The Model Health Show Ep788: Science-Backed Secrets to Raising Healthier, Happier Kids - With Dr. Elisa Song

You are now listening to the Model Health show with Shawn Stevenson. For more, visit themodelhealthshow.com.

Welcome to the Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert Shawn Stevenson. And I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. This episode is dedicated to the health of our children. Childhood health concerns have exploded in recent years, but there are solutions. Currently, at least 1 in 5 kids has eczema, 1 in 10 has asthma, ADHD or anxiety. And sometimes kids have all of the above. According to the latest statistics, nearly one in two kids has at least one persistent health concern. This new normal is not normal. And on this episode, we're going to really get to the heart of this issue and talk about real solutions. And they're often rooted in one thing. And our special guest is an absolute wealth of knowledge with decades of experience working as a pediatrician. And she's put all of her experience together in some valuable resources for us. And again today, we're going to unpack what's at the heart of this exploding issue of childhood health concerns, including childhood diabetes, obesity, autoimmune conditions, eczema, allergies. The list goes on and on. Mental health challenges are at an all time high. And again, we're going to be able to unpack what's going on behind the scenes with these issues and point towards what are some real world solutions for these things and to be able to offer a real world guide when we're experiencing acute issues. Where do you turn? How do you get real solutions? What are the questions to ask? So again, this is an incredibly valuable and important episode. And make sure to listen with your heart and your ears, your ears and your inner ears, because this is truly important for the health of our children and our future. Now, being that our special guest is a mom of two herself, I wanted to provide a couple of great resources myself. And whenever my guests come in, want to provide them with some gifts. And oftentimes my wife helps actually to put a little gift bag together. But one of the gifts that I gave my special guest was organifi red juice. And as soon as she saw it, she's like, I've been wanting to try this. And so if you've been wanting to try organifi red juice, it's all organic and it's an amazing super blend of the most potent super fruits that you're going to find. Included in this blend is acai, which has an orac value of 103,000. This means that it has about 10 times more antioxidants than most fruits that you'll see on the produce aisle. And a study published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry found that ACAI actually factually does raise participants antioxidant levels, demonstrating how it resonates with human cells and in particular gut health, which again, we're going to really be diving in deep and looking at the intersection between our gut health and our overall health today. But in addition, also there's blueberry in this blend. And researchers at the University of Michigan published data finding that blueberry intake can potentially affect genes related to fat burning pomegranates in this blend as well. A meta analysis of eight randomized controlled trials published in the journal Pharmacological Research detailed how pomegranates have antioxidant, antihypertensive and anti inflammatory effects. So all these superfruits and more again, all organic, no ultra processed, high glycemic sweeteners. This is the huge upgrade to the old paradigm of Kool Aid. All right. Knowing that she has kids and knowing how many kids out there are growing up like I did with these Capri Suns and these Kool Aid jammers. All right. And just the old packets of Kool Aid and Tang and all that stuff, we're moving away from that stuff. But again, this is speaking in that same language that we're familiar with by having an upgrade to products like those utilizing real superfruit concentrates. So head over there, check them out. It's Organifi.com forward/model. Check out their Organifi red juice blend and you're gonna get 20% off. That's O R G A N I F I.com forward slash model for 20% off their red juice blend and you're going to get 20% off store wide. So definitely check them out. Organifi.com model and now let's get to the Apple Podcast Review of the week.

Another five star review titled My North Star of Health by Mawmol27. Sean Stevenson is my North Star of Health. I've been listening to this podcast for about seven to eight years now. Sean delivers on his promise of providing great content with experts on unpacking critical topics and how to put into practice. I know that I can trust Sean's message. He has a clear vision backed by authenticity and bravery, sharing his adversity of what he has overcome with the world. The show is truly a gift and his voice is comfort to my ears.

Oh man, that's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. Seven or eight years we're family. We're family. And I appreciate you so much for making me a part of your amazing universe. And listen, we've got so much more in store for you and we're going to kick that off with Today's special guest, Dr. Alisa Song. Alisa Song, MD, is a Stanford NYU UCSF trained integrative pediatrician and pediatric functional medicine expert. And most importantly, a mother of two amazing children. She's dedicated her career to helping parents and practitioners bridge the gap between conventional and holistic pediatrics with an evidence based, pediatrician backed, parent approved approach. Dr. Song has lectured around the world at leading integrative and functional medicine conferences and premier parenting events. She's also been featured in hundreds of media outlets including Forbes, Mind Body Green, National Geographics, the New York Post, Parents, and many, many others. And on this episode, we're going to be talking about an integrative pediatrician's guide to whole child resilience. Let's dive into this conversation with Dr. Elisa Song. All right. Dr. Elisa Song, so good to see you.

Oh, thank you. I'm so happy to be here and be with you and meet you and chat with you.

I'm going to put this book, healthy Kids, Happy Kids in my top 10 books of the year already. Oh my gosh, this is, this is such a valuable resource for parents.

Not only is the information just so incredible, but in the back of the book you put a bunch of resources like if we're ever dealing with acute situations, but you're really helping to lay out the foundation for health for our kids. And we're going to get into all that good stuff. But I want to first talk about what got you interested in pediatrics. Like, why did you choose that as your specialty?

You know, I mean, that's, that's an easy one. I've always, always wanted to work with kids. Even from the moment when, I mean, thinking about colleges, I had in mind a couple of different routes, but they all involve kids. I thought maybe I'll be a teacher, right? I thought maybe I'll be a civil rights public health advocate, lawyer. That was actually the first path I kind of went towards. Being a pediatrician was, I mean, the bottom of my list because I grew up with my mom who's an OB gyn, worked her tail off to really provide us the life that she didn't have growing up in Korea. And, you know, obs are busy anyway. But all I saw was, oh my gosh, my mom is so busy all the time and I didn't want to. I just didn't think I wanted to do that. And so when I was at college at Stanford, I was a public policy major with a political science. Political science major with a public policy minor. And I had some amazing, amazing professors. Jim Steyer, who's the founder of Common Sense Media, he was one of my professors. And I was just so gung ho. I wanted to be a lawyer. I'm gonna go on Capitol Hill. I'm gonna fight for kids rights. And I did. For two summers, I was at the Children's Defense Fund.

Advocating for policies to raise the poverty level at which families could qualify for benefits, policies to red teenage pregnancy rates. And it was fascinating. But then at a certain point, it clicked. I'm like, all right, I might be doing some really good work for kids, but I'm not going to be working with them. And so that when I realized that, that's when I shifted, you know, my last year at Stanford, I'm like, what can I do that will really enable me to feel like I'm doing good, but also work with kids? And so that's how I kind of veered off into pediatrics at that point.

And you really are a blend of all those things, you know, teacher. And this is really clear in your book, the teacher aspect. You know, one of your possible career choices that's embedded into what you do at a different level than the average physician. You really are working as a teacher, empowering people, educating them about their bodies. And obviously the advocacy part is a big part of your work as well. So it's so interesting how our life can create this, like, very unique space for us, you know. And, you know, with that being said, you are there, you know, day in and day out. You've been working with kids for many, many years. I believe you've been in the field for over two decades now. And so you've seen some of everything. I. I can can't even imagine. But one of the things that you really highlight in the book is the state that we're in right now and the evolution, what's. Or in a way, devolution that's taken place in the last 20 years in particular. But you are there to firsthand see not just the statistics that we see where you highlighted this in the book. For example, you know, we're at near one out of every two children has some form of a chronic or consistent health issue.

