Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, everybody. Dr. Ben Edwards here. Welcome to another episode of youf're the Cure. I've got a great guest today who is the author of this book, Between a Shot and a hard Place.
And Dr. Joel Warsh. And I've asked Dr. Warsh to come on and I'm going to ask him in a minute about this Gator, Dr. Gator, because I heard that's what people call my people call me Dr. Ben. When I first showed up in Garza County Health Clinic right out of residency, people thought I looked too young to be a doctor, so they just started calling me Ben. Dr. Ben. Anyways, Joe Worsh, board certified pediatrician, practices in Los Angeles, California, specializing in parenting, wellness and integrative medicine. He grew up in Toronto, completed degrees in kinesiology, psychology and epidemiology and also community health, I believe, has a master's in that earned his medical degree, Thomas Jefferson Medical College, completed pediatric medicine training at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, and has worked in private practice in Beverly Hills before founding his current practice in integrative pediatrics and medicine. Studio City just published the book recently. We'll get into that here In a minute. Dr. Joel Warsh, welcome to the program.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Thank you for having me on and thank you for everything that you've been doing. And it's been a wild year, for sure.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: It has been a wild year and just getting wilder by the week. I know the whole vaccine advisory committee just got dismissed and I heard today maybe eight new folks have been appointed and we can maybe get into that in a minute.
You know, such a can be a difficult subject to talk about, vaccines and integrative medicine in general. I mean, people know my story. I want them to hear your story. And in particular, what motivated me to reach out was I have so many physicians, so many colleagues that have been reaching out to me lately, wanting to do something different, wanting to learn more. And then when you learn more, you realize I need more time with patients and I probably need to get out of my current practice setting. And I'm not sure I want to follow the CDC schedule and just tons of questions. But then people are scared. I don't want to be labeled. I don't want to be ridiculed. What will my peers think? And there's just so much complexity for our colleagues. And so this show, I really want to encourage, of course, the audience parents for the sake of the children, but encourage our colleagues too. So. But Joel, I thought we'd start with you just kind of sharing your testimony, sharing your story Why'd you go into medicine? Why pediatrics?
What got you out of just the standard?
I call it narrow minded, tunnel vision into thinking more broadly and integrating in to your practice different things. So please welcome to the show, share your story.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Awesome. I mean, going back, you know, as you said, I grew up in Toronto. I would say had a pretty regular life. I wasn't particularly, you know, holistic minded or integrative minded in any way.
And I always loved science. I love working with kids. I used to coach my brother in hockey and baseball. And so that's really what I think developed that love for working with kids. And then I started working in summer camps. And when I decided that I wanted to go into science and eventually into medicine, it was always to do pediatrics, it was to work with kids. I really enjoyed that more than working with the adults and getting ahead of issues and preventing issues and you know, kids listen and they actually get better and adults don't always do that. So for me it was really those things that led me into pediatrics. But as I went into my career, I really started getting very frustrated seeing all the chronic disease around, seeing kids not getting better. And around my early residency I met my wife, she, my now wife, she's, she's a very holistic minded. So that definitely opened up my eyes a little bit more to a little bit other side. Just seeing also patients go outside of the system and get better for things that they were told they would never get better for or would need medications for the rest of their life. And that, that also just kind of sparked my interest too. I'm like, well what are these, what are these people doing? Why are they going to a naturopath or why are they going to acupuncture? Why are they going to other places and getting better? Even though we said that they weren't gonna be getting better in our, in our training. And I think all that just really led to me getting outside of the system a little bit and starting to learn about integrative medicine myself. I'm not against medicine. I, you know, obviously I've done all the regular training. I think there's a lot of amazing parts of modern medicine, but I think that there is really a lot more to learn and the more through my journey, the more that I found it really interesting that there is a lot of evidence based research out there on alternative practices. People want this, we want to minimize using medications as much as we can. It's not very woo woo. I mean it can get out there and get woo woo but it really doesn't have to.
And, and I, I feel like I'm a pretty open minded person. And as I've been going through this, a lot of what I've learned, it was like, why didn't we learn that in med school? And I took a functional medicine course. I remember like the first person I used to watch a little bit was Mark Hyman and he was kind of doing it for adults. And I went to a functional medicine course and they started talking about root cause medicine. I was like, like, of course we should be thinking about that. Of course we should be thinking about what caused the rash as opposed to just giving him medication. But really when you go through your training, it's so much about treatment and of course that's important.
But you get so focused on this system of illness treatment, try to figure out if it's the worst case scenario. Don't want to miss the cancer, don't want to miss the really serious thing. But nobody ever talked to us about diet, exercise, sleep.
We never learned about vaccines. Not really. Right. I mean, we certainly learn about the schedule and the diseases, but no one really talked about any of these other things that the parents are bringing to you on a daily basis when you're in practice. And so for me, that really pushed me to start learning and just getting, getting out there.
And that's kind of the general story of how I got to integrative medicine, opening up my own practice. But then of course, with vaccines, that's a whole other, that's a whole other story. I don't know if you want me to go into that next.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Well, yeah, we'll go there shortly.
So really, your wife was probably, you would say was the real key moment of opening your eyes to look outside, just your normal background if you grew up. Not.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, and the gator things. My wife's last name is intelligator, so that's where the Dr. Gator comes from. It's not a Florida thing. Nothing against Florida, but it's a, it's a wife thing.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Yeah, well, my wife's responsible for a lot of things in my life too. I'd say.
