Enhancing Mitochondria in Children for Better Development

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Hi, I’m so excited to be here.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I know, it’s gonna be good. You are gonna be one of the few pediatric experts on this summit, and this is an important conversation to have for our kiddos too. Mitochondria problems, don’t just occur in adults, kids can suffer the consequences of mitochondria not working well, and so you’re gonna bring that conversation to life for us today on the summit. And whether you’re a parent, a grandparent, or an auntie or an uncle, this is relevant, we all have kids in our life in some capacity, most of us do. So, thank you for being here.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

I’m so excited. This is great. And I think it’s a topic that we don’t often address in children, and we sometimes ponder about like what some of the things that our children are dealing with. And anyway, there’s some… I’m excited to get into some tips and tricks that people can start doing right away to improve their children’s mitochondrial function.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, so good, so good. Well, let’s introduce you to our audience. You are a holistic pediatrician, you are a best-selling author, a mother of three, an award-winning speaker at Harvard Club of Boston, and you’ve had over 100 TV news and podcast appearances. You’ve been busy over your career. Your passion is to inspire, educate, and empower mamas to revamp their family’s health and prevent children from developing chronic disease. So we’re gonna get into mitochondria with kids, so let’s just jump in. What are some of the signs of mitochondria fatigue in children? How might you know a child in your life is suffering from this?

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

One of the things that I see oftentimes is parents come in and one of their concerns is that, gosh, my children have an activity and they’ve been there for like three hours, and then they’re wiped out, and then they have to like take a nap. And we’re not talking about like four year olds, we’re talking about like seven year olds, eight year olds, 10 year olds, a four year old, you expect that they’re gonna have an intense activity and they might still be a little bit tired, maybe they need a nap, but we’re talking about the older kids. But even when we’re looking at the younger ones, in kids that I see that, let’s say, they’re three and four, they’re having some issues with core strength, they’re having issues with some fine motor, some gross motor. They don’t seem to have the endurance of the other kids. When you see ’em at a playground, for example, you’re like, oh my gosh, and this goes for all ages, how come my child is the first one that has to sit down? How come my child is the first one that has to call time out? How come my child is the first one that has to leave the playground first because they always seem to be whiny, their legs are tired. And again, sometimes it’s a little bit hard to discern because little kids complain, and they wanna be held, and wanna be carried by their parents, but this is goes beyond where you are noticing that your child is always the one that has to be carried, always the first one to lead the playground. And then in the-

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh my gosh. Wait, I just have to say, I remember this when I was a kid, I can remember kids that couldn’t keep up with the rest, or they just didn’t seem to have the stamina, and they was the last one picked on the team because everybody knows that kid can’t keep up. Oh my gosh, and even with everything I know, ’cause I don’t work in pediatrics, I never would have thought, wow, those kids probably had some thing going on at the cellular level where they couldn’t function as high as the other kids.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Correct, ’cause I mean, one of the things that you always talk about is like mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, powerhouse of the body, so if the motor and the engine is not running at optimum speed, well, you can’t run on a playground, you can’t be the fastest one. And again, I’m not necessarily saying that our kids need to be the fastest, but they shouldn’t be always last, every single time, they’re last, every single time they’re pick lasts. And then when we look at, at school performance, they fatigue early, they don’t have stamina for a standardized test, they’re brain fog, some ADHD, actually, can be because of mitochondrial dysfunction, in attention, anxiety, it can show up in many other mood disorders and irritability, because if you are always tired, if you’re always fatigue, if you’re always brain fog, if you always feel like you cannot just memorize and remember all the stuff from the school, how can you not be irritable? How do you not develop anxiety around test taking? How do you not start fearing school, because you always feel like you’re not good enough from the aspect of the mitochondrial perspective.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow. Oh my gosh, this is so enlightening. Now, I’m starting to think about grumpy adults, and slow adults, and I’m wondering.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Right, but I mean, how many of us as adults, you feel like in your 40s and 50s, you’re like, oh, it’s just an aging thing, and then I’m just kind of tired. And someone I’m like, “Or maybe you’re powerhouse in your body as just like lost the the will to live.” And it’s not firing on all the cylinders and therefore you are manifesting it through your own brain fog, your own tiredness. And again, when you’re a mom, and you have four kids running around, you’re trying to run a business, et cetera. You’re like, “Oh, it’s because of that.” Is it? Or is it something deeper?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. Okay. So now we know what to look for in kids with what mitochondrial fatigue might look like. Now, why do they get it? Why are children who are born perfect, why are they getting this so young? What is the problem? I mean, yeah, it makes sense if you’ve been on the planet for 50 years and you’ve filled up your toxic bucket, but what’s going on with kids?

