Root Causes of Child Developmental and Mood Disorders

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

Thank you very much for inviting me and including me.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Yeah so you know you have such an interesting professional history as I introduced you and what a journey to go on from you know massive public health and nutritional education and doctor and and all that stuff like that. So but our topic today is mood and developmental disorders and Children. So happy to talk about that because I have three young daughters. 

I want to make sure that they’re okay. Yeah. So how common, by the way our mood and development disorders and Children

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

Unfortunately very common and C0V!D didn’t do us any favors. In terms of mood disorders it was about 20% if you look at kind of Children teenagers and then C0V!D actually doubled those rates. You think about depression, anxiety. I haven’t seen a lot of kids all ages who really had a lot of issues in terms of developmental disorders, estimates were one in 51 in six Children have some kind of learning or developmental issue.  A. D. H. D. Is like 10% of our kids. And as you know a lot more boys than girls. This is kind of how I got in there. I’ve got a son with two who’s now an adult. He’s doing awesome journey. Our cells autism. When I started probably 18, 20 years ago just integrated medicine. It was like 150 kids with autism. And now it’s like 1 30 One and 30 something and again our boys are much more effective. So the rate of you know increases obviously can’t be genetic right? It can’t be just generations who are doing moving too quickly.

Cheng Ruan, MD

What is causing this increase? Because we’re seeing the same thing reflected in adult populations. You know, worsening increased 60% increase in the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s dementia in the last couple of years. Right? So even an adult, we’re seeing the same thing, bipolar disorder is a huge one. Schizophrenia has increased dramatically since the pandemic. Right? What’s going on here? You know,

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

I mean if you think about before, after pandemic. So I wrote a book because I had you know autism and their families or what can we do if we don’t have another child. And so I looked all the way back in preconception. So in terms of Children we have to look at their moms. So if the mom has inflammation, if she has infections, if she has autoimmune disease, she’s nutritional deficiencies. All those play a role. And so I feel like these kids, especially with autism, it’s like the ultimate there’s so many different hits starting preconception more likely be born by C section  more likely to you know not be nursed although nursing, you know a lot of women are really toxic. So that’s a whole other issue. There’s definitely a diet nutritional impact if you look at all the stuff in our food. If you look at the whole microbiome talked about the gut brain connection right here C. Section you don’t get that natural good flora to start. And if you’re not nurse you don’t get it. And so that sets up your immune system that sets up autoimmune disease inflammation. And start thinking about all the different toxicities we have from glyphosate which I think is probably really underestimated. You know if you look at some of the rates and the use of glyphosate and pesticides that go up there’s definitely genetic susceptibility especially mood disorders but also in autism. The one child with autism especially boy you have another boy. The rates are really high and A. D. H. D. So I think it’s a really a combination of so many different things that we’re doing in our environment and our diet. Like and then not to mention E. M. S. I mean we I feel like we’re doing so many things that we really don’t know long term impacts at all.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Okay so you know electromagnetic fields are one of the things. But what about psychological emotional stress especially priest conception in utero how much does that affect  being born?

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

Yeah that the mom has elevated cortisol. It definitely affects the baby in terms of setting up the HPI axis. And you think about that a lot of these kids are in constant fight or flight. It’s like they’re born in fight or flight. And so our adrenals are stressed a lot of times of adrenals are stressed. The thyroid stress, thyroid hormone plays a huge role in terms of development in terms of neurologic development. So I think that you know and what are women doing to cope with that stress? You know? What about the medications they may be on? No I mean I think there’s so many different factors unfortunately.

Cheng Ruan, MD

And you talked about Chorus elevation and I don’t want people to listen to this and say oh chorus all is to blame. It’s just a marker. Just a marker that we look at for chronic stress factors, right? And in reality you know stress plays a huge and important part into the gene expression what genes are actually expressed on a daily basis. So that plays a place a massive impact into developmental and mood disorders, adults and kids alone which that’s kind of you know that kind of plays a role into our lifestyles and what we how we consume information in the modern age, right? There’s a lot of social media and screen time and stuff like that. Let’s have you just comment really quickly, how does something like that? Like you know, looking at screens and ideas coming in through social media, how does that really affect the development and mood.

