Vomiting on the GAPS Diet is a common occurrence during the first week. It’s usually due to one of two things – low blood sugar or an inability to digest the new fats, and I’ll give you remedy ideas for each. Of course, it can be a coincidence, so monitor your kid’s temperature to determine if they’re sick or if something more serious may be going on, and visit a doctor, if indicated.

Quick help for nausea in general can come from ginger tea, which you can drink between meals. You can also use AromaEase essential oil, placing a couple drops on a cotton ball, and inhaling the scent for 30 seconds to a minute.

Vomiting can be a sign of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). When you cut out most carbohydrates in the diet of a sugar addict, it’s easy for our blood sugar to drop too low. When sugar’s been the primary source of fuel for your metabolism, you’ll need it frequently because it burns up quickly.

In this case, have a couple ounces of fresh pressed apple or carrot juice and see if that helps. Freshly pressed juices are best, but if the situation is urgent and you don’t have a juicer yet, use store-bought juice with no added ingredients. If the juice helps, continue using it in as small an amount as possible to remedy the nausea and vomiting when it happens. It’s helpful to make freshly pressed juice into ice cubes or popsicles in advance, so they can provide immediate relief.

Another remedy is to make a mixture of raw coconut oil (or ghee) and add a little raw honey. I recommend a ratio of about 1 tablespoon of coconut oil and 1 teaspoon or less of honey. Put this mix in a glass jar and take it with you everywhere. Have a teaspoon of the mixture every 20-60 minutes to keep your blood sugar level. This tastes delicious and people usually think they’ll never stop using it, but when you’re getting the other nutritious foods in, you’ll forget about this within a couple of weeks.

To keep your blood sugar steady, eat GAPS foods often, and in small amounts, rather than insisting on set meal times. As you increase your intake of fats and start burning fat as the primary fuel for your metabolism, your blood sugar will become balanced again and you’ll be able to go 4-5 hours without eating, which is your goal.

Nausea first thing in the morning, after meals, or vomiting shortly after eating are common signs of an inability to digest fats completely. Even children can have poor bile production with a sluggish liver and gallbladder. If large amounts of animal fats are a new addition to your diet, you might not be able to tolerate them at first.

In this case, try introducing beet kvass early in the Intro Diet. You can have it in addition to, or in the place of, the sauerkraut juice.

You can also skim off the animal fats from your soup (save them in a jar to cook with later) and replace them with coconut oil instead. Coconut oil doesn’t require your gallbladder to digest it, so when you have a fat digestion issue, you’ll usually feel much better with coconut oil instead.

This doesn’t mean that you’ll be avoiding animal fats for the duration of the diet! It just means that for the first 3-4 weeks you’ll gradually build up, using beet kvass to help thin your bile (or the supplement Beta-TCP). This will support fat digestion until your body becomes more efficient at digesting it again. However, if you’ve had your gallbladder surgically removed, you’ll need to take ox bile with meals from now on in order to properly digest your fats.

In the long run, fats buffer your blood sugar so you don’t end up with hypoglycemia again. It’s extremely important to eat fats with every meal in order to exercise your gallbladder – it’s a use it or lose it type of organ. With these tips, most nausea should subside quickly, but if it doesn’t, or if you can’t keep fluids down, speak to a healthcare practitioner.