Ep 145: Parenting at your Child's Pace: by Integrative Pediatrician Dr Joel "Gator" Warsh

Dr Joel "Gator" Warsh joins this weeks Ask Dr Jessica to talk about his new book "Parenting at Your Child's Pace": a parenting guide for the first 3 years. Dr Warsh is an integrative pediatrician, and in this podcast we have a great conversation about what integrative pediatrician is exactly, and what his philosophies in general are about parenting and medicine.  Our conversation will be a two part series --on this episode we discuss  setting boundaries, technology, teaching healthing eating habits, and the importance of reading food labels.  

To learn more about Dr "Gator":
Joel Warsh is a Board-Certified Pediatrician in Los Angeles, California who specializes in Parenting, Wellness and Integrative Medicine.  He completed his Pediatric Medicine training at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA) and worked in private practice in Beverly Hills before founding his current practice, Integrative Pediatrics and Medicine Studio City, in 2018.

He has been featured in numerous documentaries, films, summits, podcasts and articles including CBS, Fox, LA Parent, Washington Post, MindBodyGreen, and many others.

He is also the founder of the Parenting Masterclass Platform Raising Amazing which can be found at RaisingAmazingPlus.com

Dr. Joel Gator may be best known for his popular Instagram DrJoelGator where he offers weekly parenting and integrative pediatric support.

The link to his new book "Parenting at Your Child's Pace": The integrative pediatrician's guide to the first 3 years.

Dr Jessica Hochman is a board certified pediatrician, mom to three children, and she is very passionate about the health and well being of children. Most of her educational videos are targeted towards general pediatric topics and presented in an easy to understand manner.

For more content from Dr Jessica Hochman:
Instagram: @AskDrJessica
YouTube channel: Ask Dr Jessica
Website: www.askdrjessicamd.com

-For a plant-based, USDA Organic certified vitamin supplement, check out : Llama Naturals Vitamin and use discount code: 15AE5ABAC60

-To test your child's microbiome and get recommendations, check out:
Tiny Health using code: DRJESSICA

Do you have a future topic you'd like Dr Jessica Hochman to discuss? Email Dr Jessica Hochman askdrjessicamd@gmail.com.

The information presented in Ask Dr Jessica is for general educational purposes only. She does not diagnose medical conditions or formulate treatment plans for specific individuals. If you have a concern about your child's health, be sure to call your child's health care provider.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Hi everybody. I'm Dr Jessica Hochman, pediatrician and mom of three. On this podcast, I like to talk about various pediatric health topics, sharing my knowledge, not only as a doctor, but also as a parent. Ultimately, my hope is that when it comes to your children's health, you feel more confident, worry less and enjoy your parenting experience as much as possible. Hi everybody. Welcome back to part two of my interview with Dr Joel Gator Warsh. Today we're going to talk about his new book, parenting at your child's pace. I hope you got a chance to listen to last week's episode, and if you didn't definitely go back and take a listen. Dr Warsh is an integrated pediatrician, and he's a really clear thinker when it comes to parenting and the practice of medicine. Today you'll hear Dr Gator share his thoughts on topics such as minimizing toxin exposure and screen time. Thank you so much. Dr Warsh for coming on. Ask Dr Jessica and if you're enjoying this podcast, it would really mean so much if you would take a moment to leave a five star review and share this podcast with a friend. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's so nice to see you again. You too. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited. I'm so proud of you for being a pediatrician, a dad and still having time to write a book, it's, I mean, you fit it in there. You know, you figure it out. I guess. So tell everybody first. I just to start off, why don't you tell everybody what an integrative pediatrician is? Because I think many people are familiar with pediatricians, but what separates a pediatrician from an integrated pediatrician? So for me, I really define it as trying to balance the best of modern medicine with alternative practices. So I'm not against Western medicine at all. I always start off by saying that, because I think it's really important to mention that, you know, if you get an antibiotic, it can save your life. We have amazing emergency departments where we can go and get an MRI and X ray. I think all these things are great. And there are all sorts of things that we've invented that can be very useful, but there also are a lot of other modalities that have existed for a very long time that can be useful in many situations. And so we just try, and I just try, to blend the best of both worlds together and use natural remedies whenever it's reasonable and not an emergency type situation, and I just think there's a lot of opportunity for that, and there's actually a lot of research on many of supplements and herbs that can be very helpful, and medicine in general doesn't have a lot to offer and doesn't focus on prevention for a lot of these chronic diseases or long term things. What you're saying really resonates with me. I'm not an integrative