Click here to discover more yourself... http://theinnozablog.blogspot.sg/2012/11/inspiration-success-story-wow-cool.html
DM= Dr. Joseph Mercola
NC= Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride
Look for milk that's produced from natural organic pasture, and these kinds of cows, their milk does not need to be pasteurized. You can buy it raw and ferment it at home from raw. That is the best possible yogurt that you can produce.
If you haven‟t got enough access to raw milk, don‟t worry about it, buy organic – the best that you can buy – and ferment it at home. Because when we add the fermenting culture to the milk, these bacteria bring quite a lot of life back into the milk. They alter its structure and predigest the protein. They break down casein, [inaudible 1:13:33], and they predigest proteins in it. They predigest other substances in the milk, so it is much easier for our human digestive system to handle.
This is a particularly important issue for parents of autistic children to understand who will condition for the gluten-casein free diet, which bans all dairy products. I find that the majority of autistic children in my clinic do perfectly well on homemade yogurt made from organic, natural milk (like this), because the fermentation process predigests and breaks down the milk. It is an excellent way of introducing probiotic bacteria into the digestive system and many good nutrients, which were broken down and predigested for us.
DM: One of the problems with pasteurization is it damages the milk proteins that are very fragile. Would fermenting it compensate for that by predigesting these proteins, so you don‟t get the damaged proteins and precipitate some type of autoimmune reaction?
NC: I have a large group of patients in my clinic who have no accesses to raw milk at all. They just could not find it. It was not available, because it‟s not available in many countries around the world. They just buy whole organic milk in the supermarket – whatever they could access – and fermented it at home. And they got a very good recovery, so it does work.
Do your best. Find what you can – the best that you can find. I‟d say that you can get a lot of healing done with simply buying organic fresh milk with full fat, of course, in your supermarket. You can do that. Because fermentation process brings back a lot of life into the milk, predigests it and breaks it down.
Another group of fermented foods that we introduce right from the beginning are fermented vegetables. I recommend making your own sauerkraut at home with the traditional fermentation method. The recipes are in my book and on my website. There are many other wonderful books now and companies that can actually make sauerkraut for you. You can buy it ready-made. What I recommend is that cabbage is quite fibrous. Fermenting cabbage predigests local fibers and breaks down a lot of it. It makes it far more digestible and much easier for the human digestive system to handle.
But for many people with diarrhea, ulcerations, and erosions in their digestive system, even that small amount of fiber is too much. I recommend that initially we just start from the juice from the sauerkraut.
For the first stage of the introduction diet, you just take juice from the sauerkraut. Start from a tiny amount of it per day and gradually increase the amounts per day. For the first three stages of the introduction diet, you‟ll only be having juice from the sauerkraut. If certain amounts of healing have happened in the digestive system, the person is able to start introducing the fibrous cabbage itself from the sauerkraut.
DM: There‟s a number of different ways for you to create sauerkraut. If you use a commercial food processor that has a shredder that actually cuts the sauerkraut into very tiny particles, it‟s going to be a lot easier to digest than having the larger shreds, isn‟t it?
NC: Yes. You can also chew it. But nevertheless, in the first couple of stages, we do not introduce cabbage itself because it can be too much.
DM: Okay.
NC: In extreme cases of profuse, watery diarrhea, we have to start from a purely animal product diet. We do not introduce any plant matter at all. No fiber at all is introduced in the diet.
DM: Interesting.
NC: The person can only drink the meat stock – a cup of hot meat stock every hour throughout the day. They eat the meat that they made the meat stock with. The most valuable meats for GAPS people and for people with damaged digestive system are the gelatinous meats. I have heard many people who say that, “I can‟t eat meat, because it constipates me. I feel toxic. I feel terrible, and I feel nauseous.”
What they are talking about is the meat fibers – the lean meat. Meat fibers are more difficult to digest indeed. For the majority of GAPS people, what I recommend is to go for gelatinous meats. What you want are the meat around the joints, around the bones, the skin of the chicken, and all the gelatinous parts of the meat rather than the muscle fibers themselves.
You will find that later on, you can start increasing and increasing the amounts of the muscle fibers, but you‟re relying more on the gelatinous meats. Because these are the meat – the gelatinous parts of the meat – that provide all those building blocks for those baby enterocytes in the gut lining. They provide collagen, elastin, glucosamine, gelatin, and other wonderful molecules in order for the gut lining to give birth to beautiful little cells, those enterocytes. Focus on those meats.
A person with a profuse, severe diarrhea will drink meat stock – a gelatinous meat stock – all day long, and they can introduce raw egg yolk into their diet.
They need to have the homemade yogurt or homemade whey. If you have any problem with yogurt or if you are reactive to them, I recommend that you drip it through cheesecloth. The yellow liquid that drips out is called whey, and that contains no casein at all. There‟s largely other group of proteins in it. For people who are particularly concerned about casein in the milk, they can start from whey. Because the whole process of introducing these fermented foods is to introduce probiotic bacteria into the digestive tract. Whey will introduce that very effectively as the yogurt would.
So, you have plenty of whey, plenty of meat stock, and plenty of gelatinous meat.
If a person – a child or an adult – stays on this no plant diet for one to two days or sometimes even longer until diarrhea stops, then you can start making soup with vegetables that you cook very well and deseed and peel, for example courgettes, marrows, zucchinis, and squashes. If you‟re cooking broccoli or cauliflower, remove all the stalks and all the fibrous bits away. Stay away from fibrous vegetables such as celery and those from the cabbage family usually. We use vegetables that are less fibrous. You start making some soups, and see how that goes. If diarrhea doesn‟t come back, you can increase on that amount, and then you can start introducing more and more vegetables into the diet.
