Babies Don’t Come With Manuals—But This Might Be the Next Best Thing

Podcast Introduction and Mission 0:00

these things are designed to keep you engaged and to be addictive. And that's how they make money is by capturing attention. So that is where you can get into the pitfalls and the traps. That's where we do see things like increased anxiety in children and decreased attention spans and just more sensitive to things in their environment, more sensory processing stuff, more sensitive textures and things. They're just running raw. Their nervous system is overloaded and they don't know how to be bored and how they settle themselves down.

Screen time in that sense, in addictive scrolling one thing after the other, it's like a drug to your body and your brain. It might feel fun in the moment, but in a long term, Everything is connected and I'm here to tell you how. I am Dr. Laura Hanson with Connect My Brain. This podcast is for moms who are concerned about their child's development. The brain impacts our mind, body, and overall health. I explain how your brain is wired, what happens when it's out of balance, and how early childhood development not only impacts your child, but can affect you as an adult years later.

Want to know how to improve your life? Join me and learn about your amazing brain and what it can do for you.

Dr. Carol Keimu2019s Books and Parenting Resources 1:35

Hey everybody, it's Dr. Laura with Connect My Child's Brain. We are so excited that you are tuning in today and we have a very special guest to really give us some insights into new parenting. What is it like to take care of a newborn? She is a medical pediatrician, she has her own podcast, and she is an author of several different books. So Dr. Carol Keim, we are so excited that you are with us. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. I'm so exciting to be here as well. Good. Well, why don't you just start off?

Tell us about all these books that have. So the first book I wrote was called The Baby Manual, and I actually wrote the 1st edition in 2014. And it's just all the things that parents would call about in the middle of the night panicked that were totally normal. The final straw that made me write the book was when a dad called me around 2 a.m. because the umbilical stump had fallen off when he was changing his baby's diaper. And, you know, babies are often crying when they're having their diaper changed.

And there was a little bit of blood there and he was terrified and thought he'd really hurt his baby and so was calling in a panic about it and I said, no, it's normal. You know, the umbilical cord has blood vessels in it. There's normally dried blood behind it, you just need to wipe it with a wet washcloth. And he did and it was just this immediate like, ugh. Okay, it's fixed. We're good. If only he knew ahead of time. I'm sure we talked about this in the clinic earlier today, but we give so much information at those visits.

Maybe if parents just had it all written down in one place, all the stuff that's going to come up, It's gonna freak you out in a moment, But it'll be fine. So I just put all that together into a book. After I had my first child, I rewrote it, did a second edition, and then a third one just came out about two years ago now, so about to add a fourth edition as well. And then my other book is called Holistic Mama's Handbook, And that is just all different holistic alternative and complementary medicine and different ways to treat common pediatric conditions that show up in the first six years of life.

Because, you know, for the first few years, babies, children, they can't really take a lot of over-the-counter medicines. And a lotta the times they come to the office, and most of us pediatricians would say something like, there's nothing we can do, we just have to wait it out. I think that's terrible advice because there is always something we could do. So I always pull on the complementary alternative at that point because I feel like while Western medicine keeps you alive, it's really the complimentary medicine that gives you the quality of life and helps you feel better as you're getting better.

Oh, I love that statement. That is true. Like if you have a gunshot or a stab, don't come to me. They could maybe come you, but when it comes to everything else, go holistic. You can always add something. You just can't always take away the impact of something else. Are those the two or you have another one? Those are the 2 main ones. I have a coloring book called Bye Bye Boobies. That's just when you're finished breastfeeding. If you are breast feeding up to toddlerhood and then having a hard time weaning, you can color it together with your toddler.

Oh, that's so cute. There's just one more that is called My Happiness Journal and it's a journal with guided prompts that cause you to focus on the positive and there's some research behind that where it really does actually make you happier as you write in it. Oh, that's wonderful. Okay. So I love what you have put together because you're right. These babies don't come with manuals and lots of times people don' t know what to do. What would you say are the three top things that new parents often go through that maybe you can help them ease their mind and realize that everything's going to be okay?

