Why Kids Are Sicker Than They Used to Be | Live Webinar With Dr. Joel ‘Gator’ Warsh

I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm starting to speak now. I'm starting to speak now. Hello and welcome to Frontline Health. Today we are with Joel Warsh, or as his patients call him, Dr. Gator. He's a passionate voice for children's health. He's a board-certified pediatrician based in LA, and he practices integrative medicine. Dr. Gator, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me on. It's an honor. Excited to chat. Yeah, definitely. So, today we're trying to answer the question, why kids are much sicker than they used to be. Dr. Gator, can you paint us a picture in numbers? Yeah, so as a pediatrician, my job is to help kids to get healthy. And what I'm seeing in society is really frustrating. What I'm seeing in medicine is really frustrating, because it seems like we're going in the wrong direction. And if you look very simply even at life expectancy, life expectancy is going down. But if you look specifically at kids, almost 50% or maybe even over 50% at this point of children have a chronic disease, 20% are obese. We're seeing anxiety, depression, autism, ADHD, mental health diseases. Everything is skyrocketing. Some conditions that were never even seen in kids, you know, maybe 20, 30, 50 years ago are skyrocketing up. And it's really, really frustrating as a pediatrician and as a dad to see the trend and the direction that we're going and not really feel like we're doing anything about it to make a change. Yeah, I also have two little girls and I worry, you know, what are these things catching up? Is it the environment? What's going on? How do you see it? How did we get here? What's this? Can you tell us a little bit about the history of this problem? Yeah, I think, you know, it's obviously not simple, right? It's multifactorial. But to me, it seems like over the last 50 to 100 years, we're seeing an increase in toxins and worse and worse food. I think those are the big two things. I mean, there's certainly lots of factors at play here. But especially when we're talking about chronic disease, obesity, diabetes, we know that our food is absolutely terrible compared to what it used to be. You know, after the war, you know, mid-century, we were all about faster, easier, simpler TV dinners and companies started to take over mass produced food. And, you know, in some ways, that's good because we won't need to get food for everybody. But at the same time, the convenience, we lose quality and we lose the nutrients that we need. And we're literally built of what we eat. And eating chemicals, preservatives, dyes, and those things build up over time and can lead to chronic illness. And at the same time, we're seeing more and more toxins, toxins in our chemicals, toxins in our air, toxins in our water. And so we're also having to deal with that, not to mention a sedentary lifestyle. So yes, technology is great and we can do things like this, right? But we're not outside. We're not farming. We're not cooking nearly as much when exercising. So that's a perfect storm for chronic disease. And then you add to that when we're talking about kids, right? Kids are growing and they're smaller and they don't have necessarily the same resilience as some adults have. They haven't lived as long. And these chemicals can build up even more so in their bodies because they're so small. And it's not surprising at all that kids are getting sick at this point. I mean, I don't think it's rocket science to figure out why. You know, we're inflamed. Our kids are inflamed. And we're getting this buildup of toxins younger and younger. And we're seeing conditions like we never have before. I mean, the easiest example is diabetes, right? Type 2 diabetes wasn't even something, you know, I googled it a couple of weeks ago and I was looking for what the statistics were. And it's like, well, we can't really find statistics from 50 years ago because I'm not even sure if it was around in young kids. And if anything, it was very negligible. And now we're seeing a third of kids with diabetes or prediabetes. And the average age of onset is 13 years old, which it's adult onset diabetes. That's what it's called, right? Because it was something that happened in adults for, you know, in general, poor lifestyle and diet and exercise choices. But now we're seeing it in kids. Right, right, right. That is a bit crazy how all these things are coming in. What I find is that a lot of people like to blame it on some, on one thing, right? Whether it's they just say they're just convinced it's the vaccines or they're just convinced it's this and this, or I just need to get rid of sugar and everything's going to be fine. But I like how you brought it up. It's multifactorial, right? There's a lot of things that are happening and you've got to clean up your act in many different ways. If your room is dirty, right, you have to do a full cleanup, right? Not just the floors. Right, exactly. So, but what do you see in your practice? What do you, what are the kids coming in to you these days? Like, how, what are you seeing on a daily basis? I'm seeing a lot more ADHD, a lot more autism, a lot more autoimmune conditions, a lot more eczema, allergies. You know, if you look at the statistics, I mean, I'm lucky in that I, I'm an integrated practitioner. So I have a very self selecting population. And most of the people that come to me are somewhat integrated minded or holistic minded already. So maybe