EFR 833: TOP PEDIATRICIAN Debunks Parenting Myths, Why People Are Waiting Longer to Have Children, and the BEST Ways to Raise Smart, Healthy Kids with Dr. Joel Warsh

00:00 - Chase (Host) The following is an Operation Podcast production.

00:03 - Joel (Guest) Yes, we're better at diagnosis. That's no question. That's a small part of it. But, especially if you just look at the last 20 years, things haven't changed that much in terms of diagnosis criteria. You can go back hundreds of years, but even then we didn't go from 1 in 25,000 or 1 in a few thousand to 1 in 30, because it's not happening more. We didn't go from 1 or 5% chronic disease to 50% over a few decades because it's not happening more. Yes, we're absolutely better at diagnosing things. That's a small part of it. But if you go, if you think back to when you were a child, you don't. Most people, almost anyone I've ever asked they don't really remember anybody with autism, or maybe one or two people. They don't really remember allergies, or maybe one person had a peanut allergy. They don't really remember asthma.

00:41 - Chase (Host) Why do you think now most people, it seems, are waiting later in life to have children.

00:48 - Joel (Guest) I think number one people don't feel ready to be parents and we're forgetting that to be a good parent, you really don't need anything right, there's not enough stuff that you can get to be a great parent. I mean, some things could probably help a little bit here and there, but to be a good parent.

01:03 - Chase (Host) It's about being there and loving your children. Is it too late to turn the ship around? Parenting at your Child's Pace the Integrative Pediatrician's Guide to the First Three Years this one is going front and center on my bookshelf at home. I'm so stoked to welcome my son into the world in just a few months, and this is going to help immensely.

01:21 - Joel (Guest) I am Dr Joel Gator Warsh, an, an integrated pediatrician in Los Angeles, california, and the author of Parenting at your Child's Base. Welcome to Ever Forward.

01:37 - Chase (Host) Hey, what's up everybody. Welcome back to Ever Forward Radio. I'm your host, chase Tuning, certified health coach, wellness entrepreneur, army veteran and soon-to-be new dad. And I say that because, well, I'm just so excited. But also, it cannot be more perfect timing for my guest today, dr Joel, aka Gator Warsh Joel, is a board-certified pediatrician here in Los Angeles who specializes in parenting, wellness and integrative medicine, and today we're diving into the core of his new work, his content, in parenting, wellness and integrative medicine. And today we're diving into the core of his new work, his content and his new book Parenting at your Child's Pace the Integrative Pediatrician's Guide to the First Three Years.

02:14 Now, even if you're not a parent, this information is going to be very valuable for you A lot of great daily health and wellness practical tips that you can apply. But also, if you are a parent or maybe, like me, soon to be parent, it is never too late to begin to wonder how you can be healthier, how you can live a healthier life, set a healthier example for your children. But more specifically, like we're going to dive into today, we're going to be diving into topics around. Quote the pandemic of overprotective parenting that is driven by biological and cultural phenomena. How do we raise healthy children if we feel like we are not healthy ourselves? And what do we do when we realize our children are not developing healthy habits? What if our kid is gaining weight, getting overweight or not interested in being active? Is having a child later in life better or worse in terms of being a more capable parent? All this and so much more. You're in for a real treat.

03:09 If you're new to the show, welcome. If you have not yet done so, hitting that follow button on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you're tuning in here today, would be a huge, huge thanks If you have. Thank you so much and if you're about to thank you in advance. It really does support the show in tremendous ways. It helps us grow, it helps us reach more people. It helps others live a life ever forward. All right, let's go ahead and jump into today's episode, where we're going to learn, through accessible, evidence-based guidance, how Dr Joel Warsh helps parents work through the health concerns and developmental changes that come up during the first three years of life and navigate the unique realities of parenting today. Welcome to the show. Are you familiar with Jordan Peterson? Okay, so I found this video, this quote of his work, talking about how he's saying there's quote the pandemic of overprotective parenting that is driven by quote biological and cultural phenomena.

04:04 - Joel (Guest) Yeah, I mean I think there's a couple of points there. Number one, I mean we're certainly having fewer kids than we ever used to have, a lot of countries their birth rates declining very precipitously, and I think there is a lot of concern around that, and I think it's really important that we are even mindful of that fact and start to ask ourselves the questions of you know, why are we even having kids later? Why are we so worried to have kids? Why are so many adults choosing even not to have kids? So I think that is certainly an important question.

04:32 And then, yes, I do think we're more overprotective. I mean, there are many reasons for this. One of them, like you said, you don't want to having as many kids. So maybe we're more overprotective over those few kids. But I think we're living in a society where we have access to social media and and the media and the news and and there's a lot of fear-based news around, and so I think we're a lot more concerned about issues than we ever used to be.

04:56 And if you do look at the statistics of um, like child abuse and and kidnappings and things like that, most of them are actually down, but but we have this perception that it's a lot worse, and so there's been this movement to overprotect our kids, and even Jonathan Haidt that's one of the big things that he mentions in his book when talking about getting kids off screens and also getting kids outside more, because we are way overprotective of our kids and not letting them play outside, not letting them explore the world, and that's more of our fear, and I think it's a misperception of the statistics and the actual level of fear that we should have. I mean, there's obviously things out there that are not great and those things are possible, but we're over proportionally worried about the few things because we see them, because that's what the media drives Like. Some horrible thing happens and we all see it.

05:49 - Chase (Host) I want to get kind of the medical insight, medical opinion on why do you think now most people, it seems, are waiting later in life to have children. By later in life I mean thirties, forties.

06:02 - Joel (Guest) I think number one people don't feel ready to be parents. They feel like, well, I think we've been taught to get a career. You know, career is important. We need to have enough money, we need to have enough of X, y and Z to be ready to be a parent, and we're forgetting that to be a good parent, you really don't need anything right? There's not enough stuff that you can get to be a great parent. I mean, some things could probably help a little bit here and there, but to be a good parent, it's about being there and loving your children.

06:29 And I've worked with really wealthy families and not so wealthy families. And when you see them in the office, it's not about how much money they have or how many things they have in their home or how big their nursery is. It's really about how much they care. But that's not really what we've been marketed to. There's just so much marketing around you need the right nursery, you need the right bed, you need this, you need that, and so I think we just don't feel ready and we want to climb the corporate ladder. We want to have more money. Oh, the inflation is happening. So now, even though we have this much money, we need even more money. We just don't ever feel like we're ready or there's a good time and there's no such thing. I mean, it's always going to be the time. If you're in a good relationship and you want to have children, then I think that then you're never going to feel totally ready, even once you have that child.

07:13 - Chase (Host) Yeah, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure you know I'm 38. I'll be turning 39 before my son is born and, it's funny, I always had this idea in my head of being a certain age. I want to be by the time I'm 35. I was telling my wife when we were dating I would love to be 35 and have a kid. And now I think back to 35, which is not that many years ago, just three years ago and I'm like, no, I wasn't ready or would have figured it out. But now, at 38, I feel so much more prepared and I know you're a big advocate of this, of really doing what you think is right, when you think it is right on your terms, because I feel like that's going to help you make the best choice for your life. But when we're talking about the other lives in your family, that's that's gotta resonate, that's gotta actually come down and not pass new stress. Really.

08:12 - Joel (Guest) Correct, I agree, but I think everyone should do it when they feel ready to a degree. But I think it's also important to step back and realize that we're never going to totally feel ready, and also to step back and look at society and look at how we have been marketed to and we also have changed our values to some degree, I think, in terms of the fact that we don't value having children as much as I think previous generations did and we don't revere it as being one of the most important things that we ever do. I mean, some people do, but I don't think that's.

08:41 - Chase (Host) Do you think family values are kind of more out the window these days?

08:44 - Joel (Guest) I think they're definitely lower on the totem pole than they used to be. I mean not for everybody, but I think that for sure, as a value, it's not something that we necessarily prioritize nearly as much as we used to. And you know, you do hear a lot of people like Jordan Peterson talking about this all the time, and he's a very big proponent of getting back to having more kids and that this is one of the most important things that we do. And I think a lot of the leaders, the thought leaders, are starting to really realize that and think about this, because our kids are literally our future and we need. I think I agree that it's one of the most important things that we can do and it's a really important role for us to play. We really grow, I think, as adults and we really invest in the future a lot more and have a very different understanding of the world once you become a parent. You just really can't see the world in the same way until you are a parent, because you see it through somebody else's eyes, and I think that's a very valuable thing for society because it gives you a lot more investment back in the future and just even in the way that you think about things. So I think it's a good thing.

09:46 I don't think that everybody has to have kids, or everybody would be a great parent, or, you know, everybody should have kids. But I think that we, we are under, we're under, we're putting ourselves in a place where we are not feeling like we can do this when we really can. And I think the world is telling us that more and more and we need to push back on it and tell ourselves that we can do it. And I see it all the time, especially when you look at parents who have two kids. You know that first kid they feel like they don't know anything. And then, by the time they have that second or third kid, they you know they got this. They're not calling me.

