2023-02-03_Invest_in_Children

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00:01:01.000 | Hey Radicals, just five days left before the live class, the big launch of my newest course,

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00:01:15.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:01:19.000 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while

00:01:23.000 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua Sheets, and

00:01:26.000 | today we continue our show on how to invest in your children at an early age. This is

00:01:32.000 | part two in this series. I'm a big believer in the value of investing in children at an

00:01:37.000 | early age, and I want to give you specific ideas and strategies as to how to accomplish

00:01:42.000 | that.

00:01:43.000 | Now, the first episode of this series was one in which I focused primarily on what is

00:01:49.000 | probably for many of us something that's already done, right? Our selection of a spouse and

00:01:53.000 | the contributions that we and our spouse make to our children. Because at the end of the

00:01:59.000 | day, a significant component of your children's long-term success is going to be driven quite

00:02:07.000 | literally by simply who their parents are. And I spent quite a lot of time talking about

00:02:12.000 | who their parents are in terms of their basic genetic material, which is going to drive

00:02:17.000 | what our children look like, some of the basics of their health, etc., as well as their

00:02:22.000 | cognitive ability, and in terms of the culture that the child's parents are from. Is the

00:02:30.000 | child going to be raised in a culture where he has good role models, where he's going

00:02:35.000 | to be loved and cared for, etc.?

00:02:38.000 | So now we move on and we continue in the earliest stages, and I want to talk about those

00:02:43.000 | things that can be done in the very earliest stage of the child's life. Prior to, during,

00:02:50.000 | and following conception. Because this is where that raw genetic material of a parent's

00:03:00.000 | body and a parent's life is brought into reality, is brought into being, is at the

00:03:08.000 | moment of conception. Now, the primary opportunity that we have relating to setting our children

00:03:16.000 | up for long-term success is related to good health. A strong and healthy baby is generally

00:03:25.000 | produced by strong and healthy mothers and fathers, who continue to be strong and healthy,

00:03:31.000 | especially, of course, the mother, after the time of conception. And this is something

00:03:36.000 | that we don't talk a lot about, but I believe that it is something that is extremely important

00:03:41.000 | and it's something that all of us can impact to some degree or another. Now, perhaps you've

00:03:47.000 | already chosen your spouse, you're not changing anything there, you're not going to go out

00:03:50.000 | on the marketplace and say, "Well, let me just pick another beautiful person that's

00:03:53.000 | going to have, you know, another person with whom I'm going to have a designer baby."

00:03:57.000 | So you're married to the person that you're married to, and that's settled, but you're

00:04:00.000 | going to have a baby, and you hope to have a baby. What can you do to invest into your

00:04:04.000 | child? The biggest thing you can do is going to be based upon health and nutrition. We're

00:04:10.000 | going to begin with nutrition. In yesterday's podcast, I shared with you some ideas from

00:04:16.000 | the excellent book called Deep Nutrition by, I think it's Katherine Shanahan, and I want

00:04:22.000 | to read a little bit of what she has to offer from the perspective of how to invest in nutrition

00:04:29.000 | prior to conception, and then, of course, during pregnancy. This is not something that

00:04:34.000 | is commonly talked about in our modern world, although I think we do understand it to a

00:04:40.000 | greater degree than before. I don't really know a pregnant mother who doesn't take some

00:04:44.000 | prenatal vitamins, for example. But I think there's a lot more that we could do if we

00:04:49.000 | were very interested in this, and there's a lot more that we probably should do in order

00:04:54.000 | to supercharge the long-term benefits for our children. In the book Deep Nutrition,

00:05:03.000 | the author talks extensively in the very beginning about the history of studying good health

00:05:09.000 | and scientific research. I want to read a couple of comments in terms of traditional

00:05:15.000 | cultures. It's very important that we go and we study traditional cultures. Of course,

00:05:19.000 | here, the researcher and dentist, American dentist Weston A. Price is probably the most

00:05:23.000 | famous figure. But we need to go and study from what our ancestors did in order to understand

00:05:29.000 | why what they did worked, because all of us are the recipients of a long line of genetic

00:05:37.000 | investment. And it's extremely important to understand that what we do matters. In

00:05:43.000 | our modern age, we've been infected with the idea that all sicknesses are caused by

00:05:48.000 | germs, that all illnesses can be treated with a pill, and we neglect doing some of the

00:05:54.000 | fundamental things that can drive good health. So listen to a little bit of historical analysis

00:06:00.000 | and we'll get some specific examples of what mothers and fathers can do prior to the

00:06:04.000 | conception of their children in order to invest heavily into your child. During a historical

00:06:12.000 | comment from chapter one of this book of Weston A. Price and some of his data, here is an

00:06:20.000 | excerpt. "If you believe Price's data, which I do, then clearly our bodies appear

00:06:24.000 | to be accustomed to a far richer stream of nutrients than we manage to sip, chew, swallow,

00:06:30.000 | or scarf down in our daily diets. Our need for nutrients is apparently quite extraordinary.

00:06:36.000 | But what is more extraordinary is the totality to which indigenous cultures, and presumably

00:06:41.000 | also our ancestors, involved themselves in the production of these foods. In contrast

00:06:47.000 | to our general attitude of nourishment as a necessary evil demanding expediency, traditional

00:06:53.000 | life seemed to revolve around collecting and concentrating nutrition. To this end, no methodology

00:07:00.000 | and no recipe was too bizarre." I will include here a few examples from Price's book to

00:07:06.000 | demonstrate how fully people immersed themselves in the production of food, and a few of the

00:07:10.000 | wonderful ingenuities that streamlined this undertaking. In the Scottish Isles, people

00:07:15.000 | built their houses using chiefly, the grass that grew abundantly on the moors. The roofs

00:07:21.000 | were loosely woven and chimneyless so that the smoke from their cooking fires would pass

00:07:26.000 | directly through the thatch. When the roof was removed and rebuilt in the spring after

00:07:30.000 | having been infused with mineral-rich ash all winter, the smoke thatch made fantastic

00:07:35.000 | fertilizer for their plant crops, chiefly oats. Their oats, in turn, were superior sources

00:07:41.000 | of minerals and were incorporated into many dishes. One of the most important was a fish

00:07:46.000 | dish made from a baked cod's head, rich in essential fatty acids, that had been stuffed

00:07:51.000 | with oatmeal, rich in minerals, and chopped cod livers, rich in vitamins. On the other

00:07:56.000 | side of the world, in Melanesia, the original arrivals to the islands had brought with them

00:08:00.000 | a member of the pig family bred for its self-sufficiency, at finding forage in the muddy and mountainous

00:08:06.000 | landscape. They'd released their hogs into the wild so they could colonize the forests.

00:08:11.000 | Soon, the hogs' numbers had grown to the point that one would be hunted down just about

00:08:16.000 | anywhere. Every part of the quarry, from snout to tail, would be cooked or smoked or otherwise

00:08:22.000 | prepared and eaten. It goes on and gives some other interesting examples, but let's focus

00:08:26.000 | on our children. As focused as people were on the production of healthy food, the chief

00:08:33.000 | crop and the ultimate prize was the next generation of healthy children. Traditional cultures

00:08:39.000 | made a science of it. As we'll see in Chapter 5, Step 1 was planning ahead. Around the world,

00:08:45.000 | traditions reflected extensive use of special foods to boost a woman's nutrition before

00:08:50.000 | conception, during gestation, for nursing, and for rebuilding before the next pregnancy.

00:08:57.000 | Some cultures thought it prudent to fortify the groom's diet in preparation for his wedding

00:09:01.000 | ceremony. The shreds of surviving information suggest such knowledge was quite sophisticated.

00:09:07.000 | Blackfoot Nation women utilized the still-unknown nutrient systems found in the lining of the

00:09:12.000 | large intestine of buffalo, and later cow, to "make the baby have a nice round head."

00:09:18.000 | To ensure easy delivery, many cultures reinforced preconception and pregnancy diets with fish

00:09:24.000 | eggs and organ meats loaded with fat-soluble vitamins, B12, and omega-3, as well as special

00:09:31.000 | grains carefully cultivated to be high in important minerals. The Maasai allowed couples

00:09:36.000 | to marry only after spending several months consuming milk from the wet season, when the

00:09:41.000 | grass was especially lush and the milk much denser in nutrients. In Fiji, islanders would

00:09:46.000 | hike miles down to the sea to acquire a certain species of lobster crab that "tribal custom

00:09:53.000 | demonstrated to be particularly efficient for producing a highly perfect infant."

