Almond cookies that I made for the kids on Valentines day.

We're almost at the 5 month point on the GAPS diet. We've all gotten quite used to what we can eat, what we can't, and we've found decent alternatives for a lot of the things we miss. But...

But the diet, as we've been doing it, at least, is far too expensive. I suppose I could do it cheaper if I spent all day, every day, cooking (and washing dishes). But I don't want to spend my life doing nothing but cooking. As it stands right now it takes me about 30 minutes to get everyone's breakfast made. (It helps that the girls are completely maxed out on eggs and prefer fresh fruit. Fruit has been the quickest, easiest snack we've found. It takes another 20 minutes or so to put the kids' lunches together plus another 15 - 20 minutes to make my own lunch. And I spend anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour making dinner. And that doesn't include making snacks for the kids (which has been the hardest part of all. I'm not spending a whole lot more time making regular meals. But snacks go so quickly that keeping the house stocked takes a lot of time. Which is where we've turned to store bought alternatives. Which is partly why our expenses are high.)

Let me first introduce you to some store bought snacks that have been lifesavers for us on this diet.

Shelton's Original Turkey Smoke Snack Sticks: These are the only sticks by Shelton's without sugar added. And they're the only meat stick/jerky that I've found (at our local grocer) that doesn't have added sugar or grain.
MMLocal Pear (not apple) Sauce: This has been a huge helper in the school lunch and quick breakfast/snack realm.
Go Raw cookies: Chocolate is the kids favorite and Masala Chai is mine. I need to learn to make these at home. They're made from very simple ingredients.
PaleoKrunch Bars: The kids like the original and the espresso. They also have pumpkin, bacon, and other flavors. But man are they pricey. This is another one I should learn how to make. (Oh! And check this out. I just found that someone posted their own recipe online. I'll have to check this out.) PaleoKrunch also has granola. The Apple Pie is the only one we've tried, but it was devoured incredibly quickly.

These items have made the diet easier to accomplish while at the same time shooting our food budget to the moon. (Nuts, nut flours, and nut butters, meat, and lots of fresh veggies aren't particularly cheap either.)

So, even though I had hoped to make it at least to the 6 month mark for the GAPS diet, we're going to start making a transition to a more Weston Price-ish diet. I bought some red skinned potatoes and brown rice at the store today. I'm going to slowly ease us into eating starches again. And I'm going to start learning all about sprouting.

Grains are what make eating affordable. We're going to continue to avoid gluten, but I feel like we need to mix some cheaper foods into our diet so that we can financially afford to keep eating, and I'm hoping that by introducing a few grains, I'll have a wider variety of easy to make snack options available to us as well as a few more options that I can purchase at the store.

The other thing that I've decided to change is the amount of probiotic pills that we take. I've been giving everyone two a day and I've been varying the brand in hopes of getting the widest variety of good bugs that we can get. But I haven't really noticed any significant change in myself or my daughters due to the pills. So for the three of us, we're going to rely more upon fermented veggies (like Bubbie's Sauerkraut and Wildbrine's Red Beet & Cabbage Sauerkraut Salad when we can find it). I'm going to keep my son on the probiotics because he's the one that's had the most tummy issues, so I don't want to back off on the probiotics just yet.

This change in our diet is going to be reflected in my blog. The recipes may start to contain some potatoes, rice, quinoa, etc. I'm going to be learning all about sprouting and cooking with sprouted grains, so I'll try to share what I learn. And, of course, I'll be letting you know how the change in our diet affects how we feel, physically and emotionally. 

You'll see some posts repeated because they contain our story and a recipe, or helpful information, but also a bit of how that relates to us.

Informational Posts

Putting the Pieces Together (24 Sept 13): includes the video where I first learned about the GAPS diet
GAPS Intro Diet - The Six Stages (27 Sept 13): As I was trying to figure out how to tell when to move from one stage to the next (which I never really did wrap my head around) I also wanted to get a better grasp of what we could eat in each stage. This post links to recipes and ideas for each stage. 
What We Eat Affects Everything (4 Oct 13): This links to an article about how food affects health.
GAPS Diet Recipes By Stage (5 Oct 13): I didn't want to start the diet until I knew there'd be things we could eat. So I started collecting recipes. 
Genetic Roulette Movie Streamable for Free (6 Nov 13): Link to the movie about how we're experimenting on ourselves with the Standard American Diet (SAD).
Articles on Grains vs. Fats, Microbes, etc. - a reference page (1 Jan 14): I started a resource page so that if someone asked me, "What about...?" I could look it up quickly.Something Has Happened in a Pervasive Fashion from the Environmental Perspective (11 Jan 14): Article on how things are changing in the world of food and it's affecting our health.


