A Parent's Guide to Vaccines & Obesity: Protecting Your Child in a Confusing World

Summary

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The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show

Episode: A Parent's Guide to Vaccines & Obesity: Protecting Your Child in a Confusing World
Date: September 30, 2025
Host: Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Guest: Dr. Joel Warsh (Pediatrician, Author of Between a Shot and a Hard Place)

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Episode Overview

This episode features Dr. Joel Warsh, an integrative pediatrician, in a candid, nuanced discussion with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon about emerging trends affecting child health—particularly chronic disease, vaccines, and obesity. Together, they dissect the surge in childhood chronic illnesses, ongoing vaccine debates, systemic failures in public health, and actionable guidance for parents. The conversation emphasizes transparency, personal choice, and the urgent need for research and open dialogue.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Epidemic of Childhood Chronic Disease

• Rising Trends:
  Dr. Warsh sounds the alarm on rising rates of chronic disease in children and adults:

  "50% of kids have a chronic disease, and the latest statistics just came out, and it's 75% of adults. That number is staggering, and it continues to get worse." (01:32)

• Not Isolated:
  Increases are seen not only in obesity, but also diabetes, neurodevelopmental issues, autoimmune diseases, cancer, and more.
• Observation:
  Dr. Warsh notes,

  “More and more kids seem like they have developmental concerns or chronic conditions, or they just always seem sick, unfortunate. I think that we're seeing this.” (02:25)

2. Nuances Around Vaccines

a. Informed Consent and Parental Autonomy

• Dr. Warsh clarifies his stance:

  "I'm not against vaccines. My personal belief is that we should have informed consent. People should be able to choose whether they want to do or not do any sort of medical procedure..." (04:26)

• The discussion stresses the importance of nuanced, individualized decision-making rather than rigid adherence to mandates.

b. The Hepatitis B Vaccine at Birth

• Risk Calculation:

  "You're asked to give a vaccine to a newborn baby, literally a day old... you have to ask yourself about the risks. And we never talk about that in modern medicine." (04:26)

• Transmission Clarity:

  “If you have hepatitis B, it may very well be reasonable to get that vaccine… But if you don’t have hepatitis B... your risk is infinitesimal, really, really, really small.” (07:08)

• Parental Empowerment:

  "You're putting parents on day one in a position where they have to make a choice to listen to the doctor and the CDC or go against that recommendation. And I think that's a really bad place to be." (06:00)

c. Vaccine Side Effects & Long-Term Unknowns

• Short-Term Risks:

  "Fever, pain, swelling, get sick in that week... Major complications are documented to be pretty rare... seizures, Guillain-Barre syndrome..." (08:53)

• Knowledge Gaps:

  "The question is really to me more around long-term risks, which we just don't really know. It's never really been studied in that way." (08:53)

• Both agree on the absence of research into cumulative long-term impacts of the current vaccine schedule.

d. Vaccine Mandates & Recent Policy Changes

• On Florida’s removal of vaccine requirements:

  "It's a bold move... But I don't think that's the right incentive. The right incentive should be people should get vaccinated because they want them, because the science is clear..." (10:57)

3. Vaccines and Autism: Debunked or Unanswered?

a. Exploding Rates, Unanswered Questions

• "It was, you know, maybe 1 in 150 to 1 in 65, 68, 20 years ago, and now it's 1 in 31 are the latest numbers. 1 in 12.5 boys in California." (13:50)

• Challenging media narratives, Dr. Warsh asserts:

  "Yes, we're better at diagnosing it... But something is happening, and the fact that we're not open to looking into everything, including vaccines, is absurd." (13:50)

b. Scientific Integrity and Research Gaps

• A central theme:

  "We haven't studied anything where it's vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids. Not one study exists on that with autism." (16:12)

• Dr. Warsh calls for more research, notes scientific and professional disincentives preventing necessary studies:

  "There's been a major push... to call the people quacks and then destroy their careers..." (16:55)

• On needing rigorous evidence:

  "When you say something has been debunked or that the science is settled, you need very strong evidence to say that. We don't even have weak evidence to say that. It's insane." (18:41)

Notable Moment

• Dr. Warsh’s candor:

  “There is nothing that has shocked me more in my probably entire life than looking into the autism research myself… We have not done the best kind of research, the research that we need to tackle this topic.” (15:19)

4. The Changing CDC Landscape

• Recent Upheaval:
  • Secretary Kennedy has overhauled CDC leadership, firing long-standing officials and advisory committee members, causing media and internal backlash. (20:16)
  • Mainstream medical community resists the changes, viewing them as anti-science.
• Perspective on Change:

  “Whatever was done before has absolutely failed in terms of our overall chronic health and chronic disease. So we have to do something different.” (71:17)

• Nuance Over Extremes:

  “Everything is very nuanced in this and there does need to be a lot more discussions and I hope that that does happen. But it seems like we're moving in the other direction.” (26:17)

5. Navigating Information as Parents

• Guidance for Parents:

  "The first step is... to get educated to some degree on the different concerns that are out there and what the mainstream is talking about with vaccines and what the counterpoints are. And I think you need to read multiple different books." (29:22)

• Choosing practitioners:

  "Ultimately, again, it is personal choice. And the reason it's personal choice is because no one's ever studied anything else." (31:30)

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Memorable Quotes

• On Parental Choice and Vaccine Risk:
  “A vaccine doesn’t have zero risk. And so I think it’s reasonable to say, okay, but what are the risks from this vaccine? If you don’t feel like vaccines are the best thing for your kid, you should be allowed not to take them.” – Dr. Joel Warsh (00:02)

• On the Need for Open Dialogue:
  “We need to look into everything. Some kids with autism do phenomenally well, and that's okay. But there are a lot of families where they have severe complications... a lot of severe autism, which is much higher than it used to be, and those families want help.” – Dr. Joel Warsh (13:50)

• On Nutrition and Parental Responsibility:
  “We have to change our food. I mean, we have to change the food system... It’s really important that you have to take some responsibility to understand that. I love that you’re saying that because ultimately you’re the one purchasing the food, especially when they’re younger.” – Dr. Joel Warsh (57:56)

• On the Failure of the Status Quo:
  “We have clearly failed at public health in this country. We're the sickest western country... chronic disease rate 75%... We have to make all sorts of changes. We have to move in a different direction. And some of those things are going to be right and some of them are going to be wrong. But what's definitely wrong is what we've been doing.” – Dr. Joel Warsh (71:17)

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Chronic Disease, Obesity, and the Food System

Environmental & Lifestyle Determinants

• Dr. Warsh emphasizes that environmental toxins, processed foods, and inactivity are foundational to modern chronic disease (55:45).
  • “It's our crappy food and it's the toxins that we're exposed to. And we just have not acknowledged that up until more recently that we're bombarded with chemicals and toxins all the time through our food and through our environment.” (55:45)

On Childhood Obesity and Parental Responsibility

• Call to Action for Parents:
  “You have to take some responsibility to understand that. I love that you’re saying that because ultimately you’re the one purchasing the food, especially when they’re younger and we have to be okay with buying real food and preparing that food more.” (57:56)
• On Broken Food Systems:
  “It's the choices that we're making and the food system that's so screwed up. ...ultimately it's the system. It's the ultra processed food.” (59:51-60:40)
• Discussion of food accessibility and societal responsibility for systemic change.

Activity, Sedentarism, and Screen Time

• Movement is Key:
  • “We're not moving. Kids are on screen seven plus hours a day on average… If you are on seven plus hours [of screen time], then what are you not doing? You're not moving, you're not getting outside.” (62:51-63:02)
• Advocating for Standards:
  • “Having standards makes sense. I don't have any problem with that, but I have a problem with looking at our health where we are. We want to get better. We have to have some major changes, and that's going to cause a little bit of turmoil in the interim. But we need it.” (72:25)

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Noteworthy Segments (with Timestamps)

• [00:02] Vaccines, Autism, and Risk/Benefit Calculation
• [01:32] Chronic Disease Trends and Disturbing Statistics
• [04:26] Informed Consent and Parental Autonomy in Vaccine Decisions
• [07:08] Hepatitis B Transmission and Real Risk Calculation
• [10:57] Vaccine Mandates, Florida’s Policy, and Personal Choice
• [13:50] Autism Diagnoses: Prevalence and Debates
• [16:12] Research Gaps in Vaccine Safety Studies
• [20:16] CDC Restructuring and Culture Clash
• [29:22] Parental Strategies for Navigating Confusing Medical Advice
• [43:52] Clinician Observations: Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Children
• [55:45] Environmental and Food System Factors in Chronic Childhood Illness
• [57:56] Childhood Obesity and the Dual Roles of Parents and Systems
• [62:51] Sedentarism, Screen Use, and Activity Standards
• [68:47] GLP-1 Medications for Children and Societal Quick Fixes
• [74:32] Lifelong Impact: Early Movement and Healthy Habits

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Actionable Advice for Parents

• Do Your Research:
  Read beyond official guidelines, seek multiple perspectives, and empower yourself to make informed decisions.

  "Read multiple different books... form your opinion... make the best decisions with all the information that you do have..." (29:22)

• Prioritize Real Food and Minimize Ultra-Processed Food:

  "Buy real food. Prepare your food. Read every label. Move away from ultra-processed foods." (57:56; 77:44-79:24)

• Encourage Movement & Limit Screen Time:

  “Something that keeps you moving, like, you know, soccer is great, whatever it is, but I don't care right now. I think just something.” (73:19)

• Have Open, Nonjudgmental Conversations with Your Healthcare Provider:
  Seek practitioners willing to discuss alternatives, acknowledge unknowns, and respect your choices.

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Final Thoughts

This episode provides an uncommonly balanced space to examine complicated issues—vaccines, chronic diseases, parental authority, and systemic failures. Dr. Warsh stresses the need for humility in medicine, urging acknowledgment of uncertainty and prioritizing parent education and agency. Both he and Dr. Lyon call for parents to become proactive stewards of their children’s health by engaging in transparent conversations, advocating for better research, and taking actionable steps—starting with fresh food, movement, and reading labels.

