The GAPS Diet: A Powerful Healing Protocol

Our physical and mental health are inextricably tied to our gut health. Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, author of “Gut and Psychology Syndrome” and “Gut and Physiology Syndrome” (GAPS) explains today the importance of healing and sealing the gut for vibrant health. She describes how the GAPS diet can do just that, resolving a compromised digestive system (commonly referred to as “leaky gut”).

The porous gut wall unfortunately allows toxins to flow from the gut to the bloodstream and then throughout the body, leading to physical diseases or mental health concerns. Whether the symptoms are related to mental health (like schizophrenia, depression, and ADHD) or physical health (like allergies, brain fog, and autoimmune conditions), they can be resolved by addressing the root problem: poor gut health. The GAPS nutritional protocol is the powerful tool Natasha recommends. She discusses how it works and reminds us that epigenetics (lifestyle changes) play a part in turning things around. She also invites us to keep in mind that a diagnosis of any kind is not our destiny.

Visit Natasha Campbell-McBride’s recommended websites: gaps.me, Doctor-Natasha.com, GAPStraining.com, gapssciencefoundation.org

Check out our website for further resources: westonaprice.org

Become a member of WAPF

See our sponsors: Redmond Real Salt, Marithyme Seafood, Optimal Carnivore

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Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript, the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Natasha Campbell-McBride.

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The GAPS Diet: A Powerful Healing Protocol

Every chronic disease is born in the gut, so said Hippocrates over 2,000 years ago, and so says our guest. She also suggests that it is possible to heal and seal the gut, and in this way, cultivate robust physical and mental health. This is episode 391. Our guest is Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, creator of the GAPS Nutritional Protocol. Dr. Natasha is a researcher, speaker, and author who has helped transform the health of countless people through the GAPS Protocol.

GAPS stands for Gut and Psychology and Gut and Physiology syndrome. Natasha is convinced that restoring gut health and understanding this gut-brain connection can help heal numerous physical conditions, including thyroid issues, autoimmune conditions, insomnia, allergies, and psychological conditions like depression, anxiety, ADHD, and more. Even brain fog and skin rashes can be reversed, and all sorts of conditions that we might not even normally associate with gut health.

Natasha reviews GAPS, but she also speaks to the dangers of pseudo foods in the diet that are like antibiotics in the body. She talks about toxins like glyphosate and how they compromise our gut health. She also reminds us of the healing power of real food and epigenetics, and how our lifestyle can help us reverse diagnoses that might have once seemed irreversible to us. In sum, Natasha says that healing the gut can bring about a number of surprising benefits, including helping us live with vibrant health and greater resilience than we may have ever experienced before.

Before we dive into the conversation, I want to invite you to support the work we do here at the Weston A. Price Foundation. Become a member. We rely on members to fund our research, undergird our advocacy, and enable education and initiatives like this show. Help us get the word out by becoming a member for only $30 a year using the code POD10. Go to WestonAPrice.org and click on the Become a Member button. Use the code POD10, and for $30 a year, you will receive our quarterly journal, our annual shopping guide, and a welcome package with dietary guidelines and informational brochures. Thank you from all of us at the foundation in advance.

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Coming up, Natasha explains how to get started with the GAPS diet. She also goes over how our very existence and our experience of life can change drastically once the body heals.

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Visit Natasha Campbell-McBride’s recommended websites: GAPS.me, Doctor-Natasha.com, GAPSTraining.com, GAPSScienceFoundation.org

Check out our website for further resources: WestonAPrice.org

Become a member of WAPF

See our sponsors: Redmond Real Salt, Marithyme Seafood, Optimal Carnivore

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Welcome to the show, Natasha.

Thank you for inviting me. I’m delighted to be here again.

It is so good to see you. You are a GAPS hero. Everyone that I know loves you and refers to your books, Gut and Psychology Syndrome and Gut and Physiology Syndrome, not to mention Vegetarianism Explained. You have so much wisdom to bring. You were one of the first guests on this show years ago.

