The Frustrating Truth About Why Healing Stalls

Introduction and episode context 0:00

Hey team, welcome back. This episode is so special because if you're a parent walking through eczema autoimmunity or anything chronic with your child, I know how heavy that feels. I now how it actually is. And it can feel like your whole world quietly shifts. It feels like what used to be simple, feeding yourself, your family, suddenly feels really complicated. When you think about food and the environment and their comfort and sleep, all the time and somewhere in the middle of that you're trying to hold together your your normal life that's a really hard place to be and my goal is to get you out of there as quick as possible and those symptoms that your child is experiencing that, your family is having to accommodate or maybe that You're experiencing they aren't random.

That's your body trying To communicate with you and thankfully what I've lived and what i see over and over again with the people that are in the eczema elimination method and the beautiful listeners that you are, is that this is not the beginning of a lifelong struggle. This is an opportunity to change your family's entire trajectory of life. And before we dive in right now, I just want your child to feel more comfortable. You can find the Skin Comfort Trio along with a whole bunch of other exima healing, organic, non-toxic goodies inside the Eczemashop at examakids.com.

Okay, friends. I am so genuinely honored to bring you this conversation. Dr. Terri Walls is here. She is someone whose work has deeply, deeply impacted my life and my family's life. And I found her work years ago in 2019 when I was trying to figure out how to help my own children through severe, severe eczema, the kind of exema where they didn't have skin, where the whole top layer was falling off of their body. And I was told the only thing you could do is put on steroids and hope that they grow out of it.

And her work was one of the first times that I saw this idea expressed so clearly that the body is not broken, that it's communicating, and that when it is given what it needs to actually heal, healing is absolutely possible. Dr. Walls is a physician, a researcher, an author widely known for her working in reversing symptoms of progressive multiple sclerosis. through targeted nutrition and lifestyle changes. And what I love about our work is it just really brings us back to something so grounding that health is built through these small, consistent changes that support the body.

Honestly, we can heal. The body is made to be healed. that no one is here to live in a broken state. And in this conversation, we really talk about what's driving chronic conditions, autoimmune conditions like eczema and the gut immune connection and common nutrient deficiencies and how to support healing in way that actually fits into real life. Take a breath, let's get into it. Is your child struggling with itchy nights and endless flare-ups?

Dr. Terry Wahls' MS journey and recovery 3:00

I'm Andrea McHugh, mom of four and host of eczema kids. Here, you'll find natural solutions that actually work so you can heal your childhood eximote without steroids, without the overwhelm, and finally see calm, healthy skin again. Let's Get Into It. Dr. Walls, welcome to the show. I am so honored to have you here. Great. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. I have to admit, I'm sincerely fangirling right now. Your work changed mine and my family's life so, so completely. After reading The Wall's Protocol six years ago now, there was this really big shift for me for just, you know, two of my kids at that time.

We're suffering from severe, severe eczema, just head to toe, bleeding, weepy. One was just a newborn, one was two years old, and I didn't have any experience with it. My husband didn' t have experience exima and we went to the pediatrician and they told us all you can do is give you some steroids and you could throw a cap of bleach in their bath and that's all we can really offer you and hopefully they go out of it and after reading your book, I was starting to see patterns like, okay, this might make them flare a little bit more, just the foods that I'm feeding them, but it was really hard to pin down.

And then after reading your book, it's less focused on, what should I be removing? what does the body actually need to heal? And that changed everything because you talk about in all of your works how the Body is designed to Heal and that health is built one choice at a time. And, that's what we talk here. It's just like there's so many things that you could do day in and day out that completely changes the trajectory of Your child's life. I think for the parents listening, that's a really different way of looking at things.

Most of them are stuck in this cycle of removing foods and managing flares and trying to calm inflammation and just not seeing their child move toward healing. And your work opens up a completely different path. So for those who don't know, I'd love to start with your story, because I think it gives so much context to everything that you teach now. What did your health look like when it was at its worst? So I'm a physician, I am an internal medicine doc, and I was an athlete before entering medical school, so I had really great health for a long time, had a couple of kids.

And then when my son was eight, my daughter was five. I started stumbling and I had some weakness in my left leg and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, age 45. Being a physician, I found the best MS center in the country. I saw them, but I took the newest drugs. In age 48, it needed to recline wheelchair. It's very clear that in retrospect, my symptoms began during medical school with these bouts of electrical face pain that were diagnosed as trigeminal neuralgia. Then 20 years later, leg weakness and MS.

