The Mind-Body Wellness Podcast
Grab your favorite cup of tea, find your comfiest spot, and join Annika as we nerd out on all things holistic health and mental wellness. This is a cozy, supportive space where we'll thoughtfully discuss important topics like mood-healing with neuro-nutrient therapy, trauma healing, subconscious brain-rewiring and everything in-between!
Annika runs a virtual holistic wellness practice focused on helping women + teens gain relief from anxiety, depression, fatigue, and digestive imbalances naturally.
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The Mind-Body Wellness Podcast
Natural Tools for Kids' Mental Health with Jess Sherman | Ep. 16
If you’ve ever felt confused or overwhelmed trying to support your child’s mood or mental health—this conversation is for you!
Today we’re diving into a topic that hits home for so many parents and caregivers—kids’ mental and emotional health. Did you know that 1 in 5 children in the U.S. alone have been diagnosed with a mental, emotional, or behavioral disorder? So what’s really going on beneath the surface? And how can we support our kids naturally—beyond just symptom management?
My guest today is Jess Sherman, a functional nutritionist and author who specializes in children’s brain health and resilience.
We talk about:
🌻 How amino acids can offer a natural alternative for mood and behavior support in kids
🌻 Which natural nutrients Jess uses for anxious, angry or stressed kids
🌻 All of the hope, solutions and answers that functional medicine is bringing to kids with mental or behavioral struggles
🌻 Resources for overwhelmed parents
➡️ Jess's Blog
➡️ Amino Acids For Kids Course
🌻 Download the Free Mood Type Questionnaire HERE🌻
Book with Annika at: nourishedbynature.co
Instagram: @nourished_by_nature_wellness
This podcast episode is for educational and informational purposes only and solely as a self-help tool for your own use. I am not providing medical, psychological, or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems or illnesses without consulting your own medical practitioner. Always seek the advice of your own medical practitioner and/or mental health provider about your specific health situation. For my full Disclaimer, please go to https://www.nourishedbynature.co/disclaimer
Welcome to the MindBody Wellness Podcast, where we have insightful conversations on all things holistic health and mental wellness. I'm your host, annika Taylor. I'm a holistic health practitioner and somatic coach, and I believe that the key to healing already lies within you. Together with Nature's Medicines, we have everything we need to live our most authentic, expansive, coziest and dreamiest life possible. Let's get nourished. Welcome back to the MindBody Wellness Podcast.
Speaker 2:Today we are diving into a topic that hits home for so many parents and caregivers kids' mental and emotional health. Did you know that one in five children in the US alone have been diagnosed with a mental, emotional or behavioral disorder? This is not something that's really going away. These statistics are really only increasing. So what's going on beneath the surface? That is the question that I think we need to be asking, and how can we support our kids naturally beyond just symptom management?
Speaker 2:So my guest today is Jess Sherman. She's a functional nutritionist, she has a master's degree in education and she is an author who specializes in children's brain health and resilience. She's here to break down the connection between amino acids and mood regulation for kids and how simple nutritional shifts can lead to big changes in behavior, sleep, focus and emotional balance. If you've ever felt confused or overwhelmed trying to support your kid's mood or emotional balance, this conversation is definitely for you. So grab your tea, take a deep breath and let's dive in. All right, hi Jess, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm really excited to talk with you.
Speaker 3:Me too. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Today we are going to talk about amino acids that we can use for kids. We're going to talk about anger, sleep issues, irritability and mood things that go on with our kiddos, and I'm just really excited to talk about natural ways to support mood health for kids. It's really something that I'm seeing and I know that you're seeing as well is such a need for parents to have these tools, and parents are the ones who can really turn this around. So I would love to just talk about yeah, really, what got you started into doing what you're doing? You're helping families support their kids with mood health. What got you started in all of this?
Speaker 3:You know, I I. It was very secure, circuitous, it was not a direct path. It's not something that I knew that I wanted to do at a young age, but the short story is that I landed in teaching. I landed in education, and it's funny. I remember this moment in my 20s when I was like medicine or education those were like my two kind of interests at the time and I went towards education and I taught in the classroom for a while and then I just started to get really curious about kids' bodies. You know, and I've always been really interested in like what makes people tick, why people behave the way they behave. You know all of the different forces that conspire to create who we are.
Speaker 3:And then I got pregnant and as I was growing my first of three human beings, I started to really double down and get really interested in nutrition and in the body and in physiology and in how I could support myself. But then what do I do with this little baby? I now need to keep healthy, and so I took a sabbatical from teaching and I studied nutrition and I just couldn't unlearn what I started learning about all of the different biological forces that impact who we are and what trajectory we take through our lives the genetics, the gut health, the nutrients, the you know all of the different, the toxins, all of those different aspects. And then I started, you know, looking I was still teaching at the time. I started looking at my students and my family and myself and all this new information that I had, and then I was poking around being like who's talking about this stuff? And this was back in the early 2000s and I was like more people need to know this. So that's what shifted me to know this.
