How to improve your gut health naturally
Everyone is talking about gut health these days.
But why does gut health matter?
How can you tell if your child has an issue with Gut health?
How do you improve gut health?
Why does gut health matter?
If you gut isn’t working right, your body isn’t working right.
Your child’s brain is part of their body, just like an arm or leg, so if their gut doesn’t work right, their brain won’t work right.
Pretty much most childhood conditions can be linked back to gut health:
- Skin conditions such as eczema
- Allergies and intolerances
- Depression and anxiety
- Learning or behavioural issues
How can you tell if your child has an issue with gut health?
There are some basic checks and measures you can do to check your child’s gut health.
- Visual
Whenever your child does a poop, have a look. Luckily our little darlings can often forget to flush, giving us ample opportunity to do this.
If it floats, your child might be producing a bit too much gas, which might mean they have an infection or are lactose intolerant.
If the gas causes your child pain or discomfort, this is a sign that their gut health is out of balance.
You shouldn’t be able to see undigested food in the poo. If you can,
- They might be eating too fast
- They might not be chewing enough. This is a common issue when they go to big school and they want to get off to play as soon as possible.
- They might simply be eating too many hard-to-digest foods, like nuts.
- They may have some inflammation or not enough stomach acid.
- Frequency
Check the number of bowel movements your child has each day.
The ideal number per day is very individual. The rule of thumb is that most people should be moving their bowels at least once a day.
If it is less than that, increase the number of veggie servings.
- Transit time
Feed your child with a noticeably difficult to digest food, like corn or sesame seeds. Note the time they eat the food, then wait until you see the food reappear.
Transit time should be 12-48 hours.
Longer than that, and the food is sitting up there a bit too long.
Longer than 72 hours is constipation. Do the test 3 times and get an average.
- Bristol stool chart
This is the best way to describe poo formation. It ranges from 1 (hard nuts) to 7 (diarrhoea). If your child’s poo is in the 1-2 category or 6-7 category, you may want to take them to a gut specialist, such as a Nutritionist or Naturopath. Check out the Bristol stool chart.
- Symptom score card
Does your child suffer from any of these issues?
- Gas
- Bloating
- Belching
- Loose stools
- Constipation
- Diarrhoea
- Undigested food
- Bad breath
- Mucus in stools
- Indigestion
- Heartburn
- Chronic food sensitivities.
All these point to suboptimal gut health, which would benefit from gut healing
- Look for wrigglers
If you see something wriggling in the poo, your child has worms.
There are natural ways to get rid of worms, without resorting to medication. These involve using essential oils or garlic. It is really something you need to do with a Nutritionist or Naturopath, to make sure you don’t kill off good bacteria too.
The important thing is to keep the terrain of the gut healthy (See below, ‘How do I improve gut health’). This means keeping all the bacteria in balance. That way, they defend their territory and don’t let invaders like parasites or pathogenic (disease causing bacteria) take over.
- Specialised testing
You can do specialised gut testing with your Nutritionist or Naturopath.
This could be a stool analysis, breathe test or urine test and can assess how well your child’s digestive system is working. It checks if there is anything there that shouldn’t be there, or something missing that should be there.
How do I improve gut health?
- Feed the good bacteria in your digestive system!
You do this by eating more fibre and unprocessed foods.
Highly processed foods are very easily digested., which means they’re completed digested early in the digestive process, and there is nothing left to feed the good bacteria in the bowel.
You have to feed the good bacteria with fibre, or they can start to attack the walls of the intestines. This can trigger allergies and asthma.
Eat more whole foods. Include lots of fruit, vegetables and nuts in your child’s diet.
- Bring in the cavalry
As well as feeding the good bacteria in your child’s gut, you want to boost the number of good guys in the bowel too.
Eating foods that contain bacteria is a good way to do this, including fermented foods such as kefir, sauerkraut, live yoghurt or kvass. You can make your own or buy in the health food shop. Just make sure they aren’t pasteurised.
Highly processed yogurt doesn’t have these health benefits (and the ‘yoghurt’ topping on snack bars isn’t yoghurt at all.)