At age 48, I'm in the totally inclined wheelchair. At aged 52, i can no longer sit up. I had a zero gravity chair with my knees higher than my nose. My trigeminal neuralgia is much, much worse. i'm beginning to have brain fog. And it's very clear my tract become bedridden by my illness because i was already very close. Demented by the illness, because I've been having brainfog. and my trigiminal neurology is harder and harder to turn off. So I'll probably die with intractable, horrific levels of pain.

Now, when I'd gotten into the total decline wheelchair is when decided I should go back to reading the basic science. I started reading about the animal models of Parkinson's, Alzheimer's ALS, Huntington's disease. And I decided that mitochondrial dysfunction is what's driving disability. So I ultimately find some supplement cocktails that help my fatigue a little bit. and I'm super grateful because, you know, it helps a And what I had been taught, and all of my neurologists had said, progressive MS, because I have secondary progressive, MS functions once lost will never come back.

And so I'm doing everything that I can to slow my decline because they know I cannot recover. I've discovered the Paleo diet. You know, but it's like, I don't know how, and maybe all I can do is slow my decline. So I'm grateful to do my paleo diet, my supplements. I discovered the Institute for Functional Medicine. And I have a longer list of supplements, which I happily take. Okay. And so we add electrical stimulation of muscles to my little, itsy-bitsy, tiny workout that I do every day by physical therapy.

And I'm taking these extra supplements. Then I have this big aha, and I laugh at how long it took to have the aha. What if I redesigned my Paleolithic diet based on this list of 19 nutrients that are really important for my brain? So that's a few more months of where are these nutrients in the food that is paleolithic in nature. Okay? So now I have a list of all these foods I should be eating. And my boss has called me in to the VA hospital to say, Terry, I'm going to assign you to a traumatic brain injury clinic.

You'll start in January and you'll be examining patients without residence. Describes the job. I go home and I tell Jack and she says, you know, honey, there's no way you can do that job, You physically can't do it. And I'm like, I know, but come January I'll have to go to that new clinic. And if I can't do it, then I have the finally apply for medical disability. So December 26th, i have my list of foods that I should be eating, the Paleolithic foods, that will maximize these 19 nutrients. I start this new way of eating.

The January 2nd I go to the new clinic, the first two weeks I just watch my new partners from my two-week-old wheelchair do their thing and then the third week of January I have to start examining the patients and writing the notes. You know when I come home that first night and so it's like the fourth week this new way of eating and I tell Jackie, you know I'd like to sit with the family for a sub in a regular chair. Now I haven't done that in years. So I sit up in the regular chair and I have supper, and that's pretty exciting.

And then on Friday, after doing my clinic all week, I come home and tell Jack, you know, think I can do this. It's not too bad. When I see my physical therapist the next week says, Terry, your definitely stronger. I'm advancing your exercises. And so we advanced my exercises, and by the end of February, I start walking with my two walking sticks in the hospital. First time in years. No way. Four years, as a matter of fact. And then I began walking on the sidewalk a little bit with Jackie. And I tell her, I'd really like to try riding my bike again.

And that's in April. She says, you know, honey, maybe in the fall, things keep going well. A couple of weeks later, it's Mother's Day, and I really want to ride my own bike. So we have this emergency family meeting. My two kids, they don't want me to do that because they want for me not to fall. But Jack says, no, we can try. So we all get into position. She gives the all-clear. And she tells my 16-year-old son, who's six foot five, Zach, you run alongside on the left. My 13- year- old daughter is Debbie.

You run along side on right and she'll follow. And I get on that bike, and I bike around the block. As you can tell, it's still emotional because it was at that moment when I biked around that block, you know, that 60-year-old boy, he's crying, my 30- year- old daughter, she's cry, Jackie's cried. I cried, I still cried thinking about that because that's what I understood. The current understanding of secondary progressive multiple sclerosis is incomplete, and who knows how much recovery might be possible.

So I kept biking a little bit more every day. I keep doing my little exercises. And then in October, Jackie comes home and says, honey, I've signed us up for the courage ride. It's 18.5 miles. However far you go, it's going to be a triumph. And of course, at that point, the furthest I'd gone was eight miles, but I did it, 18.5 miles. And so that really changes how I think about disease and health. It will change the way I practice medicine. You know, I continue to make progress. Now I can jog on my treadmill.

I'm lifting weights. And hiking, and biking. Not normal. My kids laugh saying, you know mom, they'll never be normal, but of course not. But I continued to improve. 70 years old. You would expect a person with secondary progressive MS to be wheelchair bound, bed ridden, demented. You would not expect them to be getting stronger every time. When I go see my neurologist, we see how many push-ups I can do. That is not what you expect. Oh, you're raking the full Dr. Walz in. I'm just so thankful. As a beneficiary of your work that you have shared this journey and I didn't know all of that.

