How to Heal Eczema Naturally & Brainwash Your Man to Be Healthy | Dr. Ana-Maria Temple, MD

What is the disturbing warning that parents are not being given about eczema drugs like dupexant? You're trying to get my blood to boil. Number one thing is that it's called the biologic, when in fact it is a massive immunosuppressant. It knocks off a branch of the immune system from working. What do you tell new moms who are wanting to do no vaccines, but then they're starting to get worried about RSV, and so they're wondering, well, should I at least get the RSV vaccine? Okay, if we're going to say no to a vaccine, the RSV vaccine is a solid no. Here's a fact that is going to just upset everybody. 90% of children under the age of one get an antibiotic in their lifetime. And most often, it's your infections. And the number one antibiotic for your infections is amoxicillin. And what is an amoxicillin, guys? Red 40. Have you been wondering, how do I brainwash my husband? I mean, not just on any topic, but specifically on how to turn him into a Maha King. This episode is for you. It's also going to expose why eczema is not a skin problem. It is a warning sign. And most parents are being told to silence it instead of heal it. My guest, teaching us how to brainwash our husbands in a good way for the betterment of the health of them and our family. And also, heal your child's eczema as well as chronic ear infections. What they mean, how to heal them naturally. What about peptides for children? Did you know that children can be taking peptides as well? why sound machines are detrimental to your baby's well-being, the problem with most wet wipes on the market today and what to use instead, and so much more. By the way, you are going to love this episode. It's with Dr. Anna Maria Temple, a holistic pediatrician from Charlotte, North Carolina. She's on the show. You are going to love her personality. She is so funny and easy to listen to. It's going to be your new favorite episode. If I'm a betting person, this is going to be that episode. Watch this episode on the Real Alex Clark YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify. Please take a second to leave a five-star review for the show. Tell me the episode that you still can't stop thinking about. Please welcome Dr. Ana Maria Temple to Culture Apothecary. Are parents being misled by standard of care advice that's actually outdated? I would say yes, because there's so much data out there on eczema, for example, on vitamin D and the relationship between vitamin D and eczema, and no doctors are talking about it. And when that's brought up by parents, hey, are there any labs that we can do for eczema? The overarching answer from traditional physicians in Western medicine is no, and that's simply not true. I've never heard that. What's the connection between vitamin D and eczema? So vitamin D is an important nutrient that we have in our body, and our body actually uses sunlight to convert vitamin D from one form to another, which is a usable form for the body. And the body uses vitamin D to build strong bones, strong skin, strong brain, many other organ systems. And when the vitamin D levels are too low, the skin can become inflamed. Wait. So, okay, does this impact other things besides eczema as well in the skin? Your brain, your immune system. I mean, during COVID, there was tons of studies done on how do we prevent COVID. What vitamins can we take during COVID? vitamin D came up over and over again as the powerhouse to prevent getting a viral infection. We've shown that in influenza, in RSV, in the common cold and flu, that vitamin D levels, when they're adequate in the body, helps the immune system prevent major infections. What are the biggest changes in pediatric medicine that you've witnessed since you first became a doctor? Oh, gosh. Well, you know, when I first became a doctor, that was like, 2003. We don't have to tell people. And then I had a massive life shift in 2016. My family and I, we quit our jobs and we moved to New Zealand and we lived in New Zealand for a year and a half where I decided that I was going to practice medicine differently. I was like, no more, we're going to do it different. And they gave me one hour patient appointments at Wellington Children's Hospital, where in an hour appointment, I was able to really dig deep into the root cause of kids' illnesses. And we were really getting to the matter at hand. And so by the time that I came back into the U.S., I was doing it differently. So by then I came with a different, complete different mindset and different shift in what how I was doing. So, yeah, medicine has changed significantly. So you ended up kind of falling into this more holistic mindset by accident, just because at the hospital you were working at, New Zealand, they did medicine differently. so you just learned on the job? Well, actually, I learned differently because my children were covered in eczema and they dealt with seasonal allergies and asthma and ADHD and chronic constipation and recurrent ear infections. And that was 2007. And I was tired of the same answer, which was more meds. Like for my son who couldn't go out for an Easter egg hunt because his eyes would swell shut and his tears would stream down his face and his body was covered in hives and he would rip his skin off so we couldn't go outside. When I took him to the doctor, the answer was, we've run out of medications. He was on five allergy medicines at that time. And they said the only next option is allergy shots. But he was two years old. Jeez. And for my daughter, for her asthma, they're like, well, she can just continue her inhaled steroids because those are working for eczema. They're like, well, the topical steroids for her allergies are a Zyrtec and for constipation. They were like, Miralax daily is working fine. And don't worry, she's going to outgrow her chronic ear infections. By the time we got to my kid with ADHD and chronic sinus infections, I stopped paying attention. That's when I became shifting my thought into what I'm going to do. I just got to put it in practice in New Zealand about, you know, 19 years later into how I can do it differently for other families. So what was the shift that you made with your own kids and your family when they're dealing with all of these issues that you noticed the biggest difference? Well, you know, and probably a lot of people can relate to this is after I went to that doctor visit with my three little ducklings on a doctor's table. And I was like, why are my children all having so many chronic meds? What is happening? And the answer was, you know, more meds. And so I felt unheard. I felt dismissed. I felt like a crazy person because there was no other answer. And I didn't know what the answer was. I was five years into my medical practice at that time. I walked out of that doctor's office and I was speechless. I was like, this is how people walk in and they walk out with no answers. But the mama warrior took over and she was like, oh no, oh no, no, this is not the rest of these children's story. I don't know how this story is going to go, but I know the ending. And the ending is we're going to figure this out. These kids are not going to need medicines and they one day are going to be the examples by which other families are going to heal their children. So a week later, with this new mindset, I went to my kids' elementary school where the nutritionist was giving a talk. And I walked in, I was like, I'm the pediatrician. And I know what she's going to talk about, right? And it was there on a Tuesday morning, 7.30 in the morning, freezing my butt off in a first grader's classroom that the fog lifted. And I realized the root cause of my children's chronic disease. All that the lady talked about was sugar. And I had no idea how much added sugar was in my children's breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was giving them strawberries at lunch and I was giving broccoli at dinner. So I felt I was giving a whole rounded meals. I did not realize the impact of added sugar. And so that night I came home after my clinic in my stilettos and walked into the pantry and I throughout the cinnamon toast crunch, the Lucky Charms, the Pop-Tarts, Toaster Strudels, the chicken nuggets, chocolate milk, you name a garbage. We were eating it. And that is when the big change happened. Unfortunately, I became an outcast in my own family because my husband, who is an orthopedic surgeon, and I fought over food over the next five years. Whoa, hold on. Five years. Okay, wait, I need to know how this ends and then I want to get into it. So is he now, has he come around? He's a convert. He's now an apostle. He calls it complete brainwashing. Okay. So this is honestly, I feel like I could do a whole episode with you on this because so many of the women in my audience are struggling with this. They have seen the light. They're all into Maha. They are wanting to change the grocery list. They're wanting to spend more on groceries. So they're spending less at the doctor's offices. And their husbands are like, what the heck are you doing? I hate this. I'm not on board. And so what did you do to get him on board? Most of the time people are like, oh, my kids are picky. I'm like, I bet your husband's pickier and more annoying. I will tell everyone this to make everyone like, because, you know, when they see me coming and if they see my social like, oh, my God, she's just eating like this and everyone eats like this. And it's amazing. I'm like, yeah, that's because I didn't have Instagram in 2007 for you guys to see at the dinner table. And I'm not making this up. I would make this meal and there would be a box of Cheez-Its on the ground next to my husband, who's six foot five. He's a big dude. And he would lean over and grab crackers and then like eat them in between his bites of food. And then the kids would be like, well, we want crackers. And he's like, well, no one can see me. I'm like, they're not blind. Okay. We could all see you, that you're eating crackers, that you're holding next to your chair under the table. This is what I had to work with. And he was like, you know, I can eat whatever I want to. You know, the food has nothing to do with it. I work hard for the money. I can eat whatever, blah, blah, blah. And then it was like, why is our grocery bill going high? So, but here's my approach. I knew that going hardcore was not going to end well because, right, he always, let me tell you something about an orthopedic surgeon, man, there's a lot of ego at play and he is right all the time in his mind, right? So I was like, well, if I come in hot, it's not going to go. So I, you know, I was like, Jedi mind tricks. And I'm a patient, perseverant woman. I will sit and wait and I know I will outlast everyone's willpower. And so I was like, okay, you know what? I'm going to go with the kids. And the kids were like, hey, guys, we're going to have smoothies. And our smoothies are going to be ice cream, literally vanilla ice cream, strawberries, and milk. And who wants an ice cream strawberry shake for breakfast? And they were like, well, that's amazing. Mom's lost her mind. I'm like, perfect. But what happened is I got him to buy into the smoothie. for the husband. I was like, we're going to do smoothies and I want the Vitamix. But by the way, we fought over the Vitamix. He's like, it's just a blender. I'm like, sir, it is not just a blender. Anyway, finally convinced him to get the blender. That was like year one of change. Get the Vitamix from Costco. And so I'm making smoothies and then the kids are eating, drinking the smoothies. And then over time I started like removing the ice cream and replacing it with yogurt. And then I started replacing it with Greek yogurt instead of the vanilla yogurt and all the added sugar, maybe a little raw honey that's unfiltered, maybe some dates. And then the milk became oat milk. And then it was like mangoes. And then it was vegetables. And, you know, the smoothie took this shape. And over time, my husband started going like, OK, well, that's not so bad. But I didn't ask him to have a smoothie. I didn't give him a smoothie. The kids and I were eating a smoothie. And he's like, I mean, it won't kill me to have a smoothie. So then he's drinking a smoothie and he was still eating the cereal as a kid started not eating cereal because I was making And the smoothie is more protein rich and more nutritiously dense. So then I didn't say don't eat Lucky Charms. Yep. That was just for the intro story. I said, we'll just eat the smoothie. And when you're done with the smoothie, you can eat the Lucky Charms. But I knew they would become filled on nutritionally dense food. And they're going to not want to eat that. So it wasn't, I was not a no culture. I was like, sure. But first do this. This is genius. Right. And it was just a small