Gut Health Part 1

If you’ve been following my stories lately you’ll have seen that we are working on our gut health at the moment. While this is something that we’re always trying to practice, every now and then we do it more intensely, and we see amazing results.

The gut is truly incredible. A healthy gut means a strong immune system. Being the second brain and the root of neurotransmitters, it also means reduced anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions. The gut regulates inflammation – said to be the cause of all disease including autoimmune disorders. And a healthy gut is also necessary for proper absorption and assimilation of nutrients. Have a deficiency? You need to look at your gut health.

When gut health is compromised you could see allergies, skin conditions like eczema and dermatitis, poor mental health, chronic infections or being constantly sick. You might sleep terribly, have brain fog, chronic pain or be diagnosed with an autoimmune condition. Even reproductive and hormone health starts in the gut.  

Our adventure into gut health really started just before I gut pregnant with Ashton. I ticked almost every box I listed above. I was:

-Allergic to the world (cats, dogs, dust, mould, grass, personal care products, you name it)

-Almost constant dermatitis somewhere on my body

-Debilitating anxiety

-Always sick with a cold, cough or sinus infection

-Chronic back, shoulder and neck pain

-PCOS and an almost completely absent period

At this time I was just starting to look into gut health so I started with some basics – including meat stock in my diet and starting to cut out any processed food or those from a packet and swap for a home made version.

Then Ashton was born. While outwardly a healthy and happy baby within his first 3 months we realised something wasn’t quite right. He’d bring up milk after every feed, and then for the hours afterward too. He scream and writhe in pain if we lay him down. His nappies were full of snot like mucous and stank like vinegar. I knew something wasn’t right but it wasn’t until I ate A LOT of cheese a friend’s wedding that we put it together. As I held my screaming baby upright for 72 hours straight I realised he couldn’t handle dairy. So I cut it out and he was like a new child. But the bringing milk up and very poor sleep remained. It took us another couple of months to realise he couldn’t handle gluten either. Cut that out and all symptoms went away.

So we stayed away from gluten and dairy. When we introduced solids we only let him have vegetables and meats, a paleo approach, with fruit a very rare thing.

And this worked for a long time. It was around the time he turned 2 that I started questioning things again.