Nurturing Little Tummies: A Guide to Kids' Gut Health with Melissa Deally

My tummy hurts. Hey, welcome back, No Problem Parents. I am actually happy to welcome back Melissa Dealy to this latest episode of the No Problem Parenting Podcast. I'm your host, Jackie Finneman, and Melissa is an integrative mind-body health practitioner and trainer.

She's dedicated to healing and empowering clients worldwide, and today brought her back on the show so we could talk about the critical role of gut health in children's well-being. We're going to learn about the signs of imbalance, nutrition strategies, and lifestyle factors for a healthy gut. Plus, Melissa is going to chat with me about how we can educate our kids on their body, about their body, and even their poop.

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Welcome back, No Problem Parents. Today's topic is gut health, and gut health is the basis for your child to thrive. Our guest, Melissa Dealy from Your Guided Health Journey, is back with us today. She's going to share insights on the importance of water intake, stress management, and mindful eating for optimal gut function.

And we're even going to talk about the poop chart today. So if you haven't picked up our first book, No Problem Parenting, Raising Your Kiddos with More Confidence and Less Fear, the book is worth it just for the colored poop chart that's included in there, where we're going to talk about fun ways to get your kids interested in their digestive health and want to drink more water. And so welcome back to the show, Melissa.

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. I'm excited to talk about gut health and not just talk about gut health, but how we can talk to our kids about gut health, because I think what you're really great at, Melissa, is while you mostly work with adults, you are so great at teaching adults how to have these conversations with their kids and get them interested from the inside out about their own health and learning at a young age.

So it's not just don't eat that. No, you can't. You know, all the negatives. It's how's that going to make your tummy feel?

You know, I wonder. Perfect. Well, I want to just go back to the beginning of a child's gut health development. so that parents understand that as well.

And then we can dive more into how we can talk to our kids about their gut health. That our gut starts its development as we are being born through the vaginal cavity. Because as we come out of that vaginal cavity, we're picking up all of mom's little microbes. And that starts the development of a baby's gut.

And of course, our gut has more microbes in it than we have DNA in our body. It is its own little ecosystem living with inside of us that helps us thrive when it's healthy because it's helping break down all of our food to get the nutrients from that food into our cells to give us the energy in order to be able to, you know, run around and play with our friends and play sports and learn at school and, you know, have that concentration, etc.

A healthy gut is also producing over 90% of our serotonin, which is our feel-good hormone. And dopamine is also produced in the gut, and that is our motivation hormone. And when our gut isn't happy, the body can't produce enough serotonin and dopamine. And very often, that results in people feeling like they have depression or they've got anxiety, and they go to the doctor and they get put on a medication without even looking at the health of their gut. And I would really love for people to know that let's start by looking at the health of their gut because we can run a really easy urine test that will show if there's bacterial overgrowth, mold in the gut, yeast overgrowth in the gut that can be causing the gut not to function properly.

And that same lab also shows the neurotransmitter production. So understanding all of this is so key. And it was Hippocrates who said thousands of years ago that all dis-ease starts in the gut. And I like to flip that around and say all health starts in the gut. When our gut is in balance and really the body just wants to be in balance, that's when we thrive. And poor sleep will start to cause an imbalance in our gut because it starts to kill off our good microbes. And then the bad microbes, which we have, but we want to keep in check with the good microbes, can start to take over, right? High stress will do the same thing. And not to mention that high stress can cause poor sleep. So it's a double whammy. So managing stress, even in our children, is also really important. Giving them the space to have quiet time, to listen to some quiet meditative music,

to have that downtime and encouraging them to have that instead of always being go, go, go. You know, a lot of kids are really programmed in their day. It's get up, it's go to daycare, go to school, go to daycare, do some sporting event, come home and fall into bed exhausted. Where in their day are they getting a little bit of downtime to just calm their brain and calm their whole nervous system so we're not setting them up for an imbalanced gut? Coming back to the development of the gut. The next step in the development of the gut is being breastfed because the colostrum in the mother's milk, that pre-milk that comes through, is packed with good microbes to start the healthy life of their gut. And there's also really great prebiotics in all breast milk that aren't even meant for baby. They're meant for the microbes in the gut to feed the microbes, right? And we went through multiple generations of being told by the food industry that bottle is best. It's more convenient. You know, it's exactly the same as breast milk. Everybody should bottle feed. It's great for their bottom line of the food industry.

