Gut and Psychology/Physiology Syndrome with Natasha Campbell McBride

This was the first session I attended at the Wise Traditions Conference. I took notes, but I am a slow writer and typer, so thankfully a reader sent me an email with her fabulous notes. She graciously agreed to let me use them in this post. So a huge thanks to Jenifer Andersen for her thorough notes.

GUT & PSYCHOLOGY/PHYSIOLOGY SYNDROME
“All diseases begin in the gut.” ~ Hippocrates
◦If the root of the tree is not healthy, the whole tree will be sickly

Roles of Gut Flora
◦Recent research suggests that 90% of the body’s cells are micro-flora
◦Beneficial gut flora (bacteria, viruses, protozoa, fungi, even worms) are essential to life & health; a sterile gut would likely be fatal
◦Gut flora is major barrier to heavy metal absorption/toxicity (mercury, arsenic, etc.); also helps block chemical toxin absorption
◦Gut flora are critical to digestion of several kinds of foods, therefore also to absorption of several kinds of nutrients
◦Some nutrients (i.e. all B vitamins) are actually produced by healthy gut flora from nutrients provided in food
◦The gut flora can neutralize toxic byproducts of digestion, as well as preventing cancer cells from developing. Long-term damage to gut flora ultimately results in digestive cancers(antibiotic use is likely a major factor).
◦Approx 84-88% of immune system is located in gut wall. The gut flora actually regulates the balance of the immune system. If the primary (gut-related) part of the immune system is damaged and not working properly, the secondary system steps up and allergies are among the results.

What Can Damage Gut Flora
◦Antibiotics kill not only the bad bacteria, but also the good. After a course of antibiotics, the gut flora can take up to 2 months to recover; this is a major window of opportunity for problems to develop. Prolonged antibiotics (i.e. 6-24 months in teenagers for acne) can have extreme prolonged effects.
◦Poor diet (the modern standard diet) feed abnormal gut flora with the sugar, processed starches and chemicals.
◦Chronic disease always is related to problems in the gut flora – sometimes a circular relationship.
◦Pretty much everything a dentist uses is toxic, so it’s important to pay attention to diet & take probiotics before and after dental treatments.

A Typical Scenario
◦Babies now start out with abnormal gut flora due to the abnormal gut flora of the mother; this problem self-perpetuates through multiple generations unless deliberate action is taken.

◦Babies are born with a very immature immune system; the first few weeks are critical to establishing gut flora and therefore a healthy immune system. The most common result of of failure to develop a healthy gut flora and immune system in an infant is recurring ear infections, which starts a cycle of antibiotics and ongoing gut flora damage.

◦Vaccinations are designed for healthy, well-nourished children. Most children in the western world are not fit to be immunized because they are not healthy and properly-nourished.

Damaged Gut Wall
◦With a healthy gut there are no spaces between enterocytes. Nutrients can’t get into the blood without going through the enterocytes and being checked/detoxified.
◦Food intolerances are a result of a leaky gut – of foods being absorbed before being properly digested. If the gut is healed and sealed, food intolerances can be corrected.
◦Many proteins in foods are similar to proteins naturally found in the body. Improperly-digested proteins getting through the gut wall can cause the immune system to attack similar proteins that are natural in the body, resulting in autoimmune disease. This is called “mimicking phenomenon”.
◦Toxins that get through can change the structure of proteins in the body, thereby creating strange/unnatural proteins that the immune system then attacks. This is a factor in rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, psoriasis, eczema, etc.

Cleaning the Flow from the Gut
◦The lungs are a major detoxification organ

Liver
◦The liver, when overwhelmed by a damaged gut, can change from being an effective filter into being a source of ongoing toxins released into the blood.
◦The liver forms bile stones that harden and the center of the stone is infection. The bile stones that harden and can’t be passed will further compromise liver function, which will cause more stones to form. This is a self-perpetuating problem, and it frequently causes problems with digesting fats.
◦Freshly-pressed celery and apple juice can help dissolve/soften bile stones in the liver.

Lungs
◦Lungs are a major factor in removing toxins from the bloodstream
◦Wheezing (bronchospasm) is a biological action to close off damaged bronchi and allow them time to quickly repair (20-30 minutes usually). Asthma is when multiple sections of the lungs do this at the same time. Supportive therapy for asthma is keeping still, warm, calm and hydrated, thereby allowing the body to heal properly.
◦Asthma medications override the body’s self-healing functions, leading to major long-term lung damage. This has taken a benign, mild condition and turned it into a life-threatening problem.

Gut & Psychology Syndrome: Asthma

◦When asthma treatment doesn’t allow the lungs to heal themselves and detoxify the body, the toxins have to end up elsewhere in the body.

