Sugar and Brain Health: How Diet Shapes Kids’ Focus, Mood & Microbiome | Dr. Elisa Song

The change in your microbiome could be accounted 47% by diet. Now these endocrine disrupting chemicals, whether the phthalates or PFAs or parabens, they have all been shown to profoundly disrupt the gut microbiome. ANA is a very, very general marker that your immune system is tipping over into autoimmune reactivity. If you do not figure out what is causing your immune system to be so unhappy, eventually you you could develop an autoimmune disease.

Everybody's out there saying everything is due to parasites. How problematic are parasites in reality? And what do you think about all these parasite cleanses in children? Dr. Elisa Song is a Stanford, NYU and UCSF trained holistic pediatrician on a mission to revolutionize how parents care for their children. As the founder of Whole Family Wellness, one of the nation's leading integrative pediatric practices, and the creator of Healthy kids, happy kids, Dr. Song blends conventional medicine with functional and holistic approaches to help help kids thrive. With decades of experience and a passion.

For empowering parents, she's helped thousands tackle everything from colds to chronic conditions like adhd, anxiety and autoimmune illnesses, always with a focus on healing from the inside out. In the pediatric conventional endocrinology world, hypothyroidism is not treated until kids TSH is over 10 and that to me is criminal because your thyroid is Are there.

Things parents are feeding their children that are unknowingly sabotaging their gut health?

That's a great question because there are so many things. Let's start with babies. Baby foods should have Saving on your.

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The Dr. Brighton show where we burn the BS in women's health to the ground. I'm your host Dr. Jolene Brighton and if you've ever been dismissed, told your symptoms are normal or just in your head or been told just to deal with it. This show is for you. And if, while listening to this, you decide you like this kind of content, I invite you to head over to drbrighton.com where you'll find free guides, twice weekly, podcast releases, and a ton of resources to support you on your journey. So let's dive in. Are there things parents are feeding their children that are unknowingly sabotaging their gut health?

Wow, that's a great question. Because there are so many things. Okay. And I mean, let's start with babies, right? We can do all the things by making our own food. And I did that. I had a baby biaba, I think it was called, one of the best purchases I ever made. And then at a certain point, there comes a time where you're going to be going and buying some, maybe baby yogurt or some of the food pouches that are so popular, even organic ones. Now, one of the things that I think parents don't realize is that baby foods should have zero added sugars. Like zero from zero to two years of age, no added sugars. Well, I was shocked the other day. I was actually looking at my kids are teenagers. I don't look at baby food anymore. But I looked at this yo Baby Stonyfield organic baby yogurt. I could not believe there was something like 6 grams or over a teaspoon of added sugar per serving in that yogurt, which, and it says, number one, pediatrician approved. I'm like, well, not this pediatrician approved, right? And then even when you look at the baby purees, according to the fda, do not yet have to be called added sugars. So it's a way of getting basically high heat pulverized fruit purees. This is not homemade. They're taking out every bit of fiber in it and getting basically added sugars in your kid's diet. So I would say, just as a caution, because sugars are one of the most ubiquitous sources of inflammation and gut microbiome disruption, that that really starts even when your kids are babies and you think you're doing a great job. And I just want parents to know, let's stay away from a lot of the pouches. Those are in a pinch, like, I know I carry them. If you're at the park and your kids are hangry, fine, Right. But at home, we want to keep the fiber in and we really want to look and make sure they're not getting any added sugars. There's going to be plenty of time for that later.

So in the same vein. Do you feel like children's tantrums can be tied to what they're consuming in their diet?

Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, let's take the sugars. There's a couple of different pieces to that. So there's the sugars. So what happens when kids, especially if they start off their day with a sugar load. Now, what do I mean by a sugar load? Because most parents are not at least listening to this podcast. They're not feeding their kids Fruit Loops for breakfast, right? But they're maybe getting, you know, oatmeal, and they're get. Or a vanilla. Vanilla yogurt and putting some fruit on it and then sending their kids off to school or preschool maybe with like a little bit of those yogurt bites. I keep saying yogurt because that's one of the biggest sources of sugar for.

No, I. Something I always bring up especially for perimenopausal women. Like, when you're looking at weight loss, you have to look at added sugar. And I always bring up the yogurt because it is the one that appears to be a health food, but it's the most sneakiest source of sugar. So I agree with you.

Yeah, it's really sneaky. So you send them off. It's a sugar bomb, essentially, to your kid's body. Their insulin spikes, their blood sugar then crashes, and then they're hangry, and you need to feed them. And, you know, as a parent, those are the kids that you always have a snack. Like, you don't go anywhere without food, but then what do you reach for? You reach for, reach for maybe that squeezy apple beet pouch, right, with blueberries or whatever it is. And then they have another sugar spike. Insulin comes and they crash. So the sugar roller coaster is real. And as kids get older, I actually often will check a fasting blood sugar and a fasting insulin to see what is going on. And even at young ages, like elementary school, you see signs of insulin resistance starting. And I'm not talking about your typical, you know, the picture that we have of insulin resistance and diabetes. At least type 2 diabetes, we think, okay, maybe overweight, sedentary, not eating in the right way. These are kids who are slim, they look fit, they're running around, but their blood sugar is going like this. I would love every kid to have a continuous glucose monitor. I think that would be so eye opening for parents.

Super controversial thing to say these days, though, right? I mean, we. I've had guests on talk about wearing continuous glucose Monitors in their pregnancy. I think that's brilliant. I think everybody should be doing that. Because the idea of waiting, you know, in pregnancy for a glucose challenge to finally catch something that's been going on for months, that's problematic. If you fail the glucose challenge. Your metabolic health has been in a bad place for a long time. So we want to catch things earlier. You brought up, you, you tested fasting insulin, you test the fasting glucose for a lot of people. I'm sure they're wondering at what age or what indications are you looking for to run that test.

Yeah, every teenager whether I'm, if I'm doing standard, just routine, well cure blood work. Now, what I call routine, well cured blood work is not necessarily what's going to be offered in pediatrician's office. I mean, most pediatricians are not going to be ordering blood work for a kid who appears, quote. Well, right. But I love getting blood work around 13, 14. Hormones are shifting so much. Thyroid function is changing so much and their diets are changing so much because they're choosing their own foods.

We no longer get to control place.

So that's when I love to check. Also because we know that the rates of autoimmunity are increasing the most in our 12 to 19 year olds. So I like to do routine blood work then. But for a younger kid, any kid who comes in with anxiety, behavioral concerns, attention and focus concerns autoimmunity. I mean, any chronic condition where I'm thinking, is there inflammation driving this? Which is probably everything. Right. I want to know if blood sugar dysregulation is one of the driving forces for that inflammation.

So you brought up this panel. I know everybody right now is like, what is an ideal panel to be getting your preteen especially. And we're going to get into the, this conversation that you had brought up. So we see precocious puberty happening. Girls are getting periods at like 8, but we're seeing delayed. At least you are in male puberty onset. So I want to talk about that. But for parents listening right now, what is the ideal panel of blood work to be asking to screen your child in those preteen teenage years?

Yeah, and, and I do want parents to be empowered to talk to their pediatricians even if they don't have an integrated pediatrician. Getting this baseline is such an opportunity. And here's the thing, because sometimes there will be something that's off and it can be really frightening to a parent or even to a kid. But when we catch these before there are any problems, it's such an opportunity to be proactive. So what do I like to check? I like to check a complete blood count, a CBC with differential and platelets, a fasting comprehensive metabolic panel. So there you're going to have your fasting glucose, you're going to have your kidney function, you're going to have some of your electrolytes, and you're going to have your as and ALT liver enzymes, which we know that non alcoholic fatty liver disease is on the rise in kids because of the sugar consumption. Right. So and with all of these, I'm looking at it through a lens of not just what's normal, but what's ideal for this body to function in the optimal way. I also check a ferritin, rbc, zinc or red blood cell zinc, red blood cell magnesium, a 25 hydroxy vitamin D. Now we can actually check N omega 3 N ome 6 fatty acid people pretty easily through quest. It's called an omega check. Now why those? Because iron, zinc, magnesium, vitamin D and omegas are the top nutritional deficiencies in kids. I'm sure in adults too. Right? But we want to optimize those. And then I'll also add for teenagers a fasting insulin, a hemoglobin A1C. I do check a fasting lipid profile. Surprisingly not necessarily because so many teenagers have high cholesterol. Sometimes it's the opposite where their cholesterol is too low. And what do I mean by too low? Because nobody really talks about that.