Speaker 2:So so that's that's what shifted me. That's incredible, and so, as I'm listening to this, it sounded also like I mean, when you get pregnant, that's like such a shift and your whole like world and everything's revolving around your baby and wanting to make sure your baby's as healthy as your baby can be. So is that really the moment when you started really thinking about the food mood connection, or was it before that, when you're teaching kids Like how did? I'm curious?
Speaker 3:I think it was slightly before. It was before that because I worked as an educator. I worked in very unique environments. I worked in the outdoor education context where we were taking kids out in the woods on trips, so we knew what they were eating, we knew how they were sleeping, we it was a very relational stuff. And then I worked in a boarding school where, same thing, we could see all these different aspects to them and and that's when I started really getting curious, and then it was just amplified when I and then it was just amplified when I started thinking about it for myself and for my own kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, gotcha, and I'm just curious from just a standpoint of having not worked in the education field before. Did you see kids struggling with mental, behavioral, emotional imbalances at school?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I mean also, you know, with from the vantage point that I had, I worked with because of the context that I was working, I was working with kids who needed something different. Right, they just they needed a different kind of educational context and so a lot of them were struggling, yeah, and, and we were. I mean, when I look back on it, we just had the most amazing educational team and I'm so when I look back on it, we just had the most amazing educational team and I'm so thankful and grateful. Some of the best friends that I have ever made were in that context because we were working so closely and so passionately for these kids. And yet still there were some that were struggling. You know, even when we threw out the curriculum and we really focused on relationship and we focused on, you know, changing the environment and all of these wonderful pedagogical tools that we had the flexibility to use, there were still a lot.
Speaker 3:And I remember this one conversation with our principal who you know the bottom line was more kids than not in our little school were on medication and that was for either something behavioral and focus and mental, or it was for something physical, like they couldn't sleep, or they couldn't poop or they had acne or something like that, and that just floored me. That was right around the time when I had my first baby and I was like, wow, I get that we're in a subset of kids here. These are kids who are struggling, I get that, but more kids than not need medication. There's something going on. So that's when I dug in. I was like what's going on inside these bodies?
Speaker 2:And I love that you kind of took it upon yourself to figure out on your own what is happening and what shifts can we make. And I'm curious what are some of the things that you were finding were going on in those kids' bodies?
Speaker 3:Well, I knew none of this at the time. Like if I, if I could transplant myself back in that teaching context, I would be a very different teacher. But now what I see in the kids, I'd say that there's. I've kind of narrowed it down to like there's five things they need more of and there's five things that can get in their way and that's the framework that I use with every kid that comes to me.
Speaker 3:What do they need more of? What is getting in their way and when it comes to what's interfering? Of those five things, two of them dominate. One of them is nutritional deficiencies and the other one is gut problems. Um, the others are important too, but that's all like when I first see somebody, I do it, I do an assessment to sort of figure out like where do we need to focus. And I'd say eight out of 10 of them are on the gut and the nutrients.
Speaker 2:Okay. So nutritional deficiencies and gut health are the two main things that you will see really interfering with kids brain health, mood health, behavioral health and that is where you are focusing the most on that I love. I love the fact that you've got the five, the five things that are interfering. And then it helps, I think, because you're an educator. When I listen to you speak and when I see all the stuff that you have in your programs, to me the first thing that sticks out is this is so clear Because when you're a parent I co-parented two of my younger siblings with my mom and my younger sister and it's so overwhelming when you have kiddos that are reacting to every food and you really have to, my goodness it feels like you are just shooting in the dark and like, okay, let's take out gluten, let's take out dairy.
Speaker 2:Oh, they had a bad reaction at the birthday party to the food dyes in that cake. Okay, well, food dyes. And it can be so overwhelming that I love the way that your programs and your message is so clear, like, no, there's so much we can do, but let's start with the basics, let's start with the most important things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely Like if you don't have a framework, if you don't have a container to put stuff in. When you're a parent, you just and I see that I see that a lot. When you're a parent, you just and I see that I see that a lot you flounder and then you read a blog post and you're like.
Speaker 3:Oh, my God, I need to do this thing. And then you know you get an ad fed to you and you're like, and it really throws you off balance when you're, when you're a parent. So I am very I'm a big proponent of like, let's get strategic. We have to see the whole picture. So when people come into my program, I overwhelm them from the get go by saying like, here's the big picture. But I want them to see the big picture because because if you don't know, because you don't know what you don't know, so you see the big picture and then my job is to hold that big picture and their job is to, step by step by step, walk through it, boots on the ground, finding strategies that are doable and that feel like manageable, and just implement step by step.
Speaker 2:I love that so much and I'd love to chat a little bit about some stories of you know maybe some case studies that you've had some wonderful experiences with kids shifting their moods naturally towards the end. I'd love to kind of shift now to that. First, the first root cause that you're talking about nutrient deficiencies. Could we go over the topic of amino acids for kids who maybe are experiencing mood issues, sleep issues, and just kind of chat about that mood issues, sleep issues and just kind of chat about that? Because I do talk about amino acids.