God bless our wives.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: So where did you start in just a conventional, regular, straight pediatric practice or since you started learning during residency. Did you.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: No, I, I did. I saw. Right out of residency, I started in pretty conventional practice. So I worked at the hospital a little bit for that first year in their clinic and then also a pretty conventional practice. So that was maybe for about a half year to a year. And Then I moved to. So I started looking for like more of a full time job after that, which a practice in Beverly Hills were very nice. They took me in. I kind of express to them my interest in integrative medicine. And they were more of a conventional practice, but they were open to it, they were excited. They had patients that, you know, maybe were interested in it, but they were in it themselves. But they said, like, you know, if you want to do it, if you want to introduce it to the patients, go for it. We're all for that. And at that time, I was just still at the beginning phases of learning, really. So I only knew so much. But I found very quickly that people were super open to it, they were super excited about it.
A lot of patients that had been with other doctors even at that practice for years, wanting to switch over to me just because of this philosophy. And I was like, I'm just this new doctor, like, why would you want to come to me instead of going to the doctor that's been there for 20 years? But it definitely resonated with some folks for sure who were open minded and were like, yeah, you know, I, I like medicine, but I don't want to treat with antibiotic every time. Like, is there something else we could do? Or oh, you're okay having a discussion with me about vaccines. You're not pushing them on me, you're not forcing me to do it. Okay, that's great. That's my philosophy too.
And the more that I was in practice, the more that I realized that there are just more and more people that are interested in that. And I think that's really expanded and grown over the last few years, especially during and since COVID I think that really opened up people's eyes to a lot of what's been going on. And we're seeing more, more hesitancy around the medical system and certainly vaccines than ever before.
And it just seems like medicine at this point is still kind of doubling down on like my way or the highway. This is the only way. And more and more people are just not having that anymore and they want to have discussions. And I'm not against vaccines, I'm not anti vaccine in any way.
I don't even believe in those terms really. Like it doesn't make any sense to me. I'm pro healthy kids and I want the best things for our kids, the best products. I want kids to avoid disease, but I also don't want them to have chronic conditions. And I want the safest possible products. And I think we should be able to talk about everything.
And I never did talk about vaccines, not until like a year or two ago. And really since then, I think things have shifted a lot and people are much more open discussing it, which has been great and it made me feel more comfortable to write a book about it. But I think we just need balanced discussions. I think we need to be open to talking about this. And it's been really nice to see that things have changed and the words not being censored as much or almost at all online anymore. And I've been able to be on pretty big podcasts and shows and of individuals that would have never talked about it a year ago. So I think things are changing. And when it comes to our profession, I think we need to change with it too. It's not about being pro or against anything. It's about what is the research, what is the data, how do we get the best research and data? And let's do whatever's best for our kids, right?
[00:09:47] Speaker A: I agree 100%. That sounds like a real common sense approach. And that's kind of what we, we try to stick with. And it also sounds like patient demand or the general public kind of has ahead of the curve in a lot of ways. These parents are kind of demanding this. So when they find a physician who's willing to at least be open minded and here they come.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, I mean, from a business perspective, just purely business perspective, like there is such an overwhelming demand for integrative medicine. There are very few people that are, are willing to do it or open to doing it. And it's endless. Like they're just. We just can't even come close to taking the amount of people that want to come to the office.
And you know, I'm not doing it because of that. But I mean, if someone's listening and they're like, oh, you know, are people interested in this? Yeah, there are so many people interested in it. And it's. And you don't need some sort of vast knowledge in integrative medicine or acupuncture to do it. I think it's just a willingness to be open to it, a willingness to spend a little bit more time, a willingness to have some more discussions and then, yeah, maybe learning a little bit more. But it's not like you're learning rocket science. You can learn about nutrition and exercise and sleep and stress and some basic supplements and herbs that are, have been used by, you know, forever. Like we in pediatrics, we say vitamin D for everybody and then all the Other stuff is woo woo. It doesn't, doesn't make any sense. Like there are, there are plenty of things that have lots of great evidence that we can use to support our immune systems or certainly their lower risk than doing a medication in the setting. If it's like a virus where there's nothing else to do. Like a parent wants to do something so you give them a little vitamin C or elderberry or zinc and, and they're happy and they don't need to reach to an antibiotic for that first day and, and they never need to eat. And that's just good medicine.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And I, I echo that 100i physicians call all the time. Just had one yesterday and that's what I told them. You don't have to go spend three years and feel like you need to learn every single thing about integrative or functional medicine.
Just the basics. And number one, and you said it is just listen, just listen. And, and just the fact a patient gets to speak and spend some time when you're listening, that's the majority of it right there. And then just be honest with them. You know, I don't know a lot of this stuff, but I'll learn with you. And it is, there is a way to make that transition.
For those who are looking to do that, let's shift a little. When did you start to wonder about question, dig into the whole vaccine topic and I'm assuming you're like me. Medical school taught us basically here's the schedule and you know, memorize it for the test kind of and then implement it in your clinics.
When did you first start to think outside of that narrow training and were you under the assumptions that I was under and I think most our colleagues are under that.
There's all this evidence.
You know, these have been widely studied, deeply studied, you know, the whole safe and effective narrative on, on every single vaccine.
When did you start to first question that?
[00:12:47] Speaker B: The first part of your question. And I didn't even think about it at first. Right. I don't think you do. When you're in med school or in residency or training, you know, sometimes people want to, want to say like, oh, doctors have some sort of nefarious motive or whatever. Like unless you are exposed to some sort of other narrative or exposed to some of the other information, like you just don't think about it. You're just, you're so bus, you're in training, you're taught like here are the horrible diseases that are out there and here are the great vaccines that we have to prevent those. And they've done all this great, all this good. And they're great, and they're very effective and very, very safe. And, you know, they can cause a reaction every now and again, but usually it's mild.
And the serious stuff is super rare, like one in a million.
And that's kind of what you learn, and you just go into practice and you just do it. And that's the way that it was for me at first.
