72: How to Create Immune Resilience in Your Kids with Dr. Elisa Song

Almost two years into the pandemic, we know so much more. We know that we don't have to have the same fear that gripped us, but we need to have knowledge.

Welcome to the youe Longevity Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Stephanie Gray. My number one goal with the show is to help you discover your personalized plan to build your dream health and live a longer, happier, truly healthier life.

You're about to hear from Dr. Elisa Song. Today we're going to discuss immune resilience in children, mental health resilience in kids, and preparing for the winter. Ultimately, what you can do to keep your family healthy. Let's get started.

Welcome to another episode of the youe Longevity Blueprint Podcast. Today my guest is Dr. Elisa Song, who's an integrative pediatrician, pediatric functional medicine expert and mama. In her integrative pediatric practice, Whole Family Wellness. She's helped thousands of kids get to the root cause of their health concerns and help their parents understand how to help their children thrive. But body, mind and spirit. By integrating conventional pediatrics with functional medicine, homeopathy, acupuncture, herbal medicine and essential oils, Dr. Song created healthy Kids, Happy Kids as an online holistic pediatric resource to help practitioners and parents bridge the gap between conventional and integrated pediatrics with an evidence based pediatrician backed approach. Welcome to the show, Dr. Song.

Thank you, Stephanie. It's an honor to be here today.

Well, tell us your story. So first, what led you into becoming integrative with your approach to children's health in general?

That goes way back because I grew up in a very conventional household. My mom was an ob gyn and we grew up with medicines and everything. Very, very conventional. Although being Korean, Koreans do tend to gravitate towards more kind of herbal natural therapy. So it was interesting. I grew up with my grandmother at home, so she was my second mom. So when I went to college, first of all, I had no intention of becoming a doctor. I actually, I wanted to do policy and be a lawyer and advocate children in Washington D.C. and I spent a couple of summers with the Children's Defense Fund lobbying for, you know, children's health rights and poverty, fighting poverty. So children were always my heart. But then, you know, I remember thinking as a junior taking the LSATs and thinking about law school and thinking, oh my gosh, well, if I'm a lawyer, I mean, I can do hopefully some good for kids, but I'm not going to work with children. So then I kind of switched gears and senior year was when I took all of my Pre med courses. And it was senior year at Stanford that I saw this sign. Now I'm going to. This was back in the late 80s where I saw this sign for this conference for the American Holistic Medical Association. I'm like, what is that? So I went, whatever got into me as a junior to drive to the Santa Clara Convention center. And it was so amazing. I heard from these people that were just barely getting started. Andrew Weil, Deepak Chopra, Joan Borisenko. And literally my mind was blown. And I thought, oh, I'm going to be a naturopathic doctor. I remember calling my mom and saying, hey, you know, I want to. I want to. I'm looking at best year. And she's like, what is that? And everyone I spoke with is like, what is that? So, of course, I wasn't necessarily encouraged to go that route. And I ended up going to medical school. And I'm actually really glad that I went this way because that's why I really consider myself more of an integrated pediatrician, you know, because throughout my career, even in medical school, I wasn't satisfied with what I was learning. I wanted to go to this holistic medicine student medical. Medical students elective in Virginia with Pally de Levitt, and of course, my advisors in med school, nyu, very traditional. Were like, nope, sorry, that's. You know, we can't accept that. I'm like, what? So then, you know, and at ucsf, I did. I created my own elective in integrative medicine during my rheumatology immunology. I said, hey, can I secret my elective? And I wrote a primer, did research, and went to different chiropractors and acupuncture offices and learned about an integrative approach to juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. So it's always been in my heart. When I finished my residency, I just thought, what can I do? You know, I'm not happy with whatever I'm seeing. It's just. We're all. It's like band aid medicine. And we're great at trauma, we're great at acute infections, we're great at. But all of these chronic conditions were just skyrocketing. And I thought, well, I think I want to do something more integrative. So that's when I went back and did additional training. And I started off in medicine, in clinical practice, as an integrative pediatrician.

Very cool.

So, yeah, that's always been my passion. And the only way I would practice. We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? There's a time and a place for everything. But we know now that what we're doing in conventional medicine, I mean, antibiotics can be life saving, but we need to understand the unintended consequences on the developing child's gut microbiome and the effects on their brain and their immune system and their hormones. So it really takes that holistic, integrative approach.

I love it. I love it. That's how I practice. Only for adults, not children. Yet so many parents have called you the voice of reason that's helped them navigate this pandemic with a calm confidence, using facts over fear. So tell us about your journey to becoming the go to integrative pediatric expert for the pandemic. I know there's a story there, so please share.

Well, it was never my intention, right? I mean, the life happens thrown at you for a reason. And so if we kind of step back, way back, I mean, not that long ago. But, you know, just remember where we were back in January of 2020, right? February of 2020, when we're just hearing about, you know, this thing, this virus and it was taking over the world. And the fear, I mean, there was so much fear. I remember, you know, at the end of February, just talking to my husband, should I go to this conference, the a forum conference where I was supposed to talk at the end of February, like, should I, should I wear a mask? What should I do? And, you know, it was just this whole thing. And I remember, you know, at that point, you know, we're like, well, okay, I was seeing these children with these influenza, like, illnesses that were flu negative, right? And remember back then, we had no way to test for Covid. I was on the wait list for quest to get my hands on those precious swabs to be able to do COVID testing. And then even if you did COVID testing, it was taking like a week to get back. So we were just in this wild west of fear. And so when I have fear in me, you know, I just, I need to find the facts, right? So I just dug into what we knew about, you know, what was being called. We weren't even calling it SARS COV2 back then. It wasn't. Well, we were calling SARS COV2, but it wasn't Covid just yet. And I just looked at all the research on SARS CoV1 and really looked at it from a functional medicine integrated perspective. And I wrote an article, if you guys know me, like, you know, my articles are really in depth. I go into this science and you know, I wrote this article with like, I don't know, like 82 citations and like, okay, we just need to approach this with a little bit more knowledge. And that was on, I think it was February 22nd and it was the first article, right. Of this, of 2020 first article on really looking at a comprehensive approach to SARS COV 2. And it literally, I mean, no pun intended, I mean it went viral within hours, shared everywhere across the world. And it's had, I think now over, probably over about 1.5 million views. I mean it was just crazy. And we need to post a link.

