Dysregulated and Overloaded Kids: Dr. Clinton Explains the Quantum Biology Behind It

Introduction to Micro Steps and Dr. Katherine Clinton 0:00

Moms and dads, we're going to be talking not about how to magic wand it. We're gonna talk about what I talk all the time. Those micro steps that lead to huge changes. And we're talking with Dr. Katherine Clinton. She is the author of Optimize. It's a book we are going to get into. And I'm just so excited because she's just one of the coolest moms I know. homeschooler and she's just like one of us. Our kids are all little on the unique side and we're going to be diving into what are those little things that every single parent across the globe because people listen to me from all over the world.

What can you do today and so welcome? I'm so glad you're here. Oh, I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me and I am excited to dive into these small steps we can take that have a big impact on our children's health. They really can and we always have good time so it's always a pleasure to always talk to you and again we're both moms trying to change the world. And our parents are going to really get the benefit of that today. Kids are struggling more than ever. And there's anxiety. There's a lot of dysregulation.

You know, the word dys regulation has become a hot word because kids are Struggling with emotional regulation. And things feel like they're fundamentally different today. Our parents are much more anxious. But when we talk about being burnt out and you talk such interesting things, and we're going to talk a little bit about quantum biology, but why do you feel today, you know, we both have been parents for at least 20 years, why you do feel that kids today are so burnt-out and overloaded? That's a great question.

And I think that you hit the nail on the head. It is fundamentally different to be living right now in today's world. We are inundated with information, with expectations. When you and I were kids, it was like, go outside, be home when the streetlights come on, come home for dinner.

Why Kids Are Burnt Out and Dysregulated 2:25

there were periods of silence, there was periods stillness, boredom, connection, and we've traded all those things for this hyper-driven screen dominant culture that has our children with, you know, 30 different tabs open in their heads at all time, multiple different expectations for every given moment, that doesn't breed that regulated child, that happy content child. So true. We can't go backwards. But man, we were like, We were riding our bikes until here, Philomena call us out the back door.

And then we knew we had a hustle. Philomina called us. we we're in trouble. That's my mom. She's a big part of my book, too. I mean, I just remember playing with my dolls for like hours. And I also was a child who was experimenting with cooking like from at a very young age. We were doing things instead of this all the time and just needing that stimulation. So you really have brought quantum biology into the consciousness of the world. I know that there was big researcher and you're a big believer in his work.

Talk to us in really simple terms, because I think that's what I, you've gotten such a huge following. If you're not following Dr. Katherine Clinton on Instagram and Facebook, please do, cause she puts out really cool posts that they're just awesome and they are so visually cool too. What is quantum biology and in layman's terms to help people understand it? Great question. Perfect place to start. Quantum biology is an expanded understanding of the body. When we're talking about how to approach health and healing, we usually stay in the confines of a chemical-mechanical approach.

We're taking about nutrition, mechanics of body, posture, surgery might be needed, all these different interventions that we use in conventional medicine. And that's great. Those things are valuable, and we know how valuable they are. But there's another piece at play when it comes to health. That's quantum biology. It's looking at the flow of energy in the body. Really, a way to look at it in a simple term is that there are all of these waves of information around us. We're talking about light, we're taking about electrical fields, magnetic fields sound, EMFs, all of these things impact our body.

They have measurable biological action in the body and so quantum biology is really the idea of how we can harness these different inputs or how can avoid some of those inputs for better health for our children. Yeah. And if we think about quantum biology and these different inputs, some of which we talked a little bit about, how does that help us to understand some the struggles, the dysregulation maybe that we're seeing in our kids? Because they are, as you really said, just so much input is coming in.

What's that connection? Because we're going to actually talk about solutions and ways to improve the inputs and really try to foster, try, to really improve regulation through

Quantum Biology Explained Simply 6:00

those micro actions. And we'll dive into that. But how does that help us understand some of this dysregulation that we are seeing? Well, I think that we have to understand that this expansion that quantum biology, a quantum-biology approach to health gives us is more tools. We have a deeper understanding of what happens. So when someone comes to us, when a parent comes us and they say, okay, i've tried the diet, tried this and that, nothing's working. Well, let's try to look at the body from a different perspective, from an expanded perspective.