Speaker 2:I've done a couple super deep dives, podcasts, but I'd love to break it down for parents with kids and maybe start with. Well, I'll go ahead and just read a couple this is off your website Some things that kids might experience if they are having struggles with neurotransmitter imbalances. There might be anxiety, there might be moodiness, anger, aggression, sadness, impulsivity, inattention, racing brain fidgeting, low energy. That sounds like so many kids nowadays. So would you mind just kind of talking us through how we can start to use amino acids to address these things? Use amino acids to address, to address these things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 3:So, um, amino acids are are just the building blocks of protein and they really are the building blocks of life, Like without amino acids we would not exist we use amino acids for all kinds of things, like white blood cells and like our skin cells, like we use amino acids for everything, but in for the, for the, in the context of mood and behavior and focus and brain health. We use them to create neurotransmitters Now, and these are just chemicals in the brain that make us feel certain ways. Now, when it comes to research on mood and depression and behavior and all this stuff, when it comes to research on mood and depression and behavior and all this stuff, we know that it's not just a neurotransmitter imbalance. That's an old way of thinking Like oh, you're depressed, you have a serotonin imbalance, let's give you an SSRI to fix that imbalance. We know that it's much more complicated than that and certainly our kids are more complicated than that. But what I love about amino acids is that they can give you I call them nature's pressure valve. They can give you just a little breathing room so you can start to consider what else is going on. So if your child has impulsivity or they have depression or they have anxiety, it's really hard to breathe at home, right Like usually if one child is experiencing trouble like that. It takes up a lot of space and parents get like waking up in the night like worried about their kids and phone calls home from school and, oh my goodness, is this going to be a good day or a bad day? And so the first thing we need to do is find a pressure valve, and that is I use a lot of amino acids for that, because they work quickly, they're relatively safe and effective and effective. Then everyone can breathe and then we can consider the deeper, the deeper things that are going on.
Speaker 3:So we have a bunch we can choose from, because so these are the building blocks of protein. Like I say, it's either like so we take we, we eat protein. Our digestive system pulls that protein apart into single amino acids. Those amino acids go into the bloodstream and then the body does with them what it will, decides where those are needed and then creates other things from those amino acids. So when we give supplemental amino acids, they don't have to be digested, they're just the building blocks. The body will do what it needs to do with it.
Speaker 3:So it's like giving a kid like more Lego pieces. They will build what they need out of that Lego. So we have a bunch we can choose from. The ones that I use mostly um are 5-HTP and tryptophan, gaba and tyrosine and uh, dlpa and theanine I use quite a bit of theanine. How you're going to decide what you need it depends on what's going on with your kids and and we can, I can put some, we can put some stuff in the show notes so that people people can better understand how to pick the right one. But the nice thing about amino acids if you start nice and slowly, you're either not going to see an impact or you're going to see a positive impact within a short time, like half hour to an hour kind of timeframe, right, which people always are shocked at like that fast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that fast, because the body doesn't need to digest it, it will just absorb it really quickly. They're always best absorbed if you give them in the, if they're absorbed in the mouth. So if you give them as a powder or a liquid and they can just sort of, they can get absorbed right there. Sometimes that's not possible with kids who are, you know, super tasters and don't like the taste of anything and you have to hide stuff. So so you know you can, but that they're best that way away from food and just dissolved in the mouth. And then the yeah they, and then they get into the bloodstream really quickly and they can go and do what we want them to do.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. So, yeah, I love amino acids so much and I love that you're talking about them as a pressure valve to just create that space, having that just that quick, kind of rapid relief where we can take a breather and then, like you said, dive into. All right, what are we looking at? Nutrient deficiencies, is there gut health? Are there parasites Like what? What's going on? And yeah. I absolutely love that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and, and that's a it's a good note, because amino acids, like I say, they're building blocks, right. So they they require nutrients to turn into what we want them to turn into. So if you take tryptophan, for example, which is the building block for serotonin, it also requires nutrients that your kid's going to get from food or supplementation to turn into serotonin. It has to go through a bunch of different processes and so we can't out supplement a crappy diet, right. So we need those nutrients coming in. We need the B vitamins, we need zinc, we need copper, we need vitamin D, we need sunshine, we need all of those wonderful things. Right Back to what I was saying, like there's five things kids need more of. They need good food. That's one of them. They need real whole, good food and they need outdoor play, which is another one which is going to give them the building blocks to turn that Lego piece into a neurotransmitter.
Speaker 2:I love that. I need more outdoor play. Every time I'm outside on my lunch break I'm like, no, I need to be outside way more. So bringing it back to the amino acids using specifically for if we took I guess if we just took like anger irritability, is there an amino acid specifically if a kid came to you with anger irritability, maybe angry outbursts, and their parents just weren't sure where to start, is there an amino acid that you might start with?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So kids are funny, right? Kids? You got to dig a little bit to be like why? Why is this coming up as anger, right? Is this kid really angry or is there something underneath? And often underneath it's because they're being asked to do something that they can't do. They feel like they're letting someone down to do something that they can't do. They feel like they're letting someone down. They want to push people's buttons because they, like the dopamine hit or there's anxiety underneath there. They're afraid to fail. Like there's something underneath there.