they've taken some steps, you know, for their health, or at least thinking about it, not all, but definitely more than usual. But I mean, the statistics are scary. It's like 25% of kids have have an allergy. You know, I posted the other day, but I'm just I was just curious, you know, because this has come up. And I was like, how many parents have a child with allergies? And like 60% said click Yes, 60% of the people on my Instagram in your audience. Wow, yes. But their kids, one, at least one of their kids has an allergy. Like, that's insane. More than half of kids. I don't remember this as a child. I mean, I'm sure for sure that existed, right? For sure. But allergies, you know, there are peanut allergies that it was around. But you don't remember it as being common. It certainly wasn't one out of every two kids or so. It's, it's scary to me that this is happening. And I'm very concerned about where we're going for my kids and for everybody else's children. Because if we don't do anything different, at this point, you have two kids, one's going to have a chronic disease. And that should not be the normal we shouldn't be okay with that. I guess if you are okay with it, then that's fine. But I don't know why, as a society, as you know, medical establishment, as a parent, we're okay with with a coin flip that our kids are going to have a chronic disease in the first couple of years of life. And it's getting worse, right? The trends are worse and worse. Yeah, I mean, you look at autism, you know, if you go back several decades, it was maybe one in 10,000, then in the 90s, or so it's one in 150. Then more recently, it's one in 34. In California, there was a study recently that showed one in 22. So I mean, you know, whatever the numbers are, they're staggering, like, that's a staggering increase over just a few decades. And, you know, the counter argument to that is always, oh, well, we're better at diagnosis. And absolutely, we are, we're better at diagnosis. There's no question about it, that plays a role in this as well with some of these increasing numbers. But it's absolute BS, in my mind, that that's the reason that's what's going on. I mean, 40% of kids that have autism are nonverbal, we wouldn't have not noticed that. Yeah, they might have different diagnosis, but but potentially, but we wouldn't have not noticed that. So there's something going on. There's a lot of things going on. And there's a lot to be concerned about. And we need to do something about this. And I know there's a couple of people already writing in the comments, oh, it must be vaccines is the vaccines that and we have to address that, you know, there are problems with vaccines, we've seen it, it's not, it's not uncommon to see a reaction right after the vaccine. But what other things do you see? Or how is it just the vaccines? And what other ways other tools do you use to help kids that have certain problems? It's such a tough question, because we need a lot more research, especially when it comes to shots. You know, there's a lot more research that needs to be done, especially long term, especially with things in conjunction with each other in conjunction with society. But again, as a pediatrician, it's very frustrating to hear people always jump to one thing, because it's absolutely not one thing. I've taken care of kids that never had a shot that had certain conditions. So you can't blame things on one, one specific item. I think that's very close minded. And that's as close minded as medicine is, you know, right now that there's nothing going on. It's like, we have to find the balance, we have to think about this and come together, because it's absolutely not one thing. And for certain people, you know, can be let's take a medication. Yes, you can take a medication, have an allergic reaction. And that can be the cause or the trigger of some sort of condition. Right. But that's not the way that it is for most families, a lot of families, they're just living their normal life. Nothing specific that they can kind of put their finger on, but their kid develop allergies, your kid develop eczema, or their kid has lupus, or they developed diabetes or whatever it is. And the vast majority of that, I feel like it's just from our lifestyle from the simple things that we're doing differently now than we did in the past. So that's our diet, the foods that we're eating, I call it the foundations or the seeds of stress, environment and toxins, exercise, diet, and sleep. I think those are the basic foundations in my parenting book, you know, parenting at your child's pace. One of the things I wanted to talk about and kind of get to the root of was, what are some of the things that are foundational? I call it the Dr. Gator Smoothie. Thanks. Yeah, Dr. Gator Smoothie, because, you know, I wanted to like, a little bit mock that concept, there's like some magical, some magical smoothie, some magical thing that we can do to get to the bottom. There are a lot of things. So you take a big scoop of the seeds, stress, environment, exercise, diet, sleep, you need a lot more sunlight, community, family, love, nature, like these are the things that we're missing. And, you know, it's not, it's not a medication deficiency, it's a lifestyle problem. And we have the power to change that. Interesting. So when parents come to you to your practice, and you have really great reviews, I've read a lot of them. Is this something common that you have to just sit down with them and just explain to them the basics? Is