Yeah, that's great. I think the first thing I would say is the cluster feeding and that is going to start immediately. So when your baby is very first born, they are probably going eat. A lot of babies will want to breastfeed right away and they actually can kind of wiggle up towards the breast. It's a really cool thing. An innate reflex that they have. And I'd say they feed well once and maybe twice and then they're really tired. After that, they are pretty wiped out from being born. Then they'll wake up several hours later and want to feed back to back.

And then this pattern continues for the first couple of weeks and it gets more and more consolidated over the several months of life. They're on a full liquid diet, right? So that digests pretty quickly.

Newborn Feeding, Cluster Feeding, and Early Concerns 6:10

So you have to eat them really often and sometimes they will cluster feed to feedback. Your prolactin level is the highest in the wee morning hours of the night. So between about midnight and 6 a.m. is when moms produce the most milk naturally. And somehow babies sense that. Unfortunately, they like to cluster feed during that time the It's rough and it's tough on both parents as well. I'd say the second big thing that I hear from all parents is the moment they walk out of the hospital is when it hits and they they're like I have something that i need to keep alive and I don't know what I'm doing I've no training on this.

So really like try to find out as much as you can ahead of time and i'd, say especially the dads because I feel like as moms in society, there's this pressure to just know everything. And there are stacks of books for pregnancy and for babies. I remember a friend telling me, I felt the pressure, to know these thousands of pages worth of information. My book is tiny, it's 100 pages. It's just a really thin little handbook. That's all you actually really need to get through the trenches. But yeah, as soon as you walk out and you realize, you might not be fully trained for this and things are going to come up that are gonna be scary in the moment.

So make sure that you're sort of expecting the unexpected and that have a good resource to go to and a place to find information so that don't end up just panic Googling in middle of the night because that's where you gonna find the scary things. Yeah. And then the third thing I'd say is the sort of tummy things that come up. And these are things I often refer to pediatric chiropractic. So that's things like reflux, spit ups, colic, gas, that kind of stuff. That all peaks around a month of age. We say around four to six weeks is a peak.

I found that when babies are born earlier, it really matches up pretty well to 44 gestational weeks. It's a little older for the ones that are earlier, but there is this peak of colic. And in Western medicine, we can't fully explain it. Really, all the studies I've seen, the only tool that we have is probiotics. They say any probiotic, which I'm sure you know, Dr. Lora, is not all probiotcs are the same. But that's about what we've got. Then things like tummy massage and bicycle legs and stuff like that.

I found that chiropractic does actually help a lot with things, like reflux and colics and spin ups. Oh, and going back to the newborn period too, sometimes babies want to feed on one breast and not the other. Or they just do much better. We're going to get into that little topic, but I really, I love that you do refer to chiropractic. And before we got started with our recording, we were kind of touching on that. I had a wonderful conversation with another pediatrician and she too felt the same way that You know, regardless of the profession that you're in, if you've done your due diligence and you have a license and have the credentials to do what it is that I think we've got to be more embracing of all the different services that are available so that the patient or the parent to the patients can match up what is right for them, right?

I'm just kind of glad that we're in a space and time where it seems like it is a little bit more open that can talk about these things. So I appreciate that part. So let's dive in because I find this one's really interesting. And I'd love for us to kind of go back and forth with conversation. You were getting ready or started to say, tell us from your perspective when a child is favoring one breast over the other for nursing. Yeah, so it seems like a lot of the times parents will tell me, you know, they just feed so much better on one side than the other.

And the ways that we counteract that in Western medicine and, we'll have lactation consultants that come in in the hospital. So sometimes like if a baby only wants to turn their head in one direction, will have them feed in like, a regular cradle hold on side and then kind of move them over to a football hold, on the side so that their heads stays in this same position and you're just kind moving them. in relation to the breast, and you're not addressing the underlying, you know, they don't want to turn their head both ways, which can be an issue if they're- Yeah.

