A Journal of my Journey on the GAPS Diet

*These posts were written when my blog was more of a journal and will have more of a diary entry typestyle. If you are in the middle of the GAPS Diet or considering doing the GAPS diet, these posts will helpful for you to see what being on the temporary diet was like.

What is GAPS?

GAPS stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome, a term which was coined by Dr. Natasha Campbell-Mcbride. She developed a healing diet meant to heal and seal the gut as well as reduce the toxic load for her patients. Mainly, she noticed that her autistic patients (one being her own son) were able to get their life back from making her dietary and lifestyle change and she noted how connected the gut and brain really are

A Snippet of My Background {of Sickness}

(Originally Written in 2013 – some sentences have been updated)

When I started GAPS 60 days ago I was in the absolute worst health of my life. It was literally a crisis. I thought I was going to die. For real. I have been struggling with hypothyroidism for 7 years along with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. My former endocrinologist said Hashimoto’s is not a big deal – just take synthetic T4 and you will be fine. He said my thyroid will just continue to take damage and then eventually die. 

Through the lack of treatment and understanding about Hashimoto’s, chronic severe stress in my life for more than two and a half years, major sleep deprivation for two years, a diet filled with sugars and starches (even the good for you ones like beans, lentils and fruit), antibiotic usage and more, my body was wrecked and continuing to decline in function.

When My Health Symptoms Became Intolerable

In January 2013, coming out of the holiday stressors an unhealthy diet for me at the time, I crashed. My husband was scheduled for surgery for a fusion in his neck on the 10th. During that week I got the flu and was down for three days. I started feeling better the day of his surgery and thankfully was able to go to be with him. Of course, that meant poor sleep, more stress and a lot of “bad for my health” things going on. 

The day after those events, I woke up with terrible swelling in my face. My ears were painful, bright red, swollen and on fire with a burning itchiness. My eyelids were swollen and the top half of my face was swollen. I freaked out.

Because I freaked out, sadly, I took a round of antibiotics and prednisone for the swelling. Dumbest thing I could have done. Those things made my healing go backward and in turn, I will take a lot longer to heal now – by months (maybe years) – just from one decision to take the stinkin’ antibiotics.

Still dealing with swelling and what felt like some sort of infection I woke up four days later to my eyes almost swollen shut. My boys couldn’t even recognize me. My face, ears, neck, and head were burning and itchy with scales that were flaky and bleeding. My whole body felt infected.

Don’t Deal with Quack Doctors

The antibiotics had done nothing good. The prednisone continued to suppress my immune system so it couldn’t fight off anything. My white blood cell count was SO low. I was in one of the deepest, darkest valleys of my entire life. All of the unknowns were haunting me. Cancer, something else debilitating, will I be around for my kids, am I going to die, etc, etc, etc? {2018 update – I found out that the antibiotics my doctor prescribed to me were Penicillin which is the ONE I am allergic too. This is why I had such a severe reaction and the swelling worsened rather than got better. Be sure you interview your doctor so you don’t get a quack who does stuff like that!}

I went to the ER that day

It’s what I thought was my last hope, my saving grace.

On my way to the ER, I got a call from my Functional and Integrative Medicine doctor (*I highly recommend this kind of medicine, I had just started meeting with her) and she told me I tested positive for MONO! If only I had a working immune system.

Longer story short – the ER doctors could do NOTHING. They didn’t even give me anything for my swelling since it wasn’t an anaphylactic shock type swelling (probably a good thing in retrospect.) In other words, my airways were fine.

$2,000 later (on top of the thousands I have already spent over the years) and no diagnosis, help or hope, I decided I was done with allopathic medicine.

They treat the symptom, not the cause.

This revelation had been a long time coming and in general, I never had any good experiences in the western medicine world. I will only ever go back to a western medicine doctor for an acute problem like a broken arm or a heart attack. My family will not go to one either. It is a waste of time and money. They have been no help and actually have contributed to my decline in health over the years.

The Beginning of True Healing

In the days following I could barely function. However, I started getting down to business with my FIMD (Functional and Integrative Medicine Doctor.) She ran the gamut of tests and talked to me for hours (yes it is true a doctor will actually spend hours with you if they truly care and are not run by big pharma) about things to try to help my dying, immune-suppressed body. One of the ideas, among many, many others, that came up was to try the GAPS diet.

During all my time at home, I did a lot of research and a lot of praying about trying GAPS or some of the other things she mentioned. I couldn’t physically “do” anything else.

