How The GAPS Diet Will Improve Gut And Brain Health

There are a lot of diets out there that promise to improve your health in a variety of ways. When you have Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome (AFS) changing your diet is important in reducing stress and boosting your recovery. However, it is important to do your research before you start a new diet to ensure that it will have the benefits you want without harming your health. So, if you are thinking of trying the GAPS diet to improve your AFS, this is what you need to know about it.

What is the GAPS Diet?

The GAPS diet, or Gut and Psychology Syndrome Diet, is designed to improve gut health using food to manage troublesome symptoms and help with the gut repair. This diet claims that a great many disorders both physical and psychological are caused by what is known as leaky gut. This occurs when the lining of the small intestine becomes damaged and allows food particles and toxins to leak through the gut lining. These particles then flood the bloodstream, acting as a toxin. The GAPS diet claims to help with neurological disorders such as autism as well as psychiatric and behavioral disorders. However, there is absolutely no evidence that this diet will benefit these disorders, so make sure you seek out effective and expert help before embarking on such diets.

The GAPS diet goes through several phases that are meant to eliminate damaging foods and gradually improve the health of your intestinal lining. The first phase and perhaps the most important is a strict elimination diet that contains several stages. The elimination phase is based on a very small and strict list of foods that encourage gut healing and decrease inflammation. This phase, however, has a few disadvantages because it can cause digestive symptoms such as diarrhea, which will start to settle as inflammation decreases. Once these symptoms settle, other foods can be added back to your diet.

The GAPS diet is highly personalized and individual. Each person moves through it at their own pace entirely depending on their symptoms. Once the introduction phase is complete, the full GAPS diet can be incorporated, which prohibits all sugar and starches and contains a great deal of fermented food. This type of diet should be adhered to for at least two years and should promote good gut health and a healthy balance of bacteria in your gut.

What to Eat on the GAPS Diet

The GAPS diet includes a wide range of food that can be eaten at different phases and at different stages throughout the diet. This includes:

1. The Introduction Phase

• The introduction phase of the GAPS diet is strictly divided into six stages. In the first stage of this phase, you can eat mostly homemade meat or fish stock, probiotics foods, and ginger, mint or chamomile tea.
• In the second stage, you can eat stews and casseroles made with meat and vegetables, fermented fish, homemade ghee, and raw, organic egg yolks.
• In the third stage, you eat avocado soup, fermented vegetables, sauerkraut, and pancakes made with eggs, squash and organic nut butter.
• By the fourth stage, you can add cold-pressed olive oil, grilled or roasted meats, fresh vegetable juices, and various homemade bread.
• The fifth stage introduces fresh fruit and vegetable juices, raw vegetables, and cooked apple puree.
• In the sixth stage, baked foods made with dried fruits and peeled raw apple can be added.

2. The Full GAPS Diet

   Once the introduction phase is over, other foods can be added to your diet. These include

• Fresh or frozen organic meats, fish and shellfish.
• Garlic.
• Liver and other organ meats.
• Unprocessed honey.
• Fresh organic veggies and fruit.
• Homemade coconut milk.
• Organic, unsalted butter.
• Raw nuts and seeds.

Is the GAPS Diet Healthy?

So, the question arises, is the GAPS diet healthy? It is a fairly new diet and there are no studies to support its effectiveness. This means you should be very careful and only implement the system with the help of a trained medical professional. There are several troubling issues with the GAPS diet, including:

• The diet is very prescriptive and hard to follow.
• It prohibits many foods that are a good source of fiber, which may actually cause harm rather than help gut health.
• There is very little evidence that a leaky gut can cause or help address psychological or neurological disorders.
• There is not enough evidence to support the idea that certain foods can cause a leaky gut.
• And finally, there is no evidence that the foods that are eliminated from the GAPS diet are linked to a leaky gut.

So, if you experience anxiety or depression or other serious psychological or neurological disorders, then it is important that in addition to thinking about making dietary changes, you get the right kind of professional help for your situation.

