Orla Walsh Nutrition, OWN your Health

31/08/2025

Just say MOO - my kids love this 🤣

28/08/2025

A healthy aim - 30-60g of nuts or seeds daily

26/08/2025

Loose stools - have you tried chia seeds?

16/06/2025

Webinar this evening on Heart ❤️ Health

Join my Heart Health Webinar to learn how diet, exercise, lifestyle changes, and monitoring can help prevent heart disease. Get practical, science-backed tips to protect your heart for life.

26/05/2024

What are your weird and wonderful symptoms??

When I was with my neurologist I asked if my ear and sinus infection were triggering my migraine. They were migraine.

Turns out the symptoms of feeling hormonal were too.

Anyway... Migraine is the gift that keeps giving. But perhaps by talking about the symptoms of migraine we will help others.

For those that don't know, you can be suffering badly with your migraine some days and get no headache.

Other days you'll get a headache that makes you head feel like it will explode off your shoulders, on top of other symptoms (e.g. pins and needles in the skin of your face).

Migraine is a common condition. It affects around 1 in 5 women and around 1 in 15 men. Let's talk more about it.

08/04/2024

Listen...

Does the level of processing correlate to how healthy a food is? Yes.

Does this mean that we should use the same classification system for level of processing to classify how healthy a food is? No.

Are some minimally processed foods less healthy than some UPF? Yes.

Also: Does context matter? Yes.

If something is an UPF it just means it's very processed. We don't know if it's healthy or not until we look at the food/ drink and the situation.

e.g. fresh orange juice has undergone very little processing. Should everyone therefore consume it often? Probably not.
But, is it a healthy option in some circumstances? Yes.

e.g. formula is an UPF. Should babies consume it often (when breastmilk isn't an option for whatever reason)? Yes.
Is formula unhealthy because it's an UPF? No.

Get me?

02/03/2024

Last week our dog died. He was just 3 years old. If you don't mind, I'd like to tell you about him.

I remember when we got the call to tell us that the beautiful Wheaten Terrier called Fola had given birth. The absolute excitement of it... It felt like ages until we got to visit the puppy assigned to us for the first time. But... he wouldn't get out of the bed! He had zero interest in us. Instead, another one of the puppies came up to us and stayed by our side for the entire visit. He had a little red collar on and was the cutest little pup that we had ever seen. Thankfully, the puppy so keen on us wasn't assigned to anyone yet. So, when he was old enough, he came to live with us and we called him Jasper.

He was nuts! He had a witching hour (8-9pm) at night where he went even more nuts. The memories of which still make me laugh. This lasted about a year. All in all, the perfect best friend to our then 1 year old son.

About 6 months after Jasper came home and a week before I gave birth to my first daughter, my husband's back went, leaving us unable to walk Jasper. To our rescue came . It was to be a temporary thing but Rob brought adventure, fun, love and friendship into Jasper's life. So, instead, Jasper became a full time member of his pack where he remained until he became ill.

Jasper was a brilliant dog. Clever, happy, hilarious and affectionate. He loved to lick a face. He LOVED his grandparents. Even when he was very ill, he would muster up the energy to give the "wheaten greetin" that his breed are famous for to my parents and Ben's mum.

On our last outing with him to the beach a beautiful bikini clad woman sitting on the beach post winter swim showed him a little interest. He took that to mean she would love to have her face licked. He gave it welly 🤣 On the drive home, in what should have been a somber journey, as I warmed my feet on his body I couldn't help but smile.

I miss him in a thousand moments of every day. Jaspie my love, it was an absolute privilege. Thank you for choosing us. 🐾

15/12/2023

Melatonin is the sleep hormone. This survey was in the US. It's not available over the counter here. But shocking numbers! I'll post some tips on sleep below 👇🏼

But first:

👉During 2017-18, only about 1% of U.S. parents reported that their children used melatonin. Some growth in 5 years!!

📝To get a sense of the current prevalence of use, Hartstein and colleagues surveyed about 1,000 parents in the first half of 2023.

👉Among children ages 5 to 9, 18.5% surveyed had been given melatonin in the previous 30 days.

👉For preteens ages 10 to 13, that number rose to 19.4%.

🥺Nearly 6% of preschoolers ages 1 to 4 had used melatonin in the previous month.

Steps to help kids sleep better

✅ Increase movement/ exercise (incredibly important. Do not underestimate this. Tire them out! And... It helps with mood + sleep hormones, plus helps to de-stress)

✅ Increase time outside, especially in the first half of the day
(E.g. we swapped cycling them to school/ Montessori for walking/ scooting for this reason)

✅ Reduce screen time, especially in the second half of the day. Really important to avoid in the 2h before bed.

👍🏼Rule of thumb: They should have more active than screen time.

✅ Structured mealtimes and avoid grazing. Their internal clock becomes more accurate with structure and routine. So, their body knows when it's bed.

✅ There's caffeine in Coca cola. It's like giving them a cup of tea.

Helpful?

14/12/2023

Ah beans...

Tasty but also nutritious.

A 225g tin provides 10g of protein and 10g of fibre. Consider we're aiming for 25-35g of fibre a day, a tin goes a long way.

Worried about the sugar? Don't be. With that much protein and fibre, the sugar enters the blood stream slowly. Plus, most people need to aim to keep their sugar intake below 6 - 12 tsp a day. So, a little sugar in nutritious meals (beans, soups, etc...) isn't really the issue, it's more the sweets etc...

If you eat with 2 slices of wholegrain toast, you'll be getting about 20g of protein.

If you require more protein than that, swap the butter for cheese. This bumps you up to over 30g of protein AND is more heart healthy. ❤️

What else have you tried?

✅ Curry powder?
✅ Chilli powder?
✅ Balsamic vinegar?

Pop your suggestions and questions below 👇🏼