Dhru Purohit Show - Four Controversial Truths About Children’s Health That We Need to Normalize With Integrative Pediatrician Joel Gator Warsh

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers, Lumebox, and Air Doctor.  The rates of chronic disease in children are rising at an alarming rate. Type 2 diabetes and increasing rates of autism are just two of the diagnoses affecting children today. What’s at the root of these increases, and how can we support children and families in protecting their loved ones? Today’s guest offers insight by sharing what he teaches his patients and families in his practice daily. Today on the Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru interviews integrative pediatrician Dr. Joel Warsh about the alarming rise in chronic diseases among children. Dr. Joel reveals key factors driving this increase, such as ultra-processed foods and environmental toxins. He also introduces his SEEDS protocol, a holistic approach emphasizing both prevention and treatment. Plus, Dr. Joel dives into controversial topics like vaccines, formula feeding, Botox for nursing moms, and co-sleeping, stressing the importance of open dialogue on these issues.  Dr. Joel Warsh is a Board-Certified Pediatrician in Los Angeles, California, who specializes in Parenting, Wellness, and Integrative Medicine. He completed his Pediatric Medicine training at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA) and worked in private practice in Beverly Hills before founding his current practice, Integrative Pediatrics and Medicine Studio City, in 2018. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Gator dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): The alarming rates of disease and sickness (00:00:33 / 00:00:33) Top factors contributing to the increase in chronic disease (9:55 / 6:24)  How ingredients in ultra-processed foods can cause in children (18:31 / 15:18) Navigating the consumption of sugar and balance (24:53 / 20:00) Environmental Toxins and the Soup Study (30:31 / 25:38) What to prioritize to reduce exposure (36:40 / 31:11) Why we shouldn’t shy away from vaccine conversations (41:10 / 36:17) Avoiding extreme statements and using a nuanced approach (1:00:48 / 55:55) Toxins and metal exposure (1:06:23 / 1:01:30) SEEDS protocol (1:15:53 / 1:11:00) Dr. Joel’s hot takes on formula, Botox, and co-sleeping (1:24:20 /1:19:27) Also mentioned in this episode: Parenting at Your Child's Pace: The Integrative Pediatrician’s Guide to the First Three Years  Dr. Yvonne Burkart Episode: Toxicologist Reveals the Top Sources of Hidden Toxins We’re Being Exposed to Daily Bill Ackman Tweet  JAMA study on fluoride and IQ scores For more on Dr. Joel, follow him on Instagram, X/Twitter, and via his website. This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers, Lumebox, and Air Doctor.  Upgrade your digestion with enzymes! Go to masszymes.com/dhrufree now for a free bottle of Masszymes for a limited time. Lumebox is offering my community $260 off their FDA-registered portable Red Light device—that's over 40% off! Go to thelumebox.com/dhru to get your Red Light device. AirDoctor is offering my community $300 off. Just go to dhrupurohit.com/filter/ to clean up your home’s air and feel better today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Joel, welcome to the podcast. You know, today you're here to talk about the most controversial aspects about pediatrics and children's health. And the truth is these things should not be controversial. And that's why you're here to talk about them. In fact, we've made a list of four big topics we want to go into. And I'm super pumped to go into them and to talk all about your new book. Let's jump into it.

Here's the first one that we want to talk about. The thing that's so controversial that nobody, especially legacy media, wants to talk about today, is the fact that we are sicker than ever before, and that is even true for kids as well. Can you chat about that? Yeah. To me, as a pediatrician and a dad, it is really frustrating to see that we're not willing to talk about what's going on. almost 50% of kids have a chronic disease at this point, which is insane. If you have two kids, one is going to have asthma, eczema, ADHD, a mental health condition,

and it should not be that way. It was like 5% maybe two, three decades ago. And yet here we are just a few decades later, and we're seeing kids sicker than ever. And we're not discussing it. it seems like we talk and we hear more about genetics and there's nothing that we can do about it. And it's just something that's happening. And yet that's just not true. There's so much that we can do.

And we need to be talking about this and we need to be figuring out why. And I am more frustrated that we're not figuring out why. It doesn't seem like we're spending the effort that we really need to for our kids, which should not be sick. It's not normal. Give us some of the top kind of crazy statistics. that showcase just how sick our environment and society is in the West, in particular for kids. What do we know?

I would say if anything, we can look at autism first, like 1 in 25,000 children were diagnosed with autism just a few decades ago. And now it has gone down to 1 in 36. And in California, it's actually 1 in 22. That's almost a 9,000 percent difference in the last 20 years. It was like 1,125 around 2000, which is just an insane difference. It was one in 25,000? One in 25,000.

So, of course, you know, the first thing that everyone's going to be saying is, you know, we're better at diagnosis, which is absolutely true, right? That is a part of why we are seeing this more. But it's not the whole picture. And especially if you look at the numbers from 10, 15 years ago, there's still such a staggering increase over just a few decades. And it can't just be that we're better at diagnosis. 25, 30% of kids that have autism are non-volveillance.

verbal or minimally verbal, where were all those kids 20, 30 years ago? They would be in some other category. Maybe it would be called autism, but they don't exist. They're not there. So something's going on and we're seeing this continual increase towards a place where it might be one in 10, one in five. Who knows what the number is going to be if we don't figure out what's going on and we don't do something about it. Exema allergies, I mean 10% of the population have that. When we talk about obesity, the rate is like 25% obesity. In some studies, it's up to 40% obesity. Diabetes is a very interesting topic.

You know, look at type 2 diabetes. It's called adult onset diabetes. We didn't see it in kids. I gave a talk on this a few weeks ago, and I was looking into diabetes rates from just a few decades ago looking at type 2 diabetes. And you couldn't even find it. It didn't exist. And now one in three kids have diabetes,

or pre-diabetes, the average age of onset is 13 in something that you didn't see it all 20 or 30 years ago. I mean, something is happening. Those numbers are not coming out of nowhere, and we cannot say that as genetics. I mean, certainly there's a genetic component to everything that makes us susceptible more or less, but something that we're doing or many things that we are doing are contributing to this epidemic of disease, and we're doing our children a disservice to just say, oh, you know, it's just genetics.

oh, it's not really happening. No, it is happening and it's on us to think about this and to discuss it and to figure out why. And I think a lot of it is that we don't want to blame or shame anybody. I feel like that's one of the issues. It's like, well, if we say that, you know, this, this chemical was the reason why you got diabetes, then I should have known that. And this is my fault that my kid has diabetes, my fault that my kid has diabetes. That's not true. I mean, it's not about blaming people. it's about being realistic about what's going on and figuring out what it is so that we can do better in the future so we can see those numbers go down. I mean, that's what our role is in health care. That's what my job is as a dad and a practitioner. It's to figure out and to help people

to get to the place where they're going to be the healthiest and most resilient. And I don't feel like we're doing that today in modern medicine. I feel like it's a lot of you have a condition and you treat it, but there's very little discussion on prevention, very little discussion on what's going on in society, and that's not okay. It's not okay. And we're going to be talking about it all. And you write a lot about this in your book, Parenting at Your Child's Pace, the Integrative Pediatrician's Guide to the first three years.

But really, the book has a lot of implications even beyond individuals that, you know, are currently parents, maybe you're thinking about being a parent or maybe you're a grandparent and you're just caring about leaving the world off in a better place. Kids aren't sick of shit all the time, and people are running around with all these chronic diseases, which is exactly what's going on right now. And a little preview, we're going to be talking about vaccines, big picture. Stay tuned. We're going to be talking about environmental toxins. We're going to be talking about some of the misconceptions around birthing that are there and being pregnant that you want to talk about as an integrative pediatrician.

But really, we want to start off by zooming out a little bit. And part of your message here today is that it's not just one thing. We have to look at everything. So if you had to start off with some bit of a list that you know to be true as an integrative pediatrician as to why kids are so sick, let's start off. Let's make a list starting with the thing that you feel is significantly impacting us for the negative. What would you put at the top of that list?

I would say, well, if you're putting the negative, I would say toxins. I would say the biggest thing would be our food. I think the crappy food that is mostly processed and or ultra processed, too much sugar, too many chemicals, not enough nutrients and really just not eating real food. I think our kids are not getting the nutrients that they need and that is the biggest factor. And then second one will be toxins. So just being exposed to too many chemicals and too many toxins in this toxic soup and our bodies are just getting to the point where they're so in flame, they just can't handle what we're doing on a daily basis, and then it manifests itself as a chronic condition, whether that's eczema, allergies,

asthma, an autoimmune condition, whatever it is. I think it's just different manifestations of the same thing. Of course, yes, some things are totally genetic. I mean, you can get cystic fibrosis. You know, we know that, but I think that a lot of the conditions that we have are a mixture of our genetics and mostly our environment. And it's weird that we don't think in that way for most conditions. we do for diabetes, right? We do, we have type 1 and type 2. And we know that for type 2 diabetes,

it's very common knowledge that if you improve your diet and if you exercise more, then we can see the condition go away. Not as true with type 1 diabetes. I mean, it's certainly helpful, but you're probably not going to get rid of your condition just by exercising better. I think that's true of almost every condition. I think that's true of autism. I think that's true of autoimmune conditions. I think there are many versions of a lot of these things that we call a condition and a big portion of it has to do with our lifestyle. And if we acknowledge that, then we can improve symptoms for those kids or we can see those diagnoses go away.

And I see that as a functional practitioner. I've seen it with autism. I've seen it with autoimmune conditions. Sometimes you can change up their lifestyle and the symptoms get better. So why would we not want to do that for kids or for ourselves if we could? Why do we want to label it as something like, well, there's nothing you can do. Here's your medication. You're stuck with this for life.

if there is something that we can do, we need to be figuring this out and doing that for our kids so we can get them off medicine, decrease their medicine, help them live the best, healthiest life that we can. There's nothing controversial about that. Not really, right? Like what is controversial about trying to figure out what we can do to help a kid be as healthy as they can? Maybe it's going to, you know, air coats cure their disease. Maybe it's going to improve some of their symptoms. Any of those things are still good. So why would we not try? You mentioned at the top of the episode, autism, and you've also talked about how you've worked with kids who are on the spectrum. And you've seen, in some instances, their symptoms diminish or greatly improve. So let's take this concept of some of the top contributing factors to dis-ease. Give us an example of a patient that you worked with or a story. You know, somebody that came in and presented, maybe already had a diagnosis. usually a lot of kids that are coming to you, have seen a lot of other doctors that are out there.