Never again.

If your cholesterol is under 130, you are not going to be optimizing your teen's brain development or their sex hormone development. So I check a fasting lipid panel, I'll check a homocysteine. I don't check homocysteine in younger kids because it's rarely elevated. But if it's elevated in a teenager, I know this kid needs more methylation support, more B vitamin support. And then I also check some called an ana, an antinuclear antibody. And this one is elevated in many, many kids. Too many.

Yeah.

In fact, it was the ANA level that was studied through different age groups through different periods of time. And this study found that the age group with the fasting fastest rising rates of ANA positivity were our teenagers double from the 80s to the 90s and then triple from the 90s to now. And so that's like your little canary. N. What else do I need to do? Because then I'll dive into if that's positive. Let's check for celiac or Gluten sensitivity. Let's check for other inflammatory things in the routine panel. I also check a thyroid panel.

I was going to ask that.

Yeah, absolutely. Because thyroid can go all over the place. We know thyroid is so sensitive to inflammation. I mean, you're the thyroid queen. And so, you know, during puberty for boys and girls, I often see your thyroid stimulating hormone start to climb, climb, climb. And in the pediatric range, 4.5 is the upper limit of normal. So I'll see some kids at 4.2, 4.4. Sometimes they're actually outright high, like 5.6 or. I mean, I had one kid who was almost a 10 and I was like, you know, jaw to the floor, okay, they're not functioning well. But then you check a free T4, free T3, reverse T3. In the pediatric conventional endocrinology world, thyroid low thyroid hypothyroidism is not treated until kids TSH is over 10. And that to me is criminal. I mean, a TSH over 10, your brain is already not working well. The rest of your hormones are not working well. I mean, you're basically not allowing this child and teenager to develop in the most appropriate way because your thyroid is one of our master regulators. So that's the baseline panel for younger kids. I don't necessarily do an ANA right away unless I'm worried about something autoimmune. I don't do a homocysteine because just through the past 20 years, rarely, rarely does homocysteine rise until you're in adolescence. So now I don't bother. There's. You can only draw so many tubes of blood in a little kid. Right. But I do if I can get a fasting test, which sometimes for little kids it's hard, but if I can get a fasting test, I do always like to throw in that fasting insulin and fasting glucose at the same time.

Yeah, so you mentioned ferritin. That's the storage form of iron. We often see that going low before a child is frank anemia and their cbc. You brought up this ana, and I don't think everybody understands what antinuclear antibody indicates. So can you explain that a bit why we wanna run this test?

So ANA is what I tell parents if they, especially when they see something elevated. It's a very, very general marker that your immune system is tipping over into autoimmune reactivity. It is not happy, is starting to attack your own body. It does not mean you have an autoimmune disease. And that's very important to distinguish because you can have a positive ANA and never present with a clinical autoimmune disease. Or sometimes it's decades down the road. We see this in things like juvenile or type 1 diabetes. I wish we could call it juvenile and adult onset diabetes, but we know that type 2 diabetes hits kids way too often. But with type 1 diabetes, we can see in some kids, positive juvenile, type 1 diabetes, autoimmune markers for decades before they develop type 1 diabetes. And so this ANA, it just lets you know, okay, your immune system is not happy if you do not pay attention, if you do not figure out what is causing your immune system to be so unhappy that it's starting to attack your own body, eventually you could develop in autoimmune disease. So I don't look at it as doom and gloom. I never want to do that. I mean, I would never order a test if there was nothing we can do about it. But there's so much. If we have a positive ana, then we look and see, okay, is it the sugar, is it the gluten, Is it the psychological stress? Is it the lack of sleep, Is it the lack of movement? Maybe it's all of the above. But all of those things that I mentioned, we actually have control over. So we can help, help start modifying that and at least talking to our teens and saying, look, this is a sign. Do you remember, you know, you have your auntie with rheumatoid arthritis or you have, you know, your, your uncle with diabetes. We don't want you to head there. Right. So what choices can we start making now to empower yourself so that you don't have to become someone who has this condition. And it doesn't mean that just because it runs in the family, it's going to happen to you.

Yeah, I think that's so important to be meas antibodies early. So often doctors are like, we just wait until we have symptoms. And so in the case of autoimmune disease, especially for the thyroid, so I'm imagining your thyroid panel, TPO and thyroglobulin antibodies are in there as well. We so often see those high. You have Hashimoto's, but you don't yet have hypothyroidism. You develop the symptom expression, the debilitating symptoms, sometimes after enough tissue destruction has happened. And so catching those antibodies early, like that is the best, best place to be. Because it's like, let's reverse that. Let's bring your body back into balance before you actually have the tissue destruction. And then you require a Lifelong medication or you have, you know, in the, in the case of like arthritis, like you have these joint changes that we can never walk back from.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I love that because it is. I mean, ideally, of course, we would never have these positive auto antibodies to begin with, but that's just not the reality nowadays in our modern world. Sometimes we need a little wake up call and that ana be a wake up call. Or those anti tpo or antithyroglobulin antibodies which I do see elevated in so many teenagers. And it's like, no, okay, you don't have clinical disease. Let's catch this before you go on to struggle with your energy and your mood and your periods and later on your fertility. And so really I don't shy away from these labs. I view them as, you know, this is part of you get your checkup. Let's check what's going on under the hood. Because you don't know what's going on under the hood. You could feel awesome. I mean, think about how many of us moms, we feel awesome until we don't. Yeah, right. And then our blood markers or urine markers or whatever, I mean, we know they've been simmering for years, maybe decades. Right. And I wish I would have had a lot of the knowledge when I was younger to course. Correct. When I had the chance.

Yeah, it's. I mean, that's why we do what we do now.

Right.

We're like, we're further down the road ahead. Let us give you some insights. So you avoid the pothole that we fell into and it took us years to get out of. So, you know, you were talking about thyroid hormone and future fertility. This is something that's a big question mark for me because now that we start to understand that within the follicular fluid, so as the egg is developing, we have thyroid hormone there. It's a big question mark for me of like, what is happening in these pediatric cases where we're allowing the TSH to be above 10 before they get treated. These girls are having late onset of their period or so menarche, their first period or they're having irreg. And how is this potentially affecting their future fertility? Because that thyroid hormone is so crucial. But it's the problem, I think in medicine that just still persists of like, that's a thyroid problem, that, that exists only in the thyroid. And it's like, well, no, actually it's, it's going to affect her ovarian function as well. And then as you were talking about.

Brain development well, the brain development is, is so important to understand. You know, in, in America, right. In every hospital there is something called the newbor and that's your baby when they got their little heel prick. And there were, if you ever watched, it's a sheet of paper where there's little circles and you get your baby's blood onto each of those circles. It's sent immediately to the public health lab in every state and it checks for several rare but metabolic conditions that if we could tackle from the very beginning, your baby could have very different outcomes and stay healthy if we don't. They could for instance, become profoundly mentally retarded if we don't correct their thyroid. And thyroid is one of those markers that is measured on the newborn screen. Well, okay, so let's say you don't have congenital hypothyroidism, but you have an elevated or a very high normal TSH for your age that is not optimal for optimal brain development. And I wish endocrinologists would kind of change their tune around that. I've had several conversations and I've yet to find an amazing pediatric endocrinologist. I'll just, if you're out there, let me know. Right. Because that you know, in early development from the time you're a baby to toddler to elementary school age, because that is one of the most important times to optimize thyroid. Well, let's talk about the adolescent brain too. I mean so important. And so you know, what I would really want is for every mom, of course preconception and during pregnancy to optimize their thyroid because that impacts baby's brain development in U and then immediately understand how do we get this baby's thyroid on track?