Oh my goodness. It's just, I have to know. Everyone is leaning in, like what are those 19 foods that were on those lists? Like what was that protocol that eventually became the Walze protocol? You know, at first, when I started teaching these concepts to my veteran patients, I was trying to realize I needed to teach something that they could remember, because at my primary care clinic, they only had five minutes with my veterans, so I'm staffing the resident clinic. When I's in my traumatic ranger clinic I had 20 minutes, and I couldn't give them the list of all the foods I following, then I have to rethink.

And I categorized things. We analyzed my categories to make sure that they really were hitting all these key nutrients. You have to have all of these B vitamins. Vitamin C, the carotenoids, you need zeaxanthin, mesozeaxamthine, lutein.

The Wahls Protocol and key nutrient groups 13:00

carnitine, alpha-lipoic acid, coenzyme Q, all these minerals, magnesium zinc, selenium, chromium ion, manganese. You want to have plenty of fermented foods. Well, you can't expect people to remember that. That's just too complicated. So we had to had a simpler way for people think about it. It comes down, for my veterans, it would last okay. The goal is three cups of green leafy vegetables, Three cups of sulfur-rich cabbage, onion, mushroom family vegetables, three cups deeply colored things. So when you cut through them, they're colored all the way through.

Peppers, beets, carrots, berries, the stone fruits, that would all work. Plenty of protein. And we had options for vegetarian and omnivores. I did explain that I prefer that they eat meat. But we understand some people are spiritually unwilling to do that. When I first started doing this, back in 2014, we didn't understand how vital the microbiome was. Fortunately, even then, I knew that we should be eating fermented foods. So I talked about sauerkraut and kimchi being particularly potent for you.

We talk about seaweed as being very beneficial. You have to start with a little bit and gradually increase. It's a more nuanced if you are on thyroid medication. And nutritional yeast is a terrific source of the vitamins, a horrific source selenium trace minerals, and it's another way to get those mushroom benefits with beta-glucans. And if you're taking dairy out, it gives you a sort of a nice cheesy flavor. Yep. I grew up on a dairy farm. Dairy was a wonderful invention about 10,000 years ago.

But our species, we got weaned, you didn't get milk again. You just didn't get milk. So it's a new food. It has a lot of leptins in it. You may develop an immune response to milk, cow milk allergy can be a huge problem for children and adults. And it has similar structures to our brain. If you develop and immune-response to the milk you're also developing immune responses to your brain So that is a reason to not have milk if you have a neurologic problem, if have you a psychiatric problem. If you had a skin problem it's a reasons to take milk out.

Our species, we don't need it. We don´t need. It is delicious, it does stimulate our endorphins, is why if your listening to me and your having sweaty palms and your heart's racing, I'm talking about taking milk away from you, it's because you're probably addicted. It is delicious. I understand that. There's some debate about A1, A2, the goat milk products are probably better tolerated than cow products, but there's still the risk of cross-reactivity with your brain. So do you think that there's a place for dairy in a quote unquote healthy person's diet or?

Well, you know, my ancestral colleagues will say, it's new food with significant health risks. My advice for everyone, healthy or unhealthy, is pay deep attention to what you're eating and your environment and how you are feeling. If you feel great, you have a healthy weight, a happy mood, and you family agrees that you a have healthy mood and healthy way, then your current diet is fine. No. if you not at a health weight and a healthier mood then you current that may not be fine Yeah, agreed. It's a hard one.

And, you know, especially for kids, and I know the concern is, well, what about calcium? So of those... Well, so yeah, let me comment for the kids. So I think before your growth plates fuse, there probably is a role for dairy. Particularly human milk dairy. So breastfeeding is really, really good for kids. I want everyone to breastfeed. Well, you know, that is ideal. And our ancestors would have breastfed to age three to five. Of course, socially that's not as acceptable now for a variety of reasons.

It was cultivating dairy products, a brilliant technological advance that helped humans. Probably. And if you don't have a milk allergy, is it a great source of calcium, minerals, protein? Probably, I think cheese, yogurts, kefers are far better tolerated than milk. Once your growth plates fuse, then the advantages are much less in my mind. So then I'd think you should get your protein from other sources. But what about our osteoporosis, osteopenia, our ancestors who weaned their kiddos and never had milk again, had far denser bones than we have?

So the problem is, you're not doing enough strength training. You don't have enough vitamin K. you don' have vitamin D. So address those things and eat lots of greens, which are also rich in both calcium and magnesium and better absorbed. as a mom, then the next question comes, okay, how do I get my kid to eat this much leafy greens? Oh my God, it is so easy. So we had these wonderful clinics that I eventually was able to get going at the VA, the Therapeutic Lifestyle Clinic, and we have little group classes every month with my vets.

