TLC Todd-versations: Todd Linsky in Conversation with Dr. Alan Greene

this conversation is brought to you in part by Calavo Growers the family of fresh!

hey there everybody good morning good afternoon happy September October November December whatever day whatever

you listen to this I don’t really care I cannot even begin to tell you how thrilled I am with the guest I have to

bring to you today we have a living legend sitting here hanging out with us somebody I’ve known for a very very long

time one of the all-time great doctors in this country that is making a difference

on a global scale that is going to blow you away sit back tell your boss you’re

not feeling good chill out whatever it takes but listen to this episode write some stuff down make sure you know where

the website’s at because you are going to enjoy yourself this is going to be a big big source of inspiration to a lot

of people and I’m thrilled to have him please everybody give it up for my friend Dr Alan Green Alan thrilled

you’re here brother oh Todd I am so thrilled with my friend to get to be with you plus to get to be with your

audience but especially to be with you it’s just great to see you thank you my friend I’m just I’m your work your body

of work is just it’s unbelievable it’s just mind-boggling what you have done for this planet and what you continue to

do especially for parents and kids that’s you know you’re a pediatrician you’re out there making a difference I cannot wait to dive into all that you

have going on inform these folks what drgreen.com is all about I’ll say it again drgreen.com say it one more time

drgreen.com okay I got the first first three Shameless plugs in I’ll keep you here we go but we should mention that

it’s d-r-g-r-e-e-a right E Yeah e at the end I forgot about that thank you yes it is

it’s e at the end and that’ll get lost yeah they yeah they will you know what we got it on the backdrop and we’re

gonna promote the hell of it they’ll know the E’s there believe me I love it let’s talk a little bit about your

trajectory if you wouldn’t mind just give everybody a quick little synopsis of your bio and who you are a little bit Indian I’m gonna dive into the 9 000 11

questions I have that sounds like a good plan so so yeah I’ve devoted my life to kids health uh started on a service trip

I was in Guatemala which was its own luggish story but saw that it was really

important for the health of all Humanity for the kids to get the best health and

I tell you one really quick story when I was in medical school I decided to go to medical school I did pre-med at

Princeton I went to UCSF and while I was there I was taking care of an elderly woman who had crippling osteoporosis

and I really like to get to the bottom of things so I try to figure out what can I do to make a difference for her

and as I took a deep dive and looked into it I was shocked to learn that

osteoporosis is a pediatric disease it’s kids so all of us lose a little bit

of bone density every year and there are some things we can do to to change that trajectory some and and especially great

exercise and great nutrition or things that will work but the big question for osteoporosis is how much bone density

you build between 10 and 20 years old approximately that’s where the dye is

cast and I thought we’re getting at this way too late and so what do they need and they need to be getting enough

calcium and vitamin D and not too much soda and sun exposure Beyond vitamin D

and weight-bearing exercise and all these things that most American kids weren’t doing right most had sub-optimal

vitamin D sub-optimal calcium not enough exercise too much soda and so then I

went on to the next rotation and saw cardiovascular disease which starts in

childhood and cancer often has its roots in childhood and just so many macular

degeneration of Aging has its roots in childhood so I devoted my life to kids now

wow locally and around the world I bet there’s a lot of people that have no idea I bet there’s a lot of people are

going I did not know that already we’re one minute into this interview and they’ve already gone I wrote something down which I freaking love it I

absolutely love it you launch drgreen.com back in 1995 and it is an

unbelievable source for parents caregivers whomever wants to learn a

little bit more about kids and get a deeper dive and a clearer understanding the American Medical Association called a Pioneer Physician’s website I mean it

is absolutely so chalk packed full of information I don’t know how you and I don’t know how you would show match I

think I don’t know how you keep that thing going because there’s so much you can go from literally from baby to

teenager to everything in between and everything that’s involved in between why’d you decide to create it based upon

that you know story you just told about that about the lady so you were right by the way Cheryl is the key person my wife

she’s executive producer it makes it all happen yeah I wanted her to come on and not you but I couldn’t get that already

she’s tough to get I know she’s good too she’s got big agents she’s got Bookers and agents it’s a process

but the way this got started I was in a typical or fairly typical pediatric practice in the San Francisco Bay area

and uh when I started the the pace that most of my colleagues were keeping and

that I kept was to see three patients an hour they give you 20 minutes with them and and that was a pretty good

visit felt like and then this was the time when managed care insurance came

kind of steamrolling through the Bay Area and they are Medical Group acquired we see for an hour and that little shift

was a huge difference in the depth you could get into with people yeah and then they said five an hour and then they

said six an hour and I was exhausted and racing and felt like I couldn’t explain

anything and the families were complaining too they said we love you but we your hands on the doorknob when

we get in how do we how do we uh change this so I talked to some of my colleagues and

