EP6: Building Healthy Habits That Last a Lifetime with Dr. Clark from Little Wellness Pediatrics

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Welcome to Healthy Knox, connecting Knoxville to better health. This is the show where we cut through the noise and get real about what it takes to live a healthier life right here in East Tennessee. Your hosts are two doctors who aren't just talking about health. They're living it and delivering it to this community every single day. Dr. Cherise and Dr. Trent from Corrective Chiropractic, let's get into it. All right, welcome back Knoxville, where health isn't a trend, it's a lifestyle. I'm your host, Dr. Trent Hippert corrective chiropractor and wellness and lifestyle prevention practitioner. And today, this episode is gonna be, I think, an episode you're just gonna love, and you might even have to pull over the car if you're listening because we are inter- our guest today is Dr. Clark from Little Wellness Pediatrics. Welcome to the show, Dr. Clark. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. So why don't you give the listeners a little bit of background on yourself in two minutes that you think they should know? Sure. So I'm a board-certified pediatrician licensed here in the state of Tennessee. And one of the most important things that I do and is different than a lot of practitioners and pediatricians, and even just physicians in general find, is I have a problem with just fixing things with Band-Aids and treating things acutely. Quick fixes are not a lifestyle change. And it's really important that we as physicians, because we spend a lot of time learning about how our bodies heal themselves, how our bodies work, how they can go wrong, and how we can fix them, we are taught a lot about those Band-Aids and those quick fixes. But on the side, if you have a physician that spends a lot of time researching and working through how our body actually heals itself that's gonna be one of the most important things that you find in a physician for yourself or for your kids. And that's something that I have spent really the last seven years of my life investing alongside of my medical training career to make sure that not only I can inform patients on treatment options, but also I know what I'm supposed to be doing in training and helping that parents don't know for their kids. People go every day and they're like, "Oh, my kid's pretty healthy." But I want to look at it from a medical side of, hey, there are actually some deficiencies in what you're doing that are gonna down the line lead to problems, not only from a medical standpoint, but I also want to encourage you to learn how to teach your kids healthy living. Because when you drop them off to college, are they gonna be spending their time worrying about what they shouldn't be eating and have a lot of anxiety around that? Or is it gonna be just second nature on healthy living and health- healthy use of their bodies so that they have good energy, and when they have their own kids one day, they can show up with the energy that they want to have and not regret all the time they didn't get themselves to that healthy place? So I think for me as somebody that's not only a pediatrician, I would classify myself a- as a health coach for that reason, is I love spending time walking families through practically how they can incorporate healthy living and teach their children how to do that, so when they grow up, it's second nature for them to be healthy. I love that. Now, what's interesting, because you're not the traditional medical doctor and perspective of the medical doctor and system that y- most of them operate in. And so what got you interested in kind of the perspective that you're looking at now? Sure. So I my wife I give her a lot of credit for pushing me on some of the perspectives of how the medical system was set up. And she pushed me with question of, do you want to spend most of your time just fixing problems that are there, or do you want to spend a lot of time preventing them from even occurring? And also changing how people think about what's actually healthy. She proposed other questions when it comes down to particular topics like, medicines and vaccines and those sorts of things as well. She pushed me in all of those areas. But I think that was a big step very early on in my medical training career that just was like, wow, I know our bodies. God gave us amazing bodies to be able to heal themselves, and we can do a whole lot to mess that system up. But we can also do many things even from a daily or hourly standpoint that, that can help our bodies get towards that, that self-healing process. And when she pushed me on, open your mind to the fact that what you're doing is not it not that it doesn't help a lot of things, I know it does, but it's not the big picture. And missing a huge part of the picture i- is one of the most important things that I saw so many people going through the same training as me, that they just were like, "I'm gonna stick with it, what the system's teaching me, and that's it. I don't wanna do any extra research. I don't wanna spend extra time." And it gets to the point where, you know, one of the most important questions I can ask any pediatrician, I spent some time this week ask- reaching out to several of my pediatric colleagues from over the years and asked them this question