thing. And then I was like, I started replacing the crackers. Hey, guys, instead of Cheez-Its, how about was it back to nature at that time? These are real ingredients. We're just if you can't eat it, don't eat it. We're working on these ingredients for my patients, guys. I need you to taste these crackers. Well, over time, we had all these crackers. So my husband would be like, oh, let me let me try that cracker. You know, let's see how bad that cracker is. And then the kids and I would watch a documentary. It was Food Inc. Oh, my gosh. So funny you bring this up. This was the documentary that radicalized me. Really? Yes. Stop. Food Inc. is it. Right? Yeah. I mean, I just was like, hey, guys. And fed up. Food Inc. is fed up. And that was our next one. This is why we're like, see each other. Yeah, I know. And so we did Food Inc. Again, it was just the kids and I. He was not invited to the show. But then he comes lurking. He's like, what are you guys watching? It's always the dad. The dad is always like, what is this crap you're watching? But then they'll sit there and they're like, but they're watching it. They're judging it, but they won't leave. Correct. Correct. It's a documentary. So it's very, it's a lot of learning. and John is all about facts and learning. And he's like very cerebral. He's like, I wonder what this is. But, you know, approaching with like a skeptical eye. And then he was like, oh, grass fed. Okay. And so all of a sudden he starts thinking just a little tiny different. Maybe we have a little less fight over the meat that I'm purchasing. And then we do fed up. And the kids have a, they were like appalled. We can't believe you let us eat that much added sugar. Like what kind of mother Lester can't eat this much sugar. It's good. I was like, okay, I'll take it. That's fine. No problem. And so because they're talking, now he's thinking. But it wasn't like he changed. But I'll tell you the change that happened. It was five years into this whole thing. He got so sick. So sick. We were going to France. And he is coughing. He's a disaster. He's coughing up blood. I'm putting his pants on. He's a six foot five man. Did I mention that? It's really hard to put pants on this giant man. And I was like, we're going to urgent care because tomorrow we're going to Paris. So you either stay home and I'm no joke. I'm like, we're not going to, oh, we're all going to stay home. Oh, sorry, dude. You're staying home. See ya. And so we take him to urgent care. He has double pneumonia. His action level is down. He puts on antibiotics. Yep. He comes to France. He literally, I think, almost died on the plane there because he felt so sick. But he's like, well, I'm going. I'm like, okay. No mercy. We walked nine miles. I'm like, that's your problem, dude. And he came back and he's like, okay. why is no one else sick why am i the only one that's sick wow yes and i was just like i had no idea i i don't know it's weird so i didn't go into a lecture so this whole journey there was no lecturing there was like you should do this it's living by example you gotta live by example i just shut it i talked to the kids they're my you're my little apostles they're my little learners they don't have a choice on this right yep i'm changing their diet we're doing our thing you do your thing guy. You're good. But he started changing. All of a sudden he's reading men's health and like sending me photos of what they recommend for breakfast, which is tons of vegetables and good protein. You know, then he listens to In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan because he loves audio books. Then he gets onto a podcast that's a dude talking about dude things about nutrition. And all of a sudden he's like, did you know that cereal was not the same? So he becomes a Huberman bro? Yeah, yeah. Totally. Totally. He goes on. He's like, do you know alcohol is bad for you? I'm like, really? Wow. No, I had no idea. So it was kind of like, and when I talk to my mamas, I'm like, do not lecture. Do not talk at them. Do not try to convince them of anything. It has to become their idea. It's like, guys, in my big fat Greek wedding, literally that's the mom's quote. He's like, we have to make sure it becomes his idea. And then he's on board. Truer words were never spoken. And so it was just, I kind of dropped things. Like you watch documentaries with your kids. You listen to a podcast in the car with the kids. You talk to your kids. You just do not involve, you don't, you know, with teenagers, I always go, I'm like, you act like teenagers are feral cats. You don't go at a teenager. You don't go try to hug them. You don't go like, what'd you do at school? What's going on? How are things going? Because they hate that. You act aloof and then they come seek you. They're like, wait, do you want to know about my school day? That's so interesting. Tell me more. And the same thing with husbands. Just leave them alone. And you do you. You work out. You do your water. You do your skin. My husband has made fun of me and my skin for the longest time. Guess who was putting products? And he's like, wait, what are you doing? So should I? Retin-A. You think retin-A is? I'm like, oh. This is great. So this is an amazing success story. I love that you said don't become a culture of no. That's really important, I think. Yes, because otherwise it becomes so negative and it becomes contentious and it becomes you versus the children or you versus the husband. So another example, when we went to change the diet to snacks, and I'm all about small changes. You cannot change everything in one day. It's not sustainable. You lose your mind. Everyone's upset. But when we did in the snack phase, I was like, sure, you guys can eat your Cheetos and Doritos. But before you do that, you have to eat a fruit or a vegetable. And they're like, oh, I'm like, that's fine. You don't need to. Then you're not hungry. You don't need anything because no one needs snacks. Only Americans need snacks. Turns out the rest of the world doesn't need snacks. I don't know what's with us, but apparently we're all going to die if we don't have snacks. And so the kids were like, fine, I'll eat an apple, I'll eat a banana, you know, and then they would eat their Cheetos and Cheerios and whatever. And then over time, then I started changing out those snacks and got rid of food coloring, whatever. But it was very gradual and very slow. And so then when they would come home from school, they'd be like, we're so hungry. And if I was home from work, I would have a charcuterie platter ready to go on the counter. Because it doesn't matter what you tell me, how picky your children are, how much they complain. When food is cut up for them right in front of them with a nice presentation, they will eat it. So good. But if it's not there and they have to open the silver box known as the refrigerator, they can't. They become blind. They don't see it. You could have the strawberries cut up in the fridge and they will mold. They cannot see it. It is this blinding object. I'm always like, this is this phenomenon that happens with children, especially with teenagers. And kids are going to go to the pantry because it's easier to grab a snack that's already in a package. But if they're intercepted by a delicious food sitting on the counter when they walk in, Yeah. They'll eat it 90% of the time. And husbands too, I think. And the husbands will eat it because you know what dudes like? Things that are easy and already made for them. I have not had anybody break down how to brainwash your husband so well on this show. I'm an expert. I'm making a shirt. Everybody's talking about peptides for adults. Are you on peptides? I'm on peptides, actually. Okay. So I haven't started this yet. I really want to. What are you taking and why? Okay, so I tried the injectable ones and my body said no thanks. I got all these bruises and like fat thickening and I'm a thin person. And it was like, I mean, I look like a disaster. I look like I was like shooting myself up with like all kinds of weird needles. So my body was like no thanks. So I do capsules and I do BC-157 and TA-1 and I do them for hand arthritis. I'm 52 years old and arthritis runs in my family, despite all the anti-inflammatory things that I do in my life. They're still a component to inflammation. So I've been using peptides. And you know what? I've used those two for a couple months. I ran out and then I was off of them for like a month or two because I'm like, by the time I order them, do they do anything? And my hand pain came back. Okay, I need to get those for my mom because she's struggling with arthritis pains right now with her hands. Yeah, so I restarted them. Arthritis pain gone. Interesting. Yeah. Again, right. You can be just one thing. It's a combination of things. We got to do the anti-inflammatory diet. We got to watch our stress. We got to sleep. We got to deal with our stress with all the different things. And then you add peptides to the whole thing. So people are raving about peptides for adults, but you are the first person I've ever seen talking about peptides for your kids. What peptides should we be giving our kids? What do they do? What are they for? How do you do it? I'll tell you, peptides is like when you're in the AP course. Peptides are for the folks that already have done the foundations. Because the problem is we have... They've been listening to Culture Apothecary for a while. They're good. They've implemented nutrition. They're my star students. The star students who've done the nutrition. The kids are outside. Their screen times are limited. The kids are sleeping. They're pooping every day. They're exercising. They're moving. I just, I cannot reiterate enough because we're a culture that has supplement FOMO. And so I will sit and talk about nutrition and people are like, so what vitamin, you know, I'll talk about sardines, like sardines, omega-3s and vitamin D. And people are like, cool. So what supplement should I take? I'm like, sardines, people. They're like, right, that's gross. What supplement should I take? When it comes to peptides, the peptides are not going to work if the foundation is weak or broken. So for my kids with eczema, I will do the BCP-157 and KVP. and it's a fabulous combination. I only use one place where I will get the powders or the capsules. It's integrative peptides that I've talked to three different peptide gurus, like the gurus, this is what they do, this is what they speak on. And I'm like, what can I do? And this is the company that they all use. So, and then they have a powder that's really great to decrease inflammation for kiddos. And then the Thymogen 1, TA1, that's for global inflammation for kids as well. So when you say a powder, is it like a flavored thing you put in water or something? Yes. So it's got like the two, the BCP-157 and KPV. It's got acromensia. It's got inulin. It's got a couple of different things that work on the gut microbiome and on the amino acids that we need to decrease inflammation. Do you need a prescription? Nope. So where do you order it? Integrative peptides. Okay. Not affiliated. Just on. Most people don't actually know anything about their health. They know what TikTok told them to take last week, but they don't know what's happening inside their body. And that's really not your fault. The system doesn't test deeply. You get basic blood work done at the doctor if you ask. 20 markers, maybe. Someone says, well, everything looks normal to me. And then you're sent home to manage chronic fatigue, mood swings, weight gain, or inflammation on your own. Jevity exists because that's not good enough. They run one of the most comprehensive biomarker panels available. Over 90 biomarkers tested twice a year. So they can actually see what's happening with your hormones, nutrients, metabolism, and inflammation. Real data, no guessing. They'll send a phlebotomist to your house. You don't have to leave and go anywhere. 