00:09:58.000 | Elsewhere, fortifying foods didn't just facilitate pregnancy; they made the difference

00:10:03.000 | between the baby making it to term or not. The soil of certain areas around the Nile

00:10:08.000 | Delta is notoriously low in iodine, the lack of which can lead to maternal goiter and infant

00:10:14.000 | malformation. Local tribes knew that burning water hyacinth, rich in iodine, produced ashes

00:10:20.000 | capable of preventing these complications. These ingrained traditions existed throughout

00:10:26.000 | the world and, until recently, dictated the ebb and flow of daily life. This kind of dedication,

00:10:33.000 | study, and wise use of natural resources is what was required to amass and protect the

00:10:39.000 | genetic wealth that enabled people to survive in a very different and harsher wild, wild

00:10:45.000 | world. Of course, these days most of us spend our time fighting traffic, not wild boar,

00:10:51.000 | but the same nutritional input that toughened and fortified the physiologies of these indigenous

00:10:56.000 | peoples can still be accessed today for the attainment of extraordinary health. Were the

00:11:02.000 | medical community to bring the same enthusiasm to the engineering and maintenance of healthy

00:11:06.000 | bodies as archaeologists bring to their study of ancient architectural wonders, they would

00:11:14.000 | soon call for a radical revision of what we understand to be a healthy human diet. The

00:11:20.000 | construction of a beautiful, sound building is not a matter of chance, but of planning,

00:11:26.000 | good materials, and reference to the collected body of relevant science. Winning the genetic

00:11:31.000 | lottery depends upon those very same prerequisites. Today, at every stage in the process of producing

00:11:38.000 | food, we do things differently than our sturdy, self-sufficient ancestors did, wasting opportunities

00:11:43.000 | to provide ourselves with essential nutrients at every turn. We fail to fortify and protect

00:11:48.000 | the substrate on which the life and health of everything depends, the soil. We raise

00:11:53.000 | animals in unspeakably inhumane and unhealthy conditions, fill their tissues with toxins,

00:11:59.000 | and color the meat to make it appear more appetizing. Being raised on open pasture is

00:12:04.000 | no guarantee that an animal's body, an ultimate sacrifice, will be put to full use. Typically,

00:12:09.000 | only the muscle is consumed. Much of the nutrients, bioconcentrated over the animal's life, are

00:12:15.000 | thrown to waste. Grains, even those grown on relatively healthy soil, are too often

00:12:21.000 | processed in ways specifically damaging to the most essential and delicate nutrients.

00:12:27.000 | Once in the kitchen, the consumer takes one last swing at whatever nutrition has survived

00:12:31.000 | through overcooking and the use of cheap, toxic oils. Finally, since we've not been

00:12:36.000 | told that certain vitamins and minerals are more bioavailable when combined with acids

00:12:40.000 | or fats, many of them pass right through us. Given that we drop the ball at every stage

00:12:46.000 | in the process of bringing food to the table, it's not surprising that recent studies

00:12:50.000 | show far from exceeding the RDA, as we should be (RDA is recommended daily allowance),

00:12:55.000 | few of us even meet it. For vitamin A, only 46.7% of healthy females meet the RDA, and

00:13:03.000 | levels are low in 87% of children with asthma. For vitamin D, 55% of obese children, 76%

00:13:11.000 | of minority children, and 36% of otherwise healthy young adults are deficient. For vitamin

00:13:17.000 | E, 58% of toddlers between 1 and 2 years old, 91% of preschoolers, and 72.3% of healthy

00:13:24.000 | females do not consume enough. 0% of breastfed infants were found to have achieved the minimum

00:13:30.000 | recommended intake of vitamin K. For the B vitamins, only 54.7% consumed adequate B2,

00:13:37.000 | riboflavin, for folate. Only 2.2% of women between the ages of 18 and 35, and 5.2% of

00:13:45.000 | women aged 36 to 50 achieved the recommended intake. And for calcium, fewer than 22% of

00:13:52.000 | African American adolescent girls consumed the RDA. There are more studies, but you get

00:13:57.000 | the idea. Not one study shows 100% adequacy of any single nutrient, not to mention adequacy

00:14:04.000 | of all measurable nutrients, which would be a better goal.

00:14:08.000 | Presumably, the vast majority of Americans are deficient in multiple nutrients. Many

00:14:14.000 | of my patients suffer from symptoms that could be attributable to poor nutrition. Problems

00:14:19.000 | as common as dry skin, easy bruising, frequent runny noses, yeast infections, and crampy

00:14:25.000 | digestive systems are all exacerbated by, if not due entirely to, inadequate nutrition.

00:14:32.000 | Unfortunately, testing for vitamin adequacy is not easy. We haven't even defined what

00:14:36.000 | normal levels are for many nutrients, including essential fatty acids and vitamin K. For those

00:14:41.000 | that have been so defined, the normal range may extend all the way down to zero. That's

00:14:46.000 | right, you may have none of an essential nutrient in your bloodstream, yet still be considered

00:14:51.000 | to have consumed an adequate amount. So, why bother testing? And, since many vitamins are

00:14:57.000 | stored in the liver and other tissues, even if blood levels are adequate, overall body

00:15:02.000 | stores may be low. As far as I can tell, the best way to assure nutrient adequacy is not

00:15:08.000 | with testing, but with adequate nutrient consumption. Goes on and talks about some of the ways that

00:15:16.000 | you can achieve that. Now, let's go specifically to her chapter on specifically what we can

00:15:25.000 | do to prepare for children, because here we have a significant set of useful information.

00:15:33.000 | This is from chapter five, called The Sibling Strategy. Letting your body create a perfect

00:15:39.000 | baby. And here is, here are the introductory kind of bullet points. Number one, mom's nutritional

00:15:47.000 | status before and during pregnancy influences how much facial and body symmetry her child

00:15:53.000 | develops. Remember that facial and body symmetry is a mark of beauty, but more importantly,

00:15:59.000 | that beauty is a mark of health. And children who have poor body symmetry suffer from all

00:16:07.000 | kinds of health problems caused directly by the inadequate body symmetry. In the context

00:16:14.000 | of modern diet, birth order correlates with two distinct symmetry shifts away from ideal.

00:16:21.000 | Studies show that most women are nutritionally deficient during childbearing years. Eating

00:16:25.000 | sweets and fried foods during pregnancy is likely to be as detrimental as smoking and

00:16:30.000 | drinking, if not more so. All evidence suggests that optimizing nutrition represents a powerful

00:16:36.000 | strategy for creating healthy, beautiful babies. Almost nothing gives a woman more pride and

00:16:43.000 | confidence than the birth of her first child. After one successful pregnancy, there is an

00:16:47.000 | understandable expectation that a second pregnancy will go even more smoothly. And perhaps it

00:16:52.000 | will, at least for mom. More distensible pelvic issues do facilitate an easier second labor.

00:16:57.000 | But unless the mother gives herself ample time, generally at least three years, and

00:17:02.000 | enough experience for her body to fully replenish itself, child number two may not be as healthy

00:17:06.000 | as his older sibling. And so, while big brother goes off to football practice or big sister

00:17:11.000 | gets a modeling job, the second sibling will be spending time in the offices of the local

00:17:15.000 | optometrists and orthodontists. It's not that they got the "unlucky genes." The

00:17:20.000 | problem is that compared to their older sibling, they grew in a relatively undernourished environment

00:17:26.000 | in utero. Timing is everything. Why does being born second sometimes mean a child's body

00:17:33.000 | is second rate? For one thing, most American women have no idea how badly they're eating.

00:17:39.000 | One study shows that overall, 74% of women are falling short on nutrients from their

00:17:43.000 | diet. And I think even that number is optimistic. If most mothers-to-be aren't even taking

00:17:49.000 | in enough nutrients for themselves, how can we expect them to properly provide for a growing

00:17:53.000 | baby, not to mention one right after the other? But the biggest reason there's often such

00:17:58.000 | a difference between number one and number two in cases of rapid-fire conception has

00:18:03.000 | to do with how the placenta works. Even minor nutritional deficiencies can hamper baby's

00:18:08.000 | growth. So, to better protect baby, nature has provided a built-in safety mechanism,

00:18:13.000 | allocating as many resources to the placenta as it can get away with, even if it means

00:18:18.000 | putting mom's health at some risk. The baby protection mechanism is so powerful that even

00:18:23.000 | on an all-McDonald's diet, a woman can expect to produce a baby with ten fingers and ten

00:18:28.000 | toes. Dr. John Dernon of Glasgow University describes the mechanism vividly. "The fetus

00:18:35.000 | is well-protected against maternal malnutrition, that indeed it behaves like a parasite, oblivious

00:18:40.000 | to the health of its host. If a mom's diet is deficient in calcium, it will be robbed

00:18:46.000 | from her bones. If deficient in brain-building fats, as horrible as this sounds, the fats

00:18:51.000 | that make up the mother's own brain will be sought out and extracted." Pregnancy drains

00:18:56.000 | a woman's body of a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, and other raw materials, and breastfeeding

