"My Mighty Quinn" - From Tics, Turbulence, Distraction and Disconnection to Calm, Confident and Connected"

S2 Episode 3: A Mother's Conversations with World Leading Experts: Your Stress Matters... Creating Calm, Co-Regulation and Connection - with BG Mancini

• Lucia Silver / BG Mancini • Season 2 • Episode 3

Share episode

Hello and welcome to another enlightening episode of My Mighty Quinn and our mini series a "A Mother's Conversations with World Leading Experts"! 

I'm thrilled to have you join me today as we delve into a fascinating discussion with BG Mancini, a distinguished neuro-developmental specialist from the Brain and Gut Institute in New York.

In this episode, BG shares her expertise in functional medicine and neurodevelopmental practices, shedding light on the interconnectedness of the family nervous system. Here are some key takeaways from our conversation:

  1. Holistic Approach: BG emphasises the importance of taking a holistic approach to health, moving beyond symptom management and medication-based solutions. Understanding the root causes of challenges faced by children and families is crucial for promoting healing and resilience.

  2. Microtraumas: We explore how seemingly minor factors like diet, environmental toxins, and sensory stimuli can impact our nervous systems and contribute to health challenges. Recognising and addressing these microtraumas is essential for overall well-being.

  3. Self-Care for Parents: One key takeaway is the significance of self-care for parents in supporting their children's well-being. BG highlights the importance of parents addressing their own nervous system health and modelling healthy behaviours for their children.

By prioritising holistic health and nurturing our nervous systems, we can create a brighter future for our families. Thank you for tuning in to this enlightening episode. 

Stay tuned for more enriching conversations on "A Mother's Conversations with World Leading Experts"!

BG Mancini Resource Links: 

Resource Links:

My Might Quinn 

[00:00:00] Lucia Silver: Hello, everyone. Good morning. This is very exciting times. Today on our Mother's Conversations with World Leading Experts, I'm so very excited to be welcoming BG Mancini all the way from her fantastic clinic, the Brain and Gut Institute in New York. BG is a neurodevelopmental specialist. an advanced certified practitioner in functional medicine.

[00:00:31] Lucia Silver: She is not only the founder of the Brain Gut Institute, but also the creator of the Family Nervous System. With 27 years of clinical experience in practice, she works with children and families to unlock their unique potential through biomedical, nervous system, and neurodevelopmental practices. Now our promise at the Brain Health Movement is to bring you eye opening education and practical steps to address the underlying factors driving children's behavior and many of the attention, learning and developmental struggles they are facing.

[00:01:09] Lucia Silver: And this is exactly why I'm excited to have BG. She is devoted to, and like us, also advocates for, a holistic, whole body approach, and where possible, non medication based support. By whole body, this means including and exploring a whole host of contributing factors in any conversation about our children's health.

[00:01:34] Lucia Silver: For example, I can't just talk about Quinn's tick or another child's mental health without looking beneath and behind and what has brought this into play. So BG therefore combines functional medicine, functional neurology, nutrition, and Developmental vision, retained primitive reflexes, brain hemispheric integration with polyvagal theory tools, and that's all around the nervous system and something called the vagal tone, in order to address the physical, emotional, neurological, and behavioral well being of individuals, children, and families as a whole.

[00:02:19] Lucia Silver: Now, there are two particular reasons why I have invited BG onto this podcast, beyond the fact she's clearly fabulously qualified and hugely experienced. Number one, conventional medicine neither looks at the whole picture nor the causes. It treats symptoms and usually does so solely with Medication.

[00:02:42] Lucia Silver: Getting nowhere close to addressing the why. Why has this illness, this inflammation, this dysregulation, this imbalance occurred in the first place? Conventional medicine approaches the body and health in a compartmentalized way, with one specialist rarely speaking to another. But how can you treat a tick or a dysregulated or anxious behavior without looking at the nervous system?