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

I think it leads to a lot of like attention issues and A. D. H. D. Issues because there’s a constant flux of lights and sounds and people and then they go in the classroom and they’re supposed to listen to this without any of the visual. And I think it contributes a lot to stress for these kids. It’s like they’re more connected online but they’re I think they’re much more isolated and then the bullying and you know what they hear and the comparisons and I think it’s really stressful for these kids. And I said I think they miss a lot of the other kind of development that kids are supposed to have and the creativity on their own and individuals.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Yeah, absolutely. And I always sort of give this example when it comes to attention. So in 1990 when the real world came out on M. T. V. It was really the first show that dedicated a specific filmography to sort of the A. D. D. Generation, which is what’s called four second B roll footage is. And then I have a history of videography. So what it is that you have, you know four second before you transition into every scene. Now if we look at that back in the day versus now it’s not a huge deal because right now the average transition is 0.7 seconds right, attentions on shorter. So videographers are actually changing the style of media content. And now of course is a huge explosion of short short form video content on Tiktok and instagram reels. Youtube shorts and stuff like that. Right? And back in the day it was buying. So you have this explosion of short form content that now allows the person to just scroll through that are actually making their own footage is scroll through. 

And the more they scroll through, the more that A D. D. Mindset kind of kicks in. And so from a videography background, we know that based on marketing data, that these short form content as well as the short bureau footage is 0.7 seconds allows the person to stay on that video for x number of seconds longer in a specific population, you usually aged between 11 and 16. So that’s what, that’s what the data is based on right now. That’s why we’re making sure they’re short form content. So that’s concerning. And it’s not, it’s not the marketing companies fault. It’s just that they’re just reacting to what people’s behaviors are. But that goes back to the brain, you know, goes back to the brain and goes back to the lifestyle. So let’s touch on nutrition for a little because I think this is huge. So let’s kind of, have you described, how does nutrition play this role into developmental and mood issues and how do we know?

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

How do we know? I mean, some of it is from research, there are studies that show, even if a mom is low in vitamin D. That the child is an increased risk of autism. If she’s low in iron child has a risk. There’s studies that look at certain levels of iron and zinc and omega threes, ferreting like an iron level, like below 30. And when you, you know, supplement these Children, they actually get better attention gets better, the mood gets better. So the research that it helps if that makes sense. So I think it’s, yeah, you just have

Cheng Ruan, MD

something super important that, that I see my practice as well. You said that 13 below 30 is correlated with food and development right now. The average range on labs from the pediatric population, it says it’s below eight on, I don’t know, you know, this. So, yeah, so they’re actually based on the standard deviation graph of most of the population. And still, even if it says like, you know, 25 through at risk on the, but on the last line of red and honestly, doctors don’t really address that, right? And so, unless you’re there, like you and me, and we do address it a lot, but facts and below 30 is a massive population, massive portion of the population with that level of iron deficiency. Right? And so it’s, and it’s so important to know understand that. And so, but that goes beyond nutrition because, you know, I think there’s other educational points with, especially with, with, with women and girls, menstrual cycles, that there’s blood loss, right? And that and heavy heavy missile cycles tend to make people at risk for losing that iron and thus turn into you know A. D. D. And stuff like that. And I can’t tell you how many times we find really low irons and we either do iron infusions or having something in the iron and that improves 80 like 80%. I mean just something that’s simple as well.

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

Can’t pay attention if you’re basically it’s low iron stores. What about sleep? Like sleep? Doctors wanted like the fair to about 50. So people don’t think about even that. And you know, sleep is one of our restorative healing modalities and these kids aren’t getting enough sleep anyway. Right? So it’s kind of gonna get into different parts of kind of health and nutrition. I mean then you think of our processed foods, if you see some kids what they eat. I think the pesticides play a role and there are some studies on just food dyes itself in hyperactivity and just take the food dies out. And that was even recognized in the seventies like Feingold first talked about it a long, long time ago, about 50 years at this point, you know, thinking about what our kids eating. the worst diet. One of the things I do in my practice is I take a diet record, you know, parents, right? Three days. And so my kids with autism. I mean they’re eating five foods. I had one child come in. He literally ate white bread and candy. That was all he ate. You know parents get so scared about what they’re feeding a child or this child. You know like especially my child with autism have sensory issues and texture issues and all sorts of stuff. But even kids who when the parents say oh this is healthy I’m like well you know there’s still a lot of things missing here.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Yeah massive. And I don’t think there’s enough dedication to the role of nutrition in developmental disorders. There’s just not a whole lot of attention on this as it should be. You know we have the ability right now to do a lot of fancy different labs and diagnosis. So you know my areas quantity V. Gs. So you know earlier we talked about how sleep is getting affected which contributes to a lot of developmental disorders. And of course our brain regenerates during deep sleep. We need three cycles of deep sleep to get there. They eat cycles about two hours. So those people sleeping under six significant developmental disorders and almost behave like kind of they’re drunk and stupor. But more importantly I think that if you look at the E. E. G. Definition or E. G. Biomarker of inattention or attention deficit and the E. G. Basically for those who are listening is a device. So just like an E. K. G. Measures the electrical conduction of your heart. E. G. Measures multiple lateral conduction of your brain. 

