Living A Full Life

Crafting a Gut-Positive Future for Your Child with Dr. Christine Hafer's Wisdom

• Full Life Chiropractic • Season 2 • Episode 25

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Unlock the secrets to a flourishing gut microbiome right from the start, with the guidance of gut health guru Dr. Christine Hafer. Together, we navigate the complex world of infant gut health, emphasizing the pivotal role of maternal gut flora and how early exposure to beneficial bacteria can shape a baby's future wellbeing. Whether you're curious about the implications of birthing methods or seeking strategies to optimize your child's gut health regardless of your personal feeding choices, this episode promises a wealth of knowledge. Dr. Hafer and I reveal the continuous opportunities for enhancing gut wellness and the adaptability of our bodies, providing reassurance that it's never too late to improve gut health.

Transitioning to the world of growing children, we discuss the intricacies of food sensitivities, allergies, and the external factors that can tip the scales. Discover the power of a balanced diet, the role of environmental triggers, and the significance of gut-friendly foods post-antibiotics. Dr. Hafer also sheds light on the benefits of functional medicine in tackling conditions like SIBO and histamine intolerance, offering a tailored approach to dietary management. Our conversation is not just about troubleshooting but about building a roadmap for long-term, gut-centric health. For parents grappling with picky eaters or those seeking to reintroduce dietary diversity, this episode is your guide to nurturing a robust, happy gut in your children.

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Optimizing Gut Health for Infants

Speaker 1

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Living a Full Life. We are diving even deeper into gut health this week. If you didn't listen to the last couple of podcasts, it's okay. This information is going to be absolutely wonderful. Dr Christine Hafer is with me today. Hi, hey, and we're going to dive into when everything works well. We usually take it for granted, but we're going to be talking about when things start to not work well, what we can do to help put it back on track, especially with our gut. This one's going to be a great one. Take out your pen and paper for this one. That's going to be some great tips.

Speaker 2

Okay, so, based on research, a lot of what I do, almost all that I do, is based on research and there's a lot of research when it comes to gut health. There's kind of a normal progression, you know, when babies are born, that they go down and they then have good gut health from that. So we sort of talked about how to have good health good health last time, but I missed a couple of key, important things, so I wanted to touch base on them. But this is kind of the normal flow, based on, you know, a lot of research. And I'm going to talk about birth and breastfeeding, and this is not judgment, this is um, you know, if things don't go the ideal, ideal way, then we sort of have an idea of what to do to work on gut health and improve it, cause it's always improvable, no matter where you are. If you've had everything ticked off against you, you know, um, you haven't gone down the right path. There's always room for improvement on our gut and probably every adult needs to work on their gut health on a regular basis. So, um, even if you've done everything perfectly, but here's kind of you know, based on research and there's a um, there's been a lot of good microbiome research. Probably I don't know for the last 15 years been a lot of good microbiome research. Probably, I don't know, for the last 15 years we've sort of been involved. There was a company called Ubiome and when we moved to Tampa our family actually participated in some of the research. So we did stool tests for, like our babies and our toddlers and ourselves and they developed, I think I think from what I've talked to from these research companies, a lot of the norms that we understand for a lot of the gut tests. Um, and of course I'm sure there's more than one test that did all this, but more than one company, probably tons Um. But there's a, a group called tiny health. They do baby tests. So, um, babies don't really have a developed microbiome Um, babies have leaky gut. Um, leaky gut is when you have basically intestinal permeability so things get in and out. That would be less than ideal as an adult but for a baby it's normal Um, but here's the, the basic flow on what would lead to good health, so good gut health.

Speaker 2

So step one is mom, so mom's carrying a baby and mom has good gut flora. A lot of moms don't. And now you know there's some providers you can see and moms can do a vaginal microbiome test and see what's growing there. That should and shouldn't be, but that's just something regularly checked. So ideally a baby is born via vaginal birth. If they're born with a belly birth, a C-section, then that's okay too, but they're probably not going to have some of the same bacteria. There's different bacteria and that babies have in their guts when they're born. Vaginally versus born would be a belly birth. So that's step one.

Speaker 2

Step two is breastfeeding, and not all moms can breastfeed. Not all moms want to breastfeed, and that's fine too. Again, not a judgment, but when a mom has a good microbiome and she breastfeeds her child and there's some debate on how long, but I think two years is pretty accepted as normal that's not something all moms can do. Moms work, Moms are busy, moms have issues, we have a lot going on. But that would set us up for good health, good gut health.