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And if it is wrong, they will fix it because, you know, they're nice people. So yes, put lipstick on a pig. Just make sure it's Adele natural cosmetics. Use code Alex for 25% off your first order at adelnaturalcosmetics.com. That's code Alex for 25% off your first order at adelnaturalcosmetics.com. What do parents know about doing parasite testing on kids? Yeah So when it comes to parasites that is also the rave That is the rage Everyone is like let talk parasites And I like are we eating processed foods Because if we eating processed foods we are not a parasite Again this is extra credit We done all the things If we go back into evolution and how we used to live we used to live on farms On farms you live with the animals and the poop and the cow poop of the dogs and the sheep. And you play in the dirt and you kind of wash your hands, but kind of not really wash your hands. And then you eat. So we're filled with parasites when we live on a farm. And you have parasites and you have bacteria and your fungi, the human body is made to work in harmony with all of these things. It's in our modern world where things are off balance. We can never get rid of all the parasites. We can never get rid of all the bacteria or all the candida. If anybody goes, and then we're going to get rid of everything. That's not true. All you're trying to do is decrease the bad guys. So the good guys are, there's more good guys and less bad guys, but parasites are not all bad. In some things, so I treat autism. I treat alopecia totalis, which is when the kids lose all their hair. I treat pandas. And we will use parasites for that. It's the egg of the rat tapeworm. It's called helminthic therapy. And where we have the children ingest parasites. Oh, really? Yep. And so because parasites and bad bacteria, well, in quotes on a podcast, you know, I'm doing quotes, guys. bad bacteria and candida and also the reason they're in our microbiome is in order to exercise and work the good guys the good guys need to be stimulated so they're on guard so we're not falling asleep they're not bored they're like always protecting us but they need the bad players in order to stay vigilant and protect and create antibodies and know what's up and so not all parasites are bad so some people are you know because they're like and then i did this cleanse and look what was in the toilet. Sometimes what they see in the toilet is actually the lining of the intestine. Ooh. Because the lining of the intestine is a long, slimy goop that looks like a worm. So we want that. We don't want to remove the lining of our intestine. I'm saying some people are doing such aggressive things to their kids' bodies and they think they're successful, but they're just stripping the lining of the intestine. Well, how do you know? How do you know if it's really a parasite or if it's intestinal lining? Exactly. Most parasites move. So are you against doing parasite cleanses? No, I am pro doing all the basics and we're not getting where we need to. The body is not able to rebalance itself. When we do the basics such as, you know, eczema, whatever chronic illness we're dealing with, nutrition is going to be micronutrient repletion. We talked about vitamin D, but there's zinc. There's omega-3s. We got to do the gut microbiome. Are we on digestive enzymes if we need to? Are we doing some herbal supplementation? Are we using the proper probiotics for whatever the issue is? And are we dealing with stress? Are we pooping every day? Are we exercising? Are we outside? Doing all the things we talked about. That normally fixes the body. You don't need to go to the peptides. You don't need to go to the parasites. If that doesn't fix the body, okay, now we might need a little extra help. And then we do specific parasite cleanses. And there's got to be specific symptoms to it. It's not like, well, they're just not talking. Okay, that doesn't give me an idea of if this is a parasite or not. I'll give you an example. One of my patients were doing great. Everything was coming right, neurological inflammation. During the day, her behavior, she was throwing air doctors. She's ripping curtains off the wall when she's going into an episode. All that is amazing. This is like a child with autism? Child with pandas, neurological inflammation. And the child's doing great. Nighttime, we just can't hold on the symptoms. and at nighttime, she wakes up and has fits where she has to be taken on a car ride. She's four on a car ride to fall asleep. Otherwise, she loses her mind. That gives me the impression, oh my gosh, after everything we've done, everything has gotten better. We just can't fix that. That sounds like parasites. And so we're working on that. And we started Parasite Cleanse. The kid lost her mind, unfortunately. Sounds bad. It's good. That means we are where we need to be when we have, that we've basically triggered the body because we are now killing the parasites. So now we have to, I'm creating now a protocol to do that a little gentler. So it's called a Herxheimer reaction when you actually give a supplement or a medication to treat something and the opposite happens. So for example, I will treat kids with eczema, with fluconazole and their eczema gets worse. And the parents are like, oh my God. I'm like, no, that's good. We're killing the yeast. When the yeast dies off, it irritates the skin more. We are where we need to be. Now we just gotta be prudent about all the other things we do to support the system. So we kill the yeast without triggering too many flares. So when this kid with pandas freaked out with the parasite cleanse, what did you tell the parents? Well, we stopped and we're going to go on a low histamine diet because, again, it's a long story and how, you know, but the child reacts to histamine. So we're going to go on a low histamine diet. Which low histamine diet, what does that look like? That is a very restrictive diet. And I always tell people, I'm like, before you do any restrictive diets, please work with a functional nutritionist. When people do restrictive diets on their own, most of the time they end up with orthorexia, which is fear of food. And the children end up eating such few foods that is actually becoming, you're doing the opposite. You can't heal when you're eating like three foods. So low histamine diet is going to be, you know, if you think of a charcuterie board, everything on a charcuterie board is high histamines, cold cuts, smoked cheeses, nuts, red wine. Okay. I hope the children are not drinking red wine, but the highest histamine food on earth is red wine. For all my adults who drink red wine and turn red. I have so many adults that drink wine and they're like, I get blotchy. I was like, because you're having a histamine reaction to the red wine. That's not a good sign. And so those things, leftovers are high histamine foods, spinach, strawberries, avocados, bananas. So whenever we want to remove a food out of a diet, we always have to have a replacement. So my families, my patients, my clients, when they're like, I think that spinach is causing an issue. I'm like, cool. What are you going to replace it with? You can't be just, I'm not going to give them spinach. The right answer in that case would be kale. Kale is a low histamine food. So, but you have to be cognizant when you've removed dairy, what are you replacing it with? When you remove gluten, because that has fiber, that has a lot of good nutrients. What are you replacing it with? You can't be like, oh, I'm just not going to eat dairy. I'm not eating gluten. I'm not eating eggs. I'm not eating nuts. I'm not eating soy. I'm not eating corn. Then we're going to need four foods. And it's usually processed foods that are horrible. For an adult who's struggling with pandas, what are like the first three things you would tell them to do? Number one is going to be stress. I tell you, if it's pandas, if we're dealing with eczema in adults, name a condition, a cancer. Number one, two, and three, stress, stress, stress. In the American culture, stress is the most under-recognized toxin. The number one skipped chapter in my eczema program, the stress and anxiety chapter. We've had to rename it overwhelm because everyone's like, we're not stressed. I'm like, wait, your children are scratching themselves to bloody messes at night and you're not stressed. Get out of here. Yeah. Folks with pandas, the people are screaming. They're losing their mind. They're having these horrible tics. You're not stressed. Get out of here. So stress, number one, two, three for my adults. Number two, I'm not going to be anyone's fan. Alcohol. Gotta go. Like zero alcohol. If you're dealing with pandas, alcohol cannot be in your life. And number three, processed foods. Well, I would say nutrition because you got to do processed foods, lower sugar, and eat whole foods. But that's a big one. Yeah. Number three. Are we breaking a child's immune system every time we pop a fever? So, right, doctors and nurses, we have created a fever phobia. And because every time that the child has a fever, if you call your doctor's office, the first thing they'll tell you, give them tonal and motor. If you take them to the ER, the first thing they give you, Tylenol and Motrin. And we have become just not educated or I don't even know the right word about the human body, right? The human body creates fever because it's under attack. And when we have fever, the body mounts an immune response. It's more efficient, more effective when we're doing fever. An example I like to use is, okay, let's say your child is exposed to influenza. Here comes flu. The flu virus cannot live on its own. It has to live in the human body. And it uses the human body to replicate itself. It uses us as a photocopy machine. So the flu virus and his 50 friends come into your child's body and start to use the body as a photocopy machine to make more copies of itself so it could live. The human body doesn't like that. So it says, what's up? Hold on. We're out of invasion. Let's raise the thermostat. When it raises the thermostat, the child gets shivery and starts shaking. They turn pale. Their hands and feet are a little bluish. They're like, I'm just so cold. I'm so cold. That's the body trying to make the muscles move really fast to raise the temperature. The body raises temperature 103. The parent panics 103. Oh my gosh, this is horrible. But the body is like, no, at 103, I'm turning the photocopy machine off. Now the flu virus cannot replicate itself anymore. And now I'm making a ton of antibodies. And now the 50 guys that came in to invade, maybe it's 200 now. But now at 103, the body's made a million antibodies. and now it's kicking the flu virus's booty. So when you've got a new mom, and I know you get these people, and their new baby, they've never had a kid before, has a high fever, and they're calling you Dr. Temple. Yeah. There's a fever. I mean, what is the number you're like, okay, that's worth calling your doctor. Everything else, don't even bother calling me. Like, what's the number? 105. Okay. I don't want to give a number, but no one, they're like, I just need a number. I'm like, fine, 105. Okay. 105, you're like, okay, Let's do a fever reducer, not because of brain damage, not because of organ damage, because the parents can't deal anymore. If your kids had 105, what would you do? They did. And I didn't do anything. So just comfort them. I took my one of my kids and he was laying on me. He was a hot potato. And I took him to the doctor's office just to make sure I don't treat my own kids. And just to make sure there's nothing else going on. Hey, listen, I'm cool. Just look at him. Make sure with an objective eye, because I tend to be like, they're fine. Make sure nothing's going on. they wouldn't let me leave the office until I gave them Tylenol. Stop it. I got bullied at my own private practice's office to give my child Tylenol. I was like, he's fine. He's like, he's so febrile. He's hot. I'm like, well, of course he's hot because his immune system is kicking booty right now. Anyway, but I want to go back to the example with a flu virus, because what happens when we give kids Tylenol and Motrin or any fever reducer, whatever home things you want to do. When you lower the temperature, the body's immune system slows down. The photocopy machine gets turned back on. The flu virus is like sweet ass and is like replicating itself. Now you have a million flu particles. You only made a thousand antibodies. Now your child is sick for two weeks and now you're annoyed because you have, if you let the fever do its thing, the kids are going to be sicker for less time. What are your opinions as a pediatrician on the changes made to the childhood vaccine schedule? Fun fact, I've already made most of the changes eight years ago. So I am on board. One of the first thing that the CDC changes were that the hepatitis B vaccination at birth should be a discussion rather than like an automatic thing. and forever and ever, I was like, listen, the hepatitis B vaccine was started in the 1996 when we had a massive epidemic of hepatitis B and hepatitis B leads to liver cancer. So in my book, it's one of the first vaccines for anti-cancer and they couldn't get it under control. There's so many people infected with their chronic hepatitis B carriers. You can never get rid of it, la la la. They gave it to the babies, newborns, because that's what we're able to decrease the rates. Cool. Also in the 80s, the rates of getting hepatitis B, from a blood transfusion was like one in three. One in three, if you had a blood transfusion. Now it's one in 65,000, right? Huge changes. Now we're screening moms for hepatitis B when they come in, when they're pregnant or when