Gut & Physiology Syndrome
◦Caused by the need to eliminate toxins and undigested food through other parts of the body because the gut isn’t doing it’s job and the liver and lungs can’t do theirs.
◦Every mucous membrane is a potential means of eliminating toxins, be it bladder, sinuses, vaginal wall, or gut.

Gut & Physiology Syndrome: Autoimmunity
◦Autoimmunity always involves more than one body system because more than one toxin will be coming through the damaged gut.

Gut & Physiology Syndrome
◦The conditions listed as “autoimmune” are due to being toxic. Fatigue (debilitating fatigue) is generally a first and primary symptom.

Blood-Brain Barrier
◦The blood-brain barrier is similar to the gut wall in that it is supposed to be very tight. Zonulin is one of the components that maintains this tightness.
◦When toxins damage the integrity of the blood-brain barrier, toxins, microbes & antibodies pass through into areas where they do not belong, causing neurological symptoms. These symptoms may be physical (epilepsy, etc.) or psychological/behavioral (bipolar, schizophrenia, substanceabuse, etc.)

Gut & Psychology Syndrome: Child vs. Adult
◦GAPS children, unhealed, will become GAPS adults with major problems
◦GAPS kids are the ones that easily are pushed into psychotic reactions and end up with extensive psychiatric problems (i.e. schizophrenia).

Epilepsy in children
◦Standard treatment of epilepsy is to not really look for a cause (just classify it as “idiopathic”), but rather to just treat it by medicating to suppress symptoms.
◦If there is no biological reason for epilepsy, it is a gut problem that should be able to be healed.

Eating Disorders
◦Vegetarian diets are becoming a major source of eating disorders in the western world. Children go vegetarian because they are told it’s “healthy” or “planet-saving” or “kind to animals”.
Parents generally don’t object because it’s so common, but the child ends up with nutritional deficiencies (especially B12 and fat-soluble vitamins). Additionally, the diet becomes heavy in starches and sugars… eventually toxicity gets past the blood-brain barrier and alters perception and thinking.

◦Current treatment focuses only on “gaining weight and eating”. Treatment should focus on detoxification, healing and sealing the gut and the blood-brain barrier, and correcting nutritional deficiencies. A few weeks on the GAPS Introduction Diet will usually allow enough detoxification to allow self-perception to become accurate.

◦Correcting the diet is the  most important part of treatment.
◦GAPS Diet was developed from the SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet)

Foods to Avoid
◦It takes TWO YEARS on the GAPS diet to allow full healing of the gut-related
◦Starch molecules are large and difficult to digest. The final steps of starch digestion are accomplished by the enzymes of the enterocytes, which are not active in a sick gut. The starch that is not properly digested is food for pathogenic flora.
◦Sugar consumption pulls magnesium from bones, teeth, etc., and leads to magnesium deficiency. In children a main symptom of magnesium deficiency is hyperactivity; in adults a main symptom is hypertension. Blood vessels need magnesium in order to be able to relax, calcium to contract.
◦Sugars are carried into capillaries and block them, forming amyloids and causing arthritis.
◦All beans contain starch; they can be added to later diet if soaked and properly prepared.

Recommended Foods
◦Foods that are homemade, easy to digest, and nutritious.
◦Animals designed to eat plant food only have several pH-neutral stomachs (rumins) full of bacteria that digest plants for them. People and carnivorous animals have one acidic stomach that can digest the plant-eaters.
◦Healthy bowel flora will convert starches into short-chain fatty acids for absorption as fat. Few people in the western world have enough healthy gut flora to do this. This is why starches should be avoided.
◦Liver is one of the most nutritionally powerful food and should be a regular part of the diet.
◦Vegetables should be cooked well in the initial stages.
◦Fruit should be only eaten if it was ripened naturally; chemically-ripened fruit is not healthy.
◦In fermented dairy the probiotics have digested some of the proteins as well as the lactose.
◦Bees won’t eat honey that has been heated above 113º F  – it is damaged. This is why honey should be cold-extracted.

Meat & Fish Stock
◦Meat stock is rich in simple amino acids, gelatins, etc., that help the gut lining be able to rebuild/heal itself. Soups and stews should always be made with meat stock.
◦Bone marrow is one of the most nutritious substances on earth and should be eaten.
◦Long cooking of joint tissue results in extra collagen, which his especially essential for recovery of gut flora (especially in autoimmune situations)
◦Fish stock should be made using heads, bones, fins, tail.

