RESOURCES
- Buy the book “Between A Shot And A Hard Place” on Amazon
- Buy the book “Parenting at Your Child’s Pace” on Amazon
- Visit Dr. Gator’s website integrativepediatrics.com
- Check out Dr. Gator’s online Parenting Masterclass Raising Amazing
- Shop at Dr. Gator’s online Store Tiny Roots Apothecary
- Follow Dr. Gator on X.com
- Follow Dr. Gator on Instagram
- Follow Dr. Gator on Substack
- Watch this episode on YouTube
- Listen to this episode on iTunes
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro Snip
00:54 Introduction to Dr. Joel Gator Warsh
02:40 Dr. Haley tells what it was like to have 4 unvaccinated kids get pertussis at the same time
04:00 Dr. Joel Warsh explains the balance between medicine and a healthy lifestyle
04:55 Dr. Haley reads the definition of mainstream medicine and Dr. Warsh explains the difference between mainstream medicine and integrative medicine
07:02 Dr. Haley and Dr. Warsh discuss how medicine which came from herbology and natural things is again beginning to reincorporate them into their practice
08:30 How strict does a medical doctor have to conform to the AMA guides?
14:21 Dr. Haley explains how he uses the Merk Manual to decide on vaccine issues
16:50 Are Dr. Joel Warsh’s kids vaccinated?
20:40 How “safe and effective” damaged the trust in medicine
21:58 Dr. Joel Warsh discusses health freedom and how things went from choice to being forced
22:30 Why do doctors dismiss their patients when they don’t follow the vaccine schedule?
25:54 Where does the indoctrination come from that makes people think vaccines are safe, effective, and proven by science?
33:06 Why this video might get censored on YouTube
34:15 What are Dr. Warsh’s predictions about what RFK Jr. will find and reveal in vaccine studies with the MAHA movement?
36:03 What kind of trials should we do to find the truth about vaccines?
37:45 What is the book “Parenting At Your Child’s Pace” about?
38:15 What should we consider when making dietary choices?
47:35 What is Tiny Roots Apothecary?
47:53 What is Raising Amazing?
TRANSCRIPT
A vaccine could protect you and can also cause harm.
And it’s like the medical side just wants to focus on the protection and the, like, anti-vaxxers or whatever
side just want to focus on the harm. And
both things can be true about a product. And then the reality is weighing that for yourself and for society risks versus benefits.
You are listening to the Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life.
Your host is no other than the founder of Haley Nutrition Dr. Michael Haley.
This is the Dr Haley Show podcast. I’m Dr Michael Haley, show host. Today’s guest, Dr Joel Gator Warsh. He is an integrative pediatrician and author of some controversial books. Between a Shot and a Hard Place and Parenting at Your Child’s Pace. You can find Dr Joel Gator on Instagram @drjoelgator And there’s, good reason he has, over a few hundred thousand followers.
He’s got some great content, and I would encourage you to head over there and follow Dr Joel Warsh. Thank you for joining me on the show. Now, is it Dr Joel. Dr Gator. Dr Joel. Warsh Dr Gator Joel. I’ve heard it all with you. Any of the above. Whatever works for you is find My actual name is Joe Warsh.
Dr Gator, my wife’s last name is Intelligator. So I got the nickname Dr Gator, and it kind of stuck. So whatever works. But, any of those are all good with me. You know, I’ve always said that’s how it is for the, you know, the good doctors, the good doctors,
they go by, you know, their first name some time, their last name,
they’ll go by anything.
And, they’re humble like that where others are, it’s. I’m Doctor Haley. How dare you call me Mike or whatever? Yeah, I don’t care. That’s great. I love it, I love it. And, you know, you already mentioned your wife and you have kids. How many kids do you have? Two kids, five and a half. And almost a one and a half, I guess.
Oh. Young ones. Oh, this is going to be great. Because I’m always curious when we have a discussion like this.
when we’re talking about the choices that we make for our kids.
it has a lot more meaning when you have your own kids and you’re in the thick of it right now, in those young years with them.
I have four kids. My oldest is 22, my youngest is 16, but I remember it like it was yesterday. In fact, 16 years ago, I remember when, we all got pertussis at the same time.
I and I know it was 16 years ago,
because my 16 year old daughter was only six months old at the time.
And I knew, okay, Mike, you got work cut out. You got to watch her like a hawk. And you know, and she’s in that risky age, so it means a lot more when you have kids. I am curious about, you know,
who was first in the understanding these things when it comes to vaccination and how big of a role diet plays in your health, you or your wife?
Or were you both on the same page from the start? I think
she was more holistic minded when she was growing up than me. You know, I wasn’t very much. I just kind of lived normal life. Didn’t really think about it. She was more holistic minded. And so I didn’t really get exposed to that world, really, until I met her, which was during residency.
So it really opened up my eyes to a little bit of a different perspective. And,
I did great Western training. I’m not against modern medicine. I think it’s fantastic. And when you need it
and sometimes it can save your life and that’s great. But we’re just so quick to, to take a medication these days, and
that really did frustrate me.
And it really opens up your eyes to a whole new world when you start to see people go outside of the system and get better, or start to think about or talk about food or, you know, nutrition or exercise, and you’re like, why I didn’t get any of this stuff. I guess, you know, an integrative medicine or holistic medicine can be woowoo, but it’s mostly not.
It mostly it’s pretty basic stuff. And there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be discussing these things, but you just don’t really think about it. And I really thought about it
in modern medicine. And so for me, it was really, it was really natural to kind of blend the best of both worlds. And that’s what I do in my practice today, because I just feel like it makes sense.
