Why Children Are Getting Sicker and How We Can Help | Dr. Joel Warsh | Align Podcast #523
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Welcome back to the Lend Podcast. This conversation is a contentious one to say the least. We get into shots, the ones that would be injected into our bodies. I am hesitant to use the word, which is interesting in and of itself because of censorship.

We talk about fluoride in water. We talk about certain herbicides and insecticides and things of the like that are potentially changing the sex of amphibious creatures such as frogs and disrupting the hormones of humans probably as well. We talk about pediatric antibiotics.

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He is he's completed degrees in kinesiology, psychology and epidemiology and community health before earning his medical degree from Thomas Jefferson Medical College.

He has published tons of peer-reviewed research in respectable journals. And he's great. He's been featured all over the internet. And he is a wealth of knowledge. I'm grateful to get to bring this conversation. You guys, if you have interest in taking care of children, the future of children, taking care of yourself, anything like that, I think this conversation is for you. Share it with anybody who has a child, who or has a child on the way, or just is interested in the health of children.

kids. I think this is a really important conversation. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for leaving reviews. Thanks for checking out the Align podcast YouTube channel and subscribing over there for a chance to win sweet prizes. We pick a subscriber at the end of each month and we send them some cool stuff. That's it. That's all. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Dr. Joel Gator Warsh.

Dr. Joel Warsh, thank you for being here. Appreciate you making time. I want to start off and heard a startling statistic in listening to you that around 50% of children are diagnosed with some type of chronic disease. Is that accurate? And if so, why is that? What the heck is going on?

It is accurate, unfortunately. I mean, there are different statistics out there depending on which study you look at. I've seen 40 percent, 50 percent, even a little higher. But regardless, it's just so high. And it's really unfortunate that we're here because just a few decades ago it was about 5 percent. And now we're somewhere around 50 percent. So one out of two kids have some sort of chronic disease, asthma, allergies.

ADHD, autism, autoimmune conditions. I mean, you name it, everything is basically going up. And the big question is why? Like, why is this happening? What's going on? And why are we not figuring this out? I mean, I certainly have theories and I think a lot of individuals in the integrative space really feel like they're not figuring this out.

feel like it's around our food and our lifestyle and our lack of exercise and the toxins that we're being exposed to, but we don't exactly know. And I think that's unfortunate, but certainly whatever we're doing is not working and we're going in the wrong direction. What is your intuition or research suggest would be some of the longest levers? Or if you had to pick one, what would be the longest lever in creating disease within children? I think the two biggest are food and toxins. I think

that the food that we're eating is not nutrient dense. It's filled with chemicals and we're, well, especially kids are eating mostly ultra processed foods, a ton of sugar. And, and then it's being sprayed in chemicals like glyphosate. They're,

consuming metals and all sorts of toxins. So I think it's those two things together. I mean, we're literally built of what we eat. And if we're not consuming the nutrients that we need for our body to thrive, then how do we expect

Yeah.

diabetes for another child. It just has different expressions, but I think that's what we're seeing. Is glyphosate a conspiracy theory? Like what's, why is glyphosate legal to be sprayed on crops if it's as bad as it's suggested to be? I don't think it's a conspiracy theory. I mean, I, I feel like it's proven at this point that it's harmful. I mean, there've been a lot of lawsuits and it's been related to cancer and on all sorts of issues. So I don't think it's a conspiracy in any way. Um,

At some point in our history, we wanted to make sure that we had higher yields of crops and we wanted to make sure that pests didn't get them. And so we started spraying with these herbicides and pesticides and we changed up the crops so that way they could handle these things. But we were never really meant to consume something like glyphosate. We really just worked around it. But it's not really surprising when you're spraying something like that, that we're going to see issues. And really all the food, almost all the food that you test nowadays has

Some glyphosate in it, and I feel like there is more awareness and maybe we're moving a little bit away from it, but companies are smart and they'll just have other products and spray other things. So no, I don't think it's a conspiracy theory, but I do think that companies do what they're allowed to do and they'll do whatever makes them the most money. And unless we force them to do something different, why would they do something different? And our system in America is not

really set up to push back on corporations in the way that they are these days. We really do believe in freedom, which is good. But when companies get so big that they can do whatever they want, then that's also an issue, especially when you're talking about food. So that's one of the big reasons where we see, I think, a major difference to a lot of other countries in that

They have higher standards, especially when it comes to food, whereas we have the grass generally recognized as safe. And so you don't have to really, you have to prove something unsafe here, which is much harder than proving something safe. So we have so many more chemicals and so many more toxins in our food. And I think that's a big problem. What can a person at home do to ameliorate some of those pesticides and chemicals that might be sneaking into our food?