Speaker 3:And that's where we're really going to get our answers around which amino acids are going to help? First, I want to assess whether they need serotonin or GABA support, and we might do that with tryptophan or 5-HTP or GABA or L-theanine. We might even just do that with sleep, right? Maybe kids just sort of need more decompression time with more connection time. Make sure that parents are spending time with their kids and, you know, validating their experiences and those sorts of things. I mean those that creates neurochemicals too. So let's not discount all of the lifestyle stuff. But once we get calming support in place, then we can start looking at something like phenylalanine or tyrosine, which are a little bit more stimulating. But I'm not too worried about overstimulating and causing panic attacks. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:That makes so much sense. And also I've used those amino acids myself and I did start with GABA first just to make sure, and then the L-tyrosine helped me so much when I was going through a lot of gut problems that were making me just so tired I couldn't even wake up in the morning, but the L-tyrosine was so helpful with that.
Speaker 3:I find that too and that's the difference between kids and adults too right. L-tyrosine is also a building block for thyroid hormone. So you know us perimenopausal women who are really tired because we've been parenting for so long or, you know, living for so long, and you know our thyroid's starting to go, our nutrients are starting to go. We forget to eat because we're too busy our're our guts off. I take tyrosine too, and I find it super helpful, along with a lot of adrenal support, because I'm just at a different stage of life, so it's different.
Speaker 3:It's different for adults than it is for kids. I think adults often will really benefit from that kind of stimulate stimulating. But I'll add that caveat If you're going to stimulate, make sure the adrenals are okay, Because you stimulate too much, the adrenals have to pick up that slack. So I love adaptogens for that Ashwagandha, rhodiola schizandra, those sorts of things.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love those as well. So we talked a little bit about anger and then I guess, specifically, let's chat a bit about anxiety. So if an anxious child comes in I know we did talk about that along with the anger, but if an anxious child comes in, really anxious and, you know, maybe not sleeping very well as well, what are the amino acids that you might reach for to just help to start calm down their nervous systems and help them to just kind of function better?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So some of the questions I ask is like are they wired and tired, like do they want to sleep but they're just like, oh mom, I just can't fall asleep? Or are they spinning in their head Like they're worried about something and so they're keeping themselves up because they've got so many things on their mind? Do they have that perfectionist tendency, and so that feeds into that like, oh my gosh, I've got an anticipatory anxiety around an exam tomorrow or a performance or something like that. These little nuances will help decide. I mean, the nice thing is that amino acids are compatible, so you can try a few different ones at the same time. They also compete, though, to get into the brain, so that's a whole nother conversation. So, but I I love inositol for the spinny brain, for the kid who just like't shut it off, can't shut down their parents too. I keep that next to my bed sometimes too.
Speaker 3:Just like shut her down. We got to go to sleep, come on. So inositol is really nice for that. 5-htp can also be very, very nice. Or tryptophan. Tryptophan gets made into 5-HTP in the body, so it's it's. It's working on the same pathway. It's just you can get it in the two different forms and and that's really nice for kids who kind of get in their heads a little like they start overanalyzing, they start thinking that they're failures and they start turning on that negative self-talk that can be really nice for that kid to just settle into sleep. And 5-HTP eventually gets turned into melatonin, which people are usually familiar with as a sleep hormone.
Speaker 3:When kids are really under a lot of stress, they need more nervous system support. We've all felt that as parents. Right, it's like, so why does that? Cause? That's always the question like, well, why does my kid need this pill? Why do they need extra melatonin? Why do they? Why do they need? Well, it could be that they've got a genetic need for more of it because they just don't transport it or process it well, or for whatever reason. It could be, just because their stress load right now is very high and so we can use it as a temporary pressure valve again to just remind the body that, like you have capacity, you have some strength there. Stress load kind of comes down and we can also find out like, well, what's stressing them out so much? Are they being bullied at school? Are they in the wrong school? Are they, you know, having an issue with a friend or a parent or what have you like? Where's the stress load coming from?
Speaker 2:We could deal with that, but in the meantime we can support their nervous system to have stronger capacity to handle stress. That is so I resonated with it so well, because I'm right now going through healing through a severe parasite infection in my gut. It was way more severe than I ever realized and while I was healing through it. So we're talking about stress load. When you have a stress on the outside, we're talking about maybe bullying at school or relationship stress. If there's a stress on the inside of the body, it's constantly telling your nervous system we are not safe. I mean your very cells are having that cell danger response and everything in your body is screaming we are not safe, so we can't sell them.
