Eat your way to health?

Why, as a traditionally trained Paediatrician do I write about food? How can I not? I believe food is an incredibly powerful “medicine” to prevent illness and achieve a strong healthy body and mind. Oh, and incredibly fun & tasty too!

The right foods help our bodies grow, heal, move, breathe, learn and laugh. How fortunate we are to be able to harness this. Although Hippocrates said it in c430BC “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” and traditional eastern medicine has implemented this for even longer, it has taken centuries for modern medicine to look closer. There are now sciences dedicated to it. For example Nutrigenomics and Nutrigenetics study how food and our DNA (and genes) interact to create health or disease. Multiple experiments and studies have been done, analysing foods to the smallest compounds to understand how they impact on our bodies. And the information is mounting.

So now when you tell your kids: “Eat your fish! Its good for your brain”, you can actually prove it!

But making good food choices is only the first step towards health. The next is having a healthy gastrointestinal tract (gut) so that our body knows what to do with food as it travels from our mouth to bottom. So it really is “you are what you eat and what you digest”. The gut is more than a conveyor belt moving food; it carefully selects what will enter or exit the body, helps produce energy compounds and even directly manufactures some nutrients like Vitamin K. And it’s the bacteria that live naturally in our gut (gut microbiota or gut flora) that play a major role in this.

Did you know that our gut has 100 trillion bacteria in it? Yes, 100 trillion! That’s about 10 times more than all the cells in our body. So essentially, we are more bug than human! These bacteria are now standing centre stage and the world is watching. The US alone launched the Human Microbiome Project at the National Institute of Health with a budget of over $110 million to identify microbes found in association with both healthy and diseased humans. Europe has a comparable project as does Brazil and all you have to do is Google to see how many up to date studies are being published.

The gut microbiota can almost be seen as a “super system” within us. So far studies have shown that good gut bacteria are linked to healthy weight, limiting allergy symptoms, fighting infection and controlling inflammation in the body as well as helping us absorb nutrients, manufacture vitamins and eliminate toxins. There have also been studies showing a clear link between gut health and mental health & behaviour. And we are only just beginning to discover more.

Sorry to have my geek hat on, but fascinating stuff!

The way I see it is that there are a few “pills to pop” and by this I mean following my prescription:
o Eat real food
o Optimise nutrition and use foods as medicine
o Keep your gut healthy
o Keep your environment healthy

In this blog I will explore these aspects in more detail and in relation to specific paediatric issues. As a mum I am also focused on supporting you and will blog about this too. But please know that the information I share is not intended to replace formal medical assessment and care.

So, thank you for joining me. I look forward to helping you and your children thrive!

Best,
Dr Deb