The Ground Our Children Grow In with Dr. Michelle Perro | Ep. 007

Pediatrician Dr. Michelle Perro on industrial food, glyphosate, and what four decades at the bedside taught her about why kids are sick.

For most of a career spanning emergency rooms and children's hospitals, Dr. Michelle Perro watched the patterns in front of her shift—more allergies, more gut trouble, more neurological and chronic conditions in children who, a generation earlier, would have been rare. Rather than treat each symptom as its own broken part, she did what good clinicians do: she stepped back and asked what had changed in the soil these kids were growing in. The answer led her into the tangled relationship between industrial food, glyphosate, the gut, and the developing body.

In this conversation, Nasha and Michelle move past the noise and the absolutes to sit with the harder questions. What does it mean when a child's body is responding intelligently to an environment that no longer supports it? What gets lost when we medicate the response instead of tending the conditions? And what does it take for a physician to let her own observations—not just the literature—reshape how she practices? This is a conversation about children, yes, but also about food as terrain, about the courage to swim against the current, and about what becomes possible when we stop asking what's wrong with the child and start asking what's shaping them.

More From Dr. Nasha Winters

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today's conversation is one I don't take lightly. My guest is a woman I count as a friend, a colleague, and I'll just say it, she's one of my chiros. Dr. Michelle Perrot spent more than 35 years as a pediatrician, much of it in the trenches of emergency medicine, from Metropolitan Hospital in New York to Children's Hospital in Oakland. She's the kind of doctor every parent hopes is on shift when the worst night of their life walks through the door. And then she did something most physicians will sadly never do. She let what she was seeing in front of her, things like asthma, eczema, gut pain, kids who were sick in ways the textbooks didn't quite count for, change her mind. She stopped asking only, What is the diagnosis? And started asking, what is this child marinating in? She turned that question into, What's making our children sick? Her landmark book with medical anthropologist Vincent Adams that named a few how industrial food, glyphosate, and a wounded gut are driving an epidemic of childhood chronic illness. That book was the whistle being blown. Her newest one, Making Our Children Well, a Parents Guidebook, is the answer to the question every frightened parent asks next. So what do I actually do about it? This is a hands-on turn towards nutrition, homeopathy, and rebuilding a child's terrain. She co-founded GMO Science to keep this work in the public and in front of the people who'd rather she didn't. A career spent swimming against the current, stethoscope in one hand, and a soil sample in the other. Here's my conversation today with Dr. Michelle Perrot. I'm Dr. Naisha, and this is Tend the Terrain, where we stop drowning in information long enough to recognize we're starving for something much deeper. Health doesn't happen in isolation, it happens in a terrain. The biology, the rhythms, the relationships, the meaning you're still making. All of it shapes whether life expresses its vitality or quietly begins to unravel. And each week I sit down with scientists, physicians, farmers, artists, patients, and systems thinkers, people who talk about bodies, but also about land, about healing, but also about grief and belonging and what it means to become human again. This isn't a show for quick answers. It's a space for better questions. Pull up a chair. Or were until recently, for you know, for many, many decades. So I want to understand like the night, whether that's metaphorical or literal, that a diagnosis for you stopped being enough. Like you were this phenomenal emergency pediatrician trained to stabilize, name it, treat it, move to the next bed. But somewhere along the way, that stopped being enough for you. You I really want to understand, like, take us back to what you started seeing in those exam rooms that you just no longer could contain in the construct you were trained in.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