food, whether we like it or not. The best thing is to know where your food comes from. So the more that you can get local, the more that you can get it from places that you know, the farmer or the farm, then I think that is the most helpful. Still, some can get on there. But ideally, if you're working or buying food from a place that's organic, a place where you can ask them questions, do they spray this on it? Do they have it on it? If you're buying a product that states, you know, glyphosate free, they've tested for it. I mean, these are the ways that you can at least

try to minimize it. I don't think it's easy to get down to zero, but the more that we do, the better. And again, I think it's, we're getting to the point where there's just too much. Our body can handle a little bit of most things, but we're exposed to so many chemicals and so many toxins. And especially with glyphosate, it's in so much that even decreasing it by 20% or 50%, that's very helpful for most kids. And it really just starts with being mindful. And most parents aren't even, certainly weren't at

you know, five years ago, weren't aware of these tanks. And this is something that we have to be aware. We have to start reading labels. We have to start looking into where our food comes from. We have to start prioritizing that in our decision making. And if you do that,

then you can decrease some of these chemicals and some of these toxins. And I do think that goes a long way. Why are babies getting so many shots? The short answer to that question is that's what's recommended by the CDC, right? And, you know, for me as a doctor, you know, for those who don't know me, I'm a pediatrician.

And I specialize in integrative health. So I really try to focus on balancing the best of both worlds, modern medicine and integrative medicine. I'm not against Western medicine. I just want to front by saying that if we're gonna talk about shots, but but I do think that we need to have conversations about everything. And you know, when it comes to shots, over the last

you know, 40 to 50 years, we have seen quite an explosion in the amount of shots that are given to kids. What is standard at this point? I don't have a child, so it's not so relevant to me, but it still seems interesting to know about. So the CDC schedule would have on it, so you have the pink off shots, so it's D-tept, diphtheria, tendinous pertussis, haemophilus influenza, polio, hepatitis B, pneumococcus, measles,

Chicken pox. And then you have the COVID shots. You have RSV shots and flu shots. So those are all of the shots. Not necessarily getting them all at the same time, but those would be the shots you'd be getting theoretically if you did them all in the first four years and multiple of each of those. So you would be getting, I mean, depending on how many yearly shots you do, if you did any, you could be getting 30, 50 shots over the first few years.

Wow. And is there some of the shots that would be advisable even from like a you or a Kennedy or somebody of a like and some that might be a little bit more kind of gray area, maybe not so much not not so valuable? Is it kind of like all or none? Is there any what are the potential implications of said shots? Yeah.

in either direction? Are they positive? Is it worth the risk? Is there a risk at all? So, okay. So that's a good question. I'll take a step back on that because I mean, number one, I can't give any medical advice. I think that's always important to note upfront. I can't tell people what to do. And even in my office in general, I don't tell people what to do. I don't think that's the right way to do things. I think people should be given information and then you should be able to make your own decisions. And I think what's really important is to

have informed consent. So to understand the risks and the benefits and to make that calculation for yourself, because the only thing that a doctor can recommend is

is the CDC schedule because that's what's been studied and that's what's recommended. Anything else outside of that is something that a parent would have to decide themselves or an individual would decide by themselves and based on either their research or their information or their personal medical history in conjunction with their team, that's a discussion that they should be having. I think it's so insane that shots are

have become this controversial that you can't talk about it? I mean, it's insane. Like, you can talk about drugs. You could talk about

all sorts of illegal things out there. But then the conversation of shots comes up and it gets censored. It gets taken down. Post something, you lose your account, you know, on social media. Like, that's insane to me. And we can't move forward with this continuing. It's really, really tough to be a parent and not be able to discuss these things, something you have to do to your child 10, 20, 30 times. And

Trust in the medical system is gone. It's gone. It used to be 70% like five years ago, and now it's at something like 30%. I've seen a recent study on that. And that's because we're not having discussions. It's not about telling people what to do. It's about having a discussion and letting people see the research, see the data, come to a conclusion, and also to discuss where...

There might be some shortcomings. So that way you can do that research to convince you. If you're a doctor and you believe that everyone should get all the shots. Well, if a bunch of parents are saying we're missing this researcher, this is what would help convince me to do them. And we're not willing to do that. Then that's insane to me. I mean, there's so much censorship on this topic that we can't even move forward with an appropriate discussion. And there's so much gaslighting on the information that's out there.

I don't know how much you've ever looked into it, but the things that are said in modern medicine, a lot of it is just not true. Like there's just not research on certain things. Or, you know, you're asking about RFK and the things that he mentions. I've looked into it all. I'm working on a shots book right now. It's going to be called Between the Shot and the Hard Place and kind of working through a lot of these questions that you asked. And when you really dive into it, it's pretty nuts.

how much of the research is really missing or the research that you really would want to be done has never been done, even though they say that it's been done. And so I think that

There really is a lot of discussion to be had. And a lot of this censorship is really unfortunate because I do think we could move things forward if we talked about it a bit more. Tell me about autism and what's been happening with that over the last few decades. Sure. So the autism rates are skyrocketing. When you go back to around the time when we were born, it was about 1 in 10,000. And now it's about 1 in 30. So 1 in 36 was...

was the last statistic that was done and one in 22 in California where I am. So is that like the 80s? Is that like data from the 80s is one of 10? Yeah, in the 80s. Around 2000, I think it was about one in 150. So...

