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!
Hi all, I have been studying the GAP diet for over a month now, and everything related to leaky gut and candida, as we have it, too, in my family. We are all allergic to milk, my nose is always congested, and my husband has hay fever and asthma. I love what Dr. Campbell has found out and I have watched her video several times. I have sent her video links to all my friends!
However, when it comes to her idea of how to fix the gut, my mouth drops. Really.
Dr. Campbell is an excellent neurologist, not a nutritionist, and it is obvious.
She has developed a diet which is very similar to the one promoted by the Weston & Price foundation, a diet based primarily on raw, organic, un–pasteurised animal products, with the elimination of grains and raw fruit/veggies.
While it is completely possible that GAP syndrome may get better by following this diet for a short time, (as it eliminates some of the culprits, namely sugar and grains) any nutritionist or holistic healer will know that if kept for a long time, this animal-based diet will cause a lot of harm, namely the four big problems that plague industrialised countries: diabetes, cancer, heart disease and stroke. (For details just watch the free video: Fork over knives)
Dr. Campbell has not brought any long term evidence that her patients, after say, 2 or 3 years of that diet, have not developed serious, really serious problems, constipation being the first.
Moreover, she is completely uneducated regarding the massive amount of vaccines, steroids, growth hormones, antibiotics, and general chemicals which are injected in farm animals from day one and pass to our bodies when we have milk (a glue, the foundation of allergies and cancer) and meat (a dense mass that putrefies in our intestine for days before becoming a had mass stuck on the lining of the intestine).
Most animals are fed with G.M. corn (and they are not supposed to eat corn) and soy meals.
Oh yes, she recommends grass fed animals. Good luck if you think you can pay for that kind of meat. And how can you be assured that no farmer has ever sprayed pesticides in the field nearby, 3 times a year, and therefore that lovely grass is actually full of chemicals?
It is just not healthy food. Especially for 18 months. I am yet to read any testimonial of any patient who has been on the GAP diet for 2 years and now, 10 years later, eating all that meat is still healthy. Impossible. And I have read hundreds of testimonials for hours and hours, day after day, for over a month. There isn’t one definite case of one healed person who has no more problems. Because they might seal the gut (easy, as casein is a glue, and it permeates the gut, stopping the absorption of all minerals, thus you read of people being very tired etc) but they will develop a lot more health issues in the future.
The GAP diet in the first two stages eliminates all fiber. There is no need to do so, because you will also lose a lot of nutrients that are only found in plant foods. This issue of the fibers causing an inflamed gut can be easily be solved by juicing fruit and veggies. (And of course by avoiding fruit in the beginning as it feeds Candida). This is the quickest way to remove the fibers and get the nutrients straight into the blood stream.
Superfood by Dr. Schulze has lots of spirulina and GAP friendly nutrients by the way, and it gives you plenty of energy.
The human body is not designed to eat only animal products: we have only 4 canines for a reason. Our intestine is much longer than the one of carnivores, and thus meat putrefies inside it, causing, in the long term, a lot of problems, including constipation, toxins and yes….leaky gut syndrome. The industry has brainwashed all of us, including doctors, to believe that we need to eat animal products, so they can become rich while we become sick. Big Pharma is thankful.
A search on the Internet will show that all the “other” medical doctors and natural healers suggest a plant based diet to resolve dysbiosis and leaky gut syndrome. Dr. Campbell is the only one who suggests that humans can get better by following a lion’s diet. It’s a shame because I think she is fantastic and I really like her, but her diet is dangerous. There are far better programmes around which are more doable and will heal the guts, too. There isn’t just one way.
Among the many websites on leaky gut and candida, I noticed lots of people contradicting one another. Lots of foods allowed by one doctor are forbidden by another. Very confusing!
I was very happy last week to find some clear guidance from Dr. David Christopher in an article I am linking below.
David Christopher is a Master Herbalist and I have studied at his school, becoming a Family Herbalist last year. I have learned so much about nutrition and about the mucusless diet of Dr. Christopher, which is excellent to prevent stomach problems and any health problem.
It is a life style which makes sense and is doable, and not based on difficult to find foods, or on killing animals.
I am excited to have found David Christopher’s programme for the healing of leaky gut syndrome and it looks to me much more doable than any other programme I have seen so far, plus it makes sense from a holistic healing point of view. Although he suggests one month, in some cases a longer time will be needed but I feel he is on the right track.
