Biohacking Your Kids (and the missing link for many parents)
Biohacking is such a buzz word lately, and ‘biohackers’ are starting to wonder what can be done to optimise their kids health.
I love biohacking kids, though really I just consider it optimising their development. There isn’t much to hack - they don’t have the layers upon layers of complexities that us adults have. In fact, one of my passions is to help parents raise the healthiest kids on the block so that they don’t have to worry about the chronic health issues of modern life.
Biohacking for Kids
There are some ‘low hanging fruit’ that are quite easy to hack when it comes to your children, and they honestly give you such a big bang for your buck. We will cover some of them today, but if you want to deep-dive, you might like to check out my Biohack Your Kids Masterclass (it’s pre-recorded and available whenever you are).
Kids are amazing - you put their body in the right environment, and it takes care of itself. You do not need to get your kids in ice baths to hack their system (thank goodness).
Brain Health is where it begins
It is no secret that I love the vagus nerve (and the whole nervous system). So when it comes to biohacking your kids, I immediately think of their brain development.
The brain develops when it is given adequate stimulation, nutrition, and SAFETY.
Simples really..
Get your kids moving
Get your kids eating whole foods
Create a secure attachment with your children
We cover these in depth in my Masterclass, but for now let’s assume you’re already doing these things.
What happens when you do all these things, and nothing is going as planned?
The nervous system can be pretty fiddly at times. And it isn’t always as simple as movement, food and perceived safety.
The issue I see in my practice a lot is that the concept of stress and stressors is not fully understood by most people.
Stressors are what is happening TO us. This could be our current environment, external OR internal. The nervous system cannot tell the difference between as external stressor such as being bullied at school, vs an internal stressor such as a gut health imbalance triggering inflammation. To the nervous system, these stressors are one and the same.
And on top of that? We have the stress itself. This is how our body responds, physiologically AND emotionally to the stressor. And this is entirely individual - based on personality, past experience, current state of the nervous system (ie if they are already overloaded, one small thing might cause a big reaction).
This is the territory I work within in my clinic (in person and online).
Until their nervous system can feel safe above all else, the rest of their physiology will not work optimally. So you can biohack your kids all you like, but you need to prioritise safety.
Root causes of your child’s nervous system dysregulation
Unfortunately, neurological safety can be a double edged sword, and sometimes you really need to clear the root cause before you see a shift in your child’s brain function (and body too). Other times you need to sort out the nervous system regulation abilities before the other physiological imbalances start to resolve.
I’m assuming that if you’re still reading, you’re having some regulation struggles with your child and you’re looking for answers.
Sometimes you need to optimise their vagal tone and create safety in their external environment, and other times you need to prioritise their internal environment so they can better cope with the external environment.
So if you’ve tried all the attachment parenting advice, you’re patient, you keep yourself regulated with your kids, and yet there is still ^something^ - then you need to be seeking answers inside their physiology.
Children are not naturally dysregulated all the time, and mothers have a strong intuition to know when things are off (if only we all trusted it more!).
The entire reason I do what I do, and why I have Michele the naturopath on my team, is because we really need to address a child’s nervous system safety from both sides of that sword, and as a team we are the only ones doing this.
Biohacking your Kids can be simple, or it can be complex
If you’re wanting to DIY the ‘lowest hanging fruit’, then watching the Biohack Your Kids masterclass is going to give you everything you need to truly hack your child’s brain development and set them up for a healthy life.
If you feel like you’re floundering, not sure what is going on, and just cannot get to the root of it all, you might like to get in touch to arrange some 1:1 support. You do not have to diy, you do not have to do it alone, and you do not have to stop listening to your mother’s intuition telling you there’s something going on!