Yeah.

Right now. And it's incredibly abnormal. So you've been able to see, and if you can answer this question, has our children's health been degrading in the past couple of decades?

You know. Yes. And I mean, the reason why I wrote this book was because I saw these changes in my kids and the kids who were coming to me with more and more, not just being diagnosed with, let's say, eczema or asthma, but being diagnosed with severe eczema, you know, about to be placed on chemotherapy medications or, you know, the rise in mental health concerns in our youth and our teenagers just exploding and the rates of, you know, suicidal thinking, kids with autoimmunity at younger and younger ages. I mean, I had a six month old baby diagnosed with Crohn's disease. And so when we see that and we realize, you know, what, our kids are getting sicker at younger ages, they're getting sicker when they are diagnosed with anything. It's, you know, in these past two decades that I've, you know, been an integrated pediatrician, things have really remarkably changed. I would say maybe in the past 30 years or so, dramatic change. And, you know, residency didn't completely, completely prepare me for it. I remember in 1999, it was my second year of my pediatrics residency at UCSF. And UCSF, I mean, we see the sickest of the sick kids, right? It's this tertiary coronary care system. And I was doing my developmental pediatrics rotation and I was told that if I saw a handful of kids with autism in my entire career, it would be a lot. I mean, that was 1999. Fast forward 2004. I opened up my practice flooded with kids with not just autism, but sensory processing disorders, which wasn't even a diagnosis when I was in medical school. With behavioral concerns, with attention and focus concerns, the. With parents desperate for help, wondering, is there anything I can do for my child? Because there's not a whole lot to do in conventional medicine. Where are some of the root causes? But I wrote this book not just to paint this doom and gloom. It's like, you know, what? We have this. We need the knowledge, we need to open our eyes that what's going on with our kids right now is not okay and that our modern world has a large part in that. And what can we as families do to change that tide? And on a larger scale, what can we as communities do? What can we as educators in our school systems do? What can we as, you know, policyholders and policymakers really do? Because it's gotta, you know, really change on that larger level. But, you know, I love how you talk about really changing the culture of the family. It starts at home. Right. It starts at home, and it starts with the kids. When you educate the kids, it is amazing how much they can advocate for themselves.

Yeah, yeah, you. You said it. You know, and I. And I love that. It's putting the power back into the hands of the family and also understanding, again, we're seeing this situation with our kids and some of this stuff, you've seen it far closer than the average person. So much more. It can be heartbreaking, you know, when your kid is dealing with something that that's, you know, very detrimental to, you know, not just their physical health, but their mental health as well, and not seeing solutions. A lot of times with kids, you know, going through a conventional method, unfortunately, and you adjusting your approach to really looking at the whole child, and that includes the environment, that includes the family structure. There are all these inputs that make up a person's life. And the way that our system is structured right now, unfortunately, is just this kind of factory system. You know, you got 10 to 15 minutes of. You cannot possibly understand what's going on with that child, let alone an adult as well, in that short amount of time. And healing really starts with empowerment.

Yeah.

And as you're sharing again in the book as well, you're really looking at, okay, yes, we have these bad things that are going on, but there are solutions. And I want to talk about this because, you know, we live in a universe of causality. Like, we didn't get to this state on accident. And one of the things you start off the book talking about are some of the things that you wish you were taught in medical school. So let's talk about a couple of those. And one of them has to do with antibiotics.

Yeah, yeah. Well. And this is also to say, for my fellow practitioners and pediatric providers, there comes a point where if you're entering into this integrative space or functional medicine space, you realize, oh, my gosh, wow, I didn't know that. I wish I had. And you go through, like, I did, the list of patients where I'm like, I wish I had known because I would have done things a little bit differently. And so, I mean, it's just like, as a mom, right. You know, realizing, learning some of these things, and you're like, oh, my gosh, I did that, you know, when my kid was little. It's okay. Right. We can't undo that. But what we can do is realize, okay, we have this knowledge moving forward. And so, I mean, with antibiotics, I mean, so many different things, you know, issues there. And as an integrated Pediatrician. I do write prescriptions for antibiotics. It's not that it's a never, ever. It's just that we know in some studies for children, up to 70% of antibiotics are inappropriately prescribed, oftentimes for things like viruses that, of course, antibiotics don't do a thing for. And we are now heading to the point where, if we are not good antibiotic stewards as parents, as adults, as physicians, as public health professionals, we are in 2050, possibly headed to a point where antibiotic resistance is going to become a leading cause of death worldwide. I mean, that is frightening. Where none of the existing antibiotics will be able to help. That's on a broader public health level, on an individual level, because as a pediatrician, I look at this little child in front of me or this teenager in front of me, we know the antibiotics are the single biggest acute disruptor, this immediate disruption to their developing microbiome and our infants, microbiomes and our teenagers, microbiomes are rapidly changing and affecting how their immune system is developing, how their brains are developing. So with antibiotics, yes, we want to use them appropriately. Although some of the statistics, when you look at, and I always back up here and say, as a mom and as a pediatrician, both of my children received antibiotics when they were babies, right? I mean, my daughter, she was two to three weeks old, and she had a urinary tract infection. My son, at five weeks of age had strep. In fact, he had this really strep discharge coming from his ear. I'm not gonna mess with that. Those were necessary antibiotics. And yet we know for infants who receive antibiotics within the first six months of life, they are at an increased risk for almost every six single allergic disorder, including eczema, asthma, hay fever, anaphylactic, food allergies. By the time they're four, you shared.

I think, two to four times higher incidence of developing these issues.

That's right. And then, you know, we look at the gut brain connection and we see antibiotics at any point in life, but especially in infancy, in that first six months of life can increase and almost double the risk of mental health concerns by the time your child is an older kid or a teenager. And the more rounds of antibiotics, the higher the risk. And so when we understand that, A, we need to understand when to use antibiotics appropriately, and then, B, when we do use appropriate antibiotics or inappropriate, we need to understand the disruption to the microbiome and do what we know how to do to restore their microbiome so that it doesn't have this ripple effect on Their immune system or their metabolic system or their, their nervous system, either in the immediate or later on in life. I mean, even when they're adults, this can have that ripple effect.

I love that you said this again. It's such a valuable asset that we have when we have the use of antibiotics, life saving in certain contexts. It's just the overuse and you know, unfortunately we have a system to where also we might be as patients coming in, you know, just want to get our kids something.

Yes.

And you know, as you just mentioned, having the overuse of this could lead to a situation what's already trending towards that where anti. Antibiotic resistant infections are going to be a leading cause of death. We don't want to get that far. We've got to make a change right now and we've got to be more judicious in our use of antibiotics. Ask questions I think would be helpful. I know again, I had so many rounds of antibiotics in my life, even at, from, you know, in childhood and as an adult, but not knowing the, the connection there. Very, very. And I love this as well. You cited so many studies in the book. This date has been there for a.

Long time, long time.