this something that happens? Like, what's the number one or two things that you think most people just miss or don't get it right? I think the number one thing that people miss is being conscious with every single decision that they make in every purchase that they make about health. I think that people don't realize that all the small things matter. And we're, we're seeing in the news, we're seeing in the media, these days, certainly when I post about things, you know, let's say we're talking about autism, or whatever, whatever it is, obesity, it's like, oh, no, it's, it's, it's normal. We're just better. We're just better at diagnosing. And this is just our genetics. And that's just the way that it is. But that is not true. It's the messaging around health, we need to take responsibility for what we're doing, or what parents are doing for their own kids for all the purchases that we make, and try to purchase things with a health conscious lens. And that means reading labels, looking at the label, and seeing what ingredients are on there. And if you know the words, then you're halfway there. If it's a long chemical name, it's probably not good for you. Don't buy that thing. Don't buy something based on the packaging and the colorful labeling and the cartoon character. You know, if that's there, that's to distract you from actually looking at the ingredients for what you're purchasing. So that, that is the number one thing that I always tell parents is reading labels, not just about food, but also every other thing that you purchase, the things you put on your skin, what you put into your home, every single product, you have a health focused lens. And that's going to get you along a long way. Because yes, if you eat a bag of chips, is it going to cause you any severe damage in the short term? No, of course not, right? That's not that's not the reality. But if you eat that every single day, for many years, then it builds up in a really, really good example of this. There was an amazing study out of Harvard. And they looked at soup. And what they did with it with these participants was they were actually looking at BPA in the soup because soup cans are lined with that plasticky lining, which has BPA in it. So they took five days eating canned soup and five days eating homemade soup. And they took the urine samples looking for BPA. And there was a 1000% decrease in just those five days between eating the canned soup and eating the homemade soup. And it's so staggering just to see that much of a difference in a couple of days. But imagine if you love soup and you're eating or giving your kids canned soup every single day. Yeah, what difference is in your body? And yes, you have one day, okay, it's fine. Like, look how quickly you can make a change. But it builds up over time. And if your kid has a little bit of BPA, a little bit of BPA, a little bit of BPA, a little bit of a PFAS, a little bit of a phthalate, a little bit of lead, a little bit of this and that. How do you expect them to be healthy? How do you get them not to have a chronic disease, their body can't handle it. Their immune system goes haywire, and they develop a chronic disease, or they get an illness that otherwise would have been normal, like the flu, and they get really sick. Wow, do you want to go through all your five steps? Actually, I think, you know, let's, let's throw that back up. And let's go through each one. And, you know, I think our audience would enjoy listening to you, like, explain, let's talk about stress. Like, what do you mean by that? What is in your, you know, purview? Like, what is stress for kids? How is that important? So it's extremely important. You go back to the landmark research from 50 years ago, and you look at the participants that I don't know who's volunteering for these studies, but they're putting viruses in people's noses and just self reporting whether they were stressed or not, you had a two to three times increase in getting sick, reported that you were stressed, we know this, I mean, your immune system is is not built for a time when you're stressed at all time. Yes, stress can be a good thing, right? We have stress to get away from a lion or a tiger or whatever. I don't know, that's always the example people get who's running away from lions and tigers. I don't know. But that's the reason why we have it. So you can you can fight or you can get out of there, fight or flight, it's called. But today, we're living in a society with with chronic stress. I mean, babies are born to parents who are stressed. And that means their hormones are different. And that probably affects the baby. I would imagine that it does. Then you're born into to a world where, you know, you might have stressed out parents. So you're in a stressed out environment. Then as you get older, there are stresses that have been put on kids that never before, like the way that we we do our schooling these days. There's a lot more put on our kids, a lot more activities that the kids have. And there's not as much free free play and free structure. The news, you know, is running all the time, scaring people left and right. Social media, as your kids get older, they're dealing with looking at looking at others and comparing themselves to others. So stress is at an all time high. Mental health is at an all time low. Depression rates are skyrocketing. Anxiety rates are skyrocketing. It's like 10 percent of teens, something like that, you know, have have these diagnoses. Some very large