Speaker 2:So I had been experiencing this just mysterious anxiety and panic attacks over the past two years and I just thought this is so strange. I should be the most calm that I've ever been because I have all these tools now and I know how to take care of myself. And until I got to that I really didn't know what to do. But I had been using GABA and GABA was really and I did a podcast on it it's my most popular podcast because it's all about how GABA supports anxiety and panic and the GABA for me has been an anchor, and an anchor for my nervous system more than any other tool. I think that I actually have, as I've been healing through this and as I'm resolving this in my gut, um, and so I I love that you brought that up, because it is important to know. There's also inside. There's inside stressors, there's those nutrient deficiencies that we talked about too.
Speaker 3:Well, like, so, yeah, so like. The message here is that stress is not just emotional. Yeah, right, we can have we can have externally generated stress and we can have biologically generated stress, and parasites are one of those things, and killing parasites are even more stressful on your body.
Speaker 2:Well, that's when the anxiety came out. Yeah, it's killing them because they're.
Speaker 3:they're little animals, right, I don't know if they're animals, but they're little creatures. So when they, when they die, they, they, they let off whatever's inside them, and and same thing with yeast and bacteria and things like that. So, yeah, yeah, whenever. Whenever I'm doing gut work with kids, I want to make sure they have a certain level of resilience in order to be able to handle that extra stress. So we want to make sure we get stress support in first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's huge. That is huge Because I love that people are talking about parasite detoxing and all of that stuff, but I'd love to have a little bit more just awareness for people to know that, like everyone's body's different, Everyone methylates differently. We might need more support and if your nervous system's already so stressed from whatever factors it is, throw things like pyro disorder in there, which I'd kind of love to touch on. It's important to have these types of support. Or you can throw your nervous system which is what I did unintentionally a year ago into such a storm and and bring up so much anxiety and even things like depression, and it's just not. It's, it's not very nice to go through.
Speaker 3:I mean it's it was about. It was about five years ago when I started to really understand. It's all about the nervous system. We have to work with the nervous system.
Speaker 3:The nervous system is the container for everything, and if we try to, you know, change behaviors or change the gut or detox or, you know, kill an infection or whatever, without understanding the repercussions on the nervous system, and have supports in place for the nervous system, we're going to get worse before we get better. I mean, it's all moving in the right direction, but if we want to and especially with kids, because we want kids to have a positive lived experience right, it's so important that they experience feeling well, and so if we do something in treating them that makes them feel unwell, we're playing with fire a little bit here. We have to have some really good supports around that and tread lightly and and really listen to their nervous system, listen to what they're capable of, what their capacity is, and and work within it, and so kind of maybe bringing it back to those nutrient deficiencies and like back to those things.
Speaker 2:like you said, it's not just our emotions, it's not just, oh, I'm just an anxious kid or I'm just a depressed kid, or there's things going on causing all that, like you mentioned. I'm kind of curious are there common nutrient deficiencies that you see um, um that we can start to support kids? Like I know we mentioned pyro disorder. That's a big one, at least in my practice I see it constantly and can we kind of touch a little bit on what a kid might be going through if they had pyro disorder and how you'd sort of support them with nutrients?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so pyro disorders, it's, it's. I still consider pyro disorder to be in the realm of theory, even though I do see it, Um, and I do sometimes test for it. It's a pretty simple urine test, so it's really helpful when we think that's what's going on. But we can't get blood work from a kid Um, it, it, but it, it. It leads us down the road of thinking okay, this kid is probably peeing out their zinc and their B6 and they probably have a lot of oxidative stress in their body. And I say probably because I really like to pair it with blood work just to see whether that's actually happening. But when I can't, it's an educated guess and we do a little trial of zinc, b6 and antioxidants and we see where we're at. And when I do do blood work, I see lots of zinc deficiency. B6 is sometimes a little harder to tell because sometimes B6 looks fine in the blood but it's not getting into the cells and so there's a functional deficiency and that you can't really tell from blood work, so it's a bit harder to assess. But yeah, those are big ones. I see a lot of vitamin D deficiency, which is really important for the creation of neurotransmitters right In taking the building block and turning it into the neurochemical.
Speaker 3:Iron is one I always want to know. B12, I like knowing as well, especially if there's also energy problems with kids. That could be like hyperactivity energy, because usually the hyperactive kids also have really low dip crashes. Yes, that I would still consider to be an energy problem, right? So even if they might look hyper and you're like, yeah, my kid has lots of energy, I'd still want to know yeah, they're um, what's going on with their energy? Um, also, the kids who are in severe burnout and depressed and, uh, you know, demand avoidant kids and, um, I want to know about B12 and iron, those energy nutrients.
Speaker 3:What else do I see? I like to check magnesium. When we can, Stressed kids burn through their magnesium, like the act of being stressed eats up a lot of magnesium, and so these kids usually need more just because they're in a high, high stress situation. They may not need it forever, but right now it's probably going to help them. So, so those are the big ones. I I do see copper excess. I think you did a podcast on that too. So I do see sort of an imbalance between copper and zinc. That's not uncommon in the kids who are explosive and angry. I always want to take a look at that. Also, the kids who are very sensory sensitive. That's often an issue with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so those are, I think, the biggies. Which type of magnesium do you like? People ask me this all the time. I have my, my personal favorites, but what's your favorite for kids?
