Holistic Parenting: Parenting Healthy Brains and Bodies in a Changing World

00:01 Tara Hunkin:
This is My Child Will Thrive and I'm your host, Tara Hunkin, Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Certified GAPs Practitioner, Restorative Wellness Practitioner, and mother. I'm thrilled to share with you the latest information, tips, resources, and tools to help you on the path to recovery for your child. With ADHD, autism, sensory processing disorder, or learning disabilities.

My own experiences with my daughter combined with as much training as I can get my hands on research I can dig into and conferences I can attend have helped me to develop systems and tools for parents like you who feel overwhelmed, trying to help their children. So sit back as I share another great topic to help you on your journey. A quick disclaimer before we get started.

My Child Will Thrive is not a substitute for working with a qualified healthcare practitioner. The information provided on this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat your child. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before implementing any information or treatments that you have learned about on this podcast. There are many gifted, passionate, and knowledgeable practitioners with hundreds. If not thousands of hours of study and clinical experience available to help guide you.

Part of our goal is to give you the knowledge and tools you need to effectively advocate for your child so that you don't blindly implement each new treatment that comes along. No one knows your child better than you. No one knows your child's history like you do or can better judge what is normal or abnormal for your child. The greatest success in recovery comes from the parent being informed and asking the right questions and making the best decisions for their child in coordination with a team of qualified practitioners in different areas of specialty.

Today's podcast is sponsored by the Autism, ADHD and Sensory Processing Disorder Summit. In order to learn more about summit and to sign up for free, please go to mychildwillthrive.com/summit.

2:05 Tara Hunkin:
I welcome back to the My Child Will Thrive podcast. I'm Tara Hunkin and I am excited to bring to you today a brand new interview that I did with Dr. Madiha Saeed. She is a bundle of energy, a prolific author of obviously a physician and an integrative and holistic physician. And she has a new book out that I wanted to highlight here on the podcast, because I think it would be incredibly helpful to you and your family. It's called The Holistic Prescription for Kids and by the time this podcast airs, it is available for order. And I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book after listening to the podcast. She has some extra, extra bonuses too, for those of you that decide to choose to purchase the book. So you'll be able to find the link for those that were to purchase a book and the book bonuses on the show notes for the podcast.

If you are an avid listener of the My Child Will Thrive podcast, I encourage you also to do us a favor and both share the podcast with other parents like yourself that you think might benefit from listening to it. But also if you could take the time to subscribe to the podcast and, and give us a review because the more people that do that, the more we get to share this information with more families that are in need of our support. So without further ado here is my interview with the amazing, energetic, brilliant Dr. Madiha Saeed.

3:54 Tara Hunkin:
Hi, everyone. I'm excited to have with me today, Dr. Madiha Saeed. She is many things so just hang in here with me while I give her the great big introduction that she deserves. She's also known as the Holistic Mom MD and is a practicing board certified family physician in the US. The Holistic Rx: Your Guide to Healing Chronic Inflammation and Disease and the children’s functional medicine book series, Adam’s Healing Adventures. And we're going to be talking about her latest book in just a moment, which we're really excited to talk about. She's been doing all these things to empower the world towards healthier living. Her current online platforms reach millions of people.

She is also the director of education for documenting hope and no, we well, she sits on multiple medical advisory boards, including Wellness Mama, and she and her children speak internationally at the most prestigious holistic conferences, summits, radio, podcasts, newspapers, and the United Nations, which is that's a big and. And her recently published paper on religion and the food system.

She is a regular on the international Emmy winning medical talk show, The Dr. Nandi show and her children hosts Holistic Kids Show podcast, interviewing the biggest names in functional holistic and integrative medicine and helping kids empower and educate other kids, which is amazing because we know as parents, sometimes kids don't want to listen to their parents, they'd much rather listen to their peers. So it's a fabulous thing that you and your children are doing to help educate us all. So I just want to welcome you and thank you for your time and energy here today.

