Jul 15, 2026 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
Integrated Learning Therapy places great value on a healthy digestive system. Our knowledge about the importance of nutrition for brain health naturally evolved into a concern for the state of our clients’ guts. More specifically, for the contents of their guts. There is little doubt that having a gut stocked with healthy bacteria and other beneficial organisms (collectively called the microbiome) puts a child at an advantage when it comes to school success. The question is: if you suspect that gut problems are present in your child, how can you try to improve matters? How can you help him or her grow a healthy gut garden? This article is summarized from the book ‘Follow your gut’ by Rob Knight (A TED Book published by Simon and Schuster).
As with any garden, it is necessary to nurture the existing plants by feeding them or preparing the ground for new plants by digging in nutrients. This is where prebiotics come in. There isn’t a universal definition for prebiotics but according to the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics, prebiotics are “nondigestible substances that provide a beneficial physiological effect for the host by selectively stimulating the favorable growth or activity of a limited number of indigenous bacteria.”[1] In simpler language, prebiotics are largely soluble fibres that occur naturally in some fruits and vegetables. They provide nutrition for the cells that line our intestines and also produce some of the benefits of natural high-fibre diets. One of the major benefits is that they stimulate the growth of health-promoting microbes. It is logical then to assume that children who struggle to eat enough fruits and vegetables might lack these fibres and so also lack a healthy microbiome.
There are as yet no clear guidelines as to what you should do to improve matters if your child resists fibrous vegetables but at the very least, it can do no harm to provide a prebiotic supplement.
Secondly, once you’ve dug in some compost, you need to put healthy plants into your garden. These are the probiotics that play such an important role our physical and mental health.
They are mainly bacteria that are found naturally occurring in the human gut or in fermented foods (such as yoghurt, naturally fermented sauerkraut and kimchi). Probiotics are defined as live microorganisms that, when administered in sufficient quantities, benefit health. Briefly, they are the ‘good’ or ‘helpful’ or ‘beneficial’ bacteria. If you suspect that gut health is compromised by a lack of these good bacteria, or if your child has had a course of antibiotics that will effective destroy the entire crop that might have been present before an illness, you may consider trying to replace them with supplements, yoghurts, fermented foods and even suppositories.
The problem is that probiotic products have not been formally approved nor have health claims been accepted by official food and drug organisations. This means that you have to be very careful of the product you choose to buy.
There has been huge interest in probiotics in recent years – especially in view of new insights to the significance of gut health for so many different medical conditions. These range from depression to autism with a myriad of other health conditions along the way, including Crohn’s disease, constipation, insulin resistance and autoimmune diseases like Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis and even ADHD. Several clinical trials have been done with plenty more in the pipeline. But there is a big problem.
The problem is that currently, there’s a lot more hype than solid research to give concrete evidence to what strains of probiotics are effective for what conditions and which manufacturers can be trusted. If you visit your Health Shop or pharmacist, you’ll see lots of bottles filled with probiotics that are advertised as guaranteed to make your garden flourish. The downside is the lack of real evidence that any of them will work and no insight to which strains will work for you. In addition, you won’t know whether or not the product contains any live organisms after being freeze-dried and shipped long distances to sit on a shelf. Those in the know will tell you that microorganisms need very specific conditions to survive.
Once you try to overcome these hurdles, you will be faced with the biggest problem. This is that many people assume that any probiotic will do. It’s like saying that you took a drug because you weren’t feeling well without being able to specify what drug or why you chose it. Having a friend recommend a probiotic or a pharmacy assistant hand you one casually might lead to very limited results. The best you can do is to ask your doctor or pharmacist for a brand that has some good results (randomized, controlled trial data) supporting its effectiveness. Better still, try to find one that has proved success in treating the specific problem you identify and describe to the pharmacist.
Failing that, live, unsweetened, plain yoghurt is unlikely to hurt. If your child dislikes yoghurt, blend some fruit into it to make a smoothie. Don’t buy the yoghurt containing fruit. That isn’t a food – it’s a sweet dessert with no particular nutritional value.
So choosing a probiotic is not an easy thing to do. It is, however, worthwhile persevering because from our own experience, ILT practitioners have seen notable improvements in children whose gut gardens have been tended and begin to flourish.
Image supplied by Freepik.
[1] www.worldgastroenterology.org/assets/downloads/en/pdf/guidelines/19_probiotics_prebiotics.pdf
Apr 22, 2026 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
For some time now the health profession has realised the incredible importance of the connection between our guts and brains. This means that for children to learn easily and efficiently we need to take care that their digestive systems are full of ‘healthy’ bacteria. These are also known as probiotics and with this knowledge, sales of probiotic supplements have risen considerably in the past years.
