Smart, Actionable Strategies for Childhood Resilience, with Dr. Elisa Song

Dr. Elisa Song is one of those clinicians that I could just keep talking to! She’s a respected colleague and pioneer in pediatric functional medicine with so many practical tips for navigating childhood illness and health. Need to get your kiddo/patient through a blood draw they don’t want to do? Or get your picky eater to take their supplement? Dr. Song has the answers. I appreciate her candor as she talks about how and why her practice has evolved in certain areas (such as in the use of targeted probiotics and even “psychobiotics” for autism, ADHD, anxiety, OCD and more) and in spelling out which supplement brands and doses she uses and why. Dr. Song tackles the immense challenges impacting the health of our kids and teens head on with positivity and smart, doable strategies for lasting success. This is a fascinating and empowering discussion with many clinical pearls that I will be implementing both in practice and for my own daughter going forwards. I hope you enjoy it too! ~DrKF

Smart, Actionable Strategies for Childhood Resilience, with Dr. Elisa Song

In today’s complex landscape, children face the alarming reality of potentially having shorter lifespans than their parents, largely due to the detrimental effects of ultra-processed foods, high sugar consumption, and the stress of fast-paced lifestyles. These factors contribute to negative changes in the gut microbiome, exacerbating metabolic issues, allergies, autoimmune diseases, and neurodevelopmental disorders.

However, amidst these challenges, Dr. Elisa Song offers a beacon of hope. She advocates for a transformative approach that emphasizes the use of whole, nutrient-dense foods as medicine to support children’s health from the inside out. By educating and empowering both practitioners and parents, Dr. Song provides practical strategies to foster resilience in children. These strategies include optimizing sleep patterns, harnessing the power of probiotics and psychobiotics to enhance mood and neurological function, and so much more. Dr. Song’s breadth of experience is sure to leave you with many pearls for your practice and empower you to make positive changes in pediatric health.

In this episode of New Frontiers, learn about:

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Hi, everybody. Welcome to New Frontiers in Functional Medicine, where we are interviewing the best minds in functional medicine. I am delighted to have the amazing Dr. Elisa Song back here on New Frontiers. Let me remind you who she is, and then we are going to jump into a tour de force conversation on all things pediatrics. In 2005, the New England Journal of Medicine stated that for the first time in history, our children are expected to have shorter lifespans than us, their parents. The time to revolutionize pediatric medicine is now. Dr. Elisa Song, MD, is a Stanford, NYU, UCSF-trained integrative pediatrician, pediatric functional medicine expert, and mom of two thriving and amazing kids. I added that amazing. She’s on a mission to revolutionize the future of children’s health. Dr. Song is the best-selling author of Healthy Kids, Happy Kids: An Integrative Pediatrician’s Guide to Whole Child Resilience. She created Healthy Kids, Happy Kids at. I’ll put the URL, we’ll put the URL in the show notes, as an online holistic pediatric resource to help practitioners and parents bridge the gap between conventional and integrative pediatrics, with an evidence-based, pediatrician-backed, mom-approved approach.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – In her integrative pediatric practice, she’s helped thousands of kids get to the root cause of their health concerns and empowered parents to help their children thrive by integrating conventional pediatrics with functional medicine, homeopathy, acupuncture, herbal medicine, and essential oils. She’s lectured all over the world. She’s been featured in every publication out there. She’s got an awesome platform and I actually, avidly follow her on Instagram. I love your posts, Elisa. Welcome. Welcome to New Frontiers. So listen, you went the very conventional route for your training, and you were probably – I’m going to guess, tell me –  anticipating moving into a conventional pediatric role. But here you are just really practicing this very smart, informed integrative medicine. So I just want to know your story and your transition into this world.

Dr. Elisa Song – Yeah, so actually, I went into medicine thinking that I wanted to do something more holistic and integrative.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – And why is that? What prompted that? Where’s that piece of the story coming?

Dr. Elisa Song – Well, it’s like a series of weird circumstances, right? They say nothing in life is an accident, but, when I was wandering around the Stanford campus, I was probably all of 19, you know, 20,  I was a junior, and I was all set. I had taken the LSATs, I was getting my applications for law school, and I was going to be a children’s rights advocate. Not even health, but just overall a children’s rights advocate. And I saw this flier on one of the telephone posts, and it was a flier for the American Holistic Medical Association, which doesn’t exist anymore. This was maybe 1989, 1990, right? It was a while ago. And so whatever got a junior in college to drive themselves down to this conference, I have no idea, but I decided to go.

Dr. Elisa Song – And I heard from these people who were really starting to just get known, like Andrew Weil and Deepak Chopra and Joan Borisenko, and I mean, literally, my mind was blown. I was like, what is this thing called holistic medicine? Because I grew up with an OBGYN mom. It was pretty conventional. And so I remember at that point I called my mom and I said, you know, mom, I think I want to be a naturopathic doctor. And I told her about this college called Bastyr and she was like, what’s that? And that was kind of the common refrain, especially back then, where being an ND really wasn’t as common. And she didn’t discourage me. Nobody discouraged me. She would have supported whatever I wanted to do. But, you know, a lot of people said, you know, if you really want to be a doctor, maybe you should go get your MD first.

Dr. Elisa Song – And so that’s what I did, because, you know, the steps were not quite as clear to me. And I didn’t like any of it.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Wow.

Dr. Elisa Song (00:04:30) – I remember even in med school, you know, I tell this story every single year in med school, starting from my first year there, I would go to the dean of medical students and say, “I don’t think this is for me. I don’t see what I want to do for the rest of my life.” And she would say, “Just stick it out one more year or wait till your clinical years or, oh, you’re a fourth year, you only have one year left. You might as well finish.” And so it was just this thing and the same thing in residency. It was interesting and I love that we could put out fires and help kids in crisis, but it was really disheartening to see the number of kids who were just really, even at that time, getting sicker and sicker.

Dr. Elisa Song – And another flier landed right on my lap at that point. It was the flier for the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, Food as Medicine conference in Berkeley back in, I want to say it was maybe 2000 or 2001, so almost 20 years ago. And again, mind blown. What is this concept called food as medicine? It really matters that much? And I heard a young Mark Hyman talk and it totally changed my trajectory. So I really think that  these two points, or you know, whatever divine intervention, informed what I wanted to learn, how I wanted to practice, what kind of pediatrician I wanted to be. And so, here I am. When I opened up my practice in 2004, it was as an integrative, functional pediatric practice and just so grateful to have been able to navigate this path. But, you know, it’s been a lonely path at times, and I’m so glad that there are more and more pediatricians and family practice docs who are pursuing this route.

