Why Chronic Illness Is Increasing in Kids and What We Can Do

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Hi everyone, welcome to the show, I am Dr. Nicole, and today we’re going to delve into what I think is one of the defining issues of our time: Why it is that so many more children are chronically ill, are having mental health and physical health issues at greater levels than at any other time in history. Whether it’s things like allergies, eczema, diabetes or mental health issues like ADHD, anxiety, depression, autism — Kids are suffering with everywhere from mild to severe health issues at epidemic rates and I find that many parents who realize intuitively that this isn’t normal for kids to have so many of these health issues, but they can feel really frustrated when they try to get answers or solutions from healthcare practitioners. So to help us understand more of the route of why this is happening and how we as parents can really take some control and take steps to improve our kids’ health, I’ve invited Dr. Michelle Perro on the show today. Let me tell you a bit about her.

She’s a veteran pediatrician with nearly four decades of experience in acute and integrative medicine. More than fifteen years ago, Dr. Perro transformed her clinical practice to include pesticide and health advocacy. She has both directed and worked as an attending physician from New York’s Metropolitan Hospital to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland. Dr. Perro has managed her own business, Down to Earth Pediatrics, creating a new field of integrative urgent care medicine. She is currently lecturing and consulting as well as working with Gordon Medical Associates, an integrative health center in Northern California.  She has co-authored the highly-acclaimed book “What’s Making Our Children Sick?” and is executive director of a non-profit scientific-based website, www.gmoscience.org. She has been a sought-after speaker nationally and internationally and has authored many publications. And when she is not working, one can see Dr. Perro competing on the ballroom dance floor. Love it! Can’t thank you enough for being here today, welcome Michelle!

Dr. Michelle Perro:

Nicole, thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be here and chat with your listeners.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So we are going to keep this to about 40 minutes of a conversation. I was joking before we started the recording that you and I could talk for 40 days about these topics, that for the sake of all of you listening, we’ll keep it to 40 minutes, but I’ve really been looking forward to this conversation because every time I have the opportunity to talk with Michelle, we just really delve into so many things that we’re seeing with kids and families, and this is just really, really important stuff. So I’m excited that all of you get to listen in on this. Let’s start by having you tell us a bit about your journey, how you came to be doing the work and the type of work that you’re doing now, because you were trained as a traditional MD and you’ve really taken some interesting paths as far as your focus areas and evolving your treatment. Tell us a bit about how that came to be. 

Dr. Michelle Perro: 

So, I will give you the brief version because, oh boy, we could be here all day talking about how I got here and what I like to remind myself and others that it wasn’t some brilliance on my part. A lot of it was luck. But I can tell you that as a western-trained practitioner, I never felt comfortable giving kids so many drugs. That was from the beginning. But truly, as you mentioned, purely western-trained, pharmaceutical-based education and that’s what I learned. A year of pharmacology, two hours of nutrition. Fast forward to 26 years ago, and I had my first kid and he had some health challenges, and again, through the serendipitous door, I met Dr. Ifeoma Ikenze who is a well-known MD homeopath, and she told me to use homeopathy with my son. I did, it worked. He got sick again, I gave it, it worked. I said, “What the heck.” I didn’t need three times to understand the little magic sugar pills. Fast forward into my journey, I said, “I need to study this.” I began studying, going to school at night, my own kids, PTA, you know the drill. I was a mom who couldn’t say no. Field trips, coffee, this was how I was running things. I had a lot of fun and was kind of sleepless. 

But then what happened was a mom approached me from a practice and I was working with Dr. Ikenze at the time and needed help to ban pesticides in 2006, I believe, against the spraying of the light brown Apple Moth. And that was going to occur along the entire coast of Northern California. One county did get sprayed. But we moms, a group of us, and mostly their work, these gals, I drank a lot of coffee again,  stopped the spray. And through that work, I learned about GMOs from one of the moms, and she said, “Michelle, read Jeffrey Smith’s book: Seeds of Deception.” Moms speak, I listen. And moms know so much and one thing I’ve learned humbly over the decade is when moms tell me something, listen up. Listened, read — transformative. So I got into GMOs. There were associated pesticides and the effects on health because concomitantly, Nicole, I was seeing a rapid change in our children’s gut, neurocognitive, learning neurologic systems, and began putting the pieces together. Conferences, educating and I’ve been on the journey ever since.  

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

It’s so powerful, I think for listeners to hear the stories of how professionals came to evolve and be doing the work because for the vast majority of us, the kind of work that we’re doing now or the philosophies or the approach we take now is not how we were trained when we got our degrees, and it’s been an evolution of working with families, and I know that’s been the case for me, and you’re saying very much for you too, of seeing a tremendous shift in the types of kids coming into our practices and the types of challenges and just more kids with more problems. 