... not wanting to- Sure. Turn their heads both way. It's like they really do need to do that, but- You need that range of motion. Yeah, so yeah, we don' have a whole lot of like tips and tricks other than, like, that and just keep trying or, pump on like the bad side while they are feeding on the good side. those kind of things. Do you have a thought of why would a child do that? Yeah, so I mean my first thought is that it's just more comfortable for them to turn their head one way or the other and I'm sure you know like being born is a rough process.

This baby is going through a very narrow space whether they're being bored vaginally or by c-section, either way it's about a 10 centimeter opening and they are squeezing through it and it is a real lot on their bodies. And so I wonder if, you know, I've noticed that the ones that get adjustments do turn their head very well side to side. And I've also noticed like in myself, I get migraines and I go get adjusted every so often. And right before I got adjusted, my chiropractor will always put his hands on my head and neck and sort of just turn my heads side to side.

You'll notice one side will go a lot easier than the other, and it just feels so much more comfortable. It's more uncomfortable to sit with my hands kind of tilted slightly this way. That's all related to the alignment of my neck bones. When they get realigned, i have full range of motion of the neck again. And so I imagine, I mean, we can't talk to these babies, but I imagined that a similar thing is going on, that they're just a little bit out of alignment and it's just little more comfortable to go in one direction.

And then over time, it just becomes a habit. You just sort of build those muscles that kind of perpetuate that. My world is very developmental, so I'd love to just share a couple of thoughts with you on that. So the position of the baby during pregnancy, there is a known position that they should be in. and there's a known time that they're supposed to turn and go upside down. And so lots of times women experience especially like rib pain and they might get altered sensations going down their arms because the ribs open up and

One-Sided Nursing and Infant Alignment 12:40

then everything pushes up. So we get into what's called the thoracic outlet And if you don't have great alignment going into pregnancy, some of these pastoral imbalances could really be accentuated during pregnancy. You know, I can go right back to the very same spot where I felt my little ones just dig the heels of their feet into my ribs. And I feel like I have no torso whatsoever. I still feel very squatty. So your frame goes through a lot when you're pregnant. Now, I have a little different perspective when it comes to the birth process, especially if it really is a natural, meaning there might be a midwife, there may be hadoula, and there's little or no instrumentation involved.

And we're allowing that mom and that baby to have There's no pitocin. We're not forcing any kind of, you know, squashing. But in that perfect element, the birth process, well, first of all, we were all born, so we definitely can go through it. And that squeeze is so necessary for the big squeeze on the brain. Now that's all in the perfect realm. So then all these things like C-sections and instrumentation and traumas and stress and yes, all of those things capitalize on The Whole Nine Yards. And then if unfortunately, Your baby does favor one side over the other.

I love that you've come up with a couple of different holds, but just to really emphasize how important it is that we get that baby exposed because early on, the only interaction that they really have is when they're feeding. And so if, let's say, mom's holding them in the left arm and the right side of their body is constantly pushed up against mom, it's only the last side their of body that's getting any interaction. And that literally can begin to create asymmetries in development because of the way the brain comes online.

Even women that decide to bottle feed they have a tendency to go with the side that can control the bottle and go feed the baby. And that same thing can happen. So if you are a bottle feeder, make sure you get that baby going in on both arms. Plus, it would be better for mom's body because then she's working both sides of her body. So I love that you really appreciate the mechanical side, but it's neurological as well. Unfortunately, I think sometimes chiropractors get funneled into this box that they only handle pain, But it really is a neurological program that we go through.

I don't think we've done such a great job though as a profession, to really help the public know that. So that's one of the things with having my podcast. I really love to educate and I love help people just get a different perspective and then of course choose the one that is right for you. Tell us some other things that you do in your practice that you think the audience would really appreciate hearing because, you know, having a pediatrician's perspective, like, how do you feel about children, what the statistics are now with how many children are not going in the right direction?

