Dr. Joel Warsh is an integrative pediatrician who has built a successful practice in Los Angeles. He discusses his journey into integrative medicine, initially being frustrated by the overuse of medications in traditional pediatric care and seeking out alternative approaches. He talks about the challenge of getting the necessary education in integrative pediatrics, as there was limited formal training available at the time.
Dr. Warsh describes the experience of interacting with his more traditional pediatric colleagues, noting that he had to develop a thick skin but has seen the tide starting to shift as more doctors become interested in integrative approaches. He emphasizes the importance of open-minded communication and not being overtly contrarian.
A key theme of the conversation is the concept of “doing nothing” as the best approach in many pediatric cases, allowing the body’s natural healing processes to work. Dr. Warsh shares his dramatic reduction in antibiotic prescriptions by taking a more watchful, supportive approach.
Tune into this conversation to learn more about
- How our healthcare system is evolving, and demand for integrative practices is growing
- Unity among practitioners can amplify the message of integrative health
- Dr. Warsh’s new book, Parenting at Your Child’s Pace, which offers health-focused perspectives on common parenting questions and challenges in the early years.
- How Dr. Warsh’s book fills a gap left by therapy-focused parenting books
- And much more!
https://parentingatyourchildspace.com/
Joel Warsh, MD:
I see parents being more stressed than ever, even in my career, and just not really trusting their gut, not really knowing what to do, even about basic simple things that they definitely know, but they just don’t trust themselves. And so I think it was really important for me to write something that helped parents think through these basic questions that they get on a daily basis.
James Maskell:
Welcome to the Evolution of Medicine podcast, the place health professionals come to hear from innovators and agitators leading the charge. We cover the latest clinical breakthroughs and health technology, as well as practical tools to help you transform your practice and the health of your community. This podcast is brought to you by the Lifestyle Matrix Resource Center, who provide a range of options to help you deliver successful, effective functional and integrative medicine. To find out more and to get started, go to goevomed.com/lmrc. That’s goevomed.com/lmrc.
James Maskell:
Hello and welcome to the podcast. This week we featured Dr. Joel “Gator” Warsh. He is an integrated pediatrician from Los Angeles, and he has a new book. He has a great practice, and he’s now stepping into advocacy. I think you’ll get a lot from this podcast. We talked about how he’s managed his world in pediatrics. We talked about how he built his practice. We talked a little bit about how he got the education he needed. I think there’s a massive, massive opportunity for pediatricians, family medicine, nurse practitioners to make a big impact in healthcare and build the practices of the future. I think you’ll get a lot out of it. Enjoy.
Alright, so a warm welcome to the podcast, Dr. Joel “Gator” Warsh. Welcome, Doc.
Joel Warsh, MD:
Thank you for having me on.
James Maskell:
I’m really excited to have you on. We met in 2017 when you were building your practice there in Southern California and participating in the Functional Forum. And I guess I just want to start by saying, having watched you do your thing for the last seven years, I’m just super grateful for you building that practice, stepping into your voice online and making a big impact not only for the families you serve, but through the greater community. And it’s just been a pleasure to witness you do your thing.
Joel Warsh, MD:
Well, thank you and thank you for everything that you do. I mean, you’ve helped so many families and really open up a discussion to alternatives and healthcare, which I think is needed more than ever.
James Maskell:
No worries man. Well, good. Well I’m excited to tap in. So why don’t you just share, let’s start with your journey to integrated pediatrics and when you knew that you couldn’t deliver the standard of care.
Joel Warsh, MD:
So for me, I guess going back, I did all the regular medical training. I trained a great program in Los Angeles and pediatrics, but I got frustrated as I was going through the training. I think the biggest catalyst was meeting my wife in residency. She’s very holistic minded and I started eating the food that she was preparing and just learning about the things that she did and how she grew up and it really opened up my eyes, start learning about things, but also just seeing in my practice and in the hospital medications like their candy, just being given out to all the kids, kids getting sicker and sicker and really not having great answers and seeing people go outside of the system and get better. And I’m a pretty open-minded person and it really opened up my eyes to say, “Well, why is somebody going to this woo woo?”