And this is what I love about the work that you do. You really talk and put a vital importance on that coherence between a parent and their child. That relationship of co-regulation, that entrainment that happens between. A parent, and they're family. And it's so important how we understand that there's many different tools in our toolkit, and we should know about all of them. If we're just doing nutrition, then we don't understand about the co-regulation piece. We don' understand the nervous system that is hyper-firing at all times.

on our children, the effect of natural light or the effective artificial light. I mean, there's so many different things that impact how our bodies work, how are children's bodies, work. And it's really knowledge is power so that we have more tools in the toolkit. I think that's why, I mean, truly your posts are so popular and, and you write these like mini little dissertations in your post and always cite research with, you know, such a research nerd. So I love all that, but it's really getting people to go, huh.

I didn't think about it like that because my work is nervous system regulation. And as you said, the coherence rate, which is co-regulation, and you often really talk about what's changing your biology, The fascia, that the different components of our bodily systems. I always talk, about instead of being overwhelmed by all the options, get excited. that there are micro steps, right? That we can do. Dr. Katherine Clinton is a trained naturopath. So for her to say nutrition is not everything, and it is important, but that's a big statement because you broke away to saying, wait, not everybody, there were many ways we could heal and regulate and optimize, which is such a great title for your book.

Talk about why you chose this title, because it really is a beautiful way to say, we all can be a little better. Yeah. Yeah, and you make a great point. I was, I'm a naturopathic physician. That's what we're trained in. We're training in nutrition and herbal interventions and lifestyle interventions. And I got really sick in natropathic medical school.I was diagnosed with two autoimmune conditions and Lyme disease.And that's when I found this expanded approach to healing, that there's more than nutrition and supplements, which I don't discount.

Those things are really important. But like I said, it's important that we know all of our tools, and that all the pieces of the puzzle are important, And so that's where this book came from.

How Quantum Biology Helps Explain Dysregulation 9:45

That's this idea of optimization. Because when I got sick, I was in the perfect place for healing. I wasn't a naturopathic medical school. They did a dual degree with Chinese medicine. It was right down the hill from an allopathic, medical, conventional medicine teaching college as well. So I had all the things at my fingertips And I was able to get back from that debilitated state to a productive member again. I could go to classes, I can do my clinical shifts, but I wasn't healthy. It wasn' vital.I was still sick.

And that's where these tools came in. They're free.They're accessible.And I'm so excited about getting this information out to the people that need it. Yeah. And again, it's such a mindset shift, especially as people are expanding ideas about what health are. So in Optimize, you talk about some of these amazing tools. Some of the tools you're talking about, and I know because I'm a big follower and literally read every post, is talking about sleep and rhythm and changing the rhythm of the body. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Because we are living in a sleep deprived world. I mean, considering I'm a woman in perimenopause and I've always working on it and definitely have gotten better, but I know what affects me. And kids don't always have those words. Teenagers, you know, they're used to short changing it. Talk a little bit about some of this, the sleep and the rhythm, what happens at a biological level. Yeah, because it's so foundational. It's really foundational, yeah, it is so important. And I think a lot of people, you know, this is really new research.

I mean, in 2017, three researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work on chronobiology. And that's just a big word for how light affects our biology. And what they found is almost every single cell in our body has a circadian clock, circading gene in it. That means that the light in the environment stimulates what our bodies does. It drives all of those things. So if we are getting out, if our children are giving out in upon waking within the first half an hour of waking. Maybe they have a chore of walking a dog or maybe they.

Have a routine that they do go outside for a walk or whatever it might be to get them outside. That light that comes in through the eyes, it is cueing their hormones. It's cue their inflammatory state. Its cue in their neurotransmitters. So their dopamine that allows them to be focused and motivated, that's transformed by the natural light we see in the morning. Serotonin that allow us to feel calm. allows us to buffer against the anxieties of modern life. That, again, is transformed and secreted during that rising of the sun in the morning.