they're coming to the hospital. So we know the mom's hepatitis B status, generally speaking. And I was like, I don't understand if the mom has antibodies, if the rates of blood transfusion, because that was the thing. If your child needs a heart something or a blood transfusion in the neonatal intensive care unit or car accident, you don't want to be in that spot where you're going to get hepatitis B from a transfusion. Cool. Got it. Now we don't have that anymore, right? That is like so incredibly rare. And I was like, I don't understand why we have not changed those recommendations. Now, if you come into the newborn nursery and you have not had prenatal care, we don't know your hepatitis B status. That's a different story. And that should be approached very differently than a mom who's had prenatal care. We know hepatitis B status. That's a different conversation. And we're not having different conversations. We're just doing one size fits all. So I'm really excited that the CDC has brought up that to the attention where we're having conversations that we need to question this and really have a more individualized approach rather than a one size fits all. What do you tell new moms who are wanting to do no vaccines, but then they're starting to get worried about RSV? And so they're wondering, well, should I at least get the RSV vaccine? Okay, if we're going to say no to a vaccine, the RSV vaccine is a solid no. Why? It is fast-tracked. I call Sanofi. Like, when I saw it come on the market, I called them. And I said, hey, so I see that this vaccine is fast-tracked. And that never sits well with me. You don't fast-track a vaccine. And then I was like, well, so how many times have we given this vaccine with other vaccines? The answer was, it's not a vaccine. It's a monoclonal antibody. And I'm like, okay, let me say that one more time. How many times have we given it with other vaccines? And they only, they only a few times that they actually studied it with other vaccines, even though it's recommended to be given with other vaccines. I'm like, okay, that's no. And they show that there are side effects when you give it with other vaccines. The kids get sicker more often when you combine the vaccines than when you give it alone. I was like, well, can I have the raw data? Oh, they're like, oh, absolutely. That was two years ago. You still haven't gotten it? They're never going to send you the raw data. So that is a no. That is a no. What if that's the only vaccine you get on the whole childhood schedule? How do you feel about it? No, it's not needed. Okay. It's not needed vaccine. I'm all pro. Listen, I'm pro the hepatitis B vaccine. Okay. Eventually, I don't want to have a child that has a chronic hepatitis B carrier because the more people that don't get hepatitis B vaccine in 10 years from now, we're probably going to have the hepatitis B carriers come around. Like it's going to come around the block again. but the RSV vaccine and by the way I'm speaking as a mom who my second born was hospitalized with influenza in 2006 on Christmas day with RSV New Year's Day home oxygen from RSV so I'm not taking it lightly I'm not saying RSV is nothing but even knowing what I know now with what I had gone through I still wouldn't have given RSV vaccine to my third born if your child gets RSV you know the worst is that what you're on you're in the hospital for a couple days It's a respiratory stuff and you're on oxygen. The treatment for RSV is a lot of time and oxygen. Okay. And then the worst thing that could happen if you have a vaccine injury from RSV is what? I've not administered the RSV vaccine. So I don't know. Yeah. Because I refuse to carry it in my clinic. So it's just, I mean, vaccine injury can look like a lot of different things, right? It could look a lot of things. It could look like neurological issues. It can look, certainly can look like autism. It could look like horrible reflux. It can look like recurrent headaches. like recurrent rashes. It could look like eczema, many different things. It's just, I don't have, you know, when you look at a lot of the research, I've been practicing medicine for 30 years, and I'm very big into my clinical observations because I'm like, you can take data and you can flip data and you can statistically change data to make it do whatever you want it to do. My clinical, what I see in my clinical practice is like right in front of me, you know, and so that, But when it comes to the RSV vaccine, because I've not given it now, the Synergist, which is the RSV vaccine that was long ago in babies in the NICU who are born very early with major heart issues, major lung issues. That's not what I'm talking about. We are talking about the RSV vaccine in a healthy four-month-old who has no chronic issues. That's what we're talking about. What if a baby was born prematurely? The very premature babies that are very fragile. And that's a conversation that you need to have with your doctor on it. what are the other things that are happening with the baby? What is their neurological status? It's not as simple as like, okay, well, they're preemie, so we're going to do the RSV vaccine. I'm very big into I need to talk to each one of my families. What are their expectations? What are their fears? What are their expected outcomes? And what are their risk benefit? Everything has a risk benefit. Tylenol has a risk benefit. RSV vaccine has a risk benefit. It needs to be discussed, not a blanket statement. Why should parents not be afraid of measles? The number one side effect of measles, just like any other virus, ear infections. Second side effect of measles, like any viral infection, pneumonia. Third, dehydration. What we hear in the news is brain inflammation. Yes, that can happen. Absolutely. But that's very rare. Death. That can happen. Very rare. Also, you know what's giving your kids brain inflammation? Cheetos. Soda. Yeah. But they're never talking about any of that in the news. No, we're not. You know what else? People die more, children die most of? Car accidents. How about drowning is in our backyard pool? That doesn't make the news. That does not make the news. You know, because people are so afraid of measles. I did a little number research because whenever we get paranoid about an illness, I'm always like, but we get the numbers. Like, let's get numbers. Instead of fear, let's get the numbers. So I might misquote by a couple of, you know, digits, so bear with me. But in 2025, there are 2,256 cases of measles in the United States, about 285 hospitalizations. Out of those, the majority was for pneumonia and respiratory stuff. The second was dehydration. And the third was isolation or quarantine. Three people died out of that in 2025. Out of all those, two kids, one six, one eight, and one adult. And I don't have information on, because I always want to know what were their conditions, what were their nutrition, like what, I need more details, and it's just like, we're all going to die. So those are the numbers that we're dealing with. And when the media is coming in, they're coming in hot, scaring everybody. I'm like, right. And so now we're having a conversation. Now we're having an actual conversation. Are you okay with measles? Or are you okay with the vaccine? And as a parent, neither answer is wrong. I am tired of people shaming other parents who are, I have parents who cannot walk out of their house. They're not going to go on a plane because they're so terrified of measles. That's unbelievable. You're crippling your kid in other ways when you're doing that stuff. Correct, but I need people out of the house. I need people traveling. I need people to live in the world. And I'm like, and also if we look at the side effect, the measles vaccine, when it's given on its own without other vaccines in a child who doesn't have any chronic issues, the side effects are very minimal. When we look at people that are having side effects to vaccine, because I go to a lot of the conferences were there a lot of people that are vaccine injured? I'm always asking, tell me more about that story. Not because I want to not believe them, because I want to learn as a doctor, what could I be missing? How many vaccines were they given at that time? What were the symptoms beforehand? Did they have any other symptoms with any other vaccines? How were they before that? Because a lot of people will just say they were verbal, they were talking, they had the MMR vaccines, they're not talking. And that's very bad. I'm not saying no. But most of the time, I would say 90% of the time, that MMR was given with other vaccines. That child had other reactions to vaccines previous to that. The body was already suggesting that there's a situation underhand. There were other developmental things or there are other recurrent ear infections. Maybe the child was always irritable. Maybe they had symptoms of pandas. Maybe they had eczema. And no one paid attention. They're like, it's not a big deal. You can just get vaccines. What were the other circumstances So, you know, that's why I pay attention to what else is happening to the child before doing a vaccine. And what is our expectation of this? How many childhood illnesses are really just nutrient deficiencies? The majority of them are nutritional deficiencies. We are overfed and undernourished in the United States. Our children are chubby and they're malnourished. They're fat and they're actually starving. Exactly. Their immune system is starving. Their skin is starving. Their brains are starving. and the chronic issue in like 15 years ago, the rates of chronic disease were one in 20. As of last year, they're one in two, according to the CDC, that's 50%. And a lot of parents are like, oh no, we're not dealing with chronic disease. I'm like, okay, if your child has, because you know, they think like major things like we don't have cancer or we don't have like, if your child has eczema, seasonal allergies, food allergies, ADHD, anxiety, your child has a chronic disease. if you are using an over-the-counter medications on a daily basis on your child they have a chronic disease yeah the abnormal has become normal and we're like i you know it's just normal for kids to have eczema it's just normal for kids to have seasonal allergies it's kind of like adults you know i'm 45 so of course i have blood pressure issue i'm gonna get it's not normal to have blood pressure issues at 45 you know i have cholesterol issues because you know i'm 50 it is not normal to have cholesterol issues it's common in america yes but it's not normal Yep. You know how I know I love a skincare brand? I go through it and then I restock it. And I don't have bottles that are three years old sitting in my cabinet judging me. 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Your cells are going to thank you and big food will hate it. And we love that. What is the blind spot that conventional pediatricians have on zinc? The blind spot on a lot of the micronutrients is that we were never taught that in school. It was not until I started digging, like, what else could there be? And I was like, hold on. I was in New Zealand and I was waiting for my visa so I could start working. And I was starting to study functional medicine. And I realized that I was searching things with the, I was giving the wrong, I was asking the wrong questions. I would go, what are the common things about eczema? and it's like genetics, your dog, the environment, you know, and I was like, okay, I'm not asking the right question. I was like, okay, is there a link between vitamin D deficiency and eczema? Boom. The PubMed search just like blew up on stuff. You know, is there a relation between constipation and eczema? Boom, PubMed blows up. It's how we ask the question. So all of a sudden, as I was like, well, then let me keep asking questions. And I went vitamin D, then I went zinc, then I went iron, B12, you know, vitamin C, magnesium. I was like, all these nutrients that I'm hearing about all the time that we should have enough in our food, but we don't because our processed food is garbage. It's embarrassment that we even call it food. And so because we have these deficiencies, but because we weren't taught, and when the kids get referred to a dermatologist, and the specialist says there's no labs, the pediatrician then says, ah, there's no labs. If the specialist says there's no labs, obviously they would know. Oh, they went to Hopkins or they went to Mayo Clinic or they studied at Boston Children's. They say there are no labs. Therefore, me, the pediatrician, is gonna say there's no labs. That was what the blind side is. And it's not until I've started digging and going, wait a minute, look at the data, look at the data of the kids that are deficient and look at the data when you replenish and what happens with the children's SCORAD. SCORAD is a number system that we use globally to give a number to the symptoms that children have. The higher the SCORAD, the more severe eczema. The lower the SCORAD, the less severe the eczema. So if your child has a zinc deficiency, how could that maybe be showing up in their health? Like what symptoms? For a lot of kids, it shows up in the little white lines on their nails. Oh, and that would be adults too, right? And that's adults too. So white lines on the nails indicates a zinc deficiency. Brittle nails, brittle hair, eczema, or skin, like inflamed skin would be my top things for zinc. What is causing chronic ear infections in your child and how can you treat it naturally? Here's a fact that is going to just upset everybody. 