I couldn’t cook, clean, take care of my family, homeschool, grocery shop, go anywhere (except doctors appointments) or do anything that required energy. I felt so sick. I prayed and I researched. Thankfully my fully supportive family picked up the slack in ALL the other areas. Praise God for my family!

As I read more and more about GAPS and watched some videos, it all started making sense. I started to understand why I was so sick, what was happening to my body, what my body needed, why I was having the symptoms I was and what I needed to do to get back to health.

I still waited and prayed though because in the past I had done things that made my health worse, not better – deathly cleanse, ALCAT diet and more. After I felt confirmation from the Lord, I decided to give the GAPS diet a try for 30 days and if I didn’t see any changes then I would abandon it and try an Autoimmune Paleo diet (AIP).

Here’s a List of My Symptoms and Health Problems Before Starting the GAPS Diet

Formal Diagnosis

1. Hypothyroidism
2. Hashimoto’s
3. Leaky Gut
4. Adrenal Fatigue
5. Low Progesterone
6. Asthma
7. Vitiligo
8. Seborrheic Dermatitis
9. Atopic Dermatitis
10. Vitamin Deficiencies
11. Low White Blood Cell Count
12. Mononucleosis/EBV
13. Eczema
14. Anemia

Overall Symptoms

1. Infected feeling in head, nose and eyes
2. Cuts inside my nose
3. Electric feeling in my legs
4. Tingling in my arms and hands (ruled out MS)
5. Terrible brain fog
6. Headaches
7. Extreme body aches – EVERYWHERE
8. Poor concentration and focus
9. Blurred vision
10. Sticky, watery eyes
11. Intensely itchy skin that cracks, weeps, bleeds and burns. Feel like skin is always crawling
12. Sandpaper rash all over my body
13. Cystic acne
14. Extreme food sensitivities (sensitive to over 175 foods)
15. Critically low body weight (96 pounds) (crazy thing is I used to struggle with being overweight!)
16. Huge swollen lymph nodes in my neck, back of head and groin and some smaller ones on my face
17. Overwhelming fatigue (could sleep 13 hours and still be tired)
18. Facial swelling in my eyes, ears, cheeks
19. Jaw pain
20. Sores on my jawline and hairline
21. Terrible irritability
22. Severe depression
23. Showers make everything worse
24. Intestinal pain
25. Kidney pain
26. Abdominal cramping
27. Significant hair loss
28. Poor digestive motility
29. Irregular menses
30. Arthritic like symptoms
31. Sores on gums
32. Ridges in nails
33. (There’s still more but this list is long enough – you get the picture)

Starting the Intro GAPS Diet

I started the GAPS Diet at Intro stage 1. I had no other choice but to start at Intro stage 1 since I had so many health issues. I secured a place for grass-fed beef bones to make bone broths, bought (or had my family who was shopping for me) buy organic everything, found some grass fed bovine raw milk to make yogurt with and made my own sauerkraut and ghee (eventually.)

 

What My Meals Were Like

My breakfasts were organic beef, pastured chicken, or wild caught fish with a homemade bone broth and loads of GAPS legal veggies along with homemade ghee and Celtic salt.

I ate this way for breakfast lunch and dinner and also introduced one of the most important things -two new GOOD probiotics GUTPro and Prescript Assist (no longer on the market). I also eventually added Vital Nutrients, a multi-vitamin (with no iodine because iodine can cause Hashimoto’s antibodies to rise in some people.)

 

Starting Out + My Profound Results

In the beginning, I was also having 1-tsp of homemade, 24-hour fermented, raw milk yogurt each day and 1 tsp of sauerkraut juice. Occasionally I would add in an egg yolk to my bowls of soup too.

Within 1 week of eating this way…

• My energy was coming back.
• I started to feel less infected overall.
• My face redness, flakiness and itchiness cleared up and went away.
• This is redness, flakiness and itchiness on my face I had for 6 years!
• My swelling went down.

It was so nice after a few weeks to not go to bed fearing what I would wake up to. My itchiness overall the rest of my body was not going away though. I was still eating something or doing something my body didn’t like. I cut out the raw milk yogurt, sauerkraut and eggs to see if there would be a difference. I was also detoxing and so my body (arms, hands and neck mostly) itchiness got more intense for a time. It would keep me up at night. 

My symptoms and issues continued to improve over the next month. I was feeling full and satisfied with my meals and everything tasted so good because I was so malnourished. Remember, I was 96 pounds! I should’ve been around 120 pounds.

