Why Are So Many Kids Sicker Than Ever Before? | Dr. Ed Sarraf, Pediatrician
Every parent wants to make the best decisions for their child. Yet never before have parents faced so much conflicting information about childhood health, vaccines, ADHD, allergies, asthma, anxiety, autoimmune disease, nutrition, immunity, and preventive care.
So how do you know who to trust?
In this thought-provoking episode of the Crackin' Backs Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Edmond "Dr. Ed" Sarraf, an integrative pediatrician who has spent more than two decades bridging conventional pediatrics with evidence-informed nutrition, lifestyle medicine, functional medicine, and holistic care.
After years practicing traditional pediatrics in hospitals and busy medical practices, Dr. Ed began asking a difficult question:
Why were so many children becoming chronically ill despite advances in modern medicine?
That question transformed his career—and continues to shape how he approaches children's health today.
This conversation isn't about choosing sides.
It's about asking better questions.
Together, we explore where conventional medicine has transformed pediatric care, where it may still have unanswered questions, and how parents can confidently navigate today's complex healthcare landscape.
In This Episode You'll Discover:
Why rates of ADHD, anxiety, allergies, asthma, eczema, autoimmune disease, and chronic childhood illness continue to rise
Are children actually getting sicker—or are we simply diagnosing more conditions?
Why vaccines remain one of the most challenging conversations between physicians and parents
How trust between parents and healthcare professionals has changed over the past two decades
The role nutrition, sleep, movement, stress, environmental exposures, and lifestyle play in children's health
Where conventional pediatrics excels—and where integrative medicine may offer additional tools
How parents can make informed, thoughtful decisions without being driven by fear or misinformation
What every parent should know before making important health decisions for their children
Whether you're a parent, grandparent, healthcare professional, educator, or simply interested in children's health, this episode offers a respectful, balanced conversation about one of the most important issues facing families today.
Our goal isn't to tell you what to think.
It's to help you ask better questions.
About Dr. Edmond "Dr. Ed" Sarraf
Dr. Edmond Sarraf is the founder of Southern California Integrative Wellness Center in Los Angeles. After completing his pediatric residency, he practiced conventional pediatrics before expanding his training in homeopathy and functional medicine. Today, he combines traditional pediatric care with nutrition, botanical medicine, mindfulness, and personalized lifestyle strategies, while continuing to serve as an attending pediatrician.
Follow Dr. Ed on:
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Facebook: HERE
YouTube: HERE
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Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast
SPEAKER_03
Every parent wants to make the right decisions for their child, but what happens when the experts don't agree? Well, from newborn care to chronic childhood illness, today's parents are navigating more questions and more confusion than ever before. Today, we're sitting down with integrative pediatrician Dr. Ed Sariff to explore where modern medicine excels, where it may fall short, and how parents can make informed, confident decisions for their families. Dr. Ed, welcome to the Kraken Bags Podcast.
SPEAKER_04Thank you. I love your energy and really nice to meet you guys. Same here.
SPEAKER_03Thanks, thanks. Hey, Doctor Ed, let's start by asking you you know, you've spent years in both conventional and integrative medicine. When you look at today's children, uh compared to when you first started practicing, what what concerns you the most?
SPEAKER_04Wow. Yeah, you know, uh everything. I mean, when you think about our own childhood and how we grew up, you know, um, there's so many more diagnoses that are happening. There is so much more chronic disease that right now is there that it never was. I give a beautiful quote, you know, um you know, when he was running for president, he was talking about, you know, when Reagan was president, only 5% of our kids were on medications at that time in the 1980s. Right now, you know, it's 55% of our kids that are on chronic medications. And for some reason, we're okay with that. You know, it's this slow increase, and we've just been accustomed, we rationalize that these numbers are okay. And here you have one of the most incredible systems in the world that's spending the most amount of money in the world, you know, for healthcare, you know, and what we really get is sick care.
SPEAKER_03Well, I'll tell you, you are a rare breed of pediatrician, and it in it it makes me ecstatic to ask you questions like like you mentioned just a moment ago that we're diagnosing more, but is it the kids are actually sicker or are we simply diagnosing more?
SPEAKER_04Very good question, because that always becomes part of the debate, right? The answer is yes and yes. You know, uh I mean, you can imagine how much, you know, you know, everything has changed, right? I mean, when it comes down to schools, so I'll use schools as one example to my patients all the time about how everything's gone wrong. And we can go with from schools to parenting to, you know, uh our own, you know, like government. You can go to um, you know, you know, every every facet, when you think about it, there's the our system has broken down. So let's use the school system, okay? When I was in, you know, I grew up in Beverly Hills area, I went to Beverly Vista Public School. And I remember when, you know, one of the things we did was we we played in an hour and a half, you know, of sports. So an hour fully, right? We just played in the middle of the day, right? We had to take showers, get ready, and then go back to, you know, classes. So during that time, I don't remember anyone taking an ADHD drug. So if your kid was moving, right, you know, it it was like wonderful. We expelled all that wonder wonderful energy. And if you can imagine ADHD boys, you know, the stereotype boys move a lot more, right, and stuff like that. Now we see that in schools, we say ADHD, right? Medicaid. Now the kid's totally fine one year. The next year that another teacher, you know, is there with different standards and starts labeling this child. And then the parents come to me and say, this kid's problematic, doesn't sit, doesn't concentrate. Now, sports in schools, many of them, is what, 30 minutes, maybe every day? Maybe. Maybe, you know, some lot of schools are, you know, three days a week, right? You know, so I mean that's that's sports, you know, and you know, and then what we did was we played afterwards, right? We played another two, three hours. We went home on our bicycles, and we went home, you know, we ate, usually got to your food. I'm gonna get to food next, right? And we and then we had this like you then you had the fingernail time and so on and so forth. So what happens next, right? What do schools do? So they remove our movement. There are we have and you know, we know movement, you know, releases brain-derived growth factor, for example. Our brain. Our brain needs it to grow, right? So it's not just body, not to mention our body, right? A lot of kids, you know, are getting obese, right? And, you know, and then we're how where is it during my time? Again, we really had a very small proportion of kids who are overweight. Overweight, low self-esteem, low self-esteem anxiety, then then all the chronic problems. So this is why, you know, you can see the transformation with time.
