The Truth About Food Dyes & Kids’ Health with Dr. Ana-Maria Temple

Welcome back, everybody. I'm super excited to be with my friend and colleague, Anna Maria Temple. She is a integrative pediatrician. Super brilliant, super smart, and we're going to talk about some really cool topics. We've already actually had a brief conversation before, so after the introduction we will hop right into it. Anna Maria Temple is a holistic pediatrician and the best selling author of two books. One is Healthy Kids in an Unhealthy World, which we're actually talking about some of the unhealthy world things actually A Deep Dive and Ending the Eczema Pandemic. She has an online program, the Eczema Transformation. Her private practice treats general pediatric patients and chronically ill children from a functional medicine perspective. Her passion, which you're very passionate, is to inspire, educate and empower mamas to revamp their family's health and reverse chronic disease with less medications. Her hobby, and I can attest to this, is a slight addiction to social media. It doesn't matter what family vacation you're on, wherever you're at in the world, you are checking in on social media. So I can attest to that. So welcome today. I'm super excited to have you here.

I am so excited to be here. And this, I'm excited about the conversation we had right before getting on air and about the fact that we, our missions are so aligned to help families raise healthy children with less medication. I can't wait to talk.

Yeah, absolutely. Before we hop into that, I want you to talk about your integrative functional medicine pediatrician. I want you to give us a brief idea like what does that mean? Because some people still don't quite understand. They think that means you might just use vitamin D for allergies and maybe you throw a probiotic on some your kid's food. What is that for the average person? What does that actually take us to the depths of what that actually means?

Yes. So I like to use an analogy when we book, for example, if we look at a wilting plant. So I want everybody to just picture a wilting plant, yellowing leaves, the leaves are droopy. Plant is like, looks stick when you look at that plant. You know when you start thinking like, okay, what does this plant need? And give it a second. What does a plant need? Okay, it needs nutrients, it needs sunshine, it needs water, it needs a great pot. It needs love, it needs attention. Maybe a little misting. Nobody thinking about the plant was like, you know what it needs topical steroids because the leaves are a little yellow. It doesn't need Prozac or Zoloft because it looks depressed? It doesn't. No one came up with medications of how to deal with this. So in holistic. In traditional pediatrics, that's not traditional. When we have a skin issue, we go to the dermatologist. When we have a lung issue, we go to the pulmonologist. When we have ADHD issues, we may go to the neurologist or the psychiatrist. So every organ system is paired off with a specialist, and the specialist focuses on that one organ system without much look into the other organ system. Just like that plant. When we look at the yellow leaf, or does it need topical steroids, it's droopy. Does it need psychiatric intervention? And all these things. When we look at that plant, we look at the whole thing. We look at its nutrients, the environment, its love, its habitat. The same thing for children. When somebody comes in with eczema, adhd, or, or asthma, we just don't look at the one organ system. We look at the whole child, what's going on in the whole body. Because the skin doesn't live on itself on a jar, on a shelf, it lives. The skin lives with the nerves, with the blood system, next to the liver and the spleen and the brain and the heart and all the things. So we have to take into account how all the organs are working together and what is malfunctioning that is causing the skin to show us there's inflammation or the lungs or the brain, depending on whatever your child's inflammatory condition is. So, so we look at the child as a whole. We look at all the organ systems. Even if just one of the organ systems is telling us there's a problem, we then look at the. The family, we look at the environment, we look at the culture, we look at the whole thing around it. Because you can fix just one thing, expecting that everything will be better. It's a complex solution. So it's more like we look at the holistic whole, whole body, whole human, whole environment. And a lot of people confuse it with it's just natural medicine. It's not. In holistic medicine, we will use some Western medicine, we use Eastern medicine, we use meditation, we'll use acupuncture, we'll use chiropractic, we'll use all different kind of modalities that address the whole person, the whole environment, and the whole culture surrounding that child that's manifesting an illness in one organ system.

So, okay, so just to clarify, because a lot of time, you know, when I first heard about holistic Medicine. I was like, okay, this is like for the people who didn't quite do as good in medical school who, you know, they, they, they want to do some more yoga retreats. It's, you have to be not just your traditional medicine, you do, you need to know environmental medicine, you need to know about different cultures, you need to know about nutritional medicine, you have to know about supplements. You also have to know about how the body works energetically, not just physiologically. You have to know about mind body medicine. And each, all, each of these have their own specialty things. So you really, it really requires you to be like, not just good at your art, but amazing at your art and be able to tie all these, these things in. Is that a good rough guesstimation?

That is a, that is a great rough estimation of how you have to tie it all in. And that it's more than just. Yeah, exactly. It was like, what do those people do? I'm like, oh, they got to know all the things. You got to be open minded to all the things and all the possibilities. Because you know, a lot of what I find is I'm go as I gone through my career is that I used to poo poo different things. And I'm like, I can't. No, I don't know because that may actually end up being a thing. It always ends up being the thing. And in one human, the energy fields are off. And if you kind of ignore it, like that's not a thing. I'm like, okay, for that child, that's a thing. If you ignore yeast, if you ignore mold, if you ignore, I mean, so many different avenues that you can help heal children.

