The Longevity Formula
Is there a secret formula to living a longer, healthier life?
The Longevity Formula offers a comprehensive approach to well-being, providing actionable insights and strategies to transform your life and achieve holistic health and longevity.
This formula encompassing faith, light, movement, mindset, nutrition, and science, serves as your roadmap towards your best self. This podcast is designed for those who are driven to optimize their lives through the dynamic fusion of science, technology, and lifestyle choices.
As a leading functional neurologist, Dr. Brandon Crawford shares his expertise in brain healing and optimization. With a proven track record of restoring functions lost to brain injuries and tackling complex neurological disorders, Dr. Crawford reveals the profound potential within us all.
Unlock your brain's potential and discover the secrets to a long and healthy life. Tune in every Friday for a new episode.
The Longevity Formula
What Medical School Didn't Teach Me About Vaccines | Dr. Gator Warsh
Board-certified pediatrician Dr. Joel "Gator" Warsh offers a balanced, non-polarized look at vaccine safety, revealing the scientific gaps often hidden from parents. Dr. Warsh, author of Between a Shot and a Hard Place, discusses the absence of long-term vaccinated vs. unvaccinated studies and how the 1986 liability shield removed pharmaceutical accountability, creating little incentive for better safety research. He addresses institutional censorship, including why the Henry Ford Health study showing adverse health trends was suppressed. The conversation focuses on empowering parents with honest information and practical advice for navigating vaccine decisions, finding supportive pediatricians, and creating personalized schedules, grounded in a call for more scientific rigor.
Resources Mentioned
Between a Shot and a Hard Place (book by Dr. Joel "Gator" Warsh)
Between a Shot and a Hard Place (Substack by Dr. Joel “Gator” Warsh)
Henry Ford Health's unpublished vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study (exposed by Del Bigtree)
The McCullough Report (review of autism and vaccine literature)
Dissolving Illusions (book on vaccine history)
Turtles All the Way Down (book on vaccine research methodology)
Aaron Siri's Book (on vaccine law and liability)
Paul Offit's Book (pro-vaccine perspective)
Kevin McKernan's Research (DNA contamination in COVID vaccines, SV40 promoters)
The HighWire (Del Bigtree's show)
An Inconvenient Study (Del Bigtree’s documentary)
Products
NeuroSolution Full Spectrum CBD
NeuroSolution Broad Spectrum CBD
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For more information, resources, and podcast episodes, visit https://tinyurl.com/3ppwdfpm
Voice Over: Welcome to the Longevity Formula with Dr. Brandon Crawford. Let's explore the new era of wellness.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Hey, everyone. So recently Dell Bigtree pulled back the curtain on the vaccine industry and medical freedom. The response was massive and divisive. Some of you felt validated, some of you felt scared, and a lot of you asked, okay, so what do I actually do with this information?
I still have to take my kid to the pediatrician. I still have to make decisions. What now? So today we're bringing you the other side of this conversation. Not an activist, but a practicing pediatrician who's in the exam room every single day with real families making real decisions. Dr. Joel Gator. Walsh is a board certified Los Angeles based pediatrician, and he wrote the book that pediatricians are Too Afraid, afraid to Write.
That book is called Between a Shot and a Hard Place where Dr. Walsh's goals, as he put it, is not simply to argue for or against vaccination, but rather to empower parents with information so they can make informed decisions for their families. I believe that this conversation and others like it are vitally important, not only for the health and wellbeing of our children, but also to our society as a whole.
So without further ado, Dr. Walsh, thank you for taking time and thank you for joining the show today. Thank you for having me on again. Absolutely, man. So I think the majority of my audience probably knows you pretty well. And like I said, you've been on before. But you can you kind of walk us through a little bit.
You know, your journey, how did you start out as a pediatrician? How did you end up in this integrative pediatric practice that you are now so that everyone kind of understands you know, your journey?
Dr. Joel Warsh: Yeah, I, I, so I did all the regular medical training. I trained med school in Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson, and then I did my pediatrics training in Children's Hospital Los Angeles.
So, you know, super fantastic Western program. Children's Hospital is one of the top five programs in the country and, and very western. And that was kinda my, my training. So it wasn't really very naturally minded, I guess. I, I would say I, you know, growing up I, I ate pretty healthy and, and played lots of sports and, you know, did all the regular things, but I wasn't particularly health conscious, I would say.
But during training I met my wife or now wife, who is very holistic minded and it did open up my eyes to a different world and, and to different perspective on things and, and I was really just very interested. In that, as I started to learn about it, you know, when you're in training, especially somewhere like children's hospital or regular medical program, anything that really is about natural is kind of woowoo and out there, and that's all you really hear and you don't really think much, much more about it.
I mean, even some like chiropractics or you know, cranial cell, all those things are just kind of like, ah, you know, the, the other right. Not, not science based. Right. And that's kind of what you hear. You don't really think anything else of it, but. As I started to look into things, so I started to research things a little bit.
I was like, yeah, this is really interesting. Like, and then I did a functional medicine course, and when I was sitting there, I was like, why are we not learning this? Like, there's nothing woo wooo about this at all. I mean, obviously integrative stuff, you can get way out there, but, you know, functional medicine, root cause thinking about diet, nutrition, exercise, like none of that's woo, that's obviously like very common sense, most important stuff we should be learning and we're not.
So I just got really interested because I thought it was really very practical and useful for my future career. And so I started learning a lot more in integrated medicine and have been practicing and kind of integrated those two together. And, and I'm gonna, again, smarter medicine, you know, in practice we'll do medication if we need it.
I just feel like we should balance both worlds and have been trying to do that now for, for about a decade. But as it, you know, relates to vaccines, you learn very quickly once you get out into the world, the real world in practice and you're doing integrated medicine at all that people have a lot of questions about vaccines.
In that, in that space. And, and I really wasn't taught all that much. I realized about vaccines. I mean, we learn about the diseases and, and, and how horrible they used to be and how, how many fewer cases we have now and the vaccines that we have and how amazing they are. And you know, here's your schedule.
Yay. You know, go do it. And that, that's really all you, you think about it, you know, you don't really think anything else of it because that's what you're trained and they're just so great and, and you know, you're, you're taught to go do them. And, and as I was in practice, I was getting more and more questions, more and more good questions.
And I didn't know the answers and I didn't understand a lot of what I was being asked. So I had to learn and had to research about it. And, and the more that you read, the more I would say interesting that it becomes, and the more you realize what, what we, what we really don't know. And even the things that you're taught are not necessarily totally true, but you also have seen over the last decade that it was really censored as a topic.
So it wasn't something you could really talk about on, on, on online. And that was really frustrating and certainly during the pandemic it was very, very frustrating. So that's what, in that time when I was so frustrated during the pandemic, I decided I was gonna write a book and I was gonna do a deep dive if I wanted to talk about it, because I did want to talk about it.
I really wanted to have discussions. I'm not against vaccines, I just think that we should be having discussions about them and we should be open to having conversations and parents should be able to talk about these things and express their concerns. So that's what really led me to write the book. And I guess thankfully now we're in a little different place and it's not so censored and you can't have these conversations, which has been.