I was never okay with uh Western medicine. I fought it even during med school when I boycotted dog lab. So there was something in me that was always fighting the authority. Always. I I just was uneasy with the dictatorial nature of what we were doing, although I didn't have the backfill. There was no backhoe giving me the content I needed. I just was uncomfortable. When I left the mainstream medicine, it was over a uh patient justice issue, which I won't get into, but that's why I left emergency medicine. That was the big push out. And I joined up with a colleague who is an MD homeopath. But what happened was I needed to work on my own because it's really hard to tell me what to do. That is the downside of my personality, is once I am on a track, you have to work really hard to move me off and show me why I shouldn't think that way. So I opened my own integrative urgent care here in my little local town. But what happened was it was early 2000s, and I started seeing a lot of gut issues, tons of gut issues. And those gut issues preceded the neurocognitive, neurodevelopmental, neuropsych issues, and I hate that word, neuropsych, that were starting to emerge in children, in dogs, and adults, in everyone, but I was focused on kids. And once I learned about GMOs and pesticides, I was able to consolidate, integrate, collaborate, and understand what was happening from chronic poisoning. And the poisoning was in our food. And later, it wasn't until later that I was able to understand how this affected the microbiome and epigenetics and other things as well. But now, where I am, 25 years later, it's all about the microbiome. Until that is fixed, because right now, there are when we can get into it if you'd like, Natha, some assaults on our microbial buddies that are decimating our neurocognitive capacity. And we will be a nation of ADHD and autistic-like behaviors, antisocial, sitting in front of our devices, playing with AI in very short time. So this has been the morph, but it was the awakening was autism and gut. And noting that the gut preceded the development of the neurocognitive changes.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Amazing. And so one of the things I really appreciate, because I'm imagining some people are listening here and they may be hearing or thinking that there is a judgment against those diagnoses, but this is what I want folks to hear, and about what I want you all to know about Dr. Michelle. She does not view a child as being broken. No, this is so big. On this show, I don't have that view of when we have a disease process as a body being broken. It is a body responding intelligently to its environment. And so with a child, that environment is one they didn't choose. The food on the tray, the soil it grew in, the chemistry of the world built around them. When a kid lands in your care, Dr. Michelle, with the eczema, the gut pain, what have you, you started to recognize and put these pieces together. And this is what you're alluding to in this conversation that the diagnosis at the end, you know, like overlaying that patient isn't the issue. It's what precipitated that. Can you you alluded to that, but can you flesh that out a little further for us?

SPEAKER_01 6:57

So it really started to uh it unroll in the following fashion. So first I recognized the food, organic, now I say organic regenerative. And then I understood, well, it's the food and the foods that people are now sensitive to from intestinal permeability or leaky gut. So then I started down that pathway. And then it rolled to the dysbiosis or the abnormal microbiome and an overabundance of pathogens and not enough beneficials. And then it rolled into we had a profound nutrient deficiency from the way we're producing our food, what Americans are forced to eat via school lunches, via you know, um whether you have SNAP and you have something called like the old-fashioned food stamps. Here they're called SNAP in California, where you get government subsidies, what we're allowed to eat, to you know, what the military gets processed foods, and these ultra-processed foods are causing enormous harm to our bodies, and to the an understanding of how we've been poisoned with um bio-engineered microbes, whether it's from the sources you can say, government DOD, you know, CIA, you know, whoever's been working the field. I don't know, and I don't talk to that because I don't know. What I do know is that we have the kids are chronically infected with microbes we haven't seen before. So treating a child from when I graduated my residency, I graduated med school in '82 until '99 when I made this full transition from academic medicine. I I kind of weaved in and out after that. But officially gone in 2016, so making that transition to where I am now, understanding then chronic infection. And also I learned about terrain medicine, and I know that's what you're deep in in about 15 years ago, and understanding how the terrain modulates the entire scenario from microbes to metabolic well-being to neurologic health, the whole landscape is terrain-driven to understanding presently that just about everything I was taught is wrong. Wow. Wow. It's all wrong. And how to relearn. And so we had to unlearn to relearn, and now to understand that what we're dealing with now is just not a disease and a diagnosis, it's more of a complex interaction of many factors that we have to unravel. And I try to go for the most profound one first, and then begin to peel back the onion, our favorite metaphor and homeopathy, certainly, and get back the layers, but to restore that that basic health. And what we're doing, and not to kind of criticize any diagnosis that someone may have, absolutely not, but to saying we should make allow that individual to rise to their best self, set their highest frequency, their highest intention, whatever that may look like, and giving their body the tools for innate healing.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

