[00:00:05] Nick: Now I can actually tell dad jokes and I can mean it because for years, man, I was just out here telling dad jokes with no kids. I was just a pa. Now I'm a real pa baby. I'm a real pa, if two things are an argument, can we still call it a beef, there's one thing you can do for your health today, do some lunges, it'll be a small step forward.
[00:00:30] PODCAST INTRO: Welcome to “In The RACK” podcast, where we provide you with the practical framework for breaking PRs in all facets of health and wellness. We are just a couple of bros giving you the simple house in a world of complex wants. No filters, no scripts, no rules, just straight talk, talk tune. Now, let's get into the rack with your hosts, Dr. Chad and Dr. Nick.
[00:00:55] Chad: Alright, everyone. Welcome to another episode of “In The RACK” podcast. I am your host, Chad, and with me is my co-host and fellow physical therapist, Nick.
[00:01:06] Nick: And fellow father.
[00:00:55] Chad: Fellow father, that’s right. The last episode we were talking about “What to Expect When You're Expecting”. We said we're gonna drop that when, Nick, got back from paternity leave, and he is back. And this is the dad's perspective. We don't have any mom's with us tonight.
[00:01:30] Nick: We're not going to try to pretend that we know what that's like.
[00:01:35] Chad: So we don't know, but we tried to know.
[00:01:40] Nick: We're gonna get that perspective on at some point.
[00:01:43] Chad: We are actually with that. I think we'll add another part two that where we may have Alicia or Katie or both, and see if we can kind of get the perspective from the mom's side and give you all like a little. So anyways, I think what we're going to do today is I know Nick's got a lot of research. He's new to fatherhood. So he's definitely going to be hitting the baby stages, no doubt. And I think we're going to talk a little bit about things that you can do pre pregnancy, as well as post pregnancy. And I'll try to give my perspective on, my kids are a little older. So I'll try to give my perspective on that. And we'll just kind of go from there. So where do you want to start this conversation?
[00:02:36] Nick: First off, I'm so pumped, because now I can actually tell dad jokes and I can mean it. Because for years, I was just out here telling dad jokes with no kids. I was just a faux pa. Now I'm a real power. So love me some dad jokes they might be sprinkled in throughout this episode. I wouldn't have felt right time on prior episodes, because I wasn't a dad. But now I am. And I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I'm tired. I'm really tired. It's real. I think I'm certainly getting more sleep than Alicia. I think everyone knows, it's really even if they don't have children, you just don't know what to expect from it until you're in it. But what we're going to talk about today isn't anything like, I'm gonna say some stuff, and people are gonna be like, “It's his first kid, wait till you have three to four”. I hear that all the time. And this isn't something what I'm talking about today isn't something that it's all or nothing, it's the end all be all, it's just things that we can tweak that we can potentially do better as a society to improve the lives of our children. Because the reality of it is, they can make their choices pretty early. But overall, it's the environment we established for them, the home environment, the lifestyles, the things that we do to try to help them develop that really, really matter early on. And if we're not trying to do everything we can to maximize that development, we should be trying to do better. So that's kind of where Alicia and I took some deep dives down to a lot of reading a lot of learning in the past couple of years as we prepared for this stage to do whatever we could possibly do to help grow family, bring lives into this world. So first thing I want to talk about is the concept of prenatal vitamins. Now I know this is getting into the mother's side. So prenatal vitamins are traditionally thought of as for mothers. But nonetheless, I encourage people to think about why those are now considered necessary and why they are so beneficial. And a lot of it has to do with our modern nutrition, our modern diet culture. It's really, really nutrient deficient in the grand scheme of things. So when you think about the process of pregnancy, your nutrient demands go way up during pregnancy, because now you have to supply the nutrients for another life and to develop that life. So any nutrient deficiency you had prior to being pregnant, is now magnified. So that's why prenatal are so widely considered, every woman has to take them and they have been shown to be very beneficial. But if we peel it back, and we look at, can we manage this a little bit better? So we don't have to become reliant on prenatal? So that's the thing here, I'm not saying no one should be taking prenatal is because the reality of it is our food sources are just less nutrient dense than they used to be. So prenatal very much might be necessary. But do we have to be as reliant on them as our culture is currently, I don't think so. So some of the big things in prenatal vitamins, choline, folate, copper, zinc, all those B Vitamins, Vitamin D, Vitamin A, all the common ones that people tend to think about the big ones for prenatal choline and folate. Our modern food is loaded with seed oils, and we've talked about that on numerous Episodes. Episode 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, pretty much. So we talked about seed oils all the time. And seed oils are canola oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, all those all those oils. You see on any booster bag food, essentially, those are very, very high in what's called linoleic acid. And that linoleic acid actually makes it difficult for your body to absorb these nutrients that are