Closing Reflection:

“We're not raising children, we're raising adults. We're raising humans to contribute to society.” – Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (75:19)

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For a deep dive into these topics, see Dr. Warsh’s book, “Between a Shot and a Hard Place,” and follow future episodes of The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show for evolving conversations on health.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

Do you think that vaccines cause autism?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

That is the most important question. We don't know if they are causing some of these concerns. We need to know that. There is no way. You look around California and 1 in 12.5 adult males have autism. That's insane. Something is happening. A vaccine doesn't have zero risk. And so I think it's reasonable to say, okay, but what are the risks from this vaccine? If you don't feel like vaccines are the best thing for your kid, you should be allowed not to take them.

[Podcast Host]

How many vaccines are children getting?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

It depends on which number you look at and how you define it, but be 30 to 50, even more so than that. It's not unreasonable, again, to say, well, is it too many? There is nothing that has shocked me more in my probably entire life than looking into the autism research myself. So how can you say that vaccines don't cause autism? I think the biggest concern right now is the chronic disease epidemic. We're seeing more and more kids sick, more and more kids having to take medications. I think that's a massive concern. 50% of kids have a chronic disease. That number is staggering, and it continues to get worse. It wasn't like that just a few decades ago. It was 5, 10%.

[Podcast Host]

I am really excited to have you on. You're a pediatrician. And my number one goal for this episode is how do we keep our kids safe? And my first question to you is, what are some of the most concerning trends that you are seeing in childhood?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I think the biggest concern right now is the chronic disease epidemic. We're seeing more and more kids sick, more and more kids having to take medications. 50% of kids have a chronic disease, and the latest statistics just came out, and it's 75% of adults. That number is staggering, and it continues to get worse. It wasn't like that just a few decades ago. It was 5, 10%. So a lot of what we're doing is moving us in the wrong direction.

[Podcast Host]

And by chronic disease, your biggest concern in terms of keeping kids healthy is what?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Obesity would be one of the biggest concerns. I mean, we have a huge obesity epidemic, but it's really all of it. I mean, it's diabetes, it's neurodevelopmental concerns, autoimmune conditions, they're all skyrocketing and all skyrocketing together. And cancer, all these things we're seeing increase. And I don't know that we should pick out one or the other. They're all concerning, but certainly obesity is probably the biggest concern.

[Podcast Host]

I would say, have you seen the health of children change?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

For sure. The amount of conditions that we're seeing, the concern around conditions has skyrocketed. In my practice it's a little bit different because I have a self selecting population who are a little bit more integrative minded. And if I look at the statistics, I don't see quite as many of those things in my practice, but certainly more than I used to. And without a doubt, when I look around, when I go outside, when I see my kids playing at the playground, you notice more and more kids that have developmental concerns or seem like they have chronic conditions or they just always seem sick, unfortunate. I think that we're seeing this.

[Podcast Host]

You mentioned neurodevelopmental and that leads me to my next question, which I think is an obvious question. How do we protect our children from vaccines? And do we need to?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I think that is such an important question that we don't quite know all the answers to yet. I think when it comes to vaccines, what's important is to weigh the risks versus the benefits. And I think we have a pretty good understanding of the benefits of the vaccines in terms of risk reduction, the diseases which we used to have. But I don't think we have a very good understanding at all about the long term complications of the vaccines. And I think that's a really important piece because it's not just about protecting against disease, it's also about protecting against chronic disease. And I am very confident that we don't have the information that we need to assess how or if vaccines are interacting in such a way that it's one of the factors that are leading to chronic disease. And I think that's a very important piece because if they are causing some of these concerns, we need to know that.

[Podcast Host]

You know, it's really interesting. As a mom of two kids, I remember when I had my first child, I was really concerned about do I give my daughter the Hep B vaccine at birth or not? And you cover that in your book, which by the way, I think that your book is extremely well written. It's between a shot and heart place. Can you talk to the mothers, the families that have newborns? And you know, it's terrifying to hand your child over to say, okay, well I'm going to give you these vaccines right at birth.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I think it's really important to state that, you know, I'm not against vaccines. My personal belief is that we should have informed consent. People should be able to choose whether they want to do or not do any Sort of medical procedure, whether it's in my practice, whether it's in the book, I don't tell people what to do. In my practice, we have people that do the regular schedule. Some people do a sleep slower schedule, some people don't do it. And I feel like my job is to educate and discuss what we do and do not know. And when it comes to making a recommendation, the CDC schedule is the CDC schedule. That's what's recommended right in America. And it would be very arrogant of me, I think, to say, well, you know, Dr. Joel knows better. You shouldn't follow the CDC schedule. You should do my schedule. That's not my belief. I think it's important that we talk about it. And anything that you want to do outside of the regular schedule is a personal choice. And we should be able to have conversations like this where we can talk about things like hepatitis B and talk about the concerns that parents have, because they're real concerns. And there's just a lot that needs to be discussed. And hepatitis B is one of those big topics. I mean, there's no question about it. That is the vaccine that I would say, of all the vaccines that the most people decline in my practice, I would say the majority decide they don't want to do the newborn hepatitis B vaccine and decide if they want to do it later or not. And the reason being is because you're asked to give a vaccine to a newborn baby, literally a day old, while there are some potential benefits from that vaccine, you have to ask yourself about the risks. And we never talk about that in modern medicine. What does it mean when a baby just came out to give them the hepatitis B vaccine? And it's not just that, necessarily. You're giving them vitamin K, you might be giving them an RSV vaccine, But at least with hepatitis B, you can test, and we can test now for hepatitis B so we know if a parent has hepatitis B or not. Now, is there a possibility that you could have a false test or a problem? Yeah, sure, that's possible. Is it possible that someone who doesn't know they have hepatitis B walks into your house and bleeds on your baby and your baby gets hepatitis B? Sure, those things are possible, so you need to explain that to a parent. But the reality of that risk is so small. One in a million, One in many million. I don't know what that risk is, but almost nothing. A vaccine doesn't have zero risk. And so I think it's reasonable to say, okay, well, what are the risks from this vaccine? Does it lead to anything later? Do I have to do it now? Can I do it later? And that's a very fair question. You're putting parents on day one in a position where they have to make a choice to listen to the doctor and the CDC or go against that recommendation. And I think that's a really bad place to be, where we're putting parents against, as opposed to having a discussion about the pros and the cons and saying, here's a recommendation, here's why we say you should do it. Here are the concerns around it. What do you think? Do you want to do it or not?

[Podcast Host]

So hepatitis B is typically, from what I understand, isn't that transmitted from blood or sexual contact? Are there other ways?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

So those are the main ways that you'd get it. So main way would be sexual contact? Well, the main way at birth would be for mom. So would be mom has hepatitis B and passes it through the birth through blood to the baby. So if you have hepatitis B, it may very well be reasonable to get that vaccine. That's a very different risk benefit calculation, because your baby has a high risk to get it. But if you don't have hepatitis B, if you tested for it, then your risk is infinitesimal, really, really, really small. Not zero, but really, really small. So you have to understand that there is a potential risk, it's possible that you infected. And if a baby gets hepatitis B, it's a big deal. It will be very serious.

[Podcast Host]

So what could happen?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

They could get chronic hepatitis B and you could die. You could get cancer. It could be quite serious. So if a baby gets hep B, it is very serious. And that is why they decided to do it, because it absolutely has decreased the rates of hepatitis B. But the rates are already really low to begin with. And that goes back to personal choice and your understanding, Do I have hepatitis B? Does my partner have hepatitis B? Am I going to be letting a lot of people around my baby, and am I willing to take that risk of, I don't know, the one in whatever million that somebody comes and bleeds on my baby? It's probably not gonna happen, right? So you should be able to say, well, you know, I don't feel like I need to do hepatitis B right now. I'll do it when they're older and when the risk is a little higher. I think that's a very reasonable position to have as a parent. I don't have an issue with that. If a parent says that to me, I think that there are risks with Everything. So you have to decide on what risk you're comfortable with.

[Podcast Host]

What about the risk of actually giving the vaccine? And there are different types of vaccines which you cover in your book. But if we were to just look at hepatitis B, because again, I also had a friend that just had a baby girl and he called me and he said, you know, well, what did you do? Did you give your baby hepatitis B right at birth? What are the risks of giving that child, for example, a hepatitis B vaccine at birth?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

The biggest risk would be short term risks that we are aware of. So fever, some pain, swelling, get sick in that week, just not feel good. So those are the big risks, right? Like anytime you get a vaccine, it hurts. Redness around it, swelling, a rash, those are the things that we see. The major complications are documented to be pretty rare. We're told they're one in a million. I think it's more than one in a million, but we're told that. So things like seizures, Guillain Barre syndrome, which is an inflammatory syndrome. So things like that. So those are the big documented concerns. The question is really to me more around long term risks, which we just don't really know. It's never really been studied in that way. So we're not really sure if they're related to any sort of long term risk. And that to me is really the big piece of the puzzle that's missing.

[Podcast Host]

And it's not just one vaccine. How many vaccines are children getting these days?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

They're getting a lot more. And so it may be, it depends on which number you look at and how you define it. But be 30 to 50, even. Even more so than that. We have a lot of parents have concerns around the amount of vaccines. And I think that is totally reasonable. What has happened is when we were growing up, we maybe had a few, like five, maybe ten in that range. And most adults just never thought about vaccines again. Haven't thought about it in 20 years until the COVID pandemic and the COVID vaccine or if they have a kid and they have to go look at the schedule and like, wait, how many vaccines are there? So it's really a lot more. And sometimes you'll hear 72 or 100. So you can define a vaccine based on the antigen. So let's say DTAP vaccine, diphtheria tetanus pertussis, that's three, but it's not three pokes. So how many pokes you actually get will be somewhere in the range of 20 to 40, but that's still a Lot more. And there's a lot more antigens that are included in that. It's a lot more diseases that we're protecting against. But still, it's just a lot more than it used to be. And it's not unreasonable again, to say, well, is it too many? Is it causing an issue? Where are the studies that look at the cumulative vaccine schedule and how that's affecting us? We don't have those.

