Why More Kids Are Getting Exercise Induced Asthma, and What You Can Do About It.

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield, and I'm here with David minkoff from the LifeWorks Wellness center down in Florida. He's been on the podcast before and of course, for the show notes to this episode, I'll make sure that I link you to all the other great calls that we've done with Dr. Minkoff. But today we're going to talk about asthma and specifically exercise induced asthma in kids, because I actually ran this question by Dr. Minkoff a few weeks ago when I noticed that one of my children would run up a hill and would get to the top of the hill and be just great, smiling and ready to move on to the next thing. And the other boy, his twin, would stop about halfway up the hill and complain that he couldn't breathe. And the same thing has happened during soccer games, it's happened during wrestling matches. And you know, these are little five or four year old child. I know this type of thing happens to adults as well. And Dr. Minkoff's reply really surprised me, and it kind of went outside of what you would consider to be the mainstream response to something like exercise induced asthma. So Dr. Minkoff and I today are going to talk a little bit about this, what it is, and why we see kids and adults struggling with this possibly more and more. So, Dr. Minkoff, thank you for coming on the call today.

Yeah, Ben, I'm looking forward to it also.

So before we kind of launch into this, can you kind of give me youryour spin on exactly what exercise induced asthma is like? You know, how does it manifest or what causes it?

Yeah, I think asthma. My background originally was pediatrics. And when a kid would come into my office who was wheezing, the traditional treatment would be to give, to make sure that there was no lung infection, acute lung infection, and then give him something to reduce the inflammation in his airways, possibly reduce the mucus in his airways, and most of all, reduce the spasm in the small airways. So when the air comes in, it goes through a big tube, which is your trachea, and that divides into two tubes. One goes to each lung called your bronchi or your bronchus. And then it's the first further subdivides like 12 or 14 times. And so the small little airways right before the little air sacs where the gas exchange actually occurs are very small. They're probably pencil thin, small, and there isn't any solid structure to hold them open. In the bigger airways, there's cartilage, but in the smaller airways, they're very flimsy. And there is muscle in the wall of those membranes of those airways, and that muscle can spasm. And what you see in asthma is that there is spasm in those very small airways, so that when you're inhaling, it usually will. The pressure going in will open those up to some extent and get air in. But when you try to exhale, the force tends to close those airways. And the symptom you see in asthma is they're better breathing in than they're breathing out. Breathing out is very slowed. And so the shortness of breath that you see, if you try to imagine breathing through a straw and then walking really fast and breathing through a straw, the breathing out is very tough, and it can cause somebody to be very scared. Now, with asthma, there's also usually an inflammatory aspect to it. So it's not just an airway that's spasmy, but it's an airway that produces extra mucus. And the airway itself may thicken the wall, can get fluid in it, so that instead of being now pencil thick, it's even smaller. Pencil lead thick, it's even smaller. And so that's what causes the symptoms that these, either children or adults suffer from. In little kids, it's worse because their airways are smaller, and when they spasm, there's just less room to get air in and out. So when your little guy is running up the hill, his ability to take in appropriate amount of air and then get it out, especially get it out, is very tough. And so his lungs kind of won't empty completely. And so if it only empties 50% instead of 80%, then he's not getting much new gas in and the lung stays full and there's no new oxygen to exchange or carbon dioxide to get out. And that's the cause of his trouble. So that's kind of what happens. And in the. A traditional pediatrician would look at it and say, well, we're going to give you a medication to relax the airway. So albuterol or some version of that would be given as an inhaler to try to get that medication down there to relax that airway so that it would be. So that it wouldn't spasmodel. And then something to reduce the thickness of the mucus and something to. If there's infection down there, to treat the infection. Now, my perspective now is, in dealing with children and in dealing with adults, is that there are reasons why this occurs. Some people have a higher genetic susceptibility, but oftentimes there are environmental and Internal health factors which have to do with it which predispose kids to getting this. And overall, now, if you look at the profile in the United States, there's an epidemic of asthma. There's more children with asthma now than ever recorded. And I think there's reasons for that and we can get into that. But that's kind of the overview. I think I answered it.

Yeah. Have you noticed it more and more? I mean, is this something that you think is becoming a bigger issue?

Absolutely, absolutely. The incidence of childhood problems, medical problems overall is very much increased. Whether you look at childhood cancers or you look at childhood asthma, or you look at childhood attention deficit. You know, all of these things are on a very big upswing. Swing uptrend.

