End Childhood Obesity & Protect Our Kids' Health!

26:22And it wasn't that way 20, 50 years ago. It was like 5, 10 percent just a few years ago. So it is something that we're doing or probably many things that we're doing. And if we begin to take ownership of the things that we do have some control over, then I am sure that we can move things in a better direction. and families see that all the time.

26:41Shawn Stevenson:Yeah, and that's one of the things that is really sobering for us as parents that you shared, is that we're inching towards about 50 % of our kids now having some form of a chronic illness. And this isn't just like 10 % more, this is like significantly higher rates than it used to be, like you said, five, 10 % back in the day. And specifically, you've been sharing statistics on much higher rates of things like autism, autoimmune conditions, you know, really the list goes on and on, there's been an explosion in obesity rates. Can you talk a little bit about, again, mentioning that our modern lifestyle is a disaster for pediatrics.

27:18Shawn Stevenson:What is it about our lifestyle in particular with things like allergies and eczema and asthma and other autoimmune conditions? What's causing these higher rates? Well, I think to start with, the most frustrating thing is that we don't know, right? We don't know. We're not putting this as a serious priority. And we're not studying this to the level that I think we need to be because we're not identifying it as that issue. We're saying it's better testing. It's genetics is just the way that it is. So we don't have the perfect framework. We don't have a full understanding of the picture. But I think personally, the big contributing factors are our poor diets.

27:58So we're not getting the nutrients that we need. And then we're also getting too many chemicals. So we're surrounded by chemicals. There's chemicals in our food. We're just being bathed in a soup of chemicals and we're not getting the nutrients that we need. So how do we expect our kids to grow up and function optimally? Their immune systems are not functioning optimally. They're getting to a point where they're so inflamed that it turns into a chronic disease. And again, when we say, oh, it's just genetics. It's just the way that it is. We're just better at diagnosis. It's not true because there are so many kids that come into integrative practitioners and you work on their diet, you improve their exercise, you improve their sleep, you clean up their home environment and get rid of the toxins and they get better.

28:45They lose the diagnosis. I've worked with many practitioners that a child has an autism diagnosis and they lose that diagnosis five years later. They have an autoimmune condition. They go back to their doctor and the numbers all look normal. And the doctor says, well, what did you do? How is this possible? And it's because they change up their lifestyle. Now, does that mean that there aren't any genetic components? No, of course there are. Some things, you could do everything in the world and you're still going to have that condition, but you can still improve your life. And I think about it like diabetes.

29:18It's a perfect example. We have type one and type two diabetes. And And with type 2 diabetes, we know that if you improve your lifestyle, things can get better, right? If you improve, increase your exercise, you eat a little bit better, then a lot of individuals will lose their diagnosis and get back to a better place, but not necessarily as much with type 1. Certainly, you can improve things, but it's a genetic component. I think a lot of autoimmune conditions are like that. And even autism, I think that it's a diagnosis based on symptoms, and so I think it's a lot of things. And for a certain portion of the population, a certain portion of individuals with autism or autoimmune conditions, there is so much that we can do and so much that we have done that's given us this diagnosis.

30:03But that means that there is a power that we have to make a change. And if we don't say that we have some power, if we just kind of push it off and say it's better diagnosis, we're not going to help those kids. And, you know, definitely get into discussions. And anytime we talk about autism, it gets heated, right? Certainly does. And if you mention this, then people get upset. But there are around 40 % of kids with autism now that are nonverbal. We would not have missed that 50 years ago, right? Where are those diagnoses? So sure, there's such a wide range when you're talking about autism and symptoms.

30:40and there are so many families that are struggling, so many kids that are struggling in their own bodies. And if there is something that we can do to help those kids, then why would we not want to explore that? It's not to shame anybody. It's not to say that we don't love these kids or we shouldn't treat them amazingly. But it's why are we not trying to help these families that need the help? If you don't want it, that's okay. That's totally fine. But there are so many families that do and there's a lot that we can do.

31:08Shawn Stevenson:yeah yeah i think just having more education and more examples of what's possible like you just mentioned being able to put these conditions that are becoming again they've gone up precipitously into remission those stories getting highlighted whereas what we're really inundated with are more stories on how it's just getting worse and worse and there's nothing you can do about it right right and so just being able to reframe this to know that and i love that you said this as well just just about any of these conditions can be improved, right? We're not just talking about complete remission. We're just talking about people getting better.

