Holistic Approach to Pediatric Care with Dr David Berger

a pediatrician. And so that was really the only thing that I ever really wanted to do, if I could be like him, if I could have an impact on other children, if I could have, if I can help other families and impact the most delicate resources of our country, helping with our kids. It was just something that I’ve always wanted to do.

Manon Bolliger  02:47

Yeah, and I mean, it’s, it’s the, the most important group, you know, if we’re looking at, you know, health in general, with deteriorating all kinds of conditions and diseases, we have to look at what are the contributing factors, right? And certainly, you know, what we eat, what we breathe, where we live, what we put in our bodies, the medicines we take, the injections, all of that has a role that could be played. And it’s changed massively. Now, I was looking at 1960s you know, we had a few shots, right? And now, like, I think in the US, I don’t know how many it is, but it’s, it’s an enormous amount of, you know, of injections that, uh, that are normal to take. And so our version of normal has changed a lot and so I wanted to know your opinion on that. I know you have many factors that you look at, I’m sure, and I’m by no means, saying there’s only one thing going on here. But what is your I mean, how many parents care about this, this change? Is this an issue?

Dr. David Berger  04:06

Okay, so I want to, I’ll start off by saying that I first and foremost am somebody who is pro-choice when it comes to all things related to what goes into the human body or what goes out of the human body. And so, it’s a very libertarian view. I believe that people should be able to make their own decisions. Parents should be able to make their own decisions on everything from whether it’s how we educate our children, how we feed our children, what medicines we put into them, obviously the impact that how we behave around our kids, and the mental impact, mental health impact that that may help, how we as parents identify, potentially any behavioral or mental health issues and how we respond, and so it’s both the right and responsibility for us to do that. So, when I talk to parents about vaccines, and certainly I have parents who talk, you know, who bring up the point that that you mentioned in terms of the number. Vaccines given now compared to 50 years ago or more. And it’s certainly the number has increased because they’ve come up with more vaccines, and obviously the CDC approved it, and everything that goes forward with it. But at the end of the day, what I tell a parent is, it’s like, whatever you think is in the best interest for your child to do, is what we’ll do, and I’ll explain how to do it or not do it as safely as possible. So, whether a family chooses to do all, none, some, split, delayed for vaccines, from my perspective, that’s their choice, and I’m going to support them in their decision, regardless of how it is.

Manon Bolliger  05:37

Yeah, no, I share that point of view. Because if it’s not the parents who make the choice, then they sort of abdicate the responsibility to be informed. And the whole idea is to have informed consent, you know, if they don’t look it up, if they don’t ask questions, if they don’t have the relationship with their pediatrician where it’s safe to ask and, you know, and safe to get feedback and to look into it. I think it’s very challenging. And I certainly know, you know, many families who have been lost because the answer, because it’s a non-questioned aspect of our, you know, of our education, right?

Dr. David Berger  06:24

It’s not informed consent. If you’re not informed, then it’s just consent.

Manon Bolliger  06:28

Exactly. And I think as a population, we had a big lesson in that in the recent years. You know, too.

Dr. David Berger  06:35

Certainly.

Manon Bolliger  06:36

Let’s get informed so that we can make intelligent decisions. And you know when you say you’re doing also nutrition. Now, nutrition is not something typically taught in in medical school. I think it was like 11 hours. I did an average of curriculums.

Dr. David Berger  06:53

Yeah, it was 10. It was 10 for me back in the 90s.

Manon Bolliger  06:56

Yeah, so what can you tell us about the importance of nutrition and how I mean, there’s so many different theories. I mean, I’m talking about real food. I’m not talking about junk food or what’s not food, but of real food. There’s, we’re in a population that I’m seeing of more and more allergic people, right? So kids are more allergic than their parents, and it seems to go on like this. So how do you deal with that? Because that’s a big question I get asked all the time.