I love this. And so you hit on a lot of topics that you and I just like think of second, like second nature now, because we've been in this field literally and figuratively for a long time. But there may be people listening who have no idea of what you're talking about when it comes to glyphosate. So maybe a quick definition of that, or about these emerging organisms, or even the loss of really critical friendlies in our gut, which I know is where a lot of your interest and passion are lying today. Maybe tackle or unpack each of those just a little bit at a time to bring maybe a brand new person into the conversation, or even folks who thought they had all the story on glyphosate or some of these organisms, maybe bring them up to speed of what the newer data is showing us.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Yeah, absolutely. So the global poisoning is by glyphosate, the ubiquitous herbicide introduced by Monsanto now Bayer. And it is unfortunately like a building block of protein, it's a synthetic amino acid. Amino acids are the building blocks of our entire protein system based on one called glycine. And this unfortunately, this herbicide, 800 formulations globally, the leading herbicide spray, we all have glyphosate. And if you're living in America, actually most countries these days were all exposed. And when we look at children's urine, oh my gosh, it's off the charts. And so we're all eating this stuff, and we and we spray a lot of it because the introduction of genetically modified foods that happened in 96 in the US. We're not the first country South Africa was. So they changed the foods to tolerate the spraying of this herbicide so the crop wouldn't die and the and the weeds around it would. And so we're eating it in the crop that is modified. It is really hard to avoid GMOs because they're not labeled. There is some labeling happening now through bioengineered, and we have to be cognizant of the fact that terminology keeps evolving because Americans do not want to eat GMOs. Right. Every article I read about get rid of ultra-processed foods, seed oils, they never say GMOs or pesticides. I read one today and I thought, you didn't say GMOs or pesticides. Those are like, you know, banned words from our vocabulary. Right. And I talk about them all the time.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

And the funny thing about those two things you talked about, ultra-processed food and seed oils, by design are genetically modified. Just the massive, it's probably incredibly rare. I can't even think of any uh, you know, I guess I've seen labeling for organic canola oil, but um, there is no such thing, really. And so it's just such a thing that they're just ubiquitous in nature, like you said, in nature itself, with glyphosate, but all of these ultra-processed foods and seed oils that take up 70% or better of our grocery stores, that all just comes as a collective GMO, glyphosate, and the pet, you know, other pesticides, as well as it just being highly processed, that our bodies do not know how to safely utilize and excrete those things.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

And you know, this the downside, there's so many downsides of glyphosate, but the biggest one that I focus on is that it's an antibiotic. And it wipes out the key beneficial microbes. And the main ones are uh bifidobacteria and lactobacillus. Now, why this is incredibly unfortunate is babies are, should be a monoculture, which means a completely bifidobacteria infantus. That's what babies need to thrive. As a matter of fact, breast milk is designed to contain something just to feed bifido. They're called human milk oligosaccharides. So this food, HMOs for short, bifido, mom, that was the relationship. So we are designed to feed this microbe. A study came out a year ago, and we can talk about that show that 92% of babies now are devoid of bifido. The reason why this is so important is, and I'm a little bit, you know, kind of going sideways here, is that these microbes produce substances, they're called metabolites, that's the name. And those metabolites are needed to produce the chemicals that run our brain function called neurotransmitters. The particular one that bifidol makes is called acetate. You need acetate to make this very profound neurotransmitter, and this is important, called acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is the neurotransmitter that crosses into the brain. Most of our neurotransmitters are made in our gut, some are made in the brain, and it is responsible for focus, executive function, um, the ability to really stay on task. So when kids do not have this, what happens? They cannot focus. What do we have an explosion of? We already have the autistic explosion, is ADHD, both child onset and now adult onset. You can compensate this with some dopamine. Those are the drugs that are being prescribed, which increase dopamine, which will help offset the lack of this other neurotransmitter. But what people really need is bifido, these microbes, and we need to stop killing them with the pesticides that are biocides, kill life. So until we remove these chemicals, we will not be able to fix the issue. So that's the conundrum that we are facing, and why we are still battling decades later, the uh bears fighting hard against us, $12 billion in lawsuits, and they are trying so hard right now. The uh farm bill, executive orders, Supreme Court, to give them a pass. Yeah, yeah, to give them indemnity so no one can sue when they are harmed from this class of herbicides.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Hoo wee girl, you just big, big mouthful there. And my hope is that if anybody's hearing this for the first time and thinks we're moving into conspira conspiracyville, I really need you to do your homework. This is not conspiracy. I attend major, major clinical medical research symposiums around the globe having these conversations. This is a very different conversation in the clinical space and the research space than it is at the political and corporate space. That is who we're fighting. We are not fighting science, we are not fighting medicine, we're fighting big corporations and politicians. And so this is what's really important for people to hear. And so at the center of this, who gets hit in the most of the crossfire are the parents. And so, so much of what we both do, you know, is sitting in front of terrified people drowning in noise. Um, whether it's the kids or the patient or the advocate, all of these pieces, you have a lot of frightened humans saying, something's wrong, I don't know what it is, I'm getting mixed signals or mixed messages about what the cause is and what the treatment is. So you've had to be a guide, not just a prescriber for these folks over your career. And how do you hand a parent back their authority without also handing them another protocol to fail at? Because it is a delicate dance here. So, how do you help them learn to trust themselves and trust a different way of thinking while trying to do the best they can to support their kiddos?