other Physicians I worked with and said I think we should do this brainstorming

session with the families and see if we can come up with a brand new way of doing things and I was told absolutely

not do not do that two problems one if you mention this they’ll know we have a

problem and if you’re quiet about it they’ll forget there’s a problem and two great strategies right yeah right

for it and then two anything that patients come up with will be not

feasible it just won’t work they don’t understand what they need to understand so Carol and I started having secret

meetings at night with families patients and said hey we got a problem how do we fix this together and and it’s true that

some of the things they came up with like why don’t you just work 24 7 or not feasible

but what did emerge from those discussion was what was how about

we do a website where we could put our questions up and you could give us really in-depth answers so many of them

are the same and this is 1995 right so this is before Google this is before WebMD although

eventually we became the Pediatric arm of WebMD for a while yeah um it was before I was before Wikipedia

and and so we decided and according to the AMA this was the first physician website

in the world we just had in a spot at the time which said okay let’s do it and so we applied for a grant from an old

company now called silicon graphics and they gave out two grants that year

to us and the Monterey Bay Aquarium uh to improve the environment and we said

that children are the Leading Edge of the environment help us to a website to teach people about kids in the environment and so we won the Grant and

it was just equipment and training so Cheryl uh learned how to use this silicon Graphics workstation and uh and

we put in two exam rooms a little physical paper business card and said

any questions Dr green.com it was just for my patients and they

loved it they thought it was the they felt like we now have so much more of your time so if a kid had an ear

infection they would read what I wrote about ear infections first about what caused them about what to do about them

and how to prevent them and before they came in and then our visit could be tailored to exactly their situation

situation instead of the same shallow crossover and over and over we get the causes and solutions and and deep stuff

so it was fantastic problem was they started telling their friends about it and so I would get these questions

coming in from Friends of families and Cheryl would write them back and say I’m sorry you should talk to your doctor

they would write back and say that our doctor is too busy and isn’t online and please help help and I still said I

can’t do that I don’t want to steal patients from other people it’s I don’t have a relationship with

you yeah and um then people started pretending parents

started pretending to be my patients they would write in and say hey my name is John F and uh our dog bit our kid and

we need to know it’s on the hand that they need antibiotics and I knew that John F didn’t have a dog

and then this Bell kind of went off of my head parents are so desperate at that

time for information they couldn’t get anywhere else that there’s a there’s a

real unmet made here and so we closed my practice to new patients I couldn’t be

stealing anybody’s patients and said okay we’ll just answer one question every night that comes in that’s

representative or something they can’t find elsewhere and within 12 weeks we

had 250 000 people from six continents who came

and started following and getting involved and this was there was no advertising no uh

no PR no marketing is just people found there’s this doctor online willing to talk about real problems in a deep way

thanks for joining the Todd versation and now a word from our sponsor

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[Music] there’s no there’s there’s I don’t think

there’s well there there is but a parent that’s scared about their kids health right is a very desperate position to be

in indeed it really really I can relate it with my kids you know and and and and

you know at 12 30 in the morning trying to find an answer right then was you

know what you’re gonna go to the emergency room no that’s not where you want to go right I mean so it’s amazing you had to have some responses for

parents that just absolutely touched your heart though oh yeah yeah putting it in contacts Mike my goal with

every answer I would want to give them the best of my wisdom as a parent and as a doctor who’d seen thousands of

patients already at that point and the latest studies but to get the latest

studies I couldn’t get online and get them I had to typically go to a medical school library to pick up the paper

journal and thumb through it and find the study and bring I mean and patients weren’t allowed in medical libraries so

it was really taking the hidden gems and getting it out in public but it’s now so comment that you that you can do but

yeah people were so grateful the one that really blew me away one of the first ones was somebody who wrote typed

in and said you know dear Dr Green I have walked three days from my Village because I

heard there is a doctor on the internet and I have a question I hope you will choose and I will sit here for several

days hoping you choose mine to respond from India and uh and just the the

desire for parents was so deep and and still and last week somebody came up to

me on the street that I didn’t know and asked to have a selfie together because when their kids were young

um they they had asked questions that were their answers were so helpful to them and now their daughter just had a

baby and wanted to get her connected and it was it was just really sweet you’ve got groupies yeah I love it a small

number of groupies but you know what an honor though what I mean you know talk

about something to reaffirm your life’s calling and I want to ask that question because you say that Dr Green with the

everybody.com is your calling and I believe that it is and I’ve known

you a long time and I mean I I I I have watched your trajectory and you know obviously I’m a giant Fanboy so I’m a

quick gushing over here in a second but explain explain what that calling meant to you explain that that moment that