31:42Shawn Stevenson:And what are some of those factors for us to actually stack conditions in our kids' favor? A big part of this, and also just being able to spend time with you, to read your book, and just to spend time in your world, is removing the cause, like removing some of the glaring issues. Like again, you start off by saying, we don't know exactly what it is with all these things. we know that the environment itself has changed dramatically. And there are multiple things in our environment that are stacking conditions in particular against our kids. And so one of those that you highlighted just, and by the way, everybody should be following you on social media too.

32:17Shawn Stevenson:And one of the things you highlighted recently is the impact that a high sugar diet has on the developing brain. Let's talk a little bit about that. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the data on sugar, we eat more sugar in some meals than we should be eating in the whole week we we eat more sugar in the first few years than adults ate their whole life even 20 30 50 years ago and that's not to say that we can't have any natural sugars but we're having so much artificial sugar and it's added to everything and and i can just speak as a parent right i can speak to seeing my own child well i have two two kids now but the older one has been you know old enough to actually see this and he goes to a party, he eats one piece of cake, and he's a different kid because we don't eat that at home.

33:05We don't add any sugar except for natural sugars to anything that he's had. He's four years old and he never really had it. He doesn't eat any of those processed foods. But if he does eat a little bit, he's a completely different kid. And I've always thought this my whole life, but then you actually see it in your own child. You see the difference from just one meal at a birthday party or something like that, then what is going on in the other kids' brains that eat this food all of the time. And how much of that is when we talk about ADHD or we talk about behavioral issues, how much of that is actually just from the diet that if you clean that up, you would see a huge difference.

33:43It's not to say, again, that there isn't ADHD or their medications can't be useful sometime, but how much of it is actually controllable just from changing our diet and just from adjusting our lifestyles that we can see a huge difference. And I'm an integrative pediatrician. And to me, what that means is balancing the best of modern Western medicine with alternative practices. I'm not against Western medicine at all. And sometimes when we talk about integrative, it's woo woo, it's out there. And there can be some people that do that. But why does there have to be two sides, right? Why does there have to be modern medicine and alternative medicine?

34:20Why can't we just do whatever's best on the day for our kids. And why would we not want to decrease a medication if we can do that? It doesn't mean we should never prescribe it, right? Sometimes an antibiotic can save your life. Sometimes the child does need a medication to function optimally. But if we can adjust their diet or remove some toxins and that decreases their medication, that gets them off their medication, that gets rid of their diagnosis, why would we not try that? There's no downside to that. And it's like it's these two sides fighting back and forth that are really on the same team i mean aren't we all on the same team don't we just want healthy kids and yes we have some different opinions maybe on how we get there but at the end of the day we want the same thing we're all on the same team right and and medicine it seems like has moved into this world of telling people what to do which is so frustrating again because we're on the same team and we're trying to help people to get to a better place.

35:20And doctor comes from the word docer, meaning to teach, right, in Latin. And that's what medicine always was. But it seems these days like we're just telling people what to do instead of coming together and creating a plan that works the best for the family, right? And that's one of the impetus for the book too. It's like everybody's different. Every situation is different. And we need to look at all the evidence, figure out what what makes sense for that family and help them to get to a better place. But not to tell them what to do, it's just to teach them what's out there and let the parents, the family, decide what's best for their kid.

35:54Right, right.

35:55Shawn Stevenson:That's another one of the most empowering things about your work and about the book is you keep bringing us back to this important fact, which is we as parents are the most important people in our child's health. We are the ones who are primarily responsible for our child's health, but we have a system that has been created in our culture that has caused us to really outsource a lot of things. And the system itself has really medicalized a lot of symptoms that we start to lose our own parental inquiry about, like what can be causing this? And also our practitioners, same thing, just having a little bit more inquiry instead of just treating symptoms and targeting symptoms.

36:34Shawn Stevenson:But your work is really about removing root causes. And also, yes, whenever we have an acute situation, medicine is there to help with those symptoms as well. We can have both. And that's really the great thing about this is that it's a both and world, you know? But most importantly, it has to be empowering for us as parents. We have to take that responsibility because we have the responsibility to pay attention to our child's uniqueness and understand there isn't any cookie cutter way to parent and to care for our child's health. And you're giving us some of these tools and just staying on this topic of sugar, for example, if parents are wanting to do a little bit better, because it's a tricky landscape.

37:16Shawn Stevenson:We grew up in a sugar culture. We grew up in a very, very, just kind of inundated with a lot of sugary products. It was not uncommon for me to wake up and to have a bowl of Lucky Charms or the off-brand kind of cereal. So instead of Lucky Charms, it would be like Fortunate Rabbit's Foot or something like that. I was just making that name up, but it'd be like an off-brand kind. and for lunch having a pizza you know a slice of pizza you know with a juice and then for dinner you know having some macaroni and cheese and fish sticks and maybe some canned green beans thrown in the mix right so this would be a normal day of eating for me not to mention the chips and the cakes sure me too and the cookies and my my drink of choice my beverage of choice was like juice, right?