If you know your child doesn’t have enough good bacteria, because they have had antibiotics, or have allergies, they may need a probiotic supplement too.
- Eat dirt.
Not literally handfuls of dirt.
Just relax the sterility a bit.
Ditch the hand sanitiser.
Play outside and get dirty.
Do some gardening.
Get a pet.
Be sensible though — wash hands before eating, after blowing nose, or touching something contaminated (like poo, compost, or vomit). Wash with soap and water, not antibacterial soap.
- Avoid medication.
Lots of medications are harmful to your gut, the most well-known being antibiotics.
Don’t get me wrong. Antibiotics are life savers, but they are for emergencies only.
I have one child who wouldn’t be here today without the existence of antibiotics.
If your child needs antibiotics, start them on a probiotic immediately, but take it 2 hours away from the antibiotic. This stops the harmful yeasts getting a hold on the gut
Ever taken an antibiotic and gotten thrush straight away? That’s because yeast has taken over in the absence of good bacteria.
If your child has had multiple courses of antibiotics, they will need a good quality probiotic for the foreseeable future. Other medications are damaging too, including reflux medication, that is designed to reduce stomach acid. Guess what? We need that stomach acid! That is one of the body’s first lines of defence again infection. Remove the acid, and the bad guys (worms, yeast and bacteria) get in a bit easier. Anti-inflammatories and asthma medication can also harm your gut.
5. The migrating motor complex
This is a really important factor which doesn’t get talked about too much.
Basically, the migrating motor complex (MMC) is the electrical activity of the muscle in the gut between meals. It is responsible for keeping undigested food moving and moving bacteria from the small intestine to the large intestine.
It occurs in cycles, about every 1.5 – 2 hours. It only works when you are not eating. That means, if your child grazes continuously throughout the day, the MMC never kicks in.
This can lead to stagnation of undigested food, and over growth of bacteria in the small intestine. So another important way to keep your child’s gut health is to stick to designated meal times and snack times only.
50 years ago, there were 3 square meals a day.
Now we have somehow moved to about 3 meals, 3 snacks, and possibly even some food in between there somewhere.
A lot of this change is driven by the food industry.
Think about it.
If you have to prepare food from scratch for 6-7 eating occasions per day – will you do it?
But if you can grab something off the shelf, you are much more likely to do it.
More snacking occasions = more food sales.
Some children need so much food, that they need 3 meals and 2 snacks, especially if they are little. You will find if they are having whole foods with ample fat and fibre, they will get less hungry outside of these times.
Especially in the school holidays, I find myself having to write meal and snack times up on the fridge. If anyone asks for anything outside of this, tough luck.
I’m only thinking of your migrating motor complex, darling.
- Add healing foods
Healing foods are natural foods that will help rebuild your child’s gut lining.
Introduce your child to some healing foods such as
Organ meats like my Liver and Bacon recipe
Cold water fish such as salmon. These are high in essential fatty acids and reduce inflammation in the gut
Cheaper cuts of meat such as Osso Bucco.
The amino acid glycine is higher in cheaper cuts of meat, making it more healing. Cook in the slow cooker, kids love the tender meat.
- Relax!
Stress and anxiety will play havoc with gut health and similarly, poor gut health will lead to stress and anxiety.
A great place to start with improving this cycle in kids is to have them play outside for 1- 3 hours a day, preferably in natural light to get the vitamin D level topped-up.
Try not to fight over food (says she who says your child must eat 5 veggies a day, fermented foods and less snacking!).
Try to model good food choices, don’t make veggies out to be punishment, or less appealing (‘you can’t have dessert unless you eat the broccoli’ is setting broccoli up as not appealing).
- Avoid irritating foods
For a lot of people, foods such as grains, legumes, dairy, processed foods or sugar may cause gut irritation. Your child may have a food intolerance to a random food.
By identifying and excluding irritating foods for 6 months and working on gut healing, you may be able to reintroduce some of these foods later.
I hope you find this useful and it helps to put into perspective why you need to think about gut health in relation to you child.
If you think your child might need to improve their gut health, click here to arrange a FREE 20 minute PHONE HEALTH CHECK.