Nutrition and Gut Health in Children

Speaker 2

So in saying that babies all have a leaky gut, they do and that's purposeful. So from what we understand, you know, breast milk is a lot of it is just fodder for gut health to grow the microbiome. That's a lot of what it does. So yes, there are nutrients yes, there are fats. Yes, there are proteins, yes, there's, you know, everything that a baby needs. It's a perfect food. As long you know, even mom that doesn't eat a perfect diet has a pretty good quantity quality of breast milk. So yeah, that's really important. Sorry, the dog is here. Our dog came up, um, but yeah, so um, the leaky gut really lends to a lot of things going in and out of the gut and growing um the microbiome, but also nourishing the baby in a better way. Um, I don't know what the research is on when leaky guts are no longer leaky. I can tell you from the research we did with Ubiome that you know it takes a couple years for babies to have a more normal.

Speaker 1

Normal quotes looking microbiome, Dr Melillo says. Two years to about two years old is when we start to develop our stop gut.

Speaker 2

Yeah, probably, and it might be a bit longer. It might be, and for some people it persists, unfortunately. And then we see things like food sensitivities, food allergies. There's a lot more reasons for that than just leaky gut, but that's yeah. Then we have food introduction. So when babies are sitting, when babies have a good pinch of grass and they're no longer none of the tongue thrust reflex than food, we talk about food, you know, eating lots of good fruits and vegetables, slowly introducing them to see if your baby responds to them or not. I think that's important too, because we all have genetic predispositions to, you know, having a lectin sensitivity or an oxalate sensitivity or cell oscillates, and some people, you know, have the genetic predisposition. They won't have that gene expressed. That's called like a SNP. Whether it's expressed or not. It's a different story. That's environmental, but you know. And so we can look at when we're introducing different foods to babies, whether or not they're having certain reactions. So skin reactions would show up. We think about skin reactions a lot in leaky gut, but kids have leaky guts. So one of the things that's important and there's a lot of good research on this when we introduce things that are more allergenic, so more kids have egg allergies and peanut allergies or gluten allergies. When we introduce them between there's eight to 18 months. For some reason they seem to do better with them. It develops less things. So a lot of people want to avoid gluten for a really long time, but probably it's a good idea to introduce them between eight and 18 months. Peanuts that's a big one for peanuts too, and I know there's a lot of controversy on peanuts, and it's pretty good idea to introduce it between eight and 18 months. Um, peanuts that's a big one for peanuts too, and I know there's a lot of controversy on peanuts, and it's pretty terrifying if you have a child with a peanut allergy, right, or another anaphylactic reality or allergy, but yeah, um.

Speaker 2

Next is eating a diet rich in fiber, um, polyphenols, um, getting good protein intake, which is again smaller for kids than it is for adults. Adults eat a lot more Um. And then avoiding as many ultra processed foods as possible. It's always really important. So sugary cereals are not our friends. Candy is not our friends. Small portions are okay, but this should not be the bulk of our diet. The bulk of our diet should be fruits, vegetables, proteins, healthy grains, um foods, all that, and then you know. The last piece of the puzzle, I think, is that we want to be on as few antibiotics as possible. You can't avoid it sometimes and some you know pediatricians are more apt to hand out antibiotics than others, but we want to avoid them as much as possible. If you do have to have them, you know, do things like probiotics, good foods after things like that.

Speaker 2

One more chink in the chain that can happen is different exposures that can cause certain allergies or sensitivities. So mold is one of those. We live in Florida. There is a lot of mold here. Mold's everywhere. It's easy for mold to grow, it's easy to be exposed to mold, and mold is one of those things that can trigger a whole immune cascade that can lead to things like food allergies where someone wouldn't have it before they might have it following the mold exposure. Chemicals can cause sensitivities. Again, genetics can play a part. So there's just a lot of things that can go right.

Speaker 2

When things don't go right, then we kind of talk about. We can do a more deep dive into what are the bigger conditions that can go wrong. So when we talk about what's not right, a GI map, a gut test, a stool test will kind of. Let us know if there's something growing in the gut that shouldn't be there or if there's intestinal health markers like fat in the stool which could be indicative of a few things in inflammation or too little bile. We can look at zonulin, which is a measure of leaky gut. So leaky gut is pretty.

Speaker 2

You know big People talk about leaky gut. Oh yeah, leaky gut. Basically what it is intestinal is intestinal permeability. So again we talked about you know big people talk about leaky gut. Oh yeah, leaky gut. Basically what it is intestinal is intestinal permeability. So um, again we talked about. You know that babies all have it. That's normal, they're supposed to, and then it starts to go away around age two um, normally. But basically it means that the um, the enterocytes in the gut, have too much space between them, so there are proteins that hold them close together and when they start to lyse away, there's different proteins like occludin.

