2 years of GAPS part 1

We have been on GAPS for 2 years. I’m going to do a series of posts on each of us and our results from the 2 years. I was trying to do one on all of us but it got too long and complicated. So I will start with my eldest since she has the best story of us all.

W has been gluten free since she turned 2 and has always followed a restricted diet trying to minimize her reactions to foods and keep her on an even keel. We followed the Specific Carbohydrate diet the year she was 2 until she was a little over 3. She saw lots of improvements on SCD but life was still crazy. She didn’t sleep and was very fussy and clingy. I now know that she had silent reflux that kept her up at night but at the time I had no idea and neither did any of her Dr’s. Finally one Dr got lucky and after doing nutritional testing supplemented her with zinc (among other things). The body needs zinc to make stomach acid so it is common for people who are low on zinc to have reflux from low stomach acid. Within a month of starting zinc she started sleeping through the night. Prior to that change she would wake up every hour screaming. This had started when she was an infant and didn’t change as she grew. The sleep experts we consulted with had no idea and just assumed it was some sort of bad habit that needed to be broken. Turns out she was in pain but no one, not even the gentle sleep experts, believed that waking that much could have a physical cause. I knew it wasn’t willful but just couldn’t see what was right in front of my eyes. Probably because I was severely sleep deprived myself from the torture of being awoken every hour for 3 years straight. When her sister developed reflux at 6 months old my eyes were opened to what each of them had gone through. Thankfully by then W’s reflux was generally resolved.

Fast forward a little over 2 years. W was 5 and in homeschool Kindergarten. A big change that year was that we started taking her to a psychologist. We knew that we needed help in parenting this unique and challenging individual that we had been given to raise. We didn’t need a diagnosis for her but just help in knowing how to get through to her. Our three biggest issues were oppositional behavior, anxiety and distractability. We were given some tools that seemed to help some but mostly we still were bewildered by this child who kept changing the rules on us. It was validating however to meet with a professional who agreed that she is a very challenging individual to parent. Sometimes you, as a parent, begin to wonder if it is all you fault when so much that should be simple is such a struggle.

We started GAPS in November of 2009 when W was 5. My main motivation for starting GAPS then was a health crisis that her sister was having. I figured that it would be easiest to start us all on this together. No need to keep multiple diets straight. GAPS stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome and has cured people from a whole range of psychological issues including anxiety and AD/HD so we decided to give it a good solid try. We had been on GAPS for a few weeks when we saw her psychologist next. After a couple of minutes of the appointment the Dr turned to us and said “What have you done? It is remarkable how much she has changed!” She was very impressed with her eye contact and interaction level and so we told her about the GAPS diet. The next time we saw the Dr she said that her sister and her niece had started GAPS, largely because of the difference she had seen in our daughter. At that point we were still struggling day to day with lots of behavior issues and trying to figure out the diet but clearly something good was happening!

Early on in GAPS we figured out that she was still having low stomach acid production which leads to reflux. We put her on HCL and after about 6 weeks she no longer needed it and had completely weaned off of it. Low stomach acid sets up your whole digestive system to work suboptimally and greatly impairs digestion of protein as well as causing painful reflux symptoms. If you don’t digest your foods you don’t get the nutrition from them and your body can’t heal. I am working on a post about digestion that will explain this better.

About 10 months into doing GAPS I realized that W was still very unpredictable. One day would be great and the next day terrible. At was at that time that I began to learn about high sulfur foods. They can often cause rage and anxiety in susceptible people. I started watching what happened to her when she ate those high sulfur foods. She generally became very volatile and out of control. She might be happy but totally unable to listen or cooperate and almost manic. I took all high sulfur foods out of her diet and saw such a profound change in her. It was really amazing. She could focus and cooperate and was just so calm! When she got frustrated instead of exploding she would ask for help. I began to see that she really had very high anxiety that came across as defiance. Anxiety about things I had no idea were issues for her. Removing those foods from her diet brought it down to a manageable level. Over time and with the help of kefir grains that sensitivity to sulfur foods healed and she can now eat them in normal quantities although if she gorges herself some anxiety and the behaviors that go with it will come back. One great thing about the GAPS diet is that it gives you the tools to heal those sensitivities, not just to identify and eliminate them.

Last fall I also found out that W, little J, and I have Lyme disease. My children have probably had it their entire lives. We began to treat it with the Buhner herbal protocol and have seen good improvements in her thanks to those herbs. At this point we are not using antibiotics to treat the Lyme and are hopeful that we won’t have to ever.

W started thyroid medicine when she was 5, just a few months before we started GAPS. This past spring after I learned about the connection between adrenal health and thyroid health I tested her adrenals with a diurnal saliva test. Her cortisol levels were low across the board so we began her on a supplement called Isocort. You can see that in my Amazon links. It contains a small dose of bioidentical cortisol. I was amazed to see how much calmer she was and less anxious and better able to cope. Also her sleep improved tremendously. Over time we have been weaning her off of this supplement and now she takes a very low dose and I don’t expect she will need it much longer. Just a couple of weeks ago she began to spontaneously take naps in the afternoons. She has always had trouble sleeping her whole life and has a lot of missed sleep to make up for. I’m so thrilled that her body is finally giving her what she so desperately needs. Healing happens when you sleep.

There have been other learning issues that have improved for W on GAPS. Before she started her first grade school year she still couldn’t recognize every letter. Now she reads on a 4th grade level. She has finally figured out all of her numerals and is catching up nicely in Math. Her ability to sit and focus is greatly extended as well. She struggles with mild dyslexia that seems to come and go depending on how she is doing over all. On a bad day every single number will be backward on a math page and she will yell at me for pointing it out and on a good day one or two will be backward and she will quickly erase and correct it with a giggle when it is identified. In the past she would just get so confused and frustrated by her school work and would avoid it and need my help moment to moment to stay on task now she happily and easily does what she is asked to do often without any supervision at all. (This is of course on her good days.)

She still has good days and bad days when many old symptoms come back. We aren’t done yet but now the good days far outnumber the bad. We are now able to add in more and more advanced foods like fruit, cheese and lentils without problems. It is so nice to expand our diet. It makes all of us happy and life is easier when you can grab an apple or a slice of cheese for a snack instead of having to heat up a bowl of soup. It also gives me great pleasure for my children to tell others how much they adore lima beans or cauliflower. I consider this to be a gift that GAPS has given them that will last their entire lives. Loving a wide variety of vegetables and other non-sweet flavors. To be sure they like sweets too. Each of them ate 3 pieces of pie yesterday after Thanksgiving dinner to prove it. But they have a wide range of food loves.

I don’t know how much longer she will need to stay on full GAPS. We take it one day at a time and are thankful for the healing that has come and continues to come her way. Many children are ready to “graduate” by 2.5 years and start trying some foods like buckwheat and potatoes. We’ll see what the next 6 months bring. I certainly don’t miss grains or sugar and I wouldn’t trade her health for anything but it would be nice to be able to be more social about food at times and eat what others prepare with gratitude instead of always bringing our own to every function.

Part 2 is here.