36. Why is Chronic Illness in Kids Skyrocketing?

Asthma's going up, allergies are going up, adhd, autoimmune conditions, cancer. Really, everything is going up.

Growing up, I don't remember a lot of kids that had eczema who were sick were obese. Knowing that parents are struggling with where to start with their kids. When you're meeting with parents in your office, what are some of the foundational steps that you begin with?

The first thing that I always talk about is reading labels. If you don't really know what the words are, then maybe that's not the best thing to get. If it has a lot of sugar, added sugars, you know, maybe that's not the best thing to get. We have so many chemicals in America that are not allowed anywhere else because of the GR rule. They generally regard it as safe. So, like Europe, they have around 400 chemicals approved, but we have over 10,000, and you have to spend a lot of time to get something out of food.

Doctor Joel, welcome to Rooted in Wellness. This is long overdue. You are, like, top of my list. I'm so excited that we finally made this happen.

Welcome. Well, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here, and I've really wanted to be on for a while. I love everything that you're doing.

Thank you. Okay, so thinking about today, I sent you a voice memo because I was getting worked up just doing the research and what to talk about. And we'll keep things as streamlined as possible, but the intention is really to just dive in and why all these childhood illnesses are skyrocketing. Okay, but before we do that, I want you to know this podcast is all about ancient wisdom in our modern world. And I'd love to start off by asking you, what are three practices that you have in your life that help you feel more rooted in yourself, in your health and your happiness and who you are?

I think some of the big things for me that help me to feel rooted is just taking time for myself. I think that's really important. Especially with everything that I do in the office or outside, it's really easy to get stressed out. And so really taking the time to go on walks, get out into nature, and spending some time whenever I'm feeling a little stressed, I think that's really important. Focusing on eating healthy, it's not something I grew up really thinking about, but I've realized, especially after meeting my wife, who's very holistic minded, and seeing how much the food really affects how I feel, I think that's really important. So I'm really Intentional to make sure that I eat really healthy the vast majority of the time. And spending time with family and friends, I think just taking time to spend more time at home. I'm very lucky with my job that I have my own practice so I can make my own hours. And I really try, you know, to beat office as much as reasonable, but also be home every day, you know, earlyish and be there with my kids as well. So I think that really helps to keep me grounded and to really focus on what's important, which I think is family. Yeah.

There's something so amazing. You especially, you have a nine month old. You're in this baby bubble. I remember when my kids were that small, it was almost like meditation in the sense that you, you're so hyper present with them right now that my kids are a bit older. You know, I'm such an advocate for taking time, but I find I'm using my time to listen to a podcast or to do research. Like it's always connected to something else instead of just that magic of being So I think that that's so important to hear.

Definitely. Yeah.

So on the flip side, I'm sure, like me, you probably work with a lot of people who are treating wellness like a checklist. So, you know, things like meditation or walking or journaling or time with your family, they're not even absorbing it, they're not present to it. It's almost like a checklist to say that they've done it. So this is uprooting, I feel like, to our health. And do you have any practices or things that you notice when you're drifting off of feeling rooted that cause you to feel uprooted?

I think the main thing that makes me feel uprooted is if I get too focused on the phone, too focused on screens, too focused on the news media, all the crazy stuff that's happening out in the world. You know, for me personally, I'd rather be off the phone totally. But it's not really practical as a, as a pediatrician. You know, parents are texting me and also I feel like I need to be aware of what's going on because I get a lot of questions from parents in the office. So generally I am connected, but it's really easy to become disconnected by scrolling too much or feeling that stress start to bubble up. So I think for me it really is just being aware of that. So that way, if I start to feel that way, put the phone down, put it away for a few hours, do something else and then, you know, be Very intentional about doing that. So that way, it doesn't get me to that point where I become stressed because I. I feel like I'm very lucky. Don't get sick very often. Knock on wood. I guess being a pediatrician, you're exposed to stuff all the time. So I have super blood or whatever it is, but the only times I get sick are when I get very stressed about something. So just being mindful to me really makes the big difference and keep myself healthy.

Yeah. Getting depleted. Right. And do you find, like, do you drift? You said you eat really healthy at home. Do you drift? You know, I think people, when they watch podcasts like this, they think that you and I have the most epic, perfect healthy diet. Do you notice that? You know, when you do get stressed, are you. Are you having certain foods that you typically wouldn't.

Not generally. You know, I think it comes down to just purchasing good foods at home. So we don't have really anything that I would consider to be very unhealthy at home. At home, we eat very healthy. Sometimes we go out and have things that maybe aren't always the healthiest, but, you know, 99% of the time, we're eating what I would consider very healthy. We spend our money on food. You know, we try to get things that are local and from locations where we know that produce is going to be as ideal as possible. And we go shopping multiple times a week, go to farmers markets, those kinds of things. So I think we. Of anything that we focus on in our home, it's the food. And I think that probably is one of the most important things today. And one of the big reasons why everyone's so unhealthy is because the vast majority of the food, even the best of it, is still not completely healthy, not completely without toxins.

We're going to talk about the fake labeling that happens, for sure. Yeah. And that's such a good point. If you don't buy it, you can't eat it. Right. And there's so many healthier options to the foods that you might crave that can actually serve your health, too. Right. So, yeah, wanted to humanize you a little bit, because people probably think that you have this perfect, perfect lifestyle.

Yeah. Definitely not, though. Yeah, there's no.

There's no perfect.

You do the best that you can.

Exactly. Yeah. And when you have a resilient body, your body can handle these things. Right?

Definitely.

So the intention today, really, in the past few decades, I want to talk about how and why have the rates of illnesses skyrocketed from things like add, adhd, eczema, obesity, diabetes amongst children, cancer even. Right. So when we think about how and why do parents. What's the first place that parents can be proactive? And are you noticing a common denominator? And in the past, I guess, what, couple years of you being in practice?

Yeah. Well, I think even going back a little bit before answering the question, just acknowledging the fact that this is happening is important because there is a lot of denial out there in terms of what's going on with our health. I think if you look with your eyes, you can see that we're clearly not healthy. We're certainly not as healthy as when we were growing up. And to me, that's plainly obvious, but it doesn't seem to be that way. A lot of people, you know, we're just better at diagnosing things. But the reality is, when you look at the studies, about 50% of kids have a chronic disease, which is insane. It wasn't like that just a few decades ago, is maybe 5% or so. And certainly we are better at diagnosing some things. But when you look at autism, for example, even 20 years ago was 1 in 150. Before that, it was 1 in 10,000. Now it's 1 in 36, 1 in 22 in California. Asthma's going up. Allergies are going up. ADHD, autoimmune conditions, cancer. Really, everything is going up. So we have a big problem. And the first question is, why? Why is this happening? Why are we okay with it? Why are we not doing anything about it? And why are we watching these trends just continue while we say, oh, you know, maybe it's just genetics. I don't even know if it's happening. Right. So I think that's the first and most important thing. And we don't exactly know why, because we're not looking into this in that sort of way. I mean, I think there's a lot of denial. So that. That is the first key. Now, why is it happening? I mean, I certainly have theories. I would say that most people in integrative space would say the big things are food and toxins. So that. That's what I believe as well.

Yeah. Growing up, I don't remember a lot of kids that had eczema who were sick, were obese. I don't remember any diagnoses of ADD or adhd. And that's a good point about, you know, things that are being diagnosed now. But at the end of the day, I don't remember any behavior Behavioral changes or differences from when I was younger.

Right. You can just look at just, just a few different statistics. I mean, most people don't remember with a peanut allergy when we were growing up. I mean, it certainly was around, but you don't remember it. And now you can't bring peanuts anywhere because so many kids have, have allergies. Diabetes, right? Look at type 2 diabetes. It's literally called adult onset diabetes because you didn't see it in kids. I've given talks on diabetes before and I've looked into the research and you really can't find any type 2 diabetes in kids even just a few decades ago. And now kids are getting it when they're in their young, you know, 10 years old, 11 years old, 12 years old. I mean, it's, it's nuts. Obesity rates. When we were born, no states had a 20 obesity rate. Now every state does. It's such a vast difference over a few decades. So there is no question that it is happening. We just need to accept that and then start to identify why so we can make a change. Because the fact that it's changed so quickly makes it very clear that it's not genetics, it's not a genetic thing. You can't change your genetics that fast. This is an environmental problem. And it's probably many different things. For sure, it's many different things. It's not one specific item. But the fact that it's changed that much over 20, 30 years means we can also go backwards. Right? We, we've done a lot of great things in medicine. People used to die when they were 40, so not all of medicine is bad. Right? But we also have to be a little bit humble and say, well, maybe we're not the best at chronic disease, maybe we're not the best at everything. And let's be humble and look at some of the things we were doing 20, 30 years ago versus what we're doing now. And let's see what's changed. And maybe we have to go back a little bit. Maybe the pendulum has to switch, swing back a little bit. So we can not just focus on infections, but also on all these chronic conditions that are going on and figure.

Out why you're so calm about this. I feel like this episode needs a disclaimer because I try to keep the peace in terms of people that reach out when parents hear. I mean, we've talked for three minutes and you've mentioned over a dozen imbalances and diseases that are impacting children. Right? Literally impacting their health. Now which is going to dictate their health in the future. Right. And why. Why isn't the world stopping to address this? And I hear you. It's a multifactorial, you know, approach that needs to be made. There's so many things that are contributing to this. Is this what kind of inspired you to start speaking out about all of this? Were you seeing this in your practice?