Epiphany where you just felt like man I have found my path and there’s plenty of lights and I am off

so there are a couple of little ding moments that led up to it the first one I mentioned was when somebody pretended

to be a patient I got that people really want information sure the second one was I was trying to bring somebody with me

into a medical library to look at some studies together because I couldn’t check them all out and I couldn’t get

the patient in this was shortly afterwards and uh and

the most people don’t know this but the Hippocratic Oath the thing that doctors

take uh most doctors don’t know this but at its core if you ask somebody what’s

the Hippocratic goat they’ll say first you know harm and that’s in there but that’s not the oath the oath is I swear

it’s a secrecy oath I swear that I will teach other in the Brotherhood about

this and their families but nobody else I will keep this knowledge secret and if

I do that I’ll be blessed if I share it with people I’ll be cursed and I’ll be

ethical I will first not harm people I will do the best job that I can I’ll behave uprightly but I’m going to keep

this stuff secret so they depend on me for their access to health care and and

I and I I got that that was sort of built into the system and I

started writing because this is the end of the 20th century uh Millennial Health oath that was exactly the opposite that

I promise to teach everybody as much as I can possibly about our bodies and how

they work and how they’re connected to the rest of the environment around us and so the the moment that it’s um that it

really hit was we’re about 12 weeks in we had this map up on at home we put push pins on where

people were answering sending in questions all over the planet we’d hit six continents then not seven uh

although we eventually did get people coming from Antarctica cool it turned turn to Cheryl and said I can’t imagine

feeling more fulfilled than this this is just so exciting and it’s so fun we’re

at this moment in history and it was the next day

that we found uh cancer in her breasts yeah and it was March 22nd in 1996 that

her doctor said there’s not a chance it’s time to go home

and um she’s not going to survive this year and you should make final preparations

yeah and my first thought was to shut down the website and shut down my

practice I move in with family and just be together and she said no don’t you see this is

the moment you have to get as much out there as possible I want you to double down on how much you’re writing and how much you’re answering and

um and it clicked to me that if I won the lottery most people if you win the

lottery you’re going to keep your work no they’re going to go enjoy if they suddenly get wealthy but if I win the

lottery which I did when she recovered or if I lose the lottery like I thought that I had the thing I want to do in my

life is to break the Hippocratic Oath every single day by getting the word out there to people about to inspire people

about their own health and their kids self unbelievable well you know you and I walk that path together we yeah yeah

in my own life here I mean it was fairly simultaneous between two with the exact same thing right you’ve got less than 10

yeah I I remember being told by the surgeon with my wife go to the cave of the Lords in France and pray that was

literally his advice it’s like what where what I don’t think Francis in my book I don’t think I have time for that it’s Paramount I don’t think two young

kids no family around it was it was life-changing what and I know it and I

love it I love Cheryl saying double down and by the way Cheryl’s in the background and I know Cheryl’s in the background and it’s 2022 and I’m and

Janine’s in the background and it’s 2022 so yeah right but absolutely you can’t

until you walk that path you can’t it’s really hard to share that experience with people that haven’t walked it

because it’s a feeling it’s it’s a feeling that I hope nobody ever gets in their life but it’s yeah it’s one of the

things so different focusing and Powerful too I mean don’t wish it on anybody but I’m so grateful for for it

100 there’s there’s you ask my kids what we went through and you know we really

believed in in everything up front with them there was no there was no you know did we call did we call him driving home

from the doctor no but we talked the moment we walked in the house right I mean there was nothing that we left behind and I think that was really a big

thing for us as a bonding experience as a family because we have that

that need to communicate at a very high level but you know and then having it gone

through it again and you know and with my son with what he did with 17 with brain cancer I mean it’s like I know I’ve done the game and I get how this

game is played but what I’m interested in is what did that teach you not only

as a doctor but what did it teach you as a parent and as a person and how have you applied that to your life because

that’s what I think is a big takeaway that people don’t recognize that cancer does for people it’s the takeaway that

it gives them that changes their trajectory yeah it was very life-changing for us so so really the

reason that Dr green.com has continued for all of these years and are work

around the world has continued for all these years is that Focus that it’s not about um there’s so many things we could have

done that would have been more lucrative than this but we just want to give it away as much as we possibly can yeah

um so so that Focus has been really powerful beyond that the value of community really came into Focus

yeah got home from the hospital there was a meal sitting on our doorstep and

they thought that was so sweet and the next day there were more meals the next and the next and the next and for an

entire year it took a while before we figured out who they came from and it was the nurses and the labor delivery

part of the hospital who all love Cheryl and and and both of us and they just

took it upon themselves to support us through this year it was really powerful and still Community is really Central in

our lives um another thing that was really powerful was starting with those food

but I uh that first night Cheryl turned to me and said our youngest was nine

months old and was breastfeeding and I turned to me and said what formula do we

feed him she had to stop she kept nursing through the biopsies even an open biopsy but then once the diagnosis

came back she said you know she had to stop and I

up to that point my career told everybody breastfeed that’s the only thing he should be doing and all

formulas are the same doesn’t matter I couldn’t turn to her and say that right I I she couldn’t breastfeed and to tell

her all formulas were the same would be irresponsible so I decided to do a deep dive there and look at the differences

and and learned that they’re really different some are yeah some are not really good and and uh and and so that

got me thinking more about nutrition and I suddenly noticed that in the questions

that had come in from all over the world parents were asking about food but I

hadn’t been answering it because I just was blind to it yeah and I thought that this this Instinct we have to feed our

children right is deep and it’s right that it’s deep because it’s so important to their health there is nothing more

