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  His one-year well visit was on a Monday. The Sunday prior to this visit, Johnny’s mother ate a big omelet, and he had a huge flare-up of his eczema. We decided to ditch eggs and dairy from Johnny’s diet and mom’s diet, but we still planned on the ear tube surgery to protect his hearing.

  Then, due to an insurance glitch, Mom postponed the surgery.

  A month after that one-year well visit, the surgery hadn’t been rescheduled, and they came to have his ears rechecked.

  I expected the usual: little Johnny with a few remnant dry, itchy eczema patches on his elbows, knees, and trunk and fluid in his ears.

  But the usual isn’t what I found that day.

  The eczema had completely cleared up. And the fluid behind his eardrums? Nowhere to be found.

  A disco ball dropped down from the clinic ceiling, and Johnny’s mother and I did a happy dance. We could skip the stress, expense, and nerve-wracking experience of watching a baby get wheeled into surgery. He also wouldn’t have general anesthesia, which, while safe, always carries some risk.

  I couldn’t deny what I was seeing, but I couldn’t explain it either. Was food playing a role? As he’d gotten older, had time resolved his eczema and ear infections? Was it all coincidence?

  Over the next seven months, I observed Johnny’s ears and skin. As long as mom kept eggs and dairy out of his diet, his skin and ear issues didn’t return. By listening to Johnny’s mother and putting these pieces together, we prevented further rounds of antibiotics and topical steroids.

  When I saw this same scenario play out with hundreds of other patients, I realized it was more than coincidence. The connection among nutrition, health, and inflammation (which I explain in this book) isn’t something I learned in medical school or pediatric training (circa 2000), nor did many other doctors. Medical schools don’t teach students how to follow the threads of common childhood illnesses to their root cause. Rather, they teach doctors to use medications to treat each illness, how to prescribe these medications, and how to assess their effectiveness.

  And where has this approach gotten us? Fifty percent of American children suffer from chronic illnesses—more than at any other time in our history. Chronic childhood illnesses have gone from being a rarity to being the norm.

  AMERICAN MEDICINE HAS A LOT TO LEARN

  The United States has some of the best-trained doctors and the most sophisticated medical technology on the planet. Yet we’re nowhere near the healthiest country. According to a 2014 Commonwealth Fund report, the US ranked last among eleven industrialized countries on measures of health system quality, efficiency, access to care, and equity.1

  Additionally, in 2011, the US spent the highest amount of money per patient, at $8,508 annually, yet we had the lowest overall outcomes.2 This is compared to the United Kingdom, which ranked first overall and spent less than half of what the US did per patient, at $3,406 annually.3

  In another survey of health measurements, by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the US ranked twenty-sixth out of thirty-four comparable countries. The OECD report stated:

  The US spends far more than any other comparable country, yet we get far less for our money. Americans are fatter, die younger, and don’t get particularly good treatment for many diseases, with the exception of strokes and cancer. We spend 17 percent of our gross domestic product on health care compared to the average of 9.3 for the other countries. We also spend more than the average out-of-pocket for health care. This is just under 3 percent of total household budget, compared to 1.5 percent in Britain, France, and the Netherlands.4

  I’d love for the healthcare reform discussion to include the food industry, the availability of healthy food to people of all economic levels, and more comprehensive nutrition training in medical schools. These topics also need to be tackled on a policy level. Imagine if growing organic fruits and vegetables became a priority for our government. Imagine if schools were supported to feed our children fresh, healthy food, instead of inflammatory processed foods and sugary drinks. We might not remain the country that spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, while remaining thirty-seventh in health outcomes. Let’s invest more time, money, and effort on the front end of our health on food, nutrition education, and physical activity and less on the back end in medical costs.

  LEARNING TO LISTEN

  After Johnny’s turnaround, I continued to listen to parents when they told me about improvement in their child’s illness after a nutrition change, seriously considering the parents’ intuition. Then I’d research and investigate reputable studies to determine if any science supported the parents’ hypothesis. As I did, the link between food and illness became more and more clear, but it took years for me to wrap my head around how profound this link is. Each time I learned something new I had to figure out how to counsel parents and implement these nutrition changes in a busy pediatric practice. It wasn’t enough to tell them what the child should not eat—they also needed to know what the child should eat.

  In spite of my discoveries, the significant skepticism among medical doctors about nutrition made me keep my findings to myself and my families. One day, a fellow pediatrician said to me, “Sheila, what is that voodoo medicine you’re practicing?” I just laughed. But within a year, thanks to rapidly growing research, that same doctor asked me how to dose probiotics for one of his patients.

  A SECOND DISCO BALL DROP

  I had been utilizing nutrition in my pediatric practice for years before I decided to do a fellowship at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. That’s where I, along with sixty-five other healthcare practitioners, learned how every aspect of our environment impacts our health, from what we eat, to how we live, and even what we believe. We commiserated about the difficulty of incorporating the kind of counseling that we needed to do with our patients into the strictures of traditional practices that expected us to minimize time spent on each visit.