Dr. David Berger  07:33

Yeah, certainly. So Well, first of all, it’s multi-pronged, okay? And any conversation that doesn’t start with breastfeeding is missing a very important point. Because we know how much and faster and complete the intestinal lining of a newborn during those first few months develops when exposed to breast milk and the proteins and all the factors that are there that are not found in formula, that it’s profound. If you compare the intestinal lining of a six-month-old breastfed versus formula baby. A breastfed baby almost looks like a mature adult in a six-month-old formula fed baby looks like a newborn. So and when we talk about developing the intestinal lining, the integrity of the lining, the impermeability of the intestines as it’s supposed to be when we talk about leaky gut being a permeable intestinal barrier, it’s incredibly important we know that. I mean, there’s so many studies that have shown lower allergies and lower asthma, eczema in breast milk. In fact, I actually have people use apply breast milk to kids if they have asthma can be a great, a great remedy in and of itself. So that’s the that’s really obviously one of the first things. Okay, of course, all very often, if a baby is not formula…is not breastfed, what are they given? Cow milk formula. Now, in our practice, we mostly use goat milk formula for babies who are not breastfeeding, but the overwhelming majority of our patients also are breastfeeding, and majority are still breastfeeding past a year, if not longer. So, you know, part of you know, being a holistic pediatrician, there is a bit of preaching to my choir, because people seek me out because of the services that I provide. You know, people either will come to me because they have problems and they need to reverse it, or they come to me, because we all walk the walk and talk the talk together, so kind of two different populations. But, you know, it’s not that big of a stretch for me to talk to my patients about this, because this is why they’re coming. It’s like, why do so many people walk out of an eye doctor get glasses? Well, why do you go to the eye doctor in the first place? So, so it’s one of those things that I that, I clearly found that. But when I when it comes to them starting to introduce baby food, and what is the most common thing that baby that parents are told, give your kid rice cereal. There’s no nutritional value except for some fiber in rice cereal, and you gotta concern yourself with arsenic. So, I don’t do that at all. In fact, I don’t even start with fruits, except for avocado. Um, I talked about bringing in avocados and vegetables first. I actually don’t want to develop a sweet tooth with the fruits and the apple sauces. Kids may not like green beans if they’ve had the apple sauce first. So I like to introduce one food in every four days, so that we can watch for a negative reaction, allowing for combinations of two foods that are previously tolerated alone. You know, I do encourage people, not that I want peanuts to be a staple of the diet, but because of peanut allergies, we know that introducing earlier, as opposed to later, like we were used to be taught, can make a big difference in terms of not having peanut allergies. But then I like to bring in real nuts and seeds and other types of things. Obviously not the nut itself, but, you know, the powder or a butter or something like that, in order to do that. And then, you know, really, we don’t talk about bringing in packaged foods and sweets and stuff like that. It’s going to happen when they go to birthday parties, we realize. But again, most of my patients are doing that, so that’s a big part of it, but also one of the things that I really focus on is preconception and pregnancy health of the woman, and making sure that they have adequate vitamin D and zinc levels and a nice microbiome themselves, because that can have a very big impact if you’re born with a good vibe with a nice amount of vitamin D and zinc, you know. I start, even I Start All babies on 400 to 500 units of vitamin D the first week of their life. And I check everybody’s vitamin D level at one year old, along with their zinc levels and their iron levels. I check methylation genetics to make see it with their MTHFR and related genes are to make sure that they’re on the right forms of B vitamins. And all of this we do at one year old, sooner if you have problems. So that’s kind of the, really, the beginning of the pathway forward to meet, in my opinion, to setting the child right.

Manon Bolliger  11:49

And what about with meats? I don’t mean big commercial, you know, with antibiotics and whatever.

Dr. David Berger  11:53

Right. Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  11:53

But farm, farmed, yeah.