What was your approach with these kids or this kid that was on the autism spectrum that traditional pediatrics is not doing, is not doing, is not doing it. Yeah, so I'll tell you two different stories. I'll tell you one story from something that I did back in my training and then one story from a research study that's been really interesting that has come out from documenting hope.

So back when I was in residency, I had a patient who nobody knew what was going on. I mean, this child was coming in multiple times for all sorts of weird, vague symptoms. And he happened to be on my team on one of these visits. And I was the doctor. And I walked into the room. The child was very overweight and was eating all sorts of candy and snacks.

And it was all over the room, even though he was in the hospital. And during rounds, I mentioned to the team. I was like, you know, we've never talked about the diet. Like, is this something that we should be talking about? Maybe that's contributing to what's going on and why this child's coming to the hospital so frequently. And everybody just kind of laughed it off. You know, that's not really what you do in the hospital. You're not talking about their lifestyle.

You're just getting them out and giving them their medication and trying to figure out if you can what's going on. But that day, grandma happened to be there. And she pulled me aside after and said, you know what? Nobody in all the times we've been here has ever mentioned anything about the diet. And I've mentioned this to the parents so many times. And they haven't really listened. You know, do you think we could talk about it? maybe I can convince the parents to bring this child to you as a patient and maybe we can work on

this. And they did. They had started bringing that child to me in the clinic and we modified their diet. We got this kid exercise and got him into a couple of sports. He was sleeping a little bit better. We talked about their house and their toxins. We decreased it a little bit and he got better. And I don't exactly know what it was. But this kid that was going to hospital every month stopped going the hospital just because we change up his lifestyle. And that was one of the big aha moments in my career where I was like, okay, there's more to this. There's more to thinking about the root cause. And you don't always need to know the exact specific thing. Maybe it was one kind of food versus the other. But it was just so interesting to see the symptoms so vastly improved just by a couple of simple

lifestyle changes. And so that's story number one. Story number two, documenting Hope did this great study that just was published in the Journal of Personalized Medicine. They took two children, 20 months old with the diagnosis of autism, pretty severe autism. And over a couple of years, they work with functional practitioners, did all sorts of different testing like stool testing and metals testing and nutrient testing and got them in to nutrition programs and really change up their diet, their lifestyle. And they saw the symptoms go away, basically. Severe improvements in their language, significant improvements in their communication,

they had a lot of gut issues. Those basically went away. So they had very high autism scores, went down to very low, almost non-existent autism scores just over a couple of years with these changes. And to me,

yes, it's only two children, but it's a great example of the fact that we are pushing these kids to the side and saying, oh, you just have this diagnosis, that's what it's going to be for life, as opposed to you have this diagnosis. Let's see what's going on in your life.

And maybe we can do something about it, and the kids deserve that. You talk about that a lot of these changes are actually pretty simple, sometimes so simple that they can be overlooked as being incredibly effective. Give us an example with the first kid or the second. What did you do with their diet, for example? What were they kind of eating and focused on? And how did you shift it over that seemed to be one of the contributing factors? As you mentioned, you don't know exactly the combination or the specific thing that moved the needle forward, but the needle got moved forward in your clinical experience work.

and your clinical experience work you do with the diet? Yeah, just like you said, it's not that complicated. This child was eating a lot of snacks, a lot of pre-packaged foods. The family was ordering a lot of food, having a lot of fast food, and everything was kind of purchasing things with a, you know, fancy cartoon on the box as opposed to real food. And so it was simple as talking the family about fresh food and talking about purchasing fruits and vegetables,

buying meats, proteins, and actually cooking it. So working with the family to cook a meal every single day, send their child to lunch to school instead of buying it at school, changing up the snacks in the home and buying better versions. Not that a child couldn't have snacks, but taking them with them to the store and looking at the different ingredients, teaching them about ingredients, and then reading the labels, buying things with lower sugar,

with words that they know what they are, and trying to buy better versions of snacks. and food, and that's what it was. That's all that it was. It wasn't anything magical. There were no special diets or can't do this or you can't do that. It was really just buy real food, get rid of the ultra-process crap, minimize the sugar, start to read labels, and become a savvy consumer.

You don't need a PhD in chemistry to read a label. You don't need to know everything on there. You just know if it's a long chemical word you don't know. It's probably not good for you. Buy the things with real words that you actually know what they are. And that'll get you a long way. And then after that, hopefully you can start. learning a little bit more about what's on the labels. If there's something on that you don't know,

you read about it. And then a lot of times you'd be like, wow, there's a lot of research on this. Why is this in food? Why are we giving it to kids? That makes no sense. If you look at the ingredients on basically any box with the colorful cartoon, you will be shocked if you look into what those dyes and chemicals do to you. And we have a ton of research at this point to know that it's not very good. A lot of countries, these things are banned. What do you think it is about these ultra-processed foods in a can in a box with cartoons for kids. Was it about them specifically that you think is exasperbating these kids that you were working with?

They're autism symptoms, right? Like, what is it exactly going on? Is it the dyes and the chemicals? Is it something else? Is it the quantity that's being eaten? What exactly? I think it is all of the above. Nothing teaches you more about.

about this topic than having your own child. It is so interesting to see my son, he's four and a half right now, go to a party and eat a piece of cake and become a different child. We eat pretty healthy at home. We don't stop him from eating at parties or anything like that, but we do talk about it and we do minimize it, but he becomes a different child. Like I watch some of the kids that are super healthy.

One kid, they get very sick the next day. The other kid gets sick two days later. my child, hyper. For the rest of it's like a different child. And that's just with one piece of cake. So it really makes you think, hmm, if that's what happens to my child with one meal, what is that doing to all the other kids when they're eating this way all of the time?

And I really don't think that it's one thing versus the other. I think the bigger picture here is, well, what are we not getting? If we're eating a lot of this processed foods, you're getting a lot of junk. And each of these chemicals is probably not good for you in its own way. but you're also not getting real food. You're not getting the nutrients that you're supposed to be getting. And so you're getting this food-like substance that you're eating consistently in your body.

It doesn't know what to do with it. We weren't genetically built to eat that kind of food. This is new food that we've manufactured over the last 50 years to be faster and cheaper. But what do you lose with faster and cheaper? You lose health. And we are meant to eat locally. We're meant to eat fresh. We're meant to pick something off of a tree and eat it.

and if we, if you go to your backyard and pick a berry, right? How long does that last for? Two or three days, right? Then it goes bad. How could our food not be sprayed in all sorts of chemicals if we're getting it in the store? And that's the best case scenario. That's the best version. I mean, you're picking it in some other country, shipping it across the world,

goes to some warehouse, then in your store, then you get it, then you eat it. So it's a week, two weeks, three weeks after it's been picked. We lose something with that. And that's going to be the best case scenario of food, not even the stuff that's in packages that's sprayed, that has all of those added chemicals. So I think that we need to really think about our diets and refocus back on trying to get more fresh produce,

figure out how we can shape that for our family, whether it's going to farmers markets, whether it's getting to know farmers and buying farm boxes, whatever it is that we can do. I think there's something that we have to do as a family level and something that we have to do as a society for this. And I think that involves the practitioners, getting involved and saying, yes, we have a big problem with food. Companies are here to make money.

It's not their fault, right? They're not necessarily nefarious. They just want to sell the best products, and we have to push it back. The company's job is to make more money. It's not to keep you healthy. And, you know, it's nice if it does, but that's not their job. Their CEO's job is to make more money this quarter than last quarter. It's our job to keep them in check, and we're not. They're getting so big, and they're trying to sell products that are basically drugs for our kids at this point. and they hit those pleasure centers. They have billions and trillions of dollars to research what's going to be the thing

that's going to make my kid want to eat it, the crunch, the picture, the sugar level, whatever it is. They don't care about health, right? They care about what's going to make you buy their product. We have to make them care to make healthy products. You know, you talked about sugar and how when your kid at four years old

eats a piece of cake turns into a completely different kid. And often I'm guessing it's probably not like a homemade cake that has some sugar in it. It's a store-bought cake that's there. So it has dyes and all sorts of other things that are there that make it an ultra-processed food. You know, when people become parents, and I'm not a parent yet, but I've seen a lot of this conversation, I see different extremes that are out there. I see extreme of a parent saying, I'm never going to let my kid have any sugar, especially if they're somebody that's in the wellness world.

and then a lot of people that have kids kind of laugh at them and say like, good luck with that. And then there's other people who are like, ah, whatever, I ate whatever when I was a kid and I turned out okay. So I'm going to let my kid do their thing. It's all about moderation and nobody was looking at what I was eating as a kid. So just on the topic of sugar, how do you talk to and help parents navigate making healthy boundaries inside of the home and have a realistic approach. You know, sugar is neither bad nor good. You're talking about the total quantity and its availability and the fact that it's

often a delivery mechanism for ultra-processed food. So how do you have that conversation with families? Right. I think that's a great point because it's not to demonize sugar. I mean, we obviously need sugar. It's an important part of our body. We need it for our brains. We need it to function. It's the amount of sugar that we're getting, the type of sugar. If you look at the stats, most kids by 10 or 11 years old have eaten more sugar than most adults used to have their entire life. If you stacked up the cubes of sugar from two days in America of consumption, it would go to the moon. Like, the numbers are insane how much sugar we're getting, and a lot of it is not natural sugar, like from honey or from fruit or from maple syrup. It's the ultra-processed refined sugars. And

there's no way I don't think that our body can handle that level of sugar and I think that is one big part of what's going on and it's important for parents to set healthy boundaries I think it's okay sometimes we forget that it's really important as parents to set these healthy boundaries and we want our kids to be healthy and it's okay you know yes um we might have eaten some of these things when we were younger but we're also not the healthiest population anymore so just to say that we turn out okay isn't necessarily true a lot of people dismisses. a lot of their symptoms or don't even realize that things are connected to what they were eating, but also the food is very different today and it even was 50 years ago. And there are a lot more

chemicals and we're eating a lot more of it than we used to. So I also think it's a volume issue. And so I do think that it is important that we are serious about this. We look at what's going on and we make mindful changes for our own family. It's okay to do that. I don't think that we need to feel bad about it. It's not crunchy to think about what we're eating, to cook a little bit more to eat a little bit more fresh, to get food a little bit more locally. Whatever you can do within your means is reasonable to me. And there really is very little downside to eating fresh as opposed to process food. So I just encourage people to think about their own family.