Dr. Michelle Perro: 

We are at an interesting era, Nicole, and just to sidebar a little, because when I speak at conferences or with educators or MDs or practitioners or whatever, people want science, hardcore science. Show me the data on 20 lab rats. But for those of us who have been on the field for so long, what’s actually more powerful is clinical experience. Working with thousands of people and boy, you get your chops right out there on the field. I don’t need to be on a laboratory bench. Now that is useful, but for me, what is so important in what we as physicians used to use were case reports. And now this medicine has been sidelined or diminished as being anecdotal, but the power of medicine and practice truly comes from the art of practice and the power of patient stories and what they tell us and what we listen to is how we transform, grow and learn and that’s what I’ve been really focusing on, is hearing what parents have to say. I used to say moms, but now dads too. Yo dads. Moms and dads, moms moms, dads dads, grandparents: Tell me, I listen. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Well, and that shift that you’re talking about — I started my career in education way back in my first career, and you talk to anybody who has been in education for 20 years or longer, any teacher who has taught a classroom of kids and they say that the children that are coming into schools and are in our classrooms now, the picture of that is so different than it was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago and such a shift, both in terms of kids’ physical health, their emotional resilience, social abilities, their learning abilities — just a tremendous shift in the needs of kids now coming into school. 

Dr. Michelle Perro: 

You know, you once again — again, we can go on for days, you’re so correct. Because I just had lunch with my kids’ first-grade teacher and we’re still friends 20 years later because she was amazing. And I said, “What do you think about the classroom now? How many kids, ballpark, in your class now…” — here, this is an anecdote, “… have special needs? Half? That’s what it was when my kids were in school.” And she said, “Half? Two-thirds.” Now when I co-authored the book, “What’s Making Our Kids Sick?” 54% of American kids had a chronic disease. Nicole, frankly, since that book came out two years ago, I think that number is much higher. And what that teacher is reporting, I think, is reflecting what we are seeing now, where we’re heading past the 54% to perhaps two-thirds, and this is what is strikingly shocking in how every practitioner is not screaming in the streets, I don’t get it. But yes, I couldn’t agree more, if you have any inkling, any doubts, ask a teacher. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

That’s right. So let’s delve into that then, because yeah, that study that showed 54% of children in the US have some form of chronic illness, whether that’s a physical illness, mental illness — I think that data was even from 2014. I mean that data, I believe is at least 5 years old at this point. I’m sure the numbers would be higher now. It’s like when we stand back and look at that, it does beg the question — and as you said, practitioners should be in the streets like, “What is going on!” Let’s delve into that. What is going on with that, because I know for many of the parents listening, maybe they’ve got more than one child in the family, often that happens. Parents come into the clinic, they’ve got multiple kids and while there may be one child with more significant issues that they’re coming in for, you start gathering the history and looking at — and each of the kids in the family has something going on, or two out of the three do. And I think for whatever reason, this has just become sort of normal for us now in society as parents to think, “Oh, well, you know kids have all these problems.” What do you feel is going on there from your perspective, having been now in the medical field for as long as you have. What do you think are some of the things that are driving this epidemic of physical and neurological problems in kids?

Dr. Michelle Perro: 

So I think it’s multi-factorial and I don’t think it’s one thing. However, what I have focused on and what I believe to be the biggest driver of this global epidemic of chronic disease is our food. Genetically modified food, which we can go into. And remember, you don’t eat a GMO food without it being associated with pesticide, and particularly, they’re called glyphosate-based herbicides. Now these herbicides are being applied at a higher and higher rate because of wheat resistance and off label use. So kids are being doused with these massive doses of pesticides. And you don’t just get one pesticide in non-organic food. You average about six. So many of these pesticides together, as a chemical soup have not been studied in terms of the combined toxicity. We understand what glyphosate does or some of the fungicides, but when they’re combined together, there’s no data. And we know that many of these chemicals are neurotoxins. For example, we have this massive change in our food system, in addition to the chemical inputs, the other problem is we’ve got nutrient loss. The nutrient density of our foods is so low that kids would have to consume massive amounts of certain nutrients to get enough, for example, minerals like zinc, magnesium, copper, etc. to run basic biologic function, including brain function. And because of our sad diet, the standard American diet, kids are globally in America nutrient-deficient based on the GMOs, associated pesticides, nutrient loss as well as processed foods. 