38:12Shawn Stevenson:Quote juice, which had 0 % juice, by the way. 100 % sugar. Yeah, 100 % sugar, right? And so if parents are wanting to make some shifts in how much sugar their kids are eating, and here's my question for you, because parents are like, but my kid wants it though. My kid wants it. What do you say to help coach that parent? I totally get that. And I say to parents that it's our job to be the parents and sugar is addictive and it's not something that we need in the levels that we're eating. And it's certainly not in the added sugars that we're getting and the processed sugars that we're getting. So at some point, we just have to take charge of our family's health and we have to make decisions that are best for their long-term health.

38:53And so I tell people in my office, blame me, it's fine, if that's what you want to do. But I think at the end of the day, the number one thing that people can do is just start to read labels. And it doesn't mean that you have to never give them a piece of cake. It doesn't mean that you have to go from a bag of chips to broccoli, and that's going to be the only thing you're going to feed your kids. But every parent can start to become savvy at reading labels. And if you take ownership when you go to the store and you purchase things that you're going to turn over that bag and you're going to read the label.

39:24I mean, hopefully you pick some things that don't have labels. But for the most part, if we're talking about, say, a bag of chips is going to have a label and pick the things with ingredients that you actually know what they are. If it's a long chemical name, it's probably not good for you. You don't need a PhD in chemistry to know that some long word on the label is probably not that good for you. And if they have, you know, 10 grams of sugar is not as good as, you know, 5 grams of sugar. You can look at that and kind of compare the two. And it doesn't have to be more expensive. Sometimes it is, but it doesn't have to be.

39:51And you can pick the better version. And if you do that for every single purchase over the next 5, 10, 15 years, it adds up. It makes a huge difference. And it's the small little decisions that we make that add up that we're just not focused on these days because we're so focused on convenience. We're so focused on money and, you know, buying things that are cheaper. And I get that. I mean, I understand that we want to do what we need to do and we have to do what we need to do. But at the same time, if we look at our health, 50 % of kids have a chronic disease. So if you're okay with that, then you keep living the same way that we are in America and Western culture right now.

40:29But if you want to have healthy kids, then you have to look at the stats and they are what they are. That's not doom and gloom. That's not me trying to scare people. It's just saying this is what it is and I want you to be healthy. And if you want to be healthy, then there are some things that you're going to have to do differently than what we're doing these days. Or you're going to be one of those statistics. And that's just is what it is. And it's very frustrating as a doctor that we're not pushing the conversation back towards health and to the very little things that parents can do because it matters.

41:03And there was a great study out of Harvard where they were looking at soup. I don't know if you know the cans of soup study, but they took canned soup and they were looking at BPA levels in these patients. They gave them five days of canned soup, five days of homemade soup, and looked at the BPA levels in their urine because in the lining of the cans there's a BPA. and it was a thousand percent difference after five days and I love that study because it's such a simple little study but at the same time we're like five days cans of soup versus homemade soup thousand percent difference BPA like what does that mean for every single decision that we're making it's it's you don't think about it but you just making a few more meals it adds up yeah I

41:44Shawn Stevenson:love that by the way that study I cited that study in my previous book and eat smarter and why does this matter well we'll put these studies up for everybody to see right now right now we've got solid data this just came out this year finding these you know bpa these plasticizer chemicals in particular those that come from things like plastic water bottles and food products showing up in human hearts like half of the patients who were tested had it in their carotid artery plaque showing up in human testicles right and so again all of them right every testicle every testicle had plastics in them okay like it's integrating itself into our tissue also another study found that it's integrating itself into skin and leading to higher rates of skin cancer like we started this off and my question was about our environment and how this environment is really cultivating very complicated um terrain for our children in particular because they're growing up in this at such a high level and so here's the directive that you shared for everybody not just yeah let's pay attention to those labels and let's do better to avoid added sugars right we're not villainizing all sugar like certain foods are going to have sugar in it naturally occurring a little bit of added sugar is we don't want to beat ourselves up about and from time to time kids go to birthday parties all this stuff but let's do our best to avoid added sugars and this was a revolutionary idea that you said this is might sound crazy let's eat more stuff that doesn't have a label on it all right this is not to say we don't doordash all right but it's just like how much how often exactly and and is can we not aim to encourage people to cook more i mean you're a foodie it tastes better when you make it it tastes better when it's fresh if you pick something off a plant and you eat it i mean i challenge anybody go out to a farm pick a tomato off of a plant.