SPEAKER_00That's number one. Now, tell me, what do our schools feed our kids? Right?
SPEAKER_04Who is happy? Who is happy with their school system and what they feed the kids? Right? So I have a, you know, I I do want to read this because, you know, one of my best friends is married to one of the top people in the school systems, you know, when it comes to nutrition. And she came to take the job and she told me something a long time ago. And I texted her, I said, I want to know if I heard you correctly, remind me how much money, you know, that's spent on the food that the kids get. So I want to read this to you guys because it's sort of this morning. She texted me and she goes, the federal reimbursement is $4.71 for lunch, and California gives another $1.2, which totals $5.73, in which we have to serve a grain, a protein, a fruit, a veggie, and milk, and that includes the cost of labor to serve the meals. Okay? Straight from the horse's mouth, right?
SPEAKER_00She's one of the top people in there, and that's what she has to work with. So now how do you get good food on a plate, you know, with those numbers, right?
SPEAKER_04It's like insane, right? You know, you have so you have now ultra-processed foods that are coming in, you know, to in order to feed that, to feed the minds of the most important people in our in our in our world, you know, because if we're parents, we know there's only one thing I would give everything up for. You know, it's my kid. There's nothing I wouldn't give up for my kid, you know, in order to make that. But yet we're giving up the most important thing when it comes to the fundamentals of helping their brains and bodies grow efficiently. So you wonder, you know, okay, why are we having more of these problems, right? So, and that that was attached to the fourth thing that schools do terribly.
SPEAKER_00They started putting what in the classrooms. How do they grade things? How do the kids learn? What do they do more now that we we don't have? I didn't have it, you didn't have it. What's in front of them all the time? Screens? Screens? Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_04So schools are using screens more and more and more, you know, and you know, the question is we already have all this science that's showing how screens are terrible for the brain, right? So now the school system has gotten into it. Right? So now, you know, them getting into parental responsibility and everything else, right? But when you when you go into the one system that's supposed to, you know, help our kids learn and grow and stuff like that, you have the three most simple now screens. I I just went over an article that Denmark published just a little while ago that showed that there is this this generation Z is the first generation of cognitive decline in the history, you know, of humanity. The first time kids can process LAS, you know, their memory, executive function, able to learn, to reason, to solve problems, all of this is declining, you know, and you know, and when Denmark did their study, they said it's you know directly associated with screen time. So what they did for the 2025-2026 year, they removed all screens from the school system, all tablets, no phones, no nothing, you know, and what they realized that the kids were happier, their scores started going back up.
SPEAKER_00They started communicating again, you know, and they started learning differently, right?
SPEAKER_04So, you know, we, for example, like you know, if we want to learn, there's different ways of learning. I can listen to an audiobook, which is what I recommend all my patients, my families do. My moms and dads are very busy, right? We're all very busy. Now, I live in LA and you guys live in LA too, right? Which means that half of our life, more or less, right? Half of our life we're in the inner cars. So I recommend all families to always listen to podcasts, you know, read, you know, listen to books and stuff like that. But but listening is even different than reading. Right? Reading processes differently in our brain. The vocabulary, the comprehension, the pauses that we have in order to process something, and what you know stimulates inside of our hearts and our brains and stuff like that. So we need kids to read. Right? And, you know, and hit, you know, and so these are three major examples of only one thing, which is our soul systems feeling our kids. And it's a mini-cosm of all the bigger things that are there. Because we can take the same things and we can now extrapolate and expand it to every other aspect of our of our lives.
SPEAKER_03Is that study that you were talking about? Is that the one where they identified an atrophy of the myelin because they've they've spent so much time screen time and that they're therefore their neural, their nervous system is not processing fast enough? It's I mean, it's shocking what they're finding out about just the amount of screen time right now. Is there anything else that's trending that you see other than now if we move out of school, what else is going on that keeps you up at night?
SPEAKER_04Exactly. I mean, so the these are huge. So when when we so we we talked about the processed foods, the lack of physical activity and the screen time as being major things, right? Parenthood, now you go to parents, right? You know, so we have we all have responsibility in order to do the best that we can. Okay, so most parents allow a ton of screen time. I want to expand this now, right? The kids come home, now they go play their what are they Minecraft, which I call marijuana.
SPEAKER_00Okay, Fortnite, I call heroin, okay, and roller logs, I call cocaine, right?
SPEAKER_04So these are ridiculous, unbelievable dopamine releasers that kids do usually by themselves or with the friends that they have in the computer, right? So they have some different connections, and that's how they make their friendships now, right? A lot of them. So this is part of the rationalization. Well, that's how they do it. So we allow the worst drugs, you know, the bigger addictors, right? Smoking takes time and stuff like that, right? Alcohol, even, you know, it's it's that immediate, right? But these things, they are made to be unbelievably addictive, and somehow parents allow it because they don't want their kids to be left out. You know, but see, as soon as you start doing that, now you create a habit. You know, and as you so as soon as you create a habit, good luck breaking the habit. So, you know, so part of it is that, right? We allow these things that we don't know. And the study you talked about, this one was more talking about how neuroscientists were lowering the standards, you know, when it came when it comes down to standardized tests and the lower attention spans. So they're studying that, and they, you know, and these are the reasons that they do it. There's a lot of other things you can just, you know, Google ChatGPT and all the other stuff that you can now do in order to see a bunch of studies, you know, and there's a also beautiful book called The Anxious Generation, you know, that you know, breaks down in different segments what screen times does to them. And the guy's, I forget his name, and he's a national speaker now, did a beautiful job discussing the different ways that the you know brain gets affected, especially for kids, because anxiety is chronic. It's awful, it's horrible. It's so sad. These kids are on, you know, they they feel like they're on, you know, they're you know, they're all they're worthy to be doing anything, right? So that's that that's you know, and that's that's a big thing. Another thing is that, you know, with parenting, you know, when when I was a kid, you know, I had a lot of boredom time. And when we were bored, tough baboozo. I don't know if I can curse here, I probably won't, but you know, tough shit. You had to figure out stuff. I I I remember looking at the ceiling, for example, a long time. Then I got my rubber bands and I used to, you know, shoot flies outside. It doesn't matter because you spent a time with yourself, whatever you were doing. And I'm not killing animals or anything like that, so don't judge me, all right? I can see it in your eyes. You know? So really, you know, there was this the fact that we had boredom time allowed us to process. Now we don't have any boredom time, right? It has to be constantly stimulated, hence our attention span issues, right? Chronic attention span issues, in the ability to process, inability to wait and have delayed gratification. These are all big problems. You know, you keep you don't have delayed gratification. You get a generation that wants, you know, everything right now. They're not willing to work hard, you lose their drive, right? These become problems, right? Big problems, you know, because my generation, we have to figure out stuff. Our parents worked their ass off. It was not easy. You know, my parents lost everything. We were immigrants, we were one of the people, you know, from Iran, the revolution happened. We had to leave everything if we wanted our life. And my dad went from rags to riches, you know, self-educating, coming here to the United States, going back, figuring it out, becoming super, you know, uber-rich, but again, having to leave everything and restart. So when he when he restarted, he had to work extremely hard in a new culture and new thing. And times change. Everything is gonna get harder. Another thing that you have to look into later on, and it's not part of this discussion, is AI. And it was going to do in this generation with jobs. So when I think of my dad and how everything changed for him, because he was able to monopolize things in Iran, because they were just behind. You know, now AI is gonna remove a massive amount of jobs coming in the future. So we need these kids to be a thousand times more able to be able to figure out things, not the other way around. You know, so you know, so so we now, because our generation was tough and we figured a lot of things, we became extremely resilient. And we became, we were trivers, we were hungry. We were gonna figure things out. Now, this generation, you know, the same parents who went through hardship, they don't want their kids to go through hardship.
