Transcript:


Welcome back to Follow Your Gut. I'm Juniper, founder of ōNLē. Today we are talking about the symptoms you'd probably never think were connected to your gut. Because most of us don't find gut health because we're searching for gut health. We find it because we're trying to understand the eczema, the reflux, the colic, the allergies, the anxiety, the sour-smelling poop, the chronic constipation or diarrhea, the fatigue, the dysregulated hormones or that feeling of you yourself or your child, something just doesn't seem right. So today we are talking about the connection. Most of us were never taught to look for.

When your child has eczema, you're not thinking about gut health. When your baby has reflux or colic, you're not thinking, Hmm, I wonder what's happening in their gut microbiome. When your child has allergies, behavioral challenges, sleep issues, constipation, sensory struggles, speech delays.

There isn't a whole lot of support that helps you connect it all back to their gut. And when you yourself you're feeling exhausted or inflamed or anxious, hormonal, foggy, reactive, or just off.

No one's pausing to say, let's get a closer look at your gut. the support that you receive is how do we fix what's right in front of you? How do we fix the symptom that we're seeing? But the problem here is that none of these are separate issues.

And before we go into this any further, I want you to release any pressure that you should have known sooner. Because most of us don't find gut health by searching for gut health. I'm gonna say that over and over in this episode. No one finds their way here because they suddenly have an interest in gut health. We find it because we're trying to understand the symptoms that are screaming at us. The eczema, the reflux, the colic, right?

So today this isn't about making the gut another thing for you to obsess over. It's about helping you see that the symptom you've been fighting may actually be a clue.

I know this because I experienced it firsthand.

I wasn't necessarily not looking at gut health, but I was searching what's causing my child's eczema. Why does he have reflux and colic? And no one else in our family has allergies. Why does my son have all of these allergies? I was looking at all of his symptoms as individual issues. And when we'd go to the doctor, the doctor did the same thing. And they would kind of brush.

The more subtle ones under the rug, the ones that seemed a little bit more vague or that they didn't have a solution for. And they would hyperfixate on the ones that, especially the skin rash, right? The eczema. You can see it. I would carry poopy diapers into the pediatrician, diapers that were full of mucus and some streaked with blood. And I was told, ⁓ this is just normal. Your child's digestive system is just figuring things out.

It's okay. And then as he got older and he's eating solid foods, I'd take his poopy diapers into the pediatrician. Why is he pooping whole blueberries and whole sunflower seeds? Why isn't his body breaking these down? this is just part of a child's body learning how to eat foods. This is normal. These were all red flags. And they were all connected to my son's gut. But again, you know, we'd go to the allergist and Gosh, he's tested severely allergic to nine different foods. I was told this can just happen. It just happens to some kids.

You know, maybe you ate certain things in pregnancy that you shouldn't have eaten, or maybe when you were like in the beginning of breastfeeding, you should have exposed him to more through your breast milk or like it it it's a blame that always comes back, right?

All of that to say, I wasn't trying to become a gut health person. I was a mom trying to help my child, When I finally found answers and the connections were made, that every single one of his symptoms was connected to a significant gut imbalance. I was breastfeeding him and I was also pregnant with my third. I learned that the reason my son had all these symptoms since birth is because I unknowingly remember I never had symptoms. I've always had healthy poops. I never had symptoms that I would have connected to my gut.

I'd lived most of my life with a gut imbalance that I didn't even know that I had. And I passed that on to him during birth. This is what happens when we birth our babies. We inoculate them with our microbiome. And even if your baby is born via cesarean section, while their first exposure is environmental bacteria, you are still inoculating them through your breast milk. And so while my milk Wasn't the problem and I wasn't the problem and you aren't to blame. None of this is about shame and blame and guilt. Okay. This is about awareness and education so that we can do things differently moving forward. Which is exactly what I did. I rebalanced my gut because I was still breastfeeding him. And to give him all the support in fully healing, he rebalanced directly, and then I was supporting him through my milk.

Rebalancing myself changed me in ways I could have never imagined. And now that I'm on the other side of it, I can see so many symptoms that I've experienced throughout my life that were connected to my gut, but I had no idea. Let's take my seasonal allergies as an example. I just thought that's just how it was. I mean, I would have hysterical sneezing fits.

I'm talking 20, 30, 40 sneezes in a row where I just couldn't stop. And my eyes were so itchy and so burning. I wanted to rip them out every spring throughout most of the summer. As I got older, this turned into this like inflamed puffy bump under my eyes. And everyone, you know, just use Benadryl, just just get like an antihistamine. It's all you can do. It's just part of it, you know, that pollen.

Guess what? Since healing my gut, I have not experienced seasonal allergies once.

And I can't tell you how many messages I've received from women who have experienced the exact same thing. They don't get seasonal allergies anymore. That's just one of the many, many, many symptoms that has completely changed, that has gone away, that I no longer experienced, that I did not have the awareness to connect to my gut. I thought it was just something that I had to deal with.