What are your thoughts there? What do you mean by going in the right direction? So, children with developmental delay, the amount of children that are labeled autistic, one in six kids is thought to be having some kind of attention issue. The CDC changed all the developmental milestones and crawling is not even on there. Yeah. Yeah, and they really need that stimulation that like cross body. Yes. Very, very important in terms of like later development and even in things like IQ and math scores, like it really translates into important things later.

But they are also counting other things as crawling that don't look like normal crawling like crab walking or kind of scooting on your bottom across the floor, those kinds of things. I feel like the answer has a few layers. One part of the answer is that we're a lot more aware of things and that were able to find more things. We have so much more access to information than we ever have before. And so just having like the ability to pull so many information from different places, from countries, we have software that translates things into our languages.

It's really incredible how much knowledge we now have. Also, it's pretty incredible like how different our society is even from 10, 20, 50 years ago. And what is built into our everyday life is so different and so unhealthy. So things like sitting, like you've heard, sitting's the new smoking kind of a thing. Like being sedentary is also bad for your body. It's just like what our every day lives are really designed to do. We drive places. I know I always look for a close parking spot to get in. You know, I'm not trying to do extra steps accidentally, right?

That's just sort of a natural thing. As humans, as mammals, we are looking for things that are easy and also things like processed foods.

Developmental Delays, Crawling, and Environmental Factors 18:45

They're cheaper, they're more accessible. There's so much money in food marketing right now and food has so many chemicals in it. So much of it is chemically based. and it's designed to keep you eating more of it because why not, right? Like that's how they make more money. So I think that it is partly that our food is much poorer quality than it used to be, that we are not moving our bodies like we used too. We are putting substances into our body that historically we have not before. Think of like even vaping.

just so recent and all sorts of things. We know that things like caffeine and alcohol are not good for our bodies and yet a lot of people still use them. And I think it's a mix of everything. Or also having children at later times in our lives. I feel like some of us, I, think like across the board, the average age of having a child has increased over the last few decades by a few years. That's partly because we're being more educated and waiting to have children, but that can also affect the quality of our bodies and how much damage we've done to them over that time.

I think it's a mix of things. It definitely doesn't help that we have all of these chemicals and microplastics and things in the atmosphere, that the soil that our food is grown in doesn' t have as many nutrients as it did decades ago. You know, it' s really, really like an uphill battle to stay healthy in this day and age. And I that that kind of trickles down into these quality of life things that were not sleeping well. Maybe we're not sleeping well partly because we are on screens at night, right?

Or we've overstimulated or we have access to too much information and we aren't eating well. So I think just not taking care of ourselves in general in the way that nature intended us to is leading to these more down the line consequences that we didn't expect. Well, yeah, and you kind of touched a little bit on screens. What do you feel about children using screens? Like, it seems to be much more part of even their academic lives. I think it's used for entertainment and babysitting and what's your thoughts about children seeing devices and how much screen time would you really say is okay?

So there's sort of the educational screentime and the entertainment screen-time, and then there is the connecting screen like video chatting with family members. So things like using screens to talk to family is something that the Academy of Pediatrics actually does suggest and says is okay and doesn't really count as screen time. Now I would add the caveat that screens have that blue light, right, that tricks your brain into thinking it's daytime. So if you're using a screen after it's dark outside, it is giving your body the signal that it still daylight, that the sun is still up and it isn't time to rest yet for a couple of hours.

So allowing children to use screens later in the day can definitely affect their sleep and so I don't recommend that. But if are wanting to save face time with relatives that live in a different state or different country, then absolutely that's a great way to connect with them and that is an okay use of screen time. I'm a fan of some educational things, but just very little bits of it at a time. Children don't have very long attention spans and giving them these devices with this instant gratification is only making it worse.