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Oh gosh, the story is so complex, but let’s get genetics out of the way ’cause everyone goes, “It’s genetic, there’s nothing we can do about it.” So there is a genetic component, absolutely, and actually in the traditional model you can get genetic testing done and you can look at the different mitochondria. So when I was in traditional practice, I had children that they had genetic screens from the traditional neurologist that mitochondrial dysfunction, and it was deemed genetic ’cause you can put it on the chromosomes. However, we also have the kids that when the babies are in our belly, they are exposed to a lot of toxic things, unfortunately. And I know I’m always a fun police ’cause they’re like, everyone’s like, “Oh my God, here you go again.” But again, the water that mama drinks, if it’s a certain kind of water, if we’re just not paying attention to the water we drink, and it’s filled with fluoride and filled with chlorine and filled with other antibiotics and things in the water source, okay, well that’s going through the placenta to our babies. What about the heavy metals in the soils? Heavy metals in our food? That’s gonna go through the placenta to our babies. The stress that mama feels. I had two babies in residency. I mean, as a resident, the amount of stress is so incredible. No one told me that I need to actually pay attention, figure it out because then tone it down a little bit. I mean, I’m not gonna quit residency, but there’s ways to handle it, no one told me that. 

And so my children, two of them were actually conceived in a tremendous amount of stress and that of course is going to affect your mitochondria. And then we get to the mom food. When I was pregnant, all I was told was like, “Okay, well don’t eat cold cuts, and don’t eat raw cheese and raw fish, and then you get to go.” So I had all this processed food, it was in the cafeteria, in the hospital cafeteria, I don’t even wanna discuss the food that was served in the cafeteria. And then we would buy frozen burritos and frozen pizzas but we were cooking at home, and it was all filled with chemicals and food coloring and processed preservatives, which I was eating and then that went on to my babies. So by the time our babies are born, and I haven’t even covered medications that mama’s take, but by the time my babies were born, they’re already exposed to so many chemicals. And we also haven’t even touched on all the chemicals, and the cleaners, and the makeup, and the cosmetics that go on our bodies and are in our homes that also go in through the placenta. In fact, there is a recent study that showed that indium umbilical cord, there are over 283 chemicals that are found in the blood that goes to our babies, and these are toxic chemicals.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I have so much guilt, can I just say right now, I have so much guilt for my own child. And you didn’t even talk about firstborn child who gets the offload of the mother’s chemicals worse than the other kids, right? So your first born child is doomed, not doomed but we’ll talk about what we can do to fix it. But you know what I mean, they get the big load from us, but I have such guilt because I… Working as a nurse practitioner for 20 years before I found functional medicine, and I totally had toxins coming into my body when I was pregnant with my daughter thinking I was doing everything right, right? Oh, I’m not drinking alcohol, I’m not doing drugs, I’m not smoking, I’m not around secondhand smoke, and I’m not eating raw fish and Brie and I’m doing good.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

That’s what I thought, that’s exactly what I thought. I was like, I am awesome. And then now, I’m like, oh wow, okay, didn’t know.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Didn’t know. I know. I know. And then you know that-

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

What about at school? What are our kids getting exposed to at school? So once they go to school, what toxins are coming into them?

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

So once we’re again at school, I mean, now that after we’ve had this pandemic, now the amount of cleaners has increased exponentially, the amount was exposure to bleach and chemicals and cleaning products is through the roof. And do we wanna even talk about the fact that during the summer times, and I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, so I’m in the south, during the summer, it is hot, and steamy hot. And the schools, there’s no one in school, so what is happening in the vents? What’s in their air ducts and air systems? So when school gets in session and everything gets turned back on, all the mold and all the stuff that has been sitting in the ducts is getting sent to our children. And then, let’s talk about school food. I mean, you look at the food that is being served to our kids and it’s deemed nutritious, and it’s filled with food, coloring, preservatives and chemicals that I would never serve my kids and that as nutritious. We have a free breakfast at our school, and it’s Lucky Charm, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, regular milk, chocolate milk, or strawberry milk.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

What? That’s the free lunch?