percent of teenagers have contemplated suicide. You know, it's just the numbers are beyond reason. And whatever study you look at, they're just getting worse and worse and they just keep changing and they keep getting more scary. So what's your number one piece of advice for stress? I think it kind of depends on the age and for the kid, but certainly, you know, for the older for older kids, it's really just getting off the phones, you know, making sure that we we aren't getting our kids on the social media too early before they can really handle it in turning off the news. And I think just try not to compare yourself to others as much. And then on the flip side of that, really trying to focus on getting out into nature, a little bit more family time away from phone time. Like just some basic things you're probably not going to get your teenagers never be on the phone. But you can certainly implement in your house like no phones at dinner, no phones before bed, no phones when you first wake up. You can minimize them being on social media, you know, those kind of things. You can have discussions around it and it can make a big difference. Yeah, this definitely can lower the stress, but it also plays into the second point about the environment. Is that right? Getting out there. Is that what you mean by environment or is it to me? I mean, it's kind of a big a bigger term environment and toxins. So you can kind of take it from two angles. One, we're talking about toxins were surrounded by chemicals and toxins all the time, right? So whether in our drinking water, in our air, in the food that we're eating on the things that we're putting in our body. I mean, there are just so many chemicals and toxins. Most of them are unregulated or really haven't been thoroughly tested, certainly not tested in conjunction with others. And there are so many chemicals and products that are not allowed in other countries, but are allowed in America. And it's like totally fine to put food dyes and this and that in our kids food, but yet not in other other countries. So we're surrounded by these toxins. And then we're also not getting outside into nature. So that's the other half of environment. We need sunlight. We know that basically every condition is related to low vitamin D. Everybody is basically got low vitamin D at this point. We're not outside enough. We developed being outside. It doesn't mean you should get burnt and, you know, be in middle day sun and get, you know, the really dark tanning that some people do. But it means we're just not outside enough. I mean, we used to farm, right? And that's how we develop. We haven't changed that much in a few decades genetically. So we still need that to function at our most optimal. But yet the vast majority of people are deficient in vitamin D and deficient in nature in general. Fresh air, fresh air, which is being in the forest. You know, there's like people go out, you know, it's more woo woo kind of stuff, but not really. It's like forest bathing, being out in the trees, being in nature. I mean, we are nature, right? We're part of the world. And when you kind of lock people into a concrete city where you never get to really touch a tree, you don't put your feet onto the actual ground. You're not touching sand. I mean, think about how you feel when you go on vacation. You're by an ocean. You know, it's like, why do you feel so good just sitting there? Because that's what we're supposed to be like. It's not it's not magical like that. We're sitting by an ocean. You're just outside in nature. But but you feel good or you go to a, you know, a redwood forest and you're outside walking around like, oh, this is amazing. I feel so calm. That's just basic common. It's not magic, right? It's just you're in the environment that you're actually developed to be in, but you're just not in that most of the time. And we just don't think about it because we're so used to our lives these days. And you have a recommendation for how often we should be out in the in the forest or out in the nature? I mean, I think as much as you can, you know, I am a big realist, too. I'm not necessarily the person that's like, oh, well, everybody should just move to the forest and live out there. Some people do. I mean, I've had patients, you know, a good chunk of them that in the last four or five years with everything going on, I have moved. They moved to more rural areas. They moved to, like, you know, Montana and the mountains or middle of the country somewhere just to be in nature and to be around family more. So that's an option if that's something that you're interested in. But if not, at least once a week. Right. That's not that much to ask to take a little drive somewhere if it's not you don't live somewhere with with some nature and just go for a walk, go for a hike. You know, I guess it depends where you live, but you have to schedule it in. It's it's it's vital to your health. And that and of course, that that really plays into exercise. Sorry, I'm just realizing all these things. So, yeah, you're out there and you're having a lot more activity, right? You're moving around a lot. Yeah. Into the yeah, they're all connected exactly like you said, because it's the foundations, but by exercise. So to me, number one, I think even the word, you know, it's kind of an issue because it shouldn't be this thing that you think about like, oh, I got to go exercise. Oh, I have to go for a jog. Movement is what's important, whatever that is. It should be