00:19:01.000 | demands more still. As you might expect, the demands of producing a baby draw down maternal

00:19:06.000 | stores of a spectrum of nutrients, including iron, folate, calcium, potassium, vitamin

00:19:11.000 | D, vitamin A, and carotenoids, magnesium, iodine, omega-3, phosphorus, zinc, DHA, and

00:19:18.000 | other essential fatty acids, B12, and selenium. To the placenta, mom's central nervous system,

00:19:24.000 | for instance, is simply a warehouse full of the kinds of fat needed to build baby's central

00:19:29.000 | nervous system. Studies show that maternal brains can actually shrink, primarily in the

00:19:34.000 | hippocampal and temporal lobe areas, which control short-term memory and emotion. These

00:19:40.000 | brain regions are not responsible for basic functioning, like breathing or blood pressure

00:19:44.000 | regulation, and so are relatively expendable. This marvelous nutrient-scavenging ability

00:19:50.000 | of a human placenta means that even in conditions of insufficient maternal nutrition, the first

00:19:55.000 | child may come out relatively intact. Meanwhile, mom's body may be depleted to the point that

00:20:01.000 | before and after pictures reveal her spine to have curved, her lips thinned, and she

00:20:06.000 | may have trouble remembering and learning new things, or feel anxious and depressed,

00:20:11.000 | as in postpartum depression. It may sound harsh, but it's just the selfish gene at work.

00:20:17.000 | Successful genes behave like greedy pirates, commandeering maternal nutrient stores for

00:20:23.000 | the benefit of their own optimal replication. However, any child conceived in too short

00:20:28.000 | a time for those storehouses to be refilled will be at a significant disadvantage. In

00:20:33.000 | such depleted conditions, where baby to extract from mother all the nutrients its genes would

00:20:38.000 | like it to have, this would put mom's life at significant risk. Following the utilitarian

00:20:43.000 | calculus of genetic survival, biology pragmatically chooses not to kill the mother while a baby

00:20:48.000 | is gestating, and opts instead for a compromise. This second baby will be constructed as well

00:20:54.000 | as possible in the depleted conditions in order that mom may pull through. Tragically,

00:20:59.000 | this exposes the child to a variety of health problems, which can become increasingly noticeable

00:21:04.000 | and even debilitating as they grow older. Here's something else to consider. Sugar

00:21:10.000 | and vegetable oils act like chemical static that blocks the signals our bodies need to

00:21:14.000 | run our metabolism smoothly. Most women's diets today are high in sugar and vegetable

00:21:20.000 | oils, adding to the growth disturbances already caused by missing nutrients. Not only does

00:21:25.000 | sugar and vegetable oil consumption disrupt maternal metabolism and lead to gestational

00:21:30.000 | diabetes, preeclampsia, and other complications of pregnancy, the sugar and vegetable oils

00:21:35.000 | streaming through a developing baby's blood block signals in the womb, disrupting the

00:21:40.000 | sequence of highly sensitive interdependent developmental events that contribute to the

00:21:44.000 | miracle of a healthy birth. The consequences of not getting enough nutrients and the introduction

00:21:50.000 | of toxins are primarily brought to bear through changes in the infant's epigenome.

00:21:56.000 | It goes on and talks about some of the previous things. So the first thing is birth order,

00:22:00.000 | and the author has made a significant study discussing birth order. It's one of the reasons

00:22:06.000 | why most of the best-looking people, the most famous models, the most famous movie stars

00:22:12.000 | are often the firstborn because they got the full genetic potential of their mother's body.

00:22:18.000 | Whereas follow-on children, if there's not adequate time and adequate nutrition for a

00:22:24.000 | mother's body to recover, often suffer from being less attractive. And it's interesting,

00:22:32.000 | she spent several chapters on it. Now let's pivot and talk about some solutions.

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00:23:08.000 | The Omega Generation. When I was living and working in Hawaii, four generations sometimes

00:23:14.000 | came into my clinic for an office visit all at once, giving me a front row view of the

00:23:19.000 | impact of modern food. Quite often this is what I saw. Great Grandma, born on her family's

00:23:25.000 | farm and well into her 80s, still had clear vision and her own set of teeth. Her weathered

00:23:30.000 | skin sat atop features that looked as though they were chiseled from granite. More often

00:23:36.000 | than not, she was the healthiest of the bunch and had a thin medical chart to prove it.

00:23:40.000 | The youngest child, on the other hand, often presented symptoms of the whole set of modern

00:23:45.000 | diseases. Attention deficit, asthma, skin disorders, and recurrent ear infections. Like

00:23:51.000 | many of today's generation, one or more of his organs wasn't put together quite right.

00:23:55.000 | Maybe there was a hole in his heart, or maybe he needed surgery to reposition the muscles

00:24:00.000 | around an eye. While the exact effects may be hard to predict, what is predictable, given

00:24:05.000 | the dwindling dietary nutrients and proliferation of toxic materials, is some kind of physiologic

00:24:11.000 | decline. Within a given family, the earlier the abandonment of traditional foods for a

00:24:16.000 | diet of convenience, the more easily perceptible the decline. I am thinking of one little boy

00:24:22.000 | in particular, the great-grandchild of one of Hawaii's many wealthy missionary families

00:24:27.000 | who developed an ear infection during his visit to Kauai from another island. This little

00:24:32.000 | boy bore none of his great-grandmother's striking facial geometry. His jaw was narrow,

00:24:37.000 | his nose blunted and thin, his eyes set too close, and his cheekbones were withdrawn behind

00:24:44.000 | plateaus of body fat. The lack of supporting bone under his eyes made his skin sag into

00:24:50.000 | bags, giving him a weary look. His ears were twisted, tilted, and protruded, and his ear

00:24:57.000 | and mouth were abnormally curved, predisposing him to recurring external ear infections.

00:25:03.000 | Narrow face, thin bones, flattened features, sound familiar? This is a dynamic symmetry

00:25:10.000 | shift. The nature and degree was something I'd expect to see if he were child number

00:25:14.000 | 3 or 4 of siblings born in quick succession. But the young man sitting on my exam table

00:25:19.000 | was only the couple's second child, and though mom had given herself a full four years between

00:25:24.000 | now and now, it hadn't protected his health. He was the fourth generation product of a

00:25:29.000 | century of nutritional neglect and the consequential epigenetic damage. The last century has derailed

00:25:36.000 | our entire culture from the traditions that sustained us, so he is far from alone in enduring

00:25:42.000 | visible epigenetic damage. And the consequences impact more than a child's skeletal system;

00:25:48.000 | their entire genome is at risk. I believe this is why, according to a landmark 2003

00:25:54.000 | Center for Disease Control report, this child, like all others born in 2000, had a 1 in 3

00:26:01.000 | chance of developing diabetes, a condition that reduces life expectancy by between 10

00:26:07.000 | and 20 years. What is going unreported is the fact that it isn't just diabetes on the

00:26:12.000 | path. Every year, growing battalions of familiar diseases are cutting a wider and wider swath

00:26:18.000 | of destruction through the normal experiences of childhood.

00:26:23.000 | Whereas in previous centuries part of a parent's responsibility was to work hard to prevent

00:26:28.000 | their children from getting sick, today so many of us are sick ourselves that we've

00:26:33.000 | grown to accept disease as one of life's inevitables, even for our children. Today's

00:26:39.000 | kids aren't healthy. But rather than make such a sweeping and terrifying declaration,

00:26:44.000 | we avert our eyes from the growing mound of evidence, fill the next set of prescriptions,

00:26:50.000 | and expand our definition of normal childhood health to encompass all manner of medical

00:26:55.000 | intervention. This latest generation of children has accumulated the epigenetic damage of at

00:27:00.000 | least the three previous generations due to lack of adequate nutrition, along with the

00:27:05.000 | overconsumption of sugar and new artificial fats found in vegetable oils. The family genome

00:27:10.000 | has been getting battered relentlessly for almost a century, even during key delicate

00:27:15.000 | periods of replication. The physiologic result of these accumulated genetic insults distorted

00:27:21.000 | cartilage, bone, brain, and other organ growth. Many physicians have noted an apparent increase

00:27:27.000 | in young couples complaining of problems with fertility, which given the implications of

00:27:32.000 | epigenetic science should come as no surprise. Children born today, I'm afraid, may be so

00:27:37.000 | genomically compromised that for many reproduction will not be possible even with the benefit

00:27:43.000 | of high-tech medical prodding. This is why I call these children the Omega Generation,

00:27:48.000 | referring to the last letter in the Greek alphabet. Born by caesarean section, often

00:27:54.000 | necessitated by maternal pelvic bone abnormalities, briefly breastfed, if at all, weaned on foods

00:28:01.000 | with extended shelf lives, the human equivalent of pet foods, these Omega Generation children

00:28:07.000 | see the doctor often and, whether firstborn or not, will likely suffer from both biradial

00:28:12.000 | and dynamic symmetry shifts. In the same way we talk about bracing for the aging baby boomers'

00:28:18.000 | medical needs, we had better reinforce the levies of our medical system for the next

00:28:22.000 | rising tide, medicine-dependent youth. These children will age faster, suffer emotional

00:28:28.000 | problems, and develop never-before-seen diseases. In my experience as a doctor, parents have

00:28:33.000 | an intuitive sense that their children are already dealing with more health problems

00:28:37.000 | than they ever did, and they worry about their future for good reason. But no parent is helpless

00:28:43.000 | if you have children or are planning to. I can think of at least one child who could

00:28:48.000 | do something to avoid all this illness and start getting healthy. Yours.