Air quotes “woo woo” doctor, like a naturopath or a chiropractor or something like that and getting better. That’s what we learned. It’s like you go outside the system and it’s just snake oil salesman and “woo woo.” We didn’t learn anything about any of these professions, but people were getting better and kids were getting better. And so I started learning about it and making friends and talking to people and the more you get into it, the more you realize that there’s really nothing woo about it. There’s so many amazing practitioners that we can all work as a team and the focus outside of medicine often is on prevention and on root cause and that’s when I started learning about functional medicine and as soon as you do, you really don’t go back because it makes perfect sense. It’s common sense. Of course we should think about the root cause.
James Maskell:
Yeah. How did you go about getting educated? I know one of the things I’ve heard from other friends who are pediatricians have found that there’s a lot of great functional medicine education, but because pediatrics is such a conservative specialty, there hasn’t been a lot of specific protocols or thinking or education directly about that. I know that’s changing now and Dr. Song’s doing an amazing job there with A4M and putting out great education there. But how did you go about piecing together that education in an educational journey that is not really designed for pediatricians today or hasn’t—
Joel Warsh, MD:
Been? Yeah, that’s a perfect question and it’s exactly true. I mean, when I first got interested in it, there really wasn’t anything in pediatrics at all. So I started with just regular functional medicine. I did some of the functional medicine courses, which were very valuable. Nothing was specific to kids, but a lot of it you could apply to kids. So that’s really how I started. A lot of it was just reading books. I mean there’s just some great books out there learning about homeopathy and supplements and some natural medicine. There’s a great professor out of Harvard that she has a great book and so I read that book like The Holistic Pediatrician. So that was very helpful too. But yeah, there wasn’t a lot. So it was really just self-learning, talking to people and learning on the go and really trying to apply what was done in adult medicine, which still wasn’t that much even 10 years ago, but there certainly was more and just applying it to kids and seeing what would work or going with lower dosages or just trying to be a little bit more conservative, but just trying things out. And that’s really how you learned at that time. I mean, yes, you’re saying now there is some training, which is great. Eliza Song is doing fantastic work and functional medicine started, there was a weekend course in pediatrics, so there’s a little bit now, but it’s still pretty minimal.
James Maskell:
Yeah, absolutely. How’s it been interacting with your colleagues? I know you were in the center of that functional forum group, there was a lot of practitioners there. I’m sure you got a chance to meet a lot of practitioners through that side. But what about on the other side? I think one of the things that reasons why we started the functional forum at the beginning was for most doctors going outside of the norm and sort of interacting with other pediatricians might cause you to want to come back into the fold or not be so outside of the box because there’s a certain amount of, I dunno, shaming that goes on with doctors who sort of choose a different path with their standard of care that they want to offer, especially if you use the words homeopathy or nutrition, which are not typically talked about in those spaces. How did you deal with that? What did you find was helpful for you and was that ever something that came across your bows?
Joel Warsh, MD:
Yeah, well I mean the big thing is you just have to get used to it. I think you just have to develop a thick skin and especially with social media these days, I mean it doesn’t really matter what you post, everyone’s going to argue about something and there’s always a division and always fighting and everything that you do. So I think it’s something that you just have to be okay with. For me, I try to skirt the line as best as I can and not to be consciously contrarian. Certainly when I post or talk about things, it is not always exactly the norm or the standard, but I try to ask questions as opposed to saying something like “don’t do this” or “don’t do that,” or things like that. So I think that does help. I mean certainly the regular pediatric world I’m sure doesn’t love everything that I do, but so far it’s been okay.