Dr. Elisa Song – But we need so, so many more. I mean, we need so many more practitioners who are really willing to see children and take this on.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Yeah, absolutely. Your book is very welcomed in our space. I mean, it’s needed. To your point, as you and I were dialoguing via email and just back and forth before I hit record, all of us have huge questions all of the time on the black box that is our pediatric patients or, you know, how do we dose? What labs do we do? Honestly, they are such common questions. So just for those listening, first of all, go to the show notes, all of the appropriate links to any papers that we reference, all of the stuff will be over there along with the transcript, and the book of course. And then, I will ping Dr. Song to nail her down for thoughts on dosing and labs and so forth as we move through this, because I know that’s the number one question that we always face in this space.

Dr. Elisa Song – In the book, guys, I mean, I know this is a practitioner podcast, I wrote this book for practitioners so that you don’t have to spend all that much time explaining to your patients and families why their microbiome is so important, how to get kids on board to really support their microbiomes. And I have dosing and test guidelines in there. And of course, happy to talk more because that is one of the biggest questions. How do I dose for kids? How do I extrapolate from adult research into this child in front of me, which, you know, it’s really not a perfect science there because we know kids aren’t little adults. But sometimes it’s the best that we have. And what I hope to be able to offer is some of that research, some of the kids-specific research. And also, since I’ve been doing this for 20 years, there’s just so much clinical experience in all of this.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Yeah. A ton of experience. I mean, still, one of my favorite resources is the Pangborn and Baker book, if anybody can get it. It’s very old at this time. But of course, Sid Baker is the father of functional pediatrics and he had all sorts of pearls in that old book. We’ll link to that as well on the show notes just in case you might be able to scrounge up a copy somewhere. So let’s get to it. Kids are actually expected to have a shorter lifespan than us. I mean, what the heck is going on?

Dr. Elisa Song – Yeah. I mean, and that paper was from 2005. That was almost 20 years ago, right?

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Where are we at now?

Dr. Elisa Song – We are not any better. That should have been a wake-up call and if we don’t wake up, life is not going to be looking good for our families.

Dr. Elisa Song – I mean, I hope to be a grandma one day and I want life to be rosy for them. I want them to know that having something not quite right with them is not normal. And that’s one of the most tragic things I see today is, for a lot of parents and families who are younger now, they don’t realize what “normal” should look like. It’s “normal” for a kid to be super fussy and colicky as an infant or, “oh yeah, they have a little eczema here and there, that’s totally normal for kids, right?” Or, “oh, they’re wheezing every once in a while. That’s normal. They have some anxiousness or behavior concerns or sensory concerns, all of that we’ve kind of normalized in our society and we need to step back and think, well, really and truly, is that normal? And I will say, I mean, I am in my 50s now and absolutely no.

Dr. Elisa Song – When I was in medical school, I still distinctly remember one of my attendings telling me, you should never, ever put anything stronger than hydrocortisone 1% on the face, right? And never, ever in the diaper area. And now we have kids who are lathered with triamcinolone and just stronger and stronger steroids all over their bodies, right? To the point that one of my patients, it was a new patient who came to me, and he was in adrenal crisis because of the topical steroids he was placed on. Not even oral. And another patient who was being hospitalized frequently for IV steroids and antibiotic IV for her superinfections and was about to be put on cyclosporine for her eczema. I mean, this is not okay. And so, for practitioners, we just really want to step back and think, well, why on earth is this happening? And the same thing with adults, right? We’ve seen in the adult population, really since the late 1900s, this explosion of chronic disease in kids and for children, I mean, nearly 1 in 2 kids has some sort of a chronic diagnosis today and that number is climbing.

Dr. Elisa Song – The eight in ten adults- I mean, during the pandemic, the World Health Organization, I remember this flier, this image that was posted that 8 in 10 people worldwide will die of NCDs. I had never heard of NCDs before the pandemic. It stands for  noncommunicable diseases. So not infectious diseases, but entirely lifestyle-related diseases. And so our kids are heading that way.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Let me just state that we’ve swung back to bringing communicable diseases into the mix with the advent of Covid, and the same lifestyle factors are dictating poor outcomes to that. So it’s almost like we’ve gone in a rather tragic, you know, full circle.

Dr. Elisa Song– Yeah. Absolutely. And so, let’s talk about poor outcomes and Covid. There’s one paper, Dr. Sabine Hazan, who noted and found that people with poor Covid outcomes, it was correlated with a lack of Bifidobacteria in their gut, in their microbiomes.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – In adults.

Dr. Elisa Song – Right. In adults. I would love to do research around this, but I fully believe that so many of our kids who are presenting very early on in life with chronic health concerns, it is due to this loss of Bifidobacteria. And why is Bifidobacteria so important? I mean, we know there are so many health benefits for kids and for adults, but one of the major benefits is supporting our butyrate-producing microbes like F. prau (Faecalibacterium prausnitzii), which you can measure with the Genova GI Effects, you can see how much F. prausnitzii, and akkermansia you have. And so, with Bifidobacteria being depleted, and we can talk about why that is, and now these butyrate-producing species also being depleted, I mean, butyrate is one of our master, master regulators of overall health in kids and for adults. So, you know, unfortunately, just yet, there’s not an amazing way to get butyrate into kids because it’s just awful smelling and tasting.

Dr. Elisa Song – But yes, you can take butyrate as a compound, but butyrate is one of our most important postbiotics. It’s a fermentation product of our probiotics in our microbiome. So it would be awesome to have more innate production of butyrate with the help of our microbiome. And so, some of the factors, I think when we look back at what period of time chronic disease really started to increase, it was probably in the late 1960s, 1970s that we really saw a more rapid increase. When we look at ANA positivity rates in distinct age groups, there was one study, this was just last year, that looked at different age groups through the decades and found that the group with the most rapid rise in ANA positivity rates were our teenagers, 12 to 19 years of age. And from the late 1980s to about the early 2000s, the rates doubled in our teenagers.

