The Link Between Sugar And Your Child’s Behavior

Introduction to the sugar discussion 0:00

Welcome to the fifth mini masterclass. I am the host of the ADHD, Autism and Chronic Disease Parenting Summit. Doctor Joel Gater. Welcome. Welcome and thank you for joining me here. I'm going to talk about sugar for a little bit today. I think it's such an interesting topic. I'll start with a story. So as a parent.

A childu2019s behavior changes after sugar 0:28

Yeah. Well, first of all, before you're a parent, I don't think we think as much about what we eat. I think we should be, but we really don't. And then as you become a parent in your child gets older, especially if you're a health conscious parent, you really realize how much our food affects us. And that really hit home for me when my child, I think is maybe three, maybe four. He's five now. Went to a party and ate like he doesn't usually eat. I mean, he didn't eat very badly, but we did give him a little bit of cake and a little bit of the snacks that were there and things like that, and he was a completely different child for the rest of that day.

I mean, it was crazy how different he was. And one of his friends who also eats really healthy was completely different that day as well. Got sick the next day, had a fever for the first time. I mean, it was nutty just to see. And that was one of those, you know, very simple scenarios where you're like, wait a minute. If my child is acting this differently from eating just a little bit of sugar, not that much like a couple bites of a piece of cake.

Food, mood, and mental health concerns 1:32

The things that he doesn't usually do. And that's how it affected his behavior and his mood. What is it doing to every other child? And for kids that eat this way all the time and eat a lot more of it? How much of their behavior, how much of the mental health concerns that we are seeing are just from their food? We don't want to think that that could be true, but are you thinking about the food that our kids are eating? If they're eating those snacks at school, if they're eating those food? I mean, like, I had some kids was a little bit, a little bit here.

Oh, it's okay. Just a little snack there, I wonder. And of course, it's not everything and it's not everyone, but I wonder how much of the mental health crisis that we have, the mood swings, the inability to focus, the borderline ADHD symptoms that, you know, maybe they don't have a full diagnosis, but they have some traits of that or maybe earlier on, it's kind of pushing them in that direction. How much of that is just related to food? And I think it is important to talk about, to take note of and to discuss, not to shame or to blame anybody for the things that we're feeding our kids,

Why diet changes matter for kids 2:40

but to take note of how big of a difference it is. And I will let you know that you ask any integrative health practitioner and they say the number one thing that makes the biggest difference in their patients is changing up the diet, taking out gluten, taking out dairy, focusing on minimizing the sugar, thinking about the chemicals and the toxins and the dyes, all of these things doesn't mean you can never have gluten or dairy again, except if you're very sensitive or have celiac or something like that. But we don't think about these things, and we just keep letting our kids eat a little bit here and a little bit here.

Then they're going to develop conditions because their bodies can't handle it and they're inflamed. So we have to be thinking about food. I'm going to take a deep dive into food. I talk about food more than anything else. I talk about food labels. I talk about, healthy food choices, eating fresh, what you can actually do, what you can replace it with. I mean, this is the key topic I spend most of my time on Instagram. My doctor, Joel Gaiter on X at Doctor Joel Gator, in my parenting groups that you can find for my social media in my book, I mean, that is the topic that I talk about most.

And in the Parenting Natural Parenting Masterclass, that is what I talk about the most because we have so much control

Practical food choices and label reading 3:50

over the food that we eat and the food that we purchase, and we can decide to make different choices. We can, get two bags of chips and read the food label and pick the one with better ingredients. We can not purchase things that we don't want to have in the home anymore. We can set boundaries around the things that our younger kids are eating and, we can make different choices and we can shop more locally. If it's available, we can shop from farms, we can go to farmer's market. These are all things that are possible.

There are things we need to do at our personal family level, on things that we need to do on a macro level to make things more, available for, for everybody. But but at least for my family level, you know, this is something that is just so important. And we're going to dive into it. We're going to talk about it a lot more. I'm super excited to dive in this with you in the parenting masterclass. And, we're going to do that. We're going to get into it. And, the more that you join in with me, the more that we're going to focus on this.

So if you're not following me on social media, I mean, go jump over there and go take a look, because this is you'll see I'm not making this up. I talk about this all the time. And, I get asked this or, you know, almost in every interview, what's the number one thing that I would recommend for parents to make the biggest difference? And that is simply to read food labels, read the label on every single thing you purchase from now on. And, that'll make a huge difference in your child's health. So we're going to dive into this a lot more and so many other things in the natural parenting course.

Join me there.