That‟s the first stage of the introduction diet. I genuinely recommend that people stick to it for a day or two for a maximum of three days. Be guided by the stools. If the diarrhea continues and persists, stay longer on it until diarrhea starts abating. But if the diarrhea has cleared and the person has produced his first decent-looking stool, then he can move to the second stage.
In the second stage, we‟ll start introducing raw egg yolks. We remove the whites and just use the yolks, because they‟re very nourishing and they require no digestion at all. Then we start slightly enlarging on vegetables and on other matter in their diet.
In the third stage, we‟ll introduce more foods, so we go from stage to stage.
Many people ask me questions, “How long do I stay on each stage? How quickly do I progress from these stages?” That is very, very individual. Some people fail through them – giving two or three days to each stage and get fantastic results. Other people give one or two days to the first stage, one to two days to the second stage, and then they get flat and stop on third stage. Because whenever they try to range it into the fourth stage, their symptoms return – the digestive symptoms or some other symptoms return.
You will find that in children with learning disabilities. On the first and second stage, the bedwetting stops; the eye contact starts coming back; the hyperactive behavior reduces automatically; the child becomes more with you; he becomes more alert, and changes completely.
But when you want to move on the third or fourth stage and you introduced a new food into the child‟s diet, if the child wets the bed again or the eye contact is gone again, it means that he‟s not ready to move into that stage. Trackback to the previous stage, and stay on it for another couple of weeks. Wait for all those benefits to come back in your child. Then try again, because the healing process takes time, and in children it happens faster than in adults. Adults usually take longer to heal than children. In children it can happen quite quickly, but depending on the toxic load of the child and various other factors.
Every person is an individual, and they take their time going through the introduction diet.
The only way to know to know whether you‟re ready to move on is to move on and try it, and see what happens. If any of the symptoms that have disappeared comes back, it means you‟re not ready for that stage yet. You backtrack to the previous stage. Get back to stability again. Get better again. Then try again.
Many people have to do this dance of step forward, step back, step forward, and step back for months and months. Some people have to follow the introduction diet for 18 months. I had patients who have to follow it for 18 months before they could actually move into the Full GAPS Diet.
DM: Would that be one of the more extreme ones, the 18 months? What are the more typical ones?
NC: That is more on the very extreme. This is usually the group of the most severe people such as those with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, ME, multiple sclerosis, and people with more severe degenerative conditions. In the majority of people, particularly the children, the introduction diet takes a couple of months maximum. They go quite quickly.
DM: It‟s really a profoundly interesting approach, because it‟s not necessarily intuitive until you understand the science. Because most of us believe that vegetables are healthy for us, and that the more ill you are, the more likely they would be beneficial. It‟s just not something obvious that you have to exclude them on severe patients, especially if they have diarrhea conditions. It‟s something that‟s wise to do.
NC: Absolutely. I have patients who have done best on a completely no-plant diet. I have people who have been on a no-plants diet at all, purely animal foods. They eat meat, fish, eggs, and yogurt. That‟s all. They don‟t eat anything else. They have no vegetables, fruits, grains, and nothing of plant origin at all for 18 months, two years, and two and a half years. They do beautifully.
These are usually people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, bipolar disorders, schizophrenics, or people with other conditions. Whatever they try, a little bit of a vegetable, a little bit of plant matter, or even one leaf of spinach, they get their manic symptoms back. They get their other psychiatric problems back. They start creeping back in. These people learn quite quickly. They listen to their body, and quite quickly they know what works for them or what doesn‟t.
It is perfectly safe and perfectly healthy to be on purely animal diet. It‟s perfectly safe; don‟t worry about it. I have five four-year-old children who are on no plant diet and have been on it for more than a year.
DM: Wow.
NC: Yes. These are the children who are removing something toxic through their bowels. We work on it and work on it, but they still produce diarrhea. The bowel is still clearing something out in these children.
What we see in parallel is that the child is still having diarrhea and he‟s still not eating any plants at all, but what we see is that the mental symptoms are disappearing. The child is starting to talk. Their eye contact is back. Their behaviors are becoming normal. Their playing skills are becoming normal. Their social skills are developing. And these are all wonderful developments, but the diarrhea would just not go away. We just have to understand that the body hasn‟t clear something out yet. The body‟s just working on it.
DM: Is it possible that this is also a transition phase for establishing the ideal gut ecology, and that it‟s just taking longer to do?
NC: Exactly. Everybody‟s different. It depends not only on your constitutional genetics, but it also depends on what kind of toxins you have stored in your body, where they‟re stored, what kind of mixture, what kinds of methods your body is using to clear the mouth, and various other variables.
It‟s possible that in that particular child that I‟m talking about (who has been on a no-plant diet for the last 16 months), it‟s possible that there is something in the environment that keeps coming into the body, which is being cleared through the bowel using diarrhea. It may be the municipal water – tap water – or it may be something else. We don‟t know, until the body‟s strong enough to handle that and compensate for that variable in the child‟s environment.
Many electromagnetic influences are cleared through the bowels – surprisingly many. You may have a mobile phone mark next to your house that you‟re not aware of. The changes that it causes in your child‟s body and the kind of chemicals that the body generates in response to that have to leave the body through the bowels. You have persistent diarrhea in the child, until you move or until the child becomes strong enough for the body to compensate for that continuing damaging influence.
DM: Now, many of the benefits of your approach are mediated through the optimization of the gut flora. I‟m wondering if you can just briefly comment on that concept of the gut flora as a detoxification method directly, because it‟s a relatively interesting and novel concept. I don‟t think it‟s widely promoted. It‟s certainly something I didn‟t fully appreciate until I connected with you, how these beneficial bacteria in your gut could actually help us in the excretion of toxins and heavy metals.