To that in the show. Notes. I got to make a note. Ye if we can, if it's available.

Or is it on your website? It's available, it's still up. And I spoke about things like glutathione and vitamin D and what can we do to try to arm ourselves with this unknown thing. So that was the end of February and then we went into lockdown March 13th. I mean, that's when our schools got the notice, okay, we'll take a two week break over spring break and then come back. Of course, nobody went back. Right. But just before the lockdown, I saw two kids who had this very strange flu like illness. In fact, one boy was subsequently hospitalized at UCSF for this Kawasaki like illness. And in retrospect, I think that was obviously Covid back then. But we didn't know, we couldn't test. And so shortly after going into lockdown, my kids got Covid, right. My daughter, she had the classic signs. She was 11 at the time, actually 10 at the time. And she had these, the classic, the cough, the fever, the shortness of breath. Of course, you know, as a pediatrician, I had a pulse oximeter and she, she would drop down. Ideally, ideal normal pulse oximeter is oxygen saturation is over 97%. And she would get to like 93, 94, 95%. She never looked like she was short of breath. She always said, I feel fine. But I had no swabs back then to test. So it wasn't until her seventh day of illness that I finally got my box of Quest swabs and I tested her. Sure enough, I was like, oh my God, she has Covid, right? We weren't quarantining. I mean, how could you your child sick, right? And then about a week after she got sick, my son got sick. And he didn't have any of the classic symptoms. His first symptom was severe abdominal pain, severe headache. And back then that was not considered a Covid symptom, right? It was fever, cough, shortness of breath. And then he started having hallucinations, hearing mean voices, seeing really scary things. He got a rash. I mean, all the signs that we would now think of as heading towards multi system inflammatory syndrome syndrome in children, MIS C. His oxygen levels start to drop, drop, drop. I even got a home oxygen tank for him, which I would never ever recommend that you do as a mom, right? But when his oxygen levels dropped to 88%, I mean, that's when I was like, I can't do this at home. And just the fear was so incredible. So I brought him to ucsf. And then at that point, after I kind of shook myself, you kind of have to give yourself a little like shake or a slap in the face. I'm like, okay, get a hold of yourself. What did you just research? What do you need to do for your son, right? And so that's when I had already been giving him vitamin C and glutathione and doing everything that, you know, that I thought we could. But then I added some other things from my integrated medicine toolkit. Melatonin, serum derived Bovide immunoglobulin, specialized pro resolving mediators. And we were in the hospital. And literally as, as soon, as soon as I started those, his oxygen levels started to climb, his hallucinations went away. He was more present. He just had this really goofy, weird look with these tics, these eye rolling tics he was doing. It scared the bejesus out of me, right? He just wasn't my kid right then and there. And we know that Covid now can trigger these neuropsychiatric symptoms almost like a hands, a pediatric acute onset neuropsychiatric syndrome in children. My conjecture is that he probably got Covid around the same time as Kenzie. But since he was only 8 at the time, and we know that 50% of kids will have asymptomatic infection, I'm going to guess he had an asymptomatic infection then. And that was why two weeks later he developed this misd type presentation, which we know is a post Covid presentation. Everyone's like, well, why did you get Covid? What about your husband? And we didn't unravel the mystery until several months later when antibodies were available. And I checked all of us and sure enough, my husband and I had antibodies. And in retrospect, the weekend when we went into lockdown, about five days before my daughter started to get sick, I had this intense four day headache and I'm not a headache person enough that I slept all day one day and my husband's like, are you okay? So that must have been. And my husband had GI distress for about a day. A little bit of a headache. Nothing major, but we obviously have very mild symptoms. That must have been Covid that. Then again, not quarantining. I must have passed it on to my kids, which, as you know, Stephanie, I mean, just the PTSD of that has really been huge for me. But since then, because I never ever want another parent to have to go through that fear again. I mean, literally, when we went to UCSF and I was walking in with my son and saying goodbye to my daughter and husband, I mean, remember back In March of 2020, we had no idea of how kids were doing. The assumption then was that kids were going to worse with COVID just like they do with flu compared to adults. And I mean, I literally, like, I don't even want to speak these words, but I didn't know like who was going to come out at the end of the stay. Right. I mean, it just like it was that fear. And so somehow that kind of thrusts me into trying to bring more knowledge to parents. And here I am, you know, like over almost, you know, two years later and I'm still doing this work, trying to really educate parents and empower parents because now, almost years into the pandemic, we know so much more. We know that we don't have to have the same fear that gripped us, but we need to have knowledge. So good.

Tell us about your son though. So what happened? Did he quickly or slowly improve or.

