What’s Really Causing ADHD, Eczema & Chronic Illness In Kids?

Kidsu2019 Chronic Disease Crisis 0:00

Welcome back to Everyday Ancestral. Today, I am joined by holistic pediatrician, Dr. Anna Maria Temple, to talk about kids, immunity, and what modern life may be doing to developing bodies. Are kids today actually less healthy than past generations? You know, it's so stressful that the answer is yes. 1980s, the rates of chronic disease were like one in 25. A few years ago, was like, one and five. As of this year, it's one in two. That means 50% of our kids have a chronic disease. And a lot of people are like, oh, my kid doesn't have chronic diseases.

I'm like well if they're taking any prescription medications, if you have to go to the pharmacy, they have the chronic medications. If you're buying over-the-counter medications on a regular basis like Zyrtec and Claritin and antacids, pain medications et cetera, your child has a chronic disease. The chronic has become the normal and people have put it in their background and they're like, no, my kid's fine. They're healthy. And I'm like are they taking any kind of medication on a regular basis that you're purchasing from a pharmacy or over the counter?

Then the answer is yes. Our kids are sicker than ever before. Unfortunately, People are always like, how can that be? We have like the modern medicine and we're in 2026 and have the latest technology in the United States. The U.S., we are the sickest country in the world, we're the number one country for prescription medications. We are number country to prescribe chronic medications and we the one number to use chronic medication. And one chronic mediation leads to another and our children are no exception to this rule.

What is a parent to do? Where should a parents start? Because a lot of them are going to their doctors and they are being prescribed the medications you're telling them They probably shouldn't be prescribed. A lot of doctors have 10-minute visits, and they're ruled by patient satisfaction scores. And they are worried. I'm speaking as a physician who was in the traditional model. We were graded on patient's satisfaction, because parents also request medication. So we have the folks that come and request medications.

There's a lot of pressure on the doctors. I mean, oftentimes people get mad at me that I wouldn't give their children antibiotics because they had a fever for two days, but they have an exam tomorrow and the parent felt they needed an antibiotic. That's lot pressure. And then I would say no. Guess what? I'd get rated as a poor doctor because I will not give the parents what they requested. So it goes both ways. Doctors are rushed, they're too fast. I mean, the visits are too faster, 10 minutes. It's easier to prescribe than to talk about alternatives.

A lot of parents are requesting medications. That's a catch-22. One simple thing that you can do as a parent who is more holistically mindset, and is like, I want less medication, simply ask. If your child has an ear infection, if your children has croup, If they have allergies, or if they've asthma, before they,

Why Dr. Temple Switched to Holistic Care 2:51

when they say, your your has XYZ and I'm gonna prescribe this, Your question should be, what are other alternatives that we can do to manage said condition? Are there any nutritional changes we could make? are there are any supplements that can take? Any other interventions from other medical, like Eastern medicine, chiropractic care, craniosacral therapy, are their any methodologies that could be implemented before we go to a prescription medication? What changed you? You said you were part of the normal medical model.

So what got you to go more holistically? My three kids were sick and they had chronic diseases. And yes, I was trained as a general pediatrician and my children had eczema, asthma, seasonal allergies, chronic constipation, recurrent ear infection, recurring croup, ADHD, you name my kids had it. One day, I got tired of my kids being on chronic meds and I was like, what's going on here? So I took the three ring circus to the doctor and lined my three ducklings on the table and was, like how come my kid's aren't on so many chronic medications?

Like what else? I asked those questions. What else can we do besides chronic medication? And the answer was... For the little one, I mean, we have run out of medications. He was on five allergy medicines that time. he couldn't go out for an Easter egg hunt because his eyes would swell shut, his tears would stream down his face, and his body was covered in hives, then he would rip his skin off in the spring. We have ran out medications, the only next option for him is allergy shots. For my daughter, they were like, well, for asthma, the chronic inhaled steroids are working.

For eczema, topical steroids seem to be working, For allergies, Zyrtec seems to working For chronic constipation, Miralax looks like fine. It should allow growth of recurrent ear infections. Don't worry about it. But the time we got to my middle one with ADHD and chronic snot that you would never even be able to walk out of the house these days, I stopped paying attention because I felt dismissed. I feel unheard. Feel like a crazy person. So I walked out of that office and it was like... My mom, a warrior, took over, and she was like, yeah, wait, what?

This is not, this cannot be the rest of the story. I hear you, these kids are on chronic medication, but this is NOT how the store ends. And I don't know what the next step is. All I know, is this was not the answer. We're gonna figure out the answers. One day, the children are gonna be an example by which other families are going to change their health and their life. I didn't know what to do next. I just knew that that was my calling. That was it. And it's funny, you know how the universe presents opportunities and we take them when we have a different mindset and like we're lucky or it was a coincidence.

