38: The Childhood Health Crisis Nobody’s Talking About – Urgent Solutions with Dr. Aaron Hartman

In Medical School 96 to 2000, I was told I'd never see a kid with type 2 diabetes. It had to be type 1. If you saw a kid with diabetes, it had to be, no question asked, type 1 diabetes, because kids did not get type 2 diabetes. In 2001, I saw my first 16 year old kid with type 2 diabetes. And now we're looking at something like 10 to 15% of kids having insulin resistance and being on the verge of being type 2 diabetic. Foreign. I want to talk briefly about making America Healthy Again. Some people have been asking me about this, especially with the Making America Healthy Again report that came out from the White House and there's some controversy, people asking questions. So I want to actually take that report and take a deep dive and talk about it because I think this is important from a broad perspective. Ultimately, being healthy should not, it shouldn't matter, it just shouldn't matter what your, what you're, where you're at in life, what your ethnicity is, your gender, whatever. We all should care about our health, the health of our friends, family, colleague, our country, especially those of our kids. So I want to talk about the main topics in this. Is there validity to this? Is this actually a legitimate movement? Are the things they're trying to address legit or is there, is there more under the hood we're not really talking about? So this, this thing I'm referring to basically, which just came from the White House, the field want to look at you want to look at yourself. It basically is the, basically whitehouse.gov Maha reviews all these things and that's what I'm getting ready to take a deep dive into right now. So the big question, the thing was, do we know the key drivers of child childhood health crisis in our country? Let's take a step back. Is there actually a childhood health crisis in our country? Before I talk about the four things they described, is diabetes on the rise in our country? Yes. When I was in my first year of residency training actually in medical school 96 to 2000, I was told I'd never see a kid with type 2 diabetes. It had to be type 1. If you saw a kid with diabetes, it had to be, no question asked type 1 diabetes, because kids did not get type 2 diabetes. In 2001, I saw my first 16 year old kid with type 2 diabetes. And now we're looking at something like 10 to 15% of kids having insulin resistance and being on the verge of being type 2 diabetic. Something like 5% are already type 2 so what's happened is, is something that was rare, that I was told in my initial training I would never see now is actually quite common. Childhood obesity. Another thing, when I was in sixth grade, actually I was during, I believe it was President Bush. I think it was one of those things where you had to like they had the whole health thing and you have to run and do push ups. And I remember in sixth grade I could not do a single push up, so I couldn't get my little badge on my shirt, I think it was called. But some of you, all that I'm 52, remember what I'm talking about. And in sixth grade I weighed 136 pounds. I was too big to do peewee football and I couldn't do single pull up in sixth. In sixth grade there was only one kid in my class at that point in time that was over. That was, that would have been considered morbidly obese. And I wasn't, I was just chubby. I wasn't obese. Now childhood obesity is something like 20 to 30%. And strangely enough, kids in high school now are so out of shape that something between 60 and 70% of kids in high school would not even qualify, wouldn't make it into the physical requirements to be in the military, which makes it a national security issue and other issues. But the point is like, that's a lot of overweight kids. How about other things like peanut allergies? Again, when I was in sixth grade, I did not know an issue of any kids with peanut allergies. My freshman year in college actually saw a first person. Well, not saw, but where I was. I was at camp, a college camp in a varsity camp, and someone ate a cookie that had peanuts in it and had an anaphylactic thing and he ended up being fine. But that was the first, my first exposure. Now my daughter Anna, when she goes to therapy, nuts are outlawed. The school bus at the kids school is a nut free zone because so many kids have peanut allergies. What is going on? So we're seeing multiple, multiple things and even autism. The autism numbers are just skyrocketing. ADHD numbers are skyrocketing. Asthma, allergies. I don't think it's a big stretch to say, hey, look, kids are getting sicker and something's going on. So I think there's a childhood healthcare crisis. I don't think that's debatable. I know some people are saying it is, but that's the first thing. Okay, great. So we agree there's a Childhood health crisis. What's the cause? Now a lot of people have debates, you know, oh, maybe it's you know, environmental toxins, chemicals, molds, you know, who knows. So what did they say? Well, the first thing they said was ultra processed foods were the, one of the big contributors to obesity, diabetes and metabolic disorders. That's right along. You know the data we have is 80% of heart disease and 70% of most cancers can be prevented by diet and lifestyle alone. 