are not taking a probiotic at all.
This is a mistake. Taking a probiotic on GAPS is not an option, it is a must!
Unfortunately, a decent quality probiotic is expensive, as you may have noticed! Resist the temptation to settle for cheaper brands.
Dr. Campbell-McBride MD warns about this in her book. She writes that most brands on the market are not strong enough nor do they have the correct aggressive probiotic strains necessary to recolonize the gut. Moreover, many brands of probiotics do not contain the strains listed on the label or have the claimed bacterial strength.
In other words, you get what you pay for.
To avoid the problem of probiotic label fudging, make sure the brand selected is reputable and can deliver the results you need.
After all, you’re going to all this trouble and inconvenience to eat GAPS. Why cut corners with the probiotic and threaten the success of the process? This article explains in detail why a soil-based probiotic on GAPS is critical to the success of the protocol.
Mistake #3: Going Wild with the No Grain Flours
Our culture’s food supply is so overly dominated by grain-based foods that when a person initially decides to go on GAPS, the thought “what in the world will I eat” can be rather overwhelming.
As a result, a common mistake for people on GAPS is to make a wholesale switch from grain-based foods to those exact same foods made with no grain flour such as coconut or almond.
Eating bread, muffins, pancakes, waffles, pizza, and cookies made with coconut or almond flour at the same rate one used to eat these same foods made with wheat can cause unintended consequences.
Coconut flour is extremely high in fiber and eating too much of it can cause gastric distress. Almond flour contains a lot of omega-6 fatty acids. While essential to health, too many omega-6 fats in the diet contribute to inflammation.
As a result, eating a moderate amount of baked goods made with alternative flours such as coconut and almond is the best way to go to ensure GAPS success.
Mistake #4: Not Eating Enough Homemade Broth
A very important part of the GAPS diet is the consumption of copious amounts of homemade bone broth. A small cup (about 4 ounces) with every single meal is recommended. The reason is that broth contains so many easy to assimilate minerals, vitamins, and amino acids. It is a very soothing food to the intestinal mucosa. Physicians have known for centuries that it aids digestion due to the natural gelatin which attracts digestive juices.
Many folks I know on GAPS are not consuming nearly enough broth. Or, they are using commercial bone broth which is almost always watered down (no gelling in the fridge) and/or packaged in toxic containers like aseptic, shelf-stable cartons.
A good idea before going on GAPS is to make sure your freezer is completely loaded up with any and all forms of homemade broth that you can find quality bones for including chicken, turkey, beef, lamb, fish, etc. Note that the best and most nutritious bone broth is made from fish heads, so be sure to include that in the rotation.
Broth is inexpensive to make and is so very important to GAPS success. Be sure to include it with every meal if at all possible! Once or twice a week in soups is not often enough.
Mistake #5: Giving Up Too Soon
Success with the GAPS Diet takes time. In most cases, it took years for the gut to get in bad shape. Thus, it’s going to take months or even a year or two to get it back to normal. For a child, the average amount of time on GAPS to achieve a significant level of autoimmune remission is 18 months. For an adult, it can take longer.
I have known adults who have achieved success in only 6 months. However, these were typically people who had been eating traditionally for many years already. They simply needed to go on full GAPS for a few months to complete the healing process.
If you are coming to GAPS from the Standard American Diet, then plan on 2-3 years to success. While this may seem like a long time, it is really short considering living the rest of your life with an ever-worsening auto-immune situation.
Don’t give up too soon! Initial subsiding of symptoms within a few weeks or months on GAPS does not mean healing. Stick with it to heal and seal the gut wall for good so you can reclaim full vitality of life!
If the GAPS diet is of interest to you and you would like a complete overview of the program, please check out this article on how to heal autoimmune disease.
There are also many GAPS diet recipes on this site to help your journey.
More Information
Heal Autoimmune Disease with GAPS Diet
How to Speed Healing and Shorten Time on GAPS
GAPS and Ulcerative Colitis
GAPS vs Autism
Chronic Stomach Pain and Bloating Gone!
Is there an objective way to ascertain the condition of one’s gut flora?
Ciao,
Pavil
Not really. Gut flora imbalance is ascertained based on symptoms primarily. There are stool tests that can be done, but the accuracy of these is debatable.
A friend of mine recently told me that there is a new test that can test the degree of gut leakage. See http://www.cyrexlabs.com.