There's no such thing as coincidences. It's just opportunities which choose to take. And the week later, there was a nutrition talk at my children's elementary school. And I always showed up at any event that the school had, because I was supporting. But I walked in with total attitude. I'm a pediatrician, I know exactly what she's going to say, but I got this. Tell you what, on that Tuesday morning, 7.30 in the morning sitting in a first grader's classroom, freezing my booty off in one of those tiny little chairs, the fog lifted and I realized the root cause of my children's chronic disease.

All that the lady talked about was sugar. I thought I was doing a great job with the strawberries at lunch and broccoli at dinner. They kids were getting nutritious meals. I didn't realize how much added sugar my children had in their diet and what the impact of that was on their chronic illnesses. So that night I came home in my stilettos from clinic and I went to the pantry and got rid of the cinnamon toast crunch, Lucky Charms, Pop-Tarts, toaster strudels, orange crackers with peanut butter, because you know, protein, the chocolate milks because, you And all the garbage that my children were eating went in a trash bag, and that's when I became an outcast in my own family.

My husband and I, who was an orthopedic surgeon, he and fought over food over the next five years. my friends thought I lost my mind. And my partners in medicine were like, where's the evidence behind all this? It was like 2007, guys. My kids were two, four, and six. I don't know where the medical evidence was that time in 2007, but it couldn't be wrong to get rid of processed food and replace it with fresh fruits and vegetables. And that's all that was my mission. To get my, my kids are selective and annoying about food because they had eaten such processed foods for their entire lives.

My little one never needed allergy shots. He came off his allergy medicines. my daughter stopped needing inhaled steroids. She got off of the topical steroids, My middle one never needed ADHD medicine.

Food, Sugar, and Role Modeling 7:54

He didn't need any more antibiotics for his recurrent sinus infections. And in 2016, my husband and I quit our jobs. We moved to New Zealand where we had no health insurance, no medications. we didn' have any connections into that world and our children thrived. They climbed the highest mountains and the bungee jumped off all the bridges. And that's when I realized what it looks like to come back from chronic disease. So when came back in 2018, I wasn't going to do medicine the way I used to. I started doing it differently because I saw the change in my children and I knew that other families could achieve the same goal.

But it sounds like your first step towards healing was simply around food, focusing on the food. It's the foundation. You know, a lot of people are like, I talk about food all the time, right? On all my channels. If you were like right, but what supplement do I take? I'm like you cannot out supplement a terrible diet. you can't eat Chick-fil-A and take vitamin D and expect the immune system is going to be rocking and rolling. Sometimes when these foundations are talked about, like getting outdoors, this sun, you know they're very simple, they also sound to me sometimes like an adult's perspective of a foundation.

So if you as a pediatrician were coming at these ancestral tenants, but we were specifically shaping them for kids from a kid's. Perspective of like, how does a kids achieve these tenants? Well, I'll tell you, the kids will focus on those tenants if the parents do. Children don't listen to what we say. They model everything that we do, and I will give you a perfect example. My husband and our nutrition was garbage for a long time. However, we always had movement. Movement, fitness, exercise was an integral part ever since we met before med school.

So when the kids were little, I would take them. We had a local YMCA and we had on Sundays, the classes were outdoors. Well, you can bring, well, brought our children. No one said anything. And so the other kids would kind of do a workout. Maybe they'll do some lunges, but there was a playground. They'll go on the playground over there. There were like five, seven, and nine. I'm like, no, never had the fear that they were getting taken. The playground was literally next to where we were working out.

Anyway, so my kids would work out, one of them would complain. One would lay on the ground in the middle of the grass of everyone working out because he was like, I'm doing shavasana. But they were outside in this sunshine next to us, doing whatever they want to do. They didn't get in trouble if they didn' do the exercise. It was an opportunity they weren't given and they had the choice to take it or not take. Anyway I remember at 14, remember the day my husband and I went to work with a next door neighbor and all of a sudden the 14 year old gets up out of bed at nine o'clock and is like, where's the workout?

And John is, we're like don't make a face. Well, that's so interesting because with teenagers, you cannot make face, well we can explore that further, but you can not make the face you have to have a neutral expression. We're, like wow, That's just so Interesting. You want to work out. He's like yeah, when we going and from that day on that boy came to the workout classes, participated fully. There's no more Shavasana. Then he started going to gym with his friend, and now he's in college, has a workout routine.

All my kids have workout routines, nutrition routine, but it didn't happen overnight. I mean, we're talking when he was five, he doing Shivasana, 14, when the neurons clicked, that's nine years. You have to lead by example. If you want him to eat vegetables, you have eat to vegetables. if you don't want on blue screens, put your phone down. And perseverance, it's a long play. How long is this going to take? And it is years. It is literally years, that was nine years of work to get this kid. That was perseverance.