Okay, so that I think that is a great segue. And we were talking about things to talk about. You know, I wrote a bunch of list of things, you know, reliance on medications, common misconceptions, gut health, all these things. And we kind of got this little track. And so just for people who are listening, this is one small widget of the complexity of things that a professional, a doctor like Anna Maria have to know. And so we're going to talk about one aspect of food. I want to talk about food dyes and colorings, which not people, a lot of people know about that they may have heard, don't do red dyes, whatever. But as we talk about this conversation, you have to realize this is just one small thing. Food dyes and for everything, different, different types of foods, different types of nutrition, mold, lime, adhd, mind body stuff, these all take deep dives like this. So as we go through this, I want you all to keep that in mind because this is the, the, the type of knowledge that someone needs to have to provide holistic integrated medicine. So with that, I also feel like I'm gonna be learning a lot today, which I'm super excited about. Let's talk about food dyes. You know, what's the big deal? I mean, food dyes, you know, they're everywhere. They're in Skittles or in pop Tarts. I mean, we're exposed to em all the time. They're. They're not that big of a deal, are they? Like, are they?

Yeah. Are they? Well, you know, it's. I'm glad that you brought up the mold and the yeast and the parasites and the stuff, because one of the things that I see people do, they're like, when they hear that we do functional medicine or holistic medicine, they're like, what supplement do I take to help my kids? Anxiety or adhd? And I'm always like, you cannot out supplement a diet that doesn't fit your child's body. Don't even look at supplements. I don't even let people. When people start with me, they're not, they're always like, and what supplements are we going to start on? I'm like, none. You're starting on nothing. We are starting at food. And they're like, what? And I'm like, because if we don't have the foundation of nutrition, everything else doesn't work. I'll give you guys a great example, is like, I had a teenager come in and she's like, I'm really tired, I'm exhausted. And man, I've been working with for a long time. And I was like, baby girl, like, okay, we can do some vitamin D. And she does vitamin D for two weeks and come comes back in. She's like, I am still tired. It's not working. I was like, what'd you have for breakfast? Oh, bad day too, but a bad example. McDonald's. And I was like, oh. And I was like, all right, what did you have for lunch? Oh, that was also. Also not good. Not okay. But it was just a bad day and it was chick fil a bedside. So what we've learned from just two questions is that that vitamin D is going to do nothing because we have not fixed the underlying issue and we have not worked on the foundation, which is nutrition. So going back to the dyes is that. That's actually how I started the journey with my children. My children were sick with asthma, eczema allergy, adhd, recurrent ear infection, recurrent constipation, recurrent croup. And the way I began their healing journey was removing food dyes. And a common thing I get all the time. I mean, for example, there's a company that is under scrutiny right now. We will call them Kellogg's. And they have said it's. Our cereals are fine because they meet the FDA requirements. Okay, well, let's dig a little deeper into the FDA requirements. So the FDA in 1950s allowed 12 milligrams per day as the. The limit, the upper limit of what is allowed in a diet, recommended in a diet by 2010. It is now at 62 milligrams per person per day. And notice I didn't say child or adult, I said per person per day. So that's interesting. And this is based on animal studies only. This is not on human data and not on children data. Next is that there's six, sorry, 3,647 chemicals allowed by the FDA in our diet, including considered safe on their website. Feel free to Google. Out of those, only 6% have been tested for endocrine and hormonal disruptions. And out of 3,647 studies, only two study, sorry, out of 3,647 chemicals, only two chemicals have been studied for neurotoxicity. So we have. The FDA has allowed almost 4,000 chemicals in our children's food with no medical studies. And to all my colleagues out there, they're like, we are evidence based medicine because we are evidence based medicine. Why are we not holding the same standard to the food that goes in our children's body every single day? Fun fact one, people are like, oh, not that many children eat cereal. Actually, in the past week, 20% of children ate dye cereal. In the past week, 20% of children in the United States ate a colored cereal in the past week. Not. Okay, okay. Well, we could leave further, like, okay. I mean, it's not that much food coloring in it, right? I mean, come on, it's just Fruit Loops or Lucky Charms. We're not just going to beat on one company. There's many. It's not that much. Well, fun fact, A couple of studies were done to actually look at how many milligrams of artificial food coloring is in a kid's cereal. 41 milligrams per serving of artificial food dyes in a child's cereal. 53 milligrams are in a popular sports drink, let's call it Gatorade. When they looked at the studies and they said, well, how many milligrams? This was double blinded, placebo controlled, peer reviewed all the goodies studies. How many milligrams result in abnormal children's behavior? 50 milligrams. Well, it's actually between 26 to 50 milligrams of artificial food dyes per day resulted in abnormal behavior in children who consumed these products versus children who didn't. So I'm going to say again, 26 to 50 milligrams. And the FDA has said 62 milligrams is fine. And we think that there's no artifact that the amount of artificial food coloring in children's cereal is no big deal.

I think it's kind of interesting. You talked about, you know, you mentioned people don't consume that much cereal. But I remember just a couple months ago when inflation was going up and things were crazy, and one of the responses was, well, one of the ways families can save money is eating more cereal because it's a cheaper way to get food. People. Yeah, I know people forget that most of the chemicals, whether it's glyphosate, Roundup pesticides, you know, corn that's genetically modified to have BT toxin, you know, these are all subsidized by the government. They go into animals, but they also go into these processed foods. And all of a sudden it's not just the dye. There's all these chemicals and it's a chemical slurry that we are, we are literally doing an experiment on kids. And you know, you know, Dr. Temple, is there any data or any evidence that this might be part of some of the adhd, dyslexia, autism, things that are going on in our country?