Yeah, I also don't seen enough gynecologists who are recommending that if you have Hashimoto's that you actually see a maternal fetal medicine specialist. I think that's so important. You're a high risk pregnancy. And I have seen patients who they have elevated antibodies. We give those in remission, they get pregnant, antibodies are back to their thyroid. And that's when I say you need to see an MFM and their gynecologist, their ob GYN is like, no, that's overkill. You don't need to do that. Those thyroid antibodies can cross the placenta in the third trimester. You need to actually have a third trimester ultrasound and look at that baby's thyroid because if there is an autoimmune attack, you already know, you know, before you get those lab results back Baby's thyroid is going to be compromised. And so again, it's that, like, why are we being so late to the game? Why are we waiting until the labs are so bad before we intervene when there's all these preventative measures that we can take? And that's something I'll say if you're listening to this. Mfms, maternal fetal medicine specialists are amazing at this. They, I, they are absolutely more on top of thyroid research than your average OB GYN is, hands down. I remember in my last pregnancy, my OB GYN was like, your TSH is so elevated or so low. So it's super low. So she's freaking out. I'm like, my free T3, that was like 2.4, like, this is not a thing. And I'm explaining to her, like, see, my prenatal has biotin, and I didn't know we were running that lab that day. So I was on biotin that can artificially suppress it. I'm explaining to her, she's like, no, we need to drop your thyroid hormone. You need to be on a third of the dose. I'm like, okay, no, goodbye. Like, no way. And I talked to my MFM and she's like, God, I wish that these OB gynes would actually get trained in thyroid before they start recommending things. And I'm like, we have too many discounts happening in medicine.

Because to your point, you know, OB guys are trained to deal with this. Right. So your female sex hormones, but thyroid is not considered in that axis. And so, I mean, there's, there's nothing that is not interconnected in our bodies.

Yeah.

So it is, it is a shame to just view your body as separate organ systems when there's such a profound impact. And, and I will say, one of the things that, that I wish that OB GYNs would do before moms even think about getting pregnant and talking to their adolescent girls about when they're having horrible period pains or, you know, terrible pmdd, anxiety, mood swings is really the power of their microbiomes to shift their hormonal balance for the better or worse if they don't have an optimal gut microbiome. And not enough hormone docs are really talking about that. And so, and that is one of the areas where we have so much impact and we can actually move the needle so quickly on so many other things, not just hormones, but brain development and mood and immune function. And so, you know, if we want to tie in all the pieces, I mean, you start with your microbiome and all the ripple effect is going to really impact positively, pretty much everything in your body.

I mean, a link to our previous, previous interview that we did on the podcast, because we talked a lot about the microbiome, about the estrobolome, how to effectively change the microbiome. So every. If you're like, why are you guys not talking about it? I have a whole episode for you. I'll link to it. But what I do want to talk about is your observation. So everybody's talking about young girls getting their period sooner, but you said you're seeing teen boys having delayed onset of puberty. What is going on there?

You know, and it's just, I, I am a solo practitioner, I'm a clinician, and I can only comment on what I see in my practice. And it's not, you know, the majority of boys, but it's been a significant enough number that it's really made me pause and think, wow, you know, I've been. I started my practice, I actually started it as an integrative functional pediatric practice in 2004. And just over the past, maybe eight years or so, six years, I've been seeing more and more boys where we're just watching and waiting, and they're 13 and no secondary sex characteristics. Okay, maybe they're a late bloomer. And then they're 14 and then they're 15 and they're like, okay, now it's time to check some blood work. Right?

Secondary sex characteristics. Not everybody's gonna know what that term means.

So, you know, of course we have our hormones changing on the inside actually long before you start seeing stuff on the outside. Right. And sometimes you can actually see the mood swings from first as the, as the big thing. I have a 12 year old, that's right.

And it started like a year ago.

But you know, for boys, as testosterone starts to kick in, what do we start to see? We may start to see some acne, right. We may start to see some hair under their arms or pubic hair. If you look, as a, as a parent, I don't expect. Well, first, your boy may not want you to look, but you can see an increase in your testicular size. So testicles start to grow. There's actually, it's this funny. Looks like a carton of eggs where there's like this growing size as you go through puberty.

And it's funny because we have the same thing for breast development in girls. Boys get the testes, the carton of eggs, and then girls have like the.

Breast development and then your penis starts to elongate. Right. Voice starts to deepen. I mean, all of these signs that we know are, are external signs that, that male hormones are kicking in and puberty has begun. Right. So if I don't see any of that 13, 14, I start thinking, okay, is there something blocking the, you know, the gonadal axis, the HPA gonadal axis. And so then I think, okay, let's check some lab work. What I always with that I do check their microbiomes because the way their microbiomes impact with testosterone or estrogen is going to impact how they flow through puberty. And so I don't, it's my conjecture, but you know, we have so many hormone disrupting chemicals. Right. And, and so many of these hormone disrupting chemicals are really mimic estrogen more than testosterone.

Yep.

Right. And so if, well, and some of.

Them were designed like BPA to actually be estrogen replacement therapy.

Yeah.

And I don't think many people recognize that. But you know, to your point, endocrine disruptors being playing a role, tell us more about that.

Yeah. Well, so these endocrine disruptors or hormone disrupt accepting chemicals, we know that they can impact girls early puberty. That is one of the things that we're linking. But for boys now we have to think, okay, is this flood of estrogen like chemicals impacting their puberty? So then they're actually becoming more delayed in their puberty and you know, so many other impacts. Right. And so one article that I read, it was one of the best articles I've read on endocrine disruptors. And send us the links. I will.

In the show notes. I will.

And the researchers call for changing the description of these chemicals instead of calling them endocrine disrupting chemicals or hormone disrupting chemicals to really shift to call them microbiome disrupting chemicals. Because every single one of these endocrine disrupting chemicals, whether the phthalates or PFAs or parabens or BPAs, they have all been shown to profoundly disrupt the gut microbiome, cause leaky gut, cause gut dysbiosis or an abnormal balance. You know, too many bad bacteria, not enough of the good bacteria. And that is why, why we see in our kids not just impacts on their hormones, but impacts on their brain development, impacts on their immune system. I mean, these hormone disruptors have way more impact on children and teens than on hormones.

And so do you mean on then on adults?

Well, I, I don't know the research on adults, I'm sure it still does too. But in terms of like for if. For kids, babies who are exposed to these endocrine disruptors, which of course, we all are, right, no matter how clean we live. But it can impact cognitive development, cause problems with cognitive delays. It can impact the risk of certain immune disorders, atopy, allergy, all of which are on the rise in our kids. And so, you know, is it that it's just the impact of these toxins or is it because they're shifting the microbiome, which then has that double whammy of compounding and worsening the impact of these hormone disruptors?

So there's the things we can't avoid. But what can parents avoid and what can they be doing to safeguard their children's health against these hormone disrupting chemicals or potentially microbiome disrupting chemicals?

So one of the things that. That parents don't necessarily think about, and we can do all the things to try to remove these hormone disruptors in our lives. So BPA free free cans. Knowing that there might be some BPFs and other things that don't have to be reported, you know, you know, paraben free cosmetics and skincare and, you know, hair care products. Forever chemicals a little harder because they are everywhere. Right. And these microplastics are everywhere. And they're not, you know, as they're not labeled. Right? Yeah. You're not gonna see a product with the amount of pfas or the amount of microplastics in the product. But there are ways, from an environmental standpoint, you know, household cleaner standpoint, that we can reduce our exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals. Chemicals. But we also have to make sure that we are able to process and clear out these endocrine disruptors when we're exposed to them. Your first pass is actually through your microbiome. And what people. I was fascinated to learn, so I'm hoping that people are fascinated to learn that, you know, our livers have this thing called the cytochrome P450 enzyme system that helps us detoxify whatever it is. I mean, even estrogens. Right. And so our microbiome have very similar cytochrome P450 enzymes. And as we inhale or ingest these toxins that they go through our gut. That's our. One of our first exposures beside our skin. And our microbiota start to, you know, conjugate or detoxify some of these chemicals. So we have to have a healthy gut microbiome if we want that first pass to clear out as many toxins as possible. And one study in teenagers Found that and eating a higher healthy eating index. What does that mean? Higher fruit and vegetable intake basically significantly lowered their PFAS levels and increased their RBC folate levels, which is really important. At Sierra discovered top workout gear at.