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Well, you know, you just gave me like the perfect segue into my new book, and I was like, see if I have a copy of it nearby, but I don't. So I thought about that because access to people like me is impossible. Integrated pediatricians were few and far between. Integrative practitioners who know children are few and far between, whether you're seeing a naturopath, traditional Chinese medicine, chiropractor, holistic nutritionist, they don't know kids per se. And kids, as we've said a million times, they're not many adults. So I wrote a book and uh called Making Our Children Well, and it's it's basically called a Parents Guidebook, empowering healthy families with nutrition and homeopathy. And I wrote that book, it's almost 500 pages, but it's a manual, it's the how to do what I do because I am really trying to inform parents how to exit the system with tools. It is irresponsible for me to say, Oh, exit the medical system. It's a hierarchy of pharmaceutical driven, you know, dictums, and you need to, you know. That is your what what is a family to do? Right. So I would try to give them the toolbox and it starts in your kitchen. And at first, the new the nutritionist I was working with was unhappy with my section on informed consent, and she pulled out. And I thought, wow. And then the publisher who I also had a pull out from didn't like some of the other things I was saying. So I was getting censored for just trying to give a message to families on how to employ nutrition and homeopathy.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

And there was this subtle censor, not well, not so subtle.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Not so subtle, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Not so subtle censorship. And I thought, well, I need to get this message out, I will do it myself. I was like little red hen who could, and I did it, and it's on Amazon. Okay, you know, self-publishing. It's okay. And there it is. That's how I had to do it. Because um podcasts, of course, are great. Yeah, we write continually Nature books, we're writing articles, we're writing substacts. Yeah. We aren't trying to get into like Secretary Kennedy, we're trying to get into those places. We're often not invited in the front door.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Um, because we play the outside game, not the inside game. So we outsiders are not going inner sanctum there. So that's okay, because when you're in the inside game, you can't speak freely. So what people like you, brilliant minds, are trying to do is speak from the outside to the core of eaters, families, babies, grandparents, on how to do it and how to take it back. They don't want families, they ubiquitous they don't want people empowered. And we say, no, you're empowered, you can do it. Yeah, you make the choice, your body, your choice, whatever you choose, and we're here to support that journey.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

I love it. And in your first book, which is how I started stalking you, which was the book What's Making Our Children Sick, that was really the whistleblower book. That's where you stood up and named what was causing the harm. And then, like you said, over time you realize, ooh, there's not enough of me's in the world to do something about this. So you needed to create the manual, which is this book that is just um mind-boggling how good it is. Um, the making our children well being the guide. Michelle also spoke to the Substack, which I've been following very um very closely as of late. In fact, I think yesterday or this morning's was just incredible. I downloaded it to digest it again and again. You are writing, you know, ferociously in all of these places. Um, you also run a nonprofit organization and you are doing podcasting. You are trying to get the message out to whomever will hear. And so, as such, talk to me about um like the journey of how we bring on more people to help in this good fight, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