It's a big part of it. You know, I. One part of it is having my own kids. I mean, I think it's so important you. You get a different perspective when you have kids. And you realize that if you have two kids, by the statistics, one out of two of them is going to have one of these chronic diseases. So that. That's really important to me. I mean, just seeing it in my.

Pocket, one out of two. One out of two will have a chronic disease.

Right? And that's just. Now it keeps going up. So basically every kid's going to have a chronic disease if the trends continue.

So I have two kids, so one of my kids will likely have a chronic disease.

I mean, if you live in the way that most Americans live today, then the statistics say yes.

But making that, like, really relevant to parents who are listening, like, that could be the possibility, Right? If you're not proactive in taking care.

Of your kids, it's not even the possibility. It's the reality. Like, that's the numbers, right? So you. Maybe you'll be lucky, maybe you'll be unlucky, but one of the two of them are going to be on some medication if they're not already. And most families, they do have kids on medications every day, and that's terrible. It shouldn't be that way. Like, there's no reason that every kid should be on a medication. It's. It's amazing that we have these things. They can be fantastic band aids. They can save your life. I'm not against antibiotics or Western medicine. There are so many amazing discoveries that we have made, but our kids are not healthy. That is so abundantly clear. And you ask, you know, why did I start speaking out? Well, I realized through my practice that I can only help so many people. And when I started getting into integrative medicine, I didn't know how people would respond to it. There certainly isn't a lot of integrative medicine when it comes to pediatrics. There's a little bit with adults. You know, it's growing, but it's still. Still the minority. But certainly in pediatrics, there's almost nobody doing it. I mean, even a big city like la, there's just maybe three to five doctors that are. That are integrative pediatricians. And it's apparent that people are interested in this. And we opened the practice and people started flooding, flooding the office. I've never had to advertise. And we always have a constant stream of people that are interested incoming. And so I just realized that people are really interested in this content. People are starving to figure out what's going on with their family, what they can do for their kids. People don't want their kids to be unhealthy. Just don't know what to do about it. Because I think the problem is so big that it makes it really difficult for a lot of parents. And they just throw up their arms. I don't know what to do. I can't change the air. I can't change all the water. I have to buy food. I have to eat something. It can be really difficult and overwhelming.

So let's break this down for people because I think that the awakening that's happening is the understanding that when we go to our doctor and we're confronted with a white lab coat, especially as a pediatrician, like it's a pediatrician, you trust that they're best. They know everything that they need to know to help optimize a child's health. Right. And it's just. It's not necessarily the case. So what's the difference between a pediatrician and a functionality integrative pediatrician?

Right. Well, I. I would add to that. It. It's not the case. Going to doctor is not about optimal health. That's not what we learned, unfortunately. I mean, I went through medical school and you didn't learn about a lot of this stuff. And until you get outside of the medical system and you start to either take functional medicine courses or at least be open to some sort of integrative holistic health. As soon as you do, you're like, oh, of course I should be thinking this way. Of course you should be thinking about why. But we're not telling you taught that at medical school. It's not that doctors are bad people or pediatricians are bad people. Of course they're not. These are people that are helping kids. But when you go through medical school, you learn symptoms and treatment. You learn about pharmaceuticals. That's the way that medicine is built and has always been built. And there never really was a focus on prevention. There's never been a focus on diet or sleep or exercises or things that are glossed over.

Did you learn about nutrition for kids?

Not really. I mean, you learn about nutrition deficiencies, so you learn about, oh, sclervy or, you know, other. Other nutrient deficiencies, but you don't really spend any time on. On nutrition and certainly not on nutrition counseling. And even if you did, let's just say that you change all the curriculum and all the doctors spent a whole bunch of time learning nutrition. You wouldn't have the time when you're seeing patients to make any sort of impact in terms of, you know, diet, exercise, sleep, these kinds of things, because it takes a lot of time to discuss. And that's not the way the system is. Is set up. So I think parents just have to realize that doctors are fantastic at diagnosing, you know, making sure you don't have something serious. But they're not so good at chronic disease. And that's why we're seeing this. Nobody's spending the time to focus on these things. And that's where the. I think parents have to start to take some power back and say, okay, you know, go to my doctor to make sure that the illness is not needing to go to the hospital. But maybe that's not the best place to talk about their diet. Maybe I need to go somewhere else. Maybe I got to work with a health coach or a nutritionist or naturopathic doctor or someone who's going to spend more time with me to really focus on some of these things, because a lot of them, a nutritionist knows a lot more about diet than a doctor does. That's just the reality of it. Unless the doctor is super interested in it and learn themselves, which is the minority. And even if they do, they spend five minutes with you. So how much are you going to get on that?

So you brought up a really good point, because I think that a lot of pediatricians also, their interpretation of what healthy is also ranges, maybe based on their upbringing, obviously the things that they did not learn in school. And they're going by this metric of our kids growing at the right rate. Right. According to that graph that the chart.

Sure.

Some of those pediatricians are also saying, yeah, your kid is healthy, it's fine. McDonald's once a week is totally fine. Right. Coca Cola once a week is totally fine. And it's not like if you have any insight to the rise in any of these diseases, this is like red alarm flashing. We need to start with the foundations, with people. And a lot of pediatricians aren't doing that. So I think that the first takeaway is one, if you do have A pediatrician for your child. This is also for people who don't have kids because you need to know about this for the future. When you do have kids, if you do have a pediatrician, make sure that they are using languages, like using language, like understanding root cause or making sure that their. Their child's health is optimized and talking about diet and nutrition. I found a really. We found a really great pediatrician who is also a homeopathic doctor, and she was very much on board to support us through delayed vaccination protocol. And she would ask questions about diet and nutrition and hydration and stuff like that that I really valued and respected. I felt like I had a partner in raising my child. But that's not the case for a lot of people. And many people today, I feel they're struggling with understanding their children's health because it's so complicated. As a nutritionist, understanding what the heck to do now is so complicated. And we're walking into grocery stores now, and just two days ago, I went down every single product in the healthier kids snack aisle. I found one company that didn't use processed seed oils or canola oil or any of those inflammatory seed or vegetable oils. Of course, that one brand had a slew like five different types of sugar in it. Right. So we're marketed these brands that aren't serving us. We're marketed these protocols that aren't serving us. We're saying that certain things are okay for kids. So let's pull back a little bit, knowing that parents are struggling with where to start with their kids. When you're meeting with parents in your office, what are some of the foundational steps that you begin with?

The first thing that I always talk about is reading labels. And I think that, you know, you mentioned what you were doing there. Just, I think instinctively was just looking through the aisles and looking at the different products. But a lot of parents don't think about these things. Again, we didn't grow up doing this right. We just grew up eating whatever. And most of us were marketed to, and we were all marketed to, and we just never had to think about these things. But we do. And I think the first key is just to start becoming informed. You don't need to have a PhD. You. You don't need to be a biochemist or a nutritionist to turn the box over, read the label, see what's on there. If you don't really know what the words are, then maybe that's not the best thing to get. If it has a lot of sugar, added sugars. You know, maybe that's not the best thing to get. And just start from there. It's great if you start learning things, and I think most people do, once they start to read, then they're like, oh, well, what is that thing on there? Oh, I shouldn't be eating that. How could they put this in there? Oh, Red 40. Why do they have that in this? Like, there, you start to become more knowledgeable, but at the end of the day, you don't need to. You just need to read it and try to pick real words, actual things that you know what they are, and that gets you a long way. Ideally, you start to go to farmers markets, you start to learn about where your food comes from. You start to buy real whole foods more frequently and cook more. This is something that lost most of its value over the last maybe 30, 40 years because again, our parents were marketed to faster, cheaper, better TV dinners. You don't have to do all the work. It's, you know, you're working really hard all day. Both parents. So now, okay, here's some meal. Here's a meal that's prepared for you. And, and not everyone that's in our, our generation is. Even great cooks really learned how to. How to cook. And we've lost our connection with the food. We've lost that connection with nature. And it's so vital. I mean, it's literally what we're built of. We're. We're eating the food and it becomes us and our kids, but we just get the faster thing, we get the cheaper thing. And companies don't care about your health. They really don't at all. It's not their job to. We shouldn't be mad at them for not caring about our health. It's our fault for letting them get this big and letting them put in whatever crap that they want to put in there without pushing back. I mean, we have so many chemicals in America that are not allowed anywhere else because of the grass rule to generally regard it as safe. They get to choose what goes in the food. They get to do the research and say, oh, yeah, we did some studies, it's safe. Because of course, a lot of companies are going to do research and say their product or their chemical is unsafe, whereas most other countries, you have to prove that it's safe. So like Europe, they have around 400 chemicals approved, but we have over 10,000. And you have to spend a lot of time to get something out of food. And that's, you know, a big part of Even when I was a part of recently was the whole Kellogg's protest and, and ties. We, we can't even get food dyes out of our food here that have no nutritional value whatsoever. With a ton of research that shows that they're harmful. And yet the companies who make the food in this country, who sell it all over the world don't use these ingredients in other places. But you're using it.