5:57 Dr. Madiha Saeed:
I am so incredibly honored. That was such a beautiful introduction. Thank you again for honoring me with this pleasure of talking about, I think a topic that both of us really resonate with and that's what's so much fun is to really talk to other people that see the little, like, the avalanche coming and have that passion and drive to create some change. So thank you again for this honor.

6:22 Tara Hunkin;
Well, we are grateful to have you here today and what we're going to do is just dive right into it so we can get as much of that wonderful knowledge that you have out to the public here today. So let's start with your new book called The Holistic RX for Kids: Parenting Healthy Brains and Bodies in a Changing World, which is so timely in so many ways right now. Let's just start with talking about what holistic parenting means to you.

6:51 Dr. Madiha Saeed:
Well, you know what, we, as holistic practitioners, know that we are mind, body and soul. Though I was not taught that in medical school, we sort of just kept mind separate, body separate, the soul, we didn't even touch. But so we are mind, body, soul. Our children are mind, body and soul. And so holistic parenting really helps to nurture a child's mind, body, and soul from the inside out. And it gives them the skills that they need for emotional intelligence, making the correct decisions, managing stress, being able to be resilient, giving them the full autonomy that they need to make the correct decisions about their mind, body and their soul and their friendships and their social, sleep, basically their lifestyles. And so if we can help our children learn to take care of their bodies, their bodies will take care of them, now and into the future. So if we can educate them and empower them to be mindful children and mindful human beings, that is huge because the fact that then you can sort of let them loose.

Just like I don't mean you talked before this, really let them loose and make decisions in their own environments. And to really then, to create mindful children, raising mindful resilient children, because their mindfulness really allows our children to see that internal and the external environment clearly. And then it sort of gives them the full awareness on so many different levels of perception that they can have an order after looking at their entire lifestyle and then making decisions accordingly. So really it's about parenting your children. We all got to do it, but to influence, but doing it in a way that can influence our child's DNA, their cells, their mitochondria, their microbiome, their immune system, and even their brains. So it's really powerful because when you start doing that, it starts to create these little children that are able to then reflect and become resilient in this changing world.

9:21 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. I love what you said there and actually one of the things that you and I talked about before, so a lot of it becomes about teaching our kids how to make good decisions.

So in your book, you talk actually about that exact thing, about our children's decision-making and the parts of the brain involved being the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. Can you explain to everybody how this works and what this looks like when our children's decision-making is out of balance?

9:59 Dr. Madiha Saeed:
Absolutely. So, you know what, right now, I think first we have to sort of tailor it to that question of are our children's decision-making out of balance, right? Because right now, I mean, I was just listening to the news the other day, and their recent statistics just this during this pandemic the Children's Hospital Association, the American Association of Pediatrics have found the nearly 20{4537a52abafa24f75931b694e3f6d1d9b0beb5896e18e49b3141987b78b41d96} spike in young people trying to attempt suicide and 40{4537a52abafa24f75931b694e3f6d1d9b0beb5896e18e49b3141987b78b41d96} increase in the behavioral issues.

So our kids are constantly making the wrong decision. Our kids' brains are just not working in the way that they should. I mean, there's a rise in misbehavior and other behavioral issues, suicide, mental health issues. And it really comes down to really trying to understand why. So why is our child sick? Why are they misbehaving?

Why are they making the wrong decisions? Why are they suffering, period? And so in that answer of why lies the hope, because when it comes to our kids' decisions, right? And that is an entire science called neuroeconomics, because what our children decide to wear in the morning, what they want to eat, the decisions of good or bad is all dictated by their brain.

And so if your child is constantly making the wrong decision, it makes your parenting a little bit harder and if they're making the right decision, it makes your parenting a little bit easier. And there's two main pieces of your child's brain that is really involved in the neuroeconomics, and that is your prefrontal cortex and your amygdala.