Speaker 3:For kids, I like combos, yeah, yeah. So I mean I. I like citrate if it's. If it's. If we want to work on the gut, like if we're trying to get a kid to poop, citrate and oxide work really well for that. But if we're trying to really support their nervous system, I like glycinate or threonate or malate, even sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's good for parents to know, because there's so many different types out there. But it's good to know that citrate is more for it. It's good for getting bowel movements happening, and the glycinate and the threonate are so supportive for the brain.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and sometimes there's some really nice gels on the market gels and creams Because sometimes it can be hard to get kids to swallow capsules and just gets to be too many things, yeah, and so sometimes like a little bit of magnesium foot rub at night or on the belly. Sometimes they really like that, sometimes they don't.
Speaker 2:But yeah, yeah, I've seen those sprays and I've used them myself. It's kind of cool that you can just you can absorb so much through the skin.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or even Epsom salts in the bath. If your kid is young enough and is still taking baths, they can absorb the magnesium through the skin that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absorb the magnesium through through the skin that way. Yeah, that sounds like a really nice kind of wind down for kids is let's get you in the bath before bed and we'll just put some Epsom salts.
Speaker 3:Um and it gives them sulfur too. It gives them that that sulfate is magnesium. Sulfate is what Epsom salts is, um, so it gives them a little bit of that too, which is which is helpful for detox.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love it. I love it. Would you mind walking us through maybe one to two just experiences that you've had with kids where they came to you their parents were just not sure where to begin with either anxiety or anger or whatever it was they were coming to you. Would you mind sharing maybe a story of maybe an anxious kid coming and getting support? Would you mind sharing maybe a story of maybe an anxious kid coming and getting support.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I can think of one little girl who was. I want to say she was eight when she came ish and her diagnosis was ADHD and mom didn't want to put her on meds and or wanted to try everything she could before putting her on meds. And, as we sort of you know, we're talking through the situation, we started to uncover that like I think this is more anxiety than it is ADHD. Right, like she was very scared of of doing things wrong, she was very scared of failing, so sometimes she just wouldn't start, she just't try, and so she'd space out. She was very, she was very worried about letting people down. She was not sleeping well at night and they actually did a sleep assessment on her too and found out and they had, they had a wonderful team. They found out like she had palate issues and she she was.
Speaker 3:She was mouth breathing at night, so so there was some sleep stuff going on. Okay, um, and what else did we find out about her, the, the? The crux of it was that we felt like mom was like suspected that she had the capacity to do things. She just was preventing herself from doing it. So she was given this ADHD diagnosis and um, and so we you know, we ran some tests. We did. We did find that there were, there were some things going on in the gut. She wasn't producing enough, um, enough GABA in her gut. Like there are certain bacteria that produce GABA for us. We create some of our GABA in our brain too, but but a lot of it's created in the gut, and so now we have testing that can show us do you have the right bugs in your gut to be able to create GABA? So she didn't have that.
Speaker 3:So we supported her with some probiotics. She didn't have any parasites or candida or clostridia or anything like that going on, which is something I want to rule out because that also will interfere with dopamine and that kind of thing. The amino acid that worked great for her was GABA. It just worked great. We gave it to her.
Speaker 3:I told her mom I do this a lot like to bookend their days, to be like consider school, like school's a stressful environment for a little person, especially a little person who is super sensitive and like feels, all the feels and she was a very intuitive I see this a lot too Very intuitive, very big feeler Like she. She took on everybody's stuff, right, you know. And and imagine that in a classroom of like 30 kids, fluorescent lights and being told what to do all the time, that's a stressful environment, right. So often I'll also suggest that you bookend that child's day. So give them a little bit of resources before school, have them go through school and then, when you pick them up or at home, like give them a little bit more, because that's often where kids fall apart right At the end of the day.
Speaker 3:We usually I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty noticeable when they're like exhausted and hungry, but sometimes they just literally are just done, they're out, and so nutritional support at that point with amino acids can help too and it can make dinner better.
Speaker 3:So, you know, you sort of have to pull it apart, right, like give it to them in the morning so that they can get through their day, and then give it to them after school so that they can get through their evening, so that when they come to the dinner table they don't have a massive stress response and they're picky and they're throwing attention and they don't want to eat, and then they go to bed hungry, and then they don't sleep, and then they're crouchy the next day and it's just this vicious cycle, right? So, yeah, anyway, that's what we did with her. Gabba was amazing for her At the beginning of the day. We gave her a little bit when she came home as well, with the snack, with some connection time with the parents, dinner went more smoothly, they dialed in the sleep and she started doing great. So you know. So that's sort of one one example.