We would have a traveling kitchen, the dietician I would bring. We'd bring kale, we'd pass around the kale leaf, have everyone tear off a piece, and we eat it. And we're like, bitter, terrible, no way. I'm not going to eat that. My kids will never eat, my spouse will ever eat. So terrible. Then we chopped up kale or whatever green you'd like to have. Green grapes, equal amounts, ice, olive oil, And you can have a little, maybe a tablespoon of lemon juice as well. Put it in our Vitamix high-speed blender, blend it all up, and now pass that around.

And they're like, well, actually, that's delicious. I could have that. So that the basic recipe for the smoothie. Then we ask, do all of you like bacon? And if they all did, we would fry up some bacon to the desired level of doneness. If they didn't, then we'd use ghee and we warm that, take the chopped kale, put it in the bacon fat about 60 to 90 seconds till it's wilted, add the chop bacon back in and pass that around. And they'd say like, Oh my God, that's delicious. It would explain that when we went low fat, vegetables became bitter because they have a higher pH.

So if you add fat and it still feels a little bit bitter, add a bit of vinegar or a lemon juice, lime juice to bring the pH down and then it will become quite delicious and if it wasn't delicious, double the bacon and cook it again. and that's the basic recipe to make vegetables delicious. You need to have this experience of food tasting bitter and terrible becoming delicious and wonderful. Then the other secret for moms and dads is a couple more. You talk about these vegetables having superpowers, that these vegetable are building your bones and your brains and making you strong like Superman, like Wonder Woman, whatever the magic hero is that those kids are loving.

And then you, of course, are eating them. You're like, oh my God, this is so good. I can feel it going to my bones. We have a two-year-old, and so we're talking about food. We're taking about what these foods are doing for us. And we have to talk about the food is doing force and keep in mind the big food companies are marketing terrible foods that are destroying your children's health. using their cartoon characters, we have to counter that all the time at every meal. Explain why food is building our bodies in good ways so that these foods are magical elements.

We need to be so enthusiastic about the wonderful choices that we're modeling for our kids. And gets rid of, I mean, because everyone, listen, you know, they're contending with eczema, just like, also, this helps you get rid off your spots and get, rid up the itches. I, mean if they are over two, their motivated, to, They don't feel good. They feel horrible. they feel itchy and miserable in their skin and their are motivated to feel healthier. And yes, if you lay it out like the way that you did, it helps, It goes such a far way.

Dairy, food sensitivities, and gut healing 22:00

One of the things that we talk about with our veterans in my clinical trials is I want people to get tuned into their biosensors. And if you have pain, it's very helpful. If you a sensory disturbance, that's really helpful, if got stuff you can see on your skin, mm-hmm, It's helpful and so there's stuff that you see in your that is just ugly you don't like and there is stuff on you that feels bad. Yeah. Then I teach people when you se a flare of your symptoms, think back to the previous 24, 48, 72 hours, do I have an idea as to what may have caused that flare?

This is where the moms and dads can help the children connect it. Like, okay, we went to grandma's and she fed you XYZ. It tasted delicious, but see how your skin looks. See how you skin feels. Maybe there was something in grandma casserole that she didn't realize was bad for your skincare. So we have to help figure out what that might have been. Or at school, you picked up something that you didn't realize was going to be bad for your skin. So you'll choose something differently. And then the other thing I want people to do is so you pay attention to what makes things worse.

Then if I had a, my skin is really good. I'm feeling better. The conversation I what people have is, so in the last week, One of the things that I think contributed to why I'm feeling so good. So, for worse, it's one to three days. For doing well, I invite you to think back to the whole week. And so, can you do less of stuff that makes you feel bad? Can you more of that stuff makes feel good? And over time, Mom and dad can help you figure out what makes you feel good, so we get to do more of that, and how to less of what make you fell bad.

And that is how people fine tune, here is what I need. It may be that they'll be able to fine-tune that I can still have that goat milk kefir and I'm gonna do okay, or that Leo, I really like that goat milk to keifer, but I feel worse. Our experience and certainly your experience of illness and sickness was so devastatingly bad and ours was nothing compared to yours, right? We weren't sleeping and we were absolutely miserable. My kids were just miserable and you were miserable, you couldn't walk.

know the same with my babies like she literally couldn't walk her skin was such a mess it delayed her gross motor skills you know and for me doing things like these little science experiments like adding fat and acid to a vegetable to take away the bitter taste and now it's really delicious and incorporating these things into your daily meal right like that's so far and beyond worth it, right, rather than deal with sickness. And I just would love for you to expand a little bit more about that balance of identifying triggers and without getting stuck, this place is just removing more and more foods.