I remember. This is a very successful show.

That’s so wonderful. I wanted to have you back because it’s time we revisited some of the basics of the GAPS diet. I imagine for some people that this is brand new information. First of all, before we get into the diet, talk to us about why this diet is still trending since you wrote your book in 2004. This has got sticking power.

GAPS has become a global phenomenon. It has been more than twenty years since I worked in this area. Since I’ve written my first book, it has been translated into 25 languages. People all over the world are following this protocol with great results. There are more translations coming all the time. There are more people in the world who need this information because the illnesses and the problems that humanity or human beings have created in this world are spreading to every country.

WT 391 | GAPS — Gut And Psychology Syndrome: Natural Treatment For Autism, Dyspraxia, A.D.D., Dyslexia, A.D.H.D., Depression, Schizophrenia

There are GAPS people, I call them GAPSters, that have this condition and this problem. There are GAPSters in every country. Their numbers are growing all over the world. If you would like, I’ll go ahead and explain what GAPS is. GAPS stands for Gut and Psychology and Gut and Physiology syndrome. We now know that the human body is largely made out of microbes. We are a microbial community.

There are far more microbes in your body than human cells. This microbial world is highly organized. All the species of a balanced microbial community are there. They will support each other, control each other, don’t allow anyone to get out of control. When there is a balance and harmony between every microbe in that community and your human cells in there as well, you are healthy, happy, well, and content. You are enjoying your life. Your body is a perfect vehicle for you to live in and enjoy yourself.

The problem is human beings are very good at creating imbalances in nature because we think we know better than what’s created in this world. Every time you have antibiotics, for example, you damage that microbial community because no antibiotic in the world will kill every microbe. It only chooses particular groups of microbes and damages them. The rest of the microbial community remains there but now the balance is gone.

Those that have been killed by the antibiotic are not controlling a myriad of other species anymore. Those species overgrow and get out of control. The balance is gone. As a result, microbes, which used to be perfectly beneficial for us as part of the balanced microbial community become pathogenic because every microbe in nature can cause trouble if it is out of balance with the rest of nature. That is GAPS.

Every microbe in nature can cause trouble if it is out of balance with the rest of nature.

The majority of these microbes live inside your digestive system. Why? If you ask any microbiologist what is the most powerful influence on a microbial community in nature, the answer is going to be immediately food. You change their food supply. The whole microbial community will change within a few hours because microbes multiply very quickly. They produce trillions of babies per hour.

Certain species will disappear. Other species will proliferate depending on what food supply you give to them. Where do we put food in our bodies? In the digestive system. That is why the majority of our microbial communities live in the digestive system. It is called gut flora. That is what I described in my GAPS books. People with damaged gut flora are called GAPS people.

They have an overgrowth of certain species of microbes, which turned out to be pathogenic. The beneficial species are missing. As a result, the body becomes unhealthy. It becomes unwell. You continue eating the food that used to be perfectly okay for you, and it is now consumed by a different microbial community, a pathogenic one. They convert that food into millions of poisonous chemicals.

At the same time, they damage the integrity of your gut wall, making it porous and leaky. These chemicals are absorbed. Alive microbes crawl through and circulate around your body. They’re pathogenic. There are undigested foods too because once the gut wall is damaged and there are big holes in it, food doesn’t have a chance to be digested properly before it absorbs. It is improperly digested.

This flow of toxic things becomes a river that flows from your gut into your blood and your lymph and gets distributed around your body. Wherever this mixture gets to, it causes disease. If it gets into your brain, it will cause mental illness, starting from learning disabilities in children, autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and any other disorders.

All of these disorders are on the rise in the US and I imagine worldwide.

GAPS is on the rise. GAPS is marching across the planet. We human beings have filled our lives with antibiotic-like chemicals. The majority of chemicals that our industrial agriculture sprays on our fields and then feeds to our animals are antibiotics in their nature. One of the most powerful ones in the broad spectrum is glyphosate. That came out in the 1990s. It is one of the most widely-used industrial chemicals in agriculture.