SPEAKER_00They feel that they want to protect the kids, right?
SPEAKER_04So everybody gets a medal, you know, when it comes down to winning and losing. Right? So you you remove that extra drive of losing. Right? Okay, if you lose, you're sad. You're sad, you're mad. You're mad, you know, it may be giving you extra drive to work harder later. But we we don't do that right now. We overly praise all the things that they do. Right? You know, from from when they're very little. So they they go to school and no one's overly praising them for everything. Right? You know, oh my god, you booty boo. That doesn't happen everywhere. So they go to school, they're like, holy, hold on a second. This is not real life. You know, what is it? Am I not good enough? Is there something wrong with me? Right? So these things start popping up faster. It used to be just during adolescence, so it's now a little sooner, right? We can go we can all go back and feel it all of that, but these guys are getting a bigger version of that, right? You know, and then and then uh what else? You know, and so we don't want to be disappointed. And one thing I thought about this morning, you know, I'm like, I want everyone to watch the movie Inside Out.
SPEAKER_00You know, the first one, right? Do you guys ever watch that? Mm-hmm. You did, right? Yep.
SPEAKER_04Do you remember Terry what it was about?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was about the brain and each character was a different emotion.
SPEAKER_00That's right. And what is the main emotion, what was the main driving emotion? So that was the that was the second inside out.
SPEAKER_04The first one wanted the kid to always be accepted, popular, yeah. Yeah. They didn't want to bring sadness. Yes, yes, right? You know, at all in there. So I you know, I remember I, you know, I shed a tear a long time ago when I first watched that. Because there's so such adult themes in there. It's such a beautiful, you know, some of these things have very, very beautiful adult themes in there. So when so I want parents, if they're listening to this, to understand that they can protect their kids, but they can allow them to be uncomfortable. They can allow them to try to figure it out and don't solve all their problems. Right? Give them some clues, but don't solve everything because again, you're removing, you're removing things from them. You're removing their ability to want to get better. Right? You know, the the kids who have everything, they're in trouble.
SPEAKER_00The kids who have nothing, they become more resilient, depending on how they navigate their life.
SPEAKER_04You know what I mean? So these are this is one of those very, very important things that parents have to take responsibility when it comes down to it.
SPEAKER_00See, Terry, that that that's why I cried at the Barbie movie. He always teases me about that. I should have watched that one.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, you're fine, Ed.
SPEAKER_04Okay, thank you. Okay, it's good. I'm waiting for some good shows again. You guys have to Yeah, yeah. Well, that's not one of them. Text means old, even the old movies were better. The the previous cartoons were so much better.
SPEAKER_02Oh, the old Warner Brothers were and the old Bugs Bunny, and oh my god, they were the best.
SPEAKER_04You know, and tell me whose fridge when they had it 30 years ago. Those things worked for 30 years. Yeah. They still work. There you go. They updated something, your fridge doesn't work again. You know, so almost Lip Bit Spencer, I think we need to go backwards. I swear to God, con sense, basics, right? You know, eat right, you know, start sleeping, you know, move your butt. You know, we don't do that enough. The kids don't do it enough. And remove that screen time. So the super, super basics, you know, are very important. Although, again, it's it's still more much more complicated than that. Because it's there's a lot of other things that are you know gone wrong in our system. But do you guys agree with all do you notice that in your athletes? Because I know you guys are you know in into super athletic, you're doing NFL and Miami and this and that. You know, do you guys go back into that specific thing with them, with with these you know, top athletes or not?
SPEAKER_03Not really, but we do see you know, like when the They're getting treatment on the table, they're on their phones, or they have to. But then there's some that I'm very impressed. Some of them they completely know how to disconnect. And that that that deserves some accolade because they don't want to be connected to anything. Even some of the adults do the same thing. They just I go, Do you I ask them, do you want your phone? And they'll say, nah, I just want to relax. You know. So I I do have a question for you.
