Gut Health, Food Allergies & Eating Skills
Digestion starts in the mouth! How you eat & swallow drives how well your gut works. Gut health, reflux, food sensitivity and allergies can wreak havoc with sleep and breathing. I can help you desensitise intolerances and calm allergies, to optimise your family's health and wellbeing, helping you to thrive.
Find out the causes of issues such as reflux, mucousy stools, dark flecks/colours, constipation and diarrhoea in infants, children & beyond. (NB newborn babies should stool every feed in the early months when gut health is on track). In mothers, a strong gut filter causes less issues for the breastfed baby in several ways.
Gut Health
Our gut bacteria literally program our body, turning genes on or off! The gut is our second brain. New research comes out every day showing how the gut can affect every part of our bodies, from our mental health and brain development, to our digestion and even the immune system. How we physically chew and eat matters to how well our insides digest and absorb, especially in early childhood.
I can support you and your child with:
Tongue thrust
Introducing solids
Drooling & saliva control
Feeding skills
Jaw strength
Messy eating
Eating with a tongue tie
Low muscle tone
Slow eating
Tummy aches
Needing drinks with food
Textures
Coughing when drinking
Using utensils
Trying new foods
Sensory integration
Gut health plays a pivotal role in our overall health and wellness, even cancer and disease prevention. Let me show you what you can do about it, for life and for the future generations.
Eczema, cradle cap and candida thrush comes from within the gut, research shows, and is not the biological norm. Common - but not normal. I can help you get to the root cause to get well and stay well - you and your precious ones.
Asthma, hayfever and cows milk protein intolerance are all the same family, for example, mediated majorly by gut health. Some epigenetic lifestyle choice exposures we pass on to our children increase their risk too.
Many common deficiencies can be easily identified and addressed, the microbiome and mycobiome individualised and your enzymes and filters replenished to treat those pesky symptoms at the root
Food Intolerances, Reflux, Colic & Allergies
Food reactions in infants can present a range of symptoms, affecting skin, airway, mood, sensory and sleep, even from birth. When left unchecked, these can lead to long-term damage and greater risk of chronic illnesses later in life. The best time to address these symptoms is yesterday. The next best time to make life easier for you and your family is today!
Reactions may emerge at any age and stage in these areas or in less obvious ways. Not all reactions are digestive, such as colic, ‘high needs’, bloating, stomach pain, diarrhoea, eczema and other, more serious health complications. Food intolerances can be hard to pinpoint alone, uncomfortable for sufferers, and disturbed sleep can affect the whole family.
Skipping foods altogether when not necessary can be detrimental to a child’s health. Food allergy tests can help to identify allergies, but without a comprehensive care plan, they don’t offer holistic solutions to optimise nutrition and fix the cause.
I create a care plan to address the root cause, heal and seal the areas in need, plan adequate nutrition and undertake diagnostic elimination, avoidance or reintroduction. Not every child has common food allergies; some are harder to determine. Identifying these issues early on not only optimises children’s lives, but it also makes life easier for parents. I work with families, young babies, school-age children and adults to identify food sensitivities and reduce reactivity.
Nutrition
Nutrition is a crucial part of creating a healthy lifestyle and minimising a myriad of health issues throughout our lives. I take an integrative evidence-based realistic approach that works.
Let me help you take back control over your wellbeing and health. I can support your overall nourishment, including navigating food challenges or just optimising breastfeeding for baby or breastfeeder, postpartum healing, optimal childhood learning, or much needed increased parent brain capacity and energy!
I help families to recover after antibiotics and find out the causes of issues such as constipation, reflux, mucousy stools and diarrhoea, from birth. Sometimes but not always, elimination diet planning is required: with a prep phase, removal phase, and reintroduction phase. Sometimes a healing phase or other approach is more appropriate to get results.
I can help with vitamin and mineral testing, repairing gut integrity and identifying deficiencies and mapping out a nutrition plan to solve these issues. Even mineral and vitamin deficiencies can cause intolerances. A leaky gut also affects mothers, babies in utero, breastfed bubs and children. Formula fed babies and parents who were themselves formula fed also have special needs.
I can also support with ADHD triggers, autistic sensitivities & supplementation support, Failsafe elimination, FODMAPs research, GAPS and more.