Central than how we teach our kids to eat what everything you see when you look at

your child is built out of food that they’ve eaten or you’ve eaten but it’s it comes from from it comes from food

and all that they do their energy their memory their brains all of it’s built from friends that come from food so I

that became really Central and then the other thing that became early Central was trying to figure out

why does she get this there was no family history uh what it was there some kind of thing that might have caused it

and she grew up on a farm and and looking at possible exposures I learned

that there was a pesticide that The Closer you a woman lived to that in

their childhood the higher the risk of breast cancer and it was sprayed right outside her bedroom window throughout

her childhood and and I hadn’t learned anything about pesticides or environmental triggers in medical school

the evidence was there it just wasn’t part of our our process and so I that

changed that trajectory too for sure and it and you were really one of the first that started banging that drum talking

about that and getting it out there in the public eye and you’ve written two amazing books and I want to talk about both of them I guess we’ll do it

simultaneously first one is we’re to talk about is feeding feeding baby green and the other one is raising baby green

and it really talks about exactly what you had spoken to to about food is medicine and it can it can it

can heal you and it can kill you and it you can it doesn’t take you know you could walk through the mall on any state

in this country and go food is medicine food is going to kill and food is helping right and it’s it we need to be

really cognizant of that can you talk a little bit about that a little bit and and and really I I want to kind of lean

into the environmental exposures that kids get and how it does like you were talking about with Cheryl was you know

living on the farm and how that kind of correlates together with stuff so kind of a big softball question multiple

Direction but you can handle it and you’ll roll with it I know that we’ll have a good time so so yeah every bite

of food is either an investment in our future or it’s a new debt we’re taking

out that our body’s gonna have to pay back somehow or not beautiful and uh and you know one bite here or there is not a

huge difference but the compounding over time it can become this massive credit card debt in our in our bodies or it can

become this trajectory towards health and along and and productive life and

brain and everything so um so two things that that feeding

baby green was about is one is helping people to understand what great foods are and then the other was how to teach

kids to fall in love with them because it’s one thing to be able to people who are watching this I’m sure

pretty well uh have a sense of what great Foods might be but there’s a lot

of people who know that and don’t enjoy them they would enjoy something else more and they do it because they have to

and to make it to help especially when you start young it’s easy to really easy

to teach kids to to love the great stuff and in a tiny thumbnail what the way

that babies come out is with with their taste buds anything that is sweet is likely to take good tastes good because

anything in nature that is sweet is likely to be a good source of food for us anything that tastes salty in they

come out liking but anything that has a bitter note in it they are from the gate

suspicious of it and afraid of it and that’s good because most bitter things

in the planet are bad for us they’re toxic there are a few like vegetables

that are awesome for us and and early on that says don’t like same as first

trimester of pregnancy bitter stuff tastes terrible when you want to protect the women um and then things that are sour also

they’re suspicious of early on because anything that’s sour might be spoiled like spoiled milk or something like that

so they don’t like bitter or or sour flavors at the beginning but if they get

exposed the right number of times and the right uh at the right critical

windows then there’s some a switch goes in the brain and think oh my parents meant for me to eat This Bitter

combination this is good from now on I like it and one of the early studies was done

with with uh kids who were taking solids they were six to nine months old they asked the parents what is your kids

least favorite food of everything they’ve tried number one answer was peas I’m on babies is nobody like bees so

here’s what I want you to do we want you to give one tiny bite of peas first bite of solids every day for a week and if

they make a face don’t try to get them anymore if they ask for more fine but just just one bite is their first bite

and at the end of one week just seven more exposures 85 of them loved peas

which it wasn’t hard for them and it wasn’t hard for the parents it was easy to do they and and for 70 of them at the

end of that week it was their favorite boot unbelievable when it switches it

switches and there’s a bunch of moments where that where you can do that in in different ways how

formula and you touched on a little bit earlier how much does formula affect a young child’s palette to

command because formulas you know it’s sugary right it’s carbs it’s Carby it’s true and how much is that do you think

affects the palette of a young child to where they’re resistant to not like to your point something that is bitter a