43:37Pick a grape food off of a plant. Eat anything off of a tree, a plant. It is 10 times better if you eat it right then. You cannot get the same food that is packaged in a store that you can get when it's fresh. And that's usually the best case scenario for us is just cooking the food from the source. But even then, if you go and you pick a berry off of a bush, how long does it last for? It lasts for like two, three, maybe four or five days. So what is being sprayed on all of our food, even in the best case scenario, when it's shipped from another country, you know, goes in a boat or, or, you know, on a train or wherever it gets here or in the truck, then it sits in a warehouse, then it goes to a store, then it sits in the store, then you pick it up, then you eat it.

44:19That's not three or four days. So something's happening. Something's being sprayed on basically everything that we eat to preserve it. And so these chemicals just keep adding up. But if you're not even eating that, if you're eating the prepackaged food that has all the stuff sprayed in there and put in there and to keep it as a preservative, then how do we expect to be healthy? How do we expect our kids to be healthy if that's what they're eating every single day? And they're not eating the best case scenario food. They're eating the food that's packaged, sugars, dyes, chemicals, things that are not allowed in other countries that we're just eating every single day.

44:51And then we wonder why we have a 50 % chronic disease rate. We wonder why obesity is going up. It's not rocket science to me that there is a huge portion of it that's very controllable. And going back to what you said, it's the family, the parents that have to take control. The medical system is not going to do it. The medical system is very slow to change. And medicine is fantastic at identifying things that are serious conditions, but it's not set up. And it has never been set up for chronic disease. and there just isn't the time in most medical offices to spend 30 minutes talking about your nutrition, spend 20 minutes talking about the toxins, dive into all of these things.

45:31You're going to spend three to five minutes with the doctor. There's no bad pediatricians out there, right? These are people that went into medicine to help kids, but there is a system that we're working in that's not set up for chronic disease and not set up to look at root cause and not set up to talk about what we're eating. And so, okay, here's a medicine, here's a pill. It does make you feel better in the short term, but it solves nothing. It solves nothing. It doesn't mean that a medicine can't help you and sometimes we need it, but that's not the reason that so many kids are sick. They don't have a deficiency of a medicine.

46:04They have a deficiency of nutrients and vitamins and too many toxins. And if we're finding, you know, BPA in everybody's testicles, what about the other 10 ,000 chemicals that are out there and how much of those are in our bodies? And then what do we expect to happen when we're filled with all these chemicals? So if we're not doing everything we can to minimize that, then we're going to see the results that we're seeing. All right.

46:27Shawn Stevenson:I hope that you're enjoying and learning a lot so far. We've got one more incredible expert next up in this powerful collection of conversations about protecting our children's health today. You're going to hear from pediatrician and bestselling author, Dr. Alyssa Song. In this segment, she's going to be sharing the truth about antibiotic use in children. Everybody should know this by now. She's also going to be sharing a powerful insight about one of the most common childhood surgeries and what's causing issues with kids' tonsils. Plus, she's going to share some practical advice to help fortify our kids' health today.

47:10Shawn Stevenson:Enjoy this segment from the amazing Dr. Alyssa Song. As an integrated pediatrician, I do write prescriptions for antibiotics. It's not that it's a never ever. It's just that we know in some studies for children, up to 70 % of antibiotics are inappropriately prescribed. Oftentimes for things like viruses that of course, antibiotics don't do a thing for. and we are now heading to the point where if we are not good antibiotic stewards as parents, as adults, as physicians, as public health professionals, we are in 2050 possibly headed to a point where antibiotic resistance is going to become a leading cause of death worldwide.

47:55I mean, that is frightening where none of the existing antibiotics will be able to help. And so that's on a broader public health level. On an individual level, because as a pediatrician, I look at this little child in front of me or this teenager in front of me, we know that antibiotics are the single biggest acute disruptor, this immediate disruption to their developing microbiome. And our infants' microbiomes and our teenagers' microbiomes are rapidly changing and affecting how their immune system is developing, how their brains are developing. so with antibiotics yes we want to use them appropriately although some of the statistics when you look at and i always back up here and say you know as a mom and as a pediatrician both of my children received antibiotics when they were babies right i mean my daughter she was two to three weeks old and she had a urinary tract infection my son at five weeks of age had strep in fact he had this this really you know strep discharge coming from his ear i'm not gonna mess with that those are necessary antibiotics.