Like, of course, what we do every day makes a difference. Of course, what we eat matters, and these things actually have a very powerful effect
on our health. A lot more in most cases than a medicine really does. And again, it’s like a medicine can save your life if you need it. But
that’s not the thing that’s going to be keeping you healthy for the long term.
I mean,
it just might be a bridge or a Band-Aid in general. Yeah. I always looked at it, as something that could be used to buy time where you make the changes you need to, to get well from whatever it is to get rid of the cause and do the things you need to, to get well.
Yeah. Mainstream medicine is defined. I’m going to read this. This is from cancer.gov. So government website mainstream medicine is designed is defined as a system in which medical doctors and other health care professionals such as nurses, pharmacists and therapists, treat symptoms and diseases using drugs, radiation or surgery, also called allopathic medicine, biomedicine, conventional medicine, orthodox medicine, and Western medicine.
You’ve already given us some hints on integrative medicine and how that is different. Can you expound on that a little bit? Yeah, I it’s a great definition to read out because it’s so interesting when you step back and you think about it. Right. Even as a just a regular doctor, you’re like, well, but there’s so much more to health than just pills, right?
Just medications,
just treatments. And but that is what we’re taught, right? We’re taught like okay, here are the symptoms and here is the medication. And
again I said it before, I’ll say it again. Like it’s not like we shouldn’t be having medications. They can save your life. There’s a lot of great medications. But medicines, not just about medications.
Health is not about what’s in a syringe or a pill bottle. Right. It’s those things can help you, but they’re not what keeps you healthy and what, what why? People were generally healthier with less chronic diseases many years ago. I mean, we used to die a lot earlier from infectious disease. So we’ve gotten a lot better at some of that stuff.
But now we have a lot more chronic disease.
and that’s because we are living longer due to better sanitation. And, we have more calories available and we have hospitals. We have things that can keep you alive. But now we have chronic diseases because we’re not living the most healthy lifestyles. And so, yeah, I think it’s really interesting because integrative medicine is really trying to blend the best of those worlds, thinking about prevention, thinking about other modalities besides just what we call, you know, quotes, modern medicine, which modern medicine is really pharmaceuticals.
and really medicine should be integrative medicine there shouldn’t be both those terms, like you should be doing both. That should just be medicine. There’s nothing inherently weird or woo woo about diet or exercise or working with a nutritionist or an exercise therapist or whatever. Like these should be a part of modern medicine. It just really hasn’t been.
And it is interesting to see that that conversation change a little bit in the last year. So we are talking about it a bit more. Which is good, I agree too. It’s also funny how things have changed over the years, meaning that mainstream medicine used to be the herbal medicines and the plants because drugs didn’t exist. We didn’t have those things.
So it’s almost like we’re going back to the original now, right? Yeah. Because if you go back a hundred years or whatever, exactly. Like modern medicine at that time was herbs and plants and foods and, you know, leeches and whatever. I mean, we’ve come a long way
from using leeches. But the point is, we didn’t even have medications still not that long ago.
You know, relatively speaking. So we didn’t have antibiotics for thousands of years, like, you know, 100 years or so. So it’s not like all of medicine is that way, but things changed, very deliberately
when we
modified what medicine was, what the
medical schools was with the Flexner Report. You know, there were things in the 40s, 50s, 60s
in that, you know, generation where things really shifted towards pharmaceuticals, and away from anything
that used to be done instead of a balance which could have been done, like we didn’t have to go fully away
from holistic health.
We could have done both. And there’s a lot of good things we’ve done with medicine. Right? So it’s not like, improving science and being more focused on that world. It doesn’t have its benefits. But we kind of Pooh poohed anything holistic and kind of put it out there as woo woo. And now we’ve gone so far in the other direction.
Usually, like most things, there’s
some happy medium that can actually get us to be the healthiest. Yeah. How how strict do you have to be in conforming to the AMA guides? At what point are you risking your license or your malpractice insurance or something like that? And the reason why this is important? I’m going to give you an example.
I’m a chiropractor, and I already brought up the pertussis. And I remember back then when I noticed the symptoms coming on in one of my kids, the first one to get it. And I immediately took him to a medical doctor because I could not write prescriptions for antibiotics. And I said, he has pertussis. And if you give him the antibiotic now, you can probably save my family from a rough month to come.
I said, because
they’re all going to have it in no time. And they said, well, you know, we have to do the proper testing and stuff like that. Well, how long does that
take? Well, we can schedule you. I said, do you realize that we’re going to have the results and you might be able to put them on the antibiotic two days from now, and by then it’s too late?
Well, that’s just our protocol. And, you know, you’re a chiropractor. How do you know that he has pertussis? Won’t because he’s my son and I know my son better than anyone. That’s how I know. And. Okay, fine, we’ll go your route. And, you know, two days later. You’re right. It was pertussis. Here’s the antibiotic. What good is that going to do?
Can you write that for all my other kids? Because now they’re where he was a couple days ago. And you know, the problem with pertussis is the bacteria is killed. But then we’re releasing the toxins that cause the problem for the next potentially several weeks. And, for us, it was okay. Well, I guess we’re all going to stay home for a month now and cough it out, when it could have
been prevented using medicine.
But the medical doctor that I went to felt that
he had to conform to the standard of practice which is test before treating even regardless of how sure you might be on the diagnosis. Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s a great question. So you are held to the general standard of care, in general with the lawsuits.
So that’s kind of where it comes up. But you can do anything you want as a doctor anytime you want to, but you can get sued and you’re not going to necessarily win if you don’t follow what is standard of care, what’s expected of you
as a doctor in general. And you can also there’s also a standard of what, a minority of people will do.