And looking at the chronic asthma that I had hospitalized every year, my little brother hospitalized every quarter, really at least. And my little sister, the worst eczema that you could see, you know, on this little girl and constantly taking medication and one of the situations. And I even seen this when I opened up my practice working as a nutritionist. You know, I remember this guy came in, he was in his 50s or 60s and he'd been on low dose antibiotics for years.

Yeah, for.

I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that was a thing. Because he said his skin would break out. Yeah, he would get this kind of, you know, rosacea response in his skin. And you know, at the time, again, we made some dietary changes. Looking at his entire, his whole lifestyle though it wasn't just the nutrition part, but you know, his sleep quality, his work experience, you know, his sense of purpose, his relationships, all this stuff. And I remember it's one of my favorite stories, you know, just seeing. Because I also was working as strength conditioning coach at the gym still and he came to see me at the gym and he'd been antibiotic free for about a month. At that point he was just like, Sean, at this point I would be breaking out in these rashes and I would be in so much pain and suffering. He's just like, I can't believe that this Is my life like I'm free of that? But he just didn't know, and his practitioner didn't know as well. They were just trying to help to keep the symptom at bay. And that's what I want to ask you about, because you talked about your training in basically coming in to offensive, taking an offensive approach and attacking if somebody's experiencing a symptom or a condition and not necessarily understanding downstream, we might even hide the fire. Number one, the fire still might be brewing and also potentially causing issues elsewhere in the body.

That's right.

And that's really the thing I want to ask you about, is looking at, again, the whole person, because we might not think that antibiotic use might be connected to some mental health issues later on down the line.

Yeah, well, and what you said is so right on. You know, we're often in conventional medicine, we start a medication for a symptom, right? And then another symptom arises. So we start another medicine and then another side effect arises and we start another medicine. And eventually you have kids and adults who are on this kind of polypharmacy of medications. And at that point then we can't separate out. Hmm. Is it that their condition isn't getting better and they need a new medicine, or is it that they're having all of these side effects that may be either additive or sometimes even synergistic and they can, you know, really interfere? And so I see this with our teenagers where if we are not aware of all the factors that can contribute to microbiome disruption, we may be inadvertently, as you said, kind of fanning the fires of inflammation and disease without recognizing what we're doing. And so it's time to step back and realize your teenage girl who maybe gets put on the birth control pill because she has horrible period cramps, right. Takes ibuprofen for those horrible period cramps, has a little anxiety brewing, so she's put on an SSRI medication. Right. Maybe has a history of eczema, so she's lathering on steroid creams. Right.

And maybe has some reflux. Right. So is on antacid medications or allergies and is on Zyrtec. All of those medications in combination. Oh, and let's not forget the low dose antibiotics for acne. Right. All of those medications can disrupt the gut microbiome. And some of those, we don't think about other non antibiotic medications often as disrupting the gut microbiome, but some of them, like ibuprofen, can disrupt the microbiome. As much as an antibiotic. So we have to be aware of all these things that we're doing to try to support this child in front of us in the best way we think we're doing. And yet if we could step back and say, look, okay, if they need to be on an SSRI at the moment, okay, let's do that. And recognize that we don't support her gut brain connection. First, she's not really ever going to probably get off of that medication. Second, we're not getting to that root where we're saying, look, let's heal from the inside out, let's nourish her neurotransmitters, how her brain is thinking and feeling and acting and all of that. Same thing goes for little kids. Right. And we have little kids who. Infants who are fussy, maybe they're, you know, spitting up and that happens to coincide at the same time. Recognizing that all babies have some amount of reflux. They don't all have reflux disease. But once Zantac became approved for infants, this was back in the early 2000s. All of a sudden, every baby is being diagnosed with reflux D disease and putting. Being put on Zantac in the first six weeks of life, eight weeks of life, instead of saying, hey, look, we know that the microbiomes of really fussy infants look different. They have higher inflammatory markers. There's a difference in their microbiota. So how about restoring a healthier microbial balance in their gut so that they don't have the fussiness and don't have the antacid medication that then can disrupt long term, increase the risk for. We know disruption in those early stages can increase the risk for obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease, you know, all the things that now on the other end of life, we're trying to combat and counter.

Yeah. Before we get into the microbiome deeper, let's start more upstream with the tonsils, because you had a really great insight about this in the book and this connection between the tonsils and the immune system and also the tonsils and a similarity with the gastrointestinal tract in our gut. Can you talk a little bit about the role of the tonsils and the connection with the immune system?

Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people think, oh, the tonsils are just. Especially when I was growing up, everyone had them removed. Right. It was like the Brady Bunch. Right. Everyone had their tonsils removed. And, you know, they're this kind of.

This extra thing that we don't need anymore. But when we think about Our tonsils, they are literally lymph tissue. And as part of our lymphatic system, they're a really essential part of sensing our outside world, communicating with our immune cells. What's friend or foe, you know, how am I going to react? They're sort of. And when we think about it, they are the start of our GI tract. You know, we are one long hollow tube, you know, from the mouth all the way down at the bottom where the poop comes out. And these tonsils, we have these similar tonsil like patches called gut associated lymphoid tissue lining our entire GI tract. And that makes up like 80% of our immune system. And some people have heard the saying that our skin is our largest organ. Well, our intestines, our GI tract is our largest interface with our outside world because again, we're hollow, right? So any food we're ingesting, any microbe that we're encountering, any environmental toxin has to pass through our GI tract. And the way our tonsils and our galt, our gut associated lymphoid tissue interacts with those things will tell our immune system, hey, that's okay, you know, we'll just let it pass. Or, you know, that's, you know, a broken down amino acid, we're fine with that, right? Or it might say, oh, okay, there's a virus going through that. That or bacteria that I don't really like. Our immune system, hey, immune system kick in. Let's create a little bit, a little bit of inflammation to kick it out. If though we get bombarded, our immune system continues to get bombarded inappropriately, eventually our gut immune system kind of crosstalk. It can happen inappropriately and then sometimes we start attacking our own cells. And that's what happens with autoimmunity. So we can see just how important these are for our developing immune system. Now the tonsils. So I mean, I write the story about my own son, right? I mean, he had huge tonsils. They're called kissing tonsils. I mean, it sounds cute, but it's not, right? I mean, they're literally kissing in the back of your throat. And so when he was about three or four, his tons tonsils were just getting bigger and bigger and he had obstructive apnea from it. Right? Now there are indications to remove tonsils. However, we have to think, all right, well, tonsils are part of our immune system. Why is my child's immune system acting up? What is the reason? Is it from environmental allergies? Is it from some chronic infections that are kind of trapped in your tonsils, Is it from food allergies or sensitivities? What's going on? Because if we can identify those and remove those sources of immune stress and inflammation, a lot of times the tonsils can shrink and the adenoids can shrink, and we may be able to avoid removing them.

Now, this is such a huge insight right now that I got from you reading your book. All right, so we've got our tonsils as this kind of frontline sensor for our immune system. And it can be hyper reactive. And of course we're looking at it. This is just an obstruction. We'll just. You don't need it. Just remove it. Instead of understanding it's responding, it's reacting to something and not realizing that your gut lining has a similar reactive tissue that you can't see, though. Not like the. Not like. Not like tonsils. Yeah, right. And so that inflammatory response is happening elsewhere in the body. You just can't see. See it. And it might manifest as allergies, it might manifest as Crohn's disease, It might manifest as depression. Right. Because one of the other things that you talked about, which a lot of parents would say, okay, you know, my kid doesn't have any gut issues.