We have over 80 studies to show and in major journals like the Lancet and the journal Pediatrics, we have over 80 studies to show that artificial food dyes have adverse effects on the neurodevelopment of children, including ADHD. And in fact, the AP, which is the American Academy of Pediatrics, in 2018 put out a policy statement saying that these ingredients have enough evidence to show that they have adversely affecting children's hormones and brains. 2018, guys, 2018, the AAP and oh, and the governor of California, they, the, this, all these studies actually went to their senate and in September, the governor signed into law that six food colorings have to remove, be removed out of the schools by 2028 because the data was overwhelming that food coloring has adverse effects on children.

You know, it's kind of interesting, you know, the governor of California is Being proactive. I. This just popped up on my. I have a little thing, you probably have something similar pulls up articles and stuff that they pop up and there's a federal judge maybe two or three weeks ago that actually required, I think it was the FDA to. To look into fluoride and the drinking water because the literature is so strong now that actually fluoride can actually lower kids iq. So. So it's not just food diets, not just pesticides, not just fluoride.

It's.

It's this, it's a lot of stuff. So talk to more, talk to us more. Because I want to, I want to dive into the food, diet things. I feel like people. Except I went to my training back in 2000-2003, I did my residency and back then we were like yeah, red dye makes kids a little overactive. So you know, maybe they shouldn't eat as much. Red dye, yellow maybe a little bit. How can you. Can you walk us through like the pro. The pro. The progress we've had with understanding not just neurologically but hormonally is something you mentioned as well. These are neurocrine, neurocrine disruptors, I. E. Things that mess up kids brain hormonal system. Can you talk us through a little bit of that?

Yeah. So you know we focus a lot on ADHD because ADHD gets a lot of press. But you know, asthma and eczema and I deal with a lot of eczema and allergic diseases and a lot of these food colorings have also been shown to increase the rates of allergic disease as well. And when. And these other, all these other chemicals, neuroendocrine disruptors mean that these chemicals go into the body and affect our children's hormones. And people may say that's silly. What are you talking about? Well, okay, so if we look at the CDC data, one in eight children was had a chronic disease in 1994. By 2022 it was one in three children. Last year, one in two children. This is CDC. You can Google on the CDC one in two children have a chronic disease and chronic diseases to kind of. Because people go like oh well, cancer. Oh no, no. Type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, chronic constipation, allergies, eczema, asthma, recurrent ear infections, anxiety, depression, neurobehavioral things, autism, pandas and so many more. And I usually go if you are taking, you might be. If you're taking a prescription medication, you have a chronic illness. If you are continuously buying Zyrtec or anti reflux medications over the counter, you have a chronic illness. If you're taking medicines on a regular basis, even if it's not that bad, you have a chronic illness. And it is not normal for children to take any medicine. No, it's not normal to take Zyrtec every day. It's not normal to take Zantac every day. It's not normal to take Zoloft every day. I'm not saying that we're bad people, that we're bad, bad parents. That. What I'm saying is that the abnormal that our children are medicine has become the normal. So people defend it rather than questioning, why does my 7 year old have horrible anxiety? Why does my teenager have to be on ADHD medicine in the modern, what we were taught in medical school was like, genetics, you know, it's genetics. So we all have genetics, and therefore because of genetics, we have chronic diseases. And I'm like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw that back at everybody. And here's the thing. So if we just look at eczema for a second. If one parent has eczema, it increases the risk of eczema by 40%. Not 100%, 40%. If two parents have eczema, it increases the child's risk of eczema by 60%. Again, not 100%. Yes, the numbers are higher. However, I'm not hearing 100%. So to say that, well, I have eczema, therefore my children have eczema, and there's nothing I can do is a false belief. And it is not okay. If you have eczema. Your child is more sensitive to, let's say processed foods, is more sensitive to food coloring, is more sensitive to dairy, maybe more to gluten, maybe to eggs, maybe to the dog. Maybe it's increasing a sensitivity which then makes us go, hmm, let's look at the child's diet, let's look at what additives, what preservatives. We haven't even talked about sugar. That's a whole thing where we talk about, like going to sugar. So we can talk about sugar and then we can talk about, you know, the gut microbiome. We can talk about how all these chemicals kill the gut bacteria that's in our body. Fun fact. For every one human cell, there are 10 bacteria cells, probably 10% human. The NIH National Institute of Health did a study to look at the human genome project. 40,000 genes were listed, and they were like amazing 40,000 things. So it shows that you have genetics for maybe developing Alzheimer's. You have genetics for Maybe cancer, or you have genetics for be going deaf, whatever. What they also found was 3 trillion other genes that come from bacteria in our gut. 3.3 trillion genes in our gut. What does that mean? That means that for our adult weight, three to four pounds of our adult weight is actually bacteria weight. And the bacteria that live in our gut, not to mention the one live on our skin, but the bacteria that live in our gut, they work and continuously communicate with our cells. And they adjust the hormones, they adjust insulin, progesterone, testosterone, all the things that require us to live every single day. But here's the other thing. If we don't feed the bacteria good food, guess what? They leave. They're outta here. I always tell my patients, you know, I'm like, it's kind of like a party. When you have guests at a party, they want nice hors d', oeuvres, they want a calm environment, they have some nice music, maybe a little entertainment. Entertainment, a nice scent, right? Like just niceness. If you start bringing in horrible food and screeching music and people are start fighting, guess what? The guests leave. Same with our bacteria. The bacteria in our gut, if we feed them vegetables and plant points and fiber, they're going to hang around. If we embrace decreasing our stress, our family stress, our cultural stress, our gut bacteria thrive. If we sleep, if we go outside, the bacteria hang around. But if we refuse to go outside, we're sedentary all the time. We're sitting on our screens, our parents are fighting, we're. The house is full of stress. We're not sleeping, we're eating all these chemicals, our good bacteria leave, but in their place, it's not like there's nothing left in their place. What happens is kind of like if you had a. A beautiful lawn and you know, there's like a patch of lawn that dies, doesn't stay empty. There's the weeds that come in, the kudzu, the dandelions. So the weeds, the same thing in our gut. If the good bacteria leave, the bad guys take over. And then when you have more bad guys and good guys, there's still gut bacteria, but now they're not so good, so nice. Our hormones are kilter. We have anxiety, we have adhd, our eczema flaring. They allow yeast to come in, they allow mold. We're not able to detox heavy metals. And so it all begins with what's going on in our gut. And even more, it begins with how we feed the creatures that live in our gut, because we all have them. Oh, and by the way, we can't just give the. Let's see, a different nutrition or a different treatment to one person in our household, because our gut microbiome is shared amongst all the people in the household. So whenever we do dietary changes and lifestyle changes for a child who's suffering from eczema or ADHD or anxiety, the whole family has to do it. Because if only one person does it well, everyone else's gut microbiome is a wreck. So it makes healing so much longer. Because, remember, it's not just about the skin or the brain. It's about the whole child, about the family and the whole environment.

