After reading Anna’s positive experiences with the GAPs diet I ordered the book and have just finished reading it, I have tried a lot of diets over the years especially after living in a moldy apartment in Wellington, NZ which has resulted in problems with my digestive tract ever since. November last year was a month of non-stop rain here in Vancouver, BC and with the temperature change, was the perfect breeding ground for mushrooms, mold and yeasts. As a result our health problems reared their ugly heads again and showed us that we still have an overgrowth of harmful yeast in our systems. In some ways this is good because we at least know that we need to deal with it.

The author of Gut and Psychology Syndrome, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, is also the mother of an Autistic child and holds a MMedSci in both Nutrition and Neurology. The diet that she has used successfully with treating a whole range of conditions from Autism to dyslexia and depression is moulded on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet which was first developed by Dr Sidney Haas who was a famous paediatrician in the early 20th century. He developed this diet after researching the effects of diet on celiac disease, and wrote the medical textbook Management of Celiac Disease in 1951. This work was forgotten with the development of gluten-free diets as the solution for celiac disease, until Elaine Gottschall, a mother whose daughter had been cured on this diet, helped people suffering with Crohn’s disease, IBS, ulcerative colitis, constipation, celiac disease, diverticulitis and chronic diarrhoea, as well as autism, hyperactivity and night terrors. Her book Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Intestinal Health Through Diet, has helped people all over the world heal their intestines and regain vitality of spirit and soul as well as body.

Just the simple fact that both of these women are mothers and have found that this diet has been the solution that has healed their own children really gives the weight of true experience to these books. I just love it when I come across something that really rings true like this. As soon as I get me some good bones for stock I am going to start the Introductory GAPS Diet. It is a two year diet, but I think since it does include fruit and honey, it will be possible to do this diet without having binge attacks, once it gets in full swing. The recipes for bread and muffins with nuts and fruits are really a big help in that area.

I just wanted to share this paragraph from Gut and Psychology Syndrome when Dr. Campbell-McBride talks about genetics. It is a really good sum-up of our present obsession with genetics so I would like to share it here:

The word genetics is mentioned a lot in connection with the GAPS conditions. Now and then we see articles in various journals where some part of some gene has been found, which may have something to do with autism, or schizophrenia, or ADHD/ADD, or dyslexia, or dyspraxia or depression. We are assured that scientists are working on it and that the genetic cause of these conditions will be found! Not that it will help the patients or their families, but it will put our minds at rest that our children were meant to be disabled and there was nothing we could do about it!

In our modern world genetics is a popular concept. Almost every health problem is commonly blamed on genetics. We pollute the water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe with industrial and nuclear wastes and when we get ill we blame it all on genetics. We deplete our soils of minerals and other nutrients and replace them with pesticides, organophosphates, weedkillers and lots of other chemicals, we grow our crops on these soils, we eat these crops, we get ill and blame it all on genetics. We damage our children’s immune systems with vaccinations and antibiotics and blame it all on genetics. We regularly consume processed foods with virtually no nourishment for the body and full of chemicals, detrimental to health, and when we get ill we blame it all on genetics. We regularly intoxicate ourselves with alcohol, tobacco and drugs and when we get ill we blame it all on genetics.

If we look at all the epidemics of degenerative disease we have in our modern times, which are blamed on genetics, it is easy to come to the conclusion that we all must have very poor genetics indeed! In fact I don’t know how human kind survived for millennia with such poor genetics! According to the scientific establishment genetics are to blame pretty much for every misery we suffer. We have epidemics of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, psychological and psychiatric maladies, learning disabilities, autoimmune disorders, obesity, etc. etc., the list is very long. These are all conditions which doctors very rarely encountered 100 years ago. Have our genetics changed so quickly to cause these epidemics?

Well, for the last few decades genetic research or molecular biology has received the most money in the western world. A lot of laboratories, which used to do basic science, have been converted into genetic research. Billions have been poured into this area in every western country. So, if every other scientist works in genetics that that is what they know and that is what they are going to think about when it comes to identifying the course of any disease. As the old English proverb states: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.” Obesity? Don’t worry about your eating habits. Just wait, we will find a gene to blame for it!…Cancer? Do not torment yourself with questions about your lifestyle, we will pinpoint a gene which caused it!…Learning disabilities? Oh definitely must be genetic!

Genetics are a very convenient scapegoat. It is something we are born with, there is nothing we can do about it at the moment. So, wouldn’t it be wonderful not to worry about our food, environment or our life-styles? Wouldn’t it be so convenient to just put all the responsibility for our state of health on our genetics? p229-230

Too true Dr. Campbell-McBride! It is so sad how easily we are manipulated so that we believe that channelling all that money into genetic research is going to help us all. How much longer will we fall for all this smoke and mirrors?