When You Feel like You are Not Healing Yourself on GAPS

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*content contains graphic images of rashes. do not scroll down if you don’t want to see!*

 

That moment of doubt when your symptoms don’t go away or start to get worse even though you may have been on GAPS for months at this point.  When you really start to wonder, “Is this even working?”

 

PREACH. I have never suffered from this feeling more than the last time I went on GAPS Intro. I had to go back on this protocol as an emergency- due to my skin initially, and then because my doctor figured out I had lyme disease, which is why my skin wasn’t getting better.Then we realized it wasn’t actually the lyme that was making me so sick, it was the record-breaking amount of a pesticide called 2-4D in my system.If you want to know more details, you can read about my story here.

 

Rashes

{{{P.S. ***This post contains some pretty graphic, sensitive pictures of rashes.  If you do not want to see that sort of thing, do NOT keep reading, and do NOT scroll down!***]]]

 

Regardless, this is what my skin looked like when my GAPS practitioner recommended I go back on GAPS intro immediately, which would be the start of my 5th time on GAPS intro.

 

 

 

Pretty gnarly.I wish someone would have told me this was only the beginning of my skin stuff during this intro round.Even though Becky Plotner, my GAPS practitioner + invaluable mentor-hero, did tell me I had a lot to detox.  I just couldn’t really grasp what that meant at the time.  And even now, the amount of toxic substance I need to expel from my body still boggles my mind. 

 

Well, when I went back on GAPS intro and got serious about detox support, this above rash went away in about a week and I could start wearing pants again haha.  All seemed well.  And then a couple of days later… another rash appeared by my eye.  This stayed for about a month. 

 

 

Then this rash migrated down my face to under my nose and around my mouth.  This stayed for about 4 months. 

 

 

 

Not Getting Better After Almost 6 Months

Why am I not getting better?!?! I would ask Becky every single time I saw her.Why is this taking so long?I’m self conscious about going out in public because I have rashes all over my face. And deep down inside, even though GAPS had worked so well for me before my toxic exposure to all of these pesticides, I started wondering, ‘is GAPS even real, or is this all bullshit?’

 

Becky just kept on telling me that I had a lot to detox.  That I had a lot of toxins to shed and that they were choosing to come out through my face, for whatever reason. I just needed to be diligent about detox support and keep going. BTW, I had been on extended stage 2 for at least 4 months at this point (if you’ve done this, you know how intense it is!).  Way past the point where I felt like I was supposed to be feeling better.  My skin was definitely supposed to be cleared up by now!  Historically, my skin had always cleared within weeks of intro.

 

Also being really fixated on my rashes, it was easy to ignore my other physical stuff that was most definitely improving- I started sleeping through the night better, and after 2 months of not being strong enough to leave my house, I was able to go out into the world again, run errands, that sort of thing. And I was passing parasites all the time! But my progress all happened SO SLOWLY that it almost came as a shock when the major healing milestones would hit.I tried introducing quail eggs 5 separate times before they actually started working.Dairy took even longer. 

 

But around the 6 month mark of extended stage 2 GAPS intro, I had healed my egg and dairy allergies (confirmed via blood test), my insomnia, passed what seemed like a million parasites + parasite eggs, ~40 gallstones, was able to leave the house, and started being able to work again. And yet, the rashes just kept morphing, moving, shifting over my skin, but they were not going away!

 

Every time I would meet with Becky she would basically say the same thing- just be patient and support yourself with detox.  So for all the clients I’ve told this to, I know how you feel!  It ultimately sucks hearing this answer. haha.

Confirmation Detox was the Culprit

However, after about 6 months on GAPS intro, Becky and I decided that I was probably strong enough to start taking iodine orally.  Now iodine is the strongest medicine known to man in my humble opinion. No parasite, bacteria, fungus, virus, or cancer can survive in the presence of it.  It also chelates metals, which I knew I had a lot of.  Iodine was the most heavily prescribed chemical in America before the pharmaceutical industry became what it is today. 

