RFK Jr. The Defender - Pediatric Health Disaster with Dr Joel Gator Warsh

In this episode, Dr. Joel Gaurav Warsh, a pediatrician in Los Angeles, California, talks about the impact of the recent school lockdowns and the impact on children. Dr. Warsh talks about how important it is for kids to be around other people and have a sense of community, especially in the wake of a crisis like the one that has been unfolding since September 11th, 2001. He also discusses the importance of early identification and early intervention in order to prevent long-term effects of a pandemic like the ones we have seen over the past few years. He also talks about what he has seen in the aftermath of the crisis and offers advice to parents on how to keep their kids safe and well-prepared for a crisis of this nature. This episode is sponsored by the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers and enter "sponsors" to receive $5 and receive $10 off your first purchase when clicking the discount code "AdvertiserID" at checkout. We are working on a new ad-free version of the show that will be available in the coming weeks. Thank you so much for listening and supporting the show! We really appreciate it! and we look forward to hearing back from our listeners. If you like the show and want to support the show, please leave us a review and/or share it with a friend! or tell us what you think we can do to help us reach more listeners! in the next episode! and spread the word out there about the show. Thank you! . Cheers! Dr. Aaron Warsh is a Canadian pediatrician, thank you, Joel Warsh! -Joel Warsh - Thank you for listening to this episode. - Dr. Gaviravaravarajan Warsh and I appreciate your support and support of this podcast! Thankyou, Joel, I appreciate it. Thanks, Joel thank you for coming on the podcast. and I hope you're listening! XOXO. xoxo, Sarah, Sarah - Sarah, Sarah, Thank you, Sarah and I love you. Sarah - - Sarah Sarah's Dad, Caitlyn, Amy, Rachit, and Joe, Rocha, and Matt

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, I have a Los Angeles pediatrician on today, which I wanted to have on for a while.

00:00:06.000 Dr.

00:00:07.000 Joel Gator Warsh, who grew up in Toronto, Canada.

00:00:10.000 He completed his undergraduate training at Toronto York University before going on to earn a master's degree.

00:00:19.000 In epidemiology and community health at Queen's University, where he was honored with the Canadian Institute of Health Research Master's Award.

00:00:28.000 He was the CEO of the International Innovation Media and Design, Inc., and was the Ontario Student Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009.

00:00:37.000 He's an integrative medicine doctor, functional medicine doctor, who has also expertise in traditional Chinese medicine and homeopathy and functional medicine and every kind of integrative medicine.

00:00:55.000 So welcome to the show.

00:00:56.000 Thank you so much for having me on.

00:00:58.000 I'm excited to chat.

00:00:59.000 You know, the first thing I really want to talk to you about is I know you have pediatric You have about 700 families in it.

00:01:09.000 And I'm very curious about what you saw the impact of children on children of the lockdowns over the past two years.

00:01:18.000 Yeah, it's been really tough.

00:01:20.000 I mean, it's been tough on everybody, but it's certainly been tough on children.

00:01:23.000 I think we've, you know, we've been seeing this increase in chronic disease and mental health concerns over the last, you know, even few decades.

00:01:32.000 But what was already there, I think we threw some gasoline on the fire when it came to the pandemic.

00:01:38.000 and my practice went a lot from colds and coughs and runny nose and earaches and all the normal stuff to a lot of mental health concerns, anxiety, stress, worries.

00:01:48.000 And I think that was just a very unfortunate turn of events for everybody and especially for kids.

00:01:54.000 It's just really been very tough on them.

00:01:56.000 And I have thankfully seen things improve somewhat, but there's definitely a lot of long-term complications, stress, anxiety from what's been going on the last couple of years.

00:02:07.000 How does a child express the stress or anxiety when they come into your offices?

00:02:13.000 Do the parents bring them in and say there are mental health problems here?

00:02:18.000 Or how do you even diagnose that?

00:02:20.000 Yeah, it varies a lot.

00:02:22.000 It really depends on the kid and the age for sure.

00:02:25.000 You know, sometimes it can just start with vague symptoms like stomach aches or headaches or just general aches and pains.

00:02:34.000 Sometimes it can be mood or behavior changes.

00:02:36.000 So kids that were, you know, very happy, friendly, all of a sudden go to being in a more...

00:02:42.000 They stay more in their room.

00:02:43.000 They don't want to be around their friends.