choline, folate, the copper, so it actually strips your body of the choline, folate and copper, and choline and B vitamins that you actually do have. So even if you are deficient, and you're taking in a lot of linoleic acid through seed oils, you're now even more deficient. So if you can reduce or even maybe even remove your seed oil intake, you may not have to be as reliant on that prenatal. So those are things that we want to consider don't just, well everyone does this, I'm gonna do it. Let's think about can I improve my nutrition to help support not only my life, but the life of my child that's coming into this world, as opposed to, I really want to take the highest quality prenatal for my child. I want my child to have the best possible situation to come into this world. So I need the highest quality, I'm gonna spend the most money on this highest absorbable prenatal. It doesn't have to be like that, let's modify the nutrition a little bit. We'll still take the prenatal to support and be a supplement. But we don't have to become relying on that. Speaking of nutrient deficiencies, we've talked about veganism, all that kind of stuff. Vegans tend to be very nutrient deficient. If two things are an argument, can we still call it a beef? Here we go. So that's my thing on prenatal. Nothing crazy. I didn't want to dive too far into that. But dads, you don't get a pass on this. So even though women typically are known to take the prenatal in our culture, it doesn't necessarily mean, “Dad, you have to take prenatal” but think about your nutrition too. Because development of your child starts the moment of conception and that requires the sperm and the egg. So the quality of your sperm will absolutely be impacted by your nutrition and your nutrient density and your micronutrient content. So if you have any nutrient deficiencies yourself that can absolutely impact development. So don't think as a father, you get a pass on this, that's my wife has to worry about that, nothing. So my big message from this as a new parents, and going into this whole process of, Alicia, getting pregnant and trying to change our environment to be the best possible for our child is as it relates to toxin exposure. So our modern world is just loaded with chemicals and all these other toxins that we're now exposed to. And that cannot only relate or even cause diseases and conditions that we see nowadays, but it's going to hack your body's micronutrients, we just talked about the prenatal hormones. That's going to rob your body of those natural hormone profiles. So toxins are something we all need to think about because it's just our modern world, unfortunately. But the reality of it is, I hear this all the time from people because I've had these conversations, as I've been learning this stuff really over the last two years or so. People would be like, “I've been doing this for years”. Whether, as it relates to any kind of toxicity, I'm going to talk about kind of each big category of this, but people are like, I've been living like this or doing this for years, and I haven't had any issues. I'm fine with you a grown adult making that decision for yourself. But just know that whatever you've been doing, or whatever you've been exposing yourself to whatever it is. Just take smoking, for example, I've been doing this for years, I haven't any problem. But now you expose a newborn child, whatever age to that smoke inhalation, that's gonna be more problematic for them than it is for you. You're fully grown. You have the ability to make that choice as a newborn, they don't. So think about that as you are doing some of the things I'm going to talk about in the next couple of minutes. They are much more sensitive to all these toxins that we'll discuss. So think about that. If you're like, “I don't have any problem with this fragrance or this cleaning agent”, even though I know it's bad for you. It's got a ton of chemicals. I haven't had any issues, while your baby might. So consider that. And it doesn't necessarily mean I have to throw it all out. But can I use less of it, or can I find a happy medium somewhere? So first big thing with toxins just remember, you can't be 100% toxin free. Everything's out there that you can't avoid it 100%. But can we minimize exposure, that's the key. First thing, clothing. This is something that the research is growing, it's pretty scary. So you should for your child, at least on them put on natural clothing on cotton, wool, anything that is a natural product. Polyester is just one of the more common synthetic things that is used to make clothing nowadays, it's in a lot of stuff. And it's been shown to really, really be a big endocrine disruptor. So it disrupts your hormones, notably testosterone. Especially as males, we want to be mindful of that. So when they're growing and developing, they need a ton of testosterone to grow, muscles, bones, things like that. So do we want to be putting polyester if we could just put cotton on them? Not necessarily. Now a lot of sporting clothes are polyester. So there will come a time where your child may play some sports. If they get into that situation, we wear polyester while they play sports for an hour or two, then it's done. It's off back to cotton. So there are things that we can balance it. But think about this, if you have a newborn and you're holding the newborn most of the time, newborns faces on your shirt or something. If you have a polyester shirt, now they're getting exposed to that. So those are just considerations with regard to clothing, it would be ideal to put the child in all natural clothing, but then you also may want to change some of your wardrobe based on that. So those are just things to consider as relates to clothing. Easy changes. Like, now I consider how do I sweat a lot? If I'm wearing cotton, I might be sweating more. Can I find a blend something that's