Ep 164: How Hidden Infections Impact Kids’ Brain Development

Introduction to Strep and Autoimmunity 0:00

Hi, everybody. It's Dr. Laura with Connect My Brain, and today is our podcast. And I have actually promised this for a really long time that I was going to do a deep dive into strep, autoimmune, how this kind of plays on the development of our children. So I am going a deep dive into this, but I'm going to really try to make it to where it's understandable. I think what really finally got me motivated to take this on, because it is a tough topic, was recently I was looking at some labs with a parent.

And one of the things, they've been working with things for quite some time. what was found on the GI effects, which would be that we're looking at the stool. And what we found was out of all six categories, there was only one that revealed itself and it was dysbiosis, Which means that I don't have the right balance of bacteria and you're supposed to have many different species in our bellies, in are colon, and everywhere in your body. And when we see dysbiosis, it means that there is an imbalance and there's different scales, different severity.

But let's just say about midpoint in the scale was this individual was registering for dysbiosis and the reaction was, wow, look how much we've actually changed. And I totally agree. I mean, from the beginning of working on this particular case, which has been quite some time, we're probably in about a year and a half, maybe a And not all cases go that way. You know, one of the things that I really pride myself on at Connect My Brain is I would like for there to be a start and a finish, because if we have a One, children can get on with their lives, families can on their with lives and you have a restored child.

And now their development can thrive and they can become everything that they are meant to be. That's always where my passion lies. But not every case will go in that direction. And one of the biggest culprits is strep.

Dysbiosis, Inflammation, and Stress Chemistry 2:59

Unfortunately, what a lot of people feel is that streps is just, oh, yeah, of course my kid had strept. Everybody has stret. Well, I can tell you I've never had And that is not something we should just kind of have an attitude of everybody gets it, therefore there's no big deal. Because what I'm going to try to outline today is that you could start with something as dysbiosis, an imbalance in the gut flora, the which could then lead to inflammation, which can lead chronic inflammation causing stress chemistry in the body and ultimately leading to autoimmunity.

So I'm going to break down those words. Dysbiosis is that balance of gut bacteria with lots of different species. That'll be a deeper dive one day as well, because making sure that we have an abundance of good bacteria, a balance, of the species has actually been connected even to cancer. That when that imbalance occurs, it is our initial defense system and over time can lead to a problem. And cancer is considered an autoimmunity. Having high strep antibodies is an Autoimmunity. having high levels of pneumonia, coxsacky or hand foot mouth, yeast, parasites, fungi, can all lead to the same issue.

Probably by the end of this, you're going to go, wow, this is a really big topic. And so it's important that we understand one of these very fundamental principles of gut health, but actually leads to brain health. Okay? even if we look at something like the word dysbiosis, which can then lead to inflammation, okay? So I'm going to kind of hover here at inflammation for a minute because there's a lot to unpack. First of all, Not all inflammation is bad. So if I sprained my ankle, I'm going to get inflammation.

Inflammation is going into the injured tissue and helping to clean it out. Inflammation is part of even a pathway when we talk about the MTHFR genetic mutation, the methylation pathway. So our body will take inflammation and do something with it. And what it does is it makes glutathione. Glutathion is your master antioxidant. Now, let's just stay right there for a minute. What is an antioxidan? An antioxidant is making sure that you maintain cellular health when we get into too much stress chemistry.

So meaning that our chemistry is just completely out of balance, which will lead to a stress response. just like worrying and anxiety leads to a stress response. A stress can be mechanical like the sprained ankle. Stress response can chemical like chronic inflammation and stress responses can be generated from brain activity, like living in a state of anxiety, a lot of worry, triggers that then take you down a pathway. So that word stress alone has many different definitions. Okay. And that's why some of this stuff, I think, over time, it gets very convoluted.