And so we have a prefrontal cortex because the prefrontal cortex is responsible for like, it's a more developed part of the brain. It's responsible for rational decision-making, examines the pros and the cons, and helps your child think through their actions after taking a look at the entire picture. And so while the amygdala is reactive, it's that fight and flight type of response and where you don't, you just basically think with their gut and just this more of like our ancestral brain is what they also like to call it, a primitive, impulsive fight, or flight type of reactions and decisions. And so to make a thought out decision, it's really important to have both of these pieces working together in unison.

And that's where we've been hearing a lot in parenting books, we hear a lot about that, but nobody really then takes in a picture of how our children's brains are not functioning the way that they should be currently because of our lifestyle. Because our children are living with the increased artificial junk food consumption, with limited diet variety, with lack of sleep, lack of nature, negative social environment, increased toxic exposure inside and outside the home. All of this is contributing to this imbalanced child's lifestyle and then that leads to something called inflammation.

That then is one of the underlying reasons of chronic disease, but that chronic inflammation then hijacks our child's brains and bodies, and really is, it's really disconnecting our prefrontal cortex and our amygdala. And when it does that, our bodies, our children are not making the right decisions.

13:45 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. It's amazing how when we start looking at that, and then you talk about all the different environmental impacts of, and we all know the last 18 months has been like no other, especially in terms of the impact on well on all of us, but our children in particular have been exposed to all those things that you have just outlined as having a negative impact on that their brains and their brain's ability to make good choices and, and healthy choices for themselves.

When we say this, I know that you're not saying that they're making these bad decisions, bad kids, bad decisions. They have no control. Like they just aren't able, they don't have the foundation there in order to make fully developed decisions and in a way that benefits them and others around them.

When you talk about inflammation, many people that are listening understand inflammation, but can you talk about that pervasive role of inflammation in our children's health today, and the difference between acute inflammation and chronic inflammation and what that does.

15:03 Dr. Madiha Saeed:
Absolutely, my biggest passion. So thank you so much. When we go through medicine, as physicians, we know that chronic inflammation is one of the root causes of all these chronic health conditions.

And because when you have eczema, right, we're told to give an anti-inflammatory. When we have allergies, we give you an anti-inflammatory. When we have a headache, we give you an anti-inflammatory. Autoimmune disease, anti-inflammatory. Cancers, anti-inflammatory. So doctors know that the underlying mechanism, one of the underlying mechanisms of these chronic health conditions is inflammation, but unfortunately, doctors were never taught to address why this person is getting sick in the first place and what is actually leading to these imbalances.

So what is inflammation, right? It's really what it sounds like. It's hot, like really means fire inside. So it's the body's natural defense responses to your child's body's immune system, trying to keep out the bad guys and making sure that everything is working properly and it does, it can cause, and they even heal from wounds injuries. So inflammation causes that redness and swelling and heat and the pain. And so we need inflammation because otherwise we'd be like sitting around and like the whole world that could just attack us at any moment and not good.

But there's two main types of inflammation, right? There's acute inflammation and there's chronic inflammation and a healthy immune system, acute inflammation lasts for a short time. It's ancestral. It's a sign that your body is working properly and its defenses are all working properly. So what happens? But the thing is when that sort of gets stuck in the on switch, it can be too much of a good thing.

So constant life's modern days exposure to things like chronic stress and toxins and allergens and low grade infections. And all of these things that can sort of start to keep this immune system sort of stuck in the on position for a lot longer than it hoped because with a properly functioning immune system, it can keep that fire all under control. But then with all of these constant modern daily exposures that we talked about, again, the immune system gets stuck in the on position. And you have these immune molecules called cytokines that go out of control, they destroy everything in its path. It destroys it, damages tissues and organs and leads to chronic diseases of every type.

So chronic inflammation can lead to or worsen all of these chronic health conditions like cardiovascular disease, asthma, cancers, diabetes, and even hijack our children's brains and bodies. And you can start seeing signs of inflammation, even then you can start to see, you can see that brewing in their body, even when they actually feel like it's huge symptoms like eczema or severe digestive issues. You can start seeing these in the children's as very, very subtle signs.