Think about what you're going to do for your kids and try to impart and educate them on healthy eating and bring that into your home because the medical system is not going to do that right the medical system is very slow. It's not about preventing these issues. I mean, it's very clear that we're having serious chronic disease issues. And if you are okay with the way that things are, that's fine. You know, I'm not here to tell people what to do. If you're okay with one and a two kids having a chronic disease, that's fine.

But I'm not. I feel like that's not okay. And if we want to do something different, then we have to take that upon ourselves as parents to set up our lives a little bit differently and be a little bit more mindful of what we eat and be a little bit more mindful consumers and purchase things for our home and for ourselves that we read the ingredients and we know that we're getting the best thing possible. And that's going to do just fine for most kids.

I mean, I think if you're mindful and you purchase things based on reading the label and buying the thing that you think is the healthiest, that's going to get most people all the way there. They're not going to be sick. You know, I would say to that a lot of people actually think that they're, you know, everybody has a different definition of healthy and every family has a different definition of healthy. Some families are like, hey, listen, we only have, you know, we only let our kids have one Coca-Cola day, right?

We're being healthy. Just kind of like if you go to Hollywood Boulevard or Times Square and you ask people like, hey, do you try to be healthy? Even the most obese person is say, yeah, I try to be healthy because they only smoke two cigarettes a day when their friend smokes a pack of cigarettes a day. So it does feel that a lot of people think that they're trying to be healthy, but often from what I see from the outside is you don't take. this topic seriously until you or God forbid your kid, knock on wood, I hope it doesn't happen, but unfortunately that's what's been happening, end up with some sort of serious issue. That's when people start to say, oh, I got to do something. Is that your experience as a doctor? That is absolutely my experience. That's why I wrote this book, right? That's why I chose that age

of zero to three because I wanted to talk to parents from day one, you know, especially focus on that time, you know, during pregnancy where our early life, where we have a chance to do something different. We have a chance to prevent chronic illness. We have a chance to be more mindful. I mean, it can be useful for everybody. But what is our ultimate goal in pediatrics and medicine? It's to prevent illness, right? It's not to treat it. I mean, it's great. We do want to treat it when it happens. But ideally, I want to set the stage or help people set the stage for health and wellness by focusing on those foundations like diet, like exercise, sleep, minimizing toxins. And yeah, I think it is very important that we focus back on some of these simple things.

It's not rocket science, but we oftentimes either are too busy or we just kind of set it aside until, like you said, something happens. And that is oftentimes when people find natural medicine or integrated medicine because there aren't any great solutions in modern medicine or at that time where you're going to need to take a lot of pills and people don't want to. So yeah, I don't want that for people. I want to get ahead of it. And I want people to think about these simple things because it adds up. It adds up over time. The simple decisions that we make really add up and it matters. There was a great study out of Harvard. I don't know if you know the soup study out of Harvard. Only because I heard you

talking about it a couple times. Okay. Yeah. I know. I love this study. So that's why I mentioned it because I think it really goes well. And I mean that in a complimentary way. Yeah. It's a study that everybody should know about. Yeah. And that's why I love to about it because there were five days of soup, right? These patients, they took them in, they gave them five days of soup, five days of canned soup, and then five days of homemade soup, and they were looking at the BPA levels in urine. The canned soup has BPA lining, so they're looking at the difference. A thousand percent difference in five days. It is a magical study. It's super simple. It illustrates the point beautifully that little changes matter, and that's

why I love to talk about it because a thousand percent difference in five days from one chemical. Yes, your body can probably handle those five days of BPA. But if you're eating that soup every other day for five years, plus every other chemical that we're being supposed to, it adds up as opposed to the kid that eats the homemade soup. They don't have that BPA in their body. And yes, your body can handle it to a degree. But at what point is it too much? I think we're getting to the point where it's too much for too many people.

And that's why we're seeing all this chronic disease. You know, we had a toxicologist on this podcast. Really love her work. We'll link to it in the show notes, along with your book and your social media. Her name is Dr. Yvonne Burkhar. And one of the things she was saying is that as somebody who worked in the industry coming up with flavoring and different chemicals and additives that get placed into food and fragrances, is that even when in the rare instance you get some safety studies on exposure to a certain toxin

and says, okay, this level of BPA is toxic, but at this level, it's okay, right? And so I don't know if canned soup, if they're testing the levels, if they're not. Let's give the benefit of the doubt and say they are, and that they looked at the BPA level from soup exposure and they said, look, it doesn't seem to be causing anything. Okay, let's give the benefit of doubt. But the study that nobody's doing is looking at an average household and looking at all the exposure from all the products that they're happening over, you know, years and decades, a lifetime. And then on top of that, looking at the crossing of those different chemicals and how they might be

interacting with each other. Now, we're most likely not going to be able to do that study. That'd be a very difficult thing to do. But part of what you've been advocating in the book and what you teach your patients is that if you don't want to end up getting sick or if you want to reduce your chances as a family of developing neurological issues, diabetes, all sorts of chronic issues that are out there. You have to take a precautionary approach and assume that a lot of this stuff is most likely not good for you. And how do we know? Well, we're looking at society where a lot of people are ending up with a lot of chronic disease and they're living a normal life. So in a way, we got to be a little bit weird with ourselves and with our family if we don't want to end up being

normal. Right. Well, I mean, you're talking about reality. I think that science doesn't want to talk about, right? Like, this is the real world. And first of all, why in the world do we trust a company to tell us that something is safe versus not safe? Of course, they're going to paint their chemical, their product in the best light. They're going to say it's supremely effective and there are minimal risks. And they're going to do whatever they can to finagle the research to show that. It's up to us to kind of push back. But it is really, really hard to do that when you talk about reality, when you talk about mixing all these chemicals together and how they affect us, that's a very difficult thing to do because if you consume a pill today and you get cancer 30 years from out, it's not so easy to kind of pinpoint those two things together. If you take a pill today and you have a heart attack tomorrow, then sometimes people can figure that out. But what we're seeing more and more are these chronic diseases, these things that are building up over time. And I think you have to step back and you almost have to take a common sense approach to it by looking at what's going on, looking at the statistics,

looking at history of all these chemicals where we say it's safe, we say it's safe until it's not safe, until the company gets sued for 20 years and we finally figure out, oh, they actually knew a lot about the lack of safety on glyphosate or whatever, whatever chemical it is that year or that time, and then we go back and go, oh, this is really unsafe, it's causing cancer. that's probably true of a lot of these chemicals if you get enough of them. And it's not to fearmonger. It's not to scare people. It's just the reality of the world.

And so the best practice in my mind is to assume that most of these chemicals and toxins are not good for you. In 20, 30, 50 years, we're going to figure out that we shouldn't have them around. And so just try to minimize them as much as we can. It doesn't mean that you can never be exposed to some BPA you're going to be. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't breathe the air. Like, there's going to be stuff in the air. There's going to be stuff in your water.

But you can take some proactive. steps to minimize your exposure to toxins wherever you can, especially in your home where you spend so much of your time. And I think that for most people, that's enough. That's going to keep kids healthy. And I think that we're so far out of balance that at this point, too many kids are getting sick because they're exposed to too many chemicals and toxins. And we just keep saying, oh, it's safe. The company said it was safe. Oh, under this level, it's safe. What about lead? Look back in history at lead and this level was safe. And then this level is safe. Oh, yeah, actually, no level of lead is safe. And I think that's going to be true of most chemicals over time, not to say that if you ever

touch something with BPA, you should be terrified, but it's probably not good for you. What's an example in terms of priority? Because the one thing that you don't want to do and that you make a good attempt on, and the thing that we try to do on this podcast is the longer the list of things we tell people not to do, the more likely that people are going to throw their hands up in air and say, okay, I get it. Everything's going to tell me, so I just got to live my life, right? So if you had to have prioritization, we talked about food a little bit, getting away from ultra-processed food, minimizing that, you know, focusing on fresh foods, you know, minimizing sugar. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be eating, you know, sugar, healthy treats at home, things that you can be making, even stuff that you buy, but limiting that exposure. I asked Dr. Robert Lustig, who's one expert in this space, and I think that he said, you know, there's no upper limit in terms of nutritional facts and nutritional labels in terms of sugar.

but I thought he said that adults shouldn't be having more than 20 grams of added sugar in their diet. And I think for kids, it's like 10 to 15, which if you look at most things that kids are eating, in one to two servings, they're above that limit of added sugar. We're not talking about fruit. We're not talking about things that have healthy levels of fiber inside of it. There's sugar in everything. There's sugar in sugar is carbohydrates. There's carbohydrates in vegetables, et cetera.

sweet potatoes, anything that you're going to eat is going to have it. We're talking about added sugar, if that's accurate. So we don't want to tell people that they have to be perfect, but we want to give limits, recommendations, and boundaries of things that people should be paying attention to. So when it comes to chemicals, is there a top one, two, three, four things that you feel from your clinical experience or reading the research that these seem to be big drivers of chronic exposure to chemicals?

and if I can get a family to prioritize these one, two, three, four, five things, at least I know I'm taking care of the big culprits. Is there anything like that in the category of chemicals? Yeah, the thing that I always say to prioritize is just starting to read labels. If you haven't even done that, that's where I start. And then sugar is probably one of the first one. Certainly added sugar is one of the things that I would look at first, dyes in chemicals in children's food.