Speaker 2

Zonulin is the one that we measure for a leaky gut test in the stool and that would tell us if there is a degree of leaky gut. So everybody's got some zonulin. Everyone has got a certain degree of leaky gut. Even if you don't, if you have the most perfect sealed gut ever there are still. You know macrophages are still going to go in through the enterocyte lining or not the lining, the holes between them. There will be small ones to sample what's in the gut, to see if there are pathogens in there, if there are other things going on. So you're supposed to have some amount of communication, but not too much.

Speaker 2

If you have too much then food goes leaking out. Big food particles. Gluten is a really big food particle. Not everybody needs to be gluten-free. Some people really benefit from it. Gliadin is one of those things. An anti-gliadin IgA is something we measure also in the GM app that shows us if someone is having an immune reaction to gluten.

Speaker 2

There are food sensitivity tests that can tell you if you're having reactions to things. They can be helpful for some people more helpful for kids, I think, than adults or somebody that's got a lot of weird mystery symptoms. Because they're not the most reliable tests, you could take one one day and then another day and they could be a bit different. There are certain things in the food sensitivity test that would make me think leaky gut. If you're having lots of small immune reactions to a ton of different things, that would be a sign of leaky gut, yeah, and then you know, with the stool test, with the GI map, you're looking for things like pathogens which can cause all sorts of problems in the gut lining, problems with the immune system can have yeast.

Speaker 2

Everybody knows about candida. Or, if you don't know about candida, it's an opportunistic yeast that should live in small quantities in the gut and you know, pretty much in the whole gut lining. So gut lining goes from mouth, sinuses could be included, because things drip down there, down the esophagus, the entire small, the stomach, the small intestine, um the colon, so everywhere. So when kidney takes over, it only really takes over, um, when there's not enough good bacteria to keep it down. So, um, that's why it's so important to have a good microbiome balance. Um, the other thing you know we can have parasites. Parasites are really big, especially in the natural health world. There's some debate about how many parasites are there. When you do parasitic testing there's only certain ones that can test. For Some people think that everybody has parasites. Some people think that maybe we should have a certain amount of parasites Not so sure that that's true.

Speaker 2

And then dysbiosis. So dysbiosis is when you have the wrong kinds of bacteria. So maybe you have all the right bacteria, but you have them in the wrong quantity. So normally we should have these commensal or keystone bacteria, those 12 or 13 that we normally check for. When they're too small or some of them are overgrown, they can cause some issues that can lead to opportunistic bacteria to grow like strep, staph material bacteria, other things like that.

Speaker 2

And then you know, in the gut too we can look at autoimmune bacteria, so basically bacteria that we know that when they're present, or when they're present in too high quantities, they can elicit immune response in our body. So bacteria in our gut are always giving other signals to other bacteria. We're more bacteria than we are human cells. I don't know what the exact number is, but we have more bacteria in our body than we have human cells. So we are incredibly dependent on the right amount of bacteria being in the right spot. So when the wrong ones are there, you know they're giving off chemical signals to each other. They are changing and hijacking our body in a way that maybe shouldn't be done. They are changing the way that our immune response happens, which cytokines are being released. So certain bacteria are known to be more inflammatory.

Speaker 2

Certain bacteria are related to certain autoimmune diseases and disorders. For instance, prevotella is linked to rheumatoid arthritis. That's a big one. That's known. Fusobacterium is one. There's just this big research paper that came out about how it's linked to colon cancer and they were just doing an oral microbiome test and they were finding a lot of fusobacterium in the mouth and then the link to metastatic colon cancer later. So, and it's also related to inflammatory bowel disease. We know as well. So, yeah, the bacteria really matters.

Speaker 2

When it's not going well and you have you know symptoms. You have gut symptoms. That's probably the easiest way to figure out that you've got a microbiome issue is gut symptoms, but it can be skin issues. So the gut and the skin are linked so strongly we can't separate them. Whenever somebody comes in, especially kids with skin issues, we look to the gut Autoimmunity. So gut health is a root cause for autoimmunity, chronic infections also. But when we think about gut health and we think about something like dysbiosis that can be seen in the body as an infection, when the wrong bacteria are growing in the wrong spot, it changes the way everything happens Because, again, we are more bacteria than we are human cells, so they really affect everything in our body.

