Top Integrative Tips and Remedies for Healthy Kids With Dr. Elisa Song

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Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and I’m back with my dear friend, Dr. Elisa Song, who today we talk about the top integrative tips and remedies for healthy kids, including specifics on acute things like fever, ear infection, cold and flu, and even go into chronic conditions in kids and why these are on the rise. And she is an absolute wealth of knowledge. She is a Stanford, NYU, and UCSF-trained integrative pediatrician, pediatric functional medicine expert, and mom of two. And in her practice and in her online work, she has helped thousands of kids and families get to the root cause of their health concern and empower parents to help their children thrive in all aspects of life by integrating conventional pediatrics with everything from functional medicine to homeopathy to acupuncture, herbal medicine, essential oils, and more. She also has a tremendous gentle heart for really, truly helping families. And I always love learning from her. So let’s learn from Dr. Elisa Song. Dr. Song, welcome back.

Dr. Song: Oh, thanks, Katie. So glad to be here.

Katie: Well, I will link to our more recent interview in the show notes where we got to go deep on the topic of kids’ health and resilience and especially the microbiome. And in this one, I feel like it’s not often I just get to have the ear of an integrative pediatric specialist like you to ask all those questions that we have as parents that we wish we could just call you at three in the morning when they come up. So I want to kind of tackle a lot of those today. But as a brief intro, before we jump into specifics, I would love for you to just touch on kind of the state of children’s health today and what we’re seeing across the board in the youth population and why we’re seeing this.

Dr. Song: So when I look at the statistics around kids and chronic disease, what we can see, and these numbers at this point now are even a little bit on the older side, but nearly one in two, so almost 50% of all kids has been diagnosed with some sort of a chronic disease. Now, when I think about my kids’ classrooms, and I volunteer a ton in their classrooms, and when they were younger, you know, kinder, first, second, third, even now, the number of kids who are, you know, not comfortable in their own skin, wiggling in their seats, rolling on the floor, having a hard time regulating. So that’s heartbreaking to see. And also, as a pediatrician, I’m often asked to chaperone in my kids’ field trips. And the number of asthma inhalers or, you know, medications, seizure medications, I mean, you name it that I’m asked to carry or, you know, just to be aware of which kids might need help, that’s also really heartbreaking. And it’s more and it’s increasing.

I look back and I think about this one article that I read in 2005, which was really alarming at that time. 2005, that’s almost 20 years ago. So it was in the New England Journal of Medicine, a highly respected journal. And the authors noted that for the first time in history, our kids are expected to have shorter lifespans than us, their adults, their parents, right? For the first time, all because of lifestyle and diet-related diseases. That’s 2005. And I thought, oh, my gosh, we better do something about this now. And that’s really what propelled so much of my mission to change the state of kids’ health. Well, unfortunately, fast forward almost 20 years from that article, we’re really not in a different place. And if anything, when we take a look at, let’s say, autoimmunity in kids, we know that there’s a very nonspecific autoimmune marker called an ANA, anti-nuclear antibody, that has been increasing in every single age group. Well, when they looked at kids at different age groups from the 80s to the early 2000s and the 2000s to now, their age group with the most rapidly rising rates of ANA, like double the rate and then triple the rate in the second time span, were our teenagers, 12 to 18-year-olds, right?

And then we look at the state of mental health. We were in a state of mental health emergency even before the pandemic. But now we are truly, truly in a crisis that we need to wake up from as practitioners and parents. One in two kids by the time they’re teenagers is going to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder. Anyone. You name it. You know, ADHD, anxiety, depression, OCD, bipolar disorder. Teenagers, especially teenage girls, one in three teenage girls has seriously thought of suicide. One in four has made a plan. And about one in ten has actually tried. And when suicide is the second leading cause of death in our youth, far above any infectious disease, we really need to wake up and think what is going on.