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Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. Right. Another study found that eating fermented foods could significantly decrease your PFAS chemicals. Now, why do I point to PFAS in particular? Because parabens, phthalates, BPAs, once we stop our exposures or lower our exposures, we can clear them pretty quickly from our system and they come out pretty easily in our urine. They can even come out in our sweat. PFAS don't come out in our sweat very well. Sauna's not going to help. We don't pee them out. We have very few ways to get rid of them. So why not load up or tell your kids we're going to be exposed to forever chemicals for the rest of our lives. So higher fruit, vegetable intake, higher fermented foods, that's going to help your body, your brain, your hormones really become as resilient again against these endocrine disruptors as possible.

Except that children think they're invincible and their prefrontal cortex has not developed for their executive function or their reasoning skills all the way. So what are other ways that parents can get their children to start shifting their diet? So, you know, one thing we talked last episode about, my toddler, like, I have this, like, older child who's like, the perfect eater. And then I have the, you know, very challenging eater. And he went on this, like, peanut butter and jelly kick. It's like all he wanted to eat, eat. So I was like, fine, I'm mixing yogurt in there, and I'm also mixing chia seeds in there. Or I'm mixing flax in the meal in there. And so I would grind up these fiber sources and put it in there and then making sure that, you know, the bread also is a fiber source. So are there. That's one way that I was like, let's get more fiber in. And a variety of fiber for your microbiome. What are other ways that parents can start taking action in this?

Yeah, well, I love that way, right? Because in my book, I have a recipe for everyone right here I call Gut Hero Booster. But you can just look in your pantry. What are the fiber sources that you already have? Or maybe you need to buy some you just grind them up into a powder, and you can store them in an airtight container, and you add them to things. I mean, if you pulverize them to a fine powder, right, you can mix them into nut butters, you can put them in your soups. If you're baking goods, you can throw them in pumpkin seeds. Well, so why. You know, why. The fiber. Right. We know that less than 5% of American kids and adults. Adults. Actually meet their minimum daily fiber requirements.

Isn't that wild? Yeah.

That's including people who are eating healthy, Right? I would bet on. On many days, especially, you know, I'm here in Mexico City with you. I am sure that I've not met my daily fiber requirements. Except maybe with the vegan dinner last night.

Yeah. Well, I don't know about you, but I got a leak that was, like the. The terminal end of the leak that nobody ever wants to eat. And it was so fibrous and so chewy and it was. Yeah, I was having a hard time with my teeth, but I was like, Dr. Stacy, who we had on the podcast, great dentist, she would be very proud of me. But after I swallowed it, Bryce, my husband, was like, I can't believe you ate that. I'm like, my microbiome so happy right now. Like, you have no fiber. Like, my microbiome was like, this is new. This is different. This is interesting. We love you for it.

Yeah. So getting those boosters in are really, really, really helpful, especially until your kid's prefrontal cortex can kick in a little bit more now. Even when they're younger, though, what I love is you just have to make it fun. And I know there, you know, if you have a really selective picky eater, you may have tried all the things, right? And if you just keep reinforcing and making it fun, not. Not a battle. Yeah, it will change, right? It will get into their brains. But I always talk to kids about their microbiomes, and when they're little, I might call them their tiny little friends in their tummies, right. As they get older, I call them your microbiota. Right. There's friendly bacteria, there's friendly yeast, and not friendly yeast. And we talk about it, but also talk about what it means for them to really take care of the microbiome. How is it impacting their ability to make and keep friends? Stay in a good mood, fall asleep easily, not have hard poops, not have. Eat itchy skin. For teenagers, the acne, the skin and the hair. So always tying it back. And then I Just have kids, think about how we are taught to take care of our world around us, our ecosystem around us. And even preschoolers learn to reduce, reuse, recycle all the things, because we know our world is suffering. And if we don't take care of our world, we are not going to have a world left that takes care of us. And so I let them know that same ecosystem is inside of us, the same care. Like most of us, if we. I mean, I don't know about most of us, but when I see someone throwing a can, you know, let's say, I don't know, whatever can of a drink into the regular garbage, I'm like. And I've been known to actually go and take it and put it.

This is like the power of Captain Planet. I say if people know, if you know, you know. But like, we, we talk about this. My, my husband and I had like this Captain Planet cartoon show that was on and all the messaging we got. And like, you have a visceral reaction, right, because it's how you were raised. It's how you were trained on repeat, to learn.

That's right. Or like trash out the car window and you're like, no. Right?

Yeah.

So I mean, our kids can learn that stewardship, right? And, and in the same way they can learn that stewardship and the responsibility of how we live and eat every day impacts the ecosystem inside of us. And of course, they're going to, you know, not make the choices that we would want them to make all the time, but we also don't make all the choices that we know we should make the time. It's what we want. It's what we do on the, on the whole. Because one, this is where I see a lot of parents. I think we get a little too stuck on being perfect with the diet or too stuck on, you know, getting rid of every toxin. The goal is not to be perfect, as you said. The goal is to create that resilience in our immune system and our microbiome so that whatever happens, we know it's going to bounce right back. And in fact, in microbiome testing now, we can, can actually see and measure something called a resilience score. Like, how likely is your microbiome to bounce back to a healthier state after a round of antibiotics or exposure to, like, finals weekend sleep deprivation? I mean, whatever is going to be stressing your microbiome.

You brought up focus. Are there foods that parents can add to their children's diet to help improve focus?

Well, we want to make Sure. I mean, I would say, say there's two sides of the coin to that, Right? Because kids need, when we think about amino acids and dopamine for focus and attention, all of these neurotransmitters or brain chemicals, they're built on amino acids. So kids have to be getting enough protein. But high quality protein. It can't just be protein shakes and protein bars. So that's one thing. But there also have been studies looking at, again, higher fruit and vegetable, higher antioxidant load to improve focus and attention. Attention now because we know that, for instance, you know, all of these, these conditions that we might think of, you know, quote, brain issues, whether they're anxiety or adhd, we know that there's an inflammatory component to it, right? It's not just, oh, it's something happening in your brain. There's overall systemic inflammation and brain inflammation going on. And what do those colors, those phytonutrients do in plants and vegetables? They reduce inflammation, right? They reduce, reduce that oxidative stress that we need to keep our whole body working well. So that's one thing. But then oftentimes I think, well, what do we need to get out that's really inflaming the brain more? Right. We've already talked about the sugars, all of those artificial dyes which hopefully are on the way out now. Right? But there's artificial dyes. They wreak havoc on your gut, microbiome and your brain. Brain. And I'm going to talk about this category of food called emulsifiers that some parents may not be as familiar with. Emulsifiers are the kind of food additive that are added to keep whatever packaged food from becoming a goopy mess. So you can find them in protein bars, you can find them in all sorts of barbecue and salad dressings, you know, barbecue sauces, you can find them in ice creams. It's not going to say emulsifiers on the package, but what it will say is something, something like CMC or carboxymethylcellulose or mono and diglycerides or carrageenan or even xanthan gum. So you have to know what to look for. You don't necessarily have to memorize. I actually have a whole list of a lot of different emulsifiers in the book that you want to avoid. But once you just scan the package, like now my kids know if they see something that says mono something, they just put it right back, right? But even during pregnancy, women who had a diet high in emulsifier were found to have offspring that were more likely to have attention and focus problems. And emulsifiers in. There's a study out of Japan that looked at emulsifier consumption and found that the rapid rise of emulsifiers in packaged foods correlated with a very similar trajectory of rise in autoimmunity. Because emulsifiers can directly disrupt your gut lining and trigger leaky gut and also promote the growth of the wrong kind of bacteria, these gram negative bacteria that also are highly linked with autoimmune disease risk.