And so if you are going to be watching things with your child, I'd say you do it together. You talk about it. I like the really low sensory shows. There's one called Pocoyo that's just a little boy and there's only four characters, very little talking and it's really just teaching. Or Bluey, I really love. Blueys got 10 minute episodes and its really more like a parenting show disguised as a children's show. It's so fun to watch. Its fun for parents and kids and gives you lots of tricks on how to get kids to do things, make it a fun way to things.

So things like that I'm a fan of. Now, other things. Some things, like say social media and YouTube, these things are designed to keep you engaged and to be addictive. And that's how they make money is by capturing attention. So that is where you can get into the pitfalls and the traps. That's where we do see things increased anxiety in children and decreased attention spans and just more sensitive to things in their environment, more sense of sound, sensory processing stuff, more sensitive textures and things.

They're just running raw. Their nervous system is overloaded and they don't know how to be bored and how they settle themselves down. Screen time in that sense, in addictive scrolling one thing after the other, it's like a drug to your body and your brain. It might feel fun in the moment, but in a long term it really is eroding your Well, I'm not a huge fan of devices at all for children, and I think we've almost created a method of laziness that we don't know how to hold pencils anymore. I can't tell you how many parents come in and say their child is having such trouble with writing and you go and do a little sample with them and they still have a palmar reflex and it's impacting their academics.

And then by the third grade, if you're not going in the expected direction, then they start teaching you adaptive skills. And they are pushed on computers even more. I think because we don't really regulate things in a capacity for safety, And unfortunately, there's a lot of bad people out there, and they find a way. I don't know how to explain that, but they found a ways to pop up on these kids screens, And they take children down a direction that is not positive whatsoever. And I know many families have actually really had to go through types of experiences.

Even like our teenagers who have a tendency to get that phone early and that scrolling that actually fires up dopamine and it gives the brain a bath in dopamine. And that's really what pushes the potential addictive behavior. Addiction can be gambling, can pornography, can be shopping, can all kinds of different things. I'm a little bit more old-fashioned in my approach with how I recommend different thing, plus the research has shown that all devices, even for us as adults, ramps up the left side of the brain more than the right side.

And when you look down at function, the need to talk is on the Right, and the work of talk on is the Left. So if we ramp up one side more then the other, a lot of that function is also impacted. These teenagers are avoiding having conversation and they think, you know, texting on their phone is a conversation. And, we've got everybody constantly looking down, but they did DTI imaging, and that's dense tensor imaging to look at white matter in the brain. And they found with a correlation between the amount of device use and how much more white matter in the brain that somebody has.

So just for the audience, gray matter is for processing. White matter, is how you get it to the different parts of the brains. Front, back, side, oblique, whatever the case may be.

Screen Time, Attention, and Sensory Overload 26:45

And, they had too much of it. and it creates a filter problem and they have trouble literally filtering out what they should pay attention to. And they're training to be more about speed and then to have this expectation that they could sit down and actually be able to do 30 minutes, 45 minutes of homework they're not training their brain that way. So I think there's a huge impact with devices. I too agree that, you know, if you're going to get on a call to see a family member, great, but that's not the only use that the devices are actually used for.

They've even gotten into this idea calling, this used to be called text neck, And now they call it, like I got my phone, now, they called it dementia posture, because that's the same posture. Somebody suffering from a neurodegenerative problem in the brain, that is the posture that they take on. So I mean, to me, I am. I'm very old fashioned. Everybody in here calls me Mother Goose. And I just like a little bit more of the old-fashionedness, putting a pencil in a child's hand. Let them be bored.

They need to be board. I even had a soccer coach say to me last Saturday, kids just don't even know how to board anymore. And that's... They don' They really, really don. Okay, now I'm going to get on a touchy subject. But what do you think about vaccines? Yeah, this is it. Of course, I love them. Well, I laugh because I have a lot of chiropractor friends, and I think I know what the chriopractic approach is to vaccines. So I'd say... No, wait. I want to dispel that right away. First of all, we are not taught that in school whatsoever.

