Transcript:
Hey Mama! Welcome back to Follow Your Gut with me, Sarah Bennett, founder of ōNLē ORGANICS. As a mama to four, I have gone through the ups and downs of sleepless nights, undiagnosed symptoms, gotten the complete runaround from the medical system and have found a different way. No more waiting your childs symptoms out, endlessly googling in the middle of the night and feeling lost and alone in your family’s wellness. This podcast will empower you to take leadership so your family can experience that deep health and happiness you so greatly deserve. In todays episode we are talking about the safety of rebalancing your gut while pregnant, breastfeeding and for young children.
There is a yearning in your dear mama heart for your family to thrive. For you, your partner and your children to be happy and healthy. This is beautiful because you are a strong force and whatever you desire is possible. Yet you have been culturally conditioned to always look outward for the answers of how to do this. We all have been. It takes great courage to take leadership, to look inward while blocking outside pressure. To believe in what your mama heart knows.
I hope to be a different kind of resource for you. I will never tell you what YOU should do. I am here to empower you with information and knowledge around the core of your well-being, your gut health, so that YOU are able to make educated and intentional decisions. I am here to support you in taking leadership of your family’s wellness. Todays episode falls perfectly in line with this. I get asked every single day by mamas “I know I have a gut imbalance, is it safe to rebalance while pregnant?” “Are your gut supplements Cleanse and Nourish safe while breastfeeding?” “Can I give Cleanse and Nourish to my infant?”
This question is comparable to “is it safe to exercise during pregnancy?” There are likely three places you will go to seek help in answering this question. Google, your healthcare provider and possibly a pregnancy and postpartum fitness coach. And it is very likely that you will get three very different answers. Google is just plain confusing because there is so much polar information on there. Your healthcare professional has the best intentions but isn’t necessarily trained in fitness and likely isn’t in tune with your bodies fitness level or what you did prior to becoming pregnant. Your pregnancy and postpartum coach specializes in fitness that compliments your expanding body during pregnancy and tightening body postpartum. She might ask you detailed questions to get really in tune with your bodies fitness level and even help you create a specialized exercise plan. But legally she cannot say “yep this is safe for you!” Ultimately YOU need to be the one that decides what information resonates with your heart best and make the decision that is best for you.
That fitness coach is most likely a mama who has children. She is probably doing what she does because she has an experience with it and her knowledge comes from a deeply rooted passion. I am that mama when it comes to your gut health. I am here because I have an experience that lit a fire in me and prompted me to dive head first into learning everything there is to possibly know about gut health. But just like that fitness coach, which by the way - if you need a pregnancy or postpartum fitness coach my friend Nicole is amazing. I will link her in the show notes because honestly, everyone could use her in their life. Anyway, just like how she can’t legally say “yes its safe” I can’t either.
And plus I don’t believe advise is effective when given this way and I know that the best answer will come from inside of YOU. Your healthcare provider might be quick to tell you that exercise isn’t safe but they don’t know the detailed plan of what you will be doing and you have to be in tune with your body and take responsibility for the decision you make. If you are working with a coach you need to trust her but more importantly trust yourself. The same is true for your gut health. Your healthcare provider maybe quick to tell you that no, doing anything with your gut is not safe during pregnancy, while breastfeeding or for young children. But in the end, that answer doesn’t have to be YOUR answer. I am not telling you to go against your healthcare providers advise but what I am saying here is how important it is that you educate yourself and at the end of the day make the decision that resonates best with your inner wisdom.
So what I am going to do in this episode is give you all the information about gut imbalance, my family’s experience with imbalance, how we have rebalanced our gut bacteria in different stages of life (during pregnancy, while breastfeeding and in infancy). I will share what my naturopath and midwife told me about supplements that are equalivant to what you will find in my rebalancing shop and lastly, I am going to share with you how each of these supplements work, the ingredients and any possible negative side effects so by the end of this episode you will know with certainty if rebalancing your gut is safe for you and your family no matter what stage of life you are in. This here my friend, is called empowerment. Combine your inner voice of wisdom and knowledge together and this is when you become the leader of your family’s wellness.