So I just want to kind of put it together for everybody. So you brought up neurodivergent children. So anxiety, autism, adhd, ocd, ticks, we can see there's a lot of conditions that fall into that umbrella. We understand now that the same gene clusters tend to be among those children who have a higher rate of inflammation. Autoimmune disease can also be linked in that. And what we know about children who are neurodivergent, they have gut microbiome profiles that are different than their neurotypical counterparts. So the inflammation is a very key piece. I also, you know, you, you brought up what you consume in pregnancy and your child having this diagnosis or being noticed that, you know, the attention focus issues are earlier on. My question for you is that did the diet actually, actually cause these conditions or did the diet exacerbate what was already there to which a doctor could pick it up sooner, that they actually got recognized and diagnosed sooner?

So that's an interesting question. And also when I talk about prenatal diets or early life diets and lifestyles that can impact future health, one of the issues there is, okay, that's information. And it's information you want because you want to know how your child got to where they are today. But it's, it's information that just tells you the story. And we, because we can't go back and change that, right? So I don't want any mom thinking, oh my gosh, no, we don't blame, we do not. We never blame it.

You and I are moms and we know there's plenty of things that were like, dang, if I knew that 10 years ago. It's so different.

And what is fascinating is that the studies show now that even, even if your kids had a certain life that maybe included antibiotic exposure and exposure to ultra processed foods, your child and your own current diet can be shaped by what you're eating now. And your diet right now can really influence about 30 to 40% of your microbiome. It's powerful. So if we can really start changing our diet to a more microbiome nourishing one, it will make a huge difference. I mean, in one rat study, they found that the change in your microbiome could be accounted 47% by diet. And so what we eat really matters now when we're talking about neurodiversity and we're talking about how do we support neurodiverse kids to really feel and function as optimally as they can without trying to change who they are, right? That's not what this is about. But we know when there's inflammation. You know, a lot of kids just, they don't even know how poorly they feel until that inflammation is gone, right? They don't realize how much their tummies hurt or the fact that there's sleep problems. We know ADHD and sleep disorders go hand in hand, that their sleep problems were actually, you know, driven by inflammation. You get rid of the inflammation, you sleep better, and then all of a sudden, yes, you may still have underlying adhd, but your symptoms are so much better, right? What I wish every would be routine in every single pediatric office was not just blood testing that I mentioned before, but gut microbiome testing. Because we see changes in your gut microbiome even before we start to see impacts on your immune system or even on your brain and mental health. And I'll just point to this one little girl, she was 10, and she came to me after she had been on three or four different psychiatric medications. None of them helped, they all had horrible side effects. She stopped growing. And so she was diagnosed with, I mean, you name the acronyms, right? Adhd, ocd, odd, you know, she had dyslexia on top of that. I mean, the works, right? And so, you know, she, and she came and she told me, honestly, as this little girl, you know, 10 year olds can feel, you know, very grown up. And she said that she was not interested in taking supplements and you know, she was very selective in her eating. So I just spoke with her about the microbiome and how it could be impacting her brain. And you know, that I, and I, and that I know she wants to feel better because she was miserable and the whole family was, was miserable. Um, and, and then we did some microbiome testing and I went through it. So she had, I mean, astonishingly high levels of this bacteria, particular bacteria called Enterobacteria or gram negative bacteria, really high levels of Klebsiella and Citrobacter, which in an adult, that is an alarm bell for oh, is there an autoimmune risk? Exactly. And she had really high levels of this, this compound that is found on the cell membranes of these particular bad bacteria called LPS or lipopolysaccharides. Really high levels. And so I said, look, you know, we know that this LPS that these bacteria are producing, they can affect your brain function, they can affect how you feel, they can affect your immune system. What do you think about trying to get rid of those? And so she was getting game and we put her on some antimicrobials to get rid of those bad bacteria. I put her on something called serum derived bovine immunoglobulin to lower the lps. She actually agreed to take some prebiotics and maybe try to get in like one more fruit or one more vegetable, you know, in, in her diet. After a month, her mom called back and said her daughter was addicted to different kid. Her daughter felt it too, that she was finally getting her daughter back. She hadn't smiled in months and was starting to smile. She just felt so much more at ease. And the only thing we really did was heal her gut. So she still has adhd, right? She still needs support in school. The dyslexia is still there, but she's now able to access the parts of her brain that she wasn't able to because of the inflammation and be able to then succeed and feel the way that she wanted to. So there's so many things that we're not told. You know, when, when as a parent you're given a diagnosis and you're like, okay, I guess there's the meds and the therapy and the school supports. But what about beyond that?

Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, we're seeing currently, you know, politically and socially, people are very focused on how do you cure adhd, how do you cure autism, how do you get cure these things? We're not going to cure neurodiversity. Like, these are the wiring of our nervous system. And what we can do though, is help someone thrive optimally and we can address the differences, the things that are going on for them that are impacting their life. And that is my fear in the research, is that if we continue to look at only cure, then we are missing all of the ways that we can support people and we are, you know, confusing sometimes conditions. Before you and I started recording, reporting of like when people are talking about profound autism, I brought up that that is autism with intellectual disability. These are two separate diagnoses. And when you start just putting Everything I, I see this a lot. People are like, oh, everything is autism. I'm like, hold up. Because if somebody is autistic and they're, they have anxiety, like, we need to treat that anxiety differently. Just as I think it's very easy for people to understand. Understand, like, some neurodivergent conditions are associated with seizures. We're not going to just call that neurodiversity and not treat the seizure. Like, we're going to treat that separately. And so we have to separate these things out, but also be looking at how do we support someone's lifestyle, how do we support their quality of life, how do we help them thrive without this idea of, like, we have to absolutely change everything. I also always laugh when I look at autistic research or I hear clinicians that are like, we reverse their autism. And as they're talking through everything, I'm like, it sounds a lot like you taught that person to mask and you trained them and you healed them enough that they had the energy and the wherewithal to actually mask more. And so you didn't actually cure anything. But what you should celebrate is this person actually has enough of the energy. The mental. I mean, masking takes tremendous amount of mental energy, like, to be able to do.

Do that.

Like, that is also a win. I mean, it's not that we want people masking all the time, but it has a time and a place. It's also a win that you can do that at that level of mental energy. You brought up gut microbiome testing. Everybody's probably wondering right now, like, what are you. What are you talking about? We do in saliva, we do in stool, like, what are we doing?

We're doing poop. We're doing poop. When you're looking at your microbiome, that's. Well, we have several microbiomes, right? You had Dr. Stacy, come on. And, you know, we have an oral microbiome, which is part of our digestive tract, right? But our oral microbiome looks very different than the microbiome that's lower down in our large intestine. Our skin has its own microbiome. Our uterus has its own microbiome. Our eyes have their own microbiome, so our brain does, too. And we're going to be finding all of these different microbiomes and the different organisms that really are meant to be there. Now, when we're looking at the gut microbiome, we're really looking at your large intestinal microbiome. And the only way to measure that is through poop.

It's super fun, guys. You get to scoop your kids poop.

That's right. That's right. When they're old enough, you learn. They can learn how to do it themselves. Right. Now, the microbiome testing. So earlier this year, I believe in February or March of 2025, there was an international consensus of microbiome testing in clinical practice. And it's a very important international consensus because it helps guide us on the, you know, the huge array of microbiome tests that are available. Well, how do we choose as a clinician and as a parent or as a patient? Right. If we're an adult patient. And the consensus notes that really the gold standard now should be something called shotgun metagenomics or metagenomic testing, because we have the ability now to identify all, not all, but many, many, many of the trillions of microbes that are in our gut down to the structure drain level. Right. And also looking at their genomics, we can identify their function. Just because you have a good amount of, let's say, Akkermansia, right. Is it doing what you want it to do? Does it have the genomic profile just because you have enough bifidobacteria, is it actually making the short chain fatty acid acetate for you? Does it have the genes to protect produce GABA or neurotransmitters for you? So it's opening up this fascinating world of not just identifying what's there, but are they actually doing what we want them to do for us? Right. And also these abnormal bacteria or parasites or fungi, whatever's in there, are they actually causing harm? Right. And then we mentioned this lps, we can now measure LPS in the stool and see if our microbiota are releasing that. And, and so PCR testing really doesn't have a big role, except if you're trying to identify, you know, one bad player, then it can. I mean, through Covid, we saw PCR testing amplifies the sequence of the SARS CoV2 virus, and sometimes we amplify it too much and we see something that really isn't a problem. Right. Same thing with PCR testing in the gut. We might be amplifying H. Pylori too much, or maybe Candida isn't as much of a problem. Right. So I do, I use a. A test called Tiny Health. And just full disclosure, I'm the chief medical officer and the only reason I would have ever agreed to that is because I think this is the best test out there. And using shotgun metagenomics, Profiling. Also some enzymes that practitioners are used to like calprotectin and lactoferrin to make sure that there's not inflammatory bowel disease. Now one thing with testing as well, we are gonna get to a point, and I think it's not too far from now where we, we can see a more precision personalized microbiome analysis based on your age, your sex, your, you know, your menopausal status. Because we know your microbiome shifts depending on hormones. I mean there's, you know, baby microbiomes, you know, children microbiomes will go along the steady progression until puberty. And then when progesterone and estrogen or testosterone come into of the picture, boys and girls by sex, their microbiomes differentiate. That is very important to know. So we can't just have a one size fits all approach for, you know, an adolescent female who's having, you know, horrible PCOS symptoms. Are we going to look at a standard from like a general viewpoint or are we going to look at it as at a standard of what this developing adolescent females microbiome should look like? So we'll get there at some point and then the ability for us as practitioners to really hone in on the microbiome, microbiome science and create a truly precision plan for you will be phenomenal.