NC: Absolutely. The beneficial bacteria in our gut are the strongest chelators of toxic metals that are known to humanity. One of the strongest chelators that I‟m aware of on the market (which is extremely expensive; it costs somewhere 200 British pounds per two milliliters of it for tiny glass bottles or glass vials) are nanonized probiotic bacteria, just chalked up into nano particles.
Why chalked up? In order to increase the contact surface between the toxic metals and the cell membrane of these probiotic bacteria. Because in the cell membranes, in the cell wall, they have chelators, they have molecules that grab hold of mercury, lead, aluminum, arsenate, and anything else toxic. Not just the toxic metals, but also the [nitroxoline 1:29:10], formaldehyde, phenols, and all sorts of other toxic things that we get from the environment. They would hold them until they‟re removed through stool. Because most of human stool is bacteria – this is our gut flora dying out and being removed. All of them are holding large amount of toxins, which are removed through your stool out of your body.
I have a very interesting paper in my archives where two groups of rats were treated with organic mercury in their food and drink. One group of rats was healthy and had a healthy gut flora. Another group of rats was pre-treated with a powerful set of antibiotics in order to wipe out their gut flora. They have pretty much tear out their digestive system. Then these two groups of rats were given organic mercury in their food and their drink. Then they were killed, their bodies were opened up, and analyzed in the laboratory. What the scientists found was that the healthy rats had only about one percent of mercury from their food and drink got to the bloodstream through the gut lining. The rest of it was bound by their gut flora and removed. With the rats which had their gut flora wiped out, damaged: about more than 90 percent of all that mercury flooded in the bloodstream and got distributed around the body. It was stored in the brain and everywhere else in the body.
Our gut flora is the major, the most important factor in our bodies that protect us from toxic metals and from all sorts of other toxic influences in the environment.
The trouble is that in our modern society, we live in a world where a growing proportion of the population have their gut flora damaged, because they have been exposed to repeated courses of antibiotics. Women were taking contraceptive pills, which damage the gut flora quite profoundly, or any other prescriptive long-term medication. People were taking some toxic substances through their drink, or some other things from our environmental influences that have damaged the composition of their gut flora.
As a result, when they are exposed to mercury, lead, other toxic metals, or other toxic substances in the environment, their gut flora is unable to chelate it and unable to remove it. It floods into their bloodstream, and it settles in the body. Unfortunately, toxic metals have a particular affinity for fatty tissues in the body, so they get stored in the brain, spine, and in the rest of the nervous system. They also target your bone marrow and the rest of the high fat organs in the body, such as bone marrow, spleen, thymus, and other places. Of course, when they‟re stored in there, they would cause leukemia, lymphoma, other immune abnormalities, and other problems in the body.
DM: Is there a process you recommend to shift them up to those compartments, so they actually move into the gut and have connection with these powerful detoxifiers? Does the body have an intuitive ability to heal itself spontaneously, or does it need some help or assistance?
NC: Our human bodies have a wonderful system. Mother Nature‟s absolutely marvelous. It equipped our bodies with a very complex and a wonderful system, which is called detoxification system. It is so complex, staggeringly complex. Our science has just only started studying it and coming to terms with its complexity. This system is the cleanser, the cleaner in the body. It has its headquarters in the liver and departments in every cell of your body. Every cell has an ability to clean itself up and keep itself nice and clean and detoxified.
What happens with GAPS people is that because they have a river of toxicity flowing from their guts directly into the liver, this detoxification system gets broken down in these people. It is overwhelmed, overburdened. It just gives up. It cannot cope. As a result, the toxins that go in do not get detoxified. They do not get chelated properly and removed properly. They‟re just stored in various tissues of the body and cause symptoms and diseases.
What GAPS Nutritional Protocol does in the majority of patients – I would say in more than 90 percent of patients – is it restores your own detoxification system. Your own detoxification system is infinitely cleverer than any doctor, any scientist, any laboratory, and anybody.
DM: [Laughs]
NC: It has some wonderful methods of clearing out all sorts of toxins out of your body safely (without causing any trouble on the way), chelating them properly, and attaching various substances to it in order to remove it safely from the body. That‟s what I see. I see many children in particular in my clinic who come to me with these tests that they have done without a doctor, which show that they have huge amounts of mercury, lead, and other toxic metals stored in their bodies.
Of course, the first thing that the parent wants to talk about is, “How do we remove all this out of the body? How do we clean them up?” I tell them, “Wait. Don‟t go for chelation protocol. Don‟t go for any artificial methods of removing these things. Just wait. ”
What they find out when we repeat these tests in about six or eight months‟ time is that the amounts of mercury and lead in the body of the child halt, or there‟s only some of it left. But we haven‟t done anything yet to remove it in particular. What‟s happened here is that the child‟s own detoxification system kicks in. We restored it through the GAPS Nutrition Protocol. It started working, and it started clearing out.
Then if we‟ll wait for another six months or so, we find that in the majority of these kinds of children – I would say, in more than 80 percent of children who come to me with the usual heavy burden of toxic metals – that we shouldn‟t do anything at all. Their own bodies have cleaned it all out very nicely.
Only in the minority, after about a year and a half or two years of GAPS Nutritional Protocol, if we still see symptoms (which are stubborn and would not clear), we can repeat the test of toxic metals. And if for whatever reason they‟re not clearing them out as effectively as they‟re expected, then we can consider chelation and some other methods of removing these things that are sitting in the body. But I would say don‟t rush with it, because in the majority of people, their own detox system, as you restore it, will clear everything out very nicely.
DM: It‟s terrific. The conditions you mentioned earlier remind me of our first interview, where I was surprised to see that the profound connection that you had in identifying these risk factors for women. That if their gut flora was disturbed, it was much likely that they will have a child with some type of autism spectrum disorder. That‟s really a solution if a child was exposed to vaccines. But if that child has cleared up his gut flora prior to that, that‟s really one of the most profound interventions one could have for having a non-brain-damaged child.