So if like there’s some sort of integrated medical thing that like if you’re not doing something that’s completely out there and other people have done it, you might be able to, you know, win the case, but you have to deal with all that. But generally, as a doctor, you’re right. You’re held to the standard of care. There are guidelines that are built, and then you’re expected to follow.
In general, you can do other things. That’s up to you and up to between you and the patient. If you guys decide you want to do something different. But ultimately, if you do anything outside of what’s normal, you’d have to be able to defend
why you did that. And if you’re wrong, then, yeah, your license could be at stake or you could get sued, like all those kinds of things.
so
that’s certainly possible, especially in a litigious world, especially in America, where those are things that doctors have
to think about. And for example, like in your case, you know, it’s not wrong like
there’s a lot of coughs out there, right? So, you know, how do you know if it’s pertussis or not, just when you go in, if you have a good reason why you think it is, then that that’s reasonable.
That can certainly be considered. And sometimes you do treat prophylactically for something. If you have a good reason
to believe it. Like let’s say you were like, oh, I was around someone, I had pertussis, I’m pretty sure it’s that I would prefer. And I think the thing with the doctor is it’s important to explain the risks versus benefits.
I mean, we’ll come back to, I guess, vaccines. But that to me is what’s important is informed consent. Yeah. And in that situation and the doctor was probably right. Right. Like the doctor is probably correct in the fact like, you know, generally the cough is not whooping cough. And so generally you would want to get a test because you wouldn’t just want to give antibiotics for every single time a kid comes in for a cough, which is all the time.
And, you know, just because a parent thinks that might be whooping cough, there’s not necessarily a good reason to believe that if you don’t know the kid, like you might have a specific reason where you’re like, well, look, look, look, I you understand I’m not a person that wants antibiotics. I was around someone that whooping cough or whatever.
The reason is that you believe that it was whooping cough, and you’re like, well, I understand that two days of antibiotics is not ideal, and maybe I won’t need it, but I want to get him on it now, and as long as you explain the risk. Yeah, there’s a risk with the antibiotics, you might not need it.
Like there’s nothing against that. You couldn’t do that. If a patient really wants it. So I think that’s where informed consent is so important. And I kind of like everything. And that’s one of the big reason why I wrote my book in the first place about vaccines. I never really talked about it. It was so controversial. But like, we need to talk about this stuff.
We need informed consent. People need to be able to understand the risks versus the benefits of everything, including vaccines it’s just a medical product. They’re not, you know, religion, even though it seems like it’s a religion these days. And, you have to decide what makes sense
for you. And if you want to do anything outside of what is standard of care, what is standard, like the CDC schedule, then you have to understand what those risks are.
And, you know, some people choose those risks and that’s that should be okay, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Personally, I remember taking my four year old boy at the time, and he was the one that got tested and the first one to come up with the symptoms. And I remember telling him before they stuck the swab up his nose, I said, and he’s the one that
he’s fearless.
I said, they’re going to stick this up your nose, and they’re going to put it further than you expect. It’s okay. And I remember when they took it out, he said, dad, did they touch my brain?
You know, no, we’re not just going in your nose. We’re going we’re going in the sinus cavity the brain. Yeah. But, it was funny. And he was an absolute champ. And, you know, we all got through it. But that is something that we had to deal with because we did choose not to vaccinate. I have four kids that were all born in the living room, and none of them are vaccinated.
That’s my choice. Based on the research I did and how I felt about it for my kids to make sense of it. One of my favorite books is Merck Manual, and if you go to the Merck Manual and look up any disease like polio, for instance, it’ll tell you that 99% of the cases are either asymptomatic or, not very symptomatic, not having any significant problems, but it’s that 1%.
And I looked at it, it’s like, wait a second. If this was like a lottery and there was only one winning ticket, you know,
out of 100, chances are you’re not going to get the winning ticket. But in health, we actually have some say in it. For instance,
if I could change my ticket and make it the biggest ticket in the bowl, the most likely the one that would be drawn in.
Yeah, I win polio. And our lifestyles can actually do that. The way we live can essentially make us more likely to get it. Or better able to fight it off. So if I only need to be in the top 99%, to me that seems like a pretty easy decision. I think we can do that. And I know there’s more to it than that.
You know, when you’re inoculated, how much are you inoculated? And, how fast does your immune system have to ramp up? But. Okay, we know how to avoid these things.
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What is your take on it? And can I ask you, are your children vaccinated yeah, Well, okay, so a couple of things. So I mean, first of all, within my family, I try not to talk about it just because I get asked all the time.
I think I respect that though. So I, I leave it for them. They can talk about it one day or not. But in the office
we do everything right. I don’t force anybody to do anything. And that’s the way that I feel that it should be. And I don’t feel like what I do even should matter for people.
I think they need to decide for themselves
what makes sense. And we have people that do the regular schedule with people that do a slow schedule. Some people don’t do it. We talk about risks and benefits and that’s really how it is. And I don’t ever tell people what to do. And I think that’s the same in the book.
It’s the same with my social media. So I feel like that’s our job. My job as a doctor is not to tell you what to do, it’s to inform you
of the information so that to give you the information. So that way you can decide. And if you decide to do the CDC schedule, so be it. That’s what’s been studied.
And that’s what’s been, recommended based on, you know, smart people that have decided, you know, wherever they decide these things. And it would be really arrogant to me to be like, oh, I know better than the CDC. You should do something different, you know? No. Like that. That’s the recommendation. That’s what’s recommended. If you want to do something different, that’s your choice.
And you need to discuss that with your practitioners. And you need to understand what that means, because just like you said, like there is a risk, right? There is a risk. And you have to understand what that risk is. And with something like polio, I mean, nobody wants bad polio, right? We’ve seen pictures, you know, how horrible it could be, but that is extreme minority
like you said, like it’s not 99%.
