What is the GAPS diet? Gut Health Part 2

Although outwardly a happy and healthy child, around the time Ashton turned 2 we became concerned that he had never had a solid stool and in fact, most of his food came out, looking almost the same way it went in. Toddler diarrhoea is the term a doctor will give you. And while they say it’s common, remember that common is not normal. Knowing this would likely be a sign of deeper issues which could then go on to create further problems, just ignoring it didn’t sit right with me. So we looked into gut health deeper and on Ashton’s second birthday we started the GAPS Introduction diet.

If you haven’t heard of GAPS it stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome and is the work of Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride. In her book she explains how as a medical professional she was shocked to find that there was no treatment available for her autistic son (some 30 years ago). So she went on to do further studies in nutrition and health leading her to develop the GAPS diet. She has since been able to link gut health to an incredible array of poor health conditions like her son’s autism, which she improved to the point of no notable symptoms, as well as allergies, asthma and mental health conditions. These days thousands and thousands of people have seen incredible healing results following her protocol.

The GAPS diet is broken into stages, stages 1-6 slowly introduce foods in the order of their ability to heal and their inability to increase inflammation. The idea being, as you allow the time for your body to heal, whatever symptoms of ill-health you have will disappear. This includes allergies and intolerances to food – which is a particular reason we are being so dedicated with the protocol.

Then the full GAPS diet is where you mostly stay for life, with the occasional addition of some extra whole foods as desired. Full GAPS is very similar to paleo – no grains or starchy vegetables like potato, however, it does allow full fat, organic dairy as well as well-prepared lentils if you tolerate them.

So we started on the introduction diet which encourages the body to gently detox and heal. Being pregnant at the time I wasn’t able to do the intro diet so Ashton did it alone with Jason and I eating the same foods but adding in some sweet potato and occasionally having some rice or using tapioca in our meals.

We saw amazing results for Ashton. In theory stages 1-6 could take you anywhere from 6 weeks to 2 years to complete, depending on where you’re at with your health. Ashton did it in about 5 months. But in total honesty, we rushed stages 5 and 6 – which were around Christmastime - which brings us to where we are now.