Everything contains glyphosate, even organically-labeled produce. Everything you buy in a supermarket, you are eating antibiotics for breakfast and lunch in general. You’re damaging your microbial community in your gut, first and foremost, and everywhere else in your body all that time every time you eat. When that happens, you become a GAPSter. Once your microbial community is abnormal, it processes the food in an abnormal way. Certain species start proliferating. As a result, the species poison you.

Depending on the mixture of toxins that they produce, you may have this group of symptoms or that group of symptoms. You may develop an autoimmune disease, rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto, lupus, psoriasis, or something else. You may develop another form of arthritis, an allergy, eczema, asthma, hives, or anything at all. Every chronic disease from my point of view is GAPS, whether it’s mental or physical.

I’ve divided GAPS into two groups, Gut and Psychology and Gut and Physiology because when I first started working with this concept, I worked with children with learning disabilities. I focused on autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, oppositional-defiant disorder, and so on in children. That’s what the first book, the yellow book, Gut and Psychology Syndrome, has focused upon. That came out in 2004 first. The more I worked with these patients, the more I realized that they were physically ill. The same source of illness, the gut, causes mental problems and a plethora of physical problems as well. I called that part Gut and Physiology syndrome.

The second book, Gut and Physiology, came out in 2020. It’s a much bigger book. It’s a blue book. Gut and Physiology Syndrome covers autoimmune diseases, neurological, hormonal, gut problems, fatigue, arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, Lyme, and all sorts of things. Every chronic disease is born in the gut. Every one of them is GAPS. When you heal through the GAPS Nutritional Protocol, you lay the solid ground for your body to recover from any chronic disease even if it has been diagnosed as genetic by a medical professional.

I have an increasing number of people coming to me who have been diagnosed with a genetic condition because that’s the area that our science has been looking into for a long time. They started discovering this little gene, that little gene, and a fragment of a gene somewhere there. Once they find that fragment in you, they say, “There we go. This is the connection. This is the cause of your pain, swelling, inflammation, and not feeling well.” People receive these genetic diagnostic labels, which spell a lifelong condition, and there’s nothing you can do about genetics.

I tell these people, “Don’t pay attention to that. Start the GAPS Nutritional Protocol.” I have no end of patients, children, and adults in whom all these symptoms disappear. Maybe they have been genetic. Who knows? Genetics is not our destiny. We know that now. We know that epigenetics is far more important. What is epigenetics? These are environmental factors inside our bodies and outside our bodies that choose which genes are going to be active and which genes are going to sleep forever. When you change the environment inside yourself, and food is the most powerful game-changer in your environment and outside yourself, then certain genes go to sleep in your body while the genes which promote good health wake up and start working. Your symptoms disappear.

I wanted to ask you so many things along the way because you have so much rich information to share. The first is this. From what you’ve said even if we are eating the best foods, let’s say, I’m trying to eat only organic and clean things from my farmer, the food is still not going to nourish my body as it should if my gut is leaky, if it’s already damaged, and if there’s already an imbalance with the microbiome. Is that right?

Absolutely, because if you can’t digest your food, it doesn’t nourish you. It can be the best and most expensive food in the world but if your digestive system is incapable of digesting it and processing it appropriately, then this food doesn’t nourish you. That is why the gut is an absolute basis for healing from any chronic disease, no matter what it is. Generally speaking, I tell people that this place for all forms of healing in the world and our mainstream medicine have their place. It has developed wonderful ways of saving our lives when it comes to that.

If you got hit by a bus, God forbid, you want mainstream medicine because they know how to deal with life-threatening situations like that. They will repair your body, but when it comes to chronic degenerative conditions and long-term conditions, the mainstream doctor is probably the last person you want to go to. You need to look at your gut and your microbial community. You need to speak to alternative practitioners, nutritionists, homeopaths, osteopaths, naturopaths, and GAPS practitioners. We have thousands around the world.