was, like, if you were to choose one particular preventative health measure above anything else, and I particular targeted for pediatricians too, and I was asking this question like, if you were to pick one preventative measure- that you would choose to give any parent advice for their child to prevent disease and improve their health over the course of their entire life, including longevity and everything, what would it be? And more than 99% of those responses were things like antibiotics, vaccines, treating things with medicines as early as possible. I only had one doctor, who actually is an obesity doctor, say, "Actually, the most important thing is nutrition." And I was like, "I would agree with you because the top 10 leading causes of death, more than half of those in the world have to do with things that can be prevented when it comes to appropriate nutrition." And if we as physicians are not paid for nutritional counseling and we are in- instead paid to give medicines or paid to refer out to specialists or paid to, do things like even when... We can talk about vaccines in a separate time, but d- do these medical interventions rather than talk about something that prevents the, most of the top 10 leading causes of death worldwide, why does that make sense? We're supposed to be medical physicians to train people on how to be healthier, not just not do that. It makes no sense at all. So that was just fascinating that our mindset as physicians is just so in the system. I was like, that's fascinating that we s- spend so much time not talking about what's actually the most important part of everyone's life. Yeah. And I think you hit the nail on the head. It's you guys are taught through an academic system that is y- one, unless you have a lot of energy and time and maybe some resources, you're not gonna reinvent that wheel, and so that's why it's probably a lot of your colleagues are like, "Oh, I'm just gonna go with what my training tells me to do." My question, I was always curious about this and I wanna see if this is true. What, on average, like, how many hours do the average medical doctor, pediatrician, I know they're different there get in terms of nutrition education? Medical schools all over the world really actually only get about- Four to six hours of nutrition training in medical school. And it used to be significantly more, and then lobbyists in the higher power were able to convince them that we need less of that and more of training in thing- classes like pharmacology. I had two semesters full of four hours of lecture for most of those days going over pharmacology. And in my medic- medical school which followed US guidelines for requirements from from a education standpoint, but we only had about six hours of lecture. And I had two questions on our exam through that semester that asked questions, and I could tell you the exact question was, what sort of sugar is in breast milk and what sort of sugar is in cow's milk? That was it. That was all the nutrition training and questions that we received in medical school, which is shocking to me, and I never saw them come up on board exams. I have a... I own a tutoring company for board exams, and there are pretty much zero nutrition based questions when it comes to board exams other than you shouldn't smoke Which is fascinating. Yeah. What, if you had to give one piece of advice in terms of nutritionally to parents what would that look like? What would that be? It's hard to say one because children have deficiencies in different things. But I would say heading towards a well-balanced diet. And what people will describe a well-balanced diet thing, people feel that, oh, that means incorporate some, some fiber, good proteins, healthy fats, and, fruits and vegetables. But do we do that on a daily basis? Some people do, but a lot of those things also don't incorporate some of the micronutrients as well. And so really doing a in-depth dive into what is this child's diet on a daily, weekly, monthly basis is really important because we can s- I can see from a medical standpoint where we can be deficient in some of those things, and what that can lead to issue-wise later. Such as and I put up a post on our Instagram regarding some of the common micronutrient deficiencies and some of the things that people don't think about. But y- with kids are not well immersed in a lot of the different flavoring palettes that us adults have developed into experiencing, so I can understand the aspect of that. That's hard. But I think one of the most important, if I, to get back to your question is, if it were one thing that I would say was it would tell yourself this: take one step at a time. It does not have to be a big mountain you're climbing, it's taking one step at a time. And, I know, I talked about this earlier, but incorporating, and this could be something that I teach families, I teach parents f- about their own diet, and this, that's like a big goal of mine is my patients are not just the pediatric ones, it's their parents, and their whole families, and their lifestyle that could change a generation or generations to come because it's healthy living that I want them to get to, but it's about taking small steps. And if you were to take, like, how many meals, let's say you have breakfast, lunch, dinner, you have an afternoon snack, and a nighttime snack. Now, that's a lot of