90% of children under the age of one get an antibiotic in their lifetime. 90 percent. And most often, it's ear infections. And the number one antibiotic for ear infections is amoxicillin. And what is an amoxicillin, guys? Red 40. Oh, my gosh. I know. I know. I told you I was going to upset everybody. So wait a minute. So when we're getting all of these food dyes out of the food supply or whatever, is that going to apply to medicine? Not necessarily. Okay. That is a huge issue for parents that they need to be aware of. I know. So yeah, so the pink, when your medicine is colored pink that you have to give to a four-month-old, you're just giving red dye to a four-month-old. Not okay. What do parents do? Request for your antibiotic to be compounded. They can compound amoxicillin. No, it's not going to be covered by insurance, but you can get it compounded without food dyes. And how much does that cost? Like if you had to guess? $25. So it's not like crazy. No, it's not like $500 or anything. What is the way to treat it naturally then if you've got a little newborn baby with an ear infection? So first, we have anatomy. So babies are small and there's a tube from our inner ear that goes to our nose called the eustachian tube. And in babies, it's very small compared to adults. It's also flat as compared to adults. As our head grows, that tube starts pointing downwards. So now you have gravity and they open up. So now it pulls down. So that's one of the huge reasons anatomically babies have smaller faces, smaller airway. One little booger gets them all congested versus us adults. We have like more room in our face. Smoking is a huge issue. pacifiers are a major issues to ear infection i know what are you talking about pacifiers and as people are like oh but i'm using like a silicone i'm like it doesn't matter if it's a silicone it is the pacifiers change the way the baby breathes and the way the baby um like anatomy and the way the pressure in the eustachian tubes so chronic pacifier use is a risk factor for recurrent ear infections. Oh my gosh. Daycare attendance. It is. Mama's got to do what mama's got to do. I'm just saying, I'm just putting a fact out there that daycare is just because they get a lot of recurrent infections, right? Okay. But also dairy, processed foods. So now the mamas are going to go, but I'm nursing my baby. So they're not eating processed foods, right? The mama who's nursing the baby cannot eat the processed foods. The mama's got to eat whole foods. added sugar. So in mamas who are nursing their babies and they have a recurrent ear infection, the mama has to have zero grams of added sugar. And I know that includes honey and maple syrup. I'm sorry to be the bear. I'm just a messenger. Fruits do not count because everyone goes after the fruits. I'm like, no, people. I know they're freaking out about their Starbucks or their Dunkin' or whatever. Yeah, like I mean, one Starbucks is 26 grams of added sugar. Gross. So that is going to go through the breast milk to the baby, boom, recurrent ear infections. Dairy is next. Dairy is just an inflammatory. Even, yes, mamas that are drinking dairy or doing creamers, even if it's raw, even if it's organic, even if you know the cow personally and you've petted it, the dairy protein is what the problem is that can affect and cause issues with the immune system. And the problem about dairy, because people get bent out of shape, especially my mamas. They're like, but it's cheap. And I know the goat and whatever. I'm like, okay, cool. The problem is we have so much dairy in our diet. And people are like, I don't eat that much dairy. I'm like, really? Okay, great. So at the next family function, be dairy free. Tell me how many foods you can eat. And everybody's like, oh, well, that's right. Can't have cookies, can't have an appetizer. You can't have the main, can't have the mashed potatoes. You can't have the turkey because it's buttered up, right? Like when you start looking how much dairy we eat, you know what people are not intolerant to? Brussels sprouts. Because we don't eat Brussels sprouts morning, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack. No, but we eat a cheese stick, creamer, butter, ice cream, yogurt. Delicious. So dairy is a huge, and by the way, grandmas across the world are like, we know it. We've said this forever. When a kid has congestion, just remove the dairy because it makes the snot thicker and it impedes the immune system from working properly. So those would be my top things. Can mold in your environment also cause chronic ear infections in your child? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Let's open up that can of worms. Yeah. Okay. Of course. Yeah. Absolutely. And people think that they don't have mold. I mean, that's just they're like, well, when was your house built? They're like 1935. I'm like, okay, until it's tested for mold, you have mold, right? My office is built in new builds. Well, that was my next one. I have parents that are like, yeah, but my house is only four years old. It's a million dollar home. I'm like, fun fact, mold doesn't care about your income and how much you spend on your house. Mold likes humidity. And as the mold experts like to say, in the past, our houses were very drafty and leaky and we were like, and now our homes are built so well, except now we trap mold. Now they've become mold boxes because when they're drafty, the mold goes in and out like leaves. When it's built so great that there's no drafts, the mold stays. And so I have parents who are like, we don't have mold. And I make them test. I test a child. The child has high mold levels. They test a home and they're like, OMG. When they connected the HVAC unit, they connected it wrong. So their humidity, indoor humidity was 70% for four years. Guess what? They have mold. You have mold and bad hair. Yes. Especially in the South, like Southeast. Yeah. So it's, so we have, so that. Then we have, I had a mom, like in the multimillion dollar home, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, there's mold. Your child did not have eczema until 18 months old when you moved into this house. Yeah. And they opened the wall and it was black mold in the child's bedroom wall. Oh my gosh. Not anywhere else. And oftentimes, I have kids with asthma. I like hospitalized every month for asthma in the ICU. And I'm like, mold. And they're like, no. I'm like, yes. They look at mold and often it's in the vent and in the vent that is blowing on the child's bed. This has happened numerous times in my clinic. And once we get that, the symptoms significantly improve. We got to do some other stuff, too. But yes, to answer your question, yes, mold, again, very hidden. People deny it, kind of like stress. Well, and I understand why you really want to be denied about mold. Because if that is true, you have to move or you have to spend tens of thousands of dollars, you know, sometimes fixing damage. Also getting rid of everything that has open pores or whatever in your home, which is like the majority of your things. Right. So that's why I have people working with mold specialists. Yeah. We're never going to get rid of mold 100 percent. We're always going to be we're going to have some mold. It's a matter of decreasing the mold significantly that your immune system takes over. So a lot of times, I mean, it depends how bad it is, obviously, but you don't necessarily need to move out of every home. You don't have to throw out everything. That has to be pretty bad. But it is very daunting and it is very expensive for sure. So with chronic ear infections, how are you healing naturally? Okay. Okay, so first, if you're 80% of children's ear infection, 80% do not need antibiotics. It's a really great fact to keep in mind. If your child has 104 fever, they're puking, they won't keep anything down out of an ear infection, they're going to need treatment. They're super sick. But if your child is 100, 101, 102, they may be a little fussy, but not too bad, we can wait. Or my favorite, they don't even have fever. You don't even know they have an ear infection. You just go for a checkup and there's an ear infection. We do not need to treat that. First thing is if they're in pain, there's several things for pain. Warm packs, garlic oil, ear drops. There's ear massages. It's called craniosacral therapy. You can do it. Look, check it out on YouTube. Super simple. You pull down on the earlobe down like about 30 seconds. You push the middle bumpy thing. It's called the tragus and like where you would pierce it. You push that for about 30 seconds and you lift the ear like by where you pierce the cartilage at the top of the ear. You pull that for about 30 seconds. You do that. And I usually do it on both ears. The kids love it. I have like rambunctious toddlers who just hate me because they're toddlers. And I'll put them in my lap and I'll do these maneuvers. And they're like putty. They're like, oh, we love Dr. Temple. I'm like, you love me now. But not when I check your heart. But anyway. So there's like cranial sacral therapy. you can YouTube it and that helps declog the eustachian tubes. You can use ibuprofen and I'll use ibuprofen because three nights of ibuprofen is way better than 10 days of antibiotics. Over six months of age, I prefer ibuprofen to acetaminophen or Tylenol because Tylenol has been associated with eczema and other chronic conditions when he's used regularly or even just a few times. and then I actually use Afrin which is or Cynex which is an Afrin nose spray and I have people that are like it's so upset that I say that and I'm like but that opens up the nose and the eustachian tubes and gets everything cleared up and again three nights of Afrin outperforms 10 days of antibiotics a chiropractor too can do a little ear adjustment love a chiropractor ozone there's like ozone syringes that they can put in the ear I don't have ozone in my clinic but I have a nurse practitioner that has been phenomenal with ozone so I referred to her because she will do ozone therapy for ear infections my assistant Adeline she had a really bad ear infection I said go to my chiropractor and she went and he did a little adjustment to open up her tubes and her she was like better the next day and she had been battling it for many days and I said go to the chiropractor right now Oh, yeah. So I made her go. Yeah. I refused to do antibiotics. I mean, I had a horrible sinus infection. I did chiropractor. I did acupuncture, craniosacral therapy. My husband was like, it's enough. Just take the antibiotics. I'm like, under no circumstances. And yeah, my body did it. I just needed a couple rounds of all that stuff. If you do have to give your child antibiotics, what is the best protocol to heal their gut after? Antibiotics happen to good people. And we're not like last year. Literally, I think everyone had walking pneumonia. I'm not even kidding. I think everyone had walking pneumonia. The amount of antibiotics I prescribed last year for walking pneumonia because all my holistic natural remedies, we were getting nowhere. So sometimes antibiotics happen to good people. And by the way, antibiotics have saved many lives. So we don't want to knock on those. When you take an antibiotic, if you can get a diet, number one, die-free if possible. We already discussed that amoxicillin has red dye. Just ask your pharmacist if your antibiotic has artificial food dyes. One. Two, you can do pectin recipe. No, not a supplement. This is where people come in with a supplement. Pectin recipe is basically apples in a little bit, cord apples, peel them, core them, put them in a little bit of water with some raisins, a little bit of cinnamon. You simmer them for about 20 minutes. You make applesauce. You take that with your antibiotic. The pectin protects your gut from antibiotic damage. And it's called pectin. It's a pectin, apple pectin recipe. You can go chat GPT it. Okay. Chat will give you a great recipe. And there's no sugar added. So that helps protect. I usually often say doing a probiotic that you take. So a lot of times antibiotics are two times a day. So take your antibiotics in the morning and at night, do a