On GAPSTraining.com, we have been training health practitioners for many years. We have thousands of certified GAPS practitioners who work with people online and in person. On top of that, we have a second profession called GAPS coach. A coach is a person who has been through the protocol themselves for their illness or the illness in their family. They have very valuable practical experience. We train these people. They become fantastic practitioners themselves.

That’s wonderful. How does the GAPS Protocol help heal the gut? What does it do? I know it’s a three-pronged approach with changes in diet, supplementation, detoxification, and lifestyle changes.

It’s a program. We talk about the microbial community. Remember, the most powerful influence on any microbial community in nature is food. Diet is the most important part of the GAPS Nutritional Protocol. It’s called the GAPS Diet. That’s how it’s known around the world now. What this diet does is heal the gut wall. Remember, the gut wall is damaged in these people. It’s porous and leaky. Lots of things are getting through and things that should not get through.

Your body is a microbial community. The most powerful influence on any microbial community is food.

What we do with the GAPS diet is build a new gut wall for the person without any holes in it. We heal and seal the gut wall. It takes some time, but we build a new one from quality materials for the person. It is a careful process that you have to follow rigidly with good discipline over a period of time. At the same time, we changed the microbial community in the gut.

We rebalance it. We drive out pathogens. We reestablish normal healthy microbes. We change the whole milieu, background, and group of these microbes. That group of microbes that are in the gut is the headquarters of your microbiome or the whole microbial community in the body because there are microbes everywhere in your body.

There are microbes in your blood, blood vessels, brain, eyes, lungs, heart, liver, joints and muscles. There are microbes everywhere but the headquarters of that microbial community is in the gut. Once you change that ministry or that very important headquarter, they will then change the rest because they’re all connected to each other. The whole microbial community talks to each other.

This approach is interesting because it’s so different from what conventional medicine or doctors have to offer. It’s healing from the inside out. It’s not popping a pill or trying to change with some convenient thing. Sometimes I find people are resistant to it because it seems so overwhelming to change so much as opposed to some convenient quick fix.

Every human being is on a journey in this world. Human life is a journey of the growth of your spirit and spiritual learning. Your soul is learning. We learn and hopefully, grow and evolve rather than devolve. There are people in this world who are not interested in finding out what the root cause of their disease is. They want you to be comfortable and control the symptoms. Mainstream medicine is for you. That’s what they will do for you. They will give you pills. They will suppress the pain, the inflammation, and all the symptoms so you will feel better.

The disease will continue destroying your body, but if you don’t care about that, in the meantime, you will feel comfortable and will continue with your activities or whatever it is you do. There are people who are perfectly satisfied to do that, but if you are one of the people who would like to know the root cause and heal your body from the root cause by removing the root cause and laying the solid foundation for your body to be wealth-healthy and robust long term, then that approach is not for you. For you, it’s the GAPS Nutritional Protocol because that’s what it will do.

There are many other diets in the world. People ask me questions, “What’s the difference between GAPS and that diet, this diet, this approach or that approach?” They all have different purposes. It’s important to have the purpose in mind because from the purpose comes every action in whatever it is you do. If you have your purpose held in your mind solidly, you will march in the right direction.

The purpose of GAPS is to heal from the root cause, to rebuild your body out of quality materials, and create a solid quality vehicle for you to live in this material world. As a result, once you’ve got that vehicle, you can withstand all sorts of damaging influences from our environment because humanity has changed the environment on the planet quite seriously.

We have a lot of damaging influences around us. Many people are becoming sensitive to electromagnetic pollution, Wi-Fi, 5G, mobile phones, food, chemicals in the environment, stress, and the whole energetics of the environment, but if you live in a solidly built body made out of quality materials, you can go through the same stress that would cause one person to completely fall apart. You will hardly notice. You become strong and robust. You can withstand an awful lot without even noticing it.

Let’s say someone is reading this and they’re like, “I’m in. I want to take it from the bottom up. I want to work on healing my gut.” What is the first step in the GAPS diet that would help them get that foundation straight?