Wonderful. And, and when I wrote the book, I wasn't sure if I was gonna lose my license. I wasn't sure, you know, I was gonna get tons of hate. Thankfully I haven't. And it's been great so far and people are super open to talking about it and it's a different time. So that's, that's great. So that's where, that's what got me here now.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah. Well, and you know, just to kind of talk about your book a little bit, right? I, I, number one, I really appreciate that you did have the courage to write it. I love your balanced approach that you took to it. It's, I, I actually loved the historical perspective. You really did a great job of going through the history of vaccines.
I, I personally like to do that when I teach functional neurology, right? I know it's a completely different mindset, different topic and whatnot, but I think that we need to understand where we came from in order to understand where we're going. So I really appreciated that. What, I guess one question I have for you, what was it, was there like a decisive moment?
Was there like something that happened? Like what made you really start to question the safety, the efficacy of vaccines? Like w was that just a momentary thing or was that just a lingering question that had been brewing in you?
Dr. Joel Warsh: I don't think there was any one specific moment. I, I think the really, it's the comment, I guess, the accumulation of questions and concerns that parents had over the years and, and, and just not being able to find answers for things and things not making sense and, and certainly what pushed me over the edge was COVID and, and kind of safe and effective and the way that things were being forced and not counting natural immunity.
There were just so many things during COVID that made absolutely no sense. To anybody who's done science before, it was like, you know, natural meaning obviously counts. Like it always counted. So why are we discounting it now? Or forcing people to do something that's new that we don't have any research on long term just didn't make any sense.
And so I think that really pushed me over the edge. Like, what, what is going on here? Like, you know, we've, we've heard, I think people that are in this space and like they've heard stuff about vaccines. I think for most people, adults, they don't really think about it at all unless they have kids. And at least until COVID, like it just wasn't something that was really on most people's minds anymore.
And the more questions I got, the more I looked into it, the more questions I had. And being somebody who has to talk about vaccines and, and potentially give vaccines every single day in the office, like I felt like it's something I need to be educated on and I don't understand. So many things and it just, I can't find what I feel like should be there.
You know, like you're taught certain things about the research and the safety and how they were done and you're like, I can't find it. So like, why am I missing something? Like, some of these things just have to be wrong. And, and I, and I had to do that research to be able to at least provide the most informed consent that I could for projects.
And I still think there's just a lot that we don't know, but at least you can give people as informed consent as you can. And, and, sure. And, and to me, the, the goal with the book is to open up discussion. 'cause I think there are things that we must do to get to the answers that we have not done in terms of the research.
And we're never gonna do that unless there's acknowledgement of what we haven't done thus far and what we don't know. And I think medicine is not doing that. Like we're, we're, we're just saying, oh, they're just safe. We know that. And, and I don't think that we do. Like, I don't think we have that research long term to say yes or no.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Agreed. I love how you just outlined as a pediatrician. Who is the gatekeeper, the one that's supposed to be, you know, recommending what vaccines and when, and you know, what, monitoring childhood health status and all of these things you said there were questions that needed to be answered and you just had to find those answers and they weren't there.
So as a, as a practicing pediatrician, when you could not find those answers, how did that make you feel, just on a personal level, philosophical level, professional level? Was it just completely like obliterating to your whole mindset? Like what did that do to your, your concept of practicing medicine?
Dr. Joel Warsh: I mean, it just makes you confused.
I think it makes you confused about how to answer the questions appropriately. How to give true informed consent when you don't even know the answer to some of the questions that you're getting. And. I, I think for me there's, again, I think there was one moment it'd be something different, but because it was kind of a slow trickle, like nothing that, you know, I've seen lately really surprises me about anything.
It seems like there's all sorts of craziness and all sorts of topics, so I, I think that it's just confusing when, when we're trying to make recommendations to help kids and to prevent illness and to make kids as healthy as possible. And it seems like the goal in medicine these days is to prescribe more and to do more, more vaccines is always better.
And I don't think that makes a lot of sense. Like the goal is not more vaccines, the goal is healthier kids. Yes. And, and it seems like, you know, if you wanna call it two sides, let's say I don't, I don't, I think most people are in the middle, but, you know, you'd have the very, very pro-vaccine people and the very, very, I would say anti-vaccine individuals and, and they're having two different conversations that never connect.
You never really see debate between those worlds, but it just, there's like one world of, like the vaccines work. They have great benefit, they protect you from the diseases, go do vaccines, and there's no discussion about the risks from vaccines and it's not part of the equation. And then in the, you know, air, air codes, anti-vax worlds, like vaccines just cause so much harm.
And they cause so much damage and there's no discussion about the benefits and who it might actually help. And, and those two worlds don't collide and they're just out there and, and, and, and that's not beneficial to most parents that actually have to make a decision that might be forced to do it for school.
I have to decide like, what is the risk that I should be taking? Should I be taking the risk from nature, should be taking the risk from the vaccine. What's the risk from a vaccine? How is this gonna cause long-term harm? Am I crazy for letting my kid be exposed to measles and not getting the vaccine?
Like, what, what am I supposed to think as a parent? It's so confusing and it's more confusing than ever, certainly with discourse today, but at least there is some discourse.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Sure. I do always point out you know, when I'm talking to either side, right? Because, you know, I'm coming to in contact with both sides.
The goal of both sides, whether you're one of those, you know, super pro-vaccine person or super anti-vaccine patient, the goal is the same is to have a healthy, safe child, right? And I think that if both sides were to acknowledge that, right? We have the same goal. Let's discuss how we can really work together.
Because you're right, the goal is to have safety. The, the goal is to have healthier kids, which we can get into later. We're tracking the data. We don't have healthier kids. It's actually going the opposite direction at this point in time. But I'm actually curious because you've brought up COVID several times.
Have you seen the res, the research put out by Kevin Mc Kiernan's team? So he is put out, you know, he is researched what is actually in this COVID vaccine and they're finding DNA fragments SV 40 promoters and those types of things. That, that was, to me, that was kind of frightening to see that those things were in the vaccine.
What are your thoughts on that?
Dr. Joel Warsh: I mean, the ingredients in vaccines I think are a much bigger topic and concern level than, than than practitioners can give it in modern medicine. I mean, it's literally all you ever hear is, oh, it's just a small amount of, you know, in, in including Rex, like a small amount of Illumina, a small amount of formalde, oh, a small amount of this, it's fine.
You know, and, and, and that's all that you hear and, and you really don't get a lot of discussion on, on how this might be affecting. Certain individuals how it might affect certain kids with genetics that are not as good at detoxing it. It is like you have a peanut, you walk by a whiff, you have a whiff of it, and some kids go into full anaphylaxis.
So a small amount is not the full argument. Like I think everybody's different.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Mm-hmm. And
Dr. Joel Warsh: with the COVID vaccines, I mean, if it is true that there are a lot of ingredients in there that aren't supposed to be in there, obviously that's concerning, right? I mean, that should be concerning about any vaccine.
But I'm sure if you study any of the vaccines, you probably find stuff in there that you wouldn't expect to be in there. I mean, anything that's mass produced like that for multiple different places, who knows, you know, what's gonna be in it, what the batch to batch variation is. It's supposed to be the same, but I, I highly doubt that it's, you know, totally, exactly the same.
I'm sure you get a little more aluminum in some vaccines, a little bit less, I'm sure it's not perfect. But what the safe levels are where they're supposed to be. Exactly. I mean, you'd have to study it, right? We, we have some research, but you certainly are never studying kids vaccinated versus unvaccinated.