They're already proven to be dangerous in other countries. Right. Which goes to show walking down that aisle that I went down, it's a for profit aisle. They have no interest in the health of my kids or how they're going to grow. They're more interested in getting my child addicted to those foods so that we go back as parents and we buy more of them.

Right? That is their CEO's job. That's their company's job. They need to make more money this quarter than last quarter. That's how a business works. There's nothing wrong with that. That's how capitalism works. But you have to understand that that doesn't work for your health. They're not here to care about your health. Unless we put standards and regulations on the companies and unless people decide they're not going to purchase products unless they meet a certain standard, then they're going to do whatever they can do to make the products cheaper and more addictive. And nothing has resonated more with me than when, when Cali Means was talking about how I didn't know this, but it makes perfect sense that the, the cigarette companies bought food companies. Right. And, and that just hit home like, okay, that makes perfect sense that all of these scientists when, when cigarettes were kind of on the decrease, they had to put them somewhere. And what did they do? They went to the food companies and they started making them more addictive. And that's where we are today. That makes perfect sense. And we have to realize that we're marketed addictive food. That's not, there's very little if not no nutritional value to a lot of it. And 60, 70% of the calories that kids are eating are from these ultra processed foods. Some kids don't ever eat a vegetable or a fruit on any given day. How do you expect them to be healthy when that's what they're taking into their bodies? They're getting calories, but they're not good calories enough from real food.

No, let's call it what it is. Those are ultra processed, hyper palatable, addictive, non nutritional foods. That's exactly what they Are.

Yeah, they're.

They're chemicals and they're changing the palate of your child. My. My kids. Oh my gosh. I put up a video a long time ago of my daughter. We went into a grocery store. She saw the beautiful princesses on the front of the goldfish box, right Instantly. Mommy, can I please have these? And I picked them up and I looked at the back for me. I try not to like instill this danger around food, but helping them to understand. Like, I work with people who are getting very sick from consuming these foods and have to get them off. But like the marketing is, is so intense. Schools don't understand. I got hate mail after posting about goldfish being toxic for your kids. Parents don't understand. And they got really, really angry because they believe that these foods should be fine. Our kids can tolerate it, our kids can handle it. That might be true, but it's that combined with the Doritos, combined with the processed cereals, combined with the non organic fat free milk that they're getting at schools, combined with the non organic fruit that they're getting at schools and coffee cake that they're getting at school.

Okay, make a point. Because I think it's really important that first of all, I mean, I get a lot of hate messages too, and that's fine. People can keep sending you messages. Yeah, it's not just you, but one of the big things. And I don't know if you hear this often, but I hear it is, oh, you know, I ate this when I was little. It's fine. But, but I think a really important thing to understand is just because the product has the same name doesn't mean it's the same thing. So many of these products had very different ingredients. 20, 30, 50 years ago, you look at Gatorade, didn't have, oh yeah, artificial dyes. Yeah, you look even McDonald's. Right, even McDonald's. When it was first open, it was real meat and there weren't all sorts of ingredients, they weren't frying their fries and all sorts of different things. It's a completely different product than it is now. It probably still wasn't super healthy back then either, but it was probably a lot more reasonable than it is today. And that's what's going on with a lot of these products. They have continued to make them more hyper palatable. They've continued to try to decrease their cost by putting in more chemicals as opposed to real food. And you see that very clearly with the Kellogg's and the Fruit Loops, for example. You look at the other countries, and they might have just a couple of ingredients versus a long list of ingredients here. And you're like, oh, I ate Froot Loops when I was younger, but it's a different Froot Loops. So, you know, it just adds up all of these chemicals, and we have no idea what. What a lot of these things are doing to us. And I don't know why people continue to defend this crap. Right? Okay. It's true. A lot of this stuff doesn't have a ton of research to show that it's bad for you, because who's doing that research? But if you just use your common sense, of course a bunch of chemicals are not good for you, right? They might not be extraordinarily bad for you, but. But they're not good for you. And when you just continue to add up this chemical and another chemical and a little glyphosate, you know, and a little bit of phthalates and a little bit of metals, and it adds up to becoming a problem for everybody. And that's what I think is going on right now. And that's why we have this chronic disease epidemic, because all of these little exposures are getting to the point where it's too much for most kids, for most adults. And at some point, you fall off the cliff and it expresses itself in some way in your body, whether it's an autoimmune condition or whether it's autism or mental health concern or asthma or whatever, it expresses itself different in different people based on their genetics or based on whatever you're exposed to. And that's what we're seeing. So people want to defend, I don't know, whatever chemical red 40, fine, you can go ahead and defend that. But you should be thinking about what people did forever. And all of a sudden these things have showed up. What benefit is it to defend the chemicals as opposed to pushing the companies to use more real ingredients? More ingredients. You actually know what they are that you know where they're from. It's so backwards.

Food addiction runs deep, right? So I'm an 80s baby. Cheerios, hamburger Helper, frozen dinners, like I remember Captain Crunch, all. They certainly did not have the same ingredients. But here's one blessing that I think that I had growing up. My mom. My dad's Indian, my mom's Danish. So my mom was obviously interested in the things that would save her some time, right? So the easy foods that she could prepare, the hamburger, Hamburger Helpers and stuff like that. But every night, she would prepare traditional Indian dishes. For my dad. So she was cooking every single night healthy foods made with olive oil and a ton of vegetables from the earth. And I think that that was really a saving grace. So for a lot of people, they need to understand that these factory made foods, food scientists are hired to make them addictive. Right? And the sugar that we're eating in these foods trigger the same reward centers in our brain. So we're convinced we're almost literally being poisoned into believing that they're good for us because we feel physiologically that we need to have them. Right. But something that I always like to remind parents of is what happened, what has happened from the day that your baby was born, where you were reading every single ingredient label, where you were so conscious of all the chemicals in your home. Like did they get, do they get to a certain age where they just graduate and that doesn't matter anymore? Right.

Or for yourself.

Or for yourself. Exactly, yeah. And why, why do we let that go? It's accumulation. It's accumulation of all these toxins and it's not like they eventually become okay. But I think it's because we've really normalized it.

Well, I think it's because we've normalized it and I think it's because we don't prioritize our health. We take it for granted a little bit, but we just don't prioritize it. We have been, I think, just trained throughout our lives as we grew up that there's a ladder that you need to climb and we need to worry about money and we need to worry about success. And we focus so much of our efforts on better, faster, cheaper, you know, those kinds of things as opposed to health. And health has to come back into that equation. Once you put inside an equation, for every decision that you make, you start moving in a different direction. But that has to be part of the things you think about. And the pushback is always, oh, well, it costs more or oh, I just don't have the time to do it. It takes more time. Both those things might be true. I mean, it's not always more expensive, but it certainly can be. It doesn't always take more time, but usually it does. But that's a part of health. It takes more time to cook a meal than have something that's ready made. But if you don't prioritize that, then you're gonna get the ready made food and that's fine. If that's what you wanna do, and sometimes you need to do that, that's okay. But if cooking and health isn't a part of your decision making process, then of course your health is gonna veer into a different direction. I mean, it wasn't something you had to do before, I think, but it is absolutely something we have to do now because we are bombarded with chemicals all of the time. We have completely moved our lifestyle away from anything that would ever have been considered healthy in the past. And then, you know, you add to it, we're inside more, we're on screens all the time. We don't move. You look at the, the blue zones all over the world and what, what do they do? They're not going to the gym every day. They're just cooking and farming. You know, you look at the grandmothers that are 95 years old and they're way healthier looking than most, most people. You see they have bigger muscles than I have. And it's not because they're out there going to the gym. It's because they're like rolling in the kitchen all day, working super hard to prepare a meal for their entire family of 20 people. And they're all living to 105. And they're not doing anything magical. They're just moving. We don't, we don't do that anymore. And we don't live out in nature. We're extremely, we're extremely separated from what our genetics were built for. We've changed so much over a hundred years and I don't think we've caught up to that yet.

So this is a really refreshing approach. Okay, So I can hear people listening. I don't have time. I'm so stressed. I'm so busy. We're busier than we have ever been before. Myself included. Right. But what you just said, it's almost like switching the perspective. The values in the western world are completely messed up.

Right.

The fact that we're prioritizing screen time over time with our kids or preparing real food for the sake of our health and our longevity is completely messed up. Right? And you're right, other countries in the world are still, are still doing this. And I think that what could inspire parents from that perspective is what are you modeling for your children? Are we modeling that being busy all the time and not prioritizing our health and what we're consuming, what we're putting into our bodies is important. And if they're, if they're witnessing this, they're going to do the same thing as an adult. Right? I always say, going back to my parents, they didn't know that they were imprinting health and wellness values into my life. But, you know, after going back to the ashram, I know, you know, a bit of my story. Like, I saw firsthand the power of food and being still and being in nature and living with community and smelling food for a few hours while it was cooking. Right. And, like, the benefit of that and just how sacred of an act eating actually is for our constitution. I could care. You know, my 20s and 30s, I'd throw that out the window completely until I got sick and went back to it. That's the foundation for this episode. Like, nothing matters when you're sick.

Right?

When your child gets sick, nothing matters. All you're gonna do is wish that you could have gone back in time to make some really simple changes.

