SHAWN STEVENSON: Chronic conditions have absolutely exploded in our population, but no one has been more impacted than our children. Rates of autoimmune conditions, metabolic conditions, mental health conditions, and more have absolutely exploded in our children. And also one of the fastest rising issues is that of autism. Yes, this is our current state of affairs, but there are solutions. In fact a study that was just published titled Reversal of Autism Symptoms Among Twins Through a Personalized Lifestyle and Environmental Modification Approach was published in the journal of Personalized Medicine. And on today's episode, we have one of the authors of this study. This is groundbreaking information. Not only are you going to be enlightened about the current state of affairs when it comes to autism, I think it's going to absolutely shock you. But again, we're going to look at solutions, science backed solutions, proven published data that this condition can be reversed.

But most importantly, we need to address the underlying cause of all of these rising rates of chronic conditions in our children, and there are specific causes. What tends to happen is we look at one thing isolated. We're looking for that smoking gun. We're looking for that one thing that's causing all these different issues, whether it is autoimmune conditions, whether it is autism, whether it is depression. But our special guest is going to share with us that there is more than one thing at play. And so I'm very, very excited about this episode. Now, this is a subject that I'm very, very passionate about and I spent the last few years really focused on wellness programs for families, wellness education for specifically for our children, because again, our children are unfortunately suffering the most and they're not really even getting a chance to come into the world with a healthy template.

And so we've got to make some changes right now. And you know, we're going to talk a little bit about today. How growing up in the 80s and even the 90s, all right, but 70s, 80s, and, you know, going into the 90s, a lot of these things start to become normalized that are leading to, that are contributing agents to our chronic disease epidemics, you know, and some of those being our abhorrent amounts of sugar that we're consuming. And I grew up at the beginning of what I consider to be the golden age of sugar consumption. All right. I was able to go to the corner store and get penny candy. One cent one piece of candy. If you come in with a buck You need a couple little pennies and some change you get a hundred pieces of candy, hand picked, from the store clerk. You know, you pick of course what you want in a little brown paper bag. That's probably lined with all manner of microplastics now that I'm looking back on it. And you would subsist on that bag of candy you know you go through your day whether it's like running around playing in the streets or playing video games. You got yourself a hundred pieces of candy to dig through. And this is normal. This was normal.

We just looking out for that dollar, the almighty dollar to get all that candy into our bodies. And that was just one thing that was normalized that was common in my environment. And also the consumption of sodas and "fruit drinks". I wasn't fruit juice, it was fruit drinks, all right. So you go to the store and get you a couple of purples, a couple of greens, right? They're artificially flavored to be grape or apple, but there's 0 percent juice in the juice. And it's just normalized in our environment. And today we know that not only does that rob our brains and our bodies of its potential, and we're talking about energy potential, because you think, Hey, just bringing in all this glucose, all this sugar is going to help our brains to run better.

It's running on glucose. But today we know that this is creating inflammation in the brain, that sugar is driving into the brain in droves that we simply didn't evolve having, and creating insulin resistance in our brains, and inflammation in our brains. That is now, we're seeing this consistently, that the majority of people who are getting analyzed actually have significant neuroinflammation. And so, yes, at this point, for many of us, it's Captain Obvious to put the brakes on all of that, especially liquid sugar. But we also need to mind providing our brain with the real nutrition that it needs to run at its best. So, of course, real food, healthy fats from real foods, All the different vitamins and micronutrients that are found in real foods and having that be the basis of our diet. And also making sure that we're getting in optimal amounts of what the brain is really running on. What enables our brain to maintain fluid balance and hydration because our brain is mostly made of water. What enables our brain to stay nice and juicy. That is going to be from the domain of electrolytes.

Electrolytes are minerals that carry an electric charge that enables signal transduction, that enables our brain to maintain its proper volume. One of those being, in particular, sodium is the most important in this equation. Researchers at McGill University affirm that sodium functions as a quote," on off switch" in the brain for specific neurotransmitters, brain signaling, and also preventing Degenerative diseases in the brain. We need to make sure we're getting adequate amounts of sodium And if you're not eating a lot of ultra processed food, you need to proactively make sure that you're getting in high quality sodium, but also Potassium is another key Magnesium is especially important In fact, a fascinating study published in the journal Neuron found that magnesium is able to restore critical brain plasticity and improve overall cognitive function.

The electrolyte supplement that I've been utilizing for several years that I don't leave home without it. I travel with it. I just had it before this show today, is from the incredible folks at LMNT. Go to drinklmnt.com/model and get the number one science backed electrolyte supplement that is free from artificial dyes. Free from unnecessary sugars that are found in most electrolyte supplements. And also with any electrolyte purchase that you get from again, drinklmnt.com/model. With every electrolyte purchase, they're going to send you a sample pack bonus so you could try all the different flavors, all right.

My wife's favorite is the chocolate salt. My favorite is the watermelon or the grapefruit salt. I'm really vibing with right now. The one that I just had before the show was a citrus salt. So you're going to get to try them all when you make any purchase of electrolytes from drinklmnt.com/model. And by the way, they've got a new sparkling. Electrolyte performance beverage as well that I highly recommend checking out. I keep those in my fridge at all times. It's not just a cool, delicious, sparkling beverage to kick back and have, but it's a performance beverage and you really do notice a difference. And that's why so many folks are in love with LMNT again, go to drink LMNT.com/model. And now let's get to the Apple podcast review of the week.

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five star review titled "Life Changing" by Sudsy07. I'm going to start on a bit of a tangent, but bear with me. A few years ago, I heard my first podcast by Max Lugavere, another must follow podcaster. After a few episodes, I heard one with Shawn Stevenson on it and immediately had to come check out The Model Health Show. Now, a few years and hundreds of episodes later. One, I'm absolutely obsessed. Two, my health has never been better. Three, I'll be starting nursing school in six months. The health field was not a career path I'd ever considered until listening to Shawn and all the great information he provides. Now I'm hooked and I'll never be the same. Thank you, Shawn, for everything you do.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's so powerful. So powerful. That's what it's all about. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing your incredible story and sharing your voice over on Apple podcast. That really does mean a lot. And if you get to do so, please pop over to Apple podcast and leave a review for The Model Health Show. And now let's get to our special guest and topic of the day.

Author, educator, and former healthcare consultant, Beth Lambert has monitored and documented the escalating rates of childhood chronic conditions for the last 15 years. She's the author of multiple bestselling books, including A Compromised Generation and Brain Under Attack. Beth is the founder and executive director of Documenting Hope, a nonprofit organization that focuses on root cause healing solutions for children's chronic health and developmental issues. Let's dive into this conversation with the incredible Beth Lambert. All right, first and foremost welcome. Thank you for coming to hang out with us.