Now, I might be opening a can of worms here, but why do you think that is?

Well, I think it's a mixture of things and I think that this kind of goes to the heart of what we want to look at. If a child's environment has a lot of things in it which when he breathes them in, cause inflammation, he's going to have more trouble. So there's more asthma in Los Angeles than there is in Montana because there's more particles. The particles can be reactive, there can be problems. The other thing is that we know that children who in the first six months or the first year of life were breastfed versus bottle fed or cow's milk fed have much lower incidence of asthma. That their early diet, their early, when they're very young, their intestine is permeable and it will absorb whole proteins. Milk protein is pretty reactive stuff. Wheat and gluten proteins are pretty reactive stuff. And in children that eat those foods early on, their incidence of immune disorders or reactive disorders are much higher. We know that children who have gotten pertussis vaccine in infancy have about a tenfold increase in asthma versus children who never got pertussis vaccine.

Interesting.

So again, you're injecting foreign proteins into a body, the body makes a reaction to it, which then can make it sort of hyper irritable or hyper reactive because compared to someone who doesn't have it. So I think what occurs is bottom line is that the membrane is reactive, the immune system in the child is sensitive, it's irritable. And you know that if we can get their food cleaned up so you know, they're off glutens, they're off dairies, we can fix their leaky gut. Sometimes they have especially these kids may have problems with ear infections and sinus infections and they've Been on a lot of antibiotics. And their gut now has colonized with candida and other bacteria which are resistant to the antibiotics. But their normal flora, their normal healthy gut flora isn't there. And that makes them at risk for this because their whole immune systems get altered. Because with the antibiotics and with the candida, their gut is leaky, which means that the foods that they eat can enter their system, which makes their immune system very, very reactive. About 80% of the immune system is around the small intestine. And when the small intestine gets leaky, the immune system then gets very charged up. And that charged up area can also affect the lung lining. And so you see it, you see it as asthma, some people, it reacts in their skin, and you see it as eczema, some people use. It reacts in their brain. The brain has a whole immune system. And when the immune system in the brain is altered or up regulated, as it says, you'll see behavioral problems, you'll see learning difficulties and, you know, add, adhd, depression, you know, all these sorts of things, because the brain is kind of on fire. And then if you add to these, you know, if these children also are taking, you know, NutraSweet and, you know, Riello dye number six and drinking Mountain Dew and, you know, colorants and preservatives, these all are inflammatory things. And so really the treatment has to be to reduce the things like this that are coming into the kidney, put them on a restricted diet. So they're off grains, they're off dairy, no artificial foods, no processed foods, real stuff, and correct their leaky gut. Another thing is a lot of these kids are magnesium deficient. Low magnesium causes irritable membranes.

Interesting.

We can measure their red blood cell magnesium levels, and oftentimes they're low. And that can make a difference.

Is that a test that a lot of doctors do?

It's a test that very few doctors do. Most doctors are doing, most pediatricians aren't measuring magnesium at all. The rest of them that are measuring serum, what's called serum magnesium levels. But 99% of the magnesium in the body is in the cells. If you measure the serum level, it often looks normal when the cell level of magnesium is low. So there are laboratories that will measure cell level of magnesium, and we find it all the time, low magnesium, low selenium, low zinc. All these things are really important factors in how the immune system works and in membrane stability. And when you find these things. I find these things on people every day. And when you correct them, their immune system settles down. And it works better. The other thing that this was actually a study done in children. If you measured the amount of hydrochloric acid in the child's stomach, one of the studies, 80% of the children were low in hydrochloric acid in the stomach. And with low hydrochloric acid, you don't digest proteins, you don't absorb minerals. And so these kids are kind of at risk. And what's interesting about this is some doctors are putting kids on. They feel that the reason for asthma may be reflux, gastrointestinal reflux, and they're putting these kids on medications to block their stomach acid.

Wow.

And it's very common to see kids on Pepcid or Zantac or. I don't know. And this is actually not good because low stomach acid may be part of the problem with the active airway. So if you have a kid that's got this, my suggestion is that you don't go to your pediatrician or your pediatric allergist to start is that you go to your, you know, your naturopath or your nutritionally oriented chiropractor to, you know, try to figure this out using their methods, the muscle test or electrodermal screening or, you know, and get the diet right. Because I think a lot of these kids can be handled without pharmaceuticals and actually recover and heal and be okay.