Dr. Elisa Song– And then, from then until now, rates have tripled. And so, there’s something going on and when we look at what changed dramatically in those late 1900s, it’s our food. Our food and psychological stress. I think those are the two things that really we can’t underscore how dramatically different that is. And in fact, in my book, I write about 1953 as I think that is one of the pivotal dates. And what was 1953? It was the year that Swanson came out with its first TV dinner tray, on aluminum, no less. But it was the first TV dinner tray that within a year was selling millions of units because who did they target? The stressed-out mom who didn’t have enough time to cook and be the superwoman? And wow, you could get in 10-15 minutes, just like home-cooked meals on the table for your family, right? I mean, way to tug at a mother’s heartstrings, right? Well, that original Swanson Dinner TV tray has won a spot in the Smithsonian Institute of National Sciences, an honor for forever changing the way Americans think about food.

Dr. Elisa Song – I mean, think about that. Think about that. And ever since then, think about the explosion of ready-to-eat, frozen dinners and packaged foods, which have since then become more and more ultra-processed. And we can see that in the literature. Many of the FDA food additives –  which, by the way, there are over 3000 food additives in this list that they call “everything added to food in the United States.” I mean, it’s kind of comical – but 3000 and many, many of them, we know, can directly trigger zonulin release and cause leaky gut. Many of them directly can cause gut dysbiosis. And what we’ve seen also is this surge in psychological stress in our populations, you know, the busy, busy, busyness of our modern world, which is why many families need to use packaged foods and frozen dinners because we’re so busy.

Dr. Elisa Song – But that busyness and inability to engage our vagus nerve, engage the gut-brain connection, also, I really think has directly impacted our microbiomes. And one study found that the heart rate variability of children today is much lower than the heart rate variability of historical controls of children in the past.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Wow. And can you give me numerical data on that?

Dr. Elisa Song – I don’t have- I’ll pull up the paper…

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Can you guesstimate? I’m just curious. Okay. We’ll grab it and pop it in the show notes for you guys.

Dr. Elisa Song – So it’s really fascinating. Let’s get back to Bifidobacteria. I want someone to write a paper or book just on Bifidobacteria. But there’s a microbiologist, I want to say he was from Scotland, who actually measured the microbiomes of breastfed infants back then, 100 years ago, formula-fed infants, and found that the breastfed infants had nearly 100% Bifidobacteria in the microbiome.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Yes. I was just going to ask you that. Yes.

Dr. Elisa Song – Fast forward now and when we look at the gut microbiomes of breastfed babies versus formula-fed babies, the gut microbiomes of our breastfed babies today look much more similar to the formula-fed babies of 100 years ago. So we can see the significant change. So, I think all of the downstream effects—

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – But even our healthiest cohort, the breastfed babies, are looking like the least healthy cohort of a hundred years ago. That’s a really astute point. So much incredible information is being generated by sort of the bifido-gut-immune axis. The microbiome-immune axis. I think, and correct me if I’m wrong, but bifido was key in the establishment of tolerance, for example, really early on. And that would influence, of course, allergic disease, which is totally rampant  in autoimmunity, and probably the neurodevelopmental stuff that you’d referenced earlier. I’m sure this whole loss of tolerance or inadequate tolerance, because it sort of exists on a continuum.

Dr. Elisa Song – Well, and that could be. I mean, there are studies on particular Bifidobacterium infantis that is readily available on the market, and it points to that loss of tolerance and the protective nature of this B. infantis in reducing our allergic atopic risk in infants and children, which we know is so high right now. The number of kids who need EpiPens, and 1 in 5 kids has eczema, 1 in 10 has asthma. What’s interesting, though, is that Bifidobacteria need, in that infant microbiome, our human milk oligosaccharides to thrive. And so, I wish that this particular company would combine the Bifidobacteria with—we can now, we have human milk oligosaccharides analogs, right, that are available in the market. So, 2′-Fucosyllactose (2′-FL) is the most prevalent. HMOs – they’re called HMOs –  found in breast milk.

Dr. Elisa Song – I think that the benefits right now-  When they first came out, they said that this probiotic was only for breastfed babies. And that’s why. Right? But even formula-fed babies or infants who are supplemented with formula, they can absolutely have that benefit if they also have a source of 2′-FL.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – And I think that there are some formulas now savvy to that and adding those human milk oligosaccharides. Boy, if anybody is listening here that wants to jump on an incredible probiotic combination, it’s huge. So there’s this movement into processed foods, and we just blogged on it. I just want to throw it out there. We just blogged on ultra-processed foods, and the fact that the damage that they’re now associating with the ingestion of them, really is dwarfing the impact of smoking, believe it or not. They’re really starting to quantify the toxicity of these 3000 plus chemicals that we’re ingesting. And that mom whose breast milk is less effective, even though it’s still incredibly essential, is probably consuming these so-called foods.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – I feel like we need to put them in quotes. I was talking to Romilly about this. We need to put food in air quotes. It’s not. They shouldn’t even be allowed to be sold in grocery stores. They shouldn’t be considered food. We should treat them like alcohol, you know, and in Connecticut, where there’s all sorts of regulations-

Dr. Elisa Song – Oh my gosh. Wouldn’t that be amazing. Right?

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Yeah. So these so-called foods that we’re consuming that are damaging us and influencing our microbiome negatively and allowing the onset of these illnesses, these conditions.

Dr. Elisa Song – Well, and that’s where, you know, I truly think one of the most important things that we can teach our kids and our families is how to be savvy food label readers. I think that is hands down- If we can do that, because it’s not necessarily a reality for most that they can home cook every single thing, and ultra-processed foods doesn’t mean every single packaged food.

Dr. Elisa Song – And so, recognizing how to really be savvy and understanding that even the foods that, you know, moms, practitioners, we’re doing our best, there are certain aha moments of like, oh my gosh, I didn’t realize that that ingredient is one that I should avoid. Like, mono- and diglycerides are ones that I’m avid about telling my kids, if you see that you got to run away because that is going to wreck your microbiome and your immune system. But I think that could change the trajectory of our whole future, you know, the world’s health. It is so important.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald) – That’s fascinating. And, we need to circle back and come to the medications, but give me the top list of must-avoids if we’re going to be savvy label readers And also, what are the packaged foods that are reasonable.