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

That’s the free breakfast, that’s free breakfast.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Bring your children to school so we can poison them with free lunch or free breakfast, excuse me, free breakfast.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

And yeah, and when I went to the schools and I was like, I met with the principal at my kid’s school, and I said, hey, listen, can we talk about the food? The lunch, what can we do about the lunch? And they’re like, “There’s children that this is the only meals that they have. They have breakfast and lunch, and other than that they go hungry.” And I was like, great, so should we not be feeding ’em better food than Doritos? And I mean, and the mac and cheese that we have squeezed out of a bag and the pizza and the hot dogs? I’m like, my point, exactly. I had to leave. I was asked to leave.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

You were asked to leave.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Well, I mean, they’re like, there was nothing that we can do here, so I’m like…

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, so you at least could send your kids to school with a good lunch.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Correct. Correct. So yeah, so we have tons of exposures, yeah.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, a lot of exposure. Okay, so what I’m hearing is root causes of mitochondrial fatigue for kids, it comes from a toxic load from the mom, it comes from toxins in the environment. What about infections in kids?

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Great point. And so we do have a lot of infections. Again in kids, I would probably say that what I see most is that the kids have had run like viruses that then had bacteria and they had antibiotics upon antibiotics upon antibiotics. And the number one infection I see is Candida, yeast, that we all have in our bodies. However, because of the antibiotics, it kills a good bacteria, so now the yeast is taken over. I do see some parasites, however, not as much as you would see on Facebook, ’cause everyone comes in and I was like, right, but we do these very thorough multi-level stool tests and I see some parasites. I would say, I see more bad bacteria and more yeast than anything else, of course I have some children that have lime and Bartonella, EBV is not a big issue in the population that I see, and lime and Bartonella is small on the scale of Candida and other microbiome imbalance.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm-hmm, and what I would say about parasites, I mean, parasites are my jam, the test only looks for 15 or so types of parasites that are only gut parasites, and there’s hundreds of parasites and some are not even in your gut, they’re in your bloodstream or in your organs, in they’re protozoa not something that you can even see with the naked eye, so a bench microscopy where you’re looking in a microscope at a stool sample, you’re maybe gonna miss it. So yeah, I would say,

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

True.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

There’s probably more parasites out there than we even think.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

You know what, and there’s more viruses and there’s more bacteria than we are able to capture. Totally true. Totally true.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm-hmm, okay, so lots of root causes. So now we’ve identified what kids might be acting like if they have adrenal fatigue, we have a good idea of where these root causes are coming from, so now what? so now you’ve identified this, what do we do to intervene? Where should parents start?

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

You know, my first place where everybody in my clinic starts is nutrition. If we don’t have nutrition, we’re not on board with that, you’re just gonna waste money on supplements, you’re wasting money on all these other treatments. I have a lot of kids that we get the nutrition on par, we do it supplements, we heal the gut, we get rid of all the stuff that is ailing them, and then they fall back into the old ways, and I’ll tell you, their symptoms come back. And then despite all the stuff, so the people that do well as the folks that are maintaining the nutritional level that we go through in the treatment, and so there’s treatment sounds so big and scary. But here’s the thing, when my kids were little, all my kids were super sick, they had asthma, eczema, allergies, chronic constipation, chronic ear infections, chronic croup, ADHD. I mean, you name an illness, my kids had it. And the way, and I didn’t know anything then, I was about 14 years ago and I started with nutrition. I was like, it can be wrong to get rid of food coloring and add fruits and vegetables in their diet. And as a pediatrician, I was like, okay, well they have strawberries at lunch and they have broccoli at dinner so we’re good. Okay, when we’re getting serious about nutrition and about mitochondrial health, we really gotta step up our game, and we’re talking, I wanna see plan points at every meal. And for my patients, I’m like, you need to have a fruit or a vegetable every time you sit down to eat. 