That's right. Yeah.

Right. And you address that, because if you don't have a blatant thing like belly aches, you know, some type of gastrointestinal disease, we might not realize that as Hippocrates said thousands of years ago, all disease begins in the gut, but also all health.

That's right.

Begins in the gut as well. And so being proactive at. Okay, I understand you might not have specific, like, belly related symptoms that you're seeing, but you said with your patients, you always start in the gut.

Either way, always start with the gut. And so, you know, if kids are older or, you know, parents are in the room and I start talking about, you know, let's do some detective work. We gotta think about what's happening in your gut because, you know, all the effects that can have on the rest of your body. And a lot of times the answer, you know, the refrain is, well, yeah, but there's nothing wrong with my gut. Poops are perfect logs. No tummy aches, no heartburn, you know, no constipation or diarrhea. And then we have to step back and really talk about, you know, why the microbiome is so important. For, as you said, if your microbiome is inflamed or there's an imbalance or disruption there, you Might not have any tummy or digestive symptoms, but you may have some itchy skin. Right. Or you may have really bad acne. Right. Or you may just not be able to focus as well on your school play lines. I mean, whatever it is. I mean, all the things. Things that kids may be struggling with and have as their goals. Right. We can tie virtually all of them back to, hey, let's take a look at your microbiome. Those trillions and trillions of microscopic, tiny little friends in your belly. If they're not happy, you're not going to be happy. If they're not healthy, you're not going to be in optimal health. And that's why we always start with the gut, whether it's a poop test or not. I mean, I love to do poop tests, you know, when I can, because I can't tell just by looking at you, you know, what you're. What's going to grow inside your stool and what's going to be there. But. But we can also suspect, hey, look, if there's something going on with your. From a mental health standpoint, from an immune standpoint, from an endocrine hormone standpoint, you know, metabolic standpoint, we have to look at the gut first.

Yeah. You also brought up something that, again, is just kind of hiding in plain sight for us as parents. After you stop changing their diapers and helping them out with that whole bathroom practice, you don't really know what's going on with their poop situation.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

And so it just like, it was like a aha moment. Like, do you really know what's going on with your child's digestion?

Yeah. I mean, that's where, you know, I had this one kiddo where he was 12 at the time, and I had asked him to do a stool test because there were a lot of autoimmune issues going on. I said, look, we need to see what's going on inside your poop, because we know with autoimmunity, there are several abnormal bacteria in there that don't cause tummy aches or GI distress, but several bacteria that can trigger and predispose you to autoimmunity. And if they're there, we want to clear them out. So, I mean, mom had no idea until she started helping with the poop collection that. That his poops were like little rabbit pellets every five days. I mean, you know. Cause what do you know when I ask kids, what do your poops look like? Well, I don't know. Right. How often do you think you're pooping? Well, I don't know. Well, tell me more about your poops. They're normal, so they don't know because they're also not paying attention. Right. And so that's another thing too. I mean, helping kids to pay more attention. I ask kids, I mean, even my own kids, I'm like, just look every once in a while. Tell me what it looks like. Right? There's a nice chart that you can see. We want like number three or four. And if it's not, I mean, if it's a one off, like, your poops are really hard. Okay, maybe you didn't drink enough water, get enough fiber in. But if it's a consistent, like for weeks, it's like this or like with diarrhea. I mean, your, your poop should be nice kind of brown sausages or bananas that are easy to wipe right clean. And if you're having really messy, mushy poops, okay, maybe it was something you ate, or maybe it's a tummy bug. But if it's not passing, if it's not going away, it's a sign something's going on. And we better take a look. So it's just another way for kids and parents to be more in tune with some of the internal signals that are going on.

The.

That, hey, that could be either tipping you over into something else, or it's a sign that we need to pay attention because your eczema's flurrying. Oh, and your poops are off. Maybe it's the poop that we wanna look at first, not just, you know, steroids on the skin.

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Let's talk about the foundation of our child's gut health really for their lifetime. Yeah, let's talk about the first 1,000 days.

So the first 1,000 days are that moment from conception all the way to about two and a half to three years of age. And in the preconception time, you know, when you're pregnant with your babies, it's your vaginal and your gut microbiome that really are helping to shape how the baby's microbiome develops. Now there's controversy as to whether or not the womb is actually, quote, sterile. Do they get some of your microbes through the placenta? Regardless we know that the birthing method is really the first key event in, quote, seeding your baby's gut microbiome. And so if they're vaginally birthed, they get all of those beneficial bacteria through the vaginal canal, even through, I mean, your, it's right next to your rectum. They get exposed to your fecal microbiome. Hopefully it's a healthy one. Right? And so that starts to seed the infant microbiome. If they're born by C section, their gut microbiome starts to look very different, even in those first few days of life, and start looking more like skin bacteria or some, you know, pathogenic bacteria that we don't necessarily want in the gut. Now why is that start so important? Important that initial inoculation of bacteria and then the growth of particular species called bifidobacteria. A lot of people, you know, I mean, I would say everyone listening to your podcast knows about probiotics, but the main, and the main strains that people are familiar with are Lactobacillus or Bifidobacterium. Lots of different, you know, substrates within that. Babies should have almost all bifidobacteria. But in our modern world, that's been changing. And so bifidobacteria, which are fed by specific prebiotics found in human breast milk, set the stage for immune tolerance, saying, hey, okay, this food that this breast milk or this food that I'm eating that is completely new and foreign to my system, I'm going to tolerate that. I'm not going to develop a peanut allergy or an egg allergy, right?

That immune system development later on in life. Even the loss of bifidobacteria for adults has been linked with an increased risk of chronic health diseases. I mean, through Covid, there was one study that found that lower levels of bifidobacteria in the gut microbiome could predict more severe Covid outcomes in adults. So bifido is so important and so, and even, you know, having how our babies are fed. So breast milk has those specific prebiotics called HMOs, which I just wish every baby and even child or even adult could probably benefit from more HMOs. But these human milk oligosaccharides that feed bifidobacteria, only bifidobacteria can break them down and ferment them to all these beneficial compounds, these short chain fatty acids and other compounds, compounds that communicate with their brain and their immune system. Now, what happens in those first two and a half to three years of age. Those first thousand days informs several different things. It informs the path that your child's immune system might take. So disruption early on can trigger more allergic diseases. Right, that there's an explosion of brain connections in the brain that's happening at that time, those synapses, which as a parent, you can see, right. Your toddler, you're like, oh my gosh, you're a different kid today than they were yesterday. Their brain's just exploding. You can see their wheels turning. Well, what's driving more of that change is actually the gut microbiome, change in diversity and function that then is driving the synapses that are being formed and kept. And so, you know, those first thousand days lays a foundation even from an epigenetic standpoint. Our. It's called our second epigenome in our microbiome. But our microbiota have over 100. I've heard different estimates anywhere from 100 to 300 times more genes than we humans have. And our microbiota, the way that they are not just.