So that's. That's a really big explanation of, like, how holistic we're talking about. When we talk about holistic and how integrative we mean, when we say integrative, it's. It's a big. It's a big, big tent, so to speak. I think it's just interesting, you know, Peanut, go back to something you said a few minutes ago. I. The first time I remember being exposed to someone with peanut allergies, I was a freshman in college. It was just. It was not a thing. And I remember while doing my training at the Medical College of Virginia, they told me I would never see a kid with type 2 diabetes. If a child had diabetes, it had to be type 1. By 2023, I saw my first case of pediatric type 2 diabetes. And now it's. It's pretty, pretty common.

One in six?

Yeah, one in six. And so I think, you know, we can. People can argue and say, well, maybe it's not that. You know, maybe it's not the diet, maybe it's not this. But you can't argue the stats. And everybody knows peanut nut allergies are skyrocketing. My daughter, her therapy place that she goes to, she can't take nuts there for a snack because there's so many kids that are lethally allergic that the dust that she left on the chair would give them anaphylaxis. That's just. That's just weird, you know, and so definitely something going on in the environment, et cetera. So gut health, because that's something you've come back to a little bit in the bugs talk a little bit. Eczema is one of your things. You wrote a book about it, right? Chemicals, diets can affect the gut bacteria. Can you talk a little bit more about how the gut, whether it's through the hormones, it makes the neurotransmitters, it makes the postbiotics the things that actually bacteria make by ferment. How does the gut play a role in general health and well being to the point that we really need to watch what we put in our mouth.

Right. So you know, I have a lot of folks that come in and they're like, well listen, I'm eating an amazing diet. So we already talked about the chemicals, we talk about food dyes and chemicals and if we eat those, that's going to adversely affect our gut microbiomes. And also. But when we eat good food, there's more to just eating good nutrition. Because we were like, I ate an amazing diet. Why, why does my child have chronic illness?

Right.