So I'm going to keep going back and forth. I really make sure that we get this because it's a big part of how you heal somebody. So we're starting off with this idea, dysbiosis, wonderful that out of maybe six categories, we are down to one issue. But it's still important because this is how our microbiome functions. And it's so interesting because when you come into this world, the two main species of bacteria are Lactobacillus ambifidobacterium. And if you go to the health food store and you decide to buy a probiotic, I want you to notice how many times you'll always see those components in those

Microbiome Development and Environmental Factors 8:54

probiotics because a lot of the species that grow inside of us for many reasons They're not available in a bottle. Everything starts from lactobacillus and bifidobacteria. This is why I would really urge you not to live on a probiotic. How do we grow these species? Well, let's go back to being a baby. So and then this is still true for you today. It's about how that baby gets fed. it's About the environment that that Baby lives in. So a baby born in Alaska, and a Baby born In Georgia, totally two different environments.

Okay, so what we're really looking for is a way that the body knows how to adapt to its environment and is given the right foods, the high quality of foods in order to manufacture the microbiome in their body. This is why I always say, when we chronically talk about people having allergies, allergies mean you are not adapting to the environment that you live in. Why is that? Okay, there can be many reasons. It could be your own microbiome. it could, be what was given to you from your mom and your dad as they came together and brought life into the womb and that life then had to experience the what mom and dad are coming to the table with.

And then it's also about how did you come into this world? Were you a vaginal delivery? Or were you C-section? If you're a C section delivery, you don't get exposed to bacteria of the birth canal. That's really where it begins for the baby. So, there's many things that build this microbiome. Now, it's not just about being the baby, but it is also about, okay, what have you done even in your adult life? How are you feeding yourself today? What water are your drinking? how much water you are drinking.

What is the quality of the food that you're eating? One of the things about looking at the quality of food will take us into the direction of what has happened for many children, that they're developing secondary sex characteristics way too early. Girls are menstruating way to early, they are having bodily changes in their endocrine system way, too, early because a lot of things that go into Some of the meats and the poultries, et cetera, are different antibiotics, different growth hormones in order to really plump up the meat.

So that's why the quality is so important because I think one of easiest ones to think about, have you ever passed, been on the highway and passed a poultry truck? and saw how many chickens were living in these little cages stacked on each other. Well, guess what? Chickens have stress hormones too. And so if we are buying chickens that come from a very stressful environment, same thing is true for the meats, But if we are buying this type of a product, you're putting that into your body. And these are part of how we alter this microbiome, even if it got started off on the right foot.

So all of that matters when it comes to the microbiome. And then, of course, we have to think about the well-being in our brain. I'm going to do a truth bomb after this particular podcast. Be sure and go listen to it because I want to talk about how our kids are going back to school so early. So I'll get into that one on the truth bond. But the big idea is I want you to kind of imagine a circle, and you are in that circle. That's you. And I you want to see all the arrows coming into the circle of you, And your life and your choices and experiences play a huge part in the health of your microbiome.

So then it leads us to that concept. if we do have not the highest quality of food, not good drinking water, and not a good bathing water. And maybe we're on a lot of pharmaceuticals. Maybe we've got vaccines that we have had over the years. Of course, we are also trinkling down into our children as well. then we might have more inflammation, okay? And if the body cannot regulate how much inflammation is circulating, pause for a second, go back to the circle of view, So what is going in that's keeping your body from taking inflammation and converting it to glutathione, the master antioxidant that literally protects the cell.

This is a very hard product to purchase and ingest because the body makes glutothione. So it's very hard for supplementation to come in and reproduce something. And one of the things that we're going to lead to in this conversation is if we are going change the terrain, we have to remove the triggers. I have found a wonderful transdermal glutathione. So if you hear this podcast and you want to know more, I've been using it on myself now for probably three or four months. and I am very impressed.

I have, well, I had shingles. So I don't even know if I ever told anybody this during COVID and there was a lot of shedding going on and a parent had come in and she had had singles and like three, four days later, had I shingle. And I'm gonna tell you something, have never been in so much pain in my entire life. and I was six months trying to get the pain level down. I must have spent $4,000 on every potion lotion somebody recommended to reduce the paint. It wasn't until I went to a continuing ed conference, ran into one of my old friends who has a product called Pulse, and it's PULSE electromagnetic frequency.