Yeah, you know, I get worried that people can get into something called orthorexia, where I become more and more restrictive. So that definitely can be a problem. I want to be sure that the people have their essential nutrients. It can also be atrophic reason where people need to take a very nice multivitamin, multimineral so we don't have nutritional insufficiencies and make sure that they have sufficient protein, sufficient fats, the omega-3, omega 6 fats and for your skin, Omega-9 fats. Olive oil, incredibly good for us.

When people are worried about their skins, I would rather than having them take fancy eczema lotions, rather they just take some extra virgin olive oil and put that on their skin. So much better. Yeah. Yeah, there may be a role for food sensitivity testing. There's probably a bigger role. For working and healing the gut with immunoglobulins, glutamine, mega threes, fish oil, so really work on healing. The gut intensively in as you heal the gun and make sure you have enough stomach acids. You can digest your food.

And the proteins will be broken down to amino acids and then they won't be coming into your bloodstream where they trigger the immune reaction and the eczema. So for most people, really focusing on healing that leaky gut. As you get more mature, I'm 70 years old now, so I am at greater risk of not having enough stomach acid to digest all of my protein. I did a stool test and I was like, oh shoot, i'm not digesting my proteins as well. So now I take more apple cider vinegar and bay tang to help make sure I fully digest my food.

And can you also just speak a little bit more about that role that if you're exhibiting symptoms of eczema or any autoimmune condition, like it's very clear via the process that you just talked about, that there are food sensitivities, right? And so can just talk a bit about these sensitivites if it is not an IgE, what roles do people have in these auto conditions? Let me explain. IgE is an immediate immune response that can cause a spasm of the larynx, so your airway closes and people can die from anaphylaxis.

By the way, food sensitivities, Ig-E mediated, are going up, there's a lot of concerns about that. The IgG, as in gold or good, is delayed. So it's not an immediate response, it is a much slower response but it still activates the immune production of cytokines and it will cause autoimmune conditions like eczema, like multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, Sjogren's, psoriasis. And the food proteins getting into your bloodstream your immune cells recognize these incompletely digested food proteins as foreign and begins making antibodies to attack the food protein.

And then depending on your genetics, those antibodies look enough like other structures in your body that there are collateral damage. So in my case, it looks like my brain. That's why I have had lesions in brain and my spinal cord. For your kiddos, their food proteins are looking like their skin. Some structures are their skins and that's why they have the eczema. For kids with inflammatory bowel disease, it may look like the bowels or it might look joints in terms of rheumatoid arthritis. Depending on the condition, there may be FDA approved drugs to help quiet that disease activity.

But another really important strategy is heal the leaky gut, make sure that you can digest your food protein so they are not getting completely digested and getting into your bloodstream and triggering your immune response. I was gluten-free, dairy- free for many years because I wasn't on a Paleolithic diet. When I did food sensitivity testing, I discovered that I'm also sensitive to eggs. And I took eggs out and again restructured my Paleo diet, that's when my recovery happened. It was just remarkably rapid.

Yeah. And hearing your story and talking with you now and looking at your face, I mean, you're like reversing an age, right? Like you have zero rate... I'm pretty good for 70, hey? You're doing amazing. You are doing everything we've written about and the diet and plan that you've put out there, it's helping fuel your mitochondria. at the beast level. Can you talk about a little bit more about that and why that's the missing piece? Because one of your books is called Minding My Mind. Yeah, that was my first book.

So the mitochondria evolved when we had this spike in oxygen that actually killed off about, I think, 95-99% of all life forms. Fortunately for us, there was a life form that evolved the mitochondria to utilize this toxic compound oxygen to make ATP more effectively to nourish that cell. And that little mitochondrion was eaten, engulfed by a barrier cell, And they developed a very cooperative relationship, which would later evolve into multicellular organisms, us, eventually. And all of our tissues rely on these mitochondria to generate the energy ATP from the food we eat to drive the complicated chemistry of life.

Which, by the way, it's about two billion chemical reactions every second. I mean, that's pretty amazing. It's very complicated, the chemistry that keeps us all alive. We rely on mitochondria to convert the food that we eat into ATP that our cells can use to drive the chemistry in the correct fashions. If our mitochondrion are not working as well, that the job assigned to that cell just doesn't happen. The parts of the body that has the highest energy demands are our brain, our eyeballs, and our heart.

So people with neurologic and psychiatric issues, our mitochondria, aren't working as well, and that's why you have the neurology and psychiatry symptoms. Eye disease is because of ATP not working well and mitochondrion not work well. Heart disease, same thing. Literally, every one of our organs relies on mitochondry. So a key thing you want to do is be sure that your mitochondrial can work so that all of your organs work. So, some tips there. Get rid of the sugar, get rid the white flour, eat sufficient protein, have omega-3 fats, so wild fish, grass-fed meats, if you're a vegetarian, you have to have about two tablespoons of flax or hemp oil every day.