And so there’s something called beta beta ratio which is a biomarker of A. D. H. D. Well the fate of the beta ratio that’s high above one is impaired. Well what does that mean? Well it means that the brain is existing and fade away is more than the beta waves. Feta is sleepy, beta is awake. So easy definition of attention disorders technically it’s a sleep disorder because you have more sleepy brain than you have awake. And then when I speak to sleep neurologists about this they’re like yeah you know it’s like that the neurological definitions so we really have to marry like psychiatry and neurology together. And so they started looking at drugs that can improve the database ratio like Adderall and Ritalin and stuff like that but that doesn’t necessarily get to the root cause right it’s like a band aid that can get there. Nothing wrong with the medications if you need it. But we still have to uncover the underlying things. But besides this fancy E. G. Device and what do you use to to to look at this for development disorders images or just like a PhD in

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

terms of the I don’t look at the E. G. S. I definitely have

Cheng Ruan, MD

labs

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

labs have I mean I do basic blood labs and you know zinc iron and vitamin D. B. 12. I always look at thyroid panels. Obviously the basic labs depending on the history. I might look at like food allergies and sensitivities. I usually do like an organic acid test. People call it the O. Test. Because it looks like you know get the display aosis markers. They have more G. I. Issues. I might like a stool test mitochondrial markers. You know if you don’t get the energy in the cell it’s obviously hard to pay attention. There’s a lot of mitochondria dysfunction questions, John autism actually in depression too and mood issues. neurotransmitter metabolites, detoxification metabolites and more nutritional markers. So those two are kind of like a good starting point for me. And I get a lot of information and so that’s usually kind of where I start. I always start with diet. You know I got to make sure the guts cook, doing well meaning metabolic mitochondria. And eventually depending what’s going on then I look at more toxicity issues and things like that so that’s kind of,

Cheng Ruan, MD

yeah so that’s how we approach adult medicine as well now you know people listening to this. Well that’s a lot of information. Where do you start? Well we’re you start with a good practitioner that’s where you start to be able to guide you along the way. You don’t necessarily want to order things your stuff and some of these you can’t order yourself anyways without a practitioner, you gotta get with people who know who know what they’re doing. So let’s talk about the second brain or the gut microbiome in the gut bacteria. So there’s more neurons in the gut microbiome than it is in the actual brain. So there’s a huge gut brain axis that we have to accommodate for whenever we were looking at these disorders. So how does the gut brain microbiome access play a role in the development of these disorders?

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

Yeah, I think of it, I mean there’s the vagus nerve, so kind of the there’s a connection between the nerve, there’s a connection between the circulation. I think of the microbiome is also kind of like a key to your immune system. You know, there’s also a lot of your transmitters. You said there’s kind of like there’s a lot of neurologic issues that way to if the immune system is not balanced, it sets you up for kind of more inflammation, which kind of plays a role and you know, brain health in terms of your inflammation, like autism, there’s and Alzheimer’s is neuro inflammation. I set you up, I said for autoimmune disease I think it kind of a lot of that. I mean there’s definitely kind of a mood disorder issues, immune issues, could get sick digestive issues. I don’t know if that