00:28:56.000 | I hope that this narrative is helpful to you and persuasive because I think we can all

00:29:03.000 | see it around us with our eyes. If you step back and just look at the – again, I'm

00:29:12.000 | from the US-American culture and kind of the Western tradition, but it's so blindingly

00:29:17.000 | obvious. The internet made a big brouhaha a couple months ago when people are coming

00:29:23.000 | out – I can't remember if it was the FDA or something – but basically coming out

00:29:28.000 | and prescribing drugs to fat kids to try to help – drugs and surgery to fat kids to

00:29:35.000 | try to help them lower their body weight. It's insane. And what has happened as a

00:29:40.000 | culture, we have been desensitized to believe our eyes. We've swallowed as a culture the

00:29:50.000 | mirage of expertise, thinking that, well, the smart people must have done great science

00:29:56.000 | and therefore we should listen to the science. And as such, we've stopped believing our

00:30:01.000 | own eyes. But all that should be necessary is to walk out in the street or go into the

00:30:06.000 | mall and look around you and see the complete and total failure of our health care system

00:30:14.000 | in most of our countries. People are ugly. They're fat. They look weird. They can't

00:30:21.000 | walk. They're in wheelchairs. The kids are ugly. They look unattractive. And it's not

00:30:29.000 | just kind of the normal unattractiveness of awkward growth spurts and everything. You've

00:30:32.000 | got sunken in chins and weird deformations, etc. And we don't look like a healthy and

00:30:39.000 | attractive culture. And we have to change that. And it has to start with nutrition.

00:30:44.000 | And so if you're going to help your children to flourish and succeed, you have to invest

00:30:50.000 | into their nutrition from the earliest of age. And that means investing into mom and

00:30:55.000 | dad's nutrition. And you need to do that, if at all possible, prior to conception.

00:31:01.000 | Regardless of where you are in your family growth journey, we should be investing heavily

00:31:06.000 | into our nutrition. And this is a very good and very important way for us to be spending

00:31:13.000 | money. Money should be spent on acquiring the highest quality nutritional, the highest

00:31:20.000 | quality nutrition choices that we can have. Because we owe it to ourselves for our longevity

00:31:27.000 | and for our enjoyment of good health. We owe it to our children, to our grandchildren,

00:31:32.000 | our great-grandchildren. We should be systematically building cultures where we're looking forward

00:31:38.000 | five or six generations and asking ourselves, "What do my great-great-great-great-grandchildren

00:31:44.000 | need to flourish and succeed in the world?" Part of what they need is good genetics. There

00:31:49.000 | are other things as well, right? Maybe a trust, a dynasty trust set aside with 360 years worth

00:31:56.000 | of buildup that can support future generations. Fine, that's a good part. But at the end of

00:32:00.000 | the day, if you can build genetic material that is going to have your children be strong

00:32:06.000 | and healthy and long-lived, that's going to pay off massively. Now, I'm guilty of underappreciating

00:32:15.000 | this in years past. As I'm getting older, I think more about longevity. And one of the

00:32:20.000 | things that's been so remarkable to me is talking to people who don't expect to live

00:32:24.000 | long lives. Because I never grew up with that myself. I never grew up with that expectation.

00:32:29.000 | I always grew up expecting that I was going to live a long life. Most of my ancestors

00:32:34.000 | on both sides of my family have lived well into their 90s, in some cases, several past

00:32:39.000 | 100. And then even on my wife's side, amazingly, many of her ancestors are long-lived as well.

00:32:45.000 | She had one grandfather who died of lung cancer when he was in his 70s as a lifelong smoker.

00:32:52.000 | But all of the rest of her family members, she had one grandmother that died in early

00:32:58.000 | 90s, another in... I had to ask her. I think it was close to 90, late 80s. And then a grandfather

00:33:06.000 | lived 104 or 105. I can't remember. And so, this is interesting. And it's something that

00:33:15.000 | I myself never appreciated. But that's a legacy, a legacy of longevity and good health that

00:33:21.000 | was passed down to her through her side of the family and to me through our side of the

00:33:26.000 | family that we did nothing for. We did nothing to deserve. But what we do have is a responsibility

00:33:32.000 | of stewardship. We have a responsibility to steward that legacy for ourselves and to steward

00:33:38.000 | that legacy for our own coming generations. And as you'll hear me talk about when I talk

00:33:46.000 | about education and academic development, one of the ways that I'm seeking to do this

00:33:51.000 | is with educating my own children. So, I have my entire family listening to the audio book

00:33:56.000 | of this deep nutrition book because I want my children from the very earliest of ages

00:34:02.000 | to be thinking about their genetic wealth that is built up. And what's so fascinating

00:34:08.000 | to me as a financial planner is you can turn all of the numbers of finance on their head

00:34:13.000 | when you can insert more time. One of the things that I, in my career in income planning

00:34:18.000 | course, when I created that course, one of the things I spent a lot of time on is talking

00:34:23.000 | about how fundamentally you can transform your entire financial empire if you can rejigger

00:34:30.000 | all of the expectations of your expectations around your career and your retirement. And

00:34:39.000 | one of the great tragedies of modern, of many modern perspectives, many people's modern

00:34:46.000 | goals, is their goal in many cases is to work for the shortest possible period of time so

00:34:54.000 | that they can retire for the maximum period of time. And in many cases, people have not

00:35:00.000 | received a strong genetic heritage of longevity. And in many cases, people are expecting to

00:35:07.000 | die in their 60s, 70s, etc. And when you do that, it compresses all of the financial opportunity

00:35:14.000 | that your family has. The numbers that I run are to say, what if you worked until you were

00:35:21.000 | earning income? What if you worked earning income from the time that you're 20 to the

00:35:25.000 | time that you're 90? And what if you diligently save and invest during that time? And what

00:35:33.000 | if you have children when you're 20 or 25? And what if you have even, let's just use

00:35:40.000 | normal numbers, okay? Imagine that you have five children, one at say 22, one at 25, one

00:35:53.000 | at 28, one at 31, what am I up to, four, right? The one at 35, etc. Imagine that you just

00:35:58.000 | have five children. But then what if you build a family culture where each of your children

00:36:03.000 | has five children? All of a sudden, the single generation, the family tree can blossom massively.

00:36:09.000 | And what if you build a culture in which there is a tradition and a culture of good health,

00:36:17.000 | good nutrition? And so most of you, you and your spouse and most of your children, you

00:36:24.000 | start to build this culture where you're generally around until you're 90, 100, 120 years old,

00:36:29.000 | depending on what happens with longevity science and anti-aging stuff, which is a really interesting

00:36:34.000 | area of research right now. Well, now you can see and enjoy three and four generations

00:36:40.000 | of family culture. And what if you build a financial system where you systematically

00:36:45.000 | support your younger generations? And what if you grow that over time? And instead of

00:36:50.000 | older generations consuming all the wealth, it just keeps piling up and growing and growing.