Who should we be running microbiome testing on?

Every woman who's trying to conceive, every male partner who is helping that woman try to conceive. Because we also know that the paternal microbiome before conception, I mean it is wild, this is now, this is a rat study, but we're finding this now. I mean there are human studies going, but these rats who had dysbiosis, so they had antibiotic induced dysbiosis, right? And there's epigenetic signaling that changes when your microbiome changes. So then the sperm micrornas changed and those babies in utero had worse pregnancy outcomes. Right. And even, you know, even those, those pregnant rats had worse outcomes like you know, let's say preeclampsia or gestational diabetes, the equivalent, right. When those male rats were given probiotics to correct their microbiomes, those pregnancy outcomes normalized. So we all, we think, oh, it's the mom's microbiome that shapes mom's vaginal and gut microbiome that shapes the baby's microbiome after birth. It's also the paternal microbiome. We cannot leave the paternal microbiome out of this. Right. So I would love all, all Men and women, before conceiving to optimize their gut microbiomes, women especially if they have antibiotics during pregnancy. I would love a prenatal microbiome test and a vaginal microbiome test. We can see signatures now in the microbiome that indicate an increased risk for gestational diabetes or preeclampsia. So why not correct your microbiome to reduce that risk?

Right, yeah.

And then babies, do they all need microbiome testing? I mean, I would love to start babies off with the best microbiomes, but especially for babies who are born by C section, babies who have had antibiotic exposure around the time of delivery, and babies who are formula fed, we know that that changes the trajectory of your child's microbiome to one that might increase the risk of things like allergic diseases and even mental health concerns later on. So I would love for those babies to have microbiome tests somewhere within that first month of life so we can course correct if needed.

Yeah. And then in terms of neurodivergent children, do you recommend across the board they have microbiome testing 100%?

Absolutely. So, in fact, any, any kiddo or teenager who comes to me with any chronic concern, whether it's, you know, attention and focus issues, anxiety, pants pandas, autoimmune issues, eczema, asthma. Asthma, of course, gut symptoms. Right. All of those kids, I start with a gut microbiome test because I can, you know, there are some things where by the pattern of what parents are describing, I can guess that there's blood sugar dysregulation and there's that blood sugar roller coaster. If I look at a kid with eczema, I'm just going to assume that they have a zinc and an omega 3 deficiency or insufficiency. I still would love to, to test because I don't know how much supplementation and how much to focus on which foods for you, but your microbiome, I cannot tell what's there if I don't look. You just have to look and then that can guide your diet and supplement plan. Because I don't want to throw a ton of supplements at your child if I don't know that they're going to be helpful. But when we know that they are, it can make a huge difference.

Yeah. Right now, social media, media, everybody's out there saying everything is due to parasites. And we're seeing influencers putting children on parasite cleanses, recommending that everybody's child has a parasite cleanse. How problematic are parasites in reality and what do you think about all these parasite cleanses in children?

Yeah, it's, it's interesting because I, of course I'm getting lots of questions from parents. Should we do a parasite cleanse? Does my child have a parasite? Now, parasites, I will say they are hard to discover, detect on the stool super test.

We got to, we gotta get three collections.

And even then we're like, right now, metagenomics profiling is more accurate than just looking under the microscope and seeing is in that one particular stool sample, does there happen to be a parasite egg or the actual parasite in there? Right. But parasite testing is really challenging. And so, so do I think that there are more kids with parasites than actually are detected on stool testing? Absolutely right. I do think so. Do I think that every kid who has a problem has a parasite? No. Right now I go through some, I mean, there are some clinical patterns and this sounds really weird, but we as living creatures, all of us, including parasites and humans, are sensitive to the moon cycle.

Yes, we are, right?

I mean, all of us. My mom, you know, was an OBGYN, you know, back in the 80s and 90s, and you know, she knew, she just, she never booked vacations during the full moon because she knew she would be flooded. It's baby time, right? So we see this, so we also see this with parasites. So if your kids, I just have parents kind of track and see, is there a cyclical pattern to your child's behaviors or their eczema or their sleep problems or whatever it is, right? And if there's a cyclical pattern that seems to correspond with either the new moon or the full moon, then I have a much higher index of suspicion. Even if the stool test doesn't show a parasite that, you know what, maybe we'll try it. Maybe we'll try a parasite cleanse.

Right?

And it sounds very strange, but it is what it is, right? I mean, we, we just, we have to know that we are not in full control of our bodies and brains. I mean, we have other forces, right. And so, you know, or itchy butts, right? I mean, pinworms, I mean, pinworms tend to like I will tell parents, if we're really trying to find pinworms, sometimes we'll treat. I mean, in other countries you just deworm, right? You know, every, whatever.

No, in Mexico, if you're living on farmland in a rural area, area they're getting ivermectin treatments. I mean, my mother in law, she grew up in Puerto Rico and she's like, we got regular parasite Treatments because of what we were getting exposed to. So there's certainly areas where this can be problematic. But I always think about like, the people who are living in middle America, they're cooking all their meat. Well, they don't even have a passport, so they've never traveled anywhere. Like, they have a water filter. Like, you know, we, we start to look at like, what is your exposure really, like coming into contact with parasites. Like if you are a regular gas crustacean, sushi eater. Yeah, I'm gonna guess you probably have a parasite.

So. And with, with parasite cleanses, I should say. I mean, what does that mean? Right? And I do see some of the parasite cleanse protocols out there. They're pretty harsh.

They're super, right? Some of them. I'm like you, not all herbs are safe.

That's right.

Some herbs are going to raise. So as you talked about liver enzymes earlier, they're going to raise liver enzymes. What does it tell us? It's a stress on the liver. And, and so I see them and I see the dosages and I'm like, that's high for an adult. And you would give that to a child? Like, I would not give that to a child.

Yeah, no, absolutely. So I do not recommend myself any of the parasite cleansers that are out there, especially for young kids and older kids. And I wanna make sure that they have a good gut restoration program in place. Because one of the things that, you know, for us as humans, when we find out there's a bad bug in us, whatever it is we wanna kill, that's like, you know, like, I mean.

I think it's also something like. I mean, I don't know how you feel about parasites, but I'm just like, oh, like the, the, the freeloader, like sucking off my energy. Like it grosses me out so much. And so I know whenever I have patients and we do find a parasite and they're freaking out, I'm like, I feel this so hard, but I'm with you. Like the seek and destroy and kill and wipe everything out approach, which we use in so many things, right? Like we look at weed killers, we look at like how we treat pests in our homes, like those kinds of things. And uh, as, as you say all of this, I'm like, this is back to your stewardship of the earth of like, treat your body like you would treat the earth. Like, it's not about just destroy everything, but it's also about like, how do we prevent this? How do we rebuild, how do we. Nourish yeah. So how do we do that? I know people are like, shut up, Dr. Brighton, let her say it.