Speaker 2

Food, allergies, of course, you know, we kind of talked about some of the triggers for food allergies. There's a lot of triggers we don't understand for food allergies too. So it's not just mold exposure, viral infections. There's a lot of reasons. We don't know why kids, kids, adults to have reactions to food. So food allergy is different than a food sensitivity. A food allergy is an IgE reaction. So those are bigger cells or bigger signalers. They have a bigger effect than you know an IgG or an IgA reaction as a food sensitivity and that affects our immune system as well. So our immune system when it has an IgE response, it can be pretty loud, right, you can lead to anaphylaxis, it can lead to swelling. I think we used to think in terms of allergies being really, really loud. But I think that a lot of allergists are kind of doing more testing and finding more allergies in kids too. But the IgG and the IgA are the food sensitivity reactions.

Speaker 2

We also call them delayed hypersensitivity, because you have leaky gut and certain bacteria have affected your gut, lining enough that that leaky gut has started and there is some food leaking through and you've been eating a lot of dairy. So now your body has found the dairy, has attacked, it thinks that it's a foreign pathogen. And every time you eat dairy your body has an immune reaction to it, not IgE, not that big reaction, but the delayed sensitivity. So symptoms might start three days after you've had that that dairy. So, um, while it's harder to pinpoint things like food sensitivities, they definitely are something that takes away and changes our body's reaction to things. And then you can kind of go down the path of food reactions.

Speaker 2

So specific chemicals or molecules in foods I don't think these. You know we all have genetic predispositions to maybe respond to these things or not. Just because you have, you can do genetic tests and if it shows that you have a lectin insensitivity or a lectin intolerance, you may never experience that, but if you have some gut issues or a viral infection and then your body starts to react to that, so lectins are one. Lectins are in a lot of different things. So a lot of these things are plant matter, which is a bugger because we need a lot of good plant foods fruits, fruits, vegetables, greens to have a healthy microbiome. But if our body's reacting to them they're going to make us feel pretty cruddy and it's going to be hard for us to eat them without our body having an immune response to them.

Speaker 2

So histamine is one. Histamine is linked a lot with autoimmunity. A lot of people who have autoimmune disorders um find they do better on a low histamine diet or histamine intolerance type diet. It's challenging but it can help. Oxalates are another. Oxalates are in so many plant foods, biggest in things like almonds, spinach. You can do a quick Google search and see what different food things are in different things. Salicylates are another one. Then there's more right, there's a bunch of different molecules but these are the typical big ones. The histamine, oxalates, lectins and salicylates are the biggest one that affect people. So that's another road to go down.

Functional Medicine Approach to Gut Health

Speaker 2

If you're having food reactions and you're not sure what's going on, yeah, and then in the know, in the long list of things that can go wrong, a lot of things that we're seeing recently lots of small intestinal bacteria overgrowth, so SIBO can be caused. Basically, what SIBO is is in our small intestine. We should not have much bacteria. So most of the gut bacteria in our body is in our colon, and so our colon is responsible for fermenting foods. It's responsible for producing butyrate there's so many things. It's responsible for producing certain nutrients, things like that. But when we start to develop more bacteria in our small intestine where it shouldn't be. That causes a whole host of things. That's another trigger for autoimmunity. That's a trigger for immune issues, because our small intestine is supposed to be absorbing water, it's supposed to be absorbing nutrients. It's not supposed to be breaking down fermenting food, like our colon is. So a lot of the bacteria that like to grow there will live off of things like methane or sulfur. So when someone has suspected SIBO, there is a breath test that can check it. We used to think it was either the methane or the sulfur, but now we start to know that there are different subtypes, so the breath test isn't always the best.

Speaker 2

One of the best things you can do with SIBO is to go on a low FODMAP SIBO specific diet temporarily and see if your symptoms improve Again. With histamines too, that'd be another way you can test if you have histamine intolerance or not is to avoid histamine laden foods, histamine liberating foods. Um, there is a really good website that is uh, I think it's mass cell three, 60.com, and they talk about a lot of these different foods and histamines and the different levels of them, and they have specific diets. So if you ever think why do I react to this specific food? You can you know if you've been reacting to it for a while. You can go on and you can figure out oh, it's got leptins in it or it's got histamines in it and maybe I have an overall issue with those things. But the trick is that even people with pretty overt histamine intolerance will react to one food and not others that other people have histamine intolerance react to. So it's very specific and it's very challenging to figure out what exactly you're reacting to.