Right? Right. And that is such a profound point, because we don't think about these things for the most part until we get sick or until our kids get sick. And. And if you mention anything about money or you mention anything about time, people always want to push back and say, oh, it's ableist. Oh, you know, it's more expensive to eat this way. Oh, I'm so busy. I get it. That's true. Everybody's busy. We're all busy. I understand. You have to do whatever you can do within your means and whatever is reasonable for you. I totally get that. But that's still just an excuse, because at the end of the day, if you want to be healthy, if you want your kids to be healthy, this is the direction that we're going, and it's about what you're prioritizing. You can move out to the mountains if you want to. I'm not saying that you can. You should do that. But people that get sick, they do. They move out of the city, they change up their diet. I mean, we all know intuitively that we feel a lot better when we go on vacation, right? You go on vacation somewhere, you eat different food, you. You feel way better. You're in the beach, you put your feet in the sand, you feel great. You're sitting by the ocean. Like, that's the way you're supposed to feel all the time. We don't feel that way because we live the way that we do in modern Western society, live in a city. But that's not really how you're supposed to be. And that doesn't mean you have to change everything. But if you don't start at least thinking about some of these things, then we should expect to be sick with a chronic disease. I mean, those are what the numbers are. And my goal is really to not to scare people. It's just to inform people this is the direction that we're going. And it doesn't have to be that way. I work with so many families, and even for myself, that you just make some small changes. You don't have to move to the mountains to be healthy, but you can think about what you purchase. You can prioritize your food, you can move more, you can oftentimes decrease a little bit of your work and spend more time with your family or find that balance a little bit more within whatever is reasonable for you. And for most people, that's going to be fine. Because if you just go back 20 years, most of these conditions were pretty minimal compared to where they are today. And that's going to be more than enough for your family. And in my office, I don't see that much chronic disease. Like, it's vastly different than when I used to work in the hospital. And that was still a while ago. And not because I'm some magical doctor doing anything magical. It's because the families that are there prioritize health to some degree. That's why they came. And so they most likely eat a little bit more healthy, move a little bit more. Just think about these things. And I rarely have to give an antibiotic. I rarely have to diagnose any sort of chronic condition. I rarely have to send to a patient to hospital. Not zero, but it's way lower than the numbers are. I mean, I really almost never see most of these things. I almost have zero kids that have obesity. In the practice, there's, you know, a few kids that are overweight, but not many. Not when you talk about, like 50% of kids are overweight. It's really small.

It's so incredible. I work with people who, they're taking their kids to the pediatrician. This one client last week, their daughter was given four different rounds of antibiotics to deal with an ear, nose and throat thing. Back to back to back to back to back. Like, can you imagine as a child what that does to you? Right? So I'm just, I'm calling that out because it's such a big deal. Like, I really hope you take that in. That's such a big deal that you're able to do this for people. I think that we should hover like food, I think you and I can both agree, is one of the biggest contributors to this, this chronic illness that's happening. And in the west, especially here in la, this is like the Mecca of like, oh, but it's the healthier option of the healthy food. Right. You know, we can go to certain bars and protein bars and kids snacks and stuff like that. And it's, it's got all the labels on the front, right? Like the healthy whole grain or gluten free or low sugar or something. But flip the back around and it's got all those chemicals that we talked about. The difference that I think we need to understand between our society and going abroad. This past summer we went to the coast of Turkey and I packed some snacks that I knew my kids would love, but we ran out of them naturally, which I really loved. And all of a sudden for two and a half weeks there was no snacks. There was nowhere to buy snacks. Like it wasn't something that was normalized there. You couldn't go into a grocery store and there's the kids snack area. Right. So what did my kids do? They ate real food, they tried new foods. Their palate expanded to trying new foods and they were open to trying new foods. And I think that parents are often fearful if I don't have that, then they're not going to eat anything. They're not going to eat anything. At school, if a child is hungry, they will eventually eat what's in front of them, right?

Yeah. No, I've never known any kid to starve. So it's a big fear of parents because they say, oh, my kid won't eat anything. They're worried about that, which is reasonable thing to worry as a parent. But, but you have to get over that hump. If you're giving your kids that hyper palatable crappy food that gives them that energy hit and the brain stimulation, then that's what they're going to want. And you have to get them past that by getting rid of that food or finishing it off and not buying anymore. And then yeah, the first couple of days they're not gonna be happy about it because they're detoxing and they were addicted to it basically. And then you're now coming off of a drug. So they're not going to be happy for a couple of days. And then usually within a week or two weeks or a couple weeks, they'll eat the other food. They'll, they'll, they'll eat it. And it's not about giving them food that they don't want or they won't enjoy. It's about finding healthier versions of the things that they will eat. And you see very clearly, and I'm serious in this a million times, once you get people off of the crap. They no longer want it. Yeah, you don't realize how it's making you feel until you get away from it for a little bit and then you eat it again and you're like, oh, that makes me feel terrible. And it really, really hit home for me when I watch my. He's now five, but maybe three or four year old at a birthday party because we eat pretty healthy at home. But he went to a birthday party and this was a friend who was also very health conscious too. But of course they had cake and you know, we, we. I'm not an all or none person. So he had a couple of bites of the cake, which is still fairly healthy, not a terrible one. And he was completely different for the whole rest of the day in terms of his, his behavior. And nothing hits home harder than when you see your kid acting that differently from just a couple of bites of not even that bad a piece of cake. And if that's how it makes him act, how is it making all of the other kids act when they eat that kind of stuff and much worse stuff every day on, all the time, consistently? We don't get to see it because you only see what, what you know. But when you get them off of that and you realize how different they are, you. You will very clearly see that a lot of what we're witnessing with behavioral issues and issues with focus, and a lot of it is just food related. It's not all food related, but certainly a big portion of it is. And if we just change the food, we would have a massive difference in chronic conditions.

Absolutely. Something that's really helped me with my son especially is I get him to notice his bowel movements. Like the quality of his bowel movements. He will now notice, oh, mom, I had birthday cake or I had Doritos. And he will see the quality of his bowel movements change or he might get a bit of a stomachache. So, like, get them really involved. Looking at their poop is something that they should be doing every single day too, so that they understand how their body is functioning. Right?

Yeah, that, that's the key. Right? You're. You're not trying to force your kids to eat something. You're trying to teach them how to recognize what is going on in their body and why they are eating, you know, air quotes healthier because you want them to feel good. And if they eat X, Y or Z and then they get sick, that they can recognize, okay, this made me feel bad. This gave me a stomachache. And Maybe I'm not gonna make that choice when I'm an adult. That's what we're trying to teach them. We're not trying to force them to not eat Doritos. We're trying to teach them why eating Doritos is not good for them and why it will make them feel bad. And that doesn't mean you couldn't ever have a Dorito in your life again. It just means that if we're eating these kinds of things all of the time, it's the little, little things that add up. Every little exposure adds up. And what is in most of these products isn't food. It's chemicals, toxins. It's really poison, some of it. And we need to get away from it and get away from it being okay. Again, not to shame people that are eating it, but just to recognize that this is very bad for us. The food that we're eating is extremely not okay at this point. And we have to do something about it. And I'm really excited to see that for the first time in a long time. It's really been amazing that there is such a momentum this year towards health. It's, you know, it's not a political thing, but it somehow got to become part of the politics. But I guess it's good that it became part of the politics to some degree, is there is discussion about kids health for the first time ever. It's a major issue that people are talking about, and momentum is starting to go in that direction. And I think next year it will become even more of a big issue, because for whatever reason, it became a part of the election. And then people started to notice, like, oh, yeah, this is not good. You know, it's not political. It's like, the kids are not healthy. Let's do something about it.

This is what you and I do. So obviously it's front and center for us. But a lot of people, I think, genuinely just did not know. If they saw that it was available at their superstore, then they thought it was safe to consume. And it's not. So, like, to own in on this. Look at the back of the ingredient labels. If there's an ingredient that is in it that you don't understand, check. Chances are you should not consume it and.

And be okay as a parent to start saying no. Like, we have to take parenting back.

Absolutely.

You have to be okay with it. Like, it's okay to not give your kid Oreos just because they want it. Like, you have to get okay with this is not okay. For your health. This is not good for you. We're not buying this anymore. At home, if you go to a party and you have a bite, okay, fine. You know, you do what you got to do. I don't. I don't think that's a good thing. But, you know, but at home, we are not eating this anymore. I'm modeling this. I'm not buying it anymore. We're finishing off what we have, and that's it. We're going to buy real food. We're going to more. You're going to cook with, you're going to come with. We're going to pick other snacks that you like, but that are not. That have better ingredients. You're going to read the labels with me, and that's how it's going to be. I want you to be healthy. And a part of being a parent is being a parent. Like, you're not always their friend. You have to actually parent. You have to teach them these things, protect them.

Yeah, yeah, that's such a great point. I really want to just emphasize, like, the key takeaways that you mentioned. So getting them involved, getting them to look at the ingredient levels, but also getting them involved, involved in, in cooking at home. My kids, if they're in the kitchen, if they're cutting, chopping, or cooking something, they're more likely to want to try it, especially if it's a new food. Right. So get them involved. They need to know how to cook for themselves in the future. And if you're spending the bulk of your money on these processed foods, I promise you, and I'm sure you agree, if you're spending your time in the outer perimeter of the store with where more of the whole foods are or in the produce section, you'll be saving money long term by focusing on those foods than the processed foods.