You're not studying these things long term. It's really complicated to, to research. Any of this, because there's so many factors that go into it, but you certainly don't even have the basic research that you need to look into cumulative health and cumulative safety of vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids.
So we, we can't even start there, you know, and I think that's the next step that needs to be done. And if you, you know, I always get asked like, well, what, what's the biggest thing that shocked me? And I would say overall, it's, it's the lack of long-term research like you would think these things were studied a lot in the long term, but they're really not.
Research is really all, almost all before the, the, they hit the market. I mean, certainly there's some epidemiologic studies after, but you don't have vaccinated versus on vaccinated studies. So you really don't know what happens long-term. You, you can't tell if an unvaccinated child has a lower risk of some of these chronic conditions and that may have mattered less a hundred years ago or, or, you know, 75 years ago or, or whenever, when there were more infections and people were dying from infections all the time.
But that's not what's going on anymore. We live in a different world and, and chronic disease is such a huge issue right now. And so it is a reasonable question to say how are vaccines related to chronic disease if they are, and the only way to really know that is to do the prospective trials that you would need to do.
You can't rely on epidemiology. They can only get you so far because epidemiology is so biased. And, and that's why I think you see pro-vaccine people finding very pro-vaccine outcomes for epidemiologic studies on vaccines and then anti-vaccine people finding really, you know, bad results for vaccines and, and, and it's really tough to know what's correct.
And, and the way to figure that out is to do the proper trials to do a prospective trial to follow kids forward, to see if kids there are truly healthier if they're unvaccinated from chronic conditions. But it still complicates things because you can't, you also have to take into account after that fact the infections.
Like if everyone solves vaccinating, some of these diseases are gonna come back and that, that could cause lots of issues too, potentially. So you, you have to weigh those two things, but you first have to figure out what kind of problems the vaccines might be causing to. Even be able to identify what your risks are and then also to try to make them better.
Like you could, if you could identify what, what might be going on or how things might be related, you could potentially make a vaccine better, still work, but make it have less side effects. Like is, is, is, yeah, that's the way we should be looking at things, I think.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah, no, totally agree with that. That's again, if the goal is truly to have you know, a safer option to make kids healthier, that's what we should be looking for.
Absolutely. So just to ask very clearly, so, you know, the audience can understand this, so have there ever been any fully randomized placebo controlled studies on vaccines? And I'm talking about the kind that use an inactive placebo instead of let's say, another vaccine, right?
Dr. Joel Warsh: Yeah, no, I mean, we, we have not had long-term unvaccinated versus vaccinated studies.
Even retrospective, not really. But, but certainly not prospective. So we don't have the kind of studies that you would need to really be able to look at this in a definitive way. There, there are absolutely epidemiologic studies. Still, epidemiology is really not vaccinated versus unvaccinated, but Right.
You do have some, when they say that there's an unvaccinated versus vaccinated, what, what it really is, is you're looking at one vaccine. So let's say MMR, measles moms, Ruba, it's like kids that got MMR versus kids that didn't get MMR in the setting of getting your other vaccines. So it's not that that's a useless study, it's still very useful, but it's not answering the question, which I think parents have.
At the root of it is, are unvaccinated kids at lower risk of chronic disease? And that's a really important question because to me that's the missing piece of the puzzle right now. To really being able to make a, a, a calculation of your risk versus benefits. Because if you were to say, well, if you take a vaccine and it has no risks and it, and you only just prevent a disease, well, that's a good thing.
Then, you know, I can pretty easily recommend to a parent, I could say, well, you know, there's really no risk. It's not gonna cause any problems for you and you're not, your kid's never gonna get measles. So, you know, I, I think that's a good benefit. But if it increases your risk of asthma or allergies or autism or autoimmune conditions or whatever it is, then the question is by how much and, and how many and, and that matters.
Because if you're saying, well, yeah, it decreases your chance of having bad measles. So one in, I don't know, let's say a hundred thousand, but one in 10 kids are gonna have an autoimmune condition from this thing, then, then that's not a good weight calculation. Right? It has to be a better a better benefit than there is a risk.
So you have to know what that risk is.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah, absolutely. So, so if we don't have that type of study. I, I don't understand. Why can we just not do vaccine versus placebo? Why, why do they have to do vaccine versus a different version of the vaccine? The only conclusion, the only answer I've been able to find is, well, it's an ethical concern, right?
If we know that this is gonna help prevent the disease, then why would we withhold that in a control group? Like that's the only, you know, discussion that's been around that. Like, why won't they just do the freaking study?
Dr. Joel Warsh: Well, the, there, so there's an ethics around a vaccine that's already on the market.
So the ethical concern really comes in if you're saying, well, we've had a vaccine on the market for a while, we know that it works. So we can't just study unvaccinated kids because then you're not giving the vaccine that we know works to a bunch of kids, and that's unethical. So that, that's where that unethical scenario comes from.
And you can debate that, but I, at least I understand that that makes some sense. So we can just kind of leave it there. The problem is there should be no ethics around when you're bringing a new vaccine out for the first time or any medical product, you should always have to study that against a placebo.
That should be the baseline. So you have a baseline to look at the safety. Now, for a lot of vaccines, that was never done. So we're in a predicament now because they never did it against a, a baseline of, of, of a placebo. A placebo. And now we have these things that have been on the market for 10, 20, 30 years.
And so you can't do that study ethically because they're on the market, but it wasn't done originally. So the first thing we have to do is to say, as a rule, we're never gonna anything on the market again, unless you do those studies, right? Anything that's completely new, we have nothing on the market for, if you're gonna get, make a new vaccine completely for a new disease, if you're ever gonna get it on the market, it should be required to have a inverse placebo.
Study or many studies before, like there should be nothing that's unethical or even debatable about that. I mean, I was shocked that this stuff hasn't been done. You would think it was, if you're injecting something into newborn baby, you would think, oh, they would've studied against a placebo with a hundred thousand kids before they're injecting into babies.
But, you know, lo and behold, we're giving Hep B based on trials where it was in a hundred kids and they studied safety for five days. Like it's, it's insanity. And that, that's not to say that the Hep B vaccine is unsafe or is causing problems, we don't know. 'cause they never studied it appropriately, but it should be the standard that we require it.
So yes, I, I think moving forward, like there's nothing anti-science say, I don't wanna inject something or give something to my baby unless you've studied it extensively and can show that it's safe. Like how is that un unscientific, that's like, that's science, right? So I don't think that should be debatable.
It also shouldn't be debatable that we could do vaccinated versus unvaccinated studies looking retrospectively at the data that we already have, like that's really easy to do and it should be done on many different databases. We should be able to do studies going forward where people choose which group they're in.
So there's nothing unethical about saying, all right, we're gonna do a study, we're gonna follow you forward. You can choose if you wanna get a vaccine or not get a vaccine. If you're not gonna get vaccines anyways. There are plenty of people that would volunteer for that study. If you change your mind, you wanna get vaccines in the future, go for it.
We're not gonna stop you. There's nothing unethical about that either. So that's what we should be doing, I think.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Absolutely. So I, I have to ask you right there, there's two there's one study, one report I want to ask you about. Right. So we have the Henry Ford Health Science study that was released.