You don’t have to dive headlong into the deep end straight away because it is a lot to learn. We have a wonderful course on GAPSTraining.com for people who are just starting and who find it all overwhelming. There’s too much information and too much to understand. They don’t know where to begin. If you enroll in that course, we will lead you by the hand. You will follow, start, and be given small steps. All your questions will be answered.

You will be nurtured and led by the hand through the protocol. You can do the course at your pace, whatever suits your situation. This particularly applies to people who have low energy and people with chronic fatigue, for example, fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, or another disease where they haven’t got much energy, have brain fog, and can’t focus very well. It’s difficult for them to absorb a lot of information.

On top of that, we got GAPS practitioners and GAPS coaches. The GAPS coaches are hands-on professionals. They can come to your home, do all the shopping and cooking for you, be with you, hold your hand through the whole thing, feed you, and get you stronger. It’s like a personal nurse that can be with you and is fully trained on how to do it the GAPS way. This person will train you, teach you how to cook, and feed you. When you become strong enough to do all of this yourself, then this person can withdraw a little bit.

I didn’t know you had all that. That sounds amazing. I’m so glad you have these coaches and these practitioners that people can turn to because it can be a lot. It is something of an elimination diet at first. You have to get rid of these foods that aren’t serving you and help heal and seal the gut wall with things like meat stock and so forth. It would be good to have some coaching along these lines. You’ve mentioned so many of the benefits of taking this GAPS approach, improved energy, sleep, cognition, function, and clearer skin. Can you tell us a testimonial or two of someone that has benefited from the GAPS Protocol?

I have many case studies in my books. We have published a whole bunch of them in a separate book, which is called GAPS Stories. That book gives people hope because I’ve been receiving letters and emails from people for many years. Many of the stories are so profound. The majority of them are people who never had any consultations with anyone. They just got my books, followed the book, got the results, and healed. We have half the stories from adults and half the stories from families with children.

People recovered from such a long list of problems that are considered to be incurable by mainstream medicine like multiple sclerosis, Hashimoto, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, eczema, psoriasis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, hyperactivity, ADHD, all sorts of other learning disabilities in children and adults, insomnia, neuropathies, Guillain-Barré neuropathy, narcolepsy, all sorts of conditions that people would have never connected, and epilepsy.

I don’t know how many. I need to start counting how many children and adults around the world have recovered from epilepsy with the GAPS diet or the GAPS Nutritional Protocol. There are all the things that the mainstream doctor would say, “It’s completely incurable. We can just control the symptoms.” You have to say thank you to that doctor because that’s what they know. That’s their paradigm. Move on and look elsewhere. That’s all because we live in a wonderful world where there is lots of information. The doctors don’t have a monopoly on information anymore.

I am happy too. I feel like even in mainstream media, different periodicals and such that I look at, and even conventional doctors seem to understand this gut-brain axis that they have been talking about more or this axis that connects the two, and also the idea that the gut is the second brain. There’s a lot going on there that informs all of the functions in our body.

They understand it all theoretically, but when it comes to what we do about all of this, it all boils down to suppressing symptoms. Let me reiterate this so people understand. It has to be repeated everywhere all the time. Your body is a microbial community. The most powerful influence on any microbial community is food. There is no more powerful medicine in the world than food. Nothing will come close to the effect of food on your body. That is the first thing that has to be changed.

Many toxic things are called food nowadays that you buy in supermarkets. They have no right to be called food. They are merely processed concoctions. They have special chemicals added to them, which make you addicted to these things. They’re addictive. They turn you into a drug addict. They label a polite term that is given to this substance. There are hundreds of thousands of them. The food industry is sophisticated. There are companies that produce these. They are even millions now. Maybe this information is outdated.