The whole conversation on processed foods and what’s in those things causes massive changes in the gut, and we can start to unpack this conversation between the effect of gut and neurologic function, because those things are intimately linked. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Absolutely. And it’s a link that a lot of people are not aware of, professionals as well as the general population. It was interesting, I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Stephanie Seneff several shows ago, who has done a lot of the research into glyphosate. And she talked about fascinating things with that, and it’s just really scary. The way that I have come to think about it is we have taken a generation or maybe two generations now of children and made them part of this grand global experiment of what happens when you subject growing bodies and brains to all of these things in the environment that didn’t use to be there, and it seems like what we’re finding is there is a pretty big cumulative effect. Maybe it’s not any one of these things that’s creating the problem, but as you talked about, the combined effect and the persistent effect. Kids aren’t just exposed to one of these things in isolation once in a while, right? We go through our day and there is a tremendous exposure to chemicals and things that weren’t there even when I was growing up. 

Dr. Michelle Perro: 

So there are so many things here for listeners, even if they’re not scientists, if they’re parents or plan to be parents or just eaters — this understanding of this relationship of our food. And what the other understanding has to be are these inputs affect not only those microbes in our gut called the microbiome, which are determinants of every aspect of our biologic health, they also affect our epigenetics, and this is the cutting edge of research, and I think it’s important for your listeners, our people, our families to understand that these chemicals can change, not our genes, but little things on top of our genes, which can then affect future generations. So we now have good data which shows how glyphosate, for example, the main herbicide in roundup, which I think most people are familiar with, can alter the microbiome. Study just came out in December. It can also — your epigenetic, study from  Washington via Dr. Skinner — so we now know that this chemical is being allowed by the FDA, the USCA, the EPA and it is directly harming our bodies both presently and for future generations. And again, you’re so right, Nicole, this is one of many toxicities that our kids, that we are facing, and our pets too, by the way — but if we at least can alter our food, that would be a huge, huge improvement in overall global health. And that is something we have control over. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So there is this food piece because of the GMOs because of the pesticides, the chemicals, all of that, but where are some of the other places that this exposure comes from? I’ve heard you talk about water as an important one. 

 

Dr. Michelle Perro:

Yes. So if we leave the food thing aside, because I can yack on about food for a few years. Water and old water systems. We know that there are significant amounts of lead, aluminum, and other heavy metals in water. It wasn’t just the Flint, Michigan issue, which that one pediatrician revealed. It’s been shown in Newark, it’s been shown in old pipe systems and in schools, so the kids need to drink filtered water until we can clean up all the old water systems. It comes in the form of air pollution. Air pollution is one of the most toxic things for children and so kids who live in very high urban areas, they’re inhaling a lot of those solvents. A lot of those solvents are directly carcinogenic and are linked to diseases like asthma, infecting 1 in 6 to 1 in 8 kids. So there is a whole thing around air pollution. And according to Dr. Joe Pizzorno and for example Pete Myers and other scientists, we have to worry about the phthalates, the plastics, PBAs because those are endocrine disruptors. And those are directly linked to diabetes, which is now becoming of epidemic proportions as well, not a benign disease. 

So we understand endocrine disruption definitely could be a link to early puberty. We have girls and boys now in early puberty, as we know, girls as young as 8, boys 10-12, and imagine a middle school where all these kids, these 11, 12 and 13-year-olds are in puberty. It used to be high school, and now it’s happening in middle school. So imagine this world that our kids are facing, and parents unaware. And I would be remiss if I didn’t bring electromagnetic frequencies. 

I’m so concerned about electromagnetic frequencies in terms of kids being on computers endlessly, and they have thin brains, the cortex of their brain is very thin. When those little cellphones are in their little ears, frequencies go right in and can change their brain frequencies. Our bodies are chemical and they are electrical, and there is a direct link between those frequencies and how close they are to our children’s bodies as well as ourselves, and of course, I am tremendously concerned about 5G. There’s health data about 5G. The telecom industry is trying to push it in without adequate study. There are studies which show the health effects, and those health effects are profound. 5G is not just a 4G upgrade. It works on an entire different system of radio frequencies that are very fast and very dangerous to health. So we’ve got all this going on and so I say we need to begin to unravel many of these things without overwhelm. But I think understanding is the first step, and at the end of our conversation today, Nicole, we can do some simple things parents can do at home, people can do at home — but I just want to give you the palette or the lay of the land. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Well, I think that’s so important because when we give recommendations of what’s going to be helpful, if those recommendations aren’t rooted in people understanding why it is that those things are helpful, then it’s just like, “Well, that might be nice to do, but I don’t need to do it.” Right? Like the idea of, “Well, eat whole food or eat non-GMO or organic produce”, people go, “Oh well, that’s nice to think about, but I don’t really think I need to do that.” You’re framing this discussion around no, there is real legitimate science-based concerns about the kinds of food that we’re eating, about the chemicals that we’re inhaling, that were drinking. We’re beyond the “Oh, it would be nice to do some of these things.” And we’re really at the point where for the sake of our kids and of ourselves, we need to really understand that we have to do some of these things if we want to improve our health and get our kids on a better track. 