I would like to start off by talking about how common gut imbalance is. Everyone has experienced imbalance at some time in their life. Our gut bacteria fluctuates like our immune system and hormones. This is normal. But what isn’t normal is that we treat each symptom of gut imbalance like skin rashes, restless sleep, headaches, migraines, constipation or diarrhea, yeast infections, brain fog or inability to focus, unstable moods, the list is so long. Go back and listen to episode 3 to go over the entire list of common symptoms connected to gut imbalance. Anyway, we have all been conditioned to treat these symptoms individually. Right, your child gets an ear infection and you either use the mullein garlic drops or drop and liquid silver in the ear or your child is put on antibiotics. The ear infection goes away but the root cause of why your child got that ear infection in the first place was never addressed. Maybe your child develops a rash. You find a topical (maybe homemade with essential oils or calendula or castor oil. Maybe a silver gel like the one that I sell in my shop or maybe a steroid cream. That heals the rash but the WHY behind that rash was never addressed. One last example. You are experiencing depression so you see a psychiatrist and are put on antidepressants. This isn’t bad but again why were you experiencing depression in the first place? Maybe it is situational or maybe emotional but do you know what both of these have in common? Gut imbalance. Maybe something happened in your life that caused stress. Divorce, the loss of a child or loved one, job loss, a big move - maybe something traumatic like this or maybe something like postpartum depression, utter overwhelm and exhaustion induced depression. For children it could the introduction of a new sibling, change in sleeping arrangements, change in family dynamics like divorce or a move. Possibly starting school or changing schools, a sickness or bullying. Regardless, the situation caused stress which caused an imbalance in you or your child’s gut bacteria and THAT is what is at the root to every symptom you see. The rashes, the restless sleep, unhealthy poops, depression. Okay?
Stress itself is relative. It doesn’t cause symptoms. It impacts your gut bacteria and your gut bacteria impacts your hormones and immune system. 70% of your immune system is located in your gut. Many hormones including 95% of your serotonin are produced in the gut. If your gut is imbalanced this means your immune system is compromised and your hormones are not functioning optimally. So maybe you are diagnosed with clinical depression and are prescribed an antidepressant. This isn’t a problem because the antidepressant helps stabilize your brain and you feel good again. The problem is that the root was never addressed. So while you are now taking a dose of artificial serotonin, your gut is still imbalanced so your body is not producing serotonin on its own but this is being masked by the medication and you could go years or decades with the gut imbalance and never know it because every time a symptom comes up you mask it. Ibuprofen or peppermint tea for headaches, steroid creams or homemade salves for rashes, sleeping aids etc. But the why was never addressed. Your gut bacteria is the why underneath it all. Get in tune with your gut bacteria, while treating the individual symptoms rebalance your gut and actually heal your body from the inside instead of just healing each individual symptom.
Now that you understand the significant of your gut bacteria and how it is the WHY underneath so many common symptoms I am going to tell you about my family’s experience with imbalance and what we did to actually heal all of our childs symptoms by rebalancing his gut bacteria.
I am going to start this by reading a little story I share in my Happy and Healthy From the Inside Out course.
- Listen to hear our story -
There are so many potential long term risks with have too much bad bacteria and yeasts in the body and zero negative side effects from these supplements. It was a no brainer for me but of course I had to do my own research.
The supplements that I was give by my naturopath were equivalent to what you will find in my shop. Cleanse, Nourish and Balance.
Now that we are talking about supplements I want to take the time to break each one of them down. I believe that by sharing my family’s story and educating you on the supplements will empower you know make the best decisions for your own family.
Lets start with Cleanse. Cleanse is a pH Balanced Alkaline structured Silver solution. Silver has been used for thousands of years due to its natural antibacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral properties. Cleanse is what killed the bad bacteria and yeast in my sons gut. I like to picture it like the cleaning spray that cleans off your kitchen table so there is lots of clean space to fill the table with beautiful flowers and nourishing foods. The table is the gut. Cleanse cleans out the bad bacteria and make space for the good bacteria to come in and flourish. Again, it naturally kills bad bacteria, yeasts and molds. You may have heard of a similar supplement called colloidal silver. Let me explain the difference because I get asked this a lot. Silver is naturally an acidic base and in most silver supplements minuscule silver particles are suspended in purified water. This is typically okay for short term use but the acidity is hard on the gut. This is why I sourced an alkaline based silver because it is gentle on the gut and because many studies show that bad bacteria and yeast cannot flourish when the body is an alkaline state, as compared to being in an acidic state. When I built onle I had very clear mission. To source the absolute best quality supplements. I haven’t cut any corners or missed any parts because this is important to me. When it comes to silver there are many important parts to consider. The particle size, the concentration and the base. I made absolute certain to source the silver that is not only suspended in an alkaline water but is an effective concentration and manufactured in a way that makes the particle size small enough that it will not metabolize or build up in the body. The ingredients are silver and alkaline structured water. Thats it.
