Jessica Donovan, Natural Super Kids on gut health in babies and kids, impact on sleep and development
Jessica Donovan is a mama of 2 and naturopath who helps mums raise super kids with healthy food and natural medicines. She is passionate about educating parents on nourishing their children with real food, helping to boost their health and heal naturally. Jessica combines her extensive naturopathic knowledge with a realistic, empathetic, inspiring, and down-to-earth approach to empower women to look after themselves and take charge of the well-being of their families.
Come along and join Naturopath Jessica Donovan in this FREE online masterclass where you will learn 3 SURPRISINGLY SIMPLE ways to Transform Your Kid's GUT HEALTH. When we focus on gut health we see improvements in our Kids: Mood and behaviour Immunity Tummy troubles Allergies Eczema and Asthma Fussy eating and more Register now, it's free: https://naturalsuperkids.com/gut-health-masterclass-oct22?orid=68805&opid=28 I also spoke about my newly release Mama Mantras and I would LOVE for you to see them too! https://www.mamamatters.com.au/mama-mantras Check out our upcoming Honest Sleep Group here: https://www.mamamatters.com.au/honest-sleep-groups
Hey Mama, I have a Sleep Guide for you! For birth to 18 months, this guide is steeped in evidence and laced with compassion. And you can download the first chapter absolutely free HERE.
Are we Insta pals? If not, why not? Come and hang out at @mamamatters.au!
As always, thanks for being here- if you enjoy this poddy I would LOVE if you could give a rating and a review. It means the world to me.
xx
TRANSCRIPT
Fiona Weaver 00:09
Hello love and welcome to the Manage chatters podcast. If you're keen to ditch all of the parenting shoulds and want to uncomplicate sleep and parenting, you are in the right place, through honest conversations with experts and each other, we will help you to cut through all of the noise and to love the heck out of your imperfect and authentic parenting. I'm Fiona, a social worker by trade. Now supporting families with sleep and parenting through my business mama matters. I'm passionate about parenting psychology, biologically normal infants sleep and infant mental health and attachment. I'm also a parent, and I am on a mission to normalize the shitshow that can be parenthood.
Fiona Weaver 00:48
I know that right now you might be trapped under a sleeping baby. Or maybe you've got your headphones in to soften the blue of the afternoon witching hour, wherever and whoever you are, I want you to know that you belong here. Now, let's have a chat.
Fiona Weaver 01:06
Hello, my love I am back I took a little bit of a break from the party. And you can tell because I have recorded and deleted this little intro about 75 times now but I'm sticking with this one. I am happy to be back. I can't wait to have some more chats with people in our community and to be in your ears once a week again. So thank you for your patience. I've been working on some things lately always working on things. I have released my mama mantra cards which are little validation affirmation cards for
Fiona Weaver 01:39
anybody who is in the season of wakeful babies, dealing with lots of advice and noise around baby sleep. It's your little visual reminders that you are right where you need to be and you are the best mama for your baby. So I will link those in the show notes. They're really beautiful. I'm really proud of them. They come with a little wooden block and you can put them around your sleep space or on the fridge in your mother in law's line of sight for when she visits. You can do anything you like with them. So I hope you like them as much as I do. I'm also currently developing my sleep guides so they will be released soon I was originally making a newborn sleep guide but through that, I realized that that needs to be just for little babies. So instead of a newborn sleep guide, it's going to be for this what the first sort of eight months and then my next LibGuide will be for nine to 18 months. And in personal news, we got a caravan we finally got a caravan we're out of our tent into a van This is how the other half live. We don't know what we're doing all the gear and no idea. We put it like we're putting everything into another Instagram account called wandering weavers.au Because we are the weavers.