vegetable might have a little bit of flavor to it you know case think about a broccoli whatever you know comes up yeah and all of a sudden they’re like you

know no I really don’t want that I’d really rather have the sugary sweet you know instead yeah it certainly can

imprint kid we call this taste imprinting it can’t imprint kids on very sweet flavors and one flavor breast milk

is a different flavor every time a kid drinks it right flavors that mom drinks uh while she’s nursing come through and

so for instance there was a study done with those exposures with with moms who didn’t like

carrots didn’t eat carrots but during nursing they were given carrots or something else a shot of carrot juice or

a different juice 12 times during the first six months while they were nursing those babies when they had their first

bite of of carrots all the ones whose mom had had just 12 total servings of

carrots liked it on the first bite they recognized it and the ones who didn’t not a single one did it wasn’t too late

they could still do it in that next phase but it just all the stuff worked naturally before there was a processed

food aisle kids just learned to like what their parents like and you didn’t have to think about it yeah but yeah

formula is one flavor every time and so you need to tap into other ways of doing

it and if you do use formula look for one that’s sweetened with lactose

lactose is what breast milk is sweetened with it’s there for early on people are

now afraid of it because of lactose intolerance whatever babies typically are not lactose intolerant that’s what breast milk is sweetened with there is

this lock and key where the breast milk is lactose babies have this enzyme

specifically during infancy to be able to digest that lactase it’s what they’re looking for is what the mom is giving

and it’s not just moms it’s every mammal it’s every ape and primate and every

mammal it’s lactose is what’s there and the idea that we come along and use corn

syrup in a instead or or sucrose table sugar instead and a formula to me is

just crazy it’s nuts tens of thousands a hundred thousand years of doing it one way that our bodies are built for well I

mean look at diabetes you know look at abuse I mean these are all facts I mean and you’re putting you’re literally planting those seeds in young children

right if you’re not making a conscious choice I want to come back swing back around a little bit to environmental

exposure with kids yeah and I think you know and because my assumption is is that your studies

over these years you probably have a an opinion of 10 years ago might be different than your opinion of

environmental you know exposure today can you touch on that a little bit because I think it’s just fascinating when people hear what’s really going on

out there yeah so one of the the early things for me again after doing all the reading I could after what we went

through with Cheryl um I did some work with the environmental working group ewg and Ken

Cook yeah I Love Ken and um I was the physician on a study that

got a fair amount of press um the the headlines were mostly born polluted and what we did back at that

time is we we took a sample from the umbilical cord blood from babies and

just did a complete chemical analysis to say what is in here nobody’s ever done

that before and we were surprised and not surprised to see that

we found a total of 287 industrial chemicals coursing through baby’s blood

at the moment of birth so they had been getting that the womb had been thought

of as the most protected place right where you’re you’re so protected from what’s going on outside but no the we

are part of the environment the things that are in our environments end up in our bodies and in our children’s bodies

even our unborn babies bodies and we didn’t know what those things meant we

knew that some of those things had been proven as neurotoxins or endocrine disruptors but this was just at the

beginning and and it’s not just babies right we did I did another study with them where um with teenage girls and the

uh the personal care products that they use that they put on their skin or that they brush their teeth with and took the

list of all those chemicals and everything that was in their personal care products when we drew their blood

we found in their blood so it’s going into the body not just on the skin and the more we look the more we find

sometimes subtle and sometimes significant impacts from from those

exposures um let me think offhand if I mean we know

that Chlor pyrophos one of the organophosphates causes neurodevelopmental developmental problems ADHD in some kids

excuse me and one of the studies I thought early on that was interesting was so the wheeze uh weed killer

atrazine um very widely used some researchers in

I believe it’s Korea looked at the maps of obesity in the United States and saw that it roughly matched the maps of

atrazine use and so they thought that’s interesting let’s do a little study so they took animals and the Animals had

the same exercise the exact same diet the same exposure in the room the only difference was a tiny might a bit of

atrazine in the water that they drank the same amount that’s in the ground

water in some parts of the Midwest and they found that the ones who got

that were obese wow you’re a fat and the other ones didn’t so I mean our diets

are are Central but just the the pesticides too can impact weight

yeah I think it’s it’s so shocking now you know let’s let’s get the big elf in the room is microplastics now where we

all have it right we all have a Visa card running through our bloodstream at this point and and that’s going Downstream to the

kids and and what’s what amazes me Ellen and I got to be honest it’s like we care but we don’t care enough we don’t care

enough to find out ways to solve this stuff yeah and since back then we’ve

learned a lot about something called the epigenome or the epigenetics where you turn around different genes and those

are heritable and so if we have switched our genes around to deal with these

obesogenic Plastics then the next generation is born um expecting that’s the right way to be

and it takes work to undo it it could last two three four generations you know as a country you know when you