Definitely. And there are. So if you live in a city, a big city for the most part now, we're lucky. Like, there are farmers markets, there are places you can go or even you can get to know a farm and buy a box and they ship it right to your home. You know, if you're busy, like, there are a lot of options now with, you know, not everything's good about the Internet, but there are some great things where you can search out and get a farm box from Idaho. You know, you can get it delivered to your door so you can get fresh products. And even at the grocery store, you have to keep in mind that stuff's been shipped all over the world. It's Been picked somewhere else. So the more that you can get things that are fresh and local, the better. Or at least when it was just more recently picked. So the more that you can get to know your food, the better it's going to be. And just like you said, get kids involved in. Your kid might be a picky eater, maybe they don't love apples, but if you take them to the farmer's market where they have 15 different kind of apples and they can try all 15, maybe they're gonna find one that they like. And then, oh, all of a sudden, now your kid likes apples. And when it's plum season, oh, there's 15 different kinds of plums. Try them. Pick the one they actually like. They've already tried it. And then they're gonna. When you go home, they're like, that's the one you liked. Okay, I guess I'll eat it.

What was that stat? You have to put a kid, you have to put a new food in front of a child like 10 to 15 times before they.

10 to 15? Sometimes it's over 100. But usually if you keep putting in front of them, they will eat it. But it's not always the first time. So again, that's where parenting comes in. Like, I know this is good for you. We're going to keep trying this. Take a bite. Don't force them to eat food they don't like. And recognize that maybe you're not a good cook, too. Like, this is important stuff. Like, we have to just recognize, like, maybe you never learned how to cook. So maybe you take some cooking classes, maybe you watch some online videos. Like, there are so many ways to become better at doing this. And it just wasn't something maybe we all prioritized. It certainly wasn't something that I prioritized when I was younger. And you just. I think it's something we have to bring back as a value that we have. Cooking and food are a big part of our life, and it used to be. And for some families it is, but for a lot of families, it is not anymore. I mean, you think about what you. What you think about from 50 years ago, like, big family parties and everybody coming over and, I don't know, Sunday brunches or whatever, whatever it was. And that, that isn't the case as much anymore. And I think we need to bring that back. That, that reverence for food, the. The love of food and the connection to where it comes from. And kids don't know that. They just go to the grocery store. It just Shows up at their house and it's wrapped in plastic and that's what food is.

I love that song so much. There's like love and energy that goes into food. Like it's an act that brings people together. Right. Such a special act for your family. One little tip that has really been fun in our house. I'm finding once a month we're kind of introducing a new trend. So my husband got really into tagine pots, so we're doing that for a month. And then we got really into banana bread and then we got into dal. So even if it's one new recipe a month that becomes your thing, own it. By the end of the year, you're gonna have a repertoire of like 12 new recipes that you can just start using. Right. And I know we're hovering on nutrition just because I know it's such a pain point for parents, but let's just say, you know, what are the top three things? If you're guiding parents to removing key ingredients, what would you say those three things are?

I would say added sugars is a big one. Trying to remove the pesticides. So looking for things that are organic or at least known to not be sprayed in glyphosate or other chemicals. And what would the thermometer, I think the throne just be just reading labels in general. So real ingredients.

Yeah. And should we have our own glyphosate?

Sure.

Yeah. So glyphosate Dr. Zach Bush has talked about the onset of glyphosate and the rise of issues like ADD and ADD amongst, amongst children. Glyphosate. Now we know they're sprayed on all these massive commodity crops, oats, especially for kids, which are always targeted towards kids. There's lots of oat based products out there too, and they're not glyphosate free oats. So have you ever seen a case where you're recommending glyphosate free products or is it a focus of yours in your practice?

We definitely talk about it. I think it should be a focus of everyone. I mean, I think that we know how serious it is for our health and these chemicals and pesticides really can be. And we're lucky that at least for this chemical there's been a lot of media around it and there's been a lot of discussion, but it's just so pervasively used and I imagine as it starts to be decreased in its use, they'll just replace it with something else. That's probably similar. But I, I think at least it's good that we have had discussion around these chemicals and pesticides because we don't think about it all. But of course it's not good for you. I mean these are things that are meant to kill life, right? They're meant to kill the pests that go on food. And then they engineered the food to not be killed by the pesticide or the herbicide and then we eat it. So it's good in the sense that we get bigger yields. I mean that's why they do it. But at what cost? Then we're eating food that we were never supposed to eat because it's been sprayed in these chemicals and we're getting it so consistently. And of course it affects our insides, it affects our microbiome, it affects our gut, it's an ecosystem. And if you're putting in something that's meant to kill like an antibiotic, then then what do you expect to happen? I mean it's going to have an effect on us. And that's what we're seeing. We have this mass produced economy and we've moved so far away from small and local that it's a disaster and we have to go back that we have to move back to small and local. And again, the counterpoint that always people says, well you know, if we were to try to feed everybody locally, there wouldn't be enough food. So we need these massive, this mass production. And that's true to a degree in the short term, right? You can't just switch tomorrow to just everybody eating from a local farm. But you can transition over the next 20 years back to prioritizing that. And instead of subsidizing corn and wheat and soy and these factory mass produced factory farms, we can start to promote major subsidies for local farms and we can, you can start to build gardens everywhere. You can start to build more local farms. You can start to make sure that farmers markets pop up. I mean if you incentivize these things and make it cheaper, then people will start to do it, there'll be more farms pop up and then, you know, instead of 1%, let's say of food for coming from these places, you have 5%. And then instead of.

It will grow.

Yeah, it'll grow. And then, and if you're eating food even if 10% is locally grown, great, so that's better than before. And now you're getting more nutrients, more food that was just picked, more food that you know where it came from and that can start to grow and we can start to increase the percentage of local food and decrease the mass production. And we can do that over 10, 20, 30 years. It doesn't have to be tomorrow. It doesn't have to be like, oh, we're all going to eat local food. That's not realistic. In the short term, you can do that as a family. You can find places, but not everybody can. So. But we can prioritize it.

There are ways. And it's so much more than just the here and the now. It's about literally our children and our grandchildren.

Right. It's the long term. It's not about tomorrow. It's about we want to change the trajectory so they can be healthier, so they can live longer. The life expectancy is going, was going back down. Do we want that or do we want it to go up again? And if we want that to happen, then we have to think long term. And unfortunately politics in the most part doesn't think long term because they think in their term. But we have to get away from focusing on the big corporations and focus back on health and, and hopefully there's such a spotlight on this now that people will start to recognize, you know what, these big companies, they have all the money. They know how to market, they know how to lobby, they know how to do all these things. We need to get people that are outside that system to have a broader look. And that doesn't mean we're going to get rid of all these companies. It just means let's find some middle ground where they can still make their billions, but maybe make a little bit, you know, fewer billions a little bit and make a little better products and maybe we can transition some of that money to some of these other, these other places. Like there's this big discussion now on giving all the kids weight loss drugs. Right. I mean, that's a big thing that they're talking about potentially covering it. And for the money you could cover these drugs, you could give better food, you could give gym memberships, you could, you could cover a lot of things. It's very short sighted and we have to think longer term. Yeah.

And especially everything that we're learning about the microbiome for kids. Right. And how the health of your gut is associated with weight gain and energy and mood. Right. Where's the education on that?

There's nothing.

There's nothing. That was a really great analogy. So if you are eating a food product that is sprayed with something that is designed to kill bacteria and bugs, you're going to consume that product, it's going to do the exact same thing. In your body and kill the exact same bacteria and bugs that are designed to keep you healthy.

Of course it will. I mean, these are things that are so obvious. If you just step back and you think in a common sense way, but nothing's common sense anymore because we've been told that it's not dangerous. I mean, if you mention. If any influencer out there mentions anything like, oh, these chemicals are toxic or there's a problem, then the bigger you are, the more these companies are like, all right, we need to stop that. We need to shut it down. Let's make sure that we say that there. There's no research to show it there. There may not be research to show that it's dangerous because it doesn't exist, because nobody's doing it. That doesn't mean it's not dangerous. You know that it's dangerous. We know that eating a real food is better than eating a bunch of chemicals. It doesn't mean that those chemicals are extraordinarily unhealthy, but they're obviously more unhealthy than eating an apple. Like, we don't need a study to show that, you know that. We all know this.

I'm asked almost daily, mona, does organic really matter? Like, come on, organic's gonna change. And I just say, you know what? Like, yes, the organic policy is gonna change in the future. But if you were to imagine going to a farm and you saw somebody in a big hazmat suit going and spraying all these chemicals, wearing a mask, you know, gloves on because you couldn't touch how harmful these chemicals are, Would you ever take your child or yourself even, and pick off that strawberry from the vine and put it directly into your mouth?

No.

Never. Right? It's no different than if that's happening without you seeing it and then it arriving days later in the grocery store. We just have to ask more questions and understand where our food comes from. So thank you for shedding that light. Okay, so shifting gears. Stress and mental health. Stress and mental health are huge concerns for families, especially living in today's world. What was the stat? The stat was 13% of children age 3 to 17 have diagnosed mental issue, mental health issue. And these numbers are continuing to go up. Anxiety related disorders amongst adults. But also now children are on the rise. Why isn't there an urgent need for intervention amongst youth for this?