pediatrician. I'm a general pediatrician. However, I think it's very well established that there's a lot of overuse when it comes to medicine, and so how nice for patients that want something to try to help their kids, if they can't take home an antibiotic or it's really not in their best interest to have an alternative option to try to feel better, right? Exactly. And I mean the very classic example, something like ear infections, right? I mean, you can look at ear pain and the guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics, and even in the guidelines, unless it's very severe pain or or both sides, or, you know, a few other things, then you're not even supposed to really treat them in the first day or two. You're supposed to do some watchful waiting. And, you know, you can offer them a script to take home, but maybe not to do it. But the problem is that parents want to do something. Their kids in pain, they have something going on, and I feel like most parents would be much more comfortable giving it that day or two if they had some other natural remedies to try and it seems to be that way. I mean, in my practice, when I used to work at the hospital, you know, and you before I even really started doing a lot of interview medicine, it's like somebody medicine, it's like, somebody comes with ear pain. Here's your script. Good luck. You go to the urgent care. You know, no matter what this, the severity is, it's like, oh, they have a little bit of ear pain they had, you know, this, this and that, maybe it's getting a little better. Okay, here's your prescription. Good luck. There's no, there's no other alternatives. But the reality is, if you give people something to do, then the vast, vast majority, more than 90% probably like 98% the 9% don't ever need the medication because it just gets better. Because just look at the stats, it's mostly viruses that are going to be causing that ear pain. So the antibiotics actually doing nothing. If anything, it's causing harm. It's so true, and I feel like the system is set up for doctors to want to prescribe. Because first of all, parents, when they have their child that's in pain, I'm so sympathetic. I'm empathetic. They want to do something to help their kid immediately. And for doctors, quite frankly, it's so much easier to write a prescription and send send them home with that prescription. It takes time to explain why the prescription isn't in their benefit, why they might want to watch and wait, treat the pain in other ways. And so I think, I think you're absolutely correct that if you can give parents a proper explanation as to why it's in their best interest to wait, I think most parents are on board, right? I mean, the parents want the same thing that you want. You want their kids to be healthy. You want them to recover. That's what they want. They don't want to give an antibiotic that could cause, you know, some gut issues, some diarrhea, whatever it is, if they don't have to, but they also don't want their kids eardrum to burst, or, you know, them to have hearing problems or other things. So they just want to know that it's it's okay. But that involves a lot of discussion, a lot more than just giving a prescription. And the system is really not, not set up great for most practitioners. And on top of that, the other. Huge key is you have to be able to have follow up like and that's not necessarily the case in a lot of big box office practices, where, if you give somebody something natural, let's say for ear pain, and then they go home, they have to be able to get a hold of you. They have to be able to understand what to do, because it could get worse. It could get much worse, and maybe they do need antibiotics, so they have to be able to follow back up, and then, you know, private practices, it's more I guess it's easier for a lot of patients to kind of follow up and have a little bit better access, where some of the bigger practices, they don't, and our kids would do better if we could change the system up somewhat to help us. I mean, we have antibiotic overuse. We know that's a huge problem in medicine and antibiotic resistance, and there are a lot of remedies that can be very helpful, like elderberry syrup. There's tons of evidence on elderberry syrup being being helpful. There's tons of evidence on vitamin C. There's tons of evidence on zinc. All these things are known to be helpful, to some degree, to be supportive of viruses, and yet it's like not common knowledge, not commonly used for whatever reason. Well, the other perspective that I have on that is, let's say they're not that helpful. What is the harm? I mean, besides, I guess you have the cost, the out of pocket, cost of the supplements, but certainly, if they're providing some immune support, and maybe they're not changing the course of the illness that much, let's say there is a benefit to placebo. There's a benefit for parents to feel like they're trying to do something that potentially may help. So I have no problem with supplements like elderberry, vitamin C, zinc. I agree with you, right? It's very important not to do something that's dangerous. So there's that side too, but there are things that are dangerous. So that's where you want to go with with items that are very safe in general. And almost every supplement that's out there is much safer than than medication. I mean, anything can have side effects, but the reality of vitamin D or vitamin C, are those kinds of things having