Another issue with the GAPS diet has to do with AFS. Incorporating this diet may help address symptoms of AFS because eating a nutritious, healthy diet is vitally important to AFS recovery. However, it is crucial that you make drastic changes like this slowly when you have AFS. Even healthy changes can cause stress, which will only worsen your AFS. So, consult a trained professional who is an expert in AFS and the problems it can cause before you make the transition to the GAPS diet.

Gut Health in AFS

When you have AFS, the health of your gut is often one of the first parts of your body to go out of balance. The GAPS diet may be able to help with this, as long as it is right for your body and followed carefully and with respect to your physical condition. When you have AFS, your gut health is impacted by a combination of factors including high-stress levels, a poor diet, inflammation, and bad bacterial balance. Stress is a problem that the human body is designed to cope with. Your body has what is known as the NeuroEndoMetabolic (NEM) stress response which activates when you are under stress. But when you experience chronic stress, this system can start to malfunction.

The NEM stress response relies heavily on the adrenal glands to excrete cortisol, which then prepares the body to react to the cause of the stress. But this system is only designed to be active for short periods. It activates, helps you survive the cause of the stress, and then shuts down. So, when you experience chronic stress over a period of months or years, this system becomes overworked and all the circuits in the body can go out of balance. This is what happens when you have AFS and it will affect every system and organ in your body, including your gut.

The Dangers of Gut Imbalances

The gut becomes unbalanced because of a variety of issues when you have AFS. Firstly, stress and a poor diet often lead to digestive and elimination problems such as constipation or diarrhea. These symptoms can often disturb the balance of good and bad bacteria in the gut, resulting in an overgrowth of bad bacteria. Nutritional deficiencies because of a poor diet or poor digestion can also prevent the gut from getting the nutrients it needs to function properly. With the rise in the inflammation levels in your body, these problems in the gut get worse.

Additionally, the situation becomes problematic as AFS progresses to include more circuits in the body. The microbiome is an integral part of the neuroaffect circuit as well as the inflammation circuit. And as these circuits degrade, the health of the gut deteriorates over time. It is therefore vital to have strategies to improve the health of the gut and the associated circuits. In this case, the GAPS diet, can be also beneficial.

The Connection Between The Gut and Brain

The gut, brain and microbiome are very closely linked together. They make up what’s known as the gut-brain axis, so what affects one system will naturally affect the others as well. That is why it is so important that you improve your gut health when you have AFS, as poor health will have a noticeable and negative effect on the health and functioning of your brain. The health of your gut will affect your thoughts, emotions, memories, and neurotransmitter (NT) levels. NTs are the chemical messengers that your brain uses to communicate with the rest of your body and three-quarters of them are produced in the gut. So, when your gut is unhealthy, it will markedly affect how your brain communicates and functions.

Improving your diet is one of the best ways to improve the health of your gut. This will have the following effects:

• Decreased nutritional deficiencies.
• Increased levels of good bacteria and decreased levels of bad.
• Fewer toxins in your system to excite the inflammation circuit.
• It will encourage natural digestion and elimination.
• The increased nutrition will ensure that your brain gets the nutrients it needs to function.
• NT levels may stabilize.
• It will help to balance the circuits that are malfunctioning due to the processes of AFS.
• Lower stress levels.

Incorporating the GAPS diet may be able to produce these effects. However, as stated earlier, it is vitally important that you get expert advice before you make this change. The last thing you want when you have AFS is to increase your stress levels, cause more negative symptoms, or worsen your overall health condition.

The Takeaway

If you struggle with symptoms relating to poor gut and brain health because of AFS, then the GAPS diet may help. This eating plan will help to restore the natural balance of your stomach and the bacteria it contains, which will naturally boost your brain health. If you consider trying this diet, do it carefully, so that you avoid any negative responses from your AFS. This will help you to get a good start on the path to AFS recovery.

 
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