More GAPS Insights

I have been playing around with the GAPS diet for about a month now (Christmas with family absolutely nuked my December effort) and Ryan and Colson joined me on the journey after the first of the year. We are doing very well, with the occasional GAPS break and one exception allowed for Colson.

First the occasional breaks and what we learned. Pizza still kicks Ryan and me when we are on GAPS. Full on disgusting with nausea thrown in for me after 1.5 slices, even though we are eating one of the top ten best pizzas in the country and it is organic.

Rice doesn’t seem to bother us at all. I served it with this amazing Cajun dish from Paul Prudhomme: Shrimp Diane. I served it over his Basic Rice, which I cooked in the additional shrimp stock. Magnificent!

What is the exception for Colson? He gets to drink as much raw milk as he wants. Only fermented milk is on the GAPS diet. Colson battles seasonal allergies all year, and the GAPS tune up in 2011 quickly pushed them back so dramatically. What is interesting is that milk is a well known mucus producer and I would expect it to stuff Colson up, and yet it doesn’t seem to be interfering with Colson’s triumph over his allergies. My boy is now happily sleeping with his mouth closed, as opposed to the monstrous snoring previous to the diet, and his sneezing and tissue use are profoundly decreased.

Some people seem to get upset on behalf of Colson because Ryan and I make him avoid grains and sweets (except the chocolate nut balls that I make which taste better than any old wax-filled Hershey’s bar), but to them I say Bah! There is nothing better than not hearing my boy sleep and not asking him to pick up mountains of tissues.

So what food is the problem? The GAPS diet eliminates all beans except navy, lima and green. Perhaps beans are the problem, but I doubt it. In a few weeks I will reintroduce black, red and garbanzo beans and see what happens.

The GAPS diet eliminates all dairy except fermented dairy and certain hard cheeses. We can see for Colson that dairy isn’t a problem. I am not too worried about it for Ryan and me either. Last night I broke the diet and had a big glass of raw milk. That should have given my body a jolt. A little inflammation and pain in my back, maybe, or a stuffier nose since I have a cold, but instead no repercussions.

The GAPS diet eliminates all sweeteners except honey. We are sold on honey, and this is pretty much all we use, with the exception of some maple syrup very rarely when not on GAPS.

The GAPS diet eliminates all grains. If we don’t have any adverse feedback from reintroducing beans and dairy, then that leaves grains. First I we will reintroduce rice and see if that troubles us. I don’t think it will given that we bombarded and shocked our systems with rice the other night and felt fine, as opposed to the nauseating effects of the pizza the other week. Then we will move on to wheat. I know that I shouldn’t predetermine our outcome, and I won’t share this with Colson, but I think that wheat is the problem for him. I think that repeated exposure to wheat via sandwiches and wraps does it. A short burst, such as pizza, doesn’t seem to bother him the way it does Ryan and me, but over the long term if he is off of GAPS and eating the Nourishing Traditions way (GAPS plus unfermented dairy, all beans and all grains, his nose stuffs up and his sneezies are back powerfully.

I feel pretty confident that wheat is the problem for me, given that when I eat it I gain weight and get achy. Lots of bread brings the food cravings back for Ryan, which signals that he is out of balance and bread is damaging to him.

Even though we haven’t properly reintroduced foods to learn their effects prior to this GAPS experiment, we have been on and off the GAPS diet enough times and our bodies our so clean that they speak clearly to us when going off of GAPS. I feel comfortable that my intuition about wheat is correct. Even so, I will try and test my wheat hypothesis in a more controlled and experimental way.

Here is to adventuring strongly forward!