Dr. Michelle Perro: 

I think understanding is the first step, and I appreciate that people do not have a genetics background, and GMOs are complicated, by the way, and advanced genetic modification and pesticide science is complicated. And I think we can simplify this in terms without dumbing it down, we can make these scientific concepts readable, approachable. That’s what we try to do at GMO science so that people understand that wait, we have good data and we can explain this in a way for every science background, no matter what your science background is. And you’re actually right that people can understand, “Wow, there is good data here on why I need to change my behavior.” Because getting people to change, for example, what they eat — we as physicians, that’s one of the hardest things you can get an adult to do. And so we’re asking people not only to make changes but to change culturally things they have been brought up with. To change and to kind of banish certain concepts like ‘mom in the kitchen’. That is decades old. Everyone cooks. Boys love knives. Give them knives, let them chop. So we need to get off this model of what we’ve been programmed to believe as American food and get back to real food, perhaps like France. I think France probably is one of the best countries that embraces real food. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Well, and also embraces this understanding that these things are important and make a big difference in kids’ health and functioning, right? They have a very different way of viewing — especially when we look at neurobehavioral kinds of disorders, it’s a very different way of viewing that and looking at how to approach that than we do here. But I want to do a follow-up question about all of the things that are going on that have created more health challenges for our kids. Sometimes I have parents who come into our teacher’s seminar and people will say, “Well, if that’s the case, if these things are so problematic, how come we’re all not suffering with all of these problems. How come it is that I have three children at home and just this one has a diagnosis of autism and eczema and severe allergies. If this is a problem for kids, how come all kids aren’t having all kinds of problems?” Can you touch on that?

Dr. Michelle Perro:

Absolutely. This is one of my favorite topics, Nicole. So yes, you could have children, and they could all look very different. What one of the things is, it depends on mom’s status and how she was doing as well as dad, to a degree, prior to the conception of that kid number 1, 2, 3 or 4. So if mom was exposed to pesticides, a lot of stress, some heavy metals herself, she will download on that child. So her own exposures can alter the effect on the next kid. If she received a big dose of antibiotics for an infection before child number 3, that will change her microbiome and then affect the baby’s microbiome, the baby’s bacterial makeup, which will then affect that baby’s immunity. So there are lots of factors. Maybe the parents moved, maybe mom got divorced, maybe dad, you know, etc. So that’s number one. Number two is we’re all faced with a set of genetic makeup so there is a partial explanation about every kid is different, and also their own exposures. Every kid may be in different schools, different things happened to them. The effect of adverse childhood experiences on the individual kids in classrooms. Maybe one of the kids was bullied, maybe one of the kids received or had an illness when they were in the pediatrician’s office and then got vaccinated. There are so many factors that can alter one child in the lot. So I say, that is one of the explanations. So this idea that I have been lecturing about — I’m doing a talk coming up soon about it is pre-pregnancy cleanout for both mom and dad prior to conception. Now those eggs that mom has were inherited, were produced within her own mom. Exposure to those eggs might be 100 years old. So those eggs have been passed on for generations and were formed when that mom was a fetus in her mother. So those eggs may have received a lot of exposures over the decades and then produced that child. Oftentimes, when there is a toxic exposure, we don’t see effects often in the first line, but in the second line. So if mom was okay, for example, mom may say “I’m fine, why do my kids have this?” It might be that it skipped mom, her parents were affected, skipped mom, and affected what we called the F2 generation. 

So it gets a little complicated, so these factors all matter and I couldn’t stress enough, and I know you will agree with this, is the parents’ emotional health at the time of that pregnancy and delivery is tantamount. If mom might be with kid number four, her stress level and dad’s stress level, not just mom, may be much higher. Her stress changes her entire neurotransmitters, her chemistry, her steroid hormones, and that also affects that baby and the breastmilk. If a baby was formula fed and one was breastfed another big factor. So these all come into play. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

And I think it’s important when we have these discussions, for parents to hear that this is not about blame. If you’re a mom or dad listening and going, “Oh my gosh, I can see so many pieces.” This is not about anything being your fault. This is about just understanding all of the dynamics that play into this, and how so many things affect our physiology and our kids physiologies and their development in ways that we haven’t been aware of before. So this is more about empowering ourselves as parents with new knowledge and information that then we can do something with much more so than it is about blame or looking back and wishing that we can change things. We can’t go back and change things, but we can understand how those inputs historically may have led to some of the challenges, and then that empowers us to make changes. 