Another great tool to help with autoimmune problems is the LEAP MRT mediator release test by Signet Diagnostic. This is a blood test that checks for “mediator release” of 150 various foods and chemicals. Our systems are so individual that it is impossible for one diet to fit everyone. When I had the MRT done, I had problems with many of the very healthy foods I was eating — garlic, apples, pinto beans, pineapple. By avoiding those trigger foods I had great improvement in my skin condition. Their website is http://www.nowleap.com. It is promoted for IBS and Migraine, but it is helping people with many immune-related problems.
So, so, so well said, Sarah! I don’t have time for blogs, but I always read and pass along yours to friends and the folks on the health forum I moderate! This one should go in your “most important” list.
Probiotics and enzymes in pill forms upset my stomach. I used quality stuff from Standard Process and Progressive Labs – I was worse off than when I started. I found, after some trial and error, I could use them pulverized in my mortar and pestal and just sprinkled on my food. But real food sources are better (for me) I think. I now just use kefir and fermented foods like homemade yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, etc. and I seem to do fine. Also, as someone else mentioned, lots of good fats – homemade butter from raw cream, coconut oil, home rendered lard, etc. I have Sjogren’s Syndrome and peripheral neuropathy (cause unknown) and I’m not sure those can be “healed” with any type of diet. The fact of the matter is, I don’t have time to pursue a GAPS diet or any other high maintenance diet. We follow WAPF as much as possible within our time frame and my DH and I do quite well considering we are not spring chickens and that I have two major “diseases” going on.
Hi D. I have been reading through these posts, all very interesting, and have just read your comment about neuropathy of unknown origin. As a Medical Herbalist I have a good deal of success with such neuropathy, or that caused by known pathologies such as diabetic neuropathy. What I use is Chilli Cream. You can make your own like this: Take any standard skin cream that you generally use and have no reactions to and add chilli tincture to it, at about 5% of the weight of your cream, and stir it well in with a teaspoon handle. Apply this to the areas affected by numbness or tingling or sporadic pins and needles, two or three times daily, rubbing well in, then washing the fingers that rubbed it in, so as to prevent inadvertantly getting chilli in your eyes, nose, vulva etc (!). Now you should ask, ‘Where do I get chilli tincture?’. You make it. It’s easy. Cut up some hot red chillies, using rubber gloves and in a ventilated space (as the fumes can catch at the back of the throat). Cut up enough to fill a jam jar, then pour on vodka right to the top of the jam jar and put the lid on tightly. Shake this around as often as you see it (keep it in an obvious place, not out of sight) every day for two weeks. After this time has elapsed place a piece of clean cotton cloth into a sieve and empty to contents of the jam jar through a sieve into a fresh clean dry bowl or wide necked jug, squeezing out the chilli bits using the cloth to press out the juice. Decant the liquid into a clean bottle, with a well fitting lid. This is chilli tincture. It is a very useful substance, including having the effect of opening up narrowed cardiac arteries, such that a mycardial infarction (heart attack) insues. Just a few drops of chilli tincture in this sort of emergency can be a life saver. It also has the effect of increasing gastric hydrochloric acid, and generally producing a warming effect everywhere, when taken in a little water. A great thing to take on a cold day, or to add to soups or other dishes. Although chilli is a member of the solanaceae family (like potatoes, tomatoes, aubergines and bell peppers) it is tolerated pretty well, even by GAPS people, though some will react if they are super sensitive. The dose one uses is very small, just a few drops at a time, so that is obviously a factor. Externally, added to a cream as I mentioned, is a very effective way of getting fresh oxygen rich blood to any tissues that have insufficient, such as feet and toes. It also combines very well with ginger. You can make ginger tincture in the same way using fresh chopped up or grated ginger, or, if treating nausea (such as nausea of pregnancy) make the tincture using dried ginger as it is far more effective. Good luck and let me know how you get on if you do it.