So this state of children’s health, it’s, yes, it’s, it’s very disheartening, and it can feel sometimes hopeless. But we now, you know, as parents, as practitioners, we need to you really learn all the different ways that we can move beyond this state, not just sit here and be hopeless. There is so much hope, but we need to understand how to do that. And that’s really where supporting our kids from an integrative pediatric standpoint is so important.

Katie: I’m so glad you brought that study up. That was actually a large part of how I initially got into health and wellness as well. I think I actually read an article, Time Magazine reporting about that study. And I read it in 2006 as I was holding my newborn son. And it was just so striking to read all these things that they were going to face. But like you said, these are largely diet and lifestyle related diseases, which to me is awesome news because that means that a lot of the factors are within our ability to affect change. And I think it all goes back to, to moms, to families. And that’s why I’m always so grateful to get to speak to moms so often, because I think the moms are the changemakers and we’re the ones really creating these inputs for the future generations. And I think we have a tremendous ability to affect change within our own families and then hopefully ripple that out into society as well.

So I’d love to start delving into some of the specifics for moms, especially on things we can just start to be aware of and shift when it comes to how we handle a lot of these common things that come with childhood. And I know a big question I get often and people ask on social media, I’m sure you get it all the time, is related to antibiotic use. Because the statistics I’ve seen is that antibiotic use is also on the rise in the modern world. And we’re using them often. And I think a lot of people are now aware that there can be a gut effect from antibiotics, especially overuse of antibiotics. And so when a child is sick, I think a lot of moms are in a tough spot of trying to decide, is it better to do the antibiotics? Is it better to not do the antibiotics? If they don’t, what do they do instead? And there’s so much that goes into that. So can you just help us unpack that from a pediatrician standpoint of what moms need to know to be aware of to make that decision?

Dr. Song: Yeah. So I always start discussing this by letting moms know that both my children, Kenzie and Bodie, both of them had antibiotics when they were under two months of age, right? There is a time and a place for antibiotics. So Kenzie had a UTI when she was two weeks old and Bodie, there was strep in the house and he actually had strep, this purulent, basically pus coming out from his ear and that grew out strep. And so that was at about five weeks of age. So did I really not want to do the antibiotics? Of course, as a pediatrician, as an integrated pediatrician, knowing all of the downstream effects on their microbiomes and potential problems that can occur with antibiotic use, especially in babies, I did hesitate, but I knew this was absolutely necessary. So just know when antibiotics are absolutely necessary, you want to give them. And, now understand how do we restore their microbiomes afterwards?

So antibiotics, they are the single biggest acute disruptor of the gut microbiome. Almost nothing will disrupt your gut microbiome as quickly and profoundly as a round of antibiotics. And here’s the thing, you know, so just as a very basic, which many of you understand, you know, antibiotics, they’re not very selective. They kind of kill any bacteria in their path, right? And what are the probiotics in our gut? They are bacteria. So, when we take antibiotics, sure, hopefully they’ll kill the quote bad bacteria in your child’s bladder or behind their ear, or if it’s a strep throat, but those antibiotics can also kill all the good bacteria along with it. And in fact, some antibiotics have this insidious way of preserving pathogenic bacteria like Clostridium species and preferentially killing Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria beneficial probiotic species.

And so it can take at least one to two months for most of your own microbiome to recover after antibiotics to those pre-antibiotic levels. But some bacteria don’t return for two to four years, right? So we really want to understand that. And so why is that important? So this is where, as a mama, I want you to take a breath, right? Because we know, Katie and I wouldn’t be doing this interview if we couldn’t move forward from the disruption of antibiotic costs, right? But antibiotics, some of the studies have shown that antibiotics, especially given in the first six months of life, can significantly increase, sometimes double the risk of virtually every single allergic disease, whether it’s eczema or asthma or anaphylactic food allergies or hay fever. There also are some large Finnish studies looking at antibiotics given to infants and children and found that antibiotics given to babies and children, and this even counted in utero antibiotics given to pregnant moms, right? That significantly increased by up to 50% many, many mental health disorders when those kids were older or teenagers. And the risk was highest when babies were under six months of age after that exposure. And also, the more the rounds of antibiotics, the higher the risk.