And it wasn't exactly the same as breast milk because it didn't have those prebiotics. It didn't have the colostrum. It wasn't feeding the microbes in the gut the way breast milk does. And so today we have generations of people that are now in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who didn't have the benefit of being breastfed, whose gut health is a problem. We also went through a stage of OBGYNs booking C-sections because, you know, they didn't want to be interrupted from dinner on Friday night, right? Again, thinking, well, it doesn't really make a difference if we do a C-section versus a vaginal birth. Well, when the baby's taken out by C-section, they're not getting the benefit of the microbes from the vaginal canal. Now, I realize some C-sections are necessary because they can save the life of mom and baby. And when they are necessary now in today's world, we know that we can ask the doctors to still swab the baby with the microbes from mom's vaginal canal. So they can still get microbes and here's a crazy thing too is i heard a doctor say once that he actually took his newborn baby home and let the dog lick that baby all over because guess what that dog is actually putting good microbes into baby's little gut we hear that we hear that babies eat you know they're crawling around and they're getting dirty hands and etc etc they're picking up more good bacteria and they'll lick their hands and touch their face and it gets on their skin.

We need that. We need our babies to crawl around in the dirt. We as adults can go out barefoot and walk in the dirt and go walk in the woods and we get microbes blown onto our skin and through our feet that are supporting our gut. So we don't need to panic about keeping our babies super clean all the time. There's things in our environment that are really helpful for our baby. What we are better off doing is removing the chemical toxins from our house and using non-toxic cleaners but we don't have to panic over every little bit of dirt they might get on them and in fact using antibacterial soap is terrible just gonna ask about that because it's antibacterial just like antibiotics it's killing off not just the bacteria the bad bacteria it kills off everything in our gut and causes an imbalance. And it's interesting because years ago, my sister-in-law, she had antibacterial soap everywhere in her house. And whenever I went there, I was like, I don't really want to use that. So I just wash my hands with water, right? And her kids were always sick. And I didn't know what I know now back then. And I always wondered why my kids never really got sick.

And her kids were sick all winter long, every single winter, missing a month of school at a time. And it's because I wasn't actually fussed about the dirt my kids were ingesting. And we didn't have any antibacterial soap in our house. And unknowingly, that was actually helping them have a healthier gut and 70% of our immune system is housed in our gut. So that means their immune system was healthier. And my sister-in-law who thought she was doing the right thing was actually killing her kids healthy gut and their and tanking their immune system as a result.

So this is why having a healthy gut is so important because it helps support our immune system, not to mention our liver is housed in our gut and that's our detoxifying center and I know we're going to have a whole other podcast on detoxifying. However, it's really important to be able to support the health of our liver because it's responsible for over 500 chemical reactions in our body. and when it can function properly, we can thrive.

And there's so much fatty liver out there today. So much liver disease out there today because of an unhealthy gut that is impacting the health of our liver. So much good information. And I also want parents listening today not to feel bad if they have been the mom who has the baby wipes on hand all the time and is constantly cleansing the area and the surface and the, you know, all the things.

And if they are noticing now that maybe their child's older and does have a lot of allergies or sensitivities to different things, you can't just be like, oh, well, we're just gonna, you know, let it go there. But there are ways to help. Yes. Cleanse the gut and detoxify.

And we're going to talk about that in a minute. But also for parents who did have a C-section, you know me, you know that my son was born C-section and that was a whole loss of dreams. And I did not want to have to do C-section, but we almost lost him at five months. There were health reasons that caused the C-section.

And there were things that we didn't know then. We don't know what we don't know. And every single one of us is doing the best we can with what we have, right? And so beating yourself up over what you didn't know at the time serves absolutely no purpose.

Now you know, and now you know that you can do things differently moving forward, right? And you can look at the health of your child's gut if you have concerns about it, and we can rebalance it now and set them up for success. And that's the beautiful thing about the human body is that when we create the environment for it to heal, it absolutely can heal. So what are signs that you might want to be looking for in the event that, you know, your child has some gut health issues?

it might be gas it might be bloating it might be discomfort after eating it might be skin issues eczema psoriasis rashes our skin is directly impacted by the health of our gut even acne in teenagers you know so often doctors are quick to put girls on birth control to help control it and yet what we really want to be doing is helping them detoxify their body and rebalance their gut health because that acne is triggered by hormones, but also by toxins. And again, the liver is the key piece in our body's ability to detoxify and help our body detox excess estrogen. So when there's hormonal imbalance, it can cause significant acne. I'm not talking about a little bit of acne here and there. That's completely normal. But if your child is struggling with a lot of acne compared to other kids and they're getting self-conscious about it, let's look at helping them to detoxify, helping them to rebalance their gut. And then also talking to your child about their poop, because poop is an indicator of an unbalanced gut. Constipation is not normal.