eating, but a lot of pe- people do reach those meal sizes and, throughout a whole seven-day week if that was what you followed every day. It's about 35- meals or snack times that you approach, and it takes, if you were to take one of those and say, "Wednesday lunch I'm gonna eat this healthy thing, and I'm gonna do that every Wednesday for lunch," and then each week you add on one new healthy thing, so now it's Wednesday lunch and Wednesday dinner that you're gonna choose a healthy thing. If you start do- rou- creating a routine of health change, it only takes you 35 weeks. That's about, eight months or so. If you were to do it one meal at a time of incorporating something healthy, that pushes out anything that is unhealthy and unbalanced and doesn't have those macro and micronutrients that our body absolutely needs for growth in childhood, but also for adult healthy living. And I think the most important part that we tell ourselves every day is like, "This is just too hard to tackle, so whatever," and I think it's hard when we have that mindset when it actually is a little bit of mind over matter when you tell yourself, "I can make one change a week." Just once. You decide on Sunday that you plan for Wednesday at lunch, "I'm gonna do this thing healthy." That's it. And the next day, and suddenly you're eating healthy every single meal and snack that you have, and you're suppl- and and can plan your s- ahead of what you're ordering or what you're going to get at the grocery store to make those things healthy for yourself and for your kids. Yeah. I I explain to patients that easy change is easy, hard change is hard, and if we make the easy changes, it makes it sustainable, meaning you can do it over and over again. And you brought up a good point, too, that the majority of Americans d- American, Americans and their diet, they fail miserably, not at the macronutrient level because, right now in the culture of fitness and what's out there in social media land is everything's being infused with protein. And that's not usually- Yeah the best quality of protein, but it's- Sure a marketing gimmick right now- Yeah because of GLP-1 medicines and whatnot and what they're doing. But the point is, here what I'm trying to make, is the micronutrient level is the thing we drastically fail at. And what I found in my studies and certification in wellness and prevention, everything goes back to a deficiency problem or toxicity or a combination of the two. Yeah. Absolutely, and it's becoming deficient in our soils. It's becoming deficient in our fruits and vegetables, and we can talk about all those trace minerals and nutrients that we need for hormone function. You had on an earlier podcast someone who their job is helping patients with hormone balance. And w- people deal with that every day. It's a growing thing to get hormones in balance, and I think that's awesome. I think that's, very much needed for a lot of patients. But, how did we get there? How are we in this trajectory? And that's the biggest problem I'm seeing not only here in Knoxville but across the United States. Like, where we rank in Knoxville or where we rank in the state of Tennessee versus other states, it doesn't matter because all the states are in the, heading in the wrong direction. And I think that is one of the biggest goals that I have is every patient that I have, I wanna get you on the right path, in the right trajectory, your mindset about it. It's second nature for you to live healthy living so that when you're 35 and you have littles of yourself your own and you wanna run around with them, and do you have the energy for that? Do you have the energy to go up to the mountains and do a hike? Do you have the energy to play sports with them when they reach teenagehood? It's it's really important to ask ourselves every question for the future today in the aspect of, like, where do I wanna be in a year? Where do I wanna be in five years? Where do I wanna be 10 years, but with our health? Not many people ask that question. They tell themselves where they wanna be and c- house do I wanna be in? Or like what job or career? Am I gonna be happy? Where do I wanna be with a family? Do I wanna have five kids or two or whatever, we ask ourse- ourselves those questions all the day, but like where do we wanna be with our health, our fitness, our cardiovascular system? Like, where do we wanna be from a functional energy standpoint? Those are questions that we need to ask ourselves every day, and it doesn't take, a tremendous amount of time necessarily to do that if we do that one at a ti- one step at a time, if that makes sense. And I think you're right. Talking about these things sound really good, especially to people that are listeners and first-time listeners here. And it can almost become overwhelming 'cause it's like, "Oh, it's another thing for me to worry about, another thing for me to micromanage." But we're here to tell you, this podcast is here to tell you that it's about taking this information and taking that and applying it one step at a time. 