Dr. David Berger  12:02

Absolutely, you know. So of course, we talk about healthy foods and we’re healthier options of things. But certainly, yeah, I typically will bring in the, in fact, I actually tell people to bring the meats before the before the fruits, but and then before the grain. So I like to bring them, but obviously with, as with everything you know. So I realize not everybody can, can get access or can afford organic foods, etc. So, you know, I talked to them earlier about the environmental work groups Clean 15 Dirty Dozen lists so that if everything can’t be organic, at least how to choose better, less pesticide laden food by using those types of lists.

Manon Bolliger  12:41

Now with the your specialty in ADHD and all of those kind of disorders, why do you think that’s the case? I mean, you know, there’s, there was a movie, I think a few years ago, I tried to bring my kids to my adult kids who have children, okay, to sort of influence them a little bit that maybe there’s other perspectives on this than the denial that there’s no such thing as ADHD. Which is kind of, at least in Canada, that’s what we hear. You know, there’s there, there’s not and certainly nothing causes it that we could do anything about. But anyway, this particular movie did talk about that a lot more. I don’t think I’ll say the movie’s name just in case, but obviously you’re treating it so what…what is your What’s your understanding of, yeah, how it happens. You know, what can parents look at who are concerned about that?

Dr. David Berger  13:44

Yeah, well, you know, I can’t say that we know why it happens. And in my perspective, whether you’re talking about autism or ADD or other areas along the neurodevelopmental spectrum, I think that much of it can be minimized and can be prevented by a doing some of the stuff that we talked about from the very beginning, maintaining those proper nutrients and everything before, avoiding toxins as much as possible. So, I don’t know, just a couple weeks ago, I’m actually going to be recording a video about it this week, and myself about, you know, we talked about things like plastics and BPA, and we’ve known that BPA is a hormone disruptor. Well, a study just came out two weeks ago that showed that women who have the higher levels of BPAs in their body during pregnancy were six times more likely to have a child with autism, a son with autism, technically having to do with the aromatase enzyme that’s responsible for hormone metabolism, and incredibly important during fetal development, sixfold increase with the highest BPA levels and so, you know, and that’s not even talking about the other microplastics. It’s not talking even about so many of the other things that are out there that are causing problems. So, part of it is, you know, I talk to people about clean food, clean water, clean air, keeping humidity down here, especially in Florida, to decrease mold growth. You know that all of the you know checking your houses for mold and obviously remediation and that can be really tough, because not a lot of people can afford what really needs to be done for that. But we know so…

Manon Bolliger  15:19

I think the Wi Fi went strange.

Dr. David Berger  15:21

Sure. What the last thing you heard me say?

Manon Bolliger  15:23

Yeah about mold. Why mold? And if you could start about with that, that’d be great.

Dr. David Berger  15:29

Sure. So you know, the air that we breathe, especially, and I’m not especially when it comes to things like molds and other toxins in the air. In Florida, we have a huge problem with mold, partly because of the humidity, because mold grows in higher humid climates, partly because of a lot of the storms we have. So there’s a lot of water damage that happens. I mean, all these people who have their homes damaged by the hurricanes, and they don’t realize that, yeah, you know, not just that, but all of the stuff that’s behind the walls that doesn’t get seen. So mycotoxins is a is a big thing, and how does our body properly clear them? What can we do to minimize the exposure that we’re inhaling them, and that’s in our food supplies? So you know, all of these things are toxins and and obviously, with modern world that we live in, you know, all a lot of these toxins were not there a couple of generations back.

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Dr. David Berger  17:31

And so our bodies our you know, we could not have possibly evolved in such a way to deal with the types of toxins that have been thrown at us from the past 150 years. So evolution doesn’t keep up that fast.