BETH LAMBERT: Thank you. So happy to be with you.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I want to start off by talking about a really groundbreaking study that you and your colleagues conducted on autism. But first, can you set the tone for us and just give us some insight about the current state of affairs when it comes to autism?

BETH LAMBERT: Sure. So, autism is a condition that's, you know, the features of it have been around probably for a long time in human history. But we are witnessing a massive epidemic of autism diagnoses. And it's gone from the best data we have is going to the 1970s, where it was maybe one or two cases in 10, 000. And there's medical literature that, that's really, you know, effectively tried to count all the cases of autism. And now we are looking at a rate of 1 in 36.

That's what the CDC most recently came out with last year. But we actually don't think that that represents the reality of how many cases of autism there are because our researchers have actually done some analysis and the CDC always corrects their numbers about two years later. They update their numbers and they say, okay, just kidding, in 2024 we told you it was 1 in 36, but it was actually 1 in 34 or actually 1 in 32 because they have to go back new studies come in. So we did an analysis on it. We think it's closer to 1 in 30 or 1 in 33 kids affected with autism and it's predominantly boys. It's a 4 to 1 ratio, boys to girls. So it is clearly something that is an epidemic. A lot of people dispute whether it's real or whether we're just better at diagnosing.

And I always say, well, we're absolutely better at diagnosing. We also have a broader category that we're using for that. We're now using autism to describe both adults, you know, who are living in the world, have jobs, have families, and maybe have some features of autism, like some social anxiety or some OCD or some sensory issues. But that same label of autism also applies to children and young adults who have no ability to speak, can't care for themselves, can't even toilet on their own. Like we're talking about such a heterogeneous disorder that all carries the same label of autism. So there's a lot of debate about, you know, what is Autism, what does it look like and how do we count it? And I don't think we've done a very good job of that so far

SHAWN STEVENSON: Obviously, I mean and of course there's this term use of a spectrum.

BETH LAMBERT: Mm hmm.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right, but within that again, it's so unique. Potentially, you know just having one particular symptom might put you on the spectrum. I love the fact that, you know, one of the things that I'm really getting from spending time with you and your work is having the audacity to consider redefining Autism.

BETH LAMBERT: Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So let's talk about that.

BETH LAMBERT: I'm actually, it's so funny you say that because for the last couple of weeks I have been spinning and spinning and spinning trying to come up with words to describe what I would call a subtypes of autism. So there is again this whole debate about autism and whether it's treatable. And a lot of people don't like that idea because they think autism is genetic. It's brain based, there's nothing you can do, we should of course just embrace people for who they are and to say that they're treatable isn't accepting people for who they are. And that shows me that we don't properly subtype autism. Because if there is somebody who's living their life, They're not suffering. They have, again, a job, a family. They're, you know, they're really doing great in life, but they have these, you know, maybe quirky features or something like that. That is, that needs a name that's different from the kids I mentioned before who can't speak or what have you.

So I've been trying to come up with words that describe that. those different subtypes. And there are researchers who've tried to, you know, label them. It's such a complex condition. So I think we are still struggling to come up with good language to subtype autism, but we absolutely have to do it because we do such a disservice to just make these blanket statements like autism is genetic and it's brain based and lifelong and there's nothing you can do. Or to say it's always treatable and always should be treated because it's not that black and white. It's way more complicated than that.

SHAWN STEVENSON: To say the least. Yeah. And of course, just having these conversations and talking with people who've been working in the field for, you know, 40 years, 50 years working in medicine and working with children. And, yes, testing is better, but they're just affirming again and again, no, these rates have gone up precipitously. But to go from around one in 10, 000 to one in 30, essentially in a span of a couple of decades.

BETH LAMBERT: Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's astronomical like we should all be wildly upset about this and like trying to figure out what's at the root. And your work is not, you know, what was so refreshing is it because we're looking for the smoking gun like what is causing all these cases. And you're just like you're breaking down and showing that it is multifactorial.

BETH LAMBERT: Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And you know with that being said, what is going on? Why are these rates skyrocketing and children because one thing that I also, and we talked about this before the show, unless somebody's directly impacted, I don't think they understand how grave this situation is. But you affirm that if they're not impacted now, they very likely could be at the pace that things are going on right now.

BETH LAMBERT: That's right. Autism also is not its own epidemic on its own on an island. It is actually the tip of the iceberg of a broader epidemic amongst our kids that includes life threatening food allergies and asthma and autoimmune diseases. So we have an enormous problem on our hands in terms of the cost of managing these conditions. The what, what this is going to do for our economy, what it's going to do for national security. I don't know if you ever heard about the too fat to fight report that was put out by some military personnel, describing how the health of American youth is so bad that we just, we don't have the ability to supply and military.

Like 75 percent of new recruits are rejected for mental or physical health problems. So that just tells you there is something going on here. And autism is again, something that is one manifestation, neurodevelopmental kind of manifestation that shows that the body is out of balance. Autoimmune disease is another manifestation of the body being out of balance. And life threatening food allergies is yet another manifestation. So how are these things related? They're related because all human bodies have a capacity to handle stressors, health stressors. Those stressors could be pesticide exposure.

It could be EMFs. It could be, you know, heavy metals. It could be emotional stress. And, when we experience too many stressors, not enough sleep, as you know about, would be an example of a stressor, the body starts to break down. And that's when you start seeing symptoms. Now, if you're an adult. That might look like autoimmune disease or maybe that'll look like depression or anxiety, right? Your body is screaming out telling you something's out of balance. But for when a child has a set of stressors that are hitting them and in the critical developmental window, so like think, think conception through to the first few years of life, like really through age six. You're learning to walk, to talk, to interpret complex social cues and to develop all kinds of really intricate human functions.

And when you're overloaded with too many stressors During that developmental time period that's when you get the neuro behavioral or neurodevelopmental kinds of conditions. That's when you see the brain being impacted. And there's so many there's myriad influencers in the modern world. I mean I could sit here for days and we could talk, we could go down the list, you know, and you know all of them. They're not anyone's smoking gun. That's responsible, but it is the total load, the synergistic and cumulative impact of living in the modern world. And, it's hitting our kids when they're most developmentally vulnerable. So of course we're going to see things that look like autism.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, yeah. Wow, thank you for sharing that because, you know, thinking about how we grew up. Like we, growing up like in the 80s, you know. Even as I'm saying, it's like Michael J Fox and, you know, just that kind of vibe. But just, we grew up in the golden age of fast food. Like it was really becoming a staple really in our culture. And you know, we didn't think anything of it. It's just another convenience and you know, microwave dinners. And you know, these mega companies are just really dialing it in on capitalism and you know at all costs and not really looking out for what's gonna happen with the environment. And it was just kind of unfolding, but now we're seeing the ramifications of those choices.