And that was the center of Del Bigtree documentary an inconvenient study. Right. And then we also had here recently we have the McCullough report that came out, which is not a study, you know, really just looking at what, 126 different publications, I think. What are your thoughts on these two items?
Dr. Joel Warsh: Yeah, I know two pretty different scenarios. So let's, let's start with the, the Henry Ford study. I would say that's the most important research in, in vaccines to date. I, I think it's really important, especially because they were able to get the hidden camera footage. I think that's really helpful to understand what's happened in the vaccine world.
I mean, this is what I suspected happen. I think this is what anybody that really looks into it kind of comes to conclusion that, that the research isn't all there because it was just wasn't done or was, was hidden or, you know, people just were too concerned to do it. But this kind of proved it on camera.
Like I, I think it's really interesting to watch this guy who's very pro-vaccine, who's not really seemingly against kind of controversy. Like he was involved with several controversial things before then he, you know, he does this study. In my mind, from what I've seen, it's a very good study. It's done extremely well.
As about as good as any other study has been done on vaccines, they come up with results that he was surprised to find, which to me is really important because, you know, usually have a pro-vaccine person finding a pro-vaccine outcome. And this is someone who's super pro-vaccine who finds things that he didn't expect to find.
And so I think that's really valuable. And then you watch him say that he didn't wanna publish it, right? He didn't wanna publish it. He was afraid for his career. And he's right, like he's right. He probably would've gotten destroyed after that study came out. But, but ultimately, this is research that was done.
It was good research. It should have been published. And we don't have this great study that. Could have pointed to the fact that maybe, maybe there are some issues with long-term chronic health from vaccines and, and no one study is perfect. Maybe the data is bad. Maybe there's some reason, you know, whatever, they didn't control things properly.
But this is good information to say, look, here's what we're finding. Let's replicate this. Let's see if it holds true. Let's do it at Kaiser, let's do it at Harvard. Let's do it other places. Let's see what we can find. Because if all the studies are showing the same thing, well that's concerning that we're having increased risk of chronic conditions from the the vaccinated kids.
And now we do really have to do a prospective trial to see if this is true or why this is happening so we can figure out what's going on. So that study is very, very important. And I'm glad that it has come to light now because, you know, I think it's just been unclear for a while, like, what's going on with that research?
And that makes it very, very clear that like people are just too afraid to do it and if they do find something, they don't publish it. And so you only get one side of the research, not the other. And that's not to say again that vaccines cause a problem. I'm saying we don't have the side of the research that maybe shows where it might cause issues.
And so we, we don't have an honest debate and an honest, I think cumulation of research that we really need to be able to move forward. We need that, we need that research as unbiased,
Dr. Brandon Crawford: right? So why this, you know, this isn't a, a new study, right? It's been out for a while now. It's not been published.
But why hasn't it been widely accepted by providers? I mean, it's been, you know, accessible. So why haven't doctors like taken it and been like, Hey, you know, why aren't we publishing this? Why, why is no one raising flags? Why is no one drawing. Attention to it, right? Like it just kind of has sat there for years.
Yeah, I mean,
Dr. Joel Warsh: I, I, I think that, well, I mean, originally it wasn't out there, so no one probably knew about it. And then even now after this, it's still not published. So most doctors wouldn't even be aware of it. Most doctors don't follow, so just accessibility
Dr. Brandon Crawford: concern. Yeah. They don't follow
Dr. Joel Warsh: Dell Big Tree or you know, the high wire.
Other things like that. I mean, he's, he's kind of seen this in, out there kook, you know, in medicine, right? He always was, he was part of that, like RFK, you know, crazy crew or whatever you wanna call them from the past. And and so anything that they do is like, oh, just anti-vaxxers, whatever, you know, they're so, they're not gonna like, see any of that.
And even if they did see it, they would say, oh, it's just, it's unpublished. It's, it's no good. You know, there it was unpublished because the research is bad. They're never gonna actually look at the study or, or, or watch the video or have any clue about it. So I, I think that's the way that it kind of, why it's not more popular or why it's not really known is 'cause there's just, it's just not, not a disseminated study in a big journal.
And that's what doctors see.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah. No, I can understand. That's the standard of medicine. I, I get that. So let's compare and contrast that to the McCullough report.
Dr. Joel Warsh: Yeah, I think the McCullough report's very different. I, I think to me, that that has been way blown out of proportion in terms of its usefulness.
I, I think, you know, I looked at it, I read through it. I think it's very good in terms of, of like, they were thorough. They spend time, they put together a report, but it's just, it's basically like an article in a, in a, in a magazine. It's not research, not really. And, and I think it's the, the conclusions that people are drawing or the discussion that people are having on it is way outta proportion.
It's, it's a group of individuals that have a perspective. They're putting that, they're putting that together. They're choosing their research that they wanna discuss a lot of the things in there and even published studies and, and, and things like that. So stuff that kind of goes with their narrative and they're packaging it together and discussing it.
I, I think it's good in the fact that they're talking about autism. They're talking about multifactorial reasons behind autism at, they're going through the, the vaccine research on autism, which is really useful because it's something that's been censored for so long and I think needs to be out there.
But it, it really is just a packaged, a bunch of information of people who are quite biased in that subject and not presenting both sides in any sort of way. And, and it's being presented. I don't even think they're necessarily presenting in that way, but people have taken and been like, oh, the, the color report, the analysis, the study.
And it's, it's not really any of that. It's just really a summary of research in, in terms of like their kind of narrative of what they, they feel like is going on. And it really kind of disregards the other. Research that has been done. And, and I wouldn't say the research on autism's good. It's terrible, but there still is plenty of research out there that shows that, that vaccines don't cause autism.
So you have to include that too. And you can, you can say why you don't agree with that research or why that research is biased or why that research hasn't looked in the right way, which it hasn't. I mean, it really just studied MR and thi Marisol, so we don't actually know. But, but it's, it's really just kind of a biased view from the other side.
And so I think it's good as a counterbalance to all the research that's out there, but it's not really a study in any way. It's not not controlled. There's no, they're, it's not a meta-analysis. They're not combining things in any way. They're not looking at effect sizes. They are including things that are small as the same as something that's big or something that's done better.
So it's, it's just more of a narrative and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. I think it's fine as a narrative. It's just not research or a study. It's just, right. Like imagine someone put an article in the Atlantic or the New York Times or whatever, and they synthesize, like that's what they did.
They just synthesize the research and they put a lot of effort into it. So I think it's great, but not, not science,
Dr. Brandon Crawford: right? We need to take it for what it is, right? I mean, and unfortunately a lot of people don't know how to, to read this information and take it for what it is. So it's, it's good to hear from you about how to do that.
Can we talk a little bit about liability shielding? Right? So since 1986, if you get injured by a vaccine, you're not actually able to sue the vaccine manufacturer. You actually have to go to a federal court, you know, petition for the na national Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund. That's concerning for me.
Right? So I'm obviously, you know, we have to carry malpractice insurance, but then I also have. You know, I manufacture lasers, right? Therapeutic lasers. And when we're manufacturing and designing our lasers, we have to test each component part according to FDA standards, even the electronics, the optics even the casing, like everything has to be individually tested and then tested as a whole collectively as a system.