We were, every time we on Sundays worked out, he came with us, whether he complained, I don't care, you're coming. So those would be the thing. I would say those two things, there's gonna be role modeling, and it a longer play, so perseverance I don't know about you, but it feels to me like something that's very different from the current generation versus maybe our generation, you know, those of us that are older. We have very strict, at least I did, I had very strong boundaries. Yeah, with consequences.

That's what I get in clinic all the time when I give these examples. They don' want to come work out. I'm like, sorry, why is that a choice? We've confused gentle parenting with child-led parenting. Gentle parenting is I love you, I adore you. I'm not gonna shame you I am gonna provide you with a safe home with the roof over your head with food on. That is gentle. Not yelling at you and not making you feel bad about yourself. But we have boundaries. We have expectations. Am the leader, you are the follower.

You have feelings, we're gonna validate those but we are not going to lead by those feelings. So what's happened in our current parenting world is become more child led. Oh, if the child doesn't want to do it, If they're not happy, here's the thing. We, me, you and I, are the only people responsible for our own happiness. Children are responsible, for their own, happiness us, the parents are not responsible. For their happiness and because we've confused that with what parenting is and we have confused gentle parenting with child led parenting.

They really want, to eat lucky charms. So I mean, I can't take that away from them. Literally, so I say in clinic, Dude, I don't know. I've had a bad day. What, I'm not drinking a margarita. I mean, you can figure out why I am not. So just because they want lucky charms doesn't mean that they're going to get it. It's become this conflict. But then they are not happy. Well, that's their choice to not be happy, your choice as a parent to put a boundary in and how you tell them about the boundary and why this boundary is in place.

Am all about explaining the boundaries, why that is happening. However, the boundry stays and then the consequences, positive or negative, on the follow through. The screens is a hot topic, right? That's really the biggest difference between these most recent generations and our generation. We didn't have them. we were told TV was rotting our minds, but now TV is like, well, I'd rather have him watching TV than on an iPad, so we keep moving the marker.

Screens, Dopamine, and ADHD 14:06

Is that something we genuinely should be concerned about? Do you think it's affecting children's nervous systems, their sleep, they're immunity, behavior, or is this just us moving the needle like once it was TVs, then it video games, and now it is iPads? Screens are a toxin. are a horrible toxin. We are on a screen right now. So I'm not saying it's not a necessity of humanity, but it is a tox in to children's brains. Children under two should not be on screen. They do FaceTime with grandma. That doesn't count.

You're sitting and watching Sunday football with your baby on your lap and you guys are laughing and talking and interacting and your like, Oh my gosh. And you're talking about the play. But that's, not what I talk. I was talking when you take the child and then you put them in front of a, screen so they can sit and have their show or you know the what drives me nuts when kids have Their iPads. I'm like They have iPods with like plasticky handles that like their initials on it. Um, literally like I have like a this nervous twitch I was like we just gave him a toxin that we put their initiatives on and basically now the kid is like What's my iPad?

it's not on your iPad, it is my iPad and with my Wi-Fi and my data. So I choose when you have it. When it becomes their thing, they're the boss of it, so then it become a huge conflict. But here's the thing. There's a pediatrician in 1998 who looked at children's programming in 98, which is not the programming of now, but it was even more insane. And he did a comparison. It was a mouse experiment. He put mice in front of lights that simulated Mr. Rogers' show. And for anyone who hasn't seen Mr. Rogers, he talks like this.

He's very neutral. Nothing's moving in the background. It is very wholesome. And now everybody talks this, and all the cartoons are really like, this and there's lights and they're flashing and the continuous movement of the screen. So the kid is watching a frame for like three seconds and then he moves to another frame and another thing. What he did is he put the mice in front of Mr Rogers' simulation. the mice, and then he put mice in front of current programming of 1998, which was really fast-paced, la la.

And then, he looked at the mouse behavior. The mice who watched the Mr. Rogers simulation did mouse things. What happens is when you go in a box with the cheese in the middle, the mous goes around because he's scared, everything eats him, so he has to be very cautious. So, when he went around the perimeter, you would go get the cheeses, around, very clean, how he just stayed around with a little bit of cheese. The mice that watched the simulation of the current children's programming for three to five hours simulation went into the same box and they start on the perimeter and then become completely disorganized.

And they would eat the cheese and be in the middle and run around in circles and go to the corner. So basically they're open to predators. But what he demonstrated is that the mouse brain became completely dysregulated, hyperactive, inattentive, no memory, discombobulated. neurologically chaos from the programming. So when we say that the children's programming, because my parents are always like, oh, it's just this show, the amount of money spent on that show to see how much they could retain a child's attention, how many ads they can add to that shows so they would sell to the parents, there's so much strategy.