I think there is an urgent need, but it goes back to, I think, a lot of what we're talking about before. There's so many issues going on right now, and a lot of these issues are more silent. Like things with mental health, people don't want to talk about it. Or again, it's just there are so many issues that it's really hard to focus on any one issue. And everything just keeps continuing to skyrocket, and especially when we're talking about kids and teens. Just like you said, the mental health rates are terrible. I mean, we've seen it. We went through Covid. I mean, it got worse. It was already bad that. That threw gasoline on a fire. That was already there. And now we have social media and we have the Internet, and that's not helping in any way either. And so we just have all of these factors coming together, and it's. It's no easy task to kind of peel back those layers and focus on those things, because we can't even focus on the easy things. Mental health is a very complex, difficult topic, you know, and I think that we're not even getting the easy stuff right, so we have to start peeling that back. And again, I think it comes to the family level, where we just have to recognize that kids. Mental health is not the best. And so focusing a little bit on that too, making sure we're checking in with our kids, trying to minimize the screen times, and just recognizing some of the things that we do have some control over that can be really helpful.

Yeah. And maybe before we get to lifestyle, do you see a lot of kids with digestive issues?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So why don't we shine a light then on the connection between digestive issues and things like stress and anxiety?

Yeah. I mean, there. I do think we have a pretty good understanding at this point. We're still at the beginning of understanding everything, but we understand the brain and the gut are connected. I think anybody who has eaten any sort of sugary food, you know how it makes you feel, it changes how your mood. And so we are really starting to understand that what we eat matters. For our health and our mental health, it's all connected, and it goes back to everything we talked about before. If you're not eating healthy, it affects your brain. It clouds your brain, changes the way that you are perceiving the world. And unless we make those connections, unless we clean up our diet, then our mental health is just one part of how it's affecting our. Our bodies. And I know what I mean. If I don't eat healthy, I don't feel great. If you don't eat healthy, like, you know, you're sluggish, you don't want to do anything. The rest of the day. So how are you supposed to focus in school when you just had a bag of chips and you know, you're wired and then you're. You're down? It's. It's pretty obvious that these things matter, but they're all connected, and that's where it just goes back to the foundations. It's not overly complicated where to start. It's a big problem, but from a family level, it's not a big problem. You just get back to the basics. You focus on cleaning up your diet and moving more. And we didn't talk about exercise too much today, but that's the other thing. I mean, we know that for depression, for anxiety, almost in every study, exercise beats out medications, right? It always beats it out. Doesn't mean that a medication can't be useful. It doesn't mean that it can't save your life. Of course it can in the short term, but nobody should be getting a prescription for antidepressant without a prescription for exercise, too. You need to have both. I mean, we know that it works better, and of course it does. You need to move. That's what helps your brain function.

Isn't it wild that PE isn't part of the curriculum at every school? You and I both grew up in Toronto, and it was just like it was part of every day. It was guaranteed that we were going to be moving our bodies some capacity for an hour. And now my kids have PE every second day.

Yeah. I mean, realistically, that everything we do at school is backwards. Right. Especially for young kids.

We live in California where there'd be access to go outside every day. Right.

A lot of your day should be movement. Right. Kids are not. We're not built to sit in a classroom, especially not little kids. They should be moving almost the whole day. We should be increasing physical activity. We should be increasing recess. We should be decreasing the learning time because they need to move. And then they can be more effective when they are learning. But we're going in the opposite direction. We put crappy food in school, make them sit. You know, they're on their screens, they're stressed out, they're getting more and more homework. All the things that are not beneficial long term because we focus so much on education in terms of climbing that ladder again, like, that's where we have moved things to. It's like, oh, you got to do more things, got to do more extracurriculars. You got to do more homework. And. And while learning is good. Right. I mean, I'm not against reading or Academics or learning. But we've devalued health. And you want your kids to learn in school, they need to also be healthy. And look at what's going on with our academics. I mean, they're the worst they've ever been on most, you know, most, most scales. We're one of the worst in the world for a lot of these things. And so what we're doing isn't working. It's not working. I mean, modern medicine isn't working for our health. We're less healthy than we've ever been. We're not doing better in terms of academics, we're not doing better in terms of our health. So we have to be humble that we don't need more of the thing that's not working. We need to step back and re examine it and say, okay, what's working? What's not working? What can we change so that way we can move forward for our kids like this is for them. Not everybody agrees on the exact direction you should go, but we should agree that we should care about their health and we should be open to talking about everything. And every sort of medical intervention that we're doing should be on the table in terms of things that we're willing to discuss or willing to change or the way that our academics are set up needs to be rethought because we've moved in this direction and I think a lot of it is because of corporations and money.

Yeah.

And we have to get back to the actual kids, what matters for them.

I think we forget too that the mind of a child and their ability to use their imagination and how that could serve their health. And when we're getting them outside into nature. Do you ever prescribe getting to parks?

I mean, I always talk about it with families. Like, you know, I think one of the big, one of the big things that we know about our health is vitamin D is so important. Right. We know this. Almost every disease is associated with low vitamin D. Almost anybody that you test for vitamin D, it's low even in a place like California because nobody's outside enough anymore. And so, yeah, getting onto nature is a key factor. But we can also look at the data that we have. We stick kids in school so early, they're inside all day. But look around the world at where the kids do best academically. It's in the countries where they don't even start real school till like 7 or 8 years old because they're, they're just playing all day. And how much does a four year old really need to learn. I mean, it's. Obviously can teach them a little bit, that's fine. But what they actually need to learn is how to run around, how to play, how to be social. Like, getting. That's what they really will get the most value from. And also in terms of their health, well, you're touching the dirt. You're outside, you're playing, you're getting vitamin D. As opposed to our kids now, where they're inside all day, they get sick every other day. You know, all the families that their kids are in daycare, they're. They're literally sick half the time. You know, it's not abnormal for a kid to have five to 10 viruses in a year. And that. That can't be great. It just. That's not. That shouldn't be the way that it is. I mean, I guess it's, you know, it's good. Your immune system is. Is dealing with these things. But I don't think it's supposed to be that way. I mean, you're supposed to get sick and get better. That's what our immune system is for. But I think if they were outside, they would be sick a lot less. And we're depleting their immune systems and then shoving them in a room with a bunch of kids. And that's probably the opposite of what they need when they're four, with fluorescent.

Light, with no fresh air.

Right. Chemicals sprayed on everything.

I seek opportunities for my kids to get dirty. I remember coming home, I would always have dirt under my nails or mud all over my clothes, and that just doesn't happen with our kids. So these are some powerful lifestyle changes then. Are there other key lifestyle changes that you would recommend in terms of preventing illness or disease?

Well, when we talked about food, we talked about exercise. I think sleep is very important.

Like a screen time.

Yeah, yeah. Well, screen time, too. So. So those are. Those are connected. But I think certainly for the older kids, getting off screens early is super important. Not. Not to be stressed about screens. I don't think screens inherently are bad for you. It's what we're not doing that's the problem. Right. Our teens are on screens for seven to nine hours a day on average. So what are we not doing? We're not getting outside, we're not moving, we're not exercising. We're not socializing. We're stressed out about what we're reading. I mean, these are the things that are happening when you're on for seven to nine hours. So I think prioritizing family time and getting off of screens is really, really important, especially as kids are getting older. If you're on. If your kid's watching a movie on a plane, that's not the end of the world for sure. But you have to focus on minimizing that and maximizing time together, I think.

So if people want to know, okay, like, just tell me, how many hours a day or a week would you.

Say is a guideline as minimal as possible? I think. I think that's the reasonable number, but not zero. Like, it's fine. Screens are not going anywhere. And it also depends on the kid. Right. Because I think as they're getting older, we're talking about screen times for doing homework. That's not where I think it's a big issue. It's screen time for social media. It's screen time for watching TV and movies. And we all watched TV and movies when we were growing up. I don't think that was a big problem. And I think that's okay, especially if it means, okay, you're gonna watch a cartoon for half an hour. There are a lot of programs that are educational that you can learn things. We just have to recognize that you don't learn as well from a screen as you do from a person that we know. Like, you can learn from Sesame Street. There's actually a lot of research back from Sesame street in the day where you actually learn a lot from something like that. But you don't learn as well to read from a show as you do from a person. So you have to recognize you can't plop them in front of a screen to teach them it's better to be active. But that doesn't mean that there's no value to being on a screen. Or instead of having, you know, if you need five minutes to go to the bathroom or to cook a meal, that that can be a reasonable time to de. Stress the family and let them watch something educational. That is not my issue. I think it's putting them there instead of parenting or putting them there instead of getting them to play when they're.

Not doing those foundational things.

Correct.

That's when it becomes an issue. Yeah. Also, what they're watching, I think really, really matters. And is it an addiction? Like, is your child having a tantrum? When you're pulling these screens away from them, then chances are it's probably time to take a break.

Right, Exactly.

You emphasize the importance of really getting to the root cause. Right. This is something that you and I talk a lot about. So how and why is it important to work with a practitioner who helps you get to the root cause as opposed to treating the symptom. Because as you and I, many parents themselves and their children are getting instant prescriptions for medication without understanding where it comes from. And this is where I will always have, you know, a precursor of, like, God bless medications when we need them. Right. But if it's just throwing a band aid onto the problem and not knowing what the source is, then it's defeating the purpose. You're not doing anything to serve your child's health in the future.

