How’s Your Inner Garden?

Are you taking care of your inner garden, the microbiome?

Our microbiome consists of trillions of bacteria that live throughout our body, concentrated in our colon.

These microbes aid in digestion, absorption of nutrients, managing inflammation, and producing vitamins and neurotransmitters that affect our brain.

If there’s any disruption in your microbiome, inflammation and illness can ensue.

Factors that can disrupt the microbiome are c-section delivery, lack of breastfeeding, antibiotics mom may have received during pregnancy, medications such as antacids and anti-inflammatories, infections, stress, lack of sleep, toxins, and an ultra-processed nutritionally depleted diet.

This can lead to dysbiosis, an imbalance of microbes which can start with GI symptoms such as bloating, gas, abdominal discomfort, constipation, and diarrhea.

If this imbalance persists, the lining of the intestines will break down causing a “leaky gut” leading to inflammatory disorders such as Autism.

The metabolites released by these problematic germs in the gut will travel to the brain leading to many of the sensory, motor, cognitive, and psychosocial delays that we see with our kids.

Taking care of your microbiome is like tending your garden.

You want to feed the good guys with foods high in prebiotic fiber and phytonutrients such as fruits and vegetables to allow them to thrive.

Fermented foods such as sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi, and yogurt provide probiotics to replenish our microbiome with healthy bacteria.

When you take care of the good germs by feeding your inner garden healthily, they’ll prevail and decimate the bad germs- like getting rid of the weeds.

Studies are currently being done on fecal microbial transplants from healthy donors to kids with ASD and the results look promising.

Hopefully, this will be an FDA-approved treatment shortly.

Applying the pillars of a healthy diet, exercise, sleep, stress, and toxin removal plays a tremendous role in supporting a healthy microbiome to help heal our kids.

#autism #ASD #microbiome #leakygut