Dr. Michelle Perro: 

And Nicole, it’s because so many western practitioners that our families see, that we see aren’t saying this, parents aren’t hearing it. So I want to reiterate. We don’t do the blame game, but this is a way of understanding it. Parents may say, “My pediatrician doesn’t say it, why is this doc saying it? I don’t hear any of this!” So there is so much confusion because it’s not being broadcasted from the kids’ regular physician and the parents’ physician. So we’ve got this dichotomy of information of what people are listening to, and that adds to the confusion. Like “Why should I believe Dr. Michelle here, and Dr. Nicole?” And so this is something that is really hard to wrap around. So when parents tell me that, and I’ve heard it, I say the following: “Well, look, let’s do this. You make these changes. Can you possibly give it 4 weeks, 6 weeks in your own home and then report back to me on what you see? You be your own science experiment and let’s just see if there is some validity here. I can give references and I can give websites, books, journals, etc, but you be your own and of 3, 4, 5 — conduct your own science in your own family and report back.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, that’s a great way of looking at it, and I do think it is so confusing for parents because they may listen to a program like this and hear this information or see things online and read books, and they go into their child’s healthcare provider curious about this asking questions and just get nothing about this, or many parents will say to me, you know, “I’ve been asking for years why it is that this child gets ear infection after ear infection, has needed three sets of tubes, it’s always runny nose, these kinds of things, and nobody can really give me any answers except give me more prescriptions.” And then they start connecting the dots with the kinds of things we’re talking about, and I think a lot of parents feel really not only confused but also just very disappointed and very frustrated with why it’s so difficult to get any of this information or to get to some of these more root issues with their typical healthcare providers. 

Dr. Michelle Perro:

And you know, in defense of practitioners and here is my defense because I’ve been known to trash my own business for sure, and I had a lot of frustrations. However, on the other hand, the kind of information we’re talking about here where parents are seeking is lengthy. The education process takes time. To start teaching people about diet and how to alter diet to affect those ear infections and that asthma takes time and in a busy clinical practice, because of an HMO, a health maintenance organization, or whatever kinds of insurance people have, that pediatrician maybe seeing 3 to 4 to 5 patients per hour, and they’re moving along with the electronic health record, those docs, I’ll speak about my people, have their day increased by 20% with no added income. So we need a kind of reconfiguration of the healthcare model where we are not driven by insurance, which is this massively consuming non-productive part of healthcare. I am a believer in single-payer, I think medicare for all would work personally, but I know we’re not going into politics, but politics does come into play here and practitioners don’t have time. So what they will need to do is refer patients to a nutritionist, perhaps to work with a family. 

Now, this is where we get into problems too because dietitians are often employed by clinics and hospitals and they don’t actually follow some of this holistically-minded nutritional stuff that we’re talking about here, Nicole. So you need to see a holistic nutritionist. This is where it gets complicated, who is often out of pocket. So these are the challenges that we’ve got and so what’s a poor family to do? They get the information and they get frustrated and they’re stuck with two sets of data. What do they do? And that’s why we go to “You try these things and see what you think as a smart family.” And I agree, It’s an imperfect system, at best. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And there are so many wonderful physicians and healthcare providers out there who bang their heads up against the limitations of the current system. We have a wonderful group of pediatricians here in my community who got so frustrated with the barriers to practicing in a way that they felt was actually conducive to helping kids and families that they left the medical system that they were a part of and went out on their own so that they could practice medicine in a way that allowed them to spend the time and to delve into the questions that families have. But it is — there are just so many barriers to that, so that’s one of the things that I love about doing this podcast, is that it is a way to reach anyone with this information and to really empower people that regardless of your situation, there are some really important fundamental steps that you have control over, that you can take to support your health, to support your kids’ health. it’s not a situation where you just have to deal with whatever it is that’s available in your community. You have the power with this knowledge to start implementing some things that can really make a tremendous difference for your kids.  