Dr. Elisa Song – Yeah. So that’s one of the keys. Right? And the other thing is-  because now there’s a lot of pushback from certain groups about, of course we don’t want to label any food as blanketly bad or good, and we want our kids to have healthy relationships with foods, but at the same time, there are foods that are outright just really not good for you.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Horrible. I mean, again, air quotes, you know, like it’s not food. So yeah, to your point, we do need to be mindful, but we also need to call a spade a spade. This isn’t food you know and these greater powers that be have ushered it in under the food heading and created this false sense of acceptability and safety. And it’s not.

Dr. Elisa Song – Yes. I mean, we should be outraged at what the FDA allows in our food, but also our babys’ food and our kids’ food, and part of that is, when we look at it, if children had a balance of really amazing, microbiome-nourishing foods almost all the time, and then every once in a while the rainbow-colored unicorn Frappuccino thing snuck in, that would be one thing. But some of the studies have shown that children and teenagers consume at least two-thirds of their diet as ultra-processed foods. This study was adults, but found that 50% of their sugar intake now is in the form of these sugar-sweetened beverages like boba teas and frappuccinos and sodas and all of that. For some teenagers, it’s at least that. Right? I have teenagers who are going to Starbucks or Boba with their friends every day after school. And I will tell you, our kids’ bodies, their metabolism, their metabolic health has changed.

Dr. Elisa Song – As an integrative pediatrician, I do way more lab work than most pediatricians. Right? But whenever I have the opportunity to check a fasting blood sugar, a fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1c, the kids who are showing signs of insulin resistance and tipping towards type two diabetes, in my practice, they are not fitting that mold of being overweight or obese or sedentary. These are “healthy” on the outside, active, athletes, slim, and their insulin is either outright high or they’re right at like 17 or 18. Right? So we really need to think about what this is doing. Doesn’t necessarily matter what you look like on the outside. It is not about how you look. It’s not about the number on the scale, but really about being metabolically healthy, even for our children. And I would say especially for our children.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – That’s extraordinary.

Dr. Elisa Song – Right. And so I would say for practitioners, if you can, get a fasting lab order. Check that, because  knowing how inflammatory sugar is and how much of a risk insulin resistance plays in virtually every single chronic disease you can imagine-

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Well, I was just going to say maybe this seems like-  I mean this certainly could be the crux of why our kids are going to die earlier than us.  Nathan Price was at the Institute for Systems Biology and he published this pretty cool analysis looking at different conditions and biological age, and diabetes was ahead of the pack, you know, just massively. So if you’re moving along that metabolic continuum, you’re just aging at this radically accelerated rate, and that’s the gatekeeper for all the other conditions. I mean, it’s mind-blowing to me that you’re seeing insulin that high in kids.

Dr. Elisa Song – Yeah. You know, I used to be shocked at first and now I’m not so shocked. But that’s why I check. Right? Because if we don’t check, especially in our children who don’t seem to be at risk, we’re not going to know. We’re not going to be able to move the needle on their health and practice true prevention. Even liver enzymes are bumping up against really not acceptable levels for many “healthy, fit kids”. And so, this is concerning.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – What are you seeing? What’s bumping up against an unhealthy level for you? What do you see?.

Dr. Elisa Song – Well, I mean, I do see some kids with it with an ALT of over 40 and AST is in the 30s, and so you’ve got to look at that and say, well, why, why does this kid have high normal or high liver enzymes? it’s got to be at least in large part due to the sugar. Right? What I really encourage practitioners to do is present the data, and sometimes it sounds scary and we do sometimes want to have that shock factor, you know, but, in an empathetic, educational way.

Dr. Elisa Song– Because once kids understand- And I talk to kids too, right. You’ve got to talk to the kids to have them on board, even if they’re young. You just try to frame it in an age-appropriate way. But,I’ll just say a couple of studies that really- I mean, if it’s shocking for me, I want it to be shocking for parents and kids. So this one study found that ultra-processed foods can change the brain morphology in kids so they have smaller cerebral white matter. Right? So literally, their brain is shrinking, and I tell kids this, versus they also looked at higher quality diets and found that a higher quality diet improved IQ, improved brain gyrification and cerebral gray matter. How crazy is that? And for kids who eat a more steady diet of “junk food” when they’re toddlers, they are significantly more likely to have behavioral problems by the time they’re seven and later on be diagnosed with things like ADHD or anxiety or depression.

Dr. Elisa Song – So these are kid studies. We want to really discuss kids specifically and what I tell kids and teenagers, especially teenagers and those pre-teens, right? They’re all about, “I want to be independent, make my own decisions.” I’m right there with my kids who are 12 and 14, and we talk about what they want. They want their independence. They want power over their own bodies and their brains. So I talk to them about the fact that there are a gazillion mad food scientists behind the scenes in these industries and they are purposely figuring out food additive combinations to trick their brains into thinking that they want more and more and more. That is not control over their bodies or their brains. And so if they really want that control, they need to be informed and make educated decisions about what they want to put into their mouths. So, I just think it’s so important for us to also- You know, a lot of practitioners have hesitations about working with kids because they have to work with the parents and the kids, and it’s just more work.

Dr. Elisa Song – But it can be so empowering, especially if you can frame things in a language that the kids will understand and embrace, and also know how to break it up. You can’t do a 20-minute lecture. Or you break it up and then if you start to see the eyes wandering, then you know, okay, that’s it for today. We can talk about it next time.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – I’ll shout out to any practitioners anxious about working with kids. Your chart notes will be a lot shorter because their health history is way abbreviated.

Dr. Elisa Song – Yes. Well, and also another plus: kids don’t have the decades of toxic crap that have dysregulated their nervous systems, and their immune systems, and their gut, and so kids respond faster. You will have so many rewards working with children, a shorter journey to healing for kids than it is for adults.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – And there’s really something satisfying about working with the whole family. I mean, obviously you’re not going to successfully treat a kid if you don’t have the primary caregivers, really all of them, sort of enrolled in the journey. And even sometimes siblings have participated in work that I’ve done in my practice. And the other piece, I noticed when I was reading your bio is that you use essential oils and homeopathy. I think kids are really potentially more responsive to some of these as adjunct components of their care.