[00:03:08] Lucia Silver: And so on. And number two, how can we heal if we do not heal all together as a family? How can I co regulate or help my child down regulate if I'm in a state of trauma or stress? And it was in a conversation with BG about my son where she made me take a good hard look at myself. And where I was in the picture, wanting Quinn to heal, but becoming and being ever increasingly dysregulated with stress and worry myself.

[00:03:44] Lucia Silver: And how can our kids be all right if we're not all right? So BG is developing her work further and further in this area, including children and their families. So without further ado, let's hear from BG. Hello and welcome BG. 

[00:03:59] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Nice to see you. Good to see you again. 

[00:04:02] Lucia Silver: So BG, could we start perhaps With you explaining to us a little more about the concept of the family, the whole family nervous system, and how this highlights the connectedness, the interconnectedness of family members.

[00:04:18] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Sure. So, when we look at an organism within itself, so let's take a child, for instance within their system, they have different dysregulation and harmony that has to work neurologically through the gut. We are a bi directional being. where our gut and brain are really not separate.

[00:04:40] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: They're talking to each other in real time all the time. So a lot of times what was happening is parents were coming to me and saying, here, can you help my child? And, through the tools that I've learned over the years and through studies and working with different providers, we were able to help that child to start to stabilize, to start to reduce inflammation, to start to improve their symptomology.

[00:05:04] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And then when you send that child back to a home where the mom, you know, and I always tell the moms, so they would be telling me on zoom or person. How the child is and then I'd pause and I'd say, okay, mom, and how's your nervous system and their shoulders would go from up here to, oh, I'm fried, I have so much stress and this and this, and as a mom myself, I know that when my kids are having challenges and, they do I know where my stress level goes and so I started to play with the idea that, you know, just because we're smiling and our voices are still having softness and prosody, and we're trying to engage, Really what they're hearing is the true tone of our nervous system, which is, we're hanging on for dear life when our kids have stressors.

[00:05:49] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: So within that dynamic of where children and mom and dad and other siblings and the health of the home and all of this, that is the bigger organism that each person has to be functioning individually and within the whole piece as well. 

[00:06:07] Lucia Silver: Is this what neuroception, interoception, proprioception, you, can you elaborate on those concepts and how they contribute to the self awareness within a family system?

[00:06:17] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Sure. If we think about, so interoception, Is our cues that are coming from within us. So many times kids, if you think about kids who are not aware when they have to go to the bathroom and having late stage bedwetting or, day wedding, et cetera. Okay, the cues from inside the body are off.

[00:06:36] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And why does that happen? Why, if we think about it as an adult, what, when do I check out of my body and not want to hear what my body has to say? It's when I'm uncomfortable. Good call. It's when I'm in pain. It's when the cues I'm getting from inside are so dysregulated, it's better and safer as a coping tool for me to not listen and to check out.

[00:06:59] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: So how do we help ourselves and our kids get back to it's okay to stay with these signals? by turning down the volume if those signals are dysregulated. So how do we get the body to be less inflamed? So whether it's foods that are triggering, whether it's environmental stressors, it can be people, it can be sounds, and it's a feedback loop with interoception.

[00:07:26] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: When our sensory processing gets heightened, when our inflammation is high. So that's been proven. So if we are able to turn down our reaction to the outside world, it's lessening this internal reaction. And so we're neuroception, which is our sort of, if you think of whereas interoception is our internal radar.

[00:07:49] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And Neuroception is our external radars. Picture like a, a satellite dish. Am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe? And this is a tool for survival. That's intrinsic to being human, actually being in a body. I think I know, all animals do it too, right? So if we're hearing, sound, okay, typically one little sound in the background is not going to cue us to go, turn quick.

[00:08:12] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Am I safe? Okay. Your brain processes it. It's okay. Probably just a thing. Okay. But what happens when we're inflamed and when our nervous system's resilience is down, drained by all these little pokes and injuries, is that everything starts to feel dangerous to us. We have now installed a lens of threat through which we're interpreting our relationships.

[00:08:35] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Our relationship with the outside world, with family, and with ourselves. Because our internal state is saying, you're not safe. Something's going on. You're creating inflammation with things you're eating, things you're exposing yourself to. That is a part of it. Interoception can be skewed by viruses, bacteria, all of the different things.