SPEAKER_04You're dealing with an adult, by the way, too, that has a lot of things coming at them.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So a little different than the kids, because the kids' worlds are a little bit smaller. Right? So, you know, I'm I'm wondering, do the athletes, because I use athletes all the time. You know, because when my kids are into sports or I bring up sports all the time, I think it's one of the most beautiful EQ things you can possibly do. Right? You know, it's it's a connection, right? You know, with other humans. You know, I say, do you think LeBron does this? Or if they like tennis, Djokovic, or you know, I I bring up the sports stars. I say, do you think they eat this way? You know, how do you think, and if they if they want to be rich, I say, how do you think the entrepreneur spends their time? Do they read? You know, because reading is, you know, like we talked about. Reading is, you know, if they're doing screens, they're really not reading. And if us if they're addicted to streams, good luck going backwards. But it's much easier if they're addicted to reading, not to get to get addicted to screens. So one thing I want parents to know, because I know it's difficult. Um, look, some people have only, there's, you know, one parent households and they have to work. You know, other, you know, other times the parents are, you know, just not on the same page. People have to know that even if they're not together with their partner, they must sit down and plan these things ahead of time. Parents must be on the same page when it comes to parenting. They must listen to books. At 18 months, it's a big speech from me, for families. I give them different books that I think you should start listening to. I say, quote unquote, I don't believe in terrible twos, but you've heard you never want those terrible twos and three majors. I say, if you don't get prepared, you're gonna be feeling that you're always gonna be in a reactive mode. You're always gonna be behind. You're gonna create habits that it's gonna be so much harder to break later. So I when we do 80-20 with foods, right? We don't have to be perfect, 80% good, 20% junk, outside medications, whatever, I do the same thing. If you don't start habits early, right, you know, in the beginning it's 20% hard, right? You know, but if you have those bad habits and you want to try to break them, then it's 80% hard breaking it. So, you know, if you want your life to be miserable, right? If you want to go through this, I see it all the time, guys. And I have the best patient population in the world. You know, they're they're so fantastic, they're so into it. But I see this struggle for those who those who don't study. Okay, kids are a lesson for us, right? Kids are a lesson for us to grow ourselves, right? We are responsible for them. They're their only human being. We have to mold, protect them, you know, nourish them, you know, and and but guide them into different things so they can learn themselves and they can learn how to have an increased cognitive, increased resilience, increased adaptability, and connect to joy, you know, a little bit more other than what they're experiencing.
SPEAKER_03Dr. Ed, have you always been like this? Was there a time where you did conventional pediatrics and then had a epiphany or a uh you know realization that there's this isn't the right way?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, uh it's a very good question. I definitely was not always like this. It was lots of little epiphanies. You know, uh the biggest one is um after I graduated for two, three years, I worked in Bakersfield. You know, so I don't know if you know guys know Bakersfield. Bakersfield has a lot of one of the biggest farming, so lots of herbicides, pesticides. I remember as I was driving up from LA, the planes would be, you know, with the with the wings spraying that, and I would drive right through them. So you have all of this massive toxicity for the from you know from from you know from that. Then they also have a lot of oil. So now you have heavy metals in the community, in the environment, stuff like that, that's you know, you're you're getting cl you know just exposed to. And they're in a valley. So everything is trapped. So what I realized is, you know, I I I you know I was very conventional medication, you know, medicine. It was a you know, peel-for-nail approach, right? Conventional medicine, allergy, allergy medicine, headache, headache medicine, you know, you know, asthma, asthma medicine. So I went from excellent health into chronic allergies, chronic asthma, just like almost 80% of my patients. Right? You know, the those kids had so many ear infections that they didn't have one tube in the ear. They had the the ENT would just put three at a time because he would just come back, you know. Um, so you know, so whenever you look, there was three, and I've never seen it anywhere else in, you know, ever. So at that time, this was 20 something, you know, a little over 20 20 years ago, the AEP American the county pediatrics used to have a step-up approach for asthma allergies. So start with, you know, you know, some inhaled corticosteroid, then go to leucotrium, then go to advir and all of that. So they went out to control the kid. Now, guess what? I'm living in a cesspool, right? And I'm every two weeks we bring these kids back and they're still suffering. So at that time, I said, well, this is not working. So just by intuition, I said, no, I'm gonna go step down approach. When these kids come in, I'm gonna throw everything at them. I'm gonna take remove things one at a time, right? And if that worked, the kids would come in much less. Right. So that was, and then two years later, the American Canada pediatrics actually jumped into what I was doing intuitively. And I don't the reason I actually mentioned this is because we really need to allow doctors to use their intuition and their know-how and their, you know, and all of their learned abilities, and then share it with the AAP and our other, you know, academies, you know, to work together in order to bring the best things to light, not just a step-down approach where just a few people make all the decisions. Because you can pick up these things if there was an easy, like, hey, you know, there's like a little email line where you can just pretty much, you know, write down your thoughts and someone would be, you know, now you can have AI take a look at all of it and then summarize it for them. So that we can use all of our, you know, wisdom, all of our talents together. So what happened during those two years? I'm like, this is ridiculous. I do a much better job controlling kids. So I felt the fact that I was quote unquote better at that moment from a tradition. But I say there must be more to this. So when I decided to start my own practice, I took a homeopathic class through uh Boyron's C E D H. It's the number one homeopathic school for doctors. You know, and you know, homeopathy is voodoo. It doesn't make any sense. It didn't make sense to me, you know, before, but after it was magic. You know, it was incredible. It was like phenomenal. So instead of Tamil flu, we did Oscillo and Elderberry and stuff like that. And I saw kids get better in two days, you know, rather than you know, Tamil flu was still Tamuflu and those drugs decrease two days. They're supposed to decrease the duration. And if you really read it, it's two to three days. So if you do the drug, you know, instead of 10 days, it should be seven. You know, like, you know, that's and then there has all these different side effects that you have to like read and see if you have, because a lot of our patients who actually read, they see that they have some side effects. So, so I saw different magic. A one-year-old that wouldn't eat, I would put alfalfa homeopathic in the in the bottle. And then they, you know, they take it because that could stimulate appetite, right? They would take it and their appetite would increase, and the parents would text me and say, hey, this is amazing. Then their palates would run out, right? And the kids decrease their eating, and then they put it back in and it increased their eating. So here, you know, where homeopathy doesn't make sense, this is an incredible plus, you know, like if you may say that's placebo, well, that's a one-year-old, right? You know, and they didn't even create homeopathy. You know, Dr. Henneman 600 years ago in Germany. So there, you know, so when you start using different modalities, you start seeing if it works or not. Now, does it work for everybody? Well, no, it's not that one, but I've seen it enough. You know, some kid doesn't sleep, you give them this, they sleep and they don't, blah, blah, blah. Right. So there's a lot of the common parent problems. So what I did was when I took homeopathy, I started immediately using it. And I truly, it completely changed me. It just, my, my, my, my family members, my extended, my friends, immediately as I was taking the course, I would say, oh, this is this patient. Well, that's that personality. I would write down different personalities as I'm learning it. And I would immediately, you know, start using it. And I saw a huge change. So that was the first time I completely like shifted. It was incredible. You know, and often that I took a lot of functional medicine courses, you know, and and what functional medicine does, it really tries to get to the root cause. It explains things from biochemistry to biochemical to toxic load. So you have different ways of trying to understand the body. It gives you all and it also is world medicine, you know, so it adds lots of different ways of treating. So I started learning gemotherapy and herbs and some Chinese stuff, you know, and not everything, but because it's too much of a beast. Started doing different levels of testing. And each one of those, Spencer, changed me. You know, I got more excited. I was more in, and my my staff said, please, Dr. Ed, stop going to the courses. Stop changing things. Stop. Don't go. You know, but it it really made me fall in love, you know, with the process, and it made me who I am. So completely in, I mean, I walk to talk. You know, we I have to, you know, on my own supplements downstairs because our body doesn't do everything perfectly. You know, it's not, you know, food is wonderful, but you know, I always say to my patients, we are what we why. No. No, we're not.
