Discover Dr. Gator’s Journey To Holistic Pediatric Care

Introduction and Background 0:00

Hi, I'm doctor Joel Gator wash. Thank you so much for joining me here at the Raising Healthier Kids Summit. And thank you for joining me here at the first of the mini classes or mini master classes. I am very excited to share with you. And for this session, I wanted to get into a little bit about my background. So you get to know me a little bit better. And what brought me here today? so first my nickname I get asked a lot was where does Doctor Gator come from? So most people think it's from a Florida thing or from Florida.

It's actually has nothing to do with Florida. My wife's last name is until a Gator. And so people started calling me Doctor Gator. They thought it was funny and it stuck. nothing against Florida, but it's a wife thing.

From Pediatrics to Integrative Medicine 0:53

I grew up in Toronto, and, so that's where that comes from. And I always loved working with kids. I used to coach my brother in baseball and hockey, and then I worked on, some summer camps and just love working with kids. When I was going through high school, really fell in love with science and health. And so that's what led me into medicine. But when I went to medicine, it was always to become a pediatrician. And so that is what I did. And as I was going through medical training, I did get a little bit frustrated with the the regular system and the super short visits, medications for everything all the time.

And I also met my now wife, who was very holistic minded. And so that led me to start learning about integrative medicine and natural medicine. I did not have a very woo woo upbringing or was not really aware of integrative anything back at that point. But as I started learning a little bit more about functional medicine and root cause medicine and really thinking about prevention and diet, sleep, exercise, I mean, these are basic foundations. But we were never really taught about it, weren't really talking about it, and it was just so obvious that this was important.

And so that is what led me to start practicing integrative medicine. And I'm not against Western medicine at all. I just think there's a time and a place, and I really feel like it is so important that we do land the best of both worlds together, and there's a lot of great things in modern medicine, and sometimes you need a medication and that's fine, but most of the time you don't need that. And there are natural remedies that we can use that are, safe

Natural Medicine and Root-Cause Care 2:29

and that can be used wonderfully, that can support the body of our patients and our kids. And that's the way that I practice. And I just try to minimize using medications as much as possible. And it has been absolutely fantastic. I mean, I used to give prescriptions all the time, and I knew everything off by heart. And now in my current practice, I really almost never have to do a medication and never have to do an antibiotic. Of course we do sometimes, but it's just so rare that I have to look up the dosing pretty much every time at this point, because I just don't have to do it very often.

And I think that speaks volumes to natural medicine and integrative medicine. I have also, seen patients who have been given diagnoses that were told that that was for life and seen their families make a transition and focus on lifestyle and focus on root cause and lose those diagnoses over the years, or that's autism, ADHD, autoimmune conditions, you know, you name it, I've seen it and so have other integrative practitioners seeing these, improve drastically or even, lose the diagnosis or of their symptoms have improved.

And, and that's what I really try to focus on. And that's why I wanted to create this event, to bring together fantastic practitioner ers who work in this space and can bring forth this information that you might not get from mainstream health care and medicine. And it's not out there. Woo woo. It's just in the middle somewhere. But you have to learn about this stuff to to really appreciate it.

Why Open Discussion Matters in Parenting 3:56

And once you do learn about it, there's no going back. and there's really no reason not to support natural remedies whenever it makes sense. Why would we not want to minimize using medications if we can? Why would we not try? And why would we not want to try to support our kids and get them off of their medications or help them to, improve their symptoms if we can? There's no real controversy there. and that's also why I created the, Natural Parenting course, which you can check out, after the summit. And, and it's really important that we talk about everything.

It's really important that we have all discussions on the table. I'm so frustrated as a doctor and as a parent who I feel like there are topics we can't talk about these days and there's no reason that should be the case. We should be able talk about everything. We are able to have discussions. We should never assume that science is settled because science is never settled on anything, and it's important to have research and data and then keep asking questions and keep discussing things so we can get to a better place.

And unfortunately, I feel like so much of medicine these days is kind of telling you what to do instead of teaching. And we're telling parents that this is the only way, or this is the way that it's going to be when there's actually a lot of other ways to do things around the world. And diagnoses are not always or life there, maybe there are things that we can do or stuff environment that is contributing or even causing the symptoms that our kids are, feeling and that they're expressing. So

Closing Remarks and Program Preview 5:20

the big part of integrative medicine to me is to bring everything together, focus on what we can do, focus on our environment and our lifestyle, and really work towards helping our kids to get to a better place, because that's what we all want in the day. Maybe not every physician agrees exactly how to get there, but we all are on the same team and we want to get our kids to the best, most resilient, healthy place. And so I hope that you enjoyed this summit. I hope you enjoy these mini masterclass courses, and I hope you enjoy the Natural Parenting Program, and I have provided for you at the end of this summit.

So have a wonderful rest of the day. Enjoy the programing and I'll see you in the next mini masterclass.