Dr. Michelle Perro:

You know, when we think back historically to the time of, for example, our grandparents and my grandparents were born in the early 1900s, people knew how to take care of their own health. They understood basic medicine, herbal medicine, and they took care of so many of these things that are common and routine on their own base, with herbs, supplements, common foods, basic, oregano, garlic — at home. So there was a knowledge of home-based medicine that people had that we lost with the westernization of medicine. And I’m not a big fan of people not knowing these basics of how to take care of things themselves. So one of the things we teach is home healthcare. For parents, it’s how to take care of these simple things at home on your own. Everyone should be supplied with a basic kit at home to understand the how-to and using non-toxic modalities for the treatment of different things. Before we started this podcast, you and I were talking about vitamin C. So simple, very affordable, you can find it anywhere, it actually tastes good, kids like it because it tastes a little bit like the C A N D Y, I don’t even want to say that word, there were things like that that just got lost. Or using oil of oregano, we’re using garlic — garlic is one of the best antibiotics, oil of oregano is an awesome antibiotic. So we have to resurrect, and that’s what we’ve been doing for a few decades now, the understanding of how people can regain their health by understanding how to take care of themselves. And then needing the system when things kind of ratchet up. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Right, because there is a place for all of these pieces, right? There is a place for all of these, and where things start to break down is where you have a child with these chronic neurodevelopmental or brain-based or health issues and the acute kinds of treatments aren’t cutting it. So what can we be doing to help with that? I want to get into some of the strategies that you have for parents because you talk about some really foundational practical things that parents can do if they have kids with these kinds of challenges. What are steps that they can be taking to address the fact that we live in a world with all these exposures, right? I mean short of moving to the very few places left in the world where maybe we wouldn’t have any exposures, it’s like we’re living in the world we’re living in, so how can we support our kids, their health, their microbiomes to raise the threshold for them that their bodies can manage more of these things? What are some starting points for families?

Dr. Michelle Perro:

I’ve changed this over the years, Nicole, because as I work with more families and read more and learn more — and the first thing I tell families to do is get off processed foods. I find they’re not healthy, even the organic ones. Processed is processed. There are a lot of things you have to do even in organic processed food to make that food last in a box on a shelf, organic or not. So now, I used to say organic first. Now I say off processed foods, which means more cooking, less takeout. And I’m not trying to bash restaurants, I too enjoy going out to a restaurant. However, restaurants are not often using organic. Many of them are using cheap products and if you go to Costco, for example, in the morning, you see their trucks, their little big carts are loaded up with the stuff, the restaurants go in first, and I’m thinking, “Ugh, God.” and so much of it is unhealthy. So we have to: Off processed foods, diminish our takeout, start cooking whole foods, and that means everybody cooking in the family, to the point where even families can cook together. I can tell a few families from here who had kids that were gluten-free and dairy-free. They were three families who live within a ten blocks area. I said “Can you guys communicate and each one of you make the meal?” They all eat similarly. And then just trade the pans! Why do we have to cook for our own families each time where you might only need to cook 3 nights a week if you’re sharing with other families? So that would be number one. Number two is get a water filter. I don’t trust a lot of municipal water systems and it can be a simple charcoal-based filter. Water filters, you and I can talk for about two hours just on water filters because it’s a very complicated topic and if people want to learn more about them, I usually send them to the Environmental Working Group. I think it has a really good review of water filters. If people want more information than the basic carbon-based pitcher filter or sink-based. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

But even that is a good starting point, because I think some people who come in or email and they say, “Oh, I’ve been doing all this research!” People can get so overwhelmed with all of the options and all of the pros and cons and then they just don’t take action on things, so you’re saying, “Hey, look, even those charcoal ones, the ones that come in the pitcher that you can get at the — that’s a great starting point.”

Dr. Michelle Perro:

It is a starting point, and the truth is the carbon filters, you have to change them, you have to, every 3-6 months depending on your use, it’s about 3 months, you have to change the filters like in the refrigerator, people don’t change those filters. Change your filter. And I have seen those filters, the pitchers at thrift stores for a few bucks. You can buy the pitcher and you do need to get a fresh carbon filter and change those. And the food thing: People say, “Well, Michelle, you say eat organic, it’s more expensive.” Not so much anymore. The prices are starting to equalize, and if you’re home cooking and not doing takeout as much, it goes under budget, and that means bringing your lunch to work. So people don’t consider that takeout lunch or if you’re running to the food truck, that might be 6, 8, 10 bucks right there! And that is a couple of meals for your family if you buy organic. 

So two simple things. The last thing I ask people to do, and boy, I have a hard time in my own house getting people to it here is, “Can you take your shoes off at the door?” 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yes!

Dr. Michelle Perro:

How simple is that?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

It’s a rule in my house, do not wear shoes past the foyer of my house.

