Brainstorm Health Clinic

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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 spectrum, 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.

I still meet children with severe OCD whose immune system has never been investigated. Not once.In 2005, a team in Londo...
15/10/2026

I still meet children with severe OCD whose immune system has never been investigated.

Not once.

In 2005, a team in London tested the blood of 50 children with OCD.

More than 4 in 10 had antibodies reacting with the basal ganglia, the part of the brain that handles habits and behaviour.

In children without OCD, it was 2 to 10 in 100.

A later review of seven studies found that people with OCD had almost five times the odds of having these antibodies.

I’ve spent years investigating the immune system’s role in childhood OCD, and I’ve seen remarkable changes when underlying immune problems are identified and addressed.

This does NOT mean every child with OCD has these antibodies. It means the immune system belongs on the list of things to explore.

Has your child’s immune system ever been looked at? Or was it straight to anxiety, medication and therapy?

Studies and my blog in comments 👇

Almost 9 in 10 parents in a study of children with PANS described their child as gifted.Think about that.Extraordinary m...
09/10/2026

Almost 9 in 10 parents in a study of children with PANS described their child as gifted.

Think about that.

Extraordinary memories. Advanced language. Exceptional abilities in maths, reading, creativity and reasoning.

And this fascinates me because it’s something we’ve repeatedly observed at Brainstorm Health.

Children with remarkable abilities who then become desperately ill.

OCD. Rage. Crippling anxiety. Food refusal. Cognitive decline. Children who once loved learning but can no longer attend school. Some can barely function day to day.

I’ve been asking myself the same question for years.

Could the very neurobiology that makes some of these children exceptional also make them more vulnerable when their immune system becomes dysregulated?

We don’t know. But surely we should be investigating it.

Today is PANS/PANDAS Awareness Day.

I want more people to know about this finding, and I want more research into why this pattern is being reported.

And I’d really like to hear from parents.

Was your child exceptionally gifted in something before PANS/PANDAS struck? What was it?

Study in comments.

28/09/2026

The National Autistic Society has set the autism conversation back 20 years.

It’s taken me a minute to collect my thoughts and go through the rationale behind their announcement. I expected the detail to make the statement more defensible. It didn’t.

They have told families that autism is genetic.

Of course genes matter. But saying genes play a part is very different from saying they are the cause.

And the science simply isn’t there to make that claim.

Autism is not one biological thing. Genes shape how the immune system, placenta, mitochondria, folate metabolism and brain respond to the environment. So where does “genetic” end and “environmental” begin?

We are nowhere near understanding enough to be closing this conversation down.

I’ve gone through the evidence behind the NAS statement, what that famous “80% heritable” figure actually means, and the biology that gets lost when we reduce autism to three words.

If you hear “autism is genetic” being repeated as though the science is settled, share this post.

Link to article in comments below. 👇

23/09/2026

Please stop telling parents that orange juice is “basically sugar”.

It isn’t.

Researchers compared orange juice with a glucose drink containing roughly the same amount of sugar.

Glucose increased oxidative stress, inflammation and endotoxin-related immune activation.

Orange juice prevented those rises.

Even on an empty stomach, orange juice behaved very differently from the same sugar load as glucose.

And there’s more.

Research in humans has found orange juice can:

⬇️Lower insulin resistance.
⬇️ Lower inflammation.
⬇️Lower blood pressure.

Why?

Because orange juice isn’t sugar water.
It contains hesperidin, vitamin C, carotenoids and other plant compounds that change what happens in the body.

And no, it isn’t just orange juice.

Pomegranate, cranberry, tart cherry and beetroot all have their own human research showing different benefits.

So if your child enjoys a small glass of 100% juice, please stop worrying about how many teaspoons of sugar someone has drawn next to it.

This is what happens when we repeat nutrition slogans instead of looking at the evidence.

A teaspoon count is not physiology.

Link to studies in comments below 👇

High serum B12 is one of the most misunderstood results I see in autistic and PANS/PANDAS children.It rarely gets questi...
15/09/2026

High serum B12 is one of the most misunderstood results I see in autistic and PANS/PANDAS children.

It rarely gets questioned. The number is high, so the child must have enough.

That's like counting the lorries on the motorway and assuming the shop shelves are full.

Serum B12 tells you what's in the blood. It doesn't tell you what's getting into the cell.

And B12 has a long way to go to get there.

Stomach acid has to free it from food. Intrinsic factor has to grab it. The ileum has to absorb it.

In the blood it rides on carrier proteins. Inflammation drives those proteins up, and the B12 result climbs with them.

Then it has to get inside the cell. Lithium has been linked with that transport, and it's so often low in the children we see.

Inside, B2 has to be turned into FAD and FMN. Without them, B12 metabolism can't work properly. And that B2 step needs a working thyroid, which is why Greg Russell-Jones' work on iodine and selenium is so interesting.

Any one of those steps can fail. The blood test won't show you which.

So I look at MMA. Methylmalonic acid builds up when B12 can't do its job inside the cell, and it can be measured in blood and urine.

This does NOT mean these children never need B12.

It means piling in more B12 won't necessarily fix a problem further down the line.

If your child's B12 has come back high, look deeper.

🔖 Save this and 📌 share it with a parent who might need it.

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 👇

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