Some nuts and seeds for the omega 6 fats because we need those as well. And then reduce your exposure to toxins. Filter your air, filter your water, because our drinking water is too contaminated really, so have a water filter. Try and get a filter, whole house air cleaner as well.

Mitochondria, toxins, and supporting cellular energy 33:00

And eat as organic as you can given the financial reality for your family. Yeah. It goes a far way. You are living proof. So, you know, these kids or adults, it's pretty clear they aren't completely digesting their food, right? Like somewhere in that chemical reaction that you just outlined, there's a kink in the chain. And a big part of it, and you talked about that earlier, is sufficient stomach acid. and how it naturally declines as you get older. But in a lot of these cases, these kids, they're so young, right?

And they are not even able to extract anything. Once you have an autoimmune problem, it can begin to also attack your stomach and stomach acid as well. And so that happens to the kiddos, that happened to adults. People with an audioimmune condition are certainly much more likely to have inadequate stomach acids, inadequate digestive enzymes. And that's where betaine or apple cider vinegar can be very helpful, and that is where digestive enzymes with lipase can help. Because a lot of these kids are experiencing H.

pylori or some other pathogen that are in there that absolutely disrupts the stomach acid, those are helpful tips. I'd love to get your opinion on this. For my set of people, we avoid vinegar, even apple-cider vinegar for that healing phase because It is made from yeast, right? And there's just this dysbiosis going on so clearly. And I mean, in essence, what we're doing is a gut healing and sealing protocol for these little kids. So I just want to throw that out there because in this specific condition, it doesn't work for that initial healing phase.

But then once you move past that and heal, seal the gut lining a little bit better, then you can bring in those other healthy whole foods. Apple cider vinegar, but you can use assets like lemon or ginger I don't know I used to make these little like ginger It says like cut up ginger root and then put mineral salt on it. We need those before eating And they just do well with baiting. Is that potential for them or no? Yeah. Yeah Yeah. That's definitely something that we could do. I mean, that would need to be in capsule form, right?

Yeah, so depending on the, you know, some of these kids, obviously under three, they can't swallow capsules. So the strategies differ, but that. Would be a great one to incorporate if they So for the people, right, that are listening and their kids are clearly, they're not absorbing the nutrients from the food. They're clearly a little deficient in the minerals and things like that they need. A lot of them are missing these growth milestones, because they just need to absorb from their food, a lot are underweight.

You know, there's just, it's a struggle. There's real things going on there. But then they're also three years old, and they've never had sea vegetables before. And what are some ways that you can start to incorporate those in? So a couple of things for kids. We need to model healthy diets for the kids, we need talk about what these healthy diet are doing. You can certainly make smoothies. That is very helpful. You can make soups and stews. That's very useful. I do think it's important that our kids are chewing.

If we're not chewing, we don't get enough jaw development and we need to have narrow, small airways the kids will need. orthodontia. The kids will have obstructive sleep apnea. So I want them chewing. We have to be sure that they're chewing and the foods are bitter. Fat and acid is your friend and you can decide, do you want to use ghee? Do you to want use bacon fat, duck fat chicken fat? You could cook the broth and vegetables and then add olive oil after it's been cooked. I don't like cooking vegetables in olive.

Oh, the reason for that is The olive oil has a bunch of polyphenols in the olive that are damaged by heat and so if you don't cook in duck fat because you're worried about the high saturated fat, cook and bra and then add an olive-oil pesto afterwards and that's really quite delicious. Yeah. You can make olive and your favorite green herbs whether it's Basil, oregano, dill, sage, blend it into a pesto and put that pisto over the vegetables and the meat over that you cooked in the broth and you pour it over.

It's really quite delicious. And again, you know, the other thing that I want to stress to everyone, if you go around the world, we eat very different things. Kids love hot spicy food in India. Kids, love Hot Spicy Food in Korea and Thailand. The kids love American food. It's culturally the taste that we introduce to those children. And the parents are very excited about these flavors. and the kids will learn to be excited, about this flavors as well. It's perfectly normal for the child to refuse it and just keep offering it, being enthusiastic, and they will embrace it.

The one thing that we are biologically drawn to is sweet. Breast milk is very similar to vanilla ice cream, which is why vanilla is so popular. And that's what the fast food industry knows. They know how to design food to be biologically very attractive. And when they're not sleeping, so they are tired, everything feels harder. But they just feeling overwhelmed by this idea of, it feels like they need to change everything. Because right now, I mean, generally the people that are listening now they eat really healthy foods.