When you talk about it or when it's discussed in mainstream, it's, oh, you know, we're just much better at diagnosing it. Right. That's what you hear. It's just genetics. We're just better at diagnosing. There's no way that that's true. There's no way you go from one in 10,000 or even one in 150 to one in 30 just because we're better at diagnosing it. I mean, sure, we are better at diagnosing it. So that's a small part of it. But we didn't miss all of these kids out.

30 years ago, 25% of kids with autism are nonverbal. We didn't have missed 25% of nonverbal kids. They would have been diagnosed with something else, but they'd be there.

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Get your money back. But I think it's worth giving a shot. 10% off. LeelaQ. L-E-E-L-A-Q.com slash ally. One in 30 children are diagnosed autistic today in the United States, I presume. 36, yeah. In the United States, yeah. Holy crap. Right. It's so many. It's insane. It's an absurd amount to not know why.

and to not be really raising the alarm bells to figure it out because we really don't know why. We have no idea, really. I mean, maybe we do, but... What are the ideas? I'm sure we have ideas. What are the ideas? Food, toxins, and then obviously a lot of people mention shots, right? So that's the other thing that people will say. How could shots be associated with it? What is the actual, like, through-line, one-to-one associations or connections with that that are actually, like, provable? You could...

prove it if you did research, like really strong level research, double-blind control trials, where you were looking at people that got shots versus not got shots or did anything. You know, it's not just shots, but really, if you want to prove something, you need very high-level studies, which would be double-blind control trials or, you know, the best trials that you could do looking at whatever the factor is. So...

eating cupcakes versus not eating cupcakes, being in a sunny place versus not, whatever it is. Like if you're randomizing kids to those two groups, then you can do that research to figure out if it's associated, if it's causing it, you know, like smoking, right? You can have a bunch of people smoking versus not smoking or have cigarettes that don't have any nicotine in them and see if that makes a difference. So you can do research to prove these things. It's never been done. And what's

really crazy about looking at the research is when you do talk about shots, there's such a strong emphasis in modern medicine on the fact that the science is settled, that we know that shots don't cause autism or do cause autism. We know these things and it's never been studied. So you can't say yes or no, either way. There really isn't research. There's some

Some very poor epidemiologic retrospective studies done from a while ago. But there's certainly no studies on all the shots. So you cannot say that they don't cause it. You can't say that they do. It hasn't really been studied. So that to me is insane because we're not studying something which people are concerned about. But that's not the only thing. There's so many other things that could be involved. And I don't think it's one thing. I think that's way too simple. It's probably many things.

Would there be specific shots that you would say, like, these are the most suspicious? Obviously, probably the C-word one would be a suspicious one for a baby. I mean, in terms of autism or just in general? Just in general. Like, maybe...

hold off, you know, obviously you're not advising people, but like just as an individual parent, like maybe just ask a few more questions on this before just like plunging in. When it comes to kids, very few people are doing the C-shot. So I think that is certainly one that people are more mindful of, but I think they're aware given what's happened over the last few years and the risk for kids is quite low in general. So I think that's something that that

parents know hepatitis B is the other big one. So newborns get hepatitis B. And I would say that's the most asked about.

shot from parents over the first few years, just because especially now we have testing for hepatitis B. So you know if mom has it or not. And generally you get it from sexual activity or you get it from IV drug use. And so unless there's a wild baby party, your baby's probably not getting it. Can they technically get it from somebody else? Yes, you could technically get it from someone who has an open sore or

that bleeds on them or something like that. Is that possible? Sure. But has it really ever happened? I don't know. Probably not. Or certainly it's extraordinarily rare. These are the kind of things where, again, it goes back to like, you know, is it possible? Sure. Should you talk about it with your patients? Absolutely. Should you give them the information and say, okay, well, you have a one in 10 million chance for your baby to get hepatitis B. But here are the potential risks from the shot. Which one do you want to do? Because some people might say, no, I don't want to have any risk to have hepatitis B. I want to do a shot.

That's fine. You should be able to do it if you want to do it. I think we need to have those conversations so that way people can decide what they feel like is best for their child. Can babies show indications of depression? Can you be like, my baby's depressed? Or are they just in a psychedelic state where they're just flying through a dream and you wouldn't have something that's like a depressed baby? I don't know if it would be in the common sense of

depression that we think of it as. I mean, I'm sure they obviously have feelings and they can be upset or happy, but it would be hard to diagnose somebody as depressed if they're a newborn baby. What about toddlers? How is the psychological well-being of modern day babies probably harder to measure unless you're like a mother and you have an intuitive sense of how your child is and toddlers? Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's a hard thing to measure. But I would say just if you step back in general, our mental health is hurting. And the easiest way to really think about it is so many parents have a mental health issue. And the most important part of our kids' lives are our parents having, you know, being there with us and love and support.

support. And so with the mental health crisis that's going on in adults, I think that does transfer to our kids. I mean, the stresses that we all feel, certainly our kids feel it. You can certainly see it on a day where maybe you're sleep deprived or really stressed and you take it on your kid or they're not behaving as well. I mean, I think they do pick up on these things. So I'm not sure that I would call it depression per se, but certainly mental health

is hurting. And I think that's a part of all these conditions as well. I mean, mental health, stress, these all play into our general health. Do you know anything about atrazine and atrazine making the frogs gay?