So the idea is that um our the where I'm looking at are numbers. We are greater, our numbers are fabulous, we are massive, and so it's just reaching as many individuals as we can, as many ways as we can, whether it's writing, speaking, community meetings, town halls, whatever it takes, Zoom links, whatever, and ignite the passion we feel. And when people regain their power, it's almost like a cognitive wake-up. Like, what? I've been asleep, and now I need to wake up and take hold. When that happens, it's a force of nature. The other way I try to do this, and I am blatantly transparent about it, is to piss off every mom across America and wake up the mama bear. Yeah, there is an inherent power in women, particularly protecting their children, but it can be protecting your family dog, it can be protecting your your spouse or your mom for that matter. You know, it's it's this innate nurturance. Women have it now. Listen, we're not the only ones that have it, but we have a powerful, powerful force. And that is one of the things I'm tapping into. And I do believe it's what drove Maha. Drove Bobby into the White House, probably drove Trump into the White House too. And we can stay political or not, but I feel that that is one of my subterfuges. And I am working on that to ignite. But it's it used to be change your home, but I think that day is over. I used to say, whatever you do at home is okay. Uh-uh, I'm not saying that anymore. I've changed my rhetoric. Now it's everyone needs to step in. And what I'm working on right now is I've learned, for example, I'm in the great state of California. We are spraying our forests, 75,000 acres in Tahoe with glyphosate-based herbicides. We put that on hold. They're spraying my area. It's called West Marin. It's called Point Reyes National Sea Seashore. It's beautiful. They're spraying that. We're creating a coalition, literally, as we speak. So we have to work. Everybody can get involved. You don't need to be a lawyer, a senator. You don't need to be a glyphosate, you know, aficionado. You just need to be a concerned citizen that doesn't want to see your home, your air, water, food poisoned. If you care about your environment, then you need to step in. And I'm I ask everyone to join in the fight now and go in organizations like yours, and we can list others that are fighting the fight. It's happening locally, Natha, across America. And now what we're fighting, unfortunately, are these data centers. And I don't want to go off too off topic. Yeah. But talk about the biggest polluter. I mean, I was thinking it was 5G60. I was thinking it was geoengineering. And now I'm thinking, here comes the tsunami. Right, right, right. But I would say still we have to start with the stopping of the ubiquitous use of these glyphosate not to be substituted, whether more toxic, you know, herbicides or pesticides, but stop this chemical farming, chemical spraying, chemical modulation of our planet. And I invite everyone to become involved. It's not you and me, it's everyone.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Exactly. And you know, it's interesting where you and I first finally met in person was actually at a regenerative farming conference where we were clinicians coming to speak about what we see at the other end of the fork, you know, and what they were seeing at the other end of the fork and how we came together. So that's the other place where we have been linking arms, I think, effectively, is in the regenerative farming um community is actually giving more voice to making some of these changes politically and on the, you know, in government and corporate impact, more so than sadly the clinicians. Partially because I'm sure the clinicians are just fried, buried, overwhelmed, burned out. But we have to come together to your point. I used to think that there were buckets of people being like, here's the clinician, here's the farmer, here's an advocate, here's an activist. It we all have to be all those things today in order to do something to make a ripple towards positive outcomes in this world around us. And you in your work, in your life, in your teachings are doing just that. And so before I let you go, I'm asking this question of the folks who are doing this heavy lifting because it's it's a lot. I want to know what or maybe how you are tending your own terrain these days.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