I’d just like to add that Sjorgren’s Syndrome is, at it’s root, no different to any other autoimmune disorder. The cause is the same, i.e. cereal grains, especially the lectins (such as wheat germ agglutenin) and the proteins (prolamines such as glutens and gliadins, which are in all grass seeds/grains in some form or other), and the effect of eating this non human food (which is perfectly fine for rodents) is then compounded by excess glucose from all carbohydrates, which feed the pathological gut microbes leading to a downward spiral of dysfunction and damaged tissues. Lectins are also in the solanaceae family, especially potatoes and tomatoes, and in legumes, i.e. all beans including peanuts (a bean really). All these foods are also packed with phytate which adds to the body’s woes by removeing the very minerals needed to heal and defend itself from the lectins and microbes. I suggest going on the GAPS diet properly, starting with the intro and never, ever eating any cereal grains again. Ever. These are the basic cause of it all. The reason there is such a steep increase in autoimmune diseases is that wheat has been mucked about with and so is now even more dangerous than it was for our ancestors of the past 7,000 years or so. It was alway a terrible food choice, caused most of the arthritis, madness and tuberculosis in that time, but now it has been so hybridized that it has become super toxic. You, tragically, are one of the many who have succumbed to it. Stop ingesting all the toxic ‘foods’ and start eating only healing foods, chief of which is bone broth, as everyone above has correctly stated, and you have a chance of recovery. But I would say that it is a life long dietary change that is needed, not just 18 months.
I say this very confidently, because that is where my research has lead me. I apologise if you feel that in your case there is a completely different cause. I could be wrong, and if I am I would like someone to show me in what way that thesis is incorrect.
Best of luck with changing your diet and starting to recover.
Afifah
Hi Sarah. This is a timely post as I am planning to do GAPS when I get ready. I don’t have severe issues but have had digestive issues for a long time and would like to heal that so I can eat comfortably. I just received the GAPS book and the GAPS Guide. Have read the guide and just starting the GAPS book. It will be a trial I’m sure but I am hoping I can manage committing to it. I have a question I would like to ask while I’m here. I don’t have access to raw milk but was recently visiting my Mom who lives near the Maine/US border (it is about 75 miles from where I live). I often cross the border when visiting to purchase food items that are cheaper than here in Canada (milk, butter, chicken, tuna etc). Anyway, this last trip I checked out the organic section and they actually had raw milk and raw yogurt for sale from a local farm. I was super excited, so I bought a gallon of the milk and a large container of the yogurt. I was wondering since I have never had raw milk, would I have to be careful how much I drink to start. I have had kefir so my system is used to some good bacteria. My daughter and I both found the milk to have a bit of an aftertaste and I found it thinner than pastuerized whole milk – could this be because there wasn’t enough cream in it? It had a sticker on it that said ‘shake me up’, I assumed that was to mix in the cream. I’ve had a bit each day for the past 3 days and no issues with it. I’ve also eaten some of the yogurt and it isn’t causing me any distress. I won’t have a steady supply of it obviously as it is a long drive and I only visit every couple months or so but figured I would get some each time I visit.
HI Mary, some folks get a bit of cleansing reaction in the form of loose bowels the first time they have raw milk as it is so loaded with probiotics. Start with a small glass and see how you go. Increase appropriately as it seems to work for you.
The only exception to what you’ve said is the probiotic issue. Some (including us) have done much better simply including many probiotic foods. Some with EVERY meal. It’s been discussed heavily on the GAPS Yahoo list too, and that is the way some families do it. For us, that means homemade yogurt with breakfast, kombucha with lunch, and possibly pickles and juice at snack or dinner. You absolutely NEED probiotics…but it doesn’t have to be a supplement.
We started out baking from almond flour maybe once a week…as a transition. Now we bake maybe once every 2 – 3 weeks. Most meals are really meat-heavy and lots of soups, or (if you can’t stand soup all the time), meat/veggies cooked in stock.
Yes and no on the probiotic. In our guts, there are transient bacteria and native bacteria. Transient bacteria, like that found in cultured foods, come in and do their good deeds and then leave with an elimination. Native bacteria, like those found in only very specific supplements (99% of the ones on the market only have transient bacteria), are the strains that colonize the gut and shove out the bad bugs. It’s important to have both. Cultured food is extremely important and should be included at every meal, but a good high quality probiotic with native bacteria, should also be included. I don’t use BioKult in my practice, for the most part, because of the additives, though many people are just fine with it. I use a different probiotic that has over 29 stains plus soil-based bacteria. It’s comparably priced to BK and I feel does a better job- though it is based on your bio-individual needs, of course.
Can you tell me what probiotic you use?
I use the Usana probiotics as they are manufactured in Denmark by a reputable, well-established manufacturer of probiotics. There are very few strains of probiotics that have been proven to work. And getting these strains into a delivery system that works is not easy. Best of luck
Hi Sarah, I was wondering if you know the differences between the GAPs diet and the SCD diet. I will be starting the SCD diet tomorrow and have read the book “Breaking the Vicious Cycle” which has been very insightful, it seems these two are very similar.