So knowing, and we spoke previously about your developing gut microbiome and your developing brain and how important that is to understand. So when we understand that and we understand how the disruption to the gut microbiome can then affect your child’s immune system and their brain health and mental health. We want to see, okay, let’s first of all, make sure we’re only taking antibiotics when necessary, right? Second, let’s see if those antibiotics are necessary. How do we restore their gut microbiome so that none of these downstream effects occur? Or if it’s been years in the past, what do I do now so that I can restore my child’s gut microbiome?

Katie: Wow. Yeah. Some of those statistics are so staggering. And this is why I love that you are an integrative pediatrician because I feel like you’re able to unite the best of both worlds. And to your point, it’s not that we should avoid antibiotics every single time. It’s that the overuse of them can be really problematic. But I always like to say I have tremendous respect for doctors. And there is a time and a place for these interventions when they’re necessary. And with my third, I had placenta previa and a C-section saved my life, even though I wanted to naturally birth my babies. There’s absolutely a time and a place for it. And I’m so grateful that it exists when it’s needed. But like you said, it’s perhaps that not every time and place is the time and place and that they’re being overused and or people aren’t aware of how they can mitigate, like, after antibiotics are necessary. So to sort of address that first point, are there any good general guidelines for parents on being able to discern when are antibiotics a necessary course of action and when can they be avoided if possible?

Dr. Song: I mean, that is probably the single most important question that we as parents can think about. When we go to urgent care, kids have an ear infection. Given an antibiotic prescription, usually amoxicillin, right? And then you have to think, wow, okay, what are the questions I should ask? And it’s not just for your child’s microbiome. It’s really for the world’s microbiome. I really want to make it clear that there’s also a public health implication to the overuse of antibiotics. Some experts are now conjecturing that antibiotic resistance is going to be a leading cause of death by 2050. That is really frightening, right? A simple infection. I mean, this is kind of throwing us back into the dark ages before antibiotics. And so, of course, I mean, one of the calls for the FDA is to create newer, stronger antibiotics. Well, that’s kind of what got us here in the first place, right? Creating these superbugs. So that may not be what we want to do.

But when we look at antibiotics for children and for adults, we know that many, many, probably the majority of antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary or inappropriate. And for children, that number may be as much as 70% in some studies. Okay, so when we know that the majority of antibiotics may not necessarily be appropriate for your child, how do we advocate as parents? And I get it. I am in a fortunate position where I’m a pediatrician. So, you know, I can make these decisions. The patients in my practice, I help them make these decisions. But you might not face the same sort of, what’s the right word? You know, when you’re at urgent care or the emergency room, it may be harder to ask those questions as a parent, right? But just know you as a parent, you are your child’s advocate. You have every right to ask. Because what I tell parents is when you ask questions about a medication that’s prescribed, you’re not questioning the doctor, you’re questioning the medication, right? So really come at it that way. It’s not a come at it of like, you know, well, why should I do this just because you said so? No, it’s, well, why should I do this? I really like to understand how necessary this is for my child.

And one of the first and most important questions to ask this doctor is, hey doc, is this antibiotic really necessary? It seems like a really simple question to ask but ask it because here’s the thing. There have been studies that have found that doctors are much more likely to prescribe an antibiotic even if they thought it wasn’t a necessary antibiotic. Like let’s say they wrote it for what they really thought was a viral respiratory infection. So doctors are more likely to write a prescription for an antibiotic if they think that the patient wants one, right? So just by asking that question, you open up the door as a parent for this doctor to say, oh, okay, this parent in front of me doesn’t necessarily want to run to the antibiotics. So let’s have a discussion. Sure. We know that actually the vast majority of ear infections are going to clear even without antibiotics, even if they’re bacterial. So maybe we can wait a little bit and see, right? I mean, so you’re opening up that dialogue.