Well, I mean, because it is true, right? We have this kind of scorched earth policy and we're like, you know what? You have to rebuild the rainforest, right? And, and that's where. Especially for children. Children, the younger you are, the more malleable, the more changeable your gut microbiome is, for better or for worse as an adult. I mean, if you've been living with chronic yeast, you know how hard it is to change, right? But kids can change really rapidly, their microbiomes especially. And so one of the really most important foundations of any gut regimen where we're trying to get rid of abnormal bugs, the first thing is you have to regrow and really create that ecosystem that is friendly to these beneficial flora, Right? Because that is going to start crowding out already. Parasites, they don't want to live in a healthy gut. You know, these, these enterobacteria, these gram negative bad characters, these bad bacteria. They don't want to live in an environment that's full of phytonutrients and, you know, fiber and fermented foods. They would prefer to live in an environment that's full of emulsifiers, right? Or, you know, high saturated fats and high sugar environments. Right. We know that that changes the microbiome for the worse. Or in, you know, in a diet that's loaded with glyphosate, right? So first thing, you don't feed those bad bacteria, you start feeding the good bacteria. Then you have that foundation there. You have you building, you're building up the terrain. The soil is healthy now, there's fewer bugs to kill. And so the, once you get to the killing, it's not as hard. The reason I'm not really for many of these gut cleansing and parasite cleansing protocols is, as you said, some of these herbs can be very harsh. And we know also that some of these herbs can cause just as much dysbiosis as antibiotics if we're not careful, right. People think, oh, it's natural, it's herbs, it's not going to cause the same problems. That's not true. If we're doing higher dosages or for very prolonged periods, it could cause problems. So what do I typically do for parasite? I actually do do prescription anti parasitic. I just find that layering in either nidoxanide, which is alinea, unfortunately, very expensive, or metronidazole or flagile, right. Which tastes gross. I mean, you know, so But I, I'll usually layer that.

Honestly though, like anything that is killing off like parasites or killing off in the micro. Microbiome tastes gross. Whether it's an herb.

That's right.

Antibiotics.

Well, think about the herbs, right? Like artemisia, I mean, and berberine. They're bitter. Bitter, right. But, but I just like to get those in. I had this one kiddo who the parasites in him, he had, you know, high levels of blastocystis which, which did show up on stool testing and I wasn't sure what was going to happen. He had lots of behavioral issues and, and you know, really his tics were getting worse and worse. You know, sitting in front of the tv, blinking, shoulders shrugging, whole body jerking. I mean, just looked, right. Started him on Flagyl. Two days ticks gone.

Yeah.

I mean it was fascinating. Right. But then the, but then after we stopped, did a 10 day course or so, the tick started to come back. So what we did was then every full moon, for the next three full moon cycles, I layered in the Flagyl for that week around the full moon and also added in some anti, anti parasitic herbal combinations. I mean there's some ones that are more gentle and did that while we're in between those cycles, really doubling down on, you know, getting in a more microbiome friendly diet. Fixing, not fixing, but modifying the lifestyle as much as possible. Right. Knowing that, I mean, he's a kid, right. I mean he's gonna go out and hang out with his friends. He was old enough that he was buying some of his own food, but, but he knew he didn't like the ticks, right. Cause his friends were starting to notice and it was on his. Comfortable for him. Yeah, Right. So he had more motivation to try to stick with a diet that you know, really got rid of the dyes and you know, he started reading labels, he started trying to choose healthier chip options and when he bought candy, he was trying to buy ones that weren't as bad as some of the other candies that he used to have.

Yeah, well, and I appreciate that you, you talk about how you leverage pharmaceuticals in this way. You know, it's often something that, you know, it's like I think about a yeast infection. If a woman has a yeast infection, infection, why wouldn't I give her Diflucan? So we can get rid of that right away and then we can start to work on everything else. Because the reality is, is that when you have something that is overgrowing, right. These are commensal flora, but it is causing Inflammation, it is distracting you, it is taking extra energy from your body and it becomes so much harder for you to actually focus on the nutrition and lifestyle components. And so, you know, I just appreciate you offering that because I think so often people are like, well, if you're integrative or your yarn natural, then it's just all about only doing herbs. And, you know, our perspective, and this is why I'm having you on, is that it's about the right tool in the right situation and making sure that we're meeting the patient where they're at with what they need. And certainly like when you're dealing with a parasite, it's like, we want that gone as soon as possible, especially if you're presenting with symptoms. We are rolling into back to school time soon. What can parents do to support their children's immune system so that they're not getting sick or all the time?

You know, the foundation is still going to be the microbiome, but when we focus on diet, I would say just keeping the sugars down, you know, less than 25 grams of added sugar per day. What does that mean? That's about six teaspoons of added sugar in a day. You're not going to know how much sugar is in a food until you read the label. Right. But that's. As we start heading back from the summer back into school, just, you know, I know summer vacations, diet can go all over the place, but just getting a better handle on, let's, let's get back to eating more vegetables. Let's get back to cutting out the daily ice cream and popsicles can happen over the summer. So that's one thing when we think about, a lot of parents want to know, are there some supplements that can help support. I'll talk about probiotics because now I actually don't necessarily think that kids and adults for that matter should take a probiotic supplement every single day. We want to know, well, why are you taking this probiotic? For what goal? And does that probiotic supplement have the right strains in it for you? If you're supporting vaginal, vaginal health, very different probiotic supplements than if you're supporting immune health. But this one study, this huge, you know, Cochrane review of studies, looked at probiotic supplements and cold and flu wintertime and found that I want, I, if I get the numbers wrong, forgive me, but I want to say something that was jaw dropping to me, that if every person took a probiotic supplement over the wintertime, that there would be something like 54 million fewer missed days of work in school. Right? Yeah. Just the power of the microbiome. And there are particular probiotic strains that we know in children can reduce the risks and rates of colds and flus and fevers and miss days of school. So why not? Right? Especially if you have kids who are really picky. Like, I don't, I don't know if I can get any fermented foods into them. I don't know, you know, if they're going to get, if I'm going to get more fruits and vegetables into them, then probiotic supplements can be really helpful. I would say for immune functioning and winter support. I would want an immune probiotic, a vitamin D supplement. Because across the board, most kids need more vitamin D, most adults and most vitamin D. Right. And then, and then, depending on the situation, I usually do suggest extra zinc and extra fish oils because most kids aren't getting enough. Right. And then when it comes to fermented foods, I mean, this is fascinating. There's actually, actually a kimchi research institute in Korea.

I love this. I am like, sign me up for this.

So, because kimchi, and not just because I'm Korean, but kimchi has amazing, amazing immune and brain and restorative powers. And there actually was this one study looking at kimchi, this was during the, I'm sure you remember that long before the pandemic there was an H1N1 flu scare. And it was, I mean, panic, not on the level of pandemic, but I mean, a lot of panic. And, and this research institute came out and showed that H1, that kimchi could kill the H1N1 influenza virus. Wow. In vitro, Right. And then I love, you know, there's another study looking at fermented foods and young women with social anxieties. How many have that right. And found that fermented foods significant, significantly reduced their social anxieties. And the researchers even comment, which I had to laugh about, that that could be a low cost intervention for these women. Why not? Low cost, low risk. Right. Why not? Right. But women don't know. But we're also, for many, many people, they're thinking about fermented foods as sauerkraut or kimchi or pickles. And they're like, I don't, my kids don't really like that. Right. But you can ferment foods in lots of different ways. In the book, I have a fermented BlackBerry lemonade recipe that I've made, made with my kids, class, classmates and super easy, super fun. It's a way to get Fermented fruits and still has fermented power, but it's a little bit sweet. Kombucha. If your kids like kombucha kefir, I mean, there's more and more. You don't have to make your own. It's super fun, too. But. But, you know, I was at Trader Joe's and they had a whole row of water kefirs like this agua fresca water kefir that actually tastes really good. And so you have to watch the added sugars. That's the only thing. But there are different ways to get fermented foods and be just thinking, how am I going to get sauerkraut into them?

What specific strains of probiotics can help support a child's immune system as they move back into school or winter cold and flu season?