It may sound daunting, especially picky kids and such, we start with one bite. When we are dealing with picky eaters, ’cause that’s the first thing that when people hear me say this, I’m like, got, my kids are never gonna do it because they’re picky. So I’m like, right, but everyone could take a bite of one grape, you can take one bite of a carrot stick, you can take one bite or you can do a cucumber slice, you can do one organic edamame, so we have to start really small. So plants are super important because they’re filled with the right nutrients that the mitochondria needs. One of the things that a mitochondria needs is vitamin C, and everybody’s like, I’m gonna get my vitamin C from a pill. I’m like, okay, no, you get it from like red peppers, red peppers and strawberries and guava actually are the highest foods in vitamin C. And also when you get your vitamins from food, the body is able to absorb it and recognize it better than when it’s from a supplement. Even though it’s a fancy supplement from my name, I have my own supplement line, it’s amazing, but the human body responds the best from when getting nutrients from food. Well, I talk about organic foods. There are things we need B12 and we need methylated B12 in order to get the mitochondria really cranking. 

Where do you get your methylated B12? From eggs, from liver, yes. I know, from organ meats, but from other meats and everyone was like, ah, but in France, my friends, pate and liver stuff is fancy. I was in Spain last week and liver pate was like a normal thing that you get at the grocery store, so my children know how to eat pate. But we can get, again, when we’re buying synthetic supplements, we don’t know what we’re looking for so that’s why I always go for nutrition. Decrease the child’s sugar intake. I mean, we can go in a whole hour on sugar, keeping the added sugar, not natural sugar from fruits and vegetables, added sugar to less than 24 grams a day, and removing food coloring from your life, removing preservatives. When I started my journey, I can do all of this. I picked one thing and I would… Cheez-Its was a big cracker in our house. So I was like, I’m gonna replace the Cheez-Its, so I went and read the ingredients and I only picked a cracker that had ingredients that I could read 100%. And my goal is to keep the ingredients less than five in a packaged food, because if you keep it less than five, you’re more likely to avoid the preservatives, the food coloring and all the junk. So in summary, for food, keep your added sugar to less than 24 grams a day, if you can’t read it, don’t eat it, try to keep your packaged food amount of ingredients to less than five, five or less, and start introducing a fruit and a vegetable at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

This is perfect advice for adults too. I mean, I know adults who eat like kids, honestly.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

I do too, because the apple doesn’t fall far.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, when my daughter was little, we used to call it her, no thank you bite, she had to have a no thank you bite of everything. And my claim to fame as a parent is, my child’s favorite vegetable as a child was brussel sprouts. I won that one big time, yes. And it’s the way you cook them too, my brother’s a chef and he taught me this amazing way to saute brussel sprouts that even the most picky eater eats it and says, “That’s amazing.” Yeah, this is good, so food is so important. So what about, well, what about school? So obviously, not having the school lunch, any tips and tricks on getting your kids to eat the lunch that you pack them?

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Yeah, so when I started, I started slow and my kids had lunchables, the beautiful thing is I did it all wrong, and I had all the garbage in my kid’s foods. I’ve gone through the whole journey ’cause a lot of people are like, “Oh, you don’t understand.” I’m like, “Oh no, but I do.” ‘Cause we had juice boxes and chocolate milk in their lunches and you name it, but start switching out one thing at a time. Like when it comes to juice, for example, again, juice is a ton of added sugar, I know and it says natural and it comes from fruits, one things I tell people I’m like, so a little box of Honest Kids’ juice is about six to seven apples. So I don’t know any children that sit down and have six to seven apples in one sitting.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