NC: Absolutely. What I feel sorry for now…I feel sorry for the generation of teenage girls now that are growing up. Because when they are ready to start the family – when they are ready to have children – their generation is going to have a much higher incidence of autism and other learning disabilities in children. We are heading for a lot of grief.
Mothers of my generation who have daughters who are growing up now, now is the time to assess your daughter. See what her gut flora is like. How is she doing before she‟s ready to conceive or have children? Prepare them for it to avoid the huge amount of grief in the family of having a grandchild with autism, hyperactivity, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and some other disorders. This is because the proportion of girls now with damaged gut flora is growing in our modern world, and they are heading to having unhealthy children, unfortunately. It‟s very sad.
DM: Thank you for all the work you have done there. Now I have some specific questions. One of the tools on your GAPS Diet isn‟t intuitive or isn‟t a process that many people are already using in their normal food preparations, and that is the use of these meat broths. I‟m wondering if you could comment and expound on that topic a little more, because it seems to be a powerful element of the whole process. It‟s not something people normally use.
NC: Absolutely. What I would like to say here, as you have mentioned the diet, is that it is very important tool as you start the introduction diet in particular for you to listen to your sense of desire, sense of smell and taste, and sense of satisfaction from food.
Please read my article One Man’s Meat is Another Man’s Poison. Please read it and take it to heart, because it is up to you to decide what proportions of vegetables to animal foods you are going to have in your introduction diet. How much cooked vegetables in proportion to how much meat you are having. How much yogurt you‟re introducing, how much sauerkraut, and so on, because it is only your body who knows how much you need for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I have people who have just read my book and my website. They didn‟t consult with anybody. They just started the diet, and a small proportion of them, particularly people who have a very strong will and who have tried various diets already in their lives, they are used to imposing their very strong will on their body. They‟re used to imposing it on their body. They are so detached from their body. They‟re not listening to that at all. They forgot how to listen to their body.
Your body is your slave. It‟s your servant. It loves you very much. It will do whatever you ask or tell it to do.
Some of these people run into trouble. These people either get terribly constipated. There are one or two people who run into electrolyte abnormalities in their bodies. They got the wrong electrolyte. They run out of potassium, magnesium, or something else happens. They can get heart palpitations and some other strange symptoms, which can threaten their very survival.
It is essential for you not to impose your will on your body, but to listen to your body, because only your body knows how much cleansing it needs to do now in proportion to how much feeding. Remember, feeding is done with animal foods, while cleansing is down with vegetable matters or with plant foods. So, if you feel that at the moment you are quite overstuffed and you don‟t need that much feeding but you need more cleansing, eat more vegetables in proportion to meat. Drink the meat stocks. Drink the bone broth. Eat more soups. Eat more vegetables and less meat.
But if you are malnourished, if you are underweight, and if you feel that you do need to be fed and built and you need to do more building in your body rather than cleansing and washing out, then have less vegetables and more animal matter. It is up to you to decide for that proportion that‟s very, very important to do.
It‟s the same with children. Parents are connected on a very deep level to their children. They can feel their children‟s bodies and what their children‟s body needs. By experimenting with different combinations of foods, what you don‟t introduce, and what you introduce, parents quite quickly – in my experience – learn what works for their particular child and what doesn‟t, and what proportion of vegetable matter to animal protein they need to give their child at any particular meal.
Also listen… When you stop the diet, the natural taste and natural sense for food in the child gets restored.
We‟re all born with these built-in wisdom and knowledge within our bodies – what works for us and what doesn‟t work for us. You should listen to that appetite. If you‟re child has more appetite today, doesn‟t want to eat, just drinks and just takes this, that and the other, don‟t force your child to eat, because what if the child‟s body went into a cleansing mode? It wants to fast a little bit. There‟s no danger in it. There‟s nothing to worry about.
Let your child guide you in that sense. If they have no appetite, fine. They will eat tomorrow, or they will eat two days later. When the appetite returns, that‟s the signal coming from the child‟s body that says, “All right, I‟m cleansed now. I‟m ready to be fed. I‟m ready to be built now, so let‟s start eating and feeding.” Your child will have an appetite, and he‟ll devour the whole roast chicken, half a duck, or something like that. You‟ll be absolutely surprised how much your child will eat.
Don‟t try to impose your will either on your own body or on your child‟s body. Try to be more intuitive. Listen to the body. Because the will comes from our human mind, and the human mind only knows what is read in some book and a glossy magazine, what is heard and seen on TV, or what is heard in my interview for that matter. [Laughs]
DM: Sure.
NC: The mind has a very meager knowledge. It‟s quite a stupid part of our human nature, so don‟t listen to it too much. While your body, your six senses – your intuition is very ancient and very old. It knows infinitely more, because it‟s connected to very, very deep metabolic mechanisms going on in your body.
Listen to your body. Listen to that appetite. Listen to the desires for food and for drinking from your body. If you‟re not thirsty, don‟t drink. Don‟t force yourself to drink those liters of water just because some book says that you have to. You can introduce a serious electrolyte imbalance in your body. You can introduce a serious kidney disorder in your body if you drink too much water. Drink only when you‟re thirsty, and eat only when you‟re hungry.
Listen to your body. Work with it rather than imposing your will upon it. That is very, very important to understand for adults and children. Adults have to take their responsibility for their child. The child will guide you. The child‟s thirst, hunger, and desire for food will guide you how to progress.
DM: Thank you for that. Let‟s get back to the meat stock and the bone broth.
NC: Okay.
DM: I have a specific question for that. Is it okay to cook it and eat the meat around the bones, but then make a bone broth from the bones?
NC: Absolutely. There are two varieties of stock you can make. One is meat stock and the other one is the bone broth. They‟re all very traditional. They come from traditional cultures.