It’s for like 99.999% define or like 99% are asymptomatic. And then even if you do get it, then it’s usually not very severe. And then you have like a stomach bug or something like that. And then the very, very, very, very, very minority might have that, the stuff that we’re scared of like the paralysis. Right. So it’s really, really mild.
It’s not zero. So you have to understand like if you if you don’t get vaccinated with a polio vaccine, which works quite well, then there is a chance, you know, maybe it’s 1 in 1,000,000, maybe it’s one in several hundred thousand, maybe it’s 1 in 10,000,000, maybe it’s 100 million. I don’t know, like we don’t know. It’s hard to know exactly, but it’s not a huge risk.
And there aren’t a lot of people getting paralytic polio these days. But it’s not a 0% risk. And like you said, you know, you can choose to not get the whooping cough vaccine. It will protect you to some degree. It’s not a great vaccine of the vaccines. I mean, the immunity does wane over time, but, you know, you might have a 50 to 70% reduction right after you get the vaccine.
So it works and you can get whooping cough like you did. Right? So it’s possible. And most people they get whooping cough. It’s not fun but you’re not getting anything super severe. But for a baby, like you said a six month old, it could be very severe. Babies die of whooping cough so it could happen. I mean, the risk is again very small.
but it’s not zero.
and you need to understand, like, if my baby gets whooping cough. Okay, I have a 20, 30% chance to go to the hospital. I have, you know, 50% chance of having pneumonia. I have a 1 in 100 chance of dying. Like, what are those risk? And am I comfortable with that?
Right? You don’t have a crystal ball. You can’t look back. You never know if you’re going to be the person to get it. You can be the healthiest person in the world and still get something. You do want to stack the odds in your favor. So, like, I think that’s all important to understand. Like stack the odds in your favor, be as healthy as you can, which would be good for minimizing your reaction from a vaccine.
It’d be good from being healthy in general. It’d be good if you get exposed to these things. There are many viruses and infections that don’t have a vaccine. So, I mean, it really shouldn’t change much. You want to be as healthy as you can for whatever comes your way. Absolutely. But, you know, you have to understand your is your kid in daycare.
Are you around a bunch of other kids? Are you going out, traveling. Are you going somewhere? You know, it’s like we don’t just give everybody yellow fever vaccine just because
you get it. If you go to an area where it is like, we could just give everyone a smallpox vaccine, even there hasn’t been smallpox and, you know, 50 years or whatever it is.
but we don’t like you have to weigh your risks and benefits for yourself and decide
what you’re comfortable with, because a vaccine has a risk and the disease has a risk. Yeah, yeah. No, it’s so true. But my kids didn’t go to daycare, but every Sunday they went to Sunday school and with the other kids and my goodness, boogers everywhere.
It’s just the way it is. And
that’s where they would get what they got and build their own immunity. And in the case of our kids, but with vaccines, there’s no risks, right? They’re safe and effective. Their risks. I mean, of course there are. And that’s what’s
it’s insane that discussion has really gone that direction of I mean, first of all, safe and effective is propaganda.
It makes no sense. It’s a really dumb phrase, and it shouldn’t be used because nothing’s fully safe and nothing’s fully effective. It’s how what are the risks versus the benefits. That’s why we should be talking about things. And unfortunately, with the pandemic, that’s where trust in medicine just basically plummeted. And it’s gone. Because when you say something like that, when it doesn’t make any sense, then you lose people’s trust because you can’t say with a new vaccine that it’s safe.
Like that doesn’t make any sense. You can say, based on what we know so far, we haven’t seen any problems. We haven’t seen any short term major issues. You know, you don’t expect to know necessarily about myocarditis unless you’ve studied it for a few months and you can see enough people. So you it’s not unreasonable when something’s coming out fast, that you don’t know everything.
As long as you say that, you’re like, well, here’s what we’ve seen is we found we haven’t seen anything else. We’ll keep looking at it and we’ll let you know, that’s fine, you can say that, but you don’t know if you’re going to grow a third arm in ten years. So you just can’t say those things. You just say based on what we know.
Here’s what we know. Here’s the risk reduction that we see. Here’s the safety signals that we’re seeing or not seeing. Here’s our recommendation. Do it or don’t do it like that. Some somewhere along the way we went from recommendation to force.
and that’s a really big problem in my mind. And I really think we need to go a little bit backwards on that.
It’s the CDC recommended schedules, not the CDC required schedule. And somewhere along the way, medicine has just put vaccines on such a pedestal that it’s almost like it’s forced. Now and
that isn’t doing any good. It’s actually pushing people away. And I said this again in the book, like, very clearly, it’s like medicine is actually creating the hesitancy.
They don’t want. In vaccines. They’re pushing people away and the amount of exemptions are going up and the amount of people unvaccinated is going up. And, and I think people just don’t trust the system anymore because they feel like they’re being forced. And it’s about money, and not
about safety. And I don’t think doctors really realize that they’re like, oh, vaccines are great.
You know, why would we not do them? And I think people are concerned that, you know, maybe there’s a little bit of influence from pharma there and maybe there’s a little bit influence of money. And
not all of what they’re looking for in terms of the research is ever totally been done. And I think that’s true. I think there’s a lot more that we could do to, really have a much more thorough understanding of the risk versus benefits for vaccines.
Yeah. And I think this is a safe, question for you to answer when it comes to force or influenced by the American Medical Association or by your malpractice insurance in recommending the vaccine schedule. And let’s say you present the information for a parent to make their own decision, and they choose not to vaccinate. Some doctors are excluding them from their practice, dismissing them.