48:57And yet we know for infants who receive antibiotics within the first six months of life, they are at an increased risk for almost every single allergic disorder, including eczema, asthma, hay fever, anaphylactic food allergies, by the time they're four.

49:14Shawn Stevenson:You shared, I think, two to four times higher incidence of developing these issues. That's right. And then, you know, we look at the gut-brain connection and we see antibiotics at any point in life, but especially in infancy in that first six months of life, can increase and almost double the risk of mental health concerns by the time your child is an older kid or a teenager. And the more rounds of antibiotics, the higher the risk. And so when we understand that A, we need to understand when to use antibiotics appropriately. And then B, when we do use appropriate antibiotics or inappropriate, we need to understand the disruption to the microbiome and do what we know how to do to restore their microbiome so that it doesn't have this ripple effect on their immune system or their metabolic system or their nervous system, either in the immediate or later on in life.

50:11I mean, even when they're adults, this can have that ripple effect.

50:16Shawn Stevenson:I love that you said this again. And it's such a valuable asset that we have when we have the use of antibiotics, life-saving in certain contexts. It's just the overuse. And, you know, unfortunately we have a system to where also we might be as patients coming in, you know, just want to get our kids something. Yes. And, you know, as you just mentioned, having the overuse of this could lead to a situation and what's already trending towards that where antibiotic resistant infections are going to be a leading cause of death. We don't want to get that far. We've got to make a change right now. You talked about your training in basically coming in to offensive, taking an offensive approach and attacking if somebody's experiencing a symptom or a condition and not necessarily understanding downstream, we might even hide the fire, Number one, the fire still might be brewing and also potentially causing issues elsewhere in the body.

51:17Shawn Stevenson:That's right. And that's really the thing I want to ask you about is looking at, again, the whole person, because we might not think that antibiotic use might be connected to some mental health issues later on down the line. Yeah, well, and what you what you said is so right on. You know, we're often in conventional medicine. We start a medication for a symptom. Right. and then another symptom arises. So we start another medicine and then another side effect arises and we start another medicine. And eventually you have kids and adults who are on this kind of polypharmacy of medications. And at that point, then we can't separate out, is it that their condition isn't getting better and they need a new medicine?

51:58Or is it that they're having all of these side effects that may be either additive or sometimes even synergistic and they can, you know, really interfere. And so I see this with, with our teenagers where if we are not aware of all the factors that can contribute to microbiome disruption, we may be inadvertently, as you've said, kind of fanning the fires of inflammation and disease without recognizing what we're doing. And so it's time to step back and realize your your teenage girl who maybe gets put on the birth control pill because she has horrible period cramps right um takes ibuprofen for those horrible period cramps has a little anxiety brewing so she's put on an ssri medication right maybe has a history of eczema so she's lathering on steroid creams right um and uh and you know maybe has some reflux right so it's on antacid medications or allergies and is on Zyrtec.

53:03All of those medications in combination, oh, and let's not forget the low dose antibiotics for acne, right? All of those medications can disrupt the gut microbiome. And some of those, we don't think about other non-antibiotic medications often as disrupting the gut microbiome, but some of them like ibuprofen can disrupt the microbiome as much as an antibiotic. So we have to be aware of all these things that we're doing to try to support this child in front of us in the best way we think we're doing. And yet if we could step back and say, look, okay, if they need to be on an SSRI at the moment, okay, let's, let's do that and recognize that we don't support her gut brain connection.

53:47First, she's not really ever going to probably get off of that medication. Second, we're not getting to that route where we're saying, look, let's heal from the inside out. Let's nourish her neurotransmitters, how her brain is thinking and feeling and acting and all of that. Same thing goes for little kids, right? And we have little kids who, infants who are fussy, maybe they're, you know, spitting up. And that happens to coincide at the same time, recognizing that all babies have some amount of reflux. They don't all have reflux disease, but once Zantac became approved for infants, this was back in the early 2000s, all of a sudden, every baby's being diagnosed with reflux disease and being put on Zantac in the first six weeks of life, eight weeks of life, instead of saying, hey, look, we know that the microbiomes of really fussy infants look different.

54:46They have higher inflammatory markers. There's a difference in their microbiota. So how about restoring a healthier microbial balance in their gut so that they don't have the fussiness and don't have the antacid medication that then can disrupt long-term, increase the risk for, we know disruption in those early stages can increase the risk for obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease, you know, all the things that now on the other end of life we're trying to combat and counter. Yeah.