But still, if I injure, you know, if that device supposedly injured someone, I'm liable. This is true for every product out there. Right? So it, it concerns me that that's not the case for vaccines since 1986. Can you give us some narrative on that?
Dr. Joel Warsh: Yeah, it's, it's another big piece of the puzzle that I think is really interesting and unique and concerning when it comes to vaccines that just most people wouldn't know.
I mean, I certainly didn't know it, right? Until you start to learn about these things. And, and so I don't think most doctors really do know any of this and, and. It matters when you're talking about having one product that's different than all the rest. And when you talk about like a country, like America and and capitalist society, one of the big checks and balances is being able to be sued.
And, and that's really one of the, the, the big factors here. You know, when, when you have a pharma company, they'll study a medication for five or 10 years because they wanna see if anything long-term happens. 'cause they don't wanna get sued for billions of dollars or anything that's made here. You don't, you don't wanna get sued.
So you wanna make sure your product is as good as possible. And if it does start causing problems, you either have to take it off the market or you have to change it because you, otherwise you'll keep getting sued. So that, that's really one of the major checks and balances we have in our society and, and for vaccines we don't have that.
So you have a situation in the eighties where. There were so many lawsuits that companies were just deciding that it wasn't worth it anymore to make vaccines. They were too concerned they weren't gonna make money, so they just dropped out of making vaccines and the rest of them were considering it. And the solution at that time was, well, we want vaccines, so therefore we need to give them a liability shield.
And so they enacted the, the, the vaccine Liability Shield in 1986. And from then on, you sue the government. If you are gonna sue, you know, basically you can't sue them. I mean, there are a few exceptions, but mostly you can't sue them. And that's where we sit today. And so what you get with that scenario is a product that once it hits the market, you have all the marketing done for you by doctors and CDC and FDA, you have all the I mean, it's automatic kind of, you know, everybody needs to get it.
So there's a huge market for it. They don't have to really do anything and there's no liability, so you can't sue them. So they have a lot of incentive to get them on the market. They have no incentive to make them better. They don't have to care about safety other than. You take it and everybody just dies the next day, then, you know, maybe it's not gonna get on the market.
But they just, they don't need to really care about safety other than to get it past the review. And so they have every reason to lie, cheat, you know, change the research, not look for things. They have every reason not to look for safety. And, and, and, and it's not nefarious. It's just if you, if you, if you don't have to be sued, then if you don't find a problem, then the problem doesn't exist.
And they can say it's safe if they never found it. And I, and I think that's where we are today, where you have all these studies where they studied against a non ander placebo against another vaccine. You're looking at relative safety you finding out things later. They're not long term, so there's no push to find things before.
And then there's nobody looking after. And so anyone that says, oh, well we have a problem, they say, no, no, it's not to do with the vaccine. Or if you do relate it to a vaccine, which is still very rare because there's not that much you can sue them for in, in terms of the government, then it just goes through the government.
The government just pays and that's it. And it doesn't have anything to do with the company. So it's a really. Bad situation for our health, I would say, in terms of having the best possible vaccines and making them better. 'cause there is no incentive to make them better.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah, I mean the, the markets lined up to generate a lot of revenue.
And that's what it seems like, right? This is a revenue making machine, especially when you shield from liability like that. It's concerning. And I hope it changes, right? It, it needs to change because that's how a capitalist market protects. You know, the, the society, one of the mechanisms. And I know that's arguable and I know people would probably message me about that statement, but that's fine.
So I, I do have a question. So when you were researching, you're writing your book, were there any things that you uncovered that you're like, holy smokes, I had no idea. This is huge. Like, mind blowing information that you uncovered for yourself.
Dr. Joel Warsh: I would say by far the most mind blowing was the research on autism and vaccines.
I, you know, we're taught that vaccines don't cause autism. We're taught that the research is debunked, the science is settled. I mean, those are all the buzzwords we've heard for a long time. And that, and again, it's like that's all you really learn in med school. Like you say, yeah, anti-vaxxers are crazy.
We have so much research, so much science, no link. We know that. And, and, and so that's what you really take with you and you don't really look at it yourself. And, and when I looked into the research, I mean, it's just so shocking how little there is and how specific that research is. I mean, there certainly is research on MMR and there certainly is research on thiol, but there's no studies on all vaccines versus no vaccines.
There's no studies on. All the other vaccines following them forward. So how can you possibly say that? I mean, doctors just don't know. I mean, I didn't know. And, and you can't say that vaccines do or not cause autism based on the research that we have. 'cause it hasn't been studied appropriately. But there's so many other vaccines that we haven't studied yet.
So to say that it's so categorically can't be related to autism doesn't make any sense. Like you have to study it first. And there's so many vaccines we give in the first year that are not mm. MR. Mm-hmm. So I don't know how you can make that conclusion. It means really just a conclusion of we don't have any research that shows that vaccines cause autism, therefore vaccines don't cause autism.
And it's like, well, if you don't look, you're not gonna find, so if you don't look, then you can say it doesn't cause it, that, that, that's not the answer is we don't know. Not no. Like the answer is we don't know. Therefore we need to do that research. And, and that is completely shocking to me. But it, and, and I didn't believe it.
Like, I could not believe that I thought I had to be doing something wrong when I was searching. I kept searching and, and, and. When I couldn't find anything. Then I started reading books. I mean, I was reading some books, but like, I was like, oh, I gotta pick up the big books that talk about autism and like, look at Paul OITs book and look at Peter Hot's book and all these people that are super pro-vaccine and like, okay, they must have more research that I can't find.
And they just point to the same studies. So there isn't more than what I found. It's just we haven't really studied the question. Not, not really. So it's actually like a crazy, crazy thing to me that we, we so definitively say that when it's just not true. And I think if most people knew that they wouldn't be so against getting more research, and maybe we could actually look into this and maybe if they did the right research, it would show that vaccines don't cause autism.
I don't know. We need to do prospective studies to look at that. But we can't say so definitively and in no way can we say that.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Sure. I mean, so my, you know, my fellowship is developmental functional neurology. So I mean, my. Focus, especially early in my career, was heavy neurodevelopmental disorders.
I've seen a large amount of autism cases continue to see a large amount of autism cases. And and I'm sure you hear the same thing. You know, I'll, I'll have a parent crying in front of me that they say I had a normal kid until right. They received X, y, or Z vaccine. Now I can tell you that's, that's played out hundreds, if not thousands of times over my career.
Again, that's a heavy focus for my practice. But then I also have, I'll say a handful of autistic children. And they've never been vaccinated, right? So that's a, that's data that, that's something that we need to pay attention to because there's no smoking gun to autism, right? This is a multifactorial situation.
What are your thoughts on like, what's really driving autism, these rates? Like they're going insane. They're skyrocketing and, and I know that diagnosis has changed. I know that, you know, like just, you know, I think it was last year they took away the diagnosis of PDDN os, right? Mm-hmm. And so they're kind of forcing you to, to diagnose either autism or cognitive delay or global delay which I didn't like that.
I, I, I like the PD DN os for certain kids, but, so I know that those are factors, but what are your thoughts? Like what's really behind the issue here?
Dr. Joel Warsh: Yeah, I mean, you, you summarize it really well and I think for me, the, the frustrating part with this is that we haven't even acknowledged at this point that it's increasing or that like, I mean, I think a little bit now, but like for so long it was like, ah, no, no, we're just better at diagnosing.