Yeah, I mean, I heard about it. I mean, I think RFK has talked about it and Cali Means has talked about it. And I don't know, I'm not like an expert on it, but I certainly have read about it a little bit. And it's really interesting to see that with the studies where they use atrazine and it changed the genders and things like that. So I think that's just interesting. I mean, I think it goes back to the bigger topic of all the chemicals that we're exposed to and how those are affecting us and how those are affecting estrogen and how those are affecting our

teens and all of us. Is there, and so Atrazine I imagine would be considered an endocrine disorder.

disrupting compound or chemical. And it's a, is it a pesticide? I believe. Yeah. Herbicide pesticide. One of those. And so when it's exposed to frogs, it causes them to become hermaphroditic. Is that the right term? Hermaphrodite? Uh, yeah. Yeah. And the, and so a suggestion, which is kind of interesting and curious is like that would, you know, maybe be affecting humans as well. Uh,

Do you see any correlation or association or connection with that? I think, well, I don't know if it's that specifically, but I think that in conjunction with all the other things that we're spraying and all the other things that we're doing are pushing kids in a more estrogenic way. I mean, just obesity in general, we know that increases your estrogen. So I think that we're seeing more discussions around gender these days, of course. We're seeing more just conditions in general. So yeah, how would these things not be related, right? I mean...

Are we smart enough to know how these things are related yet? Exactly no, because we're just recognizing these things as problems. And certainly we're not easily able to study these things in conjunction with other things. So how does glyphosate...

And mixed with atrazine, and that's the real world, right? So I just think it's the soup of chemicals that we're exposed to, and we need to slowly start to peel that back. And I hope that we do. I think that, again, we can handle, for the most part, we can handle a little bit of these things. We did, right? We had some chemicals, and we didn't see the rates of chronic disease like we have now. But we know that we can handle some of it.

But we certainly are getting to the point where we can't handle what we're being exposed to in general. As you can probably tell, my intention is to uncover every tinfoil hat conspiracy based like pharmacy corporation out to kill us concept. I was just going to say, like, the more we've been through the last five or 10 years, the more we see that it's not so conspiratorial anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I agree. Fluoride.

What's going on with fluoride? Why are we using fluoride? Is there any reality or objective data or science around the fluoride causing calcification of the pineal gland, among other things? Is that a thing? Tell me about fluoride. So,

Growing up, we all told that fluoride is good, right? Good for your teeth. It's good for your mineralization of your teeth, decreasing cavities. I mean, this is kind of the thing that we've been sold for our entire lives. And I would say over the last 10, 15 years, I started hearing more about the issues with fluoride and more research started to slowly trickle out about the neurotoxic

effects potentially, lower IQ, things like that. So we have heard that start to trickle in and it's become much more mainstream now. I would say a good chunk of dentists at this point are starting to talk out against fluoride. They're just concerned about the risks of neurotoxicity and maybe the over-embellished benefits of it potentially. So there are more people moving to other, you

toothpaste like hydroxyapatite. And also, one of the things that's really interesting, I didn't know this, but when I looked into it, most other places in the world don't have fluorine in the water. Just we do. So it's not something that's universal. It's not something that everybody does. It's something that we chose to do. But there seems to be more and more concern around the risks for neurotoxicity and even

still, even if you do believe in fluoride, you don't need very much for it to be beneficial. So I do think there is a lot of discussion around removing it from the water. And then I do think that is something that's going to slowly happen over the next

five to 10 years because we are starting to recognize that things like lead, like, oh, we thought we could have a little bit and then we realized we couldn't really have a little bit. So I think if we can take out some of these chemicals and start again to peel back the layers on these things that we're being exposed to on a daily basis, that makes sense. If you want fluoride, you can put it in toothpaste. You can go to the dentist and put it on your teeth. Like, I don't know why it needs to be in the water.

So I think it's a reasonable thing to take it out. It's not a conspiracy theory anymore. I don't think the science is 100% definitively proven on either side, but I think that we need to go with erring on the side of caution. And as evidence builds up that it's

potentially harmful, then you have to weigh that against what's the potential benefits. And we're something like that. You can, you can get the, all the fluoride you want if you want it. So it can be an individual choice. So I think that's where we're going. When did we start putting fluoride in, in the water? Do you know like what, what happened with that? That's okay. 75 years ago, but I don't know. Interesting.