If you add this chemical to your food or your product, you will make it irresistible. These processed things do not feed your body, but they turn you into a drug addict. Like a drug addict, you want your drug. You want that irresistible thing. That causes disease. That’s all. It’s very difficult to break a drug addiction. It’s not easy and pleasant at all. It’s not comfortable to come out of that. That is a big barrier for many people. We have special methods and special ways in the GAPS Nutritional Protocol how to overcome that and break out of that vicious cycle.

I’ve heard that with children sometimes. They’re fussy eaters. They only want certain food. The parents are like, “I can’t make them eat these more nutrient-dense foods that are going to give them a solid foundation.” You suggest that the parents simply do what’s best for the child even if the child resists it first.

The problem is very often, the parents are addicts themselves. Like any addict, that’s difficult for them to accept that their child can’t have these things. The whole family is addicted. It is not easy. That is why GAPS Nutrition Protocol is going through it. Life is a journey of going through it because, at the other end, you will come out as a different person. You will change. You will become better, kinder, and more loving. There will be more light in you. You will be more enlightened and stronger. Nobody will be able to bamboozle you again the way they used to before you started the GAPS Nutritional Protocol. It is life-changing.

I’m pretty sure so many years ago when had you on the show you said you believe that most of the population now have damaged guts. In other words, some people think, “I have a little brain fog every now and then. I struggle with eczema,” but they don’t see it as very serious. Indeed probably everyone could benefit from taking on the GAPS Protocol. Do you still stand by those thoughts?

Absolutely. I live on the protocol permanently. My family lives on it permanently. It keeps me well, healthy and strong. It gives me the energy to do a lot of work. I wouldn’t change it for any attraction in the world. They’re not attractive. It’s the clear thinking that you get. You have crystal-clear thinking. It is difficult for anybody to deceive you or lure you in the wrong direction.

This is important now because more people and even folks in their twenties that I meet say, “I can’t think straight.” They’re fatigued. They got brain fog. They’re like, “I can’t remember.” I’m like, “How can they not remember something when they’re so young? They should be so vibrant in the prime of their lives.” They’re dealing with this low fog that’s constantly present. They can’t even imagine what it would feel like to have clear thinking. This is a beautiful promise and objective that you’re putting before them.

You become a real human being because many people in this world who live on processed foods are addicted to various irresistible chemicals in these concoctions. They have never known what it is to be a real human being. They have been so drugged up. They’ve got such brain fog. They can’t think straight and focus. They’re constantly distracted by this informational noise in social media and everywhere else around them. They live their life unconsciously. For them to wake up and realize what it is like to be a real human being, and what we are supposed to be like is amazing. We are amazing creatures.

People who have lived on processed foods have never known what it is to be a real human being.

You’re giving the vision of a beautiful way of living that would be so attractive to people. In the meantime, we’re all in this pool doing the doggy paddle. We could be swimming across the English channel if we knew what we were capable of. It’s a whole other level.

Human beings are very powerful creatures. We are special. We have a special function and role in this world but only if we keep our vehicle. Your body is a vehicle that you live in. You can’t fly to the moon, jump out of the spaceship, and run around in your shorts and t-shirt. You need a space suit to be in that environment. It’s the same with this material world and this planet.

To be here, you have to have a space suit or a vehicle that is compatible with this environment that will allow you to survive. Your body is that vehicle. It’s a machine. It’s a wonderfully designed and amazing machine, but every machine has rules, what fuel you put into it, how you look after it, and what you do with it. You have to maintain it properly. If you put the wrong fuel in it and you don’t maintain it properly, it malfunctions.

As a result, you cannot interact with this environment appropriately. This lever doesn’t work. That button doesn’t work. The glass is all muddy. You can’t see through it properly. You can’t drive a vehicle like that. You don’t have a quality experience. That’s why it’s important to look after your body the way the creator has designed this body according to certain rules.

There are laws and rules on how human bodies are supposed to be fed, function, and be treated. If you treat it that way, you suddenly get this perfect and magnificent vehicle. You can see clearly. Every lever and button works. It’s an amazing machine. You realize the things you can do with it are magnificent and amazing. You couldn’t even imagine before that you could do such things.