Through the broths especially, my body was getting the vitamins and minerals it needed. I was losing my fear of eating because there were finally foods that I could eat that didn’t make me react in some horrible way. I stopped crying after every meal.

My blurred vision went away. I could focus and I felt like the fog in my brain had lifted. The headaches and sores on my face went away. Only occasional cystic acne. My arthritis pain went away too. There were good things happening. I was so happy!

The Second Month on the GAPS Diet

Some days were worse than others. Depending on how much probiotic I was taking, which in turn caused more detox, or if I introduced a veggie my body didn’t agree with I would feel the reaction.

I did Epsom salt detox baths, bentonite clay soaks and tried numerous oils (like coconut) to moisturize my rough painful skin. I now use only pure organic shea butter on my arms and neck. 

The rule is, if you can’t eat it DON’T put it on your skin. I realized I reacted terribly to some things like onions, garlic and coconut oil. Although they are excellent foods, I react because they cause detox for me. They are also FODMAPS which I think I have a sensitivity to some FODMAP foods. Chicken or fish doesn’t really sit well with me either. I have a hard time digesting it.

Now, after 60 days on the GAPS diet…

I am on Stage 3 / 4 of the Intro diet. I stayed on stage 1 for a long time (more than a month) because I had to backtrack when I had to eliminate eggs, yogurt and sauerkraut midway. I just wanted my skin to clear up.

I am beginning to introduce more foods in the past two weeks though. I still skip the egg yolks but will be trying raw milk yogurt at the end of the week again and sauerkraut next week. I am also introducing other foods.

Now I make my own sausages from grass-fed ground beef for breakfast and I throw those into my bone broth veggie soups. I also plan on starting to juice in the next week but have to take that slow because it causes detox too.

I hate detox!

Results after 60 Days on the GAPS Diet

After 60 days on the GAPS Diet, my energy is back to almost full swing. I literally cannot believe the power of food!

I have to be careful to go to bed at a decent time and get enough sleep (due to my adrenals healing.) My egg size swollen lymph nodes on the back of my head and neck are gone and I only have two tiny ones on my neck now.

The only symptoms I am still dealing with and maybe for a lot longer are itchy, bleeding eczema on my arms, hands and neck that ebbs and flows. I can’t get them wet or the itchiness drives me insane. Other symptoms still hanging around are dry skin, irregular periods, still some digestive issues, occasional depression, ridges in my nails and a bit of hair loss (due to extreme diet change I believe.)

Results:

• My thyroid Antibodies TgAb and TPO have come way down,
• My Leaky Gut is healing because I notice I am digesting food better and I can tolerate more foods,
• My adrenal health is improving but still really fragile,
• At this point, I have not checked my vitamin levels or progesterone levels.
• My white blood cell count has risen to a low normal range.
• Instead of itching all over my entire body it has concentrated on my forearms and neck. It’s still pretty painful and cracks, bleeds and burns.
• I gained 6 pounds.
• Headaches and depression have improved though they’re still present.
• I still can’t take showers because water can’t touch my painful arms or neck.

Am I Satisfied with the Progress I’ve Seen on the GAPS Diet?

From my first symptom list to now I am pleased with the progress I have made on 60 days with the GAPS diet. There have been bumps in the road and a lot of trial and error. There have been doubtful days too. I do believe that it is helping my gut to heal which in turn is helping my thyroid, adrenals, hormones and all other issues heal. 

It Took Me 34 Years

34 years is what it took me to get to this state of health so I expect to be in this for the long haul. It is worth it to me though to have my life back and be able to function and be a mommy to my 2 sweeties and a wife to my hubby of almost 9 years (who by the way has been SO supportive through this whole process. Poor guy was supposed to be recovering from neck surgery when I got the sickest. Instead he started taking care of me.)

The GAPS Diet has helped to nourish me back to health slowly. I am so thankful for it. 

I trust if you have read this whole post you are searching for answers to your health journey. I would love to answer any questions you have. Just leave a comment below. The Internet has been priceless in my quest for knowledge about my body, my health and healing. Honestly, it’s helped in a much bigger way than going to see doctors has.

I hope in some way this post can help you in your journey as well.

This is Not the End of My GAPS Diet Journal Entries

I journaled my way through the diet and have a three-part series that will tell you all about 90 days on GAPS and a one year summary of my healing progress.

90 Days on GAPS Part 1 of 3

90 Days on GAPS Part 2 of 3

90 Days on GAPS Part 3 of 3

One Year Summary of My Healing Progress

Helpful GAPS Resources for You

These are some amazing resources that will help make doing the GAPS diet attainable for you.