Podcast #9
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Create Thriving Families Podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Peterson. I'm a doctor of chiropractic and I've been in private practice for 20 years seeing mostly women, babies, and children. The Create Thriving Families Podcast is a place for us to have a conversation about how we can help our children become the healthiest, most vibrant and aligned version of themselves.
The full expression of who they came here to be. The quality of our lives and the quality of our relationships is dependent on the quality of our health, and I believe that the greatest gift any of us could give to our children is the best start possible when it comes to their own health. I can't wait to see where this journey takes us.
Let's get started.
Nutrition and brain development. Nothing makes new parents feel [00:01:00] more overwhelmed, uh, after maybe sleep issues than nutrition. There is so much conflicting advice and the rules seem endless and they're changing all the time, and it makes it really difficult sometimes to know. How we're supposed to feed our kids, what we're supposed to be thinking about what's important.
Um, nutrition is not about everything being perfect all the time. It's about providing the building blocks that our kids need for healthy growth and development and making small, consistent. Choices are far more important than perfection and rigidity around food. Food is not just fuel, it's information and each bite instructs the nervous system about what it needs to be doing.
[00:02:00] So. The brain requires nutrients to build new neural connections. It needs nutrients to regulate our emotions, to support sleep, to fuel learning, and to manage stress. A brain that doesn't have proper building materials cannot function optimally no matter how much stimulation or how much structure we provide.
So I think that, you know, if we're gonna think about key. Areas that we need to be thinking about with, with babies and young children. One of the most overlooked contributors to, um, all of these things. Learning, sleep, um, managing stress regulating emotions is blood sugar. When blood sugar drops, focus drops, patience drops, emotional tolerance drops.
It's not. [00:03:00] Misbehavior, it's physiology, and it's not just that way for kids. It's that way for adults as well. Some adults are more sensitive to blood sugar, uh swings. Others are less sensitive to it. But stable blood sugar supports a stable nervous system. What's the best way to support stable blood sugar?
Eating regularly and having a combination of healthy fats, proteins, and carbohydrates at the same time. What is the best way to create chaos in the system and imbalance in blood sugar? Simple carbohydrates eaten alone with nothing to help put the brakes on the blood sugar spike. So let's start by saying that, .
Little kids need to, even though their stomachs are tiny and their appetites are tiny, we need to get into a habit when our kids are really young of making sure that they are eating a balanced [00:04:00] meal, where they're getting a combination of protein, healthy fats, and then whatever, vegetables or, or carbohydrates.
So. In order for blood sugar regulation so that we at least know that that's not , what's happening when we're seeing other,, issues throughout the day. So key nutrients for brain development,, the developing brain. Relies heavily on healthy fats, protein, iron, zinc choline, B vitamins.
These nutrients support neurotransmitters. They support myelination. They help with good communication in the nervous system, and this is why thinking about giving our kids whole nutrient dense foods matters. Especially during early development, many kids are picky eaters and. [00:05:00] That's totally normal. They are not born knowing how to eat,,, a variety of different foods and eat, , balanced nutrition.
They learn that through exposure and just, uh, having a non pressured environment that helps them to learn about different foods and try different foods and have it be an open experience more than having a power struggle over food. So. , Understanding that we have to expose our kids to a variety of foods early on, these need to look like whole , nutrient dense foods as as little packaged and processed foods as possible from the very beginning, so that our babies and our kids are used to seeing a variety of real food on their plates.
The nervous system needs to feel safe in order to explore food. [00:06:00] So forcing them to, putting, having food forced down their throats doesn't contribute to a relaxed feeling in the environment. And , it contributes more to having, you know, stress around food and stress around meal times and.
We need to also remember that these small brains figure out really quickly if they are allowed to,, refuse to try whole nutrient dense foods, then within a short amount of time, , white bread or plain pasta will be shortly, , served. To appease the situation of them not eating. They figure that out really quickly.