DM= Dr. Joseph Mercola
NC= Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride
Look for milk that's produced from natural organic pasture, and these kinds of cows, their milk does not need to be pasteurized. You can buy it raw and ferment it at home from raw. That is the best possible yogurt that you can produce.
If you haven‟t got enough access to raw milk, don‟t worry about it, buy organic – the best that you can buy – and ferment it at home. Because when we add the fermenting culture to the milk, these bacteria bring quite a lot of life back into the milk. They alter its structure and predigest the protein. They break down casein, [inaudible 1:13:33], and they predigest proteins in it. They predigest other substances in the milk, so it is much easier for our human digestive system to handle.
This is a particularly important issue for parents of autistic children to understand who will condition for the gluten-casein free diet, which bans all dairy products. I find that the majority of autistic children in my clinic do perfectly well on homemade yogurt made from organic, natural milk (like this), because the fermentation process predigests and breaks down the milk. It is an excellent way of introducing probiotic bacteria into the digestive system and many good nutrients, which were broken down and predigested for us.
DM: One of the problems with pasteurization is it damages the milk proteins that are very fragile. Would fermenting it compensate for that by predigesting these proteins, so you don‟t get the damaged proteins and precipitate some type of autoimmune reaction?
NC: I have a large group of patients in my clinic who have no accesses to raw milk at all. They just could not find it. It was not available, because it‟s not available in many countries around the world. They just buy whole organic milk in the supermarket – whatever they could access – and fermented it at home. And they got a very good recovery, so it does work.
Do your best. Find what you can – the best that you can find. I‟d say that you can get a lot of healing done with simply buying organic fresh milk with full fat, of course, in your supermarket. You can do that. Because fermentation process brings back a lot of life into the milk, predigests it and breaks it down.
Another group of fermented foods that we introduce right from the beginning are fermented vegetables. I recommend making your own sauerkraut at home with the traditional fermentation method. The recipes are in my book and on my website. There are many other wonderful books now and companies that can actually make sauerkraut for you. You can buy it ready-made. What I recommend is that cabbage is quite fibrous. Fermenting cabbage predigests local fibers and breaks down a lot of it. It makes it far more digestible and much easier for the human digestive system to handle.
But for many people with diarrhea, ulcerations, and erosions in their digestive system, even that small amount of fiber is too much. I recommend that initially we just start from the juice from the sauerkraut.
For the first stage of the introduction diet, you just take juice from the sauerkraut. Start from a tiny amount of it per day and gradually increase the amounts per day. For the first three stages of the introduction diet, you‟ll only be having juice from the sauerkraut. If certain amounts of healing have happened in the digestive system, the person is able to start introducing the fibrous cabbage itself from the sauerkraut.
DM: There‟s a number of different ways for you to create sauerkraut. If you use a commercial food processor that has a shredder that actually cuts the sauerkraut into very tiny particles, it‟s going to be a lot easier to digest than having the larger shreds, isn‟t it?
NC: Yes. You can also chew it. But nevertheless, in the first couple of stages, we do not introduce cabbage itself because it can be too much.
DM: Okay.
NC: In extreme cases of profuse, watery diarrhea, we have to start from a purely animal product diet. We do not introduce any plant matter at all. No fiber at all is introduced in the diet.
DM: Interesting.
NC: The person can only drink the meat stock – a cup of hot meat stock every hour throughout the day. They eat the meat that they made the meat stock with. The most valuable meats for GAPS people and for people with damaged digestive system are the gelatinous meats. I have heard many people who say that, “I can‟t eat meat, because it constipates me. I feel toxic. I feel terrible, and I feel nauseous.”
What they are talking about is the meat fibers – the lean meat. Meat fibers are more difficult to digest indeed. For the majority of GAPS people, what I recommend is to go for gelatinous meats. What you want are the meat around the joints, around the bones, the skin of the chicken, and all the gelatinous parts of the meat rather than the muscle fibers themselves.
You will find that later on, you can start increasing and increasing the amounts of the muscle fibers, but you‟re relying more on the gelatinous meats. Because these are the meat – the gelatinous parts of the meat – that provide all those building blocks for those baby enterocytes in the gut lining. They provide collagen, elastin, glucosamine, gelatin, and other wonderful molecules in order for the gut lining to give birth to beautiful little cells, those enterocytes. Focus on those meats.
A person with a profuse, severe diarrhea will drink meat stock – a gelatinous meat stock – all day long, and they can introduce raw egg yolk into their diet.
They need to have the homemade yogurt or homemade whey. If you have any problem with yogurt or if you are reactive to them, I recommend that you drip it through cheesecloth. The yellow liquid that drips out is called whey, and that contains no casein at all. There‟s largely other group of proteins in it. For people who are particularly concerned about casein in the milk, they can start from whey. Because the whole process of introducing these fermented foods is to introduce probiotic bacteria into the digestive tract. Whey will introduce that very effectively as the yogurt would.
So, you have plenty of whey, plenty of meat stock, and plenty of gelatinous meat.
If a person – a child or an adult – stays on this no plant diet for one to two days or sometimes even longer until diarrhea stops, then you can start making soup with vegetables that you cook very well and deseed and peel, for example courgettes, marrows, zucchinis, and squashes. If you‟re cooking broccoli or cauliflower, remove all the stalks and all the fibrous bits away. Stay away from fibrous vegetables such as celery and those from the cabbage family usually. We use vegetables that are less fibrous. You start making some soups, and see how that goes. If diarrhea doesn‟t come back, you can increase on that amount, and then you can start introducing more and more vegetables into the diet.
That‟s the first stage of the introduction diet. I genuinely recommend that people stick to it for a day or two for a maximum of three days. Be guided by the stools. If the diarrhea continues and persists, stay longer on it until diarrhea starts abating. But if the diarrhea has cleared and the person has produced his first decent-looking stool, then he can move to the second stage.
