GAPS Nutritional Protocol

The term GAPS stands for Gut And Psychology/Physiology Syndrome and was developed by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. The GAPS Nutritional Protocol is a structured and successful way to nourish your body that promotes gut healing by lightening some of the burden off the digestion process. Its main goal is to heal and seal a leaky gut (a damaged gut wall that lets undigested food go into the blood, leading to inflammation and disease).
The GAPS Nutritional Protocol has become a global phenomenon. It focuses on highly nutrient-dense foods that promote healing: plenty of protein, healthy fats, fermented foods, vitamins and minerals. This protocol is very effective to improve your health, because the body can only be properly nourished when the gut wall is healthy, which is the only way that the small intestine can digest food properly and absorb nutrients.

This protocol has four ways to promote healing:

1. Remove irritants to stop further injury. Removes fiber (in early stages), because with a damaged gut wall, fiber irritates the gut lining and provides food for pathogenic microbes in the gut.
2. Starve pathogens. Cuts on fibre and sugar to make the pathogens microbes die.
3. Provide nutrients that will repair, heal and seal the gut. It emphasizes on foods that support the body’s immune system, as well as helps heal and repair the gut wall damage resulted from pathogens, toxins and inflammation. Some examples of these foods are homemade meat stock, organ meats and animal fats.
4. Rebuild the Microbiome. Provides probiotic bacteria in the form of homemade fermented foods, which must be introduced gradually to avoid a die-off reaction (the symptoms that appear when pathogenic bacteria die).

The GAPS Nutritional Protocol, which has been successfully used around the world by thousands of people, consists on three main points of focus:

1. Diet.
2. Supplementation.
3. Detoxification and lifestyle changes.