And I would say it's. It's parents. I mean, it's parents asking questions that really did open up my eyes to start learning more about it. I mean, certainly over the last decade, I've slowly learned more, but it definitely over the last few years, as the main reason people, I would say, come to the practice in the first place is really just because they want to have discussions around vaccines over anything else.
So I get a lot more vaccine questions than I feel like the average office. I mean, I have patients in my office that do the regular schedule, that do a slow schedule, that don't do any. Most do some sort of slow schedule. So again, I'm not against vaccines, but I have. I don't force anybody to do anything. I don't feel like people should be forced to do anything. I feel like we should have discussions and give people the best information, and then they should make the choice that's best for them and their family, like everything else in medicine. And that's how I practice. And that seems to be the main thing that people come for. But they had more and more questions, and the questions are getting better and more.
More detailed, I would say, over the last few years and certainly online as well. So that is one of the big things that really pushed me to learn more about it. Like, that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book, because I needed to learn more myself. I was getting all these questions all the time, and really, until I did the research for the book, I knew I would say more than most just from being aware. But you really, really don't have any idea what the research actually shows until you dig into it yourself on many of these topics.
And, and some of it's quite shocking as somebody who, you know, parroted things back in the day. And then you. You realize, like, okay, you're just saying something that's completely wrong.
That's just not in the research and science. And. And so, yeah, I think it's. It's really much more. More recent where I, I really dug into it, and especially for the book as I kind of, you know, had to really do a deep dive into the research to do a good job for the book.
And yeah, it's pretty shocking, especially when you're talking about things like what research exists, what long term research exists or doesn't exist, how the things were studied originally and then the vaccines and autism research. I mean, this is just not what you're taught, right?
[00:15:39] Speaker A: What were some of the more shocking or aha moments that you know, you thought whatever talking point you were told and then it turns out totally wrong or partly wrong or what were some of the bigger.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean by far the biggest is the autism and vaccine research. There's no question there. I mean I was always taught, you know, the science is settled, it's been debunked. It's very obvious that we have all this great, massive, amazing research. And I thought when I was even going to do the book, you know, what I, what I, what I thought was, okay, there's going to be this like excellent body of literature, very robust, that shows that the vaccines don't cause autism. And that's why we say that. And, but, but I also knew some of the other stuff, so I knew some of the other things that have been out there. I was like, okay, but here is the other research is not always the best research, but there is some other, you know, studies that maybe show that there could be some link. So let's not like conclude that we should be debunking it. But like here's the majority of research that shows that, that why we think vaccines don't cause autism. And then when you go look at the research, you're like, okay, where is it? It just doesn't exist. And it's so crazy because I looked so hard and I have a master's in epidemiology, have a pretty good idea of how to do research. I've done a literature review in a journal before on body checking in hockey, so it's very Canadian, but that's what it was.
And the research is just on MMR and thimerosal and that's it and nothing really else. So we don't have any prospective trials, we don't have any vaccinated versus unvaccinated trials. And we have no research basically on any of the other vaccines but mmr. And so to be able to say anything about that is really surprising. And I just don't think, I didn't know and I don't think most doctors really would be aware.
We just don't have A good, robust body of research on these vaccines, especially the ones you get in the first year. And that's really important to know because we're saying this without knowing it. And if vaccines do have something to do with autism, we would want to know that. We want to know why, what ingredient? What are we doing? What's part of the schedule? Could we change it? Could we improve it? I'm not saying that it is, but when you have all of these people that are concerned, all these parents that are saying the same story over and over again, it is something we should consider. It's something we should look into, and we should get really good, robust data. Because either we get the right kind of research and we find that there's an issue and then we can make changes to make it better, or we do the right research and we don't find there's an issue. And that's the kind of data that makes parents more comfortable to actually get vaccines.
So it shouldn't be controversial, but we shouldn't be parroting something that's not true. And it's like, that's all you hear as a physician, and that is really shocking to me.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
And obviously it would be impossible to give informed consent, true informed consent, in the setting that you just described, when doctors are just told something and make some assumptions. And the assumptions being all these institutions would be telling me the, the truth or accurate. You know, I hate to say lie, but false advertising. I mean, I know, like in an integrative, holistic practice or any, any business, you can't just make a claim.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Iv, vitamin C cures cancer. No Federal Trade Commission will come tell you that's false advertising. Get off your website or we're going to find you.
So just this lack of truth and informed consent. But, but talk about that a little bit.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's shocking, like how, how easy it is to look into this and to find that it's not true. Like, it's, it's, it's shocking. And, and it's, it. I don't know if it's a lie by omission or on purpose. I don't know what it is, but it's very weird. It's something we've been told over and over again. And I'm not sure if it's just. They don't want people to look into it because they're worried that they're going to find something. I don't know what it is, but it's the same thing as during the pandemic. Safe and effective.
It just doesn't make any sense. When you say things like that. That's just propaganda. It's, it's, you could say during the pandemic, especially at the beginning, like, okay, based on the research that we have, the vaccine seems to, the benefits seem to outweigh the risks. We see in the short term that there's a decrease in hospitalization, a decrease in death, but we don't know anything about the long term risks. So this is why we recommend it. You can say something like that, but when you just say something's just blanket safe when it hasn't even studied for more than a couple months, that doesn't make any sense. And I think that was the thing that opened up so many people's eyes to the reality that we're being told things without people actually looking into it or using their common sense.