In the second stage, we‟ll start introducing raw egg yolks. We remove the whites and just use the yolks, because they‟re very nourishing and they require no digestion at all. Then we start slightly enlarging on vegetables and on other matter in their diet.
In the third stage, we‟ll introduce more foods, so we go from stage to stage.
Many people ask me questions, “How long do I stay on each stage? How quickly do I progress from these stages?” That is very, very individual. Some people fail through them – giving two or three days to each stage and get fantastic results. Other people give one or two days to the first stage, one to two days to the second stage, and then they get flat and stop on third stage. Because whenever they try to range it into the fourth stage, their symptoms return – the digestive symptoms or some other symptoms return.
You will find that in children with learning disabilities. On the first and second stage, the bedwetting stops; the eye contact starts coming back; the hyperactive behavior reduces automatically; the child becomes more with you; he becomes more alert, and changes completely.
But when you want to move on the third or fourth stage and you introduced a new food into the child‟s diet, if the child wets the bed again or the eye contact is gone again, it means that he‟s not ready to move into that stage. Trackback to the previous stage, and stay on it for another couple of weeks. Wait for all those benefits to come back in your child. Then try again, because the healing process takes time, and in children it happens faster than in adults. Adults usually take longer to heal than children. In children it can happen quite quickly, but depending on the toxic load of the child and various other factors.
Every person is an individual, and they take their time going through the introduction diet.
The only way to know to know whether you‟re ready to move on is to move on and try it, and see what happens. If any of the symptoms that have disappeared comes back, it means you‟re not ready for that stage yet. You backtrack to the previous stage. Get back to stability again. Get better again. Then try again.
Many people have to do this dance of step forward, step back, step forward, and step back for months and months. Some people have to follow the introduction diet for 18 months. I had patients who have to follow it for 18 months before they could actually move into the Full GAPS Diet.
DM: Would that be one of the more extreme ones, the 18 months? What are the more typical ones?
NC: That is more on the very extreme. This is usually the group of the most severe people such as those with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, ME, multiple sclerosis, and people with more severe degenerative conditions. In the majority of people, particularly the children, the introduction diet takes a couple of months maximum. They go quite quickly.
DM: It‟s really a profoundly interesting approach, because it‟s not necessarily intuitive until you understand the science. Because most of us believe that vegetables are healthy for us, and that the more ill you are, the more likely they would be beneficial. It‟s just not something obvious that you have to exclude them on severe patients, especially if they have diarrhea conditions. It‟s something that‟s wise to do.
NC: Absolutely. I have patients who have done best on a completely no-plant diet. I have people who have been on a no-plants diet at all, purely animal foods. They eat meat, fish, eggs, and yogurt. That‟s all. They don‟t eat anything else. They have no vegetables, fruits, grains, and nothing of plant origin at all for 18 months, two years, and two and a half years. They do beautifully.
These are usually people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, bipolar disorders, schizophrenics, or people with other conditions. Whatever they try, a little bit of a vegetable, a little bit of plant matter, or even one leaf of spinach, they get their manic symptoms back. They get their other psychiatric problems back. They start creeping back in. These people learn quite quickly. They listen to their body, and quite quickly they know what works for them or what doesn‟t.
It is perfectly safe and perfectly healthy to be on purely animal diet. It‟s perfectly safe; don‟t worry about it. I have five four-year-old children who are on no plant diet and have been on it for more than a year.
DM: Wow.
NC: Yes. These are the children who are removing something toxic through their bowels. We work on it and work on it, but they still produce diarrhea. The bowel is still clearing something out in these children.
What we see in parallel is that the child is still having diarrhea and he‟s still not eating any plants at all, but what we see is that the mental symptoms are disappearing. The child is starting to talk. Their eye contact is back. Their behaviors are becoming normal. Their playing skills are becoming normal. Their social skills are developing. And these are all wonderful developments, but the diarrhea would just not go away. We just have to understand that the body hasn‟t clear something out yet. The body‟s just working on it.
DM: Is it possible that this is also a transition phase for establishing the ideal gut ecology, and that it‟s just taking longer to do?
NC: Exactly. Everybody‟s different. It depends not only on your constitutional genetics, but it also depends on what kind of toxins you have stored in your body, where they‟re stored, what kind of mixture, what kinds of methods your body is using to clear the mouth, and various other variables.
It‟s possible that in that particular child that I‟m talking about (who has been on a no-plant diet for the last 16 months), it‟s possible that there is something in the environment that keeps coming into the body, which is being cleared through the bowel using diarrhea. It may be the municipal water – tap water – or it may be something else. We don‟t know, until the body‟s strong enough to handle that and compensate for that variable in the child‟s environment.
Many electromagnetic influences are cleared through the bowels – surprisingly many. You may have a mobile phone mark next to your house that you‟re not aware of. The changes that it causes in your child‟s body and the kind of chemicals that the body generates in response to that have to leave the body through the bowels. You have persistent diarrhea in the child, until you move or until the child becomes strong enough for the body to compensate for that continuing damaging influence.
DM: Now, many of the benefits of your approach are mediated through the optimization of the gut flora. I‟m wondering if you can just briefly comment on that concept of the gut flora as a detoxification method directly, because it‟s a relatively interesting and novel concept. I don‟t think it‟s widely promoted. It‟s certainly something I didn‟t fully appreciate until I connected with you, how these beneficial bacteria in your gut could actually help us in the excretion of toxins and heavy metals.
NC: Absolutely. The beneficial bacteria in our gut are the strongest chelators of toxic metals that are known to humanity. One of the strongest chelators that I‟m aware of on the market (which is extremely expensive; it costs somewhere 200 British pounds per two milliliters of it for tiny glass bottles or glass vials) are nanonized probiotic bacteria, just chalked up into nano particles.