'Cause if you do just one thing today, whether it's go for a walk for 10 minutes, whether it's choose the glass of water instead of the high-sugar soda, like you are literally changing and helping your body in that one moment. And I think that gets glossed over too easily because it's like, "Oh, what could that one thing do for me?" That one thing can change you in a way that it could spur you in that direction of, "Oh, that felt pretty good to go on a walk. I think I'd like to do that more often on my lunch break, and it's only 10 minutes." Yeah. Yeah we're gonna wrap up here in a little bit, but I wanna cover with you: What's one simple thing you could advocate to parents with kids that they could start doing today that is simple? Let's do an action step. Sure. I think an action step for you is to you know- Figure out and choose... I always remember this line from the movie The Patriot, the, "Aim small, miss small." And I think starting at the small micronutrients first will get you the macronutrients from a diet. So if you're, like, looking at your kid and you're like, "Okay, wait, they're eating these certain foods," if you were to ask yourself, "What are we deficient in?" And vitamin D is a whole another thing. I think getting sunlight and everything is important. But if you're talking about nutrition that goes into your child's body, choose one food that is out of the ordinary from what your child normally eats that has nutritional balance at its basis. Not any refined anything, not any processed food whatsoever, but something that brings nutritional value and brings special nutrients. For example, mushrooms and different mushroom forms carry a significant amount of selenium, which is very important for thyroid function and a lot of other metabolic processes, right? So how do we incorporate mushrooms? But mushrooms may not be the only thing that you have that nutrient in it. But if you're gonna choose something that commonly leads to deficiency, choose one thing and incorporate it into the diet a week And if you do that, you're gonna also get the proper amount of proteins and carbohydrate balance that you're gonna get. You're gonna get all of the amount of rich and appropriate fats that you're supposed to have as well. So when you choose something small and go for the micronutrients small first, you start getting the larger things with it. Yeah. So if you're gonna make choices and one thing a week, incorporate something that gets you something small first, and that actually makes it fun. You can bring your kid and say, "Hey, here are five things that you can choose at the grocery store that have these things in it. What would you like to choose from that?" Obviously, if you have tiny little kids that they're not gonna choose for you, but, incorporating those things and trying them, it's worth a try. Don't get stuck in a routine of your kid just eats this, so that's it. Make choices for them that are healthy. Teach them about it, and also enjoy a meal that incorporates some of those things together. That's gonna be healthy for you. That's gonna be healthy for your kids. A- and get things into their bodies that are healthy for their development. But teaching them about that is also a necessary thing 'cause as they get older, in high school here in, in Tennessee, public schools, they really only require about two to three semesters of general health education and PE. Otherwise, they don't require much of that beyond that point, so when they are heading towards college, they're just thinking about academics. They're not really thinking about health. And so when they get to college, choices get made that are not healthy for them. And so teaching them that way before that is gonna be one of the most important parts that you do from-- with your kids as they're small. I think that's awesome advice. As we wrap up, how can anybody who's a listener interested in reaching out y- to you and your practice give them some information how they can do that? Yeah, awesome. We have Instagram and Facebook, social media. That's where you can see posts, updates other things to understand a little bit more about the practice. It is a direct primary care clinic in South Knoxville. We'll be opening up near the end of December. We'll give updates on our social media as well. Our website is littlewellnesspediatrics.com. That's where you can join up for our wait list. We send out a monthly newsletter where you can get updates there as well and then also get some pr- special privileges for enrollment if you decide that our practice is best for your family and your children. And that's also where you can get contact information, reach out with further questions. My email and everything is on there. The full official website should be going live in the next couple weeks. It's currently a landing page, but you are able to get on our wait list through there if you would like to get more information. I love that. I had a great time talking with you, so- Yeah, me too I'd like to have you come back again, and we'll do a different topic. I think this will be a popular episode. And if you're a listener, if you have any businesses any professionals that you think we should interview, please reach out to us, let us know. And remember, when it comes to your health, you're worth it. We'll talk to you next That's a wrap on Healthy Knox. Thanks for spending some time with us today. If something we said stuck with you, share it with someone in your life who needs to hear it. And if you're ready to take the next step toward feeling better right here in Knoxville, come see us at Corrective Chiropractic. We're not just your doctors, we're your neighbors. We'll see you next time.