They're off gluten and dairy. maybe the occasional mac and cheese or peanut butter sandwich or things like that. It feels really hard to change and it feels like there's a lot of resistance. If they could only start with one or two things, how would you have them begin? Well, I think for many people, it's easier to do additions than subtractions. So I would start with subtract the additions. So you can think through, you just talked about why you should have green leafy things, cabbage, onion, mushroom family things and bright colors.

In those big three categories, are there things that you're willing to experiment with? These science experiments of eating kale, everybody agreeing like, oh my God, it's terrible, and then making it delicious is a wonderful family activity. is take something that you think is terrible and then transform it into, actually, that is pretty good. That will be a fabulous activity. A really wonderful smoothie is a full bunch of parsley. green grapes, ice, and water. That makes it really, you know, parsley is sort of a strong flavor.

Kids aren't going to eat that by itself. But if you take the parsley, green, grapes a little olive oil and the water and you put that together, I predict your kids will say like, gosh, mom, You know I can have that every day after school or before school, or, after nap. Yeah. I think that would be a very, very successful addition. I'm doing it, Dr. Walz. I am going to give it to all four of my children. And I love some of these as just a nutrient delivery vehicle. Like, I think it's so great. But this, yeah, you can always make them taste good.

If you put some fruit in it. It's just fine. So I appreciate you taking the time to just break down the science for us and just help us motivate further about why these changes are necessary. What I hear a lot, because it is hard, is just the kids at school and the parties and, you know, even the adults that are working through this, they're feeling like that they are being left out in some way.

Practical kid-friendly food strategies 41:00

And, yeah, I would, let's talk about that. There is so much evidence that kids who don't have sugar have such greater mental health. neurologic health, metabolic health and heart health for the rest of their lives. And so I can't stress enough to your listeners that improving nutrition is such a powerful gift for your children. Explain to them why this is. Explained to that these foods are really, really good for us. And it's okay to say that we have these big companies that are trying to trick us into giving you terrible food that's going to destroy your health.

I'm not going be tricked. Love that. Big companies as they're trying profit make themselves rich at your expense. That's a really good way. I mean, literally, two days ago, this weekend, I was at Costco with my four-year-old son, and he's never had Frosted Flakes, but he saw the whole pallet of Frosting Flake with the tiger. And he was like, oh, what's that? I didn't even know what it was. He just saw a tiger and was motivated to have it. You have to explain it and we have the same sort of conversation.

It's essentially poison. you know, GMO cord and I kind of went into that like going to the store. It's like, it's just really not good for you, but they want you to buy it. And so they put a cartoon character on it and that's all it is, is just marketing. There are countries that ban that kind marketing to children. we should be doing that, and listeners, I'm going to tell you, call your electeds and demand the end of marketing these foods that we know are toxic to our children, all this sugar to children.

So toxic, so harmful. Telling your children and telling them, because yes, when they leave your house, they'll make baking choices, telling that these big companies are trying to trick them into buying their products that they know are health destructive. And I think we have to tell our kids, we need to our styles, is we to let them know that why we want to eat this food and why are telling them to not eat that food. They will go through an adolescent period where they'll say, screw you, mom and dad, I'm going to do it anyway.

If you've taught them how to link how they feel with their biosensor, they will be like, well, my skin is bad again. And I don't like how I feel. I'm going to go back to eating good. Yeah, yeah, I honestly believe that we're the lucky ones. Especially if you experience this when you're a kid, they're young. And it just made us really look at everything and change everything. For the better, we removed as many toxins as we possibly could. We focused on whole, real foods. and got in those extra nutrients that they sincerely need to grow and to thrive.

I'm honestly thankful for our experience now. It took a while. Yeah, it took me a little while, but I feel like I have a continuous inflammation sensor on my brain now, so if I had a flare of my trigeminal neuralgia, like okay. What happened? What was the trigger? Yeah, yeah. So do you believe for kids? Because now my kids, they eat everything. Like I don't buy gluten or any of the things, but they go to the parties and they have swim team and dance and all the other things and the stuff. And thankfully, they don't get skin rashes.

I can certainly tell with behavior the next day if they've had a cupcake or something like that. And I don' like it, and we talk about, oh, this maybe isn't the best choice. They also don''t want them to be scared. But I guess the question is, do you believe that you can sincerely build up the resilience enough to have these things if you experienced, you know, as a child, or do think this is for life? I was, you know, severely reacting to eggs, had eggs out of my diet for 11 years. Yeah. And then I finally retested, could I tolerate eggs?