Why chalked up? In order to increase the contact surface between the toxic metals and the cell membrane of these probiotic bacteria. Because in the cell membranes, in the cell wall, they have chelators, they have molecules that grab hold of mercury, lead, aluminum, arsenate, and anything else toxic. Not just the toxic metals, but also the [nitroxoline 1:29:10], formaldehyde, phenols, and all sorts of other toxic things that we get from the environment. They would hold them until they‟re removed through stool. Because most of human stool is bacteria – this is our gut flora dying out and being removed. All of them are holding large amount of toxins, which are removed through your stool out of your body.
I have a very interesting paper in my archives where two groups of rats were treated with organic mercury in their food and drink. One group of rats was healthy and had a healthy gut flora. Another group of rats was pre-treated with a powerful set of antibiotics in order to wipe out their gut flora. They have pretty much tear out their digestive system. Then these two groups of rats were given organic mercury in their food and their drink. Then they were killed, their bodies were opened up, and analyzed in the laboratory. What the scientists found was that the healthy rats had only about one percent of mercury from their food and drink got to the bloodstream through the gut lining. The rest of it was bound by their gut flora and removed. With the rats which had their gut flora wiped out, damaged: about more than 90 percent of all that mercury flooded in the bloodstream and got distributed around the body. It was stored in the brain and everywhere else in the body.
Our gut flora is the major, the most important factor in our bodies that protect us from toxic metals and from all sorts of other toxic influences in the environment.
The trouble is that in our modern society, we live in a world where a growing proportion of the population have their gut flora damaged, because they have been exposed to repeated courses of antibiotics. Women were taking contraceptive pills, which damage the gut flora quite profoundly, or any other prescriptive long-term medication. People were taking some toxic substances through their drink, or some other things from our environmental influences that have damaged the composition of their gut flora.
As a result, when they are exposed to mercury, lead, other toxic metals, or other toxic substances in the environment, their gut flora is unable to chelate it and unable to remove it. It floods into their bloodstream, and it settles in the body. Unfortunately, toxic metals have a particular affinity for fatty tissues in the body, so they get stored in the brain, spine, and in the rest of the nervous system. They also target your bone marrow and the rest of the high fat organs in the body, such as bone marrow, spleen, thymus, and other places. Of course, when they‟re stored in there, they would cause leukemia, lymphoma, other immune abnormalities, and other problems in the body.
DM: Is there a process you recommend to shift them up to those compartments, so they actually move into the gut and have connection with these powerful detoxifiers? Does the body have an intuitive ability to heal itself spontaneously, or does it need some help or assistance?
NC: Our human bodies have a wonderful system. Mother Nature‟s absolutely marvelous. It equipped our bodies with a very complex and a wonderful system, which is called detoxification system. It is so complex, staggeringly complex. Our science has just only started studying it and coming to terms with its complexity. This system is the cleanser, the cleaner in the body. It has its headquarters in the liver and departments in every cell of your body. Every cell has an ability to clean itself up and keep itself nice and clean and detoxified.
What happens with GAPS people is that because they have a river of toxicity flowing from their guts directly into the liver, this detoxification system gets broken down in these people. It is overwhelmed, overburdened. It just gives up. It cannot cope. As a result, the toxins that go in do not get detoxified. They do not get chelated properly and removed properly. They‟re just stored in various tissues of the body and cause symptoms and diseases.
What GAPS Nutritional Protocol does in the majority of patients – I would say in more than 90 percent of patients – is it restores your own detoxification system. Your own detoxification system is infinitely cleverer than any doctor, any scientist, any laboratory, and anybody.
DM: [Laughs]
NC: It has some wonderful methods of clearing out all sorts of toxins out of your body safely (without causing any trouble on the way), chelating them properly, and attaching various substances to it in order to remove it safely from the body. That‟s what I see. I see many children in particular in my clinic who come to me with these tests that they have done without a doctor, which show that they have huge amounts of mercury, lead, and other toxic metals stored in their bodies.
Of course, the first thing that the parent wants to talk about is, “How do we remove all this out of the body? How do we clean them up?” I tell them, “Wait. Don‟t go for chelation protocol. Don‟t go for any artificial methods of removing these things. Just wait. ”
What they find out when we repeat these tests in about six or eight months‟ time is that the amounts of mercury and lead in the body of the child halt, or there‟s only some of it left. But we haven‟t done anything yet to remove it in particular. What‟s happened here is that the child‟s own detoxification system kicks in. We restored it through the GAPS Nutrition Protocol. It started working, and it started clearing out.
Then if we‟ll wait for another six months or so, we find that in the majority of these kinds of children – I would say, in more than 80 percent of children who come to me with the usual heavy burden of toxic metals – that we shouldn‟t do anything at all. Their own bodies have cleaned it all out very nicely.
Only in the minority, after about a year and a half or two years of GAPS Nutritional Protocol, if we still see symptoms (which are stubborn and would not clear), we can repeat the test of toxic metals. And if for whatever reason they‟re not clearing them out as effectively as they‟re expected, then we can consider chelation and some other methods of removing these things that are sitting in the body. But I would say don‟t rush with it, because in the majority of people, their own detox system, as you restore it, will clear everything out very nicely.
DM: It‟s terrific. The conditions you mentioned earlier remind me of our first interview, where I was surprised to see that the profound connection that you had in identifying these risk factors for women. That if their gut flora was disturbed, it was much likely that they will have a child with some type of autism spectrum disorder. That‟s really a solution if a child was exposed to vaccines. But if that child has cleared up his gut flora prior to that, that‟s really one of the most profound interventions one could have for having a non-brain-damaged child.