The only risk ever reported when it comes to using silver supplements is Argyria. Arygyria is a very rare skin condition where the skin permanently turns a gray or blue color. This is caused by consuming large amounts of improperly prepared silver solutions. The only reported cases of this happening are from people making their own silver solutions in their own homes. The silver particle size in Cleanse are very tiny, and are bonded to the water molecule in such a way that they cannot ‘fall out’ of solution or accumulate in the organs or skin cells. My naturopath and midwife both assured me that I could drink a gallon a day and never turn blue. My manufacture has since confirmed this. I personally have zero fear when it comes to using Cleanse. We use it for . . . . and because I have so intentionally and diligently sourced it I trust it with my whole heart. There isn’t an ounce of fear in me.
The last thing I need to share about Cleanse is that silver kills the strep bacteria so if your child is suffering with any strep related conditions like PANDAS it will help. It also kills the Epstein Bar virus so incorporating it into your wellness plan is a great option. Oh and Lymes disease - Silver again kills the borrelia bacteria so having my Topical silver gel on hand to immediately put on any tick bites and Cleanse to take internally brings me huge peace of mind. We spend a lot of time outside and I actually found two ticks in my boys this spring when we were traveling in Arkansas and I was so darn grateful I was able to be on top of any possible bacteria right away. I could talk about strep, Epstein bar and Lyme all day long. I probably better make an episode for each one.
Okay, now onto Nourish Probiotic. Nourish is a spore forming probiotic. What this means is that at the time of encapsulation, the bacterias actually go dormant. I like to look, think of spore, forming probiotics. Like maybe like a carrot seed. You buy carrot seeds, they're dried, they're dormant inside that cute little seed bag. And then when you plant them in rich soil and you give them water, they germinate and they grow the same is true for a spore forming probiotic. When you consume it germinates and it becomes more inside your body. These strains of probiotics tend to be more hearty and they're stronger, but they're kind of hard to come by. Most probiotics on the market are non- spore forming. Where spore forming go dormant, germinate and become more in the gut, non-spore forming probiotics begin to die shortly after manufacturing and by the time you take them there are so few bacteria still alive that they aren’t very effective. So if you are focused on rebalancing and maintaining balance you really want to take a spore forming probiotic because it is going to be the most effective.
Nourish is designed for infants to elderly. If you want to learn more about Nourish listen to episode 10. The ingredients are three different spore-forming bacteria strains, a prebiotic and the cellulose veg capsule. Thats it.
To give to children who cannot swallow capsules you just open the capsule and mix the power with water, Cleanse, breastmilk or applesauce.
Both Cleanse and Nourish can be used in higher doses to rebalance the gut and in smaller doses to maintain gut balance.
To recap, I have given you all the information about gut imbalance, shared my family’s experience with imbalance, the supplements we used to rebalance and the suggestions my naturopath and midwife gave me for my young children and me while pregnant and breastfeeding. I have shared with you how each of these supplements work, the ingredients and any possible negative side effects. So now you are empowered to answer the question of if it is safe or not for you you to rebalance your young child's gut or yours while pregnant or breastfeeding. Because mama, YOU are the one who always knows best and at the end of the day should be the only one answering questions like this for your family. If you have further questions please ask your medical professional or if I can answer any other questions please email me at www.onleorganics.com
Thanks for being here and for changing our world together with me. We do not have to settle with symptoms or a fine life. We do not have to settle for cultural norms and only seek advice externally. Together we can empower ourselves with knowledge so WE can be the leaders and gatekeepers of our family’s wellness. I’ll see you back here soon!