00:36:56.000 | They'll be passing laws against your grandchildren like they do against the Rothschilds or

00:37:03.000 | someone. It's just an incredible vision when you flip everything on its head. And to me,

00:37:09.000 | it's very, very inspiring and encouraging. What if you build a family philosophy that

00:37:13.000 | is so robust and so strong? What if you live a faith that is so real and so powerful that

00:37:20.000 | all of your great-grandchildren want to be just like you? What if you write a book that

00:37:25.000 | encapsulates your wisdom, the things that you have learned, and your great-grandchildren

00:37:31.000 | study that book as part of their education? And what if you build that over time and you

00:37:37.000 | build a family culture? It's possible. People have done it throughout history. People with

00:37:41.000 | vision and a long-time perspective have done it. But we, in our modern age, have often

00:37:47.000 | abandoned this on every level. We've abandoned it from a health perspective, and we've

00:37:51.000 | expected a pill to solve anything. And we've swallowed the idea that we go, "Well, I

00:37:55.000 | just can't do anything about it." We've abandoned the concept of working for future

00:38:00.000 | generations in favor of saying, "Well, they've got to figure it out themselves. They've

00:38:03.000 | got to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and, you know, we'll just do that." And

00:38:07.000 | these things are not healthy, right? We need to do better. And then back to kind of the

00:38:12.000 | working lifetime, we've abandoned largely the idea that our work is a fundamental, core,

00:38:19.000 | important part of what it means to be a human being, doing important contributions to the

00:38:24.000 | world. And we've assumed that the only reason to work is to earn money so that we can quit

00:38:27.000 | and retire. One of my favorite heroes is Dr. Denmark, who was, I think, the first female

00:38:35.000 | doctor to pass through, was the American Medical Association, something like that. She was

00:38:41.000 | a pediatrician in the state of Georgia, and she worked in active practice as a pediatrician

00:38:46.000 | until the age of 104, and then she retired for 10 years and died at 114. Well, if you

00:38:51.000 | could have the health and the kind of job that allows you to do that, just imagine what

00:38:55.000 | it can do to your finances. It's an incredible idea. So, this concept of investing into genetic

00:39:00.000 | wealth is really, really important. And one of the areas that we should be improving our,

00:39:06.000 | increasing our expenditures in our budgets is on food. We shouldn't have a goal of saying,

00:39:13.000 | "Well, what can I get on coupons that's cheap?" You know, I like couponing. I think it's cool.

00:39:18.000 | I really love Amy Decision's, you know, the Tightwad Gazette. But one of my great frustrations

00:39:24.000 | is a lot of the cheap food that you can get great coupons on is not good food. And so,

00:39:30.000 | food is something that we should be intentional about increasing our budget, and we should

00:39:34.000 | be finding and sourcing the highest quality foods and preparing them in the very best

00:39:40.000 | ways, and making sure that we ourselves and our children receive the highest possible

00:39:45.000 | nutrition, because these are the building blocks, and we need to invest into these things

00:39:50.000 | over the course of years, years and years. This is important for men and women, both,

00:39:56.000 | because for men, your nutrition affects your ability to procreate, whether you have viable

00:40:04.000 | sperm or not, and then the health of your sperm make a huge difference in the long-term

00:40:09.000 | health of the baby. One of the comments that, let me double-check her name, again, I think

00:40:15.000 | it's Shanahan, one of the comments that she made, yeah, Catherine Shanahan, one of the

00:40:20.000 | comments that she made in the book is about infertility. I have been shocked as, due to

00:40:29.000 | the significantly high levels of infertility that I see presented by my age group and my

00:40:38.000 | peer group, and some of these things are explainable and some of them are not, but it is shocking

00:40:46.000 | how many of my peers who over the last 10 years should be and should have been in their

00:40:52.000 | prime reproduction age, and I'm thinking healthy-looking people, right, people who seem like young,

00:40:57.000 | vigorous, healthy adults who have tremendous problems conceiving children and then bringing

00:41:04.000 | children to term, to healthy childbirth, and so it's a big and important thing. One more,

00:41:13.000 | I want to read one sidebar to you from this book, and I want to urge you that if this

00:41:16.000 | is something that you want to think more about, pick up Deep Nutrition or pick up any other

00:41:21.000 | book that you think will help you make a study of this and add anything to your own studies

00:41:30.000 | in this area, but I want to read this sidebar to you, and I want to point out to you how

00:41:35.000 | these things can make a difference in terms of investing in children. Six ways nutrition

00:41:40.000 | can optimize your child's growth. Number one, height. Pour more milk. A meta-analysis

00:41:45.000 | concluded that for each additional 100 milliliters of milk, roughly 3.3 ounces consumed daily,

00:41:50.000 | children grew an extra 0.2 centimeters, roughly 1/8 inch per year. Children in the study were

00:41:55.000 | aged 2 to 20, and the study duration ranged from a few months to two years. The study's

00:42:01.000 | authors noted that the growth effect was especially powerful in teens. It is not known if higher

00:42:06.000 | and sustained milk supplementation would have additive effects, but if avid milk drinker

00:42:11.000 | and NBA player Jeremy Lin is any example, at 6'3" with 5'6" parents, then perhaps

00:42:17.000 | it may. Height is something that is strongly correlated, especially in men. Height is something

00:42:24.000 | that is strongly correlated to lifetime success. I myself am 6 1/2 feet tall. I haven't measured

00:42:31.000 | it. I probably, I don't know if I'm stronger than that, but somewhere between 6'5" and

00:42:34.000 | 6'6". When I was younger, it was 6'5" and 3/4" when I stretched up, so let's just call

00:42:37.000 | it 6'5". During my entire lifetime, being tall has given me immeasurable advantages.

00:42:46.000 | It automatically commands more respect because you have a more imposing presence. People

00:42:51.000 | look up to you in the figurative sense, meaning they just automatically assume you to be more

00:42:56.000 | capable. Big tall men. I have a good friend of mine who is very short, a couple of them.

00:43:02.000 | We were talking about it recently, and what's amazing is that he's several years my senior,

00:43:07.000 | has all kinds of qualifications, but because of his short physical stature, people underestimate

00:43:12.000 | him constantly and continually. You look at income stats, etc. Tall men have earned higher

00:43:20.000 | incomes. Tall men have a much easier time attracting beautiful spouses. It just makes

00:43:27.000 | a big difference. If there's something that you can do to help your children to grow in

00:43:31.000 | height, then it's dramatic. Ms. Shanahan includes information in here in the book, an interesting

00:43:38.000 | analysis where you can see as nutrition in a population increases and gains and becomes

00:43:47.000 | better, then the height of a population increases. So height is important. Vision. Look for lots

00:43:54.000 | of variety. In a study of children between ages 7 and 10, children who developed nearsightedness

00:43:58.000 | compared to children who did not consumed significant less of a wide variety of nutrients.

00:44:03.000 | Protein, fat, cholesterol, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, vitamin C, phosphorus, and iron. Of note,

00:44:08.000 | although the myopic children ate roughly 300 fewer calories, there was no difference between

00:44:12.000 | the two groups in several anatomic metrics, height, weight, or head circumference. This

00:44:17.000 | suggests that while normal height, weight, and head circumference are indications of

00:44:21.000 | sufficient nutritional intake, they are not definitive indicators of optimal nutrition.

00:44:26.000 | It also suggests that children with normal vision may have been more physically active.

00:44:30.000 | I've always been nearsighted and I had LASIK vision correction surgery a couple years ago

00:44:36.000 | and it was a transformative event in my life. To finally experience what people with excellent

00:44:45.000 | vision experience, a life free of corrective lenses, has improved my quality of life immeasurably.

00:44:53.000 | It's one of the best things that has happened to me over the last decade. And if we can

00:44:59.000 | give good nutrition as well as good eyesight exercises, and et cetera, we may have a good

00:45:07.000 | eyesight exercise, good sunlight, good exercise, et cetera, just overall producing healthier

00:45:15.000 | children, we may help those children to have a higher chance of maintaining appropriately

00:45:24.000 | normal vision. Cognitive development, skip starchy snacks, nutrients shown to correlate

00:45:29.000 | most strongly with high IQ include vitamin E, omega-3, and iodine. Studies have shown

00:45:34.000 | that the higher a child's vitamin E, the better their language and social skills. Similarly,

00:45:39.000 | the higher a newborn's omega-3, as measured in maternal umbilical cord blood, the higher

00:45:44.000 | that child's IQ later in childhood. Additionally, cognition has been shown to be impaired by

00:45:49.000 | a snacky pattern of eating high carb foods, characterized by foods that require minimum

00:45:55.000 | preparation such as potatoes and other starchy roots, salty snacks, sugar preserves, and

00:46:00.000 | confectionery. Presumably this effect is mediated through reduced nutrition to calorie ratio.

00:46:05.000 | Again, IQ and cognitive ability is a major driver in long-term success of your children.

00:46:14.000 | And so from utero, you want to do everything possible to support the development of the

00:46:20.000 | smartest and most functional brain that your children are capable of, and then you want

00:46:25.000 | to support that, including supporting it with good nutrition. Lifespan, beget big babies,

00:46:30.000 | larger children born to non-diabetic moms have greater muscle mass, higher resistance

00:46:35.000 | to diabetes and obesity, and longer telomeres, the part of the DNA that determines how many

00:46:39.000 | more divisions a cell can undergo, thus influencing cellular lifespan, all known to be associated

00:46:44.000 | with longer life expectancy. How to grow a big baby without developing gestational diabetes?

00:46:49.000 | Aside from being tall and well-fed during your own childhood, we don't know much about

00:46:53.000 | specific interventions to produce bigger babies, but we do know something about how to avoid

00:46:58.000 | having a too small baby. Don't smoke, don't conceive while you're undernourished or

00:47:02.000 | underweight, and don't restrict protein, i.e. if you're vegan, you may need to supplement.