10:21 You know they're so worried like they have a little sniffle.

10:24 Or you know they're worried about how they're putting on the clothes or if they're feeding them enough, and it's like, oh, you're in the 99th percentile, I think they're fine, but but we are so worried about everything, like we're doing something wrong, we're going to screw them up, and I think that, at least to some degree, has to do with the messaging that we're receiving, and that's something that we can. We can change by just helping parents and adults to to realize that this is, this is in us, it's biological, it's innate. I've been doing it forever. We have more resources than we ever had and, and, and we are afraid of things that probably don't have that much to do with our actual lives or actually going to ever happen to us, but we see the worst case scenario for everything, and that makes us feel like we won't be able to do a good job it kind of begs the question for me of when times were much harder the world wars, civil war, medieval times when you literally didn't know if you're going to make it past 10, 11 years old.

11:21 - Chase (Host) you know the slightest cut would get infected and you would die, kind of thing. It seems like when times were tougher and lifespan was more uncertain, people were more inclined to have children sooner and to have more children. But like you just said things, resources are never more abundant for most people. We have more technology at our fingertips, we have access to healthcare. In so many ways the argument can be made it should be so much easier and it should be more of the population having more children more often. But it kind of seems like the more we grow in society and maybe even in awareness, our reproduction kind of notches down and goes the opposite way.

12:08 - Joel (Guest) Yeah, I think there are many factors in that, but to me the biggest one is just our values. I think that people valued having children, having lots of children, a lot more than they used to, whereas now people value how much money they're making their job. There's other things, and that's not a good or bad, it just is what it is. I mean, there was the women's movement, and women used to be home more and now they're working more. And so the values of a lot of individuals have changed, where now for many women they want to get a career and they want to get into, they want to have education and they want to do all of these things, and so that then the values of having kids get put on the back burner. And that's not a judgment statement, it's just what it what it is, and so it's a shift.

12:48 It's just a shift of where of where people are putting their, and there's only so much time to do everything. And so if you, if you prioritize I want to, you know, have a career, I want to become a doctor, I want to become a lawyer, whatever it is then you may not choose to have children. You might say I'm not ready to have kids, I want to have my career, I want to do this. And so now you're 35 and you haven't had children, and now you feel ready, but you're at the end of your, you know, the tail end of the reproductive years, and so that can make it also harder for people to have kids too. So it's not good or bad, it's just that's what it is. And so if you're prioritizing other things, you're not necessarily going to have kids when you're 20. You're going to wait till you're 35 or 32 or 33. And then if you're going to have kids between, say, you know, 32 and 42 or whatever, whatever timeframe, then there's only so many kids you're going to have during that time period.

13:37 - Chase (Host) Brings me to a question I had prepared Is having a child later in life better or worse in terms of being a more capable parent?

13:48 - Joel (Guest) I think you're more mature when you're older. You've seen more things, you've lived in the world longer, but I don't know that it makes you better or worse. I think it's very variable and you can be a great parent when you're 25. And you can also be a terrible parent when you're 40. So I feel like it matters more about what you do than how old you are. I mean, there's obviously advantages, I would say, to being older, but then there's also some advantages to being younger and naive and not worrying about everything.

14:11 - Chase (Host) So I think it's on on balance before I was going to be a parent too, like right now, because that's that's the thing it's like.

14:18 - Joel (Guest) Okay, you know. A perfect example is you know? Is it people always make joke, oh, you a pediatrician. That must be great to be a parent, because you know everything, and first of all, being a doctor, you don't know everything about being a dad, that's completely different. But also, number two, a lot of doctors are the most paranoid people because they know about all the worst stuff. So you know your kid has a cough and then you're worried about the thing that their parents wouldn't even know about. So it's not always good to know more. The more you know, the more you know to be afraid. Right, exactly, so it's not I wouldn't say it's not 100 true that if you're older and more mature and more wise, so that's always a good thing, because you might just worry more how do we raise healthy children if we feel like we are not healthy ourselves?

15:00 I think in your question is a lot of the answers. We start to focus back on our own health, and I think that is key, and I don't even know that what you said is completely true. I don't think a lot of people even think about their own health when it comes to their kids' health maybe a little bit, but I think we have to at least get back to that and identify that the things that we're doing now matter for our kids later. Certainly, if you are pregnant, everything that you're doing, everything that you're eating, that goes to your baby to some degree. I mean, they're literally built of the nutrients that you eat, and so the first step to me is to recognize that. You know, overall our health is not great, and so if we want to have healthy kids, we have to look at the statistics, look where we are, and they're not great. I mean, 50% of kids have a chronic disease. Every kind of condition that you can think of is skyrocketing, and so is that globally or just in the US?

15:50 So it's really high. I mean autism rates they're one in 36. Overall, one in 22. In California they used to be one in 150. They before that one in 25,000. I mean, the numbers are just going up and up over the last few decades. Autoimmune conditions are skyrocketing, mental health conditions are skyrocketing. I mean the numbers are just going up and up over the last few decades. Autoimmune conditions are skyrocketing, mental health conditions are skyrocketing. I mean all these things are skyrocketing.

16:10 And so we have to ask ourselves why. And we're not doing that enough. And so to me, it really starts with today, and you shouldn't stress about the things you've done before. But if we want to have healthier kids and you want to get pregnant or you are having a kid, well, start thinking about the things that you're doing today. Start setting up the environment for you to be healthier, which means for them to be healthier. Start trying to focus on what we're eating, exercising more. I mean all the things that we know, all the things you mentioned, but they're not rocket science yet we're not doing enough of it. Again, we're focused so much in general on faster, quicker, not healthier, and we do have to get back to that if we want to be healthier, because the stats don't lie and we're not that healthy.

16:53 - Chase (Host) Calling all honey fans If you're like me and you enjoy a little something sweet, maybe in your tea or lately this has been my morning jam hot water, fresh lemon squeeze and some honey. It's a great way to ease into the day, supports gut health and, honestly, it's just a tasty treat. But not just any honey. I'm talking about today's partner, manu Kora. This is honey with superpowers. This is your daily digestive, immune and whole body support. That has never tasted so good. It's rich, it's complex. It that has never tasted so good. It's rich, it's complex. It's thoroughly enjoyable. This is next level honey. That's because it's packed with high levels of antioxidants and prebiotics. It promotes digestive health, like I said, even supports immunity and boosts energy. In fact, their product, the MGO 850 Plus, is the number one high-grade Manuka honey in the USA. I got a great deal for you. Maybe you're looking for a better for you honey high-grade Manuka honey in the USA. I got a great deal for you. Maybe you're looking for a better-for-you honey, a better Manuka honey, or just a good deal from a trusted person. Hey, that's me over here, health coach Chase, coming at you. I would never steer you wrong. Let me put you on Monocora. We got a great deal for you.

17:56 You can actually save $25 on their Monocora starter kit. I I love it because it comes with the jar of honey you can use at home, but I love these travel packs. It comes with a free five-pack travel honey stick pack and even some cool little recipes and great ways to introduce it into your diet, your drinks, your nutrition, however you want to tackle it. Also, if your little one's got a cough, this is so good for that cough. Manuka honey can provide relief from coughs and sore throats. Its soothing texture helps coat the throat, reducing irritation or even wound healing. Manuka honey's antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties can aid in the healing of minor cuts, scrapes and burns. It helps prevent infection and support the body's natural healing processes. Look, if I don't have your attention yet, what are you doing? Hop on the train, head to monocorecom. Slash ever forward to learn more and to save $25 off of their starter kit. Link for you, as always in the show notes, but again, that's M-A-N-U-K-O-R-A dot com. Slash ever forward to save $25 on the Monocora starter kit today.

18:57 Now do you think these stats are so alarming and on the rise because that is actually true? Or have things like chronic illness, autism only become more um diagnosable in the last few generations. Cause I feel like I mean, like I said, I'm 38. So I feel like in my grandparents' generation I don't really know if they were like, oh, he's autistic, she's autistic, or you know kind of neurodivergence, or oh, they've got you know type two diabetes. They kind of just like, oh, it's husky, my grandparents would call it. So is it actually happening or is it just kind of a reallocation of terms and awareness?

19:38 - Joel (Guest) No, it's actually happening. I mean there is some debate and controversy around that, but I think that there's no question that it's happening more. Yes, we're better at diagnosis, that's no question. That's a small part of it, but, especially if you just look at the last 20 years, things haven't changed that much in terms of diagnosis criteria. You can go back hundreds of years, but even then we didn't go from one in 25,000 or one in a few thousand to one in 30, because it's not happening more. We didn't go from 1% or 5% chronic disease to 50% over a few decades, because it's not happening more. Yes, we're absolutely better at diagnosing things, so that's a small part of it. But if you think back to when you were a child, most people almost anyone I've ever asked they don't really remember anybody with autism, or maybe one or two people. They don't really remember allergies, or maybe one person had a penile allergy. They don't really remember asthma, I don't. I mean for sure it was around.