But I’ve been very encouraged. I think that the vast majority of doctors are starting to wake up to this just a little bit. I mean everybody sees that it’s not working, it’s just a question of how we move in a different direction. And certainly the younger generation, there are a lot more doctors, pediatricians reaching out saying, oh, I love what you’re doing, or I’m really interested in some integrative medicine. What kind of courses could you take? What could you do? How did you learn? Because the reality is that the vast majority of integrative medicine isn’t out there at all. It’s just thinking about diet and nutrition and exercise and sleep. And there’s nothing that a regular pediatrician couldn’t learn about that. We just don’t really focus on it in med school. So I think that the tide is changing and if you go really far out, that’s where you can I think get a lot of pushback. But when you’re somewhere in the middle, which I try to stay most of the time, then I think a lot of doctors are receptive. They want their patients to be healthy, just not always have the same opinions of how to get there.
James Maskell:
Yeah, well I felt very fortunate with my first daughter. We lived in New York and I was really grateful to have Larry Palevsky as a pediatrician who’s just like a savant in my estimation, his ability to really understand what’s going on. I remember taking my mother-in-law to one of the first pediatric appointments. She was like, “Where was this guy when I was having my kids?” So I was grateful for that. And now having a second daughter here in California got an amazing functional pediatrician sister duo that take care of my younger daughter now, my family here. So I’ve been really grateful for that. One of the things that Larry was always on about is that a lot of the times the best thing to do is nothing. And this is just a body process working out and it’s best not to get in the way of it. How have you seen that in action? And I guess that could be a tricky situation too, because a lot of times parents, especially nervous early parents want to do something, like doing something is critical. And part of the reframe and reeducation that he was always offering was that in many cases not doing anything is the thing. Because these diseases are self-limiting and the body part of what you’re doing is building a muscle for that self-limiting function.
Joel Warsh, MD:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I had a very popular post, I dunno, a few months ago just about this and it was more of a joke of if I just posted a sign that said it’s normal, I could just save everybody the copay and they could go home. Ninety-nine percent of what you do as a pediatrician is just to say that it’s normal and it usually is, of course there are situations that aren’t, but that’s what you’re trained for is to pick up those very rare situations where something is a lot more serious. But the vast majority of the time they just get better on their own. And I think the most perfect example is ear pain or ear infections. Because even in modern medicine, even in Western medicine, if you look at the guidelines with the American Academy of Pediatrics, they’re right there. It says to wait two days in general, unless you have very severe pain, high fevers, you have a history like severe symptoms, then otherwise you can wait.
That’s the treatment for what you should do. But if you go to urgent care with your kid with ear pain a hundred out of a hundred times, you’re going to get an antibiotic. When you go home, they’re going to say, “Here you go, take your antibiotics. The ear looks a little red, good luck to you.” But when you change over to a more integrative mindset like what we do at my practice, you almost never have to give antibiotics. Almost never. I mean maybe out of 101 times, they’re actually going to need to take the antibiotics. Parents want to make sure that it’s not super severe. And I think if you have good communication with your doctor, then you can have a look. You can say, okay, take some pain medication, take some natural remedies, whatever it is to bridge that gap. And it usually gets better on its own because most of the time it’s a virus, so the antibiotics do nothing.
Even if it is bacterial, the amoxicillin isn’t going to cover it if it’s really severe. So the vast of time it’s not that helpful when you’re giving a medication that you don’t even need and the body’s amazing, it usually cures most things. When I was in the hospital in my original training right at the beginning, we were giving medications out every day all the time, 10, 20 times a day. I knew every medication off by heart, the dosages, I don’t have to think about it now. I almost never give antibiotics maybe a couple times a month, once or twice. I have to look everything up every time just to double-check. And the kids aren’t any less healthy, they’re probably much more healthy. And it’s just because it’s a difference of viewpoint and having more available because like you said, parents want to do something so they don’t want to come in and feel like they’re doing nothing. So if you have a bigger toolbox, if you have herbs like elderberry syrup, vitamin D, vitamin C, colloidal silver, whatever it is, then at least they’re doing something and you give the body a chance to heal as opposed to hitting it with an antibiotic which could have side effects.