We have a ton of research at this point on the harmful effects. So there's no real reason that should even be in kids' foods anymore. or it's not in some countries. And I think that we should also prioritize organic wherever we can. There's so much glyphosate everywhere, so many pesticides. And I think that we have, again, great evidence that that can cause cancer and all sorts of gut issues. So you're going to pick two or three. I think those are a reasonable place to start.

But there are just so many. And then plastic. I think not cooking in plastic, not using plastic as much as you can. We get so much exposure to BPA and phthalates. I think we know that those are. are quite bad for us at this point too. So wherever you can minimize using that, I would put that on the top couple as well.

Would you add people getting a good quality water filter to their home? Good quality water filter. Would that make your top five? Probably. I mean, I think that's up there. I mean, it depends where you live, I guess, right? There's some place that have better water than others.

So I think it depends where you live. But if you're going to be drinking a lot of water, especially if you're going to drink a lot of tap water in a location like Los Angeles where the water's not great, then I would say having a good water filter would a really good place to start because you also like I think sometimes well what do we do the most right what do we do the most and if you can kind of cut down on some of those things and that's helpful so we breathe and we we drink water a lot right so I think that if you can improve the air in your home a little bit

by getting an air filter or putting some plants that's going to get a lot of bang for your buck because we're breathing you know 20 30 times a minute right at the air so we're breathing a lot and if we're drinking tap water every single day in your home then that's a very reasonable thing to be filtering out some of those chemicals so that you're minimizing that constant exposure to something. Is there anything that you guys do in your home, something maybe more recently, that you kind of really go out of your way as a family to avoid or minimize? And maybe the research is not settled on this, but you anecdotally, or not even anecdotally, from your clinical experience or your gut intuition, you kind of feel like this is going to be a big deal. So you as your family,

again, you're not recommending it to everybody. You're not telling your patients to do it. But you guys as a family go out of your way to really avoid this particular thing. Is there anything like that? Well, tap water. I think that, yeah, we order mountain spring water in glass, and that's one of the things that we do. And also trying to get fresh produce,

we try to go to the farmer's market at least once or twice a week or the stores they get fresh produce. And we try to prioritize that. That's where I feel like our money is best spent. And so we try to prioritize fresh fruit and, water because we're eating that every day and we're drinking that every day. So I think that is where we might do something that's a little bit different. Some people say, well, you know, we can't afford it. I get that. But that's what we do. And that's where we prioritize our money. I want to pivot here,

because we've talked about the first topic in these four topics. I want to pivot to something that could get this podcast canceled. We'll see. And that's the topic of vaccines. Specifically, you have a big beef with the fact that, you know, we're not even talking about this conversation. We're not even allowed to have this conversation without people fearing for their careers when it comes to the topic of vaccines. Can you talk about that? Yes. I think it is absurd that there's any topic that's off the table. And certainly when it comes to vaccines, it is very frustrating that over the years, it seems like you cannot discuss it. You say the word and everybody goes nuts. You say the word online or anything related to vaccines and it's just an argument that devolves into nothing useful,

people yelling at each other and just all around anger. And there's no reason to me that it should be that way. We should be able to talk about everything. We should be able to have rational discussions. Rational parents have a lot of questions and we need to be talking about this if we want people to be comfortable getting a vaccine. I'm not against vaccines at all. I'm not anti-vaccine. Most people that talk about it are not. But as soon as you even discuss it, you get labeled and you get shamed and it just becomes this horrible thing that I don't understand why that is. And we need to be talking about. We're giving this to our children. We're giving them multiple vaccines. And we all want the same thing at the end of the day, right? We all want healthy kids. We want to minimize their

exposure to disease. We want them to be healthy and grow up happy. Not everybody necessarily agrees on how we get there, but we have the same goal. And so if people disagree the way to get to a better place is to have discussions and debates and to talk about things, as opposed to shutting down the conversation, that helps no one. And where we are right now in medicine, it's very clear. People don't trust medicine anymore. It's really unfortunate over the last few years that the trust in modern medicine is an all-time low. If you look at articles, vaccine hesitancy is an all-time high. And that's because a lot of practitioners and the media and the news and online kind of shut down the conversation. And so everybody, a lot of people are just saying that they, they don't

trust anything anymore because we're not even willing to have a conversation. We're not willing to talk about risk versus benefits. And that's what we should always be willing to do. We should always be talking about risks versus benefits so we can make the products the safest they could possibly be and the most effective they could possibly be. But yet we've watched over the years this shift towards allowing companies to take charge and to provide the data and provide the research on their products. And that's insane. They have every reason to lie or to manipulate the data to make it look better than it is and more safe than it is. And we should need to be doing this independently. We can't be trusting them to do it. And yet it seems like we are. So it doesn't mean

that they're not giving us appropriate data, but we shouldn't trust that they are. Why would we trust a company who stands to benefit from her product, stands to benefit from her product, stands to benefit from her products? Is it fair to say that as an integrative pediatrician, and you know, you practice personalized medicine with your with your patients who are kids, And obviously you're working on this with their family. Is it fair to say that as an integrated pediatrician, there have been multiple times where you have laid out the risks and the benefits of any intervention,

in this particular instance, we're talking about vaccines, and looking at a child in their unique circumstance and what they're going through, you've helped the family come to a conclusion that maybe the benefit doesn't, isn't worthwhile the risk of an intervention. Is that fair to say? That is fair to say it. Well, first of all, let's say this. I cannot tell anybody what to do. I cannot tell certainly online anybody whether they should or should not get a vaccine or anything else for that matter. I mean,

that's something you have to have in discussion with your practitioners. And nobody should be giving you medical advice that doesn't know you. And the only thing that is recommended in terms of vaccines in general is the CDC schedule, the American Academy Pediatric Schedule. Anything outside of that is something that you would have to discuss with your, your practitioners and decide what makes sense for your family. But I don't know why vaccines have become this alternate universe when it comes to these discussions. I mean, medicine is about teaching, right? The name doctor literally comes from dosaire means to teach. We're not here to tell people what to do. We're here to discuss things, provide the risks and the benefits, and let people decide what's

best for them. We don't force Jehovah's Witnesses to get blood if they don't want to. We don't force people to get a surgery if they don't want to. Sometimes in emergency situations, you know, things will just happen. But in general, you know, you talk about your heart issue and you say, oh, well, you know, you can get this stent placed in. Here are the benefits. Here are the risks. Do you want to do it? It might save your life. It might not. You might not need it. You know, you get a hip surgery. You talk about the pros and the cons. You could die from your hip surgery. You could get a blood clot. You get an infection. I mean, these are the things that we talk about. And yet with vaccines, a lot of times it seems like, just do it. Don't talk about it. Don't talk

about the pros and the cons, don't talk about the specific child and what's going on, maybe they are allergic to something in the shot. Maybe they have some condition that's precluding them from getting it that day, or maybe they were sick two days ago and it's not the best thing to do today. Maybe you can wait a week. These are individualized questions that we make every day for all products. And yet when it comes to the word vaccine, all logic seems to be dropped from the conversation and just a lot of anger and frustration that I talk about. don't know why we are here because it is not controversial to say we want our kids to be healthy. I think that everybody, if there was a magical pill that you could give their kid that

prevented them from getting all disease and had no risks that pill whatsoever, we'd all be lining up to give our kid that. But that's not the reality of anything. Everything has risks. Everything has benefits. And we need to talk about those things so we can decide what's best for our kids. But with a lot of these products, we don't have long-term data. We don't have data for these things in conjunction, just like we're talking about with the toxins.

We don't know how these things interact with each other. We need to. We're giving products to our kids. And a lot of very intelligent, very educated people have questions. As they should, you should question anything you're giving to your kids. You should question everything that you're doing to yourself and get educated on that topic. There's nothing wrong with asking questions. We should be asking questions.

and yet we're not having discussions and debates, which I think would be very helpful to have in modern society. I think if you are somebody who is extremely, you know, let's say you're very much on the side of everybody should get vaccines. Well, then let's have discussions about those vaccines, talk about those things, and you prove why you're correct. That's how we do everything else. You know, if somebody says, oh, I don't think I should get this vaccine for whatever reason,

let's have discussions on those topics and let's talk about the pros and the cons so that you can convince people to do the thing that you think they should be doing just like with any other medical intervention. For the parent who's out there who's listening, it's like, look, guys, I appreciate you talking about food, everything else. But with the topic of vaccines, you know, quote unquote, the science is settled, the top experts in this space have told us that these things, especially for kids, are looked at or studied.

and to even have the discussion fuels conspiracies, misinformation, and overall general hesitancy, right? For that person that's out there could be a parent, could be a medical doctor listening, could be anybody. What do you want to say to that individual? It's important to have conversations about everything. Nothing in the world is settled. Science is never settled. that is not how science works and not talking about it is creating a much bigger problem. The problem is growing and it's bubbling and I see it in the office.

I see people more hesitant and more scared with everything in medicine because we're not talking about it. And to say that something is settled, I don't even know how we can talk about that at all. There are so many vaccines that are new. There's so many medications that are new. How can you say that something is settled when it came out last year and it has been 15 years? Like maybe you're going to grow a third arm from a medication you're going to take in 10 years. How do you know?

Nothing is settled and you have to keep studying things. And certainly when it comes to a product that you're doing when there's multiple of them, what research has there been on everything together? Right. We don't have that, not really. And so to say that it's settled, it's conspiracy theory, there's no such thing. There's not, there's no, there shouldn't be so much anger. There's no reason why we can't talk about this.

You don't have to agree. nobody's telling you not to get vaccines. I'm not against vaccines at all. I'm not saying you shouldn't get them. I'm saying if we want people to get them, if we want to have people trust medicine, we shouldn't have any topics that we can't talk about or debate. We shouldn't have anything that's off the table.

We shouldn't ask me this question and it be like, oh, well, what if somebody thinks you're a conspiracy theorist to anti-vaxxer who's going to be harming kids and causing heads? No, we're just talking about it. We're talking about the questions that parents have that I hear. every single day, all the time, people that come to the office, people online, they're concerned about many different things. They have a lot of questions about, you know, do we need to do this vaccine anymore? There hasn't been this disease in 20 years. Do I need to give this to my kid?

