Reflections After 15 Months on GAPS: Part 3 – My GAPS Healing So Far

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Meghan Slocum • 10 Comments

In part 1 and part 2 I discussed how trying to fix my acne led me to GAPS. In part 3 I’ll share the progress that I’ve experienced on GAPS so far. I’ve seen a lot of healing but I’m hoping for even more.

Acne:

I am so happy to say that GAPS has made a huge difference in my acne. Before GAPS I literally had dozens of breakouts on my face all the time. These days I rarely have more than four or five “active” blemishes. Some days I have none. Now honestly four breakouts is four more than I want, but I think that healing my skin (and gut) is just a really slow process. For the first five months on GAPs my skin actually didn’t improve at all. I kept plugging on, though, because I was so convinced that it was going to work. And after five months, my skin finally started clearing up a bit. After 11 months or so my skin was looking pretty good. Now at 15 months I’m still at that pretty good level. I’m not satisfied yet: even when I don’t have any breakouts my skin still looks flawed because I have a lot of hyperpigmentation and bumps from old blemishes. My skin looks blotchy and discolored rather than smooth and even. And since I’m still getting new breakouts I’m generating more of those spots all the time. I’m hopeful, however, that my body will be able to repair all of this given enough time.

Digestive Issues:

I briefly mentioned in part 1 that I’ve had digestive issues my entire life. Since childhood I’ve experienced unexplained stomach aches, occasionally accompanied by diarrhea, on a routine basis. It wasn’t a major problem but I never knew when I might start feeling sick to my stomach. Within a few days of starting GAPS my digestion immediately started feeling great. I realized that, in the past, even when my stomach had been feeling okay I’d still had a low level of discomfort. But once I started GAPS my digestion cleared up immensely. I am so happy about this! These days I still get stomach aches sometimes but it is very occasional. It’s wonderful how great my stomach feels the vast majority of the time.

Warts

Before starting GAPS I had more than 20 plantar warts on the bottom of my right foot. I’d tried both natural and conventional treatments but nothing had made any difference. They weren’t bothering me a lot but I knew that if they kept spreading they might start causing pain. Within a few months of starting GAPS I suddenly realized that my warts were less noticeable. As the months went on the warts continued to shrink and disappear. Today they are all gone. I didn’t expect this type of benefit at all but it is awesome that it happened anyway.

Energy

Before GAPS I felt tired a lot of the time. There were plenty of days that I just wanted to sit on the couch. After more than a year on GAPS this finally started to improve. I’m still not super energetic but most days I feel a lot more energetic than I used to. I’m confident that my energy will get even better as my gut heals more and more.

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I am so happy about all of healing I’ve experienced with GAPS. I still have room for a lot more improvement, though, so I’m planning on sticking it out for another nine months at least. I’m so curious to see what the next few months will bring.

In tomorrow’s post I’ll discuss the lessons I’ve learned during my GAPS experience. I hope you’ll join me then!

This post is part of Fight Back Friday at Food Renegade.

If you’re on GAPS, what healing have you seen? What improvements are you still waiting for?