Our story - posts listed chronologically

Putting the Pieces Together (24 Sept 13): includes the video where I first learned about the GAPS diet
Day One-ish: Stage One of the GAPS Diet begins (11 Oct 13): The beginning of a broth based week.
The Kids Reaction to Stage One of the GAPS Diet (12 Oct 13): The kids didn't like stage one.
Yogurt and Eggs! (13 Oct 13): We moved through the stages quickly. Yogurt and eggs made such a difference.
Homemade Yogurt Is Rocking Our World (14 Oct 13): Homemade yogurt is really easy to make and it's cheaper than buying store bought. Better for you, too (because you know exactly what's in it and it's fresher than store bought so the little live cultures are healthier when you eat them).
Adding Pancakes and Reviewing Goals (15 Oct 13): Pancakes felt a little more normal. But we still couldn't add much honey.
Stage Three: End of Week One (18 Oct 13): I started to lump days together at this point.
Celebrating... Despite Lack of Potatoes (21 Oct 13): We celebrated my mom's birthday and caught up with my sister who started the diet when we did.
Sweet Things That Are GAPS Friendly (24 Oct 13): I've found snacks to be the hardest part of the diet. You can't just buy them in the store anymore.
Coconut Milk, Kids' Lunches, and Cabbage Soup (24 Oct 13): Packing lunches took lots of prep work the night before.
Meggie Had a Bloody Lamb - And Other Tales of Failure (25 Oct 13): Things didn't always go as planned.
One of the Grossest Things I've Ever Done (28 Oct 13): I drank straight broth. Remember, I don't like the taste of meat.
Lack of Snacks (1 Nov 13): Our biggest struggle, having the time and ingenuity to create new snacks. There's lots of recipes out there, but it's a trial and error process finding things that the family will like.
One Month on the Full GAPS Diet - Little Change in Symptoms (25 Nov 13): Change did come, it just wasn't really noticeable for us yet.
Woot! Two Small Victories Show That the Diet is Healing Me (6 Dec 13): Progress! Finally.
Gack! Liver! Run away! (10 Feb 13): I know we need to be eating more organ meats because they're so nutritious, but honestly, liver?!!




Recipes - posts listed alphabetically by type

GAPS Diet Recipes By Stage (5 Oct 13): I didn't want to start the diet until I knew there'd be things we could eat. So I started collecting recipes.

Savory Dishes
Cauliflower "Rice" Recipe (15 Oct 13): This is really yummy, especially with lots of butter. (Remember, butter is good for you.) It doesn't soak up sauces like regular rice, but it makes a passable base for stir fries and other dishes that you're used to eating with rice.
Pork Cutlets - GAPS Style (22 Oct 13): I started buying meat from a local ranch.
Fresh Cabbage Soup (7 Dec 13): Easy to make. Yummy.
Apple Carrot Curry Soup (7 Dec 13): Sooo delicious!
Greek-ish Salad (10 Jan 14): This is one of the family's faves. The kids love the chicken.
Chicken Adobo (11 Jan 14): Easy crock pot recipe.


Snacks/Desserts
Almond Raisin Cookies (25 Sept 13): These are made with almond flour and a bit of coconut flour. To make them even more almondy, add a bit of almond extract.
Squash Fudge (24 Oct 13): Creamy and yummy!
Fried Bananas with Caramel and Cream (26 Oct 13): Yeah, baby!
Panna Cotta with Fruit Sauce Topping (3 Nov 13): This was a big hit. But the kids preferred when I used the coconut milk with guar gum in it.
Banana Ice Cream - Dairy Free, Easy to Make, and Yummy (17 Nov 13): Soooo easy to make and so yummy!
Grain-Free Muffin Recipe (21 Nov 13): Basic recipe that's easily adapted.
Coconut Pancakes - Paleo / GAPS (29 Nov 13): The kids loved these.
Soooo Simple Chia Mousse - GAPS / Paleo Easy Peasy Dessert (29 Nov 13): Good for school lunches
Coconut Flour Crepes - GAPS/Paleo (29 Nov 13): Crepes feel decadent and help you feel less like you're on a diet.
Grain Free Crackers (15 Dec 13): Finally, something to dip in stuff besides veggies.
Flourless Chocolate Cake (15 Dec 13): Pretty rich and dark. Good with whipped cream. (You don't have to add sugar to whipped cream to enjoy it.)
Simple Cream Custard (31 Dec 13): Rich. I like it with nutmeg on top.
Grain-Free Peanut Butter Cookies (14 Jan 14): It's hard to make enough of these at a time. The kids plow through them.
Chocolate Cookies (11 Feb 14): So easy to make. And there's no eggs, so you can munch on the batter!