[00:08:54] Lucia Silver: But to keep that little bit very simple, I find it very interesting when we're looking at the symptoms of a child within a classroom feeling that. So let's say, for example, inattention or jitteriness or fidgeting, and we focus just on that. But actually, with what you're saying, if your central nervous system is on high alert and you're feeling in a state of, as some of us have heard of, fight or flight Your systems are essentially telling your body, there's a tiger in the room, there's a tiger in the room.

[00:09:25] Lucia Silver: And then we're wondering why our children can't focus on their fractions. And when you look at it in that context, or you imagine a deer in headlights, or you see a gazelle in nature in that immobilized, fixated state, we need to understand that is Pretty much what's going on for those children that might have dysregulation of a similar order.

[00:09:48] Lucia Silver: It could be their moral reflex. It could be, as you say, environmental factors. It could be a compounding factor of all of those things. But that is the expectation we're having of those children in the classroom, isn't it? 

[00:10:00] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Absolutely. And you bring up the point of retained reflexes, which are really the fabric and foundation of our survival in the world, right?

[00:10:08] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: They develop in utero. In order to help us navigate growth in the uterus, in order to navigate the birth canal, in order to, the the reflex to feed, when the baby's mouth is touched. 

[00:10:20] Lucia Silver: Absolutely. 

[00:10:20] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: So, you 

[00:10:21] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: know, 

[00:10:22] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: All of these 

[00:10:23] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: things are designed for our development and survival. And then if those are not integrated at certain points, there are constant strain on the nervous system, like a record.

[00:10:35] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: That the pin is here and it keeps trying to go into the loop. And so then all the other therapeutics and other things we're trying, it's making this groove to get into so much harder when the reflex isn't quite integrated. 

[00:10:49] Lucia Silver: Yes, 

[00:10:53] Lucia Silver: and that touches on the importance of sequencing, to some extent, that you've talked to me quite a lot about, BG, the importance of what we do in what order.

[00:11:02] Lucia Silver: Is, I've always loved the, Shakespeare's quote, the readiness is all, how ready are we to receive healing? How ready are we to receive treatment? How ready are we in any, if a child is in a heightened state or the family is in a heightened state of alert or trauma, and I, we're going to go on and talk a little bit about trauma as your, one of your many areas of speciality, but we can't hope to begin to heal, for the gut to heal, for everything else to heal, if the system is on high alert.

[00:11:36] Lucia Silver: So in terms of sequence, BG, could you talk to us a little bit about where best to start sometimes? 

[00:11:44] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: So I would say I, what I always tell parents is that we start wherever you can, right? And so for some people, they look at changing the diet and it's too overwhelming, right? Food is a very emotional, tool that we use for coping sometimes.

[00:12:00] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: So sometimes it is food that is a foundational dysregulating tool though, right? We see some kids who when they have colors, colored food or gluten or dairy or sugar, my parents will tell me they can see pinwheels in their kids eyes, as soon as they get those. Then for some kids it's going to be the retained reflexes.

[00:12:19] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And sometimes it's, okay, if you can't do it five times a week, twice a day, can you do it once a day and just get into a routine three times a week and start to build those up? Can it be just getting outside and putting your feet in the grass or getting UV light, to help regulate the nervous system and our sleep patterns?

[00:12:39] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Can you spend 10, 15 more minutes? a day, 10 15 more minutes a week. Now, where can we start to take those five percent, I call them the five percent rule, of food, retained reflexes, nature more hydration, addressing leaky gut? Our connection our deep connecting time, staying off of our phones as 5%, 5%, 5%, wherever you can get those and start to stack them, you get momentum, right?

[00:13:08] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: It's not necessarily 100 percent of all the things that are likely contributing, but meeting yourself where you are, being gentle with where your nervous system is as a fam, as a parent. In order to best support and take your child with you on that journey, and I'll just draw the picture that which is what inspired me when the image came to me, parents would come and say, can you help my child?