Cheng Ruan, MD

Yeah, so let me kind of piggyback at least and I think it’s really important is that there’s multiple factors, right? When people think that gut bacteria is just there and it does this sort of black box, manageable thing. And actually there’s a lot of connections there. So you know, you talk about Vegas there first, which is my favorite topic of all time is the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve, by the way, for those listening is the nerve that comes from the bottom part of the brain, the brain stem and has multiple different branches and it behaves like a vagabond. That’s why it’s called vagus nerve. It wonders everywhere the wondering nerve, that’s technically what it means. And or it goes to our are a lot of organs. So the entire guts is controlled by the vagus nerve and the gut microbiome feeds back to the vagus nerves too with a street. And so as the nerve permeates through the gut and the microbiome actually has things that it does actually communicate with the vagus nerve. Well, what else does the vagus nerve connected? Well, it’s your immune system and the gut has a huge amount of immune immune cells and they’re called the gut associated lymphatic tissue as well as the gut itself, actually, it’s an immune organ as well as the digestive organ as well. And so now we kind of get back to the original question is, hey, why are people developing more disorders during C0V!D it’s because, well, there’s there’s there’s a bi directional interchange. So there’s a perception of stress, stress affects the microbiome. Microbiome feeds back to suppress the vagal activation. So people are persistent fight or flight. And so even that amount of stress is all dictated by the vagus nerve and the immune system. And that’s a huge, huge developmental construct in, you know, in my field this is more, you know, Parkinson’s dementia and Alzheimer’s dementia and stuff like that in your field is more autism and it needs to be. But in reality we’re really talking about the same things between you and I right? You know, I jokingly said this on another part of the discussion with someone else, but kind of jokingly said that it was kind of in truth is that like pediatric A. D. A. C. Is basically, you know what I would consider like mild cognitive impairment in developing into Alzheimer’s same like spectrum and physiology. Right? And so we really have to address this, you know, much earlier on, you know, what do you think is going to move the needle the most improvement development disorders and mood disorders? Do you think it’s the diet? Do you think it’s trauma or relationships and connections people have? do you think it has to do with toxins? Like what do you think like moves the needle the most when it comes to healing from these.

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

I mean, unfortunately, I think all of us play a role. I mean as I said I always think we have to get the moms healthy because the healthier the baby starts the better they have chance. You know they start behind and they’ve already been exposed to toxins in utero and you know missing different nutrients. As I said they’re already kind of behind the eight ball so then they come out and see what their nutrition is or the immune development, their gut development, it kind of sets them up, it feels like the multiple hit. You know, there’s only so many hits that they take before. As I said, they kind of you know regress or the kids, you know who start even from very early on with it.

Cheng Ruan, MD

But what about the moms who are listening now who maybe already have like 12 13 year old diagnosed with PTSD? Is it too late to do something about it?

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

No it’s definitely not. I mean that’s always look at the diet and look at the nutrition, that’s always a really good starting point. Because I said there is definitely ways you can help him calm down and pay attention better. You know it’s interesting because the kids with autism have more of like overt gi symptoms in a thing as kids get, it is like a D. H. D. Autism is a spectrum just like you said, my whole cognitive Alzheimer’s which is interesting. I never kind of thought of it like that. But I always go you can’t get, you know, you can’t go by good nutrition cleaning up the house in terms of toxins. You know there’s some real basic things, you know, what do you, you know, how do you clean your house, What products do you use? What do you spray and you’re spraying roundup on your garden, You know, what do you use in terms of products? organic food, you know you start, it’s like oh I don’t organic food and like more and more you can their studies about how quickly organic food can kind of clear out from the pesticides and I think you do need to make some white changes like that and that’s a really good start. Kids need to get sleep. These four teenagers are supposed to get up really early and they’re naturally go to bed later. So we’re really kind of, most a lot of teenagers are not doing well in terms of sleep. You gotta get outside, get in vitamin D. Get them exercise, you know, get them off the screens, get them away from their phones level

Cheng Ruan, MD

And these are huge because you know recently had to talk to somebody apparent that was really concerned about their child and it’s interesting because the child is 30 years old. It’s all relative right? And he’s like man, he’s spending a lot of time like on social media a lot of time, you know doing business development etc etc on the computer screen. And one of the things that we really that we really talked about say, why don’t you like instead of looking at your phone, looking at email first and you get up, take that time and do a 10 minute walk and it’s so powerful. How that one change and inhabit, you know, calm this gut down as bloody become less. He didn’t eat any different. His bloody became less. You know, he’s a lot more clear. And so it’s not just about walking and exercise, about the intention. What you do throughout the day actually changes over time as well, you know, for for that performance. And so, you know, but yes, you’re right. I think that the, the guts toxins, the, and our ability to actually eat clean food is extremely important. The what you know, now, I’m not, I don’t see Children’s, I don’t know about autism as much as most people like yourself. But what do you think is the difference you said earlier that, you know, attention issues and mood issues are here, autism is here, but there’s also a spectrum in between, right? what do you think delineates that that spectrum is just a diagnostic criteria or is it something that’s there?