Diarrhea is not normal. And yet many people, and children included, live with this on an ongoing basis, not realizing that those are symptoms of an unhappy gut. And so having your kids look at that poop chart that you referred to from the first no problem parenting book and have that posted in your bathroom so they can become familiar with what healthy poop looks like. And we often tell our kids not to talk about poop. However, we need to teach them when it's appropriate to talk about their poop and when it isn't. We're not going to talk about our poop at the dinner table with friends over. However, it's appropriate to talk about poop with mom or dad at home one-to-one, not even necessarily with siblings around, so that they can be comfortable with understanding their own body and know that they should focus and be aware of how their body talks to them.

because those are all signs to do something differently. And so if they're constipated, one of the first things you want to look at is, are they hydrating enough? Because a good form stool needs a lot of fluid. We need to be drinking 50% of our body weight in water every single day.

So if the child weighs 50 pounds, they want to be drinking 25 ounces of water through their day. That's roughly a little bit over three cups. and how can you make sure that they're getting that? And when I say hydration, I'm very specific on what I mean by that as well.

It's not pop. It's not energy drinks. It's not coffee. It's not caffeinated beverages.

Yeah, it's also not juices. Juices can be good, but they're so sugary, and even in the natural sugar, right? That can kind of set you back. Exactly.

Exactly. So what I'm talking about is water. good healthy filtered water that you can flavor with the juice of half a lemon half a lime you know a little bit of orange juice in there for flavoring for older kids you know herbal teas etc we need and just plain water we need to get three cups of good hydration into them and people may not realize this but the body can better absorb room temperature to warm water better than it can absorb cold, cold water. And so think about that too, is what are you having your child drink? So during the school day, what are they taking to school to drink? I recommend a water bottle full of water. And that water bottle might hold 20 ounces. Have them drink that whole water bottle and then you know they're almost all the way to their three cups. And they can have some water in the morning, some water with dinner, and you've got them to their three cups plus of water in the day quite easily. Yeah, it's always a great idea. It's like saying no to something by saying yes to something else. So when the kiddo asks for juice, you can say, sure,

you can have juice just as soon as you've had your 25 ounces of water or your 50 ounces of water. Exactly. So that stool chart can be really helpful in having kids start to understand how to know what good stool looks like and how to listen to the symptoms of their body. So if the stool is really, so if the stool is really pebbly or lumpy, that's a big indicator there's not enough water.

What about if the stool is really juicy? Well, perhaps they're not getting enough fiber in their diet. Sometimes it can be because there's, you know, some kind of virus or bacteria in their system that's working through their system. But if it goes on for, you know, too long, then I would be questioning, are they getting enough fiber in their diet? Because in today's world, many people are not getting enough fiber and they're drinking juices instead of eating the fruit. And when you eat the fruit, you get the fiber with the juice and then you don't have the insulin spike from the sugars in the natural sugars in the fruit, right? What vegetables are they eating in their diet? Can you sprinkle some hemp seeds or some psyllium husk or some flax seed over their meals or put that into their meals to increase their fiber intake as well.

So these are all things that you want to be looking at if that stool is too juicy, as you put it. I like that term, Jackie. Well, I just say that because that's what I hear little kids say, mom, I had a juicy poop. It's disgusting, but you know, but it also, I also like the poop chart for them being able to talk about the different types of poop. So when the kiddo's done and they're looking at it which helps them want to poop by the way if you're having a hard time training your kiddo a lot of times it's because maybe when it plopped in the toilet it splashed their bum and it scared them or maybe it's coming out really hard and or too big and it hurts them you know to go so there's there's also but when you can explain when kids know without us trying to sugarcoat anything or convince them when they know the facts about things and we're educating them,

they're more likely to be engaged with it and to have less challenges and problems and behaviors around it. Exactly. And just as we wrap, I'll just leave two other things for parents to be aware of that if they are struggling with their bowel movements, one thing you can do is to have them put their feet on a stepping stool. So their knees are higher than their hips because the way that the bowel is in the body is it helps to have the knees higher than the hips to help ease that out of the body. So you can actually buy specific stools on Amazon to go have in front of your toilet if people feel they need that. Or if you already have a stepping stool, because you got little people in the house, as long as it helps lift their knees up a little bit higher. So there it curves their little bum in such a way that it's easier to pass the stool.