probiotic in the middle of taking the antibiotics. Okay. I'll often say, depending on how long the antibiotics, adding a probiotic and also maybe SAC-B. That's another type of probiotic that prevents yeast from coming because a lot of times after having antibiotics, the yeast, the candida, likes to wear its ugly head. As a pediatrician, what is wrong with the majority of baby wipes on the market? So many chemicals. I mean, it's too many chemicals on the diapers, so many chemicals on the wipes. And I mean, we're using it on the most sensitive area. And, you know, people often don't realize that the skin is a living, breathing organism, is our largest organ. And whatever we put on the skin gets absorbed. Whatever we put on the vagina gets absorbed. whatever we put on the penis, those are like really delicate areas. So we want to use stuff that is just water and, you know, maybe grapefruit seed extract. You're recommending parents buy dry baby wipes and add water. You could do that or there's water. They're literally water wipes. Oh, there's water with grapefruit seed extract. That's it. Fantastic. Should we be saying no to steroid creams for eczema? So I use steroid creams as part of a treatment plan. And here's why, because a lot of people go, oh, you're a natural doctor. Here's, I'm a holistic doctor. Holistic is very different than natural. Holistic means I'm looking at the skin, the person wearing that skin, the people surrounding the person with the skin, their culture, their environment, all the things, looking at everything that we need to do for the skin. Steroids have a role and a place, but here's how we do that. The problem is we have used an acute care medication. You have poison ivy, right? Poison ivy, you put steroids on it and the poison ivy goes away because it's from a plant that is a skin issue. Eczema is an internal issue. It comes from the gut. It comes from deep within, but it shows up on the skin. When the skin is open to nature and it's raw and it's bleedy and it's cracked, well, that increases the risk of food allergies and risk of environmental allergies. So if natural approaches don't help close the skin, sometimes I always use steroids in the form of Dr. Aaron's and a very specific protocol to close the skin so I get the immune system away from the skin and to the center. Because if your child is a raw wound, their antibodies are at the, they're in the periphery. The antibodies are over here on the outskirts waiting for the pollen, the dog hair, the peanut, the egg, because they're always under attack. So when we close the skin, the immune system calms down and now we can heal from within. Now the immune system is like, okay, you were saying, because otherwise it's too distracted. So eczema is an internal gut issue. It is not something that your child is using on their skin is causing it. Correct. I mean, can you use an alcohol sanitizer and cause inflammation of the skin and then you stop and your skin is better? Yes. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the people that are doing all the things. They've tried a thousand lotions. This is what I say. I'm like, listen, if you spend between two and four thousand dollars on lotions, you have chronic eczema. And the issue is not a lotion deficiency. It's from within. If your medicine cabinet looks like Sephora, you have chronic eczema and you need to heal from within. In your practice, what are you finding is typically the root cause of severe eczema? I usually refer to our bodies as a cup of inflammation or giant cup. And in that cup, when you get in, like the cup gets full, that's when we see eczema. We'll start with genetics. Genetics, load the gun, the environment pulls the trigger. So we may be given those genetics, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to get eczema. It's not like 100% of the time that you get those genes that they're going to turn into eczema. So we have genetics, mold we already touched upon. Then we talked about nutrition, food additives, preservatives, food coloring, processed foods, added sugar, dairy, gluten, sometimes eggs, sometimes peanuts. We have food allergies, stress, environmental toxins, dust mites. Dust mites are one of the highest environmental pollutants. and 60 to 80% of people suffering from eczema have a dust mite allergy that we need to discuss and we need to remediate. How do you remediate that? On Amazon. Allerys is my favorite company that is a pillow cover and a mattress cover. It can be one that's just elastic. It has to be a full zippy thing. It's got to zip the whole way around because dust mites live in our mattresses and our pillowcases. That's disgusting. And guess what dust mites eat? Skin. Yep. And what happens when you have eczema? I use shedding skin all night. And so the dust mites are like, yay. Thanksgiving. Feast. Right. And you can't get rid of them. So you got to encase the pillowcases and the mattresses in that will reduce the amount of dust mites. If the kids have lovies, have them sleep with only one lovie, not a hundred lovies, because all those stuffed animals collect dust. If you have wall-to-wall carpet, consider doing hardwood floors with a throw rug or vacuum on a regular basis, including under the bed dust mites. And the walls. And the walls, if you can wipe them down, but if you can vacuum under the bed, because a lot of people vacuum around the bed because, you know. Yeah. But I want to talk about steroids. One more thing. The misconception is that steroids are the answer to eczema. Steroids help us in the immediate time to help decrease the inflammation so we could retrain the immune system. And then we're done. Steroids are not a long-term solution. It is an acute care medication. I just wanted to say that because I don't want people to walk, oh, now we're going to use therapy. No, no. That has a time and a place, and then we're done with it. When you've got somebody that has a chronic case of eczema in your office, how are you working backwards to find the root cause? Like what are the first foods you're telling them to eliminate from their child's diet and things like that? So we start with, you know, a lot of people try a bunch of different things, but they go in different ways. I call it eczema whack-a-mole. And they'll do like remove dairy for two weeks. And then they're like, ah, that didn't work. So then now we're off to a lotion that we heard on a podcast. And then that didn't work. So then we're off to zinc. We heard about zinc. Zinc. She said zinc. So they'll do zinc. But their skin got worse. So they'll stop that. So we go, eczema, whack-a-mole. Okay. So the way things work for the body in order to heal, we got to start from the top with nutrition, to your point. And we can't start and stop. We got to keep going. So removing processed foods. Get rid of artificial food dyes, preservatives. If you can't read it, don't eat it. Then we're going to do added sugar. Less than two years old, zero grams of added sugar. Over two years old, you have a sugar budget, 24 grams of added sugar. So it's not like, no, you can never have a cookie. You just can't have six cookies or cookies and Gatorade and a birthday cake. You have to delegate, designate your sugar budget. Dairy has to be replaced, not removed. Gluten, replaced, not removed. Then blood work. What are micronutrients? Vitamin D, zinc RBC, a CBC. What is our iron levels? What is our total IgE numbers? What is our B12? What is vitamin A? What is vitamin E? So we got to look at our micronutrients. We do lab work for most other illnesses. We need to also do them for our skin. So we got to look at the micronutrients because I do use vitamin D, omega-3s, zinc, etc. in my protocol. A micronutrient that is not talked about is called L-histidine. L-histidine is an amino acid that the body, which is a skin moisturizing factor, the filaggrin is a protein that lives in our skin. Filaggrin uses L-histidine to make skin moisturizing factor to moisturize the skin. So we can actually, because our skin is able to moisturize itself from within. So L-hissidine is a fabulous one that a lot of people overlook. We have to be on probiotics. We've got to work on gut healing, digestive enzymes. If we have dysbiosis, which means too many bad guys, grapefruit seed extract, uva ursi, herbals that are going to balance our inner gut bacteria and yeast, we need a topical protocol. Yes, eczema is not a lotion deficiency, but we have a microbiome on our skin. What are we doing for the microbiome on our skin? 90% of people with eczema are over colonized by Staph aureus. Staph aureus is annoying. It like vomits this enzyme on the skin, which breaks the skin and opens up the skin. So we want to get rid of that guy. A great thing to use is hypochlorous acid. I use active skin repair, but there's many formulations. Girl, you are on the best show for that. I preach about active skin repair. I'm like, you could literally come up with almost anything. I'm like active skin repair for that. It is like a miracle product. It is. It is. Okay, back to my big fat Greek wedding, because we're going to bring it full circle. In that movie, they always use Windex for everything. So in my online eczema program, we referred hypochlorous acid as like the Windex. Yes. You have a little scrape, hypochlorous acid. You need a great hand sanitizer, hypochlorous acid. People have diarrhea and norovirus in your house, spray hypochlorous acid over everything. I'm 100% with you. It literally does it all. For your pets? Yes, and you can put it in your eye. You can put it on your hands. You can put it on your fruits. You can put it on your vegetables. It's crazy. Put it on vaginas. Put it on penises. That matter. It's totally fine. It's totally fine. Let me ask you something. When was the last time you got real sunlight on purpose? Not through your windshield. Not through Instagram. Actual light. Simon? Weeks! Editor Simon says it's been weeks since he's had actual sunlight. Guys, Simon is not an anomaly. this is what's happening to the majority of Americans. We live indoors and then we stare at blue light all day and then we wonder why we're tired, sore, not sleeping well. We're getting sick all the time. Our skin looks terrible. This is why you've got to get a Juve red light and near infrared light therapy device to use every single morning for 10 minutes. Okay, that's all. Red and near infrared light have been studied for their ability to support mitochondrial function. That is your cellular energy production. This is why when you were sick in the Victorian era, they said, let's go by the seaside. Your cells make energy more efficiently and you see benefits in skin health, muscle recovery, joint comfort, sleep quality, and overall daily energy with red light, infrared light. It is foundational, but it's, you know, not always easy for people. I understand a busy American everyday life, modern life. It's just kind of not in the cards, unfortunately for many of us. I like to use my juve in the morning, 10 minutes. I use it to check emails, to do my devotional. It helps with recovery after workouts supports my skin I notice better sleep whenever I am consistent with it Again 10 minutes every day there a little timer on it What sets Juve apart is the quality So Juve uses clinically proven wavelengths They deliver a safe and effective dose of light. Their panels are true medical grade devices that are independently safety tested and certified. So you don't wanna fall for random knockoffs with fake specs. You buy all this stuff on Amazon and then you're like, well, I don't really feel a difference. Oh, I wonder why? Because you're cheapening out on crappy red light devices. Juve has options for you too. If you want to not spend too much money, you can just get a small little travel device or a targeted device to use on just certain areas. I got my mom that so she can hold it above, you know, her knees if they're hurting her or whatever. They also have total full body panels if you want to spend a little bit more for like the whole shebang. So it really will fit your own space, your own routine, your own budget. If you want to support your health at the cellular level, Simon, go to joove.com slash Alex. That's joove, J-O-O-V-V dot com slash Alex. My coworker's sister was denied coverage twice for the exact same preventative genetic test, the one her doctor said was critical to understanding her cancer risk. She was left holding a $12,000 bill. Insurance said, oh, that's not covered, even though it was required by law in her state. She had to fight for months just to get a fraction of the cost covered. People are supposed to trust these companies, and instead they're left in debt and stress. That frustration is exactly what we talked about with Andy on this show, the CEO of CrowdHealth. Since that interview that we did last spring, so many of you have reached out saying that