something that you enjoy doing, because I don't think that if you go back in time, people really exercise like we think of now. They didn't go to the gym. They didn't go for a jog for seven hours. They just lived their life. But their life was exercise. They were moving all day. They were walking to wherever they needed to go to to go to the shop. They were working in the kitchen all day. You know, you've seen those like the grandma's working and they're like rolling things and working hard. And they're in better shape than I have ever been five years old. And it's because they're not they're not exercising. They're cooking like they're living. But their work is is movement. I think it's a matter of building back into our lives, this like automatic continual movement and at least to start kind of focusing back on, OK, let's make sure we're getting kids outside more. We need more recess, more free time, more play. And then as parents, we need to make sure that we're structuring in some exercise, but not let's go for a jog. You know, unless that's what you like to do as a family. But like, let's go to the playground a little bit more. Let's go for a walk as a family. Let's make sure that we're we're doing things that involve movement. Maybe you're dropping your kids off at school and you don't go to the parking lot. Maybe you park a block away and then you walk with them. You know, whatever it is that you can just build in some exercise into the day. That's what's going to get you much farther. And ideally, it's not you work it in. So it's not something you have to plan every day. You work it in. So it's just that's what your day is like. And then you don't even have to think about it. Yeah, you know, like just from personal experience, I always find myself optimizing everything. So we need to leave just at the right time to get to school on time, just to get this and this and everything's just by the minute. But none of those things are factored in where like what you said, hey, just go park a couple blocks away and just walk to school for the last. Just have a good time walking on a good day when it's not raining. But can I say that what you just mentioned is probably a good chunk of the problem that we face all of us, right? Not you, not me, all of us. It's that we're so busy. We have so many things to do. Life is more stressful than it ever was in many ways. And so it's like, oh, you know, I got to just get my kids to school. I got to do this. I got to do that. And the way that society is built right now is really difficult for the modern parent and just for yourself in general to be healthy, because it's not built in a way that forces you to be healthy, right? Like lifestyle used to force you. If you had to work on a farm, there was no way you were going to be overweight. There was no way that you were not going to exercise. You were doing all day, right? If you're working in a kitchen, you're exercising. That's not going to happen. Our life is such that like, oh, you know, I got to get to work. I got to do this. So it's just something that we need to be mindful of. It's not that it's good or bad. It's just that's what it is. So we need to start to understand why we're here with this health problem. And it's because of that, right? It's because of like, this is how our life is. So I, you know, I got to get dinner on the table. I don't have time to make it. Okay, well, that's fine. But if we keep doing this, then all of our kids are going to be sick. And we're going to be sick, too. That's what we're seeing. Ah, it's so interesting that you mentioned that because it feels like the modern lifestyle has is optimized or has convinced us that we should optimize for productivity or for some kind of work outcome or some kind of, you know, time that you sit on your phone and you're, you know, scrolling on Twitter or doing some kind of activity on the computer, right, or watching, watching the next sports game. And our modern lifestyles are not optimized for health. And we don't think about it that way. It's not a priority. At least, like, now that you mentioned it, I realized it's not for me. No, it's not. I think for most people in a modern city, you know, especially Western society, it's not the way their lives are built. It's not our priority. Our priority is not health. Our priority, just like I said, is productivity. It's like getting to the next step, making more money, whatever it is. We've been trained and taught as we grow up that, like, this is normal. This is what it should be like. You should be working. You should climb the corporate ladder. You should do whatever. And it's not wrong. It's just that that's not that's not built for health. Like your lifestyle is not built for health. If you are a farmer, your lifestyle is built for health. You are you are, you know, I'm not talking about the chemicals in the spring, but like just in terms of working, right, like your your lifestyle is set up that you're exercising all day. And if you live in, you know, you look at the blue zones, right, there's all those documentaries on that. Where are the people that are the healthiest? Well, it's the people that have to walk all day because they live on a hill somewhere and they like they have to walk to get to what they're doing. They're not setting up their life to be healthy. It just is because they're moving. Right. And so we're here and we're going to have to decide whether we want to make changes in the way that our society works or not, or whether the