And just the push is really just to do it as opposed to have nuanced conversations and discussions about what is best for you or what's best for the individual or really just to look at the data with an unbiased eye. And so, I mean, I think we're here now and this is what we're seeing. I mean, there's a lot of pushback in medicine. That's what we're seeing with Secretary Kennedy. That's what we're seeing with the changes in the vaccine committees and all that. Because I think there's just been this, this, this push to just do it, just do vaccines, just follow the schedule and don't, don't think about it, don't ask questions. If anybody ask questions that might stop us from getting vaccines and that would be the worst thing ever. And all these diseases are going to come back and we're all just going to die from measles and, and I, and I think, like, that is the mentality that people have. And with social media and Internet, people can see through it now. They can look up stuff themselves and you can poke holes in these obvious narratives.
And that's not the way forward. The way forward is through transparency, through debate, through discussion, to acknowledge what we know and what we don't know.
And it's okay not to know everything certainly is. But if vaccines have something to do with autism or something to do with asthma, we need to know that so we can make them better. Like, we want to have better vaccines. I want to have the least amount of infections with the fewest side effects. And, you know, for example, if 50% of asthma is because of vaccines or vaccines, make it Worse, and that's because of aluminum. Then wouldn't you want to know that maybe we can make some sort of other adjuvant that doesn't do that? I don't know. Like that's what science is for. That's. We don't have the best vaccines we're ever going to have in the history of humanity. So let's, let's have some humility and let's look at the pros and cons, look at what we know, what we don't know, do that research and then make things better. We've taken vaccines off the market before, we can do it again. We can make a better version of vaccine. We did it with rotavirus and you know, the DTAP vaccine. We've done it before. So like, let's have some humility to say maybe we can make things better and it doesn't have to be all or none.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: Right?
How, I mean, this is such a polarizing topic.
How do you see the way forward to de, escalate, depolarize and have some of this common sense discussion like you're talking about?
[00:22:22] Speaker B: I mean, the first step is you can't have censorship. So I think that we're on a path forward for that and I think we need to make sure that doesn't happen again. We cannot censor the word vaccine. We cannot censor discussion because we need to have that debate available so that way people can see both sides. The next step is to have open discussions and debates. I mean, we need more of it. We need it in universities, we need it on bigger platforms. We need to have discussions on it. It was never talked about. I mean, just recently, you know, people like Joe Rogan and even Huberman, like, they are talking about it. So it's like the first time ever you're hearing the word vaccine in a very long time, other than like a little bit with the COVID vaccine.
So I think that's the first step forward is just making people aware of what we do know, what we don't know.
I very much hope that with the new committee and with Secretary Kennedy in there, they, they go through the research and the data and they republish things. Like I really would hope that like now we have more information. They'll go through, they'll publish things for doctors, they'll publish things for the public, like, okay, here is the information that we actually have because I guarantee you the vast majority of doctors do not know what the research actually is on autism, on long term health and vaccines, how vaccines were actually studied originally that are on the common schedule. People just don't know that unless you've read Dissolving Illusions and Turtles all the Way down and multiple books. You can't just read something by Paul Offit or Peter Hotez and have an idea of what's going on. You can't. You need to read both. I mean, that's again why I wrote my book, because it does discuss kind of both sides and you get a lot of that information. But I think we need this published. Like, like something in the New England Journal of Medicine or you know, jama, like, okay, here's the research on vaccines and autism. Like, look at it. If you don't agree with it, tell me what's missing. You find me. The research that you say exists, like show, I think if doctors saw that they would go, oh really? Like that, that, that's not settled science. Like not even close. So maybe what, what Secretary Kenny saying isn't all that crazy. Like maybe we do need some more, more research.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: Right.
Well, I think doctors are so busy, number one and so trusting, number two, because probably if, if a pediatrician were hearing this for the first time, they're one of the things they'd be thinking of would be, well, if there were any issues in the cdc, the fda, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the state medical board, somebody would be saying the same thing.
What would you say to that pediatrician that puts their 100% trust and faith in these institutions?
[00:24:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that we have seen that not everything that all these institutions have said over the years has panned out. And I think it's just really important to have a look yourself. I mean, if you don't believe it, you just have to look yourself. You have to go see some of these things and you have to understand that it's not about anything nefarious. It's just a lot of us were taught something and we kind of passed that on and most people just never looked at it themselves.
And you even hear people who were like heads of the cdc, they don't know some of this stuff.
I was listening to Del Big Tree talk to Robert Redford Redfield.
He was asking him questions about like the Hepatitis B vaccine. He didn't know so much.
He was like the head of the cdc. So I think we just assume that people know. We assume that these things have been studied and it's not that hard to go look and to see what is and isn't true.
And I think we just need to be open minded and we have to come Together and say like look, just because you're talking about safety of vaccines doesn't mean you're anti vaccine or you want to stop all vaccines. But we want what's best for kids. And just parroting what you've been taught is just not going to work anymore. It's not working for parents. We're seeing the highest rates of hesitancy, the lowest rates of vaccines ever and just telling people to leave your office and not come back or just telling people to do what you've always been taught. It's not working anymore. Medicine is literally failing. They're trying to prevent hesitancy and they're creating hesitancy. So we need a new, a new path forward. And that path forward is through transparency and open discussion and humility. I think.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. I've said that multiple times on my show.
We need to confess when we mess up. It's a hard thing for humans to do. We teach our kids this. Come on, just confess. It'll be okay. You gotta be able to truth tell. And if we can't look in the mirror and truth tell and confess and ask for forgiveness if we need to, then we're not going to move forward. We just double down and, and pride and arrogancy. It's not going to work. It's blown up in our face actually.
So this trust in physicians, I've seen surveys, you know, 70% trust pre Covid, 40% and dropping fast. I think post Covid there's just been an absolute decimation. I mean we're not quite down low, as low as congress and meet the media I saw recently is even lower than congress are almost single digits but still a huge drop in trust Physicians and maybe it's just what you just said, but how do you see a path forward to rebuild that trust?