And just to think again, and I remember watching your talk and you saying, you know, I would love to have world peace, but at the same time, we're not able to really supply a military. So we're talking about a national defense issue. And you're just really touching on all the different things that we might care about. You know, even if somebody doesn't necessarily think about the hardships that kids are going through, but like, What about protecting, you know, our rights and liberties and all these other things and also potentially bankrupting our healthcare system as well.

BETH LAMBERT: Yeah. One of the things that you just sparked in my mind is this thing we often miss, which is that this epidemic that we're experiencing with humans right now, especially in the modern industrial world, it's not just children. I mean, half of Americans have at least one chronic illness, a third are obese or overweight. The adults are sick. Of course, the kids are sick. But you know, in the past, kids were healthy, right? You didn't expect to see a chronic disease in kids. So you would think like we start paying attention to this because there are the canaries in the coal mine truly telling us that something's going on here.

But we have to take the long view here, right? As you were just starting to say, When we were kids in the 80s, we ate crap, we did all these things, we had toxins around us all the time, and I didn't have autism. Well, you have to think of this as multi generational. And a perfect example is our grandparents. So people growing up in the 1920s, 30s, 40s. In the 1930s, we got our first class of antibiotics. The sulfa drugs came out in the 1930s. And what did that do? That totally disrupted your microbiome. That created all kinds of problems in terms of dysregulating your immune system, preventing you from being able to detoxify.

So you think about the first generation of humans in the modern world exposed to antibiotics. Then that microbiome in that person, a mother let's say, transfers to her baby when the baby is born. So the baby takes up an altered microbiome and then that baby gets a couple rounds of antibiotics for ear infections or strep throat or what have you. And then that child then grows up to have a child and then that child's microbiome carries on. So each subsequent generation is getting an accumulation of problems, of health problems. And it's really just in the last, you know, 75 years that we're seeing that all start to accumulate and result in this health epidemic we have right now.

So we have to think multi generationally. We also have to think about just the sheer number of new types of chemicals and the new types of exposures we have like glyphosate would be an example. You know, we grew up with pesticides, but all of a sudden we have this new one on the market in the 90s and it is ubiquitous. It is everywhere and that affects gut bacteria, and it's hard to escape it. So it's like you kind of need to think about a greater number of exposures, but it's also multi generational, and that's why we're seeing it as bad as we are right now.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, and you know, just in the last couple of years a lot of people have heard the term forever chemicals. And just this bioaccumulation in our tissues, in our blood, in our liver. And there really isn't a part of our bodies that hasn't been devastated in the last few decades. You know, there's Skyrocketing incidents of all manner of issues with the brain, with the lungs, with the gut and, you know, skin issues. Everything is up, but not just a little bit, like enormously.

And we're just sitting back and wondering. You know, many of us are just like, oh, this is it's matter of fact, it's normalized. That's that's the word, it's normalized. And but then there are people like yourself. They're just stepping back and saying this is not normal. This is not normal when you mentioned, you know, there's from the CDC. According to them, this was in 2022, 60 percent six out of ten American adults have at least one chronic disease, 40 percent have two or more. There's actually like 2. 7, you know, and.. But then as you said kids were a little bit more protected from this stuff, right? The kids weren't suffering these diseases of older age.

BETH LAMBERT: Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right, but it's just been going basically going lower and lower and lower in those age brackets where again, we're seeing adults. You know, we might see cardiac issues when somebody's like in their 60s or 70s. And it was in the 50s and 40s 30 year olds regularly having heart attacks and strokes and people in their 20s and this is not normal.

BETH LAMBERT: No, it's not if you ask somebody just pick anyone average person draw a picture of somebody with chronic disease. What are the chances that they would draw a picture of a child? They would never do that because that's not what we think of when we think of chronic disease. We think about somebody who led a great life, you know, drank too much, smoked too much, maybe partied too much, maybe was too stressed, you know, those are adult type behaviors. But that is the definition of chronic disease is completely shifted because now we are, you know, the frog boiling, slowly boiling in the pot of water. We're not even aware that our environment is toxic and the things that we're doing, it's not just about the toxins. Toxins are only one piece. It's the other things we're doing. Staying up late at night with, you know, our devices and artificial light. It's not getting enough sleep. It's being too stressed.

It's so many pieces of living in modern life and in the modern world. And it's being disconnected from nature. I think that's one of the most fundamental contributors to all of the disease, whether it's in children or adults, is we just don't live in rhythm with nature anymore. Whether that's in our food, the types of things we do, we don't get outside enough. We don't set our circadian rhythms to what they've been for millions of years. So that is a clue for us that, you know, if we could just get back into rhythm with nature, we would have way healthier human beings, way healthier lives.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's just, it sounds very fantastical. All right, it does. It sounds like Tom Cruise, you know, legend. Again, you know, just like this sounds too easy, like it can't be that. But again, you and your colleagues conducted a study on this subject matter and with real people. Can you talk a little bit about that study?

BETH LAMBERT: Yes, so we published a paper in the Journal of Personalized Medicine. It was a case report, which is looking back retrospectively at a set of twin girls, who had been diagnosed with level three or severe autism. They did an intervention program which I can talk about which basically involved completely changing their life. They changed their diet. They changed their environment tried to create as toxin free and safe of a home environment as possible. They worked with personalized therapeutics, things that their girls need to get back on the developmental trajectory.

And over the course of about 18 months, these girls went from level 3 severe autism, diagnosed at Walter Reed, so this wasn't like a mistake that they diagnosed these girls. And I know the family personally, and I know these girls were impacted. And they at the end of this 18 months to two years, had one child who didn't even score for autism anymore. Like there were no symptoms left and the second one was a little bit higher, but she'd gone from severe down to mild with hardly any symptoms. Both girls are indistinguishable from their peers. So how does that happen? You know, what we just documented is the experience that's actually happening all over the country.

It's happening in these pockets. Typically these families, oftentimes they'll work with an integrative physician or holistic type practitioner or nutritionist. And they'll do these kinds of lifestyle changes, and they'll give personalized, bio individual kind of attention to their child and completely reverse these conditions. And it's not just autism, it happens with autoimmune disease, it happens with life threatening food allergies, and these things that they tell you are lifelong and forever. But we know that's not true. So this was our first of several papers, we have two more coming out, essentially documenting what's possible when you change your lifestyle, when you change your diet, when you just try and get back in those rhythms with nature.

This family was all about that too. Getting the kids outside, getting natural sunlight, getting them in the woods, exercising movement, like all those things that like you think a young child would have done a hundred years ago, right? Instead of sitting in front of the TV or device or out climbing, jumping, playing, remember that? Remember when kids did that?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Oh my goodness. First of all, thank you. Because this is giving a lot of people hope. Right now because again, most people have no idea that's even possible, right? They're going through their life and they feel like they've been dealt a difficult hand, you know because like their most precious thing that they've had a part in creating is struggling. And you know parents are looking for solutions, you know, not even solutions just for their kid to feel normal, right? And just doing whatever that looks like. And so that often entails a lot of suffering, a lot of struggle, and a lot of things that don't work.