Is that under influence by the AMA or standard of profession? Possibly the state laws? Where’s that coming from? Okay, so a few things there because that’s another. these really is a really good question. So in general, there’s not really a, I guess, a push or a coercion in general to have doctors not take patients that don’t vaccinate.
I think it’s just it’s something that’s just become commonplace. A lot of practices, either for their own personal beliefs or just because it’s easier to deal with,
they don’t want to deal. If you are unvaccinated, they don’t want to have those conversations. They’ve decided and let’s say a lot of practices, they just won’t take people that are not following the schedule or are not getting the vaccines.
A lot of practices will take you if you go slow, but very few will take you if you don’t do any,
there has been an increasing push over the years to encourage vaccination
for sure, but I think mostly it just comes from the fact that most doctors just really believe in vaccines and really put them up on a pedestal, as
the best thing ever,
that they feel like they can do for their patients.
And so that’s really the reason why. And they feel like
if you’re not doing it, then you’re not the right patient for them and you’re not going to listen to their medical advice. And, you know, you’re woo woo out there anti-vaxxer, whatever the word is,
I think that’s
the majority of it, it’s not so much a push.
I mean, there has been more discussion around it in the last few years about encouraging it, but nothing forces you to get people to get vaccines like that. That’s not there’s no requirement to do that. It’s just
So if you tell people not to get vaccines that going against standard of care and then you could be I think liable if somebody is like, well you told me not to get a vaccine and my kid died of measles.
You know, it’d be
hard to defend that, I think. But if you discuss vaccines and you provide information on you make patients aware of the risks, and they choose those risks and they sign a waiver or,
you note it down. They talked about I don’t think there’s a lot of liability there for a doctor.
Because at the end of the day, people can choose what they want to do. And you’re not required to force somebody to get a vaccine. So I think there’s always some liability when you go against standard of care, but mostly as long as you’ve discussed it and encouraged it, then ultimately, if the patient does something differently than that was their choice, not yours.
Yeah, I feel the same way. And documentation is king. So, you know, if you document that you had the discussion and they sign off, what else do you need? But if you fail to do that, okay, I guess it could be, there could be a fear there. Where is this, indoctrination coming from that when I say indoctrination.
And again, I’m not taking sides. I’m not a I’m not being an anti-vaxxer or a vaxxer I’m not. I’m kind of like one of those guys that says, let me look at each vaccine on an individual basis. It just happens to be that for me so far, based on what I’ve researched and the things that were recommended for me, it wasn’t something that I was convinced of
But during the pandemic, so many people were and I don’t think they were lying. I think they really believe this. You know, it is safe and effective, and the science says and they believed that there was science that wasn’t there, but they were completely convinced that it must be that way. Where is this indoctrination coming from that people have such strong beliefs that vaccines are 100% safe and 100% effective?
Yeah. I would break that question into two parts. I think you have to go back to training. Right. So I think it starts there. I mean, the Covid stuff we can talk about in the second half, but vaccine in general, as a concept, when you’re in training, when you’re a doctor, you’re not really trained on safety, you’re trained on.
here are the horrible diseases that we used to have. Here’s how many people used to die of these things that are really bad. Now, we don’t really see these things anymore. That’s because the vaccines are the best thing ever. And here’s your amazing vaccines. Here’s the schedule. Go do it. And you don’t really think to question that
you’re told I mean, doctors in general are followers, right?
I mean, these are people that like, work really hard, that trust the system and kind of work in that manner. So
you have no real reason if you’re a good person who’s like, oh, I’m going into medicine. I want to help kids. I want help people like you have no reason to think that you’re, professor or whatever is lying.
and they’re not really lying. I mean, I think
this is like just what you’re taught. You just don’t think anything else. You just think that vaccines are the best thing ever. And that’s the way that I was. I mean,
I had no thoughts about this until I kind of got outside of the system
and started to do integrative medicine and then had so many patients had questions about vaccines.
So it kind of forced me to look at the other side and to understand where things were coming from. And even until I wrote the book, there were just so many things that I didn’t even know that were true. Because you don’t think to ever look it up. You don’t know what that research actually is. You’re told, oh, the science is so robust.
We’ve done all these studies, we know these things. It’s settle And so when somebody tells you that if the CDC or whatever says that you’re like, okay, I guess it’s not like I’m going to defend that because that’s my group of people and that’s what I’ve been taught. So it’s not evil. Like it’s not like doctors are evil or like, want to harm your kids.
No, they think that the giving your vaccine is the thing that’s going to protect them. And not doing it is what’s harming them. And so they’re defending that. And whether you believe that’s right or wrong, that’s, you know, up to whatever, I guess, information that you have and
how you take that research. But I think people assess the research differently.
and so
you can have very different opinions based on even if you do look at the research,
what it says. And I think that’s what happened with Covid, where we have this research that comes out. I mean, it was obviously under emergency use And so it’s coming up quickly, but you have research and data from the companies and they show that it’s working, and they show that it’s effective, safe,
whatever it is, those words.
And then that’s gets repeated over and over it again.
and that’s what doctors repeat. And so that’s what
you hear and
you rarely have discussions on safety. And so it’s like, oh, this thing works. Why wouldn’t you want to do it.
and in many regards it did work to some degree. I mean
it did decrease your risk of getting severely ill, at least based on the mainstream research.
Right. So
that part might be true. But the question is at what cost? Right.
and, you know, nothing is more clear in terms of, I think, frustration than the Covid vaccine, where you have even still to today, two worlds out there on the Covid vaccine that are like completely opposite, like the this is the best vaccine ever.
And it’s saved millions of lives and saved trillions of dollars. And then you have another world. It’s this is the worst vaccine ever and killing more people than it’s helping. It should be pulled from the market. And what why do we still have it? And you never see the like a debate between both sides. And it’s really tough as a parent.