80% of all chronic health issues have a relationship to processed foods and 60% to, to ultra processed than mildly processed. And you look at what we consume, a significant amount is ultra processed. And also when look at nutrient deficiencies and you realize that when they process foods they remove trace minerals, they remove B vitamins, they remove a bunch of things. And you know, fortified bread for example, they're taking out when they, for when they make bread. This actually goes back to 42 early 1940s. Actually processed bread in America was seen to be causing neuropathies and nerve damage. So the federal, the government mandated bread to be fortified or it couldn't be put back in their food system. So that's when manufacturers start putting in folic acid so that you wouldn't get the neuropathy or nerve damage but they didn't put everything else back in. So that's kind of an interesting thing. So yeah, processing foods removes nutrients. But also the thing with ultra processed foods with fats, unhealthy fats. So we've talked about seed oils, not commercial, but commercialized foods have industrialized sea oils. That's the word I'm looking for, industrialized seed oils in them. And these industrialized seed oils are usually Mega 6s, they're usually oxidized. And you also have these things called lipid wraps or which are can turn into trans fats. But the lifted wraps actually make cells stick, they stick together which affects cell to cell communication. These are all things you see in ultra processed foods. And then there on top of that, the sugar artificial sweeteners which themselves are neuroendocrine disruptors. Okay, yeah. So ultra processed foods, check. That can be cause for part of our healthcare health crisis with kids. Next thing is environmental toxins. Now I feel like if a government had at this level had said environmental toxins could be a part of our health crisis in our country, they said that five years ago they would have been shut out, off the stage so to speak. But they mentioned pesticides like glyphosate, atrazine. I still have a measurable I just did a urine tech toxin test on myself several weeks ago. I still have atrazine in my urine from about 13 years ago. Was the last time I got exposed to atrazine during my yard work. I know, I know. But the gist is that it's still my body. Atrazine has associated with a whole bunch of health issues. There's actually the. In India. India. So Indiana has the county that has the highest atrazine exposure in the country. They also tend to have. They also happen to have the highest incidence of Parkinson's in the country. There's a direct correlation with atrazine and neurodegenerative disorders. Hence, farmers have more Parkinson's and other things like that. Glyphosate. I mean, I think most people realize by now Roundup is bad. It's actually. It actually got its patent for being a. It messes up the shikimate pathway in bacteria. It actually kills bacteria.

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So it's healthy for humans, right? Well, now we know about the gut microbiome. We realize that messing up your gut bacteria can be horrible. One thing that's interesting about glyphosate that people don't talk about is that over 90% of the inertia, the inactive ingredients in glyphosate are actually petroleum distillates. Oh my gosh. That basically a petroleum oral distillate is in. That's the vehicle you put that on your. On. On basically gets in your food system. One of my patients was a farmer. He was talking about when they feed the cattle the grain that they have to scoop it out and they get oil all over their arms from, from the roundup on the grains, the little. The wheat berries that they're feeding to a cow. Well, cows are eating those wheat berries. And now glyphosate is getting into the meat, that's getting into the dairy, it's getting into the chickens, it's getting into the eggs. So okay, y. See how, how glyphosate can be a part of this, this mess. And then pesticides in general are acetylcholine esterase inhibitors. So they affect acetylcholine, which we now have no direct correlation with these and Alzheimer's as well, a bunch of other neurological issues. And you know, pesticides in our food system are bad. And it's interesting, Splend, Sucralose, which is sucralose is Splenda. Splenda, yes, I remember. And it was in my. Dr. Houghton, he was one of my mentors and, and my residency program, I was waiting for him. Cause in my first year residency I had to wait for the, the doctors and he had a journal of postgraduate medicine sitting on his desk. So I opened up, started reading through while I was waiting for him. So I asked him my questions because that's what we have to do. When I was an intern and had this article about glyphosate exposure and increasing A1Cs and showed direct correlation, not sorry, not glyphosate, almost Splenda with sucralose exposure and drug correlation with exposure and increased A1Cs. And the implication was hey, this is probably related with diabetes. Well, it was actually discovered initially, was actually a pesticide, but it was found be sweet and at low doses it's safe for human consumption. So that makes me feel better about everything. So okay, yeah, I can see, see how these things can be related to these environmental toxins, can relate it to our childhood obesity diabetes epidemic in kids. Okay, got that check over medication number three. So we got ultra processed foods, environmental toxins, I think we can rear those over medication. I mean kids are over medicated. But the interesting thing, I talked about this previously. 