Why see a Naturopath during pregnancy?

Pregnancy is such a special time of excitement and anticipation as your baby grows.  It can also be plagued by overwhelm and anxiety as you are faced with so many decisions to make and questions around diet, supplementation, lifestyle and exercise.  All you want is the very best for yourself and your growing family, and this is where seeing a Naturopath comes in.  Consulting a Naturopath helps to ensure that you have a healthy and happy pregnancy, optimising the likelihood of good outcomes for both yourself and your baby.

Pregnancy brings with it very high nutritional demands and each trimester has its challenges from morning sickness and fatigue, to thrush, varicose veins and constipation.  A Naturopath can help take any uncertainty out of the equation by offering a listening ear, support and advice around optimal nutrition for you and your growing babe, making sure you are replete in all of the important nutrients for pregnancy, and offering natural solutions for any uncomfortable symptoms and health issues that may crop up.

The benefit of seeing a Naturopath is they look at you as a whole person, not just a sum of parts, and offer a holistic approach to your health and healing.

The premise of Naturopathy is to harness the healing powers of nature, to find and treat the cause whenever possible (not only the symptoms), to treat the whole person, education and prevention, and to first do no harm.  The tools used within a Naturopathy session can include herbal medicine, nutritional medicine, vitamin and mineral supplementation, pathology testing, and flower essences.

Seeing a Naturopath during pregnancy is an investment in the wellbeing of both yourself and your baby, so that you can move with grace and certainty through this exciting time of transition, and simply relax and enjoy the miracle that it is.

By Claire Andrews (Naturopath)

Are your gut bugs making you sick?

Gut health is a hot topic right now and it’s great to hear specialists being interviewed on the radio discussing stool banks being opened and museum’s creating microbiome exhibitions but do you really understand the role your gut bugs are playing in causing your health issues? Let’s look at the basics to understand the role the gut plays in not just digestive symptoms but also in issues like fatigue, hormone imbalance and even how your brain functions.

Dysbiosis is the term used to describe the imbalance of the gut bacteria/microflora in your digestive tract. Healthy bowel bacteria also known as microbiome is crucial.  A balanced microbiome means:

Good immune function

Reduction in inflammation in the body

Enhanced gut motility and function

Protection against contracting gut infections

Improved digestion and absorption of what you eat

Production of vitamins

Detoxification of toxins from the body

Weight management

What does dysbiosis look like? 

• IBS type symptoms
• Inflammatory bowel disease
• Intestinal bloating
• Abdominal pain
• Excessive flatulence
• Offensive smelling stools
• Diarrhoea and/or constipation
• Poor concentration and memory
• Fatigue
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Ankylosing spondylitis
• Eczema
• Hay fever
• Chronic sinusitis
• Obesity

How to test for dysbiosis 

The best way to test for dysbiosis is to do a comprehensive stool analysis with a reputable laboratory that uses DNA sequencing to accurately detect bacteria counts in the large bowel.

Causes of dysbiosis/changes to the gut microflora

There are quite a number of contributing factors for dysbiosis. Some of those include:

History of excessive use of antibiotics

Pharmaceutical drug use, particularly proton pump inhibitors and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories

Stress

Poor, low fibre, excessively high protein, refined carbohydrate and/or fat diets

Natural treatments for dysbiosis 

Diet

The role of diet in addressing dysbiosis is not to be underestimated. By eating a semi-vegetarian diet high in fibre and plant foods you can begin to change the composition of your gut bacteria in 48 hours. Focusing on eating legumes daily and eating lots of fruits and vegetables will make gut bugs happy. Diet alone is often not enough to balance the microbiome but it can definitely start making a significant change in the bug profile you have.

Prebiotics are non digestible foods that make their way down to the large bowel to fuel gut bacteria. They are naturally occurring in some foods and you can also take supplements such as galactooligoasaccharide powder, fructooligosaccharide powder, partially hydrolysed guar gum, inulin and a few others. Of course you should consult with your naturopath, nutritionist or dietitian to find out which of these would be appropriate for you to take.

Probiotics

The strain of probiotic you need is a very individual thing. The best way to approach probiotic supplementation is to match your condition or health issue to the strains that have been found to be helpful for this in the research. Or even better you take species of bacteria that you identify on comprehensive stool testing to be the exact species of bacteria you need to top up. That is true individualised medicine.

Herbs

Some herbal medicine can be a safer option than broad spectrum antibiotics to eradicate overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria. Of course you would not self administer oregano oil, it is always important to do anti-microbial work under the guidance of a naturopath or herbalist.

By Susan Hunter- Naturopath