James Maskell:
Yeah, absolutely. Well look, I want to get into your book because I’m really excited to talk about the topic of that. But I guess just before we get into that, I mean this is a practitioner podcast and I’d love for you to share any insights that you could share with the practice community about what it meant or some of the things that you felt worked really well in building up your practice. Because ultimately building a practice, doing integrated pediatrics, in my mind, way more pediatricians should be doing this because there is a huge demand for it. There’s not a lot of supply of it, and it seems like this would be a good move in many different ways. But a bit like dentistry, you almost have to admit that you’re wrong about quite a lot of things in order to build an integrated practice. And most pediatricians, like most dentists are not willing to do that. And so you have limited integrated pediatric choices. What are some of the ways that you either set up or organize your practice that really work that you think might be a lesson for someone who’s listening to this, who’s considering starting their own practice and has been a bit on the fence?
Joel Warsh, MD:
Well, I would first agree with your original premise here, which there is a big need for it. So I think that is key. If somebody’s listening, if you’re even remotely interested in integrative, and that doesn’t mean you have to do acupuncture or do homeopathy, you could just be into nutrition or gut health or anything that’s integrative is a big word. So anything that you’re interested in looking into the root cause that can be integrative. And we need so much more of that. There is no shortage of patients. I mean, I have to turn down 99% of the people that apply to our office. I’ve never really had to advertise ever. We could probably have 10 more doctors here and be full. No problem. People are looking for this. Kids are getting sicker and sicker and the regular medical system doesn’t really have great solutions for chronic disease and the numbers just keep going up.
So anybody who’s interested in any way in having a smaller business where you have a private practice where you’re interested in diving into root cause or even just spending more time with patients, there’s so much need for that and people will look for it. Even in a big city like Los Angeles, there’s just a couple of us that would call ourselves integrative and you could probably have 50 more and we wouldn’t even notice anything on the bottom line or anything to each other. There’s just such a need for it and everyone’s always looking and I’m always getting asked, oh, I’m moving to Denver, do you know any doctors there? Most places you don’t know anybody. So I think that if something you’re interested in, there’s a need. I think that’s really helpful. One of the things that really helped kickstart us was I just went to the local farmer’s market. I went there right before we opened and I just made some basic cards that said that I was moving my practice over here and it’s integrative medicine and reach out to do an interview. And that’s really the only advertising I ever did, but that at least just kickstarted at the beginning, getting some people in. But yeah, after that I’ve never done anything. I mean, I don’t have to do a thing other than being on stuff like this. I think this helps getting out there and talking, but no real advertising per se.
James Maskell:
Awesome. Well look, now you have your practice doing great. You can take the patients that you want and you are as busy as you want to be. And you do a lot of stuff on social media. I know you work with as an advisor to companies as well. But now you wrote this book and I’m always interested as to what topic an integrated pediatrician writes their book about because ultimately there’s so many things that you could dive into. And I love the name of the topic here, parenting at your child’s pace. And this is particularly interesting to me because for the last four years I’ve been heavy, heavy into understanding Steiner methodology and Waldorf School, and part of that thesis is neurodevelopmental appropriate education. And so I’d love to hear your take on the book and why you chose that name and why you chose that topic and what are some of the main themes in the book.
Joel Warsh, MD:
Sure. So the book is for parents in those first couple of years. So really the first three years I think it’s most targeted to pregnancy, but certainly for younger kids it would be great as well. And the two big reasons why I wrote the book, number one, I feel like parents are more stressed than ever. I see parents being more stressed than ever, even in my career, and just not really trusting their gut, not really knowing what to do, even about basic simple things that they definitely know, but they just don’t trust themselves. And so I think it was really important for me to write something that help parents think through these basic questions that they get on a daily basis. That’s kind of one side. The second side is health. Our kids, again, are sicker than ever. Like 50% of kids have a chronic disease and very few, if not, I don’t know of any really parenting books really talk about health.