Now, you talk about HCl and magnesium and gut flora. I mean, with kids like this, can you safely give kids things like some of the recommendations that I know you'd probably have for adults who had issues like this, like, can you give a kid a hydrochloric acid supplement or a magnesium supplement or a probiotic? I mean, are those type of things safe for kids to be taking?

Oh, sure. Oh, sure. I mean, you just have to have some experience with kids so the dosing is right. And that there's some way to monitor this on the kids so that, you know, so the guy that's doing it. I'm not suggesting that a parent should just do this in the blue because, you know, they're kids and you got to watch out. But with an experienced practitioner who's used to seeing children. Absolutely. And you know, they usually, the kid, you know, overall, the kids usually have a very, you know, they heal quick, their bodies aren't over toxic usually, and they respond very quickly. And you can get them, you can get them fixed up. And then you just got to sort of keep in the, you know, all these things are, you know, it's hard to keep in a good Diet an adult, let alone a kid. And, you know, stay away from things that are preserved and that are full of chemicals and things like that. And so it's, you know, you just sort of have to monitor it with the kid and see, you know, what, what can you get away with and what can't you. To try to keep the kids in good shape. Gotcha. And overall, you got to fix the gut. You know, on most of these kids we get a, it's called a complete stool digestive analysis. Where we can see is there enough hydrochloric acid in the stomach? Does the kid have enough digestive enzymes? Are there enough good bacteria growing in his intestine? Does he have a yeast overgrowth? Does he have other bacteria? He's been on antibiotics and now his gut is full of resistant, you know, antibiotic resistant bacteria. And then also, you know, I do some sort of screening for foods and usually with the. And then, you know, if it's in the budget to get the red blood cell mineral levels. And then, and then sometimes there's a trigger. You know, there's a cat or a dog or something like that where, you know, the kid is obviously sensitive to either desensitize the kid to the cat dander or the dust mites or, you know, whatever the particular trigger is. Using one of the. There's a lot of therapies where you can use acupressure and you can desensitize the kid to things that they're allergic to and get. And you can get the kids to heal up and they're not reactive to the stuff. If anyone wants to, the website is naet.com you can go on that and find a practitioner near you. And this is a marvelous treatment for children. Where it doesn't hurt, it's easy to do and it can be very effective, especially with this asthma, reactive airway disease, food sensitivities, things like that.

Interesting. Yeah. I've actually seen that website before and I'll be sure to link to it in the show. Notes for folks. It was one that I had looked into when one of my kids was kind of showing signs of a peanut allergy. And we instead just gradually exposed him over a course of several months to more and more peanuts and he ended up being fine. But that NAAT was a fascinating concept and I certainly looked into it now.

Can I just add something to this? This treatment is so good that the California medical associations are trying to get it outlawed. It's usually delivered by acupuncturists and chiropractors. And they're trying to get it outlawed so that it can't be used. It's that good. In our office, we've done over 20,000 treatments of adults and children with it. And I think it's a terrific treatment for these kinds of things.

Wow. Wow. Well, I'll certainly link to that. Now, have you seen this condition of exercise induced asthma and this autoimmune issue with children successfully reversed or successfully controlled? I mean, have you seen kids go from, you know, half a year earlier not being able to run on a soccer field to doing okay or what have you observed?

Oh, I have. And what it requires is a compliant, you know, compliant parents. You know, the parent will do the program.

Yeah.

You know, they'll keep. It's so much of it is what's the kids, you know, what's the kid eating? Yeah, much of it is that. So will the sub, you know, can you give them the supplements? Will the, will the, will the. And will you control the food? You know, can you get the kids cooperation of. Look, we're going to do this as a six month experiment to see if, you know, you can run again and you can do all the things that all your friends do. And if it works, then we've got to, you know, we got to keep it in. But if you, if the kid won't do it, then it doesn't work very well. Or can't do it. It won't very well. And like gluten, you give somebody who's gluten sensitive a sandwich where they have some gluten and now you're going to, it's 10 days before that intestinal membrane back in shape.

Yep.

So you can't, you know, once a week I'm just going to give them some brownies and cookies and cake. In a sensitive kid, it doesn't work very well.

Yeah. And it certainly is tough. You know, it's something that I've been a little bit more hypersensitive to for the past couple of months. And you don't really realize how often that a child is exposed to these types of environmental triggers. Sometimes when you're around, sometimes when not. It can be a cupcake at a birthday party, a quick cookie at daycare when they're decorating cookies. I mean, it's so prevalent in culture for it seems part of our love or our fun with children to be based around a lot of these foods that are potential gut bombs in the gut of a kid who's got these autoimmune issues going on. I'VE certainly noticed it quite a bit.