Katie: Yeah, that’s a great point because unfortunately not all of us can just have Dr. Song on speed dial for all of our imminent questions. But I think you’re right often in adults too, but especially with kids, we don’t want to see our kids suffering. We want there to be a solution. So often when we go to a doctor, I can empathize with that. They probably realize parents want a solution and they’re trying to give people what we want. But I think just asking that question, like you said, is super helpful to reframe and then probably ask also like, are there other things that could work as well? Would wait and see for a little while be effective? Is there a risk to waiting for a couple of days and seeing if it clears? If it’s a non, like you mentioned some cases with your kids that were pretty immediate and important necessary uses of antibiotics, but in things like ear infections, I’ve read that statistic as well, that the vast majority do clear and or are not even affected by antibiotics. So there are cases where we can avoid it. But in those cases where we can’t, what can we do for our kids after the fact or during the course of antibiotics to reduce that damage to their gut and or help them recover all of that lost microbiome after?

Dr. Song: So hopefully, if you’re starting antibiotic on your child, we know that it’s necessary. And, you know, as Katie said, there are lots of other questions to ask. In the book, I give six questions to guide you to just keep on hand when you go to urgent care. These are the six questions to ask if your child is prescribed an antibiotic. And, you know, if you start the antibiotic, if it’s deemed necessary, then we just want to make sure that we understand how to, as Katie said, restore that disrupted gut microbiome. How do we get it back to a state of resilience?

And so, as we mentioned in the previous episode, it’s not just about throwing probiotics into your child’s gut. And in fact, there’s one study that found that probiotic, giving really massive high doses of probiotics may actually interfere and crowd out the restoration of your own, your natural microbiome, right? Because if we think about it, of the trillions of organisms in our gut and how uniquely different we all are, we all are from a genetic standpoint, from an epigenetic standpoint, from a microbiome standpoint, you know, my gut microbiome that’s optimal for me is going to be very, very different than yours, Katie, right? Our microbiomes are just meant to be unique for us.

So we also want to think about how do we not just, you know, reseed and repopulate with some of the beneficial organisms, but how do we get our own microbiome that is supportive of us to grow back? And that’s where really returning to the principles of, you know, getting in your microbiome champions with fiber, phytonutrients, fermented foods. And in fact, fermented foods may be better at repopulating your child’s gut, then, you know, taking that probiotic supplement or, you know, even getting in enough fiber. So get that in. And then, right? Because we need the foundations. Then we want to think about how do we reset your child’s gut. So the reset, so the re, R-E, is just returning to that whole gut rainbow, returning to all the things that are going to nourish and keep the good bacteria in, right?

But then we need to seal and heal the leaky gut. Some antibiotics will directly trigger leaky gut. And those are things like, you know, if you’ve worked with a functional medicine practitioner, you know what these are. These are glutamine and zinc and omega-3 fatty acids. Because antibiotics can often preferentially preserve the pathogenic bacteria while killing the beneficial bacteria, we often will get gut dysbiosis or abnormal bugs in the gut, not just bacteria, but also yeast overgrowth or a resurgence of abnormal bacteria. So we want to eliminate those with whatever tools we might have in hand. And in the book, I mentioned coconut oil, MCT oil, because that has benefits on supporting your health, but also can preferentially kill some of the dysbiotic organisms. And then the T in the reset, transforming your gut microbiome. So we need to transform. And this is where the vagus nerve work comes in. We want to make sure that your microbiome becomes a healthy, happy, vibrant community, a place where all of those amazing, positive bacteria and yeast and viruses, yes, we can have positive yeast and viruses, all of those live in community together, really helping to support your child and nourish them.

Katie: I love having an acronym to help remember. And I know that, like you said, you explain all of this in detail in the book. But I think this also leads to a laundry list of other issues that parents encounter, especially with young kids when, as we talked about in the first episode, their immune system is developing in its natural way of developing, and they occasionally do get sick. So you already touched on ear infections a little bit and how often they resolve without antibiotics, but that doesn’t make them any less uncomfortable for the kids who are experiencing them. So do you have any tips that you give to parents when a child has an ear infection?