No. We learn about vaccines, but we were not told to be an anti-vaxxer. That is not true. Chiropractors are taught to And you, on your own independence, have a lot of time to look at things and you begin to have an opinion. But it is not a chiropractic model to say that we are anti-vax. I had some guy reach out from the Atlanta paper and ask me, why are chiropractors against vaccines? That's not the opinion! I chose not to vaccinate because of what's in it. And I was actually studying to be a lawyer at that time.

One of the first cases that I worked on, I walk in and the lawyer has got a book open and it's a picture of a baby. I go, are we working on a case? And he goes, yeah, a dead one. And he goes, yeah, the parents are claiming that the child died from vaccines, but we represent the insurance company. And I have to tell you, I was in my 20s. That is the very first time in a whole life. that I ever heard that statement. And of course, it just made me go and dig. So it's not a chiropractic thing. But what is your view as a pediatrician?

And do you connect any dots whatsoever to let's even just say with the stats on autism, one in 12 to 31, depending upon who you want to quote. Do you make any connection with that whatsoever? So I'd say I am an MD and like Western trained and also live in the Boulder area and have a lot of like influence from alternative medicine. So I think not all vaccines are the same. There are a couple of different types of vaccines. so there's live vaccines that are live attenuated. And those are ones where they take the actual virus.

Like the chickenpox vaccine, for example. They take a chicken pox virus, they weaken it and then they give you that virus and your body fights it off. Those types of vaccines, only the chickenpox, the MMR, and the yellow fever vaccine, And the rotavirus vaccine actually, which is an oral one. It's not a shot. But those four vaccines are the four live vaccines that we give. And live attenuated vaccines Are great for people with great immune systems and cannot be given to people With weakened immune system.

They do have the potential to cause some pretty big side effects. Like I had a patient's parent who had encephalitis from one of those vaccines, which means that her entire brain got the infection. It was pretty severe and she survived it, but it was bad. I was like, I understand and I also would not want to vaccinate your children if something like that had happened to me. And I fully supported her decision not to vaccinated her kids. We're finding more and more about specific genes and epigenetics and what genes are responsible for metabolizing which components of which vaccines.

So there's more and more testing available, I feel like, every day. And there are ways to determine whether you have some of these enzymes that help you to process the vaccine safely and whether or not you don't. So I would say you can look into a lot of different types of tests like that. On the grand scale, overall, vaccines have helped a lot to decrease the number of infections in the wild. And so that, I think, is a good thing. Also, on an individual basis, the vaccines might not be right for your child and some of them might be not right.

So some other types of vaccines, there's component vaccines where they take just part of the virus or the bacteria, like a surface protein, and your body can recognize it and then fight off that thing, There are ones where they just take the completely killed virus or bacteria, the whole thing and kill it. And so then your body's reacting to the hole surface of it and now we have those mRNA vaccines where it's essentially giving your buddy a set of instructions to make something that looks like something, that's on the virus that it is trying to fight.

Those we're going to see, I think a lot more in coming years. I know that they're starting to develop more and more mRNA vaccine for different diseases. At very first, my opinion was prevention is always better than trying to treat the disease. Now, after I've met children, I have had patients that have have vaccine adverse reactions and vaccine injuries. It is a thing that happens. So I would say you should have an educated discussion with your provider. I feel like a lot of the health care stuff that's going on right now is making people even more hesitant about vaccines.

and I don't believe that there is a tie between vaccines and autism. I know that autism is on the rise and vaccines are also relatively new. It's more of a correlation than a causality situation. But I have also seen other adverse reactions that cause severe developmental outcomes in children where they did have lifelong developmental consequences because of the vaccine. So that is the thing that can happen. Sort of a mixed answer, I'd say, in general, a fan. And also, there are some vaccines too, seasonal ones, like the flu and COVID vaccine, that are much, much less effective than other vaccines in terms of percentages covered.