Fiona Weaver 02:48
But we took it for our first trip the other day and it was very fun. So that is exciting. The kids are very happy about that. One more thing is I am running my honest sleep group in a couple of weeks. I haven't done these for a while because it's been too busy with the podcast. But I'm ready to go it's going to be for mamas of little babes zero to eight months or and over four weeks we go on a Learning Adventure for all things baby sleep, we learn about your baby's temperament, we assess sleep and work on optimizing your family sleep we work on losing stress and anxiety over sleep. And above all, we work on building your confidence and coming together with a bunch of like minded mums. So for four weeks you'll have access to me you'll have a buttload of helpful content to work through in your own time and for keeps heaps of resources to keep and a private Facebook community to hang out with your new mum powers. So I will link this in the show notes too. Okay, that is enough about me and Mama matters. I am here to introduce our guest today who is Jessica Donovan from natural superkids So Jess is a mother of two and a naturopath who helps moms raise Super Kids with healthy food and natural medicines. She is passionate about educating parents on nourishing their children with real food, helping to boost their health and heal naturally. Jess combines her extensive naturopathic knowledge with a realistic, empathetic, inspiring and down to earth approach to empower women to look after themselves and take charge of the well being of their families. just spoke with us about the importance of gut health for babies and kids. And it's super, super interesting, fascinating topic. I could have talked to her for a long time, but she does have a free masterclass happening next week, and I will put all the details in the show notes I would highly recommend listening to her talk. She is amazing, and just a legend. So I was really, really happy to have this chat and I hope you enjoy it too. Hello, Jess. Welcome to the potty.
Jessica Donovan 04:39
Hi, Fiona, thanks so much for having me.
Fiona Weaver 04:41
No worries. It's absolutely bloody lovely to have you here. So I'm excited to talk to you today because you are one of those people who has the knowledge that I wish I knew, you know, you know of some people like damn, I wish I knew everything she knows. So I'm really excited to talk to you and we are going to be focusing on gut health in in kids today. Oh Waiting. So I'm gonna questions holy.
Jessica Donovan 05:04
Fire away.
Fiona Weaver 05:06
All right, I do want to introduce yourself and let us know who you are, where you're from what you do and who's in your family.
Jessica Donovan 05:12
Sure. So my name is Jessica Donovan. I'm a mom of two. I've got a 14 year old son and a 12 year old daughter. So I'm in the throes of those teenage years. Now sharing with Fiona off air that I'm feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Everything's changed. So I live on the flurry, open enchilada with my hubby and two kids, which is about an hour south of Adelaide, such a lovely spot down here, although it's it's raining. So yeah, and I have an online business. I'm a naturopath, I'm a qualified naturopath. I've been a naturopath for over 20 years, and I specialize in KidsHealth. And my business is natural super kids. And we just aim to inspire and support busy parents to take care of the health and nutrition of their kids and also address the underlying cause of what might be going on when it comes to the health symptoms and conditions that they're experiencing.
Fiona Weaver 06:14
Okay, I'm going to not make this call about me. Any questions? Because I have a very, very, very picky eater. So why why are you so passionate about gut health wise is your thing.
Jessica Donovan 06:28
Yeah, because I really just, I see so often how when we start to improve and boost and rebalance the gut, how everything else changes within a child. And so gut health really is the foundation of kids and adults well being you know, it's where we absorb our nutrients. It's where we eliminate our waste. It's where 80% of our immune system is located. Our gut health influences our mood and behavior and sleep, which I know we're going to talk a little bit more about today. It definitely has an impact in kids eating preferences, and their appetites. Of course, these things that I'm mentioning have, you know, there's multi factors that can impact things like fussy eating, but gut health is one of the often overlooked kind of pieces. And so I've just seen time and time again, over my years and years of consulting as a naturopath, you know, when we start to work on gut health, we can really clear the slate and start to improve so many of the symptoms and conditions that we see in kids. It's also really important. Something else I didn't mention is, you know, the allergies and the eczema and the Food and Environmental intolerances and sensitivities we see so often in kids, you know, gut health has a really important role to play in all of these things.
Fiona Weaver 07:56
So, so can you tell me more about what you would see like, how, how do I children's got health impact on all those things? You mentioned sleep mood behavior?