Quickly, quickly. And by quickly I mean we went into the hospital. It was, you know, probably 10 o' clock at night. You know, I don't remember what day that was. I think it was maybe a Saturday. No, I take that back. It was a Thursday night. I started him on melatonin that night, you know, and his oxygen levels again. Quickly, like rapidly, he would. He started to climb, climb, climb back up. His eyes came back, his tics went away, his hallucinations went away and we were ready to go home the next day. Except that they wanted to watch us a little bit more closely because honestly, the hospital, I mean ucsf, the nurses and the staff were so amazing, but they didn't know what to do. And I was like, what about back then? There were some different medications that were being tried and they're like, well, we don't have any experience with kids, so we're just not recommending that. So he got IV Fluids and oxygen, right? But no medications, no treatment. Tried an albuterol inhaler for him. It didn't make a difference. You know, he quickly turned around. And I. Can I say it was because of, you know, what I did. I can't for sure. But that was the only thing different because I was giving him oxygen at home, too, right. You know, we were actually. Stayed two nights in the hospital just resting. And by the next day, I mean, he was back and he thought it was a blast because ucsf, the children's hospital, Benioff Children's Hospital, is gorgeous. And he's like, I don't want to go. I have this huge tv, right? I can play video games on my tv. I can order room service on the tv. And I was like, buddy, we have to go, right? So Saturday, my husband and Kenzie picked us up. And he. I mean, that afternoon he was running around with Kenzie in the yard. I'm like, slow down. Take it easy. Right? But he was running around, they were jumping on the trampoline. And Sunday was Easter. And he. I mean, we did an Easter egg hunt in our yard. I mean, it was like nothing had happened. And knock on wood. Thankfully. Thankfully. I mean, I actually took him to the cardiologist a few months later just to check his heart.

Nothing.

No residual problems at all. So. And to this day, he's doing 100%. I mean, he's still. Now he's back to his normal goofy self, as opposed to the kind of scary goofy that he was in the hospital. So, I mean, he just. He bounced back. And that's where I really want parents to know. I mean, it's. I mean, that was kind of the next question that we were going to go into is really, what do we know now about immune resilience? Right. When we think about immune resilience, what I tell parents over and over again, it's not about never getting sick. I mean, we've lived in a bubble for the past two years with our kids, and so many parents tell me it's amazing. My kids didn't get sick at all this past year and a half or two years. And I don't know that that's necessarily a good thing because our immune systems have kind of lost their training. We have to get back on our training wheels. And immune resil not about never getting sick. It's about your immune system and your body learning how to overcome each and every single hit so that it can be stronger for the next hit. And by hit, it's not even just Infections, right? It's environmental toxins, it's emotional stress, psychological stress is as inflammatory to our immune system as any infection or toxin. And in fact, when Bode was in the hospital, the power of mind body medicine, it really has to be up there, way up there, in fact, higher up than I think any medication that we're using, any supplement we're using. You know, really, you know, we do need to think about food as medicine, but food as medicine and mind body medicine, I think, are the two most important pieces for immune and cellular resilience. So, and I know that firsthand, when Bode was in the hospital, his oxygen levels would start to drop and he started to look a little short of breath. Of course, my mommy brain would kick in, and I start to be like, bode, are you okay? And start to kind of panic. And he would start to breathe faster, and oxygen levels are start to drop more. And he even said at one point, he's like, mommy, stop. You're scaring me. So I'd have to kind of. I mustered all my strength and I would calm down. I would have Bode kind of sit up and I'd say, okay, Bode, let's just slow it down. Let's do our square breathing. That's a breathing technique where you just imagine a box. It's box breathing. And we have this app called Stop Breathe. Think where a fish goes up, up and around the box. As the fish goes up, you take a slow breath in, hold it across the top, and then as the fish goes in, you exhale and hold it across the bottom. So we do our square breathing, and then we would just say our healing mantras. We'd stand up and shout. We had a private room in the corner, and we just shout out as loud as we could. My body is strong. My lungs are strong. I'm getting stronger and stronger. And immediately he'd go from 88, 89% to like 95, 96%. I mean, within minutes, Right. And so we cannot discount the power of using, harnessing, you know, our mind to get that mind immune system connection, mind gut connection, working properly.

Love it, love it, love it. So you teach parents and practitioners about these foundations of immune resilience. So let's break down those three things you mentioned that food is medicine, the supplements, and then. And what we can do to support emotional health. So let's talk about food. So tell us about your food as medicine approach.