[00:13:32] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Yes. And I always say the parents were underneath the pool water, holding the child up here, right above, so they could survive. And as the child started to get better, what I noticed was many times moms And dads. They but especially moms, because that was my demographic when I started. Those were my original patients.

[00:13:52] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Their nervous systems would actually crash after the child started doing better. So when we think about a crisis some of us, okay, incrementally have enough resilience left. All right, I'm going to get my stability back and keep moving up the hill, right? But sometimes you've drained that bucket of resilience so significantly that when the crisis is over.

[00:14:12] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Instead of recovering, the nervous system was going into autoimmunity, chronic fatigue, all of the different diagnosis that you really call debilitated resilience, essentially. So I said, Hey, mamas, how about if we put the jack underneath you, right? And raise you up as you're raising the child up.

[00:14:32] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And then you both get ahead because the connection, the deep, meaningful connection that we as parents need. in order for that feedback loop between our child to not only make the connection, but that raises our oxytocin, it raises our dopamine, it helps them to feel that, and it demonstrates for them we can't say to someone, eat better when we're sitting there eating tacos and Twinkies, right?

[00:14:57] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: So we have to show them and live that presence of, Hey, here's why we're doing this. And sometimes doing good things for ourselves is hard because if feeling good were effortless, everyone would be doing it. That's what I always tell people, it's not easy. And parenting's the hardest job in the world.

[00:15:16] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: It's super hard and your children are looking to you, I remember it even as we all do when our kiddies are, when Quinn was little and he fell over on the playground. You see it immediately, then they look up, they look at you. And they wait to see whether you've gone, or you've gone, let's get an ice cream.

[00:15:33] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And, you see it right then, don't you? You see the beginnings of them formulating how they are going to respond to the world through that mirroring. So psychologically it's there, energetically it's there but what would you advise? I've had moments with Quinn and particularly since his, he, having this, he has an autoimmune condition that I haven't shared particularly with our followers, but when his dysregulation is extreme, it is extremely difficult to yourself not be Shocked if they suddenly shout, or I'm quite a nervy person by nature, everyone thinks I'm calm, but I'm the worst person to watch a horror movie with, I jump out of my skin.

[00:16:15] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: So if Quinn has a little moment like that, then I and then he goes again and the both of us are like jumping rabbits. What would be a first step in this approach to self care?

[00:16:26] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: So I would say, That, tools that we use, they always say, put your own mask on first. And because it's so cliche, everyone goes 

[00:16:34] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Yeah, there are tools that you can share that you can do in the moment for yourself and for your child. When kids love being well and eating healthy and doing cool exercises for your nervous system is not a stress or a strain for young kids. They actually think it's fun, and if we approach it from that perspective Glenn Doman taught me this 35 years ago when we were working with my niece who had a traumatic brain injury at birth, hypoxic double cord injury, and she was told she'd never walk, talk develop and be institutionalized.

[00:17:04] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And he showed us that through repetitive movements much like retained reflexes through frequency, intensity, and duration, we're able to rehabilitate pathways in the brain and body nervous system. In order to develop resilience and functionality. Starting with things like EFT tapping, it's called which I think we talked about before, and you can put in the show notes, super easy, three to five minutes, you will have a, okay, moment.

[00:17:34] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: You get that. We, as a very thinking person myself, even though I love yoga and I love these other things, I will think my way into more problems than anything else, but I can't think my way into feeling safer and more relaxed. So until I get out of my head, back into my body, which is get your feet in grass, take your kids outside.

[00:17:57] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: All kids regulate outside. They get so much more calm because nature is a regulating element for our nervous system. That's been proven in research time and time again. You can do tapping, which would just literally tapping different points on the body, take people through that. We could do it now.

[00:18:14] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: I don't know for that. We have the time. There's something called the Stanley Rosenberg reset. Which I find particularly useful. Yes, it's great. Yeah, it's really amazing, so that's another one takes a little bit of practice. Do it when you're laying in bed, especially if you have a hard time falling asleep.