SPEAKER_00We assimilate what we digest. Yes.
SPEAKER_04Thank you. We are what we absorb. We are what we absorb. We are what we assimilate. You know, so and I used to say we are what we think, you know, but I also realized that think, you know, which we think is also what we absorb. So I then put those two things together. So that's what part of what we are. The other thing that we are is we are what we cannot get rid of. Right? So we are what we can, right? So if things are inside us, you know, if you're constipated, if you're not, if the chemicals are already inside, if those forever chemicals are there, or their plastics are there, right? If those things are in there and it's having some effect already, that's part of us too. So that's how we, you know, sort of talk to people. I say we are, you know, we are what we absorb and we are what we cannot eliminate. So in functional medicine and that realm, you know, they really talk a lot about that. And that's how I evolved into who I am now. You know, and I mean these are part of it, but there's a lot of other crazy stuff.
SPEAKER_03Dr. Edder, I I want to I want to commend you on going against the grain of what traditional medicine is. And I think for the viewers and listeners, I think it's important to just kind of let them realize, because they're told by you know, to trust these experts, and then there's different experts, and then they often give something completely different as far as advice and different, you know, they don't know who to trust, especially now after this whole COVID and vaccine ordeal. But, you know, just as a as a as a realization that the curriculums in schools are age-old, and that's who educates the doctors that one of two doc types of doctors, the ones that that are like you, which are rare, and then there's those doctors that just continue with that same curriculum that they learned in school, and maybe the continuing education they do get is from the pharmaceutical reps. So, but I would love to ask you your thoughts on when I when the I mean there these there's these listeners that and viewers that are that have kids and they don't know who to trust and how. So, you know, if you could touch off on the vaccines and the social media and the public, I would love that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's um it's pretty difficult. You know, it's hard if your world is getting one message, it's hard to go outside the box. You know, the you know, so in medicine, let's just talk about medical school and residency. Um, again, first of all, Western medicine can absolutely be beautiful. It is very important. I I prescribe medicines. If I have a pneumonia, I'm gonna treat the pneumonia. If I have a kidney infection, I don't want it the kid to become septic. I will treat that and then I'll work on different mechanisms to help the gut heal that I've learned that they're not taught in Western medicine. So, you know, so so yes, we we we learn how to suppress things in medicine.
SPEAKER_00That's how we're taught.
SPEAKER_04And yes, it's not evolving fast at all. The world is evolving, you know, but Western medicine has it. It's very, very, very slow. The other thing with doctors, you know, you know, again, we're we're stuck in trusting organizations that, you know, I you know, again, I don't want to it gets complicated. It's it's it's hard to know exactly who to trust, like you said, because you know, I really think just when it comes to our academies and organizations, they need to remove any kind of um financial gain from from different models. You know, so you know that it's it's it's complicit. Like you, you know, people, doctors, everyone has to say, you know, um, you know, if if I own a company, I have to bring it up. You know, and this is what I own, this is what I gain when you guys in in Western medicine, there's you know, whether it's the CDC, NIH, you know, all these different academies, there are a lot of patents associated with it. You know, so I think people lose a lot of trust. And I did too, to some extent. I still thank God for Western medicine. You know, um, I I don't, you know, it has a very important role. You know, you have appendicitis, you better cut it out. You know, you only live to see another day. And there's certain things that you really have to, you know, you have to suppress. Otherwise, again, until you can figure out what's causing it. Um, I think that Western medicine needs to just pull down the guard and you know, accept world medicine. You know, who am I to say that Chinese medicine has been 5,000 years doesn't work? You know, and why don't we, you know, allow it to, you know, to be, you know, to work? And why not allow nutracy, nutrition as medicine? Like, you know, when I would constipate a kid, um, I give him some magnesium citrate and I give them some high dose vitamin C as I work on their diets and stuff like that. You know, if they text me like seven days late, I say, yes, put a glycerin repository or do a fleet enema. You see how we can be working together. But the vitamin C, guess what? It's it's a laxative in high doses. So it be you get diarrhea from it. So you can use a little higher dose to get diarrhea if you're constipated. And you know, and then you know, wash it out rather than mirror's, for example. Right? So there's so many ways, oh, even the omegas, you can do the same thing, right? You know, fish oil, you know, too much will give you diarrhea. Very few people affect their platelets and petichia, and it's so easy to check. Maybe one kid in my 20 years, which I had to slow down. And if they if something doesn't agree with them, we just adjust. You know, so why not put the world medicine? So a lot of doctors, I don't know. I mean, look, I want all the doctors to come and play the game. I know that they'll be happier treating their patients if they accept integrated medicine, you know, what you know, and then start taking other courses or demand the medical school and residencies to add that in. There's no classes on nutrition, really. If anything, maybe half an hour in our four years. You know, nothing. There's really not much, you know, I think is change you know, changing slowly, guys, but it's going to be extremely slow. You know, and the only way things will change is if, you know, there's more demand from both doctors saying, hey, a lot of these patients are asking me about heavy metals or mycotoxins or you know, glycephate or something like that. Can we check our kid? And none of them know how if you're just in traditional medicine. And there's not enough demand from traditional medicine to try to, you know, take some of these labs and really, you know, organize it in such a way where they are comfortable, you know, in the sense, okay, this is a lab that's we trust. They don't do that. So and there is a lot of labs, you know, and you're not, you know, even that is a little complicated because you know, you have to know which one to trust, you know, and you may get false positives and false negatives, you know, when it comes down to that. So it's not a super easy answer overall, but if they want, if parents, this is part of the parental responsibility that I'm telling talking about. If you know, if parents want to understand, they have to look at both sides, you know, you know, constantly, and then and then have friends or colleagues or something to sort of help them. Now, here's a weird thing. I am creating an AI version. You don't know this, I haven't told you guys this. You know, I'm creating an AI version of some of the things that I do because I'm I feel like I'm very much in the middle, you know, because I do use Western medicine. But I, you know, out of the, you know, I would say I use it 10 to 15% of the time. Right? Green burgers