The Norma Natasha Project

Today is D Day: Diet Day, the day I start my new diet.

I think it usually takes a traumatic or very unpleasant experience to get people to change their way of life. For me, it is years of being unable to sleep at night because of indigestion.

Being allergic to wheat, chicken, beef, dairy, cabbage, apples, grapes, cherries, mustard, celery, cranberries and  many other foods has definitely changed the way I eat — and not for the better. The restrictive diet I’ve been on greatly limits my choices. Compounding the problem is that food intolerances are caused by a leaky gut, so I am faced with acquiring more allergies which will leave me with even less choices of foods to eat. That’s not a pleasant future to look forward to.

And simply avoiding those foods has not lessened the indigestion and sleepless nights.

In reading a copy of the Weston A. Price Foundation magazine, I noted that there is another choice.

Enter the GAPS diet. That stands for Gut And Psychology Syndrome diet. According to the book (which I promptly ordered), I should be free of food intolerances within two years. So what if it greatly restricts my choices of foods for the next two years. I have happy eating experiences to look forward to in two years with little or no restrictions.

I told Charley he could decide to go on the diet with me or not (he has food intolerances, too), but that I wasn’t going to cook two different meals for the two of us. I told him what he ate when he’s elsewhere is up to him. After complaining about how difficult it would be for him because he eats out at various meetings, banquets and on the road, he finally conceded that he would try it because he “doesn’t want me to get ahead of him.”

The theory behind the GAPS diet is that food intolerances, indigestion, food cravings — and even autism and behavioral problems —  are caused by the gut bacterial flora being out of whack. It takes approximately two years for a person’s gut to be restored to a healthy mix of bacterial flora. Reasons a person’s gut flora gets out of whack is due to many causes, but stress, antibiotics or the birth control pill are common causes. Add to that the rampant consumption of sugar and other carbohydrates in our society and you have the makings of an unhealthy gut.

In fact, according to Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, the author of the book, just cutting out gluten or dairy isn’t the solution for food intolerances, even celiacs. Getting your gut bacteria healthy is. Most people with these problems, she says, do better without any grains, even so-called gluten-free grains. And most gluten-free products, so popular these days, are made with high levels of other sugars and other starches, which only compounds the problems of a sick GI tract.

Dr. Campbell-McBride seems to know of what she speaks (or writes). Not only was her son autistic, but now completely normal, but she has helped thousands of others return to normal through this diet.

So what is this diet like, you ask? Based on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), popularized by Elaine Gottschall — who also cured her autistic child with the diet — it restricts all grains and not just those with gluten, all sugars and high starch carbohydrates. The reason celiacs don’t always respond to just restricting gluten, according to Dr. Campbell-McBride, is because people need to restore their natural gut flora and just cutting out gluten and/or dairy doesn’t do that. The GAPS diet differs from the SCD diet in that it also adds probiotics and detoxifying to speed things up.

For the first two weeks, I will go through the introduction diet, because people do better and get better faster when they incorporate this two-week diet into the six or seven stages of the diet. (And who wants to prolong it?) The introduction diet consists of bone broths cooked for several days to insure that the minerals are extracted from the bones (because most people with gut dysbiosis are in some stage of malnutrion and are unable to absorb nutrients). To this is added the meat picked off the bone and low-starch vegetables cooked very soft because fiber is hard to digest and most people with gut dysbiosis can’t to it. A cup of broth is taken with every meal. A teaspoon of a fermented vegetable liquid is added to the soup along with a chopped up clove of garlic. That’s it. Charley and I actually like vegetable soups, so I’m thinking this shouldn’t be too hard. The problem for me is getting enough bones to cook, as I can’t use beef or chicken. Fortunately, a coworker donated her venison bones that she would have otherwise thrown away.

And so the Norma Natasha Project begins. I have only 729 days left.