00:02:45.000 They don't want to go out.

00:02:45.000 They don't want to do anything.

00:02:46.000 They can be a little bit more depressed or sad.

00:02:48.000 So sometimes we'll just see changes in mood, but other times it will be the parents will actually physically come in.

00:02:53.000 And that even more so over the pandemic, you know, it wasn't usually the parents were coming in and saying, oh, my kid is depressed or they're very anxious, but that became the norm.

00:03:01.000 Almost every teenager, almost every child that was going to be like four to 12 or 15 years Those were the calls I was getting every single day.

00:03:10.000 And that was devastating.

00:03:11.000 I mean, these are kids.

00:03:12.000 They should not have this level of mental health concerns.

00:03:16.000 They're not meant to be put through this kind of stress.

00:03:18.000 And what we were seeing and what we're still seeing is just the fallout of everything that has happened over the last few years.

00:03:25.000 And I think it's terrible.

00:03:27.000 It's really terrible what's happened to the kids.

00:03:29.000 And what part of COVID was that was really stressing them?

00:03:36.000 Was it the fear from the disease?

00:03:38.000 Was it the constant reminder?

00:03:40.000 Was it the mask?

00:03:41.000 Was it the isolation?

00:03:43.000 I think it's a mix of the isolation and the stress.

00:03:47.000 I think, especially for teenagers and kids, they're social creatures.

00:03:51.000 I mean, we're all social creatures and we need community and we need to be around other people.

00:03:54.000 And I think we need hugs and love and family.

00:03:57.000 And there was a lot of discussion and changing messaging.

00:04:02.000 And so that's hard for even an adult to know exactly what to do during everything.

00:04:05.000 And it makes sense.

00:04:06.000 Sometimes there are changes and things do change over time.

00:04:08.000 But for a kid to hear, oh, you might die day in and day out. 0.99

00:04:13.000 Oh, you might kill grandma.

00:04:15.000 Oh, this messaging that they heard, it's no wonder that they were stressed out.

00:04:20.000 And then as things have improved somewhat, certainly over the last few months, there are many kids that are still very afraid.

00:04:27.000 It's very hard for them to go from to understanding of this raging pandemic is going on versus, okay, things seem to be getting better.

00:04:35.000 Oh, you might die from this thing.

00:04:37.000 But then females are like, oh, it's not so bad. 1.00

00:04:40.000 That's just messaging that it's much harder for children to get.

00:04:43.000 I think it is...

00:05:04.000 Important to be safe and to be conscious about what is going on there, but what was certainly missed over the last few years has really been the greater implications of everything that's been done, and so there's going to be positive and negatives with everything that we choose, but a lot of the mental health aspects to this were really forgotten, were really secondary, and I don't think they're as secondary anymore.

00:05:27.000 more.

00:05:28.000 I really do think people are starting to recognize how much of an impact this has.

00:05:31.000 And you're starting to see research and studies and more discussion about the impacts and really, you know, trying to, to decrease the impacts long-term for children and most kids, you know, overall, I think in the long run we'll do okay.

00:05:43.000 But I think this is an important lesson that we need to learn and we need to just be mindful of how important community, family, and the messaging that we have around health is because if we're just talking about disease every day, all day, if we're just talking about all these stressful things, then it's no wonder that kids are going if we're just talking about all these stressful things, then They already had enough to deal with and they're already having a lot of mental concerns as it was.

00:06:06.000 And then you see 30% increases in hospital visits for mental health concerns and more depression and more suicides and That's a big deal.

00:06:14.000 That's a huge deal.

00:06:15.000 And that's on top of the chronic disease that we're already seeing with the rates that are skyrocketing before even the pandemic was like 50% of kids or so, depending on what study you look at, have a chronic disease.

00:06:28.000 And that shouldn't be that way.

00:06:29.000 One out of two kids should not have a disease, should not be on a medication, should not be needing to see their doctor every few weeks.

00:06:35.000 We need to be raising the flags and saying, like, this is a problem.

00:06:38.000 We need to do something different.

00:06:40.000 And what did we do during the pandemic?

00:06:42.000 We had to stay home more.

00:06:42.000 We watched more TV. We didn't eat as well.

00:06:45.000 We were more stressed out.

00:06:46.000 All the things that we know that lead to chronic disease.