I have a couple of questions to ask you as we start to wrap up. One is this. What is something that has surprised you over the years about the GAPS Protocol or perhaps about the human body that you were talking about that’s so magnificent? What’s something about it that has taken you by surprise?

Every patient is a surprise. I’m a neurologist by training. I worked as a neurosurgeon for several years and as a neurologist in mainstream medicine before I started my family. Neurology is a wonderful mental exercise when you’re diagnosing the patient, but when it comes to treatment, there’s not much that can be done. It’s all suppressing symptoms and maybe helping a little bit here and there, but you know that the disease will progress, continue, and eventually destroy the person.

That’s the dogma in that environment. When I started treating people with the GAPS Nutritional Protocol, that happened to me, not by design. It just happened that way. Life led me on this journey or this way. I suddenly discovered that multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Guillain-Barré are curable. All these neuropathies are curable. Migraine is curable.

All of these things are curable. Hashimoto, other thyroid problems, pancreatic problems, and all sorts of hormonal problems are curable. Epilepsy is curable. If you say anything like that to a mainstream neurologist or a mainstream endocrinologist, they will think you’re crazy. They will not even listen to you. My patients never cease to surprise me, amaze me, and teach me lessons. They’re my main teachers.

That’s so beautiful. I want to close with the question I like to pose at the end. It may be related to GAPS or not. If people could do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?

Make yourself a GAPS soup every day. Soup doesn’t have a good connotation in the Western world. People immediately see a tin with some liquid in it that you microwave. That’s not soup. Soup is the most amazing and magnificent healing food that every traditional society around the world relied upon for all of our existence on this planet. The basis of every good soup is meat stock. You never make your soup on water. You make good meat stock.

Soup is the most amazing healing food that every traditional society around the world relies on.

For that, you need the connective tissues of the animal. You want bones, joints, ligaments, fascias, tails, feet, heads, spines, off-cuts, and bits like that. You cook them in the water for several hours until the meats become so soft that they fall off the bones. All the gelatinous parts, ligaments, fascias, joints, and capsules of the joint become so soft that you can chew and eat them.

The liquid that is made that way is called meat stock. You want a few vegetables in that liquid. You strip all the soft tissues off the bones and return them with the vegetables into that stock. Here’s your soup. It keeps in the fridge for up to two weeks. You can always take a portion and warm it up. If you have a bowl of that every single day, you can add some sour cream to your bowl of soup. You can add some hard-boiled or soft-boiled eggs, greens, garlic, spices, or whatever it is you prefer. If you have a bowl of that soup once a day and that’s the only change you make in your life, that will already bring a lot of benefits.

What a beautiful note to end on. Thank you so much, Natasha. Thank you for coming to our Wise Traditions Conference and for sharing this information all around the world. We are so grateful.

It’s a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. I’m looking forward to meeting everybody at Knoxville.

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Our guest was Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. Check out her website starting with GAPS.me. I’m Hilda Labrada Gore, the host and producer of this show for the Weston A. Price Foundation. You can find me and my resources at HolisticHilda.com.

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For our Letter to the Editor from a recent journal. Sue from Colorado had this to say, “The amount of mercury in one amalgam filling is enough to poison all of the fish in a twenty-acre lake and make them poisonous to human beings. I have done extensive research on chelation and found the Andrew Cutler Protocol to be the only safe way to remove mercury.”

“In terms of food that helps, I have found two studies showing that much more mercury is removed through the bile than through the kidneys. In one study, 9 times more is removed. In another study, 29 times more is removed from bile versus from the kidneys. Using this information and knowing that bile is released in quantity when we eat fats, I decided to test this theory while I was chelating.”

“When I am not eating butter and other fats, I get moderate kidney pain when I’m chelating, but if I eat bread and a thick smear of butter with every meal, there is no pain. If I forget to eat the butter and I notice that I have kidney pain, I can eat a slice of bread with lots of butter, and the pain is gone in half an hour. It is much easier for us to remove mercury and other toxins via the bile and liver than it is to remove them via the kidneys. The kidneys are not meant to remove mercury.”