Dr. Michelle Perro:

Well. I have some people who feel otherwise in my own home, so it’s a journey, Nicole, I didn’t ask for perfection, do the best that you can. It’s a process, it can take months to employ those three simple things that I ask families to do. And then from there, if they can get those in, then we start getting into smoothies and what we can put in smoothies, and how we can sort of get away from so much carb-based eating to more legumes, seeds, and nuts, more veggies in the diet. Veggies, veggies, veggies, and more veggies. And then we start to go in that direction and then we can even start to sort out, “What does your kid need? Do they need more iron? Do they need more B12? Do they need more zinc?” And alter the diet that way But we have to start first with those first three premises, and then take it from there. And it’s baby steps, Nicole, we don’t look for perfection. It’s a process. 

And then I start upping the ante by including different herbs in their diet, I’m a big fan of herbs. Herbs are often healthier than the vegetable, whether I’m using parsley, cilantro, rosemary — all the herbs, and say, “Bring ‘em in”. And so then we start changing diets, reducing EMFs and then I start bringing in different substances, whether it’s a multivitamin with minerals, probiotics, etc. And then we start upping the ante, but I always start with those basic building blocks first. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

That’s so important because when people start to feel successful with implementing things, then that gets more success. We get the ball rolling! So often I see families who come into the clinic, who have been to see integrative practitioners or functional medicine people and they’ve got this huge stack of tests and this huge report, all of these recommendations about all these complicated things and they’re just sort of deer-in-the-headlights, looking at me like, “We haven’t done many of this…” we have to start at a place that people can manage and feel successful with, so I love those three things and the piece about getting off the processed foods, that’s a process. For most families, that’s not going to happen quickly. So to look at how you can start taking some steps in that direction, sometimes people look at either starting with some of the snack foods that they’re doing with kids and how can you, when something runs out, instead of replacing it with a processed item, what can we find as a swap that’s more of a whole food item? So taking that in pieces, but those three things that anybody can start to implement, that’s really powerful and that leads to bigger changes, I think. 

Dr. Michelle Perro:

I’m sit-in here chuckling to myself, because of that same lunch with my favorite teacher, and I said, “What’s in kids’ lunchboxes?” One of my favorite lectures, right? I’m living in a pretty crunchy organic town here in Northern California, Nicole, and I thought there was going to be celery sticks and hummus, and she said, “Oh, not so fast. These little things called Lunchables, Spicy Doritos, no protein, no veggie, very little fruit. Occasionally some fruit and they’re stopping at the fast-food place on the way over here and they’re picking up more.” I thought, “Oh my God.” I was shocked because I thought here in this little crunchy town that we’d have some nice-looking lunchboxes, but no. And one of my favorite slides that I have ever done on a talk is I’ve taken lunchboxes from all over the world. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Oh I love it. 

Dr. Michelle Perro:

And OMG Nicole, we are not looking so good here in the US! So I can tell you in other countries, not only do kids not even bring their lunch boxes, they have hot meals prepared at school. Like in France, and they have kitchens. And we’re trying to do that here locally but we’re getting some resistance and it’s working slowly, but this understanding — it has to even go, “What?” If you’re sending your kid processed food in the lunchbox because it’s easy, that’s the message you’re training your child already to enjoy those tastes of fat, sugar, and salt. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

That’s right, and it’s interesting because I’ll have parents who will come in and have addressed some of their own health issues, and they will eat completely differently from their kids and they’ll say, “Well, this is the stuff that they want.” And like with so many things with kids, what they want and what is good for them are often two different things, and as families, shifting towards “We’re all doing this for our health”. And I’m a big proponent of “Everybody eats this way.” We don’t have separate rules or separate things for different people in the family because particularly when you’re looking at kids, that sets up a lot of power struggles and a lot of problems, and sometimes that’s the barrier, right? It’s that parents actually are resistive to changing the way they’re eating, and they realize, “If I’m going to tell my kid that they need to have celery and hummus in their lunchbox, then I need to be changing what I’m eating”, and that can be a real challenge for some people. 