So you can't out supplement a bad diet and lifestyle. Right? We know that. Right. Whenever people talk about building Immune resilience, supporting their child's immune system. The first question is, well, what supplements can I give them? Which supplements have a role? I'm not saying they don't. And I give supplements to my kids and I recommend supplements, but you have to start with a foundation. Now, I totally get 100% that some kids are really, they're picky or they're not quite eating five to nine servings of vegetables in a day. And right now, as we head into the holidays, from Halloween to Christmas, it's a sugar fest, right? I mean, it's like we can't escape some of that. And so we need to support ourselves with supplements. But really we want to get down to the foundations of food as medicine and prioritize that. I'll just take a moment with a word on sugar. And I'm not going to say I don't give my kids any sugar. I mean, Halloween just happened and they're having one thing of candy from their Halloween. I really, you know, I would say if you can please avoid any artificial colors and flavors. But the sugar, let's talk about the sugar. Sugar in any form, whether it's glucose or fructose, and I'm going to say even, you know, a ton of fruit sugar. The studies have found, this is an old study back in the 70s, but found that sugar within 20 minutes of consumption reduces your white blood cells ability to basically these macrophages that are part of our white blood cells to engulf, to eat, to trap infections and fight by 50%. And that effect can last for at least five hours or longer. Now, pre pandemic, in the days of bouncy house parties, or like you're pump it up parties where there'd be cake and skittles and lots of candy and everyone's touching and combination, you're like, oh boy. But it's no wonder that the next day so many kids, they wake up with a runny nose or they, their throat's sore, right? So we just want to remember that and know that if your kids are having a treat or having a sugar load. And our family, we've been going through a very stressful time right now with some medical issues with elderly, aging grandparents. And so it's been stressful. And there's a reason why when we're stressed, our brain wants sugar because it gives you that kind of feel good hormone release. But we want to take that and just know, okay, when we're stressed already, our immune system is a little down. Load it up with sugar. But if you're going to have some sugar. Balance it out, right? Balance it out with antioxidants and greens and enough sleep. Sleep is healing. Sleep is so important. Getting your body moving, get some exercise in. So just balance. It's all about balance, right? And then when we think about food as medicine, but also get you, Stephanie, for the listeners is I have a little guide, a little shopping list called Food as Medicine for Coronavirus. But I really need to change that to Food as Medicine for Immune Support, because it's really the foundations of all immune health. But I list the top nutrients, the vitamins or the minerals that are really so foundational for your immune health on one hand. And then on the other side, I list all the top foods with those nutrients in it. And what a lot of parents have done, which I think is awesome, is to print it out, put in the fridge, and then as they go through and make up their weekly shopping list, have your kids involved, have your kids pick out a food from each of those categories. And even if they're not eating it quite yet, you can say, okay, for the glutathione, we're going to work on cabbage this week and try to find some different creative ways to eat cabbage. So if your kids can help with that, it gets them more invested and more interested in at least trying some of these foods. The top foods, and I'll tell you what's on the list, there's zinc, there's quercetin, there's vitamin C, there's vitamin D, there's glutathione, vitamin A and probiotics and omega 3s. Now that sounds like. Oh, my gosh. Gosh, that's a lot, right? But a lot of foods, I mean, you do double duty, right? Because your cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, those can do double duty with vitamin C and with glutathione, glutathione enhancing foods, some of them are going to be rich in quercetin. So it's not like you have to choose a ton, right? Your zinc foods or your zinc rich foods. If you choose seafood, that's also going to be a rich source of omega 3s. So a lot of them do double duty, right? But each of these, you know, has a role in supporting different aspects of our immune system. When it comes to Covid, in particular the SARS CoV2 virus. We have a lot more data from SARS CoV1, but we know that, for instance, zinc, which a lot of people have heard of Zinc and quercetin by now, you know, as we're kind of now two years into the pandemic. And why are those such super nutrient powerhouses? Because zinc, at least for SARS CoV1, the first SARS virus, was found to inhibit replication, multiplication of the virus inside the cells. And quercetin, which is found in red apples, red onions, in grapes and spinach, cruciferous vegetables. Quercetin is what we call a zinc ionophore, which, I mean, could you imagine into the pandemic how much more language, medical language we have, not just as laypeople, but even as practitioners. Do you think most medical professional have ever heard of a zinc ionophore before the pandemic?

Probably not.

Right. But now it's like it kind of rolls off the tongue for a lot of people. But a zinc ionophore helps to drive zinc into the cells so that your cells can use it more. Right. So that's, that's why, you know, some of those. Now, vitamin D, if you're going to prioritize any supplement, it, hands down, is vitamin D so important that I even wrote an article, why all kids need Vitamin D. Right. It's the most important supplement through the winter. Very often, if you look at the food sources of vitamin D, they're not the most kid friendly. Right. There's mushrooms, caviar.

Yeah. Right. Now dairy, cow's dairy has vitamin D. But you know, a lot of my kids that I see are sensitive or allergic to cow's milk products. And you know, from a Chinese medicine perspective, cow's milk creates a lot of it damp and flesh and mucus. And so we really don't want that in the wintertime either or when we're sick. So vitamin D. For vitamin D, you often need supplementation even in the summer when there's enough sunlight to get conversion through your skin. I mean, we live in an inflammatory world, let's just put it that way. We have a lot of forces on our immune systems and our brains that really make us use so much vitamin D every day that even, even in the middle of summer, I have to find when I measure 25 hydroxy vitamin D levels, almost all kids need a little extra vitamin D. But that would be like the one supplement that I'd say if you're gonna focus on, and then if your kids are not yet the most varied eaters, and let's face it, even the healthiest of eaters could uplevel their healthy eating game a little bit. Right. Supplements can be a way to just have a Little bit more of that security under you.

Well, let's go through those. But can we go back to vitamin D for a minute? Because I'm sure a lot of parents are thinking, oh, okay, how do I dose that in the adult population that I see, I check their level and then I dose them based on how low they are. So in kids, especially if they have not had levels tested, let's start with even infants, like how much should we be giving them? How much vitamin D?