think about penicillin polio vaccines surgical advances Western medicine taking on all the things

we’ve really doubled down on just throw a pill at it more that we have looking

at our diets and and and taking control of that and and managing that especially

with young children for God’s sakes I mean you know at the level of what are we really feeding these kids and why are we asking tougher questions and you know

and I understand and I want to get into the economics that’s not it’s not at play here I don’t believe I think it’s

really about more about common sense but you know how much more should we be investing in our diets and be thinking

about that and how do we accomplish getting to that point with people yeah so first what kids actually are

eating in the United States and uh I should say I I love Cutting Edge

medicine I think there’s great things I think and about the best inventions and all or discoveries in all of human

history but they are wildly overused and misused and not good for us directly in

fact antibiotics in agriculture are used to fatten up cattle yeah that works it

also fattens up kids there’s research about that it messes with the microbiome this entire environment that we have

inside our bodies but what are kids actually eating uh the USDA did a study where they it was part of the food

pyramid guide where they looked at what kids are actually it enlisted it in order

um over what they ate between two years old and 18 years old so pretty much all of childhood and list them in order of

how much kids are eating of them and they publish their top 25 list

and there is only out of the top 25 foods that kids eat there’s only one vegetable on the list

and that vegetable is french fries yeah and there is only one fruit on the

list and that fruit is apple juice yeah and

we are missing out on so much and and it is having a health impact so let me tell you when I started in Pediatrics I was

and I was concerned about building these great organs and systems to last for a lifetime it was really rare then to see

a child with high blood pressure just rarely happened I mean it was not common

and today as we’re talking there are millions of children in the United States with high blood pressure it was

rare back then to see a kid with a waist size over 40 inches or or high blood

pressure high blood pressure blood sugar that’s elevated let’s say had like childhood diabetes or triglyceride up and now two-thirds of

American High School students already have at least one of those middle age

conditions and all of it is influenced by how they

eat how they eat yeah and well yeah so how much should we invest in that we

have this metabolic and economic ticking time bomb going off right now it is it’s

slow moving but that that train is moving the wrong direction yeah they’re 100 and and and it’s I’m so

thrilled again that you’re here and to get this message out to people to make them kind of wake up and realize that while we think we make good choices that

drive-through is not really your best choice and we need to be thinking about that we need to be thinking about how that affects kids at such a young age

it’s such a deep dive and I what do you think holds what do you think is holding us back from making better choices is it

convenience is I know I can’t imagine it’s finances if you’re driving through you know you’re driving through some place I mean is it just lack of

Education to Parenting to young parents to people you know where is that disconnect

oh there’s several pieces of it I think one is that there’s much less cooking at

home than there used to be and people just tend to eat better if there is a home-cooked meal around a table together

um it just happens and we have the family meal table is gone in a lot of places and home cooking is gone it’s

cooking at home is ordering in from doordash yeah whatever right and um and

so that that’s part of it part of it is that we have a generation that was imprinted early on on the wrong stuff so

that is their comfort food uh is a big problem and we have this food culture we’re surrounded by foods

that are engineered to hit exactly those combinations of salt sugar and fat that

are craveable so a lot that’s going on there but I’m also encouraged I I know

many families that are making Family Meal Time a priority even better making cooking together a priority of anything

the kids are involved in cooking they’re more likely to want to eat and growing food and more and more people are

growing food so so there’s this growing group of people that are getting it really right so the the nation as a

whole we’ve got some real problems but there are so many bright spots well you know and I’ll lean into one right now

definitely you know as I call it now it’s kobed it’s not covered anymore it’s kovid I’m yeah I’m trying to trying to

change a little bit make it a little bit softer maybe but you know covet goddess eating at home a lot right yeah right

and you take a look at the stats you take a look at the data of what was being eaten at home yes you have had chips yes you had cookies right I mean

that’s part of the vehicle oh yeah right fruits and vegetables were up and one of the big things I keep harping on is that

you know we were given this this amazing opportunity to help people eat better and now that kovit is slowing you know

it’s going away and people are driving through and eating out more often we’re getting away from that so I’ve been trying so hard to encourage my peers and

the industry itself to say you got to keep leaning into that you’ve got this nice lift you’re going to literally piss

it away if you don’t pay attention to it because people are going to go back to where they were and right that I don’t

want to see happen I am totally with you on that and it’s such an opportunity and yeah the data is clear people ate more

fruits and vegetables and when you look at the at the Coronavirus

all other things being equal the people who have better micronutrients people

who have better controlled blood sugars are less likely to get sick and are more likely to get better faster and to have

less of a real problem when they do but food really matters and and that it’s not a guarantee that you won’t catch an

infectious disease but it’s one of the biggest things that we can do is to give people great nutrition and well I mean