00:47:07.000 | Immune system, maximize microbes and micronutrients. Researchers at UC Davis found that individuals

00:47:12.000 | with subtle deficiencies of various micronutrients are more prone to develop a variety of common

00:47:17.000 | day-to-day infections, and are more likely to have more severe infections with prolonged

00:47:21.000 | convalescence. Allergies, asthma, and autoimmune illnesses are more prevalent in children with

00:47:26.000 | reduced microbial gut flora diversity. Experts recommend breastfeeding to optimize early

00:47:31.000 | gut flora development, and are considering recommending soil-based probiotics, including

00:47:36.000 | fermented foods in a child's diet, and encouraging outdoor play would be my preferred

00:47:40.000 | methods of introducing immune-boosting probiotics. Back to the immune system. Anything we can

00:47:46.000 | do to cultivate large and strong immune systems will have a strong knock-on effect to our

00:47:53.000 | children's lifetime success. A child who is sickly and misses, say, 10% of his school

00:47:59.000 | days will have a much harder time achieving academic success than the child who is healthy

00:48:06.000 | and is always present in school. These small percentages expanded out over time make a

00:48:14.000 | huge difference in long-term success. I mentioned on the previous episode that when I'm sick,

00:48:22.000 | I'm just filled with empathy for people who don't enjoy robust health, and I realize how

00:48:28.000 | much of my own success in life has simply come from the simple fact that I did nothing

00:48:34.000 | to deserve of being healthy. Because when you're healthy and you feel good, you're

00:48:38.000 | filled with energy, you can work hard, you can work consistently, and that work pays

00:48:42.000 | off in terms of financial productivity, career productivity, etc. Somebody who has a weakened

00:48:46.000 | immune system, and even just excluding chronic conditions, just experiences, gets more colds,

00:48:54.000 | more flus, common ordinary sicknesses, and those sicknesses, instead of being beat in

00:48:59.000 | six hours or a day, they linger on for two or three days, that person's, at the end of

00:49:04.000 | the year and at the end of the decade, that person's personal productivity will be dramatically

00:49:08.000 | reduced due to something as simple as having a weak immune system.

00:49:14.000 | Puberty. Avoid insulin resistance. Junk food consumption and being overweight are both

00:49:18.000 | associated with insulin resistance. Insulin resistance impacts boys and girls in different

00:49:24.000 | ways. For girls, it causes precocious puberty, so common today that we find breast development,

00:49:29.000 | typical of 11-year-olds a generation ago, often occurring in 7-year-olds, and rarely

00:49:34.000 | in 3-year-olds. Aside from its detrimental psychological effects, precocious puberty

00:49:39.000 | typically reduces the child's adult height. In boys, insulin resistance reduces testosterone

00:49:44.000 | levels. Low testosterone during puberty is associated with decreased development of muscle

00:49:49.000 | mass, impaired growth of the penis and testicles, reduced deepening of the voice, development

00:49:54.000 | of breast tissue, and lack of normal male hair growth.

00:50:00.000 | In conclusion for this particular commentary, do everything you possibly can to emphasize

00:50:07.000 | the health of a mother and a father and build strongly the health of the mother and father

00:50:14.000 | prior to conception so that at the moment of conception, you have the very healthiest,

00:50:22.000 | most vibrant sperm that could possibly exist, and you have the very healthiest, most beautiful

00:50:29.000 | egg that could possibly exist. And when those come together and in that magical moment form

00:50:34.000 | your new baby, you want all of the genetic material that is present to be completely

00:50:41.000 | functional and give you the highest probability of having a beautiful, healthy child. Then

00:50:49.000 | throughout pregnancy, support the mother's physical health as strongly as your budget

00:50:55.000 | can possibly make possible. Buy the very highest quality foods in abundance. Support her with

00:51:03.000 | the greatest diversity of nutrients, making sure that her diet is of the best quality

00:51:11.000 | that exists. Don't cheap out on good food just to save a buck. Think of your family's

00:51:19.000 | genetic heritage 50, 100, 200 years from now and invest into it today the way that you

00:51:27.000 | wish your forebears had invested into it for you. You may not come from a family of strong

00:51:36.000 | genetic wealth. Your parents may have all, or your grandparents may have all expired

00:51:41.000 | at the age of 60. That stinks. But you can start today to give the kind of gift to your

00:51:49.000 | great-grandchildren that you wish they could have. So in conclusion to this long section,

00:51:56.000 | nutrition makes a huge impact on long-term growth potential of your child.

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00:52:35.000 | Now, in addition to nutrition, you want to do everything you can to support a mother's

00:52:44.000 | health during the gestation of your baby. That includes exercise and psychology. One

00:52:54.000 | of the most important things for a mother to do during gestation while the baby is in

00:53:00.000 | her womb is to exercise consistently but not over much. Meaning a strong mother will have

00:53:08.000 | a better pregnancy, will be healthier, contribute to the health of the baby, and will have a

00:53:14.000 | better childbirth and a better recovery after childbirth. And so you want a mother to be

00:53:20.000 | exercising consistently and to be strong. And then psychologically, one of the best

00:53:25.000 | investments you can make is helping an expectant mother to be in the healthiest possible state.

00:53:32.000 | As a man, once you've made your contribution to the family genetic pool, it's done. Your

00:53:40.000 | physical health is not, your physical actions are not going to impact the baby at that point

00:53:47.000 | on genetically, whereas a mother's body will. But what you can do is you can care for the

00:53:54.000 | mother in a strong way and make sure that all of her emotional state is as positive

00:54:01.000 | as it possibly can be with the goal of having a healthy and natural childbirth. It's hard

00:54:10.000 | to know, just like with genetic factors regarding health, it's always hard to know how much

00:54:21.000 | credit a person can take for the relative good health that you may enjoy. You ask yourself,

00:54:29.000 | "Well, am I enjoying good health because of all my hard work and my good diet and my

00:54:34.000 | good exercise, etc., or am I enjoying good health because I won the genetic lottery?"

00:54:39.000 | On the other hand, "Am I sick because of my own choices or am I sick because of the choices

00:54:43.000 | of my forebears?" How do you know? Same thing with natural childbirth. If you're trying

00:54:48.000 | to help a mother prepare for natural, for effective and healthy and smooth and easy

00:54:53.000 | and pain-free childbirth, and she experiences that, it's hard to know how much credit to

00:54:58.000 | take. I know plenty of people who worked hard to prepare for childbirth and weren't able

00:55:03.000 | to do it. So I'm giving a disclaimer here that I'm going to tell you some of the things

00:55:07.000 | that I have done and that my wife and I have worked at to try to have healthy, easy

00:55:14.000 | childbirths, and thank God we've experienced those. But I also acknowledge the fact that

00:55:19.000 | I don't know how much of that is due to any particular single factor that we have done.

00:55:26.000 | But I'll tell you what we do. First, I think that you should have a goal of having

00:55:33.000 | the very best childbirth that you want, that you can have. And if you're looking for the

00:55:38.000 | well-being of the child, I think the best outcome for the child is to have a natural

00:55:44.000 | vaginal childbirth, if at all possible. It's the best for the mother and it's the best

00:55:48.000 | for the child. Now, in the United States, at least among my peers who are culturally

00:55:54.000 | similar, there is a strong... This is kind of acknowledged, like of course that's what

00:56:01.000 | the desire would be. Globally though, you'll find regions of the world in which this is

00:56:06.000 | not even discussed. There are some regions of the world in which their rate of natural

00:56:11.000 | childbirth is incredibly low. All of us should be extremely grateful for the technology

00:56:20.000 | of cesarean childbirth. It's an incredible technology that has saved so many mothers

00:56:25.000 | and babies' lives and we should be grateful for it. It is inferior... Cesarean birth is

00:56:32.000 | superior to the death of a mother or the death of a baby, but it is inferior to natural

00:56:38.000 | childbirth if the goal is the best start for the baby. Without going past my area of

00:56:46.000 | expertise, there are all kinds of functions of the actual birth process for a baby that

00:56:53.000 | if a baby will experience natural, non-drug-affected vaginal childbirth, he will be set up for

00:57:02.000 | his best possible chance at life. The action of the womb during labor, the chemicals and

00:57:12.000 | the... I wish I knew all the proper terms. I've read cursory about it enough to know

00:57:18.000 | that it's there, but without going deeply into it. But all of the chemicals and the

00:57:22.000 | bacteria and the things that the baby is exposed to as he passes along the vaginal birth path,

00:57:29.000 | all of these things are really good. And when a baby is born at full term through natural

00:57:34.000 | childbirth, the baby is strong and ready to go. And his first days can be incredibly healthy

00:57:42.000 | and he can very quickly go about his entrance into the world. I've seen this happen five

00:57:48.000 | times and I've always been just so blessed to see a healthy, happy baby come into the

00:57:53.000 | world. And I myself have received all five of my children. It's something that happened

00:57:58.000 | unintentionally the first time and since then I loved it so much. It was just a wonderful

00:58:02.000 | aspect. And I always tell fathers, like one of the coolest things you can do is you be

00:58:06.000 | the one to receive your own babies. It's an amazing thing. And so when you hold a newborn

00:58:12.000 | in your hands that is literally one second old and you can interact with and you see

00:58:19.000 | him happy and healthy and alert and ready to go, and then you start that process, a

00:58:25.000 | bonding process with a mother and she's not drugged up, the baby's not drugged up, she's

00:58:31.000 | alert, she's rested, she's healthy, et cetera. It starts everything going well. And so if

00:58:37.000 | at all possible, work for and plan for natural childbirth. The things that we try to do is

00:58:43.000 | really good nutrition, really good exercise, chiropractic care to me makes a big difference.