Dr. Elisa Song – Yeah. And it’s so much easier to use some of the herbs or supplements. I mean, I integrate them all, but learning how to use homeopathy and essential oils for kids can be really, really rewarding.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Yeah, absolutely. I have the big Boiron blue box at home for my daughter. All right. What do I want to say? You’ve unpacked a ton of stuff. There’s so many directions we can go. We just all need to have your book on our shelves. I want to talk about these ultra-processed foods again and what we really need to be avoiding. But there is a profound addictive quality, to your point, to trying to wake your own children up to getting that these guys are working on you to own you just like the opioid crisis that we’re in with adults. It’s incredibly similar. So how do we deal with that? How do we back our kids out of it? They are so profoundly addictive, and you’re right. They are the dayglow unicorn stuff. They’re just designed to feed- My daughter would live on, whatever that is, whatever that thing is. Anyway…

Dr. Elisa Song – I know, once they’re not toddlers anymore, infants anymore, and we lose control over everything that goes on their plate and in their mouths, and it can be really stressful for families. Even just when you go to the grocery store and kids kind of grab those little SpongeBob covered fruit roll-ups, right? I encourage parents to have conversations about, well, let’s read the label together. Just do it, even when they’re toddlers. Oh, wow, I don’t think this is something you want to put into your body, and just talk about why.  And we also have to recognize the addictive quality of it as parents. Think about how many of us as parents are addicted to x, y, and z packaged food. I had one mom, who was just really bashfully admitting how addicted she was to Ritz crackers when she was younger.

Dr. Elisa Song – And so we have to give ourselves some grace, and especially our children, and recognize it is not easy when you’re addicted to something to give it up. There is going to be a point of withdrawal, so doing it slowly. It’s not going to work to do it cold turkey. And it’s also the artificial sugar substitutes. One study, this was in rats mind you, it found that, I would say that virtually everyone has seen the pictures of the scans of the sugar lighting up the same centers of your brain, the reward centers as cocaine. Well, in rats who were already addicted to cocaine, they chose saccharine over cocaine. That’s frightening, right? And I’d love them to repeat that with all the other artificial sweeteners that are now in the energy drinks, like Prime, that all these kids want, and whatever the thing is, with sucralose and acesulfame potassium.

Dr. Elisa Song – Because by now, adults and kids, I would say you’d have to be really living under a rock to not know that, oh, we don’t want too much sugar. That’s like just “eat a rainbow”. I mean, that’s so cliche now, almost, right? But really, a lot of kids now and adults, unwittingly, are choosing these zero sugar drinks because they think, well, at least it’s not sugar. Well, I don’t know a single study that has proven that zero sugar artificial sweeteners actually reduce your risk of metabolic disease. And they’re so addictive and many will disrupt the gut microbiome like sucralose and acesulfame potassium. So, what are on my top list to avoid? In the book, I go through all the top- Because we can’t memorize all of these. But I do mention some of the top ones. So food emulsifiers, I think,  have to be way, way up there on the list of knowing how to avoid them.

Dr. Elisa Song – And food emulsifiers, I explain to kids and parents, that’s the ingredient, the additive, that keeps your food from becoming a goopy separated mess. It keeps things together and you’ll find them in some protein bars, in ice creams, and even in infant ready-to-feed formula, it’s allowed. So, what are these? I mentioned mono- and diglycerides. There’s carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), and carrageenan are some of the top ones. Polysorbate 80. Xanthan gum has been found in premature infants to disrupt their gut microbiomes. I am on the fence,  I think that things like guar gum can be a source of fiber and can support the microbiome, so I don’t say definitely no to those, but if you see any of those, really choose another packaged item.

Dr. Elisa Song – Of course, anything that says artificial, we just know to put that back. It doesn’t matter what artificial thing it is, it’s fake, so we just put it back, but especially colors. There’s not completely compelling evidence about the harm that colors do to your microbiome. There’s some, but we know how harmful it can be for children’s developing brains and the correlations with attention and behavioral problems. So much so that there’s warnings in European foods with artificial dyes that they can affect your children’s attention and behavior. So any of those artificial colors we want to keep out. I do teach kids how to read and look for added sugars in the packaged foods and recognize that according to the CDC and American Heart Association, they should have no more than 25g of added sugar. And I do fun games. I have them visualize that one teaspoon of sugar is about four grams, so when you pick up a package of food or when you go to boba tea and it has, I mean-

Dr. Elisa Song – Let’s say Starbucks. There actually is a Frappuccino that has 54g of added sugar. So just imagine, okay, 54g of added sugar in that. You could probably down that Frappuccino in like five minutes, it goes down really easily. Right? Well, that is going to be about, if I’m doing my math right, 13 teaspoons of sugar. Could you sit there and spoon in 13 teaspoons of white sugar? Not that quickly.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – In five minutes. Yeah.

Dr. Elisa Song – Right. And so, really making it visual and concrete for them is super helpful. And then, everyone knows about glyphosate, but I also tell parents and kids that glyphosate was patented as an antibiotic, and just like we don’t take antibiotics unnecessarily, why would you want to take an antibiotic in your food unnecessarily? And so, trying to really choose as organically as possible and when that’s not possible, we want to surround that food with as many colorful fruits and vegetables that will help us clear the glyphosate. There are certain probiotic strains that can help clear the glyphosate. So, you know, when it’s not possible to eat organically, then we want to support our ability to detoxify that from our system.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – In my patient population, which is mostly adults, I see now- So I’ve been in practice for probably about 15 years. The last four new patients, I just popped this into a slide for a lecture that I’m going to deliver, they all came to me with elevated mercury. And these are smart, healthy people. These are health-conscious individuals. It’s mind-blowing because I didn’t see that before. And this is coming from fish and they know to get wild-caught, so I think things are becoming more contaminated. But this is sort of a long-winded way of just asking you, are you looking at toxins in kids? Is that something we should be measuring in them? Should we be doing a Vibrant urine panel and looking for glyphosate levels and so forth or blood tests? Obviously we need to do a periodic lead and so forth at certain time frames, but what are your thoughts around actually measuring?

Dr. Elisa Song – You know, I don’t typically measure toxins outright to start with unless there is- I’m not even going to say unless there is. It’s not my firstline round of testing. My firstline is going to be blood work for nutrient levels. Depending on the history, if I’m concerned about chronic pathogens, I might check for that. I do try to get fasting insulin and fasting glucose. I do like to check thyroid function tests, so the complete TSH free T4, free T3, reverse T3. If they’re older, if they’re tweens and teens, I do check ANA and thyroid antibodies because they are surprisingly elevated, minimally elevated, in many of our kids, too many of our kids. So I’ll start with lab work and I typically start with a comprehensive stool analysis and also the metabolomics, a urine organic acid panel.