You’d never do that. But in a juice, you remember you’d eat that on top of the fact that’d remove the fiber and all the vitamins and minerals and then they pasteurize. Okay, so in the juice example, the way I started, I was like, instead of doing juice every day, we started doing juice every other day, and then it was juice twice a week, and then it was juice once week, and then it just went away, and then my kids just, I stopped buying it, once you stop buying it, they’re gonna stop whining. It’s gonna take some time for the whining to stop, but most kids under the age of 16, don’t have a driver’s license and they don’t have money, so they can’t really go to the grocery store, so if you want your children to stop eating a certain way, you have to stop supplying them with that kind of food. ‘Cause we are… The way when my kids were eating Goldfish, like it was going outta style, I was basically, I felt like I was a supplier, I was like their drug dealer. And then I would yell at them like, “Why are you eating Goldfish?” I’m like, “Why am I buying the goldfish?” If I buy the Goldfish, they’re going to eat the Goldfish, so one of the ways is actually stop buying the food that you don’t want your children to have, and also put a positive spin, always like the reason that we’re eating this way, the reason we’re changing ’cause I want you to be faster, stronger. Don’t say healthy, healthy means nothing. But if your child is like comes home always like, “I’m always picked last on the playground.” Great, great news here. Okay, don’t you wanna be to be picked number two, number three? Okay, well when you eat blueberries, you’re gonna be stronger, faster, so now you can be picked on the playground for the other kids to play. Oh you get tired in the end of day? You can’t focus on math? You need a tutor? Isn’t that exhausting? Oh my gosh, if you eat more vegetables, if you eat eggs, if we change out the cereal for a smoothie, now you have brain power, now you can remember stuff, now you’re not gonna need a tutor, you have stronger brain, you have stronger muscles, you’re faster. So I always encourage kids, and I associate the food with a way that they’re feeling rather than a generic healthy, because kids respond to faster, strong, whatever their thing is, you will know because they’re always complaining about whatever their perceived weakness is.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So good. You’re so good. I’m loving this conversation. Okay. You’re solving all the problems. All right. So now what about lifestyle modifications? What do we need to do there to support mitochondria? So we’ve gone all over the place with food, now what?

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Yeah, so one of the things that I see a lot of like people, the kids, we’ve become a sedentary society, we are now sitting inside and one of the things that’s happened with a pandemic we told our children, you should sit inside more. Definitely don’t go outside because there’s big bad germs out there, so let’s sit inside more, let’s sit on Zoom school for eight hours, let’s sit on connect with our friends on Xbox, so now we’ve become a sedentary society. Mitochondria thrives in sunshine, mitochondria thrives when we give it oxygen, you have obviously you breathe so you have oxygen, but when we’re out, when the kids are playing and running, they’re getting more oxygen into their body, and they’re able to supply their mitochondria with a one of the key fuels which is oxygen. It is an aerobic organism, it cannot work in the under anaerobic conditions which means it needs oxygen. So the more that we have our kids play, run around, bike, go out in the sunshine, the more we empower their inner motors with more energy. In my kids that are so severely affected by mitochondrial deficiency, they have to actually wear oxygen but that’s not true for a majority of the kids, We have oxygen out into the world which is much better. By the way, our indoor air quality is 100 times more polluted than our outdoor air quality, so have your kids go outside. Screens, it’s not been shown in the literature, but screens suck the power out of our children’s mitochondria. I don’t know if any of you guys who are listening have any children that maybe have been addicted to YouTube or to TikTok or Snapchat or whatever screen or their iPads, and then they’re just like possum motion on the couch. And then like, you wanna go hang out with your friends? “No, I don’t wanna.”

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

No.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Do you wanna go to… “No, I don’t wanna do anything.” Why don’t you go outside? “No, I don’t wanna…” Everything’s like, “No, I don’t wanna…” And we’re like, we’ve sucked the energy out of their mitochondria with this screens, they’re very useful, you do your schoolwork, you find your recipes, you do your Google Maps, you have your Spotify, but we have now all become addicted to these devices which are literally sucking the power out of our bodies. My son was in the middle of quarantine, clocked 46 hours of YouTube, because we thought he was on school, and we were distracted by publishing a book and all this stuff so I took my eyeballs off him and he’s became especially vegetable-ish. And my husband’s like, “We gotta look at the history.” So we pulled the history up, it’s 46 hours, he spent five, mm, maybe nine minutes on school work that week. He figured out how to get into the classes, get attendance, do the minimal amount of work to get a minimal grade that is noticed by the teachers, and the rest of the time was all on YouTube. And he, I can tell you, he wouldn’t go outta the house, he wouldn’t get off the couch, he wouldn’t hang out with his friends, it was like literally ripping this human like up to try to lift them up and push him out into the world.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And the addiction. So on this summit, we do have people talking about EMFs, and dirty electricity and the dangers there, but that addiction that dopamine hit every time you see another YouTube video. And I mean, he probably was sitting there watching mindless couple minute things, like not even long attention span of things.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Right. Right. And he even told me, he goes, it got to the point, ’cause I’m talking to him, he was watching, I figure what some meme or something. And I was like, how do you know about the relationship for that? ‘Cause like about actors in the ’80s or something, he’s like, “I don’t even know what that means.” He’s like, “It’s gone to the point, it doesn’t even matter, I don’t even know the context, I just didn’t watch it like a zombie.” He said that to me, he was 14 years old at that time.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

