Gut and Psychology Syndrome: Natural Treatment for Autism,ADD/ADHD,Dyslexia,Dyspraxia,Depression,Schizophrenia by Natasha Campbell-McBride (2004) Paperback

This is definitely one of my favorite books. I read it all in one day... I couldn't put it down! All I did that day was feed my 3 children meals and read. It was so worth it. I have had eczema all my life, as my mother and grandmother had, and my daughter also got about 6 weeks after she was born. I tried a number of natural remedies to help my daughter's eczema (which covered her legs and itched), including a gluten-free diet, oils, creams, and digestive enzymes, but at 18 months her eczema had still not cleared. This book explained why. It's an inability to digest, caused by a lack of good bacteria, which babies are supposed to get from their mothers while going through the birth canal and through breast milk in the first 2 months of life. Though I had given birth vaginally and breastfed, I didn't have enough good bacteria to pass along to her sterile newborn body (since my mother didn't have enough to pass along to me) and so the good bacteria didn't cultivate and left her vulnerable to bad bacteria and yeast, causing her eczema to appear at 6 weeks. Eventually she developed other symptoms like poor sleep and constipation, also signs of an inability to digest and an overload of toxins from the bad bacteria and a plugged-up colon. For quite a while I have been feeding her a similar diet to the one recommended in the book, but when I added the probiotics that Dr. Campbell-Mcbride helped to develop my daughter's constipation disappeared within a few days and her skin cleared up within a week. I'm amazed! Her skin hasn't looked this good since she was a newborn! She is also much happier and sleeping better. She is finally digesting her food! I have also begun taking the probiotics for my similar problems. I can tell I'm finally digesting my food also. What a relief! I am passing the book around to about 10 people that I know it would help. It's not just for parents of autistic children. It's for all the people (which is half of the population) who are constipated and irritable. It's definitely worth the read! I should add that I am not new to nutrition. I have been studying nutrition for 12 years (it was part of my major in college) but until this book I never really understood the digestive system. It is well-explained and thorough, but easy enough for someone who doesn't have much nutritional knowledge to understand. Another thing that I love about this book is that it gives me hope of eating gluten again. I have been gluten-free for several years because my skin was clearer and I felt better, and I assumed that I would have to be gluten-free for life. However, according to the book, after the diet is maintained for 6 months-2 years (depending on the severity of your condition) the microvilli in the intestine heal and the intestines are able to digest gluten again. That's so exciting! UPDATE: After writing the above review I put my two sons on the diet also, and my children and I have since completed the GAPS diet. We stayed on it for 8 months. My daughter no longer has eczema and has regular, easy bowel movements (before GAPS she only eliminated about every 4 days, and it was extremely difficult and painful). My oldest son (8) was lactose intollerant before the diet and is now able to digest milk. My middle son wet the bed until he was almost 5. He had no other signs of digestive distress or gut dysbiosis. I figured out the bacterial connection, which Dr. Campbell-Mcbride doesn't specifically address in the book. After putting him on the diet and giving him a probiotic dose of 130 billion/day, he was dry within a month and hasn't wet the bed since (a year later). The behavior of all three children has markedly improved, and they are much happier overall. And why wouldn't they be? I'm cranky myself if I don't feel well! I continue to take probiotics and give them to my children to maintain the gut health we have achieved. I also continue to feed them a healthy diet from scratch, free of as much junk food as possible (although we certainly aren't perfect). Other than that the children have returned to a normal diet. I continue to be careful, as I have been dealing with this a lot longer than they have and adults don't recover as quickly as children do. If you are hesitating to take the plunge because the diet is completely overwhelming, take heart. Once you get started it isn't so bad. And the benefits FAR outweigh the temporary inconvenience. You can do it!

This is truly one of the best and balanced health books out there today. Dr. Campbell-McBride has seem to target a real pivotal health issue in our culture today. On top of being very informative, her writing style makes is very easy to understand and grasp the concepts. Even though this book focuses on certain illnesses, it's really a health book for all. It seems to really target the central cause of many illness that for the most part have remained a mystery and it not only provides help for these illnesses but is filled with a wealth of information for people who just want to be healthy. The Gut has been a crucial aspect of health that has not been well understood nor well approached. Dr. Campbell-McBride does an excellent job not only giving an overall understanding of how it works, its importance but an appreciation of some of the specific players in maintaining and rebuilding your gut health. It's just an excellent book that I recommend highly to everyone!

This book answered so many many questions for me. For example: what is the link between vaccinations and autism? Why do mental/depression problems usually come with digestive problems? How are asthma and excema connected? Why are some babies colicky? What causes food allergies? I have given this book to several friends either for answers to problems or simply for reference. I see this program as the answer to problems ranging from simple heartburn to autism and schizophrenia. Medications do not solve these problems. I think the diet is very simple to follow (although I am not attempting to change the habits of an autistic child)and makes such perfect sense. It does, however, require a certain amount of hands-on food preparation and taking quite a few supplements. I think Dr. Campbell-McBride has stellar credentials and has done an immense service in providing this information. I highly recommend this book.

Amazing book !! Everyone who must read this, especially if you have children of any age with or without a disorder as our world is so toxic, just because we are born healthy does not mean we will stay that way. This book does the best to explain why there are so many people alive today living with chronic auto-immune disorders. I am 57 and have friends my age with Multiple Sclerosis, Rhumatoid Arthritis, Lupus, Chrones, UC, Thyroid issues, Fibromyaglia and many other chronic disorders. Their children are even less healthy with IBS,Chrone's, Ulerative Collitis just to name a few. All of which will be on serious and expensive medications for life. Do yourself a favor and get this book and read it a few times. I may be a fanatic but its the only way to fight sickness in a toxic world where government and the powers that be are not helping.... they are just making themselves rich !!