Hi Hannah, GAPS is based heavily on SCD. There is more of a focus on broth and fermented foods on GAPS than SCD. Here is a link that explains it in more detail:
http://gapsguide.com/2008/12/05/differences-between-scd-gaps/
Couple of things based on comments above that I’ve observed. First of all, I’ve seen plenty of folks heal on GAPS without doing the intro, myself and my husband among them. We ate honey and fruit and were fine. I don’t personally find the anti-candida diet to be helpful.
Also, in most cases, BioKult is needed. Probiotic foods are not strong enough. There are some extremely aggressive strains in the BioKult that “search and destroy” the pathogens like the milder strains in probiotic foods cannot. People may think they do better without the BioKult because it is so strong that it makes them worse at first. AFter coming off GAPS, fermented foods are sufficient for maintenance, but in my experience, a very strong probiotic like BioKult is necessary.
The problem many GAPSTERS find with BioKult is that it contains additives that they react to and it’s really expensive especially with more than one person doing GAPS.
Custom Probiotics makes an 11 strain powder probiotic that is much more cost effective but is still missing three strains that BioKult contains. CP has no fillers.
Many find healing with doing full GAPS but most (based on reading GAPS Support Group for a year now) need GAPS intro and sometimes an anti-candida diet to heal.
The anti-candida diet excludes fermented foods which is misguided and will drastically slow healing of the gut wall. It also allows starchy vegetables which will prevent the gut from healing properly. Believe it or not the anti-candida diet does not exclude grains either! It is a misguided diet all around.
I do not find excluding honey and ripe fruit on GAPS to be helpful at all. While on GAPS, there are SO MANY restrictions on carb intake (with grains and potatoes and other starchy veggies completely eliminated) that eliminating honey and fruit as well can cause extreme tiredness from too low a carb intake. Eating honey and fruit while on GAPS was my saving grace .. I could not have gotten through it without them as I would have had no energy whatsoever from too little carbs in the diet. GAPS itself will bring the candida under control even if honey and fruit are still consumed in moderation. It is simply unnecessary and causes undue stress and strain to eliminate honey and fruit as well.
Thank you for that clarification. I _have_ been awfully hungry. My specific protocol allows for yogurt so I’ve been consuming that with glee. Maybe GAPS isn’t so bad after all 🙂
Hi Sarah,
I’ve been doing the GAPS diet for about 7 months. I am definitely not ready to end the diet yet as I get a recurrence of symptoms (specifically some joint pain) if I try to eat any potatoes. But, I have noticed that over the last month or so I have been getting extremely tired, so tired that I might even call it lethargy and fatigue. My sleep is not the best (I still have an infant in the house after all, and he still wants to nurse throughout the night), but the tiredness seems to be more than just lack of sleep. My gut feeling is that perhaps I am not consuming enough carbs, and this is leading to the extreme tiredness. Can the body function okay without many carbs? Do you know why I felt fine for the first six months on the diet, but now seem to have this problem? We aren’t really eating any lentils or white beans, so my carbs are limited to veggies and the 1-2 pieces of fruit I eat each day, plus a small amount in baked goods (that are only eaten a couple times/week). Sorry if it is off-base to ask you; you just seem to be so knowledgeable about it all.
thanks for this post. I was wondering what to do about the candida. I saw the Doc recommended taking it slow on the honey and fruit. I am on first stages but I am opting out on the honey and loading up on veggies. i will be interesting to be adding a sweetner in after 3 years of no sugar (only grn apples and berries.)
Adrienne,
Can you expand on your comment? Are you saying we need grain flours? Or are you saying we shouldn’t eat as many veggies? I’m confused but would definitely like to learn more. Thanks!
Sarah,
I really appreciate this post. I personally know a number of people who have gone on the GAPS diet only to find themselves in a worse situation than they were before.
One additional caution that I would like to bring up is that adrenal fatigue is often linked to copper overload / toxicity and vegetarian foods are heavy in copper. This is one more reason why “going wild” (as you appropriately put it) with the no grain flours can be a problem. This doesn’t mean that we can’t eat any of them, but it does serve as a reminder that anything to an excess can become a problem.
Please tell more about people that have tried GAPS and then been in worse shape. Why? We are very close to starting the intro and want to be sure we don’t end up worse off. Thank you!