Right. And I think the kid, if the parent is faced where their kid is, chronic ear infections, a lot of antibiotics, a lot of bronchitis with antibiotics. These kids really, you have to find a practitioner who will pull them off of the regular medical stuff because it's a dwindling spiral for most of these kids because antibiotics mess up the gut flora, they mess up the gut membrane. And the kids on antibiotics every six weeks that, you know, almost all these kids, if you can just get their foods right and get them on some good supplementation and get their gut flora restored and their leaky, you know, their leaky gut fixed and if they need some hydrochloric acid, they get better, they really get better. And they, and then if you can just keep them honest, so to speak, they'll, they'll do well. And then the other thing is this, you know, there is a lot of controversy now about immunizations. And for anyone who wants some information, there's a great website which is www.nvlikevictor ilikendiacarrot.org which has a lot of information. Children are getting many, many, many vaccines. Vaccines now which are didn't used to be the thing. And there are many people who feel like this is a definite contributing thing because you take a day old baby who's given hepatitis vaccine and then at 2 months DPT and polio and there's I think 26 vaccines in the first year of life. And in these vaccines, vaccines are things that are immune sensitizers. There are metals and there are acetones and some of these vaccines are cultured in kidneys, in monkey kidneys or in duck embryos. And there are parts of these things in the vaccines. And a kid with a sensitive immune system is going to react to that stuff and it makes them. I think it's part of the reason in addition to the sort of deterioration of our food and our genetically modified foods. And that is part of the reason why we're seeing the epidemic in children of all these problems.

Yeah. And it's certainly a polarizing topic and I think a lot of people don't realize that you don't, you don't have to get your kids vaccinated against everything. And certainly something my wife and I have gone through because we kind of went with the minimal vaccination route just because we traveled internationally with our kids when they were first born. And so we did do a few of the vaccinations. But since then, when we put our kids into Kids camps and summer camps and things of that nature. We've had to actually go to our kids pediatrician and have him fill out paperwork and sign a big waiver form that our kids haven't been vaccinated. And, you know, I know I'll probably get some angry comments from folks even for this podcast for mentioning that our kids haven't gotten, you know, all of their immunizations and vaccinations, but I've certainly seen some of the same things that you're talking about, Dr. Minkoff, in terms of its effect on a kid's gut and immune system and autoimmunity. So I agree, it's a pretty serious issue.

Yeah. The other thing I just thought of is that a lot of these kids aren't, you know, in our office, we, we do blood work on basically everybody that comes through. We see a fair number of children. Virtually every child in the last three years that's walked through our practice, and it's hundreds, if not thousands has had a vitamin D level under 25. Vitamin D is a really important nutrient in immune processes. Now I'm in Florida and there's a of lot of sunshine here, and all these kids are plastered with sunscreen, so they never get any sunshine. They don't eat a lot of oily fish, and there just isn't any other source of vitamin D. And their vitamin D levels are really low. I like to keep mine at about 75. And I'd like my kids to be at least above 50. If you don't take care of those sort of basic nutrients. So vitamin D is one. The other thing that is really important is that we measured what are called carotenoids. Carotenoids are the things that are in fruits and vegetables, the colored substances in fruits and vegetables that are the main way that our body gets antioxidants to fend off things that cause inflammation. And we screened over 1,000 people for antioxidant levels, and normal was above 50. And the average that we got was 18. And none of the children were above 18. So we took dietary histories on these kids. How many servings of fruits and vegetables were you getting every day? And the average child was getting zero to two servings a day of fruits and vegetables. Guess what the vegetables were?

Oh, gosh, like French fries.

French fries and ketchup. Now you can give the kid a. So we thought, this is a disaster. They have no vitamin D. They have very low levels of carotenoids. And vitamin D is easy. There's drops. You can give your Kids things starting at 2 months of age, vitamin D or get them in the sunshine every day. Not to the point of burning, but mild tanning is good. You can give your kids a powdered. We use nano greens or doctor's greens. There's hundreds of these products out there where they're organic, dehydrated fruits and vegetable mixes. You could put a scoop in some juice or in some water or add it to a smoothie. Kids, if they're started on it early, will drink it. And they get. We found that everyone, we did this after one month of taking one scoop a day, their carotenoid levels went to above 50 and then they got basically 10 servings a day of fruits and vegetables in one scoop of powder. So that was easy. The other thing that most kids are low in is omega 3 fatty acids. They're not eating much fish. Again, that's easy to supplement. You go to the health food store, you can find fish oil in gummy bears in things that the kids will eat. These essential fats have a strong anti inflammatory potential. Again, if we have a membrane that's inflamed, having a good level of omega 3 fats will not only make you kids smarter and have their IQ go up, but it will reduce inflammation in their body. And that's easy. You know, that's easy. Any parent could do that.