00:06:48.000 Again, we threw gasoline on a fire that was already there.

00:06:51.000 And it's not surprising that we're seeing more health problems and diabetes rates doubled in some places.

00:06:57.000 I mean, that's crazy.

00:06:58.000 Doubled in the last two years?

00:07:00.000 There's no reason for that.

00:07:02.000 That's not okay.

00:07:04.000 And what was the reaction that you have in talking to other doctors?

00:07:10.000 You come from a community, Cedars-Sinai.

00:07:14.000 It's kind of the center of allopathic medication and medicine.

00:07:21.000 You must be an outlier there anyhow.

00:07:24.000 Yeah, I think that it all depends on the way you approach things.

00:07:28.000 And I'm very cordial with my colleagues, and I went to a great allopathic Western medicine program.

00:07:34.000 And to me, it's more around the way that you balance things.

00:07:37.000 I'm not against Western medicine at all.

00:07:38.000 I did all the regular medical training.

00:07:41.000 You know, we have medications in our office.

00:07:43.000 We do all of the normal stuff that you would do.

00:07:45.000 I just...

00:07:46.000 I think it's unfortunate that we've forgotten about all of these other modalities in alternative medicine.

00:07:51.000 There are so many ways that we can balance between both worlds.

00:07:55.000 And again, I'm not against Western medicine.

00:07:56.000 I just think that we're way too quick in modern medicine to give a medication.

00:08:00.000 We're way too quick to give an antibiotic.

00:08:01.000 And if you never learn about supplements or other options out there, then if you have In illness, a parent wants you to do something, and if the only thing you have for them is an antibiotic, then you're going to give that.

00:08:13.000 And even in Western medicine, there's so much discussion about antibiotic stewardship and not giving medications when you don't need it, but there just isn't the training and the knowledge in that.

00:08:23.000 So for me, I never talk poorly about my colleagues in medicine, especially pediatricians.

00:08:29.000 They're great people, right?

00:08:30.000 They're going into medicine.

00:08:31.000 They want to treat kids.

00:08:33.000 They want to keep your kids healthy.

00:08:35.000 So I think that some people in the natural world, they might have different opinions on how to get there, but everybody wants kids to be healthy at the end of the day.

00:08:42.000 And to me, what I think is important is balance and balancing between those worlds.

00:08:47.000 And it's really frustrating as a human being and as a pediatrician to see this division and to see people getting so angry at each other and fighting and not discussing and not putting the kids first.

00:08:59.000 And that's what we've seen just get worse and worse over the years.

00:09:01.000 And I know you know this, but there's no reason why we can't discuss these things.

00:09:06.000 There's no reason why we can't find some middle ground.

00:09:08.000 And there's no reason why we can't use the best of natural medicine and the best of modern medicine together.

00:09:14.000 And I think if you come from that angle and you make sure you're keeping patients safe, Then there's no reason, you know, to be, oh, just think about acupuncture, right?

00:09:22.000 Acupuncture used to be woo-woo, you know, 15, 20 years ago, and now it's in every hospital when we use it instead of pain medications with the opioid crisis, and that's the first-line treatment.

00:09:32.000 And things do slowly trickle into modern medicine, but it's just slow.

00:09:37.000 And I've certainly seen over the last few years more and more practitioners getting interested in natural medicine.

00:09:44.000 There's still a long way to go, and there's a wide range of of what somebody can do when it comes to natural medicine.

00:09:50.000 You don't have to be the most knowledgeable person, but at least if you're open to learning about it and bring it into practice, then we can bring these two worlds together for the kids.

00:09:59.000 You know, that's why we're here.

00:10:00.000 That's why I'm here, is just to help kids get healthier because what we're doing isn't working.

00:10:05.000 We're great at infectious disease and treatments and, you know, antibiotics and pneumonias.

00:10:11.000 We're much better than we were 100 years ago, but chronic disease rates are skyrocketing now.

00:10:15.000 And so we need to, I think, change the system and really focus as much on prevention as we do on treatment.

00:10:22.000 Yeah, that's one of the things that I wonder about with pediatricians, because I know, of course, like you say, virtually every pediatrician got into that line of work because they love children.

00:10:35.000 But I grew up, you know, I had 10 brothers and sisters, so there were 11 of us.

00:10:41.000 And I had probably close to 70 first cousins on both sides of my family.