a reaction or an overuse or toxicity, is very, very low. Anything's possibly can be allergic to anything, but, yeah, I mean, the reality is that either it helps a little bit, it's not magic, or it's not a medication. So you have to understand that it's not like you're gonna get better within 15 seconds of taking vitamin D, but it's supporting your immune system and you again, like you said, if it doesn't do anything, it's still placebo effect, and that's a huge effect for most people. What I find is very under appreciated or under acknowledged, is how time is really our best friend that often these illnesses don't get better right away. It is normal for fevers not to get better after a day or two, and it's okay not to act and treat with an antibiotic or a strong medication. It is okay to do your best to make your child feel comfortable, support them, but that, as you mentioned, is the value of follow up and having a close relationship with your pediatrician, that if you are concerned after a couple of days, you can reach out to your doctor and go through the questions and make sure that still safe to monitor and give the child time to recover from their illness, definitely. And that's one of the big reasons why I wrote, wrote the book parenting at child's pace. And it's a big, you know, mixture of the common parenting questions that you get, plus a little bit of the health side and the wellness side, but a big part of what's happening with parenting these days is we're very stressed. Parents are very stressed, and they're not really sure what to do or what to worry about. And I find that people worry about the very wrong things, and they're not worried about, sometimes the things they should be worried about. And you mentioned something like fever, you know, we talk about that a whole bunch in the book, because people are so worried about fever. And you know, as patients, it's like, you remind them you're not worried about the fever in general, it's the other things. Like, you're supposed to have a fever when you get sick, that's pretty normal. It might be a day, it might be two or three days, but that's still pretty common. So it's what other things are you looking for? But we're we're so ingrained with this fever phobia, and I think it's important to to know when to be worried. Because, yeah, you should be worried sometimes, but not most of the time. I don't know if we as a society made it worse, and we did all the fever checks. I think remember those days of I think it's bad, and I think it's also that we are very concerned about fevers and newborns, and so you talk to parents pretty early. Parents hear about it pretty early. It's like, oh, go to the hospital, lumbar puncture, yada yada, this and that. And we put a lot of fever phobia, I think, into our own, own patients, and so it's something that we have done as a medical establishment, because with a newborn, it is actually a big deal, but it's not as much of a big deal in general for an older kid. So I think it's that initial fear for a parent, and then maybe they don't really get the message that it's different when their support carries over. Yeah, that's an excellent point. Okay, so you already alluded to my next question for you, and that is what inspired you to write a book. The big thing that I noticed with books lately in the parenting space is a lot of them are written by individuals that aren't doctors. So it's a lot of psychologists. It's a lot of moms, influencers. Many of the books that were written on parenting back in the day were pediatricians like Dr Spock, you know the ones, the ones like that. But more recently, it's been therapists and parents, which is great. Give a great perspective, but it's just different than what you hear in the pediatrics office. And it's certainly nothing that I've seen has been from an integrative perspective, and I wanted something that's a little bit more balanced and has both sides, because what you miss from a therapist book is the health and the wellness perspective from from their books. I mean, they're, they're great in terms of what they deal with, in terms of tantrums and behavioral issues, and, you know, all of those things. But it's not health and wellness, but both things go together. So I really wanted to have that piece, especially because we're seeing such a disastrous rate of chronic disease, like 50% of kids have a chronic disease, and if anything that we can do to prevent it. That's what, that's what I, you know, really want to do. And that's why I even start the book in the first chapter talking about health and wellness, even before getting into the the newborn questions and the potty training and then all those other issues that that we get. Because I think it's so important to set a foundation of health and all those things relate to behavior and all those other things. But the therapist can't really talk about that because it's not really there. It's not really their their wheelhouse, just like therapy is not my wheelhouse. I can talk about that part, but the two things together, I think work really well that you make an excellent point. I agree with you. It's nice to absolutely wonderful to get a perspective from a pediatrician and an integrated pediatrician at that. So you bring up chronic disease and how it's increased to astronomical levels in children, 50% truly have chronic disease right now. The numbers are variable, depending on what research study you show, but most