Chella David, Ph.D. and
Joseph Murray, M.D.

Celiac disease is on the rise, and not just because diagnostic tests are improving or that awareness is increasing. A study by Dr. Joseph Murray has found that people today are 4 times more likely to have celiac disease than people only 50 years ago. An article on the Mayo clinic's website describes Dr. Murray's study:

Dr. Murray's team tested the 50-year-old blood for gluten antibodies, assuming that 1 percent would be positive — the same as today's rate of celiac disease. But the number of positive results was far smaller, indicating that celiac disease was extremely rare among those young airmen. Surprised, the researchers compared those results with two recently collected sets from Olmsted County, Minn. One blood-sample set matched the birth years of the airmen. Those elderly men were four times likelier to have celiac disease than their contemporaries tested 50 years earlier. The second set matched the ages of the airmen at the time their blood was drawn. Today's young men were 4.5 times likelier to have celiac disease than the 1950s recruits. "This tells us that whatever has happened with celiac disease has happened since 1950," Dr. Murray says. "This increase has affected young and old people. It suggests something has happened in a pervasive fashion from the environmental perspective." (Celiac Disease: On the Rise, July 2010) 

Dr. Murray also found that celiac disease could be deadly when undiagnosed.

Unfortunately this article didn't address problems of gluten intolerance or gut disbiosis, which I'm more interested in. But the fact that celiac disease is on the rise shows that something in our environment has changed. And just because it hasn't caused celiac disease in us doesn't mean that it isn't affecting us some other way.

Dr. Murray hypothesizes a bit about what could have changed in the last 50 years to cause these health changes. According to the article from the Mayo clinic:

Dr. Murray lists several possible environmental causes of celiac disease. The "hygiene hypothesis" suggests the modern environment is so clean that the immune system has little to attack and turns on itself. Another potential culprit is the 21st century diet. Although overall wheat consumption hasn't increased, the ways wheat is processed and eaten have changed dramatically. "Many of the processed foods we eat were not in existence 50 years ago," Dr. Murray says. Modern wheat also differs from older strains because of hybridization. Dr. Murray's team hopes someday to collaborate with researchers on growing archival or legacy wheat, so it can be compared to modern strains.

People keep sending me links for articles or videos related to diet. I thought I'd start a page where I list the articles in case I want to refer back to any of them later. So this page will be updated as I come across new articles.

The importance of our microbiome (healthy gut flora is key)

From NPR

Gut Bacteria Might Guide The Workings Of Our Minds, on Health News from NPR, November 18, 2013. Explains how there's growing evidence that the bacteria in our gut affect our mental health. The page includes an audio and a video portion. The video is a cartoon that explains what our microbiome is, how we get it, and what could be causing problems with it.

Microbiology and Technology of Fermented Foods, by Robert W. Hutkins. This is a somewhat technical document including 400 pages of information about fermented foods - their history, types of microbes, etc.

Your gut’s what you eat, too, by Peter Reuell in the Harvard Gazette. Studies show that a change in diet can have immediate affects upon our microbiome and that a change in diet can increase the amount of bilophila in the gut, a microbe known to cause colitis in mice.

Living in a Microbial World, by David Shardt in the Nutrition Action Health Letter, July/August 2012. This is essentially a microbe primer covering topics such as what our microbiome is, where it comes from, what affects it, and how it can be healed.

From Balanced Bites

The importance of healthy fats in our diet

Your “Healthy” Diet Could Be Quietly Killing Your Brain, Psychology Today, October 9, 2013. This article focuses primarily on brain health and the importance of a fat rich, low carb diet to avoid dementia/alzheimers.

Fats: Which to Eat & Which to Ditch, from Balanced Bites by Diane Sanfilippo, July 2010. This article gives guidelines about which fats are good to eat and which aren't.

Eating fat is good for you: Doctors change their minds after 40 years, by Jo Willey of the Express. Studies in the 70s showed a correlation between saturated fats and heart disease, but they never proved causation. New studies show that natural fats such as butter are better for the heart.