BETH LAMBERT: Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right, a slew of different medications, different psychotherapy, and all these things have their place, by the way. Everything has their place, but what is at the root? If we're not removing the root issue, the symptoms are just going to persist. You can cover it up, you can, they can make an adaptation, But, if we're talking about a real resolution, we need to address the root cause.

BETH LAMBERT: Right, and our system's not set up to look at root causes. We have a medical system that is symptom suppressive. And, you know, I, I really feel for physicians because they have five or ten minutes to get to know their patient, to know the background, get the medical history, understand what this means the patient is going through, and then they, the patient's looking for a solution, the patient's looking for an answer. So really, the only thing they have to offer, they might say, you should change your diet, or you should exercise more. But really the only thing they have to offer is a script, right? They walk out with some kind of pharmaceutical. All that's doing is suppressing the symptoms. So our system, the payments, the reimbursements, it's not set up for root cause, functional, holistic type medicine. There's no opportunity to get to the root, but that's, to me, that's what the symptoms are. The symptoms are telling you something's wrong. So let's look for why something's wrong. It's so logical, you know?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. That's the thing. A lot, you know, there's a statement that common sense isn't very common, you know, today, but you also mentioned earlier, and I don't want to slide past this. You mentioned how this is affecting boys significantly more than girls. Do we know why that is?

BETH LAMBERT: There are hypotheses out there and they think it might have to do with either the protective effect of estrogen or something having to do with testosterone. But they are still trying to unravel that but it definitely is more boys than girls. And so if you project forward if we're at one in 33 kids right now and you're talking about that's four to one, boy to girl ratio. If you're projecting these rates forward, how many boys are we going to have in the future that don't have an autism diagnosis? And those that don't have an autism diagnosis probably have some kind of neuro behavioral or developmental condition like ADHD, or maybe they'll have a learning disability. So I'm very worried for our boys as a parent of a boy myself, like I just worry about what the future looks like for our boys.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Now again, this study that you conducted is very eye opening, but also very inspiring. So let's talk a little bit about the intervention program. So what are some of these components?

BETH LAMBERT: So the most foundational piece of this particular family's experience, and I've been documenting these stories for 15 years. So I've got dozens, and dozens, and dozens of stories on our websites that you can see these families have had similar kinds of experiences. The foundation for all of these is diet. It's like ab I don't know one person who's reversed their chronic health condition without changing their diet. That's just basic. The other piece is detoxification, getting as many toxic exposures out of the body as possible, and also supporting the body's capacity to detox.

So one of the things you commonly see in kids with autism, because they have this microbiome imbalance, they have a low diversity of microbes in their gut when you're supposed to have a very robust rich diversity of microbes in the gut. A lot of kids with autism because of that microbiome situation, they end up getting GI symptoms like constipation. And when you have constipation and you're going to the bathroom once every three days, or some of these kids are going once a week, you're not getting rid of waste toxins that are supposed to be excreted from your body. And you're also not getting rid of cellular debris, cellular toxins, microbial metabolites that are toxic to the body.

So it's really just an accumulation and a buildup of toxins because these kids aren't able to detoxify. So that's actually one of the most important features in this family's journey was improving gastrointestinal health. And that you can do through diet and supplementation, and other kinds of targeted interventions. The other things that the family did was work with an OT, Occupational Therapist, who does a different kind of modality called MNRI, which is a, it's called Moscotova Neurosensory Motor Integration technique. That's a big mouthful. But all it is doing is helping revisit some of the developmental problems that happened.

And again, for kids with autism, they miss milestones, right? They maybe didn't crawl on time or didn't roll over, or their vision doesn't quite develop the way that it was supposed to. So this is a technique, again, used by occupational therapists that can help rewire the brain, get the brain and the body connecting and communicating again. So this family used that method. They went to a pediatric chiropractor, they used a wide variety of local clinicians, including a nutritionist, to help them guide a personalized treatment program for their children. So one of the challenges in, you know, when I talk about this recovery story of the, for these children is that there's no protocol.

There's no, just follow this path and it works for every child, and we're in that mindset, right? There's a pill for every ill. Like, is there a pill for autism? No, there's not a pill for autism. It's a bio individual. So you actually have to like, look at each child and their particular history, and actually unwind some of the things that they experienced. Unwind some of the exposures. And do you know who's best suited to do that, to guide that? Mom and dad, parents. That's also another challenge we face in this kind of thing is that a lot of times parents, they get their diagnosis, they're overwhelmed, they don't know what to do. They want to rely on an expert. They want to rely on a physician to guide them or somebody to tell them what to do. But a lot of times it's about mom and dad really getting, you know, rolling up their sleeves and just figuring out what their child needs because they know their child better than anyone else.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. I 1000 percent agree. And It's complex today.

BETH LAMBERT: It is.

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know, especially today. And you know, it's gonna require us to pay attention to our kids.

BETH LAMBERT: Mm hmm.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And unfortunately, we are so distracted. Everyone's stressed. Everybody's so busy. We've got all this technology. We've got 24 7 access to, this is another part added to those ingredients, right? The kind of system insufficiency that's causing these health outcomes, right? Even our lifestyle today and how we're not interacting with each other. Got a quick break coming up. We'll be right back.

Are you interested in living a shorter life? Of course not! Everybody would love to extend their lifespan and their healthspan. Because it's not just the number of years that we live, it's the quality of those years. And what cutting edge research is now revealing is that there is a specific beverage. Time tested. Enjoyed by humans for centuries. That has the potential to extend your lifespan and your health span. A meta-analysis of 40 studies published in the European Journal of Epidemiology revealed that regularly drinking coffee was associated with a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer and all cause mortality.

Now keep in mind, the researchers did an excellent job adjusting for confounding factors like obesity, alcohol consumption, et cetera, et cetera. But they found that drinking coffee really stood out. But here's the key. It's the quality of that coffee. We're not talking about coffee. That's littered with artificial sweeteners and sugar and artificial creamers, like "coffee meat", all right. We're not talking about that. We're talking about high quality coffee itself. And one of the reasons why was affirmed by researchers at Stanford University. And these scientists found that the caffeine found in coffee has a remarkable impact defending the brain against age related inflammation.

In fact, they found that these compounds found in coffee was able to suppress genes related to inflammation. This is truly remarkable, and again, keep in mind that it's the quality of coffee. And there's a U shaped curve of benefits. So it's light to moderate coffee drinkers who are seeing these incredible results. And you combine that organic coffee, that's the key, organic coffee, with time tested medicinal mushrooms like lion's mane and chaga. You've got something really special. Lion's mane in particular was affirmed by researchers at the university of Malaya to protect the brain against degeneration and even help to heal traumatic brain injuries.