Interacting with their own genes to create certain compounds that are beneficial for us or not beneficial for us, but also interacting with our genes and affecting kind of imprinting our epigenetic potential in the future. It's fascinating. I mean, it's all. I mean, when you look at that critical time. And so I say that because, yes, it's a critical time, but also you can change it. Right. If you parents listening, you're like, oh my gosh, my kids are like, my kids 12 and 14, or they're in high school or they're in college. We can restore. We can't go back in time, but we can change and help replenish and rejuvenate your microbiome, no matter what stage it's at. But if you can do it in the first thousand days, it sets the stage for so much more thriving later on.

Yeah. This is why I want to make sure that folks that have young kids, or if you know somebody that is pregnant or they're planning on having a kid, or they have young kids, gift them this book. You know, it's such a great resource. And you shared in the book how, yes, this stage is so influential in things going wrong, but also it's very influential and permeable with things going right. There's a lot of opportunity for swift change. And that's what's really empowering about it, too. And I want to ask you about some of this because you mentioned and the connection with the brain, right, the gut brain Connection. And obviously there's a lot of science on this now, but you're highlighting how, you know, so many of these neurotransmitters associated with our cognitive function and our brain health are produced and stored in the gut.

Yeah.

Serotonin, dopamine, you know, dopamine is having a moment right now. 50% is in the gut.

Yeah.

You know, and you're sharing this in the book as well. Melatonin, the list goes on and on, affecting whole body function. But it's really centered around what's happening in our belly.

Yeah. Well, and you know what's fascinating too now, as we look at fermented foods, let's say, which are the prebiotic with the probiotics. Prebiotic as the fiber, let's say cabbage. Right. Sauerkraut. And a lot of people think that these fermented fish foods are mostly beneficial for us because of the probiotic content. But what we're recognizing now, it's probably more because of the postbiotic content. And that's where, when we think about the power of these postbiotics, all of the microbes in your gut, your neurotransmitters, like as you mentioned, 80 to 90% of our serotonin is made by our gut microbiota. And so that's a postbiotic. When our bodies, our probiotics, the beneficial bugs in our belly, you know, get fiber and prebiotics to eat, digest, ferment, they spit stuff out on the other end. Right. In a good way. And serotonin is one of them. So is B12. So is Butyrate, which also a lot of people now know. Buty. I mean, they're taking butyrate supplements for cognitive functioning, for fitness, for their gut microbiome. Butyrate is one of our master regulators of health. And it's a postbiotic. If we have friendly bacteria in our gut, we're going to be chock full of butyrate. It's just that now, I mean, most of our microbiomes have been disrupted to some extent, some more than others, but we're not necessarily making enough of those postbiotics to support our brain and our immune system and our metabolic health.

Yeah, I love this. You've mentioned this several times to be more kind to ourselves because of some of the things we might have chosen to do. You know, having kids, there are many things, of course, I would go back and want to do differently, but in a situation, because C section rates have also gone up precipitously as well, you know, you could just schedule what, what day you want to have your baby? Yeah. You know, for some. Some cases, it. And other cases are for the safety and welfare of the child, for the mother. And they have a. It's wonderful that we have the opportunity and technology to do that. Now with that being said, there are going to be many kids who are missing out on that experience, that initial inoculation. And we have to be honest about this. This isn't something that you can just replicate. Taking a probiotic.

Yeah.

So I know that there are some procedures right now, and some of this stuff is in different countries where they're inoculating the child might be born in C section and getting some of the vaginal bacteria and inoculating the baby with that.

Yeah.

So obviously there's that. Can you talk about what are some things that moms can do if they had or are going to have a C section to support the development of their baby's microbiome?

Yeah. And as you said, yes. I mean, sometimes C sections are absolutely necessary and they're life saving. But you know, in. In our country and in many western countries, there are many unnecessary, you know, cesarean births. And so this is just, you know, as a parent, same thing. Like when you're going into the doctor's office and your kids are sick, you just want to ask questions about, okay, if I am heading into this C section, what can I do to mitigate some of the unintended adverse consequences that we know can occur, like the fact that babies now are going to be initially inoculated with more of the skin bacteria, not your vaginal bacteria and your gut bacteria. And so what you mentioned, this seeding where a swab is placed in the mom's vaginal canal. And after birth, babies are literally swabbed. They're seated, you know, mouth, eyes, nose, anus, to get to approximate that inoculation they would get as they're coming out from mom's vaginal canal. And so there are small studies, but they have, they're really positive. And so that's something to have a conversation with your doctor about. Not all obese may be amenable to it, but definitely to have a conversation about that right now. Apart from that, there's different things that we can do to help support a microbiome that we know is either at risk for disruption or maybe already disrupted in those early infant stages. And as you said, I mean, taking probiotics just alone in supplement form, that is actually one of the biggest shifts I've had as a functional medicine, integrated pediatrician I used to say that I think everyone could benefit from a daily probiotic. And I don't say that anymore. Right. It's not a matter of. And I explain it to the kids because even, you know, from when I first started in the practice, and I have parents who are coming in and saying, oh, but, you know, I shouldn't still be taking this. It's a shift. Right. And I let them know, look, it's not like Jack's magic beans. You can't just throw probiotics into your gut and expect this beautiful ecosystem and community of microbes to develop and form. You need to create an environment where all of those beneficial organisms, bacteria and beneficial viruses, even some yeast in there, can live in harmony with themselves and with you. Right. And not just, you know, not just kind of expect that they're going to want to stay there. We want to create a home for them, so they want to stay. Right. And so, you know, yes, during those times, though, there is evidence that when mothers have gone through C sections and, you know, infants have been exposed to antibiotics, or even, you know, older children, adults have been exposed to antibiotics. If we take a probiotic supplement at that time, it can help restore the microbiome. So there is a time for probiotic supplements we have to be aware, though, of, well, why are we taking this probiotic? Is it to restore the gut microbiome that's been disrupted after antibiotics? Okay, then maybe we take a broader spectrum. Is it to restore their neurotransmitter production and gut brain connection? Well, then there are other probiotic strains that do that. I mean, there's thousands of strains that we're identifying. So it doesn't make sense that, oh, these 15 in here is going to. They're enough to do everything we want them to do. Right. We have to be a little bit more savvy than that now for an infant. Right. If you are. Because I really think if we can, like you said, if we can set the foundations in those first thousand days, we would have a different future for our kids. Right. For our grandkids. Right. And so in those first early days of life, months of life, ideally, babies would be breastfed because that human milk oligosaccharide, that specific prebiotic, is going to foster bifidobacteria to grow. Bifidobacteria helps to support the growth of our butyrate producing microbes. And so we can then develop this whole ecosystem that's beneficial for the baby. Now, if you're not breastfeeding, you know, for whatever reason, if there are challenges, I've had moms who have had to abruptly stop nursing because of, you know, certain, certain diagnoses. Well, there are now commercially available human milk oligosaccharide analogs. They're manufactured, they're close, and the studies are really good with them. Right. So even formula fed babies can have the benefit of adding some of these human milk oligosaccharides to the milk that the babies are getting. Infant formulas now. I mean, that's a whole other topic of discussion because we're not doing right by our babies with the formulas that are mostly on the market today. But a lot of them are adding these human milk oligosaccharides to their formulas, which is great. I mean, that's a step in the right direction right? Now, once your kids are eating.

