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 “Why drinking meat stock is so so crucial to heal and seal the gut?”
Your the biggest organ in the human body is the connective tissue and it’ s made out of collagen elastin another tough proteins which hold your body together they’ Re- elastic these proteins, so your skin is largely collagen. Your digestive system every mucous membrane is largely collagen. The skeleton of your skeleton, the skeleton of your bones, the structure of your bones is collagen, so when you have osteoporosis, it’ s not lack of calcium. You’ ve got a lack of collagen because your bone is made out of collagen and you’ re lattice of collagen um rather than you know calcium is just the bones. Bones are like bookshelves. The shelving is made out of collagen; calcium, magnesium, boron, and other minerals are books that are standing on those shelves, so when you have osteoporosis it’ s the shelving that Broken: You have no shelving, you have a lack of shelving, so the books have nowhere to stand; they just fall off that.
Why you lose calcium and you lose other minerals, but you can be pumping as much calcium as you like if the shelving is still broken, those books will not stand there; they will not be absorbed by your bones. So collagen is the basis of your bone structure. Your joints are largely made out of collagen, all the ligaments, the capsule of the joint, the liquid inside the surfaces of the bones are covered by collagen, and your fascia. This is this is the tough tissues and tough layers of you like like big sheets that hold every muscle in its capsule, every organ in its capsule, that divides different compartments of the body; your abdominal cavity, your back has huge amounts of these structures.
And if you try to chew collagen any of these tissues raw or cooked slightly, like you do with a steak, you will not be able to even chew it; it is so tough, it’ s impossible to even chew it. s difficult to even cut these tissues with a sharp knife; you have to cook them in water for three hours, two hours to make them soft enough to even chew. These tissues are necessary for us to maintain our physical structure. We need lots and lots of collagen every day because human body renews itself all the time. Every cell in your body has a short life; you You know, some cells such as the enterocytes that lie in your gut wall only live a few days. They only live a couple of days.
They work very hard. They get old very quickly. They die and they get shed off. So the body has to constantly give birth to trillions of new baby cells to replace the dying cells, the cells that are being removed and shed off. And if you have any toxicity or any disease or rot immunity or inflammation going in your body, then far more of those cells are dying every day, being damaged and being removed. You’ re losing your tissues; huge amounts of your tissues. You Re losing far more than a healthy person loses on a daily basis. So you have to replenish these tissues all the time. And because the majority of the structure of your body is collagen, are these collagenous? Tough tissues. They need to be replenished the most.
That is why in every traditional culture, and I grew up in one of those traditional cultures. And I remember every day, starting from my kindergarten, then school, then university, at lunchtime, every woman in a canteen where we had our lunch would tell you, soup every day. You must eat your bowl of soup first before you eat anything else. Exactly. And it’ s essential because the soup is collagen. You’ re replenishing your collagen in your body. You’ re replenishing your connective tissue. You’ re replenishing the structure of your bones, the structure of your muscles, the structure of all your mucous membranes, of all your fascia, everything in your body, which is absolutely essential. And you cannot replenish it by eating purely meat because meat doesn’ t have a lot of collagen.
Yes, the muscles have also a little skeleton in them made out of collagen. But because a pure muscle can’ t. But because a pure muscle can’ t be eaten raw, it’ s soft enough to eat raw, to chew and chew it raw, or rare or medium rare. You can have a steak, rare or medium rare, so you literally cook it a little bit. It means that there’ s very little collagen in there. You cannot chew collagen without cooking it in water for a long time. So the softer, like a fillet steak, the softer the muscle is, the less collagen you are consuming. And if you have any chronic disease, the worst. The worse your situation is, the more serious your disease is, the more collagen you require.
And the only way to get it is by boiling a chunk of animal in water with some salt and spices for three hours, four hours, and then drinking that stock and then eating all those soft gelatinous tissues around the joint, around the bones, the fascia, the ligaments, the capsules of the organs, and so on. That is why meat stock. That is essential. And that is why it’ s essential to make it with gelatinous, tough parts of the animal, of the carcass of the animal, with the feet, with the legs, with the neck, with the skin, with the heads, you know, with all the tissues that you cannot just do three minutes on each side, medium rare. You cannot do that.
So it’ s essential to consume those tissues in order to maintain the physical structure of your body that you live in.
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.