Most parenting books are written, especially now by therapists, some great books by moms, but really not by pediatricians. They used to be. But now when a pediatrician writes a book more a health book specific like Dr Song’s book, it’s amazing. Just a phenomenal book. But it’s more of colds, gut health, that kind of thing. It’s not so much the basic parenting questions like something similar to what to expect when expecting or those kinds of books. So I want to do something similar to that, but with a health perspective and try to get ahead of, of chronic disease, talk about health and foundational health so that we can set kids up for success and talk about these questions that parents have that I get all the time from the lens of a pediatrician. The reality is the therapist doesn’t see most of these kids in the first three years.
They see them a little bit later. And really we get asked the questions. So in terms of writing a book, it wasn’t very hard to write. It’s a big process to write a book, but figuring out what to talk about was simple. It was just like, well, what do I get asked every day about newborns? What do I get asked every day about a one-year-old? What do I get asked to read about a two-year-old? And just wrote that and then kind of discussed both sides or the different avenues of what information is out there and try to help parents to synthesize it. So that’s the big overarching theme of the book, and that’s what parenting at your child’s pace really comes from, is really focusing on your family and what makes sense for them and not necessarily what everybody else is telling you.
James Maskell:
So is it 300 pages of “it’s normal”?
Joel Warsh, MD:
It’s 300 pages of “here’s how you think through,” and there is a lot of information about when to worry versus when to not worry and really trying to de-stress that most of the things are normal, or at least if it’s not normal, it’s not an emergency. So you really have time to get the information, synthesize it, figure out what you feel like makes sense for you and your family, and then try that and then reevaluate if that’s not working. But I feel like most parents these days feel that everything is an emergency and they think that they will get it wrong. What do I feed my kid first? Okay, well, you used to just ask Grandma, okay, what’d you feed me? Okay, I’ll just do that. But now grandma says, oh, you should start with peas. And then you read on the internet, no, peas will kill your kid. Why would you do that? Right? And you have the complete opposite opinions on everything and you can’t make decisions, and that’s not very helpful for parents. So we need to de-stress that and learn how to come to some sort of conclusion based on what’s out there so we can make a decision.
James Maskell:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well good. Well, I’m glad it’s there. And I would recommend for practitioners who are listening to this, I’m sure that they’re dealing with some of these questions, if not directly inpatient care then with sort of family connections. I mean, when you have a practice, when you spend more time with people, you sort of end up taking a lot of questions that you might not if you were in allopathic medicine just because there’s time and people have these kind of concerns and questions and it’s a good book from grandma to mother. And I think that that’s a great starting point. What are your hopes and dreams for it, and what do you see for yourself now in the next little while given that the practice is running, you’ve got this book now, where do you see taking your work here in the future?
Joel Warsh, MD:
I think the next big step for me is really continuing on the path to advocacy and continuing on the path to getting out there and speaking about this more and trying to help and discuss these kinds of topics with as many families as possible. Unfortunately right now it’s still fringe to be integrative and mainstream media tends to shy away from many of these topics or these discussions. And I think it’s just so important to have these conversations. I mean, I’ve unfortunately noticed through this process, I mean the book’s doing great, which is wonderful and I’m really thankful for that. But I noticed that liberal media, left-wing media, oftentimes doesn’t want to have me on, even though it’s just talking in integrative. Whereas more right-wing things would, and it’s not political health is not political, and kids’ health is certainly not political. And I will go on anything from the most right-wing to the most left-wing.
It doesn’t make any difference. Kids are kids. And I really hope that through that messaging over time, we can find some middle ground. And the more podcasts I could go on, the more shows they can go on, the more we can talk about this, then that’s only going to foster discussion. And the way that we improve our health is through discussing this and finding some sort of balance instead of censorship. And so that’s really been my mission over the last little bit, is to open up discussion, try to have debates, try to have talks with anybody about health and really point parents in direction to first understand that there is a serious problem. And then two, what are the basic simple steps that we can do to move in a different direction? So that is my big mission for the next bit, I think.