00:58:49.000 | Chiropractic care, regular chiropractic care of a mother in preparation for childbirth

00:58:57.000 | to ensure that her pelvis and her skeletal system is in the best alignment possible.

00:59:03.000 | And then dealing with the psychological challenges that can sometimes impair childbirth,

00:59:09.000 | making sure that a mother feels strong and confident about her ability to deliver a child,

00:59:14.000 | making sure that she's completely free of fear related to childbirth, that she's filled

00:59:19.000 | with positive expectation around childbirth, and then using good techniques to minimize

00:59:26.000 | pain and discomfort during childbirth. All of these are good and productive things to

00:59:30.000 | work at. And I'm not going to go deep because I think those are well attended to in most

00:59:34.000 | of the cultures that I'm exposed to. Now, in the very afterbirth, however the birth

00:59:40.000 | goes, the most important thing that you can do to invest into your child is to invest

00:59:45.000 | into the relationship of your baby and the mother. In general, this means having lots

00:59:55.000 | and lots of time together. If you want your child to succeed, the best investment you

01:00:02.000 | can make into your baby is making sure that he and his mother have a strong relationship.

01:00:09.000 | And this begins from the very beginning. Physically, his most important nutrition is going to

01:00:17.000 | come from breastfeeding. The data on breastfeeding is unequivocal. And again, just like the comment

01:00:24.000 | on C-sections, we should be grateful for the many babies' lives who have been saved with

01:00:31.000 | high quality nutritious formula. We should also acknowledge, and we should acknowledge

01:00:37.000 | that formula is better than death. But formula is nowhere near as good for a baby as his

01:00:44.000 | mother's breast milk. The problem is breastfeeding is hard. It is hard and it is incredibly

01:00:53.000 | demanding on a mother. It's hard and demanding in a way that I think, at least in my experience,

01:01:01.000 | is probably more than birth. When my wife and I had our first baby, we worked so hard

01:01:06.000 | to be prepared for the childbirth and we were so blindsided by how difficult breastfeeding

01:01:11.000 | was that it was just, it was way more difficult than childbirth. Breastfeeding is difficult

01:01:17.000 | physically for the mother. It hurts. It hurts in different ways at different stages. But

01:01:23.000 | those first few days are often extremely painful. And it's incredibly demanding because of

01:01:30.000 | the scheduling demands that the baby places on the mother. Babies don't sleep very long

01:01:37.000 | because they're usually hungry. I forget what the formula is. People say, okay, the baby

01:01:42.000 | can sleep for as many hours as he is months old or something like that. But the point

01:01:46.000 | is a new baby will often need to eat every two, three, four hours depending on the child

01:01:56.000 | and depending on the age. This eating process, especially for a little baby, is often a 30

01:02:02.000 | to 60 to 90 minute process depending on the child and depending on what's necessary for

01:02:07.000 | the burping and all of the stuff, etc. And so a new mother is going to wind up being

01:02:13.000 | awakened on a 24 hour basis every few hours. And that's very, very disruptive for her.

01:02:20.000 | It's very, very hard. And so if you're going to support that process, the most important

01:02:26.000 | thing you can do is eliminate all of her stress, eliminate all of her difficulty, and eliminate

01:02:32.000 | all of her outside obligations. So what I try to do is make sure that the only job she

01:02:40.000 | has is to take care of baby. And obviously I'm going to do my best to help take care

01:02:43.000 | of baby, especially in those early days. For the uninitiated fathers, one of the things

01:02:48.000 | that's very important to understand is that childbirth, even the most medically textbook

01:02:53.000 | perfect childbirth, quote unquote, is a traumatic physical event. When the placenta of the baby

01:02:59.000 | detaches from the uterine wall, it leaves a significant scar, a significant wound that

01:03:05.000 | needs time to heal. And so a new mother needs time in bed, she needs time just to recover,

01:03:11.000 | she needs time just to rest and heal. And that process, she shouldn't carry the baby

01:03:17.000 | in the first few days, she shouldn't be doing anything difficult, she should just be resting

01:03:21.000 | and recovering from childbirth. And breastfeeding itself is such a demand on a mother's body

01:03:29.000 | that she needs lots of time to rest. So you can't really spend money on this process.

01:03:36.000 | What you can do is you can spend time, and you can try to eliminate her stress. And so

01:03:42.000 | at least the way that we've tried to do it is right now my wife does nothing. I do everything

01:03:48.000 | that can possibly be done, which is why I'm talking about this with you. And I haven't

01:03:57.000 | done many podcasts because I'm making all the food, I'm taking care of all the children,

01:04:01.000 | I'm doing all the homeschooling, and she's in bed with the baby. That's her job. And

01:04:08.000 | I do what I can to help with the baby, but obviously it's just, it's a mother's job in

01:04:13.000 | the first few months. Now, if you want to invest in the long-term outcome for your new

01:04:22.000 | baby, then you'll do everything you can to extend the duration of that relationship and

01:04:29.000 | contact between the mother. A baby who experiences the continual comforting presence of his mother

01:04:37.000 | will have most likely a strong psychological standpoint in life. If you go and look at

01:04:45.000 | some of the studies that have been done for babies in orphanages, and you look at everything

01:04:49.000 | from touch, right, how much a baby is touched, spoken to, etc., then what you see is that

01:04:56.000 | the most important thing for a baby is relationship. Lots and lots of cuddling, right? There's

01:05:02.000 | studies on skin-on-skin contact, making sure the baby has lots of contact with a mother

01:05:08.000 | or father's body, skin-on-skin. Making sure that there's lots of conversation, lots of

01:05:14.000 | reassurance. You can build a strong psychology into your baby, or let me rephrase. Hold on,

01:05:19.000 | that was probably too strong of a statement. You can put in place the best possibility

01:05:24.000 | of a strong psychology, emotional regulation in your baby at an early age if the baby will

01:05:32.000 | know nothing but continual love and continual connection. So the physical aspect is provided

01:05:39.000 | by the nutrition from his mother. So we support the mother's body with the best nutrition

01:05:45.000 | that we can. The mother's body creates the highest quality breast milk for the baby.

01:05:50.000 | That breast milk, with ideally copious amounts and for extended periods of time, is going

01:05:55.000 | to provide for the best possible growth potential of the baby. But that's demanding on the mother.

01:06:01.000 | So the way that we invest into that is by freeing the mother from obligations. Imagine

01:06:07.000 | yourself, this is why I hate it when women feel like they have to go back to work three

01:06:11.000 | months after the baby is born. Imagine yourself as a breastfeeding mother, sitting at work

01:06:18.000 | with a thing on your breasts, you know, and trying to find a quiet corner where you can

01:06:22.000 | put a thing on your breasts so you can pump milk for your baby, so that some, you know,

01:06:28.000 | hired worker can give that milk to your baby. There are so many dedicated mothers who do

01:06:33.000 | this, and it sucks for them. And so as a husband, as a father, one of your, I say mandatory,

01:06:42.000 | but you do it, is to never put your wife in that situation. If she has a job or a career

01:06:49.000 | that she wants to pursue, and your children are older, and they're not breastfeeding,

01:06:53.000 | and you've got a great school for them, and they're older, etc., fine. But don't ever

01:06:59.000 | put that kind of demand on your wife that somehow she's going to go to work with a pump

01:07:05.000 | attached to her breasts and try to figure out how to make money while she's doing that.