I mean, there's a very different answer in the very conventional world, in the more integrated functional medicine world. And I'll just have listeners understand and your listeners know this, that there's a huge difference between what one would consider normal and what one would consider optimal. And when you look at the vitamin D ranges, the 25 hydroxy vitamin D ranges at, let's say a conventional lab like Quest, the normal value will be anywhere from 20 to 100 nanograms per milliliter. That's a huge range. So when I have a mom come in and they'll say, oh yeah, I had my vitamin D levels checked and I was told it was normal. Right. Especially for a pregnant mom. Right. Because that vitamin D during pregnancy to optimize it so important for your baby's developing immune system and brain. And I want to know the exact number because if she's at a 22, that's not okay. Right. That might be normal, but it's not optimal. So I like to get kids to an optimal range of about 60 to 80 nanograms per milliliter, which I think is that, that's the same for adults too, right? It's really not that different. But the dose, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all breastfed infants get supplemented with 400 international units, 400 IUs of vitamin D, three daily. Now why is that just for breastfed babies? Why not formula fed babies? Shouldn't breast milk be the perfect baby food? Right. I mean, that's just evolutionarily, that's what we were born with. Really and truly the reason is because most moms are deficient or insufficient in vitamin D. So when measuring babies, if moms don't have enough vitamin D in their system to that pass through the breast milk, then yes, babies are going to be more likely to be deficient or insufficient. That's why when you're pregnant or nursing, it's so important to optimize your own vitamin D level so that baby gets enough and then there probably isn't going to be a need to supplement. If you are at adequate levels. Now, that being said, that's a recommendation of 400 IUs for a baby. And then there's not really clear guidelines on whether or not from the American Academy of Pediatrics, whether or not older kids need supplementation. But they don't recommend more than about 1,000 IUs per day for any, you know, any age. Now, I will say knowing that most kids are deficient or insufficient, that's typically not enough. The Vitamin D Council had guidelines. The maintenance dose, once you reach an optimal level for vitamin D is about 1,000 international units per 25 pounds of body weight, up to 100 pounds. So up to 5,000 IUs. So once you get to 5,000 IUs per day, you kind of maintain at that. Now, that's a maintenance dose. So for most, you gotta get there. You gotta get there first. You gotta get there first. So that's where I am measuring levels. And, you know, get some kids, they might need, you know, 10,000 IUs a day for a month, and then we repeat and see if they're adequate. And they might not still be adequate. Right. And so if you can, it's best to test because I cannot look at a child and say their vitamin D levels are low. Right. I might suspect that. I can suspect it. If your child gets frequent infections or they have asthma or autoimmune conditions or any neurologic or psychiatric conditions, I presume then you know that your child probably has suboptimal vitamin D levels. But I won't know until I test. So if you can test, then do it. Do that.

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Then. Yeah. Then let your provider guide you on what dosing you need. Yes. And then continue with the maintenance. Let's go on to some other supplements. You alluded to giving your son some, I think you said serum derived immunoglobulins. So can you talk to the listeners about the role that they play, why they're important? We were just talking about breast milk. So there's a little bit of overlap there, that breast milk also contains immunoglobulins.

So one of the things that we've learned that many people have learned through COVID 19. I mean, this is something that we should understand in general from that functional medicine perspective. And this is really a life lesson, right? There's really very few things that are 100% good or bad in life, right? I mean, think about it. I mean, like very, very few things, right? And the word inflammation, when you say inflammation, what do most people go to? Oh my God, that's bad. We can't have inflammation. We got to squash it. Right? And when it comes to, to cytokine storm or sepsis, when inflammation goes out of control, yes, that is not a good thing. We want to lower that. However, we have to remember that when you are sick initially, inflammation is a good thing. It's your body's natural response. Those cytokines, when you mount a fever, when you cut yourself and you get that redness around, that's all of your white blood cells going there and saying, creating pus. I'm trying to heal myself. Those are those white blood cells doing their thing. It's when things don't then reach resolution, right? You've managed the infection, you've managed the cut, right? The pus, your Immune system has to say, okay, inflammation, you've done your job, let's bring it back down and resolve it back to a normal state. When that resolution doesn't occur appropriately, that's when you get the cut that just oozes and oozes and oozes, right? Or you get the infection that then goes on into that second week of COVID right after the honeymoon period where you're getting better, might tip over into pneumonia, cytokine storm, sepsis, right? So there's a time and a place for everything. We do not want to suppress inflammation when our body's trying to do its job, but when it's done its job, we want to support it in resolving that inflammation. And that's where the key role of immune modulators come in. Now, we know with SARS CoV 2, there are a lot of different inflammatory pathways that are triggered trigger. One of the more important ones is the NLRP3 inflammasome. Immunologists love their acronyms and their initials, right? So the NLRP3 inflammasome that gets triggered when you have an infection. And then we want that to settle down. Now when things start to go a little bit off kilter, we start seeing signs of the NLRP3 inflammasome is now inappropriately activated. There are things that we know from a functional medicine standpoint that can bring that down, but not support, suppress. Right? We don't want to just squash inflammation because then that's not helping you to get to a normal healthy state, to get back to the homeostasis. So melatonin does, right? Melatonin is amazing at that. Melatonin is not just our sleep hormone, but it is an immune regulator, also protects the brain, which is why it's used in Alzheimer's and with cancer patients. There's also our specialized pro resolving mediators or SPMs. And my followers and my patients know that is probably hands down apart from vitamin D, my favorite ever supplement. They are molecules derived from the EPA and the DPA of your omega 3 essential fatty acids, your fish oils. But you really can't get enough therapeutically by drinking tons of fish oil. So now there are variety of supplement manufacturers that have purified out these SPMs. They have been game changers for my patients with autoimmune illnesses. Because what happens in autoimmunity is again, it's that dysregulated immune response response. So with COVID as well, I can never say it's a treatment, right? We don't want to get in Trouble with the FDA by calling anything a treatment. But it can help the symptoms of a hyper inflammatory, a dysregulated immune response. Amazing, right? I've used SPMs to support a healthy immune response to not just Covid, but to infections to kids with pans and pandas support healthy immune responses to even things like vaccinations. And then there's our sbi which is an even less well known supplement. It's the serum derived bovine immunoglobulin. What this is, it's bovine meaning cow. So it's cow antibodies. But it's not meant to boost your antibody systems. What SBIs do is they act on the gut. And we know that for people who present with the gut symptoms like with BODE did, there's some evidence that that actually portends, predicts possibly a more serious COVID infection. Because we know for instance with MIS C what they found, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, that there is evidence that they have elevated levels of zonulin, a protein called zonulin in their blood than kids with COVID who didn't go on to develop MIS C. And zonulin is a marker for leaky gut. And so we know from a leaky gut, in sepsis there are endotoxins that are secreted by gram negative bacteria that can get absorbed and and create something called metabolic endotoxemia. These endotoxins are called LPS lipopolysaccharides. This LPS, when it's been absorbed, has been implicated not just in sepsis, but in autoimmune illnesses like Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, neuropsychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia, anxiety, depression and a whole host of autoimmune diseases. What SBI does is it absorbs these endotoxic, this lipopolysaccharide, right, These LPS before it can get absorbed into the bloodstream. It's been amazing for some of my patients with like social anxieties or with autoimmune illnesses. With COVID I think it's an important piece of the puzzle, especially if you have GI symptoms. Now in Spain they're actually doing, it's a study called PICNIC and I cannot remember what that acronym stands for, but they're actually using, it's a trial using, using SBIs in the hospital in patients who are hospitalized in the ICU with COVID So a lot of these things, again great that they're investigating these functional medicine tools that we have that we can see in the literature. That make clinical, it makes hypothetical sense. So now we need to see does that translate into then clinical improvements? Because let's face it, I mean these million dollar drugs that are being investigated, we have at our tools, I mean melatonin and SPM and SBI that not nearly the cost and much more easily accessible. So I really do hope that there are more findings and more good studies on some of these functional medicine approaches.