[00:18:32] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: There's different auditory programs, which are remarkable the SSP. 

[00:18:36] Lucia Silver: BG, we'll make sure as well, because these are so valuable. We're going to put these in a guide for everyone afterwards so that they can download it. We'll put it in the show notes. So yeah, you've just listed, I'm taking them down myself here, but we need to absolutely share these.

[00:18:50] Lucia Silver: So just to everybody, there'll be in the show notes after afterwards, you'll be able to download it. I will send you the link. Sorry, BG, carry on. In case anyone was panicking trying to get this down. 

[00:19:01] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Really, it's just, the takeaway is that we can't think ourselves into a calmer state. We have to physically do something to reset ourselves, and our children do too.

[00:19:11] Lucia Silver: Interestingly, when I was first doing the primitive reflex work, everything was focused on Quinn. And I realize, again, and it's reinforced by everything that you're saying, there's no reason why And often it is the case that the retained primitive reflexes, for example, that your children are expressing, or some of the nervous inattention that your children are expressing, you will find that you are expressing that yourself, whether as a subsequence or previously, or they're expressing your stress.

[00:19:42] Lucia Silver: We've all seen that manifest. And so I've started now doing my exercises with Quinn. It supports him as well. It means he doesn't always have to do it by himself, but hell, it's also about getting myself in shape. So I think when you approach a lot of this work as a collective, as a tribe, as a family, that is, Very warming.

[00:20:07] Lucia Silver: It also makes the child, it doesn't, it's not then about the child. It's all of us in it together, right? It becomes a joint responsibility and a, and as you say, make it fun, make it a family activity. 

[00:20:20] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Because no one wants to feel like they're the problem, right? Because that's what happens when you have one individual in the family.

[00:20:27] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: You say you're the problem. You're the one that has to do this. Whereas, and that's why I stopped working with children only. Okay. About four or five years ago, I said, okay, it's got to be the whole family here. Because what you just said about the child on the playground falling, and the child looks to you and says, how am I doing?

[00:20:42] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Here's what I found was happening was profound when I developed, when I figured it out for myself was parents were holding the image of the child where they were at their worst. And when I say worst, they're most challenged. Okay. And they were really suffering because we hold that image. It is hard for us to get over it.

[00:21:03] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: So the child would start to make progress and feel a little better and respond a little differently. But our parent nervous systems were still holding them in this other place and it was making it much more difficult for the child to progress. So when we started working with parents nervous systems, seeing what was really holding them stuck, where was their trauma, their unresolved trauma it really made it easier for them because as soon as we worked with them, I stopped working with the kids until parents got a little bit more resilient, right?

[00:21:34] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And then they would tell me, Oh, my child wants to cuddle more, or, Oh, my child is reacting differently. Because the tone of their, the sound that's actually the pitch that our nervous system was making shifted and instead of reacting, because they can, because remember kids nervous systems are undeveloped.

[00:21:55] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: We have frontal lobes and executive function, so no matter how stressed and strained we are, we still have certain catches that stop us from behaving and reacting a certain way. Children don't have that. And so when they sense what is happening and they always know, even if we gaslight them and say no, I'm fine, they know.

[00:22:15] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And so that honesty, when something's going on, we have to give them details that are traumatizing. Okay. But yes, I'm struggling. I'm having a hard time right now. I want to show up for you the best way I can, but I'm having a hard time. Kids want to be connected to us, our imperfect selves, right?

[00:22:34] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And so if we are able to authentically be there with them, And try and work together. It's not us to figure it all out. It makes a huge difference and they feel more part of the team instead of being singled out as the one with the problem. And that's part of the nervous system of the family. 

[00:22:49] Lucia Silver: Absolutely.

[00:22:50] Lucia Silver: And gosh, that, that, that's just true for life in general, can you turn up fully as a human in all of your relationships with that vulnerability and honesty? I always laugh and say that doesn't mean oversharing, but it is about being fully. And by being that way, giving others permission to do the same.