Dr. Song: Yeah. So as an integrated pediatrician, I will integrate a few different, well, several different healing modalities. And I just, as a caveat, you know, there are, of course, some modalities that, I mean, you can’t know it all. I have a great team of practitioners around me, you know, chiropractors, osteopaths, Ayurvedic practitioners. So what I incorporate into my practice are herbal medicines, essential oils, I teach parents acupressure points, and I also use homeopathic remedies. And so those are what I’ve found to be, in my experience, you know, over the past 20 years to be very effective. And you don’t have to do all of them.

And in the book, I give several options, but for earaches. So number one, there is an herbal combination, an ear oil, and you can make your own. I know Katie has a recipe on her site, right? So you can make your own, or you can buy one. The one that was in the study had garlic, mullein flour, St. John’s wort, and something else I’m forgetting, but that one was studied to actually relieve pain more rapidly than an analgesic, right? An anesthetic eardrop. And, you know, some of that through your eardrum will diffuse through and garlic has amazing antimicrobial properties. And I didn’t say just antibiotic properties, antimicrobial, right? So garlic can kill bacteria, viruses, and yeast. And guess what? Most ear infections we’re finding are mixed. They have mixed virus and bacteria, maybe a little yeast in there, right? Which is why for many kids, when they take antibiotics for ear infections, they might feel a little better. Maybe they feel better for a couple of days because you’re killing the bacteria, but you’re not doing anything for the viruses or for the yeast that are also causing some of the earache and the ear infection. And so right back again, you know, a week later, they’re still in pain. And then what’s the conventional option? It’s the next round of maybe stronger antibiotics, right? And so the garlic ear oil can work amazingly well.

Also doing homeopathic remedies. So the number one homeopathic remedy for ear aches and ear infections is one called ferrum phosphoricum. Now, ferrum phosphoricum actually helps your eustachian tube to work more efficiently and drain. So it’s one, too, if you are flying and you have trouble clearing your ears or your scuba diver and you have trouble clearing your ears, you can use that beforehand as well. So that’s one option for homeopathy. Homeopathy works best if it’s individualized as well. And so adding on different homeopathic remedies like belladonna comes to mind if it’s a really red, bulging, inflamed eardrum.

And then essential oils. Well, you know, we have essential oils are kind of, and I know you had an episode with Jodi Cohen recently of Vibrant Blue Oils, but essential oils are, you know, really for children, a lot of it’s kind of the wild, wild west. And there’s a lot of online, oh, you should never do this or, oh, you have to do this. And so when I really delved into the literature, sure, there are some safety concerns, but some of them are really overblown, but some of them not, right? We need to treat essential oils like medicine. They’re not just things that smell good. They are therapeutic. And on some level, they can be toxic, especially if your children ingest them. So I never, ever recommend that children ingest essential oils. But you can apply them externally. And lavender essential oil is one of the safest ones to use in children and infants. And when you pair them with acupressure points, they can really help benefit the child’s immune system, nervous system, whatever you’re trying to work on.

And so one of the best acupressure points to relieve fever and congestion in the head and respiratory tract is large intestine four. Now, large intestine four is in the web space between your thumb and your index finger. And if you just hold gentle pressure there, you can have a drop of lavender essential oil on your finger and you just hold pressure. You can have your children do that, right? And you can also massage lavender essential oil from the back of the ear, behind the ear, down the neck to help with some lymphatic drainage to help some of that fluid drain from their ear. And I promise you when you do this, I mean, ear infections are one the most amenable acute childhood conditions for integrative treatments. And it’s one of the ones that is the most rewarding to, if it’s your first kind of entry into using natural remedies, it’s a great one to start with because earaches are the number one reason for acute visits to the pediatrician’s office. So, I mean, hopefully you don’t have a lot of opportunity to use these, but you may.