not 100% polyester, it's a little bit of a blend 50-50 or something? Great, that's better than 100% polyester. So think about the clothes you're wearing the clothes your child is wearing. Next one, cleaning agents, detergents, skincare products, these are huge. These also hack your endocrine system, your hormones. Cleaning agents, easy to make homemade products, baking soda, vinegar, essential oils, lemon juice, all that stuff easy for cleaning agents. Detergents, there's a ton of better options out there. Seventh Generation is a great one for people who are like, “I don't know what to do. I don't know how to wash my clothes without it”. Seventh Generation is at most stores now it's definitely better than some of the mainstream ones. And then then your skincare products, what are you putting on your skin? If you have a newborn, and you have a bunch of makeup on that's got a lot of chemicals in it, parabens things like that. And then you're face to face with your newborn kissing, doing all the things that we want to do as parents, but now you're just exposing them to all those chemicals from that as well something to consider. Again, it doesn't mean if you're going out to work and you typically wear makeup to work, you can put it on and then you can wash it when you get home for you to interact with the baby. Again, we can find a happy medium common ground there. We already talked about the seed oils. That's a huge one. So we don't want to be unfortunately a lot of formulas out there. Our main ingredient is a seed oil typically, unfortunately. So there are better options for formulas but also as the parent if you are a mother and breastfeeding and you're consuming a lot of seed oils, your baby is now getting some of that little egg acid via the breast milk. So minimize your seed oil intake as well. Air quality is huge. We spend about 90% of our time indoors nowadays. That is a whole separate discussion we need spend more time outdoors nowadays. But nonetheless, can we do things to improve the air quality in our houses? Absolutely. There's a ton of good air purifiers on the market nowadays. Some are more expensive, some more affordable, obviously, sometimes more expensive ones work a little bit better. But if you're just trying to do something to improve that indoor air quality, indoor air pollution has been shown to be much more detrimental than outdoor air pollution. So when we talk about pollution, we always talk about big cities, they're more polluted. But we never talked about the inside. So think about that. There's a lot of plants as well. A lot of the species of cactus and things like that they help with air quality. So you can always get some plants in the house, and you can do a deep dive into the world of plants, it's crazy, but nonetheless, air purifiers, you can get some for the whole house, you can just get some plugging in the wall for each room, or whatever the case is. So options there. The water we expose ourselves to, tap water, drinking tap water nowadays, probably not a good idea. Now your baby, if they're newborn, they're not really drinking water. Again, if you're breastfeeding, and you're drinking tap water, there's a ton of things in the tap water that can be then transferred to the baby. There's this term there called PFA is it's per and poly floral alkyl substances, it's just a fancy term, they're being dubbed forever molecules. But basically, they're just resistant to break down. So once they get in your body, your body has a really hard time breaking them down and flushing them out. So they just there, they may or may not wreak havoc, we don't know to the full extent we're finding some of these in the research connections to cancers and things like that, but we still don't know a lot. But nonetheless, we know they don't break down. So probably can't be that good. Most of the stuff in our body breaks down. Like all our cells, all our tissues, we break it down, we build it back up, and we break it down to the backup. So you can imagine something getting in there that can't be broken down, might be a little dicey. So in that tap water, you don't want to know what's in there. If you take this dive, and you go into the deep dive of what's in your tap water, you will be alarmed. There's heavy metals, there's micro-plastics a ton of them. There's even pharmaceuticals. So residual things from medications and drugs that get into the water supply, they get in there. So there's actually a lot of regions that have high levels of birth control in the water supplies. That's not good either. Because we know that could be a separate podcast on and what it does to one's hormones profiles. But you can imagine what that's gonna be doing if you're just drinking that. And then some of the other things are our governing bodies add to the water, like fluoride. Fluoride even though it can be beneficial in small doses, when it's in large doses. Like if you're drinking a lot of tap water in large doses, it's not great. We've seen a lot of issues in children with high levels of fluoride. Chad, knows about this one. Tupperware containers, so if you can store things in glass, it's going to be much better than plastic because the plastic, , the, the longer something is in there, liquid food, anything like that the plastic will kind of bleed into the food and you'll get micro-plastics in that food or that liquid. So if you store things like glass, it's going to be much better those micro-plastics they're PFA. They forever molecules, and they don't break down. We have a hard time getting them out. They're very, very microscopic. So they get lodged in places in your body and just get in the way essentially,
[00:18:52] Chad: Can't think of how many times I fed the girls when they were babies and threw a bottle. And how they think I hated that thing up there. I put it in that little babies steamer in plastic bottle.