It's not just a benign show. Oh, we're all here for children benefits. Get out of here. And that children's brain are not taken into account. Children's brains from a young age are very susceptible to the blue light and the continuous stimulation from blue screens and that affects them long term. And you know, now most schools have moved to all this stuff online. We don't have long-term data on what happens when you're eight hours in front of a screen learning, I had to do quotations, but I mean, you are learning in a front-of-a-screen for eight-hours, how would that affect your brain?

We know that because of screens, brains have, on functional MRIs, have changed fundamentally. So it is a toxin. It needs to be used with caution. We do need it for our daily lives, absolutely. But we need to intermix that with a lot of outdoor sunshine, parent quality time, face-to-face communication with other humans. We have to see these things like the way you're saying, which is they are a toxin or they, they have, or we have label them a specific way so that we approach them with the delicacy and the hesitancy that would if something was a drug.

Right, and I'll give you a perfect example that's gonna scare everybody. Everybody get ready, here we go. So TikTok, we'll just use TikTok. Let's beat up on TikTok for a second. TikTok is a dopamine hit. Doing cocaine is dopamine head. And what's happened is that our teenagers are using TikTok and they're becoming more accustomed to it and it's quick and is fast and its moving. Majority of teenagers cannot watch a 60 minute show without referencing back to their phone and watching TikTok They could no longer sit through whatever murder mystery, whatever show, family show without TikTok.

I'm saying that again and again, and, again. That is an addiction. Addiction means that you, it doesn't matter what the substance is, in this case, TikTok, the toxin, they get such a dopamine hit that now regular TV programming is not enough. You need to look at it because otherwise your brain is getting like the, you know, when you're doing a withdrawal, You're basically going through TikTok withdrawal without you realizing. So I just want anyone with a teenager, watch them when they're watching a family show.

What percentage of your kids pull out their phone to either text, but it's usually TikTok because they need to get that dopamine hit from somewhere else because the TV is not doing it for them anymore. Really we're almost inducing ADHD, right? Absolutely. The rates of ADHD are through the roof, not just from the food, but also from screens. That combination is lethal. I feel like though we can't just talk about the problem because the reality is when we as parents start to create these boundaries and say, okay, I'm going to feed my family differently.

Let's just use that as an example. When you did that, you got ostracized because the minute you do something that's different from society, society sees you as like, oh, well, she's or they treat you differently. And that the last thing kids want to be treated like. They don't want be treat differently in school. they don' want open up their lunchboxes and have kids laugh at them or be looked at because they have some specific cracker that was homemade versus a goldfish, right? How do you recommend we navigate those waters of kind of societal norms versus wanting to be optimally healthy?

Got it. Well, first, I will also say that the children don't want to feel different, but the parents don' I can't tell you, my parents are like, yeah, but I don't wanna be the weirdo mom on the sports field bringing orange slices and water when everyone else is bringing Doritos. Again, it's gotta start with the parents. We have to be of the role model to it. Okay, so three things that we're gonna do to change this. Number one, we gotta change our mindset. we have understand that food, walking outside, being in the sunshine, decreasing screens and prioritizing sleep and pooping every day is imperative to children's wellness.

If that is a number one and you understand that that isn't what needs to happen, that becomes your mission and all the other stuff falls to the wayside. Number two, we're not going to become a no-culture. No, you can't have goldfish. You can have Doritos. What we are going do is, of course you have the processed food, but first you need to eat a fruit or a vegetable before you're going eat the process snack. When you eat fruit of a vegetables, your body gets the right to have a processed foods and then worry about changing the processes foods later.

Boundaries, Anxiety, and Measles 22:00

And number three, we have to be the example that our children are going to grow up seeing. Anxious parents raise anxious kids, right? The apples don't fall far from the tree. I mean, it's like, you know, when families come into the clinic, You could see the ducklings following along. If mom is anxious, the kids are anxious. So the mom, is like let's go do this. The kids were like we're gonna do that. And there's nothing wrong if you are, anxious is just how are you projecting that? What work are doing on you?

Are you putting your oxygen mask on first? and then teaching the kids. Unfortunately, so many parents are like, oh, no, the kid are first. The kids are never first! Mama's first, then the marriage is second, the children are third. We've got it all backwards. The children first. A marriage will wait, guys. I've been through four marriage counselors. That marriage does not wait. If you don't cultivate it and care for it, it is not gonna withstand the difficulty. Having children is hard. It is much harder than anyone anticipates.