Katie: Well, that’s a great tip for the homeopathics for scuba diving. I made a note of that one, even suffered of ear infections. And those are great tips as well. I’ve noticed the essential oils and acupressure points often give relief very rapidly too, because I know that for parents, often we just hate to see our kids suffer. So that one I think is so helpful and very much worth the try, like you said.

Another common one that parents encounter probably with every kid at some point is a spike in fever. And I want to talk about colds and flu separately in a minute, but when our kids are running a fever, often it’s recommended to give them some kind of fever reducer or even alternate between different types of fever reducers. Not that my kids have never taken pain medication. They for sure have with injuries and acute things, but I try to avoid, especially Tylenol whenever I can. But I would love your take on this, because also, again, it goes back to, we hate to see our kids so uncomfortable and fevers can be an uncomfortable experience. But what is your approach to like low grade fevers that come with common childhood illnesses?

Dr. Song: Yeah. So this is such an important topic because parents and practitioners, many, many have fever phobia, right? This sort of unfounded fear of fever that, you know, sort of we in the medical community have really in a way created. Because what’s the first thing if you bring your child to urgent care or the emergency room and they have a fever, what’s the very first thing that happens? Before your child is ever seen by the doctor, the nurse gives them, you know, a spoon of Tylenol, right? Invariably, that’s what happens, right? Now, so there are definitely, and in the book, I go through a long section of this because I want parents to understand, not that you want your kids to have a fever and be miserable. However, if we understand a lot of the myths around fever, it helps us to not panic, right? It helps us to know, okay, first of all, fever is your body’s natural response to infection. In fact, fever supports a healthy inflammatory response to whatever infection is going on. And it can shorten the duration of that illness, right?

On the flip side, we’ve seen that reducing fevers artificially with Tylenol or Motrin, so acetaminophen or ibuprofen, can prolong the duration of your child’s illness. So keep them sicker for longer. One study found that it can actually promote increased viral shedding from the nose. So it can also make them more contagious, right? The exact opposite of what you want. You want to get your kids faster and you want to make them less contagious, you know, to their friends and certainly, to everyone else in the family, right? And so there’s that one misconception.

Now, Tylenol especially will deplete our master antioxidants called glutathione. And glutathione, so, you know, when kids are sick, it can be very helpful to get them into an Epsom salt bath or give them extra antioxidants like glutathione. When our glutathione is depleted, it makes it harder to get over that illness and it makes it harder to recover completely. So that’s one thing.

So I used to say, it’s interesting that, you know, that if you’re going to use a fever reducer, because again, there is a time and a place, right? If you’re going to use a fever reducer, I would prefer ibuprofen. So here’s the thing about ibuprofen. I found this one study that found that ibuprofen can disrupt the gut microbiome in a similar way as antibiotics, right? So knowing that it can do that, then, of course, we still want to support our child’s gut microbiome after ibuprofen in a similar way to what we might do with antibiotics, right? So just knowing that, right?

And another, you know, another myth, right, and the thing that I get the most comments on when I post about fever and letting the fever run and here’s some natural remedies to help your child be less uncomfortable, right, is, well, you know, I was told to give, alternate Tylenol and Motrin so my kid doesn’t get a febrile seizure. Well, here’s the truth of it. When we look at all of these meta-analyses, which are large reviews of the studies, none of the studies has found that giving ibuprofen and acetaminophen around the clock actually reduces your child’s risk of having a febrile seizure unless, okay, here’s a caveat, the only time it’s been found to maybe be helpful is if your child has already had a febrile seizure in that particular fever episode, that particular illness. Okay.