So it's important to think about, , that from the very, it is easier to start off from the very beginning, having our kids be used to seeing and tasting and experiencing a [00:07:00] variety of different fruits and vegetables and proteins and, and whole Foods, , than trying to get them, , trying to fix. Uh, maybe a, a bad habit that we've fallen into as parents for giving them something that we know that they will eat over something that we know actually provides them with the building blocks that they need to produce.
Everything that they need , to build new connections in their brain and to support their emotions and to support learning and to support sleep. And so. It's easier to start off on the right foot if you are in a situation where you have a kid who's 3, 4, 5, 6 years old and has been, used to eating the beige foods, , and is a little bit more of a picky eater and a little bit more, , has a little bit of a harder time with food than thinking about introducing.
A few new things every single week [00:08:00] in an environment that isn't pushing or stressing, but allowing them to explore. A lot of times having kids help you with the preparation of the food makes it so that they're tasting during the meal preparation process and much more interested in tasting when it gets to mealtime as well.
So. Struggles with food are again, not your child trying to ruin your day. They can be signs sometimes of sensory sensitivities , or immaturity. , It can be about immaturity or poor,, oral motor skills. They're having a hard time with different consistencies in food or different textures in food.
And it can also be about overwhelm in the nervous system. So understanding all of these things will also change how we as parents respond. You wanna think about it the same way we talk about nervous system regulation, the same way we talk about regulating for sleep, [00:09:00] that the more calm. Regulated, non-stressed out, you are yourself.
While providing children with a variety of whole nutrient dense foods that support their body and the, and the systems that their body needs to build, , for all of the building blocks of development, is gonna get us farther than being very rigid and very trying to do, trying to have mealtimes through us as parents being more stressed out than our kids.
So thinking about supportive nutrition means thinking about having regular meals, preferably together, feeding our kids something while we ourselves are not eating, isn't showing them that. It's not providing the community aspect of it. It's not showing them that this is what the adults are also eating.
This is how we do it. This is [00:10:00] what mealtime look like for kids and for adults. Trying to balance what's on the plate with adequate, healthy fats, proteins, really trying to minimize ultra processed foods and showing our kids what enjoyment of a variety of food looks like. So. We have to do it in order for our kids to learn how to do it.
It requires patience, it requires curiosity, and anything we can do with kids that we can make a process fun automatically increases the chances of success, whatever we're trying to do. So bringing them into the process of helping us prepare the food, help letting them choose in the grocery store. When my kids were really little, we talked about, we tried to have, , we wanted the entire rainbow of colors on the plate throughout the week, so they would come to the grocery store with [00:11:00] me.
We would try to pick out things that were different colors and it was a, it was a process for all of us. Did it take a lot of time? Yes. Was I always in the mood to be talking about what the purple color could be for the rainbow that day? No, I wasn't. But did it help? Me have now two kids who are used to eating a variety, whatever is, put on their plate in a variety of different foods.
And not everything is their favorite, but, but we have sort of, raised them in a culture where. We try different things and the body needs a variety of different nutrients. And mealtime is about things tasting good, but it's also about thinking that we're supporting our brain and our body with what it needs in order to grow and to develop.
And so those are things that we've been talking about with our kids for since they were very, very little. , So it's important to think that. Nutrition supports brain [00:12:00] development. Brain development supports emotional regulation. Emotional regulation supports learning and connection. None of these things exist in isolation, so when we feed the body well.
We support the whole child and we make our lives so much easier when it comes to all of the other areas of development and growth that are happening at the same time, it is much. Easier to try to understand what it is that our children need help with and need from us when it comes to, for example, , developing emotional regulation.
If we know that they're not trying to get themselves through the day on constant blood sugar spikes and,, sugar rushes and sugar crashes that are. That are facilitating emotional dysregulation. If we know that that's not the situation, then it's much easier to try to figure out [00:13:00] what, how we can help them and
not to mention, , sending kids to school and, and helping to facilitate learning and development and being able to manage stress. They're all dependent on having the building blocks and the nutrients available that our system needs, and able to do those functions throughout the day.
Thank you again for joining me today for this episode. I hope you found something valuable in the time we spent together, and I hope you'll join me again next week on the Create Thriving Families Podcast. Until then, be well.
I.