Why are kids so fat? The two big things, right? We're eating really crappy food, tons of sugar. Everything's processed. It's not real food. It's junk food. And you mix that with not moving as much. So we don't move as much. We're sedentary in school. We're playing video games. We're on computers. All those things together. I think the biggest thing is the food, but certainly there's a part of it that's also exercise. So we no longer value our food.

We no longer, kids don't know where their food comes from. We value cheaper. We have, as a country, subsidized the cheap crappy food, wheat and corn and soy, and everything has tons of sugar in it. And we have boxes of cereal and other things from big corporations that market to you that have actually written the label. So kids are eating this ultra-processed food that

hijacks your reward system. The food scientists know how to make food that makes you want to eat it. They know how to make food that tastes really good and they don't tend to care about health

They care about making money, which again, it's not, that's not because and it's not evil. It's not, I mean, it ends up being evil, but it's not evil. It's very straightforward. They're just trying to have better ROI each month on month. And you know, if there's a food that's highly palatable and even maybe a little addictive and reduces hunger, it makes you actually more hungry. That's a,

They're probably going to be incentivized to sell that food.

But even those are almost always fake greenwashed labels because the actual animals are still raised inside and pumped with vaccines, drugs, corn, and soybeans. The companies are just using pretty packaging to charge more for basically the same stuff. And don't get me started on a vegetarian fed chicken. Chickens are not vegetarians. One family got sick of the BS and decided to do something about it. That company is ProSupply.

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Right, they are. And that is why I always say, you can't blame a company for making money. The CEO's job is literally to make more money this quarter than last quarter. So that's what they're going to do. And Cali beans really... I didn't know this fact, but it makes so much sense that the cigarette companies bought the food companies and then the food changed. That makes perfect sense. The cigarettes were on the way down and they have a place...

they need to put all these scientists. And so they buy the food companies and then they start doing all the similar research on addiction and what, what, how to make people buy your food. And so you, you change over all the food of what we see now. I mean, it makes sense. They have these brilliant minds that know how to make us eat their food and buy their products. And, uh,

Yeah, that's why we're here now. And that's what we have to push back. Yeah, I feel like there's like you can have like kind of a victim mindset that like they're evil, evil corporations. They're doing this to us. But I'm thinking like if you had any business, you had like a go-kart company, you would try to make your go-karts colorful or have flames come out the back or make them be the fastest or like whatever the thing is to attract people to come and ride the go-karts. So all of these companies are just businesses trying to get you to come and ride the go-karts.

And so within that, it's your own sovereignty and agency to actually do your own due diligence and do your research and be a, an informed consumer. Like there's, I don't, I don't like, I don't love the idea of like the evil bad man out there. I feel like it's just people trying to get by and some people are getting by with, you know, by the, by the billions of dollars, but they're still just kind of, it's a similar mindset. It's like what works best.

And so it really comes back to just agency of the individual consumer. I think it's actually, it can be quite empowering. I agree. I, I, there are some bad people out there for sure, but, but, but for the most part, it's not, I mean, most, most of these big companies are just made up of people, right? They're just nice people. They live in a small town. They go to their, they go to their office, you know, and then they're doing whatever they can to, to sell their product. Um, and there's some evil companies too, though. Like I've heard, I've heard, I've heard some things about Bayer. I've heard some things about Monsanto. People,

People could listen back to the Brigham Bueller conversation. He was very illuminating on a lot of things. He's like, oh, that's actually evil. Like, that's like bad, bad. But even then...

the majority of people at the company probably aren't evil. It's probably just some people that know some things that, that, that, you know, keep some information back or, or, or aware of something that maybe they should make public. But again, it's like this, if they make it public, then their company is going to spiral downwards. So they, they don't. And you know, whether that's the right thing or the wrong thing to do. I mean, it's the wrong thing from our perspective, but they're going to do what they're going to do as a company. And unless we're watching over them, unless there's oversight, uh, companies are going to do what they're going to do. They've always been doing that. And, uh,

We have to get back to that. I mean, the agencies that regulate these companies are owned by these companies for the most part. And there's nobody watching over things anymore. And I think that's what really spurred this movement back the other way in the last year. More responsibility, more accountability, getting people back in some of these organizations that are going to watch over them and are not

bought by those people or haven't been lobbied by these people for 50 years. I think that's what it takes because for you to have a capitalist society, you have to still have some checks and balances over these companies. And at this point, some of these companies are just so big that it's really hard to keep them in check.