You’re like, okay, why do I believe and both sides have valid, reasonable information. Yeah. And they’re not actually discussing and like weighing because it’s like both the two things can be true. A vaccine could protect you and can also cause harm. And it’s like the medical side just wants to focus on the protection and the, like, anti-vaxxers or whatever
side just want to focus on the harm. And
both things can be true about a product. And then the reality is weighing that for yourself and for society risks versus benefits. And we don’t often hear things in that kind of discussion in that nuanced way. It’s just arguing. And if we could actually have a nuanced discussion, I think most people would understand that it’s not so simple.
Yeah, but some people don’t want the discussion. And some people, how dare you even question the efficacy. And
that’s the, you know. The dogma, to the extent of not even being able to have an open mind, the fact that your mind is open, something’s wrong with you. How dare you close your mind and don’t even question.
And that’s one of the biggest problems in the vaccine space today. Because the fact that you can’t have a discussion about it is terrible. And that, again, it’s literally the reason why I wrote the book is not to, tell people to do it or not do it is to have a debate and discussion, because we have to have discussions like this.
Friendly, nuanced people have to understand
what is actually out there, because there’s nobody that’s making vaccines better. There’s nobody pushing companies to make them better. And if you have no liability for your product and there’s nobody that’s making you do safety research and everything is just perfect, then you’re just going to have more and more vaccines that are going to be worse and worse and worse, and eventually you’re going to have everybody have problems with vaccines.
Like that’s the only direction that it could possibly go. Unless you say, look, we want the best vaccines ever.
we want the minimal amount of disease. We don’t want people getting sick and getting measles and dying. Yeah, of course not. But we also don’t want people to have reactions from vaccines. And if you can’t look into the problems which do exist, it doesn’t matter whether you out there, there are documented reactions that you can have.
Let’s try to minimize those. Let’s figure out what those reactions are. So that we can make them better. If there’s an ingredient that’s causing a reaction, don’t you want to know that? Like if some vaccines causing asthma, let’s say, then wouldn’t you want to know that? So you can say like, oh, let’s remove that ingredient. Let’s find a new ingredient, let’s adjust it.
Maybe we just to schedule, maybe we don’t need this vaccine anymore. Let’s prioritize this other one. Like we want to prioritize. We want to make them better. We want kids to be safer. And more isn’t always better. We can’t just keep adding more without having a discussion about what’s best.
and right now, you can’t have that discussion just
Like you said, it’s like, no, people don’t want to have that discussion. No, just get vaccines. That is not going to work. You’re going to have a war on your hand. And that is what’s happening right now. You’re seeing it. There’s this battle everyone’s putting their feet in the ground.
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Yeah. And it’s obvious that things are changing just a little bit.
I’ve had a number of my YouTube videos taken down, and since then my editor would always beep out the word Covid or vaccine, and they’ve stayed up. And sometimes people would say, what got beeped out? But, I’ll tell her before this one, do not do that. Leave the words, let them be spoken and I suspect we might get away with keeping this one up.
It probably won’t get censored. Because times are changing. It might. It might get taken down, I don’t know, but mostly things are not getting censored anymore, which is nice. YouTube still like weird, you know? Mostly it’s not, but there’s still a little behind mean at least thankfully. Like Instagram and X, are not anymore. but this will be a good test because we’re using the words plenty of times.
And I like it because what we are doing is having a discussion about it. And, there will be people that disagree with me. There will be people that disagree with, you and the people that listen to this, that disagree with both of us, and they have their own opinions. And that’s okay. The good thing is, is we’re having a discussion about it and these things are being explored.
We’ve got, you know, Kennedy out there saying, hey, we’re going to do some studies. Do you have any predictions on what might come out in the future in those studies? Yeah, I mean, if he does, you know, proper research, then we’re going to find stuff. I mean, there’s no question about it. I think that vaccines cause reactions. It’s hard.
It’s really the my honest answer to
what
the risks of vaccines are as we don’t know, I think we really honestly don’t know. I think the research in general is so biased. One side or the other. And you have studies on both sides. And basically you can look at, okay, what is the person’s kind of preconceived notion on vaccines?
Are they super pro-vaccine they work for the CDC or are they very anti-vaccine and then their study kind of finds that thing, you don’t really see a lot of studies where the head of the CDC is like, you know what? I actually found that vaccines are causing autism in this research. That’s interesting. Like, you know, you don’t see that.
You don’t see the opposite ever. So it’s when you’re doing epidemiologic research, it’s really very biased. It can be like, it doesn’t have to be, but you certainly can, make the data work in the way that you want it to work by changing up the inputs in the outputs based on what you find. And as someone who’s done a master’s in epidemiology is the thing that I dislike the most, because it just really depends on what you put in the model.
As you get an output and yeah, if you’re like super honest and you get everything right with the model, you can get an amazing study from
epidemiologic research. But, if you are somebody who is, let’s say the head of vaccine safety and you put a bunch of things into the model and you show that vaccines cause autism, you’re going to lose your job pretty quickly, right?
So you’re going to be like, well,
why is this output showing that vaccines cause ten times the amount of autism? I must have missed something. All right.
let me adjust for this. Oh, yeah. No, now I must have I should have adjusted for that other thing I didn’t address for it. That’s why it was showing that now it’s no, no risk.
And, you know, maybe you should have adjusted for it and maybe that’s the correct thing. Or maybe you shouldn’t have adjusted for. And actually what was found before. So the only actual way to know is to do perspective trials and follow kids forward, which we’ve never done. And that’s honestly just what we need. I don’t know the answer.