Speaker 2:That's amazing and I love it. And you know amino acids. They have a shorter, you know, lifespan in the body than medication. So that is something that we will be doing is giving them every, sometimes every couple hours, every maybe three, four hours and kind of spreading them throughout the days. But they do work so quickly and there's so many benefits to that as well, as what you're talking about is like getting to support everything else which is probiotics. You know.
Speaker 3:what's interesting also about her is that we ran genetics on her as well. Parents were really interested in genetics and she had um, she had a double comt variant and comt is catecholine, catecholine methyl transferase. So it's, it's, it supports our catecholamines, which is our dopamine, our norepine, our epi, and what a double variant means is that it's probably working a little bit more slowly. Like genetics can't tell us what's actually happening, but it can tell us, like the tendencies, right. So what's the first thing you want to give a kid when they have ADHD? If you're a doctor, it's some sort of stimulant, right. It's some sort of stimulant to keep dopamine in the brain longer. But for a kid who has double COMT, that's probably going to backfire. Not necessarily, but probably because if they already have slow metabolism with dopamine, low dopamine might not be the problem. They might have plenty of dopamine, they just are not. They're not processing it effectively, if that makes sense, absolutely.
Speaker 3:So I was so glad that she came to me first because I suspect a stimulant medication would not have, would have made her more anxious. Yes, it would help. It always helps with focus, it always helps kids get stuff done, but it can have that negative side effect of causing more anxiety and more panic, and I suspect that would have happened with her. They never needed to try it. But it was another little tidbit of information. People who have really fast COMT, they sometimes do quite well on stimulants because they're burning through their dopamine. They're just, like you know, the kids who really just sort of are constantly craving dopamine hits because they're just burning through it. They're just you it. So anyway, that was just sort of an aside note.
Speaker 2:I think that's a really good point, because with a lot of these situations whether it's methylation or just all the different genetics we're talking about one kid might do really great on a medication and then the kid with similar symptoms not good at all and it might actually make everything so much worse. But we're not even really ever checking that. I mean, gosh, wouldn't it be great if we were always checking genetics before suggesting medications? That would be amazing, because then we could have a better idea.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, there are pharmacogenetic tests too. So if you do want to put your kid on a medication, at least do a pharmacogenetic test which tells you how your body is likely to manage with that certain drug. That I would love to see. But what we're talking about, about the subtleties of what's actually going on in the body. That's a lot more nuanced and and it's just a different way of thinking about what's going on.
Speaker 3:But, what I, why I brought that example up was because it she didn't need more dopamine. That was not her issue. Her issue was she just needed to calm down her nervous system so that she could think clearly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and once she was able to do that that she could think clearly and once she was able to do that, she could perform fine.
Speaker 2:That is so beautiful and, like you said earlier, it all does come back to the nervous system, because that nervous system is just doing its best with what it knows and to be able to protect you and to keep you, either, if it needs to, in a stress response or into that more of a trauma response, and the body just needs that extra support to feel safe. And it sounds like that's exactly what you helped her have, rather than just a, you know, one size fits all here's this, here's this and hopefully you feel better. But I just love that you did take the time to really get to know her whole situation. I'm kind of curious now for parents maybe, who are listening right now and they're like, oh, all this is really cool and maybe new information that I I've never heard before, but maybe they're still feeling a little overwhelmed, like, where do I start? Do you have like resources on your website that you might turn parent to, to be kind of as a starting place for them and their children?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, there's. There's a number of articles on my blog post, on my. There's a number of articles on my website that we can just link directly to on neurotransmission and sort of the key ones that I think are important for parents, and I do do neurotransmitter testing, sometimes when it's accessible to parents, just to see whether my hunch is correct. So we can, we can link to that as well.
Speaker 3:I have a whole course on picking and choosing and trialing amino acids, particularly with your children, and it's it's not. It's not that it's different than it is with adults, but when you're an adult trialing something for yourself, you can give yourself different feedback, right. You can feel how it feels and decide for yourself what's going on. And when you're doing it with a kid, it might look a little different. They might not have the language to articulate how they're feeling, so you're sort of looking for different things. So it's a little bit more nuanced and I always start really slowly with kids because, like there's some, you know, gaba on the market. That's like 750 milligrams, it's like do not do that.
Speaker 3:Well, some people need it, Some adults might need it, but I always want to start under 100 milligrams for children and gradually build up. And sometimes that's frustrating for parents because they don't see an impact right away and we have to go through a whole titration, you know, gradually increasing the dosage to find the right one. We want the minimal amount necessary. I don't want kids on these supports forever. I want to figure out how much we need for it to act as our pressure valve and then figure out why they need it. Why is it working? What else is going on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good point, so I always start slowly, yeah.
Speaker 3:So anyway, I have a whole course on how to do that, but do start with the articles so you understand what we're talking about anyway.