Jessica Donovan 08:08
Yes. So this this area, this gut brain area is so super fascinating. So the gut and the brain actually communicate, they, you know, talk to each other if we want to put it really in a really simple to understand way through the vagus nerve. And so I think we can all think of those times when we've been, you know, emotional in some way or feeling a certain way, let's say if we're feeling nervous, and we get those butterflies in our tummy, or we need to go do a nervous poo. Where you know, worked up and nervous or we're sad and we feel it in our tummies we feel a bit sick or nauseous. So that's a really sort of simple way that I think we can all relate to how the gut and the brain are connected. There's, there's so much research being done in this area, but there's still so much more needing to be done. We're really only just scratching the surface and who knows when or if we'll ever understand the, you know, the whole picture. But we know that the microbes, the bacteria that live within our gut, influence the brain, and particularly their thought to influence the level of neurotransmitters. So the majority of the neurotransmitters that affect our kids mood, their behavior, their sleep, so we're talking about things like melatonin, GABA, serotonin, and dopamine, which are all those sorts of feel good calm down neurotransmitters. The production of those relies on good gut health. And when we don't have a balance in our gut microbiome, we know that can lead to mood issues, behavioral issues, sleep issues. And so you know, the imbalance in the gut microbiome leads to impact lenses in neurotransmitters. There's there was even a study done on toddler tantrums. This was really interesting that showed that positive behavioral traits in toddlers linked with a more diverse microbiome. So more different species of bacteria in the microbiome actually help us get through those toddler years a bit more easily. Of course, toddler tantrums are much more than that, you know, their limits and boundaries and things like that. But yeah, that study was really, really interesting.
Fiona Weaver 10:34
Yeah. Wow, that is interesting. So when the like, like, how would we know that that there is something in our child's gut? That's off?
Jessica Donovan 10:43
Yes. So such a good question. And it's really actually, you know, that so there's the common kind of, I guess, more obvious symptoms that we might think about, like the tummy pain or the constipation, we see so much constipation at natural so because it's so common. Kids with chronic constipation, the reflux in babies and kids loose bowels, or irregularities in bowel motion motions, you know, they might be constipated one day, and then they might have looser boughs, the next excess wind toileting accidents, which are also really common and go hand in hand with constipation. You know, kids that are toilet trained, but they're still having accidents can be common. And then there's so they're the kind of more I guess, obvious sort of tummy digestive symptoms. But then we can have things like the fussy or picky eating, particularly those kids that are drawn to more the starchy, bland, carbohydrate rich foods that can that can be linked with dysbiosis, or an imbalance of good and bad bacteria in the digestive system. Appetite issues, so that could be lack of appetite, or even a tendency to over eat. And then there's the immune symptoms. So kids that are getting sick frequently, and I are having slow recovery from infections. Those recurrent infections are those kids that are constantly getting croup or tonsillitis. Kids with allergies, that those real sensitive kind of kids hay fever, eczema, asthma, any sort of skin symptoms. So it could be eczema, but it could even be you know, the the kids that get rashes or sensitive skin. And then there's the mood kind of behavioral issues as well. So we know kids with anxiety will often have lower diversity within their gut microbiomes kids that, you know, just have moods that are all over the place, ongoing behavioral challenges, learning concentration issues, so you can see how broad the signs and symptoms of gut imbalance can be. And I will do just want to also reiterate that there's there's lots of different factors that can lead to these kinds of issues and symptoms. But gut health is a really important part of the picture to look at.
Fiona Weaver 13:11
This is this is a question coming from somebody who's not trained in this stuff. When you are talking about gut microbiome, is that based on everything, what goes in, you know, food wise, and also like environmental, bacteria and things?