I've read this online about the MMR vaccine. Should I be worried about it? Like, this is what an informed, intelligent, reasonable parent would do. They would have questions about anything they're giving to their child. And if we can't talk about those things, then then how are we going to get to a better place where people can trust the medical system if you're just like, no, no, it's settled, it's fine. But the parents don't feel that way. Some might, you might, you might feel like everything's settled and fine. Great, go do it.

And that's perfect. That's what the recommendations are. But there are a lot of parents that are frustrated because they feel like they have questions without answers and they come and ask me those questions. And a lot of times I don't have the answer because the research doesn't even exist on a lot of those things. Yeah. Well, I'm sure your patients appreciate, as our listeners do today, the fact that you're even willing to talk about the fact that a lot of people can't talk about this topic. I don't have kids.

You know, I haven't had to make those choices yet. But one thing that I definitely feel very strongly about right now from talking to many experts that have been on this podcast and many of my friends are functional medicine doctors or pediatricians like yourself. And I know I'm not speaking for you because we've never actually talked about the topic. But they themselves have questions about certain interventions and the combination of those. And a lot of it, and a lot of it, if anti-vaccin anyway, but a lot of people have concerns about this updated schedule that we have today. And if you got all the vaccines that were there at the time that they want to get all of them done, which are largely decided on public health measures, it's very difficult, especially

when you get to lower income populations to even get them to go to the doctor the first place because we don't have universal health care in America. So they try to get as many of vaccines and one appointment as possible. And that's the reason why we have a lot of the schedule from my understanding that we do today because you're worried about kids not coming back and getting them. And I think that that's public medicine for all. And when you understand that, you can make decisions for your own family and say, does that make sense to me if I don't know that these vaccines have been studied in combination or that there could be a risk or my child already has some level of mitochondrial dysfunction or gut issues or some chronic issue that they've been dealing with?

Do I want to introduce something that could be a potential, not known, but a potential disruptor that could throw their immune system off? I think that's what a lot of people are asking. They don't know the answer. They just want to be able to make those decisions for their own family. Correct. And those kinds of questions are the exact kind of questions that we get in the office or the other doctors get that you don't have an answer to. I think it is a reasonable question to ask. And the answer may very well be that the benefits, that way the risks, and you should do it. But a lot of the stuff doesn't have research on it, doesn't have data. It doesn't have discussion. It was just studies that were done by the companies when the products first came out and that's it.

And then they're shown to be safe and that's it. And then we kind of move forward from there. but parents don't feel like they're being heard and they don't feel like they're being listened to and these questions are being answered and maybe there are more studies out there that I'm not aware of. Maybe there is a lot of research on this stuff. I don't know. I have not seen it.

But maybe there is more information. But that's where the discussions need to be had because at the end of the day, if a parent has a question, like my child has serious gut issues and I'm concerned that they get whatever medical intervention, not just a vaccine, but any medication, then the question is, okay, well, what are the risks and the benefits? Do you need this medication? What are the known risks from that vaccine or from that medication?

And should we take it versus not? And that's a discussion because you don't know how it's going to affect you. You don't have a magic ball that says what the future is going to be. So you have to go based on the data. And if you can't even have the discussion and you don't have the data on some of these things, then it's not helpful. I mean, again, we want healthy kid, right? nutrition are not bad people. These are good people that are going into medicine to help kids. But the question is, what are the risks, what are the benefits, and how do we get to a place that is healthier and more vibrant? And I think we can get there by having discussions. Because at the end of the day, let's say that a specific vaccine has an ingredient there that's

contributor to eczema. Well, if we can figure that out and we can take that thing out, then maybe we can have a vaccine with the exact same efficacy that decreases the risk. Why wouldn't you want that? Why would you not want that to happen? There's no downside. It's not stopping people from getting the shots, but if there's some risk that you get from whatever product, it's a medication, you know, you can get a heart medication. Well, don't we want to know that it's causing blood pressure issues for that patient? Like, you'd want to switch that medication up so it doesn't. That's not controversial. It's just basic human decency that we want healthy kids. And so if we can just have these discussions, maybe we can talk about it more. Maybe we can push for more research, more

independent research. Maybe we can look into some of these products and decide whether we still really need them. You know, do we, can we change things up? Are there ingredients in there that we can change up? I mean, there are a lot of questions that we can ask over the next 20, 30, 50 years to make things better and safer and healthier. But the answer isn't always more. And that's what it seems like it is these days. Like, let's just do more. We have another one. Let's do more. And at some point it's too many, right? At some point it's too many. And there's good in having more medicine. There's good in having more vaccines. I'm having more vaccines. We're having more vaccines. And if we can't weigh those, if we can't talk about it, then we're going to be missing where

we can help kids to be healthier, I think. The billionaire investor and philanthropist, Bill Ackman, he recently weighed into this conversation on X.com, formerly known as Twitter. And one of the things that he was writing about is that he said that he's been looking for reputable teams that are out there that are university associated that would be willing to go into this discussion on vaccines, being looked at the standard childhood schedule and looking at them individually and seeing, you know, can we test some of these things? Can we look at their efficacy? Can we do some additional research that's there?

And one of the things he posted, and I haven't seen an update from since, is that even getting researchers, and he was willing to fund this research, right? He was willing to write a grant, and he, I believe, had mentioned that, you know, he had had all his childhood vaccines, but he understands that a lot of people have questions, and it's a big topic. I think it's like 50% of the population has, like, major questions about this topic of vaccines, and that he's willing to fund some research in this space. And even getting anybody to reach out, and even the people I did reach out privately, I believe he mentioned, and we'll link to the tweet, that just people were very scared of even taking on as a project. Because if you're a researcher and you take on

this project, what are other people going to think, even if you think it's a valid thing to look at? This is an area that also happened with fluoride. There was a study out of your neck of the woods, Toronto, just outside of Toronto, there was a couple counties. I don't know exactly how you say him. And there was a researcher based in Toronto who was looking at fluoride and tap water. And does fluoride negatively contribute to the neurological development of kids? And what they did is they did a natural study. There was a town that didn't use fluoride in the tap water. And there was another town that used fluoride in tap water. And they looked at the IQ of babies. And the findings were pretty shocking. We'll link to the study there. And they at least led to the feeling that more

researchers need in this space is that the town that used fluoride in the tap water, that it seemed to have negatively impacted the young boys, for some reason. It didn't impact the young girls as much. And the researcher got so much and the journal, which was super reputable, it was published in JAMA. I don't know if it was JAMA pediatrics or something else, but it was published in JAMA. We'll link to the study again. And their argument was, there's no benefits for babies when the brain is being formed. Babies don't have fucking teeth. There's no benefits to them getting fluoride in the first place. So why wouldn't we at least, number one, do some more research in this category, but number two, at least precautionary tell parents to have or provide, you know,

in a country like Canada that has universal health care, provide some sort of filtration system at home that takes out the fluoride, takes out other chemicals that are there. And the journal ended up having to post a sort of defense letter as to why they want this research to be had and they understand that it's controversial and they got a lot of blowback from it. And as you've mentioned, the topic of vaccines, the topic of these things, these shouldn't be controversial for us to look at them. Now, with all that being said, you have an important message for people.

You know, there was recently a YouTube Live that you were on for an online newspaper outlet. And, you know, one of the things that consistently showed up in the comments when you were talking about what was going on with our chronic disease epidemic is in the topic, there was a lot of individuals. that were writing, it's the vaccines, it's the vaccines, say it's the vaccines. And actually, the interviewer actually brought it up with you and said, you know,

a lot of people are saying it's the vaccines. And you had an important message for people that feel that all of our chronic issues, autism, everything, can all be summed up just by looking at the increased usage or the incorrect quote unquote usage from their point of view of vaccines. What do you want to say to those people? Right. Well, that's, I mean, the whole other side, right? There's two sides of the crazy part of this story where it's in an extreme where there are a lot of people online that think that everything is caused by vaccines all of the time.

And that's the biggest evil in the world. And, you know, whatever you mention, that's the cause. And I've taken care of kids, many kids, one of the many, but some kids that have all sorts of conditions that never got a vaccine. So it couldn't be that. It couldn't be the cause of or have anything to do with those kids because they never got one. So it's too simplistic. It's way too simplistic to say that one medical intervention or one thing is the big boogeyman, and that's the thing that's causing all of our problems.

There's no way that's true. It's multifactorial. There are so many things going on, and that's why we need to discuss it. We need to figure out what is going on, what are the biggest contributors, why are we seeing more eczema, why are we seeing more autism, why are we seeing more autoimmune condition? We have to have everything on the table. Nothing is settled, and it can't be settled because the numbers are getting worse and worse. no matter what we think, we have to rethink, we have to look at it in different ways,

we have to look at it from a different lens, and try to figure out for our kids what is going on. And if we pre-assume a position, then we're not serving our kids the best. We cannot, we cannot get anywhere with crazy arguments of division and anger and fighting. If you say the word vaccine and everything goes in one direction. and if you mention a disease, then everybody blames it all on vaccines. Like, that's not a reasonable way to move forward, and that's not going to take the discussion anywhere. Like, we need to have open discussions, open debates, we need to open up the topic, we need to have a lot more discussions about it, and that will lead us to a better place

because either we're going to get to a point where the population is convinced that there's really good evidence, actually, that these things are beneficial and the risks are really low, or we're going to find out that actually some of these things do contribute to some of these conditions and we're going to make changes to make them better. It doesn't mean that we're going to throw away all vaccines because we find out that this ingredient in there contributes to eczema or to asthma or whatever it is that we find. We're not going to throw that all away because there's a lot of good that can come from vaccination. There's a lot of good that can come from preventing illness.

But we can't assume that it's all good and there aren't a risk. Everything has risk. You get Tylenol, there's risk. People die from Tylenol. There's nothing that has no risks for everybody. So it's important that we keep discussing it and start to open up the debate on it so that way we can get to a better place where parents are comfortable. Because there's a lot of parents that are not comfortable. Nobody wants to talk about it.