My daughter's MD recommended I read this book to help my daughter's eczema. I resisted. I didn't want another restrictive diet for her. We'd already tried a restrictive allergy diet and if anything it made her condition worse, plus was so hard to administer. But eventually daughter number two also started getting eczema, which scared the heck out of me. It had been so many years since I was allowed to sleep through the night... having the situation get worse was not acceptable. So after a few more months of procrastinating I got the book and read it, hoping it would be utter nonsense that I could then disregard. It wasn't nonsense. Even my mother--who loves whole grains and is just as skeptical a reader as I am--agreed that it made sense. So we tried the diet in the book for both kids and for myself too, so I could see what it was like. In one month daughter number two's eczema went away. My first daughter is still on the diet and is getting better skin and is sleeping much better than she has in years (yay!!). For myself, I didn't notice any difference at all in the way I felt on the diet. But I'm healthy, so the diet's not really made for me I guess. The diet in this book is difficult to administer. You should know that from the beginning. It means completely changing the way you look at meals. And you need to put some effort into home food preparation because nothing commercially prepared will suit the diet. I wish that there were an easier way to help sick kids whose whole body and mind are not functioning correctly. But there isn't. This was the right thing to do for my kids. I would highly recommend it for other tricky cases that haven't resolved easily with all the simple, common treatments out there. If you do try this diet, I also recommend getting an SCD cookbook. The recipes in the GAPS book are just so-so. But there are a few SCD cookbooks out there with really stellar recipes. I actually made an almond flour birthday cake for my daughter from one (by Raman Prasad, or something like that? I forget the name.) and everyone at the party was shocked at how immensely tasty it was. It was by far the most popular cake I'd ever baked, and I'm a pretty popular baker.

This book was a gift for a nurse I know and helped us with our symptoms and a cure. Its always great to hear inspiring stories others have.

This book should be on the bookcase of every parent, medical, and healing professional. The information is absolutely fascinating and thorough. It has been so helpful to both myself and my son. I glad that I finally found this book as it has brought so much understanding and healing to my family. I recommend it to anyone, and especially to those who suffer from any type of mental illness, food allergies or sensitivities, ADHD, autism, or sensory issues. Here, finally, is a natural way to heal without medication of any kind. I had tried all kinds of elimination diets to help my son, and finally with this one, I feel like we are actually doing the real healing work that needed to be done, and not just skirting around the issues with elimination and rotation diets.

I purchased this book as part of mandatory reading for my college course in herbalism and holistic health care. However, I would have enjoyed reading this book and learning about the GAPS Diet even without the requirement. There is a lot of really good information that is put into language that is easy to understand. I would HIGHLY recommend anyone who is a parent of an autistic child, or a child with ADD, or learning difficulties such as dyslexia, who is suffering from digestive issues, and more. It is also an important book for adults with some of these same problems, and especially for adults with digestive disorders such as IBS, Crohn's, and auto-immune diseases.

A must read book! The link between the gut and autism is too strong to ignore. We bought this book 5 weeks ago and followed the diet advice for our ASD son who is 4 years old. He has always got by with requesting things with 1-4 words "more orange juice" He is now starting to speak in whole sentences "mummy can I have more orange juice please" and for the first time ever got on his bike and rode it steering and braking (with stabilizers of course!) which made both myself and my wife cry as before he couldnt even figure out what to do with the pedals!! We are very pleased with the progress we have made in such a short space of time but obviously still a long way to go. Its hard stopping the naughty foods ie chocolate, cakes etc especially when other children in the family ask for them...luckily their starting to eat fruit and veg instead of craving sweet things now. This book has made me realise what junk we pile into our kids and ourselves and yet we expect to remain healthy. The chemicals in cleaning solutions and every day products are staggering. With autism cases rising fast, along with mental health problems not all these can be genetic.

I found this book to be an easy read, one which continued to provoke serious thought about our health generally and possibly why health is going so wrong. Whether others agree with this or not, there are some valuable view points covered here and it should not stop you considering the arguments she puts forward if you don't agree with them at this time. The intrinsic value of properly grown and prepared foods and the over use of medicine to suppress our own ability to cope and take charge of our own selves is likely to be our own downfall. This is self explanatory, it should be on everyone's book shelf in my opinion, you don't have to be the one with the conditions outlined in the book, but it makes you think why possibly your health isn't all it should be.

This book really is the best on the subject. She writes clearly about the science behind the role of nutritional intervention and her suggestions even though seen as barmy by some (no to rice, potatoes, and yes to meats with fat) makes a lot of sense when she explains the reasons. There are loads of magic remedies being peddled by snake oil merchants (just have a look at the American yahoo websites for GF/CF) enough to make any parent of an autistic child feel hopelessly inadequate. Ms. McBride, a doctor herself argues that the SCD diet combined with ABA intensive early intervention is probably the most sensible option. The most lucidly argued book on autism treatments (and I have read quite a few!!)

My bible! Bought this book ages ago.....my boy has autism and he's been on Gaps for 2 years and the results are beyond my expectations.He's doing so well I count my blessings now! It has been a very bumpy ride but we are nearly there! I recommend this book to everyone I meet but is so disappointing to hear from the parents the usual excuses "I don't think I could do this" or " my child will starve...he only eats toast and nuggets" etc.This book will change your life as a family ,will challenge you so much but you will rip the rewards and you will be so happy that you listen to your gut and gave it a go!!

Bought this as found a link between my son being autistic and having gastrointestinal problems. Something that my Pediatrician was not even aware of. So the writer has explained why and what I need to do. Brilliant read!