Problems with grains - GMOs, gluten, gliadin, and other issues

Modern wheat a "perfect, chronic poison," doctor says, on CBS This Morning, June 21, 2013. Dr. William Davis explains that wheat has been changed over the last 30 years. It now contains gliadin which is an issue for all consumers, not just those with celiac disease or a gluten intolerance.

How Grains Are Killing You Slowly, by Katie of the Wellness Mama. Katie explains how phytic acid in grains causes problems for the gut. (Sprouting the grain helps to remove the phytic acid.) She also touches on gluten and lectins.

Why Are So Many Allergic to Wheat Now?, by Melissa Melton of Truthstream Media, May 2, 2013. Melton shows that recent changes to wheat coincide with increased incidences of allergies, autism, and other issues. There's no proof of causality given, but a relationship is implied.

Arsenic in Your Food, from Consumer Reports, November 2012. Consumer Reports found that several brands of rice products contained high levels of inorganic arsenic, including organic brands. And that because the arsenic is often concentrated in the bran, brown rice tended to have higher levels than white rice. One suggestion to reduce the level of arsenic in rice is to rinse the rise before cooking, then cook with 6 cups of water to 1 cup of rice and pour off extra water once cooked. This washes away some nutrients but also removes arsenic. A more recent article entitled, There’s Still Arsenic in Rice (and It’s Probably Not Going Away), was published by Takepart.com on September 11, 2013. Once again, brown rice still looks problematic.


Milk/Dairy Issues

“The Devil in the Milk” — Dr. Thomas Cowan on how the A1 – A2 factor explains why even raw milk sometimes does not seem to be enough of an improvement over “store-bought”, by TheBovine, March 20, 2009. The type of cow that is producing the milk can affect how well people digest it.


Healthy Diet (This is more of an umbrella section for posts, videos, etc. that cover several topics.)

Nourishing Traditional Diets (2 hour video), by Sally Fallon of the Weston A. Price Foundation. In this video Sally Fallon explains how Weston Price explored traditional diets and what conclusions he came to regarding what we should be eating for optimal health. It includes many photos taken by Price during his travels.  This video is long, but worth watching. 

The movie Genetic Roulette – The Gamble of Our Lives is available to stream for free for the next few days. The movie includes the results of several studies that have been done that show the harmful affects of GMOs in our food supply. They also explain how some of these affects lead to so many other problems that we're seeing a sharp rise in these days such as inflammation, leaky gut syndrome, IBS, autism, birth defects, reproductive disorders, cancer, etc.

Essentially, large corporations are changing our food supply to our detriment and without our consent. Not only are corn and soy almost entirely GMO crops, but the meat we eat that was fed these crops are also full of GMOs. The only way to not play this game of roulette, is to stop eating GMO foods.

Half way into the movie there's a description of a farm in Africa that was growing GM corn. The workers ate the GM corn at every meal and before long they were seeing several symptoms they didn't have before, including constantly runny noses (which is the problem we've been trying to get rid of in my son) and severe headaches (which my daughters keep getting). We went onto the GAPS diet to fight the runny nose, headaches, yeast infections, and acne. I wonder how many of these symptoms are caused by GMOs. We eat a lot of organic food, but are there treats or other foods that we've been eating that we didn't realize were full of GMOs? There's no way to know what contains a GM gene without some sort of labeling.

I strongly recommend this movie. Click here to stream the hour long video. (They'll ask for your name and email address.) I've told my husband and kids that this movie is a must watch for them this week. 

An article by James Hamblin just came out in yesterday's Atlantic Monthly entitled What We Eat Affects Everything. In it, Hamblin interviews Robynne Chutkan M.D. Chutkan doesn't seem to espouse any particular diet, but she does recommend an 80/20 principal (that I've also seen mentioned by the Conscious Cleanse gals) in which 80% of the food you eat should be unprocessed and healthy. The other 20% can be splurge food.

Chutkan claims that for many people 80% of what they eat is highly processed, sugary foods that are low in nutritional value and the other 20% are meats, vegetables, whole grains, etc. By flipping that percentage around, we'll spend less time toxifying our bodies and more time detoxing.