Speaker 2

But you know, sibo can be triggered by decreased motility in the gut. Some of the things that lead to decreased motility can be gallbladder that's not functioning properly, too little bile. That can be caused by things like estrogen imbalance too much estrogen versus the unopposed progesterone. Um, low stomach acid is really big and so many people are on proton pump inhibitors because they think they have heartburn, because they have the gut, the burning in their gut right, the burning in their stomach, um. But then it's like 48 hours of being on a PPI. It starts to decrease the um, the HDL pumps, the hydrochloric acid pumps, and that can cause SIBO. You know it doesn't happen immediately, it doesn't happen in all people. But it's one of those things that is linked. And then if you've had previous surgeries or previous trauma, that can cause um an issue with how things are moving. So a lot of people that have had multiple abdominal surgeries will have um adhesions in their gut. So a lot of people that have had multiple abdominal surgeries will have adhesions in their gut. So that decreases the mobility.

Speaker 2

So what do we do when we have gut issues? So I just threw a ton of information at you. Some of it probably wasn't super necessary to hear. But what do we do? Testing Testing seems to be number one and if you do a stool test, you need to rule out pathogens, you need to rule out yeast, you need to rule out parasites, you need to see what is growing in your gut, what's not growing in your gut, and then when you find those things, you work on correcting them. So there's a lot of different things you can do Lifestyle changes I typically find that most people have enough issue with their microbiome that just doing a prebiotic and probiotic isn't going to fix it.

Speaker 2

They need things removed. Strep is really common. I'm seeing a ton of E coli, which we know isn't great. I'm seeing so much E coli lately and people that don't even have really severe gut issues. You would think that E coli, they'd be super sick and they're just not, but they don't feel well, they can't figure out why. Um, yeast parasites, these things all need to be removed and fixed, and then we need to work on the microbiome balance after too. So it's a long process. Gut healing takes a minimum of six months, and that includes all the lifestyle changes that need to be done as well while it's worked on. Anything else.

Speaker 1

No, you see parents and people defaulting to the literature, which is fantastic, and they're like you know. I've gone sugar-free, dairy-free, gluten-free to try and help myself because they're struggling or their kids struggling, and those are, I think, great starts. But Dr Christine just lined up a whole bunch of reasons why that may not be enough or it may not be the right thing. Maybe we truly don't have the dairy issue. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1

And these tests, especially like stool tests, are easily accessible. You can do it yourself online and send them in and get the report. But, as you can see, the flora and the microbiome is so complex that having a coach that knows what they're doing or a doctor that knows what they're doing goes way further than just being put on an antibiotic for 10 days and then hoping for the best. So that's what we help patients with and when they're frustrated, that's where functional medicine comes in and you start doing the right tests at the right time. But, like Dr Haver said, it takes a while. This is not a one week thing or one month thing. It takes a while and there has to be a game plan to get to the finish line with our guts.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, it's worth it, though, you know, when people come in and they've got symptoms that may not even be related to gut, but we talk about, we go through all the symptoms and all the health history and we, I think, wow.

Speaker 2

I think that maybe your gut was something we need to check on and they work on it. It's amazing what goes away. You know, sometimes people need to do multiple rounds of things. Right, they need extra work, but hormones can improve when gut health improves. Immune tolerance can improve when gut health improves.

Speaker 2

And a lot of people who you know it's fine to cut things up in the temporary, but when you are living off of some people come to me eating 10 foods because they can't tolerate other things. That sucks and that's not a long-term way to live. And the goal of any gut health plan should always get you to a point where you can be eating as many healthy foods as possible. And then you know I like the 80, 20 rule for gut healing. You probably need to be pretty close to a hundred percent for lifestyle changes for healing. But if you eat healthy and whole, clean foods 80% of the time and then 10 to 20% of the time you know you're eating things that are less than healthy, that's okay.

Speaker 2

But not everybody can just decide to do that and easily get their gut health when it's really wrecked really needs to improve. But it's just amazing to see how simply you know when people come in with these crazy symptoms and there's so much work they need to do and you know they're struggling so much just focusing on the gut to start and then doing a cleanup with hormones, doing a cleanup with, you know, some immune supplements or whatever else we figure out needs to happen after, and then it becomes a lot easier. When you work on gut health first, then you can do easier things in the future.

Speaker 1

Yeah, that was great. A lot of food for thought. The nice thing about functional medicine is it can be done virtually, and most of it is done virtually. So if you need some help, contact us at info at fulllifetampacom. We will guide you in the right direction. Whether we can or cannot help you, we'll find you the right help that you need. That's the first step to getting the help that you need. Visit us at fulllifetampacom. And just because it says Tampa, doesn't matter where you live, anywhere in Florida or United States or Canada, we can help you with all the labs and things that we can do right down the street from you. It's either blood work or a kit to the house and we can help you out. So reach out and any other questions you have. We love this stuff. Thanks for tuning in. See you next week.

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Dr. Enrico Dolcecore

Host
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Dr. Christine Hafer

Co-host