James Maskell:
Well, it’s interesting you say that, and I haven’t talked about this publicly, but I’d love to ask your opinion on it. My friend Kelly Brogan 10 years ago puts out an anti-pharma book basically, I dunno, in 2016 talking about not taking psychiatric medication. And at that moment, one of the choices that you make when you put out that book is that you’re going to get basically zero mainstream media coverage. That’s the situation at that moment. What’s interesting is that in the last couple of years, some of the biggest independent media channels going like Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson, which is I think one and two in the biggest podcasts in the world, are not only open, but seem keen to discuss these kind of topics. And it’s almost like a changing media landscape where there is a journey for people like yourself to get out to a different part of the population actually that we probably need to reach more than anything.
I mean, when you look at the map of America and you see where the life expectancy is high and low and where the health is high and low, it seems like actually in a strange way, if you wanted to aim for where this needed to be heard more than anything, and books about health and nutrition needed to be heard, it might be those audiences that need this more than anything. And so it’s interesting to now be in that media landscape and see that there is an opportunity to get the word out about these kind of topics through channels that you might not have expected. And having been in this industry for 20 years and basically seeing that there’s almost zero political will for this movement for 20 years, it is exciting to at least see some political interest in this topic. And some people staking out a claim because it’s obvious to me that more than 51% of the population want healthy kids. And so if you just think about voter theory or political economics, 51st voter theory is like go for policies that at least 51% of people want. And this seems like 90% of people want it. So it’s just like hopefully what this is doing is pushing the needle whereby this just becomes bipartisan policy.
Joel Warsh, MD:
Right. Well, I mean, I couldn’t agree more. And a big part of, I feel like my ability to speak out and speak on these topics is a comfort in knowing that all of these other avenues exist. Because at the end of the day, if you brought out a book 20 years ago and you wanted it to do well or you wanted people to know about it, there weren’t that many avenues that you could go, you wanted to get on a daytime talk show or maybe a nighttime talk show or whatever. That’s how you got your book to be big now. You don’t really need them anymore. It’s unfortunate. And again, I said I hope that we can move backwards to a place where everyone’s willing to talk about stuff, but even if some of those channels are not willing to, you don’t need them. Really, there’s so many bigger independent media sources at this point that if you have a good message, it’s going to get out there and it’s going to be heard.
So to me, that’s really empowering because there’s no possible way to really shut you down anymore. If you’re talking about even something that’s mildly controversial, you can still get it out there. So I think that’s really important and really empowering. And I agree what RFK, when he announced that he was running for president, talked for, I dunno, a quarter of his speech about kids’ health. I was like, what? He’s talking about this great, it doesn’t matter what your politics are. It’s like he started talking about it and then the right-wing side has really picked up and really started talking about health. And I think that’s good because it’s not political. It doesn’t really matter what side you’re on. And I hope after the election then it moves back into more both sides really going for this. I think at the end of the day it’s like, yes, it’s great and it’s exciting.
We’re talking so much and it’s exciting to be part of this movement. And over the last, I dunno, as of the day that we’re talking over the last two or three months, I’ve never been invited to more podcasts, more events, more things, big things because everyone’s interested in talking about health and especially kids health. That’s what I’ve been doing for years. But it’s very, I dunno what in or it’s a big thing right now. Everybody’s talking about it and they should be, but it’s nice to see it happening and seeing some of this election kind of pushing that discussion forward, which is fantastic because the country needs it. I mean, everybody’s sick, our kids are sick and we’re sick and there is a lot that we can do and it doesn’t have to be like this.
James Maskell:
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I totally agree and I’m glad to see you stepping forward into that. Well, on that topic, I know that you, just as we’re recording this, just got back from Michigan and there was a big rally on Tuesday led by my friend Vanney Hari and a bunch of other educators, advocates, leaders specifically around a petition to take food dies out of Kellogg’s, Kellogg’s cereals. And I think a lot of the momentum has come from, there was a senate hearing that had a lot of very shareable clips that have gone viral, and now you’ve got a lot of celebrities getting into it. I mean, taking poison out of kids’ food. I can’t help but think that’s a very obvious mainstream policy. And so give us a little bit about the experience of being there, what it was like, the energy that you’re feeling, how you came back feeling now, now that you’ve got back from it, and just how that plays into what you think is relevant in society today.