Dr. Elisa Song – So that’s my start. Now, for kids who don’t have any particular health concerns- I mean, those are the kids who come in for consultations for whatever health concerns they have. And then, if there’s concerns about, yes, there was clear water damage, of course I’ll check mycotoxins. But for your general healthy kid as they’re entering puberty and adolescence when I can chat with them about, “Hey, this is an amazing time. Your body’s going through so many changes. You are doing such an amazing job growing, growing, growing, and we want to give your body the best chance to grow as optimally as it can. This is a great opportunity to check some labs to see, well, what can we fine-tune to really get you fully on your path to being the healthiest young adult that you can be?” So, for my “healthy” kids, that’s a great opportunity to check at their annual visit, order some labs to really be able to do that. And then that’s everything I’ll include because most kids – most kids –  need more zinc, have low red blood cell zinc. Many have suboptimal and deficient RBC magnesium. Many have low ferritin or suboptimally low ferritin. I mean, these are the same things that we might see in adults, but I really want to know that, especially zinc. Zinc is really important for testosterone production in boys. So we want to optimize that for our boys. It’s really important for immune health, sensory issues, and nervous system issues. Of course, we all know the benefits of magnesium. And, you know, it’s a rare child that has optimal levels of vitamin D.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Yes, that’s right.

Dr. Elisa Song – So, there are all these different things that we can check. I don’t typically check homocysteine on children until they’re kind of later into their adolescent years because I’ve just not found young children and middle school-age kids to have elevated or suboptimally high homocysteine, that takes a while. I will, though, on their urine organic acid tests, sometimes see an elevated methylmalonic acid and FIGLu (Formiminoglutamic acid), so those can be my measures for methylation as opposed to a blood homocysteine.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – And those are looking at folks, methylmalonic is looking at B12, and FIGLu is folate. What other nutrients are you measuring in whole blood? Out of curiosity, are you looking at RBC folate or serum folate?

Dr. Elisa Song – Not as my first round? Because also with kids, there’s only a certain amount of blood you can test at one time. And the younger you are- And some labs are much bigger sticklers about I can only take this much. So the other thing to know too, just if you haven’t ordered blood tests on children, I would strongly encourage prescribing EMLA cream, lidocaine and prilocaine numbing cream, to use before the blood draw because if that first blood draw is really traumatic, you may not get another blood draw for a very long time. Right? So you instruct parents and kids to use the magic cream to numb their elbows and have it be a seamless experience. They can watch Dora, I mean I’m talking about my son. At three and a half we did lab work and he happily watched Dora the whole time while he’s just looking like, what’s going on in my arm here? So using EMLA, preparing kids for- If it’s a quite extensive blood draw, you might need to prioritize and break it down into two blood draws.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – And just store it appropriately.

Dr. Elisa Song – And just store it. And I recommend, for parents, if there are some unusual labs or- I mean right now, all the labs around me, they’re used to what I order, so it’s not a problem, but, if not, then have parents go to the lab first without the child so they can show the lab requisition to the phlebotomist. They can get all the tubes ready so that your child isn’t waiting for an hour while they’re kind of trying to figure out the test codes and the labs and which tubes to use. These are little practical- They seem like little things but if you can make that experience easier, it makes it so much more successful and it makes what you can do for that child so much better.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – The one other addition- Those are awesome pearls. The numbing cream is like, oh, my God, that’s so brilliant. Yeah. The other thing is that we can check in is, I’ve had parents call the lab and find out who is the really amazing kid drawer, or phlebotomist?

Dr. Elisa Song – Yes, 100%.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Yeah, because that’s the difference between success and failure, or it can be as well. Wow. Really, really good tips. Because you’re right. Yeah, we can’t order the massive 32-tube panels or use lab slips that we send our adults in with. So, yeah, leaning on the urine and stool, those are definitely doable. Okay. All right. That’s all good. What are some of your top supplements and what forms do you use? And what brands do you like? You’re going to have to go with chewables or liquids or something like that. So, most kids are on X, Y, and Z, the forms I’m using X, Y, and Z, talk about those.

Dr. Elisa Song – Yeah. So I will preface this by saying that one of the biggest shifts that has occurred in my practice is that I used to recommend that every patient take a daily probiotic, and I’m not necessarily doing that anymore. I’m really trying to be more targeted in what probiotics and which strains kids are taking, and I’m more targeted in their use.

Dr. Elisa Song – So of course, after antibiotics, I have kids take a really broad-spectrum probiotic for at least a month or two. But what’s really even more important than that is making sure that they’re feeding their microbes so that they want to come back. And I tell kids the example – these are not like Jack’s magic beanstalks. You can’t just throw a whole handful of probiotics, you can’t even throw 100 trillion colonies every day into your gut and expect them to want to stick around. Just like when you grow your tomato plant outside, you have to make sure the soil has the right nutrients, and it’s getting just the right amount of water and sunlight. So we need to be able to create an ecosystem that our probiotics actually want to stay in. And if your kids will have fermented foods and can get in all of their fiber and phytonutrients to act as prebiotics, that’s going to go so much further in recolonizing your gut, no matter what the case is.

Dr. Elisa Song – And to be honest, the pediatric data on specific strains is really lacking for a lot of indications. There are some probiotic strains that are- There’s one four-strain combination that IFF, which used to be DuPont, and they’re using a lot of probiotic supplements. There are some pediatric studies on microbiome restoration after antibiotics. So that’s great. There are a couple of other strains that are specific for that. We know that there are certain psychobiotic strains that are better at supporting optimal serotonin and dopamine levels. So, when I have a kiddo who has anxiety or depression or OCD or whatever it is, ADHD, I will have them try to really create that microbiome ecosystem through their diet and lifestyles and then supplement with these specific psychobiotics.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – And what are those?

Dr. Elisa Song – I’m going to look these up. So, one of them that is fascinating is called Neuralli (MP) PS128. There’s only one company that makes it though, unfortunately. And that’s Bened Life. I love that I can talk about products because when you do these CME talks, you can’t and you’re trying to say-

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Trying to say, right, I know. You just get in the habit of talking around it.

Dr. Elisa Song – You totally, totally do. Yeah. So anyhow, that’s Bened Life that has this PS128 strain, which over three months was found to significantly reduce autism-related symptoms and improve sociability. They’re actually starting to look at it now for Parkinson’s. They’ve even looked at it for sports performance. So that’s one psychobiotic strain. Another psychobiotic strain is Lactobacillus paracasei LPC-37, which now you know, you can look for these in supplements. There are two rosell strains: there’s Lactobacillus helveticus Rosell-52 and then Bifidobacterium longum rosell-175. So those are two other psychobiotics that have been shown to support neurotransmitter levels.