And we're running into that problem. We ran into it with social media and censorship. We're running into it with food. We're running into it with pharma. We're running into it with farming. We're running into it with every big...

sector, because the companies have so much money that they can stay ahead and they can hire the best lawyers and they can do whatever they want. And by the time anybody figures anything out, it's 15 years later, they've made their hundred billion and they're like, oh, we got a couple of lawsuits. We pay five billion. Okay. I guess that's fine. What's happening with the mental health of kids? How's kids' mental health doing? Mental health is also a big issue. We know that by 18, 50% of kids have a mental health diagnosis, which is

pretty crazy. One out of 10 girls think about suicide or have thought about suicide. One out of three have tried. So it's pretty, it's pretty insane. Those numbers, like it's,

It's absurd that we're at a point where half kids have a mental health diagnosis. Kids are more stressed than ever. School is more stressful. We're putting more on our kids than ever before. So I think that we're in a tough place with mental health and social media and screens don't help. Why do they hurt? Screens in particular, I feel like I understand the social media. I mean, I think I understand the screens as well, but social media comparison, you know, having like, you know, like...

like parasocial friends instead of actually real relationships. But is there anything particular in relation to screens? Well, I think with screens, the way that I look at it is what you're not doing. So if you're on your screen all day, which the average teenager now, seven to nine hours on a screen, what are you not doing? You're not exercising. You're not socializing. You're not spending time with your family. You're not outside. You're not in nature. So that is a huge part of our mental health. I mean, we're not outside. We're not moving. So we're not sweating.

We're not exercising. We're not getting out into nature. And that affects your mental health. I mean, we started with breathwork, right? It's like these are the things that actually matter for your mental health. And yet we're on a screen all day doing homework on social media, playing video games, getting stressed out, looking at the news as opposed to going for a walk or hanging out with your friends or whatever it is that we used to do.

Back in the day, that kids are just not doing anymore because they're in front of their screen. And so if you're constantly comparing yourself and constantly in front of a screen, that's going to affect you. And you're getting the negative effects of the screen, but also all the negative effects of not moving. So the subtitle of your book, Turning Era at Your Child's Pace, The Integrative Pediatrician's Guide to the First Three Years, what is the relevance of the first three years of a child's life?

So it's really where you're setting the foundations. And to me, the reason why I wrote that book was, so two big reasons. Number one was health and number two was the stress of parents. I feel like parents are more stressed than ever and I really wanted to run through the big questions that parent had on day one. But also I feel like as a pediatrician, someone who went into health, I went into it to help prevent disease, to help kids before they get sick. And it seems like everybody's showing up at the office early

later because they're struggling with a chronic disease. So to me, it was setting up the foundations for success and talking about stress, environment, toxins, exercise, diet, sleep, like really the foundational aspects of stuff we've talked about today. And really parenting books don't tend to talk about those things. So I thought it was really important to get ahead of it and to speak about some of those

factors to set up parents for success. What are some of the biggest mistakes parents make with their children zero to three years old? I think one of the biggest mistakes is really not trusting themselves. So not trusting their gut. Um,

50 years ago, you had a question, you asked grandma, what did you do for me? What did you feed me? When did you feed me? And that was it. You just did that. Now we have so many competing voices out there. Grandma says, oh, you should start rice cereal and you should do it in six months. And then you look on internet and it says, rice cereal, that'll kill your kid. It's got arsenic in it. Never do that. And then you go on somebody else's social media and they tell you something so different. So you have all these competing voices. It's really stressful.

And I think that parents oftentimes just don't trust themselves anymore. And I think it's so important that we learn to take in the information, synthesize it and do whatever we feel is best for our kid and our family. And we have to recognize that there isn't one right way to do almost anything. We figure things out as we go. And I do think that helps de-stress parents a lot because sometimes

we get back to a point where we realize that there isn't exactly one way to do things. So therefore, not everything's an emergency. We don't have to know how to do everything. We just synthesize the information. We figure out what makes sense. We try that. If it doesn't work, we try something else. And that seems to be really helpful for parents as opposed to feeling they need to know everything or be ready because nobody feels totally ready. We just figure it out as we go. What do you think of trauma being...

into a child at a young age. I think that certainly does happen. I mean, I think that, you know, you look at, at all of the research on trauma and, and major life events and, and that can certainly come out in different ways as we get older. Um,

Um, and, and everyone has, everyone's different. So our genetics are different in the way we handle things are different. But I do think it's certainly any major life traumas like divorce or death, you know, these things can certainly affect the child, uh, in all sorts of different ways. And that can certainly come out later in life. Is there anything else that stands out where like, like mistakes that you see being made or like if you were raising a child zero to three or zero to five, just young child that you feel like is uncommon among adults?

modern Americans, things that would be common to you? Is there anything else that stands out? The big thing that stands out to me, I mean, maybe I'm biased because I'm integrative-minded, but I think it's focusing on our health. Um...