Again, there's something really special about lion's mane medicinal mushroom. That's what I actually had today was organic coffee, Lion's Mane medicinal mushroom and Chaga blended together in the incredible coffee blends from Four Sigmatic. Go to foursigmatic.com/model, and you're going to get 10 percent off all of their incredible coffee blends. They're amazing elixirs of dual extracted medicinal mushrooms. Nobody does it better. Then for Sigmatic again, that's F O U R S I G M A T I C.com/model for 10 percent off. And now back to the show.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Now in this conversation, one of the things that you talked about in essentially any progression out of chronic conditions, you know, this epidemic it's gonna involve diet, right? And this is so true, but it's again, it seems soft. It seems like a soft science So my question is why is food so impactful, like changing a child's diet when we're talking about, yes, prevention of chronic conditions, but also, again, being able to reverse a lot of the things that are failing our kids.

BETH LAMBERT: Well, I think there's a couple of reasons why diet is so foundational. One is you have cells. Every cell in your body needs nutrients. Nutrition to function like the mitochondria in our cells, the powerhouses that make energy that allow us to do fundamental things like vision or hearing or to grow new skin cells. We need our mitochondria to work and you have to provide mitochondrial nutrients. Where do those nutrients come from? Our food. So that's like foundational. There are other essential nutrients that our bodies need to detoxify, for instance. So remember I said all these kids are overburdened with toxins.

Well, how do you get the toxins out? We have natural detox mechanisms in our body, like our liver, our gastrointestinal tract. All of these things are built in, but they require nutrients to function. So you need to have sulfur, for instance, that goes into your body that feeds into the liver detoxification pathways. Where does the sulfur come from? Cauliflower, broccoli. It might come from cruciferous vegetables like cabbage. I love making homemade sauerkraut because I know that my kids are getting some of that sulfur they need for detox. So the basic ingredients that you need to supply your body, to build the cells, to keep them healthy, and to detoxify comes from nutrition.

The other piece that I think is so critical, especially for kids with autism or ADHD, because this is demonstrated science, their microbiomes are a mess. And so the way to rebuild the microbiome is to feed it. So when we feed ourselves, when we eat our food on a daily basis, we are feeding ourselves, but we're also feeding the microbes in our gut. And you can grow certain type of microbes with certain foods. So the fibrous foods, the vegetables are going to grow a diverse and rich and helpful type of bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract. And that's the bacteria that makes neurotransmitters. That's the bacteria that regulates your immune system. You can also grow the bad guys. You eat a lot of sugar, processed carbs, you're gonna grow the bad guys.

And the bad guys, actually, are in there puking out their own metabolites and their own waste products, which then your body needs to process and excrete. So, if you think about every time you put food in your body, you're feeding yourself, you're feeding the microbes, and you can do those things in a good way or in a bad way. And the thing I love most about diet too is, it's something everybody has the capacity to do. Even if you are as resource constrained as possible, a head of cabbage costs $1.99 at Whole Foods, which is probably the most expensive place you're going to buy it. You know, there's always ways to find better choices, always ways to put good food in.

So I think that is very empowering for most people. You don't necessarily need the expensive medication or the expensive doctor. You don't necessarily need the expense, expensive therapy. All these things might be helpful, but there's so much in your control, if you take ownership over food.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that because it's not just about the resources, it's resourcefulness.

BETH LAMBERT: Mm-Hmm.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so you can get that ahead of cabbage and you could learn, go to YouTube and look up a video on how to make sauerkraut.

BETH LAMBERT: Mm-Hmm.

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know? It's just salt. Making your brine.

BETH LAMBERT: Yeah. Salt and water. Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So again, like we, but this might require you to change. And that's really what it's all about at the heart of this, is that if we're gonna get different outcomes, we're gonna need to be different.

BETH LAMBERT: Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right, now with all of these different inputs, because again, and I love this about you. We're not just pinpointing this is the cause of our epidemics of chronic illnesses in our kids, epidemics of autism. But what we tend to do right now, and again, very concerned parents and advocates, is to put all of our eggs in one basket, right? It is the pesticide load. It is the lack of movement. It is the diet. It is the vaccine schedule and that's another thing that you talk about. And you are bringing a very I think balanced perspective about it that again this is another one of those factors that could be contributing because of the introduction of all of these very powerful immune system Agonists or antagonists into a very, very small developing child, who's got all this stuff going on.

So can you talk a little bit about that? Because this is one of those domains where people can get very, people tend to get very emotional in this subject matter. Especially again, if they think that their child has been harmed. Or, you know, they just think that this is all just nonsense and all the different vaccines and the vaccine schedule that has dramatically grown in just the last couple of decades is just all for the benefit of the child and that's just silly and so people tend to be on these extremes.

BETH LAMBERT: Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So let's talk a little bit about this.

BETH LAMBERT: Yeah, so vaccines are the third rail. Nobody wants to, you know, put a stake in the ground and make a position on it. There's lots of medical literature. You can hop into PubMed and find the papers that are published on whether autism is related to vaccines or not, or how they're impacting kids' health. But in my, I've been doing this for 15 years. I've talked to hundreds and hundreds of parents who have kids with autism, let's say. And in those hundreds of parents, each one has a different story. You have some kids who have autism, who've never had a vaccine. You have some kids who have autism, who were totally typical, got a set of childhood vaccines and then slipped instantly into the symptoms of autism.

So how do you make sense of that? Right? And the way we make sense of it is by understanding the total load of theory, which was a theory put out originally by a woman named Patricia Lemmer. She has a wonderful book called Outsmarting Autism. And you know, she, her theory was that it isn't any one thing. There's no smoking gun. It's basically the cumulative and synergistic impact of many things, but too many stressors on kids. So when we started out and decided we wanted to create a research program with my non profit organization, Documenting Hope. We knew we wanted to understand what caused these chronic conditions.

Was it the antibiotics? Was it the reflux medications? Was it EMF? Was it a diet? Was it vaccines? What was it? So we created a study called CHIRP, which stands for Child Health Inventory for Resilience and Prevention. It's the largest environmental health survey that covers everything a child could be exposed to from, you know, multiple generations back, preconception, prenatal, all the way through till the child's present day. And we ask about what kind of toothpaste they're using, how many rounds of antibiotics they had. Did mom get a flu shot when she was pregnant? Anything that you can imagine that could conceivably influence a child's health positively or negatively, we ask the question. And we've been collecting data since 2018 and you can see some clear signal in the noise.