Jessica Donovan 13:31
Yes, so great question. And I sort of jumped to these words, just sort of because it's it's just normal language for me just assume that everyone knows what I'm talking about. So thank you for that. Yeah. I mean, the the gut microbiome is basically the ecosystem of it's made up of different bacteria and different different micro organisms. There's fungi in there, but there can be parasites in there, which obviously, not something that we want, but it's the so the, the microbiome diversity, we want that to be as high as possible. So we want as many different beneficial species of bacteria within the gut microbiome. And we know that high diversity within the gut microbiome leads to more positive health outcomes. We know lack of diversity in the microbiome is linked to things like eczema, allergies, frequent infections, you know, even the neurodevelopmental conditions like ADHD and ASD, you know that these kids tend to have lower diversity in their microbiome. So that's the first thing and then there's all kinds of things that affect that diversity within the gut microbiome. And really, it comes down to our modern diet and lifestyle, you know, that diversity within the microbiome has reduced hugely over time. You know, when we look at the diversity of the microbiome back in the hunter gatherer days As it was so many times more diverse, and it's just reduced over time. And so it does come down to, you know, the way our babies are born and fed our Western diet, toxins and chemicals in our environment, and so many more things. And I can definitely go go into more detail in any of those areas you'd like me to,
Fiona Weaver 15:24
I feel like I could keep you for a really long time. Going to, I am really curious to hear about how birth can impact gut health, the way that our babies are born the way that they're fed? Yes. So
Jessica Donovan 15:38
what we know from the research is that babies that are born vaginally, that are that are sort of moved through the birth canal, have higher diversity within their microbiomes, because they're picking up the bugs as they move through that, that birth canal. And kids that are born via C section have a lower lower diversity in their microbiome right from the get go. And so this is not, you know, in any way to guilt, any parents that have been down the C section route, of course, like this, this can be life changing. We, you know, we know that outcomes from birth are better, since we've had, you know, easy access to things like C sections. But if your baby was born via C section, it just means you need to kind of nurture that microbiome with some extra care in those early days. So we could look probiotics, yes. So the way that our babies are fed as well. So we know that breast milk is full of probiotic and prebiotic fibers, which are super important for the microbiome. So again, if babies are formula fed, look, formulas come a long way. And it's definitely better with a lot of these beneficial kind of substances that they're now adding to formula. But yeah, you can certainly add probiotic supplements to Formula prebiotic supplements to formula. And of course, I'd always recommend getting some professional support by before doing that. Don't just go to the chemist and buy any old probiotic and add it to your baby's formula. But we know that babies that are born vaginally, and that a breastfed have a healthier, more diverse microbiome, which protects them against things like allergies, eczema, and so many other of those really common childhood conditions that we see so often.
Fiona Weaver 17:39
What about antibiotics? early on? I know people always feel funny about giving their babies antibiotics, what needs to happen if that? Or What impact could that have?
Jessica Donovan 17:50
Yes, this is a huge one. And what we find natural Super Kids are, you know, generally those kids that have ongoing immune issues. You know, when we look back at their history, they've often had really early antibiotics. So of course, again, they have their place, I wouldn't wait want to be a parent in the world without access to antibiotics, but they are so over prescribed and overused, particularly in that in pregnancy and and you know, young babies, because I think we're just extra careful, you know, there aren't people, women who are pregnant, and then babies are vulnerable to infection. So I think a lot of doctors will just give antibiotics, you know, just in case. Yeah, so we know, early antibiotics and antibiotics given during pregnancy and labor, which is really common, you know, if a woman tests positive for group strep B, there'll be given antibiotics sort of prophylactically to make sure that, you know, there's no issues with that with that infection. But we know that antibiotics, the very nature of them, they kill bacteria, so they also kind of wipe out and kill the good bacteria within our gut microbiome. So we want to, you know, take antibiotics when they are absolutely necessary. But we if and if we do need to give babies or kids antibiotics, we want to make sure that we're replenishing those good bugs post antibiotic use. So anytime you need to give any child or adult antibiotics, make sure you're following up with a really good quality probiotic for a good four to six weeks post antibiotic
Fiona Weaver 19:35
use. Wow. We don't get that advice. No. We get the antibiotics and then we go on skis. Yes, yeah,
Jessica Donovan 19:44
exactly. And this is the cycle that we see so often and unnatural Super Kids, you know, like kids are given antibiotics. And then their, you know, their gut microbiome is depleted so they're more vulnerable to infection, their immune system is affected and then they get sick again. So they get given more antibiotics and it just kind of goes downhill. So breaking that kind of and that antibiotic cycle and working on improving our body's natural defenses to infections. You know, there's so many tools that we have naturopathic Lee nutrients and herbs and Homeopathics that can help to strengthen a child's immune system. So, if and when they do get sick, and look, it's normal for kids to get sick, you know, there and hygienic little creatures.