20:25 - Chase (Host) Please go deeper. On allergies. I'm re-remembering this point I wanted to bring up. I feel like nowadays kids are allergic to everything, whereas in my day, which wasn't that long ago, you know, it was rolling around the grass. Everyone's eating peanut butter. You didn't have to differentiate the snacks at a birthday party, kind of thing.

20:47 - Joel (Guest) I'm not saying that was right or wrong, but it just seems radically different now why it is radically different and we don't know why. I mean there are theories, and certainly I have theories around it, but that that is the point. I mean we all live. You know, all of us that are listening, we lived and you can think around and you're like I don't recall it at all. Yes, I'm sure some people had it and some people were not diagnosed with it, but it's not like it is now.

21:02 You go into any classroom and most of the kids have a diagnosis. None of the schools you can bring in nuts. You know all these things that you just never had to really think about before. And obviously some of that's good because you want to protect the kids, but we shouldn't have to do that, right? I think that's the bigger question. And then that begs your question of why, like why is this happening? Why is this happening?

21:22 And we don't know for sure, but from the individuals that I speak with, the people that think about chronic disease, that think about prevention, it's the food that we're eating and the chemicals that we're exposed to and our just crappy lifestyles in general that are putting our kids in this place of chronic inflammation, and their bodies just can't handle what's being exposed to them, and so they're reacting to things they shouldn't react to, and it's expressing itself in all different ways, whether that's asthma for one kid or autism for another kid, or autoimmune condition for another child. That's what's happening, and our bodies just can't metabolically handle our food and what we're exposed to and we're not getting the nutrients that we need. I mean, our food is so devoid of nutrients Most kids eat and the research shows 70% to 90% ultra-processed foods. It's not real food. So how do you expect their bodies to function when they're not getting the nutrients that they need? So I think that's a big part of it.

22:19 - Chase (Host) I'm so glad you brought up nutrients and nutrition. I've always been curious about country kids, city kid. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, almost a couple hundred acres. My grandparents had a garden. Most of the food that we ate we grew fruits, vegetables. Across the mountain was a farm who slaughtered his own pig and cow, and so we got our hands dirty. We got our hands dirty picking the food, growing the food. We're outside all the time. We had well water and so I'm curious, having the doctor in the house, is there a correlation or causation to a child that maybe grows up in that kind of environment of literally getting their hands dirty in terms of play and nutrition, compared to someone who doesn't, who gets it from processed food or the cafeteria? Why is that? Why is our actual physical environment so conducive to raising a healthy kid or not?

23:20 - Joel (Guest) So the research? For? So there's definitely some research that you can look through about kids in rural areas or farms versus cities, or Amish families versus people living in cities, and almost all the research shows there's a decrease in allergies and eczema and autoimmune conditions if you live outside the city. So we don't exactly know why, but the theory is that you're being exposed to you know you're being exposed to more of everything out there, so you're not necessarily concerned. Your body's getting used to some of everything out there, so you're not necessarily concerned. Your body's getting used to some of these things. You're eating healthier food. You're moving a lot more. I mean we're getting back to the way that we were meant to be.

23:51 - Chase (Host) So exposure to more things in our environment from a younger age but natural things, natural things is actually healthier for us.

23:59 - Joel (Guest) Almost certainly, and I would say that that, even if you just step back, is almost common sense. Like, how did our bodies develop? We developed in nature eating real food, eating what was around us, and then, all of a sudden, over the last 50 to 100 years, we changed everything that we're doing. We're getting all this ultra-processed food. We're getting all this marketing, these sugary drinks, these chemicals, these preservatives. We're trying to get things that are cheaper and faster and you lose health with that, I think. And our kids are being marketed to, we're being marketed to. The food companies know these things and they're trying to figure out and use their research and science to figure out. Well, what is going to make our kids eat more, what's going to make them want to buy more of this product? And it's not the food that makes us full, it's not the proper food that we're supposed to be eating forever. It's this new sugary, chemically food that I don't think our bodies were ever meant to handle.

24:58 - Chase (Host) So then, what is the best diet for children?

25:01 - Joel (Guest) I think the best diet is very simple. I mean, we're so confused by all these guidelines and what to do, what not to do, and I think it's really, really simple Just eat real food, cook more, eat real food. So stuff you can get that you actually know what it is, it doesn't have long chemically names on it, that's not sprayed in a bunch of chemicals and pesticides. Just get as much as you can real food and cook it yourself, and that's going to get us a long way. I mean, we're talking about vegetables and fruits and meats and fish. You know things that are, um, you know, pasture raised, even though it would just be called beef before right it's like the way they're supposed to be, the way they're supposed to be.

25:37 - Chase (Host) You know, going around there, you know milk, it's like every kid is sensitive to dairy these days, All natural Also just used to be called food.

25:42 - Joel (Guest) Right, exactly Like oh, milk. I don't think milk is the problem, it's just that the way that the cows are raised, all the stuff that's shot inside meat, you know, beef, chicken, veggies, fruit cook it up, make it.

26:02 - Chase (Host) That's what we should be eating when.

26:03 - Joel (Guest) That's what we always ate our entire life and, um, you know, I've, I've, I've heard the joke before many times. Like you, don't see any other animals out in nature being overweight or obese, be it. 50% of of kids are overweight or obese, more so, more than that, like 75% in adults, you know, in America, and that's because of our food. We're not meant to be overweight or obese. No other animal is. They just eat and then they get full and they stop eating.

26:26 But we have these you know not real food, these processed, made from a lab, foods that we're eating. We just don't think about it. We've just been marketed to. Over the last 50 years, we moved away from cooking. We moved away from the importance of food, the importance of being in the kitchen, the importance of family meals, and look at their results. I mean, humans are not healthy and we're overweight and obese everywhere that you turn, and that's because of our food.

26:55 - Chase (Host) So let's say I am an overweight or even obese soon to be parent. Let's say we're not even me and my partner, we're not even pregnant yet, and then I stay overweight and I stay obese. Getting pregnant during pregnancy Am I pretty much guaranteeing that my child is also going to be obese?

27:15 - Joel (Guest) I don't think that you're guaranteeing that your child is going to be obese or overweight, but you are setting them up for it to be more difficult for them to be at a healthier weight, because you eat what's in your environment and generally, if you're eating a certain way that is not metabolically healthy for you, then your child's probably going to eat in a similar way, and so that's going to make it more difficult for them to to maintain an uh, a healthy weight. And and I would say that you know, if you're breastfeeding or or, um, you know, feeding a baby, I mean the stuff that's in you goes to them, so I would say that it certainly matters. Right, I think you're, you're making, you're giving them worse odds at having a longer, healthier life based on the way that we're eating, because that's just what's happening. I mean, that's why life expectancy is going down. Adults are overweight or obese. Teens are overweight or obese. It's not that kids just started becoming obese for no reason. I mean why? Why is it happening?

28:08 - Chase (Host) Everything a child does is learn behavior right, Right.

28:12 - Joel (Guest) And so they're eating what we buy. They're eating what's in our home, and we have to take responsibility back and say we're not going to do this anymore and we're going to have to prioritize food. And prioritizing food means more work and sometimes a little bit more money, and it's very unfortunate that sometimes with real food, it becomes a discussion around class or money and these things. But we have to get away from that. I mean it shouldn't be something that a doctor can't say like oh, we need to eat healthier food, we need to go to farmer's markets. We have to make that possible for everybody. I get that it can cost more sometimes, but we don't want to be sick.

28:47 So we have to do whatever we can and we have to stop subsidizing the cheap, crappy foods like corn and soy and sugar so much. I mean we need people to have calories, but we have to have them, have real, healthy calories, as opposed to seed oils and so much corn and high fructose corn syrup. I mean that's why all these products have it in them. But that's not real food, that's not what we need to be eating, and so we have to start to shift that balance, and that's not an easy thing to do. It's something we could do, but at least from the family perspective, if you recognize that those decisions make a big difference for you and your family, you can stop purchasing those things, or at least decrease some of those things that you're purchasing, and then put your priorities back into food, put them back into cooking, put them back into caring about what we're what we're buying, and, and I think if we do that, then we are going to move the needle a long way.

29:39 - Chase (Host) Now let's say I am planning to get pregnant, I'm planning to bring life into this world in one way or another, and I have found great success with a particular diet. Let's say I'm carnivore and I've been doing carnivore diet for two years. I feel my best, look my best, great labs, blah, blah, blah. Is there harm in passing on my preferred or my chosen diet to my child?