CrowdHealth has changed your family's life. Listen up. If you're planning ahead, especially around pregnancy, traditional insurance can leave you in the dark when you need clarity most, when you're bringing a new little life into the world. CrowdHealth treats your entire pregnancy as one global health event. They cover prenatal care, delivery, and postpartum all together with one predictable $3,000 member commitment. No hidden pieces, no surprise denials, and you choose how you want to bring your baby into the world. But CrowdHealth doesn't stop with birth. No, they allow eligible funding for things insurance won't, like certified doulas, licensed midwives, pelvic floor therapy, lactation support, breast pumps, even supplies for home birth care, personal control and flexibility, something insurance promises, but they never deliver. If you want clarity, choice, and care that feels human instead of corporate, join CrowdHealth to get started today for $99 for your first three months using code CULTURE at joincrowdhealth.com. CrowdHealth is not insurance. Opt out. Take your power back. This is how we win. Joincrowdhealth.com. Code CULTURE. What is the disturbing warning that parents are not being given about eczema drugs like Dupixent? Okay. You're trying to get my blood to boil. All right. So number one thing is that it's called the biologic and it's not called an immunosuppressant when in fact it is a massive immunosuppressant. It knocks off a branch of the immune system from working. And if you listen to the 10,000 warning signs on your TV when they talk about Dupixin, parasites and viral illnesses are a side effect because you cannot defend your body from those things when you're on Dupixin. Oh, my God. Exactly. And the studies on Dupixen were 109 children in one study and maybe another 90 in another study. We're talking less than 200 children studied on Dupixen. The longest study on children for Dupixen was one year, 54 weeks. But we put children on Dupixen for years to come. And we tell parents it's no big deal. And they're always sick. Yes. It just upsets me because the parents don't hear, we only have data for a year long term. So we only know that it's safe for a year. We don't know if you're going to get transcutaneous lymphoma, which by the way, that's what's happening in adults, that there's a significant rise in transcutaneous T-cell lymphoma in adults, which is not a genetic cancer. That's a cancer that adults on Depixent are getting. And they're like, it's blown off like it's not a big deal. It is used. And again, if you have to be on Depixin, you're not a bad parent. My request to you is what other things are we doing for the immune system with a goal to get off Depixin? Well, yeah, it sounds like a terrible drug to be on. Right. Big Pharma is going to come for our heads. That's fine. Correct. Why are those parents on it? Because it's just severe eczema? Well, so when you go to the dermatologist, I mean, I literally had a dermatologist. Okay, these are parents that are going to the dermatologist. They're not going to a pediatrician for eczema because they say skin. They think skin. I have to go to a dermatologist. Correct. But even when they go to the pediatrician, the pediatrician is like, I don't understand why you're not on Dupixin. And the parents are like, is there anything else? They're like, no, because this big pharma drug has been put out there as like the savior. And the doctors have no further thought process than Dupixin. Okay. I send a patient to an integrative dermatologist in my town. and we have worked for four years and we've come such a long way, but we still have work to do. And the parents were like, we would like to see an integrative dermatologist in the town for a second opinion. Wonderful. Yes, let's go. They went, they walked in. The first thing they said, why isn't your child on Depixen? Are you kidding me? They're like, why? I would never let my child walk out of the house with his face looking like this. Oh my gosh. First of all, rude. I made the referral. Yeah. So guess who looks like a doo-doo head? I'm a pediatrician. That's how I talk. Did you call that office and rail them? No, I will tell you that there's no further referrals happening. I was like, what did you say to my family? So the parents, so when they go to the derms, generally speaking, not all derms, but majority or allergists, they're just looked, they're just made feel like insignificant, crazy parents, inadequate parents, bad parents, because they're not giving their child a massive immunosuppressant and that they're asking other questions. Could it be mold? Could it be parasites? Could it be pesticides being sprayed on the lawn? Could it be all the stuff sprayed on our food in our lawn? Could it be my house? Could it be the water? Could it be the food that I'm giving my children? Could it be all the stuff that is in my child's school environment? And it's like, no, that's not been shown when in fact it has been shown to be a root cause of eczema. What are sleep machines doing to babies' brains? Another good one. It's like you're in my head. Well, that's my job. I got to get in the guest's head. Okay. So they drive me nuts. And I'll tell you why. We are raising very delicate humans. We're raising very fragile humans. And before we get into the neurological things with sound machines, we are raising humans that are just, they can't sleep unless we have blackout curtains, a sound machine. It's got to be floofy this and floofy that. And in my own home, we used to send our kids to war. Oh, yeah. I'm like, what is happening? I was like, when my daughter, like, I remember when she would fall asleep. I'm like, time to vacuum. And I'm going to everyone talk loud. I was like, what? Because what you don't realize is that whenever you go anywhere, they can't sleep without a sound machine and the blackout curtains and whatever. Or the snoo thing. Oh, my God. Don't I'm going to start on the snoo thing. It's this thing that vibrates the kids. So they sleep. So now you're shaking the doo-doo out of these kids when they sleep. And then they're like have sleep issues. And then they have neurological issues later on. I can go on. Anyway, my point to the sound machines. Okay. So when sound machines can have a beneficial effect when they're used at low decibels and not next to the kid's head. Because what parents will do is they'll put the sound machine. It's really loud. I have to look back how many decibels that you have to be under, but there's a specific number of decibels to be under and three feet away from the kid. Because they usually put them on a car seat, like on the kid's face, and they're like... Why do you need that? You have literal car noise. Like you have road noise that's soothing, like airplane. You know what I mean? Right, but because it's like, okay, well, we need to make sure that they sleep. I'm like, okay, well, sometimes they don't sleep. So what I'm just a warning... I'm so thankful I do this show before I have kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a warning, warning out there. Warning, warning. I'm seeing a lot of fragile kids. My goal when I raise my children is to raise resilient children. And when people are like, you don't know what you're talking about. I'm like, I don't know. My kids are 24, 22 and 19 and they're kicking butt. You know, aside from being in practice for 30 years, I'm like, I've raised resilient humans and I've seen how that works and I see it in my practice. And I'm like, we're just enabling too many things in our children and they're just fragile. Wow. So we need more noise during naps, not less. We need more noise. We need to talk. They need to nap. They need to be in the middle of where you are. If you want to put them in a bedroom for them to sleep, great. But then you talk and you carry on with your day. They're taking the nap. They can be in a quiet, silent. If you have dogs, let the dogs bark. That's when the kids sleep and then they'll sleep anywhere. And then it's fantastic. When I travel with my kids when they were little, they slept anywhere through any party at anyone's house. I didn't have to carry any of the, I mean, You have to carry the car seat and the pack and play. That's annoying enough. On top of all the other stuff that parents carry now. What is it telling you if your baby is constantly spitting up? Could the baby be eating too much too fast? So when a baby's nursed, if the mama has a lot of breast milk and has a strong letdown reflex, the baby just guzzles from like a fire hose. And their stomach is like a little tiny ball. And they get like two ounces like in three seconds. So then they're like spitters because they got so much breast milk in one time. Then I have the Piggly Wigglies that just gorge themselves on breast milk or on formula and they overheat. And so they're just too much food. And then I have parents who are like, every time the baby cries, they either put them on the boob or they give them formula. So they overfeed them and the baby's puking because they're getting too much food. So I would say the number one reason is like the letdown reflex or they're overfed. And then the next thing is the baby's fingers sphincter gets weaker. So we have a sphincter between our esophagus to the top of the stomach. There's a sphincter. And babies are born neurologically young and the nervous system is very raw, if you will. And it has to mature. As it matures, the sphincter above the belly gets loose in the first four to six months and then it tightens up. So sometimes it's just simply they ate enough, not too much, enough, but you lay them down and that sphincter's loose. So then they're just like puke it back up because they need they need a little more time to be in an upright position so gravity helps them pull them down okay but it's not necessarily bad and it's not horrible reflux we know it's reflux when they puke and they're upset they're losing weight they can't sleep when they eat they're arching they're they're like stiff as a board like eating is uncomfortable living is uncomfortable sleeping is uncomfortable that's when we're really discussing reflux. And then there's many things that we can do for that. But before we go to that, there's a lot of other things that we can do with some breastfeeding adjustments, not feeding them as much, keep them upright. And then if we're dealing with reflux, the first thing is dairy is a number one irritant for baby guts that if you are dealing with true reflux, dairy in the mom's diet can upset the baby's belly. Is it a good thing or a bad thing if a baby that's a couple months old is routinely sleeping through the night and not waking up to eat? Usually it's not because they need nutrients. And so they just can't get as many enough calories and nutrition in the day. Could there be that one or two babies out there that can do that? Yes, that's very rare. What I found is that they will do that and then they wake up at four months and then they're like a nightmare. And the parents are like, they slept at two months. How do you prevent that sleep regression in four months? Having them on a sleep schedule. I'm a sleep Nazi. And I keep my kids when they came from the hospital, we were on a schedule. Yeah, they did the cluster feeding, etc. But then we I did a cluster feeding before bed. And then we worked on making it a few hours without nursing. So then we can get used to their bellies being full. And it's a learning learning how to eat. And at four. And if you are do things on a relative schedule, You don't have to be like ridiculous, but someone on a schedule, you can get them in a rhythm because a baby will follow your lead. And then at four months is when babies start producing melatonin in enough quantities that they can get longer periods of sleep. Right around four months and we can start seeing about five hours of sleep, six hours of sleep, etc. So then why are they saying there's a four month regression? Sounds like you would sleep better. Right. But at four months, you're also going through a growth spurt. and as you go through a growth spurt, you get hungrier. And when you get hungry, you start wanting to eat in the middle of the night. And then you nurse the baby and the growth spurt or regression is like a few days. But what happens is the baby doesn't know that there's a growth spurt. The baby just knows they got fed. And then after they're done with their growth spurt, now they're like, you know what was cool? Waking up every four hours. Because you know what happens? There's a boob in my mouth. Wait, so how do you prevent this? So I usually will go, it's like if you do it for a couple of nights and it's legit that they're like super starving after a few nights you're like all right okay now we got to go back to where we are you don't need to eat and especially the super chunky one so if your baby is