Well, we eat it and then we have to digest it. And then after we digest it, it has to be absorbed and from absorption has to be assimilated, which means that the body takes the nutrients that it's absorbing and bringing it to the cells via the brain, via the skin, via whatever, and then we have to eliminate it, which is pooping. And so a lot of people focus on the nutrition. Yay. There's much more awareness. We still have more to go, but I do feel there's more awareness. But let's say you, you guys already know about the food diets. You already know not to buy cereal for breakfast. You already know about not eating more than 24 grams of added sugar per day because that also messes up the gut bacteria. So you already know that. So now by digestion. So fun fact, another I just have fun fact. Eczema. Most common time for eczema to start is between three and six months old. What? How can eczema, how can chronic disease begin in a three month old? They're not even around for that long. It begins when they're in mama's belly. It actually begins before mama was even pregnant. And because the body keeps count to everything that we do. So if in our young life we had antibiotics for our recurrent ear infections, we had steroids for our asthma, we took antibiotics for our UTIs or medications for acne and we, and add, insert whatever. Well then as we are pregnant, we actually the our gut microbiome gets transferred to the baby. And also during pregnancy we are exposed to so many chemicals we just touched about fluoride. Studies out of Canada showed that mamas who have a certain amount of fluoride per day will have children who have neurological and cognitive deficits by five years old. And the fluoride in Canadian water is the same amount that is in the US So it's no we actually studied same fluoride that is in, in both our waters. So we know the chemicals that mama eats during pregnancy because during pregnancy we're told, don't eat, you know, raw fish, cold cuts, don't smoke, drink drugs, okay? But then we are not told about the chemicals, we're not told about the sugar. So as during pregnancy, like I'm pregnant so I can eat whatever I'm eating for two, I have ice cream craving, I have cereal craving, I have all these. And I'm not making fun of it because I did the same thing. No one told me anything. And so you eat all those things. So now your gut microbiome that the baby is forming is based on yours. And are you eating chemicals? Are you eating too much sugar, are you under too much stress? Because all of that we have data to show it affects the baby's gut. So when they come out into the world, they're going to have a different gut environment than if mama during pregnancy did something different. By the way, I didn't know my children. I was under tremendous amount of stress. I was in residency. I ate Pop Tarts and Toaster Strudels and Diet Cokes. So I'm not throwing stones at anybody. And then the matter of the way our babies are born matters. If a baby's born, vaginal versus C section make a huge difference on how the baby's gut microbiome happens. And it starts from the beginning because a lot of people are like, oh, you know what, I have my heart attack when I was 40 because my current diet, no, it actually started in utero. It started when you were a baby. It started at all. It's a long play. It all, all the body keeps count of all the things. So now when the mom is nursing, okay, is mom eating a processed diet, high sugar? What are the chemicals, what chemicals are she putting on her body putting on the baby? What are the parent parental stress? What's the sleep? Did the baby have anti reflux medications? Because a lot of babies are fussy, so they get a lot of reflux medications. Back to my digestion, this all is going to go together. But the reflux medicines. At three months old, so many babies get put on anti reflux medicines and that messes up digestion. And if you start messing up digestion, well, you're not going to be able to assimilate and eliminate because we need to have all the different things together. So. Or are we taking a lot of Tylenol because babies are teething and when the babies are teething, we just like to give them a lot of Tylenol because that's what we think we should do, because that's what the people tell us and then that affects their gut microbiome as well. So now we get a little bit older. Now the children are not pooping every day. And by the way, a big misconception is that nurse babies can poop every seven days. Guys, I'm here to tell you, all babies nursed, formula fed. All babies have to poop every single day. I see it in my clinic every day that the children who poop every day have less eczema, less allergic disease, less chronic issues than the babies who struggle with pooping from birth, even if they were breastfed. So that is an indication for us to know, does my child have a healthy gut microbiome and is based on their poop? All right, so we went to the digestion and especially I wanted to touch on the reflux meds, but I know that if I touch on the reflux meds, everyone will have questions. Well, how could a baby have chronic disease? So I just thought I'd just get so, so digestion. So again, so did we have reflux medicines? Are we eating under a stressful environment? Are we selective in our eating? Because that will affect how we digest and then absorption. Absorption is depends on digestive enzymes. And babies and children and humans do not are not born with all the digestive enzymes. They start happening. So the reason that you can't feed a baby steak at two months old, okay, they don't have teeth, but they also can't digest it and absorb it because they don't have the right digestive enzymes. And so it does matter what we feed babies. So a lot of people, especially in nine month olds and toddler years will feed kids a lot of fruit and then we get the toddler's diarrhea, if you will. But that's because the children one are getting eating too much fruit. But some babies, a lot of babies don't develop the fructose digestive enzyme until they're three or four. So they might eat one fruit and then have toddler's diarrhea. And the parents are all stressed like right because their digestive enzymes have not progressed. Because we can't just because it says in a book that's how you should develop your digestive enzyme. The human body does whatever the human body wants to do. And so digestion, it happens differently from different humans and it all affected by nutrition, sleep, outdoor time, stress, pooping. And then we get to, of course, elimination, when we already talked about it. Are we pooping every day? And for other kids, they may say, well, they're pooping every day. They're pooping four times a day, but it's loosey goosey poop with food particles in it. Well, that's a problem because now we're not absorbing it. So, yeah, we're eliminating, but we're basically just throwing away the food. Not word of caution for toddlers that they who inhale food. Sometimes you see food particles in a toddler's poop, but that's because they didn't chew. Because if you live with a toddler like my middle child, who literally inhaled this food, you're gonna see whole food in there because you didn't chew it. But is it loose poop? Is it loosey goosey? Another thing I hear, well, my child has pooped every five days his whole life, so that's what's normal for him. Be careful. That's making the abnormal normal. Because no one has helped you along the way. To go, no, no, no, no. We need to poop every single day. And we need to have long snakes. They're called type 4 on the Bristol chart. Long snakes that are easy to pass. And we poop them once a day. Some kids poop those things three times a day. And that's okay. But that's how we know we have good gut health. And the reason we're harping on it is because In Chinese medicine, 5,000 years ago, they said that if our gut health is not in check, that is not going well, the rest of our body is going to suffer. And you know, in our, in Western medicine, when I go, what do they know? We are now back to tell you that turns out Chinese medicine was correct. If our gut health is off track, we will see things in our children's body. And a lot of people go, but they don't have belly pain, but they don't have gas, but they don't have bloating. They have eczema. Eczema is inflammation that starts in the gut. They have anxiety. That's inflammation that starts in the gut. They have asthma. That is inflammation that starts in the gut. All of it is inflammation that starts to the core. And in different humans, based on genetics, it. It shows up in different places. So for family that is has a long line of eczema, that inflammation is going to manifest on the skin versus a family with adhd. But it doesn't mean you can't fix it. It means that's the inflammatory tract that the body is showing.

Yeah. So that's ton of great, great information. You know, one thing I want to throw in there is you were talking about mentioned fluoride. You know, it's interesting. Drinking water has chlorine in it. And chlorine. If you look at the water environmental Working group water database, their tap water database, that's where we go. Can't talk, it's Friday. But it's interesting. You'll see chlorhalomathane, chlorhalomethanes, trihalomethanes, you'll see hexachro hexavalent chromium in it, which is kind of crazy because that's the Aaron Brockovich, if people remember that movie, whatever. And just drinking water. So again it gets, it gets really granular. Like we talk about fluoride and food dyes and these other things, but drinking chlorine and inhaling chloroform, which actually is also chloroform in as well, these are all things that are going to destroy kids skin microbiomes as well as their gut microbiomes. So, so one thing I think is amazing is like a little transition is how our bodies want to get better. Like it's amazing. Like everything you talked about, I'm like, is there any hope for us? Are we all going to die? Like how are we even alive right now? Like, oh my gosh, we should all like be like throwing five heads or whatever. It's like. But yet, but yet our body, amazingly enough, if you remove what's blocking the healing process and give it what's lacking, it just starts to like self heal and self repair. Could you talk about how you address patients issues and maybe even talk about some of the like the results you've seen? Because I think people don't realize that sometimes small steps can have massive, massive positive outcomes. Can you talk us about how our bio will start healing? Maybe give us a couple of examples of what you've seen when you do these, these seemingly basic interventions.