30:08 - Joel (Guest) So I think the first point with trying to get pregnant or think about getting pregnant is the fact that even at this point, we're having such a difficult time for so many families to get pregnant and infertility is skyrocketing, and so just the fact that you're thinking about food is so important. I mean, that's the first point, right. Then I think the second point is I'm not big on any specific diet, so I think if you are focusing on real food, that's going to get you most of the way there, and everybody's different Everybody real food.

30:35 No, I know, that's what I'm saying I'm not saying that's bad, I'm saying like I would be fine with carnivore, I'm fine with vegan, vegetarian, eating all the things. If you're gonna have good, whole, real food, then that to me is better than eating the ultra processed crap that everybody's eating so it'll be okay for me to make my child on the carnivore diet if that's what you want to do and they, they are doing well on it and I think that's fine.

30:55 I think we need to be careful with what we do for our kids. There are different people, so they may or may not um do as well on one of those diets. So I think that's something that for each person is different and you have to kind of monitor and watch for for most kids, I mean, a balanced diet is what makes sense for them at first and you can kind of see where they go as they get older. Um, but at least for for you, if that's the diet that works best for you, then that might be the best thing for your body and for your immune system and your lab work. And if you're monitoring that and watching it and that's what works for you, that's great.

31:22 And I would rather you be on carnivore diet than eat ultra-processed foods. So I think that's totally fine. I think, at the end of the day, for most people a balanced diet works the best, but not for everybody. And a lot of people do eat a lot of meat around the world, and they did for many, many years. So I think that's fine. I think that if you're eating good, healthy meat, then there's nothing more nutrient-dense than good, healthy meat, and so that might work very well for you.

31:47 - Chase (Host) What's up, friends? Quick break from my conversation with Dr Warsh to bring your attention to an incredible deal for one of my favorite snacks, my favorite protein pack snacks, my favorite partners, paleo Valley, and they're 100% grass fed and grass finished beef sticks. Because today you can get them at 80% off. You heard me right stock up. You're gonna want these in your pantry, in the car for you, for the whole family, for your kids. I really have these stashed everywhere. I got them in my podcast studio, my backpack, at home. Five amazing flavors to pick.

32:20 Personally, I'm partial to original and teriyaki, but no matter which way you go, it tastes amazing, made with organic spices, naturally fermented, so it's actually gut health friendly. Not to mention, it tastes so good and it's the only grass-fed and grass-finished beef stick in the US. You don't have to worry about going hangry. You don't have to worry about putting something in your body that you might regret later, nah, nah, nah. With these. They taste good, they're great for you. You're fueling your body, fueling your muscles, great way to introduce more protein into your diet. I'm seriously obsessed.

32:53 If you want to learn more and you want to save a lot of money, like I said, 80% off, we got an exclusive link for you down in the show notes. You got to go to the show notes, go under episode resources, click that link and for an exclusive time, just for you, my trusted audience members, you're going to be able to get their delicious, gut-friendly, healthy, 100% grass-fed beef sticks for only $4.99. Now, this is a limited time deal and while supplies last, so act fast, again linked for you in the show notes under episode resources. You're not going to find this deal on the regular website. Scoop up one flavor, all the flavors, go ahead and get them all now, because 80% does not last long.

33:30 And for the record, I'm not carnivore. I do enjoy a good steak, big meat fan, but I'm not planning on passing carnivore on to junior anytime soon. What do we do when we realize that our children are not developing healthy habits? Let's say, despite our best efforts of clean living, clean house, you know, whole foods, all this stuff, for whatever reason, they are sneaking in sweets or they're not active. You know how do we kind of get them to realize that this is important, but not force it upon them.

34:03 - Joel (Guest) Yeah well, I think first it depends on their age, but at the end of the day it goes back to some of the first stuff we were talking about, about setting boundaries. I think that's extremely important, that we have to get back to parenting sometimes and we have to get back to knowing what's best for our kids and if we see them going down the wrong path, and setting some good, realistic boundaries can be really helpful. I think it's really important that we model good behavior. So if we want them to be healthy, then we need to do it as well and hopefully we can find ways to include them or just like you said, not to force them to do things, but to motivate them to do things by figuring out what works for them, what works for the family. Maybe you can do stuff together, maybe you can go on walks together, maybe when they're younger, if you can.

34:46 Ideally you start working on these things from day one. You start educating them and teaching them. But if you're just coming at this and you have a 15 year old, then it's not always as easy to get them to do exactly what you want to do. But you can start talking to them more, encouraging them doing things together, figuring out what would work for them and just trying to include them as much as you can, and then just keep trying to get them to do stuff and explaining why. I mean, if you talk to them about it, if you get them to do it, then hopefully as a family you can move in a better direction. Of course it's not easy when you have an older teenager.

35:16 But that's where starting from today makes a big difference, because it's a lot easier for your team to be eating healthy if they've done it their whole life than if you're trying to start it now when they're 16. But you still can. I mean, anybody can do it. People do it all the time and sometimes it's just finding the right motivational triggers, the right motivational factors that can help for them. And maybe that's you know a new phone, maybe that's you know the screen time, maybe that's a new game, I don't know. Whatever it is, but you, you work on figuring out what you where you want them to go and kind of meet them in the middle somewhere okay, now I hope I'm gonna pose this next question correctly is what is the best way to begin to talk to our children about body awareness?

35:59 - Chase (Host) Meaning, son, daughter, when you look in the mirror, when you look at your body, or even when you close your eyes and just feel, in your body there's, I think, an objective, good feeling of health, of not being inflamed, of not being tired, having energy, being able to get up and move and push things around. You know, feeling good in your body does have a correlation to health, being a healthy and unhealthy body. I'm not talking about body positivity or anything like that, but just it's hard to kind of put this in words because it's all such new territory for me. I think I've been thinking about, but I want to maybe I'll just speak personally. I want to talk to my, my son, and go. There are ways that you can move your body and fuel your body that serve it and that allow you to feel as good as possible, and we want you here for as long as possible. How do I go about that? How do we go about that, maybe, especially as a new parent, to instill that sense of body awareness into our child without body shaming them?

37:10 - Joel (Guest) I think that's a great question. It's something that's going to be built over time. It starts with being present. It starts with talking about all sorts of things so that you can feel comfortable and they can feel comfortable talking to you, and then you're going to work your way up on those conversations as they get older. You're probably not talking to your one-year-old about any of that stuff, right? But when they're three, four, five, you're not maybe getting into those details.

37:33 But you are talking about how this food makes you feel good. This food is healthy, this food is not healthy, and so I think it's a gradual buildup over time, cause even our five-year-old, he understands the difference between healthy food and not healthy food. He understands that we don't eat this kind of food or this food is just for parties or you know those kinds of things. And I think you build it up over over time and you don't stress too much about having conversations. I think parents sometimes stress too much about that. They don't want to, they don't want to make their child feel bad and they don't want to talk about things, or making them talk about something is going to create a problem and generally all the research shows that not talking about it as much worse.

38:10 So I think, if you consistently talk about things over time and you do it in a in a reasonable, mindful way and at the age level that they are, then you don't necessarily need to be worried about that. Like what you said, it's just perfect. Like those are the kind of things that you would say like you're talking about.

38:24 Yeah, like you're, you're talking about, you know wanting, wanting them to be healthy, and you're coming at it from a place of health. It's not body shaming, it's not body, it's not really any of that. It's just these are the things that are important for you to be healthy. I want you to be healthy, so we're going to do these things and you also do it by showing them. It's not just by talking to them because they're going to. You're not going to really run into, I feel, like body shaming so much or that kind of worry when you're just doing things as a family and you're just doing it and they're seeing you do it and you're talking about you doing it for yourself because you want to be healthy. So's not really about that body image. It's just about being healthy and I think we need to separate those a little bit.

38:58 Cause again, that goes back to a big problem in society right now is even doctors can't really talk about obesity. It's like it gets to this body shaming and body positivity. It's like, but it's not healthy, like we should be able to talk about it, and it's not to say that you're not amazing or wonderful if you are overweight or obese. But as a healthcare practitioner, if you step back, it's not healthy for you to be at that weight and we have to be able to discuss those things, to try to help you get to a healthier place. If you want to, if you don't want to, if you're completely happy with where you are, that's fine. But our job as a doctor, I think, as a wellness practitioner is to try to help people be as healthy as they can.

39:34 And if you're overweight or obese, you have an increased risk for almost every sort of condition and your your you know metabolic system is probably not gonna be functioning optimally and you're going to be on the path to diabetes If you don't have it already. I mean, a third of kids have prediabetes or diabetes as it is right now, and how are we okay with that?

39:50 - Chase (Host) That's not okay.

39:50 - Joel (Guest) And most people don't want that, but they don't even think about it. And it's not shaming you for talking about it. It's discussing it and trying to move into a different direction. And so long as the media and the powers that be are kind of pushing a narrative of body shaming and body positivity and all of these things, it's going to be very difficult to make a change. It's about health and wellness, not about saying anything negative of any person. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't work to make you the person the healthiest that you can be, not because of image, because of I don't want you to have cancer, I don't want you to have diabetes, I don't want you to die of liver you know, fatty liver disease next year and that's what's happening yes, everything.