Why the Book Is Called Optimize 13:00

And that time is so crucial for regulating our immune system, our neurological system. neurotransmitters, our hormones, are metabolism. It cues our fat burning components, or lipotropins, all these different things, just by going outside for five to 10 minutes. I mean, how incredible is that? And then the flip side of that is, I was like, let's dive into that one, doctor. Katie, because the flip side is, I mean, i'm here filming today. You heard me say this. I have filmed 40 videos this last week and a half.

iIm a cuckoo girl. But these lights will disrupt me for 48 hours. So I've a whole system of countering that. Now this is unusual, but the computer is not. And I know that's what you're going to dive into. How do we counter all this blue light we're getting? Yeah, absolutely. Because that blue light, what we have been living with, that dominant light signal, has been the rising and setting of the sun. And that bluelight, the thing that triggers all those things I just mentioned in the morning, as the Sun rises, it gains more and more bluelight.

We get exposed to more more blulight and that says, okay, let's go. Let's secrete cortisol. let secret serotonin and dopamine and get going. And then as it starts to set, you know, that arc of the sun, it's starts down regulate all those processes. And as that sets, tells our body, okay, It's time to stop secreting cortisol. It is time that acts not only for a deep restorative sleep that we need for repair, for healthy brain function, for mood, immune system. It's also a master antioxidant. So many of us and our children are inflamed.

And just getting that circadian rhythm can be a powerful player in how to regulate inflammation, as well as sleep, of course. So here in the Pacific Northwest, where I am, it gets dark at 430. And we're just not bumping into each other in dark here. We still live and stay up till a regular bedtime. But what we do is we transition our lighting. So we have some incandescent bulbs. salt lamps that we turn on, we turned off those overhead lights, We move to light that's more rich in red, infrared, yellow tones, like you would see with the setting of the sun, Like you'd see in a fire.

And what that does is several different things. We talked about melatonin and how important that is for sleep and inflammation. That red and infrared light is also so vital for our mitochondria. And it doesn't matter what we're talking about. Whatever tissue, whatever organ we are talking, whether we talk about the brain, the heart, or the immune system, all these things have a relationship

Sleep, Circadian Rhythm, and Morning Light 16:15

with the mitochondria that are in those cells in that tissue. Those mitochondrial, those little organelles inside the cell of whatever tissue we were talking. And it powers everything. It's the power of our body. And many of the kids, because I talk about this, many kids that I work with do have known mitochondrial issues. So I'm so grateful that you're bringing this up, but please continue. Yeah. Well, you know, a simple way for us to think about this is blue light puts the brakes on our mitochondrial function and red light feeds and supports our my mitochondria function.

And we've gone from this natural rhythm of, okay, blue, light, let's go. Let's do all this action. Then red and infrared light through the evening hours. supporting our mitochondrial function to blue light all the time. You know, if I pulled out a spectrometer right now, and I'm like you, I've got all these lights on so that we can see each other, they are LED. They are dominant in one spectrum of bluelight. If I were to take that spectometer outside, you would see the full spectrum in blue, but you'd see whole visible spectrum, right?

Red, yellow, orange, red, You would a ton of infrared energy, which is so supportive of our mitochondria. You would see some ultraviolet light, depending on what kind of season you're in, but some at least. And that, you know, if we think about light as a nutrient, our children are starving. for different light spectrums that aren't present in our modern day lighting anymore. And so not only do you have the sleep, not the inflammatory piece of blue light at night, but you also have this effect, powerful effect on the mitochondria.

We could just talk about the research for a long time. There's so much research coming out where red light is being used to overcome children with mitochondrial disorders. I mean, it's really, really powerful. They're doing just a few minutes of red light exposure in the morning. But basically, if we just understand that that modern LED light puts the brakes on our mitochondria and red lights supports it. So what do we do as parents? Do I have everyone shuffling around? No, I mentioned some lighting that we can do.

