Most people who know me personally know that I’m a strong advocate of the GAPS diet and that the GAPS Protocol has made a big impact healing my family.   It has recently made huge waves on the Internet, it is frequently used by those practicing Natropathic Nutritional Therapy or Functional Medicine and you will find thousands of testimonies all over the Internet from families attesting to its healing capacity. The GAPS premise in the main can be very simple to implement – remove certain inflammatory food groups and introduce foods that heal, allowing the the gut to rest and repair.  For more serious conditions a GAPS healing protocol will entail implementing a diet plan, whilst taking steps to reduce toxicity in the surrounding environment and using minimal supplements where required.

GAPS, standing for Gut and Psychology Syndrome or Gut and Physiology Syndrome, is a strategy developed by Dr Natasha Campbell McBride, a trained Doctor with a post graduate in Neurology and Human Nutrition who resides in the UK.  The protocol is used for a variety of conditions, many that will overlap and some that will not even fit into a diagnostic box.  Here are some of the most common:

• Autism, ADHD, Schizophrenia, bi-polar and depression
• Auto-immune conditions of which there are now over 200 (including coeliac disease, rheumatoid arthritis, Lupus, Crohn’s, diabetes type 1 and more)
• Atopic conditions such as allergies, asthma and eczema
• Chronic Fatigue, fibromyalgia, ME
• Digestive conditions such as IBS and gastritis

GAPS is developed from the conclusion that first and foremost these conditions begin in the gut and advancing scientific literature lays out foundations for a new blueprint in how we treat disease.  Hippocrates, the very famous physician who lived over 2000 years ago once said ‘All disease is born in the gut’ and modern science is pioneering that chronic metabolic diseases like those mentioned above, which are prevalent in today’s society, stem from what is now termed professionally as intestinal permeability but also commonly referred to as leaky gut.  Despite the symptom, what all these diseases have common is gut dysbiosis (abnormal gut flora).

The GAPS Protocol is an advanced solution that aims to:

• Repair the intestinal lining
• Provide a diet that is gentle and soothing to the digestive tract
• Repopulate beneficial bacteria into the gut
• Remove an overload of toxins and pathogenic (unhealthy) bacteria

When following the GAPS diet you would look to remove the following foods:

• All grains
• Refined sugar
• Starchy vegetables such as potatoes and parsnips
• Processed foods

What you are left with is a very nutrient-dense traditional diet, as close to nature as possible:

• Bone broth
• Grass-fed meat
• Fish
• Seafood
• Organic vegetables and fruit
• Eggs
• Nuts and seeds
• Avocado
• Healthy fats – ghee, coconut oil, animals fats
• Raw and cultured dairy
• Fermented foods

Fermented foods are core to the healing process, not only are they inexpensive and simple to make but provide a powerful medicinal treatment. These foods proliferate your gut microbiome (the gut flora which hosts the bacteria in your gut) with healthy bacteria which will eventually crowd out the pathogens. They also have many other very important functions as listed here.

GAPS Controversy
When you google GAPS, it must be noted you will find some Doctors critical of the GAPS diet because there have up until now been no clinical trials of this treatment, they will state that the science is “unfounded” and “experimental”. This will soon be changing as a study has received funding from Virginia Commonwealth University by Austen M. Mulluy PhD and the results will be published shortly.

This certainly didn’t deter me because more importantly when you break apart the components of the GAPS diet there are thousands of studies that prove:

• Probiotics remove toxins, improve digestion, immunity and more
• Bone Broth provides collagen that heals and seals the gut
• Real whole-food nutrition supplies vitamins and minerals for optimum health
• Grains (when not prepared properly) are problematic for a large proportion of the population
• Healthy fats are a necessity for heart health, brain function

Anecdotal it may be, I have seen the results that have worked for each and every one of my family. Nothing has 100% success rate because we are all biologically unique but when properly implementing a diet of whole-food nutrition you ultimately risk very little and have so much to gain.

Look at your symptoms kindly as a warning that your health needs your attention, give your body the right tools and it has an incredible capacity to heal.

If you would like to learn more about GAPS please subscribe to my newsletter or if you would like to discuss how you implement the GAPS protocol please contact me for an appointment.

Hayfever is for many people a miserable affliction, every summer you learn to dread the next door neighbours mowing their lawn and those really hot windy days when you can see the pollen blowing in the breeze. Medications make you drowsy and hayfever symptoms make you irritable, I know I’ve been there!  I also know people suffer with far worse conditions than these but there are some important reasons NOT to ignore these symptoms.

For many people antihistamines offer little comfort, nasal sprays perhaps a little more but you have to remember to take them religiously. I suffered with hayfever from the age of 5 years old, add to that an allergy to any animal that molted and dust, I can fully empathise with 25% of the population who now experience this.  The NHS will spend £50 million on hayfever medications this year and up to £900 million on allergy-related illnesses, hayfever also accounts for 2-3% of Doctors visits, so it’s also a big burden on the health system too.

 What is Histermine?

Histermine is a neurotransmitter (sends messages between the cells) and has the required function of reducing inflammation and allergic responses.  Histermine is released by the immune cells to work against pathogens and toxins.  If your body becomes too toxic by an imbalance of beneficial bacteria or inflamed, histermine up-scales to counter.  The resulting hayfever or allergy is a signal that your body doesn’t have enough beneficial bacteria to remove the excessive histermine as exemplified in studies where probiotics are introduced. Hayfever is therefore one of the first signals that you have a gut imbalance. 

It’s not the Pollen

Pollen is not the problem, if it were we would have experienced hayfever related issues from birth but the reality is most people incur symptoms later in life only to get progressively worse.

Some of you will want to blame genetics but the reality is although you have a genetic predisposition to these types of allergies, whether you switch on those genes is determined by outside influences (health, external environment etc), which you have ultimate control over.  It is important to note that you will also inherit the gut microbiome (your gut flora of bacteria) from your parents so their health at pregnancy will determine your health at birth.  These explanations help to determine why you may experience these symptoms but what can you do about it?

Hayfever Relief

You need to find the route cause which is based in the gut.  Introduce plenty of beneficial bacteria to remove the pathogens and toxins and allow histermine to rebalance .  Support gut healing by eating foods as close to nature as possible – organic fruit and vegetables, grass-fed meats, bone broth, fish and healthy natural fats such as olive oil and avocados. The good news is that relief can be found pretty quickly, I did the GAPS introduction diet and stopped having hayfever within a couple of weeks. I have not encountered hayfever for the last 3 years and summer is now bliss, I want to share the secrets with you so that you no longer need to fear pollen.

3 steps to Hayfever Relief

1. Take out food groups that are inflammatory and difficult for the gut to digest, predominantly grains and sugar
2. Introduce probiotics, either in tablet form or fermented foods such as fermented kefir or sauerkraut, this will rebalance your gut flora and help remove toxins from the body
3. Consume plenty of bone broth to heal and seal the gut.  Bone broth contains many critical amino acids which repair and protect the cells in the gut lining while detoxifying the body.