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So we talked about food as medicine and the role supplements play. Let's talk a little bit about the state of mental health emergency in our nation. So what role does emotional and psychological health play in immune resilience? You've already talked a little bit about this, but let's go there for a minute and then kind of talk about how we can help our kids optimize their vagus nerve function.

Yes. And you know, many people, I'm sure in your audience have heard of vagus nerve supports and the parasympathetic versus the sympathetic nervous systems. When we take a step back and we look at stress, right. What is stress again? Nothing's good or bad 100%. When we say stress, immediately people think, oh, I don't want stress, I don't want my kids to be stressed. Let's get rid of Stress, well that's not a good thing either, right? Stress causes us to adapt from a mental, physical and immunologic level. Right? When we learn from our stress, we learn from our stress when we overcome it. So there's this idea of tolerable stress or toxic stress. And when we have stress that we manage and we're in this state where we have stressors and then we manage and we learn how to do it better the next time. That's called eustress. E.U. eustress. Right. Eustress is that state of living in a world where we can balance stress and harmony. But when stress becomes distress, then that becomes more inflammatory. And as I mentioned before, psychological stress causes the very same cascade of inflammatory responses in our immune system as phys. Physical stress or immunologic stress? The very same, it's no different. So when we have this onslaught of psychological stress, after stress, after stress that we're not handling, we can present with the very same inflammatory symptoms. And we are currently. The American Academy of Pediatrics has announced and we know this, the pandemic has triggered a state of mental health emergency. It's not new, it is not new when we talk about this, and I've talked about this for years, I mean before COVID when every winter we come along and everyone starts to panic over influenza. And when you look at it, teenagers, our teens and our youth are 17 times more likely to die by suicide than they are of influenza. Right. I mean even now the CDC came out with the analysis that Covid now is, I think they said the 8th was in 2020, the 8th biggest killer of children. Well, suicide of 5 to 11 year olds. Suicide still higher. Right. I mean, you know, we need to think about what our mental health priorities are, our public health priorities are. Because what's here is not separate. You can't disconnect the head from the rest of your body. And we know how important that gut, brain, immune, brain connection is. So when we think about this, you know, what I point people to is the landmark work, the life changing work of Robert Navio down at ucsd who's really identified something called the cell danger response. And the cell dangerous was. I love to talk about the cell danger response. And I just had the Honor of Meeting Dr. Robert Navio for the first time this weekend when I was lecturing with him. I just. What an honor to have your mentor there come right, go right after him. His work is life changing and he describes the cell danger response as our cells normally live in a health cycle right where we have our normal waking metabolic processes that happen while we're awake and then our restorative healing process when we're asleep. That's our. Now when a hit comes to this health cycle and boom, we get this hit, whether it's psychological stress, an environmental toxin or an infection or physical trauma, our cells get thrown into the cell danger response. That then is called the healing cycle that we have to go through step by step, phase one, phase two, phase three of the cell dangerous response to get back into then the health cycle. Very simplistically, in the first phase of the cell danger response, that injured cell walls itself off from the rest of our body because it needs to protect us, right? We don't want this inflammation to go crazy and it triggers ATP release into our, into our extracellular space and recruits all these other cells to help heal. And we try to neutralize the threat, whatever it is, right? The infection or environmental toxin or psychological trauma. If the threat is contained, then our cells can move into the next phase two of the cell danger response. If that insult is not contained, let's take an infection, it gets walled off, it gets hidden away, wrapped around by, let's say, clots, fibrin, so that our immune system can defend itself with this wall. That's what happens with chronic infections. But then we move into the cell danger response too, where it's the repair cycle. Stem cells get generated so that there's any old cells that didn't survive get rep replaced, cells that can be repaired, get repaired. And that's where all of our functional medicine interventions are really important to support mitochondrial function, metabolic function, you know, immunologic function, methylation, detoxification. When that happens correctly, our cells can move into the third phase, cell danger response, phase three. This third phase is where many, many, many people, kids and adults are stuck in, right? Their cells are stuck, stuck in this third phase because they can't move back into the healing cycle. What happens in this third phase? Our mitochondria get restored and the cells that were separated, all these new cells that were created in phase two and the initial cells that were walled off, separate from the rest of our body have to reconnect to the rest of our body through the vagus nerve. That happens to the vagus nerve. And when you're stuck in this space three, that could really be what's happening for our long COVID patients, they're stuck here for our patients with autism, for ptsd, for autoimmune illnesses, and they can't recover very often. They're Stuck in this space. I see this too for my kids, where if they have autoimmune illness and we do our functional medicine work and we can get them into remission. But what happens? Maybe we can get them into remission briefly, but another stressor comes along and they go right back. They're not staying there. But if we can incorporate these vagus nerve supports, which kind of get put into the side category mind body medicine, but it really is the foundation of everything that we're doing. They can stay in the health cycle. That's why patients who have chronic Lyme, many of my colleagues are really moving towards supporting them now with vagal retraining through integrated listening systems, or through amygdala retraining with DNRs or the Gupta program. Right. There's different programs because we have to retrain the way our brain and our vagus nerve operating, get out of that sick mode, into the healthy mode. So it's so important. But what can we do even before we get into that phase? We want our kids to have ourselves as parents, to have all the tools to have the strongest vagus nerve possible. What can we do? We can learn how to do those breathing techniques before we're sick, before we need to do them. There's no way Bode would have effectively used that square breathing if we hadn't already been doing it. We with that app before he got sick. We use those breathing techniques at our house when our kids kind of get. Or when I do that too. We use our breath work, mindfulness meditation. Eft tapping has been shown to improve vagus nerve function. Heart Math is another program that's been shown to improve vagus nerve function. How do we measure vagus nerve function? We measure it by looking for. For optimal or good heart rate variability. And when I listen to a kid's heart and their lungs, what I'm listening at is not just that lungs are clear and they have no murmurs. I'm listening as a proxy. What is a heart rate variability? And you can do this how parents and kids do this. Just find your pulse on your neck or find it on your wrist and take a big breath in.