55:17Shawn Stevenson:Before we get into the microbiome deeper, let's start more upstream with the tonsils, because you had a really great insight about this in the book and this connection between the tonsils and the immune system and also the tonsils and a similarity with the gastrointestinal tract in our gut. Can you talk a little bit about the role of the tonsils and the connection with the immune system? Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people think, oh, the tonsils are just, especially when i was growing up everyone had them removed right it was like the brady bunch right everyone had their tonsils removed and um you know they're this kind of um uh this extra thing that we don't need anymore but when we think about our tonsils they are lymph tissue and as part of our lymphatic system they're a really essential part of sensing our outside world communicating with our immune cells what's friend or foe you know how am i going to react um and they're sort of And when we think about it, they are the start of our GI tract.

56:15You know, we are one long hollow tube, you know, from the mouth all the way down at the bottom where the poop comes out. And these tonsils, we have these similar tonsil-like patches called gut-associated lymphoid tissue lining our entire GI tract. And that makes up like 80 % of our immune system. And some people have heard the saying that our skin is our largest organ. Well, our intestines, our GI tract is our largest interface with our outside world. Because again, we're hollow, right? So any food we're ingesting, any microbe that we're encountering, any environmental toxin has to pass through our GI tract.

56:57And the way our tonsils and our galt, our gut associated lymphoid tissue interacts with those things will tell our immune system, hey, that's okay. you know we'll just let it pass or you know that's that's you know a broken down amino acid we're fine with that right or it might say oh okay there's a virus going through that that or bacteria that i don't really like our immune system hey immune system kick in let's create a little bit a little bit of inflammation to kick it out if though we get bombarded our immune system continues to get bombarded inappropriately eventually our gut immune system kind of crosstalk, it can happen inappropriately.

57:36And then sometimes we start attacking our own cells and that's what happens with autoimmunity. So we can see, you know, just how important these are for our developing immune system. Now the tonsils. So, I mean, I write the story about my own son, right? I mean, he had huge tonsils. They're called kissing tonsils. I mean, it sounds cute, but it's not right. I mean, they're literally kissing the back of your, of your throat. And so when he was about three or four, his tonsils were just getting bigger and bigger and he had obstructive apnea from it, right? Now, there are indications to remove tonsils.

58:14However, we have to think, all right, well, tonsils are part of our immune system. Why is my child's immune system acting up? What is the reason? Is it from environmental allergies? Is it from some chronic infections that are kind of trapped in your tonsils? is it from food allergies or sensitivities what's going on because if we can identify those and remove those sources of immune stress and inflammation a lot of times the tonsils can shrink and the adenoids can shrink and we may be able to avoid removing them now this is such a huge insight right now that i got from you reading your book all right so we've got our tonsils as

58:54Shawn Stevenson:this kind of frontline sensor for our immune system and it can be hyperreactive. And of course, we're looking at it. This is just an obstruction. We'll just, you don't need it. Just remove it. Instead of understanding it's responding, it's reacting to something and not realizing that your gut lining has a similar reactive tissue that you can't see though. Not like the, not like, not like tonsils, right? And so that inflammatory response is happening elsewhere in the body. You just can't see it. And it might manifest as allergies. It might manifest as Crohn's disease. It might manifest as depression, right?

59:34Shawn Stevenson:Because one of the other things that you talked about, which a lot of parents would say, okay, you know, my kid doesn't have any gut issues. That's right. Yeah. Right. And you address that because if you don't have a blatant thing, like belly aches, you know, some type of gastrointestinal disease. We might not realize that as Hippocrates said thousands of years ago, all disease begins in the gut, but also all health begins in the gut as well. And so being proactive at, okay, I understand you might not have specific like belly related symptoms that you're seeing, but you said with your patients, you always start in the gut either way.

1:00:14Always start with the gut. And so, you know, if kids are older or, you know, parents are in the room and I started talking about, you know, let's do some detective work. We got to think about what's happening in your gut because, you know, all the effects it can have on the rest of your body. And a lot of times the answer, you know, the, the, the refrain is, well, yeah, but there's nothing wrong with my gut. Poops are perfect logs, no tummy aches, no heartburn you know no constipation or diarrhea and then we have to step back and really talk about you know why the microbiome is so important for as you said if your microbiome is inflamed or there's an imbalance there disruption there you might not not have any quote tummy or digestive symptoms but you may have some itchy skin right or you may have really bad acne right or you may just not be able to focus as well on your school play lines.