Dr. Michelle Perro:

You know, my husband hid that junk food bag in his closet for years, my kids had zeroed in on that thing, they would find it and I think he still hides that junk food bag in his closet. I’ve done many a cereal box that I had found in the food pantry, thinking, “Not real food.” I wouldn’t even put it in the compost. This is some pseudo-industrialized product, it’s not real food. That’s another thing I tell folks to do is get off those cereals. That morning cereal is, I don’t know, some American fabrication of Kellogg’s or some other big business, I’m not singling out Kellogg’s, many are responsible. It’s like get rid of that. I don’t know who thought of that, it’s a non-food. Yes, it’s easy, but it’s non-food. It’s not real food. So that might be another simple change because I know a lot of American children are raised on cereal and milk. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yup. Cereal and milk or Pop-Tarts, I was thinking of this, you were talking about what’s in the lunches — buying a carton of chocolate or strawberry milk at school that has more sugar in it than a can of soda pop. I mean these kinds of things, and again, this is about awareness and this is about knowing something different now and choosing to make some changes as a result of that. If I had known 20 years ago what I know now about food and kids’ health and developing brains and all of that — Oh my goodness, I would have done things so differently with my kids in the early years, and I thought I was doing a great job of feeding them healthy foods! But I know better now and so we do better now, but this is a journey for all of us, and I think I just like to impart to people: Start with wherever you’re at, make one change. Taking shoes off! Which by the way, can you just comment on why that’s so important? Why do you use that as a starting point for people to take their shoes off before they go into their home?

Dr. Michelle Perro:

Absolutely. One of the most toxic things in people’s homes is dust. House dust. And shoes track in from the environment, various things as well as house dust, but various toxins and intoxicants in the bottom of the shoes and tracked into the home from wherever you just were. If the kids were even playing in the fields, or even with roundup, they are tracking all that in, not to mention everything else, solvents and everything else. It gets incorporated into house dust, which is one of the most toxic things in your houses. Houses are probably, especially those people in cold climates, are probably one of the most toxic things, because we’re building houses now not to breathe. And we have the off-gas. A lot of the chemicals that are in our homes and getting those chemicals out. So some homes may be too tight, especially when it’s cold, and we have to let them breathe, so periodically open your windows if you can and it’s not freezing out, but when it’s a nice day, aerate out and take those shoes off to diminish the house dust. If you do have a kid with any kind of allergies or asthma, I recommend that they don’t do the dusting. Oh, and kids can do chores by the way, because that house dust can really be toxic. And I tell parents this all the time, one of the little harbingers of house dust are stuffed animals! I had a little asthmatic boy, couldn’t get better and on his bed was a collection of stuffed animals, and I thought, “Oh dear.” 

So that’s why house calls and going to people’s houses are so important. Parents meant well. He loved those animals, we just put them on a shelf, off the bed. So see? It’s these little common sense things that maybe don’t seem so common sense initially, and that’s the kind of stuff we talk about. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah, it’s so helpful and your book really covers a lot of this in more depth and gives parents even more practical suggestions. I do want to make sure that people know where they can find out more about what you’re doing and find out about your book. The book is “What’s Making Our Children Sick?”, Right? and that’s on Amazon, and where can people go to get more information from you and find out more about what you’re doing?

Dr. Michelle Perro:

Absolutely. So yes, the book is on Amazon, and in all honesty, it’s two years old. I reread it recently, it’s still relevant, although there have been more developments with genetically modified food, new gene-editing techniques which I didn’t cover so much. So for full disclosure. Chelsea Green was our wonderful publisher. I do run a website, it’s called GMO Science and we bring the most up to date stuff, and we’re about to launch a series of videos in the next few weeks, geared specifically for parents and younger people, millennials, little two-minute videos are coming on some of your favorite topics, and those will be finished with the next few weeks. Lastly, I will be launching my own website soon, drmichelleperro.com, and what that’s for is for practitioners. And I will be doing practitioner consultations to help people’s doctors get started on basic to complicated cases and just teach people what to do and how to manage these kids. And I can use nutrition, I can use herbs, I can use homeopathy, I can use nutraceuticals, I can use all kinds of things, and it’s taken me a long time to get there. So that’s going to be up hopefully in a few weeks, and I continue to do these amazing podcasts because I believe in the work that you do Nicole. And creating our networks and we continue to get the word out there, and we reach populations everywhere, and this is how we disseminate information, and people listen to podcasts and I support it. So thank you for what you do as well, I appreciate it. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Thank you so much and we’ll make sure to put all of those links with the show notes so that people can find you easily. And I’m so glad that you’re continuing to do not only the education work for consumers and patients but also branching into doing more things to support the many professionals who want to be utilizing these strategies and these understandings in their practice and need some consultation to do that. I love that you’re doing that. So grateful for your willingness to spend the time with us today. Really appreciate what has been a really fun conversation, thank you.

Dr. Michelle Perro:

Thank you, Nicole.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And thanks to all of you for listening, we’ll see you next time on our next episode of The Better Behavior Show.