Dr. Elisa Song – And I have used this combination of these two psychobiotics and the PS128 in one child, who we were trying all the, I’m going to say, the “usual” things for OCD: high dose inositol, theanine, and acetylcysteine, omega-3s. It wasn’t until we added these three strains that the mom said this is really starting to make a difference. So who knows if it was a synergy of also all the other supplements, but it was clearly, clearly, the introduction of these three that moved the needle for her debilitating OCD. And then Microbiome Labs has their psychobiotic. It’s the Bifidobacterium longum 1714. I don’t have a lot of experience using it, although at the last conference I was speaking at, one of the audience members who was a practitioner came up to me and said that they’d started using this one on their child with anxiety and thought that it was really helping, so that’s just anecdotally.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Yes. Nice. Nice. Okay. So, is everybody on vitamin D? Do you give vitamin D with K? Omega-3s?

Dr. Elisa Song – Oh yeah.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – And by the way, we don’t have too much time. So we’re kind of at the- We’ll just move through your workhorse list.

Dr. Elisa Song – I would consider the staple supplements are omega-3 – there is really, hardly a child who has enough omega-3 fatty acids in their system. Vitamin D3. If they’re older, I’ll add the K2, but if they’re an infant, they can just do the D3. That’s fine. And I’ve been on the hunt for a really high-quality children’s multivitamin. There’s not one that I’m super excited about, which is why I’m actually just, as a prelude, hopefully in the fall, I’m working with some contract manufacturers to try to create my dream multivitamin for kids and their microbiomes.

Dr. Elisa Song – So, a comprehensive, because when we’re thinking about what we’re feeding and putting into our kids, it should be with the lens of, well, what are we feeding their microbiome, right? Because their microbiome is what’s helping to keep them healthier and happier. So a multi right now, what do I use? Douglas Labs has a pretty good one, their Ultra Preventive Gummy that’s pretty tolerable for a kid, they enjoy the flavor. And then Xymogen, their ActiveNutrients Chewable. That’s pretty good too. The flavor, I will say, I mean, some people can taste the B vitamins in it, right? You know how B vitamins just tend to make things a little bit more bitter, but it is what it is. I mean, those are our options. For kids I do sometimes use Klaire Labs VitaSpectrum Powder.

Dr. Elisa Song – That’s a hard sell, though, palate-wise, but for some kids, it’s not, and then when you really need to have even more methylation support for, let’s say, your autistic kids, that is a good one. So vitamin D, multi, and fish oil are my foundations. And then depending on what else is going on, of course, I mean, I love, love, love, SPMs. That is my hands-down number one favorite supplement for kids and for adults, and so I do put many kids on SPMs.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Specialized pro-resolving lipid mediators, you guys. These are derivatives coming from the fish oil. And actually, I have a podcast with Charles Serhan, the guy that discovered them. If you really want a drill down, it’s ridiculously fascinating.

Dr. Elisa Song – You have to listen to that episode, guys. It is one of the best episodes ever, and I refer all my practitioners to that episode on SPMs. It’s fascinating. I refer patients to it as well, but it’s pretty technical, so it’s for the science-geeky parents and kids, but as a practitioner, I feel like you must listen, because SPMs are so important.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Oh my God. They’re just incredible and he just touches on the breadth and depth of the science out there on these guys. It’s fascinating. All right, so listen, just on that, how are you getting kiddos to ingest fish oil? My daughter has a supplement graveyard as much as I do from things she took for a minute and then just completely rejected and fish oil is challenging. And I feel like I’m leaning on the ones that- Right now, the one that she’ll eat has sugar, but it still tastes fishy to me. I’m somewhat blown away that she’s consuming it. But anyway, what are some of the go-to brands you’re finding kids will consume?

Dr. Elisa Song – The two that I think are really tasty, and I will say – because I’ve tried them all – and the two that are really, I think, so yummy – and I don’t say that lightly – DaVinci their KiddOmega-3, it is really good. I mean, I don’t taste any fish in there. And also, NutriDyn, their Omega Pure Kids liquid as well. I really don’t taste any fish in there. So those two I would try.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – That’s awesome. That’s very good, actually. That’s great to know. Liquid, you can get a little more in. Now my read on the literature, you don’t need to approach doses for fish oil like we are in some of our adult patients. What do you put your single-digit kids on and then what do you put your adolescents on?

Dr. Elisa Song – I mean, I’m very generous with fish oil. And honestly, I don’t necessarily look- I mean, I have to look at the bottles, but, when I think about little kids, I’ll probably put them maybe on 500 mg to even a thousand total. And then for the school-age kids, at least a thousand, you know, combined. Right? And then there’s some thought as to, should you have more EPA or more DHA? And sometimes it’s hard to find the specific one that you might want. And of course, if they had any head injury, which is so much more common, I’m dosing, you know, way higher. Or they have anxiety or ADHD, I might be upwards of 2 to 5g.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Okay, so you’re right in there with adult doses. Then liquid is good. I did have success for a little while with the Designs For Health Lemon Smoothie.

Dr. Elisa Song – The smoothie. So the smoothie, even that one’s a little bit more fishy. Barlean’s has their swirls, which is an over-the-counter, not practitioner line. But Barlean’s, you can find it easily. They have omega swirls that are smoothies that are actually pretty tasty. But you have to take a lot. A lot. It’s on the order of like two tablespoons as opposed to one teaspoon. But you know, that might be a way to get your kids to have that.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Yeah. I mean, you just never… I mean, like I said, I have a supplement graveyard, so it’s been a lot of trial and error in our journey. Okay. Were there any other supplements that you wanted to add in there? I mean, you’re doing zinc and magnesium on a lot of kids?