Manon Bolliger  17:46

No. And I think if you add also, I was listening to Dr. Peter McCullough, who was quite featured with the heart issues, you know, that we’ve seen in the last three, four years. He was quite outspoken, and he’s, he’s a cardiologist, I’m sure you know, but he, he was saying, when asked, you know, also about autism and about childhood vaccines, he said, Oh, you know, it’s funny. I never thought anything about it, you know. But now that he’s sort of seen what’s happened here? He’s looked back and looked into the research of that. And you know, when we say there’s possibly toxicity in the shots, but the accumulation, I think he said there’s like 108 vaccines, when in his time, it would be three, you know, it was like a much larger amount. So the sheer amount time zone without, you know, we’re not doing detoxes and we’re not doing a whole bunch of things to clear all this heavy metals. I I don’t know, I would think that it would have an impact, but at least that’s my, you know, my, it’s not my research, it’s my reading different authors and going, wow, you know, there’s maybe something there that we need to look at again, and look at these studies and, you know, and also the realizing that there’s no studies that show all of these put together the impact it has on the body that I’m aware of anyways, you know, it’s not mixed, you know, in the real way that babies take all this.

Dr. David Berger  19:33

Right? So, you know, I want people to also be clear, there aren’t 107 different shots being given to the kids, okay? So, you know, when you know a lot of the like, those numbers that are used, for instance, like, there’s a, like, the streptococcal pneumonia vaccine called Prevnar, it’s, you know, there’s 13 different substrates within it, okay? And it’s given typically four times, okay. So, I mean, that’s 52 right there, if, if my math was correct, right? So, you know. Just so that the listener is not is, is understanding what that number means, you know, that’s the, you know, so where it’s for actual injections over time. So just, just to be clear about that.

Manon Bolliger  20:11

Good point.

Dr. David Berger  20:12

Yeah, but you see, my take on all of this is about inflammation and how our bodies are or are not able to handle inflammation. And I don’t just mean being susceptible to allergies. I’m talking about enhanced inflammation, hyperinflammation, that happens when the immune system is not tip top in terms of how to deal with it. So I always like, I like to talk about the Goldilocks aspect of things. Okay, we don’t want an immune system too weak that makes us more susceptible to infections. We don’t want an immune system too strong that makes us more susceptible to autoimmune diseases and allergies, asthma, eczema, eczema. We want it just right. We want in the middle. One of the fascinating things for me, and if we want to talk specifically about the covid vaccine, the similarity between many of the side effects of the vaccine mimic the negative symptoms and the potential long covid symptoms from wild disease. And I have, I, as I what I think is that obviously people went into two very different camps when it came to the conversation about covid and the vaccines. And I think that there’s kind of a lot of people are missing the really important thing, what’s the commonality between the vaccine and the disease? Spike protein hitting ace receptors, causing the immune causing the immune response, the cytokine storm. Okay, and so, whether we talk about myocarditis and pericarditis, yeah, it happened at the vaccine. Happened with the disease too. A lot of the fatigue and a lot of the chronic, you know, other types of things. The we’re seeing it both. So the way that I look at it is that, what are we able to do to allow the immune system to respond in such a way? And it’s just true with wild disease, to again, create immunity for the future, and obviously, herd immunity, natural immunity, and and not let it go overboard. So although we heard, you know what, we did lose a family friend to covid early on, obviously up in New York, when 3000 people were dying a day from it. At the very beginning of it, that was obviously a terrible, horrible thing where I understand why corners were cut. I didn’t agree with why corner curves were cut, but it, you know, I also, you know, we want to remember that decisions were being made when things were like insane, right? And so when Operation Warp Speed was offered by the government at the time, they cut all of these, all of these steps that would normally take place, right? And so it was rushed out. You know, I was fortunate. I was I was invited to your audience. And may know that I was one of the only physicians that I presented to the FDA at the the emergency authorizations, the committee, I was chosen. I spoke in front of the for the committee three different times, when they brought out the moderna. I mean, the Pfizer, then the moderna, when they and then when they wanted to bring it out to kids. First thing I talked to them about is transparency. If you’re not going to be transparent, upfront and honest with people, you’re going to lose people, and you’re going to see a divide, which is exactly what happened second time, when I was talking about after data was out, was you’re talking about a very few number of people in what you’re quoting, and you’re gonna miss potentially more uncommon reactions, and you’re not looking long enough for potential, obviously, you know for it as well. So if but at the same time, those things were happening in under both circumstances of wild disease and in the vaccinated state. So how do we make again, how do we make our immune system now, when people start to get sick, what do I recommend that they do? They increase their C they increase their their zinc levels. I put them on something either echinacea or something called Larix, the bark of the Western larch tree, which come which also has arabidogilatium, the same active ingredient as Echinacea. And two doses, I mean, two days only of high dose vitamin A. What do I What did I tell people to do to protect themselves for not just the covid vaccine, but all vaccines? Did I lose you?