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[00:28:39] Speaker B: The path forward is to include people and to include discussion.
It's, it's, it's. I don't think it's that difficult. I mean, obviously it's not simple, but I don't think it's that difficult to be honest. And I think if we can be honest what we know and what we don't know, we'll start to rebuild that trust. And if we start to partner back with patients as opposed to companies, then I think that's going to come a long way. I think the.
I don't know if it's a majority, but maybe it's a majority at this point, of individuals, and rightly so, feel like medicine is just about money. They feel like pharmaceutical companies, especially with vaccines, have liability. So you can't really see them and nobody's stopping them. Nobody is really making sure that the products are safe. Nobody's making sure that we keep testing these things over and over again. It's just kind of get on the schedule, do more medications, more vaccines. And that's kind of what we're going forward with. And most parents want to see some sort of pushback on that. To say, look, look, look, like, we know that nothing is 100% safe and we know that it's going to take some time, but we want to know that you care, that you care about our kids, you care about their health. And you're not just going to blanket statement. These things are, you're not going to blanket statement that these things are safe. We're going to say we're going to look at everything. We're not going to take any assumptions. We're going to study these things consistently. We're going to look at signals. We're going to see if they're related to chronic disease. We're going to see if they're related to autism. We're going to have an open mind about it. If we do find things, we'll make changes.
If we don't find anything, we'll present that like, we're gonna continue to be the, the, the force that, like, kind of pushes back against these companies. A pharmaceutical company has no reason to Study their product for safety once on the market. Why would a vaccine company who has no liability say, you know what I'm gonna do today? I'm gonna spend another couple billion dollars and look for problems in my product so that way they can pull it off the market. They're not gonna do that. We have to do it. And ever since, you know, the last maybe, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 years, like they know these things. They, they, they pay everybody. They know how to do it. They, they, they fund the med schools, they fund the journals, they fund the news, they fund everything. So nobody's pushing back against them. They fund the three letter organizations. They, they're just people going back and forth and, and no one's pushing back. And nobody is saying, wait a minute, like do we have too many vaccines?
Are any of the vaccines a problem?
Are there any ingredients that might be an issue?
Do we, can we pull something back? We just keep adding more and like, and they just say, oh, you can just have 10,000 vaccines, it's fine, a million vaccines. It's like that can't be true. There has to be some upper limit of safety. And like, and maybe we're there, maybe we're not, but if we don't push back, then we're going to have 10,000 vaccines. And just because you can make a vaccine doesn't mean you should.
There are, there's some negative to any positive.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. Agree 100%. What would you tell a parent who is frustrated with her current situation with their pediatrician or their physician who has done their own research, has some questions, loves their doctor, but really, you know, has lost faith and competence or has done some of their own research and wants to modify something?
What would you say to them as far as trying to broach this subject with a pediatrician or a family practitioner to move forward for again the safety and benefit and health of their child?
[00:32:10] Speaker B: I mean, I think it's one of the most important steps to moving the needle forward is for parents to step up and ask questions. I think we cannot be scared anymore to ask questions. You can't feel like it's woo woo or you're out there to have questions about vaccines or medications or your kid's health? I think we have to do it, we have to ask our doctors are questions. You need to be in a partnership and if they're not willing to answer it or they're going to kick you out, then that's just not the right doctor for you. Find one that is. And if, if Most people start to do that, then, then doctors are going to have no choice but to start to learn and to listen because they won't have patience for much longer. And, and I think that a lot of this stuff comes from, from patients. Like I've seen so many people that have told me, like, oh, you know, they went to their, I don't know, cardiologist or whatever after going after birth or endocrine doctor after having a condition forever and they went to like an ayurvedic practitioner and they got better. And then the cardiologist like, wait, what'd you do? Right? And then they start learning, like, what, what, what would doctors want to heal you? These are good people, it's not bad people. And, and I think the more that there can be exposure to some of these things, the more that people are going to be open to it and they don't have to do it themselves, but they just won't get upset at you. They'll be willing to listen. They might say, I don't know about that, but that seems interesting. Like, tell me more, maybe they'll research it.
I know, just like you said, a lot of doctors, younger doctors are reaching out to me. A lot of individuals who are in med school or in training and they're very excited with the new generation of health that's a little bit more open and they have the same questions that I have. And again, it's not about saying you shouldn't get vaccines. It's just about having real questions that we're asked every day that we don't really have answers to. We really don't have an answer to vaccines and autism. We really don't know anything or very little about long term complications from vaccines. And we really just never did the proper safety studies in the first place for a lot of these childhood vaccines.
And so we just kind of know relative safety and not absolute safety. And we really just don't know if kids were completely unvaccinated, if they would have lower rates of a lot of these chronic conditions. And obviously that comes with, if everyone gets, if everyone doesn't vaccinate, then some of these diseases come back. So it's a weighted balance there, but it's not an unreasonable question because at the end of the day, again, our goal is to minimize infectious disease, but also minimize chronic disease. And we didn't have to worry so much about chronic disease 50 years ago or 100 years ago, but now we do. So we now have to balance these two things. And if vaccines are playing a Part of that, we need to know it. And if they're not, then we need to be ruling that out so we can figure out what actually is. And it should be on the table. Amongst many things that I'm sure are contributing to this is not just vaccines, for sure. I mean, I've taken care of kids with autism that never had a vaccine, so it's certainly not the only thing.
But it shouldn't be off the table. Everything should be on the table because what do we want? We want healthy kids. So that should be our only goal. And no product should be above that. Nothing's above health. And I don't care. I don't care if kids get 15,000 vaccines or zero if they're healthier.
Whatever it is that makes them the healthiest. That's what I want. That's what I want for my kids.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: Amen 100%.