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

I feel like, as I said, like sensory process and a d d you know, there’s like mood issues on that. And most people with autism, there is some kind of mood anxiety issues and attention issues and getting you know with anxiety get better. They have a lot of A. D. H. D. So I think it’s more hits. The kids with autism tend to have more severe digestive issues, more severe immune issues if that makes sense. More autoimmune issues. And the A. D. H. D. Is like there’s definitely like you know lead toxicity and nutritional component but much less G. I. Issues. I feel like there’s a more inflammatory component to autism. That makes me sicker and something

Cheng Ruan, MD

that makes sense on why the statistics are getting worse and all the populations, right? We’re seeing more autism. We’re seeing more 88 C. Now it’s like a standard you know 10% of the population who knows maybe in a couple of years will be 20% right? And so there’s something about our environment that’s really changing That’s creating more of this. And some people argue well maybe we’re just diagnosing more. I actually don’t think so actually we’re still under diagnosing as well. I think that what’s happening right now is that there is a huge shift in the in the way our lifestyles are you know back back in the 19 right after World War I is where all the sort of explosion of pesticides really came in right? The pesticides allowed the wheat crops to be much much more bountiful the waste to be much less so that they’re shorter. But they have actually had more grains which also unfortunately increased amount of gluten that’s in them. And then now the newer toxicities is more like technology based. You know you talk about E. M. S. A little bit earlier which could be an issue and then you also have plastics, right? And then I’m in Texas. So we have petroleum byproducts within our soil. So every patient I text as in the urine. You know, I haven’t seen one that’s negative, right? So we’re seeing a lot of the toxic toxic world, you know, come into play with these things. And so are there things that we can do to defend ourselves beyond like nutrition and you know beyond stress reduction and stuff like that? Well for example what are some supplements that may be key to address this?

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

I mean if you’re thinking of detoxification, things like and milk. Thistle things that help kind of your liver detox because if you’re exposed to so much I feel like your body can only handle so much. You know we talked about things like vitamin D. If your vitamin D. Is higher your immune system stronger, less allergic potential has problems with blood sugar. You know if you have iron and zinc zinc in terms of I was taught no zinc. No think you know it involves so many different cognitive process. And mood is created if you have low zinc, that’s the rage behavior, right? The 0 to 60 you know, you get upset so quickly, poor stress tolerance. I use some targeted B vitamins, things that I look at, some genetics to, we didn’t talk about that much more than m th fr but sometimes it’s like, oh they really need active B six and I think most people are low in magnesium, which is a really calming kind of mineral mega threes or mood stabilizing if you get them at high enough levels. That’s huge. You talked about the bipolar or like the kids who are just like up and down and everything else. I’ve looked at hair tests, there’s like low lithium, right, nutritional lithium can make a difference in terms of stability. I think that there are some supplements I use, I use like some of the common herbs I use, adapted jen’s, you know, we talked about that cortisol stress response. People are like this and then they’re burnt out. You know, let’s get to homeostasis like Ash Lagonda, right? Things like that.

Cheng Ruan, MD

And it’s so individualized. You know, I wish we could be super general, but it’s so individual and once again it’s things to work with practitioners on especially functional practitioners when it comes to this topic. And sometimes, you know, as parents, they can get kind of lost to kind of over analyze certain things as well and what you know that there’s a reason for that, right? They want to protect the child and that’s totally understandable, but sometimes the complexity could be the enemy of progress as well. So certainly for those people listen to this, please work with an actual practitioner on this rather than do it yourself, you don’t have to be alone when it comes to this. So do you do you think, what do you think is going to slow down the diagnosis and development of these disorders in our future generations? Because I am truly concerned about my kids. I’m sure you are too.