And I laid on this table, he told me too, his wife had shingles as well over her eye.

Glutathione, Oxidative Stress, and Cellular Health 16:48

Mine was around my rib cage. And I laid on this table 15 minutes, three days in a row. And, I was back to walking that Sunday. Now, prior to this time, i was doing Pilates six days a week. I couldn't move. It was, it was very, very bad. So, one of the things that I really have, trying to really heal from this. And my table, I actually bought one of those tables, it's a great therapy, and I absolutely use it. But I started using this transdermal glutathione that I learned about at a MAPS conference.

A MAPPs conference is the Medical Academy for Pediatrics and Special Needs. I starting using it right on my rib cage. and I because I had still had this lingering feeling and i also found that there was more restricted range of motion on my right side where the shingle line had erupted and and what shingles is is a virus on a dermatone level and a dermatone is how your body is mapped out neurologically. And so this area for me was restricting range of motion. I always had this little feeling there.

Since I've been using this transdermal glutathione, that feeling is so minimal, but my range So I know that my nerve line is truly healing. It also helps with sleep and a lot of these little kiddos who, you just can't give kids a mountain of supplements. They just don't do well with a Mountain of Supplements. So having a transdermal product and product that is really about tackling inflammation and helping your body's own mechanism to begin to use it up, then it takes it and it recycles and uses it again.

So that's what's really important about understanding what inflammation is actually doing inside. When we get a marker of oxidative stress on a lab report, What this means is that we are down at a cellular level of trouble. And inside of your cell, every single body part is represented. So the mitochondria, the respiratory center of the cell your spine is represented in the cell, your organs are represented, in this cell. And it's not always like you can tell exactly which one of the body parts are going to be impacted because it is a breakdown and your cells are gonna turn over.

Sometimes cells don't always come back in full gusto that they're beginning to break down. And this is what we don't want, because you probably have heard that a lot of children that have been diagnosed autistic, they will tell you that it's a mitochondria dysfunction. So that is the powerhouse down inside of the cell. And we will actually, in our lab reports, we'll actually get a marker for that as well. But we don't want that. We know now that if it's down at a cellular level, man, this has been going on for a long time.

When things go on, for along time, and you're a child, You are actually programming your body to only know illnesses, especially when these patterns are activated and going strong while those are open windows of development. So remember, age two is the maturation of the gut. Age three is maturing of immune system. This is why I'm a huge advocate for planning your pregnancy. Okay? Because we know so many things today. We know that if we look at mom and dad, if do lab work on mom-and-dad prior to conceiving, and we find out who's still lingering in there, did you have pneumonia?

Did you strep? Did you have hand, foot, mouth? Do you had dysbiosis? Et cetera, et cetera. We clean you up prior to conception because those maturation windows They're very early on, age two, your gut, aged three, you're immune system. Okay, so dysbiosis and imbalance in that bacteria of the gut really damaging the microbiome. And the micro biome, You make neurotransmitters in your got, Your immune is in you gut. You're trying to absorb all the vitamins and minerals that need to cross over the got lining And if it doesn't, it can lead to what they've always called leaky gut.

Well, now we know there's leaki gut, there is leeki liver, and there are leiki brain. And I just read an article this year on leki throat, people having to constantly clear their throats. So this is telling us that these chronic problems, not everybody is going to have the same issue. But there's enough going on that the body is breaking down. And if we really want to change it, we have to go back. We have go to the beginning and see how do we rebuild ourselves. Everything has got to start in the gut.

So then, if we've got this dysbiosis or any issues going on in our gut, we got a co-activation of inflammation. And from there we can have a coordination of altered stress chemistry. not enough glutathione. When glutothione goes down, the rest of the antioxidants go down. We can have leaky gut, leky liver, licky brain, and lekey throat. All of those are stress chemistries. This can then begin to change how the immune system is going to respond.