Speaker 2:Perfect, and I will put those on the show notes so it's just easy peasy. People can just click on that and get straight to all of those resources that you have. I love that you made a course, because that is what I wish I would have had years and years ago, because I bought the books. Um, trudy Scott has a wonderful book the food mood anxiety, food mood solution. Um, but how wonderful to have someone that you know. You just get your course and just slowly walk through it and you're just guided the whole way. Um, specifically for kids. I think is amazing, it's fantastic.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I I used Trudy. Trudy taught me a lot about amino acids and I use her questionnaires, which you can find online Like does Google amino acid questionnaire. You don't need a course for that. Where the course comes in handy is to just sort of talk things through and figure out how to apply this to a child. But yeah, that's a great place to start child.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, that's a great place to start. I love it. Thank you so much and thank you for providing that for us. It's just really needed.
Speaker 2:I don't think that amino acids are talked about enough just because I see them working so well and they have for so long, and there's been just so much research and people just trying them out themselves, and Trudy Scott on her website has so much. There's just a wealth of information and this has been helping so many people that that's why I want to continue to talk about it and educate people on this, because it's such a gift I think that we have and I love that. It's. You know, it's food-based, like you talked about. It's the building blocks of protein. I also love that it doesn't have to become a dependent thing, that it can be used as you need it, um, and allow the body to. You know, as we're working on those underlying things, that this is just our. I think about them as just like friends, Like they just hold our hands as we're going through something and then when we're on the other side of it, it's like great, we're good now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly as your stress load is, is is higher. You're going to need some support and unfortunately, kids are under a lot of stress now, more stress than they used to be when we were kids. And because back to stress is not just emotional, yeah, it is. And there's a lot going on in the world and the kids are, like all of the five things you know, causing stress inside the body nutrient insufficiencies, you know, gut problems, food reactions all of that is causing a higher stress load for kids and so they need more stress support. I call it scaffolding too. Sometimes I think of it like that, Like we're just, we're just scaffolding a kid, we're creating a little bit of support, like we would with a crutch, until they can feel better and then we can start to take that away.
Speaker 2:I love that too, and even as you're saying it, like just somatically in my body, I can just feel this breath of relief Like okay, because there is so much unknown and there are so many children struggling and there is just so much more that they're dealing with, on even just the toxin and environmental level. So just having the resources that you provide, um, just having the knowledge that we, you know, as parents, as caregivers, can support, as grandparents can support those kiddos, it's just yeah, it's, it's incredible, it's an incredible gift and I'm so grateful that we have that. What is one thing that you would want to leave people with? Yeah, you may want to leave parents with today. One thought, one maybe encouragement, before we go.
Speaker 3:Oh, man, you know, as you were talking, as you were just saying what you were saying, I started thinking, yeah, we live in a tough time, but at the same time, we live in a really interesting, exciting time, because we have functional tests, we have nutritional supplements, we have research about the gut brain immune axis, we have functional practitioners who understand the body as a whole. We are really in a paradigm shift and we've been there for 10, 15 years. When I wrote my book in 2016, I felt that deeply, really deeply, that I had one foot in like the old way of thinking and one foot in the new way of thinking about the body. Right Of like the old way being we are a series of compartments and you go to the gynecologist and the urologist and the gastroenterologist and the immunologist, right, that's kind of the old way of thinking. But now we have so much evidence that it's better to think of the body as an integrated system and that everything, what's going on in the gut is affecting the brain, what's going on in the brain is affecting the nervous system, nervous system is affecting the endocrine system. It's all affecting everything.
Speaker 3:So that's exciting. That's really exciting, I think, as parents. Yeah, it's frustrating because we're stuck getting conflicting information. But you get to decide which paradigm makes more sense to you. Some people are very comfortable in a sort of conventional like I've got this problem, give me a medication kind of relationship and that's fine. You do what you need to do. If that doesn't sit well with you, we have a whole new toolbox of tools to help with functional approaches, with the somatic stuff, with the breath work, with the whole kit and caboodle. So yes, it's harder than ever to raise little healthy people, but we have a whole lot of support and resources to help.
Speaker 3:So if I could put a positive spin on the overwhelm, it would be that I really have connected with so many people. If I don't know the answer, I have about 10, 15 people in the wings that I can ask their opinion on, because we're all working for the benefit of children.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, oh, I love that so much. Jess, thank you so much. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for what you're doing in the world. We need you. We need more people like you, and I am going to put how to reach you your website, your Instagram. I'll put that in the show notes. Your website is just Shermancom and Instagram is, ask, just Sherman, so I will put that so that people can find you and connect with you as they want to. Yeah, thank you so much. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me Great conversation.
Speaker 2:Annika here. If you've been feeling overwhelmed, lost or stuck trying to figure out what's really causing your low moods, anxiety or focus or low energy, I've got you. You don't deserve to suffer for months or years. With my holistic approach, you'll get clear, functional answers, no more guessing and a personalized plan that actually works, using advanced testing and targeted therapies like amino acids and nutrient therapy. Most of my clients actually start to feel real relief in just a few short weeks. Ready to finally feel like you again, visit nourishbynatureco to take the first step.