How good gut health can change your life

TAKING care of your tummy can change your life as one family found out.

Lisa Kelly and husband Mark McInnes with children, Piper, 3, and Will, 5, discovered that good gut bacteria can improved their lives. Picture: Mark Stewart

GUT health is not the sexiest of topics. But that hasn’t stopped Lisa Kelly. The mother of two is trumpeting the message that prominent childhood illnesses — allergies, asthma, eczema, ADHD, anxiety and even autism — can be eradicated, or at least improved, with good gut health.

By her own admission, Kelly, who founded the popular kidshealth.com.au website in 2014, is not a health professional, rather she’s a curator of health specialists, surrounding herself with some of the best medical minds in the business to support and spread her message. In August, she launched a Gut Health Masterclass, a three-week online tutorial to teach parents how good gut bacteria can improve their children’s lives. The first course attracted 117 participants. More than double that number signed up for the second course in October. So popular have the tutorials proved, Kelly now offers them on an ongoing basis, with parents able to start the course at any time.

“Hippocrates said, ‘All disease begins in the gut,’ and I believe that to be so true,” Kelly says.

“I know it’s not the easiest of subjects to broach, but it’s gaining momentum, certainly among health professionals who see how important it is. There is a lot of credible information to show how food is being used as medicine to heal, instead of drugs.

“And when it comes to children, the importance cannot be over-estimated. The first three years of life are the most important for gut health. By the age of three, your microbiome footprint, or the microbes that help you digest food, absorb essential nutrients and fight disease, has matured to adult form.”

The stories Lisa heard from other mothers about their struggles with children not eating well, fed her passion for gut health and led to the launch of Kidshealth.com.au.

Despite a background in digital marketing, Kelly was inspired to start Kidshealth.com.au after her own battle with poor gut health following her second pregnancy, during which she had developed a condition where the ovaries become swollen and extremely painful.

“I’d go to my GP and he just kept giving me antibiotics but I wasn’t getting any better. So, a friend suggested I see an integrative GP, who is a medical doctor, but also a naturopath and nutritionist, and he told me the antibiotics were killing all my gut bacteria. He told me I was on the road to cancer. I was terrified.

“He put me on a clean-living program and I did a massive detox and started taking special supplements with the aim of building my immune system and reducing inflammation.

“The results were amazing — good, clean food and the right supplements had done what medicine was only making worse.”

Kelly says she was also able to cure her five-year-old son, Will, of asthma through diet and eradicating common household toxins, such as perfume and fly spray.

These personal health experiences, together with the stories she heard from other mothers about their struggles with children not eating well, fed her passion for gut health and led to the launch of Kidshealth.com.au

“I see parents all the time, and I don’t know why, but they don’t like to talk about their child’s ailments; it’s like they’re living a silent hell, like it’s their failing as a parent that their child has asthma or allergies or ADHD,” Kelly says. “I know from personal experience that finding a good specialist is virtually impossible.”

The Gut Health Masterclass costs $179, which covers 10 tutorials. It also includes access to top Australian health professionals and entry to a closed Facebook page where members can get ongoing support for life, post questions to experts, as well as find recipes and photos, share information and be referred to specialists.

These days Kelly says her entire household is much healthier. Even her husband Mark McInnes, CEO of retail giant Premier Investments, has jumped on the gut health bandwagon.

“He is really on board with it all and often prepares breakfast for the kids, things like gluten free toast with avocado, scrambled eggs, frittatas, smoothies or muesli,” she says.

“Back in 2010, I doubt he would have been able to boil an egg!

“And he’s much healthier himself, too. When I met him he used to eat so badly, but now there’s no option to do that in our home. He goes to the gym every day, he leads a very different lifestyle and is a great role model for our children.”