00:10:46.000 And I didn't know anybody who had a chronic disease.

00:10:50.000 There was nobody that I knew who had diabetes, who had rheumatoid arthritis.

00:10:55.000 Obesity was extremely rare.

00:10:57.000 There was no autism when I was a kid.

00:11:01.000 To this day, I don't know a single person my age who has full-blown autism.

00:11:06.000 And now it's one in every 44 kids.

00:11:08.000 And then all of these other neurological disorders that are now common, like tics, facial tics, and Tourette's syndrome, and narcolepsy.

00:11:18.000 You know, why are the pediatricians not standing up and saying, you know, at least saying, what the heck is going on with our kids?

00:11:27.000 Why is that not happening?

00:11:29.000 I'm not exactly sure why we're not looking into the root cause.

00:11:33.000 I think one part of it is everybody's just so busy these days and you don't necessarily have enough time to spend with the patient.

00:11:41.000 You don't have an hour or two hours to kind of go through our full history and have a full discussion on diet and nutrition and All the things that you really need to be focused on.

00:11:49.000 I think there are certainly some people that are starting to really look into it.

00:11:53.000 But to me, I think it's crazy that we're not stepping back and saying, look at the numbers.

00:12:00.000 Look at the chronic disease rates.

00:12:02.000 Look at where we're going.

00:12:03.000 There's something that we're doing.

00:12:05.000 That is not working.

00:12:06.000 I mean, you can say, okay, sure, we might be a little better at diagnosing things nowadays, but there's no way that that accounts for the rapid increase of disease that we're seeing.

00:12:16.000 And just like what you're saying, I don't remember anyone really that had a peanut allergy when I was little, you know, maybe one person.

00:12:22.000 I don't remember autism.

00:12:23.000 It doesn't mean it didn't exist.

00:12:24.000 I'm sure there were some people that had or, you know, a few, but it's, you know, one out of every few kids has one of these things now.

00:12:30.000 And a lot of patients that I see and have seen Have these things.

00:12:34.000 So we didn't change genetically that much over a few decades, right?

00:12:38.000 That's just not possible.

00:12:39.000 Maybe very minor, but realistically, that's not what happened.

00:12:41.000 It has to be something in our environment.

00:12:43.000 It has to be what we're doing.

00:12:45.000 It has to be what we're eating and what we're exposed to.

00:12:48.000 You know, it's very complex, but it's also very simple.

00:12:50.000 It's something that we're doing, and it's probably many things that we're doing.

00:12:53.000 You know, people always ask me, well, why?

00:12:55.000 Why are we seeing these rates of chronic disease?

00:12:57.000 And they always want to point to one thing, but there's no way it can be one thing.

00:13:00.000 It's everything.

00:13:01.000 It's the way that we're living.

00:13:02.000 It's the nutrient poor food that we're eating.

00:13:06.000 We're not getting the nutrients that we need from our food because we're eating crappy, preservative, chemical, prepared food.

00:13:14.000 We're not making it ourself.

00:13:15.000 And even if you are making it yourself, you're buying from the store, the fruits and the vegetables and everything that we're getting isn't nearly as good as it used to be.

00:13:21.000 And you're literally built of what you eat and you're made of what you eat.

00:13:25.000 And so if you're not getting the nutrients, then how is your body going to be able to And we're also just surrounded by more chemicals.

00:13:32.000 We're exposed to chemicals all the time in the air, in the water, on our clothes, everything that we spray down.

00:13:38.000 And so if you're just increasing those chemicals on a daily basis and over years, and you're not getting nutrients that you need, how are you not going to get sick?

00:13:47.000 There's no logical way that it's not going to happen.

00:13:49.000 And that's what we're seeing.

00:13:51.000 That's why we're seeing these rates increase.

00:13:53.000 But at the same time, Many of the families that do focus on these things and are cognizant of the food that they eat and the chemicals that they're surrounded by, their kids can be very healthy.

00:14:05.000 Anybody could be healthy or could get sick, but you by far and above see...

00:14:10.000 I think, and certainly I've seen in my practice, the families that are just cognizant of this and take small steps to decrease the chemicals in their life and to eat healthy and buy from farmers markets and buy locally and plant a garden.

00:14:24.000 By and large, they're not nearly as sick as the other kids that I've seen over the years.

00:14:28.000 Why doesn't the American Association of Pediatrics or Academy of Pediatrics, why aren't they taking on these issues?