1:01:07I mean, whatever it is, I mean, all the things that kids may be struggling with and have as their goals, right? We can tie virtually all of them back to, hey, let's take a look at your microbiome. There's trillions and trillions of microscopic tiny little friends in your belly. If they're not happy, you're not going to be happy. If they're not healthy, you're not going to be in optimal health. And that's why we always start with the gut, whether it's a poop test or not. I mean, I'd love to do poop tests when I can, because I can't tell just by looking at you, you know, what you're, what's going to grow inside your stool and what's going to be there.

1:01:44But, but we can also suspect, Hey, look, if there's something going on with your, from a mental health standpoint, from an immune standpoint, from an endocrine hormone standpoint, you know, metabolic standpoint, we have to look at the gut first. If we want their gut microbiome to be in the healthiest state possible, that's where we have to go back to the foundations, right? We have to go back to what is going to nourish your child's microbiome. Because again, they're not just like tomato seeds you grow and you leave and come back in a month and you have these beautiful tomato plants. No, you need the right amount of water.

1:02:19You need the right amount of nutrients in the soil. You need the right amount of sunshine. You want to talk to them, give them the right amount of love, right? And so we need to think about our microbiome in the same way. And once we have those foundations, that is when we have true microbiome resilience. That is when, even if your kids need an antibiotic later on in life, or even if they get exposed to whatever microbiome disruptor, their microbiomes can bounce right back because our microbiomes want to go back to the state they were in before the disruption. That's really important. So you get a good foundation.

1:02:54All right, they take a little hit, fine. Get right back up and restore the foundation really easily. Yeah.

1:03:01Shawn Stevenson:Resilience is one of the most important aspects of health. You know, it's that bounce back factor. I love that so much. And actually you talk about these creating microbiome magic with our kids and what they're doing every day. There's five specific things. And this is again about that foundation and creating resilience. And you kick things off talking about the importance of nourishment, right? The right nutrients, the right environment, the right soil that it's going to create. And if you could, what are two or three things that we should be looking at to do for our kids for microbiome nourishment?

1:03:41So, and with nourishment, I put into two parts. there's what we want to try to get in but for some families if you know as you write in in your book right if the culture hasn't been quite shifted just yet and it's a harder sell to get in like a huge salad you know at dinner time all right sometimes the the biggest shift can happen by knowing what to keep out so there's sort of two parts and as a parent right i get we're all busy we're we're trying to do the best by our kids you pick the thing that's easier right i mean we want this to be, we want the small wins. And as you get the small wins for you and your child and everyone starts to feel better, it gets so much easier.

1:04:24And here's the thing. Once you know what to take out of your diet too, it changed, it can change your palate so that then it's more acceptable, more desirable to get in the things that we want. So what are the three things we want to get in from a microbiome centric standpoint? I call them our microbiome champions. the three F's are fiber, our phytonutrients, which I know is a pH, but it sounds like an F. Still got a F. Yeah, it's still got a F. And fermented foods. So those three things, if we can get in, right? And we know, I mean, fiber, I mean, here's the thing that, and why, you know, I love everything you write, because they may sound simple, but you know what?

1:05:05Simple is often the hardest thing to do, right i mean simple is not always easy and yet simple and the foundations are what are going to get you the longest lasting health results i mean i want to make it so that no kid ever has to biohack in their 50s right it's like you know what let's just make you know healthy living a lifestyle right and so what do we get in well fiber we know that 95 percent of americans today don't get the recommended fiber intake. And the recommended fiber intake, you know, varies on age and sex, but let's say it's about 25 grams of fiber for most kids. Well, you know, the Hadza people down in Tanzania, which has, you know, they're still a very traditional hunter-gatherer society with the richest gut microbiome of virtually any population in the world, they eat somewhere up to a hundred to 150 grams of fiber in a day.

1:06:03So it doesn't seem like it should be that hard, except that our diets are so full of ultra processed junk that are, have like zero fiber in them, that it's not easy to see why most of our kids aren't getting enough fiber in their diets. And I make it really concrete. I give lists, you know, like a cup of raspberries is going to be about nine grams of fiber. All right. That's your, like a third of the way there to your daily fiber intake, right? My kids could down like, I mean, a whole tray of raspberries if I let them, right? And then, you know, a cup of lentils is going to be maybe 16 grams of added fiber right there.

1:06:38So just, you know, trying to make it concrete, figuring out like, where can we get in a little fiber here and there? And then phytonutrients, that's a color, you know, the phytonutrients, all of these phytochemicals, I prefer the term phytonutrients because phytochemicals just doesn't sound right, you know, when we're talking about plants. But these phytonutrients, every single color has a different benefit for our eyes or our heart or our brain or for our immune system. And every single color also acts as a prebiotic. And every single color also affects how our microbial genes express themselves and influence our epigenetics.