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Filed Under: GAPS Diet

10 Responses to Reflections After 15 Months on GAPS: Part 3 – My GAPS Healing So Far

  1. Pam @ Ramblings of a Happy Homemaker says:
    December 22, 2011 at 4:57 am
    My doctor has me on a gluten free diet right now as well as progesterone cream to help correct some hormonal issues I've dealt with my entire life. I also have low energy (she said I also have low adrenal function) and I just can't seem to lose weight. I wonder if GAPS would help clear up my issues as well? I think I need to look into more deeply.
    Reply
    • Meghan says:
      December 23, 2011 at 11:59 am
      I don't know for sure whether GAPS would treat your particular issues. GAPS heals the whole body so I'd bet it would help you. But, of course, it's not exactly an easy diet so you'd probably want to feel pretty confident that it would work before you dove in. If you're really interested, I would join the GAPShelp yahoo group and ask if anyone has experience with GAPS healing hormonal issues and low adrenal function. The people in the yahoo group are a wealth of information and very supportive.
      Reply
  2. Tracy says:
    February 23, 2012 at 1:39 am
    Hi Meghan! Thanks for directing me to this article, I love hearing about other people's experience on the GAPS. Like you, I just feel so strongly that this could be the answer to ... like.... everything. Or at least acne and digestive troubles which is what I would like to solve once and for all! Out of curiosity, how long did you spend on the intro diet??
    Reply
    • Meghan says:
      February 23, 2012 at 5:17 pm
      Thanks for stopping by, Tracy! Yeah, I think most people could benefit from GAPS in some way. Are you thinking of starting GAPS soon? I think I spent about a month on the intro diet. I think that's a pretty good amount of time if you don't run into major issues. The intro isn't much fun so I'd hate to stay on it for a long time.
      Reply
  3. Tracy says:
    February 23, 2012 at 5:51 pm
    Okay that's good to hear... I've been working up to doing GAPS in my head for a while now. At first I was seriously intimidated, but the more I thought about, the more I realized that it was really only the Intro Gaps that was intimidating, and that I pretty much eat like full gaps already so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch. I still am kind of intimidated but now it's mostly just the projected length of time to be on the full gaps with NO cheating. That's the hard part. How have you found that aspect of it? However, no matter how I eat, my digestive troubles don't seem to want to go away, and neither does my stubborn mild acne, and I realize now that I may as well not put it off. I'm excited to start it, I plan to start maybe in early to mid April.
    Reply
    • Meghan says:
      February 24, 2012 at 12:54 pm
      You sound like me! I read about GAPS for a long, long time before I could work up the nerve to do it. I was really intimidated, too, but none of the other things that I was doing were working for my digestive issues or acne so I eventually decided to just go for it. When I'm in my own kitchen, cooking my own food, I don't find sticking to full GAPS to be very hard. I mean, it's a lot of work doing all the cooking, but you get used to it and the food is really delicious. It's when you try to go out into society that things get more complicated, since food is entrenched in so many things. We don't go out to eat at all because I find it too stressful to make sure the food is safe for me to eat. (We never ate out much pre-GAPS, for financial reasons, but it used to be nice to go out for a treat.) We have some friends that we've made dinner with for a long time, so we still cook with them because they've been very gracious about accommodating our dietary restrictions, but we don't often eat with other people because I don't want to have to explain the diet to people. Mostly that's just me feeling weird about it - it's SO different from the way most people eat and I don't like having confrontations about these types of things. If you hang out with people who have similar food views, though, then you probably won't have the same types of issues. Good luck getting started! I look forward to hearing how it goes for you.
      Reply
  4. Devon says:
    July 9, 2012 at 7:08 pm
    Hello, Just curious as I have been having trouble with plantar warts all my life, on my feet and hands. I'm wondering how long you had the warts on your feet for? More specifically, I'm curious to know if there's any chance you had fallen within the two year timeframe most websites say that warts go away within anyway? Thanks! Also, I enjoyed reading your posts! D
    Reply
    • Meghan says:
      July 10, 2012 at 9:49 am
      I first noticed the plantar wart right before I went to college. It (plus all of the other warts it had spawned) started to disappear about two years after I graduated, so I had the warts about six years. I thought it was really crazy when they just started disappearing on their own, as the many treatments I'd tried on them had made absolutely no difference. I hadn't heard that about warts going away on their own within about two years. That's very interesting.
      Reply
  5. Richard says:
    October 22, 2012 at 11:24 am
    I think diet is a great place to start, but I would be willing to bet if you switch to Irory Soap plain and tried that for 6 months you will be thanking me. You see I was called pizza face all through high school and in the Navy. 2 years in on board ship the only soap I could get was Irory. My face clear right up and stayed that way, untill I started using other soaps, then bam pizza face again. I am 45 now and have been without a single zit in 25 years. Diet is some of the problem but not the entire horse. Just try and see for yourself, you will thank me. P.S. I also use Ivory shampoo.
    Reply

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