40:30 - Chase (Host) Great, great response. I love that. So now we have a newborn? Uh, we're starting our family and I'm already beginning to see these comments flood in with just a gender reveal announcement and sharing with my audience that, hey, I am expecting a child. I'm getting unsolicited advice about get this test, don't get that test. Get this vaccine, don't get that vaccine.

40:53 - Joel (Guest) Unsolicited online. Unsolicited online, yeah, online, yeah, just never from friends, family from random people.

40:58 - Chase (Host) Yeah, who would have thought, just hey, here's what I think. I'm gonna tell you all about it. But there has to be some truth to some of that. As you know, my son will be born in 2025, so here in 2024, 2025, are there things that you recommend as a doctor? Every child needs to get tested for. Every child should get this vaccine. How do we navigate that kind of very medical, clinical aspect of bringing new life into the world?

41:22 - Joel (Guest) Yeah, great, great question. So I want to step back a little bit and talk about one of the big reasons I wrote the book in general was just for this kind of question, because there's so much information on everything, right, no matter what topic you're talking about. You talk about vaccines, you can talk about how to feed your baby, baby led weaning versus purees when to toilet train. It doesn't matter what the topic is, you have grandma's opinion and then you have everybody else's opinion, and they're completely different.

41:47 And everybody wants to give you their advice on every single thing and you have no idea what to do Grandma's always right, right. More often than not, but not always right, not always.

41:55 I mean it's good to have grandma's opinion, and grandma usually knows your family, so I think that's a good opinion to have. But what I, what I think is so important, is to get back to figuring out how to synthesize the information and figure out what's right for us. And so that's one of the big purposes of the book is to kind of run through those big questions, like you know you mentioned, and then be okay with getting the information, kind of bringing it in, and then you have to synthesize it and figure out what makes the most sense for you to do and to try, because there is no one right way to do almost anything in parenting or in life, I mean. Everybody's different and so there isn't going to be exactly one specific way for every single thing.

42:28 There are certainly guidelines out there, right? So the American Academy of Pediatrics or the CDC might have guidelines for certain questions and answers, and that can be very helpful to help point you, because obviously a lot of smart people have thought about these things for a long time. But at the same time it doesn't mean that they're right for you or doesn't mean that you agree with them or want to do those things, and at the end of the day, if you step back, we're not very healthy right now. So even all the guidelines can't be totally correct because we're not very healthy in general.

42:52 - Chase (Host) is population Fair, point yeah.

42:54 - Joel (Guest) But it doesn't mean that those things are not useful either, because there are medications that can save your life, right? So I think that it's not one or the other, and that goes back to integrative medicine and integrative health and integrative parenting, because you have to synthesize these things and figure out what is going to make sense for you, and, unfortunately, there are topics these days that seem to be very taboo or people just get angry, no matter what, when you talk about them and and you know, just devolves into fighting. And we just should be able to talk about these things and talk about every single topic out there and and have debates and conversations and then help each other to figure out what makes the most sense for us. It doesn't mean we have to fight about everything, right. We just we just have to get that information, think it through and then figure out what's right, right, right for us, and so, no, I don't think there are many topics where there's like one right way to do it for everybody. That's that would be very rare.

43:44 - Chase (Host) I love that answer, but to critique a little bit or to go in a little bit on that does that not leave room for subjective opinion on what the science might show us? Is like no, this child at this age absolutely needs this test, this injection, this vaccine, this allergy, this, whatever. Or do we need to just, with all of that, take a step back and go? This is how I feel about all of these tests and all of this science right now, and then, based on how I feel about this evidence, I'm going to choose to do or not to do.

44:21 - Joel (Guest) Well, I mean, medicine is about personal choice, right, it's about it's not about telling people what to do, it's about providing information to help people make the best decision for them. So those two things are both correct. Like, it's not that people should make a subjective opinion. They should value, I think, the best information out there and weight that really heavily right. So if you're talking to your doctor and they're like, well, you should get this medication right now because it's going to save your life, you should probably listen to that, right, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it, but people don't, right? I mean, there's Jehovah's Witnesses that choose that they don't want to have blood, right, if they don't have a transfusion, and we allow that because that's their personal choice based on their you know religion and their beliefs.

44:59 So I think that your personal choice should always be included, but at the same time, we need to synthesize that and figure out what makes sense, because, yes, most of the time you're going to want to follow the guideline, most of the time you're going to want to follow your doctor's doctor, and you agree with what they're saying, but personal choice and discussion should always be in the equation, because even for me as a doctor. I don't know you, I don't know your family, I'm not there every day, and so I might give you advice that might not actually be true for you, because there might be something different that's unique to your family or your child or your specific needs. That isn't true for most of the other kids, or maybe the study doesn't know this thing about your child and that actually makes a different answer for you so yes, I think I mean getting back to, like you know, should we just make our own decisions, not listen to the science?

45:43 no, I mean that's. That's not what I'm saying. It's just that I think that we have to leave room for discussion and debate on everything. Nothing is completely settled. That's what science is. It's always continuing, revolving, asking questions and having discussions, and I think that we should synthesize that information so that we can do what's best for us. And a lot of times that's going to be what the other people are telling you. But what do you do when two really intelligent people or science gives you two completely opposite answers, or science says one thing and grandma says another thing. You have to pick and choose one. So we have to get back to figuring out how to do that and trusting ourselves, because we have to make those decisions ultimately and continually for our family okay, all right.

46:22 - Chase (Host) What about, um, mom and dad, or mom and mom or dad and dad, or whatever combination? Has pre-existing conditions, has type 2 diabetes, type type 1 diabetes, family history of cardiovascular disease. What should a new parent really be hyper aware of in terms of their health status, their predisposition to certain chronic illness, disease, so that they can really begin to cultivate that environment of health and awareness as best as possible for their kid?

46:54 - Joel (Guest) I think it's about bringing it up when you're meeting your physicians.

46:57 That way you can talk about things and see if anything specific to your condition is well known to affect the child, or things that you could do to help bring them up in a way that is healthier, more resilient. I mean most things. I mean, of course, the environment matters, but it's not going to be direct. It's not going to have a direct effect on the child, especially for the dad. Sometimes not going to be direct, it's not going to have a direct effect on on the child, especially, um, for the dad. Sometimes the mom, you know, will have some effect. But at the end of the day we just have discussions around these things and figure out what we can do to create that environment as best as we can. So I think it's just having discussions, but but it's so specific to each condition that would be hard to to generalize on that, because different conditions are going to affect the family in different ways yeah, I agree and um know someone listening right now might be going like I was.

47:37 - Chase (Host) I wanted an answer Like if I have this and I need this test, or if I have this disease or this whatever, then I need to be focusing this with my child, but, um, but, it's so specific because even if you have a certain, let's say, like diabetes, everybody with diabetes is a little bit different.

47:49 - Joel (Guest) So what what's going to make sense for you isn't necessarily going to make sense for for the next person, and that's where personalized and individual medicine comes in. And that's, you know, the direction that I hope we move a lot more of, because nothing should work in a conveyor belt type system like we have now, where it's like a factory line.

48:06 You have to figure out what makes sense for you, and then that's how you can help to improve things for your own family. And so there is. There should not be one answer. I think that if anybody is going to give you one answer for everybody, that's not. That's not somebody you should be listening to, because that's not a realistic perspective on humans. Everybody's different. So we have to, we have to know what the research is, because that helps point you in a direction, and maybe everybody with diabetes will do really well with checking their blood sugar and getting a gut test. And you know there are things that probably are common themes, but it still doesn't mean that this is what is going to be the right thing for you.

48:37 - Chase (Host) And to sum all that up, I'll say I really hear in your answer it's awareness. You know, whether you know that you have this predisposition or you have this chronic illness or disease or genetic whatever. Um, some things are more obvious, like you're going to know if you're diabetic, most likely, but other things people don't know and they should know. And I'm such an advocate for people getting just basic diagnostic labs. Just get, whether that's whatever you get at your annual physical. You should get your annual physical everybody or you know now there's so many options to go to go get labs or to have a lab draw at home or something like that. You should know your blood sugar, know your cholesterol, know your A1C. You should know so many of these just basic diagnostic markers that can, you know, really set the tone for your health but taking the most appropriate next steps for the health of your child, I believe.

49:27 - Joel (Guest) Yeah, I think that's great advice and we're lucky now that there's so much more testing available and that the prices really come down a lot in the last few years to where it's not, you know, in general super expensive to do it anymore. So it is a lot more accessible and I think for a lot of people that can well, I think it can be helpful for almost anybody, but I I think that it's a very helpful tool for a lot of individuals who are not making changes in their life, because that could be a really good marker to be like.

