Laying a foundation of wellness in the early years can set the scene for a healthy adulthood.

Taking a functional medicine approach to children’s health can ensure that your child is healthy from early on in life. Rather than waiting for symptoms to develop, the focus is on maintaining general health so that there is far less potential for illness.

But if symptoms have already developed, functional medicine can look to resolve symptoms by getting to the root cause of why your child is feeling this way. Many of the chronic conditions that affect children can be managed by addressing triggers and creating a personalized action plan to resolve them.

 A functional medicine approach to children’s health can have a positive effect on gut health, immunity, brain health, and behavior (to name just a few of the areas that can benefit from optimizing health).

Initially, a child’s gut bacteria is inherited from their mother but it can be influenced by factors such as nutrition and lifestyle. Antibiotics can deplete levels of healthy bacteria in the gut and this can be further impacted by poor nutrition. If the balance of bacteria in the gut is skewed in favor of “bad” bacteria, it can have a negative effect on immunity from childhood.

Childhood is a time of significant brain development and nutrition is a significant factor in this. With optimized nutrition, healthy brain development can be supported from an early age.

Neurodiverse conditions such as autism and ADHD are becoming more common and this is another area that can be supported through nutrition, lifestyle, and environmental factors. Optimizing your child’s nutrition and lifestyle can help to manage symptoms and have positive effects on behavior.

Nutrition, supplements, herbs, and lifestyle changes can optimize your child’s health so that future problems are less likely. Through the functional medicine approach, we can implement a whole-body approach that promotes balance in the body and enables all of the systems in your child's body to work in harmony. It's root cause medicine that heals the body from within, rather than focusing solely on symptoms and providing "band-aid" solutions.