Can I tell you how many people come in a clinic and they go, well, I knew it was hard, but anything was this hard? Raising kids is hard, raising healthy kids, is even harder. And if your marriage is wobbly, then that's a thousand times harder! Let's touch base on some fast-fire topics that are making people anxious, and I'd love your answers to hopefully alleviate some of the anxiety. Right off the bat, the one I just read about recently is, oh, measles outbreak, you know, it's increasing and everyone's blaming MAGA or MAHA.

Should we be worried about measels? And I will preface this with, I remember as a kid watching the Brady Bunch. And Peter got measles and it was no big deal. Like, and I don't remember the measels being a big when I was a kid. And yet. Everyone's so scared. So what's truth? What's fiction here? So measles is super contagious. It is a viral illness. Number one complication of measels is your infections. Second is going to be respiratory asthma, pneumonia. There could be some meninges, some encephalitis, which is brain inflammation, and there could some long-term.

Generally for most people, it's a mild disease. But because of the encephalitis and because how many people were sick with it in the hospital, that's one of reasons that they started the immunizations. We had in 2019, before Maha and whatever, we had about 1,275 cases of measles in United States. Then we had COVID, then we have none. This past year, we've had about 2,279 cases of measles in the United States, 285 hospitalizations. Out of those hospitalization, the number one was respiratory issues, number two was dehydration, and number three was isolation.

There were three deaths, two children, six and eight, and one adult. Whenever it comes to measles or anything pertussis, before we panic, let's look at the numbers. Because the moment there's one case the media is going to explode, it is sensational. Having measels has not been around for us. It was around the Brady Bunch, but not during, as our children have grown up. So it's newish. And because of the political climate, it's controversial, so news sells. So if one case shows up in your community, boom, It's like a major dramatic thing.

Number one, when it comes to measles, what I would do is figure out what the numbers are around you and where you usually travel. Two, you're going to find a provider who can have this open conversation with you, whether you choose to do the vaccine or not do vaccine. And number three, we're gonna work on the things we already addressed. We've got to work on our nutrition, we've gotta do our sleep, have to poop, be outside. We have resilient immune systems. To your point, when you have a fragile immune system and you get measles, you're more likely to have severe complications.

The same way when we had fragile systems and we got COVID, We had horrible complications Resilient immune can withstand the viruses that have been around for thousands and thousands of years. Do immunizations work? They do. One immunization protects you 93%. Having two shots of the MMR protects your 97%. The timing is also important. If you have it between 12 and 15 months, it is not as effective as if you had it over 18 months of age. So all these things have to be addressed with a provider who is open-minded to discuss and alleviate your stress regarding this illness.

We are not doomed. It's not the end of the world. it's an illness that can be address in many different ways with many options depending on everybody's anxiety and level of stress. How about ear infections? That one comes up a lot. And it's always recommended with antibiotics. Is that parents only option? Absolutely not. So fun fact, 80% of your infections get better without antibiotics, let me say that one more time. 80%, of ear, infections, get, better, without, antibiotics so after you go and you get your child gets diagnosed with a near infection.

Three things you can do. Number one, if they're not having a 104 fever and screaming in pain and we have some time, we can some pain relief. I do ibuprofen for three nights because ibiprofene is way less toxic than 10 days of antibiotics. I use Cynex, which is an afferent, a form of afferen, even in little people, but there's like an eosinafferen if you don't want to use affren. And you use it for three nights, no more than three, that helps decongest. Again, three days of the Cynax or affern, significantly less toxic than 10 days And then I teach parents how to do craniosacral therapy, that there's a specific ear massage.

You can Google that. Do you check that on YouTube? There's specific year massage that helps open the eustachian tubes so we can have everything drain and we let the pus come out so the child can get over the ear infections without antibiotics. Easy. There are no side effects. I mean, I have like more tips, but I'm trying to do so people are not overwhelmed because if I give you 17,000 options, but those are super simple. Most people have ibuprofen. You can go to CVS and get Cynex and then you just need your hands and your youngster to do the craniosacral moves on the ears.

If the ear infections are chronic, meaning they keep happening, right? Are there certain foods that should be looked at or removed from the kid's diet? Absolutely. So one off-year infection happens to everybody, no big deal. Now we have a recurrent situation. Number one is gonna be our processed foods. And a simple rule of thumb for that is if you can't read it, don't eat it. If you turn the package around and you have to send me a DM on Instagram, is monosodium glutamate bad for my child? You're going to put that food back.

Can't I read that? Don't need it! Number two, we're gonna reduce the added sugar in a child's diet. No fruits don' count. less than 24 grams of added sugar in children over two. Under two, zero grams added of sugar. And if mama's nursing, mama has zero gram of adding sugar to her diet because it comes through breast milk. Sugar lowers our immune system and makes for immune fragility. The third thing for chronic ear infections is dairy. I don't care if it's wild-caught, farmed, raw cow, goat, camel, sheep.