49:53 Oh, you know it's not at the point where I have diabetes yet, but it's really close, and so maybe this is a good reason why I should make this change now, before it gets there, because medicine doesn't do that.

50:02 Almost ever no-transcript up call for you to say, well, do I, do I want to do something about this now? Do I want to get my health back in balance? So I want to get my eating on track, because look where the numbers are now, and if I don't do that, it's going to probably get to that point where I'm going to be on three medicines in five years, like most people are. Or well, this is a wake-up call, let's do something about it. So I think it's a good thing to do for most people, because it can be a nice wake-up call to move you in a better direction. I mean, if you are going to just do that anyways, great. Most people aren't going to just do it on their own. So I think getting some hard data can be really helpful for people, and also then you can compare it in a year or a few months or whenever it is, and you can see which direction you're moving.

51:02 - Chase (Host) Huge advocate for getting your labs whether you're trying to get pregnant or not, but, speaking of a lot of people in this generation this day and age are not having the same luck in terms of I want to get pregnant.

51:16 We tried, we got pregnant. I'll tell you, my wife and I tried, for we were actively trying to conceive for about almost a year and a half about 14, 15 months or so and we actually, the beginning of this year, first time we got pregnant, went through a miscarriage, and so the more and more I'm talking about this and sharing our fertility journey now in terms of getting pregnant, went through a miscarriage, and so the more and more I'm talking about this and sharing our fertility journey now in terms of getting pregnant, how long it took and our first one not staying. I am overwhelmed, in both a good way and very emotional way, of the amount of people that I personally know and people reaching out online of going. We've been trying for months, for years one miscarriage, two miscarriages, four miscarriages. The fertility journey seems so much more trying and difficult and longer than ever. Why is that?

52:10 - Joel (Guest) I think we have touched on it a little bit today and there are probably many reasons. I mean, one of the big ones for a lot of people is just their general health and lifestyle, right? I think that's a big thing. You know, we're not eating as healthy, like we mentioned, and we're not moving as much as we we can. We talk about a little before as well.

52:27 We're older, right? So I think, just by nature of being older, when we're trying to conceive then you have a lower, uh, chance of conceiving. The number goes down a couple of percentage every every year in terms of your chance to get pregnant as we get older. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it and it's still very high if you are, you know, let's say, in your your later 30s, but it's like you know you have a. I don't know what the exact numbers are, but when you're in the twenties it's like you have a very high chance and then, as it goes more on and on, it's like, well, you have a higher chance, but it's over like half a year or a year, right, you know?

52:56 so it's not going to necessarily happen right away, but it's still pretty. So you just keep trying, but it's just not necessarily going to happen as as easily, and also we're just surrounded by chemicals and toxins. So we're, we're, we're already at a point where it's it's.

53:08 - Chase (Host) I think it's very hard for us to do that. What do you mean specifically, surrounded by chemicals and toxins?

53:11 - Joel (Guest) so in our food, in our environment. Environment I mean the plastics. I mean there was just that recent study where there were microplastics in everybody's testicles that they were testing.

53:20 Whoa, whoa, whoa, say that again 100% of everybody that they test that have microplastics in their testicles. So we see, you know the BPA, the forever chemicals. There's pesticide spread on everything. I mean there are so many chemicals that we're surrounded by all of the time in our air, in our water, what we're, you know, the plastics that we're drinking in our water, the metals that we're exposed to. We're exposed to so much, and so these things disrupt our endocrine system. They, you know, affect our body in all sorts of ways, and so I think that makes it harder for us to get pregnant. I mean, it affects our sperm and it affects the eggs and it affects the hormones and the fertility, and so I think that's a big part of it, along alongside with being older, um, and not not eating as well and not exercising as much, I think we're we're making it very difficult for ourselves to conceive.

54:06 - Chase (Host) I heard on another episode you talk about. You shared this example of the the soup study talking and this is kind of drawing this memory Um can you talk to us about the canned soup versus homemade soup? In um microplastics and fertility?

54:18 - Joel (Guest) yeah, it was a great study from harvard and they took patients, they gave them five days of canned soup and then after that they gave them five days of homemade soup and they were looking at the bpa levels in urine.

54:29 - Chase (Host) And cans are usually lined with plastic bpa um, and so when they looked, at metal cans, metal cans most most cans, most cans in general, but cans of soup are generally lined with some plastic most people, when you hear bpa, you think plastic, so you think you know I'm doing the right thing, I'm getting a metal jar.

54:45 - Joel (Guest) Most of them are lined with with a plastic lining or with bpa in it, and so they were looking at the bpa levels before and after those five days and the difference between the five days of canned soup versus the five days of homemade soup was a thousand percent difference in the year and it was so much, a thousand percent difference.

55:01 It's such a big difference and I think that's such a great site. That's why I quote it, because it's so simple, but it's very poignant. It's like, look, it's just one chemical, it's not actually a huge difference. I mean, it's a huge percentage difference, but not a big difference. But at the same time it's like well, that adds up right, this chemical 1,000% difference, then another chemical 1,000% difference, and that's just over five days.

55:24 Imagine if you're eating canned soup every day for the next 10 years. Then all that BPA builds up in your body. You can get rid thing. Some of it stays in your body, some of it goes in your fat, um, you know, some of it goes to who knows where. It affects your hormones. It changes things and we know that these are endocrine disruptors. They affect our hormones. We, we studied that. We have that very good evidence at this point. And that's just one chemical, not hundreds of chemicals, and not all the other things that we're exposed to, along with not eating well and not moving. So how do do we expect our bodies to function? How do we expect ourselves to have fertility levels like we would 50 years ago or a hundred years ago when we were living off the land. I mean, not everything's bad, right, we used to die when we were 40. So we have some good things right, it's not all bad.

56:09 But you know, we didn't have the chronic disease, we had almost none back in the day, and now we have increasing levels of chronic disease. Our life expectancy is going back down, so we're doing some things well and some things not so well, and so we have to find a way to get back into balance, be somewhere in the middle and I think, especially when it comes to chronic disease and toxins and our food and our movement, that we have a long way to go and modern medicine is not built for that. It's not set up for having these long-form discussions. You have three minutes with your doctor, maybe five minutes if you're lucky and you're really not going to get into a discussion about BPA and chemicals and movement and eating and cooking in your doctor's office, right, but that's what's going to actually make you healthy not a pill.

56:50 - Chase (Host) If you do, let me know. I want that doctor's name. I'm going to switch primary cares, yeah exactly Right.

56:54 - Joel (Guest) So you're not going to get healthy by getting pills. Pills can be helpful in the short term, they can be band-aids, they can be magical when you need them. But we're not deficient in the pill. We're deficient in something that we're doing in our life that's creating this environment of toxicity. That's creating an environment where our bodies are crying out for help and it turns into some sort of condition and that's what we're seeing, whether it's obesity or diabetes or autoimmune conditions, and we have to listen to that and change our lifestyles.

57:22 Hopefully, you know, the government's going to make changes. Hopefully there'll be bigger changes in society over the long run. But we can't wait for that. We're not healthy now. So it's up to us to make changes for ourselves and for our kids. And if you are pregnant or thinking about having kids, it's not going to change before that child is here.

57:40 So you have to take it upon yourself and recognize that when people are living in this way, where they're a little bit more health conscious, it's very possible to create a lifestyle in an environment where you're fostering health and wellness and you put the odds in your favor. You know everybody can be sick. I mean, it's always possible but you're trying to give them the best chance to be healthy, and we know that if you make some lifestyle changes, you can get rid of your diagnosis, you can feel better, you can look better, you can look better, you can be more healthy and you can certainly give your kids a better chance at health and wellness, and that's what I'm here to provide me. I want my kids to be healthy, so I'm doing the best that I can.

58:18 - Chase (Host) That's why we're having this conversation, but I do want to ask a follow-up to that. You know again, personally speaking, but also I know a lot of my audience, all of my audience. For the most part, we already do these things. We. If you're listening to this podcast, watching this podcast right now, you in some way are starting to in big, big ways, or have been taking care of yourself, watching what you eat, moving more, sleeping, being conscious of your relationships. You know all the which ways I talk about on the show to live a life ever forward. And even sometimes we struggle. We have a clean home, we get rid of the chemicals, we 80-20 rule, eating mostly whole foods. We exercise regularly, get good sleep, good sunlight, we hack all the things.

59:03 You know I have had a wellness journey of all these things for up to starting to try to get pregnant of about, well, honestly, I'd say, my entire life. You know I was always growing up outdoors, moving, playing, sports, active, but you know, truly being aware of my body and doing it intentionally and consistently 16 years, 16, 17 years, and my wife as well. We're both very active. She's comes from a healthy family and it even was a struggle for us. And so my question for you is what about for the people who already are air quote here, healthy, are doing all the quote right things and we can't even catch a break? Where do we go next?

59:48 - Joel (Guest) So I I mean, I guess it depends on what the break you're trying to catch is, but we still live in.