[00:19:04] Nick: I know it's crazy. And that's so mainstream that everyone's doing it. And feasibility comes into play. I have experienced our baby feels only. He's gonna be four weeks this Sunday. So he's super young. So I'm very new to this. So you guys can bash me all you want to say you haven't been through it. You haven’t been through the beginning of the thick of it. Fine, that's fair. But you can always do a little bit better. So does it mean absolutely no plastic that would be hard? But can we be better? Can we have our glass bottles and then in a pinch the plastic ones just easier? I have that if I'm super stressed out. I'm super tired. It might be easier. Maybe the baby takes it a little bit better. So there's always this kind of give ebb and flow give and take, can I find that middle ground? That's where we want to be okay. And the other thing if all we have is plastic bottles, that's what we're going to use. But if we buy some glass bottles, now I have access to those. And maybe, if I'm like, “No, I'm just gonna end up using the plastic bottle, we'll just don't have any of them now”. And it's gonna think at first, this is so much harder than plastic for whatever reason. But if that's all you have, you get used to it, you figure it out. So one of those things. This is another big one that I haven't gone on a deep end, and this one is the Wi-Fi. So there's a lot of new research on Wi-Fi as it relates to babies. Let's backtrack a little bit. Human beings, animals were electrical beings. Nervous System, heart, it all runs on electricity, electromagnetic forces. So we can imagine if we have something like cellular service Wi-Fi that's going to interact with it. So we've seen a lot of this research over the last three to four decades, it's been a long time since we've had this, but people don't really talk about it. And there's books coming out about and all that kind of stuff. But your body runs on this electromagnetic frequency, or multiple electromagnetic frequencies. So Wi-Fi can kind of interrupt with some of that stuff, it can interfere with some of your body's natural functioning, all that kind of stuff. Children are so much more sensitive to this is what we're finding. So humans have the capacity of not have you feel any of the effects. But the younger you are, the less exposure you have to that and the more sensitive you are to it. So if you got the Wi-Fi going, you got the highest grade Wi-Fi you can get from XFINITY plus you got your cell phone, you got these Bluetooth headphones in, you got the computer there and you're hanging out with the baby, you're having fun, but you got all these devices just surrounding the baby. Imagine how much of this radiation from all these devices is just hitting you and the baby. So, again, is this something just ditch all the devices? Absolutely not. That doesn't make sense. It's the modern world. We need computers, we need phones, for jobs most of the time. So can we when we're not using the phone turn on airplane mode? Or can we try to use more wired headphones, things like that? Because all the Bluetooth stuff creates that electromagnetic frequency. Can we shut our Wi-Fi off at night when we're sleeping? So those are strategies that you can implement to modify this. We're not going to completely avoid it but we can definitely mitigate it. And then the other thing with that is get outside more. So get your child outside. This was kind of mind blowing to me at the hospital. So Alicia gives birth. It's early in the morning on a Sunday. We didn't see the light of day till Tuesday afternoon. And I know this is for safety things and everything. You can't leave the room with your baby. And I know a lot of people know that. I was kind of blown away that we couldn't. It was just one of these things. I'm like, “What do you mean I can’t go outside with the baby?” I want to share my baby son for the first time. No, you can't leave the room. You can leave but you can't leave with baby. He’ll stay here. So, it’s 72 hours we're not even gonna show this baby the sun or the sky. It was mind blowing to me. I don't know why. But nonetheless, get outside. There's gonna be less of that radiation outside. Wi-Fi ran down. I'm still going here, Chad.
[00:23:35] Chad: I'm not trying to interrupt you.