And so there wasn't a lot of research into. What's going on? Why is autism rising? What are the factors? And, and just until maybe this last couple months we, we, we we're barely talking about it. It wasn't something that was out there. So we don't, the answer is we don't know. Right. We don't know what, what's, what's driving this.
I, I, I think, like you said, there's no question that some part of it is, is diagnosis. I mean, we're certainly much better at diagnosing it. We're much more aware of it. People are talking about it a lot more. Doctors are much more aware of it. You get a lot more services you know, for free or covered if you get a diagnosis.
So there are many factors driving an increase in diagnosis, but that still pales in comparison to how many more kids have autism and how much more severe autism is than when we were younger. So yeah, at some percentage of it, and I think it's certainly, it's probably a reasonable percentage of, of mild.
Autism. You know, I, I think there are plenty of, of adults where they might have gotten a diagnosis a long time ago, but, but they just never did. And, and, and now they're hearing more about it, so they go get a diagnosis. But just by nature, those are individuals that are fully functional that live their life, didn't even know they had a diagnosis and, and, you know, maybe had some idiosyncratic idiosyncrasies or, or some, some odd behaviors or did things differently or were super smart or whatever and you know, or had some other diagnosis and, and, but they function like they're living on their own, they're doing okay.
That, that's not what we're talking about. I mean, there are kids, correct, many kids, like 20 to 30% that, that are, have severe autism now and cannot function. And, and there's a large portion of those kids that are never gonna be able to live on their own. And that's a, a big, a big concern. And that seems to be rising.
So I, I think there's no question that it's happening more the question of why I still think we don't know. I would, I would assume it's a crappy food and too many toxins and, and some sort of mix of that. Just like you, I have seen kids have autism with no. Vaccine. So I certainly don't think that's the only thing it can't be.
And I think the autism first problem is as many things. I don't think it's one thing. I think we call it autism, but, but there are probably 10, 50, a hundred different reasons why kids have some of those symptoms. And so I think that that's why some kids without vaccines will still have it because maybe they were exposed to something, an infection, a toxin, they have a genetics, what, whatever it is that we, we, we call it autism.
And then there are other kids that it's more environmental that that comes later and, and maybe vaccines throw them over, over the edge or maybe they get a vaccine just 'cause kids get a lot of vaccines that we start seeing their symptoms near, near after it. And you blame it on vaccines when it has nothing to do with that.
That, that that's what research is for and that's what we should be studying. And we, when you have, I would say probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of parents who have had a similar story at this point they went in to get a vaccine and their kids had a reaction and, and things change the next day.
You can't say just 'cause you had a vaccine this morning, had a heart attack this afternoon, that one thing caused the other. But if everyone's having heart attacks the same day they get a vaccine, you should probably look into it.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yes. And
Dr. Joel Warsh: you can't call these people anti-vaxxers. It makes no sense. These are literally people that went and get a vaccine and they feel like the vaccine caused these issues.
They could be right, they could be wrong, but that is the data that you need to figure out what's going on. And you should be studying this and you should be looking into these kids and maybe there's a certain genetics or whatever that, that if you get vaccines, it causes issues. And we could figure that out over the next 10 years if we studied it appropriately.
And, and, and that's what we should be doing instead of disregarding it. We should be listening to parents. We should be listening to what they believe and we should be studying it so we have more information in a few years. And maybe for some kids it does trigger. What we call autism and, and maybe there's a genetic pathway or whatever that, that, that kids, those kids are susceptible to.
And maybe we can know that before. And then those are the kids that don't get vaccines or they get fewer vaccines or one at a time. Like, why would we not wanna know that?
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Absolutely. And you know, those were some of the things that I was hoping would come out of this search by Maha. Right. But instead, and I know they're still, you know, working on it, but instead we get a rundown on Tylenol.
I was so let down. Right. I mean, the studies were already out there about Tylenol, depleting glutathione and all of these things. I mean, it's good to bring to light for the public. I, you know, I think that's good. Great, whatever. But what you just mentioned, that's what we need to be looking at. And I was hoping that's what we would be getting out of this.
What are your thoughts on this Tylenol situation? The, the big announcement Tylenol causes autism, which I know that wasn't the actual announcement, but that's what people took home from it.
Dr. Joel Warsh: Yeah, it was, it was, I mean, it was bad. I don't know. It was just, it was the whole all around that, that was just a very, it was not well done.
It was not very science based. It was not portrayed or sort of, it wasn't stated very well. Yeah, again, like you said, like I, I don't have any problem with talking about it. I don't have any problem with, with, with stating some caution. I, I, the studies are there there have been many studies that have potentially linked Tylenol to, to autism or at least associated with it.
There have been some newer studies that didn't. We have explanations why it might not be related, but I think it's totally reasonable to say, well, you know, like we should be cautious. There's plenty of studies that show that it might. We're cautious with everything during pregnancy and, and so you shouldn't be taking Tylenol willy-nilly because maybe it's associated with it in young kids or in pregnancy, which is true of everything.
So you really, I, I mean that just gets back to the bigger problems in America of like, we take a pill for everything when you don't always need it. So I think that's fine. Like, hey, maybe there's association, like think twice before you take this, make sure you really need it. But the way it was portrayed, the way it was discussed was, was bad.
It just wasn't, wasn't discussed in a, in a really scientific way that really made a lot of sense for anybody. Nor is Tylenol going to be the major factor when it comes to autism, even if it is related, which I'm not even sure that it is, but let's just assume that it is and you know, it's very small, one small piece of the puzzle.
Okay, fine. That's fine. I don't have a problem acknowledging that if it turns out to be true. But that's just such a small piece of the puzzle and to, to come out with that to me. It was just so silly and such a missed opportunity because what, what I was hoping was going to be done and, and what I was really, I guess, disappointed even when, when Secretary County talked about it originally, when you start saying like, oh, we're gonna have the answer, we're gonna know, that doesn't make any sense.
You're obviously not gonna know in a few months because we don't know. Right? Know. So, I mean, the, the right, the, the thing that should have been done, in my opinion, if I was in charge, would've been, this is important. We need to study this. We have done an extensive literature review, not by Mr. McCullough, by like, you know, the CDC or whatever.
And we have reviewed all the literature that we have on autism, and here are the top 20 things that we think might be associated. Here are the genes, here are the factors that, you know, here's the review. We are gonna put a hundred billion doll, whatever, you know, what some, some amount of money. We're gonna study all these things and we're gonna look into it and we're gonna try to figure out which ones are most associated, what we can do about any of these things.
Are there any treatments that we can be doing anything preventative? Like we're gonna look at all these things. Tylenol could be one of those. That's fine. But, you know, vaccines and genetics and this toxin and that to like all the things that it could be, that's what we should be researching. So that way in 10 years we have much better research and we have a much better picture of, all right, well here are the 10 things you could do as a parent to minimize your risk of your kid.
Having the diagnosis of autism like that, that to me would've been the announcement that would've been really logical and would've been very helpful, versus Tylenol, which is like, I don't know, just kinda made them look bad.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah. You say if you were in charge, could we see Dr. Gator in a political office one day?
Is that something that might happen?