Six months and beyond, toddlers, older kids, teenagers, if we want their gut microbiome to be in the healthiest state possible, that's where we have to go back to the foundations. We have to go back to what is going to nourish your child's microbiome. Because again, they're not just like tomato seeds. You grow and you leave and come back in a month and you have these beautiful tomato plants. No, you need the right amount of water, you need the right amount of nutrients in the soil, you need the right amount of sunshine. You want to talk to them, give them the right amount of love, right? And so we need to think about our microbiome in the same way. And once we have those foundations, that is when we have true microbiome resilience. That is when, even if your kids need an antibiotic later on in life, or even if they get exposed, exposed to whatever microbiome disruptor, their microbiomes can bounce right back. Because our microbiomes want to go back to the state they were in before the disruption. That's really important. So you get a good foundation, all right? They take a little hit, fine. Get right back up and restore the foundation really easily.

Yeah, resilience is one of the most important aspects of health. You know, it's that bounce back factor. I love that so much. And actually, you talk about these, creating microbiome magic with our kids and what they're doing every day. There's five specific things, and this is again about that foundation and creating resilience. And you kick things off talking about the importance of nourishment, right? The right nutrients, you know, the right environment, the right soil that it's going to create. And if you could what are two or three things that we should be looking at to do for our kids for microbiome nourishment.

So, and with nourishment, I put into two parts. There's what we want to try to get in. But for some families, if, you know, as you write in your book, if the culture hasn't been quite shifted just yet, and it's a harder sell to get in, like a huge salad at dinner time. All right, Sometimes the biggest shift can happen by knowing what to keep out. So there's sort of two parts. And as a parent, right, I get, we're all busy, we're trying to do the best by our kids. You pick the thing that's easier, right? I mean, we want this to be. We want the small wins. And as you get the small wins for you and your child and everyone starts to feel better, it gets so much easier. And here's the thing. Once you know what to do, take out of your diet too.

It can change your palate so that then it's more acceptable, more desirable to get in the things that we want. So what are the three things we want to get in from a microbiome centric standpoint, I call them our microbiome champions. The three Fs, our fiber, our phytonutrients, which I know is a ph, but it sounds like an F. You've got a. Yeah, it's still got a F. And, and fermented foods. So those three things, if we can get in, right? And we know, I mean, fiber. I mean, here's the thing that. And why, you know, I love everything you write because they may sound simple, but you know what, simple is often the hardest thing to do, right? I mean, simple is not always easy. And yet simple. And the foundations are what are going to get you the longest lasting health results. I mean, I want to make it so that no kid ever has to Biohack in their 50s, right? It's like, you know what, let's just make, you know, healthy living a lifestyle, right? And so what do we get in? Well, fiber. We know that 95% of Americans today don't get the recommended fiber intake. And the recommended fiber intake, you know, varies on age and sex, but let's say it's about 25 grams of fiber for most kids. Well, you know, the Hadza people down in Tanzania, which has, you know, they're still a very traditional hunter gatherer society with the richest gut microbiome of virtually any population in the world. They eat somewhere up to 100 to 150 grams of fiber in a day. So it doesn't seem like it should be that hard, except that our diets are so full of ultra processed junk that have, like zero fiber in them that it's not easy to see why most of our kids aren't getting enough fiber in their diets. And I make it really concrete. I give lists, you know, like, a cup of raspberries is going to be about 9 grams of fiber. All right? That's. You're like a third of the way there to your daily fiber intake, right? My kids could down like, I mean, a whole tray of raspberries if I let them. Right? And then, you know, a cup of lentils is going to be maybe 16 grams of added fiber right there. So just, you know, trying to make it concrete, figuring out, like, where can we get in a little fiber here and there. And then phytonutrients. That's the color, you know, the phytonutrients, all of these phytochemicals. I prefer the term phytonutrients because phytochemicals just doesn't sound right, you know, when we're talking about plants. But these phytonutrients, every single color has a different benefit for our eyes or our heart or our brain or for our immune system. And every single color also acts as a prebiotic. And every single color also affects how our microbial genes express themselves and influence our epigenetics. And we know 8 in 10 kids and adults have a phytonutrient gap in every single color. Right? And so if we think about, you know, eating that rainbow, it sounds so cliche, but, you know, for kids, if they're not eating a whole rainbow, well, then think about, I mean, broccoli. A lot of kids like broccoli, right? Well, getting the green broccoli and the purple broccoli, that counts, right? Same broccoli. It's not even the same broccoli. It tastes a little different, right? Bell peppers, you love them. Great. Get the red, orange, you know, purple, green. I mean, all of those, right? It's a different phytonutrient. So you can fill in their color gap even just like that. And then I always talk about fermented foods because that's probably the hardest sell for a lot of kids and grownups because they're thinking, you know, the sour, the sauerkraut. I mean, I grew up with kimchi, so it's like second nature to me.

Right?

But there's so many Ways we can get fermented foods in and honestly, one of the best ways. Make it with your kids. In my daughter's third, fourth grade combined class, there are these eight to ten year olds and I created the six week curriculum for them. It was honestly one of the most fun and rewarding things I've ever done in my entire life. And you know, we talked all about their, you know, the tiny friends and their tummies and how they help them, what they do and how do we nourish them, you know, with food and lifestyle. And we made sauerkraut, we brewed kombucha, and we had the two ferment stages. So on the second stage, the kids got to choose different flavors and we seasoned them up and we had a little kombucha tasting contest. We made fermented lemonade, which is one of the recipes I have in the book, because these are easy ways to get fermented foods in and have kids make them and want them. And I had parents calling me, saying, oh my gosh, I can't believe, you know, Emily actually took a bite of sauerkraut. She's like the piggiest thing ever. And she said, you know what, that wasn't too bad. She still don't want a huge bowl full. But, you know, that's where we get kids. If they first of all understand we have to give our kids way more credit than most of us do, they can understand why their microbiome is important to them at virtually any age. Right? And we can empower them with the tools to know how to do it for themselves. I mean, then, then I mean, that's our job as parents, right? Setting them up to be successful. Not just, you know, from an academic or career standpoint, but how do we help them be successful from a health standpoint, you know, for long term.

I love the framing that you use in the book when talking with kids because again, it's just speaking in a familiar language. You know, a lot of kids in schools today, you know, we're educated about the environment and things to do to support the ecosystem around us. But you pointed to, and sharing with the kids that it's your responsibility to take care of the ecosystem in your belly, right? And here's what to do, here's some things to do to take care of this rainforest that you have the responsibility to care for. And it's just, it's so cool to see stuff like that.

So when kids learn about the ecosystem and, you know, biodiversity, it's the same way we can frame the diversity of the plants we're eating and the diversity in our microbiome. I mean, our world's diversity is shrinking from the crops that we're eating and, you know, from. Even from the animals that. That we're raising. And our micro. Our microbiome is doing the same thing. And our food that we're eating is kind of narrowing. Narrowing. I mean, what is it something like, is it 75% of the world's caloric intake is from four crops, right? Wheat, corn, sugar cane, and soy. And, you know, for. For many people, you know, if you look around at what your kids are eating. It's true, right?

Yeah. This diversity is a huge issue. And also, you know, just talking about eating the rainbow, the closest thing I got to eat in a rainbow was Lucky Charms. Real talk like that was it. I just didn't have that diversity input. There's a lot of beige in my diet, you know, and, you know, it's just one of those cool things to see.

Wow.