It's something that needs to be a part of our daily life. We have been so trained to focus on cheaper, faster, better. And what we lose with that is our health. And what we're seeing is a chronic disease explosion where basically everyone's going to have chronic diseases in the next five or 10 years. Certainly our kids are. And so I think it is really important to recognize that

you know, it's not crunchy to care about food. It's not crunchy to make sure your kids are moving. None of this stuff is crunchy. Like this is normal. What we should be doing. This is what we were always doing. And if we let our kids live in the normal American way,

They're going to be sick. I mean, one out of two kids are sick. That's the statistics. It's not meant to scare somebody. It's just what it is. And so we have to be conscious of this and be okay with doing things a little bit differently. And doing things differently just means being aware, being aware of what you're purchasing, reading labels, making sure that we're buying things for the home, that we've looked into what's on them or what's sprayed on them or what's in them. I mean, I think these things are...

so vital to our kids' health. And if we start to think in that way, then we give our kids the best chance of success. And I used to work at the hospital, you know, big hospital, and antibiotics were given out like candy in my office every

We almost never need to use them. You know, maybe once a week I'll give out a prescription, maybe not even that. And it's not because I'm some magical doctors because people are just a little more health conscious. And I think that makes a huge difference for their health. What about allergies? How do we have more robust immune systems early on in our lives to prevent allergies becoming something to come on set later on in life? I think it's a lot of the same stuff. I think that our immune systems are going haywire because we're

bathing them in chemicals and not giving them the nutrients that we need. I mean, if you think about it, our immune system is literally built up of us, right? What are we built up? The things that we eat. And if our body is constantly needing to deal with crappy food that inflames the body, then it's not able to handle what it's supposed to be handling or it thinks of things as foreign and it's not supposed to be foreign. I mean, we don't exactly know

why we get these allergies. I mean, it's still a big mystery. It's really interesting that we're getting it. But what we know is that these things are going up, right? Like how many peanut allergies do you remember when you were little? I mean, they were there, but not often, right? But now every classroom has a kid with peanut allergies. You can't bring peanuts to the school. You can't bring them on the plane. Someone's got a peanut allergy. So something's going on, maybe many things, probably many things. And we need to get to the bottom of that and, and,

So yeah, I think it's the inflammation and the crappy lifestyles. I'm going to take a moment to share about one of the things that I find to be absolutely the most important quote unquote biohacks that you can possibly have. It's not a biohack at all. It's completely natural. It is utilizing red light therapy in your daily life. If you're a person that has any types of aches or pains or injuries, red light therapy is fantastic for wound healing and tissue repair. If you're a person that

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So at least grab that guy, get the bigger panels, get all the guys. I think red light's amazing. Uh, mito red light.com he's promo code aligned for 5% off. Do you have any sense of what is actually going on? Like at a more intrinsic level? It's okay if you don't or nobody does, or is there any, like, like what's the most prominent idea of what's going on with it?

I don't think anybody knows. I mean, one of the big prominent ideas is like leaky gut. So inflammation, crappy food causing inflammation in the gut. So then food gets to where it's not supposed to be. And then you create antibodies to that food.

And then your body starts to see it as foreign. I mean, that's one of the options. Other people think of it as an immune hyperstimulation. So maybe from shots, some people postulate that you're giving adjuvants in shots. And so that's meant to stimulate the immune system. And so maybe it's an overstimulation. Other people say it's the destruction of our gut through all the antibiotics that we're taking.

So we're killing the good bacteria and the bad bacteria, and then that's changing the ecosystem in the gut. And again, maybe it's all the things. It might be different things for everybody. But at the end of the day, whatever we're doing is moving us in this direction to which we are...

more susceptible to allergies and asthma and autoimmune conditions. And it's probably a similar pathway. What about diabetes is becoming more common among kids from my understanding? What's happening with adult onset diabetes being not just an adult thing? Right. So literally called adult onset diabetes because it used to only happen in adults, type 2 diabetes. But now we're seeing it in young kids. Yeah.

And that's tragic. One third of kids are either diabetic or pre-diabetic, which again is insane that you're talking about numbers on that scale. And we're eating crappy food. I mean, type 2 diabetes, we've known already.

what it's about for a long time. You know, we're not eating good food and we're not exercising enough. And oftentimes if you turn that around, the type two diabetes goes away. So I think that's what we're seeing with a lot of conditions. We just haven't called it type two, type two allergies, type two asthma. You know, I think it's the inflammation in our body that from the crappy food. And if we give it what it needs, then things reset. Our body's amazing and it can figure it out. Right now, we're just at a point where

We're not recognizing these things. We keep moving and then eventually you push your body over the edge. And type 2 diabetes is just one of those things. And the food that we're eating is so crappy at a young age that it's starting to happen younger. Yeah. What I'm hearing is I'm kind of like attempting to dig into these different aspects of diseases and whatnot. And what I'm generally hearing is like people just need to eat healthy whole food without pesticides and

Ideally, something organic and something local would be great. And people need to get outside more often and people need to move their bodies in various different ways. And people need to have positive connections and love and relationships and probably physical contact and touch and play and social engagement. And people need to trust their intuition and people need to

calm the freak down, relax, breathe. Is that about right? That is most definitely right. I mean, that's the place. That is the correct. What you said is not rocket science, right? That's pretty basic stuff. But we're not doing that at all. I mean, you can go around the room and most people are not doing that. If we did that, if we just did that, you would see chronic disease rates

plummet. Not all of them. That's not the only thing. There's still other things. There's still more to learn, but we would go...