The GAPS diet is very low carb. If you suffer from adrenal fatigue, which is probably most of us to some extent, a low carbohydrate diet can actually aggravate it. It is important to treat the bigger problem first. IE. if you are very fatigued but also have trouble sleeping, going on a very low carb diet may not be the right choice. Try a less strict version of GAPS first.
I didn’t think the GAPS diet was very low carb. At least not Full GAPS. You have lentils, navy beans, squash, and other veggies on the diet. I think maybe the carbs are more limited than most of us are used to, since we are used to carbs coming from grains and starchy foods. But I don’t necessarily think Full GAPS has to be low carb. Sometimes it is more time consuming/difficult to work in the carbs after spending all the time preparing the broths and meats. But the diet itself doesn’t have to be low carb. I am working towards GAPS. I eliminated all grains about 3 weeks ago. But I’m not yet up to fermented veggies or dairy at this point (have to learn how to make them) and not yet doing fermented dairy (need to figure out where to source raw milk and how to make it). I also have just started reading the book and haven’t gotten to the part about which supplements I need and dosage and such. But once I get to that plan, will be ordering the high quality supplements. I am doing Full GAPS first because I spent over 20 years as a vegetarian (near vegan) and I had to see whether or not I could even manage to drink meat broth (let alone the rich “gelatinous” bone broth). I haven’t even eggs in all that time, other than if they were hidden within baked goods. I don’t know that I will be able to eat the raw eggs at all. But even eating a cooked egg is a huge leap for me. I am eating large quantities of the home made soups at least once a meal. As I get more recipes under my belt and making this type of food becomes more of a habit over the next few months I hope to eat the soup(s) as part of my meals rather than the entire meal (usually I eat soup for lunch and then maybe a smaller portion with my dinner). But I’m working towards it. Once I get this huge lifestyle change with both eliminating grains AND eating meat down, then I will back track to the introductory stage. I think I had die off symptoms the first 2 weeks. But it’s hard to tell because of PMS (which is potentially a GAPS issue anyhow). But I was very stiff and couldn’t sleep. The stiffness has mostly disappeared at this point. Sleep has gotten better but is still a bit of an issue though. I read that a lot of animal protein can make it difficult to sleep. And I’m not used to any animal protein. I figure once my body has time to adjust, better sleep will happen.
I am one of those people. I didn’t have any digestive issues but we went on GAPS as a whole family because I was hoping it would help my husband and one of my children. (It would not have been possible to have two out of six people on GAPS while the rest of us at traditional foods. Not only would that have been extremely difficult for me, the planner and cook, but for the people giving up all disaccharides to watch the rest of us eating them would have been torture.)
My hair started falling out, my menstrual cycles got strange, I developed short-term memory loss, extreme fatigue, exercise intolerance, gained 20 pounds, and my body temps dropped down to 95 degrees on a regular basis. I was grain & starch free for 2 months, then we did GAPS for 11 months (adding in all the broth and ferments), so about 13 months of being disaccharide free. The symptoms just kept getting worse, as time went on.
My throid levels were fine (had them checked by a holistic thyroid specialist, not just the standard TSH) but my ratio of RT3 to FT3 was way, way off. Basically, I had developed a famine response by being on a starch free diet.
It’s two years later and while I’m mostly feeling better, I’m still trying to recover.
I have seen how GAPS has helped people overcome allergies and autism. But, based on my experience, I strongly caution anyone from using it that does not have digestive issues.
And, a good friend of mine healed their family’s food allergies in a mere 4 months on GAPS. So, in my opinion, if you need GAPS, do it and get off it as soon as you can. Don’t stay on it, thinking it’s a lifetime diet. And, if you are continually getting worse, don’t think that “sticking it out” will make things better. Examine whether or not you are, overall, getting better or worse.
As far as my husband and son– my husband’s pollen allergies did improve. His other health issues seemed to stay the same or decline. My son’s anxiety improved in the beginning but, the longer we were on the diet, the more it regressed.
Another consideration is that most people with GAPS have low hydrochloric acid levels in their stomach. Not only does this play into problems further down the intestinal line (with dysbiosis, leaky gut, etc) but it also affects your zinc status, which interplays with copper. Therefore, someone with low zinc and/or low HCL would be more affected by this. It’s important to explore some of these other health issues as a supplement to the GAPS protocol. HCL and/or zinc supplementation is easy and inexpensive. Most people could benefit from it but it shouldn’t just be used automatically. I do see that most of my GAPS clients also need digestive support further up the chain as well- digestion is a north to south process after all 🙂