Joel Warsh, MD:
Yeah, so Vani Hari, if you don’t know, she’s the Food Babe, and she is a food activist. She has been for a long time, very popular, very sweet mom, and she has taken on big companies like Subway and Starbucks and Kraft, and they have changed their ingredients based on the petitions and the thing that she has done. Starbucks took out caramel color out of their pumpkin spice latte, and that was her, she did it. So, she’s done some pretty big things and she turned her sights this time on Kellogg’s and the artificial dyes in cereal, specifically Fruit Loops. She actually petitioned them about 10 years ago to take it out and they said they would, but they never did. And so now it’s really been reinvigorated. She got about 400,000 signatures. So this was the biggest grassroots petition ever to take out the artificial food coloring from Fruit Loops.
And it really, I think took hold because it’s something that a lot of us ate as kids. Everybody knows about the colorful cereals. But what I think was so impactful was looking at what is going on in other countries and comparing Fruit Loops ingredients here to Canada or Germany or Europe or other countries where they still make that cereal. It’s the same box, but the ingredients are totally different and they don’t use artificial dyes. They use natural dyes like watermelon and beets and carrots and things like that. So the big question is if you can do that, if you’re doing it at other countries, why are you giving kids here an inferior product, a product that has ingredients that have no nutritional value, have tons of research that they have potential harm. So we know that they can cause sensitivity or they can cause hyperactivity and sensitive kids inattention.
They’ve been linked to cancer, they’ve been linked to hormone disruption, immune dysregulation, and there are just tons of research on it and there’s really no benefits, and you have this other alternative that they’re already doing. But their response is basically, well, that’s the culture here and it’s not illegal here and it’s not proven unsafe officially, so therefore they can do it. Obviously it’s due to money mainly. I mean, I’m sure it’s cheaper and it’s brighter so they make more sales. And what’s nice is there’s such a grassroots effort, and I think that people just really took it up because they get it, this is poison or poisonous or it’s chemicals and we don’t need it, and these other countries don’t have it. So why isn’t American company giving American kids an inferior product when there’s an option for change? And the explosion this week has been just unbelievable. I mean, so many celebrities posted, and it’s not about celebrities. I mean people when they say, oh, who cares what a celebrity thinks? Well, it matters. They have a huge audience, and—
James Maskell:
It’s a media channel. It’s a big independent media channel. Kim Kardashian—
Joel Warsh, MD:
And I could care less what Kim Kardashian thinks, but when Kim Kardashian posts that we need to think about food dyes, well, 300 million people see that. And then they’re like, why is Kim Kardashian about food dyes? Well, maybe I should learn about this. I don’t know. I think that happens, and I think that’s why it’s important to get everybody involved. But it was nice to see we went there. Vani Hari, Rob Herring, he’s a filmmaker, Courtney, she’s Realfoodology. Alex Clark, she’s a podcast host of Culture Apothecary. So just a bunch of us went down there and Jason Karp was the other person, he’s the founder of Hu Chocolate, and we gave three-minute speeches. We had a big crowd. There’s about a thousand people there. We took over the petitions and of course they refused to meet with them. They took the petitions, but they refuse to talk to them.
And that has sparked even more anger. They didn’t even care enough to pretend to have a conversation about it. They really ignited a flame that I think now the powers that be want them to get it where it hurts. And that’s in the bottom line. And if they’re not willing to listen, then I think the big next step is to show them that people care. And if enough people decide that they’re not going to buy their products, then maybe they’ll change and they’ll change their products because companies will follow what people want. And at the end of the day, it would be nice if we can get legislation on this, but that’s hard and hopefully we’ll keep pushing for that. But if we can as a grassroots efforts, as parents say, we don’t want our kids poisoned, we don’t want these ingredients in our food. If other countries don’t have it, then we can push companies to do that just like we did with organic and non-GMO. The more people that are like, I’m not buying anything with an artificial dye in it, then companies are going to take it out.