1:07:16And so, and we know eight in 10 kids and adults have a phytonutrient gap in every single color. Right. And so if we think about, you know, eating that rainbow, it sounds so cliche, but you know, for kids, if they're not eating a whole rainbow, well then think about, I mean, broccoli, let's a lot of kids like broccoli, right? Well, getting the green broccoli and the purple broccoli that counts, right? Same broccoli. It's not even the same broccoli. it tastes a little different, right? Bell peppers, you love them. Great. Get the red, orange, you know, purple, green. I mean, all of those, right? It's a different phytonutrient.

1:07:55So you can fill in their color gap, even just like that. And then I always talk about fermented foods because that's probably the hardest sell for a lot of kids and grownups because they're thinking, you know, the sour, the sauerkraut. I mean, I grew up with kimchi, so it's like second nature to me, right? Right. Um, but there's so many ways we can get fermented foods in. And honestly, one of the best ways make it with your kids in my, in my daughter's, um, third, fourth grade combined class, there are these eight to 10 year olds. And I created the six week curriculum for them. It was honestly one of the most fun and rewarding things I've ever done in my entire life.

1:08:33And, you know, we, we talked all about their, you know, the tiny friends in their tummies and, and how they help them, what they do, um, and how do we nourish them, you know, with, with food and lifestyle. And, um, we made sauerkraut, we brewed kombucha and we had, we had the two ferment stages. So on the second stage, the kids got to choose different flavors and we seasoned them up and we had a little kombucha tasting contest. Um, we made fermented lemonade, which is one of the recipes I have in the book, because these are easy ways to get fermented foods in and, um, and have kids make them and want them.

1:09:10And I had parents calling me saying, oh my gosh, I can't believe, you know, um, Emily actually took a bite of sauerkraut. She's like the piggiest thing ever. And she said, you know what? That wasn't too bad. She still don't want a huge bowl full, but you know, that's where we get kids. If they, first of all, understand we have to give our kids way more credit than most of us do. They can understand why their microbiome is important to them at virtually any age, right? And we can empower them with the tools to know how to do it for themselves. I mean, that's our job as parents, right? Setting them up to be successful, not just from an academic or career standpoint, but how we help them be successful from a health standpoint for long term.

1:09:57Shawn Stevenson:Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this and I hope that this inspired you to be even more proactive about protecting and supporting our children's health. As Dr. Joel Walsh mentioned later, our medical system is simply not set up in a way that is about preventative care for our children. That's about protecting our children against chronic diseases because our current model does not unfortunately educate parents about nutrition, support parents around exercise, around community, around family dynamics, around sleep health, around, I can keep going on and on.

1:10:44Shawn Stevenson:There's so many different subjects that create this patchwork quilt of our lives and of our children's lives. It's dynamic, it's fluid it's ever-changing and the onus is on us the power is in our hands to write the story of our family's health and also write the story for children's health for generations to come so we've got to get educated and more importantly we've got to be proactive we've got to put what we learn into action and we don't have to turn our world upside down we don't have to do a thousand and different things. We can simply focus on improving one area at a time, especially looking at what is the highest leverage thing in your family's life or something that you care about's life right now.

1:11:33Shawn Stevenson:That might be just focusing on getting better sleep and creating a culture around healthy bedtime routines and good sleep hygiene, good sleep habits for our family. Maybe that's where you want to focus. Maybe it's nutrition, right? You just want to go and focus a lot more of your energy on to improving the nutrition for your family, making sure you got healthy snacks, making sure that you are mindful about what you're utilizing for, you know, busy days and things like that and having family meals together. So listen to your heart, let your conscience be your guide. Shout out to Jiminy Cricket.

1:12:11Shawn Stevenson:And more important than ever again, And this matters so much to me. It's a big, big part of why I do this work is we've got to protect our kids. They don't have the opportunity. I know that I didn't when I was a child to make a lot of decisions about my health. I was just kind of born into an environment that was remarkably unhealthy. And so we've got some decisions to make because here's the rub. We can normalize creating a healthy environment. so that our children are just born into environments that are more fruitful and supportive of good health. The power's in our hands. I appreciate you so much for tuning in today.

1:12:53Shawn Stevenson:If you got a lot of value out of this, you know what to do. Share it out with your friends and family. Of course, you can share this on social media. Tag me, I'm at Sean Model. If you wanna share some love on Instagram or X, or I'm at the Model Health Show on Facebook. We've got some incredible masterclasses and world-class guests coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions, videos for each episode.

1:13:29Shawn Stevenson:And if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome. And I appreciate that so much. And take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.