doesn't mean antibiotics to me. Ear infections doesn't mean antibiotics to me, right? I can do so many things. I can 80% of my ear infections, I don't have to treat with antibiotics. Right? You know, 50% of my sinus infections, I don't. Sinus is much harder. You know, but so we, you know, there's these, all these different things. So, you know, my little thing, something that's going to be, you know, released this year, we're working on it, it's called hello Eddie. And I will have wellness mentalities where what I look for in a kid to see if they're autistic or not, early on or not, all that kind of stuff. You know, um, you know, the second thing is the illness stuff. My kid's ear hurts. You know, you go and they say, Oh, you're it, you know, you go to the urgent care, your ear is red. Here's your antibiotic. Now, that's that's like 98% of the urgent care, you guys. Okay. So this is what happens when you go to urgent care. You get your antibiotic almost always. You know, and then and then my patients, they're very picky, they understand, they want less, they understand the gun microbiome is, you know, incredibly important. So they, you know, many times, you know, they come in the next day because they needed to just double check. They come the next day to double check with me. You know, about 30% of the time when I'm looking in the ear, it's full of wax. You can't see the eardrum. You know, I'm not, you know, I'm not sure the parents are like, see, you can't see anything. So how can how can you even know there's an ear infection or not? Then I go into the AP guidelines.
SPEAKER_00I see most ear infections are viral, right?
SPEAKER_04So you have to, you know, ear pain doesn't mean infection. Ear pain could be fluid in the ear, pushing on the eardrum. It could be sterile, so you don't need antibiotics. Ear pain can be viral. You know, so it's important that we understand that you don't need to treat every ear infections. And even this bacteria, you can, most of the bacteria I treat, but I don't, you know, but we can get away with it with the parent that is very, very on top of things and they come back and recheck quickly. Right. Because we don't want ruptured eardrums. We don't want something to go to the mastoids and all that kind of stuff. We don't want secondary complications, which are very uncommon, by the way. So going back to your first thing, the gut microbiome thing is getting killed by the antibiotics as well. Right. So uh going back to your question, um, vaccine stuff. So when it comes to who do they trust and stuff, it's getting complicated. Um our job as doctors is to give informed consent. Right? So that's that's a Hippocratic oath we took from the very beginning. The problem now is that that is essentially dead. You know, informed consent is very different than giving a bunch of sheets from the CDC before they leave. So this is what we used to do, and I'm I'm sure this is happening with a lot of practices. You come in, you give them their combo shots, everything, and then they leave with five sheets of paper that the CDC had written. And when you give them that, that's their informed consent. Right? So that's what happens in the majority of different places, right? So when it comes to vaccines, what I do is I go through every single vaccine. Okay, I talk to them about what is what, which is which, and do they work, do they not work, what's inside, you know, what is the first path effect of the liver versus being injected. You know, I talk about the immune system and how time changes the immune system. I look at the risk factors of their lives. So we discuss all the risk factors, you know, like where are they compared to other ones? You know, long families are fortunate enough that they breastfeed a lot. You know, most of my patients breastfeed, and most of them are not going to daycare at two, four, six months. So they can take a lot more risk, right? Only new vaccines versus the old ones. So we discuss each one, you know, and then we talk about, you know, timelines, and then we allow them to choose what's right for their family, right? You know, and then and one thing you have to notice, you know, you know, the first, what do you what do you say, the first two years is the most important for brain, then the next year, third year, then the next two years, the first five years. You know, so you have five years, you know. So anytime people decide to, if they let's say they were forced to do it for school, if they even delay some of that stuff until later, you know, responsibly, right, you know, they are decreasing some level of toxic load. So when you go through all of these, now this is you most people may not have context to what I'm talking about right now. You know, vaccines could be amazing, but they could be damaging. So this is very, very so it's very important that you understand why do I need a hepatitis B shot in a non-hepatitis P mom, for example, at birth. You know, so it wasn't made for infants in the beginning, right? The history is it was made for the high-risk groups, which you know, at that time it was what is it for? It was for you know um homosexuals that are doing high-risk sex, generally males, you know, and drug users. So that's why they made, because those are your that's where you get the hepatitis B. But those groups are stigma, or they were, or they are, or maybe I don't know now. These days I don't know anything. But, you know, they changed A-group to infants because they got the vaccines in. Does it work? Yes, it does decrease hepatitis B, but is any young kid at risk for hepatitis B? Right? You know, so I have families who come in, they're like, oh, you know, they're scared by their pediatrician. You want you may cut their nails and you know, and you may cut them and they may can get hepatitis B. This was literally a month ago. The fear that they brought up to the patient when it comes down to it. Yeah, not their parent had hepatitis B. But there's this misinformation part of it that's making it makes it complicated, you know. And then there's, you know, this slogan called safe and effective. You know, so it's it's beautiful. You see it enough and you have enough experts that say it, it becomes believable. You know, so okay, safe and effective, then remove the liability for pharmaceutical companies. You know, so because if it's safe and effective, then you know, so that's not gonna happen. You know, so it's complicated in a sense, because, you know, um, you know, you want studies done, you know, vaccined kids versus non-vaccinated kids, you know, in order to really understand how much it helps them. And the the latest studies, there's, you know, one that was, there was a University of Detroit that did a big study during COVID. And it was a very pro-vaccine doctor that uh compared vaccinated versus unvaccinated. He wanted to sort of tell the um, you know, family, sort of, I'm vaccinated, here you go. See, they're fine. And what he realized after the study, and again, this is through the university, very, you know, reputable doctor. What he realized that ADHD, sensory processing, behavioral issues, asthma, allergies all went on, right, when they're you know vaccinated. You know, so now I really want you guys to understand that I'm not at all anti-vaccine, you know, so and I'm not, I don't think I'm categorized that at all. And a lot of my patients vaccinate, you know. So what's important is, you know, what risk factor you are, you know, what level of risks do you want to take, you know, does certain things help the community or not? Do you have a family history yourselves of being more sensitive? Because we don't have specific gene testing and stuff like that when it comes down to, you know, it's coming. There's some esoteric things that