things show somewhere between 40 and 60% have some sort of chronic disease. NIH research shows 40 to 50% so it's somewhere around there. I mean, it doesn't whatever it is. It's way too high. What? What illnesses are we talking about that are included in that statistic? So really, everything, autoimmune conditions, obesity, diabetes, mental health conditions, autism, ADHD, eczema, allergies. So I'd say probably eczema, allergies, pretty, pretty big ones like 25% of kids have allergies now based on statistics, and in your opinion, what are some actionable things that parents can do to help prevent their children from being part of that statistic? So my thinking, and I think what a lot of the integrated community is really moving towards, is helping people to understand that what we do makes a difference, and our lifestyles make a difference. Every child can handle some toxins. They can handle some things that come their way, but our bodies can only handle so much, and these days, it seems like we're just exposed to more and more chemicals and toxins, whether that's in the air, in the water that we're drinking, sprayed on our food, and so we're we, we're we haven't been really taught or really thinking about that. We can be mindful of some of these things. We can be reading labels. We can be thinking about some of the things that we're either putting on our skin, putting on our bodies, the products that we're buying for our homes. And all these things can can matter, and they certainly add up and to me. So going back into the first chapter, one of the things that I really wanted to focus on were, what are some of the actionable things that you can you can really do at home to make a difference, because you can't change the air, you can't change the air outside. You're probably not going to change the water, but you can do things to affect the air in your home. You can do things to the water after it comes to your house. So there are, there are things that you can think about. And my mnemonic is seed. So stress, environment and toxins, exercise and sleep. And I start by talking about the DR Gator smoothie. So whenever you see somebody go on a talk show, right? It's always like the guru smoothie. You know, we could, we could take celery, we take carrots, we do this with that, and that's going to cure everything. And the reality is there's no such thing, right? So I really just wanted to play on that. And you know, the doctor, Gator smooth, the air quotes. You can't see it because the podcast, but I'm air coding. It's just the things that we can be mindful of. So that way we can really focus on the basics and the foundations and getting back to that. So I start with a big scoop of the seeds, and then things like getting out into nature, getting more sunlight, family, community, love, good access to care, good access to clean drinking water, sanitation, all of these things that that really are quite basic, but they they matter a great deal. And if I'm going to focus on two things, it'd be the food that we eat and the toxins that we're exposed to. So what? What tips can you give parents about the foods that were that were consuming that you would wish we were better about? So to me, when I'm asked, What's the one thing that would make the biggest difference, I feel like it's reading food labels. I think the very simplest thing that parents can do is just start to read food labels. You don't need to have a PhD in chemistry to figure out all the details on there. But if you turn it over the label, and you look at it and there are words on it that you don't know, it's probably not good for you. And ideally, you go find something with words that you actually know, so that has like apples and almonds and words that you know what it is, and it's most likely better for you than methyl Tetra. Doing whatever, right? It's probably not, not that good for you. And I think once you start to do that, then you become a mindful consumer. And then you do start learning about these things, and you start to learn what, what to avoid. You start looking at the amount of sugar that's in there. You start looking whether it has flavors. You start looking at some of these things, and you just pick things that don't have those. And that gets you a long way, because what happens, especially for kids, is we have great detoxification systems, right? We have liver, we have kidneys, we can sweat, we can get most things out, but chemicals build up in the body, and we're being exposed to more and more chemicals, and I just don't think that we're able to handle it at this point, and that's why we're seeing this spillover into chronic disease. And one great example, I don't know if you know, this study from Harvard. It was really cool study they did a few years ago. They were looking at soup, and it was they took some participants, and they gave them five days of a store bought canned soup, and then five days of a homemade soup, and inside the cans of store bought soup. A lot of times they have BPA. They have the BPA lining, which is like the plasticky lining so it doesn't touch the metal. And so they were measuring the urine BPA levels when they were giving them five days versus giving them five days of homemade soup, and the levels were 1,000% higher in five days from the canned soup, and it's like, we know that BPA is bad for you, but we don't think about these things, and it's just five days, like, that's not a lot. What if you're eating that