When we were like, I had pride him out and we were, he had forced family walks, in order to like get him pep up. So yeah, the addiction and one of the things that we have not studied is what do eight hours of screen time do on a developing brain that is going through so much restructuring, so much pruning, so much so rewiring. We have no idea that what that is doing to our children’s brains, we’re just like, it’s fine, it’s no big deal, there’s nothing else we can do, but there is so much much we can do.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

There is. So you’ve covered for lifestyle modification, we covered moving our bodies, getting outside, we’ve covered screens and devices. Give us another one before we-

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Sleep. Sleep. And you know, ’cause you can’t power up the house if you don’t give it some rest. And because of screens, our children’s sleep has gone down the tubes. They’re watching screen times after dinner, they’re watching screen times before bed, the teenagers have their phones in their room, and a lot of parents are probably like, “Ssh, this lady is cray cray. We had TV when we grew up and we were fine.” We had tube TV, we didn’t have blue light TV. The way we have the flat screens, the TVs that we have right now are not the same blue light that is emitting now, we didn’t have that in the ’80s, in the ’90s, this is new now to our children so it’s a different ballgame. And so a simple thing that we can do, simple takeaway, is no phones or electronics in your children’s rooms. All the iPads, computers, laptops, and phones should be plugged in in the kitchen next to the parental phones because we are also a problem, and our children don’t listen to what we say but they watch and copy most of what we do. So we, the parents, can also purchase an alarm clock from Target or Amazon because they’re, oh my parents are, “Oh no, no, no. I’m using my alarm clock.” I’m like, that’s cool because there’s an alarm clock from Target. And we also plug our stuff in, and if the device is missing, when I wake up in the morning, that’s a 24-hour confiscation of that device. And there’s gonna be lots of moaning and complaining, but I’ll tell you, it only happens once, maybe twice. So we have to follow through the consequences, we got to lead by example, follow through with consequences.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So good. So good. Okay, what do we do now to make a mitochondrial healing plan and be able to follow through in a house that’s totally resistant? Maybe you’ve got a resistant spouse, maybe you got resistant kids, maybe you’re the only one in the household that says we gotta change something here.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Great. That is such a good question. I love that ’cause that’s the whole reason I wrote the book because I was the only one, I was the only person when I realized what was going on with my kids, I was the only person. My husband and I fought over food and lifestyle modifications for five years before he came on board. In fact he’s so on board, you know he is on board ’cause he is at all our meetings now.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I know your husband, I love, John, he’s amazing.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Amazing, but it took him five years and we fought in bickered. He used to have this fancy car, it was a Corvette ZR1 blah, blah, blah, blah thing, and he would only put the top notch gas in it, whenever he would wipe it, he would have only the fanciest shammies that he researched for that and then he’d be like, “What? Grass-fed organic beef? Why are we paying that much money?” I’m like, are you serious right now? Like, your car’s shammies are like, a million dollars.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And the gas, and the amount of gas, and the repair bill, and everything, it’s top-

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Right? Right. Right. And I was like, we’re fighting over food right now. So yeah, so that was really hard, but the way I did it, I actually became a yes household. So instead of being like, can’t have can’t can’t can’t can’t, when my kids were like, we want a snack, and we had Goldfish and all this stuff at that time, and I was like, wonderful, yes you can have a snack after you have a fruit or a vegetable. Which one would you like? And then they were like, “Well, I don’t want fruit vegetable.” I’m like, well then you’re not hungry. So then they picked the fruit or a vegetable, and then they had their snack, and they’re like, “We’re still hungry.” I’m like, okay, well what fruit or vegetable do you need next? And I taught ’em portion sizes. But what I did is I started filling up the bellies of the small humans and the giant human with good food, and then allowing the food that I consider garbage, afterwards. So they would be, at breakfast, I didn’t just chuck the Cinnamon Toast Crunch and the Lucky Charms in the trash, I started with smoothies and I did smoothies at first, and then drink your smoothie and then you can have your Lucky Charms. And what happened over time, it was weeks, months, they stopped eating the Lucky Charms. 