the other thing with when kids have constipation is it can be because of an emotional issue and that they're hold where they're holding it in right and so that's where we can work with some timeline therapy that i do in order to help the child release that emotion instead of holding it in. And that can if you've tried everything else, and we've looked at their gut health, we've rebalanced their gut, and we're still struggling with constipation, then I would look at what's the emotional body doing right now. And we address it in the emotional body. So I just wanted parents to know that as well. You learned in our series that we've done with Melissa here, just search Melissa Daly, No Problem Parenting Podcast, or you can go to yourguidedhealthjourney.com and check out Melissa's Don't Wait for Your Wake Up Call podcast as well. Listen to all these different episodes and you're going to find this common theme of gut and sleep and how our bodies are designed to heal themselves. Now, it doesn't mean we're not going to get diseases from external toxins and, you know, things in our environment, right? That is a risk. I always have such a hard time talking about that because children do get cancer. Adults get cancer. I mean, there are things that it's hard for me to say, oh, everything's so preventable. And then, you know,

I've got three relatives right now who are dealing with cancer. So it's, it's tricky for me. And I'm always wanting to be so sensitive to everybody. I'll help you with that. Is that dis-ease of the body, which is when I refer to dis-ease of the body, I'm generally talking about all the chronic illnesses, obesity, heart health issues, diabetes, autoimmune issues, leaky gut, some forms of cancer, all of those are lifestyle diseases. And they are typically caused by three things, two main things, which is toxic load. And the other is nutrient deficiency. So if the gut isn't working well, it's not able to absorb good nutrients. Depending on the diet, there might not be enough good nutrients in the diet. The standard American diet gives us only 17 of the 99 zero nutrients that we need to thrive. In addition to that, the toxicity, you might be thinking, he's only three years old.

However, mom's toxic level will flow through the placenta into baby. So our babies are being more, are being born more toxic than ever. And when I run labs, which I can run for kids as young as three years old, I can see kids that have aluminum toxicity, mercury toxicity, copper toxicity, etc. And we can address that, right? Because having that toxicity in your life from such a young age all the way through, the body can't cope with it. The body doesn't know how to get it out.

We have to take action to help get it out. And if it stays in there for years and years and years, it will end up in dis-ease later on. We can remove it. And that's just what people need to know is that yes, people get sick. Yes, there are diseases. They build up over time in the body.

But there are so much that we can do for our children today in order to clear it out of their bodies so that they no longer have that. And in the process, we teach them about this so they can do it for themselves forevermore. Oh, this is so great. And that segues us right into our next two episodes that we'll be doing in March with you, Melissa, on detoxifying for wellness, navigating toxins and nutrient deficiencies, and then navigating food sensitivities, which we have talked about and discussed with you several times here and there on other episodes. But we're going to get into all of that in March, our continued conversation. Be sure to hit the follower plus sign on the podcast app that you're listening to and reach out to Melissa. If you haven't noticed already, she's a wealth of knowledge. Sometimes I don't even know how you retain all this information,

but you're just so authentic, down to earth, relatable, and intentional when it comes to health. And you teach it in a way that parents and lay people can understand it and it makes sense to them. So I really appreciate you, Melissa. Thanks so much for being back.

Thank you. And it's my pleasure to be here. And I love being able to teach and share this information because we can make different decisions when we understand how things are impacting our health. Our kids can, and so can we as adults. So thanks for having me.

All right. That's it for today's episode of the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Hey, thanks guys for tuning in. If you found value in today's episode, click the subscribe button and share it with other parents who might need a little boost. Stay connected on our socials by following at No Problem Parents for more parenting tips and get your free download of the 60 ways to respond to your kids without losing your cool.

Go to noproblemparents.com. Until next time, remember, your confidence comes from embracing both successes and setbacks. So take a deep breath, embrace the chaos, and remember, you got this.