[00:23:10] Lucia Silver: Interestingly, even within the brain health movement, BG, on the moments where I have expressed that I'm struggling, is when all the followers engage. Hang in there. You'll be all right. But when I sit in front of the camera and I'm like, this is what we need to do. This is what we need to do. Quite often it's silent and we need to meet in those places.

[00:23:30] Lucia Silver: We don't need to awfulize. We don't need to turn up with drama. But I realize with Quinn now, he's gonna see it and does see it anyway. Our children, as you say, there's no hiding it. I can come in with, I'm getting on in the kitchen and Quinn goes, what's wrong? And I'm like, how did he even know? Or you end up having a terrible kind of spill out and it all comes out anyway.

[00:23:52] Lucia Silver: And then you're so full of shame that happened. You might forget to have the conversation with your little kid to go, that was me not coping. Just like you sometimes don't cope. That was me not coping. And the more I do that, the more Quinn will go, that's okay, mummy. I do that too, and there is the co regulation, right?

[00:24:10] Lucia Silver: That there is where you both align and meet and find your safe space again. Can I pull you back, BG, to microtraumas because I know it's such a an exciting and clarifying, in a way, area that you're exploring and specializing in. Would you be able to talk to us a little bit about it? 

[00:24:27] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Sure, and I really do think that.

[00:24:29] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And again, microtraumas is just the word that I use for it and the framework that I've built for myself so that I could make sense of what I'm seeing these all these years. If we think about there's big T trauma big events, ACEs, these types of things. There's smaller traumas that we experience emotionally, injury, physically, et cetera.

[00:24:50] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And then there's the micro traumas that a lot of, that we are not even aware of, okay? Most of us are not. If we are taking in foods that create leaky gut, inflammation. If we are being exposed to chemicals some of us, certain smells are actually neurotoxic. So there will be migraine headaches, there will be brain inflammation.

[00:25:12] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: There are certain sounds, pitches, okay, growling sounds, they call them that trigger our nervous system. But if you're working next to an HVAC or an air conditioning, your teacher, the things outside your classroom, and you don't know why you're so dysregulated. It can be the HVAC, right? So I'm just giving you examples, but all of these are queuing our enteric nervous system, which is in our gut.

[00:25:36] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: That is our second brain, right? That is our trust, our gut instinct to that you are in threat. And it's constantly sending the cues in this bi directional access between our brain and gut, which is all really wired as one. To be inflamed, overactive, over responsive. And so then there's the external micro traumas as well.

[00:25:59] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: We don't have time to dive into these too much, but the point is that there are these small cues that we are not aware of, but they're constantly firing us off. So what can we do? Number one, we become aware of as many stressors that we can change, that we are aware of, that we know are problems for us, right?

[00:26:17] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And then we start to tune in a little bit. Hey, is there something in my environment? Is there something I'm eating? And usually people figure it out pretty fast. They're going to know, yeah, when I eat this food, it makes me a little bit bloated, etc. And I always tell people bloating is not some benign symptom.

[00:26:34] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: It means that your gut is actually creating a dysregulated biome, microbiome. This can be SIBO, Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, which has neurological and mental health consequences. This can be, more leaky gut, which also has neurological and mental health consequences. 

[00:26:53] Lucia Silver: So Biji, let me just hold you there, because you've said a lot of super clever things that we might get a little bit lost by.

[00:26:59] Lucia Silver: So first of all, the microbiome is the healthy the goodies and the makeup of the gut that is responsible. And maybe you'll talk a little bit about the importance of the gut in regulating the system, in creating the neurotransmitters. Some of us know about serotonin, the feel good, the dopamines, the, it creates those.

[00:27:17] Lucia Silver: And how many signals are there from the gut back to the brain? It's huge, isn't it? It's most. It's most. It's most. And when leaky gut happens, which is again a phrase that some of our listeners may not be aware of, when leaky gut is happening, that means that things are getting out of the gut that need to stay in the gut.