Talk about it to me. Talk about it online. We'll talk about it off this age. They'll post something online. That's the complete opposite of what they feel like. They'll be part of a promotion that says, I'll do this, do this for a kid. And then they really don't do it themselves. but nobody wants to talk about because they don't want to get canceled and they don't want to get into this fight, but we have to.

It's not, it's about kids. It's not about a company. It's not about a product. It's about healthy kids. And if we want to get to a better place, then we need to open up the discussion, open up the possibility and find what we find. And maybe nothing's going to change. We do more research. Maybe all the research says that there's actually true.

But maybe something's not. I don't know. I don't know the answer. I don't have the answer to a lot of the questions that parents have because we just don't have that research because nobody's willing to talk about it. Yeah. And that's why we listed it as number two on today's list is that this is something super controversial that shouldn't be at least we can have the debate.

At least we can have the conversation. I appreciate you having the conversation today. So just a little recap. Number one was the fact that we're not willing to admit that kids' health, children's health, is just going completely haywire. We're on track for in a couple years, I think one out of every two kids having a chronic disease. Is that accurate?

Probably. I mean, it depends what study you look at, but I've seen the most recent better studies that's somewhere between 40 and 50%. So I'm sure it's going to be a 50% in a few years if it's not already. Yeah, so we're on track to kids being having chronic illnesses, which typically you wouldn't find in kids,

like you were talking about type 2 diabetes, right? That was number one. just not talking about how terrible our health care system is, our sick care system is, in particular for kids. We're acting like it's all normal. That shouldn't be controversial. We should be able to talk about it. We talked about vaccines.

Number three was we kind of talked about it with number one, which is we're living in this incredibly toxic soup that's contributing disease. And yet we're all acting like everything that's out there has. been studied long-term and been approved by all the agencies that have oversight instead of the fact that a lot of stuff, a lot of chemicals were actually grandfathered in based on these rules that were passed in sort of Congress. And even though it would take a magnificent effort for the government to solve the problem, the takeaway is that families have to have a precautionary approach, at least with the main contributors to these toxins that are there.

You mentioned a few, you know, minimizing our total level of added sugar inside of the body, how that can be a toxin to the body, especially for our mitochondria. And a lot of kids, especially on the autism spectrum, I think it was Suzanne Goh, who has been on the podcast. She was, and her lab was the original work that found that 80% of kids that are even on the, that are on the spectrum, 80% of them have mitochondrial dysfunction. It was a theory, but then it was proven by her work and her team that, um, that was part of the original lab that she was at,

which I believe it was at Harvard that was doing the work. So sugars, food additives, dyes, things that are often banned in other countries because there's some emerging research or there's a lot of questions. You know, takes a little bit of extra effort and energy, but it's worth it to protect your family. Get clean water, you know, clean air if you can get a chance to do that. And number four, anything actually you want to do. to say about that other that topic of toxic soup that's contributing disease before we go into number

four? Yeah, I would just say this, that as a practitioner, as a pediatrician, as a doctor, it's really frustrating that we're not talking more about prevention when it comes to these topics. We're not thinking about toxins. It's here's your, here's your pill or your disease. That's it. And that is leading to this epidemic of chronic disease. It absolutely is.

We have to shift our focus back. to talk about these things like toxins. You don't, you don't look at a fish who's sick and don't, you don't look at the water that's filled with a bunch of chemicals in there, right? I mean, we know that that's the reason why that fish is dying. You don't give them a pill. You have to clean up the water. And I think that we forget about that for ourselves. We forget that we need sunlight. We need clean water. We need nutrients. We need food. We need to minimize the chemicals and toxins that we're exposed to. And we just don't think about it in that, that light. And it's hard sometimes to prove.

these things, just like you said, a lot of these chemicals are not researched. Some of them were grandfathered in. The company puts out whatever research they do, and then it takes us 20 years to give them lawsuits to fight it back. It's really not an easy thing. So that's one big topic, and we didn't really talk about metals. That's a big concern for, I think, a lot of parents and families these days, metals and food, being supposed to lead, arsenic, cadmium, aluminum. I think that's another big issue. Again, a lot of it's in soil, so it's not that we're going to have zero amount of that in the food. There's going to be some, but we're probably getting too much. It's very common in a lot of the foods that we're eating and a lot of children with chronic diseases. They test their blood. If you test their

urine, if you test their hair, these metals come up in high in high amounts, same with adults. And so I think it is, again, it's just another important thing that we should think about. It's complicated to be a parent. It's complicated to live right now to think like that we, everything can be toxic. I don't think that's the way to go about it, but I do think that we need to be mindful that these these things can contribute and so we need to keep looking into it because I've been looking into autism a lot lately because I've been talking about it a lot and there actually is a lot of research on a variety of chemicals and toxins that are contributors to autism. Nothing's definitive but there has been some good meta-analyses that really dive into what some of the triggers are for autism and I think

that's a very good way to kind of look back at chronic disease in general and we know that pollution increases your risk. So the kids that are close to highways, they have a significant increase risk. We know that aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, all of these things can be related, especially exposure for moms in uteril. These things are related.

Can I ask a quick question on that topic? Anything that people can do, pregnant women, or if you have young kids, and you mentioned that some of the kids that come in, you test them, they have high levels of metals, you know, some of this is in the soil, but is there anything that you recommend to people that are the big contributors to having high levels of heavy metals inside the body?

It's hard. I mean, each one has different contributors. One of the big ones recently that's been found rice. You know, Irishnik was found in a lot of rice products. So I think that this is one of those topics that's more of a community issue. I mean, we need to push for better testing, more independent testing, making sure that companies are doing that and then advertising it, at least as a consumer, if anything, you can try to look for products that publicize it. they publicized they did third party testing, they publicized that they are looking for some of these things as much as you can. I mean, it's hard for every piece of food. You're not going to do

an internet deep dive as a parent, right, or as a practitioner. But at least the more that you can do the better and the more that you're a savvy consumer you buy it when it's on the packaging, I think that that's going to push companies to do this because we're working with our dollars. So the best that we can. But yeah, it's hard. I mean, you're not going to look at this. Just want to toss it on the rice thing because I've been tracking that for a little while. it seems to be that there are higher levels of arsenic in rice, but the big concern is, and I still have white rice here and there, the big concern really was any kind of product that he's using rice as a protein, like you have concentrated rice, you have concentrated rice, you have concentrated, like granulized rice that's being used as a carbohydrate source for snack foods, etc. And you know, you could probably ask if there's a, you know, kids eat the same stuff. They eat the same snack.

They like this one snack. They're going to eat this thing all the time. You can reach out to the company and ask them, do they have any heavy metal testing? If it is rice that's out there, I don't want people to freak out about, you know, whole grain, sorry, not whole grain rice, but like typical white rice that's there, which does have elevated levels compared to years in the past. But it seemed to me the biggest concern was like there was this big trend of people using rice as protein powder, right? So they were using brown rice powder as the protein powder. And in that

concentration, that seemed to be a problematic thing of the level of arsenic that was there. I'm by no means an expert on it, but I was tracking that. And it seemed to be the concentrated source. But again, you can ask the companies if there's certain products that your kids like to use on a regular basis, because their bodies don't, they're not as big as ours. So if they have half the concentration is you, but their body is a third smaller or a fourth smaller or a fifth smaller, it's going to be having a bigger toll on them. Right. And I want to say to that, because there is a really good tip that I talk to parents about when it comes to this topic is, if you're talking about a specific chemical from a specific product, a lot of times the discussion

will be around, oh, it's just fearmongering and, oh, it's well below the levels and it's in the soil, so why are we talking about it? But when you have a child, especially a child, but anybody who's eating a product consistently, like you said, like there's one snack that they love and they're getting it every day. That to me is where the biggest concern is that whatever problematic chemicals are in there, whether it's a metal or anything else, those can build up in the body over time because you're eating it so frequently. So the easiest tip there is just to mix up what you're giving them. Try not to eat anything from the same company over and over and over again every day for weeks and years. Try to vary it up if you're going to do chips, do it from different companies. Try different kinds of

chips, if you're going to do, you know, whatever product you're going to do, even if you're buying fruit or vegetables, like try to buy it from different places, from different farms, from different stores, different varieties. That way, at least you're getting different things. And hopefully that same chemicals are going to build up in your body to the point where it's going to cause an issue. So I think that's a good way to minimize your risk by just varying up what you're eating as opposed to eating one thing, because you just never know, and we've seen it. We saw it with formula. We saw it with lots of things. You just never know when we're going to do some research on a product that seems like it's super healthy. And then you're like, whoa, there's a ton of lead in there.

Who knew? Right? And your kid's been eating that cereal for five years, and they've been eating it every day for breakfast, and you find out now that that cereal has lead in it, then that's where you can run into a problem where there's a lead build up in your body and you have no idea why. As opposed to switching up with different cereals, it's much lower likelihood that all of those zeros are going to have a little bit of lead, not to the point where, or arsenic or whatever it is, is not to the point where it might cause an issue, but it could if it builds up. And that's what happens with lead. I mean, that's, to me, the easiest example that we are aware of in pediatricists, because we test for lead in kids because it can build up. I mean, it can be in your

home. It can be in the paint. It could be in China, like old pots and pans or old toys. And it's oftentimes not because you touch it once. It's because it's there and you're exposed to it over a long time that it builds up in your body and it gets to a point where it's problematic. And if it gets really high, then it becomes very problematic. So I think that's probably true of all of the rest of them, and we don't necessarily need to fear cereal. But I think if we balance what we're eating and vary up our food, then we're going to minimize our risk of getting the same chemical over and over again. This is a good opportunity to talk about something that you chat about the book,

and it's an acronym. It's called seats. And I want to go through it because, yes, we do have a toxic environment that's out there, and how we live our life makes us so much more resilient. you and I both were exposed to hundreds of toxins starting our day off today. We're doing okay. We're going to continue and we're doing our best. So for families, remind them, walk them through seeds and just how important it is to just dial in a couple of areas. And this is where we're really having families in your message in your book.

