Functional Nutrition for Children

Diet has a tremendous impact on your child’s behavior and perceptions because processed foods lead to something called cognitive intoxification.

As an example, if you fill a tube with water then add sugar, you begin the recipe for the production of alcohol.

All you need is yeast and guess what? Yeast line the gastrointestinal tract and are often out of control in children with ADHD, OCD, learning challenges, eating disorders, autism, and behavior disorders.

With sugar and water, yeast begins to ferment, which is how alcohol is made. When this happens, the yeast produce toxins that affect your child’s brain, which then leads to irregular behavior, specifically problems with hyperactivity, an inability to concentrate, emotional disruption, and defiant behavior. And with these sugar highs, come crashing lows that look like depression and fatigue.

I see this in infants, toddlers, and teenagers alike.

Sadly, the typical standard American family diet is comprised of mostly processed foods that contain chemicals and morphine-like substances that have proven opioid effects (excitotoxins) on the brain. In-N-Out burgers with fries, pizza, McDonald’s chicken nuggets, Oreo cookies, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream affect every aspect of your child’s life including mood, behavior, and perceptions. If these foods make you feel terrible, just think for a moment how a growing child’s brain would feel on them.

Gluten-free products aren’t much better and are mostly clever food marketing. Keep in mind that 40% of the time meals labeled gluten-free in restaurants still have gluten in them, and 20-80% of the products labeled gluten-free in grocery stores contain gluten. This is why I’m not a fan of them and why many of the people that come to me for guidance have not seen improvement on a gluten-free diet alone.

In fact, several years ago, General Mills came under fire for labeling their dry cereal Cheerios (among others) as gluten-free. When people starting having severe reactions to these products, testing confirmed they indeed contained high amounts of gluten. If you’ve tried a gluten-free diet with little success, this is probably the reason why.

Diet does make a difference in your child’s ability to think, feel and act in a healthy way, but it’s one piece of the puzzle. We must also understand what their unique biochemical blueprint is, too. This is important because depending on your child’s chemical imbalances, not every whole food that comes from the ground will be appropriate for them.

Take copper for example, it’s very common for children to be overloaded with copper, especially those with autism, hyperactivity, and behavior challenges. As a conductor of energy, copper lowers dopamine and increases norepinephrine in the brain. Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter needed for attention, learning, and emotional responses. Norepinephrine is a regulator of attention and impulsivity.

A gluten, dairy, and sugar-free diet is an important starting point, but we must also correct the high copper by focusing on low-copper foods and nutrients for healing to occur. The same holds true for under and over methylation, zinc deficiency, and Pyrrole disorder, also called pyroluria. Gut inflammation is also an important factor to look at in children because microbial changes can impact their behavior and perceptions, as I shared previously about yeast.