Brainstorm Health Clinic

Brainstorm Health Clinic Stella has a special interest in digestive disorders, autoimmune conditions, food intolerances and the relationship between genetics and nutrition.

Brainstorm Health is an award-winning Functional Medicine and Nutritional Therapy clinic, providing cutting-edge health solutions for children and young adults on the autism spectrum, as well as those with PANDAS, PANS, depression, anxiety, and long COVID Brainstorm Health was founded by Stella Chadwick, with a commitment to achieving optimum health for children and young adults on the autism spec

trum, as well as those with behavioural and learning difficulties, and food and chemical sensitivities. Stella has a first class BSc Honours degree in Nutritional Therapy, with extensive training in the principles of Functional Medicine, which assesses and addresses the underlying causes of conditions.

What if the “clean” product you carefully chose isn’t actually what the label says it is?I’ve been reading a new paper t...
25/08/2026

What if the “clean” product you carefully chose isn’t actually what the label says it is?

I’ve been reading a new paper that tested 113 everyday cleaning and personal-care products.

On average, the label listed 16 ingredients.

When they actually analysed the products, they found 51 chemicals.

And 85% contained at least one unlabelled chemical with a known or suspected health hazard.

Perhaps the most surprising bit?

Even amongst the products that looked best based on their ingredients, 59% failed once they were actually tested.

I immediately thought about our PANS/PANDAS and autism families.

Because sometimes your child is in a place where you genuinely cannot do much.

They won’t take the supplements. Their diet is down to a handful of foods. Anything new is a no.

But you can change what surrounds them.

The washing liquid their clothes and bedding sit in all day.

What you clean the house with.

The plug-ins, sprays, candles and fragrances in the air.

What goes on their skin.

You don’t need to turn the house upside down.

Just start looking.

When something runs out, have a think before you replace it.

It’s one small part of a much bigger picture, but it’s something you can do without asking anything of your child.

I’ll put the paper in the comments because it’s worth a read. 👇

17/08/2026

There is something going on in your child’s mouth that no throat swab will ever pick up, and you can see it in the sink tonight.

The gum is one cell thick where it meets the tooth. When the gum is inflamed it bleeds, and every time it bleeds the bacteria in the plaque go into the blood.

The immune system does exactly what it should. It finds them and responds.

In PANS and PANDAS, that response is the problem. Twice a day, every day, at the gum line, it is being kept switched on.

Tonight:

✔️Look in the sink when they spit. Pink means the gum line is open.

✔️Look at the gum edge where it meets the tooth. Red, puffy or shiny is inflamed. Healthy is pale pink and tight.

✔️Notice if they sleep with their mouth open. A dry mouth makes it worse.

✔️Book a check before term starts, ideally with a holistic or biological dentist.

Tell whoever is managing their flares.

🔄 Share this post. There is a parent who needs to read it before their child’s next flare.

09/08/2026

Which triggers reliably make things harder in your house - pollen, mould, back-to-school, certain chemicals, weather changes?

Once you start noticing the patterns, they become easier to plan around.

05/08/2026

98 studies. 4,236 autistic children. One thread running through all of it. Inflammation.

It even held up when the weakest studies were thrown out.

So here is my question. Why is this not part of an autism assessment?

The one that stood out was IFN-gamma. The body only makes it when something has got inside the cells and is living there, out of reach. Viruses. Bacteria. Mould. Lyme.

It sits in the background and your child never looks properly ill.

What you see instead is the aggression, the OCD, the anxiety, the sleep, the regression, the child who stops wanting to be around anyone.

This is what inflammation looks like in these children.

And we are handing parents conversations about acceptance and identity while a child's immune system is on fire.

That is a disservice to these children.

Bring the inflammation down first. It's the single most stabilising thing you can do. Then go and find out why it was there.

There is always a why.

Study in comments 👇

28/07/2026

If you worry about what is sprayed on your produce, a 15-minute soak in bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), one teaspoon to two cups of water, removes up to 96% of surface pesticide residue.

Cheap, simple, and it actually works.

24/07/2026

🧠 There’s a hidden doorway to the brain… right behind your nose.

A thin plate of bone, full of tiny holes, sits at the roof of the nasal cavity. Nerves thread through it… straight into the brain.

No blood-brain barrier here. No security gate.

It’s one of the few places in the body that’s never fully sealed, and it opens near the limbic system, the brain’s hub for emotion, impulse and behaviour.

That’s the route some viruses and bacteria can use to reach the brain.

So a “simple” sinus infection is never just local.

Neither is chronic inflammation hiding under a tooth.

Both sit right at that opening, close enough to feed inflammation toward the brain.

In a child who keeps flaring, with rage, anxiety, tics, OCD, sleep issues or sudden behavioural changes, don’t let this be the thing you miss.

23/07/2026

I don't believe any child is fixed in place. I've seen too much to believe that.

When a child loses skills they had, it can look permanent.

Under stress, the connections between neurons shrink back, they stop passing signals, and the ability seems to disappear.

But pulling back is not the same as being lost. Those neurons have powered down to protect themselves. Change the conditions around them, and they start connecting again.

I work from that with every child I see. A child's current state tells me how much load their system is under.

The real question is never how far they can go. It's what's in the way, and what we can do about it.

22/07/2026

Inflammation is not a straight line. It is a loop.

Body inflammation drives brain inflammation.

Brain inflammation drives the stress response.

The stress response drives more inflammation.

And round it goes.

This is why a child gets stuck. The loop keeps feeding itself long after the trigger has gone.

This is the good news. A loop has more than one point you can break.

21/07/2026

Children with ADHD often have high copper and low zinc.

A study of 108 children found exactly that. The ones with the most copper and the least zinc had the worst attention.

Copper and zinc balance each other. Push one up, the other drops.

So if your child is wired and can't settle, it's worth checking both.

Ask for plasma zinc, serum copper, and ceruloplasmin.

Ceruloplasmin is copper's carrier. Copper being carried is safe.

It's the copper roaming free that causes trouble. And a normal copper result can miss that completely.

And never move one without the other. Copper and zinc go together.

Study link in comment 👇

17/07/2026

Here's something that still amazes me.

90% of your child's serotonin isn't made in their brain.

It's made in their gut.

The gut builds it. Stores it. Uses it to run mood, sleep and digestion.

So when a child's mood and sleep fall apart, one world says it's behaviour, and the other says fix the gut.

Sometimes the gut is right.

But sometimes the gut is where it landed, not where it started. An old infection. Inflammation underneath. Mast cells firing off.

Fix the gut all you like. If something upstream is still firing, it just breaks down again.

So before you chase the gut, look at two things.

What came before it. Did this follow an illness, a virus, a course of antibiotics? That points upstream.

And the timing. Is it worse after eating, or worse when they haven't eaten? One points to histamine. The other to blood sugar. The pattern is the clue.

Address

London

Opening Hours

Monday 9:30am - 5:30pm
Tuesday 9:30am - 5:30pm
Wednesday 9:30am - 5:30pm
Thursday 9:30am - 5:30pm
Friday 9:30am - 5:30pm

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