NC: Absolutely. What I feel sorry for now…I feel sorry for the generation of teenage girls now that are growing up. Because when they are ready to start the family – when they are ready to have children – their generation is going to have a much higher incidence of autism and other learning disabilities in children. We are heading for a lot of grief.
Mothers of my generation who have daughters who are growing up now, now is the time to assess your daughter. See what her gut flora is like. How is she doing before she‟s ready to conceive or have children? Prepare them for it to avoid the huge amount of grief in the family of having a grandchild with autism, hyperactivity, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and some other disorders. This is because the proportion of girls now with damaged gut flora is growing in our modern world, and they are heading to having unhealthy children, unfortunately. It‟s very sad.
DM: Thank you for all the work you have done there. Now I have some specific questions. One of the tools on your GAPS Diet isn‟t intuitive or isn‟t a process that many people are already using in their normal food preparations, and that is the use of these meat broths. I‟m wondering if you could comment and expound on that topic a little more, because it seems to be a powerful element of the whole process. It‟s not something people normally use.
NC: Absolutely. What I would like to say here, as you have mentioned the diet, is that it is very important tool as you start the introduction diet in particular for you to listen to your sense of desire, sense of smell and taste, and sense of satisfaction from food.
Please read my article One Man’s Meat is Another Man’s Poison. Please read it and take it to heart, because it is up to you to decide what proportions of vegetables to animal foods you are going to have in your introduction diet. How much cooked vegetables in proportion to how much meat you are having. How much yogurt you‟re introducing, how much sauerkraut, and so on, because it is only your body who knows how much you need for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I have people who have just read my book and my website. They didn‟t consult with anybody. They just started the diet, and a small proportion of them, particularly people who have a very strong will and who have tried various diets already in their lives, they are used to imposing their very strong will on their body. They‟re used to imposing it on their body. They are so detached from their body. They‟re not listening to that at all. They forgot how to listen to their body.
Your body is your slave. It‟s your servant. It loves you very much. It will do whatever you ask or tell it to do.
Some of these people run into trouble. These people either get terribly constipated. There are one or two people who run into electrolyte abnormalities in their bodies. They got the wrong electrolyte. They run out of potassium, magnesium, or something else happens. They can get heart palpitations and some other strange symptoms, which can threaten their very survival.
It is essential for you not to impose your will on your body, but to listen to your body, because only your body knows how much cleansing it needs to do now in proportion to how much feeding. Remember, feeding is done with animal foods, while cleansing is down with vegetable matters or with plant foods. So, if you feel that at the moment you are quite overstuffed and you don‟t need that much feeding but you need more cleansing, eat more vegetables in proportion to meat. Drink the meat stocks. Drink the bone broth. Eat more soups. Eat more vegetables and less meat.
But if you are malnourished, if you are underweight, and if you feel that you do need to be fed and built and you need to do more building in your body rather than cleansing and washing out, then have less vegetables and more animal matter. It is up to you to decide for that proportion that‟s very, very important to do.
It‟s the same with children. Parents are connected on a very deep level to their children. They can feel their children‟s bodies and what their children‟s body needs. By experimenting with different combinations of foods, what you don‟t introduce, and what you introduce, parents quite quickly – in my experience – learn what works for their particular child and what doesn‟t, and what proportion of vegetable matter to animal protein they need to give their child at any particular meal.
Also listen… When you stop the diet, the natural taste and natural sense for food in the child gets restored.
We‟re all born with these built-in wisdom and knowledge within our bodies – what works for us and what doesn‟t work for us. You should listen to that appetite. If you‟re child has more appetite today, doesn‟t want to eat, just drinks and just takes this, that and the other, don‟t force your child to eat, because what if the child‟s body went into a cleansing mode? It wants to fast a little bit. There‟s no danger in it. There‟s nothing to worry about.
Let your child guide you in that sense. If they have no appetite, fine. They will eat tomorrow, or they will eat two days later. When the appetite returns, that‟s the signal coming from the child‟s body that says, “All right, I‟m cleansed now. I‟m ready to be fed. I‟m ready to be built now, so let‟s start eating and feeding.” Your child will have an appetite, and he‟ll devour the whole roast chicken, half a duck, or something like that. You‟ll be absolutely surprised how much your child will eat.
Don‟t try to impose your will either on your own body or on your child‟s body. Try to be more intuitive. Listen to the body. Because the will comes from our human mind, and the human mind only knows what is read in some book and a glossy magazine, what is heard and seen on TV, or what is heard in my interview for that matter. [Laughs]
DM: Sure.
NC: The mind has a very meager knowledge. It‟s quite a stupid part of our human nature, so don‟t listen to it too much. While your body, your six senses – your intuition is very ancient and very old. It knows infinitely more, because it‟s connected to very, very deep metabolic mechanisms going on in your body.
Listen to your body. Listen to that appetite. Listen to the desires for food and for drinking from your body. If you‟re not thirsty, don‟t drink. Don‟t force yourself to drink those liters of water just because some book says that you have to. You can introduce a serious electrolyte imbalance in your body. You can introduce a serious kidney disorder in your body if you drink too much water. Drink only when you‟re thirsty, and eat only when you‟re hungry.
Listen to your body. Work with it rather than imposing your will upon it. That is very, very important to understand for adults and children. Adults have to take their responsibility for their child. The child will guide you. The child‟s thirst, hunger, and desire for food will guide you how to progress.
DM: Thank you for that. Let‟s get back to the meat stock and the bone broth.
NC: Okay.
DM: I have a specific question for that. Is it okay to cook it and eat the meat around the bones, but then make a bone broth from the bones?
NC: Absolutely. There are two varieties of stock you can make. One is meat stock and the other one is the bone broth. They‟re all very traditional. They come from traditional cultures.
No comments:
Post a Comment