soup or giving to your kid every day for the next five years? That adds up. And so if you're just mindful of some of these things, you can decrease their chemical load, and that's probably going to be good enough for most kids. So for parents listening, what should they actually tell their kids? That is it that when they read the labels, they should understand all the ingredients that are in the food, or is it that they should only have limited ingredients in the food? What's your actual actual advice for parents? I think it's trying to get families to look at the ingredients and understand what the what's on the label. So if you can understand the actual words, if you know what they are, and that, to me, is the most actionable step. I mean, ideally, you're buying foods as much as you can that don't have labels or actually know what the thing is. But if, if you're buying a bag of chips, instead of just buying the bag without thinking, turn it over, look at it and see if you could see what's on there, and you might be very surprised, like, Oh, I didn't realize they put red dye number whatever in this thing. Why do we need that? Well, maybe we can get this other bag of chips and it's going to have better ingredients. And that doesn't mean that you have to go from chips to broccoli this week, but if you eat a little bit better bag of chips, then you're getting rid of a few chemicals that your kids are exposed to every day. And maybe that's, that's one step, that's one little thing. And if you do that for everything, then then it does add up, and it makes a big difference. But today, I mean, I don't think that you eat a bag of chips at the end of the world, but it's if you do this every single day for the next 10 years. Yes, it adds up. It makes a difference. And each little thing that you improve their health, well, that adds up to a huge amount over a long time. Yes, no, when I was growing up, I'm really grateful to my mom, because she would let us have desserts, but the rule in our home was it had to be a dessert that she made from scratch at home. And to her credit, whenever we told her we wanted a dessert, she was more than happy to bake something for us. But that was the rule, which, now, you know that's been ingrained in me with my own family, so I'm appreciative that I learned that from a young age. I think that's great. I mean, the reality again, is I'm not an all or none kind of guy. I think some people go too hardcore on these things. I think you shouldn't deprive your kids of all all food, or they're going to potentially have have they're going to want to engorge themselves once they're older. So I think, you know, you're at a party, you have a piece of cake, whatever, but just, just manage it. Manage what you do at home, because that's the vast majority of the time that they're eating for the first few years. So you can control that. You can, don't buy stuff you don't want them to eat. It's just not in the home. So they're not going to have those snacks. If there's some, you know, crappy snack that you don't want, and just don't buy it, and they don't have it too bad if they don't like it. You're the parent, and we're eating healthy, and that's how it is. If they want to snack, you prepare it or buy them healthier snacks. And if they are out, then you manage and you say, okay, we can have a cake. We're going to have one piece, that's it, but you can, you can, you can have it, and then you're not depriving them, but at least you're controlling the vast majority of what they're eating, and that is going to get you 99.9% of the way. And that's all that we need to do, because, again, kids can handle most things, but it's when they're eating it all the time. Yes, I agree with you. I think we all probably can think of an example of somebody that we grew up with, or who was in our life where the parents were super, super strict, no sugar, no dessert, no treats, and then later they go on to rebel and seek out those, those treats. But I agree with you, I think parents have sort of swung the other way, where we're too afraid to say no to our kids that we have to give them french fries because that's the only thing they like. We have to give them pirates booty and Hot Cheetos because that's the only thing that they want to eat. I think for parents, it's a good reminder that we we can control somewhat what's in our home, and that's okay and good for our kids. Yeah, you bring up another big section in the book talking about the parenting styles, because I think that's again, going back to very classic parenting literature, but, but things were forgotten. I think, a lot over the last 50 years or so. You go back to the original like, authoritative versus permissive versus authoritarian parents. And when you think back to maybe, you know, 50 to 100 years ago, you really think of the authoritarian, domineering parents. They come home, they're like, my way or the highway. We're spanking this, that, this, that, and the other and we moved very far away from that because we learned that that's maybe not the best way to to parent. And there are a lot of concerns around things like spanking and very, very tough love. And so we moved over to more of the permissive parenting, which is kind of letting kids do whatever they want, and gentle parenting is kind of what what popped up. But the reality of gentle parenting is that it's not actually permissive parenting, it's authoritative parenting. So we want to still have