So your book, between a shot and a Hard Place. Here it is, guys. I'm assuming you can get it on every book selling outlet there is.
I mean, writing a book's a big deal. Takes a lot of time, energy, effort, especially a topic like this.
So as you, I mean, pretty young in your career, learning integrative things, busy, obviously. Super busy. Now, what really motivated you? Why would you spend the time and effort to put this book out?
[00:35:49] Speaker B: It's just a frustration. The frustration that I hear every day from parents. The same questions not being answered.
Having parents ask me like what they should read. And you know, I had read pretty much all the vaccine books and really almost every book out there is very one sided. So you kind of have a very different picture of the Hepatitis B vaccine. If you read a Neil Miller book or an RFK book versus Offit or Hotez and you need something that's in the middle, you kind of need both sides. Nobody's talking to each other. No one's talking about vaccines, nobody's talking about the major debates today.
And I really wanted something that did that. And the goal of the book is really to bring the vaccine discussion out from the shadows and to have discussions like this and talk about the big things that parents actually have concerns about and voice their concerns. So yeah, it was a lot of it. I had kind of written down in pieces. I hadn't decided whether I was going to write a vaccine book or not. I just had to get out there. So I had it down in pieces. And then over the last year I put it together because I felt like with the changing of the individuals involved in health, I mean this, I thought was the time when vaccines would be discussed more, and it has panned out to be true.
So the timing, I think, is really good in terms of being a part of the discussion. And it's been well received. I mean, I've been really excited to see people have really enjoyed it. It goes through the history of vaccines, it goes through the diseases, it goes through what we know about the vaccines, the efficacy, the safety concerns that we know. And then the whole last part of the book is about all the questions that people have about SIDS and autism and chronic disease, and goes through what we do and what we don't know. But you get information from Paul Offit and Secretary Kennedy, you get both. You kind of see what they both say, and I don't think anything's ever, ever done that before. The other good books, really, like Dissolving Illusions, is really much more about history.
Turtles all the Way Down. I mean, I go through some of the Turtles all the way down stuff in terms of going through the initial research, but that book is very specific on that. So this is a little bit more for the everyday parent or their practitioner to bridge the divide. And I'm hoping that.
My wife is an attorney and. And she does some mediation sometimes for family law. And. And, you know, one thing I've learned from her is like, you can't always bring people to the same place, but you can at least try to get them to see the other side's position a little bit, which helps you to mediate in those kind of situations. And that's what I think we need right now between the extremes. Like, I don't think that someone who's extraordinarily pro vax is going to be anti vaxx or the other way around. But I think you can see the other side's position. You can see why somebody might have a concern around an ingredient in a vaccine. You can see why someone might be concerned about autism. And that can bring you to the middle or bring you in the discussion a little bit more, and maybe you're willing to listen to something that a parent says a little bit more. And I think that's the first step. So that's what I'm hoping for. It's like a first step towards a.
I don't know, maybe a more harmonious discussion. We're not going to be holding hands with Kumbaya, but we can maybe debate it a little bit more.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: Right? Yeah.
So what would. If a pediatrician picked this book up and started reading it, what would be, do you think the most Kind of shocking or, you know, piece of information that would have been a big aha moment for them.
[00:38:58] Speaker B: Yeah, so I, first of all, you know, when I wrote the book, it's obviously one of the big concerns, right. Other doctors reading it and kind of getting upset at me. Right. And, and saying like, oh, you're just anti vaxxer, which is, you know, certainly not true of me. But that's obviously the fear and, and you know, and even in the past, like anything vaccine discussion wise, especially during COVID like people lost friends, family, all sorts of things. So I didn't really know how it was going to be received.
Luckily, so far, I mean, I haven't lost any friends. Everyone's still talking to me.
Several doctors have read it and said that they enjoyed it and they thought it was evidence based and was not biased on either side. So I think that's good. I mean it's a good test so far, so we'll see as it spreads out how people kind of take it. But I think as a doctor reading it, I mean it's evidence based. Everything cited, it's kind of both sides. It does not anti vaccine. It goes through the positive vaccines. And I think you go through like a tennis match of kind of going back and forth a little bit of like, okay, that makes sense and oh, I didn't know that. But yeah, I think you're going to be most shocked at what research does not exist, what research we were told exists and what I don't feel like exists. And I really tried hard to disprove my own theories, especially with autism. Like I really did not believe the research was what it is, but it's that. And if you, if someone disagrees with me, I'm always open to changing it. I'm always open to people sending me stuff. My, my job here is not to play gotcha or to play like this is what it should be. This. I want to present the research as best as possible. So if there's something that I missed, great, let me know. I'm totally fine with that. I want people to be the healthiest. So I presented the research the best that I could and took people on the journey of my research and I hope that they see that.
[00:40:44] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think you did a great job of that.
How's the climate out there in California in terms of the state medical board, other medical societies, colleagues, you know, how tough is it to kind of be, you know, outside the standard mindset?
[00:41:03] Speaker B: I mean, California is one of the toughest places to be, I would say in terms of medical climate, but at least so far, you know, knock on wood, it's been okay. Nobody's come knocking. I haven't seen any big yellow envelopes. Nobody's been mad at me. I haven't. But maybe it's just because I haven't told anyone not to get a vaccine. I don't know. I mean, I have read multiple cases of the doctors that have gone in trouble. I know what they've got in trouble for.
I, I've tried to be mindful of that and not, you know, tell people what to do, which I agree with anyways. That's what I do in office. I don't tell people what to do. I provide information and then they make decisions that make sense for them.
I, I'm not oblivious to the fact that I could get in trouble. I don't know. I hope not.