  Shortly after I began that program in 2010, the seasonal flu was rampant in Charlotte and across much of the globe. Into my office walked Sandra and her daughter Julie. Julie tested positive for the flu. Sandra’s son Hasan, a darling boy of eight who is on the autism spectrum was also my patient. After taking care of Julie, I asked Sandra how Hasan was doing. She said he was the only one in the household who wasn’t sick. Sandra, her husband, and their other two children all had the flu.

  One year prior, Sandra and I worked together to eliminate gluten and dairy from Hasan’s diet. She’d also incorporated other anti-inflammatory dietary changes and some high-quality, supportive supplements—a probiotic, a whole food supplement, omega-3 fats in the form of fish oil, and vitamin D in the winter.

  “Really. Isn’t that amazing?” I said. Then I thought, Why am I not encouraging this effective anti-inflammatory diet and those same foundational supplements for all of my patients?

  In that moment, the disco ball again dropped down from the clinic ceiling, and the idea for this book was born. My epiphany was that I should be talking to all parents about nutrition for the children I was seeing, not just those who were sick and struggling. The profound impact I could have on the health of many children, simply by educating parents and other healthcare practitioners on how to optimize a child’s nutrition and strategically add some key supplements, both boggled my mind and filled me with hope.

  I had been recommending a variation of Hasan’s regimen with other patients, just not to the same extent. At that time, I didn’t have the extensive research knowledge, clinical experience, and practical understanding of the role food played in inflammation—and, in turn, how inflammation prevented the immune system from functioning properly. I also didn’t have the time to educate families about food. I knew what the kids shouldn’t eat, but figuring out what they should eat, and how to counsel families on this, remained a work in progress.

  Over the years, hundreds of families have come to me after having spent thousands of dollars on testing, x-rays,
procedures, specialist visits, medications, and even surgeries, to no avail. After going through my program, they experience significant improvements—sometimes within a week, sometimes a month, and at other times over six months. After spending years studying and practicing integrative pediatrics, I can finally look parents in the eye, with confidence in my ability to offer a more holistic solution, and say, “Yes—there is another way!”

  A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY’S HEALTH

  After that insightful day with Hasan’s mother and sister, I began to talk to all families about nutrition. One of my goals is to help parents understand that our bodies are ecosystems of cells, tissues, organs, and even microorganisms, working seamlessly to keep the whole bodymind-spirit healthy.

  I also recognized the need to create a step-by-step guide for parents to follow because few families have access to an integrative pediatrician. That’s why I wrote this book and created an online program called 7 Steps to Healthy Kids, Happy Moms. The book and online program are educational tools, not replacements for good, old-fashioned, face-to-face pediatric care.

  I’ve helped hundreds of children and families break the cycle of recurrent antibiotic use, missed school days, sleepless nights, emergency room visits, and all the accompanying stress that comes along with having a sick child.

  If your child suffers from one of the following illnesses—colic, reflux, recurrent ear and/or sinus infections, eczema, keratosis pilaris (bumps on the back of the arms, cheeks, or thighs), stomachaches, constipation or diarrhea, bloating, extreme gas, abdominal pain, chronic runny nose, mouth breathing, snoring, allergies, or asthma—this book offers the possibility of changing your child’s health and quality of life forever.

  Other issues that often improve through the HKHM program include poor sleep, mood swings, irritability, anxiety, behavior challenges, meltdowns, focus, and attention. And since I recommend the entire family do the program together, you’ll experience improved health as well. Parents come back two months after changing their family’s diet: their skin is clear, they’re jogging again, they’ve dropped several pounds, and they have an all-around better outlook on life.

  This book has been written with great care over several years. I love being able to help parents cease the late-night Dr. Google searches, so you can sleep more soundly. This peace of mind allows room for you to feel joy with your child and family again. How much better is it to be laughing over ridiculous idiosyncrasies and goofy jokes, since you’re no longer worried about your child’s health?!

  Most of all, I want to help your child get back into balance and grow into a healthy adult.

  SECTION I

  healthy cell, healthy gut, healthy child

  CHAPTER 1

  an integrative approach to pediatric medicine

  AS A YOUNG CHILD, I would get really sick two or three times a year. I’d lie on the couch in the family room, with a towel and a bucket, barely able to move. The fevers were so high I couldn’t even watch TV. I’d get weak enough that my mother would have to carry me to the bathroom. She and I can’t remember exactly what age I was when these fevers started, but we think it was first grade (so I would have been seven years old) and that it happened about four or five times over a two-year period.

  I realize in this modern era of medicine at our fingertips, it may sound like my mother was waiting a long time to take me in to be checked. I am the youngest of five, and by the time I came along my mother knew that a viral infection did not need an antibiotic and that, more often than not, our bodies are strong and designed to fight most run-of-the-mill childhood illnesses. She was actually quite diligent with my illness, as you will see.