some boundaries, but we want to be respectful to our kids as well. So some kind of middle or balance, which is usually the right thing, right somewhere in the middle is is usually the best, and a balanced parenting style is usually best, but kids most definitely function best with some boundaries. We know this through all of the research that we've ever seen in parenting. So permissive parenting actually not the best thing. You don't want to just give them whatever you want. You want to give them good, actionable, reasonable boundaries, so that way they can thrive. And really good example to kind of think that through, is is the classic. You're driving over a bridge at night, and it's dark and you can't see anything, and you can't see the walls, you have to go really, really slow, because you don't know what the boundaries are. But if you turn on the lights, then you can go much faster, because you have an idea of where your boundaries are. And kids and toddlers, especially, are very much like that, where they need some good, actionable boundaries to kind of know where to stay in between, so they can go Go fast. I usually tell parents to think of these two words, loving and boundaries, those two things should and can go together with so many things, with parenting, when it comes to sleep training, when it comes to discipline, I think you can provide boundaries, but do it in a, in a in a kind, compassionate, loving way, and it's gonna work out definitely. I mean, we all understand boundaries from a kid getting hurt like you don't. If they're running to a cactus, you know you're going to pull them back, right? You tell them to get hurt so that there's nothing wrong with boundaries, like boundaries keep you safe, but just reasonable boundaries. And kids crave boundaries. They want boundaries. Definitely, I think, I think any kid you you talk to knows that it's not in their best interest to eat candy all day, is to stay up, to stay up till all hours of the morning, and they don't feel good. But regardless of that, you're the parent, right? Our job is to keep them safe and healthy, and even if they love candy and want to eat every day all the time, well, they're not going to live very long, and they're not going to be very healthy if that's what they're eating. So our job is to teach them what is the what are the healthiest things to do to give them the best chance to be healthy? And then going back to other question about reading labels, that's a part of our job is to teach them how to eat healthy. And I think that's a big problem with the last 50 years, is that a lot of the last few generations of parents never really learned to cook. It wasn't really a big part of the lifestyle, you know, after the war and people coming back, or the wars, but, you know, 50 years ago, or, I guess, seven years ago now, things were faster, cheaper, better, right? That's what it was. It was TV dinner. It was, you know, both parents are working, and so let's, let's get something and we can just microwave it. And that was a big part of parenting for the last 50 years, but you lose something with convenience, and what you lose is health. What you lose is freshness. What you lose is natural ingredients and vitamins. And so we have to swing back the other way. Now I think again and start remembering about our roots and about cooking, and not every parent is great at that, and that might mean taking a cooking class or watching some YouTube videos to learn different things to cook, but, but that's a big part of being healthy, and then teaching our kids to be healthy, and it's a great opportunity to have family time. Maybe you cook with your kids, but they learn about ingredients. They learn about where food comes from. Food doesn't come from the grocery store. Just, you know, most kids think it comes wrapped in plastic and you ship away. No, it's like it comes from a farm. You know, people, kids don't see it anymore. They don't know where the food comes from, and they don't appreciate it at all, and neither do most adults at this point, and that's a big problem. I love your reminder that gardening can be really beneficial. It could be super beneficial. I mean, not just for your microbiome and for stress relief, but you learn how to get food, and you get food that you know isn't sprayed any chemicals or pesticides, which most stuff is. I mean, the reality of food is that even the best scenario, it's still gotta be sprayed in a lot of stuff, if you're getting it at the store, if you pick something from your garden, let's say a raspberry. How long does it last? It lasts like two, three, maybe four or five days. If you're really lucky, you think that stuff in Whole Foods or wherever was picked two or three days ago. No, it was picked like probably weeks ago, and then shipped across the country, or maybe from some other country, sat in a box for a while, went to a store, sat there a couple more days, then you picked it up. There is no way to. Stuff is fresh. It's sprayed in chemicals. It might not be sprayed in pesticides that were getting organic. Probably was sprayed in something but maybe not meeting the pesticide requirements, but it was probably sprayed in something else after to keep it, to keep it from going bad, you're so right. I think a lot about Dan buettner's Blue Zone movie on Netflix, where he shows Okinawa and their their population that lives a very long life on average, and one of the mainstays of activities that they