Dr. Elisa Song – Yeah, separately, especially- I mean, I can go by clinical clues and in the book, I ask for parents also to see, if they don’t have access to bloodwork or it’s just hard to get blood work on kids, some clinical clues for each nutrient deficiency, how it might present in children. So depending on that, just clinical suspicion, or actual lab data, then I’ll supplement with zinc or magnesium, iron sometimes. So I’ll just kind of play it by ear. I do check kids’ histamine levels too, and quercetin is a common supplement for me.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, it makes sense. It is in my practice as well. We’ve just covered a lot, but we could just have another conversation. We haven’t talked about- I don’t know, maybe we’ll do a follow-up blog. We haven’t talked about antibiotics and how to use them, or treating kids acutely. It would be fun to maybe pick this conversation up, but any last pearls you want to leave folks with? And then we’ll just kind of dialogue off air about maybe a part two or a companion piece. It’s a book we all need to have.

Dr. Elisa Song – I just think that when you work with kids, it can be one of the most rewarding things that you do. But especially for kids, we just really, really want to get back to the foundations. The foundations, like we’re doing with diet and lifestyle, but educate them, educate, educate, and empower, because that’s where they’re going to make changes. These foundations are really what they’re going to take with them for the rest of their lives. And some of them, I think a lot of us as practitioners might gloss over a bit because they seem so simplistic. But the simplest things can make the most profound shifts, and the simplest things are often the hardest things to implement.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald  – So give me an example. Yeah.

Dr. Elisa Song – Well, for instance, with sleep. I mean, getting enough sleep, right? We know how important that is. But I talk to kids about how literally when they don’t get enough sleep, parts of their brain matter that are related to memory and reactivity, the next day start to shrink. And when we’re sleep deprived, it takes two days of sleep deprivation to disrupt our gut microbiome. It takes seven days to get that back. So, let’s really practically sit there, look at the clock, think about how many hours is optimal for you? Not for your brother, not for your friend, but for you. And then we’re going to think about the lead up to bedtime. I mean, I try to make it really practical. When are we going to start the bedtime routine? How long does it usually take? Do you like to snuggle and have a story and do all that? Then we need to move back even earlier when we’re going to start that routine and try to work around any sleep issues that they might have with supplements or homeopathy or whatever it is.

Dr. Elisa Song – The more we can make it concrete and spend time on it, because a lot of times we’re spending more time on the supplement protocols and the testing, and yes, that’s necessary many, many times. But if we don’t get those foundations and really make sure that those are the things that stick, they may not be able to get off their supplements, and they may keep coming back because their problems might resolve temporarily, but they don’t fully resolve.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Are you okay with some melatonin in kids?

Dr. Elisa Song – I am. Yeah.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Good. And the book is covering some of this.

Dr. Elisa Song – Oh, it covers all of it. Yeah, like pretty much everything. For sure. Yeah..

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – The one thing I wanted to just circle back to, the thought that I had, you talked about having to detox, that we need to treat these processed foods as addictions. And in my adult population, when I’m transitioning them into a low-sugar diet from something that’s been packaged or they’re moving into an elimination diet, I talk about the changing of the guards. There’s really interesting data out there, how the microbiomes change, and those bad bugs will fight for their lives. And that can be part of that detox phenomenon. And I say, start this on the weekend and you are just going to give yourself, you know, you’re going to do massages or pedicures, you can take the weekend and binge watch your favorite series… I create this thing for them to do that detox process and I could see doing something similar with kids, like we’ll go to your favorite park, or maybe toy X you’ve been looking at. Does that-

Dr. Elisa Song – Oh yeah, we want to build in positive incentives and rewards that aren’t necessarily food related. And, in a way, we’re gamifying it, right? We’re just making it more exciting and more appealing to do. I think that’s really important.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Well, Dr. Song, it’s always really great to talk to you. And I do pay attention to your Instagram, so I feel like I’m closer to you. But we’ll do a follow-up on this. It’s just really important work that you’re doing. You’re just such a blessing and gift to us here in functional medicine. So, thank you.

Dr. Elisa Song – Thank you, thank you for having me.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald – Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Elisa Song, MD is a Stanford-, NYU-, UCSF-trained integrative pediatrician, pediatric functional medicine expert, and mom to 2 thriving children – and she is on a mission to revolutionize the future of children’s health. Dr. Song is the bestselling author of the Healthy Kids Happy Kids: An Integrative Pediatrician’s Guide to Whole Child Resilience. Dr. Song created Healthy Kids Happy Kids (www.healthykidshappykids.com) as an online holistic pediatric resource to help practitioners and parents bridge the gap between conventional and integrative pediatrics with an evidence-based, pediatrician-backed, mom-approved approach. In her integrative pediatric practice, she’s helped 1000s of kids get to the root causes of their health concerns and empowered parents to help their children thrive by integrating conventional pediatrics with functional medicine, homeopathy, acupuncture, herbal medicine, and essential oils. Dr. Song is chair of A4M’s pediatric education and has lectured around the world at leading integrative and functional medicine conferences and premier parenting events. She has also been featured in hundreds of top podcasts, print and online media outlets, including the Wellness Mama podcast, BloomTV, Forbes, Healthline, MindBodyGreen, National Geographic, PopSugar, Parents, Motherly, Parade, Verywell Health, and New York Post.

Healthy Kids, Happy Kids: An Integrative Pediatrician’s Guide to Whole Child Resilience

Healthy Kids, Happy Kids

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Autism: Have We Done Everything We Can for This Child?: Effective Biomedical Treatments by Sidney Baker and Jon Pangborn

Sidney Baker, MD

Paper: A Potential Decline in Life Expectancy in the United States in the 21st Century

Study: Lost microbes of COVID-19: Bifidobacterium, Faecalibacterium depletion and decreased microbiome diversity associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection severity

Study: Increasing Prevalence of Antinuclear Antibodies in the United States

Study: Role of Bifidobacteria on Infant Health

Study: Protective effect of Bifidobacterium infantis CGMCC313-2 on ovalbumin-induced airway asthma and β-lactoglobulin-induced intestinal food allergy mouse models

Article: Trends in Consumption of Ultraprocessed Foods Among US Youths Aged 2-19 Years, 1999-2018

Study: Dietary patterns, brain morphology and cognitive performance in children: Results from a prospective population-based study

Professor Charles Serhan, Ph. D., D.Sc.

Bened Life – Maker of Neuralli MP L. plantarum PS128 medical probiotic

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FxMed Podcast: Functional Medicine Pediatrician Dr. Elisa Song on PANS/PANDAS DX and Treatment

DrKF Blog: Ultra-Processed Foods Spell Disaster for Longevity

FxMed Podcast: Specialized Pro-Resolving Mediators (SPMs): As Close to a Panpharmacon as We Can Get?

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