00:14:35.000 You know, what do you think?

00:14:36.000 Is it because they're owned by the drug companies?

00:14:40.000 What is happening?

00:14:42.000 Because I, listen, I was a pediatrician.

00:14:45.000 Mm-hmm.

00:14:46.000 I'd be saying, why did we go?

00:14:49.000 We know what the data showed.

00:14:50.000 The data showed that by 1986, it was 11.8% who had chronic disease.

00:14:57.000 By 2006, it was 54%.

00:15:01.000 This is HHS's own data.

00:15:04.000 Why is nobody saying, what the heck is happening with these kids?

00:15:09.000 I'm not 100% sure.

00:15:10.000 You mentioned about the pharmaceutical companies, and I think that's an important piece.

00:15:15.000 Again, I don't think most pediatricians think about things in that way.

00:15:19.000 I think we have to step back and think about marketing, and we've certainly been marketed to by all sorts of companies, but everybody has on every single issue.

00:15:27.000 Most doctors are not getting huge payments from, you know, drug companies or whatever.

00:15:31.000 Most doctors wish, right?

00:15:32.000 I think that's not really, really what it is.

00:15:35.000 I think it's just more of being very focused on your patient panel and just seeing patients and trying to keep them, trying to treat what you do see.

00:15:44.000 But There isn't or hasn't been this wave of movement yet, at least amongst doctors or pediatricians, to really think about the root cause and really identify just chronic disease in general as a major issue, and then really focus on prevention.

00:15:59.000 And, you know, when you talk about companies, a lot of things do come down to money, and there's not a lot of money in Improving your vitamin D or eating healthier.

00:16:06.000 There is money in treatments.

00:16:09.000 And so that's what is talked about and what's focused on.

00:16:11.000 I do think if, you know, maybe if there's a movement towards thinking about prevention more and talking about prevention more and the ability for doctors to do it, I mean, the payments from insurance companies and the amount of time to do it, you would see more focus on it.

00:16:25.000 But it's really nearly impossible to do what you need to do in three minutes when you see a patient or five minutes when you see a patient.

00:16:32.000 And unless you're in A private practice where you don't have that many patients and you have, you know, maybe some concierge or whatever.

00:16:38.000 You just don't have the time.

00:16:39.000 I mean, when I was working in the hospital, you might have to see 10-15 patients in an hour, at least 5-10 at a minimum.

00:16:46.000 So there's only so much that you can do in...

00:16:49.000 You know, those five minutes, you want to make sure that they're healthy, and they're not going to go to the hospital, but you can't spend 20 minutes talking about their diet.

00:16:56.000 And my hope and my dream one day is that, you know, maybe these worlds will come together, natural medicine world, and, or, you know, just talking about nutrition, and maybe we'll be more like a dentist, where you'll go to your doctor's office, and you'll spend 20 minutes with a nutritionist, and, you know, another 10 minutes with a coach, and then you'll, you'll spend 15 minutes with your doctor, whatever it is, but Unless we change the system around to be able to offer doctors longer time to speak to patients, it's really not practical to spend an hour with everybody.

00:17:23.000 So we have to find some middle ground.

00:17:24.000 And at some point we have to say, you know what, this is a big problem.

00:17:28.000 It's a huge problem.

00:17:30.000 We have to do something about it.

00:17:31.000 And as important as treatment is, and it is important, we do want to, you know, cure cancer and do other things like that and treat disease.

00:17:38.000 That's important, but it's just as important to prevent.

00:17:41.000 And if we don't change something, every kid's going to have a chronic disease.

00:17:45.000 So we have to find a way within the system to pay doctors appropriately so they can do this, so they can spend the time or find a system where patients can spend that time to actually talk about diet for half an hour or do whatever they need to do with it for that patient on that day.

00:18:01.000 It has to be done.

00:18:03.000 We have to prioritize it.

00:18:04.000 And I think it's possible.

00:18:05.000 It's possible to be done.

00:18:06.000 It's a big change.

00:18:07.000 But it can happen in the long run if everybody prioritizes it.

00:18:12.000 And doctors want kids to be healthy.

00:18:13.000 So I think it can happen, but it's not happening at the moment.

00:18:17.000 It's just not a priority or something that people are thinking about.

00:18:20.000 But I do hope that we think about it before every kid has a chronic disease.