So many authors note in these research papers that fever reducers really have no role in the prevention of febrile seizures. The only reason is to help your kids be more comfortable, essentially, right? And so what do I mean by comfortable? I don’t want kids to act “normal” when they’re sick. When parents say, oh, I gave them ibuprofen and now they’re running outside, jumping on the trampoline. Well, you know, there’s something called sickness behavior that is very, very natural and appropriate and adaptive. I mean, think about, when you’re sick or your partner’s sick or your kids are sick, what do you want to do? You want to curl up in bed. You want to sleep all day. You don’t really want to eat that much, right? Maybe you’re grumpy or maybe you’re kind of sad, right? But all of those behaviors are there. Animals have sickness behavior, right? That sickness behavior allows us to slow down and to help our body to recover. So the goal of reducing fever is not to help your kids run around so they don’t act, quote, sick anymore. It is to feel comfortable enough so that they can sleep because sleep is healing and also comfortable enough that they can drink enough fluids to stay hydrated. I mean, those are my two biggest reasons for giving a fever reducer.

Katie: Oh, that’s a great explanation and helpful overview of what to do. And I’ve noticed that like animals, if they’re injured or sick, they, like you said, they don’t eat, they sleep the whole time. They hopefully drink some water, but they rest. And as humans, we have the ability to override that. But it seems like for kids, especially, they bounce back really quickly when my kids know the routine. If any of them get sick, we make like a little nap pallet. That’s one of the few times I just will let them watch TV if they’re resting, but not sleeping. And we make a little cozy nest on the couch, and I bring them lots and lots of fluids. And they kind of get to enjoy the rest. And we make that a fun experience or at least as fun as it can be with the fever versus trying to take it away. And I had not heard that about sickness behavior, but it makes so much sense. And often fever is paired with cold or flu or some kind of respiratory thing going around. And I know those can be uncomfortable for kids as well. What is your kind of first line approach to those kinds of things in kids?

Dr. Song: So the number one that I travel with, and it’s relatively easy to get at most pharmacies. You can get it on Amazon even. But there’s one herb called pelargonium sidoides. Okay. If you are going to carry anything in your travel kit, you know, for winter holidays, for summer holidays, because kids get summer flus and colds too, it’s pelargonium sidoides. And you can find it, so through practitioners, it’s by Integrative Therapeutics called V-Clear. And in the stores, you’ll see it by Nature’s Way. It’s called Umcka, U-M-C-K-A. So UMCKA cold care syrup.

Now, why do I love pelargonium so much? It’s actually an African bush herb, and it’s been found to have antiviral and actually some antibacterial effects against virtually any respiratory infection that you can think of. So think RSV, rhinovirus, adenovirus, human coronaviruses, all of which cause the common cold, influenza virus, coxsackie, which causes the hand, foot, and mouth disease, some herpes viruses that cause, let’s say, the herpes cold sore viruses, even some activity against strep. So you can see why, oh my gosh, when your kids are sick and you’re like, I don’t know what bug they have, right? I mean, they can have any number of the 200 common cold viruses or whatever else is floating around. The Umcka is my go-to, right? And what I would recommend every family have on hand in their home remedy kit. And when they travel, there’s a lot of cold cure, the UMCKA out there. So the one I typically recommend is getting the cherry flavored non-alcoholic syrup, because that’s really easy to dose. I know on the box it says, I believe it says not for, you know, ask your doctor if your child is under six years of age or under four years of age. I’ve used it in toddlers and younger kids, and I give all the appropriate dosages. But yeah, it is so good. So I would carry that for colds and flus or flu-like illnesses.

Also homeopathic Oscillococcinum. So that is one of the homeopathic remedies that has, there are some studies behind it, showing that it can significantly reduce the time to no symptoms or reduce the time to improving and feeling well. And so compared with placebo, right? And so the way you dose Oscillococcinum is there’s little, it’s a little vial with little sprinkles in them. They’re these, you know, sweet tasting sprinkles. And so regardless of the age, you take one vial and you just down the hole and you suck on it. Three times in a 24-hour period. So if you just do the V-Clear and the Oscillococcinum, and we talked about the lavender essential oil on large intestine four, I mean, that’s going to get you a really long way to getting your kids well.

Katie: I always take notes when I talk to you because you have such helpful practical ideas and tips to have on hand like that. And so I’m definitely making notes and I’ll put those in the show notes as well. And I know this next question is very multifaceted and could be a whole series of podcasts all on its own. But I don’t want to end this conversation without at least touching on the rise in chronic health conditions in kids and your approach to that when someone comes to you with a child who has a chronic condition.