[Podcast Host]

In preparation for this, Florida just issued a mandate that they no longer require vaccines. And I was just curious as to what your take on that is.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I mean, it's a bold move. I think that with a state like Florida, you had exemptions anyways. But I think it's more of a statement to the other states that are saying, we don't believe in mandates, we believe in personal choice, and we don't want to force anybody to do anything. That's my personal belief. I don't feel like you need to have mandates. The reason behind school requirements, in theory is it pushes people to get vaccines, right? Because if they don't get the vaccines and they can't go to school, and it encourages vaccines. And as a public health measure, we're encouraging vaccines that we don't have outbreaks in schools and we're getting more and more kids vaccinated. But I don't think that's the right incentive. The right incentive should be people should get vaccinated because they want them, because the science is clear, and because you feel like it's going to help your kid. And if you disagree with that, if you don't feel like vaccines are the best thing for your kid, you should be allowed not to take them. And you might be right. You might be wrong. Your kid might get measles and get really sick. That's possible, but you should be able to make that decision. And we have seen over the last few years a push to mandate things. And I think this is the, I guess, counterpoint or counter argument to Covid mandates, which I think pissed off a lot of people, made everybody really upset, and really pushed so many people too far. And so now we're seeing the pushback where certain locations are saying, we don't want any more mandates, we don't want this to ever happen again. I don't know that the extremes are always the best thing, but this is the counter extreme to what we saw during COVID which did not turn out well.

[Podcast Host]

If you listen every week and feel like we are in this together, which I believe that we are learning, growing, and building strength, then I've created a way for us to get connected even more closely. It's called Forever Strong Insider, a premium community for listeners who want to go deeper. You'll get ad free episodes, which I know you'll love. Bonus Q&As where your questions shape the conversation behind the scene moments. Because let's face it, I'm hilarious from my daily life and written takeaways to keep at your fingertips. But more than that, you'll be supportive the show so that we can keep creating content that matters. If you've ever wanted to feel part of the inner circle, this is your invitation. Join us at foreverstrong.supercast.com or through the link in the show notes. You said that the science is clear. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. When it comes to vaccines, this is probably the biggest question that I get as a physician, believe it or not, even though I don't see kids or we see kids in our practice, but I personally don't see kids. And that question is, do vaccines cause autism? And I was looking at some of these numbers and from an autism perspective, it looks like since 2000, at that time, there was 119% increase and we were chatting before we started rolling, saying that the numbers maybe don't matter. But looking at this recent number, 1 in 31 children are diagnosed with autism.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

It's absolutely insane. It depends on which study you look at and which organization. But it was, you know, maybe 1 in 150 to 1 in 65, 68, 20 years ago, and now it's 1 in 31 are the latest numbers. 1 in 12.5 boys in California. I don't care what the specifics are. It's so much more. It's such a major topic that we're ignoring, or at least were up until this point. And it's a big deal. It's so frustrating as a physician to hear the discussions around autism often in the mainstream media discuss it in a way where it's like, oh, we're just better at diagnosing it. That's why it's, it's so much more common. And like, yeah, we are better at diagnosing it. There's no question about it. We're certainly talking about it more. But there is no way that autism was anywhere near the numbers that we see them today. You just look around anywhere you ask anybody who works with kids with autism. It is so much more prevalent and so much more severe than it was even just a few decades ago. There is no way you look around California, and 1 in 12.5 adult males have autism. That's insane. Yes. We're better at diagnosing it. Yes, that's a small part of it. But something is happening, and the fact that we're not open to looking into everything, including vaccines, is absurd. We need to look into everything. Some kids with autism do phenomenally well, and that's okay. But there are a lot of families where they have severe complications, and those severe complications are increasing. Something like 20 to 30% of kids have severe autism, which is much higher than it used to be, and those families want help.

[Podcast Host]

Back to my question, though. Do you think that vaccines cause autism?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

That is the most important question. We don't know. That's the answer to the question. We don't know. There is nothing that has shocked me more in my probably entire life than looking into the autism research myself. When I went through training, we were told, vaccines do not cause autism. The science is settled. We have tons of great research to prove at this point. You know, that's it. And that's all you think. You don't think to question it. Why would you think to question it? When you're in training and when you hear it on the media, it's like, oh, no, no, the science has settled. We. We know that it does not cause it to. It's been debunked. And so that's a reasonable thing to think. Like, why would people be lying to you? And then when you start to read other books and you start to look at the research yourself, you realize that we haven't studied this question almost at all. We certainly have had some studies. We've looked at mmr, We've looked at dimerosal, which is a mercury component of.

[Podcast Host]

Vaccines, which they've taken that out.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Which you've taken. Yeah. So that's not even a major concern anymore. But how can you say that when we haven't studied all the vaccines? MMR is just one vaccine. We have not studied anything where it's vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids. Not one study exists on that with autism. We haven't looked at all the vaccines. We haven't done a prospective trial. We haven't looked at all the ingredients in there. So how can you say that vaccines don't cause autism? You can't say that they do, but you can't say that they don't. We have not done the best kind of research, the research that we need to tackle this topic and to say that it's been debunked or the science has settled is ridiculous. It's so far from that.

[Podcast Host]

Is it just because of the amount of vaccines that they have? Or why, from your perspective, haven't the studies been done?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I mean, there are only a few theories as to why it's not been done. One, because we were just telling people it was settled, so nobody did it. I don't know if that's true. There's been a major disincentive to do it because the people that do that research end up becoming called, you know, an anti vaxxer, crazy quack. They get their careers destroyed. So there's been a major push in certainly some of the studies to call the people quacks and then destroy their careers. And that happens. So that might disincentivize people. That's not new.

[Podcast Host]

I mean, remember, have you looked at this, the past, for example, germ theory? There was this guy that suggested that when a woman has a baby that you must wash your hands. And he was completely ridiculed. People told him he was crazy, ended up in a mental institution. And I think he killed himself at, I don't know, mid-40s.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, this is not new. I mean, anyone that, that speaks out against the dominant narrative can, can certainly get a lot of pushback. But with vaccines it seems more than that. I mean, it seems like there's some targeted attacks on individuals that have come out with studies. And so I think that's, that's a big part of it. It's just really hard for me to believe, and this again is shocking that you can. It's pretty hard to do a prospective trial. I think it should be done, but it's harder, but it's not that hard to take big data sets and say, all right, how many kids are vaccinated? How many kids are unvaccinated? What are their autism rates? What happened? You don't see that. That doesn't exist. You could go to Kaiser, you could get the data you get in five minutes and you could post a study. Autism in kids that are vaccinated versus unvaccinated. I cannot believe that that stuff has never been looked at. So the only thing I can think of is either people were just so sure that there isn't a problem, they didn't look, or they did look and they didn't like what they found, so they didn't publish it. Those are the only two things that make sense to me. I mean, you have the vaccine safety data link, which has millions of kids and millions of reports. They could go back and say, okay, all the kids in this, vaccinated versus unvaccinated. What are the rates of chronic disease? What are the rates of autism, adhd, autoimmune conditions? We don't have that research. Why? You would think if they want to discredit someone like Secretary Kennedy, that would be the easiest thing to do. You just pull that research, say, 10 million kids, no difference in rates. So I don't know if just nobody did it or they looked and they didn't like what they found. But why it wasn't done, I don't know. It's crazy because. Because I thought it was done. I think people would think that. I mean, I'm very honest. I thought it was done until I did the research myself and realized it was never done. So I don't know how you could say that in epidemiology. I mean, I have a master's in epidemiology. I have a pretty good understanding of how to look at the research. And when you say something has been debunked or that the science is settled, you need very strong evidence to say that. We don't even have weak evidence to say that. It's insane.

[Podcast Host]

The CDC vaccine conversation is going a bit bananas right now. Would you just bring us up to speed?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, it's hard to be up to speed because every day something else happens. But it seems like there is just so much back and forth right now between Secretary Kennedy and the new individuals that are in the organizations versus the individuals who have been in the CDC and NIH for a long time that really.

[Podcast Host]

Frame that up. Okay, frame the. Just quickly, for a listener who doesn't know what day and month that we're recording, and just bring us up to speed a little bit on the history of, you know, just briefly, what is happening within the cdc, where they are, in terms of how long individuals have been there, and then they let them go. And just this whole situation.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, there's a lot. So we're in early September, and with Secretary Kennedy, he has fired the head of the cdc and multiple individuals who have been there for a long time, years, maybe decades, for some of them have left or resigned. Many people have walked out or petitioned against him, have asked him to resign. The mainstream media seems very much against anything that he's doing. And Kennedy. Okay, so you have that within these oranges, there's just a lot of pressure and fighting against the decisions that he's making. There's a lot of concern that he is going to cause or is causing a major concern around vaccines. In this country and going to pull vaccines or take them away from people. And so there's this massive fighting with that. He also removed the ACIP committee, so that's the advisory Committee on Vaccines, and replaced them with a bunch of other individuals.

[Podcast Host]

Are they qualified individuals? Can you highlight, just for those of us that don't know what these committees are, why they're in place and just what is the landscape and what's happening.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I would say across the board, the major concern that Secretary Kennedy has are a lot of the things that we have talked about, which is our health is going in the wrong direction. We had a very bad response in his opinion and mine to Covid. And we need change. And the individuals that have been there for a long time over oversaw all of this, whether it's the cdc, whether it's the advisory committees for immunizations, whether it's National Institute of Health, they have been very stuck in their ways. They're looking at things in a certain way. And he wants to bring in new individuals, different perspectives. And so he's replacing. It's within his purview to do it. He can replace people that he thinks are going to do better or worse. Now, I don't know each person, I don't know whether they were good or not good. I just know the outcomes and the outcomes were not good. So having individuals in there makes a lot of sense. Having difference of opinion certainly makes a lot of sense. The individuals on the committees, they have experience too.

[Podcast Host]

They have different positions. Are they MD, PhDs, PhDs?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

It's a mixture. So mostly MDs, but. But it's a mixture of different individuals in different positions. So they all have some experience in these topics. I mean, they wouldn't be there otherwise, but it's just different experience. The mainstream medicine wants someone who went to Stanford or Harvard or Yale and has been doing research for 50 years before they get on these committees. And I think a lot of individuals who are against that say, well, that's what kind of lead us here. There's a very narrow lens that people have based on the specific science that they deem is the appropriate science. And they're not open minded to some of the other discussions, other topics. When it comes to vaccines, they're extremely pro vaccine and they're not open to having any discussions around concerns around vaccines. And I think Secretary Kennedy wants to have those discussions. He wants to open up the research. He wants there to be able to be discussions around possible concerns. And so that has everyone butting heads because if you're a mainstream physician or a mainstream individual at the cdc, vaccines are the best thing ever. And anybody who questions that as a crazy anti vaxxer and you're disrupting it and you're going to cause people's vaccines to go away, which is not what he stated he wants to do. He wants to open up the research and science. So there's a lot of friction with the old and the new.