And the signal in the noise looks like this. The more health stressors a child has in their life, especially the earlier they are, like let's think prenatal, neonatal, right? If you, if a child has a lot of those kinds of stressors, the worse health outcomes they have across the board, regardless of the diagnosis. How much is this child suffering? How much does it impact daily life for the family? The more stressors, the worse health outcomes. So what that tells me. is all the little things matter. You know, so somebody will be like, does it really matter if there's fluoride in the toothpaste or if I wear perfume in the house? You know, like, does that really matter?

And the answer is, I'm sorry, but yes, it does matter. But the question for you then is, what is your child's total load? What is their burden of stressors? So the little things matter less if you don't have a lot of them, right? But the average American baby is born already laden with chemicals. You've heard the study from the Environmental Working Group where babies come out of the womb, the umbilical cord has over 260 chemicals that are, endocrine disrupting chemicals, carcinogens, like that is, that's where the babies are coming out.

So, the, what that tells us is that we need to actually pay attention to the little things and stop obsessing about which one it is. It's all of it. It's all of it. And, the other thing I'll say is the combination. So, you know, going back to the third rail, the vaccine situation, there are so many stories where babies were on antibiotics or reflux medication, so like the Pepsid, Prilosec type stuff. Both of those things totally destroy the microbiome, which is your first line of defense. That's what regulates your immune system and your immune function. And when you have a child who's on those medications and then they get a vaccine, or maybe even just a serious infectious disease, they're not going to do well because we've already handicapped them. So that's what the example of the synergy of toxins and stressors.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Polypharmacy, you know, this is, this is not considered that, again, vaccines appear to be in a different category than medicine, than drugs. But this is just a different, this is a different form, right? This is just something that is injected versus, you know, again, a lot of kids now, like a growing number of children are put on medications for reflux today. That is abnormal.

BETH LAMBERT: Doesn't that blow your mind?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

BETH LAMBERT: Reflux is something that affects people who are older and they've had bad diets and they're super stressed out, you know, a gastroesophageal reflux is not something babies get. But now it's, like you've said, it is perceived to be normal because it's so common.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And even studies like this, and this was published in 2020, and there was a lot going on in 2020, so this might have gotten overlooked. The title of the study is Analysis of Health Outcomes in Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Children: Developmental Delays, Asthma, Ear Infections, and Gastrointestinal Disorders. And essentially, they use the data from three thriving medical practices in the United States with children born between 2005 and 2015. Looked at their introductions of vaccines specifically in the first year and they had a robust amount of kids that were, you know, the population of kids that weren't vaccinated and then the population of kids who were and just compared the data. And the researchers found that vaccination before one year of age was associated with increased risk of developmental delays, asthma, and ear infections. And again, you might hear this and just like, see, it's the vaccines, but we're not looking at the overall stress load and polypharmacy and what is the situation with the child, not to say that this isn't a culprit in that potential overall stress load. There's a medical term for that.

BETH LAMBERT: Allostatic load.

SHAWN STEVENSON:  Yeah.

BETH LAMBERT: Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's what it is. And I feel like the transition in medicine from factory, you know, factory one size fits all kind of approach to personalized medicine is, could not be more urgent. Because this is a perfect example of, there isn't one set of things that caused a child to develop autism. It's many things. And in order to get to the root causes, you have to go find out what the specific things for that child were. And they're going to be different from the other child who also has autism in the same classroom. They just are. And, there's many amazing ways to treat people bio individually.

There's an incredible diagnostic functional lab test you can do to figure out what's going on with each individual person and ways that you can address it through nutrition and supplements and again therapeutics. So I feel like it's actually a really exciting time because people are doing this on their own and they're having good results. The problem is the system just doesn't support it yet. It's not like insurance pays for it. So it's not so it's an access issue and an information issue.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Now we're really getting to the crux of this whole situation, which is the system that we're existing in, right? So when you mentioned, you know again, we're taking our child to the pediatrician and you know they're dealing with we'll say an ear infection. And what we've kind of evolved the system that we're existing in is to prescribe medication. And again, we want to help our child to get out of the situation. And there are times when the ear infection is appropriate. It might be another type of infection, for example, it might be something that's viral or fungal, but then we are prescribed an antibiotic and that's been going on for generation to generation, and being prescribed antibiotics in situations that are not appropriate.

And so we start to build up this resistance. And instead of us addressing when we're trusting in this system to provide solutions, like let's eliminate the cause. Let's eliminate some of the exposures. Let's do things to ensure that our child's immune system is functioning properly. So the infection doesn't take hold of them in the first place. Let's really stack conditions in our children's favor. We have become obsessed with treating the symptoms and I think you really articulated very well the experience of, you know, a physician, even if they mean well, only having 10 minutes with the patient. I remember those, even being a kid, going and seeing, my doctor's name was Dr. Dieter Dang. Alright, true story.

BETH LAMBERT: That's a great name.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So me and my little brother made up a song, Dr. Dieter Dang. But just being in and out, you know, and my brother and I had chronic asthma. Him in particular, he was hospitalized probably every quarter.

BETH LAMBERT: Wow.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And St. Louis Children's Hospital, one of the funnest places on earth for a kid, all the video games and all the toys and stuff. So we weren't mad when we went, but at the same time, I ended up leaving there each time with all these different inhalers. Like I had a white one, I had a blue one, I had, you know, I had an orange one. My little brother, I think he had a pink one. And we're just like, just walking around with a bag full of these medications.

And this is something that we just thought was normal. My sister had terrible eczema, right? I didn't really know anybody in my family who didn't have something. And that's, that's really the problem because we weren't getting solutions. They never asked about our diet. They never asked about our sleeping habits. They never asked about the stressors that my mom was experiencing working overnight at a convenience store, right? And this is really the issue. So my question to you is if this is our current state of affairs in health, in our treatment, how in the world are we going to access treatment that's going to actually help our children to get better.

BETH LAMBERT: Well, while we're lobbying for the naturopaths and functional medicine doctors to get the support and the reimbursement that they need within our existing system. I think the, what we have to lean into is information and education because there is so much that we can do as parents, as individuals. We can take responsibility for our own health. We just don't know what to do. So like what you do, what you talk about is part of that equation. The more information people have about what makes you sick and what makes you healthy, that is going to help shift the tide here. I think we're going to have a paradigm shift where I really do believe we are in the middle of a paradigm shift.

I mean, even what's happening with agriculture and how people are starting to demand sustainable agriculture instead of industrial factory farms, because they know that it is producing food that doesn't support human health. So there, we see this latent movement. Building, building, building, so we're getting there. In the meantime, I think what we have to do as individuals, because it can feel so overwhelming, is just make the small changes and choices that you can every day to get more alignment into natural rhythms. Sometimes that means making sacrifices that you don't want to do. You know, sometimes there may be, there's sacrifices that are around like your job and your career. And how if you have a job and career that creates stress in the family, you know, is there anything else that you could do that would, you know, create a different kind of environment? Those are the kinds of choices we have to really start thinking about. It, you know, isn't just about the food or the products we're buying.