18:25 Dr. Madiha Saeed:
But what's really, I think, powerful with this discussion. And then this is when I wrote my first book. And then when I, when I read this study and when resources researchers at Harvard and Columbia, they looked at a group of 4,000 children. And these researchers even determined that these, they determined that these children with behavioral problems at eight, they rechecked their labs at 10 and saw that they had increased higher levels of two proteins called CRP. So C reactive protein and interleukin six, which is basically a pro inflammatory cytokine that occurs when it's produced in response to an infection or tissue injury and how all of those were actually associated with an increased risk of inflammation in adulthood.

And so this inflammation really is hijacking. So you can start seeing it as just as behavioral problems, but it's hijacking our children's brains, bodies, their genes, and you can even start seeing where even prenatal inflammation can even start to affect our children. So it's huge how inflammation in the mother and the child can bring out so many different types of symptoms and signs.

But really if we get to the underlying root cause and put a child's body back into balance, then they can start to really, that the inflammation that disconnects a child's prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. Now, once you start doing that, your child's able to make better decisions. They're not perfect all the time, better.

20:17 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. Well, we can all strive for perfect, but I don't know if that's going to be coming any time soon. You mentioned prenatal inflammation and its impact on neurodevelopment in the brain. Can you tell us what the research is telling us about that right now? And again, just to be clear with everybody too, we're not blaming mom. This is just really important information for us to have especially if you're thinking of having a second child, or you can look again for that root cause of what might be causing some challenges. So what is the research telling us about inflammation and prenatal?

20:59 Dr. Madiha Saeed:
Oh, so much because prenatal inflammation can actually lead to behavioral problems. The research has actually shown that brain networks in the babies can reflect the degree of inflammation that their mothers were experiencing, even in pregnancy, right? So the higher, we talked about before the interleukin six, that pro-inflammatory cytokine that actually the higher the interleukin six is in during pregnancies, when the child was assessed for working memory at the age of two, they found that that child, the higher the interleukin six, the lower, the child scored in that working memory. So, and then there was another study that showed that the mother's inflammation during pregnancy can actually lead to cognitive problems and a decrease in impulse control, even at the age of two.

So this prenatal inflammation, even if it comes into forms of just prenatal depression or postpartum depression or whatever it can, all of that, even postpartum, can actually alter the amygdala and the prefrontal circuits in the infants. And that then puts them at higher risks for developing all these large ranges of neurodevelopmental disorders.

So again, you think about what's going on in the world today. Out of like 79 countries in math, we as the United States are still number 37. So there's so much that we know that we as a society are sick, but now that's really starting to affect our children's brains and their bodies.

And so, like prenatally, we talked about how then it just even inflammation can even turn on and off your genes in a study called epigenetics where the genes can actually literally shape the behavior of the individual and then it can also influence the mitochondria. So, so many things that inflammation can do that can actually start prenatally.

23:20 Tara Hunkin:
We've obviously touched on your book, goes in much more depth than all. So far we've touched on a lot of things with respect to inflammation and why I think we understand now that that's something we need to do, but what are some of the things that we can do? And in your book, you talk about the four S's that you focus on in terms of righting the ship, like if we have chronic inflammation.

23:46 Dr. Madiha Saeed:
So it's really about putting your child's lifestyle back into balance, because when we can put our child's bad lifestyle back into balance, we have a healthy brain, we have a healthier body, and then we have healthier behaviors. So I really talk about digestive health and nutrition and detoxification, and the four S's are stress, sleep, social and spiritual health. Because if we can put our children's bodies back into balance, then what happens is that right now, because our kids are so out of balance, it's really leading to them where they're making illogical decisions, decrease in empathy, poor relationships, more anger, fostering a "everyone hates me" mentality, which you're seeing a lot, especially with everything that's going on in the world today. So if we can start putting the kids' bodies back into balance, that will then allow those brains to start working appropriately.

