D2D Phase II

In this phase you will increase the amount of fermented food in your diet. Why didn’t we do this in phase I? this is because, if you are doing D2D and you have gut dysbiosis and leaky gut, potentially, if this is severe, you may transfer microbes into your body.

D2D and leaky gut

Let me try and explain this a little more. Gut dysbiosis refers to the situation whereby there is an abnormal balance of gut microbes. Put simply, you have more ‘bad’ microbes than ‘good’ microbes. This creates a disrupted internal environment around your gut lining cells so that gaps appear between them. This means that substances that would normally stay in the gut are able to pass into your body. This is referred to as increased gut permeability.

We are all likely to have some degree of gut dysbiosis and leaky gut and for most of us, eating fermented foods will actually help to strengthen the links between the gut lining cells and not weaken them. However, if you have severe problems with leaky gut or severely increased gut permeability, eating fermented foods may make you ill when the microbes, that are supposed to stay in the gut gain access to your blood. Because I am writing this programme for everyone, I am trying to make sure that no-one has to deal with microbes in their blood as this would effectively be a toxic situation.

Fermented foods and the Herxheimer reaction

There are a whole host of fermented foods to choose from in phase II. Check out the recipes associated with this section. Be sure to start out gently though. So, as not to experience the Herxheimer reaction. This reaction, also called a ‘die off’ reaction, is the situation that happens when the ‘good’ microbes overwhelm the ‘bad’ microbes. The dying and dead ‘bad’ microbes will be dealt with by your immune system. This immune or inflammatory reaction may make you ill. The types of symptoms can be gut related such as pain, bloating and diarrhoea or non-gut related symptoms such as headache, brain fog and fatigue.

Introduce foods slowly having say, a teaspoon of the food on your very first time. After this first try, wait for 12 hours to see what happens before doubling the amount. Keep on doubling the amount if you have no untoward reactions until you can manage a bowl of fermented food with each meal and a glass of fermented drink such as Kombucha or Kefir.

Re-introduction of foods

The second part of Diet to Detox II is to begin to re-introduce the foods you had taken out in Phase I. Start this part after you have introduced the fermented foods into your diet. There is of course some overlap at this stage. For example, you may want to introduce desserts such as Very Berry. Here you will be introducing both a fermented food and fruit. I would suggest that the first fermented foods you introduce, do not contain the Culprit foods initially. When you have exhausted the list of non-culprit fermented foods, you can then begin to add the cross-over fermented foods. When you begin to introduce non-fermented ‘culprit’ foods, choose one food per week. As with the fermented foods, try just a very small amount for your first try. The next day if there are no reactions, which would be similar again to the ‘die-off’ reactions, you may then try a little more of that food. If by the end of the week, there have been no reactions, you can just about safely say that you are OK with that food. The following week you can choose a new food to introduce. I would suggest leaving gluten and milk containing foods to the end. If you have an untoward reaction to a any of the foods. You should wait until you are over the reaction. This can take a few days or even a few weeks. Once you are over the reaction you can start with a different food, putting the offending ‘culprit’ food to the very back of the list to be tried again in a few months.