A Mother, A Nurse, and a Gut Feeling

Sometimes your nursing brain goes out the window when it comes to your kids. And sometimes it becomes your second brain and you have a gut feeling when something isnt right. That was the case for my six year old that was struggling with abdominal complaints. My son had gone for a few months of on-again, off-again stomach complaints. He had constipation and diarrhea and abdominal pain that would bring him to tears. He only ate the same five things and would cry everytime he tried something new, convinced it was the reason behind his complaints. He started having anxiety about eating because everytime he ate it he was in pain. As a functional gut health nurse, I knew something was going on and I just couldnt put my finger on it quite yet. I did what any parent would do, I took him to his pediatrician for further advise.

The pediatrician asked a few questions about it and we were told to get an abdominal X-ray to make sure there wasnt something structural that was causing this. After the X-ray came back "normal" - other than showing he had lots of stool in his bowels consistent with constipation - we went back to the pediatricians office. This time they said they would want us to give him miralax for constipation, do a 3 day food journal and if we couldnt figure out what food was causing this, then they would like to prescribe him omeprazole. For those of you that might not be familiar with

one of the most common drugs on the market - omeprazole is proton pump inhibitor that essentially slows down or stops stomach acid production. If you know anything about me as a holistic and functional gut health nurse, you know that medications for the first line of defense are not my jam. I ask WHY. I dig deeper. I want to know what the body is trying to tell me with symptoms. Symptoms are like your body's check engine light - its not just there for fun. There is something going on and the body is asking for help. It asks before it screams and our job is to listen before it worsens and screams. Naturally, I was not a fan of this answer. Unfortunately, we saw two providers in the office in hopes that we would get additional answers, and both of them said the same thing. They mentioned a 3-day food journal but they gave me no insights as to what "foods" we should be concerned of. I saw this office 3 times for this same issue and was told the same thing each time - we really should just start him on omeprazole.

My kids eat pretty healthy. They do not eat processed foods and we do our best to incorporate lots of fruits and vegetables. My six year old is probably the least healthy in his eating habits though. He does not want to eat a vegetable and lives off apples (organic of course). Although I know apples are good for you, I also know that variety is best and we do try to encourage a variety but this little guy is stuck in his ways of what he wants! I decided to seek another opinion. As a functional gut health nurse, I really wanted to do functional stool testing on him but I knew I needed a pediatric expert's assistance with this. I dont have any experience in working with kids and I also knew if his stool test came back with something that needed treatment, I was going to need an expert in this. We took him to a pediatric natropathic doctor. I spent about an hour filling out all of his paperwork that consisted of every question about his health imaginable. I knew that this would be a better approach based off the paperwork alone. The natropath took an hour to meet with my husband, my son, and myself. We talked about our family and all of my son's issues over the last year. He looked at what his typical diet consisted of and recommended that we hold off on peanut butter. My son is a big fan of peanut butter and jelly. We buy organic peanut butter and jelly and I make my own bread for my kids every week out of organic flour, but I knew this was coming. Peanut butter is known to harbor mold toxins and cause gut health problems. He also recommended functional stool testing and an organic acid test. Functional stool testing is one of my favorites because it tells the story of what is happening with the gut microbiome. Organic acid tests (OAT for short) are performed on urine and show some gut microbiome issues but also explores detoxification, mitochondria issues, and metabolites for neurotransmitters. Both are very comprehensive when determinining the root causes of your health concerns. If you would like to learn more information about OAT testing, click HERE. If you would like to learn more about functional stool testing, click HERE.

After eliminating peanut butter his symptoms resolved for several weeks! It was so reassuring to see a simple dietary modification improve his health. I have spoken about this in several of my blog posts previously and why I advocate for a food first approach. It is imperative that we investigate what we are putting in our bodies before we attempt to test or medicate. I can say that although this made a huge impact, we did continue to see abdominal pain concerns and some anxiety from my kiddo so we decided to do the functional stool test and the OAT. The OAT does have some dietary restrictions prior to collection and one of those being to refrain from eating apples or juices for 48 hours. This was something my son was not willing to do for quite some time. He eats 2-3 apples per day and he struggled with the idea of eliminating them completely for two days, but, thankfully, we eventually were able to talk him into it. I am happy to report that we received his functional stool test results and everything looks great! He had some elevated markers for a keystone bacteria that we all have in our gut microbiome but his was a little higher than we would like to see. This could be related to constipation and the stool sitting in the colon for too long, and from maldigestion. Maldigestion is when food is not broken down enough to be absorbed. This can be due to lack of chewing, or low stomach acid. Now this is important in his case because, if this is his cause, why would I want to give him a medication that is going to WORSEN his problem? Let's go back to omeprazole and what it does - it causes our body to decrease stomach acid production. If someone already has constipation or maldigestion, stopping their stomach acid is only going to make this problem worse. Also, these medications are meant to be short term for ulcers and not an end solution. Many people go on these medications for the symptoms that they are experiencing and have a difficult time getting off of them because it causes significant rebound acid reflux symptoms. This is something that you should work with a provider to wean off of in order to reduce these symptoms. But I see patients all the time that are on these medications indefinitely for YEARS!

Instead of starting a medication that would only be a band-aid solution we have the plan of incorporating more colorful foods into his diet. Now that he knows these results we can discuss the importance of eating a rainbow diet. He is more willing to do so since we reduced the peanut butter intake and he can tolerate more foods now. This is evidence of "root cause" healing and how taking a more natural approach is more beneficial in the long run. Had we not listened to my "gut feelings" or my "nurse brain", we could have easily put him on omeprazole and his problems would only worsen with time. In my next blog post, I will go into the benefits of stomach acid and how suppressing this is making our chronic diseases rise.

If you are struggling with gut health concerns and looking for more insight on how to get to the "root" of your concerns, I offer 1:1 consultations with clients for this exact reason. Nurses are at the forefront of educating their patients on how to improve their health. I love seeing my clients (and my own kiddo especially!) benefit from getting to the root of their concerns. If you are interested in booking with me or just curious what a functional gut health nurse is, click HERE to book a FREE discovery call with me! Until next time, I am rooting for your healing - one bite at a time!

-Stephanie AKA Food First Nurse