They range usually 20% to 40% effectiveness, whereas other vaccine's, most of them are 95%-99%, the pertussis is about 85%. But yeah, the flu and COVID kind of hit and miss might help if you're at high risk of complications from getting flu or COVID, like if have underlying lung disease

Vaccines, Risks, and Individualized Decisions 34:15

or you are very, very young, or if your at very high-risk, maybe I should say end, of being exposed to it. Like there's a school-aged child in the home, you work in a you're a doctor or you know you work in a hospital or an airport those are the people that are more likely to be exposed to it more often and might want to get those kind of vaccines but I say the general population yeah it's an individual discussion. Well I definitely agree with that part that I think it should be a person's choice If they want to do that or not, I don't think we should be made to it.

I have a totally different view on vaccines, and I do believe there's lots of research out there. One book in particular is Turtles All the Way Down. The amount of the research that's in that book is phenomenal. And it's about three inches thick. They've also seen that there is a direct relationship between children that don't get vaccinated and the differences in their health and chronic illnesses later to come. I think something that you said though that was very interesting that somebody that has a problem And like with the oral vaccines or the live vaccines, that they may not be a good fit.

And I think sometimes that's where I get frustrated, because I don't think the medical community really practices their own method. If somebody is immune compromised, it's even in your textbook that, they should not, be vaccinated. You have case after case, after that is being brought to the public via Children's Health Defense, that literally these parents went in and told the pediatrician, my child is really not feeling well today. And it was dismissed. One little girl actually died on the way home.

You have things to make educated decisions, but they're not always practiced. The other area that I find incredibly helpful is genomic testing. Are you doing any genomics testing? Not genetic, but I've seen it. I have been working in the hospital. But yeah, yeah. That's just fascinating. Yeah. Um, I'm done probably about 40 of them now. Now I just brought it into my practice in August and it's saliva. So it so easy to do on a child. But it is talking about the epigenetics and not just about, I think it's really the science behind it that started from the explosion of autism in the 80s.

And pharma was really convinced that they were going to have a gene identified that caused autism. They didn't find that. What they found was lots of variants. And today we're so much more than our genes and we now have testing that actually substantiates that. So, and it's really okay. I mean, we can have different views on how we perceive health and how to approach it. And yes, you've been trained in one model and I've trained another. I continue, I have seven credentials after my name, especially being a chiropractor.

If you don't get like every credential, you know, known to mankind, the only thing people are going to say is, oh, my back really hurts. Other than seeing the whole picture of things. You know, I really do. I think it's important. That said, that I did have a patient that developed symptoms of autism after vaccinating and had a relative that had vaccine injury as well. And so there are, like you said with the genomics and the testing, yes, it is possible that there some children that it could turn on these genes and also all of the other things in our environment that we talked about earlier, our poor quality food and stress and being sedentary and sleeping poorly.

All of these things affect our genes and turn them on. And so I'd say it's not like the one direct link, but it can be one of many contributing factors. I think, you know, especially for kids that can't process like what's in vaccines, right? And they just build up in their bodies. Well, autism is a very interesting phenomenon that literally starts in the womb. There's something interrupting the pruning of the neurons. And if you don't know what that term is, not you, Doc, but like the audience, Babies have really big heads, they're exploding with neurons, you don't get to keep all those.

And so there's literally, first they actually call it apoptosis in the womb and that's cell death, but it's pruning is just a nicer word and you do it all the way into your 20s and it just becomes more efficient over time. But what they have found in this population is that they are not prune. And so they have all this excess, there's no efficiency, and they really are struggling to make those circuits and build those connections. And that's why I'm sure you feel the same way. I'll let you kind of wrap it up on this point, but this is why, I really think, young couples have to plan to have their baby.

Check out your body. Know what's going on. What can you work on before you conceive? Do you find that that's everything? Yeah. Well, go ahead. You can you can wrap us up on that idea. Yeah, no, it's true. you want to optimize everything, right? You want be eating well. If you're not able to get all of your fruits and vegetables and all your minerals every day, you need to be taking supplements. And you definitely need lots and lots of fruits of veggies if you are trying to conceive because folic acid is something that when you turn it into a vitamin it is very hard to process.