like on the 90th percent off or their growth charts they don't need to eat every two hours in the middle of the night i mean i have these babies are just like michelin babies they're square yeah and the mom's like they need to eat nurse every couple hours at nine months old i'm like get out of here this kid is totally working the system. They do not need to eat that much. They need to get their calories during the day. And at nighttime, we work on sleeping and we got to train sleeping. And that's hard. So you're pro sleep train, not co-sleep? No, no, you could co-sleep. Okay. You could co-sleep. But still on a routine. I'm not a co-sleeper. I don't, for me, that was not a thing that worked. I was like, you need to be in your space. I need to be in my space. And then I was so terrified of like rolling over them to begin with. So that was, that wasn't going to work. But at the same time, I was like, I need you to be in your space. So the two hours I get asleep are solid hours and you get your solid hours and then we nurse and then we're back sleeping. But I am a sleep trainer kind of girl. And at four months is because that's when the babies start producing melatonin. We work on learning how to fall asleep on our own. I do tolerate crying because here's the thing. Learning how to sleep is hard. Learning how to eat is hard. Learning how to poop is hard. Learning how to walk is hard. It's all hard. Life is hard. and our job as parents is not to make their life easier is to guide them to become resilient humans and so I don't let them cry for like seven hours but it's when we start sleep training we're like all right I nursed you I love mama loved you hugged you but you go on a bed awake and that's gonna cause a little bit of upsetness in the human and they cry for like 10 minutes and then we go pat their butt and then I mean I usually just let them cry for 15 minutes and they go to sleep but I'll tell you I start from the beginning when I come from it's going to be controversial and some moms are going to be upset about this but I begin training of me and the human right when I came home from the hospital so I know that they're so cute and cuddly and they're going to look at me and they're just going to run my life and I was like it's me versus you buddy and so what I would do right from the hospital when they would start crying I would set a timer two minutes so I gather myself They can gather themselves. Okay, is this really a cry? Or did you just give gas? Did I finish peeing? Did I finish whatever I was doing? And then I would go the whole time talking. I hear you. You're safe. You're good. Mama's coming. I just need to finish peeing, you know, or whatever I'm doing. And then I go hold them. But I started training myself so I don't jump at every time that they cry. Because sometimes, and as they get older, right, when it's a two-month-old, it was like five minutes. when I was like four months old, it was like six minutes. It was just so I would just gradually, and six minutes was the most that I would do. Because a lot of times it would be like, oh, squirrel. You know, like, oh, bright lights. Or they had gas. Or they just needed, sometimes the nervous system just needs to let out a yelp. And then we jump. And so I have mamas who are like carrying their baby all the time because they cry. I'm like, well, it's okay for you to finish pooping. And then getting them, it's okay. It's okay that if you're getting your tea, get your tea, relax, get yourself situated and they cry for a few minutes and the mama's you know the mom guilt is like this massive overpowerings oh my god they're so we're not gonna have a bond i'm like baby just because you let them cry for a little bit doesn't mean that the bond is broken as long as you're talking to them you're not if you leave them in their room and you let them cry and you go clubbing yes we have a problem yeah we're talking about two minutes so you can gather yourself and the baby gathers themselves. But what that does, when you get ready for sleep training, the baby knows that you're going to come after a few minutes and they feel safe. You're not just like, I'm always holding you. I'm never letting you cry. And at four months, you're like, good luck. You know those puffs snacks for toddlers? They're like air. Should we never give toddlers that? There's a role for them, but we do need to be aware of snacks. So the puffs, There's specific puffs companies that come up, Yummy and Serenity Kids. They have puffs that have really good ingredients, really cerebrally sourced, and all this stuff that they check on it. The problem is that when the children cry or are annoying, and fun fact, guys, kids are annoying. I mean, it's okay. But it doesn't mean we love them less. They're annoying. And you're trying to do something, and so they're annoying. So what we do is we give them food because when they eat, they stop being annoying. But what we don't realize, then we create a snack culture in our house. And now they expect a snack every time. Right. That's the thing. I almost feel like I lean towards like no snacks allowed in my house. And when I say that, I mean, they can be hungry. And then it's like offering, okay, let's do a protein or a healthy fat. Agreed. Or, you know, nuts or something. Like that's what I'm giving as a snack. But I'm not giving like little bars and puffs and crackers. Agreed. Totally agree. And the children, toddlers, should be able to make it three hours without needing food. You know what I mean? But in our culture, people come into my office and they're like, the appointments are an hour. And the kids start crying. And the mamas, well, not anymore because they send a lot of emails about this. They'll pick out a food, a snack. And literally, I'm like, that's a no. And I look at the toddler and I'm like, hey, baby, this is not a restaurant. It's a doctor's office. We don't eat in doctor's offices. Like what, when did we just start feeding kids in the doctor's offices? You know what I mean? And I happen to also have kids with massive food allergies. So that's actually a life-threatening thing if the food gets dropped on it. But besides for that, one hour, the child should be able to make it one hour without food. They shouldn't be able to make it three hours. And if they can't, back to your point, are their snacks puffs? Or are their snacks full of protein and fat? Because if a food, a meal or a snack, whatever you want to call it, has protein, carbs, and fats, they should be able to make it for three hours. If it's just empty calories like puffs with air, yeah, 30 minutes, they're hungry again. And you're like, well, they're hungry. I'm like, well, yeah, because they didn't have an adequate food. Can people hire you to be their pediatrician in Charlotte? Yes. You're taking patients? I am taking patients. And are you within insurance or out of insurance? I do not take insurance. Let me tell you why, because a lot of people get really upset. to for an hour visit where we dig into the root cause of your child's eczema, autism, right? That's gonna take some time. The insurance will pay me $25. And people go, but I pay my insurance, but on my thing, it says that you charge the insurance $300. I can charge the insurance whatever I want to. They're gonna pay me $25. My plumber coming to my house to unclog, to not unclog, to see what the problem is, is over $300. And when they come back with whatever, it's $400 and $500. For me, as a pediatrician, to dig into your child's root cause under insurance is $25. That is offensive. So no, I don't take insurance. So is that why in the traditional insurance model with conventional doctors, you're trying to get as many people through the door as possible and you're shilling out prescriptions like, just take this, just take this, get me the next person in the door because that's how you're making money? Yes. Is by people you're seeing. That's right. That's right. Oh, here's a fun fact. So when I was in, and I was in traditional pediatrics for 10 years. So not only is it that they're trying to get you out, like they try to, the suits and the hospitals, not the doctors, it's the suits that are like, okay, well, you need to see as many patients as possible, like 28, 30 patients a day because insurance only pays us pennies. So we got, they also make you refer. So if you have somebody with chronic abdominal pain, they make you refer to gastroenterology because gastroenterology charges more. Insurance pays them more. Thus, the hospital makes more. When the gastroenterologist does an endoscopy or colonoscopy, that's thousands of dollars that the hospital makes off of them. So they don't want – they don't care about pediatricians. They're like, give them a prescription for amoxicillin for ear infections. And if you can't figure it out, send them to a specialist immediately because that's where the money is. That's how the hospital gets paid. Absolutely. It is disgusting. What kind of kickback – if you were a regular pediatrician prescribing vaccines and doing vaccines, what kind of kickback do you get for vaccines? So when I first started working for the practice, the vaccines were state funded. There was no money. And then the state stopped funding vaccines. I don't know why that is. So then they became private. So then we had to buy, me, we, the clinic, had to buy the vaccines. So you have to buy the vaccines, which is a massive amount of money. And then you buy a wholesale and then you sell it at cost. So like anything else. So that's how it was. It was a productivity kind of thing. So the more vaccines, right, you made money off the vaccines, but it wasn't, you were just selling a product. It wasn't like, like pediatricians are not taught, okay, well, the more hepatitis B vaccines and MMR you have, the more money you make that you just give vaccines. That's not a pediatrician thing. And then now most of the practices are salaried. So you don't, you're just salary based. That's it. you don't get, like you can give 20 vaccines or 30 vaccines or one vaccines or no vaccines. Yeah. You're salaried. That has nothing to do with it. If somebody is experiencing pressure from their pediatrician, they're threatening that they're not going to be allowed to be a patient anymore because the doctor doesn't like their parenting choices for their child. What should that parent know? That there's so many options out there. You know, oftentimes we go to the doctor that the insurance company says on our card and you go, and then you don't jive and then they make you feel bad or you're not connected on this stuff. I'm like, when we remodel our basement, we get like three opinions or four. For our children's health care, you just go that pediatrician. Go look at other practices. Go interview other practices. There's now direct primary care options that are now no longer under the umbrella, the hospital. When you go to a hospital-owned practice, the hospital dictates about the vaccines. And the hospital says, if you don't do the vaccines, they got to get kicked out of the practice. When you go to a privately owned practice, whether they take insurance or not insurance or direct primary care, they're not answering to the hospital anymore. So you have much more flexibility. What's your Instagram? D-R-A-N-A Maria Temple. If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture physically, emotionally, or spiritually, what would it be? A change in mindset. We have to do things differently. What we've been doing over and over again has led to our children being sicker and more fragile and worse than they've ever been. Until we change our mindset, we start questioning food, medicine, herbals, all kinds of practices, our children are going to continue to suffer. Dr. Temple, thanks for coming on Culture Apothecary. This has been great. What is the biggest thing you learned from this episode? For me, I'm thinking the sound machines were huge. That was super helpful. Everything about eczema was super helpful. What to do if you've taken antibiotics, the best way to handle a high fever. I mean, all of that. Plus just how to create a culture in your home where it is easy to transition from being an ultra processed food family to a culture apothecary family. Please talk about this episode. What did you learn? What did you agree with? What did you disagree with? Discuss it in the Keep Servatives Facebook group. New episodes come out every Monday and Thursday at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern with new expert guests anywhere you get your podcasts. You can find the show on Instagram at Culture Apothecary and me at RealAlexClark. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be taken as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional regarding any questions or decisions related to your health or medical care. I'm Alex Clark, and this is Culture Apothecary.