But we'll see. I mean, I, I wasn't sure was going to make it even to getting published, which is. Wasn't sure about anything with the whole climate around vaccines. But posts on social media have been fine. They haven't been taken down, they haven't been censored, and nobody's reaching out or saying anything bad from that standpoint. So I think it's good. I don't know if maybe with everything going on with Secretary Kennedy, it's a little bit of. They're more worried about that stuff and not so worried about Dr. Joel.
So maybe, maybe the timing helps a little bit. I don't really know. So we'll see.
But so far it's been shockingly great and I hope it continues because I hope that if, if and when other doctors read the book, they can see that I'm coming from a place of care in a place of, of science and research, and not about trying to get people to do something. And I hope that that leads them to not, not come after me, I guess. And if they do, they do, but I, I don't know. I hope not.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I don't. I wouldn't be worried. I think you're, you're doing the right thing. And in the end, the truth always wins. So.
And it's just such an important topic, obviously. I mean, it's our kids.
And unfortunately, and this is kind of across integrative medicine, that was one of the saddest things is I, I came out of my conventional family practice. I was that way for 10 years. And then the past 13 years have been integrative, but seeing both other integrative physicians, but definitely the patients that were coming to see me.
They were coming out of desperation, so sick, so injured, so, you know, just desperate. And physicians sick themselves and couldn't get answers from their colleagues and the specialists and all the tertiary care centers, and out of just desperation, you know, were forced to go look at something, quote, unquote, alternative.
And that's just really, really sad that it takes, you know, because how much suffering has happened to get someone to force them to go look somewhere else or open their mind a little bit. So to have a resource like this that could, you know, pique their interest, get a crack in their intellectual, you know, open their mind a little bit to start going down this path before.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: They have to basically, and kind of say. Because I know, you know, we were talking a little bit about. For the doctors that are listening, there's such a need for integrative care in many different aspects. And for those that are thinking about it, I think it's something that people should, should really consider. I mean, I think that there, there, there, there's so much chronic disease, there's so many conditions, even if you're like a really sciency, you know, super nerdy kind of person, like, there's pandas and pans, and there's so many areas that you could go into and become a specialist. And integrative doesn't have to mean you're making homeopathic tinctures in your office. Right? Like, I don't do that. Some people do. But you could just learn about autism and learn about the variety of different modalities out there and learn about how diet and exercise and sleep kind of play into that and work with their nutrition. Like, those are things that people can do. And the vast majority of practitioners that switch over, I would say, are much, much happier.
You get to spend more time with patients. People are very happy in general to pay. Sometimes it's, you know, it's more, but it's not necessarily that much more. I mean, not with insurance anymore. Like, people pay for everything anyways.
Um, so, you know, it's not, it's not a lot of practitioners that I know that do it. Like, they just don't have that many patients and they spend more time, but they don't necessarily make more or less. They just kind of. Each patient pays their way, but they're just not using their insurance. So it's, it's like a, it's a great model. You get a great quality of life, I think, and you get a lot more of what you went into medicine in the first place for which is to actually help people as opposed to just kind of being a cog in a wheel.
So I, I think that there's a lot of need for, for both kind of doctors, but there certainly is this huge, massive rise in chronic disease and we need more practitioners that can help with that too. So I think if people are interested, then there, there's certainly a market. And really, you don't have to do a lot of marketing. People will find you once you open up.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: Absolutely. I mean, the word of mouth is, will spread like crazy. And I want to echo that too, for the practitioners listening.
Um, I mean, just think about a model. We happen to have a membership based model, but, you know, just a patient paying you a little bit every month with your goal as a physician, that you teach them how to not need you, but they value you enough to pay you a little every month. And it's. Some old mentor of mine told me this happened in China way back when.
They would pay, the villagers in the village would pay the town doctor a little bit every day, but the day they got sick, they quit paying him.
They didn't resume payments until they were well again.
So to really teach people how to be well and not need your services is kind of what we try to do in my practice. So just from a business standpoint, it makes sense. You know, you get a little bit of income from everybody, but they don't utilize you because you've taught them how to be well. So it is a great model. There's a huge demand, and I would encourage practitioners too. We just have a few minutes left, Joel. And I kind of want to, you know, for the future of pediatrics, because kind of how I see American pediatrics, I don't want to come across too harsh, but, you know, from an immune system standpoint, I mean, obviously chronic disease is all this inflammation based.
Especially autoimmune is obviously an immune system issue. And autoimmune is just through the roof.
And then, of course, infectious disease. We're talking about the immune system in modern American pediatrics. We suppress what I call for the layperson, the audience out there are first responders. These immune system cells that line our airway, line our GI tract. Think of snipers and just these first responders, boom. Chemical weapons to shoot these bad guys. And that's what creates the symptoms. The snot, the swelling, the cough, the itchy eyes, the diarrhea, the vomiting, all that. Those are first responders.
And then the memory cells, those are kind of in the background. Those first responders chop up Those germs send them down to the memory cells. Those memory cells make antibodies so they can remember and they can tag that germ next time. And your first responders don't even have to get up and wake up and get out of the barracks next time because those antibodies are there to cover that thing up and deal with it. So it's this beautiful system.
We start encouraging these antibody producing cells on day one, actually, with the hepatitis shot. And so modern pediatrics really, really encourages this utilization of the antibody producing part of our immune system. And we really suppress all the symptoms. Cough suppressants, antihistamines, anti diarrheales and anti fever meds, all that.
And we're almost like asking the immune system to get out of balance.
And lo and behold, what do we have?
We have a chronic epidemic in our children of immune systems and an inflammatory response.
That being said, again, that's my definition, kind of a modern American pediatrics.