[Podcast Host]

Oh, oh, sorry. It's time to record an ad for the show. Thank you to one of the sponsors of the show, Timeline. And listen, my kids still sleep with me and after 470 nighttime snack requests, bathroom breaks, my husband snoring, my cell is there like, yo G, we're tapped out. Enter mitopure. Timeline Nutrition is one of the most thoroughly researched products I have come across in over a decade. Look carried in my purse. They have peer reviewed published science and this is where it gets really interesting. So for those of you who are following the muscle centric lifestyle, when you increase bioenergetics, you improve muscle function and health in adults. 40 + timeline has been shown to increase muscle strength and endurance and no change in activity. So whether you've been active resistance training your whole life or you're just getting started, or you're not getting a lot of sleep and you've got a million requests, your muscles and your mitochondria need help. And they have just launched their low sugar vegan non GMO gluten free gummies, which by the way, I am eating by the handfuls, which I shouldn't, but they taste delicious. Timeline is offering our community 20% off your first order. Go to timelinenutrition.com DrLion and use the code DrLION to get 20% off. I recommend trying their starter pack with all three different formats and of course their gummies, which are incredible. Now, do you foresee this friction continuing to happen as they dismantle part of the. Would you say that they're dismantling the cdc? I mean they're, I suppose they're not. They're just, they're restructuring it with different individuals, would you say?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Correct. I think the friction has just begun. I think it's going to get far worse in the next few months. You're going to see many, many individuals either leave their positions or start to fight back. The more that comes out because we know where he's headed with some of this stuff. I mean he has talked about what they're looking into at the advisory committees like looking hepatitis B vaccine, looking into autism and presumably some information is going to come out of what they're finding and that's going to create even more chaos because anything that he comes out with, you either love it or you hate it. It's kind of very two sided right now.

[Podcast Host]

Do you think that that's more the physicians or more the general population?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

It's both. I think that the physicians mostly are pretty anti Secretary Kennedy in general. Not all of them, but I think.

[Podcast Host]

Do you think it's that they're anti Kennedy or are they pro science in a way that they are used to science being done?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Both. They're pretty anti him no matter what he does. Because I think that they see him as an anti vaxxer. That's what they've been taught and told. So it doesn't matter what he says. But I think in general they're very pro the way that things have always been done and the status quo and anything that disrupts the status quo is a threat to them and everything that they do. So I certainly think that that's a part of it and that's a part of just mainstream where there's such a fracture right now between individuals that are very approving of what he's doing. And you see that he's very popular amongst the people that he's popular with. He's got a very high popularity rating, even more than most, most other people, the latest polls. So the people that love him love him. The people that hate him, hate him. And there's not a lot of middle ground there. Just crazy to me because everything is very nuanced in this and there does need to be a lot more discussions and I hope that that does happen. But it seems like we're moving in the other direction where he seems to be digging his heels in more and the establishment seems to be digging in their heels more and there's a lot of back and forth. And so yeah, I think it's just, it's just starting and there's going to probably be more people that leave more positions that are filled and whether that's good or bad is going to be something to see in a decade from now, I think. But again, I go back to what we were doing wasn't working. So I think that we need that friction, we need some big change. And I ultimately think the bad is going to be much less bad than people are worried about. And I think there's going to be a lot of good to come from this. And a lot of individuals who are, are digging their heels in eventually might hear some of this stuff and might say, oh, well, actually that's not so bad. Oh, we, that's what the research shows. Like, like, for example, with autism, I know that if a doctor would read the actual literature themselves, they would never say, again, the science is settled. Like, that is not heard by them. They're not going to hear it from Kennedy. But if more research comes out, more people start talking about it, someone that they respect says something about will slowly start to trickle in. And then you might see, oh, maybe we should get more research and debt on that. It's not going to be so controversial to them at that point.

[Podcast Host]

If that is the case, then perhaps there are a handful of studies that you've read that really have opened your eyes or changed your mind one way.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Or the other for the autism. So it's the majority of the studies that really have changed my mind. Because when you look at the reviews, when you look at what has been studied, it's very clear that it's not all the vaccines. So the only thing that would change my mind would be actually to see vaccinated versus unvaccinated studies and to actually see prospective trials moving forward to see what they found. We don't have that. So my mind has changed that. We should not be saying vaccines don't cause autism or they do cause autism. My mind is very clear that we don't know. And that's the only thing that anybody should be saying and we should be open to looking.

[Podcast Host]

How would a parent listening to you right now be able to navigate in the world? Right? You have the American Medical association, you have the cdc, and then you have these somewhat opposing voices like RFK saying one thing. How would a parent who wants to educate themselves and understand, how do they make sense of it?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I think the first step is just what you said is to get educated to some degree on the different concerns that are out there and what, what the mainstream is talking about with vaccines and what the counterpoints are. And I think you need to read multiple different books. You need to look at different sources. And that's one of the reasons why I wrote a book, was to talk about a balanced perspective. But before my book, when people ask me these questions like, well, you have to read more than one thing. You have to read something that's a CDC perspective, and then you have to read something that has an alternate perspective. And then you have to start to form your opinion. You have to make decisions in the world, and we don't have all the information, so you have to make the best decisions with all the information that you do have and go from there. Not easy because we don't know the long term research on autism, we don't know the long term research on chronic disease. We have to make decision without that knowledge. And so you have to weigh the pros and the cons for yourself and decide what you feel makes the most sense. And you have to listen to whoever you feel like is trustworthy.

[Podcast Host]

But there's gotta be a standard, right? I mean, so for example, in nutrition science, I don't just look to anybody. I have to understand where they are credentialed, what their training has been, what has their views been, and how are they putting out information in the world and do their peers respect them and are they looking at the evidence or are they informed by something else? And there has to be a way. It's very challenging with vaccines.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

It's very challenging because the standard is the CDC schedule. So that is the standard. And if you want to go with the standard, then you follow what the research and scientists have said for all these years. But the counter argument is really just coming out now. It wasn't something that we could really discuss. Yes, there were a few books back in the day, like Dissolving Illusions, probably the most popular one from before. And then Turtles all the Way down was another.

[Podcast Host]

You mentioned that in your book.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

So those are popular books. But Turtles all the Way Down, I mean, again, the topic is so controversial, we don't even know who the author of Turtles all the Way down is, because they didn't put their name on it. It's anonymous authors. So this is not a topic that's been openly discussed until now. And for me, my main goal of the book is not to tell you what to do, it's to be able to have discussions like this because people.

[Podcast Host]

Might want to be told what to.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Do, they might want to be told what to do. But I don't think it's your job to be told what to do with vaccines. I don't think it's your job to be told what to do. In medicine in general, it's our job to discuss and inform so that way people can make a decision that's best for them. If you want to be told what to do, the CDC schedule is what's telling you what to do. If you want to do anything outside of that, if you have become educated, you've listened to different individuals, and you have hesitation, then those are the kinds of things you need to read to come up with a plan for yourself or to work With a doctor or practitioner that's open to an alternative schedule or working with patients that are unvaccinated. I mean, those are. Not every doctor will do that. Most won't. But there certainly are practitioners out there that will work with you. But ultimately, again, it is personal choice. And the reason it's personal choice is because no one's ever studied anything else. So people say, okay, well, what alternative schedule should you do? It's something we have to come up with every patient. Because there's no study that says, well, if you do it this way, it's going to be better or safer. Doesn't exist. They only studied the regular schedule. And even at that, they didn't really study it as a whole schedule. So how are we supposed to give an opinion, an educated opinion, without research or data? It's just, it's just common sense you're using, basically, or your personal beliefs. And it's also how comfortable the person is doing the vaccines. There are some people that just don't want to do it.

[Podcast Host]

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[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Correct, but it helps to get data where you can use the information that you already have to make an assessment and to lead you to give better, to do better. Questions like epidemiology research can be very helpful. You can look at a million people, you can look at risk factors for certain things that can give you valuable information. It's not as good as a double blind trial. It's not as good as following people prospectively. Because the problem with epidemiology is depending on how you set up the equations, you can change the results drastically. And that is the big issue with the vaccine research is it's very set up in a way that there's a lot of bias. And you see this because people that are super pro vaccine always find something that's pro vaccine as their answer. People that are very anti vaccine always find what they're researching. That's very not good about vaccines. And so it's really hard to know what's true because it depends how you set up the data. I mean, RFK talked about this. He was talking about recently about the study where vaccines and autism and the concerns of the thousand percent increase in kids having, you know, having concerns that were adjusted by the CDC and were changed and in a nefarious way. And I don't know anyone's motivations, but the Original research around 2000 did show a major increase in these concerns. But that was before it was adjusted, before they did their actual study. It was just the preliminary data. And then after it was adjusted, then there was no difference found in the two groups. So that again just shows you how profound the difference is depending on who's doing the research and how you adjust it. One thing that shows 1000% increase, the other one shows no increase. And so you don't know which one is right because it depends how you adjusted it. If you adjusted in a different way, maybe you get a totally different answer. But if you're like, well, I got a a thousand percent increase in autism, I must have done something wrong, go find my friend. Oh, you didn't adjust for this. Okay, let's adjust for that. Now there's no difference. Okay, I guess I did it right.