[00:27:36] Lucia Silver: And things are getting into the gut that need to not get into the gut. So when we talk about dysregulation, or we talk about dysregulation, gut dysbiosis. That's when the, is that correct? When everything is Add a whack. So things that should be protecting us from viruses and diseases and so forth are not functioning and stuff that needs to stay in to help that process is getting out.

[00:27:58] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And that's what COVID did too. The junctions were open and all the viruses were going out. Okay. And so the cytokine storm was significant, right? But what happens on a minor level is that same thing, those tight junctions open, the giga, and all the viruses, bacteria, food particles. So now once that's in our body, then we make antibodies and become sensitive and allergic, etc.

[00:28:22] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And just one more little thought, for those whose kids are in distress or experiencing really significant challenges, the same little, picture a toll booth that you go through when you're driving on the highway, those same little toll booths on our gut are on the brain's protective barrier too.

[00:28:39] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And we can have leaky gut and leaky brain, and those same junctions can get triggered by leaky gut in the brain. So then we have a condition where we're getting more inflammation neurologically in the brain, more challenging behaviors, and it makes things more complicated to heal. 

[00:28:55] Lucia Silver: It's a very nuanced and subtle and comorbid thing, isn't it?

[00:28:59] Lucia Silver: One thing impacting upon another, and as you say, you simplify it for us all by just looking for tiny steps, marginal increases towards health. And getting those sequences right. First of all, calming the system and then looking at a little bit of what's going on with the food. What could we take out of the diet that's not helpful?

[00:29:22] Lucia Silver: Sugar and gluten and dairy are, I know, a top of the list. most of our lists, if we can manage to reduce processed foods, looking at our environment. Yeah. Um, what would be for a parent right now listening to this and thinking, my word that's a lot of stuff, even if I am just going to start.

[00:29:44] Lucia Silver: What are some key takeaways for those who really want to be able to promote this well being in their families? What might be the beginnings of this for you? Where would you start? 

[00:29:55] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: I would say start with we all start with ourselves. Over the next day, two, three, can you just add in something that brings you that downregulation feeling that, okay, I feel a little better and start to be aware of this moving from head to body, head to heart.

[00:30:13] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Some people say, I say head to body, get outside, get off spend a little less time on the phones and TV, that those are coping tools. They are definitely, I always say then binge watch Netflix is my. Drug of choice, when I'm distressed and I can't quite get my handle and I need to reset.

[00:30:31] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Sometimes I'll do that. Getting into our body, whether it's a yoga, a walk, go for a coffee with a friend, listen to some great music, something that lifts your spirit up and gives you some more resilience. Then, maybe include your kids in that. Have them put on a song that makes them happy. Get them outside with you.

[00:30:49] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Try some of the tapping. It really actually works. The Stanley Rosenberg reset. And then, okay, get your feedback under you. And then where could we start with, Hey, let me look at the foods that I'm not responding well to, right? Because we don't get apples from orange trees. So our kids often have the same sensitivities or more than we do.

[00:31:12] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And then, if it's not food where you can start looking at retained reflexes. Looking at repetitive rhythm motions, those are often very relaxing for the nervous system. And, um, bringing in anything that can help you feel better and your child feel more relaxed in any moment.

[00:31:32] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: If you can get a couple of those a day, over the course of a week, that is a lot more resilience. So this is not an all or nothing thing. We can just start to build these moments a little, get our ground again, feel more resilient. Then we feel like we can handle some of these bigger steps. Yes. Ideally, do I see the biggest changes when all of them are implemented?

[00:31:53] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Absolutely. When we can get the diet, the reflexes. Some therapeutics, some sound therapy, all of these fit together. Maybe some supplementation that's been incremental, both in my own family. 

[00:32:06] Lucia Silver: Movement. We mustn't forget movement, exercise, getting oxygen into the body. Yeah.

[00:32:12] Lucia Silver: Get off the sofa. Get off the Netflix. Get off the screen. Get off the gaming. 

[00:32:18] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: And how about being outside, right? We do not have the amount of UV exposure that we need. Your kids are actually really getting dysregulated. Their cortisol levels are dysregulated because they're not getting, outside light.