Fiona Weaver 20:33
I was going to ask you as well, sorry to
Jessica Donovan 20:37
die, that's okay.
Fiona Weaver 20:40
Like, do you use a lot of sanitizer? Or do you prefer to let it all run free? Or like what does that look like for you knowing about the health benefits?
Jessica Donovan 20:50
Yeah, I, and this, this is another really important point, because yeah, we are over over sanitizing particularly over the last couple of years, right with, with the piping. And, of course, these things, they have their time, their place, you know, that that, that they may be necessary. But I mean, there's there's something called the hygiene hypothesis, that tells us that early exposure to lots of different microbes is good for our kids immune and gut microbiome development. And so now our kids are born into these sanitized environments. You know, we're keeping everything sparkling clean, because that's what we're told to do. As parents, we're wiping every surface and we're, you know, making sure we're using hand sanitizer, and all of that sort of stuff. And so our kids aren't being exposed to these all important microbes that actually help with immune development. So I am not a fan of using too much sanitizer at all. You know, good old soap and water, I think does the trick in most cases. And unless we've got a pretty awful gastro bug going through the house, which Touchwood we haven't had for quite a few years. That's probably the only time I would ever get the hardcore. So.
Fiona Weaver 22:12
Yeah, okay. That's good to know. That's about the same as us as well. It just, I always wonder about that. And just the winter that we've had with so much sickness, of course, there that would play a part. But also, people being in lockdown is going to play a part like, what's the hypothesis about?
Jessica Donovan 22:28
Well, yeah, I mean, it there's no definite answer. But we have certainly seen a lot more sickness through this winter at natural zoom in kids. And for me, my kids have been sicker than than they have in previous years. Through this winter, as well, and my feeling and thought behind it is it is because we've been locked away. We haven't been exposed to the germs over the last couple of years. And so our kid has a long time in a child's life to it really is and that's what I was gonna say, particularly the really young children who really haven't had much exposure at all because they've potentially been born through the pandemic. Yeah, there's been a lot of a lot of issues. So hopefully next winter will be better because of the exposure everyone's had this year.
Fiona Weaver 23:15
People have had plenty of exposure. Every time I talk to a client, they're like, Oh, we've all been sick. We've had COVID we had gastro then COVID came back then we've got gastro again. And relentless. We are quite lucky. But
Jessica Donovan 23:27
yeah. Really common and the flu. Yeah, lots of really nasty sicknesses. And yeah, going around. This
Fiona Weaver 23:36
has been Yeah. And as a side note, you say everybody should get a dog? Because
Jessica Donovan 23:45
yes, so we know, the hygiene hypothesis. Part of that tells us that kids that grow up with animals and kids that grow up on farms, so probably spend a lot more time outside then, you know, city kids or kids that live in the suburbs, have, you know, less incidents of allergies and more diversity in their microbiome. So exposure to things like animals, you know, is really good. We've got it we recently had a new puppy and you know, my kids letter, lick them all over the face, and I'm just like, Okay, well, that's good for them. No, it's gross, because she's outside eating kangaroo.