James Maskell:
Yeah, I totally get it. And I believe that this movement is a huge net positive and awareness and all of that, I guess. But just to be clear, if Fruit Loops decided to reorganize in America and be made without artificial dyes, you’re not recommending Fruit Loops to your patients in your practice, right?
Joel Warsh, MD:
Correct. So that’s the other big discussion on this, right? Because a lot of people, and including myself and talking to my wife and talking to people, it’s like I would never recommend, let’s say, take out the, let’s say they do exactly what we asked. So they take out the dyes and the BHT and they replace it with natural dyes. The rest of it’s still not good for you, right? It’s still very bad for you. It’s still not something we should eat. But the point was made, and I agree with it, that you have to start somewhere. And if you can’t go after the low-hanging fruit, if you can’t get out artificial dyes which have no nutritional value and significant harms, then what chance do you have to work on the rest of the things? So I think we need momentum. And one of the big things with the Senate hearing this is to start to unify, to start to have a unified message, to start to work together to really build a coalition of health professionals, medical doctors, parents, and just everybody together.
Because if we do this together, then yeah, okay, we maybe say, don’t eat Kellogg’s, but let’s start there. Let’s get them to change that. Then we start to go after other ingredients, glyphosate and the sugar, all these things. But it takes one step at a time, and people are eating Kellogg’s and they are eating Fruit Loops. And so if we can at least offer a better version of that, then that’s one step in the right direction, and we’ll hopefully take all these steps to improve our food system. But it’s got to start somewhere. And it’s something that you can unify around because if the petition was, well, let’s cancel Kellogg’s totally. Let’s just close their company downs, not going to go anywhere. That’s not even American, really. You should be free to do what you want. But I think that at the end of the day, we need to push back to get back to healthy food. But that’s a big conversation in a long time away versus this is a very tangible goal.
James Maskell:
Yeah. Well, I want to just reiterate, I think it’s a net positive. I hope it’s the beginning of something. The theme of Unity is actually our theme for 2024 here at the Evolution of Medicine. And look, I mean, I don’t mean to blow my own horn on this, but 10 years ago I was like, the first step has to be unity. The first step has to be connection, connecting practitioners together so that they could come together and make a movement locally or nationally or whatever it is you have to organize. And ultimately, that’s been the effort that we’ve been doing here for a decade, which is to help introduce people who are like-minded to each other so that they can come up and do cool things. And I’m glad that this is sparking an interest on a national level. And it’s really exciting to see that those practitioner communities that have dedicated themselves to build cohesion and build trust amongst those doctors, one, are elevating the average experience of being with an integrative doctor in their local communities and then starting to think about, well, what could we do together?
And doing public education, doing events that can make an impact in their zip code and in their town. And I think that examples like this of people coming together to really push things forward is hopefully fuel to that fire to make impact locally, internationally, nationally, wherever that can be. So I want to honor your role in that. Thank you for leading the charge. Thank you for being a voice of reason when it comes to kids’ health. Hopefully I know that your example leads to more doctors feeling comfortable to talk about difficult topics and really grateful for your journey and see this future of advocacy before you because you understand it, you, you’re on the front lines with it. And also now have a great platform to go and do a lot of good in the world. So really excited to have you back on the platform.
First time in seven years since we met, and again, just where we started. Just grateful for your work and advocacy and excited to see what the future holds for us. All, this has been the Evolution of Medicine podcast. I’ve been here with Joel “Gator” Warsh. He has a new book, it’s called Parenting at Your Child’s Pace. Check it out if you think it could be valuable for people in your community, people in your practice, and might be something as a gift for this holiday time. And if you have any other questions, we’ll put all the links in the show notes to Joel’s practice and you can see more about how he runs there. But Doc, thanks so much for being part of it. And this is your host, James Maskell, and we’ll see you next time.
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