  When this first started happening, day four or five of my fever would inevitably result in a trip to Dr. Nowak’s office, which I grew to dread. Dr. Nowak would listen to my heart and lungs and feel the glands in my neck. Then I would get an extremely painful shot of penicillin in my rumpus that felt like he was throwing a dart at a bullseye. He didn’t do any testing, just gave me a shot. If you’ve ever had a shot of penicillin, it feels like cement being injected into your backside. I was scared to death of him, and it didn’t help that he never spoke to me directly. However, I always got better within two or three days . . . the beauty of antibiotics.

  Dr. Nowak told my mother he didn’t think I needed any further testing to figure out what was driving the fevers. But once the recurrent pattern of fevers began to emerge, my mother’s gut told her something was triggering them, and we needed to get to the root of the issue. As I was writing the chapter, I called Mar (the name we affectionately call my mother) to talk about this pattern. She said it always happened around the time of an event in our family, like a party for a graduation or something. With five kids, some milestone was always on the horizon. Our house would have been buzzing with friends and relatives getting the house ready and food prepared (not that I was likely doing any of that, but I am sure I was running around with all the melee).

  Mar noticed that the fevers seemed to be triggered when my system was run down and taxed (stressed) by external factors. (I am having a chuckle as I write this because the same thing happened to me in high school after my brother and I threw a raging party when my parents were out of town. I stayed up all night cleaning the house and two days later, I had an attack of appendicitis and had to have my appendix removed.) Was it coincidence or cause and effect? Of course I will never know, but I don’t think it was solely coincidence.

  Back to my fevers and my mother’s sleuthing. After about the third episode, Mar started to realize that when these fevers happened, nobody else at home was sick. This became her clue that it wasn’t likely a virus. However, Dr. Nowak seemed content to continue giving me injections of penicillin. He never attempted to find the underlying cause and rebuked my mother’s attempts to do so.

  After about the fourth or fifth episode, she took me to the Cleveland Clinic for further testing—back then they didn’t require referrals. As Mar and I talked about this in 2020, we marveled at how she figured it all out. She reminds me a great deal of the incredibly bright and tenacious mothers I see in my practice. How did she even know what type of specialist to take me to or which hospital? As Deb Allen, the amazing pharmacist who works with me—and the mother of teenage triplets—always says in our office, “The mother of a sick child is better than an FBI agent any day of the week at finding answers.”

  I ended up getting a kidney ultrasound and a VCUG (voiding cystourethrogram). My kidney function was fine, but they discovered I had a small area on one kidney with an abnormal appearance. (They also found incidentally that I have four kidneys and four ureters . . . if you ever need a kidney, you know where to come.) My young ears remember it being explained that this area had carried a low-level infection for much of my childhood. When my immune system was run down, I’d get a kidney infection. So, the high fevers were recurrent kidney infections, which can easily end up in sepsis (an overwhelming full-body infection where the organs begin to shut down).

  The doctors at the Cleveland Clinic prescribed a six-month course of a low-dose antibiotic, and I’ve never had a problem since. This is the beauty of conventional medicine and of a mother trusting her instinct. Watching my own parents trust their guts when it came to raising us, I have always trusted the mothers in my practice when they tell me they think there is something else going on with their child that we have not figured out yet. This book is for you mothers who know there may be something else to your child’s illness than what seems to meet the eye.

  I share my kidney infection story with you for two reasons, one professional and the other personal. First, I am quite certain these experiences with Dr. Nowak are the reason I became a pediatrician. I had no voice in his office and I remember vowing then and there that I would become a doctor and that I would speak directly to the children who came to see me. Today, I include the children in my discussion with their parents and give them a say in the plan if at all possible. Second, p
ersonally, my experience with Dr. Nowak taught me never to underestimate the mind of a child and their ability to understand and interpret what is happening around them.

  As you’ll see in this book, food will certainly help many inflammatory issues and it also helps the immune system to work optimally, but we always have to keep the big picture in mind. From my many years of practicing medicine, I can also guarantee that all the right foods and supplements on the planet would not have healed my recurring kidney infections. I needed a course of antibiotics to resolve each kidney infection I had. And then I needed a less potent antibiotic over that long duration to fully clear the issue.

  THE INCREASING PREVALENCE OF CHILDHOOD ILLNESSES

  My childhood was spent in a suburb of Cleveland. All the Kilbane kids walked to the public elementary school at the end of our street. All five of us cycled through the same amazing teachers at Erieview Elementary School and my memories there are some of my fondest. Fifth grade was the first time I ever remember noticing any type of illness at school, when my friend Lisa was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Lisa had to prick her finger at lunch and carry a snack with her at all times.

  Think about that: One kid in a school of three hundred had a chronic illness (at least as far as I knew). We didn’t have kids using albuterol inhalers or storing EpiPens in the nurse’s office in case they got an accidental food exposure. We didn’t have peanut-free classrooms or restrictions on the type of foods we could bring for lunch. The 1970s at Erieview Elementary School was definitely a different era. Today in most towns across the US, 50 percent of American children now suffer from chronic illnesses—more than at any other time in our history. Chronic childhood illnesses have gone from being a rarity to the norm.