And of course, we all live most of our lives this way. We miss the pattern because in our medical system, each symptom is put in its own category. Each symptom you go see a different specialist for. It requires its own product, its own prescription, its own protocol. Eczema gets treated as a skin issue. Reflux is treated as reflux.

Allergies are allergies, behavioral issues that gets thrown into behavioral and psychiatric and constipation. Well, gosh, it's a bathroom issue. You're just gonna need mirror. Our bodies are developing symptoms because we have. Because the foundation of that part of the body is disrupted.

But because symptoms are separated like this, of course we naturally believe that they're separate. And of course we do all the searching and the the looking and the trying so hard to heal each individual symptom. And even if you have made these connections yourself, I mean, I know I intuitively did. I would ask every doctor, are you sure this isn't connected? Are you sure there's no connection here? And every single time, no, no, no.

It's exhausting. 

Right now, I invite you to start seeing symptoms through a different lens. Symptoms are the doorway. Eczema is an invitation. That reflux, it's a door asking you, please come in, come and help my body, come and heal the root of the body. Same with colic, constipation, anxiety, fatigue, Hormonal dysregulation.

The symptom is what gets your attention, but it may not be where the whole conversation begins.

So I want to break this down with you. When I say gut health, I'm not just talking about stomach aches or bloating. And I'm not just talking about whether you or your child poop every day and the consistency of your poop. Your gut is your body's core foundations it directly influences your digestion, your nutrient absorption, your immune function, your inflammation, your skin health, your mood, your cravings, your energy levels, your nervous system, your hormones, and how resilient or reactive your body feels.

So the biggest mistake that our medical system is making, it's not that they're offering relief to symptoms, because relief matters, but the mistake is that it stops there. Medications relieve the symptom. They don't heal the body. And if we only treat the symptom, we're gonna miss what's going on underneath it. And your body's going to develop a different symptom to communicate with you. So if we only treat the skin,

We're gonna miss the immune and the gut connection. If we only treat behavior, we're missing what's happening with the gut-brain connection. If we only treat the anxiety, we're missing the inflammation, the depletion, and the dysregulation underneath. If we only treat bloating, we're missing.

The leaky gut and the yeast overgrowths. This can really feel like the biggest breath of fresh air.

How much relief does it bring you that you don't have to figure out maybe your child has two symptoms, maybe they have ten. Maybe they have symptoms that you don't even recognize because they're less significant than the ones that are screaming at you. Or maybe this is you. Maybe you have lived your whole life with seasonal allergies like I did, and you just get through it. Or maybe your anxiety or your depression, or you just don't feel alive. You don't wake up with passion and purpose the way that you know you are meant to experience.

Instead of seeing everything that you or your child are experiencing as separate issues, all separate issues that need to be, I'm saying this in quotes, fixed individually. When you get to just focus on one route, healing becomes so much more simple and so much more clear.

Before we go any further I need you to hear me. You have not failed your child because you were looking to heal their skin. You haven't failed because you were focused on the reflux or the behavior. You're not a bad mom because you didn't know this sooner. You followed the symptom. That's what we all do. Now you have a new lens, and this new lens gives you new questions to ask. So right now I want you to ask yourself, are symptoms showing up in more than one area? Has your child experienced skin, digestion, immune, sleep, mood, and behavioral issues? Do your symptoms feel scattered but persistent? Have you been treating one thing at a time without lasting change? Does the body feel more reactive than resilient? If yes, the gut is the most important place for you to begin.

When you support the foundation, you're not just trying to quiet one symptom. You're supporting the body's ability to digest, absorb, eliminate, regulate, clear, rebuild, and respond. For your child, this will look like a child who feels more comfortable in their body, more regulated, more rested, less reactive. For you, this will look like clearer energy, calmer skin, easier digestion, a steadier mood. Less inflammation, fewer cravings, and a body that finally starts to feel like home again.

So I want to close this out with gently reframing your symptoms with you. Because the things you've been trying to get rid of are the thing that finally helps you understand what your body has been asking for. The eczema, the reflux, the anxiety, the inflammation, the fatigue, the behavior. The symptom is not the enemy.

It's the invitation to look deeper. This is why only exists. Because no one's looking for gut health. They're looking for help with the symptoms that are interrupting their life or their child's life. They're looking for the right next step.

They're looking for something that finally makes sense. Only was created to be that simple, connected healing path for you.

So, if you're wondering whether the symptoms that you are seeing in yourself or your child, if they're rooted in your gut, our quiz is the next best step. It's designed to gather your unique experience, your symptoms, your patterns, and the concerns that are showing up and help turn that information into custom recommendations. Because your body has its own story. Your child's body has its own story. The quiz helps you start seeing that storymore clearly and where to go from here.

You don't have to know everything right now. Start with the quiz. Let it be simple. I know that your situation is complex, but that doesn't mean that your healing journey has to be complicated. Healing can be simple.

Before we wrap up, I just want to share that thought with you. I remember after fighting for my son for two and a half years, having the conversation with my husband of how could it be this simple? How have we gone through hell and back? And it's his gut? Why didn't someone tell me this sooner? It is that simple. healing isn't easy, but the answer is that simple.