I don’t know whether vaccines cause chronic disease or not. I don’t know whether they’re, related to autism or not. The mainstream says no,
some other studies say yes, but none of those studies are good enough. We actually need to follow kids forward and find out. And that’s really what’s going to be the most helpful, in the next phase.
And I hope that they do that. I that’s not something’s going to happen in the short term. But I do think we need that in the long term. Yeah. There’s sometimes you’ll find things that are related and you’ll say, oh, you know, there seems to be some kind of connection here, between vaccines and autism. Let’s just, you know, hypothetically say that was the case.
Well, yeah, but there’s probably
also some connections between autism and irritable bowel condition. Okay. So now vaccines might contribute to irritable bowel, but so might other things. You know, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, chemicals in the food. So indirectly vaccines may be contributing
or antibiotics may be contributing to the irritable bowel conditions that may be causing autism and autoimmune problems and all these other things.
We do the same thing on both sides of the data. For instance, we might say, well, this country over here, they hardly vaccinate and they don’t have autism and they live much longer. Okay. Is that the only thing that’s different between the way we live here in the United States and the way they live in Japan? You know, they probably have radically different diets.
So there’s all kinds of factors and it’s hard to interpret the data, but I’m glad that we’re looking at it. Your, other book, The Parenting at Your Child’s Pace. What’s that about? So that was my first book, and that’s more like a parenting book, I would say. So it’s for about the first three years, and really the big questions that I get in the office and really trying to balance those questions with an integrative spin, on some of those questions.
So it’s all the things that, you know, new parents ask and behavioral issues and development and all sorts of things that are the basic questions and just kind of running through the things that I get asked over and over again in the office when it comes to things like dietary choices and looking at that more integrative approach and the things that are natural that you can do alongside medicine, where do you get most of your, foundation from?
Would it be from tradition, from, you know, science from faith, or a combination of the three or? I think it’s a combination of the three. But I think with nutrition, it’s so over complicated these days with everything, and it’s not actually that complicated. Like I think we just the world has become so complicated and everything’s been stacked against us when it comes to nutrition.
And the reality of it is you just need to eat real food and
we need to gain access to that. We just don’t have a lot of access to good, nutritious, whole foods that are local, that are in-season. And that is, you know, most of really what you need. We have a lot of processed foods and 70 plus percent of a lot of people’s diets
is ultra processed food.
And we can argue all day about this diet, this chemical or high fructose corn sirup versus cane sugar. But it doesn’t really matter if you switch those ingredients out in some crappy food, right? That’s just ultimately the problem. It’s like, you know,
you can argue about each ingredient, you can change them or maybe, you know, make a little bit of difference.
Probably not. And you can even argue the science on a lot of these things. Like there’s a lot of debate on like seed oils and like whether they’re good or bad or this or that, but ultimately it’s like, okay, you eat fruit and vegetables and whole grains and protein and fat from good sources. And if you did that, like 99% of the time, you’d be fairly healthy and probably a lot of chronic disease would go away.
And you don’t need to discuss all these little ingredients here or there. But we live in a very complicated world right now with food, and things have adjusted, in a way that’s very corporate. And it’s not as simple solution because people do need calories and those provide calories. And we built a system to provide calories in that way.
And ultimately, if we want to see a real change, then we’re going to have to go back, and kind of go back to the drawing board and refocus our attention on building more local farms, and supporting local farms and regenerative agriculture and gardening and all these things will have to shift. And it’s another ten, 20 year project kind of shift away.
From ultra processed foods
and everything is said like, okay, so this goes back to family and faith and tradition and what we always did, and really what the way that we’re eating is very different in the last few decades. And I think if we just go back to where we were eating before, even if it’s like 50% of what we’re eating is, is that, is actually going to go a long way.
I don’t think you can never eat a piece of cake again in your life like
That’s not my concern. It’s just we’re eating it all the time, right? Yeah. I like the example that you mentioned about the, the soda with, high fructose corn sirup versus, natural cane sugar. I personally haven’t had a Coca Cola, probably, and, I don’t know, maybe 30 years, maybe more.
I don’t know, it’s been a long, long time. If I was going to have one, you know, I would be tempted to try the one with the cane sugar. I wouldn’t be tempted to have one with the high fructose corn sirup. But, you know, one seems like the lesser of two evils, but it’s still a crap recreational, substance.
I’m not. Yeah, I’m not even going to say recreational food. It’s a recreational substance. I wouldn’t put it in me. It doesn’t make sense to. Why would I, when there’s so many other options?
You mentioned gardening and small farms. Did you do some gardening during the pandemic? Yeah, we have a garden at home. I mean, it’s not like a huge, huge one, but I think it’s important for many reasons.
I think it’s good to get the soil. We just don’t do it enough these days. I think it’s good for kids to learn and see. And even if you just grow a couple of things like tomatoes or whatever, then they get to see food being created, how tough it is, you know, how much work goes into it.
You get some things that you eat that have don’t have any chemicals or pesticides on it that are fresh. I think
it’s good for your mental health too. I mean, basically all research shows it’s good for your physical and mental health. So really everybody should have a garden of some sorts if they can or even can’t have a garden.
There are a lot of, options for things that you can like get a little like garden stands, or you can get a cup and put some soil and make some basil, like, there are many things that you can do at home. Yeah. Even with just a couple of herbs, just so that you have them, and it’s good for
your health, I think.
So overall, there’s really no downside to it. Yeah. I like to tell people, even if you don’t have a place to garden, if you don’t have your own property, if you’re in an apartment, you can use your kitchen sink and you can sprout beans in a jar and grow your own sprouts right there. And that’s, sort of farming, gardening, sort of mini mini farming.