do is gardening. They're moving their body. They're outside. They're preparing their own food from farm to table, so to speak. And I think that's it seems like something very helpful and healthy to do that we are not doing anymore on a large scale. Yeah. I mean, if you look at first of all, it's a great, great documentary, but if you look, you kind of go across all of the Blue Zones. The things that are very obvious and common are exercise and food, right? They're, they're, for the most part, in places where you're getting fresh food, which is absolutely obvious that that's important, because you're getting fresh nutrients from the ground, as opposed to something that's mass produced. And if you get something mass produced, then you're losing a lot of those vitamins, no matter how good you eat. And then it's movement, it's exercise, but it's not exercise. And like, Hey, let's go for a jog. Hey, let's, you know, go to the gym. You can do that. That's great, but it's like lifestyle exercise. It's places where they have hills. It's, it's individuals that that go back to their roots of the things that we used to do, like farming or cooking. It's, it's, you see all the grandmas, you know, in those in those shows, and they're like, 95 or 105 and they're in the kitchen, like rolling and working hard. They have muscles that are bigger than mine, and, it, you know, it's like, that's not exercise. They enjoy it. They're cooking for their family, but it is exercise. They're working all day, and that's why they live so long. Because, yes, they're working. So again, it's going back to, well, what can you do in your life to move your kids to a healthier place by getting exercise into their life in a fun way, not forcing them to do it? But you know, can you get them in an activity. Can you get out a little earlier and walk just partway to school? Can you encourage them to take stairs more than taking elevators? All these things that matter and just every day getting more steps, these things add up. I think what you're saying is so true, and it's so interesting, how the best things we can do for our life and for our health really are the simplest things, as you mentioned, just trying to eat healthy, trying to move your body. It's so basic, yet we've made our healthcare system so much more complicated than it has to be, something that I think about all the time. My husband's an internist. He takes care of adults, and what he says all the time is 95% of healthcare really has nothing to do with going to the doctor. It really has everything to do with how you live your life when you're not at the doctor. As you mentioned, how are you sleeping? How's your stress? How are you eating? How are you exercising? How are your day to day interactions? It really is not about the expensive medications and the CT scans and the MRIs and the fancy medicine that we now have in our world. Yeah. I mean, it's, I would say higher than that. I mean, not 9.9% of your life is really not not medicine. I think doctors are there to rule out serious stuff and to help treat you when, when it is very serious. I think doctors are like, we're really well trained in identifying problems and figuring out that it's not cancer or it is cancer, figuring out whether it's something serious, whether you need to go to the hospital treating it. But we really have very little training in prevention. We have very little training in nutrition and diet and exercise, and not that we necessarily even should. This is what I say with people asking, but I don't know that that's the best use of doctors. I don't think doctors could spend an hour with every patient. There's not enough doctors. That's not that's not the reality of the way that things are, and you do need a doctor to help you identify if something is very serious or go to the hospital. I think those are all great things. I just hope, in the long run, that we work in teams more. I think that's really the solution. I don't think it's we need to retrain every doctor to be a nutritionist. I think we have people that do that. I think it would just be really nice if insurance would cover it and programs would kind of work together. Because how nice would it be if, if a patient came to your office and said, and it's before seeing you like a dentist, you know, they go see the the nutritionist and the exercise therapist and whatever, and they had half an hour with each one of those people, and then they saw you at the saw you at the end for further conflict. This is something that could happen. It's not it's not an impossible thing. It just needs to be covered and it needs to be set up in that way. But you don't see the dentist for most of your dentist visit. So you could do the same thing in medicine too. It's just it has to be done in a way that is workable for everybody and basically everything in medicine, they don't. It's not paying enough anymore. So it's like nobody can do it. You can barely get paid as a doctor, let alone as a therapist, whatever. That's why nobody takes insurance anymore. And that has to change. If we want to prevent illness, we have to prioritize it. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of Ask Dr Jessup. That also, if you could take a moment and leave a five star review, wherever it is you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. It really makes a difference to help this podcast grow. You can also follow me on Instagram at ask Dr Jessica, see you next Monday. You.