[Podcast Host]

Now are there some people, if 1 in 12 males in California are getting diagnosed with autism, which again, that number is huge. Do you feel? And again, this is a bit of your medicine is an art, right? There's the art and practice of medicine. And a really good doctor is able to take the data and then also see what is being shown to them by their patients. Do you think that there is some way to indicate, if at all, someone who is going to do well with a, quote, traditional vaccine schedule? Let me tee this up for you. Many of the moms say at the park will say my son was fine and until he hit five and then he was vaccinated for measles and all of a sudden he went non verbal. Have you heard that story before?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Definitely, many times.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, help me understand that and help me understand, are there some children that may be at risk for that additional, you know, robust immune response or whatever it is, if anything at all? Or maybe it is just. Just happened to be that day?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, I mean, that is a wonderful question and it's the right question. And to start with, the first thing to really talk about with that question is this story is happening thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of times where a parent goes in, feel like their kid is perfectly normal and growing healthy and everything is wonderful, and then the next day or the next week or a couple weeks after they get a vaccine and everything changes. That's in their opinion. Those people are often called anti vaxxers after they get upset. And that's so crazy to me because it's literally a parent who went in to get vaccines and there's no way that person's anti vaxx. This is their experience, this is what they think. They could be right or wrong. They could have got a vaccine this morning and had a heart attack this afternoon. It could have nothing to do with it. They were going to have a heart attack anyways. But when hundreds of thousands of parents have the same story, we ought to listen to that, take that data and try to figure out if there's some truth to that. And that's really frustrating that we're not listening to parents because that is the data that we need to start to figure this out. How do we know which kids are going to have a reaction or more likely, we have to start looking into that data to figure out what makes you more susceptible. And that again, has never been done. It's insane. Wouldn't it be amazing if we figured out that there were certain genetics or certain kids that were more susceptible or more likely to have a bad reaction and figure out who those kids are so that way we can minimize giving those kids vaccines or giving them specific schedule or space it out or whatever it is that's going to give people more Confidence to vaccinate. And we're also going to minimize reactions, which of course is what we want. And so as of right now, there is no exact way to know that. I would say things to watch for would be the more susceptible kids. So some kids just get sick more. They seem to be a little bit more fragile.

[Podcast Host]

There's a name. What do they call? Are they called fragile?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

There's a name for more fragile kids.

[Podcast Host]

Fragile.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

If you had a vaccine, you had a bad reaction. I think that kid's certainly more high risk. If you had bad reactions to vaccines or people in your family had bad reactions to vaccines, then maybe there are some genetics. So I don't think for those individuals it's not unreasonable to at least go slow for those kids to make sure they're not having reactions. Again, there's nothing wrong with that or anti science or anti vax about saying these kids seem like they're more vulnerable. Let's go slow with those kids and be extra cautious. What doctor wants to give a child a bad reaction or a chronic condition? Nobody does. It's not against science to just be more cautious, but we should study it.

[Podcast Host]

For example, in your practice, do you think that there's a relationship to methylation, this idea that someone has an MTHFR mutation? Would a child like that be more sensitive to a. Maybe not even the vaccine. Maybe the preservative in the vaccine? Because I'm sure in your practice you have a more integrative practice and there's probably things that might not be evidence based but maybe evidence informed in some capacity that you try to figure out would this be too much of a burden for this child or kind of a framework for parents to think about.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

The issue with MTHFR is that there are so many people with mutations that it's hard to know how or if it might affect kids. I think certainly when that first, when the research first started coming out, people were, oh, this mthfr, it's related to detoxification. I'm not saying no, I'm just saying we don't, we haven't done the research with MTHFR as it relates to vaccines specifically. There's a very little, little bit of it, but the body's so much more complex to say, oh, you have MTHFR mutation, therefore you're gonna have a reaction to a vaccine. I think if you have a significant mutation, it's not unreasonable to go slow. But that again, goes back to. That's what we should be studying. We should be studying MTHFR with Vaccines and then many other mutations to see if we can find a pattern of. Well, These are the 10 mutations that seem to put a kid more at risk. These kids have a 50% chance having a very severe reaction. And it's not just mthfr. I think that's too simplistic, but I don't think it's unreasonable. If you have a mutation to go slower, I think that's fine. But ultimately you don't need that to go slower. It's just if you have concerns and you want to go slow, you can go slow. I don't think that's definitive of anything. I mean, I've seen people get the MTHFR test many times. It doesn't really seem to be that helpful clinically when it comes to vaccines. The reactions seem to be a little bit more. A little less simple than just doing a test like that. But I would love if somebody would do that research over the next 10 years and really starts to get kids that have bad reactions and starts to figure out what their genetics are. Because I think we could figure out that there are probably some mutations that leave you more susceptible to vaccines. That, of course, why wouldn't it be?

[Podcast Host]

I mean, that would make sense. Do you. Have you studied or looked into any of those? Do you have any sense of what they could be, or are you trying to formulate a plan?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Not yet. Because nobody studied it at all. Right. I mean, there's very, very minimal research. I've talked to some people, like, they should go do this. But you have to acknowledge that vaccines can cause a problem before you're going to go study that there are things that you can do to help protect you from those problems. We have barely even a knowledge that vaccines cause issues or can lead to chronic disease. We have to establish that first. And I think if that's established, then there's going to be a bigger push for innovation in that space because you're going to see a lot more people hesitant. And then I feel like the things that you could do to make people less hesitant are to actually test to figure out who is more susceptible and why, and then you can decrease that risk. Like maybe there's some supplements you could take, maybe there's some herbs you could do, maybe there's a genetic susceptibility. These are all things that are possible to give people confidence. We haven't done any of that yet. Or very minimal in my office. Like, okay, well, you could take some vitamin C, you could do some vitamin D, you could take things to support your immune system. But again, none of that's been studied at all when it comes to vaccines. I've never seen any research on any of it. And that's really important research to do, but no one wants to do it because that would inherently mean that there could be a problem with vaccines. And we're only starting to even acknowledge that now. And there's a big war going on right now about all of that. So I think in a few years it'll be a little bit more open to this stuff. But, but right now it's just the beginning.

[Podcast Host]

Do you think that there is a relationship between vaccines and chronic disease for kids?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I think there is. Well, first, basically anybody that you ask that takes care of both vaccinated unvaccinated kids has the same answer. They feel like the unvaccinated kids are generally healthier and more robust. That's what everybody says. Whether they're right or wrong, I don't know. I certainly, in my own experience, it feels like kids that have fewer vaccines seem to get sick less. I don't see them as much as they seem to have lower chronic disease rates. I don't have anything definitive. I don't have enough patients to do a big study like that. But that's just my experience of what I've seen and many, many practitioners that take care of them. Anyone that I've ever asked says the same thing. So I think that's true. But you have to weigh the risk of the disease versus everything else. And I think that that's an equation that requires a lot of nuanced conversation because it's not just so simple as you get fewer ear infections, okay, if your infections, but you die of measles, that's not good.

[Podcast Host]

Hydration isn't just about drinking coke zero or other sugar free sweetened beverages like bread. Bull. Now I'm saying this for a friend or it's not even about drinking more water. It's about keeping the right balance of electrolytes and fluids during life's most demanding season. Like, I don't know, parenting, maybe pregnancy or postpartum. Your body is going through massive changes. Changes blood volume increases, hormones shift, breastfeeding demands, you know, all those things, all of these life transitions. You probably need more and better hydration and you need electrolytes like sodium, magnesium and potassium. Element is formulated to replenish what you actually lose without sugar fillers and junk that you don't need. It's a clean, effective way to stay hydrated. And for men, again, it's not, not Just about hydration. It's also about performance, recovery, mental clarity, and yes, even energy. Whether you're hitting the gym, chasing kids, or grinding through your workday, maybe even your teeth, dehydration can quietly sabotage your focus and endurance. Element helps you stay sharp, strong and ready. We use Element because it works, tastes amazing, and it's no nonsense, just science. Back hydration that actually makes a difference. And, and right now, Element is offering a free sample pack with any purchase. That's eight flavors to try on the house. Go to drinklmnt.com drlion to claim yours. That's drinklmnt.com doctorlion Stay hydrated, stay strong, and as Goggins would say, stay hard. Speaking of dying of measles, you bring up a really good point. I, when I was in, my husband was active duty and I was living in New York City in a, I don't know, 4 to 600 square foot apartment, pregnant and alone, and there had been a measles outbreak in a certain community and I was on the subway going, I don't know if I was going back and forth to Brooklyn, but frankly, I was a pregnant mom, totally afraid of getting measles because there was a, a measles outbreak in New York City.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah. And it happens. And we're seeing it more because there are more people that are unvaccinated, but there are always smaller outbreaks every single year. That's not new. There's a little more this year than there has been in previous years, but it's still not far from what we usually see. But this is the reality. I mean, there's a risk and a benefit to everything. And that is where I go back to. Again, we have to have nuanced conversations about it because it just seems like there's two extremes and nobody wants to talk about the reality of the world. It's like, oh, you just want kids to get a vaccine and get autism. No, nobody wants to give kids any kind of disease. And then everybody's like, oh, you just want kids to get polio and have not be able to walk or oh, you just want measles and die. No, nobody wants that. Two things can be true at once. You could want kids to have a decreased risk of infection and you can also want them to have a decreased risk of chronic disease. And there's no reason why we can't study this because ultimately, if vaccines are related to chronic disease in some way, we need to figure that out. We need to ask why. If you were to find out after doing the proper Study that hepatitis B, increase your risk of asthma by 10 times. You would want to know why. You wouldn't say we shouldn't do hepatitis B vaccine anymore. You would say, what's the reason why this is occurring? Could we change hepatitis B? Maybe we can do it in a different manner so we don't have that risk. Nobody wants to increase our kids risk of having asthma, but maybe there's an ingredient, maybe the aluminum there is causing an issue. So maybe we could take that out or find a different adjuvant that doesn't increase that risk. We want to minimize infection, but also minimize chronic disease. And those two things can both be true. And that's why we have to be able to have a balanced conversation, because there are more and more vaccines hitting the market and more and more vaccines getting put out there. And if we don't have these conversations now, then what's to say there aren't gonna be 50 or 60 or 100 vaccines in a couple years for our kids? And just because we can make a vaccine doesn't mean we should. And just because we can protect against the disease doesn't mean we should do that. Because there can be too much of a good thing. And you could say, well, you know, five vaccines has a lot of benefit, but 40 vaccines actually causes more harm than good. Both those things could be true, or maybe 100 vaccines is fine, I don't know. But we should be able to talk about that because ultimately your goal is to decrease or to decrease these illnesses. You want kids to be healthier, and if you're making them less healthy overall, that's a problem. So we have to be able to talk about. I'm not saying that they do, but I was saying we have to be able to ask those questions and discuss it and study it.

[Podcast Host]

So the preservatives to this thermosol that from what I understand, has that been taken off the market?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

It's been taken off now. So thimerosal is just such a crazy story. It's the mercury component that's in vaccines as a preservative. And it works very well as a preservative. It does decrease the risk for bacterial contamination, fungal contamination. That's why it was put in there. But it is a mercury. It's composed of a mercury in there. And it's insane because you go back to around 2000, at that time, somebody said, hey, wait a minute, there is more mercury in vaccines than we allow in food. Is that safe? And nobody studied this or thought about this before.