[00:23:38] Nick: This is an interesting one that I kind of discovered this on a whim. So, Chad, knows this and, Chad, got into it himself. He got into the infrared sauna. But I have an infrared light at home. I don't have a sauna. Nowhere to put it yet. I want one in the future. Chad, still hasn't invited me over yet. But nonetheless, I have an infrared light. So I use the infrared light for myself. And there's a ton of research on infrared light. And the other night, it was really fuzzy. We couldn't we couldn't get him to just relax, calm down, go to sleep. And it was at night. So all the lights, we had pretty much had all the lights off. So it's dark. I'm still trying to even figure my way around the house and all that kind of stuff. And then so at night, I have a red light on my phone. So I don't use the blue light and took the phone out to see something. And as soon as he saw the red light, he stopped crying. And it was just (crying) kind of thing. And I was like, “Huh, that's interesting”. So, of course, I hit Google Scholar. Like what's up with this? And there's some really, really interesting research and children that grind and clench their teeth. And red light actually calms down the clenching and the grinding so it's calming to them clearly because we clench or grind. It's usually an anxious process with your body. So it's very common to them. And then I was like, “Let's think about this from an ancestral perspective. When did we typically see red light at night with fires?” And what else did that mean? When we had a fire, that we were probably safe. So if we were being chased by an animal predator, we probably weren't starting to fire we were taking care of we were hiding in the dark, somewhere up in a tree in a cave, wherever. But if we were safe, we knew there was no immediate threat of predators, we started to fire. So it meant it was calming, it was time to wind down. And then we were safe. So my little man feels, “I'm safe, red light, boom fire”. So, in my mind, that's kind of like where my head went. , you can think I'm crazy. That's fine. But it was super, super interesting. So try really grab a red light. But the other thing too is like night lights, a ton of them are just bright blue light, red light. If you can get a nightlight that's either red or more like amber hue, because fire is reddish orange yellowish. So those red and amber hues are going to be much more calming. So if you got to baby's crying, just blew out the diaper. You got to change the diaper in the dark. You don't want to turn all the lights on. Well, if we can have red and amber, you might be able to help your baby go back to sleep a little quicker. So give it a try. Last one, this isn't really a toxin, but in my viewpoint, it's toxin going to the feet. So I always got to talk about the feet. But why the heck do we sell these little Jays, Jordan’s on the fancy footwear for our little babies. And then people post their sweet photos like “Check out my baby's Jays”. Take the picture, take the shoes off. What do we what do we cram in our babies, especially if they can't walk. But even when they do walk, there's a whole sensory system in the bottom of foot that needs to be exposed to the world. So the footwear for our babies is crazy. Even these tight restricted socks like their feet are super wide. Let them be wide our feet as adults should be probably not that wide but they should still be wide. But they're not because we've all worn shoes for our life. We're at a different stage of our life. And you may have had foot issues in your past. So you're like, “Man, I gotta protect my baby's feet”. No, don't project your foot issues on your baby, your baby's feet are fine right now. Let them develop. But some cool stuff about the foot. So your child's foot is you as an adult, if you're listening on this, or some children listening, I don't know. But as an adult, you have 26 bones in each foot, your baby has 22. They haven't fuse yet, there's a ton of space in between each of those bones. So when you put a shoe or a restrictive sock on that foot, those bones because there's so much space are now being pushed into that space. So if we have a force on the outside, and there's open space, we will compress that space. Your baby grows and develops and they have flat feet when they're born. And then they start to gain an arch sometime four, or five, or six is usually where they have a foot and that's how their foot’s going to look like for the remainder of their life. But nonetheless, your baby will go through a point in time during that early development where they will have 45 bones in each foot, they just double the amount of bones because the bones haven't fused yet to be that 26 bone foot. So now we're putting something restrictive on our baby's feet. And we're just interrupting all of this magical process of 22 bones with a lot of space transition a 45 bones. Those will then also fine fuse into our 26 point adult foot. It's pretty freakin cool. But what we're doing with footwear modern footwear is we are just ruining that process. So please, please, please, if you get anything from this, just let the feet be free on your baby. Especially like if they're really, really young. Just go nothing. If you got to keep them warm. You can put onesie that has the nice wide plenty of space footed part or you can just put some big loose socks on something that will allow there there's those display. So please, don't cram their feet into shoes and socks. Just don't do it.
[00:29:24] Chad: Are you done? Did you get it all?
[00:29:27] Nick: I got through all the toxins?
[00:29:29] Chad: You got it.
[00:29:30] Nick: Our world is toxic.