Right. The key is to really think about why. Right. Why is something going on? There are many acute illnesses where a medication is completely appropriate because you have a pneumonia, you know, you could die 100 years ago, you get an antibiotic, and that can save your life. So that, to me, is not really the issue. It's either throwing a medication when you don't even ask any questions, or because you're like, you know, it could be. It could be something. So let's just take an antibiotic just in case. But especially when things become more chronic, when something's been going on for a while, if you just give a medication without thinking about the root cause, then you're not actually helping them. You're not actually treating them. I mean, the classic story is somebody who comes in the office and says, my bum hurts. And you give them Tylenol for the pain, and then they come back a couple days later, it still hurts. And then you actually look and you realize there's a tack in their bottom. Right? It's like if you don't look for the actual problem, you can't just give a medication to get them better. Right. You have to actually look for the reason behind it. And, you know, when it comes to kids, it's like a rash. Okay, well, is a steroid ever appropriate for a rash? Maybe sometimes. But if a rash is coming back for months and you just keep giving medications but you don't realize they're allergic to gluten, or there's something in their environment that's being sprayed that's causing an irritation, then you're not actually helping get to the root cause of what's going on. You're just giving them medication, which ultimately puts a band aid on the symptoms, but doesn't treat anything and just keeps making the problem worse. So that is root cause medicine. It's just thinking, thinking why? Spending time. And it's hard in modern medicine. There's only so much time. But at least if you work With a practitioner that thinks in that way, then hopefully, as something becomes more chronic, you start to think in that way. But also as a parent, you can also think in that way. Most of the. I have found over the years that the vast majority of the time, it's empowering parents to think in that way that actually figures it out, because I'm not there with you. If your kid's having, I don't know, a rash for. For something. I mean, we can. It's talking it through that helps parents. It's not actually finding their solution most of the time because they realize, okay, I need to think about why, and then they can start to pinpoint, okay, the rash got worse today. What did I do? What did we eat? Oh, we just went to the playground today. I've had parents that have. Oh, it's. It's the park when we go every time. Oh, they change schools. And the rash went away a couple of days later, maybe with something. They sprayed the school. Like, I can't. I can't know those things, but I can empower you to think about them so you can start to chart out, okay, it gets worse. What did I do? Because it could be a food, it could be a pet, it could be a chemical, could be something in it, could be your deterrent, it could be anything. So it's not always easy to figure out, but if a parent becomes a detective, they can usually figure it out.

And you're teaching your kids how to become a detective also. Right. Which is so important. That's parenting. And my heart goes out like, there's so many parents that I know who ADD or adhd, right? They're given a prescription for that. They notice an immediate improvement in the symptoms of their child. And a lot of those kids are still eating the Cheerios, the Z bars, the Goldfish crackers, the popsicles with dyes. So how do you balance those two together? I know ADD is like, it's such a hot topic, and there's more kids being diagnosed with adhd. So where do you start with those parents?

Well, I think the first issue is we're so quick to give medications. It's really quite simple at this point to say, my kid has a lot of trouble in school. They lack focus. Teacher says they lack focus. I think they have adhd. Can we get them on a medication? And you can go to a lot of places that will just do that. They'll just give you medication without doing anything further. And most doctors, again, are not equipped, not trained, or don't have the Time to go through some of these things. So as a parent, I think before putting my kid on a medication, if at all possible, I would work with somebody, even if it's outside of the medical system, a natural doctor, an ADHD specialist, somebody who would, would sit down with you for hours and go through what you're doing and try to change up some of those other things first and see if you can notice a difference. Because many families that do some of the symptoms or all of the symptoms improve to the point where they don't feel like they need a medication anymore. And that's great. If we can avoid getting a child on medication, wonderful. If they do need that medication, okay, that's fine too. Let's see what we can do to improve their lifestyle, to minimize the use of medication, to get them off the medication as fast as possible. There are certainly kids where the medication can be helpful and that's fine, but that should be the last resort. That should be the thing that we do. If everything else has been tried and they still need it, and sometimes it can be very beneficial for a child, that's okay. That's not what. We're not against medicine, but not every other kid should need an ADHD medication. 10% of kids shouldn't have ADHD. Like we're misdiagnosing that. We're over diagnosing it. Some people do have it and some people truly can benefit from some of these interventions. But we have to step back and say, are we misclassifying this? Are we classifying it too quickly? Are we giving a medication too quickly? And what else can we be doing? And why is this happening? And just like you can go back to the story with my, My own child, if your kid is eating crap all day, every day, then maybe their symptoms are just from the food. And maybe if you got rid of that food and you give them better food, they wouldn't actually have those symptoms anymore and you could save them a lifetime of medication. Why not try that first? Just try it. It might have nothing to do with that, but let's try the common things being common and so many families find a benefit. Ask any natural practitioner, all of them. They will all say, food number one for so many people, for almost everything. You change up your diet and most of the symptoms go away, if not all of the symptoms. Sometimes it's all of the symptoms. Sometimes they're 100% better. You lose your diagnosis just because you change up your lifestyle. It can happen. I've seen it before.

Medicating too many children and what a great concept, just having a doctor who will go through everything else with you first you. And leaving medication as the last resort if needed. Right. Do doctors get paid on writing scripts for ADHD medication?

No, you don't really get paid for prescriptions. You. You only get paid for visits for. For medicine. So not really. Most doctors are salaried anyway, so I don't think it's because of that. I think that's the tool in the toolbox. Right. It. It again, goes back to not demonizing doctors. It's. You are trained in pharmaceutical medicine. This is something you can offer, and it's something you can reasonably help your patient. So you're doing something to help your patient based on what you know or have the ability to do. I think if most. Let's just imagine a different world where every MD also had a. Another practitioner, a nutritionist or something in their office or, you know, coach of some sorts that worked on this. And you could say, all right, insurance is going to cover this. Before we do a medication, I want you to go through this program. It's absolutely free, two months long. Every day you're going to work with this, this other practitioner for an hour. They're going to go through everything that you do, and we're going to try to see if there's anything in your life that we can change to make it better. And if you still, at the end of those two months, have these symptoms and you feel like you need a medication, then we'll do it. If that was the reality for doctors, they would absolutely do it. It just doesn't exist because it's not paid for and it's not reality for the 10 patients they have to see every hour. They have to just move on to the next.

It has to be the future of healthcare, though.

It should be. It should be. I mean, I have the dream where it's gonna be more like dentistry, like dentists have it, right? Actually, they actually figured it out a long time ago. You go to your dentist and what do you do? You see the hygienist for your whole visit, right? You don't see the dentist. You go in, they check your teeth, they clean your teeth. They do all the discussion, they do all the teaching. You're there with them for 45 minutes or half an hour, however long it is, and then your dentist waltzes in and you know, the serious stuff they deal with, or they check everything over to make sure that it's right, but you're not spending your time with them. They're Spending their time on the more difficult stuff, which I think is the right way to do it. There's not enough doctors to spend an hour with everybody. That's not realistic. We need to team up and we need to have the opportunity for people to spend their time with a nutritionist for half an hour. If you have obesity, you should have easy access to a team where you can go and instead of getting a medication which is, you know, thousand dollars a month or whatever, give that thousand dollars to the nutritionist to teach you how to eat healthy. Try that first for two years and then put them on a medication if you need to. But I guarantee you, if you did that, the vast majority of people would no longer be obese or overweight.

Oh my gosh. The goal of a nutritionist is for you to not have to work with them so that you're equipped with the tools to have for the rest of your life. You're going to come back on and we're going to do a full session on just integrative healthcare and how we can just manifest what an office visit should look like from the breath that they're taking when they get there to the intake and the food information and education that happens. Like, I think that we just have to start painting a big picture for what parents should expect.

And it could be, it could happen if, if we can contemplate a world where you can, you can cover through Medicare or Medicaid, $1,000 a month for a medication, then you can take $250 a month for health.

Yeah.

And prevention and wellness and you would save a lot more money and you'd have a lot healthier population that could do a lot better. So these, these are things that are possible and I hope that in the next decade that those are the kinds of things that we move towards. But it's going to involve pushing back on big companies because insurance is not going to cover that unless you force them to.

You got it? Okay. Speaking about pushing back, the hot topic is vaccines. We all want to know, you know, a lot of parents are overwhelmed. How do you navigate the discussions in a way that really helps parents feel in, not only informed, but really empowered about their decision?

I mean, vaccines are unfortunately the, the most hot topic. It's, it's really sad that that's happened for years. I didn't really even talk about it because it's just such a hot button topic that it just causes craziness no matter what you say. And to me, I think it starts with the fact that we have to be able to talk about everything. We have to begin to allow conversation around vaccines without getting angry at each other. Everybody has the same goal. It's health and wellness for our kids. Not everybody agrees on how to get there. But everything has risks, everything has side effects, everything has, you know, things have benefits, they have risk. We have to be able to weigh those things and we have to be able to have open discussions about them. And so that's why I've started talking about it more, because I think it needs to be out there in the open. I've actually written a book about it called Between a Shot and a Hard Place and that's going to be available for pre order so that it's coming out. I've been going through all the research on vaccines for the last several months to kind of put everything together because it's crazy. I mean, the vast majority of families that come to me just want to talk about shots. The vast majority of questions I get online are to do with vaccines because parents don't feel like they're heard. They don't. They feel like their concerns are dismissed and they feel like they can't ask questions. And everything online is so divisive when it comes to vaccines. It's really like very much one side or very much the other side. Everything's in the middle somewhere.