Methylated folate is a little easier to process, but eating fruit and vegetables is the very best way to get that. And so you want to aim for 10 servings a day if you can, and that is in a lot. So if can't, you need to add supplements in. Decrease any toxins in your body, so, avoiding things like alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, THC, any other substances that shouldn't be in our body. Try to clear all of those out and yeah, just minimize stress. Well, we will put all your books We'll put all of your stuff in the show notes.

I think that's so fantastic that you have put so much time into developing tools for people because, you know, they don't come with a manual and it's really nice to have that kind of experience behind information and get it into the hands of the parents. So how does everybody reach you? How we find you. So that's a great question. My website is carolkeim.com. And all my resources are on there as well. I also have an email series for new parents. You can sign up, you'll get emails every week for the first year of your baby's life based on their age.

all my books are on there, my podcast episodes. Each season has a different theme, but season three is the holistic one, if you want to listen to that. And then in season five, I actually have an interview with a pediatric neurologist that might be interesting to some of your followers as well. Yes, that'd be really great. Okay. Well, thank you so much for meeting with me and doing the podcast. I really enjoy getting to meet different professionals or parents. We have all different kinds of people that we'll interview, but it's really wonderful to get multiple perspectives out into the world.

And the most important thing is you have to make the decision that's right for you. That's the important saying, you know? And I love that we didn't agree on everything and that parents also too. I mean, like it's perfect because really there are so many opinions out there, right? And yeah, parents do have the power to find the information out and we're going to help you get it.

Preconception Health and Closing Resources 42:35

If we can collaborate. and talk about something and stay calm, cool, and collective. It helps other people feel that they can do that too. And it's really okay if we don't agree. You have your life experiences and I have my life experience. I wish we had about four hours where I could share so much with you about how I've come to a lot of the views that I had, but I'm also, I am 65 years old. So I've been around a little bit longer and you do, you see things. But most importantly is that we can still chat and we could still be enjoying each other's company.

And you have a lot to offer. By no means do I want anybody in the audience to ever think that I am an anti-vaxxer or I'm against medicine because I choose vaccines for me and my family. But that's all it is. It's my choice. I want anyone to feel bad about any decision they've made regarding vaccines or anything else, really, in terms of their child's health. You have to live with that decision. And you have the power, and it's okay to question your professionals. it It is okay, to ask your pediatrician, do we really need this or not?

And why? What are my chances of being exposed? But there's so much. I don't know if it's like this in Colorado, but I can't tell you how many parents I've met. And I'm just like, you know what that does to somebody? It's just, it's unfortunate. And that's the part. That's really the only part that I wish we could just be different and appreciate other people's opinion because at the end of the day, they're the ones got to live with whatever decision they make. You know? That's true. Yeah. Well, thanks for being on the podcast.

Thank you. And thank you everyone for tuning in. Make sure you subscribe to Connect My Child's Brain. If you really feel like this podcast could be very beneficial for somebody else, share it with them, because this is why us and Dr. Kim do these kinds of things. We want to get the information that we have to share with you to the world. So thanks for tuning in. Remember, we a couple of events coming up in June where they're free. Parents can come to office one hour and we're going to go over primitive reflexes.

And then the last weekend or the Saturday in june, I'm starting a babysitting club. so that I can teach people that want to care for children, how to work with kids that struggle a little bit, so these parents can have a date night. If you're interested, go over to the website, the resource tab, and go to events. You can register right on there and again, there's no charge. Thanks for tuning in and as always, be blessed. Thanks for listening. I hope today's lesson will help you or someone you love.

Do you have a question or just really want to talk to somebody about brains? Connect with me over on Facebook or Instagram at Connect My Brain. Looking to understand and optimize your particular brain? Check out connectmybrain.com for course information and resources. See you next class. you