01:07:10.000 | If that's something that she does, you guys work out fine, but don't ever make it because

01:07:14.000 | of money. Invest in such a way so that she can be there with the baby, and so that she

01:07:18.000 | can be there constantly with the baby, and so that she can get plenty of sleep, and so

01:07:22.000 | that she can get all of the things that she needs. One of the reasons I've set up my life

01:07:28.000 | the way that I have is to be able to support my wife. My wife is not sleep deprived. Her

01:07:34.000 | sleep schedule is messed up because she's being awakened during the night, of course,

01:07:39.000 | but she's not sleep deprived. I make sure she gets plenty of sleep because I've arranged

01:07:43.000 | my life in such a way that I can support her in that so that she's not sleep deprived.

01:07:47.000 | And these, to me, are really useful points of wealth. It's a good way to spend money,

01:07:53.000 | and it pays off in terms of the long-term benefit for your children. So if you want

01:07:58.000 | to invest in your babies, what do they need? They need love. They need physical touch.

01:08:03.000 | They need conversation. They need nutrition. They need sleep. And the best person who's

01:08:10.000 | able to provide those things is their mother. The most dedicated professional in the world.

01:08:18.000 | You go out and you find the best trained nanny for your 22-month-old baby is never going

01:08:27.000 | to have the strongest, the kind of care that the baby's mother can have. And so support

01:08:34.000 | her in that. Now there are women who are not inclined in the direction of mothering.

01:08:40.000 | Increasingly, I think many of those women today have chosen not to bear children.

01:08:47.000 | Historically in the past, there were a lot of mothers who bore children, and they just

01:08:52.000 | weren't great mothers. And so that was why I made the comments I made about if you want

01:08:56.000 | to have healthy children, you're going to need to choose a healthy mother. A mother

01:09:00.000 | who's willing and is going to love her children. And do the best with what you've got, whatever

01:09:06.000 | it is that you have, as fathers and husbands. But support her in that, and make her job

01:09:13.000 | easy. And the more that her psychology is strong, the better she feels, the more loved

01:09:18.000 | and cared for she is, the happier the baby is likely to be. And investing into those

01:09:25.000 | initial months and years of a baby's life, it all comes down to presence. There's nothing

01:09:30.000 | academic that you can do, there's nothing, anything that's going to matter. It comes

01:09:33.000 | down to presence and being together.

01:09:38.000 | I'm going to save some of the positive things that you can do physically and whatnot for

01:09:42.000 | young children for the next episode in this series. I'll just on this, just include here,

01:09:49.000 | the importance of eliminating and removing all trauma and potential trauma from a baby's

01:09:57.000 | life. If you look at the development of children who've been raised in difficult circumstances,

01:10:03.000 | right, you can go and you can find children who, fetal alcohol syndrome, their mother

01:10:09.000 | drank a lot, or drugs and whatnot, and you can see the physical problems those children

01:10:13.000 | face. You can go and you can look at some of the studies that have been done on children

01:10:17.000 | raised in orphanages, and over the years there's just been some horrific, horrifically immoral

01:10:22.000 | studies done, you know, about children that didn't experience touch, and children that

01:10:26.000 | weren't talked to and whatnot. And they're just, they're wrecked for life. But one of

01:10:31.000 | the things that is clear and consistently true is you have to make sure that you eliminate

01:10:37.000 | trauma, or potential trauma, in a child's life. And, you know, serious trauma when children

01:10:44.000 | are physically abused or sexually abused, it literally stunts their growth and their

01:10:49.000 | development on, in some cases, a physical level, but especially on an emotional and

01:10:54.000 | cognitive level. There are 50-year-old men out there walking around in, with the brain

01:11:00.000 | of a six-year-old because they experienced some significant trauma when they were six

01:11:05.000 | years old. And so you have a duty and a responsibility to your children to construct around them

01:11:11.000 | a very, very safe cocoon, and to make sure that they are in that safe cocoon until they

01:11:20.000 | are ready to leave it. There is a huge difference between telling your, working with your 14-year-old

01:11:32.000 | to help your 14-year-old face the challenges of the modern age and of "real life" versus

01:11:39.000 | forcing your 14-year-old to go to the church nursery when he's sitting there crying for

01:11:45.000 | you. There's a huge difference between dealing with adolescents and older children who are

01:11:52.000 | capable of rational thought, etc., and having separation, etc., from their parents versus

01:12:00.000 | dealing with young children and separating young children from their parents. And so

01:12:06.000 | in many, one of the things I have observed is that in our modern age, many parents seem

01:12:12.000 | to take pride in their children's ability to be detached from the parent. I don't think

01:12:19.000 | that's necessarily a thing to take pride in, right? A healthy child at an appropriate age

01:12:24.000 | should certainly be able to do well not being with a parent. That's fine. But you want your

01:12:32.000 | children to know nothing but complete safety during the entire lifetime until they're ready

01:12:41.000 | to bear adult responsibilities and recognize that the world is unsafe, but especially in

01:12:46.000 | those early years. So you must protect your children from trauma and potential trauma

01:12:53.000 | in all of its forms. Be a bear about it if necessary. If there are people in your life

01:13:00.000 | who are potential sources of fear, of trauma, etc. And by the way, this can range, we have

01:13:06.000 | a tendency I think to go to the most extreme, meaning we have a tendency to go to the most

01:13:13.000 | horrific expressions of abuse that we're aware happen in the world. But I think most of us

01:13:19.000 | don't face those dangers very much, right? Those dangers are actually quite low in the

01:13:24.000 | modern world. But there are a lot of traumas that come in that are much more mild. Scary

01:13:31.000 | stories, scary people, scary ideas, etc. These things are not healthy to impose into our

01:13:40.000 | children's lives. And so I guess my point is simply be a bear and create a very safe

01:13:48.000 | and warm and comfortable home environment that is protected, that is a shelter so that

01:13:54.000 | your children don't experience any form of trauma. In the next episode of this series

01:13:58.000 | we will pick up with childhood education. We'll talk about the things that you can do

01:14:03.000 | to support your children in their development physically, spiritually, mentally, and

01:14:09.000 | academically, and how you can do a lot of those things at a very early age. So I don't

01:14:17.000 | participate in Teach-A-Baby-To-Read like I once did, but I do think there's a lot you

01:14:21.000 | can do at a very early age. And we'll pick up with some of those things that on this

01:14:26.000 | foundation can supercharge the results of success in the modern world. And I'll share

01:14:31.000 | with you how those things can, again, keep your child on a success path. By way of review

01:14:38.000 | I want to emphasize, because sometimes because I've talked so much about so many things

01:14:41.000 | you may have lost the thread. By way of review I want to emphasize what we've talked about.

01:14:45.000 | Number one, the basic genetics of a child's parents are going to drive the child's

01:14:55.000 | long-term success. So you want to be very careful about who you are engaging to be the

01:15:03.000 | genetic donor of your child. In addition, that person who is supporting the mother is

01:15:12.000 | going to have an inordinate influence on the kind of babyhood that that child receives.

01:15:21.000 | So as a prospective mother, choosing to marry somebody who wants children and wants you

01:15:30.000 | to be a mother is going to be very different than choosing to marry somebody who expects

01:15:33.000 | you to earn two-thirds of the family income and get back to work really quickly. Choosing

01:15:38.000 | to marry somebody who earns enough money to allow you to comfortably be a stay-at-home

01:15:44.000 | mother is going to put your life on a very different scale than marrying somebody who

01:15:49.000 | doesn't earn enough money to allow you to comfortably be a stay-at-home mother. So you

01:15:53.000 | want to be very careful. Choosing to marry somebody who is of high character and is going

01:15:57.000 | to treat you well and willing to spend the money on your nutrition, etc., those things

01:16:01.000 | matter. So you want to think about it prior to the relationship. Then prior to conception

01:16:06.000 | of the baby, you want to do everything possible on a physical basis to support the nutrition

01:16:13.000 | of the mother and father so that the baby has the very best genetic material already

01:16:18.000 | woven into his body at the moment of conception. Then while the baby is in utero, you want

01:16:24.000 | to do everything you can to support his healthy growth and working towards supporting the

01:16:29.000 | health and the mental strength of the mother so that she can be looking forward to a healthy

01:16:35.000 | and safe natural childbirth. And then after childbirth, you want to support the baby with

01:16:41.000 | the best nutrition coming through his mother's breast milk and the best environment for him

01:16:47.000 | to grow, which primarily means sleeping and eating, in a completely safe environment.

01:16:52.000 | And you want to keep mama feeling really strong mentally with lots of rest, lots of support,

01:16:57.000 | and you want to keep her really strong physically. Then as your baby starts to reach several

01:17:02.000 | months old and starts to be interacting, that's where we'll pick it up in the next episode.

01:17:07.000 | Thank you so much for listening to today's show, and I'll be back with you very soon.

01:17:11.000 | Remember, Radicals, only five days left before the live class. HackProofCourse.com.

01:17:15.000 | HackProofCourse.com. Go now. Sign up for the live class.

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2023-02-03_Invest_in_Children_Early-2