We can shift to lighting, that has infrared and red tones to it. we lower the intensity of light. So our overhead lights are on during the day. And then I switch to actual lighting. That's lower like salt lamps, like sconces on the wall. I do the same. I feel that it's so dramatic in how it really helps. These are really things that are very actionable for people that I just don't think people are thinking about. What are your thoughts about the blue blockers? Got my blue blackers over here. Do you think they should have the red over them?

Like, what are you thoughts? About how these are? Mine obviously don' They're my cheap Amazon glasses. And I generally find that if you ask your kids to wear them, they generally will. And there's also the nighttime vision that goes on your PC, your phone. I think that those are all helpful tools. What are your thoughts? Yeah, absolutely. So what's happening there is you're blocking those spectrums of blue light that tell your body, okay, it's noon, not nighttime. And something we can wrap our head around is some research that was done a couple years ago that showed that just a brief period of time, like 10 minutes, of exposing children to that artificial LED blue light decreased melatonin by 90%. Wow.

Yes. Yeah. When we look at the research, our children and as we go into perimenopause and menopausal, we become more circadian sensitive as well.

Blue Light, Red Light, and Mitochondria 20:30

Those ends of the spectrums are extremely sensitive to different light environments. So I'm hoping that that serves as some encouragement to try out blue light blocking glasses, to maybe change some of the bulbs in the house, maybe use some these apps where the screen color becomes a little bit changed. And it's dramatic for the child's ability to sleep. It's interesting because when I was first doing this with my children, they sleep, They didn't have sleep problems. They would go to asleep, it was easy to fall asleep.

kind of sleep, the quality of the sleep they were getting did not allow for the regulation, did allow the brain function and the mood that was optimal. And that's where the blue light blocking and all these different things we're talking about right now was so powerful. I think a lot of parents do say, well, you know, my child does sleep. They fall asleep easily and they sleep through the night. Do they wake up tired? Do they wake up groggy? Do the wake-up excited? do they jump out of bed like a child should?

Are they excited for life? are they able to focus on what they want to do for the day? If not, sleep might be an issue, right? And there's simple steps we can do to really support our children and their health. And it's a matter of making a routine out of it. I want to unpack something you said, because we always think of inflammation. We think people that have conditions like pans, pandas or autoimmune diseases, things like diabetes and whatnot. And yes, they have a lot of information, but if your child has a clinical condition like ADHD or anxiety or autism, so does yours.

Yeah. So we have to think about lowering our, our inflammation load. Is aware of this because they're creating anti inflammatory psychiatric medications and often so quick to jump to medications because your kid may be really difficult and cranky and I just this is about an expanding your idea of what could be contributing to that. And even if they have a clinical diagnosis, it doesn't mean they lose their diagnosis. But don't we want to optimize their brain and body so that their symptoms are less, which is why we're having this conversation.

And I think it doesn't have to be the magic wand. It could be this one small thing of, OK, I'm going to have no overhead lights. This is my life. No overhead light at night. I minimize my lights, be careful. Do put my zoomie glasses on, my UV glasses, on at nighttime. Makes a difference. It makes a huge difference in quality of sleep, for sure. You also talk a lot about kids really grounding in nature and the impact of that. And we often think of just young kids grounding. I want to say that just shouldn't be the only people grounding, it has to be us.

It has be older kids. Talk a little bit about what grounding does to the body and getting outside in nature. We are electrical beams, and I know that sounds like, oh, where is she going now with this? It's a lot out there. But really, our cells run an electrical voltage. And we see from the research, when that voltage decreases, we start to have immune issues. we start to have inflammatory issues. There's a way to look at the body where pain, inflammation, symptoms are associated with a decrease in that electrical charge.