[Podcast Host]

Tell me about that. I was looking this up and there's a vaccine containing 0.01% thimerosal, contains approximately 25 micrograms of mercury per 0.5 ML dose. And that's roughly the same amount of Mercury as a 3 ounce can of tuna.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Right. And so around that time we were really starting to understand the risks of mercury and we were concerned about, especially with fish, how much we were eating, especially in pregnancy. And there were a lot of recommendations coming out to minimize your amount of mercury. And then they said, oh, actually there's more mercury in vaccines now. It's a different form of mercury, but it's more. So is that okay again? Which is insane because no one asked that before that you could just inject mercury and it's fine. And we didn't think about safety. But they didn't and they started, okay, well we should probably study this.

[Podcast Host]

Do they really not think about safety?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Not really. I mean they put it in there without having that answer. Right. I mean they probably thought about it a little bit, but it was a small amount. But then more mercury was added into more vaccines because more vaccines were added onto the market. So probably they thought a little bit about, I mean, think about the studies back then. They weren't done in the same way that we do them now. Not necessarily as a double blind control trial, not necessarily studying mercury specifically for safety. And even if they did, they were studying it as one vaccine and not in all of them. And as more and more vaccines hit the market in the late 80s and the 90s, now there are more mercury containing vaccines that are being given to kids. And then what is the cumulative fact? Not now, not now, back then. So back then there were just more and more vaccines hitting the market in the 90s. And so now you have, if you're doing one vaccine is 25 micrograms, but how about if you're getting six vaccines with that, okay, now you have more mercury than we're recommending, is that safe? And so they said, well, let's start studying this. They never found it officially to be a problem, but they decided out of abundance of caution they would take it out, just given the fact that everyone was so concerned about mercury. And so it was taken out of every vaccine in early 2000s, but it was still in the multi dose flu. And that this year was part of the discussion if you heard the word thimerosal for the first time because it was still in the multi dose flus and Kennedy took that out. So it isn't in any vaccines anymore, or at least it's going to be phased out if it's still in any of them.

[Podcast Host]

In your clinical practice, do you test for heavy metals?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Sometimes we do. It's not, I would say, as common for kids, but certainly sometimes people want to do it and they'll do the hair testing. It's hard to do testing on kids because they're kids and you don't necessarily want to get a lot of blood. But if there are serious issues, then certainly we'll do functional medicine testing or at least I'll send them to a, a practitioner that does a lot more functional testing and they can go through those because I think if you have a chronic condition then I think it's worth to look into things like metals and mold and other issues.

[Podcast Host]

And lead. Is lead still routinely done?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

So lead, I mean, it's in there, but lead's still routinely tested just in kids in general, just because there's so much lead still around.

[Podcast Host]

And have you, and this is just a clinical practice question again asking for a friend myself because I have two little kids, have you seen a child test positive for say lead or something that you were surprised about, maybe an environmental exposure and you treat that and their behavior changes or their. Again, now you are an epidemiologist. One thing, you know, correlation doesn't mean causation. But have you seen that in clinical practice?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I have seen it. I mean certainly you see it with lead a lot of times. With lead specifically though, you're trying to catch it before. So you're testing it when they're nine months or a year old to see if there's any lead. So you're catching it really before you have symptoms. But if we do testing for older kids, sometimes we'll see things. There's nutrients off. A lot of times vitamin D is super low. So that's something that's, that's pretty common that you'll see. And then molds the other big one for kids. I mean it's, it's, it's not something we'll always test on the kids. I'll do it sometimes. But testing at the home is very common for families and they do find it, they do clean it up. It does get much better.

[Podcast Host]

Is this from a behavior standpoint?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

What would be behavior? Behavior commonly vague, weird symptoms that just don't seem to go away. So oftentimes where these things are most helpful is for these chronic low grade issues that just don't seem to go away. And you know, maybe multiple family members are Having issues. Lots of headaches, lots of stomach aches, very irritable. It's. It's these things that just are not very obvious to be anything. Sometimes it's. It's behavior, too. But oftentimes it's like, oh, there's always sick. They can't seem to get over cold. Now they're having asthma exacerbations. It's getting worse. They're. They're always. They always have headaches. They always seem to have diet, like weird symptoms that you just can't point to anything. And then a year or two later, they're like, oh, we did it. We did mold testing. We found a lot of mold, and we took it out, and it seems like they're doing better. So. So that is something that you see or just any sort of environmental exposure. I think that's the other thing that people sometimes just don't realize. And that does come up often if you talk to parents enough, is figuring out, okay, where are you going? What are you doing? What are you exposed to? I've seen many times where a kid switches schools and they have bad rashes and they go to some other school and it gets better. And, you know, it's probably something they were spraying at the school or they were at a park, a certain park, and then they realize after that that park is being sprayed in whatever chemical and they're just, you know, playing on the grass, and they. They maybe moved houses, and it just goes away. So there are a lot of environmental exposures that we just don't think of. It's not always easy to point out, but oftentimes those vague, weird symptoms that just go, don't go away, are from something that they're doing, touching or doing. It's just. You have to be a detective to figure it out, which is not easy.

[Podcast Host]

No, I absolutely agree with you. I think the environmental testing and environmental factors is the new frontier of medicine. We're very far behind. They have environmental physicians. Those are great. Environmental physicians, occupational physicians. But for the most part, these exposures are tremendous. They definitely impact our kids and adults. Yeah, we don't have great ways. There is no standardized treatment. It's really challenging.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I mean, I get asked this all the time, like, okay, so with chronic disease, what is it? Why is it happening? And again, we don't know, which is devastating. We don't know why it's happening because we haven't done those studies. But common sense being common, it's our crappy food and it's the toxins that we're exposed to. And we just have not acknowledged that up until more recently that we're bombarded with chemicals and toxins all the time through our food and through our environment. And anybody who works even a little bit in an integrative space, you don't have to be the most integrative doctor. But as soon as you start to just think about that, you see people getting better just by changing their environment, just by changing their food. It's not always the case, but those are the things that you see all the time, improve things. And it's not always with specialized testing. When you can do it, you can do mold testing, you could do heavy metal testing. That's doesn't always help. But what does help the most is being a detective and thinking, okay, what am I actually doing that could be leading to my chronic condition and what could I do to change that? And oftentimes if people even just think in that way, they figure it out. Maybe make take a year or two, but they figure it out.

[Podcast Host]

I'd like to acknowledge one of the sponsors of the show and that is Peori. This podcast has allowed me to speak to extraordinary experts and they have one unifying message. There are only a few core compounds that we need in the diet and one of Those is omega 3 fatty acids purees O3 ultra pure fish oil, which is third party tested and certified by both the Clean label project and IFOs so you know what you're putting in your body. It is safe, pure, effective. It is tested for 200 contaminants and Puri publishes all their results online. I've teamed up with Puree to get you an amazing offer. 20% off sitewide, even on already discounted subscriptions, which means you can save nearly a third off. All you have to do is go to Piori P u o r-I.com drlion and use the code DRLION at checkout. You mentioned childhood obesity, which we started off talking about. Childhood obesity is absolutely on the rise. How do you think as a pediatrician we can avoid that?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

We have to change our food. I mean, we have to change the food system. I would say as a parent, an individual level, it's really important that you have to take some responsibility to understand that. I love that you're saying that because ultimately you're the one purchasing the food, especially when they're younger and we have to be okay with buying real food and preparing that food more. We have to be preparing most of the food that they're eating. Yes, they're going to eat Some other things at school and other places. I mean, hopefully you educate them over the years as to what's healthy and what's not. But at least if you're feeding them at home most of the time, giving them food to take, that's going to make a huge difference. And just acknowledging that we're doing this. We didn't get obese all of a sudden just because our genetics change in 50 years. That's not what's going on. Our food is so crappy. 70% or so of the food we're eating is ultra processed. Just it's not real food. It's not the food that we're supposed to be eating. And you know, I've been very fortunate to be involved in some of the Maha type stuff, which is great, you know, but it's, it's all weird to me because I was talking about kids health well before Maha and I happened to be at the Kellogg's rally to support getting the dyes out. And so I got to know some of the people there and so that's. That really helped me to become, you know, someone involved. But I only care about kids health. I don't care about politics. Is really the whole thing stupid. And there shouldn't be, it shouldn't be politics. Right? Like we should be just all fighting together for kids health. It should bipartisan and you know, we are seeing that a little bit to some degree. But, but ultimately it's, it's the choices that we're making and the food system that's, that's so screwed up. And it's great that we're fighting for dyes and little things, but ultimately that.

[Podcast Host]

You said it, little things. Dyes are, honestly, dyes are little things. The bigger problem, the bigger fish that we have to fry. However you want to say it, it's the system. It's the ultra processed food. The question, I'm so happy to hear you say that you feel that it's the parent's responsibility if a child is obese or overweight. The question is, whose responsibility is it?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

It's the parents responsibility in the setting of a very difficult environment right now. So I think it's both. I think it is both. I think we need to take responsibility because ultimately you have the choices of what you're purchasing and what you're doing. And I understand, oh, the first thing that people say, oh, you know, single mom, can't afford it. I get that. I understand that there are specific situations, but we have to do the best that we can to support Our kids within the financial means that we have. And the bigger problem, and the thing you should be saying back to something like that is not, oh, it's ableist to have healthy food. No, no. Every kid deserves healthy, fresh food. How do we make that happen? How do we get healthy food to every kid? How do we get fresh local produce back as the standard? And that is a systems issue right now. On the individual level, yes, you have to do it. But we also need to fight really hard to change the system. It's not an easy thing. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

And if 74% of adults are either overweight or obese, where do you think children learn from?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Right, Exactly. And that's why I said so. The dyes thing, for example. It's great that we're talking about it. I think it's not healthy for you. Ultimately, if you have ultra processed food with a red dye number 40 or you have it with a natural dye, the food's still bad. So ultimately that doesn't make a huge difference. But I think it's something that people galvanized around and a lot more people are aware about reading labels and ingredients than before. So I think that's really, really, really helpful and it's good to get those ingredients out. But that is not the fight that we need to have over the next three years. It's not about individual things. It's about the system. It's about the farms, the food, the produce. Like all of these things have to change so we can get healthier, fresh food locally that's not more expensive than the crappy food. So we can start to change that system, change the incentives. That's a really hard thing to do. It's not simple. But ultimately we have to make that the easier choice for people. So that way we're gonna get healthier because you say, like, whose responsibilities it is? The parents. But it's gonna be a lot easier to be a parent if you could buy healthy food cheaper. And that's what's available to you versus what's not available to you.