Fiona Weaver 24:23
It's absolutely disgusting. I get it. I genuinely do not care about a dog licking their face. It just I really
Jessica Donovan 24:30
don't. Do you know my son when he was much younger as a toddler. When we had our last dog when we had the dog and the toddler in the car, or he's probably even younger than a toddler he I'd be driving and he'd be sitting in his seat going up with his mouth open while the dog licked. Thought it was hilarious but
Fiona Weaver 24:54
I'm not precious and not precious about germs and animals at all, but the dogs licking them. I grew up up on a farm as well. So you would not want to let those dogs like, go in here
Jessica Donovan 25:07
of gross stuff. And the movies
Fiona Weaver 25:09
you see them sharing ice creams and stuff? Yeah,
Jessica Donovan 25:13
no, no, no, I don't. But we really do need to celebrate our kids being exposed to more microbes. I think as parents, we need to let them like just being outside and playing outside is so good for our kids in so many different ways. And there's, you know, we, our kids are now spending half the amount of time on average outdoors as we did as children. So you can only imagine the impact that that's having on you know, their vitamin D level. Yeah,
Fiona Weaver 25:45
are we to SunSmart? I know that we need to be SunSmart. But are we to SunSmart?
Jessica Donovan 25:50
That yeah, I definitely believe that, that some of us are, there's that really fun balance between being Sun smart. And then also, you know, getting enough vitamin D, because vitamin D deficiency is, you know, is is through the roof, like it's a really big problem. And vitamin D is super important. I mean, the vitamin D helps with the diversity of our microbiomes vitamin D is so important in our immune function and your illogical function, our bone strength. So yeah, there is definitely that balance between being SunSmart. And getting enough vitamin D. As a general rule, if the UV index is under three, we probably don't we can probably rethink the sunscreen application. Yeah, so that's the kind of rule that I go with. My son is out and about on his bike a lot. And he the rule is he get his outside all day. And so my rule is, if the UV index is over three, then you need to put sunscreen on. If it's under three, then just you know, you don't need to worry about it.
Fiona Weaver 27:01
Yeah, okay. We usually just say I mean, not in the dead of summer, they'll usually have sunscreen on. But if it's winter, we'll go out. And you know, if we're not, if we're going for a walk or something we won't put sunscreen on. But if we're out for a while, we will maybe have like the first 15 minutes or so without sunscreen, and then we'll put it on. Just to get that little bit in.
Jessica Donovan 27:21
Yes, yeah. And a bit of like, you know, the skin exposure through the winter is really important. So if you're because it's through the winter, that we're really lacking that vitamin D. So when you're going for walks are spinning out at time outside in the winter, you know, rolling the sleeves up, taking your shoes off, so you're getting some of that skin exposure to the to the sun.
Fiona Weaver 27:45
I'm laughing because my my husband is all about getting that vitamin D. So he's always standing outside with this top off. And then my daughter started doing it. She just goes and takes her clothes off. She's like, don't take that off mom get some sun on your body. Lucky we have high fences.
Jessica Donovan 28:05
As long as you somewhere private, why not?
Fiona Weaver 28:08
So funny. So what what would you like to see us focus on or consider? Because that's a lot to think about. With all of that it's quite overwhelming to think that all of those things could be impacting our kids health? Where would you start? Yeah,
Jessica Donovan 28:28
such a good such a good question. And it is it is overwhelming like the area of gut health. So there's so so many things to think about. And there's so much conflicting information online. And if you start to delve into gut health that goes into, you know, strict elimination diets and getting all these weird foods into our kids that they probably won't eat and all of that sort of stuff. So I love to kind of keep things practical and realistic. So the first thing I recommend is, you know, just looking at your child's diet, and making sure that it's sort of like well balanced. So things that deplete the gut microbiome, some of the big things are things like sugar, which is you know, obviously in in lots of different foods and pretty much everything on the supermarket shelf has has sugar in it and also the food additives can negatively affect you know, our kids behavior and also their their