It's about our lifestyle. And what can we do to have a lifestyle where we can spend more time with our family, where we can connect, where we can foster a good community. Those are things that we've lost touch with that used to be fundamental in human societies. But it's just really the modern industrial world, like really post World War II, since we've sort of just taken off in this modern world. With everything synthetic and everything rushed and everything, just go, go, go. It's breaking down. You know, and our bodies are trying to tell us that.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. That's the thing. Our bodies are giving us feedback. That this is not okay. We're not okay. And we just stuff it down and keep going. Get to Starbucks. Get to work. And what you're saying is you're giving us the toughest pill to swallow.

BETH LAMBERT: It's true. And I get it. It's hard. Like I, I know how hard it is to say, you know, for me to say, Oh, just get a different job that causes you less stress. Like, really? What an obnoxious tone deaf thing to say. But we are faced with these choices where it's our health, you know, that is on the line here. So we have to look for ways that we can support our health and make it work. For ourselves, for our kids, you know, pull out of the matrix. That's what I'm basically saying. We got to pull out of the matrix because it's killing us.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, you know having this conversation with you, I'm grateful because I get to add that other side, because you just said it is a tone deaf, quote "tone deaf" thing. But it is so true. It is so true. But what somebody who's not really initiated in that possibility. They don't understand that they have the power to do the same thing. Like it's the stories we attach ourselves to, you know, like when I was really struggling with my health, living in Ferguson, Missouri, I worked at a casino. And I was, you know, I was trying to get my degree and everything. And, you know, I had to be at work at like three 30 in the morning, a lot of times, you know, and, um, we're locked away. I worked in the hard count department. We're locked away basically in a money vault. All day. I'm inhaling all this coin dust, you know, it's just like, it's not very savory conditions for a healthy life, but it was like, in my mind, that was the best job that I could get.

Right. They paid more, you know, and I was able to go to class, like, but the truth was, there's like thousands of other jobs that I could do, but it would take for me to have the audacity to change. And to put that story aside and to go and find something else or to create. But the first thing is like having a new vision. You know, and unfortunately, and this is the truth, and this is the point I want to get to. When we're caught up in that day to day, you would probably think I wouldn't have the energy to go and do that other thing. You know, I wouldn't have the energy to focus on my nutrition or to go find another job. It's an energy equation.

BETH LAMBERT: Mm hmm.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so what we can do is start to fuel our energy.

BETH LAMBERT: Mm hmm.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. Fuel our mind. Engaging in conversations like this. Put on things that empower you. And doing things that you can to start to have more energy so you can open up your vision. And know when I, and I'm still gonna say this I'm gonna stand firm on this, the story that you have that you can't change your lifestyle is just a story.

BETH LAMBERT: That's right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: No matter what circumstance you're in right now. And you've experienced this, I've experienced this. And what I wanted to do in having you here today is to really help us to reveal. This isn't a joke at this point. Like we've got all the data. We're looking at our kids and this future generation is just devolving. And there's so much unnecessary suffering and we've got to stop this.

BETH LAMBERT: Right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So can you talk a little bit about the CHIRP study as well?

BETH LAMBERT: Mm hmm. Yeah, so the CHIRP study is again designed to better understand the root causes of this epidemic. And, we've been collecting data since 2018. Parents, it's actually on pause right now. We're just loading it to a new technology platform, but it'll be open for enrollment soon. So if anyone's interested in participating, they can go to documentinghope.com to sign up for that. And any parent who has a child between the ages of one and 17 can participate. And again, we just collect information. It's an inventory. What is the inventory of your life? How are you living? How, what was, you know, your family's health history, anything you can imagine.

And, you know, I mentioned the total load being that total hypothesis being basically proven with our data, that's actually a thing. But more than that, we're also seeing some other signal in the noise. One of the things, which this will be no surprise that is most tightly correlated with worse health outcomes in terms of a single variable, or class of variables is the exposure to antibiotics. So the, you know, the kids, and we have healthy kids in the database, and we have kids who have all kinds of conditions. And what we have learned is that the more antibiotics a child's been exposed to, and the mother. And father, actually, even if they've been exposed to antibiotics, that's going to be the, you know, the worst health outcomes you're going to see.

We have a lot more data to collect before we can publish on this, but I can tell you which way the wind is blowing. And another thing surprisingly that's come up is sugar consumption. Believe it or not, that's actually showing up as a signal and the noise in terms of also being correlated with worse health outcomes. So in our culture, this one kills me because all of these things are cultural, right? It's American culture. The things that we do that are normal, the things that bring us joy. So I think about the cupcakes at the birthday parties that are blue and red and that's just a norm and you have an average kid going to 10 birthday parties a year because they go to all their friends and that's a very common, typical thing. But that's our sugar culture that we're in is that kids just are kids inundated with sugar.

Whether it's breakfast cereals or whether it's, you know, the treats at every corner and all of our holidays and celebrations involve sweets. That is making an impact on their health. So the chirp study is showing that as well. We'll continue to collect data. We're going to publish some papers on it. But again, just reinforcing what we already know to be true. The data is supporting what we already know to be true. It's that these modern living stressors are hurting our kids.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah Can you talk about Documenting Hope?

BETH LAMBERT: Mm hmm. So, Documenting Hope is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that I founded in 2009. So we've been around for a long time. We have two main things that we focus on. One is education. So we do newsletters and webinars and, we have hundreds of articles about the root causes and healing modalities and nutrition and all the things that a parent who's trying to learn about this stuff, how they might go about learning about all these things. We also have an annual conference every year. We have it coming up in Orlando, Florida, November 15th through 17th, where we bring parents and practitioners together. We teach parents and practitioners how to do this work. You asked about the twins, with in the autism case. We teach people how to do that work, how to make those kinds of changes and the different kinds of therapies that would help a child get better.

So that's what the conference is about. We also have an online membership community where we invite parents to come in and get support and education. We, they, there's live calls with integrated physicians and health coaches. I mean, we just are, they are to teach and educate and support parents as soon as they are like, yes, I want to make some changes in my child's life. We're like, great, sign up here. We're here for you. That's what Documenting Hope is about. The other half of what Documenting Hope does is the research. So we have the CHIRP study, as we've mentioned. We have the peer reviewed paper we just published and two more in the pipeline. We have another autism reversal coming out soon.

And then a third paper that will be published after that about a clinic, a functional medicine clinic that treated kids with autism in the Philippines. And then the other piece of what we do in our research program is an intervention study. We have an intervention study called the F. L. I. T. E. Study, and that's an acronym for Facilitated Longitudinal Intensive Investigation of Genuine Health Transformation. So, just put an emphasis on that last piece, that's what we're trying to investigate. How does one achieve, Genuine health transformation going from a place of sickness to wellness.