Again, the book is out, is going to be out on August, August 6th, parenting at your child's pace, an integrated pediatrician's guide to the first three years, but it's really about just more than that. It's about sort of how to really create this as a lifestyle for you and your family, or maybe you want to have a family one day like I do, my wife and I. There's a lot of things that are out there that we can worry about. And some of those things, we have to decide what are going to be majors and what are going to be minors. And then there are the majors, the things that deserve the most amount of attention. And you put them together in this acronym called Seeds. So walk us through that. The S in the first S in Seed stands for.

Stress. What do you want to say about stress? Well, I think that we live in a world where stress is more prevalent than ever. I mean, people seem to be more anxious. We have more anxiety disorder, more depression, more stress than ever before, I think because of social media, because of the news, because of the fear. And whether it's for ourselves or parenting or for our families, is we know that chronic stress is not good for us, and yet most people are living in this state of chronic stress, and I feel like we have to take a step back, especially when it comes to parenting.

We have to take care of ourselves first, and a lot of times we forget about ourselves. And so I really do think that when we're talking about the foundations of health for our kids, it starts with our stress because otherwise that's imparted to our kids. And I think that shows up later in life for them if we're overly stressed about everything or overly stressful what's going on the world.

So creating an environment at home where it's not, you're going to always have little acute stresses. Being a kid is stressful, being a parent is stressful. But you're talking about doing your best to eliminate the chronic stress, especially that your kids can feel. And that's probably a whole topic for like parenting books, the generational approaches to parenting, not over-schedling kids, not being helicopter parents.

You know, that's beyond the scope of this conversation. here, but there is a lot of utility to creating an environment that allows kids to be kids and not have to deal with the chronic stresses of life that are out there. For sure. And really important that we take care of some of our stress for ourselves. I think that's really important. Again, we don't think about ourselves. We don't put ourselves in that equation. But parenting, you know, if you're wanting to become a parent, if you are a new parent, it's stressful enough. You're already not sleeping that much. There's enough stress there that if we don't manage some of our own anxieties and worries before we get into it,

then these things spill over. Again, it's tough enough. So the more that we can work on ourselves, especially if you have the time right now before you become a parent, then I think that's a great motivator to do the work and, you know, either go to a therapist or work with a great practitioner to kind of go through some of these stresses in our life and try to see if we can find some ways to minimize that stress. Okay, so the other E that we didn't talk about, which is huge because kids today are living an extremely sedentary lifestyle. And the lower you go on the economic totem pole, unfortunately, you have a massive overconsumption of calories. So you have a sedentary lifestyle and you have a ton of extra calories that kids are eating as well too, which are contributing to

the chronic rates of obesity that we're seeing in even kids. What do you want to say about exercise and how important it is. Yeah, I mean, you said it very well. Exercise, of course, is one of the most important topics. We didn't really talk about it so much today, but it's a whole other topic and a whole other world of discussion. But, yeah, kids are sitting in front of the screens. We have a very sedentary lifestyle, and we need to move.

We're talking about toxins. How do we get the toxins out? One of the main ways is by sweating, and yet we're not outside. We're not moving. We're not sweating. And that is a big issue of obesity, diabetes. these are major issues, some of the biggest issues in America and around the Western world,

and really the whole world almost at this point. And a big part of that equation is moving. And we're doing everything, especially from the time of the pandemic. I mean, we're moving further and further away from moving. What do we do during the pandemic? We stayed inside. We stopped all the activities. I mean, you know, for better or worse, whatever you believe in, but that's what happened.

For worse, definitely. Yes, I would say for worse, too. But yeah, for the people out there, you know, everyone's got different opinions. But I know my opinion, but we're so diplomatic. But we did all the opposite things to what we know is important for health. And exercise stopped. And we got in this pattern where it was already a problem. And then we got in this pattern where we're on screens more.

And we're sitting more at home and we're getting more isolated. And we know that we need to move. I mean, look at the blue zones all over the world. They're not going to the gym. Not so much. They're just moving. Their lifestyle involves walking or cooking. or farming, and that's what we need to get back to.

We have built a life that doesn't involve moving, and while I think it is useful as a first step to get kids into activities and sports and movement in general, we have to build a lifestyle where we're just constantly moving every day. I think that it can't be something where we just go to the gym and that's actually, I mean, if you want to go to the gym, that's great, but really where you get the most bang for buck is walking, just moving all day, whatever it is.

The people that live the longest, that's their life. They're just the grandmas who are 95 that look like they're 60 because they're in the kitchen just rolling and cooking and working hard. And you see them on any of the videos you ever watch on the blue zones. It's like they're stronger than me. Why? Because they're working all day. They're not going in the gym.

They're not exercising. They're just moving. And we have to get back to that. And so for a parent, we have to think, how do we build it into their lives? How can we build some movement in? But it doesn't feel like it's forced. It doesn't feel like we're making them go to the gym. gym. We're not shaming them for not moving. We're just walking more. Like, let's park the car a little bit

away from school and walk to school. Let's find ways we can walk more. Let's take the stairs into the elevator. Whatever it is that you can do into your day, build it in because those little bits add up. I love it. We talked a lot about diet. That's the D in seeds, seeds plural. Let's talk about sleep. What do you want to say about sleep? And again, these are the majors. There could be so many things that parents and individuals can do. But these are the things you, get these things right, you're doing better than 95, 99% of the population who's struggling with even just the basics. So let's talk about sleep. Right. We also know that sleep has been getting worse and worse in terms of the amount of time that kids are sleeping, the quality of the

sleep that we're getting with all the screens and the distractions. It's become a problem, a big problem. And not rocket science. We need our sleep. That's where we rest. That's where we digest. That's where we detoxify. And if we're sleeping three hours, four hours in the night, then how are we going to be focused at school? How are we going to be focused during the day? How are we going to let our body do what it needs to do? So just a simple focus back to reminding kids, just how important it is, making sure we're getting optimal sleep for our age, for our kids and for ourselves. It is a vital part of the day we need it. If you don't sleep for just a couple of days, you start having a lot of issues. So we know that it's extremely important for us.

trust me, as a resident, the doctor in training, you learn very quickly how crazy you go when you don't sleep for even one night, right? I think it is really important that we get our sleep in. So just gentle nudging back to our kids, make sure they're sleeping, make sure they're getting off their screens, no screens in the bedroom, no screens after bedtime, you know, these are simple things that we can all do that can make a huge difference for their mental health and for their general health. That's great. You know, I mentioned we had a fourth category and it might be something that we do a little rapid fire round on because these themes go into these are topics that are controversial but really shouldn't be when it comes to especially

pregnancy, that newborn stage, and your book really shines in these categories. And we picked out a few. We wrote a few down that we thought the audience could enjoy a little preview on. So I'm going to go through these. You know, you mentioned formula a little bit earlier. And let's talk about that first. Why is the topic, or remind our audience, why the topic of breastfeeding and formula is so controversial and your take as an integrated pediatrician that you want to bring to the space? It's one of those topics you would not think is controversial, but it is because some people are very pro breastfeeding. And then other people are very pro formula that some people feel like, you know, we shouldn't make moms breastfeed. We shouldn't push them to do it.

There's formula. That's great. I think as an integrated petition, as a patrician, as a parent, and just someone who's looked at the research and really just thought about things they've been in humanity for, you know, ever, I guess. There's stuff in breast milk that you just can't replicate in formula. We're very lucky that we have formula. I think that's great if you need it. But I'm always encouraging my patients to breastfeed as much as they can. If they can, because you get antibodies.

You cannot replicate what is in there with formula. There's chemicals and preservatives in formula. And so it's just not equal. It's great. It's magical. Your kids can do just perfectly. A lot of us grew up on formula and we're just fine. But I think that it should not be controversial.

We should be encouraging breastfeeding whenever it's reasonable, whenever you can. Some parents cannot. Some parents do not want to. That's fine. But I would still encourage it if you can. Yeah. And that obviously opens up a whole bunch of conversations about how we set up our workplaces, the role that government can play.

There were some bipartisan things that, you know, she can be a controversial figure for some, but there were some bipartisan things that different individuals were working on in the latest, in Trump's administration, you know, the first time, I think Ivanka Trump was trying to do a lot of these measures that were there, you know, no commentary on politics, but there was some bipartisan movement

in the direction of trying to make life easier for women to, it wasn't specifically about breastfeeding, but just to raise kids in general. You know, we have a bigger issue, which is a lot of societies are dealing with population collapse. Italy, Japan, Korea, they all have negative population growth. And that's why these countries have gotten so scared

and they're investing hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, to actually encourage people to have kids. And so we can't talk about the topic of breastfeeding without talking about there might need to be some societal reform. that needs to be there to just make it easier for women and, you know, men too, meaning families, to have kids because people aren't having a lot of kids. I would say if you've had kids, then you very few people would disagree with that.

I think that there is so much that we can do. Once you go through having kids, you realize just how exhausted you are, how much that, how much you have to put into having a kid in those first couple of months. And so there are just so many things that we can do to be more supportive of moms and parents in general and partners for, especially those first couple of months, whether we're talking about breastfeeding, whether we're talking about leave from work. I mean, there are a lot of places around the world that do this very well and do it seamlessly. And I'm all for it in general. If you can take off some time from work, that's the thing to do. I mean, the first time I couldn't really do it because I was opening up my practice the second time I could because the practice was more established.

was so different to just be able to stay home and take it easy. I think it's here, quotes, what the new baby. But I have to worry about the office too during those first couple of weeks. I think there's no reason why we can't be supportive as a society for helping new parents and helping parents in general to do the things that we know are best for the family, which ultimately are best for the kid in the long run. Because even when it comes to breastfeeding, there's no controversy that the data shows. that you have decreased risks of eczema, allergies, asthma.

Almost every health marker that you look at, if you breastfeeding for six months, it decreases your risk. So we should be supporting that wherever we can. It doesn't mean your kid if you use formula or did is going to have these things, but there's a lower risk, so we should be supporting that. All right. One of the things that you put on this list that's controversial is Botox. Now, I've been really impressed at the wellness community.