Dr. Joel Warsh: I mean, you know, who knows? I mean, I, I'll be happy to be involved, but it's like, you know, there's very certain people that are involved in those things, so
Dr. Brandon Crawford: I
Dr. Joel Warsh: dunno, you know, if I was asking help, I would help. I mean, I have done some stuff, you know, I've been more involved in Maha stuff as much as I can.
But yeah, I mean, it's it's, it's a, it's a weird and crazy world. All, all the political stuff.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let's, and I wanna be respectful of your time, but I want to get a little bit more information out there because people are confused. They need to know what do they need to do with this information.
So, let's say, you know, you're a parent and you're not pro-vaccine, you're not anti-vaccine, you just want your kid to be safe, number one, where should they go to get information, good information, to make an informed decision? Let's just start there and I'll ask my next question after that.
Dr. Joel Warsh: Well, I, I would say, so there's a few things that I would say you wanna do.
First of all, if you have questions or you have concerns around vaccines in general, the first thing you wanna do is make sure you're with a practitioner that you can actually have conversations with. Because I, there are many doctors that are very unwilling to have these conversations. There are many doctors that you know, kind of just kick you outta the practice if you want to do anything other than the regular schedule.
So you at least wanna be in a place where you can have those conversations. You can ask your questions. So, you know, if you haven't had a kid yet and, and you're in, you know, interviewed before you go somewhere, if you are somewhere and you're not really comfortable, feel, you know, feel okay to switch practices, I think that's important because then you can at least have some conversations which is a great place to, to a great place to start from.
But ultimately, if you wanna have more educated conversations, which will be really helpful, then I think you have to start reading a little bit. And it's unfortunate that you have to do that, but I think you have to start reading and, and understanding the landscape. I mean, I certainly try to do that with my book, but ultimately, there, there are many resources out there and, and to me, what I've always told parents is, you gotta read more than one thing.
You gotta read something that's very, you know, very pro vaccine, CDC, like, get that kind of narrative and understand where, where things are coming from. So you can read a Paul Offit book they're, they're pretty good in terms of that narrative. And then read something else, like, read something that discusses the concerns that parents have, the.
The issues that might be there. And then you can kind of have a landscape of, of where things are coming from. Like, that's the way I tried to build my book, but I don't wanna promote my book. I'm just saying like, you gotta read more than one thing. So there are books on, on hist history of vaccines, like dissolving illusions is really good.
Turtles all the way down goes through the, how the research was done. Aaron Siri has a really good book that he just came out with about vaccines and it's more like about the law of vaccines, but still really useful to understand kind of the issues and concerns that parents have. So I think if you first read about why vaccines are so great and, and the benefits and, and why they, they could potentially help you, then you have that understanding and then you can kind of read the, the concerns that that some people have.
And then you can have a balanced approach to asking questions and having some respect for what a vaccine might be able to do, but then also understanding of where the concerns might lie. And that will help you, I think, to. Balance these things for yourself. And, and when, as we were talking before, like I can't tell you where nobody can tell you what the long-term risks are from vaccines.
So you don't know you have to make a decision based on what you do know. And so ultimately you have to weigh the risks from the vaccines versus the risks of nature and where everyone's gonna fall on those things is gonna be different. But at least you can understand like, which diseases are around what might kill my kid, what have, what's not been in America for 50 years what's the risk that my kid's actually gonna get this?
What's going on in my my city? Like, are there, are there, and then what are the risks that we do know? And at least you can then, if you're gonna do a slow schedule, prioritize, like, well, there's still a lot of whooping coughs. I'm gonna choose that. Okay, there's a lot of measles, so I'm gonna choose that. Oh, we haven't seen polio in 40 years.
Well, maybe that's not the one I need to do first. So I think, I think that's the way that parents kind of prioritize it. And if they're gonna work on a slow schedule, then at least you can weigh the risks and the benefits based on what you do know. And you can make as educated a decision as you can. And that's what we do in the office, because I can't tell you what I don't know, so I can just educate parents on.
Which d diseases are most likely to kill their kid. And, and, and if you're gonna choose to do vaccines, well, you probably wanna prevent those ones versus something they're not even gonna get. And, and that is the way that I try to balance it at least.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah. And you know, something I hear a lot is well we don't vaccinate, so we never take our kids to the pediatrician, and I don't like that.
The pediatrician, I mean, you're a pediatrician, you know, I mean, you guys are looking for so many things and you catch things that the parent's not gonna catch. I mean, I, you know, I had someone in here not that long ago. I'm doing brain rehab, right? I'm, I was doing brain rehab on this kid. The kid had two undescended testicles.
And that's not, I don't do that. I just happened to catch it when I was doing, you know, his reflex exam. And I asked her, you know, I asked him about it and they're like, well, we don't vaccinate, so we never see a pediatrician. It, it just stuff like that, right? That like, there's so many reasons to take your kid and have established care with a good pediatrician, but how can someone evaluate a pediatrician?
Because they're not gonna say on the website like, I'm okay with vaccinated. I'm not okay with un, you know, like, I mean, I guess some do well they might, right, right. So, but what, like, what are some things, what are some red flags? What are some things that, that people should be really looking for?
Dr. Joel Warsh: Great, great question.
So I, I'll echo the first part first is I agree. I mean, I, I think that doctors have a place for sure, and, and everyone has their, their place and their skillset and, and you might not necessarily agree on all the medications or vaccines or other things, but doctors of course have a, have trained a long time and are there to pick up the rare things that a parent's not gonna pick up.
So yes, if your kid's super healthy, do you need a doctor? No, not really. But the, the point of, of going to the doctor a lot of times, especially for well checks, is for them to pick up things that you wouldn't and, and, and you, you know, you think your kid's healthy, you kinda see 'em every day, but, but a doctor sees, you know, a bunch of kids every day.
So, so we're trained to look for X, Y, and Z that you don't even know to look for. So I, I think it's good to have an established relationship even if you don't go that often, but at least you go every once in a while just to check in, just to make sure that you're meeting the milestones, just to make sure that there's nothing that is not a parent to you that might be a parent to 'em that needs, needs more.
E examination or, or work through. So that, that's why I do think it is very useful, number one. Number two, if you don't establish care with somebody, then you are gonna have to do it in a scenario where you have a problem. And if you, if something comes up and that's not good, like you don't wanna have to figure out where to go or where to take your kid or find someone that you can trust in the middle of your kid being sick.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Yeah.
Dr. Joel Warsh: And if you never go to a doctor, if you don't have a doctor, then, like, especially if you're naturally minded, do you want to go to a mainstream office where they're just gonna pump them full a bunch of antibiotics when that's not even what you want. You want someone who's more integrated minded who might think about other things, or at least someone that you can trust to be like, no, no, no, no, no.
Like, this is serious. You do need antibiotics today. Like, this is not the time to do, you know, your, your supplement to your homeopathic, like you have a bad pneumonia, you need to do it. So, so having that relationship, I think really helps in those scenarios because ultimately if you just walk into urgent care, they give you antibiotics, you're like, eh, medicine, they don't, they don't need antibiotics.
And then maybe they really did. So I, I do think that there's a good reason to find that doctor, and, and that's, that, that to me is the red flags. Like, if you don't do that, then you're not gonna have that established care for when you do need it. And it's, it's not always that easy to find a doctor who's totally willing to let you be unvaccinated.