the data supports it though right the data supports it around code I mean you know that that you had a high level of

obesity that had no problems you had lack of vitamin D what is what is it 70 I’m trying to do the number one was it over 74 or is it 87 people vitamin D

deficient right yeah I mean it’s a lot what is kovit touching what is the experience over the last years because I

mean that had to be obviously for any medical professional I had to be a tad cray-cray more than a little cray cray

as you would imagine parents have been concerned about that the whole thing so

questions all the time so for me that meant being a step ahead of every study coming out pretty publication and and

talking with people thinking about things and um and I think one of the biggest things

that has taught me is that even though that particular problem is an infectious disease that

getting great physical activity eating real Whole Foods not Ultra processed

foods I’m getting good sleep having social connections which is harder right

now and having mental health are so powerful whether the threat to our body

whatever the threat is to our bodies it it helps us be much more resilient so it’s made me double down on my

appreciation for food and for avoiding unnecessary chemicals thanks for joining the Todd versation and now a word from

our sponsor foreign

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it seems like this is a complicated conversation but if you actually listen to your words they’re all really simple

answers they’re all right in front of you they’re all choices you go into a grocery store with 50 000 items there’s a lot of really great choices there’s a

lot of bad choices there’s a lot of really great choices and it’s a matter of just taking that deep breath going I’m going to be cognizant of my good

choices today yeah I love it one study I should mention real quick yeah just a couple years ago it was done with flu

vaccine and so what they did is they wanted to see if sleep had anything to do with the vaccine response and so they

actually measured people’s sleep with a device that would track how long they were sleeping every night look at the

six days before and they compared the ones who got at least seven and a half hours of sleep per night and the ones

that were sleep deprived and then they all got a flu shot the ones that had good sleep for this six days before had

twice had double the antibody response and there’s very few things in medicine

where you get you know you get a seven percent increase or 12 percent but a hundred percent increase

and if you got the shot and slept great for the next six days it didn’t do much it was beforehand and so if somebody is

going to get a vaccine for something then sleeping before it makes sense but more than that if you’re gonna get exposed to something sleeping before

makes sense sleeping just makes sense it makes our life better it’s it’s it can

it’s just such a simple conversation if we just continue to screw up as a society it’s crazy because it’s all it’s

it’s the way we’re programmed right it’s the way we’ve been created and I think that we get away from that right and I

think people don’t understand how big the benefits really are they yeah being

well arrested is nice but it’s not nice it’s incredibly powerful there is no medicine as good for Alzheimer’s

prevention as frequent heart pumping exercise works

better than any medication yeah well I mean look back that with sleep and food and you’re great well look at the

evolution right I mean think about this the evolution of man you were up with the sun you went to bed when the sun

went down there was you were watching TV you weren’t walking around the streets with Street lamps I mean it was you

certainly weren’t cruising around outside back tickets you didn’t know what was around there in the darkness right right so I mean it our bodies were

created with that logic yeah and in a ways we’re still discovering I’ve Got a

Friend a colleague at Harvard a guy who was Steve lockley um helped us discover and characterize

in our eyes in the retina there’s rods and cones right to see color black and white there’s another receptor

um called melanopsin that’s only recently discovered and that detects blue light and sunlight particularly and

blue skies and The receptors aren’t a gradient in back of the eyes so our bodies are aware where the sun is in the

sky and starts to change our hormone levels depending where how high or low the sun is and we didn’t even know there

was a receptor for that before a few years ago unbelievable unbelievable it’s crazy I mean what a great conversation

what do you think you know because we’re going to wrap up our time a little bit here what do you think the most common parenting misconception is today that

you see well I’m I’m skewed a bit and then I do

tend to see a lot of Alan we’re all skewed at our age we’re all skewed no that’s true

apart from things we’ve talked about one thing that I see so often is this idea

that say a fever or other symptoms are bad

and if we treat the symptom that makes it better when really the fever it is a

sign there’s something going on but most of the time it’s there to actually accelerate the healing process and

you’ll get faster if you don’t decrease it too much it decrease it to sleep or if you’re not able to drink enough or if

they’re really uncomfortable but but we we want to work with the body vomiting us to get rid of stuff and diarrhea is

to get rid of stuff wheezing is is there to protect our lungs from toxins in the

air right when the uh when the big fires came in Northern California most of the

Urgent Care Centers were saying you ought to take your inhaler if you ever have wheezing open up your lungs and

it’s the exact opposite of what you should be doing if for kids who have asthma they should be inside

um and turn on the HEPA filter and don’t do vigorous activity for a few days till

the air quality gets better right use it as a protective mechanism that humans had to protect us from smoke from fires

well give me a same same vein same kind of question what do you think is the one thing you wish every parent would strive

to do better today for their kids I mean one thing’s tough to pick I’m sure but if there was something you could you know wave that wand that that’s a tough