In nature, it's telling us what these foods are good for. You know, this goes back to the doctrine of signatures, but these colors are pigments that are rich in all these different nutrients that have these benefits. And even going back to, you know, what our kids are getting through breast milk, right? Those inputs that the mom is having is helping to inoculate or helping to train the immune system and to respond more healthfully to these different food inputs. Like, we're just starting to understand this stuff because when you talked earlier about the formula situation, which, again, it's a blessing to have formulas in those situations where they're needed. But the framing was, you know, these are all the vitamins and nutrients that your kid needs. You know, essential fatty acids. They're good to go. We didn't understand the impact and the importance of breast milk on the microbiome formation and also being able to relate to certain foods. So we're not developing this explosion of food allergies that we're seeing. We didn't think breast milk had anything to do with that. Well, guess what? And so helping to create a healthy foundation and with nourishment. And this is one of the cool parts about the book because it brought up a question that we sometimes, you know, ask ourselves as parents about. Okay, so we know we need to get some more of these foods into our kids. And a lot of parents deal with, quote, picky eaters. I was definitely, I was president, kid, president of that club. But how can I get my kid to eat more stuff when they are so picky. And so you talk about, you know, being able to, like, add in, blend in different food, foods into different meals. For example, mashed potatoes. Mix in a little bit of cauliflower into that kid won't really notice a difference. And you ask the question, though, this is a specific section of the book. You say, should you, quote, hide vegetables in your child's food? And you had an interesting perspective about this, talk about that.

Yeah, I mean, in general, we don't necessarily want to hide or deceive our kids in the moment. You know, when you're to trying. Trying to expand their palate, it might be necessary, right. I mean, I. I love my immersion blender, and I still, you know, will blend in different vegetables into our soups. Right. So it can be a way to expose them to maybe a few. A little bit of a different flavor than what they're already getting and what they. What they already like.

But you don't necessarily want to lie about it, right? Because especially for some of your picky eaters, right? You're very selective eaters. If they only have a handful of foods that they're. That they like to eat, and now you've just ruined one of them and they don't trust you about the other foods, that's even more stressful as a parent, because then you're like, oh, my gosh, now what do I. What do my kids eat? So, you know, I would just, you know, I do explain to kids, look, this is why. We explain the why, and then we can just try a little bit mixed in. There's something called flavor learning that you were just talking about, right? Where if you have a little bit of.

I mean, I'll give an example with my friend. Her daughter didn't like sauerkraut, but she loved ketchup, right? I have a lot of conversations with my son about ketchup because he's like a ketchup fiend to try to find ketchup with, you know, zero added sugars. It's a little tough, right? So, but she just put in a tiny little bit of kraut juice into the ketchup so that her daughter really couldn't notice it at first. But she said, look, we're just gonna do this, right? And then over time, a little bit more, A little bit more. And then eventually her daughter's like, you know what? Actually, sauerkraut's not too bad, right? So there's that. It's called flavor learning. They've even done these experiments. I mean, they've done this with kids in school cafeterias and did a little bit of flavor learning. Learning where they put in, you know, let's say a vegetable with some preferred food and kids actually end up eating more vegetables. Right. You know, I mean, you talk about the family meal and the family meal is so important, and Even just adding 10 minutes to the end of your family meal. Right. So go, go, go. We gotta go, go, go. Right. Just 10 minutes can show that kids actually were more likely to eat. Eat the vegetables on the table and not necessarily have more of the dessert or the bread or the mashed potatoes or whatever it is. Right. I mean, it's these 10, those 10 minutes. Right. That if we just carve out the time for. So, yes, initially you may need to put in like into the smoothies, have some different ingredients that then you let them know, hey, did you enjoy that? Oh, hey, did you know I put a tiny little bit of cauliflower in there. Right. And then you just keep talking more and more about what else might we be able to add that would be okay right now?

Yeah. And this is true, you know, it's the palate exposure and just learning. But the most important part, I think, for sustainability is your child associating something more positive with the flavor experience, you know, with interacting with the food consciously. But also it depends on where your family culture is with food coming into it. Like, so my youngest son was exposed to a lot of all this just was just normal blending things into, you know, smoothies and popsicles and, you know, his salads and different things like that. And him just, like, it was just a part of our family meals. But him getting older, we could start to share like, oh, this is what's in here. And he's just kind of used to this stuff. But also, this doesn't mean that new experiences he's just going to be open to, you know, because we are not. We're naturally skeptical.

Yeah.

You know, especially when we're kids. And it's just how we evolved. It's a safety thing, you know. And also when you mentioned the trust factor, I thought about when my mom, I was 8 or 9 years old, and she made these what she called beef sticks. Right. And so she. It was basically looked like country fried steak. Right. And there were strips. I tore them up, you know, ketchup. You know, I was probably 5% of my blood was ketchup at the time. All right. And so I tore him up. And then afterwards she had this, like, look on her face and she was like, And I'm just like, what? What's up? She was like, did you enjoy that deer meat? What the. Mom, are you serious? I never, from that moment on, I looked at her sideways just like, I don't really trust you. Like, what? Because I was very much against eating Bambi in my mind. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't want to eat this deer meat. You know, my grandfather hunted and scented that whole thing and she just thought it was hilarious. And I'm just over there just like, I can't believe I ate that. Feeling. Feeling it could because your mind, you know, and also just feeling a little woo woo, a little nauseous, little woozy. But you know, being in on it, right?

Yes.

Being able to have these healthy conversations and you know, experiences, but also know your child. That's one of the biggest takeaways from your work is like more than anybody, you are the one to know your child. And you know, a lot of times we, we have a culture that has kind of encouraged us to outsource so much of our child's development to other people with our education system, with their health and so to be more empowered and so we could transfer that empowerment to our kids and utilize, you know, respected teachers and physicians as great coaches and support systems, especially when you really need people. But in the day to day health management and the buildup of our child's immune system and their microbiome, this has to do with our family culture.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so nourish is one part and briefly, because people are just going to pick up the book and they're just going to get a chance to enjoy the rest. But the other five pillars to having a magic microbiome health. Nourish is one, breathe is another one. Talk a little bit about that one.

So breathe is, you know what I tell people the two things that I think could really move the needle on our kids health. Number one, if they learn what to keep out by learning how to be really savvy food label readers. Number two, if all kids and adults could learn how to regulate their nervous system. That's what breathe is all about, right? Breathe is what I wanted to do with the five things from microbiome Magic is to frame it in a way that these are five things that we are doing every single day, right? We have to eat every day, we have to breathe every day. We have to sleep, move our bodies, we have to hydrate every day. How can we do those in a way that are going to optimize our microbiome how can we do those in a gut hero way? And I have a whole chapter devoted to breathe and to the vagus nerve because I think it's that important. You know, for, for many of us, we put, you know, yoga, mindfulness, breath work, meditation is sort of, you know, I'm going to do when I have the time, and I want to put it way up there as this may be the most important prescription for life that you can get. Because we are so much in this sympathetic, you know, overload, fight or flight state all the time stress, when we think about it. I also, for teenagers, I really try to. And middle school kids try to reframe the word stress. Right? And you know, we in our society have come to view all stress as bad. I don't want any stress in my life. And as a parent, we also have now had this idea that, oh, I don't want my kids to, to be stressed at all, Right. I want them to be happy all the time. Well, guess what? Having no stress is actually more stressful for your body. And so I point out there's a diagram that you can look up online, and I have one in my book. It's called the stress performance curve, where we all know this. On one axis is.

