Therapist from Thrive Health holding toddler feeding tools

Gut Health, Food Allergies & Eating Skills

Digestion starts in the mouth! How you eat & swallow drives how your gut works.

How we chew changes how our insides digest & absorb

Gut health, reflux, food sensitivity and allergies can wreak havoc with sleep and breathing. We will match a skilled nutritionist/therapist to your case, who can best help you desensitise intolerances and calm allergies, to optimise your family's health and wellbeing, helping you to thrive.

Essential treatment for infections can have delayed effects and sometimes these are subtle and hard to identify. We be the detective with you.

After caesarean births, antibiotics can cause sensitivity but it can be hard to tell what is normal. Find out the causes of issues such as reflux, mucousy stools, dark flecks/colours, constipation and diarrhoea in infants, children & beyond. (NB newborn babies should stool every day per research & stool closer to most feeds in the early weeks if gut health is on track).

In mothers, a strong gut filter causes less issues for the breastfed baby in several ways.

Autistic & neurodivergent families often face challenges around variety, senses and textures, to meet nutritional needs. We can assist in a trauma informed & ND safe way. No ABA behaviourism required!

Gut Health

Our gut bacteria literally program our body, turning genes on or off! The gut is our second brain!

New research comes out every day showing how the gastrointestinal tract can affect every part of our bodies, from our mental health and brain development, to our digestion and even the immune system. How we physically chew and eat matters to how well our insides digest and absorb, especially in early childhood. 

We can support you and your child with: 

  • Tongue thrust

  • Introducing solids

  • Drooling & saliva control

  • Feeding skills

  • Jaw strength

  • Messy eating

  • Eating with a tongue tie

  • Low muscle tone

  • Slow eating

  • Tummy aches

  • Needing drinks with food

  • Textures

  • Coughing when drinking

  • Using utensils

  • Trying new foods

  • Sensory integration

Gut health plays a pivotal role in our overall health and wellness, even cancer and disease prevention. Let us show you what you can do about it, for life and for the future generations.

Eczema, cradle cap and candida thrush often come from within the gut, research shows, and is not meant to overgrow. Common - but not normal. We can help you get to the root cause to get well and stay well - you and your precious ones.

Asthma, hayfever and cows milk protein intolerance are all the same family, for example, mediated majorly by gut health. Some epigenetic lifestyle choice exposures we pass on to our children increase their risk too.

Many common deficiencies can be easily identified and addressed, the microbiome and mycobiome individualised and your enzymes and filters replenished to treat those pesky symptoms at the root


Food Intolerances, Reflux, Colic & Allergies

Food reactions in infants can present a range of symptoms, affecting skin, airway, mood, sensory and sleep, even from birth. When left unchecked, these can lead to long-term damage and greater risk of chronic illnesses later in life. The best time to address these symptoms is yesterday. The next best time to make life easier for you and your family is today!

Reactions may emerge at any age and stage in these areas or in less obvious ways. Not all reactions are digestive, such as colic, ‘high needs’, bloating, stomach pain, diarrhoea, eczema and other, more serious health complications. Food intolerances can be hard to pinpoint alone, uncomfortable for sufferers, and disturbed sleep can affect the whole family. 

Elimination & ‘TED’ diets can actualy do harm in many ways, if not the right fit for your health history bigger picture.

Skipping foods altogether when not necessary can be detrimental to a child’s health. Food allergy tests can help to identify allergies, but miss non-IgE mediated and cell mediated reactions. Without a comprehensive care plan, tests alone don’t offer solutions to optimise nutrition and fix the cause.

We create a care plan to address the root cause, heal and seal the areas in need, plan adequate nutrition and undertake diagnostic elimination, avoidance or reintroduction. Not every child has common sensitivities; some are harder to determine. Identifying these issues early on not only optimises children’s lives, but it also makes life easier for parents. We assist families, young babies, school-age children and adults to identify food sensitivities and reduce reactivity. 


Nutrition

Nutrition is a crucial part of creating a healthy lifestyle and minimising a myriad of health issues throughout our lives. I take an integrative evidence-based realistic approach that works. 

Take back control over your wellbeing and health. We can support your overall nourishment, including navigating food challenges or just optimising breastfeeding for baby or breastfeeder, postpartum healing, optimal childhood learning, or much needed increased parent brain capacity and energy!

Recover after antibiotics or find out the causes of issues such as constipation, reflux, mucousy stools and diarrhoea, from birth. Sometimes but not always, elimination diet planning is required: with a prep phase, removal phase, and reintroduction phase. Sometimes a healing phase or other approach is more appropriate to get results.

We can order vitamin and mineral testing, for repairing gut integrity and identifying deficiencies and mapping out a nutrition plan to solve these issues. Even mineral and vitamin deficiencies can cause intolerances. A leaky gut also affects mothers, babies in utero, breastfed bubs and children. Formula fed babies and parents who were themselves formula fed also have special needs.

We can support with ADHD triggers, autistic sensitivities & supplementation support, gut integrity, Failsafe elimination, FODMAPs research, GAPS and more.  We refer outside our team and can connect you with ‘tried and tested’ results based doctors & practitioners to match your needs.

Thrive Health child eating fruit from a bowl

If you want to finally solve

the food struggles, gut health or sensitivities,

reach out now &

start your healthy new future today.

Sleep

Eat

Breathe

Learn

Regulate

Thrive

Sleep • Eat • Breathe • Learn • Regulate • Thrive •