And then it was months before they would even go in the pantry and get the Lucky Charms or Cinnamon Toast Crunch. But if they would do it, I’d just say, well, what fruit of vegetable did you have before you enjoying this treat? We need to respect our body like a temple and then we will… We’re okay eating some of this stuff, it’s gonna be fine, it’s not a problem, I didn’t make food evil, I was a yes person. And with John, I was like, hey babe instead of your Cheez-Its, I tried this one, Can you try and see what this crack? “Why do we have to do this?” And so I would go through like, okay, well we’re just doing small changes. And because I did really small changes, it was tolerable. I couldn’t have just had a gazillion million things done at the same time. So it was very small, tiny, and it took five years before he came on board and then my kids about seven years until they came off all their medications and everything, it was slow, I didn’t know what I know now, but the key to my success was taking it really slow. We didn’t start doing filtered water, the reverse osmosis in our house until a year ago and we’ve been on the journey for 13 years because I knew that if I brought that up, I would have my little filters and my little picture, but we didn’t do the big house stuff because it was too much of a marital fight. But I got to the point where I was like, hey babe, I really think… And he was like totally on board, but I waited for the right time to do that.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. This is giving people hope, so I got a question. So let’s say, you get to the point where people are eating in your household, healthy food, but they’re just like, how do you finally get rid of the food colorings and all of it? Like, what if they don’t stop asking for it? What if their brains are so addicted to it? Is there something you can do to finally get rid of it once you’ve introduced all the other foods and got them eating?

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Yeah, so I mean, I stopped buying it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. That’s a thing.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

I stopped buying it, and they did complain, and then they were like, they’ll come home and like, “Our pantry’s the worst, my friends have a best pantry, our stinks, how come we don’t have what?” And I was like, this is the food in our house, you’re more than welcome to go to your friend’s house and eat in their pantry, I don’t have a problem with it, but this is the food that we have here. And I was just no nonsense about it. I was like, that’s just what it is, I’m like, if you’d like to have a conversation about why I’m choosing certain foods and how to read ingredients, I’m happy, but if we just wanna moan a little bit which is fine, ’cause everybody has to be upset about it, go ahead, no problem. But I did not internalize that as that I’m a bad mom. ‘Cause the problem is when they start with the whining and complaining and all the changes that we’re talking about, then we internalize, well, I must be a bad mom because my kids complain. Obviously, their friends’ mom is a better mom because they’re so happy to go over there and eat from their pantry. 