It's the casein protein that can be very inflammatory to specific humans. Is it 100%? Never 100%. But it's majority that when we remove that until the ears infections have now resolved and you can bring it back in the diet at like once weekly or twice weekly tops, then we can show a significant improvement in recurrent ear infections. What is your thought about dairy, by the way? That's kind of a bit of topic and it's one that historically pediatricians are like, oh yes, of course, drink all your milk you want, but I think you probably agree that it is not so black and white.

It's not so black and white, and here's the thing. By the way, I used to be a big dairy pusher. My kids drank five gallons of milk a week. I am not kidding you. Id go to Costco and the people were like, OMG, you need a cow. And I was like oh my god, my kids drink so much milk. Oh my God, why do they drink milk? Dairy in its own is not anything bad. The problem is the overconsumption. Same thing for gluten, because when people hear a holistic pediatrician, they're like ah, she's gluten free and dairy free.

Ear Infections, Dairy, and Snacking 30:30

And I'm like, nah. The point is that when we eat a food over and over again, we become sensitized to it. You know what people are not sensitize to? Brussels sprouts. Or sardines. Broccoli. Because we don't eat them. But what happens with dairy? For breakfast is milk and cereal. At lunch we have cheese sticks. For snack we some cheese. And dinner we put cheese in our tacos. Right? Dairy, dairy, diary, when people go, I don' t need that much dairy. Awesome. Go to next Thanksgiving meal and tell me how many foods you can eat.

And everyone's like, I can't eat anything. I'm like I know because there's dairy in every single main and side dish and dessert. That's where the problem is. It's the over consumption of it, you know. And so when kids are over the age of one, usually go, yeah, should you have some dairy sometimes? Sure. Whole milk, never skim or any of the other stuff, because that's the process. So you do a whole milk preferably from locally sourced. You do some milk. But then after you finish that, then you some almond milk and then some cashew milk then rotate all the different milks.

People are very obsessed with calcium. When we look at the medical literature, it's vitamin D that strengthens bones. It's not the over consumption of dairy. Right. It's not necessarily the most optimal source for either of those, right? Correct. And another thing I heard from doctors that this is a legit quote. Well, they have to eat dairy because that helps them grow. I'm like, because there are other things that grow too. like tumors, like, you know, insulin resistant. There's a lot of other things that grow.

So I'm like what is our end goal? I want a giant kid full of chronic disease or I went a normal sized kid that is healthy with a resilient immune system that goes out and conquers the world. What is filling the carts at these stores? Isn't it just processed junk? I mean, it's just bigger amounts of the crackers, of, the cookies. Now you're seeing all those nutritional bars and, and what's a crime. And what I'm shocked about is you know, you've jumped the shark and that's like a TV term of when, a, TV show is like clearly gone past like being relevant.

It's, just like, they're trying to put everything and anything on the show just to keep it relevant and so basically, that nutrition bars have jumped to shark when you now see. candy bars that are putting out nutrition bars because nutrition bar have always just been expensive candy bar. how should someone really shop at Costco? Because I don't see anyone truly shopping there the way that I think either of us would want them to. When you go to the big box stores, there's always like massive stuff.

I will give Costco prop. They're the number one distributor of organic food in the country. So there is my gold star for Costco. And the reason I do go Costco is because you can get amazing whole foods, organic, at really good prices. And that's why I direct people. And yes, I agree. I'm like, we're not going to go in the mac and cheese section. Yes, you have your Doritos and other chips and stuff, but they have the other versions with avocado oil and organic options. So you can go to Costco and get a lot of good food that is whole foods with great ingredients.

There's going be the junk. When people go and you look in their carts, absolutely. That's one of the reasons that I go. Tacosco specifically just has higher number of products that are going to be organic than other stores. And I'm very much pro like, let me show you, don't get this, get that. Because knowing and doing are very two different things and parents are like oh, now I have to read the labels and how would I know? And, I am going spend a thousand hours reading labels. I mean, no, you just take my video and you walk through the aisles and then you go and I will get these from and make smoothies with this and we are gonna do breakfast with these and here is my lunch.

Because it is very confusing. The marketing is off the chain for all these products. So I usually go to Costco and Walmart to hit two different target audiences to make life easier because there's also a lot of changes happening at Walmart. They're actually getting rid of artificial food dyes in their Walmart brands and they're working on decreasing the artificial flavoring. I'm going to give some kudos to Walmart as well. They're actually putting some real effort into making real changes to their food so it's more economical for those that need to shop in that store.