[00:29:31] Chad: I know it is. It's not get any better. I just wanted to hit a couple of quick things. And this is probably going to speak to some of the parents out there that have older kids that are kind of in the school system and kind of going through all that now. So my oldest is nine, so she's in fourth grade and my youngest twins are six, they're in first grade. So what we have to deal with all the time now is allergies with kids in school. And it totally depends on what class it is. So one of my twins, she can't pack a certain type of food, because there's one kid that's allergic to a certain type of food in that class. But the other two kids can eat whatever the heck they want. It's just super frustrating. Because now we have to remember what to pack for each child. And make sure that that goes in the correct bag instead of packing all the same, and they're identical. So my big thing, and I've been saying this for years, and I know research is starting to back this up as well. But people always wonder why this happens. And a lot of the research is targeting the fact that we're not exposing these kids to these certain foods, or certain environments. If you will, it's interesting. A lot of the exposure that research is saying, should be done within the first year. If it's done within the first year, you can significantly reduce your likelihood of any type of allergies, wheezing, asthma, that kind of stuff, and a lot of that has to do with not just exposing them to food, but what they're exposed to in the household. Like they say, even having pets can be a huge indicator as to what they develop and later on in life in terms of allergies. So go outside, get yourself pet, it can be helpful. But if you don't, just like you said, Nick, take the shoes off, get your feet dirty, get your hands dirty, expose yourself to these bacteria’s. Because if you don't, that's when we start to see these kids that are having all these issues, and it kind of makes me question, what the hell were these parents doing with these kids that have every single allergy? It could be one of those things to where I just don't want to take the risk if they have a peanut allergy or something such as not going to anything. And then it's just elimination, and then it just creates havoc down in the future so.
[00:31:57] Nick: And people often blame genetics for this. And genetics always plays a role. But genetics loads, the gun environment pulls the trigger. So if you have a peanut allergy yourself as a parent, you probably speculate that your child has a parental allergy now, but they might have the gene that's coded for in allergy to peanuts. But does that mean that it's going to be expressed? Not necessarily. If you don't expose them for the first four years of life, and then the first time they get exposed is that four and a half, “Yes, the body may react to that”. But if you gradually expose them over time, they may not develop it. They may still because allergies can still be a thing. But, Chad, is right. I had some data I was gonna throw in at the end, but we can throw this right now, 1/12 kids have food allergies, that's pretty bonkers. And 1/5 have allergic eczema, so they're not getting a full blown allergy to certain foods and other environmental factors, but they're getting a skin reaction. So it's not like, anaphylactic, where all they were exposed to peanuts right now. It's just their skin breaks out 1/5, that's pretty crazy. Chad, we need to definitely expose our kids to more and there's going to be a time where we've exposed a number of times and they're still having this reaction. That's a real thing. But those situations are probably few and far between. Chad, and I were talking about this before we hit the record button, but there's some interesting data out there that shows that you have to be exposed to something upwards 15 to 20 times, to not only have your body, almost know what it is or know what its response is gonna be, but for you to actually decide if you even like it as it pertains to food. So all the time we have, my kid doesn't like this. They're super picky. But we only tried to give it to him once. It's like you have to keep going, let them play with it, let them throw it let them do stuff. It's frustrating. But if it's been 15 times, and they're still throwing it, they we're not doing that. But it takes a long time, even as adults it takes that that amount of time. So exposure is everything and gradual exposure, progressive exposure, you don't have to expose them to the whole jar of peanut. Put a little on their plate, see what they do with it. Maybe they like it. Maybe they hate it, it is super interesting. But that speaks volumes to like what we're doing as a culture as a society, everything needs to be sanitized can't expose them to everything. Now, it's all about gradual exposure. The more that we keep putting people in a bubble, the worse it's going to be. There's been some crazy, crazy data and it's actually pretty alarming on antibiotics. So as a medical culture, we'll take antibiotics preventatively but we'll do it as a precaution. So why are we doing that the rates of allergies and issues, post antibiotics is crazy. So the average American child is exposed to 17 rounds of antibiotics by the time they're 20, that's crazy. 