One of the most interesting parts of the article, in my opinion, is Chutkan's answer to Hamblin's question, "What are some differences in the way you approach female patients as opposed to men? In my mind, at least, the digestive tract isn’t something commonly thought of as a gendered part of the body." The answers all make a lot of sense once you read them, though you might not have thought of them before now. I'd encourage you to read the article for yourself. If you're only interested in hearing the answer to the gender differences question, scroll down to just past the image of the virtual colonoscopy. (Woot! Now doesn't that get you excited to click through and read?!!)  ;-)

The GAPS Diet comes in two main stages: Intro and Full. It's assumed that when you're starting out, your gut is a total mess. You could be eating the most healthful food in the world, but if your gut is so screwed up that it can't absorb that nutrition, then it's not doing you any good. In order to heal the gut enough to start absorbing foods properly, the introductory diet takes you through 6 stages that focus primarily on broth, soups, and some fermented foods in the beginning and slowly widens out to a greater selection of foods. There's a constant animal fat focus (from meat and dairy) because these fats contain important pieces of nutrition that a GAPS person is often lacking, and they're easily absorbed into the body. (Dr. Natasha goes into detail about why fats aren't the horrible, evil heart killers that people think they are. If you're interested, she focused on that topic in her book, Put Your Heart in Your Mouth. She also briefly covers it in the GAPS book.)

I've been having a hard time getting my head around what exactly you're allowed to eat during each stage of the introductory diet. So I thought I'd reread through the book and type it up in list form. I'm also not clear on when you move from one stage to the other. So I'll make notes on that as well.

Stage One
• Homemade meat or fish stock. (Do not use bouillon cubes!) Include joints and bones when making.
• Unprocessed salt (such as Real Salt from Utah)
• Peppercorns (roughly crushed into soup but later removed)
• Homemade soups using that homemade meat or fish stock.
• Veggies: Onions, carrots, broccoli, leeks, cauliflower, zucchini, squash, pumpkin, etc. Avoid fibrous vegetables such as cabbage and celery. Also to avoid fiber remove skin and seeds from squash and don't include stalks of broccoli and cauliflower. Cook vegetables well until they're very soft.
• Garlic (cooked for much less time than the veggies)
• Probiotic foods: in this stage, only include the juice from homemade sauerkraut, fermented vegetables or vegetable medley. Don't include the vegetables themselves yet. Only add probiotic juice after food has cooled slightly so you don't kill off the good bacteria.
• If there is no reaction to dairy then include whey, sour cream, yoghurt and kefir (all should be homemade so the probiotics haven't been pasteurized out), especially for those suffering from diarrhea. Caution should be taken, however, with people suffering from constipation. They should focus on the probiotic vegetable juices and avoid the dairy sourced probiotics.
• Ginger tea, mint or camomile tea with a little honey between meals. Use fresh or frozen ginger root.

Transition point: As best I can tell, the transition point from stage one to stage two is when diarrhea or constipation is gone. So I'm not sure what that means for the person going into stage one without either problem. I did read in one blog that you shouldn't stay in stage one for longer than a week. It sounds like many people spend less time than that in stage one.

Stage Two - Anything that you were able to eat in stage one, plus the following...
• Raw organic egg  yolks carefully separated from the egg white. Start with one a day and eventually add to every bowl of soup and every cup of meat stock. Once raw egg yolk is well tolerated, add soft boiled eggs to soups (whites cooked, yolks runny).
• Stews and casseroles made with meats and vegetables.
• Fresh herbs
• Keep increasing amounts of probiotics (sauerkraut juice, whey, etc.) daily
• Introduce fermented fish (Swedish gravlax) starting with one small piece a day.
• Introduce homemade ghee (or use Purity Farms Organic Ghee which can be bought in stores). Even if you are unable to tolerate other dairy at this point, it is likely that ghee will be tolerated.

Transition point: I guess it's whenever you feel like you're ready to move on - that your digestive system is doing OK with what you've eaten so far and it feels OK to try some new things.

Stage Three - Anything that you were able to eat in stages one and two, plus the following...
• Ripe avocado - starting with a small amount and increasing as it's well tolerated
• Pancakes (Do a little dance of joy at this point! No more soup for breakfast!) Start with one pancake a day and gradually increase the number. The pancakes should be made with organic nut butters, eggs, and squash (with seeds removed). There's a recipe for this type of pancakes at the end of this post by Erin, of Plan to Eat, on stage three of the GAPS diet (which was her fourth week of the intro diet).
• Eggs scrambled with plenty of ghee or goose or pork or duck fat. Serve with avocado and cooked veggies.
• Cooked onion cooked in ghee or animal fat. Cook for 20-30 minutes on very low heat until translucent.
• Sauerkraut and fermented veggies. Start small and increase amounts.