Early Development, Immune Windows, and Gut-Brain Links 24:18

So this might be the individual who does have a lower immune system. And maybe it's chronic infections. Maybe it is just chronic colds, chronic ear infections, and chronic asthma. Chronic allergies, or chronic upper respiratory. Any of these things can happen and it has a red flag. I read this all the time in the intake forms of children coming into this office. When I have the opportunity to start really young, we can get that ship going in another direction. We can go in and interrupt that pattern.

And allow that immune system to heal. But the longer that this goes on, it's going to begin to change how your cells are going function and replicate. And then over time, whatever is going on in that immune system, if this becomes chronic, this is what we refer to with autoimmunity. Autoimmunity means that the body is actually attacking itself. We have done so many infections, we have had this reoccurring fill in the blank, and now you've actually created a pattern inside of you that your body doesn't know how to react anymore.

So what we find, too, is we will look at MTHFR and COMT. Mthfr is what's going on in the body with folate. And when we have mutations on this, I absolutely see, depending upon the pattern of the mutation, different behaviors and personalities in children. So, for example, if a child has a single mutation on both, I'll still call it a double, but it's coming on one of the different genetic markers that they test. Or if they have a double mutation, both parents, on the, I'll call it the C component.

There's a C-component and an A- component, there's definite personalities. These are the kids that really have trouble regulating their emotions. Now, also, folate is a B-vitamin. folate B vitamins run your nervous system. So that's your brain, your spinal cord, and all of your nerves, okay? So we have to support that pathway. And when you look in combination with other labs, for example, when I do a food sensitivity lab or a test, When that lab report comes back and almost every single food on there has a color code to it.

Now, a lot of people have different feelings about food sensitivity tests, but I will tell you, It gives me a big picture of your gut health. And sometimes parents need to see that. So it's not like, I just don't want your kid to eat gluten or dairy. I want to the global reaction to food in general. So if I've got a marker on everything, then that means, whoa, I got dysbiosis, inflammation, leaky gut, and I have a child that is nutritionally in deficit. Because of that, what did we call it? Stress chemistry.

if you don't have enough to run your system, you will be in stress chemistry. If you're having a reaction to all the different foods of the world, YOU are having stresschemistry. And when you start to lay one layer over the other, it's very easy to understand why this kid gets irritated. The other big thing that I find is there's just chronic fatigue. And when there is chronic fatig, a child cannot thrive. No one can. But a CHILD. We should think of children with endless energy. When they don't have that, that is a red flag.

Now, you can have other things contributing to fatigue, like sitting around too much, playing video games. Be sure and look at my truth bomb that I did on, what's it called, chat, GBT, or whatever that thing is called. I don't want to get involved in that. They literally looked at what was going on in the brain when people were relying on AI to do the paper. And when we start to shut our own brain down, okay, just like everything else, the frequency that we do that, well, yes, you're going to tell your own bring.

You really don't need to be working on this. Just let somebody else do it. What do you think that is going do to the quality of matter in your brain? Okay. So I know that there's a lot of influences even from the outside, but today I'm just focused on chemistry.

Strep, Antibodies, and Immune System Overload 30:18

Okay? If we try to go everywhere, then I just don't think I can get quality information to you so that you can say to yourself, wow, Maybe I ought to look into this because everybody can struggle with these types of issues. But when it comes down to a child, and let's say, remember the component of the infection, we're going to focus on strep today. Strep is a very intelligent bacteria, and most people are going to treat it with an antibiotic. So, an antibiotics going cycle in and it's going wipe out the normal gut bacteria.

And when that happens, we go back to our trail of events. dysbiosis, inflammation, stress chemistry, and then even brain inflammation infection and ultimately into autoimmunity. Now, when I see strep in the history, we're also going to get a strepe antibody test. One of the things about strep is if that marker and my number that I really believe is a safer number is no more than 130. So if it's above 130, I'm going to address it. Right now, we've got kids in the practice that some are hovering around 250. Some are hoverin' around 600. only imagine.