70% of children receive an antibiotic during the first two years of life. So, before they’re two, they have at least one course of antibiotics. And then 20% of acute care pediatric visits result in antibiotic prescriptions. So that's just where we're saying, “Let's just play it safe here. Let's get that”. Antibiotics is a great invention, they can absolutely save lives. But we're getting to laissez faire with their prescription. We're just like, “Let's just do that, let's just give it here”. I'm not too sure about this. But there's a two times the risk of asthma and wheezing in children who have been prescribed antibiotics, there's a 75% risk of developing allergies. And there's with that specific to food, it's 40% for food allergies. And then there's a 20% increased risk of obesity interest, which is pretty wild. And then anxiety, depression, which we know a lot of kids are dealing with nowadays, it goes up exponentially per round. So individuals who get one round of antibiotics, it's a 23% risk, and then five plus rounds is 54%. So most child children are getting 17 rounds, by the time they’re 20. That's 45 plus rounds, they just keeps going up. We're gonna be anxious, depressed for sure. So it's something that we can absolutely do better, as a part of antibiotics as a preventative strategy, probably not the best. Use your instincts as a parent. If you're like, I'm not sure about this doc, maybe we'll wait on it. I'll call you if anything changes but let's not do this just yet. And you take for example, what's a common thing a child may deal with that antibiotic is prescribed for? Ear infection. What are most of ear infections caused by? A virus. Was an antibiotic going to do? Absolutely nothing. So we're using antibiotics in this situation where maybe we don't know what to do as the provider and we're just trying to give something and it's not a good strategy. So as a parent out there remember, we've been doing this for over millionaires, multimillionaires being parents. Use your gut that you have instincts there, our modern world and our modern culture is oftentimes blocking our instincts. Take a step back, use your gut, weigh out risk benefits for your family, your child and make the choice that's right for your baby primarily, and you and your family. So it doesn't have to be an all or nothing, it can be a situational thing. I didn't want to talk about vaccines on this, but take vaccines. We have a vaccine schedule. It's like, “Children get this vaccine”, you have the right as a parent to delay that schedule. If you don't think this is right for them at that particular time, then hold off on it. It doesn't have to be today. It can be next week, it'd be next month. There are certain things that that are a little bit more time oriented in terms of the schedule for a reason, but it’s okay. Have that open conversation, you don't have to just be like, “We're supposed to do this. Here we go”. Give it all my baby right now. So it's something that you can do research, you can ask around and look into it yourself, and then have a conversation with your doctor. We talked about this before, if your doctor is immediately dismissing that, probably red flag. Like if they don't have a conversation with you, probably red flag, you want to get a second opinion, maybe a new doctor. So that's something you could do. And then there's also if your child is getting a vaccine, I'm just crazy right now. And right now, if your child is going to get a vaccine, there's also things we can do in preparation for that to prepare your baby's body for that. So one of the things that vaccines have been shown to do is significantly hacked down your baby's levels of glutathione. Glutathione is the body's main antioxidant. So that will ramp back up, but it takes time. Is it worthwhile to think we can provide our baby some glutathione? There's some great products out there that are liposomal. So they're encased in like a fat cell gets into the body is highly absorbed, can we give them some glutathione leading up to the vaccine? So now their body isn't hit as hard by the side effects of it, but they can still reap the rewards of it. So there are things you can do to kind of help with the response. Because as much as we know, something like a vaccine can be helpful and it serves a purpose. Does it have side effects? Absolutely. Everything in medicine has side effects. Even supplements can have side effects. Even the food in high doses can have side effects. So things have side effects. And we need to consider that don't forget about that. So something like, “I'm just going to spread out the vaccines more as a parent, that's totally fine”. People are going to say, “Oh, you're anti-vaccine”. I'm just delaying it for my baby to be able to develop in. Let's take this one. And let the body do what it needs to do, instead of all this stuff in the bodies like, fight or flight mode real fast. So that's just something to consider for sure. Like, we have all these things that we're doing, we can do better. There's another example I could bring this up to Tylenol. How many times, Chad, did you hear your pediatrician now just getting some time? So it's quickly recommended by pediatricians. But most people don't know that the number one cause of liver failure in children is because of Tylenol. And actually the side effects and negative effects of Tylenol results in 70,000 ER visits in children. So Tylenol also a vaccine depletes the glutathione. So when you have less glutathione, big link between chronic low levels of glutathione and autism. And now we're at a point, autism has been on the rise for the last couple of decades. Now, I think it's up to 1/44 children who have autism. Like, it's rampant right now. And it's this big connection is not only gut bacteria that gut micro biome but low levels of glutathione. So and that's not to say like, if I just keep my babies from glutathione, they'll be fine. No, not necessarily. Because there's other factors at play. But something to consider and that's what Tylenol does. So Tylenol in a situation where it fever has been present for numerous days and it's not going away. Might be time for it. But it fevers here, in within minutes I get it? Probably not. Let's play the wait and see game. So just all things to consider. Again, we can do better. There's other options for fevers and sicknesses. Vitamin C, D, Zinc, those things work. Nasal rinses have been shown to be really effective. There's a really cool homeopathic thing you can actually get at most drugstores. Also, look Oscillococcinum, have you heard of that one?
[00:42:27] Chad: No.
