Other Healing Diets

At our house we call the GAPS diet, the Healing Diet for several reasons, mainly based on optimism and law of attraction. But there are other diets out there and over the past few months I have been reading about some of them. Why? They all offer pieces of the puzzle and perspectives on health. We are going to be doing some testing/retesting to see how we are doing on GAPS after almost a year. We are feeling good as far as energy and digestion, but the girls have been having monthly illnesses (mainly respiratory) since January. Might be that we are gong to need to add in some extras, make some changes to how we do GAPS, or leave some ideas behind. 

Here's a run down:

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet

I read the book Breaking the Vicious Cycle to learn more about the SCD, which is what a lot of the GAPS is based on. The author kept her daughter on the SCD for seven years (she wasn't sure how to transition her off the diet after the death of the doctor who developed SCD) and cured her of ulcerative colitis. She then spent the rest of her life promoting the SCD and helped thousands of people around the world. This was a great read and fascinating history on how celiacs disease used to be treated. The SCD doesn't rely on broth, fat and ferments, like GAPS does, which gives me relief on those days when my children don't eat the soup!

The Body Ecology Diet

Book by the same name. Very interesting read and focused on gaining control and healing from yeast overgrowth. Very supportive of certain ferments, much less focus on fats and animal foods then GAPS. Does allow certain seed-like grains, like quinoa. She uses lots of influence from other diets, which she has studied over the years.  I heard Donna Gates speak on the recent web conference and learned that she has a program called BEDROC, the ROC stands for recovering our kids and focusses on children with autism spectrum, allergies, asthma, etc, so I am going to check that out for 

comparison. I will say that some of the book really felt like an ad for the products the Body Ecology 

company offers, from culture starters to stevia.

Nutritional Balancing

I heard about this via the GAPS yahoo group and it sounds fascinating. In short you do an hair analysis, which shows you where your nutritional imbalances are, as well as how aspects of your body are functioning, such as how you handle glucose, and what heavy metals or other toxins you are excreting. You then follow a protocol to balance and detox the body, which includes a specific diet, most notably no sweeteners, no fruit, no raw vegetables, certain grains are avoided, but some are 

allowed, and do other things such as major supplementation, coffee enemas and a type of sauna. 

You retest the hair every 4-6 months to see how you are balancing and detoxing. The theory as I understand it so far, is that once all your nutritional needs are balanced and you have cleaned up your system from toxins and heavy metals things then your health will also be balanced. This is not a do it yourself program.

The Anti-Diet or RRARF

Rehabilative rest and aggressive re-feeding is what RRARF stands for and the program is a work in progress that advises lots of rest and eating to increase cell metabolic function. This means no exercise, naps, early bedtimes, and eating a lot to replace nutrients lost while on a restricted diet (anything from GAPS to vegan). It seems to be focused on doing so for about one month. The idea is that if you increase cell metabolic rate you will recover your health or perhaps at least improve it. Taking your basal body temperature regularly is how you measure your success at increase cell metabolic rate. I came across this program from some posts of people who transitined off GAPS and onto RRARF. Matt Stone is the creator of this program and I will warn you that you may find some of the writing and humor offensive.

I have not given you all the information on these programs and if any sound interesting I encourage you to read and learn more by getting the books and visiting the websites which google will help you find.