But it's pretty easy to know which doctors are, are not gonna let you do that. So, I mean, most offices now are very clear. If they only want kids going on the vaccine schedule, it'll be right there on their website. It'll be in the faq. Certainly you should ask that as a question when you're interviewing.
So, interview, like, interview, ask the questions. There are plenty doctors that will let you on a slow schedule. Not all of them, but, but many will. If you wanna do none, then you have to do your research, ask around you. You can find there are places, but it's just not as many. Sure. So I, I think it's just researching, asking around, asking others that are naturally minded.
There are plenty of, you know, Facebook groups and other things that you can ask like, oh, I live in blah, blah, blah area. And where do you guys go for your kids who are more holistic minded? But interview, like ask the question, say like, I don't, I don't wanna do vaccines. Are you gonna be okay with that?
And if they're not, they're gonna tell you. Right? And, and that's not the right office for you. So don't, don't go there, go somewhere else. If you wanna do a slow schedule and they say that you can't do that, don't go to that office. You're gonna be fighting every day. Go somewhere where they're okay with it,
Dr. Brandon Crawford: right?
No, yeah, definitely. Good advice. Definitely should be interviewing your doctor, not just pediatrician, but, but any physician that you're working with. So let's end on a high note or well, some good actionable information, right? So I love the information you put out there about living healthy and you know, how to prevent disease so you don't have to manage it, all this kind of stuff.
So let's say, you know, parents have these kids, what type of steps, what type of lifestyle changes? What should they be doing? And I know this could be a two hour conversation, I get that. So, but what are some key elements that we need to be walking through with our kids to ensure that they have, you know, a good, healthy outlook on life?
Dr. Joel Warsh: Yeah, yeah. It's a big, it's a big question, but I guess high level you know, food, toxins, sleep, stress I think those are the big ones. I mean, food, we have to read labels. We have to be thinking about what we're eating. We have to be trying to get as real, as much real food as possible. Fiber, fruits, veggies, try to decrease the sugar, try to decrease the ultra processed food.
I think, you know, that's, that's maybe the most important factor. We're, we're surrounded by so many chemicals and toxins, so just being mindful of everything that you buy. Trying to minimize those chemicals and toxins, making sure we're getting exercise so nobody's outside enough. Nobody gets enough sunlight, nobody one's moving enough, getting enough screens.
So, I mean, I think those are the, the big ones. Obviously we can talk about each one of those for another hour, but, you know, that, to me, those are the big, the big factors that, that really are things that we can modify are not necessarily, they don't necessarily cost anything and, and make a huge impact on, on pretty much every kid.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Absolutely. Just to kind of back up in life a little bit, people that are pregnant or about to get pregnant, any key, you know, talking points or, or wisdom that you want to give those people, because that fertility is a big problem now. And, and I think a lot of this needs to go into, you know, family planning and that, I know that's a whole nother discussion, but is there like a smoking gun?
Like, Hey, if you're thinking about getting pregnant, do this now, kind of thing?
Dr. Joel Warsh: Well, I, I think the answer's very similar, but when it comes to pregnancy, I would say most people don't think about it in those, in those terms. Like, they don't think about, you know, fertility being affected by all these things, or they don't think about their kids' health five years from now in the sense of what they do today matters.
But it really does, like if you, if you wanna. Have a baby in two years from now. Like starting to get healthy now, starting to eat better, decreasing your stress. All those things help because it regulates your hormones, it decreases your stress level. I, I'm just gonna make getting pregnant easier. You know, obviously, like being super stressed is not gonna help you getting pregnant.
I mean, we don't think about those things, but it's not like you can just turn off your stress one day. So, right. I think if this are the things that you want to do in life, if you wanna get pregnant and you're like, well, maybe not yet, but in a couple months, like you have to start today, start working on things, make small changes, all of it matters, but you don't have to change everything.
You don't have to never be stressed. You don't have to eat perfect all the time. But if you slowly start to improve your health, slowly start to decrease your stress, then it's gonna make it a lot easier to, to have a healthy pregnancy and have a healthy child than if you, if you don't, and it's, you know, the more you can do, the better.
And it's, it's small, small things, but they add up over five or 10 years.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Absolutely. Well, again, you know, I want to be cognitive of your time here. I truly appreciate you coming on. I love your viewpoints. I love your book. Like truly, I love your book. I actually have copies of it in the waiting room, right?
So I, I just, you know, order 'em, you know, like five to 10 at a time. I put 'em out. If someone wants to take it home, I say take it, you know, just, just take it home with you and I replace it. That's how much I love it. So I really do appreciate that you wrote it. I love your, your, the way that you discuss everything in your book.
I highly advise everyone listening to read it. Keep a copy. I actually have a copy on my Kindle, so it's, you know, if I'm on a plane I can read it and then I have a paper copy as well. So I truly appreciate it. Is there anything else that you would like to convey to the audience today before we sign off?
Dr. Joel Warsh: I mean, well, first of all, thank you for that. That was really kind. I, I would say. It's not new woo woo to have questions. I think it's insane that we shouldn't have questions about something we're injecting, you know, 30, 40 times into our kids. So many parents have questions now. Everybody's questioning vaccines.
I think that's okay. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. But ultimately I think you shouldn't feel bad if you have questions and you shouldn't feel bad to ask those questions. And I think that the more that we do ask questions, the more that we are able to talk about it, then that's gonna help to make improvements in, in the vaccine space.
I, I, you know, if nobody talks about it, if no one expresses their concerns and there's no reason to ever make the vaccines better and I think that's what we should be aiming for is, is a better program, a safer program more research. And I think that's something that, that could be done if we come from that angle as opposed to like, ah, I have pro-vaccine, anti-vaccine.
Those people are crazy. Like, no, if we come from safety and like wanting the best possible vaccines and the healthiest possible kids, then I, I think. In the long run, we can get there and most doctors can get behind that. I, I think doctors today are kind of worried like, oh, if we find a problem with the vaccines, then no one's just gonna vaccinate.
And, and you know, I don't think that's the goal of anybody. I think, or most people, I think the goal is they want safe vaccines. And so we, we, we can do that. And, and you know, for me, that's why I try to talk about as much as I can, you know, I try kids health, but vaccines and, and I do that on Instagram and at Dr.
Joel Gator, on, on x on Substack. You know, it's been really cool to see on Substack that, that so many people are interested. It's like one of the top health substack now. It's same, same name as my book between a shot and a hard place. And, and it's risen near the top. And I think that's 'cause people have questions and concerns and they wanna have discussions on health and vaccines and we've never been able to do it before.
So it's a great time to finally at least be able to have conversations. And hopefully that's gonna lead to some, some safer products and more discussions and more research.
Dr. Brandon Crawford: Absolutely. Well, we'll make sure to put links to all of that, your Instagram, your website, your substack all the things in the show notes so that people can access it easily.
So again, truly appreciate you love everything you're doing for the world. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you.
Voice Over: We hope today's episode has inspired you to take that next step towards your best self. Remember, the path to longevity is paved with small daily decisions. Your journey is unique and every step, every choice brings you closer to your ultimate vision of a healthier, happier life. For more insights, tips, and resources, visit drbrandoncrawford.com.