It's been tough, and there are times that I go down because it's overwhelming. And I can even see it, you know, Nathan, not to do a little side here, but I do something called live blood analysis. Yeah. And I took a recent blood of a peak with my own with my partner, and I look so stressed on live blood analysis. And when you are trying to steer the ship, the captain, and you know, I don't mean to sound arrogant, you can't go down with the ship. You have to stay afloat. So if I go down or you go down, it's you know, we need people kind of pushing this. And we're super knowledgeable in the space because we've been doing it forever. And you and I are very fortunate because we've been, we're clinicians, we're authors, we run nonprofits, we've we've traveled, we've seen what's happening globally. So we have a unique perspective, a unique window. So, what a couple things I do do. First of all, my diet is as pristine as it can be without being neurotic. Yep. I've I've done several meals with her to attest for that. I don't just subscribe to neuroticism. Occasionally I veer off and I will have you know some non-organic foods. I'm at a conference with Natha, so be it. And then repair my gut. I am an advocate, um, believer in exercise and detox. I exercise pretty regularly and it's just part of my regime. And I'm I do different forms of exercise, weight training, bicycling, dancing, walking, whatever I can, and I get up frequently. I also try and try and walk, output of word, after every meal, just to reduce my glucose. I just take a 10-minute walk out my door, go around the block, and come back. So that's what I do after I eat. You know, I mean I don't I don't go for a run after I've had a big meal. Okay, folks, do that. I do a lot of um at least, I'd like to say once a week, either saunas or other detox methods to lower my toxic load or all exposed. Additionally, I run frequencies periodically. I was showing you nature before this podcast, my a little device to help run Earth, the Schumann Earth Frequency or others when I need it, because we can do another podcast. I would love to do that. It's all about electromagnetic health and frequency. And I try and stay off my devices, plug them in, get rid of them as much as I can, and not be addicted to my phone. I am on it, people. Let's let me clear. But so those are things I use, and I also try and choose, and this is a new one for me, and this is my I'll wrap it up with this healthy relationships. And this has been so hard letting go of friendships that are toxic to me. And those that has been so hard. And and saying this environment, this relationship doesn't work for me. You're a wonderful person, but it's not good for me, and I need to bow out and be honest with that. And I I swear I can go off gluten, dairy, eat organic, make all the bone broth in the world. But people and telling them that it's not working for me anymore has been my challenge. So those are some of the things I do to employ good health. And I take some supplements. I'm not supplement nutty, you know, like, oh, like taking like a gazillion pills every day. No, but I when I need support, I reach for certain things. And I do have a fair amount of remedies and homeopathics over my shoulder. You can't see them, that I choose when needed, and I give them freely to my friends, and my I'm treating my chicken right now with remedies. And so that's what I do and try to walk the walk. And I I stumble, I fall, I diverge, and I try and come back.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

I love you. This is what's so refreshing about you is you are full on like what everyone is seeing and hearing here. This is how Dr. Michelle is always. It is such a joy to be with you out in the world at conferences, to be out in a world with you and and trying to make a difference, an important difference in the world, that you're fierce enough to stand up for our most vulnerable population because it's such a territory that everyone's so litigious, fearful, you know, that not many want to touch this with a 10-foot pole. And Dr. Michelle, someone's got to do it, and I'm really glad that it's you. So thank you for being with us. Thanks for the beautiful books you've birthed into the world, and thanks for being a guiding light.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Nisha, it is a joy, and to have this conversation with you, someone I've admired and followed for as long because I've been a fan, fangirl, for a long time, and rightly deserved. So, you know, however, when folks like you and I connect, even briefly, even on a podcast. So thank you. Thank you for having me. Ah, what a joy. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

That was Dr. Michelle Perrot. 35 years in the trenches and still letting what she sees change her. If this stirred something, go find her two books: What's Making Our Children Sick for the Diagnostic Side of Things, and Making Our Children Well for what you're gonna do about it. Her ongoing work lives at GMO Science. Go read her, follow her, and meet your own questions there. Thanks for tending the terrain with us today. Thanks for tending the terrain with me today. Whatever stirred in you, don't rush past it. Let it compost. Because when we tend the terrain, life knows what to do. See you in our next conversation.