Breads, pies, cakes, etc.
◦These can be made using ground nuts and seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, sesame) as flour

Fermented Foods
◦Not only pre-digested (and therefore easy for digestion), but also teeming with probiotics
◦Probiotics help attack pathogenic organisms that can cause problems, therefore they have to be ramped up to prevent die-off reactions
◦Sauerkraut and kimchi must be fermented long enough for a complete fermentation process, otherwise it will cause gas and digestive problems (because the fermentation must finish in the digestive tract). When the fermentation process is complete, the lactic acid stops the process; completely fermented sauerkraut will keep for a year safely

GAPS Introduction Diet
◦People with signs of leaky gut need to go through the introduction diet in order to allow the enterocytes to heal
◦The current love affair with fiber is due to improper interpretation of a study of native African diets and health. Fiber is rough (“roughage”) that can further irritate an already-irritated gut.

Fiber is not necessary for health.
◦The third stage of GAPS is truly complete nutrition that allows the gut lining to truly heal; it can be followed for a long period of time.

Dairy Introduction Structure – Organic Only!
◦If there is no severe reaction (anaphyllaxis), dairy can be started at step 3 with fermented dairy.
◦Dairy fat is critical – the gut lining needs large amounts of fat.
◦Cultured butter is more nutritious than butter made from sweet cream.
◦Yogurt should be introduced before kefir because kefire has a more extreme probiotic content. Both are excellent for fixing problems with diarrhea, but may aggravate constipation. If there is a problem with constipation, the diet needs more fat.
◦Homemade cheese == yogurt cheese (strained yogurt)

Low Fiber Diet for Diarrhea
◦Makes for quick healing of gut from illness
◦During diarrhea, give meat stock with a bit of sour cream every hour
◦Raw egg yolks do not require digestion; cooked egg yolks are difficult to digest because of
changes to the protein structure
◦The juice of fermented vegetables provides strong probiotic content

Natural Fats
◦Fats and cholesterol are necessary building blocks of life – our cells can not develop/reproduce without fats, and cholesterol is critical to healing in the body. Cholesterol is also a basic building block for hormone production, is necessary food for brain and nerve cells, and is critical to vitamin D production.
◦Dietary animal fat stimulates glucagon production, which causes bodily fat to be burned for energy.

◦The majority of fat in human breast milk is saturated fat, with a smaller portion of monounsaturated fat.. The physiology of adults is not substantially different from that of an infant; we still need a lot of fat.

Put Your Heart in Your Mouth (book cover slide)
GAPS – Practical Issues

Fussy Eating Habits
◦Many times the baby/child with abnormal gut flora becomes a fussy eater because the pathogenic gut flora are trying to self-perpetuate. They are less likely to have psychiatric or learning symptoms early on because it takes time for the blood-brain barrier to be compromised.
◦Solid foods for GAPS babies will cause illness symptoms that they can’t verbalize, but the baby refuses food because he makes the association that it makes him feel bad.

Failure to Thrive
◦Result of fussy eating habits
◦Conventional medical care is even more damaging to this

Supplementation
◦Good probiotics are a critical part of the process, as are probiotic foods
◦Multivitamins, mineral, amino-acid supplements are not necessary for everyone
◦Children may not need HCl or pepsin; only if excess burping is an issue. Cabbage juice or whey or kefir may work well in place of these (just a little before a meal).
◦Reflux can be caused by yeast overgrowth damaging the ability of the esophageal sphincter to close; the yeast overgrowth is a symptom of the stomach not be acidic enough.
◦Pancreatic enzyme production is directly dependent on adequate stomach acidity. When the stomach acidity is enough to properly digest the food, the pancreas will produce enzymes accordingly.

Detoxification
◦GAPS patients are toxic, so detoxification is necessary. Cleaning up the gut is the major focus because the gut is the major source of toxins in the body.
◦The most therapeutic juices are not palatable, but they can be mixed 50/50 with carrot or apple juice to improve the flavor. The fresh juice can also be made into a smoothie with a bit of kefir and an egg yolk.
◦If doing detoxification baths, rotate the add-ins… sea salt one time, cider vinegar the next, seaweed powder the next…
◦Skin absorbs everything put on it in seconds, so eliminate toxins from personal care products.Putting something on the skin bypasses the liver’s detoxification.

Natural Chelation
◦Chelation chemicals not only remove heavy metal toxins, they also remove critical minerals (especially zinc). As a result, the long-term effects of chemical chelation are very damaging.
◦Probiotics are a potent chelator of heavy metals, as are fermented foods.

Constipation
◦Constipation is worse than diarrhea because toxins are staying in the bowel too long. Yeast(candida) is a major player in developing constipation.
◦Constipation should be defined as no stool for one day; enemas are sometimes quite helpful, especially if a small amount of baking soda.
◦Castor oil can be massaged into the skin of the abdomen (over the stomach) to be absorbed through the skin and help loosen the stool.
◦Magnesium oxide (milk of magnesia) is a rather violent solution.
◦If you are constipated, there are not enough animal fats in your diet.