My family and I are getting ready to start with this diet next week. The article is in the link below.
http://articles.herballegacy.com/natural-protocol-for-systemic-yeast-
overgrowth-and-leaky-gut-syndrome/
I hope my comments are not offensive to any of you. My desire is simply to help.
I have seen first hand my parents, grandparents, and all my in-laws dying of cancer at an early age. (from 35 to 70)
And guess what they ate. They were all on the GAP diet without knowing it. Great biological meat, (some of them were hunters), great farm dairies, mostly cooked veggies, the purest raw, full fat milk, lots of fresh animal fats etc. They lived in an unspoiled place with no pollution, too.
You would expect them to be healthy but they all had leaky gut disease for life and din’t know it.
They all developed constipation very early and together they had: appendicitis, haemorrhoids, tonsillectomies, removal of one kidney and gallbladder, 3 heart attacks, continual stomach problems, gum disease, cavities, fractures, hepatitis, osteoporosis, type II diabetes, 4 cases of breast cancer, 3 of heart disease and one liver cancer. And I am talking about 5 persons here.
If this is the effect of eating the best animal products – well, I certainly do NOT want to engage in any Weston-Price, industry-led discussion on how well they will make me any BETTER!
To all of you, all my best wishes for a resolution of your health problems!
You’ve clearly confused a great deal of things about GAPS. Read her book again and engage more critical thinking. And yes, she does stress grass fed organic meat for a reason – if you decide to skip that step, I’m sorry.
I have been following the advanced GAPS diet for about 1 year now. I have seasonal and pet dander allergies for years now.
I have noticed a big improvement with both types of allergies. Definitely a believer.
My question is, how do you know when it’s time to put starches such as potatoes back into the diet? I’m basically following a Paleo diet and they’ve come around to the idea or yams/sweet potatoes.
Sarah,
At age 60 I have had increasing digestive problems. Long history of constipation, and now what seems just kind of a digestive system shutdown. two years of extreme stress seems to have kicked this into overdrive. With a noticeable slowdown of all kinds of healing from little cuts on, am I too old to actually expect healing of my gut?
Hey Sarah,
I love your blog! It has been really helpful for me as I changed and continue to improve my diet. Two weeks ago I had a little boy! I had to have a c-section….and my water was broke for a long time before he was born, and his white blood cell count and CRP was really high…so the docs made him do a full course of antibiotics. (Which is a week in the hospital) So, now I’m wanting to put him on probiotics to help his gut bacteria get back in place. Can I use Bio-Kult for a newborn? How do I give it to him if I am breastfeeding? Should I take it too?
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Erin Crouch
I was wondering if anyone knows anything about coming off the gaps diet when it comes to eating processed foods in moderation? In the book Dr. Campbell Mcbride talks about how when you come off the full GAPS diet the patient cant go back to eating the typical american diet. But she doesnt even mention eating unhealthy things in moderation. Im not fanatical, I know when i go on vacation im not going to be able to be healthy the whole time, and same goes for when i go to parties and things like that. Of course I wanna stay healthy for the majority of the time and i never plan on going back to my old lifestyle. Ive been doing an anti candida diet for about 2 months and i plan on starting the full gaps diet next month for about 1-2 years.
Hi Sarah, can you have beets during the intro for making soup and kvass? Thanks!
Hi Sarah, I love your videos and your site! It’s been crucial in our journey to traditional foods and lifestyle. I wanted to know, you mentioned at the end of this article that initial healing in the first few weeks doesn’t mean healing. What DOES it mean? My son had relief from his eczema in total during the Introduction to GAPS, but a few weeks after being on Full GAPS it came back hardcore. I’ve read and been told that this is actually the healing going on (for several reasons) and that eczema takes the longest time to heal, but my heart keeps going back to those first few weeks and why we can’t get his skin to that again. We’re trudging through the diet, struggling financially to do this (thus my frequent visits to sites like yours), but keep wondering is it really working.
Nice post. Thanks for this sharing. It is very important to eat balanced meal which should contain every vitamin & essential nutrients important for joints & for flexibility of bones. This is important & useful information.
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Yum! Jessica, would love to know your morning drink recipe! Would be fun to have something to alternate with the tea.