And I really started off with your digestive health because 70 to 80{4537a52abafa24f75931b694e3f6d1d9b0beb5896e18e49b3141987b78b41d96} of your immune system lies in the gut. We have a hundred trillion bacteria that line your gut lining. And now studies actually have shown that, I mean, they just did a recent study that was just so interesting that they had 400 infants and they found that the boys with, and just in 2021, just a couple of months ago, published in the gut microbiome where the researchers at the University of Alberta, they found in these 400 infants that boys with a gut microbacterial composition, that's a little higher in a specific bacteria called Bacteroides at age one were found to have actually advanced cognition and language skills, craziness, right?

For the formation, because what happens is that this Bacteroides, this is just like the beginning of the information that we're starting to understand that this Bacteroides bacteria can actually produce a metabolite called sphingolipids, and which is like instrumental in the formation and the structure of the neurons in the brain. Like craziness, like this is so much fun. And it shows you that these microbes in the gut really do influence our children's brains and cognition and their language and the decisions that they make.

And so how the gut microbiota, right, and the things that will influence those the best is to make sure you have enough Bacteroides is like breastfeeding and having a high fiber diet, being exposed to pets, like specifically, they talked about dogs in the study and being exposed to nature, in green spaces. So much and then just all of these simple things can increase the specific type of gut bacteria that can really optimize your child's brain function and their health, specifically with B. infantis, which a lot of kids are not getting it.

And because they were showing a decrease in the B. infantis, that's leading to actual diseases like allergies and asthma and autoimmune conditions. So the link goes on and on of all the things that you can do with digestive-wise, but it really, I think starts off with eating real foods, right? Eating real plant based foods because of the fact that our children, they are what they eat, right? These nutrients regulate every single chemical reaction in your child's body and studies have actually shown that those children that eat a rainbow of whole foods packed with color and fiber and nutrients and minerals and good fats, they actually have healthier brains. They're less violent. They improve their behaviors and bodies and so much more. So it really starts with, I think, food, your digestive health and nutrition and then we have your detoxification.

27:44 Dr. Madiha Saeed:
The world around us right now, we are literally living in a world where pesticides and the environmental toxins can all lead to these neurodevelopmental damage while disrupting the endocrine system, right? So lowering the toxic load can help your child optimize their brain and their body functioning. You can even incorporate these foods that can help their bodies detoxify. They keep their bodily fluids moving to make sure that they continue to lower that overall inflammation.

And so really helping them learn to use holistic parenting and helping them be mindful and resilient to what kind of toxins are around them in the world, and then how to limit that the best you possibly can. And then we educate the child also the importance of stress. So that's why the four S's stress, sleep, social and spiritual health, because we know that right now, our kids are living in a world where we are very, very stressed. And so educating our children about the importance of stress management, because right now our kids, because of the stress where they're getting stuck in those dopamine traps like internet surfing and online shopping. And so to really create rules, of course, social media and cell phone use, that's really important and have that open conversation so you can prevent addictions. Because remember our children, especially teenagers, actually have higher dopamine receptors in the brain that then they're easily able to get addicted to things.

And plus their prefrontal cortex is not working properly, it's not fully formed yet until they're in their twenties, so then they're able to easily get stuck into some of these addictions and traps. And so to replace these traps with regular routines, like prayer and mindfulness and stress management techniques to lower that overall inflammation, optimize the gut microbiome and balance the hormones and the brain health so then we can all make better decisions, right.

Then getting them out in nature, huge piece of that puzzle to really optimize attention and focus and better test scores, better cognition. Making sure that their sleep is good, because our children are not sleeping. There's more and more studies that show that our children are really sleep deprived. And so to make sure that they get enough sleep in and then social support, because that loving parenting that builds connections, releases oxytocin, it decreases stress response systems. So developing those bonds of love and respect and honor, really getting involved in a child's life, that in of itself can really help to activate sensory nerves in the child's brain to help them release that oxytocin and the natural opioids that can help really optimize a child's connective neural fibers in their brains and then that really increases cognitive function and really helps them to learn empathy.