And then take a slow breath out.

And as you do that, when you take a slow breath in.

Your heart.

Rate should speed up. And as you exhale.

Heart rate should slow down. So that's what heart rate variability is. Right. We want that respiratory sinus arrhythmia. When we breathe in, our heart rate should speed up. When we exhale, heart rate should slow down. If you're boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, up all the time. That means you, you're in that sympathetic fight or flight mode a little bit more. Let's train our nervous system to get back into that slow, steady, parasympathetic rest, digest and heal state. And there are clinically we know from studies, meditation can do this, yoga can do this, heart math can do this, diaphragmatic breathing, that belly breathing, eft tapping, also something called lovingkindness meditation, which I love. And it's so easy to do. When you practice loving kindness meditation, either yourself or have your kids do it, there's only four sentences that you say. May you feel safe, may you feel happy, may you feel healthy, may you live with ease. That's it. And there's six week loving kindness meditation studies that have been done in adults and with college students that have been found an improvement in the heart rate variability, improvement in your sense of connectedness and your joy well being. And when we do this, we always start with ourselves. We always start with giving loving kindness to ourselves and gratitude to ourselves. That's so important because some of the harshest words that we hear are from our own voice, right? To ourselves. And so first we have to really, really make sure that we stop, we sit, we close our eyes, we give ourselves love and gratitude and we just tell ourselves, may I feel safe, may I feel happy, may I feel healthy, healthy, may I live with ease. And then we can sit and think, just one by one, think about family or friends that you want to extend that loving kindness to your neighbors, your community, the world, whoever you want to. In the beginning, I was really sending this out to all those frontline workers and then extend that loving kindness to them. You know, may you feel happy, may you feel safe, may you feel healthy, may you live with, with ease. And you know what, guess what? Loving kindness meditation has also been found to increase telomere length in white blood cells. Right? Right. And so I mean all of this, that's where in functional medicine we've come a step closer in really educating on the importance of mind body medicine. But we're still not close enough yet because it's still not something that mentioned. Many of us know the practical tools to teach our kids and our parents and our adult patients. It's not enough to say, take a yoga class or here, download this meditation app, because when you give your patients a list of supplements and then some diet recommendations, lifestyle recommendations, meditation recommendations, they might do the supplements. But all those lifestyle and diet things tend to go down to the bottom we need to elevate that. We need to make sure as practitioners that we prioritize the diet and the lifestyle cell piece as even more important than the cell phone piece. Right.

So true. So good. Mic drop. We could just end the podcast right there.

But I want to go back to fever because I think it's so important as we wrap up the show. You alluded to fever not being a bad thing earlier. So what's one of the biggest mistakes that parents make when their kids are sick? Like having a fever. And what can they do instead?

Yeah, so number one, one mistake, not just parents, but practitioners too, Right? Nurses, doctors, parents, grandparents. The number one mistake is having fever phobia. Number one, what happens when kids have a fever and you go to the ER to urgent care before anyone lays eyes on that kid, that kid gets a dose of Tylenol. Right. Immediately, without looking at this child. The first thing that happens for a lot of parents when their kids have a fever or grandparents, oh my gosh, get the Motrin, bring the fever down. You know, fever is dangerous. So the first thing we need to do is change that mindset, right? And understand, like we were talking about before, that there's nothing that's ever good or bad 100%. I mean, there are some things. I can think of a few things. Right. But very few things are 100% good or bad. And fever is one of the fever is your body's natural response to fighting infection, fighting physiologic trauma, even psychological. I mean, have you ever had kids or yourself where you've been so stressed and anxious and all of a sudden you get a fever?

Right.