So there's that infection, and it doesn't have to reveal itself in the red throat or the hurting throat, but it's enough that it literally is beginning to change what's going on inside of the body. And that immune system is being attacked and your immune is also up in your brain. That's why our tear can go from dysbiosis to inflammation to even brain inflammation and autoimmunity. So we're going to look at these things. We're gonna look and we are gonna go back So we don't charge in and begin to try to tackle the immune system at first.

This is where I think a lot of people, they approach it out of sequence. And that is my opinion. When you look at a child, you have to look, okay, why are you not clearing this for yourself? Why are not able to use your own detoxification pathways and get this stuff out. So if I go in and I try to push it out too soon, I'm only raising the body burden Again, and a lot of these kids will actually regress. And when you have a child that's already demonstrating, maybe it is irritability or emotional dysregulation.

Maybe it's academia, they can't focus, They can pay attention. maybe It is that their bodies are just not coordinated and they cant do typical things that children do. So again, all of these things that show up, they're always down the road. You got to go back to where things begin and allow the body to restore itself to homeostasis. This is why we can say, you know, some stress is good because it exercises homeo stasis and allows you to build a greater threshold. But if I always go in and all I ever do is push, push push you're going to cause more damage.

And so here at Connect My Brain, we really honor the child, We honor how development really progresses. We Honor how the body works. we honor The state the Child is in on a daily basis. I have some of these kids that have all kinds of different things going on in on their labs. And I know that their energy levels are very low. Some of them are quite coordinated when it comes to how they move their body. But again, looking at our tier, dysbiosis, inflammation, stress chemistry, if that stress, chemistry is so high, the more that I push them physically, then I can tip the bucket.

So what we do at Connect My Brain, remember that pulse table that I was telling you about? So we always do something on a mild level to help the child's brain. I think it is so important that when your child is going through something, that you work with somebody like me, because I am truly going to respect how can I halt the damage that this child is trying to work through. So we do a little bit of that brain work. And then we're going to do the pulse table. That is a fabulous table! What it does is we can put the frequency in, it opens the cell, It cleans out the cells, and then it brings good stuff into the self.

so that's part of their protocol. Plus, they're also getting an opportunity to relax. And remember what I told you earlier, when I get done doing this recording, I'm going to go do my recording for my truth bomb.

Treatment Approach and Connect My Brain Resources 36:36

I want you to listen to this because we are pushing these kids too far, especially if you don't know what your child's chemistry actually is. But if ever think, you know, what, my kid's got some of this stuff in the background, maybe take a step and give us a call. You can always go over to the website and you can just type in, I heard your podcast and I'm concerned about my child's state of health. My child did have strep and it doesn't matter if it's just one time. Did your child have chronic colds, upper respiratory infections, allergies, asthma, any of these things are indicators.

But I have been setting my immune system up for a crash. And those crashes come in many different pictures. It comes in the inability to regulate your emotions. it comes and the ability to focus at school. There's not a lack of stimulant medication in your child's brain that's keeping them from not being able to There's always a reason why. Okay, well I'm going to wrap it up for today. Thanks for tuning in. Be sure and go over and look at the website. We have been adding some wonderful new additions.

I am so excited. If you want to know about that transdermal Antioxidant be sure what I'll do is we'll put it in the show notes But I also feel free to do a contact us Form and I will make sure you know how to get into the website Their website and you can order it. There's also great resources that we are trying to bring your way We have a couple of them that we're very excited about, which is our CMB membership. It's very inexpensive, but it would allow you to dip your toe in and learn a little bit more about me, Connect My Brain, and our approach.

And then we also have coaching. That is a six month commitment. And I'll tell you why, because that is the length of our initial intensive program here in Atlanta, Georgia. Maybe you've heard enough and you want to come and visit Connect My Brain. We'd love to have you. we have two families coming in the first week in August, and we're very excited to Have them connect with us. and We would love you to connect us too. So thanks for tuning in. If you ever have a question, feel free to reach out and be blessed.