And then communication, really empowering and educating your child about being mindful, mindful awareness, and then setting like family rules and setting real life consequences, appreciating great behavior. But then I think one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle that I have found is that our kids today are living in a world of negativity. And that is like one of the most powerful things that can disconnect our prefrontal cortex from the amygdala, when our amygdala takes over in this fear based society.

And we're seeing this today more than ever, because science has proven that gratitude and optimism can actually strengthen those connections between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex that improves our overall health and wellbeing. So I have it immediately when I wake up in the morning, right? My children, we focus on all the things that we can control all of our blessings, our eyes, our ears, or nose, our throat. For me and in my house., my kids are younger, my youngest is six so we have a song. Thank you for my eyes. Thank you for my ears. Thank you for another beautiful day to change the world.

So remember this - holistic parenting is all about that love and that connection and educating and empowering your child and guiding them along the way, giving them the positive mindset is really important and those life skills to really navigate this crazy changing world. And so I think that starting with gratitude and ending their day with gratitude is super powerful. On all of these different pieces, really helped to again solidify the brain function and the body function to really optimize a child's wellbeing inside and out.

32:45 Tara Hunkin:
That was amazing. And I just want people to know who are listening to this, if you haven't had the pleasure of seeing Madiha's work before, you will know that she brings this level of energy and optimism to everything she does, she really walks the talk. So, I mean, it's all well and good to say all these things, but you really do bring it to all the work that you do and it just oozes out of your being every time I encounter you anywhere, way, shape or form. So people listening, you need to check out her kids' show too. What's the name of the show and where where's the best place to find it? Cause then you can see her children and how they live this as well.

33:32 Dr. Madiha Saeed:
Absolutely. I think that's one of my, like, it's so much fun to do with the kids, especially when you have somebody else that is not you telling your kids about the same stuff that you tell them, so I love it. We started this actually in the pandemic time when all four of them were home with me and I was like, what am I supposed to do with you guys? And I know they've had this education and knowledge and just to solidify that, and then they're speaking, but we started the Holistic Kid Show podcast.

So it's my 13 year old, my 10 year old and my eight year old that really have conversations with like Dr. Terry Wahls and Dr. Tom O'Bryan and all these really intellectuals in the field about parenting, about, taking care of kids' health at their level. So they'll like dumb it down, which is so much fun because they sort of live this type of lifestyle and it can be found on iTunes and anywhere that your podcast platforms are.

34:27 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. Well, I will make sure we have a link to that in the show notes.

Your book, by the time this airs, will be coming out. So you must go ahead and order. We're going to have a link directly to that as well in the show notes so that you can get the book, but it's also going to be available on Amazon, all the normal places that you can buy books, or you like to buy books or listen to. Is it coming out in an audio book as well?

35:03 Dr. Madiha Saeed:
No, not yet.

35:04 Tara Hunkin:
Okay. So it's The Holistic RX for Kids: Parenting Healthy Brains and Bodies in a Changing World. Again, I can't thank you enough for spending the time with us today, but also for all the work that you do to help educate parents and give them confidence to change the way or continue in the way that they're parenting their kids and helping them thrive in this, as you say, in a really big, changing world.

35:33 Dr. Madiha Saeed:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for all the work that you're doing too. I've been goo-goo, gagaing over your work for so long. I'm so incredibly honored to be on your podcast.

35:44 Tara Hunkin:
Thank you so much. Thrilled to have you. Bye for now. So that's a wrap. Thanks for joining me this week on My Child Will Thrive. I'm so passionate about giving you the tools and information you need to help your child recover. And as they say, it takes a village. So join us in the, My Child Will Thrive village Facebook group, where you can meet like-minded parents and stay up to date on everything we have going on at My Child Will Thrive. This is Tara Hunkin and I'll catch you on the next podcast or over at My Child Will Thrive dot com.