Dr. Song: Yeah. So many listeners will have heard that Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, is credited with saying all health, all disease starts in the gut. So we do want to flip that and know that all health also starts in the gut. And so, you know, as with most functional medicine practitioners, I do start with the gut and looking at the gut microbiome, whether it’s through clinical clues and, you know, what I might suspect, what kind of dysbiosis I might suspect your child has, whether it’s bacterial dysbiosis or yeast dysbiosis or parasite dysbiosis, or with an actual functional stool analysis, which if your kids have a chronic health concern, like anxiety or autoimmune illness or ADHD or eczema, I would highly recommend doing a functional stool analysis because it’s one thing for me to look at your child with eczema, and suspect, yeah, you know, virtually all kids with eczema could benefit from a little more zinc because zinc is such a common nutrient deficiency for kids with eczema. When I look at your child with eczema, I can’t necessarily know or predict what abnormal gut bugs or beneficial gut bugs are going to be in your child’s gut microbiome, or how well they’re digesting and absorbing their foods or how much inflammation there might be. So a functional stool analysis can be really, really helpful. So start with the gut and the gut reset that we discussed earlier. So that’s the foundation.

And then we want to look at, well, are there any other root causes besides the gut microbiome? Are there any other sources of inflammation that are driving my child’s health concern? Because bottom line, pretty much any physical, immune, psychological health concern in a child that’s chronic has to do with an increase in their inflammatory burden. Okay, so the second thing I look at is, well, what are they eating, right? That’s part of the reset, right? But what are the sources of inflammation in the foods they’re eating? Do we need to do a temporary elimination diet? More important than that, how do we get in all the nutrients, as you were saying, all those micronutrients that are going to heal, that are essential for healing, right? We need the right ingredients.

And then the third source of inflammatory toxins is psychological stress. So what’s going on in their family, in their peer group, at school, are there any sources of psychological inflammation that are continuing to perpetuate my child’s health concern? Because psychological stress triggers the very same inflammatory response, that same inflammatory cytokine cascade, as any infection or physiologic trauma or toxin.

Katie: And for people who do have kids with those chronic conditions, I know integrative pediatrics seems like the way to go. And someone who understands this multifaceted approach. Are you able to work with people either in your local area or nationwide? And how can people keep learning from you? Because I know even for your non-patients, you have a tremendous amount of educational information available. Your book is, of course, a valuable resource as well. But where can people find you and or work with you if that’s available?

Dr. Song: So the best way to find more, of course, is really why I wrote the book, but also on my website, healthykidshappykids.com. And also I’m most active on Instagram and I try to teach there. That’s healthykids_happykids. Unfortunately, through the years, you know, being a solo practitioner, it’s been really challenging for me to really provide the quality of care that patients need with just me in the office. So I haven’t been able to see new patients for quite a long time. And so I will help refer out to local practitioners. I do have a plan in place to try to offer more of these services to families and create programs so that at least families can start if there’s not any integrative or functional medicine pediatrician near them, because I know that is one of the biggest challenges is finding someone to work with. So, I mean, my heart goes out to the parents. And this is why I’m doing this work, because as just one person in a brick and mortar, you can only reach so many families. Doing broader work and really getting the education online can reach so many more families in need.

Katie: And I will make sure I link to your website and your Instagram and the show notes for you guys listening on the go. I really enjoy following you on Instagram because you are always posting such helpful information on there as well. And I’m so grateful for the work that you do. Like I said, I think your book is a tremendous resource for parents. And I just am always so grateful for your time. I always learn so much and it’s just a joy to talk to you. So thank you so much for being here today and for all the work you do to help families across the world.

Dr. Song: Oh, thank you, Katie. I always, I love spending time with you in whatever way. It’s awesome. And it’s my honor.

Katie: And thank you as always for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of The Wellness Mama podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.