The GAPS Yahoo list which was launched last year has attracted many new members. This was due in part to vigorous efforts by the list moderator to market GAPS as an improved version of SCD. Many of her claims were and are invalid, but despite this, parents do not appear to take time to verify the facts. We are making the facts easily available. (Click here to see errors in the GAPS promotion)

Yahoo archives show that there are many weeks when the number of new list members to the GAPShelp list is higher than that of Pecanbread.

Yet, GAPS currently has just over five positive testimonials posted. These date back eighteen months or less, since the diet is new. SCD has hundreds of success stories. Some appear on the Amazon Yahoo site among reviews of Elaine Gottschall's book, Breaking the Vicious Cycle. (note both GAPS and SCD are used for for adults with gastric issues and ASD children.)

On August 12, 2009, a new arrival to the GAPS list noted the scarcity of positive testimonials on one of the GAPS websites. The head moderator's response raises doubts about substantial GAPS success so far.

The moderator has put forth three proofs of GAPS success; all three raise questions regarding solid evidence that GAPS is more successful than SCD at present.

1. Her first defense of GAPS directs to the testimonial section of an SCD website where she advised the following:

"You can always look up SCD ones (testimonials), because that's essentially the diet part of GAPS"

GAPS" should have no need to borrow testimonials from SCD considering the GAPS lists boasts over one thousand members only one year after its formation and SCD is followed differently.

2. The GAPS helplist moderator additionally refers to her own book, GAPS Guide, for testimonials. The book contains three testimonials. Only one comes from someone who started GAPS after the list was formed. The mother who wrote it did not follow GAPS as directed and needed to make modifications. Another testimonial depicted very slow improvement with GAPS. The moderator addressed this with the explanation that faster improvements can be expected when one begins with the GAPS intro ( the recommended default introductory procedure on the GAPShelp list which differs from Pecanbread). Logically more positive testimonials from people following the recommended procedure would be expected and this would not be a privacy issue as parents are not required to not use their real or full names.

The moderator included only these three testimonials in her self published GAPS Guide book which appeared nine months after the GAPShelp list started. Three is a small number compared to the volume of testimonials collected by Pecanbread in its early stages. Six months after the first list dedicated to using SCD for autism appeared, testimonials from parents were collected for display on SCDkids info, a special Yahoo list for new parents.

The SCDkidsinfo list was created upon finding new parents were hesitant to try SCD since its reputation was not yet established in the autism community. They were particularly reluctant to try a diet that did not allow prepared foods.

The reputation of SCD was so well established and it was easy for GAPS to attract new parents by describing GAPS as an improved version of SCD. This may well explain why the number of parents trying SCD almost ten years ago was tiny compared to the current total of parents trying GAPS since the GAPShelp list began about a year ago.

Pioneer advocates of"SCD for autism" collected more than twenty-four positive testimonials in the first six months of the existence of its online support group list.
Click here to view these testimonials

3. The GAPS moderator also included success testimonials on a page in her weblog, started July 27 2009. GAPS list members who mention progress on the help list are invited and encouraged to upload their testimony to the blog. As of September 26, 2000 the page contained eight testimonials.
Update: During the period when we compared the reported successes from both diets, the GAPS Guide website posted every good outcome. It has now discontinued this policy.

Compare this to the number of positive testimonials recorded by Pecanbread during that same period dating back to July 27 2009. ( in fairness, we do not count testimonials from list members who have followed SCD for over a year since Pecanbread has so many more in this category.The numbers of list members who started the diet about a year ago are probably similar on both lists.)

Pecanbread was founded on Mar 23, 2003 and has 4613 members at this writing. ( It became the default SCD/ASD list on Dec 2003) GAPShelp currently has about 1243 members and was only founded on May 22, 2008. The figures make it seem that GAPS may have more members who joined this year than Pecanbread and suggest that GAPS is growing faster.

From July 27 2009 to Aug 27, a period of just one month, Pecanbread recorded forty testimonials with positive results and ten testimonials where there were positive results with some temporary regressions. Regressions are common during the initial time on SCD due to die off reactions. We have yet to count those from Aug 27 until now. If the trend continued, there would be eighty, ten times the success rate of GAPS by Pecanbread in only two months! (if the rate of new members from GAPS is half that of PB, then the success rate is still four times greater)

However the statistics are configured, the difference in results favoring Pecanbread and authentic SCD is beyond impressive. It is astonishing!

Be guided by facts, not claims.

References

These testimonials are private, Please do not post these website links on other websites.
Click here to view the later testimonials for SCD with positive results
This file contains more than 40 testimonials but we are not counting all in case that there might be some errors.

Click here to view the later testimonials for SCD that report improvements and some temporary setbacks The page with mixed results will be loaded on Wednesday night.

The head moderator's post is message #26475 of GAPShelp.
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/GAPShelp/message/26475