[00:42:28] Nick: Love this one. So Oscillococcinum, it's actually in other countries. It's not widely used in in the US, but in Europe and some of these other countries. It's the number one line of defense for the flu. And what's it come from take a guess. Think about what I love it as it relates to organs. It comes from Duck. Typically duck, heart and liver. So we've talked a little bit about organ meats on this podcast numerous times. They are loaded with nutrients. And we have this awesome homeopathic remedy for the flu and colds that is out in the world that is not talked about in the US and it's derived from the heart and liver of ducks. Pretty freakin cool. But you can use probiotics, you can use sunlight, all that stuff, whole Foods akinesia, that's another one. That can be easily given to children usually in a dropper form. People use elderberry, palm, and all that kind of stuff. I mentioned liposomal glutathione. So there are other options out there that you can just have on deck at the house. And then if those aren't working, then we turn to our modern medical system. So we can certainly do better. Our children are struggling right now. We talked about the allergies, 1/5 of the allergic eczema, 1/44 have autism. We talked about that 1/6 have a mental health disorder, that's crazy. 1/5 are obese that's absolutely insane too, 1/8 have asthma. And then 1/6 have some kind of developmental delay, or delay. So this is all stuff we're doing. We have antibiotics, like I said, great invention. But that kind of resulted in us having this like single treatment medical model, where we have this issue, what's our one treatment? But all this stuff we've mentioned throughout this whole thing, it's all multifactorial. So our treatment method has to be multifactorial to come. So we have to consider that as we're going because there are children of the next generation but if we are allowing these numbers to rise, 1/8 in a asthma, 1/5 obese all those and now we have a life expectancy that's going the other way. For decades, it was gradually rising. Now it's getting shorter. But now we have this this population of children that are sicker than ever. They're going to be the next adult population that's sicker than ever. Our adult population is already the sickest we've ever seen. We have one and two people on pre diabetes or diabetes, that's insane. So we're letting our children follow suit and get just as sick as the adult population. We're trending down a bad path. And that was pretty much the big goal of this podcast and I ranted hard on.
[00:45:27] Chad: You did. I was giving you your space on this one, because I know that you had done a lot of research on this with your whole journey through having, Theo, and all that.
[00:45:36] Nick: Again, I know guys, I'm new to this. I'm only a month in it. I totally get it and you're like, Nick's not gonna stick with all that stuff. Oscillococcinum, he's not gonna have that. It's the stuff that's easy to do. This stuff when baby's crying in the middle night, you can't figure it out. I got nothing for you for that. Try the red light. I don't know if it works for me one night. It didn't work last night, but it worked one night. So you could try it. But I got nothing for you on that. I don't have enough reps to give you any information on that. But can you have some of these things we talked about or change some of those toxic exposures, toxin exposures? Absolutely. Those are definitely something you could change. Everyone here knows that. I changed my wardrobe to if not 100% cotton, at least close to it. I'm pretty much everything I wore, I wear on a daily basis especially around the house for this reason, it is something that we can all change, and we can all do better. And it doesn't have to be perfect, just slightly better.
[00:46:36] Chad: I love it. I think we crushed a lot of the important factors here and what to expect, when you're expecting or after you've had your child.
[00:46:50] Nick: Before we go into that, we talked all about your child today. Don't forget about you, people listening, because you have to take care of yourself in order to take care of someone else. So don't forget about yourself. So take care of yourself and some of the stuff protects you. Like all that toxic exposure, you have to change your toxic exposure in order to change your child's, and your babies. So do that. If there's one thing you can do for your health today, do some lunges, it'll be a small step forward. I had to drop that in there. So next time, we're gonna get spooky with it because Halloween is coming.
[00:47:23] Chad: Yes, it is. I think we're going to talk about like some scary maybe stories cases that we've had. Maybe talk about the scary things that are going on in in today's world, kind of in addition to what we already just talked about some scary stuff. But I think we'll talk about it on a different scale, for sure. Especially some of the things I'll probably touch on some testosterone stuff, just because I've been diving pretty deep into that lately. So that's always good too. Especially for the men's health side. So it's gonna be a little Halloween special edition.
[00:47:59] Nick: We’re going some spooky with it will be. Well, actually, now we're going to record it before Halloween, but we'll be dressed up. Wait and see what our costumes are going to be. They're gonna be pretty sweet.
[00:48:09] Chad: It's gonna be pretty awesome. I got one last study. Before we conclude this episode because you came up with all the research. This one's legit, though. So, studies say that “20% of men kiss their wife goodbye before they leave their home”. It's fact. Only 20%, isn't that crazy? Studies also show that “80% of men kiss their house goodbye when they leave their wife”. So conclusion, “Want to keep your house? Stop kissing your wife”.
[00:48:52] PODCAST OUTRO: Thank you for joining us “In The RACK” this week. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes. You can also find us online at proformptma.com, or on social media at ProForm PTMA. And remember;
“If you train inside the rack, you better be thinking outside the rack”.