we would decrease current disease by, I don't know, 50%. Just, just by doing that for a year or two, you would see all these conditions come down. And even if they didn't go away, it would still improve things, right? I mean, if you're moving more, it's still going to help you with your diabetes. It's still going to help you with your autoimmune condition. Maybe it'll cure it. Maybe it won't, but it's not going to hurt it in general. So I think that that list is so simple, but so beautiful. And, and it, it really, it does come down to that. And,

We know that at this point. We really do know that. I think it's super obvious to anyone who has stepped outside the regular system and has seen people getting better and seen the explosion of chronic conditions and then watched people change up their lifestyle and see them get better from things that they were told they were going to have their whole life. And so that is where you want to start because that's something anybody can do.

Doesn't cost a lot, if anything. And it's going to get you the farthest. And then, you know, we can work on improving our medical system or whatever. But just start there. Yeah. The other factor in that that I probably would have thrown in is paying attention to

your environmental stimuli in the form of like the chemicals that you're putting on your body and the deodorants and the perfumes and the different... Tell me about BPAs and the soup study. Yeah, that was one of my favorite studies. So there was a Harvard study and they took a group of patients or a group of people and they gave them five days of canned soup and then they gave them five days of homemade soup. And the cans are lined with the plastic BPA lining.

And they were looking at their urine in between those two. So after they had the urine, they took the urine from those that took the canned soup, and then they took the urine again after they did the homemade soup. And the difference was 1,000%. 1,000% difference of BPA in the urine in just a couple of days. And why I like that study so much is because I think it brings the point home of

how important the little decisions that we make every day matter. Because, you know, you have a little BPA in your system, is it the end of the world? Probably not, right? But if you're increasing your level of BPA every day,

by a thousand percent than over a year or two years. Does that matter? Yeah, it doesn't matter. Of course it does because your body can't handle it. And then that's just one chemical. But what about all the other chemicals? And so that's what's happening right now. We're just, eh, it's a little canned soup. It's fine. Oh, it's just a little bit of phthalates. Oh, that's fine. Oh, it's just spray nilaglyphosate. Okay, that's fine. But

A little bit of everything is not fine. And we are seeing that as an expression of our really, really, really crappy health, especially in America. It's a country where we should be much healthier and we're

one of the least healthy countries in the whole industrialized world, if not the least healthy country at this point. I mean, we spend more money than anywhere else. Um, and we have poor health outcomes and we don't live longer and we have higher infant mortality than all these industrialized countries. So we're not doing some things right. We have to be a little humble and, uh,

go back and not everything we're doing is bad, right? We used to die when we were 40 and we're dying, you know, when we're 70 or 80 now and on average, so not everything is bad in modern medicine, but, but life expects and Z was going back down and chronic disease rates are going up. So we need to find some balance, some middle ground and, uh,

Not necessarily stop research and medicine and medications. These aren't all bad, but the answer to everything isn't in a pill. And we moved that way so far. We went so far to the side of pharma and we need to come back a little bit and recognize that that list of things that you gave.

That's also pharma. That's also health. And we have to do those things too. And then it's okay to have your cancer medicine or whatever. That's great too. You can stay alive. But we don't need to jump to an antibiotic every time. We don't need Ozempic for everybody to decrease their weight. We need you to eat healthier and to move. And for some people that could be fine. Maybe an antidepressant can be fine.

sometimes, right? It can save your life, but that's not the answer. The answer is to figure out what's going on and to support ourselves so we don't need the medicine as much. Is there anything else you would leave parents with? Yeah, I would leave them just with hope. You know, I think we've seen things turn around a lot in the last year. There is such a momentum right now towards health. There's so much discussion out there about health. It's been really exciting to see. And I believe that

We have the power to make such a big difference, especially with ourselves and our family. I mean, there are bigger things that we need to do from a country standpoint, but...

From an individual standpoint, those little decisions that you make every day have such a big difference. I see it in my office. I see it in the difference between the healthy kids and the not so healthy kids. And no matter what you do, there's always a chance you could be healthy or unhealthy. But the little things like reading labels and thinking about what you're spraying on yourself and your kids, that matters. So stay educated, keep learning. And hopefully when we have this conversation in 20 years, we're going to be going the other direction. Yeah.

Awesome, man. Thanks so much for doing this. I appreciate you. The book is Parenting at Your Child's Pace. Is there any other place that would be good to point people from here? Yeah, you can go to my Instagram, Dr. Joel Gator, or on X, Dr. Joel Gator. You can go to parentingatyourchildspace.com or the new book coming out is Between a Shot and a Hard Place. And that's a book on shots. Amazing. Thank you so much.

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