This blog is part of a series on the GAPS diet and No Plant GAPS. I had the pleasure of spending time with Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, learning directly from her expertise. The information shared in these blogs comes from our private conversations, public interviews, and exclusive content from a special interview included in the No Plant GAPS training session.
Monika Holland asked Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride “How did you develop No Plant GAPS protocol”
Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride answered:
I came across a group of children, some don’ t know, about 10 years ago or so, a while ago, a few years ago, who contacted me asking to help their babies. The babies were diagnosed with a condition called FPIES. It’ s food protein- induced enterocolitis syndrome.
It’ s quite a mouthful. And that was a new, fairly new diagnosis at the time, and now they’ ve got various variations of that diagnosis with different names. But in essence, what it is: we have a baby, a newborn baby, breastfed exclusively, breastfed in many cases, vomiting diarrhea, vomiting diarrhea; the child is not able to digest even the breast milk. The child is losing weight and not developing physically or properly. So, the doctors do tests and they find that the child is allergic to all protein on the planet. So at that point, if the parents follow the mainstream route, the breastfeeding stops, it’ s replaced by artificial formula usually made out of soy and other ingredients which are just basically broken down to single amino acids.
And these children have a very poor outcome if they follow the mainstream route. Many die; majority develop severe disabilities, mental and physical. It’ s just a terrible, terrible situation. So these parents in desperation were looking for what to do and many of these mothers have already changed their own diets to a GAPS diet, strict, very strict GAPS diet. Nothing happened. The child is not recovering and just tried to breastfeed. So I knew through my experience and the experience of other GAPS practitioners, we work together, we share our experiences that plant matter is difficult for human beings to digest. And the more the digestive system is damaged, the less we can tolerate plant matter. That is why on the first stage of the introduction diet, the GAPS introduction diet, we have very few plants.
We have plants which have the the minimum amount of fiber, and we have very few plants. We have done practical measurements so that we were cooking them very well to make them more digestible; we ferment them as well to make them more digestible and often we ferment them. And we have one experiment which was successful. But even the first stage of the introduction diet wasn’t enough for these babies, so what we started doing? I suggested to remove all plant matter together, since I knew that these babies have a very, very damaged digestive system, extremely damaged. So, we removed all plant matter.
The babies started consuming meat stock. They started consuming fat from that meat stock initially, then we started blending gelatinous parts that we made the meat stock with into that stock, making it thicker and thicker and thicker. Then we introduced raw egg yolks; we introduced kefir to these babies, and no plants at all of any description. And we started getting success, obviously. All of these babies were already on a synthetic formula, and once the child started eating, and we started getting some success with these babies, diarrhea stopped, vomiting stopped, or maybe these things continued to a degree. But the child calmed down, started sleeping, started putting some weight on, which is important. Then we were able to gradually remove the formula; once the formula was removed, that’ s when the vomiting and diarrhea truly stopped.
The formula was causing trouble, and the child started really putting weight on and started developing. We now have quite a large cohort of these babies who have recovered fully, no disabilities of any description, beautiful children mentally normal physically normal, they re- developing beautifully, these children, and they were on this no- plant diet, where we haven’t touched a leaf, a speck of any vegetable, fruit, anything out of plant kingdom at all for four, five, six sometimes even longer years and they were thriving. These children, and at different stages, we try to introduce vegetable matter from tiniest amounts. We will try to ferment it first, maybe courgette without the skin without seeds fermented first, and then cook it very well with meat stock and in a proportion of these children.
It would return diarrhea; it would still cause irritation. So the hardest thing for us was to introduce plant matter. We had to go very slowly, very, very patiently for these patients. And at some point, they would tolerate these vegetables. But then something happens; they catch a virus or there’ s a stressful period of time or there Some pressure on them at school, something else stress does drain nutrients out of us, and it does put a large burden on the body. And they would relapse. We had to go back to no plant again, so that taught me several lessons. One lesson was that human beings can live without plants perfectly well; we do not need plants to thrive; we do not need five a day, seven a day, or whatever it is the current number that is being recommended.
So we can perfectly well live on purely animal foods and recover from all kinds of illnesses. And then the second point is that the more damage the digestive system, the less plants we can tolerate. Then as I was working with this have five children, I was conducting by several parents with children with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’ s disease, so I did the same thing with those children with great success. Number of severely mentally ill patients have chosen to follow this protocol and are doing very well, and many of them are still eating no plants; they’ re still living on a purely animal diet, and that’ s that’ s been now many many years. re doing very well and they don’ t want to reintroduce plants because every time they try them they relapse they feel worse with people so that’ s how the no plant gaps diet was developed and with every patient it’ s a learning curve we’ ll learn more and more facts and more and more different nuances of the whole thing and I’ ve described this diet in the blue book gotten Physiology Central since then I have met many people from all over the world who had no consultations with me or anybody else they just read the book that’ s the book and they’ Following it, there is a whole following around the world now of people who follow the no plant gaps diet, many of them started maybe with carnivore diet or primal diet, there are various varieties now of diets where people don’ t eat plants at all they just live on entirely on animal foods but what these people find that it’ s not enough for them that they need to pay attention to the state of their digestive system and they need to heal it and that What the Gaps Diet does not only remove all plants and give you the proper nourishment, and rebuild your body out of quality materials. But on top of that, it heals your connective tissue, and your gut is part of that connective tissue. So, not only digestive system get healed, but all your connective tissue gets healed your joints, the structure of your bones, the structure of your muscles, your fascia, your skin; everything in the body gets healed because connective tissue is the biggest tissue in the human body.
The protocol for the No Plant GAPS diet is outlined comprehensively in the book “Gut and Physiology Syndrome” by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, the creator of this approach. Further information on the protocol can also be found here.