How would you like to see? How would you paint the picture if you were in charge of medical school's medical curriculum? Bobby Kennedy calls you up and says, hey, give me your prototype of what American pediatrics and pediatricians should be doing. What would that look like?
[00:49:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, first of all, I'd say I agree with what you're saying. So I think that that's, that's all true. And we probably need to get a little bit better education and really take a step back to look at what we're doing from a bigger, bigger standpoint and looking at all the medications that we're doing and looking at our health outcomes and realizing that not everything we've done in the last 20 years is just so great. And the bird's eye view, you know, people make the joke like, oh, you know, we're, we're not so healthy now, but yeah, but we are healthier than we were a hundred years ago, right? Like, people live till 40 and we're living till 70. So that's true. But then life expectancy has gone back down somewhat over the last few years, and chronic disease rate is skyrocketing. So we have to look at, okay, what are all the things we've done in the last 20 or 30 years? And let's take the good and balance that with maybe some of the bad and find, find some middle ground there. I mean, to me, the ultimate system would be we have to start teaching doctors in medical school about all these foundational aspects. It has to be a part of the curriculum. But I think ultimately we're not going to have doctors Spending two hours with every patient just isn't enough. You know, there just aren't enough doctors. So potentially, if we could create or work to a better system that we could work together with other practitioners, I could see that being a much better overall system. I think dentists do it really well. I think that, you know, you go into the office and you see your hygienist for like 45 minutes or whatever it is. They do all the cleaning, they do all the education, and then your dentist walts in and fixes your teeth or looks at the big things. So we could do something similar to that with modern medicine if we would pay for it, if insurance would like. You could work with a nutritionist, you could work with exercise coach. You could work with some of these other people before you even ever see your doctor as part of your yearly visits. Or maybe everybody gets one nutrition consult or whatever it is, like, we create these centers for people to go to where, you know, maybe you have your health day or whatever, and you go in for an hour or two hours and you see some of these other things. So I think that somehow needs to be built in. I think we have technology now, so maybe AI could help out with that, or maybe online courses or other things that could be integrated into pediatrics. I think that we ultimately have to get back to a place where the vast majority of what we're doing and what we're talking about online, social media, in journals, in our research is not just about treatment. I think we just got so focused on treatment and like, okay, great, we want to be better at cancer. We want to be better at treating this thyroid condition.
And then we lost the bigger picture, which is, okay, we're treating these, like, 10 people with this serious disease, which is great. But then half the country has a chronic condition, and the other half is moving towards it. So we have to bring healthcare back to not just talking about measles and the vaccine for measles, but how do you prevent measles with. Or how do you help make sure you're the healthiest you could possibly be if measles does come your way? So it's not about not getting the vaccine, but it's like, well, what can you do to be healthy? Just like with COVID what was the worst thing in Covid had comorbid conditions. You weren't healthy, you didn't have high vitamin D levels. We need to focus on that. And so that becomes just as much a part of our training, just a part as much as what doctors talk about. On social media, we do just as much research on that, then we'll see that balance shift back.
And so if I was Secretary Kennedy, it'd be pushing that balance. But I think right now, doctors are so scared that he's just going to take away vaccines or he's going to do something horrible against vaccines or whatever it is that they're just not willing to listen to him.
And I think that, and I hope that he'll talk to more doctors. Hopefully over time things will calm down a little bit and they'll see that that's not what he's trying to do, as best as I can tell.
And really with that kind of conversation that we could foster some sort of middle ground of a balance of, okay, I want, I don't want to take away this. I don't want to not focus on treatment, just not as much.
Like, let's, let's focus some of our research money on food and nutrition and exercise and focus some of our resources in government to changing the city. We have to change our life.
We have to change our movement and the way that our food is grown and our local access to food. These are big issues that we also need to address if we want to be healthier.
[00:53:24] Speaker A: Yep, absolutely. And that's really what our practice is based in. Veritas Wellness, what you describe. Health coaches, basically, nutritionists, exercise folks, guys. That's what we do. Veritas wellnessmember.com you can go there and sign up and you'll get to talk to all these wellness navigators and look at all the curriculum and actually probably get to cancel your doctor's appointment. If you going through that program, you get to the foundational things of health like Dr. Joel's talking about here.
Dr. Joel Warsh. Gator Warsh.
Talk a little bit. The book again, everybody between a shot in a hard place. Here it is.
It's a great book. Go pick it up. And your website, Integrative Pediatrics and medicine dot com. Correct.
[00:54:11] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah.
[00:54:12] Speaker A: And then what's the best place other than the book, social media or other ways people can follow you, keep track of what you're doing?
[00:54:19] Speaker B: Yeah. On Instagram or x, I'm at Dr. Joel Gator or the book is www.theshotbook.com or you know, Amazon or all the regular places like you said.
[00:54:30] Speaker A: Awesome. And I'm sorry, I've gotta. I forgot to do this at the top of the show. Guys, a couple announcements. Rewire your mind. That's a conference July 26, 9am to 4pm at Trinity Church here in Lubbock and I'll be speaking there.
And then August 7th, 8th and 9th, need your cure. That's need with a K like kneading bread K N, E a D. Need need your cure. That's in Oxford, Mississippi.
Check that out. And I'll be speaking there in August.
Okay, awesome. Dr. Joel Walsh, thank you so much for being on the show today, y' all. Check out the book. Check out the website Instagram, he's got a huge following of on Instagram. So check that out. Thank you again for all you're doing. Thank you for the dedication and the time and effort to produce the book. I know that was a big, big job, but it's going to benefit so many. So I appreciate, appreciate you. Thank you again for being on the show.
[00:55:26] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:55:28] Speaker A: All right, everybody, Dr. Ben Edwards, you're the Cure. And we'll be back next week with another great show. Bye. Bye.