way that we live our lifestyle or not, because, again, it's not it's not wrong. Like you're doing an awesome, awesome job. You're a host of a show, right? It's amazing. But but but you you have to make decisions of like, OK, so I'm doing this. Well, then do I want to be healthy? Then how do I incorporate that part into my life, too? And we don't think about that because nobody's telling us because medicine is not telling us right. Medicine is not talking about this. It's like, here's your treatment for your problem. But you have to have the problem first. Well, that's not where we are now. Now we need medicine to change gear and say, hey, there's a huge chronic disease problem. We need to prevent this from happening. But that's not where we are. Right. That's not where we are. Yeah, it's man, I'm just realizing a lot of things as we're talking. But because the next point about diet, you know, I my whole life I've been trying to optimize diet or just eat quick, like you're mentioning. And I don't cook. My wife cooks, but I just have so little interest in the cooking process and I have so little interest in up in, you know, just working in that or optimizing that that I have kind of put it on the on the side. And I'm focusing on, yeah, career and, you know, just accomplishing things. Maybe I do stuff around the house, I clean up. But yeah, how about diet? What's what's the secret there? How do you look at it? Yeah. So diet is one of the harder ones, I think, today, because even the best of food, for the most part, is not that great. I think we have a huge problem with our food in this country because you need real food, you need food that's fresh, that's local. And the vast, vast majority of our food is not that I mean, yes, if you can, ideally, you go to farmers market, you get to know your farmers, you get food at least as much as you can from local farms that that you know that they have good, good, good process. And they're not using a lot of chemicals. But the reality is, most people go to the grocery store, right? And if you pick something off of a tree, you pick a berry, you pick an apple, how long does it last for? Right? Just think about that. You pick something fresh out of a tree, like two, three, maybe five days, if you're lucky. But you really think that the food in the in the grocery store was picked within the last two or three days? Like, no, it was picked, who knows how long ago in some other country, shipped, you know, flown on a boat, wherever is in a big pile, shipped over here, went to a warehouse, then got on a truck, they went to your store, then sat in that store, then you got in any so it's like, it's not fresh, the nutrients are mostly gone. It's not the same thing that we used to be eating. And probably along the way, it was sprayed many, many times to keep it from going bad and looking, you know, all clean, like an apple does with it, you know, they cover it in wax and whatever. It's like, it's not an apple, right? That's not an apple anymore. And then you wonder why we're deficient in nutrients, or we're getting sick. It's like, we're not eating real food. So, you know, at least in practicality, it's everything's about steps, right? It's I'm not, again, extremists, like, oh, you know, we don't even have if you want to, that's gonna be better in terms of what you're eating, right? If you plant a garden and farm yourself, but nobody's gonna do that or not do it. But you can make small choices, like being mindful, reading labels, picking food that has real ingredients, trying to get more real food that doesn't even have a label, and then cooking a little bit more. And that could mean for you, oh, well, I don't like to cook, I don't care about cooking. Maybe you cook one meal a week. You know, maybe, maybe you cook one meal a week, let's cook two meals a week, maybe you're buying something that's processed and ready made. And instead you, you make it yourself, like your kids like chicken nuggets. Well, maybe instead of buying it from a fast food place once a week, you make it at home. These are the kind of small, real changes that people can make. And at the end of the day, we're very lucky, we have amazing bodies and immune systems and detoxification systems. And we can handle most things. But very clearly, we're getting to the point where it's too much. And we as parents need to think about all the small things that we can do that add up over time, because these things make a difference. And if you change one meal a week, well, that's one meal a week for the next 10 years, maybe becomes two meals, maybe if your kids start to like cooking, and they join in whatever it is that works for you. Just make those small changes with health in mind. And that may be more than enough to keep them healthy. I love that. Wow. I'm gonna start doing that. Actually, I had a friend come over once, it's a funny story. He comes in and he's like, Hey, let's let's have noodles. And I was like, Oh, we don't have noodles. He's like, Oh, let's make them. And I was surprised within five minutes, he whipped it up with a flour and an egg and mixed it up. We rolled it out, cut it up. And we had noodles, like, within 20 minutes, they were fresh. And they tasted better than anything I could buy at the store. And I was surprised that it doesn't take a lot of time. You don't have to think too much about it. Right. But it's this modern lifestyle that convinced us that it's easier, right? It's easier. And, and a lot of us never learned. Like, I think a huge