30% of our drugs are mitochondrial toxicants. They're toxic to the energy powerhouse of the cel. And if you follow me at all, you know that the mitochondria are the primary cause of all chronic health issues, including cancer. And so if kids are being over medicated, it's not a big stretch. And a third of all medications are mitochondrial toxicants. It's not a big stretch to say the over medicate med. Medicalization over medication of kids is going to be a cause for chronic health issues. And you go on top of that the negative impacts of Adderall from stimulants. You know, there's an interesting book called Blitz which actually talks about the use of both methyl crystal crystallized methamphetamines in Germany as well as other drugs. And we've had literature on this going back, you know, 60, 70, 80 years. There's a. And we're all starting now to see adults in 30s and early 40s who've been on these stimulants for years developing Parkinsonian features. Just as a lot of these medications were given to kids like candy for ADHD, SSRIs for depression, antibiotics, which again mess up the gut bacteria. These are not benign. So okay, I can see how medication we definitely know it's definitely been standard care accepted over medication. The elderly increases fall risk, increases dementia, increases hospitalizations, poor outcomes. So there's actually a. We have a list of medications in the elderly that we're supposed to watch out for because they can actually have massive impact on elderly people's health. Maybe we need to do the exact same thing for kids. That's a novel idea. We already have it for the elderly, for geriatric patients, but maybe we should think about it. And the last thing, digital overexposure. So ultra processed food, environmental toxins over medication and digital overexposure. There's no way digital overexposure is related to any bad health outcomes. You know, wait a second. Mental health, is mental health a thing with kids? Are we having any mental health issues? Is there an association with social media? Jonathan Haidt has a great book about this, the Anxious Generation, if you want to take a deep dive into it. But one of his topics about this is when our. Well, and another literature I've read is. I'm not sure if this specific thread, this book a couple years ago, but is that when, when child's kids brains are developing, they're developing neural networks. They need to go through this trial and error process with delayed gratification, not instant dopamine hits. Which is one of the things that happens with, with social media. Kids get these big dopamine hits. It affects their ability to focus. We've seen shortening of, of American attention span. It's kind of crazy to think that people went to church in the 16, 1700s. It would be there for hours on end. When I was a kid growing up, we'd be there for three or four hours. And now if it's more than an hour, no one can pay attention in the classrooms. We literally break up classrooms in a shorter time spans. And in the marketing world, we're realizing, you know, it takes something like 20 different touch points now for someone to kind of pay attention to what you're saying. Supposedly a goldfish has a attention span in about 12 seconds. They used to say that adult that we had attention span of a goldfish now they're saying our attention span is less. So I think over digital, over digital overexposure might be a little more nuanced. But if you look at mental health, there's a definite correlation. If you look at this whole dopamine addiction thing, there's definitely a correlation. Sleep disturbances, there's definitely a correlation with digital overexposure and sleep disturbance. So, okay, ultra processed food, environmental toxins, medication or medication and digital exposure. Okay, I can see how these can be associated with the childhood health epidemic. So what, what after all, what's the report say? It says we need to get more supporting data, we need to make some recommendations and we need to get public engagement. So all seems reasonable. So if these things seem reasonable to you, that, that kids are getting too much ultra processed foods, too many environmental toxins, they're over medicated and just too much digital exposure, then hopefully we can be behind this thing that's going to ultimately make our kids healthier. And that's my, that's my take on it. Whether you, whatever side you're on the public, political spectrum, doesn't matter. We, no one wants our kids sick. No our adults sick, but especially no one's kid's sick. And so I feel like my opinion is that we should be able to get behind these basic recommendations. Of course the whole point was that we just need to create some kind of policy recommendation and then public engagement, which means me and you discussing it like I'm doing here, us engaging and then as parents, family members, fathers making mothers making decisions in our homes, in our schools and in our local communities that can have impact, this kind of stuff and ultimately choosing making decisions in our home and how we spend our money so that we're not spending on things that encourage processed foods, encourage a bunch of these things. So I'm curious what your thoughts are about this because ultimately if public engagement, if people aren't buying in, it's not going to move forward. So what are your thoughts about this? Do you, do you feel like these are reasonable things? Do you feel like what other thoughts do you have? Do you think there's something else when you talk about what else would be good to put on this list as far as other things that might be part of the childhood health epidemic. Have your thoughts wherever you're watching this, Put your comments below, we'd love to know them. And maybe we'll do another short, deep dive into other things that might be causing this childhood health crisis. Take care. We'll talk to you soon.

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