That doesn’t make you a good mom or a bad mom because they wanna go into your pantry, that’s just kids who want to go into the pantry and need Doritos, that’s just a fact, this is statement, how you view yourself, that’s you. And so what a lot of times when people say, “What’s the first step in changing my children’s mitochondria, the energy level, ADHD?” I’m like, it’s mindset, if you decide that this is no longer gonna happen in your house, it’s no longer gonna happen. If you are like, well, I’m gonna kind of do it, and I think it’s good, and I think I read a Google thing, or I saw a summit and I think kind of… They’re gonna bully you out of it. I have four people against me when we went through our changes, and I was like, because my mindset was like, we are no longer gonna be sick, we are no longer eating food coloring. They complain all day long, and I was like, sorry, that’s just really what is going on. And I didn’t internalize that I’m a bad wife or a bad mom or a bad person.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That’s so good. And then what comes to mind for me too, is if you’re to the point where it’s time to stop buying it and you’re just not doing it, really think about, are you being an enabler at this point? I mean, this is huge.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Huge.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Huge. Yeah. And again, sitting down with so husbands, dads, and I hate to make it a male woman stereotype, but they’re very much about the bottom line and about the spreadsheet, and how is this benefiting the family. So for a lot of my mamas, I’m like, you know what, what we’re gonna talk about is like, how we’re doing the bottom line, when you’re buying more fruits and vegetables and more organic, well, we’re gonna stop buying less processed food, ’cause that’s what costs more. When we’re our kids are healthier, they we’re gonna have less doctor visits about their inattention or their fatigue to the doctor, that’s less copays. We’re not gonna have to spend money on ADHD, medicine or eczema medications, which by the way, it’s not 100% covered by insurance so that comes outta your pocket. So if you talk to dads, you’re like, hey, listen, we’re gonna reduce our over the counter medication costs with these fruits and vegetables. They’re like, “Okay.” We can do the bottom line, and they can start seeing it. It is hard. A lot of men need to see the results before they buy into it, so you have to give a little bit patience and you have to listen to your partner, you cannot bulldoze them, they have to be have a say in what’s going on, it’s a very delicate balanced… Listen, I’ve been through three marriage counselors, I worked through a lot of these stuff. ‘Cause it’s difficult, but you have to do it gently and gradually in order to be successful.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So good. So good. I know you and John, and what strikes me is, you are a allopathic-trained pediatrician, John is a orthopedic surgeon, you of all people would think that you guys would be able to raise really healthy kids. And what I heard you say is, your kids were really sick and it, yeah. So don’t be beating yourself up, viewers, if you feel like, gosh this is so hard. I mean, even people who are equipped with knowledge, that you didn’t get that knowledge in medical school, so this is something you have to seek out for yourself and do it. So I just acknowledge you and John for making that huge change. Last question. How are the kids doing now? Are they okay with all this?

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

You know what? They’re fantastic. We moved to New Zealand for a year and a half in 2016, no meds, no doctors, no medications with us, no medical insurance, and we just came from Spain, and my super picky eater ate all our sushi, and we’re all like, “Why is eating sushi?” ‘Cause he don’t like sushi. He’s like, “Apparently it’s really good.” So my picky eater that I’ve worked on for 15 years, he’s eating it. My children, the YouTube addicted one that was on a couch, is a couch potato, he’s on a rowing team, he works out every day. He’s now on a “I’m done doing added sugar for two months.” I didn’t say a word, did not say a word, but he was like, “I’ve just decided I’m not gonna do any added sugar for two months to see if I can do it.” And my college kids, one of ’em is doing spectacular. Well, of course, she had some setbacks because we’re gonna be honest alcohol. And then my other one, had some cafeteria situations, navigating it. But they’re all, when you look at what they eat, and how there’s no complaints, everybody is on board, there’s no more my our pantry stinks, it’s just what it is right now. But again, but we’re 14 years in the making, it didn’t happen overnight, it was many years and it’s patience. There are some days when I’m just like, oh my God, I’m like, John, look, he finally listen, or they finally are doing it. He’s like, “Well, it took 20 years, but I guess we got there.” So sometimes it takes a long time to get there, but we do, you get there.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yay, you did.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

And they’re full of energy, their mitochondria is working at optimum speed, they can do, nothing slows ’em down, nothing stops ’em which is so awesome to have kids that are on no medicines, they can do whatever, hike whatever, they can go to whatever concerts, they can travel through Spain and London and no one’s complaining of being tired or their legs hurting or being fatigued, they’re focused in school. I mean, all this effort that I’ve done for the past 14 years is worth every sweat, tear, penny spent, when I look at my kids today.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, that’s so good, that’s a great place to stop. This has been an amazing interview. And please tell our audience where we can find you. And I love your Instagram, you’re so funny, you are really funny on there. So where can everybody find you?

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

Well, I’ll tell you, one place you guys can find me is at Costco, Walmart, Target, and now recently Trader Joe’s, on my weekends is what I do. I go shopping so I can make your guys life easier and your children healthier by pointing out the products and foods that you can eat and select with a little less worry, so I’m doing all the reading of the ingredients for you and kind of giving a thumbs up or thumbs down and educating how to do it. All that is available on YouTube under Dr. Anna-Maria Temple, on my Instagram account same name, on TikTok as well ’cause why not? So, and then if you’re readers, I have my best-selling book is “Healthy Kids in an Unhealthy World” that you can grab a copy on Amazon.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Awesome. Thank you, Anna-Maria. Ah, and I’ll see you in a few months.

Dr. Ana Maria Temple

See you in a few months. Thank you so much for having me.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. Take good care now.