Paleo, Primal, SCD, GAPS: Which Diet Is Perfect for Autoimmune Illness?
As well. When you initially heard about the "caveman diet", you scoffed didn't you? Or perhaps you grunted a little. Sure appeared like another celebrity diet. I personally would've named it Encino Diet with Brendan Fraisier as posterboy to make it more competitive with Atkins, but hey caveman marketing is primitive. Autoimmune Diet
Fortunately for us, this does not seem like a scam. Many patients with autoimmune or autoimmune-like conditions seem to benefit by changing to some diet depending on evolutionary principles. You might have heard of probably the most popular ones: Paleo, Primal, Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), GAPS. There are a lot of resources available on each diet, so I'll focus on the main differences between these 4 most favored diets & explore success metrics, where available, instead of the specifics of each diet. Auto immune
Hey McFly I'm borrowing the DeLorean to consider a closer inspection at these dietary blasts from your past:
1. Paleo Diet
Probably the most popular one, led by Loren Cordain & Robb Wolf. The main focus is on all-natural (i.e. grass fed) animal fats and natural fats (ghee, avocado etc), and low carbs (starchy root vegetables, white rice, along with other starches without antinutrients.) The fundamental tenet is the fact that we're not really evolved to optimize digestion and absorption of agricultural products.
2. Primal Diet
Mark Sisson may be the main proponent. Fundamentally the same as Paleo except it allows full-fat dairy. According to Mark's pictures, shirts should also be avoided. Wouldn't mind having that body though!
Chris Kresser is another big proponent of Paleo which includes incorporated dairy such as grass-fed butter and kefir into his protocol with much success. He talks about not tolerating greater than a teaspoon of kefir in the beginning, but slowly approaching pints per day. I've heard similar stories from ME/CFS patients that take advantage of fermented dairy. His theory is that taking probiotics via kefir actually changes your microbiota or gut flora to permit your gut to tolerate dairy.
Success: I could not find any statistics specific for the Primal Diet, but due to its resemblance of Paleo I would imagine if you might tolerate dairy, the information for Paleo may well be a good reference.
3. Specific Carbohydrate (SCD) Diet
This was produced by Sydney Valentine Haas, MD. Initially it sounds being a low-carb diet, but the basic tenet is actually that carbs feed overgrowth of yeast & bacteria inside the gut, so limit both the amount & kinds of carbs to well-absorbed. The key difference from Paleo: properly-prepared legumes for example beans are allowed, and like Primal, dairy is allowed.
4. Gut And Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) Diet
Based on the SCD diet, and put together by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. The main difference from your other diets may be the concentrate on healing the gut, as opposed to just feeding it foods that are optimally digested & absorbed. Main difference from SCD: emphasis on bone broth and fermented foods, less beans, gradual implementation of dairy casein to tolerance beginning with Ghee (which includes without any lactose).
Success: Since this diet's the most recent with the list, statistics are lacking to date. During my personal opinion, according to what we should learn about leaky gut though, the use of bone broths to supply easily-absorbed nutrition and seal the gut on the way to building tolerance of fermented products makes the diet plan especially appealing for severe LGS.
Conclusions: There is certainly far more similarity with these diets than there is different. GAPS was mostly developed as a possible improvement to SCD, and Primal was mostly developed being an improvement to Paleo. Ultimately, many practitioners agree that ultimately an elimination diet where you eliminate a food for 1 month and then add one thing in at a time (and monitor your emotions) may be the method to figure out which foods and amounts of those food your body reacts to.