Right. And just by asking questions doesn't mean that you're anti vax.

Right?

Right. You just want to make the best informed choice.

Right. I don't believe we should be forcing people to do anything. I mean, literally the doctor, the word is from Latin meaning to teach docer. And that's our job as doctors, is not to force people to do things. You can believe that vaccines are the best thing ever, that's fine. But your job isn't to force people to do it. It's to convince them to give them information so they can make the best choices for their family. And that's not what's happening in medicine anymore. It seems like this is the way. This is what I believe, this is what we're doing. And if you don't like it, too bad. I'll see you later. And the unfortunate part of that, or the crazy part of that is everything that's gone on over the last few years, especially with COVID has opened up people's eyes. And the discussion around vaccines and shutting it down has had the exact opposite effect where people are more hesitant to do vaccines than ever. Exemption rates are at the highest they've ever been. People choosing not to vaccinate are the highest it's ever been. Confidence in medicine is the lowest it's ever been. Before the pandemic, the research showed that 70% of people thought very highly of medicine and doctors. Now it's like 40%. It went down so much over just four years. And that's not from small studies, that's from hundreds of thousands of people from, from, from major studies. So we've actually, because we won't talk about it, have created a situation where people don't trust anything. And, and most people do want to vaccinate their kids. They just want information. They want to be heard. They want to talk about the risks. They've heard, you know, their friend had this complication happen or they had something happen to them and they don't want to be told that there's no risk. There is a risk to everything. There's of course, a risk to vaccines and there are benefits and risks and we have to be able to weigh those for ourselves. And it's not happening right now. There's no discussion around that. And every book that I've ever read thus far about vaccines cherry picks the cherry pick research on one side or the other to prove their point. And I think that we need information in the mountain. That's why I chose to write a book about that, because I wanted to take myself out of the equation and see what information was out there and present both sides, present things that like people like RFK said and then someone like Paul Offit said, kind of compare and contrast those two things. Because if you read, I don't know, from a Paul Offit book on hepatitis B, and then you read like Neil Miller book on hepatitis B or you know, Paul Thomas or something like that, they'd be different products. Like they're completely different products. But it's not true. And how do parents navigate that?

Since you've been in practice, I'm sure you've also seen way more mandatory vaccines that are a necessity for our school systems too.

Even when I started, it wasn't necessity.

So it wasn't necessity.

You used to. Even in California, I mean, California is one of the most stringent places for vaccines. But so there's three levels of exemptions. There's personal beliefs, so you just choose. You don't want to do vaccines. There's religious exemptions and then medical exemptions. California and several places have gotten rid of the personal belief exemptions and the religious exemptions over the last few years. So now it's just medical exemptions that you can have in California. And in California it's really strict in terms of getting a medical exemption. You almost can't really do it anymore because it has to meet very strict standards for the CDC and everything is monitored very closely by the medical board. So a lot of doctors got in trouble for writing exemptions that they didn't deem reasonable based on their opinion of the literature. And so most doctors just won't even write them anymore. So you can't get an exemption. So your choice for vaccines in California for the most part is do it or go homeschool.

Right. Which is impossible for so many people. Yeah, I wanted to bring it up because we're so conscious talking about so much food today. We're so concerned. We're preaching, read labels and yet we get these vaccines. We have no idea what goes into them.

Right.

Are you part of documenting hope?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, just resources like you said. I think that education is the biggest thing. I'm curious to know, with your six month old, are you doing a delayed vaccination process?

So I don't talk about my own kids, but I'll say that in the office we have people that do everything. So we have people that don't vaccinate, we have people that go on a slow schedule and people that go on the regular schedule. I'd say the majority go on some sort of slower schedule. But what's really hard is for parents is that there's nothing out there except the CDC schedule. Right. There's no research on anything else to have discussions. So I mean, the only thing you can recommend is the CDC schedule. Right. I can't tell anybody to do anything else. That's all that's recommended. But a lot of parents do want to know about, you know, if I do delay this vaccine or that vaccine, how does that affect me? And there isn't really research on a lot of that. There really isn't research on a lot of stuff when it comes to vaccines, which is pretty crazy when you dive into it. So there'll be a lot more discussions about vaccines and all the stuff I found as we go through in the future. We can talk for another three hours probably just on that.

Will you come back on when that book comes out?

Sure.

Okay. We covered so many things today. Something that I love that you say over and over again is that parents don't have to be perfect, they just have to be consistent. We've given a lot of information today not to overwhelm people, but really just pick one, two or three places. Would you Say, let's just say in terms of natural remedies at home this time of year, are there key things that you think the parents should have in their house to support their kids?

So I get this question a lot and you know, should I be on a vitamin? What should I be taking? My answer always is, I don't think you need to be on anything forever if you are eating healthy. The number one key is to eat healthy. Like, you know, supplements are fine, but they're a supplement. I think it's reasonable. If you are going into the winter season, you're gonna have your kid in daycare, boost up their immune system. If they're sick, go for it. If you're sick, go for it. I think that's fine. The things that have the most evidence, vitamin D, vitamin C, elderberry and zinc, these things are, you know, there's tons of research that those are good immune supports. If you want to do a multivitamin, go for it. You want to do probiotics and omega, go for it. I think those are all reasonable. The risks are pretty minimal and the benefits are pretty well documented. But. But healthy living is what matters the most. So that's what you should be focusing on. And if you want to do some supplements, go for it.

I love it. Yeah. And everything that you mentioned comes from a food source. Focus on the food first and then supplement after. Right. And you mentioned vitamin D. At what point do you do any lab testing for children? How do you decide?

We do sometimes. I mean, for the thing with kids is you gotta be careful with doing blood work because it's not that fun.

Yeah.

Because you're poking them and getting a bunch of blood work for kids. So we do it if we need to, but. But generally you start with the basics like we just talked about. There's no point to do a ton of blood work if they're not eating healthy and they're eating a ton of sugar. So start there. You want to. If they're having a lot of issues, then yes, I think it's reasonable to certainly do some blood work, if not functional blood work, but that's rare. I think that we want to just focus on some of these things and for vitamin D, you know, get outside more.

I love it. So good. All right. I can't wait to have you back to wrap things up. We're going to go through some rapid fire questions.

Sure.

What are the most common mistakes or misconceptions that you're seeing women make with.

Their health not prioritizing themselves? So I Think, you know, for me as a pediatrician, I guess I see a lot of moms right after birth or, you know, young kids. And of course it's very busy and it's hectic. But the most important thing that you can do for your child is to be healthy yourself. And so you have to, at least to whatever degree you can, prioritize yourself and your health and take some time and try to share the load with your partner as much as you can. So that way you are also part of the equation. I get it. We're busy or tired. You know, you're not going to not be tired when you have a baby, but at least if you can prioritize a little bit, you know, do something, go for a walk, hang out with your friends, whatever it is that you can help your own mental health for a couple of minutes. Do that.

Oh, I love that. This ties into the next question. What's one way that women, let's say parents too, are making healing and health too complicated? You said this over and over on Today, this episode. Go back to the basics.

Yeah. I mean, the foundations correct.

Yeah. Okay. What's one favorite ancient healing remedy that you love?

Doing nothing. Doing nothing remedy. You know, medicine, we do way too much. Way, way, way too much. Kids are healthy and resilient. Parents are healthy and resilient for the most part. And we always want to do something. And I think one of the biggest issues with medicine, again, going back to we talked about, is the only tools in a physician's tool belt, our medications, as opposed to supplements or doing nothing. And I get it. Parents are stressed and they come in, their kid is sick, they want you to do something. And 99.9 of the time, they don't need to do anything. They just need a couple more days. So doing nothing is the actual remedy that's going to make them the healthiest.

I love that. The art of just being. Our bodies are so resilient. Right. We have to remember that if you had to pick something about modern medicine that excites you, what would it be?

I think we talked about that. We are, I really think, at the beginning of a movement. I haven't been talking about kids health for a while, but this last year, it has become a major part of the discussion and I think for very good reason, because you can no longer hide how sick everybody is. So I'm very excited that there is such a groundswell of movement around our health and kids health and everybody's health. And I think we are living through the beginnings of a major change.

What are the top three things that we can start doing right now to optimize our health?

Read food labels, move a little bit more, and spend more time with your family and friends.

Beautiful. If you could leave our listeners with just one takeaway that you're most passionate about right now, what would it be?

I am most passionate about reminding parents that they can do it. You know, we're all more stressed than ever and we don't trust our gut. And we know how to do this. We've been doing this forever. And I think it's really important to trust your gut, you know what's best for your kids.

I find myself going to your Instagram page for that reason alone. You have such a great way of taking these really complicated topics that seem daunting and overwhelming as parents and putting them into a really empowering, simple way. So thank you for that. Tell everyone how can they find you? How do you like to communicate with.

Your so you can find me on instagram or x. Dr. Joel Gator My book so there's parenting at your child's pace, which is@parenting childspace.com between a shot and a Hard Place. I don't know the website for that yet, but it'll it'll be on Amazon. So Between a Shot and a Hard Place. And then I have a children's book coming out called Love Dead.

Such a great gift for parents. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so grateful to know you and I can't wait to have you back.

Thank you.