Okay, so there are a few of them. I'm not going to remember all of them, but there's Lactobacillus. I think it's Lactobacillus acidophilus NCFM. Okay, NCFM. There's a Bifidobacteria Lactis Bio 7, Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG. Those are probably three of the most common ones that are that really well studied. Now. You'll notice the strain is important. Okay, so lactobacillus acidophilus NCFM is going to be different than lactobacillus acid LPC 37. Right. You know, there. And I may be saying the LPC 37 wrong, but, you know, the strain matters because we have, you know, probably hundreds of thousands of different strains of bacteria in our gut. And for instance, bifidobacteria, you know, this bifidobacteria lactis bio 7. That bio 7 is the strain of the bifidobacteria. When we talk about Lactobacillus rhamnosus, the GG is the strain. And so these are the strains that are most widely studied for immune support in kids. Right. But Lactobacillus rhamnosus has many other strains. Some of them are good for vaginal health, some of them are good for gut health, Some of them are better for brain health. So the strain can really make a difference. Now, if you're supporting your overall gut Microsoft microbiome, then you want to choose, you know, just a broader, broad array of different microbiome strains. Again, do I use probiotics every day? Not necessarily. You want to get that, you know, get the fiber, fermented foods, the phytonutrients in and then you can kind of sprinkle in probiotics here and there. Especially after time travel. You know, time going across time zones is a big stress to your microbiome. Going to altitude and antibiotics after a meal where you're like, oh, I didn't have, you know, that was not the best choice. Maybe some ultra processed foods got in there. Anytime you have that, then throwing in some extra probiotics can be a better met kind of a safeguard against that. But bottom line, you just have the foundations in there for teachers who are.

Listening or maybe room moms. What are ways to cut down on germs within the classroom room?

So it's, that can be a double edged sword too because we don't want too clean. Yeah, right. And we know that some of you.

Don'T want Lysol and hand sanitizer everywhere. Right.

Because I mean it's interesting because there are studies looking at hand sanitizers and excessive hand sanitizer use as disrupting your gut microbiome. Now why is that? Well, we can think also. Okay. Anything you put on your skin is going to get absorbed. So some of that antimicrobial property is going to, going to get absorbed systemically. So maybe that's part of it. But also if we're hand sanitizer, if we're sanitizing everything we know we're going to get an inoculation of you know, hopefully beneficial bacteria when we have some hand to mouth behavior. Right. For eating. So we don't want too clean at the same. Washing with soap and water is fine. Right? Washing with soap and water is a regular soap. Right. I mean Dove soap, you know, can actually keep your hands free and clean, clear of abnormal microbes and not disrupt your skin microbiome. That's really important. Right. I do, you know, I would say, you know, what can we, we do? I, I mean I, I look at this also from the lens of you know, my pans, Pandas patients where I really don't want them to get sick, you know, and expose, you know, to, to different illnesses. I think that we just need better policies overall to support kids to stay home and allow parents to stay home until they are well. Now what does that mean? I mean, okay, you might have some guidelines. 24 hours after no fever without any anti, any fever reducing medicines. I want them to be, well like I want them to be, you know, back to almost their baseline energy. They may still have some lingering runny nose or a little cough that can linger. I mean a cough can linger for Three weeks after a cold, you're not contagious at that point. But, but in those early stages where your kids are feeling crappy and they're still wanting to lay around, they're probably still somewhat contagious and they're also not ready to go back to school, be exposed to new germs and be able to ward those off. Right. But we don't have a system in place where parents can take off that time from work when their kids are sick and kids, if they have a whole stack of homework, feel comfortable and safe staying home from school and being able to catch up. So I think that has to happen. I think school snacks, school lunches, that has to change. I mean, so many of our school snacks and lunches are filled with too much. I mean, we had my school, I love my school, you know, and, and most of the parents in my, in my school are more health minded, but one of the school breakfast choices was whole grain, you know, multigrain frosted flakes.

Oh, man, I thought you were gonna say pop Tarts. I'm like, just as bad.

I'm like, that is not really a great choice. If we're going to support our kids immune system, we should not be giving out candy and, you know, sugary snacks as rewards. You know, the candy bucket for like the, you know, the A on the quiz. I mean, that's, that needs to stop. So I don't know if that's what, what you're, what you're looking for and what room moms and parent teachers can do, but I feel like, you know, kind of systematically changing the school environment where food is not used as a re, where, you know, we encourage movement every day, where, you know, we're really allowing kids to fully recover is going to go a long way in having fewer kids be sick.

Mm. I mean, I feel like it is the obvious one. If you want to reduce germs in the classroom, you have to eliminate the vector from bringing the germs into the classroom, which is the child who is sick. And I think you're right. It's going to take a big policy change because really at the root of all of this is that parents can't take time off work. Schools have ridiculous, you know, requirements in terms of attendance. Like, I know parents get like, where they hate on school because they're like, oh, they have these strict attendance, but it's also funding issues. It's absolutely this upstream really something our politicians all control right now. And I would say, like, if our politicians were truly invested in this make America healthy again paradigm. And we would see, we would see maternity leaves, we would see sick time leave, we would see teachers getting better funding, getting better support. Like we would see a lot of these changes that we're unfortunately not seeing that absolutely have the biggest impact on the future of our children's health.

Well, that is one of the, my biggest concerns is we can look at downstream. Great, let's change the crappy food industry. Awesome. Awesome. Right? But that's downstream. We have to look at how do we get these kids born in as healthy a state as possible. I mean, prenatal care, healthy foods and microbiome testing for all pregnant women, per conception care, supporting the mom, extended maternity and paternity leaves so that that baby can have the richest environment to support their microbiome instead of having to, to go for financial reasons to daycare at six weeks and mom's right back to full time work. I mean, we're not thinking about these first, these critical first 1000 days, which starts from the moment that baby is conceived until about three years of age, where we actually, from a public health standpoint and an individual health standpoint, have the biggest opportunity to change that child's health trajectory and optimize their immune health and their brain health and their metabolic health. Like if we don't target, if we don't tackle that, we're not, we're still going to be fighting fires and putting out, you know, these, these fires everywhere after kids are sick. So. So I'm hoping the conversation starts to shift. It's not there right now, but it really needs to be.

Yeah, it is something that I talked with some of the people that were involved in with Maha and they were talking about wanting to promote breastfeeding and getting rid of, you know, formula and making these shifts, like get more women breastfeed. And I said to them, do you realize that the reason why we don't have maternity leave is because Nestle, one of Nestle, you're one of the most corrupt companies out there. And I'll say it every day. I said what I said. They have lobbied, formula companies are the ones who've lobbied against maternity leave because that forces that mom back to work that baby into daycare. And what happens? Milk supply dries up and you're super stressed. And so that then what happens? Baby's microbiome starts to shift. Immune health, they start getting exposed to things that they wouldn't necessarily get exposed to if they were at home. And even just having play dates like they're in a Completely different artificial environment that is incredibly stressful for the entire family. And so I think, you know, you're absolutely right. It's the things that I look at with these policies where I'm like, we do have to go upstream. I have always said, said that mothers are the people who create and caretake for the future of our species. So any society that's not taking care of their mothers is not a society that cares about health outcomes of their population.

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I just even think about, you know, in, in my Korean heritage, in the culture, there are certain foods that are supposed to be prepared for the mom. The mom is not supposed to do anything but sit at home with their baby and might be, you know, laying with their babies. I mean, I was even yelled at by my aunt for going outside for a walk. She's like, you can't do that.

Right.

But there are, there are these traditions to nurture the mom and support the mom baby dyad, which is really one of the only ways we're going to successfully implement a breastfeeding initiative that is going to have women successfully nurse. There's too many factors, factors against that. I mean, we know stress, like you said, immediately tanks your supply. And not all women have the ability to take a break every two to three hours to go into a crappy bathroom stall and pump, you know, and try to express milk for their babies. So we just, we have to have more of a global, global outlook on children's health. But it has to start, as you said, upstream. We need upstream and downstream. What's missing is the upstream right now.

So well said. Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. Like I said, we're going to link to your previous episode because I think I would definitely, you know, you can listen to them in any order, but I would definitely catch both of them because I feel like we built on so much of the knowledge that you shared before. So thank you so much.

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