“Andy Cutler does not recommend using cilantro, chlorella, and garlic to remove mercury. Although they are mercury mobilizers, and some mercury will be removed from the body, they’re not strong enough to hold onto the mercury until it is completely gone from the body. This will cause the mercury that is released in the body to be redistributed. Where will it go? To the vital organs like the heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas, brain, thyroid, and any other place it can find.”

“You might be taking mercury out of the muscle tissue where it does very little harm, and instead putting it into your brain or heart where it can do a tremendous amount of damage. I have heard of people who have chelated with substances that they thought were good chelators and ended up with Alzheimer’s. It is not worth doing chelation the wrong way.”

Sue, thank you for this letter. I also have heard a lot of good things about the Cutler Protocol. Some time back, I reviewed a book written by Rebecca Rust Lee and Andy Cutler on how to remove mercury from the body. Thanks for this timely reminder. Thank you, my friend, for tuning in. If you would like to write a Letter to the Editor on any topic, send us an email at Info@WestonAPrice.org and put Letter to the Editor in the subject line. It might end up in the journal and then subsequently on the show. Stay well. Hasta pronto.

About Natasha Campbell-McBride

Natasha Campbell-McBride M.D. MMedSci (neurology), MMedSci (nutrition) Dr. Campbell-McBride graduated with Honors as a Medical Doctor in 1984 from Bashkir Medical University in Russia. In the following years she gained a Postgraduate Degree in Neurology. After practicing for five years as a Neurologist and three years as a Neurosurgeon, she started a family and moved to the UK. It was during this time that Dr. Campbell-McBride developed her theories on the relationship between neurological disorders and nutrition, and completed a second Postgraduate Degree in Human Nutrition at Sheffield University, UK. She has specialized in using nutritional approach as a treatment, and has become recognized as one of the world’s leading experts in treating children and adults with learning disabilities and other mental disorders, as well as children and adults with digestive and immune disorders.

In 2004 she published her first book Gut And Psychology Syndrome. Natural Treatment Of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Depression And Schizophrenia where she explores the connection between the patient’s physical state and brain function. The book gives full details of the GAPS Nutritional Protocol, highly successful in treating patients with chronic diseases. A second edition was published in 2010. The concept of GAPS has become a global phenomenon and the book has been translated into 20 languages. In her clinic Dr Campbell-McBride works with many patients with heart disease, high blood pressure, arrhythmia, stroke and other complications of atherosclerosis.

She has become acutely aware of the existing confusion about nutrition and these conditions, which spurred an intensive study into this subject. The result of this study is her book Put Your Heart in Your Mouth! What really is Heart Disease and what can we do to Prevent and even Reverse it. The book was published in 2007 and a second addition in 2016. Dr Campbell-McBride has been working with many young people who have chosen a plant-based life style and, as a result, became very ill. This led to an intense study into the value of plant foods versus animal foods, summarized in her next book Vegetarianism Explained. Making and informed decision, published in 2017.

In 2020 new book came out: Gut And Physiology Syndrome. This second GAPS book completes the GAPS concept, focusing on chronic physical health problems, from allergies, eczema and asthma to autoimmune illness, chronic fatigue and digestive problems, neurological and hormonal illnesses, and chronic infections. Dr Natasha is an organic regenerative farmer. In 2012 she and her family purchased a piece of land in East Anglia in the UK, which was commercially farmed for a long time. Since then they have transformed this land into an organic and biodynamic paradise with many animals, birds, bees, gardens and orchards. Dr Campbell-McBride is a keynote speaker at many professional conferences and seminars worldwide. She is also a Member of The Society of Authors, The British Society for Environmental Medicine, and a Board Member of the Weston A Price Foundation. She is a regular contributing health editor to a number of journals, magazines, newsletters, and radio programs around the world.