00:18:23.000 And I say that for my own kid.

00:18:25.000 I have a two and a half year old.

00:18:27.000 And, you know, we eat pretty healthy, and we do a lot of the things that I think you need to do to stay healthy, but it's terrifying to think that the numbers state that if I have another kid, there's a good chance that one of those two is going to have a chronic disease.

00:18:39.000 Like, that shouldn't be.

00:18:41.000 There's no reason for it, and it wasn't that way 50 years ago.

00:18:44.000 You know, you talk about...

00:18:46.000 The doctors don't have time to talk to the patients anymore.

00:18:49.000 They have to see 10 or 15 patients an hour.

00:18:52.000 And is that because BlackRock and Vanguard now and all the hospital systems and everything is driven by Wall Street and profit motives?

00:19:02.000 I mean, how did that happen?

00:19:05.000 I think it's a mix of medicine becoming more corporate and I think it's also just a mixture of the way...

00:19:12.000 I can speak about what I do and insurance reimbursements seem like they just continue to become...

00:19:19.000 They're not keeping up certainly with inflation and with the increasing costs.

00:19:24.000 You can only be open as a practice for so long.

00:19:28.000 If, let's say you get paid $20 or $30 to see a patient, but, you know, you have a certain cost to keep that office up, so you have to see more and more patients.

00:19:35.000 And that, I think, is one of the reasons why so many practices close over the pandemic.

00:19:39.000 There was some huge amount of practices that close over the pandemic, because a lot of them are volume-based, and when the volume dropped...

00:19:45.000 Then you just can't keep up financially.

00:19:48.000 And that can't be.

00:19:49.000 We can't be financially motivated to see people.

00:19:52.000 We need to be able to spend as much time as we can, or we need to, with those patients.

00:19:56.000 And I think it's just a mixture of trying to corporatize medicine.

00:20:01.000 Because, I mean, it works more efficiently, you know, if you do things exactly the same way.

00:20:06.000 But it's not necessarily the best thing for the patient.

00:20:08.000 You think about, like, an assembly line.

00:20:10.000 That's going to work efficiently.

00:20:11.000 But people are not an assembly line.

00:20:13.000 Kids are not an assembly line.

00:20:15.000 20 minutes with one kid and 40 minutes another kid.

00:20:18.000 And you can spend two minutes with a third kid.

00:20:20.000 It just depends.

00:20:21.000 But if you need to keep up your numbers, because that's what you're looking at.

00:20:24.000 And if you, let's say you're a private practice and you wanna keep your doors open, then there's a certain amount of patients that you have to see to make enough money to stay open.

00:20:33.000 And so you just don't have the time.

00:20:34.000 So I'm not sure it's like, I think it's just a mixture of the way that medicine has gone and just the practice of insurance here.

00:20:41.000 And it's different because I come from Canada.

00:20:42.000 So it's a very different model there.

00:20:44.000 But you know, this is what I know in terms of working.

00:20:46.000 And that's what I've seen over the years and certainly showed in the last couple of years.

00:20:50.000 You think it's any different in Canada?

00:20:52.000 I think it is different in Canada.

00:20:53.000 I don't think it's necessarily better or worse.

00:20:55.000 It's definitely different because you're not really dealing with insurance companies so much.

00:21:00.000 You're dealing more with the government and kind of one system to work with.

00:21:04.000 So it's different in that aspect, I would say.

00:21:06.000 You said you weren't going to say one was better or worse, but which one is better?

00:21:10.000 I don't know.

00:21:11.000 I think it depends.

00:21:12.000 I think overall, it depends on what's going on for you.

00:21:18.000 I think that you can have to wait a really long time in Canada for things, so that can be an issue.

00:21:23.000 But overall, potentially, a lot of people are very proud of their healthcare in Canada, and they definitely love and respect their healthcare overall.

00:21:31.000 So I think maybe generalized care is better.

00:21:34.000 I think you can You can potentially get better care here in certain places, but I think you can get worse care in other places.

00:21:39.000 I think overall the problem with American healthcare is it's so diverse, and there's such a wide range of quality of care and accessibility to care.

00:21:48.000 In Canada, it's kind of standard, so you know what you're going to get, but you might have to wait a while for certain things, but you're not going to have to wait if you need to go to the hospital for something that's emergent.