Manon Bolliger  24:37

Yeah, you just said and two days of?

Dr. David Berger  24:40

Two days, two days of high dose vitamin A.

Manon Bolliger  24:42

Vitamin A, okay.

Dr. David Berger  24:44

Never should one do high dose vitamin A for more than two days, but we do two doses twice a day for high dose vitamin A. But that’s also the same. Those things are the exact same thing that I recommend people do before they take a vaccine, yeah, you know, and then up through and then. After the vaccine. So we are priming the immune system in such a way to deal with it all and and, you know, and we didn’t see people have the vaccine reactions. We didn’t see people, I mean, like, not a single member of our patients perished from covid, from wild disease, you know. So, you know, so we took a very different approach from the beginning.

Manon Bolliger  25:24

Yeah, definitely. And I think I agree with the medical way of looking at it. What you’re saying on the level of we have to treat. The body can have an inflammatory reaction, we need to deal with that no matter what, whether it’s natural or whether it’s made in the lab. But I don’t agree with the history of it completely, because, you know, Dr David Martin has all the patterns of it, you know, already created in 2015 the PCR tests were already, you know, available to everyone in 2018 like, I think the history is very corrupt and complicated, and that’s not the purpose of our discussion. But I just wanted to say that part I’m not in agreement with, but how we treat people’s the same way we have to, you know? And this is this could happen with any new one that comes up. There’s a current one that’s coming up too, you know, it’s the same approach. We have to whether it’s a secondary effect, a type of shingles, or whether it’s something, you know, that was in the shots, or whether it’s something that is coming up, we still have to help the person’s immune system. And that’s the same like, you know, my understanding is you would do the same thing, you know, with upcoming conditions, you know.

Dr. David Berger  26:48

I mean, to me, it’s kind of a basic have the body in balance. The body can handle things a lot better.

Manon Bolliger  26:54

Exactly, yeah, well, our time is actually up. But I wanted to actually…

Dr. David Berger  27:00

Wow, we didn’t get to talk about very much at all.

Manon Bolliger  27:02

I know. We just went like, Well, we did cover it, you know, a little bit, but I was going to say, if I can leave you five minutes to maybe share something that I haven’t asked you, that you feel is really important, I would really appreciate that.