[00:32:33] Lucia Silver: Yes, we talk about this a lot in our original Free Guide BG where it was an Absolute epiphany to me, the importance of movement. Just that, just getting outside and moving. And we're deaf to the older generation in that comment. Kids don't play in their front yards like they used to, but it's exactly the case.

[00:32:53] Lucia Silver: You can have a sunny day and you look into a house and the kids are on their You know, they're on their screens playing and without that movement, and especially in our formative, in our developmental period, the brain literally grows from movement. That was my absolutely huge epiphany. I had no idea.

[00:33:11] Lucia Silver: Obviously, we need oxygen and we need glucose and food and so forth, but I didn't realize, this is why we see little children in orphanages who have been just left in a cot. their brain is literally retarded. They've had no human contact. They've had nothing. They've had no movement. They've had no stimulation.

[00:33:27] Lucia Silver: So let's not forget the things that are simple and free to do because I think sometimes I certainly felt I can't afford all that expensive organic food. I can't, what am I supposed to do with my kids if they're not on a screen? What are they going to do? We've forgotten the joys of some of the simplest things that we can do with our children.

[00:33:46] Lucia Silver: And one of the, one of the mums just, Texted me this morning who did our little taster course. And she was like, ever since, doing that course, I just now on the way back home, I stopped with the kids in the park and I let them go out for 10, 15 minutes. So I don't have much time, she's a single mom.

[00:34:01] Lucia Silver: I just let them get in there. And I, because I didn't even realize how important that was. We don't know what we don't know, BG. That's why we need people like you in the world, because you don't know what you don't know. 

[00:34:11] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Yeah. I still learn every day. And I know that we're. You know we're probably going to wrap up in a few minutes and I just want to say about that comment for organic foods.

[00:34:19] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Yes. The fibers in vegetables is what nourishes the gut. So even if it's not organic and even if you just threw 15 20 different vegetables in a food processor and froze it, broke off a little bit of that and threw it into the food you're cooking, That is actually the best pre, post, and probiotic that you can use.

[00:34:40] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Wow. Feed them naturally in your biome and let it develop for each person what it needs. It's called the microbiome mashup. You can YouTube it. Oh! So that's a really good tip. 

[00:34:51] Lucia Silver: That's fantastic. I hide it in a blender and stick it in the bolognese sauce, but I'm going to, the same principle applies, right?

[00:34:58] Lucia Silver: And that's good to hear that I'm sometimes thinking, Oh, that courgette isn't organic and, Oh, that, that isn't organic, but better to have it in there than not at all, is what you're saying, right? Yes. Biji, this is amazing work. Thank you so much for giving us your time today and for sharing across the whole spectrum of little steps that we can take for our precious children.

[00:35:22] Lucia Silver: Biji's organization is called the Brain and Gut Institute in New York. It's just a fantastic website. She's also coming over to the UK to speak with Marte Gabor, amongst others, who's one of my very favorite people speaking on trauma. So there's some exciting opportunities. We'll put everything that we can into the show notes.

[00:35:41] Lucia Silver: We'll also put in the free guides that'll have all of BG's tips on self care, because that's going to be my big takeout today. Start with yourself, or what's the expression? Is it Socrates? Heal thyself? Gees are mama too, by the way. You speak from the heart, from understanding exactly the challenges we face when when our children are not well.

[00:36:01] Lucia Silver: So I think it's so important and it's certainly been my promise to our listeners and our followers. To bring compassionate leaders in science and leaders in healing who really understand coming from the heart and the head, and in your case, the gut too. So thank you very much, BG. We really, we love you and we hope to have you back on the podcast again.

[00:36:24] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Look forward to it and thank you for everything you're doing and the way that you do it. You really bring the message through for your audience in such a beautiful, tangible, digestible way. I just, I love what you're doing. Thank you. 

[00:36:38] Lucia Silver: Thank you, BG. Lots of love. Bye for now. 

[00:36:42] Dr. BG Mancini AP, FMP, MS: Care.