But is this necessary? Humans have always needed a healthy gut so where did our ancestors source the bacteria for their gut microbiome? Certainly not from bottled pills or liquids bought from a pharmacy.
One interesting study was published in Frontiers in Microbiology. It revealed that a medium sized apple supplies about 100 million bacteria. These are found in the flesh of the apple, not the skin and represent a huge number of different types of bacteria – mostly those we need for health.
Significantly, most of the microbes seem to be centred in the core of an apple – perhaps because this is the most fibrous part of the fruit, and the bacteria feed off fibre. The seeds had the most bacteria of all.
So if you peel and core the apples you feed to your children (and yourself), you are throwing away 90% of the bacteria. This should stop and make you think. Why throw something away only to turn around and try and replace it with some or other pill?
Plenty of people eat an apple in its entirety. Try to cultivate this habit yourself. Munch the core and seeds along with the flesh and eat the well-washed skin too. Fibre is good for our guts.
The moral of this story is that fresh produce probably supplies us with probiotics. Those of us who really strive to eat a balanced diet full of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds probably don’t need to spend money on bottled microbes.
Image supplied by Freepik.
May 8, 2024 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
A question that interests some health professionals these days is why so many parents worry about vaccines and ponder whether they should be vaccinating their children yet are not at all concerned about giving their children antibiotics. In fact, a number of parents will visit a doctor with the aim of getting a prescription for antibiotics to treat their child’s complaint. In spite of warnings that antibiotics are becoming less effective because of their misuse and overuse. But lately, attention is turning to the damage antibiotics can do to our health.
The use of antibiotics depletes the population of important, ‘good’ gut bacteria in our bodies. The huge number of beneficial bacteria that we have on our bodies and in our gut is commonly referred to as our microbiota. The microbiota is essential for our physical and mental health, so destroying large numbers with antibiotics is not good news.
Especially concerning is what antibiotics do to an infant’s microbiota. Some bacteria in a baby play a critical role in the development of a child’s immune system. Antibiotic use early in life may raise the risks of allergies and allergic asthma because it reduces the beneficial effects of microbial exposure. One large study found a link between antibiotic use in the first year of life and symptoms of asthma, hay fever and eczema in children aged between 6 and 7 years. Early exposure to antibiotics could play a role in the ever increasing rates of food allergies as well. A study by the University of Chicago recently showed that young mice treated with antibiotics are more likely to develop a peanut-allergy-like condition. Dosing these mice with a certain microbe (called Clostridia) relieved them – seemingly by preventing the peanut proteins from getting into the bloodstream.
One of the biggest problems with antibiotics is that they often bring about almost instant improvements to a state of ill-health. A child suffering from a painful ear infection will very quickly start to feel better after antibiotic use. Why is this a problem? Because when you start feeling better, there are usually a lot of ‘bad’ bacteria still in your system. If you stop taking the antibiotic as soon as you’re feeling better, it gives the bacteria that were able to survive the early doses a chance to go on and develop a full resistance to that antibiotic. This means the same antibiotic won’t work for you next time. This is why doctors advise you to finish a course of antibiotics.
The problem is made worse because some doctors may use unreliable methods to decide which antibiotic to prescribe. Different bacteria need different antibiotics. Lab tests should actually be done to ensure the correct antibiotic use. Even worse than ‘guessing’ is the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, which target wide ranges of bacterial species, resulting in damage to our entire microbiome and not just the ‘bad’ bacteria we need to get rid of.
Probiotic use in animals
Once upon a time, sick animals used to be treated with antibiotics in the same way as they are used to treat people. Then, way back in the 1950’s, it was noticed that low doses of antibiotics caused weight gain in livestock. Increased size means increased value so low doses of antibiotics has become virtually the norm in animal farming.
This is a practice that is spreading antibiotic resistance. While high doses of antibiotics kill virtually any bacteria, low doses allow changes that make bacteria a little more resistant so that when the time comes that a particular bacteria is indeed life threatening, we’ve provided it with a means to protect itself and survive. In addition, the surviving bacteria spread throughout the agricultural industry, can jump between one species and another and infect humans. That’s why the European Union banned low-dose antibacterial use for fattening livestock in 2006. In South Africa, we can benefit from limiting our meat intake to sources that are farmed free-range and certified to be free of antibiotics.
And lastly, if low doses of antibiotics fatten up our livestock, do they fatten us up as well? It seems that the answer, although not yet conclusively proven, might well be yes!
Please be cautious about running to the doctor for that ‘quick-fix’ medication. In the long run, the benefits might be fewer than you think.
[1][1] Most of this content is extracted from the book Follow your gut, by Rob Knight. Published as a TED Book in 2015 by Simon and Schuster. It is highly recommended reading! If you would like to hear more, you can listen to Rob Knight’s TED Talk, available online at www.TED.com.