says, you know, these may be associated. So I would really honor those families that have a history of vaccine injuries. And I would listen to, you know, right? It's not like they're all anti-vax. Most people are not anti-vax. Most people are ex-vaxxers, you know, whether it's personal or family member or friend or something like that. So that stuff again dehumanizes. And I I don't I don't want politics in my practice. So when it comes down to understanding this stuff, it's a little harder to sort of find the truth if you're Googling it. Because most of Google and stuff like that will be very one-sided. And also, here's the other problem. If you're also just Googling, you hit the other side, which is totally like against everything. There's no reason. There's no like, you know, that's where your anti-vax comes in with people who say something without doing any studying at all. So there's roles, you know, but we have to honor each family and their history and their risk factors. You know, we can't say I'm, you know, I'm okay, you know, just giving a whooping cough vaccine, you know, to some kid that has tons of aluminum, you know, formal diet, something that would have a family history of one, you know, you know, and rinse the damage to that kid for a long, long time, you know, just to say I'm protecting the community. Which again, it gets complicated because how well that works or not works is not brought up either. So what I do is I just really talk a reason. You know, I don't want I say I tell I give my patients every option to do everything. So you can back, you know, shoot every vaccine at the same time. But just so you're aware, there are no studies that studies all vaccines at the same time. So they they've studied them separately, you know, and then even those are a little bit complicated when you go into the ingredients of placebo or not, right? But there's no studies that do them at the same time. You know, so but because I give my patients options, some of them do all at a time, that's the minority. Many of them spread it out as the majority, and some people don't do it at all. And some people move for their schooling, right? You know, so so it's you know they take responsibility because they honor the kids' bodies. You know, and even that's very political.
SPEAKER_01Hey, Doc, I got I want your interject for a second. What do you what advice do you give when you have the person that either doesn't want to take the vax or you've in your exam discovered they shouldn't take the vax? Yet the the pressure they get from the school systems, the society, what advice do you get them of how to navigate that? Because if they want their kid to go to school, but the school's saying they they can't go without this stuff, how do you advise them?
SPEAKER_04It's complicated, Terry, right? So I I still say you're the parent, you have to take responsibility, you have to honor your kid's body, right? If they have no family history of different anything, you know, they can, you know, at a certain age they can start taking risks. You know, we prime them with homeopathy and we use different levels of detox pathways and spread it out. So a lot of people choose, you know, to do that way. Or they take the responsibility for their kids. There's different types of homeschools that allow a lot of kids, you know, in them. You know, and this is again very political. You know, a lot of my patients move. They're still with me because they can text video and audio anytime the kids get sick. But you know, if it's if they really want to be in a regular school system, you know, they you know, they decide to go to a school, you know, this state that doesn't force it. This is where I hate politics involved, you know, in you know, in in medicine. I it it's not right, you know, and but again, this is a naive, very naive ways of talking. It's not right. You know, medicine should be in what I mean pure, right? I learned a lot of things. I'm like, oh, wow, world medicine is so beautiful. Oh, vaccines. There are people who sat down in front of me that talked about how their kids changed, you know, and they told their doctor. And the doctor said, Oh, don't worry, you know, just give some talent all and stuff like that. The kid is feverish for about three days. This is the typical story that I learned. Okay. Feverish three days, squealing and sleeping a ton more. And then they, you know, they don't, and then when they wake up and stuff like that, and that's gone, they don't recognize. And the first person who usually notices this is the mom. And they're usually telling the doctor, calling them, and then the doctor says give Tylenol, which again reduces glutathione, which is one of the more important protectors, right? So as you go through this, none of these people are related to one another. This is about a little all shock to me. I never traditionally never talked about this stuff, you know, at all. You know, so uh so when I just listened and I listened deeply, and the stories were the same among a lot of inf individuals, then I'm like, wow, you know, I need to, you know, really go much more deeper. That's when I went really deep into trying to learn every vaccine, what they are, how to work, stuff, you know, everything like that. And the history of disease, you know, and how, you know, when did the vaccine come in, what it did to, and all that kind of stuff. So again, there's a role, but it needs to be much more flexible. And it's hard to be flexible. It gets dirty. You know, it's you know, you know, it's much harder for a doctor, right? As well. You know, you have to take time to counsel, you know, and good luck. You have 15 minutes and you have no education. So now, I mean, how do you do it? You you can't, right? You're supposed to do things really, really fast, you know, and I used to do that. And, you know, I when when I was super traditional, I never thought twice about it. You know, and it was just part of when I said, yeah, yeah. And I used to say, yeah, those are just anti-vaxxon. That's exactly, but when I listened and I started learning, you know, I took that red pill, right? A matrix. You know, and when you do that, your life gets much more complicated. Right. But there is freedom. And with that freedom, you have to then learn a lot more. So I took a lot more responsibility, which every parent has to do for themselves. So no anti-vax here at all. I know each role. I know when I'm going to give each one to my kid and stuff like that, how I'm going to give it, why I'm going to give it. I feel in control overall, and I may have to move, you know, fully. I don't know, you know, and and if I have to, fine. Or, you know, if I home have to homeschool, I will. But, you know, I cannot, you know, say that I, you know, I don't break the law. So that's the problem, right? So, you know, if you want, you know, if you want change, it has to be done where parents say, hey, you know, we want, you know, we need, we need more information. We need to, we have this something happened to our kids, or why do we have 55% illness, right? We need to examine all of these parameters, not just vaccines. Lysophate, mycotoxins are horrible. You know, very complicated. I can't tell you how many kids, when I see and treat mycotoxins in my practice, how much of their behavior changes. Unbelievable. They're feeding, they're, you know, their tomb shrimps, you know, their chronic conditions improve. You know, it's completely missed in Western medicines, right? Parasites we don't talk about, right? You know, so we have to think about that. Lyme is so underdiagnosed, right? So there's a lot of things that we're not thinking about. So we, and we really need to. But, you know, if nothing else, we still have to come back to the basics, right? You