Dr. David Berger  27:18

Yeah, we live in a consumer driven society. One of the things that we’ve seen from covid has happened to our society is obviously a lot of mistrust, because a lot of people had previously just done what the medical profession told them to do, and it was, and still is frowned upon to ask questions. My advice to any patient and to any parent is ask questions. If there’s somebody who’s not willing to answer your questions, seek somebody else. It’s important to have a partner in your health, somebody who may not even agree with what you’re saying. But is there to is that person going to support you, or is that person going to throw you out of their practice because you’ve questioned what they’ve done. And anybody who you know, for me, it’s, I don’t think it’s a good clinician to not listen to what the person saying, because everybody has their own experience. Part of the problem is the medical system as a whole. Least here, if you spend more than 15 minutes with your doctor here, that’s a lot of time. Well, I typically spend my every first appointment for me is an hour, and my follow ups can range anywhere from 40-30 minutes to 75 minutes. And so we dig deep. We go really into all these things. Because, you know, we didn’t even talk today about things like healthy sleep. We didn’t talk today about exercise and activities and other things that people could be going and so, you know, I spell wholistic with the W because I look at the whole picture. That was very intentional. And if, if you don’t look at all of these things that I remember back in medical school, when we started learning about the different body systems, the cardiologist would come in and say, the heart’s the most important part of the body. If you don’t pump blood to everywhere, then you’re not going to survive. Okay? The neurologist, the neurologist comes in, well, the brain’s the most important part of the body, because if you don’t have your neuronal aspects and your cognitive function there, you’re not going to survive in this world. The GI doctor comes in, well, the GI is the most important part of your body because it’s where you get your nutrition and how you detoxify through your liver. And as each of these guys are and women were parading through the lecture hall, I’m asking myself, do y’all talk to each other? Because you know your organs do, and so if, if, if you’re taking this, this singular system approach, as opposed to a systematic approach, where you look at the whole person, and you’re not even talking about like the impacts of mental health on what that does to people’s immune systems and what that does to other things, of their ability to stay healthy. If you’re depressed and you can’t get out of bed, you’re not exercising very much, you may not be eating very well. You may be in survival mode, as opposed to thrival mode. And so it’s, it’s such a reverse of, like, what we need. And, you know, I’ve, I’ve been doing this for 25 years with these types of approaches. And, you know, fortunately, I think the world has definitely changed. I mean, you know, I remember the day during the pandemic when Dr Fauci said that he takes 5000 units of vitamin D every day, which is 10 times the recommended daily allowance, of which I was my first thought was like, Thank God for saying that. And then I yelled that. And then I yelled at him, Can you please say that every single day, every single time that you step in front of the camera from now on, because I don’t know how many people heard you, but that’s the greatest advice that you’ve ever given, you know. And so you know, we need to educate people and again, now, especially with younger people, especially with parents, and I think with it, as a pediatrician, they’re much more knowledgeable than parents were 20-25 years ago. They have much more access to information. They’re given the ability to ask questions more because we live in a more open society where people can post questions on on social media and things like that. So if the if the medical world doesn’t keep up, people are going to continue to flock. But I will tell you this something that I’ve noted, and this is also something that I think has happened with covid, even in the general community, medical community, I’ve noticed that there’s been a lot of shift in the direction of more natural, holistic, functional medicine, health. I’m not the outcast that I was 20 years ago, but I haven’t changed. I think that. I think things have shifted, and obviously worlds don’t shift just like that, but I have found that more physicians are referring to me, more therapists and other people referring to me. We didn’t even talk about medical cannabis. It’s kind of funny that medical cannabis is actually what made me the most legit in the mainstream medical world, because that’s what I get the most referrals for. And so, you know, the times they are a change in and you know, I’m the reason why I talk to people and do interviews like this, and why I make myself available at the media and why I do my YouTube channel is to educate people. I realize that everybody can’t come to see me, although I do as part of my health education consultation. So since I can only be a doctor for somebody in the state of Florida, since you have to be Florida person, since I have a Florida license, but I can serve as a health education coach, as consultant, etc, where I go over these things individually. I can order things for people, but I’m certainly can talk about what I see and what I know.

Manon Bolliger  32:31

Yeah, well, good for you, for, you know, staying true to what you saw way back, you know. And, and I think that’s also that level of integrity is what you know, what we’re looking for in a doctor, right? It’s you know you can be right, you can be wrong, but you’re truthful to yourself, and you know people can talk to you. So I admire you.

Dr. David Berger  32:59

Thank you.

Manon Bolliger  33:00

Thank you so much for having this conversation. And, yeah, we probably need a lot longer. I’d love to ask you more about cannabis too, but my audience kind of shuts off after half an hour.

Dr. David Berger  33:10

Yeah, okay. Well, I’m always happy to talk again if you want to, if you want to do another specific topic on that, I’m happy to join you again.

Manon Bolliger  33:16

Oh, that’d be fantastic, actually, yeah, because a lot of people have questions on that.

Dr. David Berger  33:20

Yeah, it’s a big topic.

Manon Bolliger  33:21

Yep, okay, well, thank you so much for your time.

Ending

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