Same thing, right? We want to understand that it is our body's natural response. And there are studies showing that if you reduce fever artificially with antipyretic anti fever medicines like Tylenol or ibuprofen, that it can actually prolong the duration of the illness, prolong shedding from your nose and the virus so you're more infectious for longer and it doesn't help your kids get better faster. Right. And so did you hear that, parents?

You may have to say that again.

Lowering the fever artificially does not help your kids get better faster. In fact, it can keep them sicker longer. Now, just like everything, there is a time and a place for everything. Do I give fever reducers?

Sure.

When kids are so uncomfortable that they're not wanting to drink or they can't fall asleep because sleep and hydration are a must when you're. You're sick. Okay. But There are many, many ways to help your child's fever naturally without suppressing it. Because what happens, right, you suppress a fever with Tylenol or Motrin, comes right back after four hours when it wears off. It doesn't do anything to support your body's immune response. So what do we want to do? We want to support your child's immune response so that their fever can come down naturally using natural immune mechanisms and shorten the duration of their illness, right, without suppressing. So I mean, number one thing is hydration, right? I mean, just being dehydrated in the summertime, if you run a marathon, you get a fever, right? So stay hydrated. Electrolytes are best, like coconut water. Or if you're making herbal teas, throw in a little pinch of sea salt, a little pinch of sugar or honey, and then, you know, I use, I teach parents how to use essential oils, acupressure points, different herbs or supplements, homeopathic medicines for all sorts of acute conditions. For essential oils, lavender is very safe even for young kids. You can dilute, but is one of the ones that can be used, what's called neat, without even diluting, and use them on acupressure points. One of the acupressure points that's really good for fever and supporting immune responses here, large intestine 4. It's in the web space between your thumb and index finger. Put a drop of lavender on your finger and just hold firm, gentle pressure. Or you can massage. That's a really easy thing to do. Then as far as homeopathic medicines go. Homeopathic medicine, medicines. They're coming, these little blue tubes. They're one of the forms of medicine that there are some good studies on, but it's one that I think many people are the least familiar with. And it's hard to wrap your mind around using these substances that are so dilute, you know, isn't it just a sugar pill? Isn't it just placebo? But there are some, especially for kids and even in animals there's some good studies showing their effectiveness. One homeopathic medicine that is good to have on hand is called ferrous phosphoricum. You give three little pellets. Kids love them every few hours. And that's just for general kind of non specific, low grade fevers. There are other ones as well. Of course you're going to give your vitamin D. You know, there are different herbs that you can use. One of my favorites is a Chinese herbal formula called Windbreaker. The reason why it's Called windbreaker is. I mean kids always kind of giggle like the wind, right? You're passing wind. It's not that, but it's because in Chinese medicine when kids have a fever, it's considered to be an attack of the the wind. The wind has attacked you. Now you have a fever. And so it helps to break that wind and break the fever, which it really, really is. Very helpful. So those are just some ideas. You know, I have lots more tips for parents, but the first thing, just when your kids have a fever, take a breath, it's okay. It's not dangerous to them in a neurologically intact kid. Right. Who doesn't have any kind of neurologic problem. And I'm not talking about autism, I'm talking about really bad.

Severe neurologic disease. Unless you're over bundled, wrapped so much that you can't have heat, escape your temperature, cannot get too high.

Good to know. We needed to hear that you're a wealth of knowledge. I'm sure you've heard that before. So tell us where listeners can connect with you and learn more of your tips.

So the best place to find me is on my online educational site, my blog. It's called Healthy Kids, Happy kids. And that's www.healthykidshappykids.com. that's where I write article and then if you sign up for my newsletter. I don't write too many newsletters but they're always information packed. And then my Instagram and Facebook pages, if you just search Healthy kids, Happy kids, you'll find me. That's where I post up to date information, my interpretation of different research papers that come out inspirational tips for moms. So those are the best places to find me.

Awesome. And I hear you have a free ebook gift for our audience as well.

I do. I've been talking about fever. It's an ebook called the top five five mistakes parents make when their child has a fever and what you can do instead. So I'll give you that link. And then I also mentioned the Food is Medicine guide. I'll make sure that you have that link too.

Awesome. I'll post those in the show notes. All right, last question. What's your top longevity tip?

My top longevity tip? Well, I think you might be able to guess it's to really center your mind. Right. Practice your mind body medicine, engage that vagus nerve not only as I mentioned before, can increase telomere length, but it can cause epigenetic changes in methylation in different genes that all promote health and well being. So it's not just for relaxation stress relief. It really is for health and longevity.

I love it. Love it. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today and hopefully reducing parents fears over illness by helping empower us with information on nutrition and supplements and ultimately teaching us how to improve our child and our family's immune system resilience. So you are such a gem to this nation's I'll say parents and the children of this nation. So thank you so much for coming on the show.

Oh thanks Stephanie. It's an honor to be here.

I hope you so enjoyed this interview. It's so clear that helping children has been her heart, but she's not just helping kids, she's helping whole families learn how to create immune resilience. Please share the show and lastly, I'll leave you with this May you feel safe, may you feel happy, may you feel healthy, and may you live with ease. Be sure to check out my book youk Longevity Blueprint, and if you aren't much of a reader, you're in luck. You can now take my course online where I walk you through each chapter in the book. Plus, for a limited time, the course is 50% off. Check this offer out at YourLongevityBlueprint.com and click the Course tab. One of the biggest things you can do to support the show and help us reach more listeners is to subscribe. Subscribe to the show. Leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. I do read all the reviews and would truly love to hear your suggestions for show topics, guests, and for how you're applying what you've learned on the show to create your own longevity Blueprint. The podcast is produced by the team at Counterweight Creative. As always, thank you so much for listening. And remember, Wellness is waiting.

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