I've never done Botox before. I have nothing against it. but I sort of felt like probably at least about three, four years ago, oh man, Botox, it's a neurotoxin, it's a this, it's a that, why would people use it in general? And then once you talk to more people, you realize like nothing works as well as Botox does. A lot of people use it. And there's actually a lot of good safety data for how long it's been used for. I think the recommendation is that pregnant women should not have Botox.

Is that correct? So the recommendations are that there's not a lot of great research on it, which is their most things. So that's why I think it is controversial because you have to take a step back for most things when it comes to either pregnancy or breastfeeding and realize that there are generally not a lot of human studies on any of these because most pregnant women or women who had just had a baby are not lining up to do a research study on some sort of chemical or product. And a lot of, it might not even pass the IRB. They may not even approve it because they're like, it's too risk it even tried.

Right. So a lot of it is based on animal studies and animal models. And therefore, the vast majority of the data that we have often comes out with, well, you know, it's not shown that it's dangerous, but we need more research or we're just not sure. So use it at your own risk. And that's kind of how most things are, unless they're dangerous, right? Sometimes eventually you figure out like, oh, this is causing harm so we shouldn't do it. basically everything else is kind of in that middle category where you're just not really sure.

And so that's when I get asked this at parent interviews. I get asked it online sometimes. You wouldn't think it was such a big, I guess, controversy or question. But I guess it is. We live in Los Angeles. Yeah, maybe because I live in Los Angeles. I don't know. But I get questions people that are not from Los Angeles. So I think people are thinking about it. And I tend to take the same approach with most things, whether it's Botox or medications.

You use it if you need it. I would say that over time, something like Botox would probably be going to realize more and more that it's not the best for the baby, not the best for pregnancy, not the best for breastfeeding. So if you're going to wait until after, that's what I recommend. I think there's no harm in waiting until after you're done breastfeeding to do it unless you absolutely need it, just like with a medication. The recommendation a lot of times, let's say like an antidepressant or an anxiety medication. There are some that are known to be dangerous, but for the most part, they're in that middle category.

And so you use it if you need it. If the benefits outweigh the risks, then you do it. But otherwise, you minimize your use as much as you. you can because we just don't know. I think it was Cynthia Thurlow. It might have also been JJ Virgin. They came on this podcast and they're like, look, I recommend people do as much organic as possible. I talk about the importance of resistance training. I talk about the importance of, you know, minimizing added sugar. I talk about, you know, all the things that are there. And I'm not ashamed to say that I will use a little Botox here and there. I don't overdo it.

And I don't think it should be what's that? No, no, this is not me talking. This is Cynthia Thurlow talking, which I appreciated it. And she's like, what is wrong with it? Like we, you know, men get hair transplants. Dudes are on Viagra. There's people that use medication and interventions for a lot of different things. Why does it have to be? And, you know, she was sharing her own, you know, thoughts on the situation. And that just because Botox is quote unquote unnatural, a lot of people in the sort of wellness space, me included previously, just had a negative approach towards it and would shame people for using, I didn't shame anybody, but I'm saying the society can sometimes feel like, oh, that's terrible. Why would you do that? Obviously, great skin quality has a lot to do with

activity, hydration, and diet, but I don't care if somebody wants to use Botox or doesn't want to use Botox. That's like their own personal prerogative. And that's what I think too, but if you're asking me about the safety of the child, safety of the child, my recommendation my wife would be and she's on the same page of me, when you're pregnant. Correct. No Botox. That's my opinion. That's what I tell people. If you want to do it, I can't say that there's the research that you should not do it,

but I would recommend against it because I feel like it's going to be something that we will be recommending against in 10 years. So that's my personal opinion. All right. Here's another hot topic, and we might end it on this one here. Co-sleeping. Why is this such a controversial topic? And what's your hot take that you want to bring to this area? So co-sleeping is a very interesting topic in pediatrics because,

So for those who don't know about co-sleeping, basically sleeping with the baby in your bed, that's co-sleeping. So in pediatrics, there are very strong recommendations that we should put our baby in their own space on their back with nothing in that space, whether it's a crib or a bassinet or whatever it is. And the reason being because that is what lowers the risk of SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome the most. We know that. We have great research on it.

That's really not something that's debated anymore. And so when you have the guidelines, that's what parents are told. They said, you know, put them in her own space. you should not co-sleep. But what's interesting about co-sleeping is if you ask parents whether they do it or not, whether they sleep with their kids or not, almost every parent says that they do. 70 to 90% of parents on most studies say that they co-sleep. It's the most light about topic in all of pediatrics, probably in all of medicine. And so to me, that says that medicine is missing something because we're focused on the research and the data, but maybe not what people are doing

in real life. And I think that's an issue. And that's why I like to talk about that in the book, because we also have to talk about reality. And what we know about co-sleeping is there are actually some risk factors that are very significant that are good to know about, like sleeping on a couch or soft surface that really increases your risk of sudden antithast syndrome, taking a medication that's a sedative or a drug that really increases your risk of sedentat syndrome. So drinking alcohol, medicine that makes you sleepy or drugs, these are things that really increase. your risk of sudden infidicinum. So if you're going to be co-sleeping, then these are good things to know because that really increases your risk. Maybe you were drinking one night. And so that's not the

best time to co-sleep. Maybe that's when you put them in their own space. But when we give these blanket statements and we don't take into account what people are actually doing, we foster an us versus them in medicine or an environment where parents start the relationship by feeling that they need to lie about something, you ask them where they're sleeping, oh, they're sleeping in their own space. and they're lying about it. And people have told me that they lie about it all the time because they didn't feel comfortable talking to their doctor about it. And that's the wrong place to start a relationship with your patients.

And so I really do think that it's important that we take patients into account and we bring all the data in so we can help make our own decisions that are the best for our family because at the end of the day, it's not our job to tell people what to do. It's our job to inform them. And I think it is important to be informed as a parent that the lowest risk of Sunday infidicidic syndrome is in their own space. But after that, parents should be able to decide what they want to do. Maybe their baby sleeps better with them. Maybe they feel like the bonding that they're getting, like the bonding that they're getting like the bonding that they're getting weighs the risk for sudden

infidest syndrome and they know what the risk is and they're okay with it. That comes down to personal choice. That's what health is. That's what medicine is. That's what wellness is. And it's not my job as a pediatrician to tell you you should or should not co-sleep. It's my job to inform you. Here is the risk of sudden death syndrome, here's where the risks are lowest, and be aware of that, and then you do what you want to do with your own family and your own home, because there might be a specific situation where the guidelines don't apply to you. And that just goes back to the bigger issue of a lot of things that we're talking about today, where there's a lot of arrogance and medicine, not a lot of listening, a lot of telling, and a lot of division and anger when we're all on the

same team, and we all want healthy kids. We're all in this together, and we need to be working together to get our kids and ourselves to a healthier place. And right now it seems like there is a lot of teams or us versus them. We're sides or fighting. And that's not getting us anywhere positive. One thing I appreciate about physicians like yourself. And unfortunately, there's not that many of them, especially when it comes to being a integrated pediatrician, is at the end of the day, you took a sworn testimony to be there for the patient. You're there to protect the kid. You're there to protect the family. You're there to be on their side to teach them, as you mentioned, which is the original root word of doctor to be their teacher. And regardless of

their politics, their vision, what they believe, what they don't believe, you're there for the family. So people come in with ideas that they want to do things in particular way. And as a doctor, you've seen it all with families. You've seen people that want every vaccine. You've seen people that have had no vaccines. You've seen parents that say, I'm never going to feed my kid sugar and see how tough that is in that process and kind of give them tips and recommendations and tell them not to beat themselves up. You've done so many different things. You've seen so many different things. And I think that's what gives you this incredible compassion that you've definitely poured into your work. And of course, this book where you're bringing a no judgment zone to all these topics.

And I just want to acknowledge you for being that incredible human being, not just to your patients, but also bringing that on to today's podcast as well, too. Well, I appreciate that. I mean, really, the main goal is just to help decrease stress and to talk about health. And that's it. There's no other agenda there, I think is really unfortunate. There's way too many agendas these days. And we shouldn't feel judged. I don't want any more parents coming to my office crying because they got kicked out from another office or they felt judge at the other office.

Like, that's not where we're supposed to be, again, we're all in the same team, and we want a healthier future. So let's do that together. And, you know, we did talk about vaccines today, but hopefully people aren't too angry about that. And, you know, if they are, I guess I'm used to it, but that's fine. But again, I'm not anti-anything. We're just pro-having discussions and pro-healthy kids.

And there's no controversy around that. Amazing. Joel, this has been fantastic. We're going to link to the book. and it's available soon. I don't know exactly what date this podcast comes out, but we'll have the link. You can pre-order it.

Parenting at your child's pace, an integrated pediatrician's guide to the first three years. Are you doing any kind of like bonuses or any kind of online class or anything like that that you want to shout out or mention? So you can get the book anywhere the books are sold, but if you go to the website for the book, Parenting at Your Child's Pace.com,

you can, if you order it now, if it's done pre-dard, you can get the first chapter, you can get a bonus chapter and a free month to my parenting community where we have a whole bunch of naturally minded parents. They ask questions. They talk about all sorts of topics, ask me questions, and we have lives and all sorts of discussions.

So you can get a free month or that so you can look at the book or just ask any questions that you have or continue the conversation from what you read if there's anything that you want to ask me. Awesome. Joel, I appreciate you. I appreciate their work that you do. And thanks for also not just taking care of patience,

but making time to post your thoughts on social media. There's not that many integrative doctors that are working in pediatrics or functional medicine doctors. So the fact that you're speaking up, I see so many parents that I know reshare your content and it gives them confidence at the way that they're living, that there's data or even just strong clinical experience

and they don't feel like they're on an island on their own. So thanks for straddling both sides of that and a pleasure to have you on, brother. Thank you for having me. Hey, YouTube, if you enjoyed what you just saw, Keep watching for more great content on how to improve your brain and your life. One of the most important functions of mitochondria is that they generate energy for the body in the form of the molecule ATP.

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