And I can. So I get to have eggs now again. It's really quite wonderful. I'm so thrilled. Yes, it is possible to eventually recheck and see, can you tolerate it again? I'm not going to test gluten. To me, there's no need to do that. I am not gonna test sugar. There's not need have any of that, but being able to have eggs is certainly pretty nice. Yeah, yeah. That's our goal is to expand. So you can do, you know, we take away nuts for a little while. Eggs, they're like textbook eczema triggers. They're a bit hard to break down just for like 90 days just to calm the system down.

But then yes, certainly bring those back in the tomatoes like those healthy whole foods that should bring it back. And the question is you take it up three days, 90 days 180 days and it can sort of decide how long you want to take things out and how severe the symptoms are. But the goal is to have the least restrictive diet possible. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And the bounty is so great. I mean, the core of your message is, oh my goodness, like not, what can we not have? It's, I just want to end there.

It is like, wow, there are so many good things that we can have and the ways that can prepare them and that you can sincerely use it as a bonding experience and a learning experience. Every time you go to the store or if you do a BSA or whatever it is. You know, want a pitch one more, a couple more things. Yes. Be sure your children are doing chores. They should help you prepare your meals, clean up afterwards. And I would have your child in middle school, they should be preparing one meal a week minimum.

You could be the sous-chef. they'll love bossing you around. Love that. But when they're in high school they, should preparing, one-meal-a-week using recipes. Wow. and you can still be, the Sous-Chef, They'll Love Bossing You Around and they Should know how to meal plan and shop so that when,

Building resilience, family habits, and closing advice 47:00

that they will know how to prepare their own foods to shop meal plan. And the average American throws away 30 to 40 percent of the food that the buy because they don't meal-plan. So they buy food and it rots in the refrigerator. If you plan a little bit, you can save a lot of money and you could prepare your children to be much more successful in future as adults. You're a doctor, right? And saying these things. Like, you recovered from MS, and you're saying things like, it's just, It matters so much.

And we talk about all those things, is just all the little things are not so little. It changes your day-to-day experience. it changes how many times you go to Chipotle. thank you. Thank you for saying that because it really is a big deal and not hard to do. And call your electeds. Tell your electeds to restrict the marketing of these terrible food story children and to mandate nutrition education in medical school. Yeah. Oh, love it. I love Such an honor and a pleasure to talk to you today, because you've just brought it back.

It's something that feels hopeful and practical, and we know that the body isn't broken. No matter how dire it looks right now, it just needs the right support. So for everyone listening, I hope this gives you just a different lens to look through, not just what to remove, but how to actually build your child back up. Thank you so much, Dr. Walz, thank you for your work and thank for being here today. Where can everyone find and follow you and check out all your resources? Yeah, go to terrywalls.com, T-E-R-Y, Walls, W-A-H-L-S dot com.

Be sure to sign up for a newsletter so you get the weekly research updates that I provide. And follow me on Instagram at Dr. Terry Wallz, D- R Terrywallz. You get to see what I'm eating and doing. Occasionally get see me roll in the snow after my sauna. I am on Facebook and X at TerryWalls. Amazing. All that will be linked in show notes. Thank you again. All right, much love to you and your family. Isn't She The Best is such a powerful conversation and such full circle moment for me. She is sincerely one of my idols and if you're listening to this as a parent in the middle of your eczema struggle, I just want to say this to for a second that you are not crazy in believing that there has to be another way, that your not wrong for questioning what you've been told and you're not stuck.

Your child's body is far from broken. It can absolutely be healed. Its responding and it's asking for something. And when you start to understand that language, everything begins to shift. Not overnight. not perfectly, not linear, but in a real steady grounded way that actually leads somewhere. somewhere sincerely promising and rewarding and you don't have to do it all at once. You just have the take the next right step. And if that next step for you is simply helping your child feel more comfortable in their skin right now, I created the Skin Comfort Trio exactly for that.

It helps calm inflammation, reduce itching, and support the skin barrier so your children can finally get some relief. If you are at the point where you're ready, you really ready to understand what's actually driving the eczema and you want a clear, personalized, transformative way to move forward, that's exactly what we do inside the Eczima Elimination Method. That's where we take all of this and apply it to your child, to you family, your home, step by step, so you aren't guessing anymore. Both of those are here for you.

And if this episode spoke to you, send it to another parent who needs to hear it today. Because sometimes one conversation can completely change what feels possible. So take care, friends. Thank you so much for being here, and I will talk to next week. Thank you for listening today, friend. I know healing your child's skin isn't easy, but you're doing it one smart step at a time. If this episode gave you a little hope or a better night's sleep, leave a quick review so more exhausted parents can find eczema kids and finally rest easy too.

Follow, share, and let's help more kids heal. Take care.