And mitochondria are foundational in supporting that electric charge, but our cells have that electron charge in their membrane. It's really foundational for how our body works. And the surface of the earth is lined with this sea of electrons, these free negatively charged particles. And we're used to thinking of electricity, electrons like we plug our appliance into the socket and electrons flow like water through a hose into appliance

Grounding, Nature, and the Body's Electrical Charge 25:00

to charge that appliance. But that's really a misnomer. That's not exactly how it works. That's why we're able to place our phones on a charging pad. They don't have to be plugged in or our toothbrushes or Wi-Fi. These fields, there's energy in the field and there is energy that lines the surface of the earth. And when we go out and make contact with that, gardening, bare feet, climbing a tree, sitting on on the blanket and having a picnic, We are coming in contact with this infinite sea of electrical charge that helps balance our body's electrical charges.

We can see when we start to increase our positive electrical charged, it's associated with some of this inflammation. And when we come in contact with the earth, it decreases that electrical charge, not to mention that it puts us in exposure to the sounds of nature, which are deeply regulating for the nervous system, birdsong, breeze through the leaves of a tree or through grass. We're exposed to negative ions in the air that we're breathing, we are exposed the natural microbiome which is present in air we breathe.

I think a lot of people think of food when we're talking about the microbiome and the gut microbiomes, but air actually has the air that we breathe has more impact on our gut micro biome than the food we eat. It's really incredible. That's probably mind blowing for people. Like they probably have never heard that before. And you know, we are kids aren't just outside in the same way and adults. We're not as outside as we used to. I live in a northern state and it's really, really cold and I hate it and i will vacate after my son graduates high school.

But I am not a cold weather, but there's a lot to say, just getting outside in the sun, in cold, and the air. And people say like, I feel different when I'm outside breathing air and that's part of it. The microbiome building through the is something everybody can do. it's something everyone can do, and it is something we can start teaching our children about. So with my kids, they live in the world. They like their screens, but they also have been trained by this parent, to understand the difference.

My 16-year-old will say, I've been gaming too long. I got to go outside." He'll sometimes he'll ask like, can we go for a hike? We live in a place where you can walk outside and there's a lot of nature right here. But he will even ask to like go somewhere else and go on a height because he knows how regulating, how calming that is. And I think all of us as adults, as parents recognize that feeling when we've just try scrolling and scrolling for that dopamine hit and we're just tapped out. We're not going to get it.

Like, Oh yeah. You can feel it in your body. And then you and I have talked about this before. When you have kids where you're educating, not lecturing, and you also role modeling, you are really teaching them about, oh, doesn't that feel weird? It becomes something they want for themselves. It's not perfect, but they recognize they need balance in the same way that we recognize it. You cannot force these things on your kids, And you can support them in doing these things without having conflict because the nervous system needs to know regulation and there's multiple ways to get there and the microbiome and and connecting with nature.

You are so right that the nature has a hum. that brings about a difference even just from a mindfulness perspective of slowing down and just being more connected to nature creates a coherence rate lowers your heart rate you know makes everything work in a different way brings you to a much closer parasympathetic state than sitting there like you

Hydration, Electrolytes, and Cellular Health 29:30

said and dopamine hitting from the scroll absolutely i mean just the sights that you're seeing seeing the blue sky seeing green looking out over a vast area, over the horizon, that has dramatic neurological effects that we don't get when we have a screen right next to us and we're scrolling or we are gaming. And it's felt. I mean, I think all of our senses really get impacted when go outside. Like you said, it is not lecturing.I don' lecture my kids about it. Oh, this feels so good. they start to notice that.

Sometimes when they're really dysregulated, I might say like, seems like you've been on the screens for a while, you know, just gently plant seeds so that they are able to name that feeling. So they were able understand and put it in a bigger context that, they want to feel that regulation and they know how to do that and that's a huge a huge life skill that I mean, I wish I had gotten when I was growing up, right? Like how do you regulate? Oh, that feeling that's dysregulation. So how am I going to regulate that?

And screens aren't going away and there's more of a demand in schools now. Like they don't really have textbooks anymore. Your jobs are very dependent on screens in every kind of job, pretty much. And so teaching them to take a break. Yeah. And reset is a very powerful thing. In this book, in Optimize, we're not going into every single detail. You can get it by going to drkatherineclinton.com forward slash Optimized. She also can just look up the book Optimizing Barnes & Noble, your local bookstore, and of course, Amazon.