microbiome and their overall health. So sticking to more whole foods where you can and that doesn't mean that you have to be in the kitchen kind of you know, cooking all day. But you know, just sticking to the good quality protein lots of fruits and veggies and salads, and you know whole grains, less things from packets that have lots of ingredients in them and you're just sort of simple food. If you can, you know make your own snacks that goes a long way because it's the kids snack foods that contain a lot of of the rubbish so, you know baking a big batch of muffins or cookies doesn't have to be, you know, complicated just something simple, can work really well and the prebiotic fibers in our kids diets are often lacking. So these come in foods in you know, the fruits and the vegetables and the plant foods basically. So if we can include more plant foods in our family's diets, that's a really great thing. So you know the vegetables and the salads but also the the legumes, the lentils, can be really good for those prebiotic fibers, I will also say I am a fan of animal protein for for kids, like I'm not saying avoid that completely. But just including more plant foods in our, our kids diets can go a really long way and starting to reduce the amount of sugar or watch the amount of sugar that our kids are exposed to. And then that lifestyle piece, you know, spending more time outside, not getting so caught up in everything being sparkly clean, knowing that, you know, germs and microbes are actually good for our kids. I think that shift for a lot of people can make a huge difference. And then I talk about a seed and feed approach when it comes to really replenishing our kids gut microbiome. So seeding with probiotics, so that can be probiotic supplements, or probiotic foods. So fermented foods, things like yogurt or coconut kefir is a really good one for kids or sauerkraut, fermented veggies, getting your kids onto these foods as early as possible, really helps them to develop a taste for it. And if you're thinking there's no way my kids are going to eat that stuff, start with just one little sliver of, of sauerkraut or, you know, a small amount of coconut kefir. And you know, start to gradually build it up from there. And then that so that's the seeding and then the feed is feeding the seeds, the good bacteria with those prebiotic fibers. So those those plant foods. For fussy kids, I know you mentioned that one of your kids is a little bit fussy. Then more than more than a little bit. We can look at getting things like oats and rye Rye is a really good prebiotic fiber foods. So switching from say, you know, the regular crackers that you might give them to like a rye crosscut most kids will like rye crosscuts or Orion arrived, you know, mountain bread wrap as opposed to a regular sort of wheat wrap. Or rye crackers. There's quite a few different versions of rye crackers that you can get as opposed to wheat. So if you've got fussy kids, those little changes, small changes at a time. You know, we've got to celebrate those because it can be really tricky to make changes in kids diets that are that are fussy. And the other good one for fussy kids that time prebiotic fibers is cooked and then called potato, pasta and rice. So when we cook and then call even if it's just the you know the plain old kind of white stuff. When it comes to pasture that a lot of fussy kids eat when we call it it increases the amount of resistant starch which is a prebiotic fiber so like an even if we warm it up again. Yeah, so we can cook cool and then warm up our kids pastor to improve the the prebiotic fiber content in there. Or we can give things like pasta salads or potato salads. Which Yeah, generally go down better than things like leek and onion. prebiotic fiber? Yep.
Fiona Weaver 34:00
100% Oh, that's good to know that I could feel like I'm doing something good by giving him some pasture. And that's been reheated. I think I have I have two kids. And one of them is probably sometimes fussy because she's three and her older brother is so fussy, but he's next level picky. Probably should do something about it. And it's really hard to introduce new foods to him despite doing it all the time and no pressure but nothing really changes for him. I think I probably need to go down that route of looking at everything. tricky because it's overwhelming. Yeah. And
Jessica Donovan 34:41
you get caught in that cycle of like, well, I know I need to give him more variety in his diet, but he won't
Fiona Weaver 34:47
try it. Yeah, yeah. And any. He's so sensitive to encouragement, even like he sees through gentle encouragement, like the tricks that would work for my daughter will not work for him.