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

Yeah, I mean, I’m at the point my kids are in their twenties, so, you know, and a lot of kids that age like, oh no, the world is in such bad shape. I mean, you know, climate change and environment everything else. And some of these kids are like, I don’t want to have kids, I want to bring kids in this world. So yeah, we really do need to. I mean, I think I’m like there’s gotta be some kind of like understanding of where we are, like some reality where we are and I’m looking at what’s in our environment, looking at the E. M. S. And going to five G, what is that really impacting you know, parents a lot of times need to get involved and what the kids are eating, but what they’re exposed to, I think and I mean all the way up to, you know, things that you do in your home to all the way up to like climate change and more political things. 

But there’s got to be I think there’s got to be preconception testing. I think you need to really look at mom’s health because you don’t get the mom healthy because your kids already starting behind the eight ball. So I think there’s got to become recognition and some kind of I don’t know, kind of a way, I mean people need to be aware of how severe we are, like the mental health of our kids is awful and the role of that, but the social isolation and C0V!D did not any favors. It was a horrible time for many, many people and our kids really, I mean those four teenagers who were in high school and my kids were in college, you know, I mean so much of the development was just like literally cut short.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Yeah. And it sounds like awareness is absolute key and that’s part of the reason we’re doing these forms in these summits right? It’s just awareness behind it. I think that as we go forward the stigma of being diagnosed with mental health issues and even brain health issues, it’s gotta go way too right? I think recognition earlier. Yeah, that has to be the foundation of our language. you know, we’re in this era of cancel culture where basically people are always put on guilty before proven innocent and especially when it comes to like social media and stuff like that and that’s the world we live in right now, right? It’s like there’s always, there’s always gonna be nicer is always gonna be different things like that. But as soon as as soon as someone speaks about something or speaks against before something, this is, there’s a lot more, a lot more ability for negativity to creep into their lives because of how connected we are on social media as well, right? And not just social media, but all of media as well.

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

And so completely changed. You know, I mean even my kids generation, you know in the 20 years how different things are, you know, things are happening so quickly. We really don’t know the ramifications of what we’re doing. I don’t think so.

Cheng Ruan, MD

And so if we take just a random population of teenagers right in 2020 to throw them back to 1986. Okay. my gosh, what difference for years has made? Right. because they’re, they’re, they’re gonna always kind of be looking for stimulation because there’s no social media to reach forward phone and stuff like that. Right. And the television is gonna look so boring because these beautiful footages are not under .7 seconds, right? And so the stimulation is not not quite there and then the world looks so different at that time and so we gotta be able to go backwards a little bit and think about how are we going to engineer our lives to be far more resilient right? Because technologies because in the next 10 years you know majority of our kids are gonna be are going to be immersed in the metaverse right? There’s gonna be virtual reality augmented reality that will already exist. But now that’s gonna be the new standard. There’s even more, there’s even these platforms that are being developed within VR like kind of behavior therapy and stuff like that. And so we’re really diving into a massive amount of unknown where consciousness really goes. But but that means we like right now we have the really the ability to kind of go back and ground ourselves in our lives and like you know taking a walk outside right now, it’s still the same as taking a walk 10,000 years ago, you gotta be doing things like ground yourself, you know 10,000 years ago they can do. And so the ability I think for our society to really self contribute into the improvement of brain disorders is really just an education as you said earlier. Pre preconception testing right is so important. Now what do you test for increasing session? The same things like vitamin D. And iron and stuff?

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

I mean nutritional stuff I think look they don’t routinely test thyroid if you get mom being before pregnant, looking at toxicity, Looking at her cleaning up her diet definitely organic foods, getting those levels, getting her iron levels. You know a good place, get your vitamin D. Levels before she gets pregnant. That makes sense. You know getting her, getting their gut, you know getting her gut and all those people have I. B. S. Right? Or probably some kind of this bios is getting that in better shape because that’s setting up her child’s immune system. Yeah. Yeah.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Absolutely.

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

So I think there’s a lot we can do and I think the earlier the better 

Cheng Ruan, MD

but the general right? But the general physician population, you know, it’s not necessarily educated on what those levels should be. You know, earlier we said that you know, fair 10 below thirties at risk for child developing these disorders, right? And you know, my wife is this is not part of the guidelines for Americans in America, these are not those guidelines, right? And so and we need it to be part of the guidelines because brain development is so damn important in the kids, right? And these are really preventable things. but I think it really takes conversations like me and you right now to kind of get this out into the wild and say, hey, you know what there might be something better to do than just looking at normal lab values optimal lab values right?

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

Or thyroid lab values the same thing? We’re writing the levels below 30 and most people in medicine like 30? Oh my God. You know somebody said that normal like. No that’s not. 