Yeah, so you know, when my children were sick in 2007, as I said with eczema, asthma, allergies, ADHD, the works. And we'll use my son for example. So 1. Well, in 2007 my kids were on chronic meds and it was, I was done with it. It was like, no more. That's it. Why, why are my kids on chronic meds? I think the final straw was when they told me that for my little one who had seasonal allergies that were so bad that he couldn't go out for an Easter egg hunt because his eyes would swell shut, his tears would stream down his face, and he would be on the ground writhing, covered in hives and scratching his skin to bleeding. They just told me that the only next option because he was already on 5 meds. Because they ran out of meds. We've run out of meds. So the only next option is allergy shots. He was two years old. Two years old. That was the final straw. And then I, because I had changed my mindset, I'm like, there's got to be something else. I was five years in my medical practice. I didn't know what to do. I went to a nutritionist. All she talked about was sugar. And it was like. It hit like I had my ha moment. I'm like, whoa, the sugar in the food. And I felt like I was feeding my kids good. They had strawberries at lunch and they had broccoli at dinner. Sweet with a cider Doritos and some pop tarts. Toaster strudels on a day I wanted to give them hot breakfast. And I was like, wait a second. So I started reading ingredients. And like I said at the beginning, I started with food dyes. Anyways, we begin begin this journey. My middle son was an annoying human. He would go to school, chew his pencils, roll on the ground under his chair, talk non stop, and claim that other students were using his voice. I was like, wow, so they're ventriloquists in your class. That's amazing. He was climbing the flag. Well, I can't even discuss all I can tell you for all my mamas out there and dads who are a, you know, cell phone basis with a teacher, you know what I'm talking about Every day. That was a text about what he did. Anyhow, so we begin this transition about kindergarten time for him. And I go to his 5th grade teacher parent conference. And I walk in and I was like, hey, I'm Jay Temple's mom. And the teacher was like, hi. He's amazing. He's listening, he's waiting his turn. He helps other kids in class. I mean, he's just a pleasure. And I was like, see, that guy sounds amazing. But I think you misunderstood. I'm Jake Temple's mom. So I think you kind of got the kids, man. She's like, no, like, he's amazing. Like, why would you say that? So I've shared with her all our behavioral challenges we've had up to this point. And she goes, if you don't mind my Asking, what do you feed him at home? I was like, you know, four years into our journey right then, so I guess here's my soapbox. Stepped on it. And I was like, let me tell you. And so I went into my dissertation of how I changed our kids food and stuff. And she was like, well, don't you think that all the work you're done, this is why he's a different human in fifth grade. And I'm like, yep. But I see that in my clinic. But it's hard to see it as a parent because you live it every single day. So, you know, having seen that, that's how I started giving. That's when I began believing. When I saw my kids coming off their meds, when other teachers were commenting, when the school nurse was wondering what we were doing for Ali's skin, who was covered in eczema. She was at the nurse's station every week, bleeding and horrible. And when her skin was clear, she wanted to know what cream were we using. And I told her about the dietary changes. She was like, must be a coincidence. I'm like, I'm sure it is. And so that's how I started changing my advice to my people in my traditional practice, and they started asking different questions. So now in my clinic, my private clinic, we work with food, and I have children with autism that come in and they are. They've been evaluated by a developmental pediatrician. They've been giving the diagnosis, and we just change their diet. Of course, there's children who with autism have a difficult time changing their diet. I'm talking about the ones that we can change the diet easily. The differences that parents note within the first month is incredible. In my online eczema program, when the parents go from processed foods and reduce the sugar and add more fruits and vegetables, they're like, I can't believe. This cannot be it. Because if it was this easy, easy, quote, unquote. Guys, I'm on. On a podcast. You can't see me. If it was this easy, quote, unquote, Surely our other doctors would tell us, but in traditional medicine, we were not taught the power. They're like, oh, they should eat healthy, but you're not taught what that means and how to do it. So I see kids with eczema that get better. Does everybody get better? No, I'm talking about. But some kids do. I'll tell you, the kids that are eating the processed foods and heavy sugar and Gatorade and the whole family is eating fast food and eating out all the time, and they make food changes, they will see change, and they stick. They truly make changes. They will see changes in their child's habits. Anxiety, adhd, autism, and skin within one to two months. It's a little harder in the children that already eating an amazing diet because the parents have already put all that effort in. Of course, I'm like, can you imagine if you didn't do all this? But I have parents all, all the time. I read your book. I know to make these changes, I can't believe. But we need more help, of course. And. But changes can happen with just changing the diet. And I'll tell you, if we change the diet, we go through a supplement program, we go through our stress management, energy healing, all that, things get better. And then we go back to the diet that we started with. A lot of symptoms come back, and people get discouraged again because if you lived your life and ate a certain way and those were your symptoms, you can never go back to that lifestyle again because you can't do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. So as we change our diet, yes, you can see huge changes. Do you need to do more than that? Absolutely. But change can be seen. I can't. I'll. The challenge. For anyone that's skeptical, take food dye out of your children's diet for 30 days. And I mean 100%. Not in Tylenol, not in Motrin, not in the toothpaste, not in the amoxicillin, not in the Zithromax, not in the foods you're eating. No diet, no dye for 30 days. See how the kids do. And then on the 31st day, give them food dye. Give them all of it. Give them all the Halloween candy. See what happens. And then DM me on Instagram.