But I do worry though that the swaps or the things like that are, it is just like pushing things down the road with like, first it was TVs, now it video games, and now its screen, iPads. that we're just pushing down like, well, it's not Doritos, but it is the Siete chips, you know what I mean? It's still reliance on chips and snacks. And so we are still moving away from the priorities of like that basics of how you should be filling your diet with the real foods that are single ingredients, right?

So I do get the lure of like, oh, people going there, but I just still question if we're just pushing the health conversation a little bit further down the road and avoiding the real grittiness of it of, you know, really, maybe we shouldn't be snacking so much. Like, why are we snackin' so muc? We're 100% on the same page on this snacky situation. And by the way, do you know this? In fact, snacking didn't become a thing until the 1950s. Guess what country invented snack? You're right, United States.

In the U.S. in the 50s after the war because they were like, oh, women are in kitchen too long and that's when they started developing processed foods. And they're like to help women not be in the kitchen so much. Well, what happened in The 50s when they did these processed foods, people would became nutritionally devoid. So their labs were horrible and they were sick. Then the food companies are like, oh, we should put vitamins in there because then we can get them to eat more processed food. And so then they like oh now they are nutritionly dense.

And then it was like, oh, well, you know, when the mom is on the go, we need to have some snacks. So we became a snack culture. We develop snacking issues when our children are tiny little beady. Because you why? When you're trying to do something and your child's crying, they're annoying, which is going to be honest about it. And so then you give them food because then they shed it and then we develop this thinking, Well, you know, they're crying because they are hungry. They are bored and they want your attention.

But now they have something to do and food and the snack foods that we choose are usually carbs or sugar. So either carbs are sugar, They both break down into sugar they feed the part of the brain, which by the way, loves cocaine. so it's a dopamine hit. And now the child is like, all right, well, I feel great. I just had a bagel. or goldfish for 30 minutes, and then I'm going to scream again in 30 minute. So what the parents do, then they give more snacks. And then, they're like, oh my God, there's so annoying.

They want snacks all the time. I'll be like we created it. It is we create the snacking. Then we're mad. By the way, we purchase the snacks, so we become the drug dealers. We're annoyed that the users are always whining and complaining and want another fix. Back to me. So when my younger one was also the selective eater, and what I'm telling you, so I would say 50% of his younger childhood he ate air for dinner, because in my house you don't get a second meal. In a food secure home, you choose to eat or you chose hunger.

Then there's nothing wrong with choosing hunger, but I am not going to cater to your sad self because you do not want to either good food. So he ate 50% of the time, he eat air. And as I was trying to dissect, why is he always eating air? He's never hungry. Then we went into the snack and then I, was like, you know, let me do this exercise. Every time he put something in his mouth, I'm going to write it down. I literally was, like oh, goldfish. Got it. Oh, we are Target shopping gold fish. Okay.

A fruit and veggie pouch. We're in the carpool line and he's bored. You know, so then I started taking notes, giving him so many snacks, I'm not even realizing anymore because it's becoming my background noise and I am doing a thousand things. So every time we would get in the minivan, he's like, um, uh, hungry. I was like of course you are because I created a habit. Every time when we're on target, they want a goldfish. Because I've created the habit without even realising it. So then I was like, well, let's bring it back.

And so was it hard? Of course it's hard, because I got to deal with whiny, annoying kids. But I said, OK, we're going to play I Spy. It was my job as a parent to come up with other things. They had to be bored for a bit and I had tolerate whining, obviously, cause they would figure some things out. But at other times, I'm like at a restaurant. There's no screens at the restaurant, and I don't bring snacks at restaurants. Never did, thank God. Always was like, all right, so let's play tic-tac-toe with our sugar packets.

Let's plays sticks with whatever. To this day, they're adults. We always have games that we play when we're sitting and waiting at our restaurant rather than snacks. When you're in the car, wearing the Carpool line, when you are shopping, what other things are you doing? Are you tolerating boredom, are tolerated some whining, or are giving in and always feeding them, and now it's become a snack culture. But when we're a snacks culture, the reason we go for the siesta chips, which I do love, sometimes, but the reasons that become norm because mamas have to have something in their purse all the time.

You don't need something in your purse. In my clinic, I had to put giant signs, no food in here because our appointments are an hour and the kids whine because it's boring, even though we have toys. And they're like, ''I want a snack.'' And the moms are like ''Here's a snacks.'' I'm like under no circumstances. First of all, a doctor's office, not a restaurant, number one. Number two, i have kids with major food allergies and they are all like we are so clean. No, you're not. food falls out of their mouth.

I mean, it's just their kids. And then three, I'm like, they, It's okay for them to be bored. It is okay. For them. To whine. it is. Okay. That they're unhappy for an hour. By the way, after they whined for like five, six minutes, then they were like. Oh, Oh I can play. Back to your point. Yes, our reliance on processed foods has increased significantly because our snack culture, we have created the snack-culture.