But there are a lot of places to get get books and it will be out by the time this episode comes out. You really go into other things we're not going to go in to it also including water and hydration and there our hydration definitely is something I feel that we don't talk enough about it is the powers the cells. What can you tell parents about hydration and helping kids just how important hydration is from a quantum biology perspective, a different perspective? Because I think they understand that kids need to drink more, but I don't think that they really understand from the mitochondrial, from cellular perspective just important it is for their mental and physical health.

Yeah, that's the first. It's optimized seven groundbreaking steps to better health and longevity through quantum biology. And that the 1st step is water and hydration, because that is the backdrop for all of these things. That's what captures the light to help the mitochondria work more efficiently. So if we're dehydrated, That is really the antenna. We can't pull that information in for that measurable biological effect, for the change in the body. I think that a lot of our kids are inflamed dealing with histamine issues, dealing mold issues and just being dehydrated is going to activate those mast cells and the release of histamines.

Spend so long talking about all the things with hydration and mass cell is something so not just my pants pandas families are realizing that people are talking About it there it's happening in the world and you know when you have health issues that aren't getting better It's a diagnosis du jour at this point. I'm not saying it' not real It' just that People are coming to realize that and they don't understand like how do I hydrate i'm drinking water It was so funny. I had a psychic reading recently and she was like, you're really dehydrated.

And I was, like don't I know it? And i'm always taking my electrolytes. iIm always working to hydrate myself. and i was just really busy that week and I could feel it. Like I feel when I'm dehydrate. As soon as you said hydration, I thought, oh boy, i didn't take my uh electrolyte today. Yeah, no. And I think that there's so many things to that, like you're saying, drinking electrolytes, but also being busy, that being that you were experiencing,

Co-Regulation and Small Daily Habits for Families 34:00

being in front of those lights, Wi-Fi, all these things are dehydrating. Stress is dehydrated, and we don't realize it. There's there are so things that impact hydration besides water. Hydration is just foundational. If we don't have hydration shells around our proteins, they can't fold and our cells can function. It's just that simple. And so it's so foundational. water, water water. Not soda, not juice, but I do really recommend electrolytes, good quality electrolyte for everybody. I think it's a missing ingredient for people and I'm glad to hear it is your foundational piece.

final words, of course, everybody's going to get optimized. If there is one thing that parents can do today that is a tiny micro habit to bring in to their daily world, what do you say to parents? I think that This idea of co-regulation, I think this idea tending to our health and our children's health at the same time. So going outside together. eating together, taking a deep breath. When I take a breath with my kids around, they take deep breaths right after me, right? It's this ripple effect.

And so many of us as parents put our children first and are scrambling and doing so different things. We have so much different tabs open, so to speak, in our life. But one of those can be, how do we tend to each other at the same time, and making these routines. I talk about in the book, I've talked about light, our electrical capacity, relationship with nature, coherence and this co-regulation that we have, the microbiome, all these things. But it's not a checklist. It's an invitation to explore these things with your children so that you are also being tended to, because our nervous system is really that flagship that points our children in the right direction.

So I would invite parents to just explore things these with their children and not see it as a chore, see as an invitation to return to some of that vitality that might be missing. I love that framing and invitation because in a place where 50% of parents felt overwhelmed, a little step might feel too big, but these are micro steps. Co-regulation is one of the greatest powers parents don't know they have. And I didn't that was going to be your number one tip, and I'm so happy that it is. And so for anybody that wants to connect with Dr.

Katherine Clinton, first of all, buy her book, Optimize. But you can find her on Facebook, you could find here on Instagram. And like I said, she has incredible posts. For the deeper dive and for the ways to really understand what are those micro steps to help your quantum biology, the change in all these different elements that affect our energy fields and affect us on a deeply cellular level, please start thinking differently because we are becoming sicker. We're not becoming healthier. And these are little things we all can do.

So thank you for all of your work. I'm so excited and so proud of you that you wrote this book and I really look forward to reading it. My tribe of regulators are going to wind up loving your book too, and thank you again.