That sounds like I already kind of know what's gonna happen with that experiment. I'd be kind of curious to see. That should be a challenge. You should do, like, the Halloween challenge, where it's like, let's do, like, 30 days from, like, you know, October 1st. No, no food dyes and candy. Then on Halloween day, surprise. And just, you know, I'd be kind of curious to see what kind of feedback.

I'm totally doing this. I'm doing this. And you know what I usually do? Plant point challenge. Maybe I'll do the food dye challenge in January. That's a great idea.

Yeah. It's because it's just like, you know, I mean, obviously Halloween's, like, perfect, but, like, that's just like. That'd be kind of crazy. You know, one thing you mentioned, you mentioned before, like, people say it can't be this easy. And, you know, when I hear that, you know, it's like, easy but not easy. It took my wife and I about a year and a half to figure out how to source our food so that we were getting, you know, our raw milk, if we can consume milk, our cows, our beef, our, you know, if you can do bread, our sourdough bread, our fresh, our fresh produce, our health, our cheeses that were aged, European aged cheeses that weren't, you know, pasteurized. It's, it's, it's, it's easy, but it's not, you know, because you have to actually find out stuff and get educated and get, get your local sourcing. What kind of things do you recommend to patients, you know, when they're starting this process? If you could pick three things, like, great, let's eat real food. What are the three kind of top things that you, that you've seen in your clinic with kids with autism to eczema? That's had profound impacts on them.

Yeah, that's great. It took us five. It took me five years. So you're much faster than I was. Is five years to actually, like, make all changes enough that all the medicines came off. But we've been on this journey for like 17 years. So a lot of people see me now and they're like, at Dizzy. I'm like. And I, like, wrote a book. I'm like, okay, month one, we were like, replace Jesus. You know. Month two, replace Ritz crackers. So I would say the first thing, first thing has to be mindset. The number one thing has to be mindset that you're like, no, my children are not going to eat like this. From now on, we're going to make small changes, but we're done. We are done with the status quo. We are done with eating like this. We are making changes. So that's number one, being in that mindset because you're like, yeah, let's see how this goes. We'll give this a go. It's not going to work if. Because you just. It's hard. It's. It's hard. And when it gets hard and the kids whine and they complain and they don't want to do it, and you, bad mom. And then my pantry. Your pantry sucks. And then the fridge is horrible. There's nothing to eat. So, like, you, when you have the mindset, like, we're doing this, you don't care what they say. If you going to kind of do it. And you hear that? Oh, you're going to cave. Not because you're a bad person, because it's hard. And so mindset number one. Number two, instead of being a no culture, we're going to be a yes culture. And this is how we're going to do it is you're not going to leave all the processed food, leave all your dyes. Don't, don't touch anything. All we're going to do is before you eat the Froot Loops, you have to have a smoothie or even smaller. You're going to eat three grapes and you're gonna eat one carrot stick and then you can have your Froot Loops. So now we're not a no culture. Oh, you're not eating your grapes and your, your carrot stick. Oh, well then you don't get Fruit Loops. So then you don't get breakfast. You're just gonna go hungry. Guys, in a food secure home, the children choose to be hungry. It's their choice, the parents. We choose what they eat, when they eat, where they eat. The children choose how much. And sometimes it's nothing. And I call it eating air. And I will introduce you to my youngest son who was a picky as can be. He ate air for a lot of his life. Many meals skipped, many foods not touched. And he's six foot one and he's a beast. So it didn't stop his growing at all. Anyway, so where it get for snack? Maybe let's do an easier one. So when they want a snack or it's going to be a fruit or a vegetable before a packaged snack. How do we say that without shaming them, without making them feel bad? Oh, the human body needs something from the ground before we can give it something that's packaged. I don't care if the packaged food has the most amazing ingredients. It's packaged food, therefore it's processed. So we eat a fruit or a vegetable before a snack and it's a portion size. After they have the portion size, they're still hungry. You kick them outside, they have to play for 30 minutes to an hour, then they can come back in and then they're still hungry. Then you do fruit or vegetable and a packaged snack. No non negotiating. They don't want a vegetable or fruit, no snack. Nobody is going to die with lack of snacks. That's not a thing. We're in the U.S. we're a snack culture everywhere else in the world. They make fun of Americans and our snacks. Just so you guys know, I've traveled the world, and they're always like, Americans and snacks. And I'm like, I know, I know. So just remember where they're not gonna die. So that we're. Yes. Culture. And then number three, we're all doing it together. It's not the kid with eczema. It's not the kid with asthma. It's not the kid with anxiety. We're all doing it together as a family. And I though those principles because when you do it and you are a force to be reckoned with, because if everyone's doing it. So in my house, my husband would bring home Cheez Its, and he would have Cheez Its at the dinner table, underneath the dinner table. You guys think I'm making this up. And he would eat dinner. You can't see me because it's podcast. And then he would lean over and, like, get the Cheez Its from under the table and eat them. Like, the kids are blind. I'm like, they can't see you. And so, of course, they were like, cracker, crack, crack, crack. And I was like, like, don't. I'm gonna murder this man. Okay, all right. Don't report me. I didn't murder him. He's alive, he's fine. He's in there. But I literally was like, he's gonna die tonight, because. Are you kidding me right now? So I had to. And he and I fought over food for five years because he didn't think that had anything to do with anything. So it was a massive thing. So it was a slow transition. I'm like, hey, babe, how about instead of Cheez Its at dinner, we're gonna do something else? So I got. Got him a carby substitution that was. Would satisfy his craving, but then the children would not be seeing it and eating it because I had to get him on board. And it was really rough going for five years. At the five year mark, he got on board because he was sicker than everybody else. And he tells the story on Instagram, tells story on Facebook. He's like, I was sicker than everybody else. I had double pneumonia, I was coughing up blood. And I couldn't understand how everyone always was healthy and I was the sickest one. And that was his aha moment. And once he came on board, guys, easy breezy because they couldn't manipulate dad versus Mom. We are both saying the same thing. We are both no to dyes, no to sugar, no to all the things. Because when you're on the same page, oh, my gosh. Right? I mean, you guys. You and your wife did so move so much faster because you're on the same page, and you're on the same mission. And that's why I'm like, you have to be on the same page. You can't have a parent come home with Skittles. And then you tell the children, no food dies. And then you go, oh, but we hit them in the pantry. The children are like hounds. Sniff it out. They know where it is. They're climbing the shelves. I'm like, you cannot fool the kids. They know. So I'm like, but if it's not in the house, you know, most kids that we're talking about, they don't have a driver's license, and they don't have money. So if they're eating goldfish, it's because you brought the goldfish in. You know, when I was annoyed with them that they ate too many goldfish, I had to have a moment. I'm like, wait a minute, Wait a minute. Who's buying the Costco size? Oh, that's me.