[Podcast Host]

Eggs. I, I hear what you're saying. I agree with you. And I would say when, when someone says that to me that it's more expensive to eat healthy, I will give you them an alternative. A dozen eggs might be $5, right?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah. And there are so many things that you could do that are not more expensive. But, but the incentive in general in the, in our environment right now is the ultra processed foods that seems to be cheaper and easier to access. And a lot of people don't always have. They have access to eggs, but they don't have necessarily access to a lot of good fresh produce. They could go. And you do have almost everywhere you can. You can drive, unless you're pretty rural there. There is some access, but we need to make that much more available. You go to other countries and the local stores are not selling mostly processed foods. They're selling fresh stuff. A lot more markets, a lot more farmer's market type things. We have to move back to that. And I think we could.

[Podcast Host]

So there is the food component. And then I was looking at some of the data in terms of children being sedentary. Children are sedentary on an average of seven plus hours a day.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, I mean, that's the whole other piece of the puzzle that we haven't tackled either. But that's the other piece. I mean, we're not moving. Kids are on screen seven plus hours a day on average.

[Podcast Host]

As a pediatrician, how much do you recommend?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I mean, as little as possible. Right? Other than, I understand people have to do schoolwork. So a lot of schoolwork is on computers now. That is what it is. But I think other than that, as minimal as possible. I'm not someone that says zero screen time because I think that's probably not practical and not the way our world works at this point. But if you are on seven plus hours, then what are you not doing? You're not moving, you're not getting outside. So I think we have to shift that and really focus on especially those kids that are eight hours a day, ten hours a day. We have to shift that back to one or two hours or homework, plus very little other than that. We have to encourage and prioritize movement. You can't eat crappy food.

[Podcast Host]

Now. When you were growing up, was homework done on an iPad?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

No, it wasn't.

[Podcast Host]

So it doesn't have to be on a computer. I think that ultimately we are doing what we've done in healthcare, which is, well, this is the way people are doing it, so we should all be doing it. I never used an iPad when I was in school. You never used an iPad? Why is that even something that is remotely feasible? It doesn't even make sense to me.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I think it's totally fine if we would go, move away from that as much as we can. And so we are encouraging. It's all about incentives and encouraging. I think if we start to make it a point like, look, we're not doing our homework on screens because it's not good for you to be on screen so much. So here it is on paper. You know, those are the kind of things that it doesn't seem like it makes a difference, but it does because.

[Podcast Host]

Absolutely.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

The encouragement, the messaging for the average kid makes a big difference. If you're on a computer for eight hours a day because you have to do all your homework on that, that's just what you think is normal. And then, you know you're on the computer, then you know the things over here, you scroll over to social media for a second, then it's been two hours, you go back.

[Podcast Host]

Have you heard of the daylight computer?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

The daylight computer, I haven't heard of that. But assuming it's like where you focus in kind of.

[Podcast Host]

No, it actually looks like a Kindle almost. And there's no blue light and you actually can't search and doesn't have all these distracting items that would pop up. And I'm hoping, again, I have no relationship with the company, but to me, if we're going for convenience, which it seems as if people love convenience, then if we're going to do that, perhaps we make it healthier and safer.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, I think that's the direction we need to go with phones and computers. And I've definitely seen a bunch of companies pop up in the last couple years where, you know, they're taking away your access to the Internet. They're taking away, like, it's there for emergencies. It's there for just the specific things that you need to do. I think we have to move back because it's. Again, it's the messaging. If we take phones out of schools, it's a message sent to kids. Hey, like, this is. This is not good for you. This is not good for your mental health. You're not paying attention. Be off your screens. We have to send that messaging clearly.

[Podcast Host]

I want to circle back. I skipped over this. I want to circle back to this new discussion, which is GLP1 use in children.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, that's insane. There's nothing else around. I like. I don't have any problem with people using a GLP1 if they choose to. If it's a last resort. I think for somebody who is morbidly obese, who's very ill, then medications have their place. And, you know, potentially you've tried everything else. You just. You don't have that motivation. It could put you on a good path. Okay, I get that. But that. That is not what's happening with kids, and that's not happening with a lot of people that are using it.

[Podcast Host]

Tell me what is happening with kids. Kids.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Well, it's, it's something that is given like any other medication. It's like, well, you have this issue. So here's your, here's your medical solution, here's your prescription. And anything like that that's affecting your body in that way, affecting your hormones, affecting your liver, affecting your kidneys, affecting everything, that's a big decision, especially when you've been on for a long time.

[Podcast Host]

Are parents coming to you asking for GLP1s for their kids?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Not in my office. I've never been asked. But. And I wouldn't do it either. I mean, if they would, would want to do it, I'd send them to a specialist, just anyways. But I would try real hard to convince them away from that. I. Especially as a kid. That does not seem like a reasonable option for almost all kids, especially younger kids. Like, it's, it's a. Younger for me, I don't know, under 15? Under total.

[Podcast Host]

I mean, listen, I, I do not think that gop and I'm usually not someone who is a yes or no type of physician. I don't think that things are typically black and white. But GLP1 use. And again, would there be a case where someone would use a GLP one in a child? Maybe if they are morbidly obese and the child can't move. I don't know.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Maybe.

[Podcast Host]

But, but, but for the average child.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

But even for like the extreme almost with kids, it should almost never be needed and it absolutely should be something that's after every other thing has been done for a while, including getting them an exercise therapist, getting them a nutritionist, getting them working with a therapist, whatever the reasons are. Maybe the family needs counseling about food and what foods they're giving them. I mean, there are very few kids that are going to be so morbidly obese and also have the chronic conditions. Like for an adult, you could see someone's really, really sick. I can understand you need it quick. Usually for kids, even if they're morbidly obese, they're not so sick that you don't have time to work with them in a more natural way because you need to figure out why they're so morbidly obese and you need to adjust those things or else they're going to be on that, they're going to get off it, they're going to get more obese again, and you've completely affected their body when they're growing. It's a quick fix. And it's not right. And again, people say, oh, okay, well, it's easy to give someone a medication. Not everybody can get a nutritionist. Not everybody can get an exercise service. Yeah, that's right. That's a problem. You should be able to get access to a nutritionist through your insurance or whatever it is as opposed to getting access to a medication. The system is broken and you, if someone's morbidly obese and you're thinking you should give them medication, we need a system that supports people in getting the other things so they can actually get healthy in the appropriate way.

[Podcast Host]

Well, what do you think about bringing back the Presidential Fitness Test?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, I mean, I think that's was controversial without needing to be super controversial. It's, it's, it's.

[Podcast Host]

Again, why, why do you think it was controversial?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I think it's controversial because you're bringing back something that has competition and, and we've moved a little bit away from competition, it seems like into, you know, more like everyone's accepted at participation trophies. And this is kind of putting back those things which I guess some people had been. I grew up in Canada, so I didn't necessarily have that. I had something similar. But I get why anything that anybody does in the administration is going to be controversial right now. But ultimately it's a message. It's a message that we care about health, we care about your fitness, and we're going to take a stand, we're going to push you towards more fitness. Competition can bring strong feelings sometimes, especially if you're not doing very well in these things. But ultimately we need to, I think, get a little tougher in our schools to push people to become healthier, not to shame anybody, but to say like, we need, we need to have some benchmarks we want to make sure everybody can do because we're not meeting them. Kids are super sick, super overweight, have all sorts of chronic conditions and that's a disaster. I mean, you talk about your family being involved in the military and services and a lot of kids would never qualify because they're so overweight. They have so many complications. It's such a big problem. Not from a, I mean, it's from a defense standpoint, I guess, but that's not my big thing as a pediatrician. It's like if you're not healthy enough.

[Podcast Host]

Putting the 12 year olds in.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, but if you're not healthy enough to do that, like it says a statement about our country.

[Podcast Host]

I am shocked that the Presidential Fitness Test was controversial. And I'm going To tell you why, the reality is we should have a baseline. How many pushups can you do? How many sit ups, what is your 1 mile run or your dash, whatever it is, your rope climb? There is nothing wrong with competition. The only way people get better is if you are challenged. There is someone that wins and there's someone that loses and just become. Just because someone isn't number one doesn't mean that they didn't put forth effort or any of those things. And you know, in terms of, you know, we talk about obesity, we talk about chronic disease, we're talking about food dyes. If we were to take a step back, I would argue one of the biggest challenges that our country faces is comfort. And comfort is absolutely killing people. The fact that the presidential fitness test, because some people win and some people don't and people feel as if it's shaming, that is somewhat ridiculous. And no. Does it suck to not be good at something? Yeah, it does. But guess how you get better?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

The test and everything else. Look, we, we have clearly failed at public health in this country. We're the sickest western country. Chronic disease rate 75%. Overall, what we're doing isn't working. So you can, I said this multiple times in last week, you know, a couple weeks, you can like or dislike Secretary Kennedy, you can like or dislike the new administration, what they're doing, but whatever was done before has absolutely failed in terms of our overall chronic health and chronic disease. So we have to do something different. We can debate and quibble over presidential tests versus not presidential tests, this policy, that policy, vaccines, not vaccines. You can quibble all those things and that is the right of everybody here. And we should do that. We should debate it to figure out what the best way forward is.

[Podcast Host]

No, I think we should do presidential fitness testing.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Sure. Everybody, fine. But okay, you can have that opinion and someone can disagree with you. You. But the fact that we are not making changes is ridiculous. We have to make all sorts of changes. We have to move in a different direction. And some of those things are going to be right and some of them are going to be wrong. But what's definitely wrong is what we've been doing.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I, you know, frankly, I also, in our company, we have physical fitness standards.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

By the way, having standards makes sense. I don't have any problem with that, but I have a problem with looking at our health where we are. We want to get better. We have to have some major changes, and that's going to cause a little bit of turmoil in the interim. But we need it.