00:21:57.000 So it's a balance there.

00:21:59.000 It depends who you are and how much you're accessing.

00:22:01.000 Health care.

00:22:02.000 Also, if you have a lot of health care bills, right, that's better in Canada, I would say, probably because they're going to make sure that you're never going to go bankrupt, but you might have to wait a year for a procedure.

00:22:10.000 You know, what advice do you give parents in terms of how to have a healthy family?

00:22:16.000 To me, it starts at home with you.

00:22:19.000 I think the most important thing that we need to realize at this point in time is that nobody is going to take care of you or your family or your health.

00:22:26.000 You have to take that into your own hands.

00:22:28.000 And there are so many things that we can do to make a difference.

00:22:34.000 Everybody is resilient.

00:22:36.000 Kids are especially resilient.

00:22:38.000 You don't need to be overwhelmed by this, but if you can make small changes that improve their health, 1% here, 1% here, 1% here, then by and large, most kids are going to do okay.

00:22:48.000 So just think about the simple things that you can do, like eating healthy, buying organic, preparing more food at home, making sure your kids get out and exercise, making sure that you're Thinking about the toxins reading the labels on everything that you buy reading the labels on every skincare product cosmetic if you buy a couch just think about those things because we're exposed to enough chemicals already so any place that you can decrease that a little bit is going to be helpful because at some point everybody tips over the edge and that's what we saw over the last couple years right we saw that

00:23:18.000 By and large, the people that had a lot of trouble during the pandemic were those that already had lots of health complications.

00:23:24.000 But that's not new news.

00:23:25.000 That's very common sense, logical stuff to most doctors, that if you have a pre-existing condition or other things going on, then you're just not as likely or not as capable to...

00:23:35.000 Handle whatever comes your way.

00:23:37.000 And that's true now and it's going to be true in the future if there's another disease that pops up or whatever comes our way in the future.

00:23:45.000 The healthier that we are in general, the more we're able to cope and the better we're able to cope with whatever comes our way.

00:23:50.000 But if we're not eating healthy food and we're not exercising and we're not getting sunlight and we're stressed out all the time and we're stressed out on social media and everybody's arguing all the time and your kids are seeing this and they're always stressed out then They're going to be sick.

00:24:05.000 They're going to get sick.

00:24:06.000 This is what we're seeing.

00:24:07.000 These are the numbers.

00:24:08.000 We're seeing one of the two kids.

00:24:09.000 So if something doesn't change, every kid is going to have a chronic disease or most kids are going to have one in the future.

00:24:15.000 But at the same time, this wasn't happening 20, 30, 40 years ago.

00:24:20.000 So there's a lot that we can obviously do because the same reason that this is an issue is the same reason it can be Fixed or it can be improved because this is so much to do with what we're doing in our environment.

00:24:31.000 And so if you're thinking about those things, you can create the environment for your family that lets them thrive and lets them succeed and lets them be healthy.

00:24:39.000 And if everybody starts thinking that way, then these trends are going to change and we're not going to see the life expectancy keep going down.

00:24:45.000 It's going to go back up again.

00:24:47.000 Dr.

00:24:47.000 Gator, thank you so much.

00:24:48.000 How can people find you?

00:24:50.000 You can find me on Instagram, Dr.

00:24:52.000 Joel Gator, or at integrativepediatrics.com or raisingamazingplus.com.

00:24:57.000 Thank you for joining us.

00:25:19.000 How much you stand up for kids.

00:25:21.000 And I know, you know, sometimes people don't always say everything that's exactly, you know, even when you listen to what you say versus what's talked about out there.

00:25:28.000 But there are so many people that appreciate everything that you do.

00:25:31.000 Thank you.

00:25:32.000 That means a lot to me coming from you.

00:25:34.000 Thank you.

00:25:35.000 Yeah.

00:25:35.000 And by the way, I mean, I take care of even a lot of celebrities and their kids just based on where I am.

00:25:39.000 And you haven't, I mean, you probably have some idea, but there are so many people that say one thing but totally believe something else.

00:25:45.000 Yeah.

00:25:46.000 So, you know, a lot of people know who you are and love what you do, but they'll never say it.

00:25:52.000 Thank you very much.

00:25:54.000 Thank you.

RFK Jr. The Defender - June 13, 2022

Pediatric Health Disaster with Dr Joel Gator Warsh

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