one I know I would hope that parents would take a moment

um before the baby’s born when you can still sleep a little bit but at least every year after that and all the way up

to our kids ages now yeah take at least once a year to stop and reflect what do

I wish that I had known at that age what do I wish my parents had known when

I was that age and um what can I do to move in that direction

there’s so many things that oh I wish I had known that then that I want to really impart to my kids and I wish my

parents my parents were great but there are some ways that I wish that they had handled differently and I want to be

that kind of parent I I capture those lessons yeah well said sir well said I

didn’t get into I didn’t get into the fact that she created Tick Tock you want to tell it real quick I think it’s just hilarious people don’t realize you are

the original guy that created Tick Tock this is true but it’s not the one people are familiar with that’s the best it’s a

better one that’s for damn sure this one is pretty amazing it stands for um transitioning immediate cord clamping to

Optimal cord care and the basic idea there is that um at the moment the

baby’s born there there is a circulation that’s been going through them throughout throughout pregnancy and the

moment they’re born about a third of their blood is still outside the body and so outside their body and through

all of human history and every culture ever studied once the baby was born people would

watch and see the cord start to pump and it would pump extra blood into the baby

they would get extra oxygen it would protect them through the golden minute and help them before their lungs open

all the way up they would get extra iron enough to prevent ninety percent of iron deficiency anemia which is a huge health

problem they get extra red cells like they were getting Lance Armstrong blood pumped into them they would get extra

white blood cells that reduce the number of infections in the first year and they get stem cells that are where lasting

the stuff that people bank because they’re so valuable and we started in 1913 immediately clamping locking that

stuff out it was a crazy idea and so easy just if even an extra 90 seconds of

waiting before the actual fast clamping gives kids such a gift and it’s not just

us every primate Waits and it’s not just that every mammal Waits there’s no

animal that actively severs the cord before it stops pumping Dr Green folks with the knee.com

what’s so good to be with you yeah my brother I appreciate you like there’s no tomorrow you are such a force of nature

out there making such a difference on this planet if we could clone you we I would love it you’re cloneable there’s

not a lot of people on this planet that need to be cloned you’re clonable well hey that’s what the new thing we’re working on by the way is uh so one of

the things we’ve done for years is uh with Cheryl and I have taken care of this little village in Costa Rica uh we

were asked we’re invited to go down there uh by a guy you may know Drake Sadler who said hey Doc there’s this

Village of people that had never seen a doctor before would you be willing to come check them out so went down

fabulous time and we’re going back every six to 12 months and checking out the

families and and it turned out some of them had seen a doctor before but still it was a useful service and

um and then when when the pandemic hit couldn’t go and so we started doing it

all by Telehealth started doing it all with tools we could check from here and that

worked even better because I was there not just every six months I could be there whenever and

so that has been so successful we are now and so many doctors say hey

I wish I could have a village so I could help out I want to make a difference and so many villages say hey I wish I had

access to healthcare there’s five billion people on the planet who can’t connect to health care in a meaningful

way so we’re starting to play matchmaker and to help folks who who health care

providers who would like to make a difference and places that really need it to hook them up with it introduce them to each other and teach both sides

how to make the best use of that how to uh how to do it I love it man you’re

I’ll tell you you’re clonable you’re a force with nature I just absolutely it’s an it’s an honor to know you it’s been

an honor to know you and I just thrilled that you’re here on this broadcast for people to hear your message Dr Green with an e.com don’t forget with an E

everybody I said it again drgreen.com honor to be with you and a true Delight

thank you my brother I appreciate Cheryl I love you too I knew she was in the background much

love to you much love to you my brother and the family and thank you for hanging out you’re always welcome I want you to

come back I didn’t get to half the questions I want to talk about I want you so much we could talk about right oh my God we could have gone in for hours I

know we would have but I do I do really appreciate you and I appreciate you so much truly a delight thank you thank you

brother thanks everybody for listening like I said if you’re not inspired by this conversation with Dr Green I don’t know what to do call him get online hear

me almost said I wasn’t inspired I need help you got to need a vitamin some way somehow he’ll help you find inspiration out of this conversation because I’m

inspired but I’m fired up you’re gonna make my rest of my afternoon I know what the hell I’m gonna do thank you for being here everybody

remember as I always say go Inspire somebody it’s really important hello it’s a great source of inspiration touches people in their heart uplift

their Spirit just like taking a vitamin in some ways giving love back to people is what we need more in this planet you

can do that and it’s not hard there’s no directions for it it just comes from right here make it happen thanks for listening check us out on social media

where all the cool kids are let’s we hang out TLC underscore conversation we appreciate you we’ll see you next time Alan I love you brother Cheryl I love

you too I’ll see you soon mutual love see you soon take care everybody

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