Cheng Ruan, MD

Yeah. But you know what the really cool part is very recently in the last few years those doctors in high risk obstetrics and our er reproductive technology are now recognizing that now have a new sort of foundation. Those doctors and fertility are understanding this now. It’s really until very very recent. Even though we’re talking about publications that are decades old. It’s not until very recently we’re getting that direction. So I feel pretty good about it. But I mean a lot of this really needs to get out you know and I’m very lucky to have young daughters that are pretty healthy. You know they’re 16 and eight. They’re all very healthy. Yeah they’re very young and so and it’s great because we have a lifetime opportunity to optimize that. But you know, but even if people are listening to this really trying to find a solution for their child, if the child is diagnosed with autism A. D. H. D. Alcohol discourse schizophrenia, whichever one it is. We’re still talking about the same fundamental principles of life right? And the last thing that we’ll talk about before we end this is genetics now autism there’s a huge thought process within the public that okay it’s genetics. You know we’re screwed. We can’t do anything about it. Right. What proportion of that is genetics and what goes with that is something outside of genetics.

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

Yeah. I think you have to define genetics. I mean it’s only 5 to 10% that are quote genetic and genetic being like something chromosome a like fragile X. or like a 16 deletion. So that is a very small portion. But if you think about genetic snips which are I think of different enzymes that have different capabilities to something work faster or slower. And those need like certain nutrition like certain nutrients to go with it. So if you look at some of those like some people can’t detoxify as well. They have snips in their glutathione or the whole you know methylation stuff pathway like the M. Th fr you need that to make D. N. A. To work. You need that to work to make their transmitters. So there’s kind of how a lot of people think about genetics and then there’s kind of we all have different genetic steps. We all have differences but there’s certain ones that will set you up for more problems. So looking like we might all be exposed a certain amount of lead. But if you can’t detox it then you might have a lot more problems from it than somebody else. I mean I think there’s different ways. I think there’s more of that genetic snips as opposed to like you know, down syndrome or fragile X. Or something like that, if that makes sense. Like kids with Down syndrome or high, high risk of autism. Very

Cheng Ruan, MD

And these kids are also a very high rate of sleep disorders. You know, sleep at me for example, it’s huge amounts of the autism population. I think it’s actually one of the most underdiagnosed things because you need air to go to the brain and those kids will see that mirror oxygen goes down at night time. I mean that’s kind of vital to the brain healing process as well. And we’re seeing another part of the summit. I actually had to Felix leon. He’s a biological dentist that educates on airway and brain developed disorders. Right? And so yeah, we talked about how so much of the food that is eating these days are so softer and processed that the child does not have an ability to develop an adequate upper palate or upper and lower palate, but the adequate airway. So that leads to sleep apnea sleep issues, which is basically one in four of the human population at this point has some sort of sleep disorder. Right? So

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

I think we’re not a lot of these kids have really low muscle tone and that’s part of why they can’t speed because the muscle tone even in their jaw or they can’t chew hard food, as you say, because they don’t have enough strength to chew that contributes that would contribute to sleep apnea too. That’s an interesting connection there.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Yeah. So the act of chewing also stimulates different hormones in the brain. Oxytocin, the brand’s really required for the human process. Melatonin. These all required chewing processes. Right? And so and there’s a lot of things that are there and sometimes I feel like you know, parents blame themselves so much. Maybe I didn’t feed him or her right next to it. Really. There’s no need to blame your parent listening. There’s really no need to blame yourself. We live in a world where it’s kind of set up for these things. So we just have to take it one step at a time anyways. But this is a fabulous conversation. Very enlightening one as well. I really want to thank you for coming on and talking about this. How can people find you and your book? Yeah.

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

No I said I want to thank you very much for you know, definitely a very interesting conversation. So thank you.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Thanks. Yeah. So how do people find more about you and more about your book?

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

My website which is actually being updated which is holistic pediatric dot com. And the book is preventing autism in A. D. H. D. And that’s on amazon.

Cheng Ruan, MD

That’s amazing. Yeah. Go get it now. Yeah. Well thank you for coming on once again. Thanks to everyone for listening. I hope you got a lot of this. I appreciate you coming on.

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

All right, Thank you. Take care.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Take care.

Debby Hamilton, MD, MPH

Bye bye.