 

Describing iodine is its own thing, worthy of its own post.  So I’m not going to get into the ‘hows’ here.  Also, I do not recommend trying this without a skilled practitioner supervising you! It’s really dangerous, and if you do not know what you’re doing, you can end up giving yourself hashimotos.

 

I had been taking iodine for 5 days (3 days at one drop, and my 2nd day at 2 drops) when the biggest, scariest, most intense rash of my life started.  You guessed it, more detox. 

 

It started out like this. 

 

And grew into this. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This rash hurt and itched at the same time. Hot showers were my only relief and I would have to get up and take a few throughout the night because I was so uncomfortable. My hip was so swollen I could not walk right, and I could not sit on the toilet.  I stopped eating for 4 days.

 

The Solution

I had an emergency meeting with Becky, and she advised me on how to stop the rash (stopping the iodine was the first order of business!), but none of it worked.  I finally just stopped eating (definitely was not hungry!) and started taking 4 of these turmeric extract pills every hour along with 6 of these adrenal glandular pills per day. 

 

After being bedridden, stuck on one side for 4 days, the swelling started to go down, my rash stopped oozing and pussing as much, and I started to regain my range of motion.  I was out of commission for a week total, but it felt like I had been out for a lifetime.  Like I had been transported to another universe for a vision quest, and feeling better had just landed me back on planet earth. 

 

Arguably, this rash, the worst rash of my life, could mean that the state of my health was horrible, right?  That GAPS wasn’t working.  But in hindsight, that’s not what happened at all.  Becky explained that iodine acts as a pump.  She used the example that when you are pumping water up from a well, the first few times you pump it, nothing happens, nothing comes up, but you are creating the suction. So the first few days of iodine were fine for me.  But then, when the iodine actually started removing the metals from my system, the yeast that was attached to these metals (yeasts bind to metals to protect you) started dying. 

 

And when yeast die, each of these cells emits 176 toxic gases- ethanol (alcohol), acetone (nail polish remover), acetylaldehyde (10x stronger than alcohol, changes shape of proteins and can induce autoimmunity), etc, which is what caused my reaction to be the way it was- absolutely frighteningly horrendous. 

 

After the fact, when Becky and I met again, she promised that I would never have a reaction that bad again.  That the worst was over.  She said usually a reaction like that only happens once, but if it did happen again (which in my case, it could because my toxic load was so high) it would be more mild. 

 

 

The Transformation

My body was definitely different after that.  After previously only being able to tolerate 1 cup of kefir at a time (kefir kills pathogenic yeast), I could drink as much as I wanted up to 1 quart and beyond.  A month later, my nut sensitivity of 7 years ‘disappeared,’  and I went on a 3 hour hike in the mountains with people I had just met vs. at the beginning of my GAPS intro journey, I could not even go on a walk at all. Period. 

 

The rash that had been on my face for 5 months in it’s various forms finally went away- a few weeks after my ultimate rash from hell healed.  And it has been gone ever since.

 

And though my torso-butt-leg rash DID come back, it came back with less of a vengeance.

 

 

And then another time…

 

 

Even When I Didn’t Believe I was Getting Better

So… I could tell myself I wasn’t getting better, but the reality was that I very much was.  Last week I went on a 4 day camping trip!  I did not treat that rash or baby it at all.  I also went 4 days without detox support, which is a record for me. And a supposed ‘no no’ in a situation like this.  I usually do an enema, sunbathe, and take a detox bath every single day, but I was fine without it. 

 

In the past, I would have freaked out, canceled the camping trip, and waited for the rash to expand and explode.

 

 

But today, even though I’m still technically getting small rashes, I know that it’s from detox and that my immune system can handle it. I’m confident that I’m going to be fine, and I don’t have to freak out because my rashes are not going to be the big deal that they once were. I’m now free to live my life however I choose.And even though I am not 100% cured, I have DEFINITELY healed. 

 

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