Oh.

Oh, wait a minute. Wait. Back to me. Problem.

Yeah. So I think that's a thing a lot of patients struggle with, is because they have the diet for one child, one person. And I actually wrote down here a question about family involvement, which you kind of finished up with because it has to be a family thing. It can't be. Mom's got her diet. Dad's got her diet. It's like, you have to be together as a family, because if you're not, it's just gonna be a source of contention. And, you know, it sounds like. Like your family. My wife was the person at our house who started some of the stuff. But it's kind of. Your husband's a smart guy. He's an orthopedic surgeon. So. But even for smart people, that, you know, a surgical specialist that sometimes it takes, you know, a while. And it took me a while to realize, you know, she drugged me along. But, you know, for our son, I think one of the reasons. Because he. He was eight months old when he got him. He had horrible eczema and asthma, and. But we. I didn't do it slowly. We basically gave him breakfast. If he didn't eat it, he got breakfast for lunch, and if he didn't eat, he got for dinner. And there are a couple days. We got breakfast for breakfast the next day, and he figured out pretty quick, at 6, 7 months old that if he wanted to, he should go ahead and do it. And so that's a Little tough love. But it's. You know, everybody's got a different speed they do it with. But the goal is it has to be a family thing, and if my wife wasn't on board with that, that would not happen. If you're. You know, you got to. The parents have to be together. They have to be a team, or the kids will divide and conquer. That's. That's for sure.

Oh, Mike. Because they're brilliant, right? We're always like, we hope to have brilliant children. Well, yeah, when they're brilliant, you figure out the system, and they. I know people don't like the word. They manipulate the system, and I mean that in the nicest way because we manipulate our environment. We. We do what we need to do to get what we want. There's nothing wrong with that. That's. I always applaud children. Like, good job. Yay. This is. Their job is to push limits. And if we're divided, they know they'll.

Find the weak one and go for the weak one. So that is awesome. I want to respect your time. Had a great conversation. This is a lot of you talk, I think, faster than me, maybe. That was so much information. Great stuff. I feel like I'm gonna definitely watch this again when it comes out. As a side note, there's a video that'll be on YouTube, and then the podcast will be audible, so you'll be. You'll be seen.

Well, you get to see me, like, dip.

Yeah. People will see you different.

My air quotes. Perfect.

Yeah, people will see the air quotes as well, so. But, Emery, if people want to know more about you, more about what you're doing, your books follow you. Where. Where can people find out more about you?

Yeah. So let me tell you guys. I. What I do on my weekends is I hang out at Costco, Target, and Walmart, where I shop for you. Because it is hard. We were joking that it's easy, but it's. It's very hard. And because it's hard, I try to make it as easy as possible. So I go to all the different stores in my area that are affordable and easy for people to find and show. You don't buy this. Buy this. Because, yeah, you know that. The ingredient. But you're like. So anyway, I'm at Target, Walmart, and Costco. You find me on Instagram, Dr. A Na Maria Temple, and that's my YouTube channel. TikTok is Dr. A and A Maria. Whatever floats your boat. It's on all the. I torture people on all the channels. I'm trying to get the message out because the changes that Dr. Hartman and I said see in our patients when we change their diet, when we pay attention to the ingredients, when we treat the child as a whole person and the whole family, it's so mind blowing. And the fact that the children that we treat don't have to be on as many medicines. Some of them have to be on medicines. We are not saying all medicine is evil. Some have to be on medicine, but they're on less medications. And they are able to lead awesome, productive lives and be vital. And they're able to play and run without scratchy bleedy itchy skin, without breathing difficulties. They're not afraid to leave their house. They're not screaming in their bedrooms. So many changes can be made. So we would love to help you and we try to do it in all the different ways between podcasts and all our social media outlets.

Yeah. And those links and those things will be below when this pops up as well so people hopefully can just click and follow. So thank you so much for your time. It was a great conversation, lots of great information and I hope you have a great weekend because it is Friday. So take care and we will talk with you soon.

Thank you so much. This was wonderful. Appreciate it.

Bye.