Your performance, actually your level of stress. So we're going up here. And on the other axis is your performance. Right on the side where we have no stress. Life is handed to you. You know, mommy and daddy do everything right. You have no homework, no deadlines. Right. That's low stress, really low productivity. Right. And then that can lead to indifference, depression, apathy, you know, just not feeling good. And it creates inflammation in our bodies.

Yeah.

As the stress increase. Oh, you have a homework deadline due. Oh, you know, soccer game coming up. Okay, I'm feeling a little stressed about that. We have a little more stress, but our performance reaches that peak and we've all had that. You have a little deadline and then you are on, you're in the zone. You're like, oh my gosh, I'm so productive. Like, give me some more work. Right? But you are, I mean, you are in that peak. You're in a flow state, Right. We all experienced that. That's because stress at this level, it's good. It's propelling you to do things. Right. Stress is simply that sensation of like your heart beating a little faster, your pupils dilated, you're getting ready to do something. Well, now you're doing something productive. But then, you know, you have the friend drama, the social media, you have, you know, the family issues, the workload, the soccer games, whatever, Then it gets to be a little too much, right? So that's too much stress, lower performance. We get irritable, angry, burnt out, right? More inflammation, more inflammation, right? These both end. So we don't want stress free, we want stress proof, right? We want stress resilience. We want to be able to have that stress. It's just like never getting sick, right? During the pandemic, things kind of blew up in our faces. The year that things opened up where our kids immune systems, our immune systems didn't have any exposures, and a lot of parents were like, this is so great. It's like the first year Johnny hasn't been sick all winter. And I'm like, hmm, maybe that's not such a good thing, right? Because what happened that first winter, really bad RSV in all ages that shouldn't be getting RSV anymore. Influenza, really severe strep throat, really severe. And so we were kind of flooded. And immune systems, they lost their resilience, they lost their muscles. And so when we think about this stress performance curve, if we realize, okay, manageable stress is a good thing, how do we manage that? We need to engage our vagus nerve, our parasympathetic, which doesn't get enough exercise throughout the day. What's the best way to do it? Well, you use it all day long, right in how you're breathing. We're not breathing shallowly up here. We're just engaging breathing with our belly filling up our lungs fully, you know, as our diaphragm is slowly, you know, expanding, inhaling and then exhaling, we let the balloon deflate. But we're doing that every day, all day long. And when kids get stressed, you know, they just got a mean text or they saw something on social. Instead of kind of hyperventilating and doing something that they might regret. Let's stop and regulate. Let's take 10 slow breaths. Now, from a physiologic standpoint, what does that do, those 10 slow breaths, if you can really learn how to belly breathe, Engages our vagus nerve, improves something called heart rate variability, which a lot of people track on their aura rings or their apple watch or whatever. Heart rate variability is one of the best predictors of current and future health. And whatever we do that improves our heart rate variability, improves the diversity of our gut microbiome, and that happens independent of diet. So if your kids are not the most wide, you know, don't have the widest palate just yet, all right, well then teach them how to belly breathe or work on other mindfulness, you know, breath work exercises. I don't necessarily call it breath work or mindfulness or meditation because a lot of kids, like my kids have their socio emotional learning class in school and they do the yoga in school and they kind of do the eye roll because it's the class that everyone doesn't necessarily enjoy being in, which I'm like, guys, that's your most important class. Right? But if you call it vagus nerve work, it's really, it's vagus nerve work. It's, you know, it's exercise for your vagus nerve. It's the thing that you have to do every single day, day. Just like if you're working out, you're exercising your muscles, if you want to, you know, live from day to day in your healthiest, happiest selves, nourishing your microbiome. We need to do the vagus nerve work.

Yeah. And you pointed to something so obvious that we don't think about though. It's hiding in plain sight again that we feel so much of our emotions in our, in our belly. You know, whether it's butterflies in the stomach, whether it's, you know, just feeling, you know, anxious and nervous, we can feel it different parts of our bodies. But you know, our stomach gives that gut feeling, right. That feedback and our thoughts are impacting our microbiome in a huge way. And we again, there's so much data on this now and more is coming. If we think about this, this is a top tier aspect of survival, right? Breathing, right? Yeah. It's probably the most important thing, you know, in our interaction with the world around us. You know, it's not just the food that we're eating, but we're breathing in this air, you know, in our environment, you know, every minute. And it's, it's such a nourishing, but also it can be constricted if we're not doing this in a healthful way. And often, often when we're not being mindful, you know, we start to breathe more shallow, we start to increase the inflammation in our bodies, we start to impact what's happening in our gut instantaneously.

Yeah.

And we can do that for the, for the better as well. And so just a quick word on this. So we got nourish breathe is another aspect that you give us training on. Movement, hydration, sleep you go into and how all these things can help to create a healthy, robust, resilient microbiome for ourselves and for our children. Most importantly, we are giving them the tools to help to turn the situation around, because right now we're not doing well and some of the worst outcomes are happening with our children and they haven't had a chance to even choose.

Yeah.

You know, and so helping to turn this around. This book, this project, Healthy Kids, Happy Kids, incredible resource. I'm so grateful for you creating this. This is like. And also, again, when you go to the back of the book, towards the back of the book, if you're dealing with an acute situation, you've got all these recommendations for that as well. Can you tell people where they can pick up a copy and also just where they can get more into your universe?

Yeah. So you can find the book anywhere books are sold. Support your indie bookstores if you can. And if you just go to HealthyKidShappyKids.com book, you can find all the information there. And probably the best way to keep in touch and stay in touch. I'm most active on, on instagram and that's HealthyKidsHappyKids and my website blog newsletter@healthykidshappykids.com awesome.

This has been phenomenal. I really enjoyed reading this book. I really, really did. Top 10 list already this year. Very, very grateful for you. Thank you for coming to hang out with us.

Thanks for having me.

Amazing. Awesome. Dr. Alisa Song, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. This is truly an important resource for all parents. Definitely check out healthy kids, happy kids.com forward slash book so that you can be one of the first people to get your copy of Healthy Kids, Happy Kids and put this in your library. Keep it on hand for when you need it. But most importantly, get the education and empowerment to ensure that we're creating foundational, functional health for our children from the ground up. And also, she reiterated this point multiple times. No matter where our children are on their journey, no matter where they are in their age brackets, the cool thing is there's still kids and there's a lot of room for improvement. There's room for improvement for us as adults as well, of course, but when we're children, we are so much more malleable. And yes, things can go wrong quickly, but they can go right quickly as well. And, you know, this is something to really take hold of, to be empowered about and understand that there's so much influence that we can have right now to create a healthier culture, a healthier generation of kids, and also looking at the generations to come. But we need to do something differently starting now. So again, check out Healthy Kids, Happy Kids and just tune in to Dr. Song's work in general. And I appreciate you so much for tuning into this episode. We've got some powerful master classes and world class guests coming your way very, very soon, so make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com that's where you can find all of the show notes, you can find transcriptions, videos for each episode and if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to itunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome and I appreciate that so much. And take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.