problem for our, you know, our generation and the last, you know, the people that are somewhere between the parents are like between 20 and 40 or 50. Our great grandparents and grandparents cooked all the time. That's what they did. They had a lot more free time. It was a lot more traditional back then in terms of man goes to work and woman would stay home and cook. And that's not the case anymore. Now, you know, most, most families, both parents are working. And, and especially if you get into the last, you know, 50 to 100 years, a lot of families move towards both parents working. So then they didn't have the time to sit around in the afternoon and, and, and cook family. They didn't have the time to kind of put that in, or they didn't think that they did. And so they didn't really learn from their parents. And then we didn't really learn. And, and so we don't even know, like, we don't, we don't even know how to do a lot of it. And, and we don't realize how easy a lot of it actually is. Like there's so some things are hard. Obviously, I mean, they're complicated, right? You know, master chef puts in a lot of work. But most of the meals that you could have at home, you could do within 20 or 30 minutes, and you can have just a few ingredients. And they'll be better than anything you're going to buy that's pre-made. And you're going to like it more. So I, I even make the comments on it. And people ask too about it. It's like, well, sometimes you have to think about why aren't your kids eating it? Maybe the food that you're making is crappy. You know, this is like a reality check. It's like, maybe you need to take a cooking class, you know? And if that's what's going to be the difference for your kid's health, like, maybe you take a cooking class. You do it online. I don't know. There's a lot of ways to get better at cooking. But you never learn. I think a lot of people didn't. Yeah. Or, or think it's scary or don't think they're not optimizing their lifestyle for health. They are optimizing for other factors. Okay. And the last one is sleep. Let's talk about sleep. You have some insights there too. Yeah. Again, sleep is, is obviously important. I think we all know that. This one's not more of a rocket sciencey one. It's like, we need our time to rest and digest. We need our time for our body to recuperate. That's when we grow the most. That's when we toxify the most when we're sleeping. And so if we don't prioritize our sleep, if we don't make sure our kids are getting enough sleep, then we're running into issues. And the biggest, I would say, problem with, with sleep these days in kids is for the older kids because of phones and people on their phones, they're stressed out. They're going to bed later. They're talking to their friends. And that is not good for your mental health. It's not good for school. It's not good for, for anything. So we've got to get phones out of our kids' bedrooms and certainly no, no screen time right before bed. I think that that is very well proven at this point that it can affect your sleep. And mental health, right? Okay, fantastic. We are halfway through. Everybody who's joining us, thank you so much. People are coming from YouTube, from Twitter, from all kinds of places. And of course, Epoch TV. We're going to jump to Epoch TV to answer some questions. People have been submitting. We've been collecting them and simplifying them, making them a little tighter so we can answer them. And we're going to jump over. Dr. Gator, can you tell us a little bit about your book before we go? Sure. In the background there. Yeah, it's called Parenting at Your Child's Pace. It's available everywhere where books are sold. It's a great book if you know anyone who's pregnant or has a young child. The basics of it is that, you know, most books that are for parenting are created by therapists, psychologists, moms. They used to be created by pediatricians. Now pediatricians write more health books. But I think we need a parenting book that kind of blends the best of both worlds together. And the first chapter especially talks about health. It's the Dr. Gator smoothie. It's the seeds. It's the foundations of health, even before we get into the common parenting questions. And I try to give a balanced approach, right? Most things these days are so divisive. It's like this way or that way. And I try to talk about both sides and kind of bring it together and give examples. A little bit more fun, a little bit more humorous, but backed in science and research and kind of bring it all together. So that's the book Parenting at Your Child's Pace. Yes. And not only that, before we jump into the Q&A, we have some great news for all of our subscribers who are joining this webinar today. Dr. Gator has a special offer just for you guys. If you are a full price subscriber to the Epoch Times, you're going to get three months of free access to his VIP community, which is valued at $60. So you keep an eye out in your email for more details for this gift. And for those of you who are on a trial subscription, well, now is a perfect time to upgrade and join us at the Epoch Times. You'll be supporting interviews like this, webinars like this, where we can answer some questions for you. We are mostly funded by subscriptions. So thank you for all the subscribers who already support us. And if you are thinking about it, please join us and hope this will help you. And yeah, Lena, let's take a quick 30-second break, and we're going to be right back with Q&A with Dr. Gator.