Stage Four - Anything that you were able to eat in stages one, two, and three, plus the following...
• Roasted or grilled meats. (Remember that everything before this point has been boiled in soup or broth.) This does not mean BBQ'd or deep fried. Avoid burned or overly browned bits.
• Cold pressed olive oil added to every meal. Start with a few drops per meal and work your way up to 1 - 2 tablespoons per meal. Don't cook with the olive oil. Just sprinkle it right on top of your food.
• Freshly pressed juices. Start with a few spoonfuls of carrot juice, filtered and diluted with warm water. Gradually increase to a cup a day. Once a full cup of carrot juice is well tolerated, begin to add celery, cabbage, lettuce and fresh mint leaves. Juice should be drunk on an empty stomach.
• Bread made from ground almonds or any other ground nuts and/or seeds. The recipe should include nut flour, eggs, squash (deseeded) and some natural fat (ghee, animal fat or coconut oil) and salt to taste. Start with a small piece a day and gradually increase.

Stage Five - You know the routine. All the old stuff plus this new stuff...
• Cooked apple - pureed. Peal first. Add ghee or animal fat. As always, start slow and gradually increase amounts. If the apples are too sour, you can add a bit of honey.
• Add raw veggies starting with the soft bits of lettuce and peeled cucumber. If those go well, add carrots, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, etc. If diarrhea returns, you're not ready for this step.
• Fruit juice - if the veggie juice is being tolerated, try a bit of apple, pineapple or mango juice. Avoid citrus.

Stage Six - This is the transition stage where you move into the Full GAPS diet.
• Peeled raw apple. Gradually introduce raw fruit and more honey.
• Gradually introduce baked cakes and other sweet things that are allowed on the full diet. Use dried fruit as a sweetener when baking.

Transition Information - Ah ha! After the 6th stage Dr. Natasha gives a better sense of when to transition from one stage to another. She says, "Most indicative are abdominal pain and the stool changes: let the pain and diarrhoea start clearing before moving to the next stage." I guess that means that as long as you don't have abdominal pain and poopy issues, you're ready to level up. She also warns that people with constipation problems may actually get worse on this diet without fiber, so she recommends "regular enemas or colonic irrigation." ... I think if I suggest to one of my teenagers that they receive an enema or colonic irrigation, they'll run away from home. We might just want to run through the diet a little faster in order to get back to fiber-land.

Soups and meat stocks should be happening every day throughout the introductory diet and even once you're into the full diet, there's supposed to be at least one serving a day. (Oh yay. ...says my vegetarian self who is very much not looking forward to such a meatful diet. *sigh*)

According to pages like this one in Journey to Food that Gives Life, tomatoes, mushrooms, and honey are legal from the beginning. I don't see that in the part of Natasha's book that describes the introductory diet, but perhaps it's been gleaned from other parts of the book that I haven't gotten to yet.

(The photo at the top is of veggies that my father-in-law is fermenting.)

I've found another helpful list of what you can eat when on the GAPS Intro diet from the Well Fed Homestead. 

Although my sister had been using some of Dr. Natasha's principals and had told me about them, I hadn't heard of Dr. Natasha herself until my son's doctor sent us the link to this video.

I'm a systems person. That means I'm not very good at taking in or processing data in a vacuum. It makes much more sense to me, and fits together better in my head, when data comes with a context. That's what I feel Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride provides in this video. She doesn't just explain the connection between gut health and psychological health (which is brilliant in its own right) but backs the story even further out to explain how our guts got into the state they're currently in, going back several generations.

I feel like many nutrition discussions devolve into X causes Y. As we started to face health issues in our family, the chief comment I got from people was, it must be gluten because gluten causes such and such. But there seemed to be a wider range of issues we were facing (including runny nose, hives, trouble sleeping, and depression) and X causes Y didn't seem to capture our story. What Dr. Natasha brings out is that there are many factors - antibiotics, GMOs, processed foods, high carb diets, yeast overgrowths, generational dysbiosis, etc - and they all played a part. And the outcomes weren't the same for everyone. Just as there wasn't just one X, there's also not just one Y. Symptoms manifested differently, not just in different people, but in the same person it seems like they change over time, probably based on the health of the gut at that point in time and what pathogens and toxins are escaping out to the rest of the body.

I had studied a lot about allergies, yeast overgrowths, anorexia, autism, and several other issues, but nothing tied all the pieces together as neatly as Natasha's description in this video. It's long, but it's worth the listen.