There’s nothing better than waking up early in the morning full of energy because you have urgent diarrhea. Not once, but twice within minutes of each other.

I keep telling myself that this is all part of the healing process, but something deep inside is revolting against that idea. I’m getting fevers some days and nights. My mouth has been extraordinarily dry at night. My gut makes very loud gurgling noises and feels like it’s “simmering” at night. I felt a cough coming just before bedtime last night. I’m getting leg cramps while I sleep sometimes.

All of these extra symptoms besides the diarrhea do not appear, in my opinion to be a healthy response to detoxing or healing. They tell me that I am weak and sick.

I read something I believe profoundly important in the GAPS book by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. On page 143 she writes,

People with food allergies and intolerances should go through the Introduction Diet in order to heal and seal their gut lining. The reason for allergies and food intolerances is a so-called “leaky gut”, when the gut lining is damaged by abnormal micro flora. Foods do not get the chance to be digested properly before they get absorbed through this damaged wall and cause the immune system to react to them. Many people try to identify which foods they react to.

However, with damaged gut wall they are likely to absorb most of their foods partially digested, which may cause an immediate reaction or a delayed reaction… As long as the gut wall is damaged and stays damaged, you can be juggling your diet forever, removing different foods and never getting anywhere… Once the gut wall is healed, the foods will be digested properly before being absorbed…

A large part of a healed gut includes a diverse and healthy ecosystem of gut microbiota, all the yeasts, bacteria, viruses, protozoa and so on. Bacteria especially help us to digest our food. Without healthy bacteria, we die.

I believe with my recent experiments with natural antibiotics I have severely damaged the healthy balance of my gut bacteria.

I think this is why many people with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis say that diets don’t work for them because what’s really happening is that their guts lack the microbiota to keep the gut healthy and it’s not able to digest anything, no matter how “safe” the food is.

This tells me how fundamentally important probiotics are to initiate a healing process. I’m having so much trouble with GAPS and getting progressively worse because I have no bacteria to help me digest the food to begin with.

That’s why today I’ve decided to do something risky and have as much yogurt as I can handle. I had a fever and a lot of diarrhea that last time I had yogurt due to a Herxheimer Reaction, but at this point, I don’t have much else to lose.

I might be in the bathroom all day today, but I need to try this. If this doesn’t work… I will probably do a microbiota transplant, aka fecal matter transplant or as I love to call it, human probiotic elixir. On one hand, I’d love to spend months going through the slow, methodical processes required for natural healing, but I’ve got a documentary to make and a life to get on with.