Jessica Donovan 35:00
Yes, yeah, so fussy kids tend to be, you know, a bit more bit more stubborn. Yeah, particularly around food. I mean, there's so many things that can affect, you know, our kids eating preferences, but looking at maybe a probiotic could be a good a good option, because when there's an imbalance of the good and bad bacteria in the gut, you know, it, they do crave more of the starchy, carby kind of beige foods. And I've seen time and time again, when we start to rebalance that microbiome, even if it's just with a simple probiotic, good quality probiotic supplement, which are fairly easy to get into kids, because they don't have much of a taste, they start to naturally sort of accept a wider variety of foods. The other thing I just wanted to mention is zinc. So zinc deficiency can lead to more fussy eating tendencies. So and this is particularly true for those kids that aren't eating many zinc rich foods. And zinc is found in red meat, and seafood and fish. So a lot of those foods that fussy kids don't eat a lot of. So a zinc supplement could be worth looking at as well. And then there's all the sensory issues that can go with fussy eating,
Fiona Weaver 36:15
too. Yeah. So that's what came up for me before when you were talking about gut health impact on even ADHD and ASD and things because what came up was what comes first? Because they will get having sensory issues that will be impacting on their food preferences.
Jessica Donovan 36:32
Exactly, yes. And then. Yeah, the impacts on the microbiome. And that's such a good point, because we don't really know like, the, you know, the research hasn't kind of gone that far. So with Yeah, with kids with ASD, for example, they do tend to be fasciae because of the sensory kind of stuff that's going on for them. And then so that leads to less diversity in the microbiome. So it is, you know, it's that that cycle, but what we do see, and I've seen this in clinic multiple times, is that when we can start to, you know, improve the diversity of that gut microbiome, they do start to accept a wider variety of foods. And this does not happen overnight. It's a slow process. We need to be patient with this for sure.
Fiona Weaver 37:16
Yeah. You can you can see how complex and layered and holistic it all is, as well, hey, yeah, like it's not just about you know, I hear things like, Oh, if he's hungry, he'll eat or, you know, because he because he knows something else was coming and like, no, it's different with him. My daughter, yes. If she's hungry, surely, if she'll say No, she doesn't want something because it's yuck. And then she'll be like, Oh, fine. Just have it. Yeah. He will. He will. He will not eat.
Jessica Donovan 37:44
He's see. Yeah. That's the most frustrating advice as a parent, fussy child, isn't it? Like dolly when they're hungry? Yeah, it stopped. Oh,
Fiona Weaver 37:54
it was validating when he started kindy. And they had shared meals and he still didn't eat. So he was at that candy for two years and still didn't eat and what I'm realizing I probably should have got more help. Okay. So how can listeners find out more about how to care for their children's gut health, Jess?
Jessica Donovan 38:15
So I've got a couple of resources. One is I've got a free kids got health ebook, which is a perfect start, and will really help. I know, like, I feel like I've talked about so much today. So I'm hoping people listening, don't feel overwhelmed. But if you download the kids got healthy book kind of summarizes a lot of what we've talked about today and gives you some action points of you know what you can do. So that's a really good place to start. And I also have a masterclass coming up. That is all about gut health. And it is the three, three ways to transform your kids gut health to improve their immunity, allergies, behavior, and fussy eating. So I think you'll be able to put the link to that in the show notes. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So that's coming up on. I've got two sessions of that happening on 25th. October, the 25th. Tuesday, October the 25th. In the morning, and Wednesday, the 26th in the evening. So yeah, that's completely free to come along to as well. And that's going to give you lots of lots of extra information about gut health and really talk about those, those three key things that you can do to transform your kids got
Fiona Weaver 39:33
amazing. I will definitely be turning up to that. And I'm sure a lot of my followers, it will reply to them as well because so many of them, we have lots of baby mamas but also lots of toddler kid and baby mamas. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time today. Jess, I've really loved having you here and I tried to not make it about me and my family. As you talk I'm like, I want to know everything.
Jessica Donovan 40:00
We can do another episode on fussy eating. So yeah, I really
Fiona Weaver 40:05
do love that episode on Knox. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time.
Jessica Donovan 40:11
Thanks so much for having me.
Fiona Weaver 40:13
Thank you so much for listening to mama chatters if you enjoyed this episode, let's continue the conversation on Instagram at MAMA matters.au. Be sure to share this app with your family and friends. And don't forget if you liked it, please leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you again and I will see you next time.