Right, right. And that's definitely an anti inflammatory that can help out with a lot of these type of inflammatory conditions that cause that, you know, that bronchoconstriction.

Right, exactly, exactly.

Now what about, what about kids who were raised on soy formulas? I've heard some talk about how their gut flora or the lining of their gut may not have quite as tight a cell barrier as kids who are fed a colostrum source of breast milk. Is there something to be said for that?

Well, I think unless it's impossible, breast milk's the ideal thing. And breast milk only for six months, especially if you're a family with an allergic history. Mom's got asthma or dad's got asthma or chronic hay fever or a condition like that. It's known that breast milk works in the kids. I don't like soy formula. The levels of genistein, which is a mild estrogen, is just way too high. And while my kids in addition to breastfed were given, this is 36 years ago now, were given soy formula and they turned out the males are males and the females are females. So it worked out okay on that. But I don't like soy formula. And if you had to do an alternative. The mom can't breastfeed for whatever reason. I would go to a formula called Nutramigen. It's a processed formula, but it doesn't have grains in it and it doesn't have cow's milk in it and it doesn't have soy in it. And it's acceptable. So I go to that.

Okay, cool. So any other tips that you would have for parents listening in or perhaps even adults listening in who struggle with, with asthma or specifically exercise induced asthma?

I think it's worth the investigation because it's tough on the kid and it's worth finding out what you know to find a practitioner near you who likes and sees children and they can do the NAAT treatments or they'll do the gut analysis or they'll work with you nutritionally. And they see a lot of kids and they, and they, you know, where you are in the Northwest, there's, there's tons of guys from Bastyr who are, you know, they have a, you know, they think, they think this way, they think nutrition, they think detoxification and they, and they, and they can really help you and then work on your kid's diet so that they, so that you're, you know, you eliminate these bad things and add the good things. And, you know, I think for the vast majority of children, they're going to be okay and it's worth the effort from the parent.

Gotcha. Well, it's fantastic information and I'm sure that folks may have some comments and some feedback or some follow up questions. And so of course, if you're listening in, you can go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com where you'll be able to access the show notes to this episode as well as other talks that we've had with David Minkoff on a variety of topics from sports, sports performance to the type of ways that he manages chronic pain and the folks that he works with to a lot of really cutting edge alternative medical procedures. And another thing you may want to know is that Dr. Minkoff is interviewed twice a month in an Ask the Doctor episode over@EndurancePlanet.com so that's another good way to hear more from the doc. And of course, he is the inventor of the formula that I personally use, the Master Amino Pattern whole amino acid supplement. And that's an incredibly impressive supplement too that we've talked about in some of those previous episodes with Dr. Minkoff. So I'll put links to all of this stuff and resources in the show notes for you If, Brian, if you.

Had just one second, because I forgot to mention this. With the fatty acids and the carotenoids, a lot of children, and we found this in the autistic kids that we see, but it's true in all of them. Most of these children aren't eating very much animal protein. They may be meeting some eggs, but a lot of them aren't eating much meat or fish. And they actually could use more protein. I would urge parents to do that. And they might need hydrochloric acid to digest them better. But also, MAP is easy to give to children. You can smash a couple tablets in some applesauce and get your kid to take it. And. And the master amino acid pattern is an amino acid that the child's body will use to build protein. And if he's not getting much protein, like I said, in a lot of the autistic kids, we find that their protein levels in their blood, their amino acid levels in their blood are just really low. And they won't build the sort of stuff that they need to make their brain function. Right. And when we give them map, they do build that stuff, and it helps them to improve. So it's another thing that a parent can easily do is give your kid a little bit of MAP and it'll help them out.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. Well, folks, I hope that helped you out, and it certainly was an educational process for me. So again, we'll put more about Dr. Minkoff in the show notes. And Dr. Minkoff, thanks for coming on the call today.

Hey, you're welcome, Ben. Enjoyed it.