So we actually have enrolled a small group of children who have a chronic health condition and track them prospectively over 18 months, changing their diet, changing their environment, like looking for all kinds of stressors in the home. Is there a EMF stressor, mold, toxic exposures, and then trying to help the family make changes to overcome their diagnoses. So that study has been underway and we have, We're going to be enrolling 12 children with autism into that study starting in 2025. And we hope to see changes over time. I mean, our hypothesis is if you reduce the total load, and increase the supports, for each individual child in their own bio individual way, you're going to see changes.

You're going to see genuine health transformation. And we've also been documenting most of this on film. So that's where that name, Documenting Hope, comes from because we are documenting on film, documenting scientifically. Documenting anecdotal success stories. We have a whole YouTube channel of success stories of kids who have gotten better. But that's the point. We're documenting that there's hope for genuine health transformation. There's hope for these kids to have a better future.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. And we'll put all the links, of course, with the show notes. But is there some place specific for that you would want everybody to go where they can find a lot of this?

BETH LAMBERT: Everything can be linked out from documentinghope.com. So you know, if you're looking for the conference or our membership community or success stories are all on documentinghope.com. And I would just say sign up for our newsletter because always new stuff is coming out, new articles and new information. And again, we are just here to support the families, almost everything we provide that's educational is free for the families to just follow along with us and just soak it all in.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, yeah. This is so awesome. And the big takeaway for today is that solutions exist. You know, I, I know, and you know, this as well. Many of us carry a lot of parental guilt, you know, because we want to do well for our children. We might've made mistakes in the past or what we deem to be mistakes, but we're all just doing the best that we can. And especially if you're listening to something like this, you really are intentional and want to do a good job as a parent. And you should give yourself so much credit for that. And getting stuck in the past. If we're dealing with an issue with a health issue with our kid is some of the, some of the biggest suffering that we can experience as a parent. And it's what we do right now. And regardless of what the past looks like, our children can get better. We can get better.

And getting connected to information like this, as you shared earlier is, this is a big part of the solution. So i'm so grateful that you exist that you decided to do this work And to provide these resources for us because like I said. As soon as I found out about you, I was immediately engaged and I was like, Oh, she's, she's my people, you know? So this has been fantastic. And you know, if you've got some other incredible books that are available for everybody out there. And you can go anywhere books are sold and get A Compromise Generation. And your latest book is Brain Under Attack.

BETH LAMBERT: Mm hmm. That's from 2018. But that one is about, an epidemic, another epidemic of an autoimmune condition called PANS or PANDAS, which is an acronym for Pediatric Acute Onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome, which is basically you have a child who's typically developing, maybe they're seven or eight years old and all of a sudden they snap like that. Start developing what could only be described psychotic symptoms, OCD, anxiety, self limiting, feeding behaviors, all kinds of things that are just out of the blue. And the parents are beside themselves because they don't know what's going on. Essentially, long story short, it's inflammation in the brain that is triggered by a lot of environmental things. And the book Brain Under Attack is a resource for parents to learn how to reverse that and get their kids back on the road to good health.

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is so awesome. You have no idea. I've been talking about brain inflammation for years. Because it's one of those things that you see somebody, you don't know if their brain is inflamed. The brain is very protective.

BETH LAMBERT: Behavior is oftentimes a function of brain inflammation. You know, when you see a child who's tantruming, sometimes it's typical tantruming. Sometimes their brain's on fire. Alzheimer's, dementia, Parkinson's, anxiety, depression, autism, ADHD, all brain inflammation. They're all metabolic and a large component of it is metabolic and inflammation is a major underlying feature in all of these conditions. So you just said such an important point. If you see somebody who's behaving erratically or, you know, is what we might give a diagnostic label to, there's probably inflammation in that brain and give that person some grace.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. I know. We've got tons of data on this now, you know, neuroinflammation, also specific parts of the brain. Different regions, just being inflamed like the hypothalamus. There's hypothalamic inflammation and some researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine found that it can create all kinds of downstream effects with your metabolism. And what they found was that inflammation in the brain was creating more downstream fat accumulation and insulin resistance and insulin resistance was creating more inflammation in the brain. Right, so it's another one of these insults creating a vicious circle.

BETH LAMBERT: Mm hmm.

SHAWN STEVENSON: We've got to break the circle.

BETH LAMBERT: Mm hmm

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right, we got to create a new circle.

BETH LAMBERT: Right! And when the net of any of these conditions is there are answers there are solutions. But as you have said so well it requires making change. And you just have to embrace that, you know, we actually, we titled our conference, Adventures in Healing. Not, ugh, the world is, you know, falling apart and our kids are so sick, that wasn't the title. We call this Adventures in Healing because you have to see this as an adventure. You know, your child is suffering or you're struggling, like, let's take this on as an adventure. What can we do to learn something new to get on top of this? You kind of got to like dig deep and, and really find your best self in there. And, see it as something I can do. I can tackle, I can climb this mountain. It's an adventure and that's a way better attitude to get you started than feeling like you're stuck or overwhelmed. It's an adventure.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I love it so much. Adventures in babysitting. Adventures in health. We're back in the 80s again. This has been so awesome. Again, thank you for taking the time to come and hang out with us because, you know, I know you've got a lot going on. You know, got your family back on the East Coast and I just really do appreciate the work that you're doing.

BETH LAMBERT: My pleasure. Well, thanks for getting all the word out about how people can stay healthy because that is our number one priority now. Let's educate people.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Let's go. That's awesome. Amazing! The one and only Beth Lambert, everybody. I truly do hope that everyone understands the gravity of this conversation. Beth's research team has proven that this condition that is growing rapidly in our population, in particular affecting children. This condition is called autism that has so many different versions of what that can look like. So many different manifestations of this condition. One thing she's fighting for is to change this blanket diagnosis, but also proving through published clinical data that this condition can be reversed with lifestyle interventions. Now, this is obviously not going to be the case for every case. But just to know that this is possible, gives us a stepping stone, and more people need to know about this. So please, please share this out with your friends and family.

Share this out. In particular, if you know somebody whose life has been impacted by autism. But as we disclose on this episode, it might not have happened yet because if we keep going on this trajectory, it's going to be far and in between when we find somebody who's not been impacted. So again, we need to get this message out as Beth has shared with me is to keep talking. Keep this conversation going. Keep getting this information out there. Keep having these conversations. Keep delivering this empowerment and delivering solutions. I appreciate you so much for tuning into this episode today. We've got some epic masterclasses and world class guests coming your way very, very soon.

So make sure to stay tuned. Take care. Have an amazing day. And I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions, videos for each episode. And if you've got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome. And I appreciate that so much and take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.