Genetics, Ancestral Foods, and Supplements 40:30

It is our job to reverse the snack culture. And as we reverse it, We're going to eat more whole foods. If we rely on snacks for all the things we mentioned, yes, then you're gonna go and choose more packaged foods for sure. What's the one thing you wish parents would stop worrying about? You know, and one things you wished they take more seriously? I wish parents would stop worrying about what's on their Instagram feed. The number one cause of anxiety in my clinic is the Instagram Feed. I wish they would just stop worrying about Instagram and missing out on what other people are doing.

Mind your own business. Do your on stuff. Go video yourself if you want to, but stop watching what the people were doing because that's just creating more anxiety and more FOMO and then making the mamas especially feel like less than that they're not good enough because look at that mom with six kids that she's got it all handled and she was making sourdough bread and they are all riding horses. Get out of here. That's not true life. Stop it. Number one thing people need to stop worrying about is what's on their Instagram feed, what everybody else is doing.

One thing that people take more seriously is the food that they put in their children's bodies. Sometimes these natural ways, these holistic practices do take longer. These are lifestyle changes that will not only just affect a few years, but will affect the kid's lifetime. So a lot of folks are like, well, it's my genetics. There's nothing I can do because it is my genes. I have type 2 diabetes because it's my genes. That's not a genetic disease. You may have the genes, but the environment pulls the trigger.

It is a lifestyle that changes the gene. So you can have a gene for cancer. Or you could have gene 4 type 1 diabetes for all the different things. Eczema, asthma, it doesn't mean that this is your story. You gave those genes to your child. It is your responsibility to give them the tools to turn those jeans off. And if you help your child turns those genes off, let's say eczema, you have exima, You gave your childhood genes of exema. You do all the things that we're talking about for immune resilience.

you turn off those jeans. Well, that child, when they have kids, That gene will be transmitted as off. So their kids are not gonna have a gene for eczema because they've turned the gene off with the food, nutrition, lifestyle changes that you have implemented, role modeled and enforced through their childhood and as they become adults, they'll continue that, their genes will be turned off and their children are now gonna to have to deal with illnesses that your generation or their generation had to do with.

Last question. So if you could wave a magic wand and bring back one ancestral practice, what would it be and why? There's two foods, sardines and organ meats. You're speaking my language now. I know. And that's why I was like, oh, you're tearing me up. Because they're nutritionally dense foods. Culturally, we don't eat them. Why eat? But culturally, people don' eat. And there, again, instead of leaning on supplements and buying, I make supplements too. But I am of the, please eat the food first, because mother nature has created the human body with the foods in the environment.

Our bodies know how to extract the nutrition, how much of it to, extract how, to use it as compared when it comes from a supplement. So I would bring back sardines and organ meats. Thank you so much. So before we go, though, I want you to share a how people can work with you, how they can follow you. And if you wouldn't mind also sharing about the supplements you offer, because I know they're unique. They're different from what most supplements contain ingredient wise. You can find me at Costco or Walmart shopping, showing you how to eat, not eat.

Many people meet me there and they're like, oh my gosh. And they watch the behind the scenes and then they are like this is really interesting. We can see me those stores. I'm on Instagram, TikTok of course. and it's DRANA Maria Temple, and I share tons of information from nutrition to ear infection tips, flu tips fever tips. Measles, we talked about measles. Whatever is current, I try to share. My goal is to empower, inspire, educate families to raise healthy kids with less medications, And I do that on my social platforms.

I have an online eczema program for anyone suffering with exima. Please don't do it yourself. We can make your life so much easier and get to the finish line faster. And I'm super excited about our supplement line. We have an organic vitamin D with just two ingredients. It's liquid. we have organic zinc liquid with a couple of ingredients, no natural flavors or preservatives.We have two eczema creams actually that don't have antibiotics or steroids in them. They're loaded with B12, which is powerful anti-inflammatory.

And up on deck is our organic zing gummy with amazing ingredients and less sugar. And we should be able to go into production at the end of February. We need that one like yesterday due to all the cold weather right now and everyone getting sick. Well, I so appreciated talking with you and it's just been lovely getting to know you. Obviously, they got a sense of your liveliness, of just your passion for what you do, but your social media exudes that even more so because there's so much even content, obviously, that we can encompass in an hour.

But I just really appreciate that you made the switch, that your courage to make the Switch. And we need more doctors making that holistic switch with you. So hopefully you're inspiring those people to do that and maybe even generations to come who become doctors to think about that. I think we are seeing a trend. It's turning in our direction of what we hope to see. But we're seeing the tides are turning and I'm very excited to what's next. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for showing up and thank all for joining us.

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