know, eat whole foods, nutritious, remove as much pesticides and herbicides as possible. No one has to be perfect. Okay, so you know, I hope they're not perfect. I say I don't want you to be perfect, because that's a lousy life. You know, you know, you know, sleep well, figure, you know, don't do screen time anywhere close. Make sure you put strong rules associated with screen time in the beginning. From two up, whenever you start introducing, there's rules. Grandma gives you some gift, you know, before you open it, you say, These are the rules if you want me to open it. Is that agreed on? Every kid, yes, daddy, yes, mommy. I'll stick to yes anything because they want to play. Right? But that's your rule. Now you have to enforce it. So put the rules before you bring the vice, right? The device is your biggest vice. So put the rules in and then make sure you have plans for them. Right? Activity. Move with Ludus Maximus. Get into a team sport, it's wonderful. You know, start playing music, it changes it. Start reading, you know, learn a foreign language, go outside and hug a tree. You know, work with nature, learn about nature. You can use your AI and you should use AI to some degree, because they that's their life, which is like again, uh, you know, I haven't figured this out. It's gonna be horrendous, you know, with what's gonna happen, you know, next. So, so you know, that's the real thing I would say. I don't have a very easy answer, but you know, first parents have to have to get educated, you know, and no matter what, they have to take responsibility. And I feel horrible for the single parent that's in survival mode, you know, that lives in certain states that they force them because, you know, then you sort of like completely give away. And God forbid you have a family history, because all the people will be lucky, you know, and they'll be okay. But there's also a lot of people, and I'm talking about, you know, in the millions, that are not, you know, and then you see that, you know, you see that in the payouts, you know, when it comes down to vaccine injuries overall that it's not talked about, and you know, and that's a minimal of what what's real out there. So so not an anti-vaccine, pro health, vaccine-informed, make wise informed decisions when it comes down to it. Decrease your toxic load as much as possible, because, you know, and then start demanding more. Demand more from your doctor, demand more from your government, you know, but it's a big, massive lift. Guys, I have no idea. You know, the only good thing, I'm gonna leave you with this, or you know, I don't know I think we're running out of time, right? But, you know, the the good thing is I think there's a trend right now that's starting to shift more into wellness. That there's more and more parents, you know, wanting to have some alternatives just to their ads on medication and allergy medicine. So I think that there are even doctors may start getting stimulated in terms of learning more. So I'm praying for that. You know, people, you know, with your shows and all that kind of stuff, you know, and what I will do, I'm um I'm, you know, part of my Hello Eddie app is really interviewing people who do things differently, bringing their magic to light, you know, whether it's when it comes down to panda syndrome or autism or you know, we have miracle stories where, you know, I had a kid on six seizure drugs, you know, C, you know, CHLA, nothing worked. They came to me, you know, went to, you know, we had to hospitalized. As soon as they came to me with the hospitalizer at Cedars, and then Cedars was giving the same drug. She's like, the mom's like, I've already done this. So they're recycling. So when they came to me, I got a teen integrative approach. We helped clean the gut, you know, and then we started giving different minerals and vitamins and stuff like that, and absorption, detoxification, pathways, and stuff like that. You know, this they joined me, I think, four years ago, right? It took us, you know, a year and a half to go down to one drug, you know, and then she's off drugs for the last year. So she's drug-free. You know, zero medications. This is a very complex seizure disorder. These are people I'm going to interview because I want people to have hope in order, you know, when they have these chronic conditions, that it's not just a pill for an ill approach. We need a lot of more functional medicine doctors, integrative doctors, all the doctors where they have their own kids and they're suffering. Because I see different doctors and they're, you know, they have kids who have chronic conditions too, right? And they're stuck themselves. So I'm hoping all of them get stimulated in one way or another, not being anti-anything. I'm not anti-medicine. Every drug they give, I give, if I need it, I just give it so much less. You know, so I feel so much better when it comes down to it. Dr.
SPEAKER_03Ed, that was a very smooth landing into the end of the program, and I really commend you on going against the grain of what traditional medicine has unfortunately provided. And I think you're really turning the tides. No, I don't think. You are absolutely turning the tides on the perspective, starting with the parents, and those are the strongest voices. Uh Dr. Terry, I know that we have to have him on again because we have 10,000 other questions for you that we couldn't even get to. You answered everything so deliberate and so clear, and I appreciate having you on the show.
SPEAKER_04Thank you so much, you guys. I really appreciate you. We're all in it together, traditional doctors, meeting non-traditional doctors, holding hand in hand, learn from each other, you know, so we can advance and do the best thing for why we became doctors. And counter correctors don't get enough credit. I'm glad you guys do. You know, it's it's incredible the magic. I use craniocycral therapists with my infants on, I'd say once a year, they should, you know, the older kids because their postures are sort of ridiculously horrible because of this. And I'm like, you know, if you want an AI not to hurt you, be become an orthopedic doctor because all the next surgeries are going to be just so ridiculous and so massive, you know, later on. You know, a lot of chiropractors do a lot of functional medicine as well. So I really appreciate your role. Because, you know, when I was in medicine, there were several chiropractors in my medical school, and we didn't really understand the incredible role you guys play. So I'm glad you guys broke out, but I want the world to understand that each of osteopathic doctors, naturopathic doctors, homeopaths, you know, you know, midwives, all of these different beautiful people need to be brought in for unity. You know, there's there needs to be unity among us. And I and I'll leave you really with this. This is my last thing. My holding company is called Fun, which is which which we'll do, you know, which will bring up different labs and different things that I'm later on what I'm gonna do. It's called fun stands for freedom. We need, you know, freedom to choose, to understand, to think critically when it comes down to things, right? Unity, unity between all of the different modalities of treatment. You know, N is for nurturing. We need to stop gaslighting, we need to listen and understand and be much more nurturing than we do. And then the other end is for nexus. You know, the nexus connects all of these things together. So you know that represents who I am. This is why I love you know this. I we I you know, I want that unity to happen so that everybody has more freedom and much more understanding when it comes down to this incredible, most important thing, which is our health. So thanks again, you guys.