[Podcast Host]

What, what are some safe workouts for kids?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Safe workouts for kids? I think, you know, using your own body weight, exercising. So we want to be consistent. I don't think for the younger kids in general, the research shows that you want to use a lot of heavy weight, but I think using your body weight or low weights and repetition is usually the best way to go. And that's what most individuals that I've ever spoke to that work in the fitness industry say for kids. I mean, you want them to be moving, ideally something fun. Right. I think the best thing is if it's not a workout per se for kids, but something they enjoy doing. So whether it's a sport, an activity class, whatever it is that can get them moving in a way that they love, so it's consistent.

[Podcast Host]

Is there one sport that you like to see kids participating in?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Anything right now, literally anything that gets them moving. I mean, even a few minutes a day makes a huge difference. Every study I've ever seen cites that even a few minutes of moderate to vigorous activity makes a huge difference. Most kids aren't even doing that. So I want to move the needle. I think everyone needs to move the needle forward in terms of what they're doing. But something that keeps you moving, like, you know, soccer is great, whatever it is, but I don't care right now. I think just something.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, there was a huge push against resistance training. When I say resistance training, whether it's body weight or picking up weights, because there was a lot of conversation around it affecting growth plates. And that is not accurate in the data. There is no reason why kids shouldn't be able to lift weights. You know, we're not talking about one rep max, but move now when you are young so that you can move later. And you know, our kids exercise. It's not necessarily, quote, structured exercise, but My son, who's 4, is training for the SEAL teams. He's hilarious. He's doing two a days. He is sprinting. We have one of those Woodway treadmills. I mean, he's doing it all on his own. He gets up and he might do three sprint intervals and then go jump in the cold, plunge for, I don't know, three seconds.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

That's amazing. And kids are so resilient and they can do amazing things if you give them a chance to. But there's such a wide range of what we're seeing, but almost all of it's not good. So to me, when you say which sport, which activity, I don't care get them moving, whatever they're willing to do. The ultimate of the discussion is get off a screen and go do something outside. Even if it's just a. Going to play outside, going to the playground, playing in nature. I mean, these things are amazing. And that's, that's, that's all they need.

[Podcast Host]

Yep. And there is some data that, that suggests that the healthier and stronger, and this obviously makes sense a child is when they're younger, the more likely that they're going to be healthier as an adult.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, I've seen many studies that show that now where your health and your, your level of health carries over into adulthood. And it's a very significant predictor.

[Podcast Host]

If you are young, physically active, building musculature, priming the body for muscle health, then your likelihood of having cardiometabolic disease is less. There's a whole host of other problems that are lower. If you start early and think about it. We always talk about kids as if, I don't know, it's a weird way of framing it as if they're something different. But we're not raising children, we're raising adults. We're raising humans to contribute to society.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah. And you're setting their, you know, you're setting what they're doing, you're setting their, their habits. And for a kid that's creating healthy habits, they're much more likely to do that later. I mean, you don't even need data for that. So obviously, if you're exercising, you're much more likely to do it when you're older. If your priority is cooking food and getting healthy food, you're much more likely to do it because you're even aware of it. Most people aren't even aware of these things today. I mean, are getting more aware of it, but clearly we're not aware of it because we have this obesity epidemic and it's not changing, so.

[Podcast Host]

Well, hopefully it will be changing.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Hopefully it's changing. The conversation's changing right now. So I think that's the first step.

[Podcast Host]

Now, devices again, you've been in clinical practice for 10 years. You've seen an increase in device use.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Oh, yeah.

[Podcast Host]

What are some of the biggest relationships? For example, increased screen time, mental health problems, increased screen time, decreased attention and learning. Have you seen relationships between device use and health outcomes or learning outcomes?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, I mean, I think that the research is very clear at this point that it affects all those health, I mean, everything. Right. You have the physical and then you have the mental. But we're really at the point now where it's so clear, especially with the mental, that a lot of school systems are taking phones out because the data is drastic. Like you're seeing 50, 75% drops in depression rates and anxiety and trips to the principal's office. So there's a massive mental health component, but of course also a physical component, obesity, diabetes, everything. Because you're just, you're sedentary, It's a big part of life.

[Podcast Host]

So yeah, when you counsel your, you obviously counsel patients and they always come in with a parent, right? Because they're, they have to, they're young. What are some evidence based recommendations that you give them for nutrition or environment or screen time? As someone who is listening to this with the goal of how do we keep our kids safe and healthy for.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Food and usually with the younger kids, I'll talk about the most important things for food would be for parents if they're not doing it. I mean it's hard for my office because I already have health conscious people to some degree coming in. They're self selecting but either way still talk about it because it's important. So reading labels is the number one thing. Like we have to be aware that we have to read every single label all the time from now on. It just has to be part of your everyday. Where you're going in the store and you're buying something with a label. Ideally you're buying things that don't really have labels. But if you're buying anything, you need to look at the ingredients and just start to become aware. You don't need a PhD in chemistry to know that some long word's probably not good for you.

[Podcast Host]

Is there one chemical or preservative that you have concerns about?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I mean there are many, but anything that, that we.

[Podcast Host]

Any long.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I mean sugar is a huge problem today. We eat way more sugar than we ever should.

[Podcast Host]

You mean I shouldn't have given my kids cake this morning?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I mean if we do it.

[Podcast Host]

I'm kidding. My kids, they did not eat cake.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I'm not against like any sugar. I mean obviously that. So sugar in and of itself is not bad for you. I mean we need it for our brain. It's just the amount of sugar and the type of sugar that we're eating. I'm not concerned about they're eating fruit. I'm concerned about all the added processed sugars that we're eating in mass. That's way more than we ever need. Way more than anybody should be eating in a lifetime. They're eating in a year now.

[Podcast Host]

I Mean, but there isn't one thing that you say, okay, well this is in the label that's out. I mean, I don't have one.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, I don't know that I ever get that specific with people because I think it's more about becoming a savvy, a savvy customer and just being aware that what everything you buy from food or from products, you should read the label, try to buy things with as few ingredients as possible and try to make as much as you can. I mean, to me that that's the goal is not like an ingredient versus another ingredient, but it's making the actual food, the ingredients, like buying actual things and preparing it yourself, that's going to get you a long way. And that, that to me is a big part of, of that.

[Podcast Host]

We were filming yesterday and in order to film, we really try to wear. Well, we don't really try. We always look at the data prior to making statements. And in 2023, over 55% of the food budget was spent on food outside of the home. It was either food at restaurants or delivery.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Yeah, I saw that too.

[Podcast Host]

That's crazy.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

It's insane. And I mean, every number you look at when it comes to food is just insane. I mean, just the 70% ultra processed foods or whatever number is around there now, that's insane. Like it should be. I mean, it should be zero, but it's not going to be zero. That's not the reality of our country. But you could certainly decrease that to 25%. Like most of the food that we should be eating should be real food, not ultra processed food.

[Podcast Host]

When you counsel your patients on nutrition, is there a certain carbohydrate target? Do you have certain targets that you try to shoot for for macronutrients?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Not usually for kids. I mean, sometimes people will ask me that and I just really try to shift away from being especially for, for the young kids. Like, I think you need to have variety. I think you want to focus on real food. Being so specific doesn't help most people. It just makes them more nervous, especially when it comes to kids. I think you can do that if you want to, but I, I aim to move away from a lot of the starchy carbs, so white carbs, a lot of bread and pasta, and move towards fruits and veggies and proteins and healthy fats. And I think if you do that, then you're most of the way there. And I think for most kids will do just fine. But the rainbows. So supplements. I, I'm okay with Supplements. But I always want you to get through food if possible. So that's what I always tell people. I mean, I'm okay. We have them in the office. If you want to do multivitamin, you want to do vitamin D or omegas, I think that's all reasonable because we're just so deficient in our food these days. Are most people are not getting outside enough. But ideally we should be getting it all from food. And you shouldn't need a supplement. If you want to do a few of them, I think that's okay. But again, it's with kids it's hard because you want a kid to be on like 60 supplements and taking a whole bunch of things. Most kids won't do that and they taste terrible anyways. So if your kid's sick all the time and has issues, maybe then I would focus my time on trying to buy more fresh produce than I would on giving them a bunch of supplements. I think supplements only get you so far. It's. It's a fine if you want to add to it. But ultimately the food is what matters to me.

[Podcast Host]

What about. So in terms of if you were to strategize and prioritize, it sounds to me that it's really the fresh fruits and vegetables that kids are missing. If I'm hearing you and understanding you versus say protein and fat they seem to be getting enough of. Am I understanding you correctly?

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

I think we get more than enough protein. You never really see anybody with protein deficiency. The fats you can have better versus not as good. But ultimately it's fresh food. But I think it's even more just not eating the ultra processed prepackaged foods. It's eating actual food. There's a big difference between a prepackaged chicken nugget and when you make it yourself. So I think it's not that they're not getting protein, it's are we getting good, healthy? Where are those chickens from? I think that's a big difference. How did the chicken live? What was it injected with? What did it eat? I think that all adds up. If you get a better protein versus not if you can. Again, these are things that not everybody can always afford or don't always have access to. But to me, these are the most important things. And if we are focusing on how do we get more real fresh food, that is where you're gonna get your better nutrients. A lot of our food gets shipped from all over the world. It's pretty crappy. Even the good stuff is pretty crappy. It's like, it was, you know, picked early, sprayed in a bunch of stuff shipped across the world, sits in the store for a couple days, sprayed again multiple times, then you eat it. And that's the best case scenario. That's still like the real. The bananas that we get. It's like, it's not even the processed food, so it's. We. We need as much from our local farmers as we can get. The food is totally different. I mean, I'm sure, you know, anywhere you go, if you eat food that's freshly picked, it tastes totally different. It's a completely different food. Half the time you're like, oh, that's what it's supposed to taste like. You don't realize that until you start buying mostly from farms where you know where the food's coming from, that it tastes different.

[Podcast Host]

Dr. Joel Warsh, thank you so much for coming on. Really. It has been eye opening. You feel very passionate about this, and I know that this comes from seeing patients for over 10 years and training and having two little kids. You're very brave, and it's important to be able to speak your truth. And I'm just. I'm grateful for you coming on. I love your book, Between a Shot and a Hard Place. I strongly recommend that people go ahead and learn for themselves and read it. Thank you. Thank you so much.

[Dr. Joel Warsh]

Thank you for having me.