59:51 - Chase (Host) America Trying to get pregnant? Yeah, or trying to, you know, have a healthy home.

59:54 - Joel (Guest) But that. So first of all, I mean you did all the things and you did get pregnant, right?

01:00:00 I mean you did, you were conscious of it, and you have to sometimes step back and say, okay, what else can I be doing? What can I be doing differently? Even if you think we're being healthy, sometimes we don't. There's new things to learn. So we're always learning. We're always trying to put our best foot forward and try to, you know, have the best chance at success. But at the end of the day, we still live here and so the odds are against us. Right To some degree. We live in a place where the food's not the healthiest, where Air is not always the cleanest, where the water is not always the cleanest, and so wherever we could make those changes, I think that helps and we keep giving ourselves a better chance at success.

01:00:31 But a lot of people think they're being healthy, and they're not always being healthy. So maybe that's sometimes where it's going back to the drawing board and trying to figure out what else we can do, or sometimes it means working with a practitioner. I mean, if it's something that's really really, really important to you and it's not working out, then you might need a second opinion. Right, you might not be the best observer of your own life or you might not notice things that, or you might not be thinking about things that you're not thinking about, right? I mean, that's the reality of it. Maybe you're not thinking about mold, maybe you're not thinking about some lab that's off for you.

01:00:59 I don't know. That's what the practitioner is there for, to kind, but that just means so many things right. And just because you go to the gym every day doesn't mean that you're living the healthiest life or you're eating the healthiest food, or you're eating from a farmer's market every day, like maybe there are some things that we could do differently. Or maybe you're living in a place that has mold, or you know you're living near I don't know highway and so you're breathing in some more chemicals, or something like that. If you work with a practitioner, maybe they can go through what you're doing, what your lab work looks like, and point you in a different direction. Maybe your hormones are just off, maybe you're living a super healthy life, but you're just exposed to a lot of BPA because you didn't realize that canned soup that you're eating every day has a lot of BPA.

01:01:43 - Chase (Host) Maybe you ate a lot of soup, yeah.

01:01:46 - Joel (Guest) So sometimes it's just, it's just about getting another perspective or trying to keep learning and and just keeping faith that it's going to happen.

01:01:53 I mean, like at the end of the day again, it's like you could do all the right things and still not be successful, and you could do all the wrong things and have 15 kids. But but we're trying to give ourselves the best chance at that. And every the more we learn and the more we know and I think that we just keep learning and keep trying and if it's not working out for you, especially if you're not working with a practitioner, find somebody who looks at root cause and discuss with them. There's some great fertility practitioners out there that you can work with with high rates of success, because they're going to go through and work on your lifestyle and usually the people that are going to those individuals are already kind of health conscious because we're even thinking about going there in the first place. So just because you're health conscious doesn't mean that you're not going to have issues. I mean the numbers are still pretty high for most people because we still live in a place where it's not the healthiest. If you want to move to, like Costa Rica or some blue zone, then you're going to have a better chance. I mean the people are healthier there. They live till they're 90, 100. 90, 100, um.

01:02:51 And we don't, yeah, we don't, we don't. So we still live here, we still breathe this air, we still drink this water, we still drink and eat this food. And you know, unless you're know your farmers and you know even the best farms, they still have to use the water you know from here and they still are next to other farms that don't maybe use the best practices. So that's the best case scenario that we have, and it's not doom or gloom, it's just what, what we should be aware of. And you know, maybe you're buying food every day at a certain store and you have to get it from different store. Maybe you have to go to the farmer's market every week or cook more, I don't know. It depends on the person. But it shouldn't be something that discourages you. It should be encouraging, but, but at the same time, it's it's always a continual learning.

01:03:29 - Chase (Host) Your new book Parenting at your Child's Pace. That title alone prompts the question what is parenting at our child's pace, and why should we be thinking about how to raise a?

01:03:39 - Joel (Guest) child at their own tempo and not ours. It's so important that we get back to focusing on our own family and our own kids. We're so focused and stressed out on what everybody else is doing and we're so focused on comparing ourselves to others, and that is very damaging to especially a new parent. I see all the time that parents are so debilitated by fear of doing anything or making decisions and they forget that it's innate within them to make decisions and, realistically, nobody's gonna make the decisions. You have to, and so we have to synthesize that information and figure out what makes the most sense for our kid, and even what's right for our kid. If we have two, one kid might be very different than the next kid, and so that's why you have to parent at their pace. You have to figure out what makes sense for them and what makes sense for your family, and try to tune out all the noise to the best that you can. Doesn't mean you shouldn't get information, doesn't mean you should ever google, but we just have to take that information in not let it stress us out too much and figure out what will make the best sense for them, and you might not always know the answer. You're just gathering the data and synthesizing in a way where you like.

01:04:43 I think this is the right thing for my child. I think we should start with baby light weaning. I think we should start with child. I think we should start with baby-led weaning. I think we should start with purees. I think we should start potty training him at two years, because that's what I feel like is right for him, and it's not that you know you read a book and you're like, if you don't do it by 18 months, then you know your child's going to miss the window for potty training. No-transcript getting in. That's what the study shows.

01:05:15 - Chase (Host) But I'm still working on it. These are the decisions that we worry about as parents.

01:05:19 - Joel (Guest) Right? This is what's happening every day. I get these texts all the time and the answer is it doesn't matter, right, it doesn't make any difference. You figure out what makes sense for you and then you go do it. Some things matter, of course they do, but most things don't matter that much. And if we parent at their pace, if we worry about our own family and our own decisions, then we'll be a lot less stressed and you'll try things, and if it doesn't work, you try the next thing, but you won't be so stressed.

01:05:40 - Chase (Host) But every little decision, which is where most parents are right now- as an active pediatrician, what question do you get the most often from parents?

01:05:52 - Joel (Guest) What age range?

01:05:54 - Chase (Host) Let's say newborns.

01:05:55 - Joel (Guest) Newborns.

01:05:57 I would say you know, for me as an integrated pediatrician, I get a lot of questions about vaccines, but just as a general question, I would say about feeding.

01:06:04 I think that's there's a lot of questions around breast feeding versus formula and and just questions around uh, feeling like it should be easier to do, but not always as easy, and and so I I always recommend you know to families that if you're going to do one course before having a baby, doing a breastfeeding course is always a good thing to do, just because if you're going to do breast, we are not told enough how difficult it can be. It's not always easy for moms. Oftentimes it's not, and I think that the more you are aware and the more you have, the more you're connected to a good lactation consultant, the more you're going to feel prepared and ready. But it usually does hurt a little bit, it usually isn't the easiest thing to do right out of the way, and so there's always questions around is my baby getting enough food? I'm worried that they're not eating enough, they're not peeing enough, they're not gaining weight. So I think that's a good thing to be prepared for. It's just the feeding in the first couple of days.

01:06:55 - Chase (Host) You also mentioned. You seem to get a lot of questions around newborns and vaccines. What's the question there?

01:07:01 - Joel (Guest) So the questions around vaccines are you know whether they should do it or not? When they should do it, what to expect?

01:07:06 - Chase (Host) Any vaccines, all vaccines, any particular vaccines.

01:07:09 - Joel (Guest) In the hospital, especially, you're getting the regular schedule. You'd be offered the hepatitis B vaccine and the vitamin K vaccine and then the antibiotic argument. So those are the things that are offered in the hospital. So people usually ask me questions in the prenatal interviews about those and whether they feel like they should get them or not.

01:07:26 - Chase (Host) Are they pretty cut and dry?

01:07:35 - Joel (Guest) Like, yes, those, and whether they they feel like they should get them or not. Are they pretty cut and dry like, yes, get the vitamin k vaccine, no, don't get this one, or is it so subjective? I, the recommendations are to do them. So you know I can't give recommendations medically for for anybody, obviously, because I'm not their their doctor. But the recommendations are get the hepatitis b vaccine, get the vitamin k um, get the antibiotic iomine. But I think that that it is important to always have discussions about these things with families, because a lot of families have questions around the antibiotic iomine, because you're doing it to prevent the passage of chlamydia or gonorrhea to the baby, and nowadays we have testing for that, so a lot of moms know that they don't have it. And so then the question is well, should we just give?

01:08:08 something just because I see, because you know, there's side effects to every medication. Same thing with hepatitis b, right? The reason you're getting hepatitis b is from passage from mom to the baby, and we have testing now, so we know that most moms don't have hepatitis b. And so the question is do we subject the child in day one to hepatitis b vaccine when there's no real benefit and potentially some risks? And so that's the decision and the discussions that you need to have with your doctors, because technically, you're supposed to do it based on the regular schedule. But there are a lot of people that are questioning these things because they, you know we have better testing now, and so the question is does the risk outweigh the benefits? And that's the way I think we should be thinking about every question.

01:08:46 - Chase (Host) I agree. I agree. One kind of spinoff question from there came up what role, if any, does family history of vaccinations or no vaccinations play in the consideration new parents should take for the vaccination of their child? Meaning, I'm the dad, my family, we all got these five vaccines me, my brother, my sister, my mom, my dad, let's just say for argument's sake, my wife, she and her brother and sister and her parents. They got three out of those five. Is there any kind of mashup or kind of? I'm loosely playing with the term epigenetics here, but you know, these things kind of pass down in some capacity.

01:09:27 - Joel (Guest) No, they probably do. I mean, that's probably too smart a question for vaccine science at this point. I think that we don't really know those things or nobody's studying that. But I would say that then the recommendations are what they are and it wouldn't really change based on what what you did, cause the recommendations for the child are going to be, you know, to do X, y and Z based on the schedule, whether what you do affects your child.

01:09:55 - Chase (Host) I'm sure it does. I mean, I'm sure everything that we do affects our child to some degree. But that's probably a smarter question than we have research for. Hear that everybody? I just asked the smartest question that research does not have an answer for All right, that's a first. Everyone's like no Chase, you're an idiot. I'm always curious when I have, you know, an expert in the house but also an expert that writes a book. Why this book? Why now? Why this subject matter right now?

01:10:14 - Joel (Guest) So the two big reasons why I wrote the book number one was the stress level that I've seen in parents. I wanted to write a book to help to de-stress parents and to run through the big questions that I get every single day in the office and try to go through the research and the data and the things that I tell patients to help parents to walk through those. Because most of the parenting books these days are written by therapists or moms, not really pediatricians. They used to be written by doctors but not really anymore, and so I thought that it would be really important to have a book by a pediatrician now in terms of parenting, because there's a lot of questions that I get in the office that the therapists and the moms won't even ever discuss or know about.

01:10:52 because it's the things that people are asking us in the office. So that was really important. Number one and number two all the stuff we talked about with health. I think it's so important that we get in front of this. Our health is worse than ever, our kids are sicker than ever and we need to focus on our health from day one. And to me, the place to do that was to talk to parents who were pregnant, um, to talk to new, new parents, because that's when we're reading books the most. I feel like, especially when it comes to parenting and a lot of um, you know parents are saying like you're like, like you're ready to read my Amazon book search.

01:11:25 - Chase (Host) History is dramatically changing right now. Right, because you start to think about okay, I have another life coming in this world, and so I?

01:11:30 - Joel (Guest) want to do the best for them, and so that's the time point where a lot of families are reading, and so I think it's a good touch point to talk about health and wellness and get that out there, but there is no parenting book that talks about health. There's no parenting book that we can get ahead of it and start talking about the things that we can actually do in a way that is functional for parents, with easy tips not, you know, crazy things like go change the system, but what can you do at home? How do you focus back on your lifestyle factors? What are the simple things that we can do to help build a resilient child? And so I wanted those things together in a book, and that's why I wrote it.

01:12:17 - Chase (Host) Is it too late to turn the ship around?

01:12:19 - Joel (Guest) It's never too late to turn the ship around. I mean, I've seen so many kids that had diagnoses that they lose those diagnoses. I've seen lots of adults that I've known go to practitioners and get better. We're talking about this more. I'm not the only one talking about this, for sure it's. Certainly we're certainly going in the wrong direction, but good usually wins over evil and hopefully health will reign supreme overall in the long run. And I think that people are starting to wake up. They're starting to realize it at some point. Everybody's going to be sick and so we will turn the ship around at some point, because nobody wants that. We innately want to be healthy and we can be healthy, and the more that people see others being healthy and the more that people start to do these things, the more that they're not the crunchy one anymore, the weird one.

01:13:01 - Chase (Host) They're the normal one.

01:13:08 - Joel (Guest) They're the one that, like they have the the healthy kid and everybody else doesn't, and so the statistics don't lie. We are where we are and it's not to scare people, but I think it's really important that we focus back on our health and and take health back into our own control, because our doctors are not going to do it. It's not that doctors are bad people, but the system is not set up that way and companies are kind of running the show right now and we need to shift that narrative and make changes, and we can and we will.

01:13:29 - Chase (Host) I think we will do you discuss in your book or in your work at all now um the role of mental health? In raising, raising children yeah, and it's.

01:13:38 - Joel (Guest) It's absolutely an important topic. It's a big topic, especially because, when we're talking about mental health, our kids and our teens have worse mental health than ever. I mean, 50 of teens, by the time they're 18, have a mental health diagnosis, which, again, it's another just insane stat.

01:13:53 - Chase (Host) Yeah, go back and please repeat that.

01:13:54 - Joel (Guest) That's very important 50% of teenagers by the time they're 18, have had a mental health diagnosis. I think 5% of kids have depression, 10% have anxiety. One-third of teen girls have thought about suicide.

01:14:06 So I mean the numbers are very, very staggering, but when we're talking about the book, we're talking about more the younger kids, and there certainly is some mental health concerns there, but I think the mental health really is more about the parents at that age. I think that's key, and, if anything, a bigger point is focus on yourself too. Don't forget about yourself as a parent. Your mental health matters, your health matters, your health matters, and the number one best thing you can give your child is a healthy parent. And so it gets stressful when you have a new baby. You're tired, but don't forget about prioritizing yourself a little bit too. Of course, prioritize your child, but at the same time, your health matters, and so if you need a couple minutes, take those couple minutes, because that's going to make a big difference in the long run.

01:14:46 - Chase (Host) All right, my last question before my last question what is the number one piece of advice you would give us to support the health of our partner, so that we are ideally on the same page as much as possible and we're both alive and well, as much as possible to raise this child, however that looks? What can we do to support the health of our partner?

01:15:09 - Joel (Guest) I think just being there and asking questions and being a supportive partner I mean that's like the key word there is asking questions, asking how you can help, being there to help them with whatever they need. Especially if your wife is pregnant, then there's things that maybe she's not going to be able to do, so you're helping to make sure that we're moving still, helping to go get healthy groceries, I mean whatever it is that you can do as a partner to make your partner's life easier while they're pregnant or certainly after. I mean everyone's going to be tired. So can you take the baby for a couple minutes? Can you help clean up? You know, don't wait to be asked something. You know, offer like what can I do? Um, how can I help? How are you doing today?

01:15:49 You know, just even recognizing that that's such a high percentage of of parents after they give birth, have, you know, postpartum blues, postpartum depression, like, realize that that's potentially coming and keep checking in, keep asking. You know, don't, don't assume that everything's okay and do whatever you can to be helpful, because you're also going to be tired and it's really easy to be tired. And and to you know, just your, your significant other is breastfeeding and you're just like you know sleep somewhere, like it's really easy to do that as a partner maybe that's your trade-off, maybe that, maybe that's your deal you have set up, I don't know.

01:16:19 But if the more that you can help and the more that you can, you know, be supportive, give a bottle, whatever, it is like that's going to help for their mental health and that's going to help their relationships. So just be a good team player.

01:16:29 - Chase (Host) Okay, so the question I ask every guest at the end is to bring it back home to the theme of Ever Forward Radio, and you know I sit down with people to have conversations to help my awareness and the various aspects of my wellbeing, but to deliver this information to my audience as well, to help them move forward in a unique area or all areas of their wellness, to live a life ever forward. What do those two words mean to you? Ever forward? How would you say you live a life ever forward?

01:16:56 - Joel (Guest) Living a life ever forward to me means thinking about the future, thinking in a positive way, loving yourself and creating the life that you want, moving into a place that's better today than for everybody else.

01:17:10 - Chase (Host) No right or wrong answer. It's always your interpretation. So thank you, joel. Where can everybody go to connect with you, to learn more about you? Maybe to become a patient? I don't know if you're taking new patients, but you know we'll have all the information in the book and stuff listed in the show notes, of course.

01:17:28 - Joel (Guest) Yes, you can find me on Instagram or X at Dr Joel Gator. The book is Parenting at your Child's Pace. You can get that everywhere that books are sold, or parentingatyourchildspacecom. I'm in Los Angeles. I don't take too many patients anymore, but our office does. You can always reach out or you can find me online and I'm always answering questions or doing Q and A's or trying to help whenever I can.

01:17:45 - Chase (Host) He's all over the place, you guys definitely got to check out the book Parenting at your Child's Place. Excuse me, parenting at your Child's Pace the Integrative Pediatrician's Guide to the First Three Years. This one is going front and center on my bookshelf at home. I'm so stoked to welcome my son into the world in just a few months and this is going to help immensely. So thank you.

01:18:06 - Joel (Guest) Well, you can also parent them at your child's place. I mean, that's good that you're parenting at their place, not somewhere else At your place.

01:18:10 - Chase (Host) Yeah, all the above.

01:18:13 - Joel (Guest) Thank you.

01:18:13 - Chase (Host) Thank you. Thank you For more information on everything you just heard. Make sure to check this episode's show notes or head to everforwardradio.com