You’re contributing to your own food supply. And I think that’s important. And you’re getting food that doesn’t come in packages. Yeah. And I mean, you know, there’s always this discussion about cost. And, you know, I mean, obviously time it takes more time to do some things. But like if you’re sprouting, that’s way cheaper than buying things at the store, like you, you literally you buy you don’t even need to buy any technology really.
You can buy their sprouting kits and whatnot, but you don’t need to. And you just go buy like seeds and you put water and like once a day you put some water in and that’s really it. It’s like super easy. You get a ton of food, from sprouting for almost no money. So
you want to do something that’s economical.
Like that is one of the things that I think we could actually push that would be super helpful in terms of like low income, individuals
is sprouting like you can get a lot of food for extremely cheap from sprouting. That’s nutritious. So
that is one of the things that could actually be super useful.
You could get a ton of food for a very small amount of area. You don’t need. You don’t need a actual garden to do it. You just need a like a jar. It’s funny because beans were used when I was growing up to refer to like pennies. You know, you could get it for beans, you know, it doesn’t cost anything.
And that’s the way it is.
They’re the least expensive food you can buy. You can buy a seven bean soup bag for less than a dollar. That would make a big pot of, you know, bean soup. Well, you could actually sprout those and you’d have mixed bean sprouts. We definitely do that.
and then we have our gardening outside.
Of course, I’m in Florida, so we’re growing more fruit. What do you grow in California? Yeah, we have some fruit and
some veggies. I have a mix. We have some lemons and bananas and tomatoes and things like that. I mean, depends on the season to
I try to do, like, Basil and things like that too.
you know, I think there are some herbs that are good
if you have land, there are some trees especially that that are like grow every year, that you have to do much for that you can use and have like rosemary is pretty easy. So there’s some things you just don’t ever need to really buy if you have a plan for it, which is nice.
Yeah. I recently moved and planted an avocado tree. It’s not producing fruit yet. I can’t wait till it does. But, you know, I have a neighbor that brings us mangoes and you know, when I was at my previous home, we had all kinds of things going there, but it was more than we could eat. So we spread it out to the neighbors, and that’s what it needs to be like.
Some of our food should come from the neighborhood and then everything else. Okay, we can still rely on the grocery store, but if something ever happens in the food supply is damaged or cut off, we still have food. Yeah. I mean, I actually I think about that. I mean, not often, but sometimes it’s like
if something happened in a big city, we’d be toast.
Like
there’s no availability of food, for that many people.
and like you said, if, if everybody grew some food, even if it was like a tree or two trees, you know, across, then there would be enough food to get you by, for a little bit of time. And I think that’s what we need.
And again, it’s like, if you could get a little bit of your food from your own stuff and you can share it there, there is literally no reason that on everybody’s front lawn there couldn’t be a fruit tree. Okay. You don’t need to do anything like, you know, I’m obviously if you live in somewhere like it depends what your climate is,
but different things go in different climates.
But whatever works for your climate. But I mean, you literally just need a water supply that can run automatically.
and, you know, if you can afford that or if it’s built into your house or condo or whatever it is, or apartment.
but like,
why don’t we have fruit trees everywhere? Like, why are these not all over?
And then people can just walk around and, like, pick a grapefruit and season or pick an orange, and there’s just, like, a million of these everywhere.
it’s not like they take work. Like, I have a grapefruit tree in our house that was there before we got it, and it’s huge. And I don’t do a thing.
It’s just there’s a there’s a water system. The water is twice a day for, you know, a couple minutes and that’s it. And like it grows every year. You get tons of grapefruit like, and I don’t do a thing. Yeah. So, why is that not everywhere. There’s no logic to it. Like we should be. Everybody should be required to plant and there should be subsidies to, like, help you to pay for watering your plant and, like, put a little drip system in or whatever, and that’s it.
And then there’s just fruit everywhere. Yeah. My previous home, I had 17 different kinds of fruit growing, and some of them were just year round, like, papaya. Just keep on coming. And, you know, we had, 6 or 7 papaya trees in a row and you could literally take a papaya off about every day, when they were growing and, you know, a nice big papaya.
Well, that’s almost feeds the family. Neat stuff. Neat stuff. Joel, where can people go to find out more? I we’ve already mentioned Instagram. I bet you got probably a good funnel if we wanted to get on your email list. Yeah. So I think the easiest places to be would be Instagram or X @drjoelgator If you want to get on my Substack then you can get it, through there just on drjoelgator
On there. The book is
the new one “between a shot and a hard placeâ€. And you could get that, you know, everywhere books are sold or theshotbook.com And what about Tiny Roots Apothecary What’s that? Yeah, I have some private label supplements that people want them. So you can go through
my Instagram as well, or X and, and you can grab stuff.
Just some of the stuff that we use in the office or some of my favorite products, in case people want any, you know, supplements, herbs, vitamins, that kind of thing. Another thing I stumbled across was raising amazing. Tell me about that. Yeah. So that I have
some courses as well. So those are from, you know, a couple of years ago now, but just like really good courses,
on vaccines and discussions and pregnancy and newborn, like really,
bunch of different courses if anybody wants them.
Just information for integrative health. All right. Excellent. I’ll make sure I have links to those below the video on YouTube, on the blog page, in the text under the podcast, wherever you’re consuming it, links will be there. You might have to copy and paste, but they’ll be there. Anything I should have asked you or any, closing thoughts that you’d like to share?
No, it was great. I mean, thank you
for chatting about it. I know the topic of vaccines is always fun. I mean, it’s a little less controversial these days, but still always controversial. So I’m glad to be having it. And for anyone out there that’s listening, you know, there are a lot of parents that have questions and concerns about vaccines, and it’s not woo woo to ask questions.
It’s not wrong to ask questions. We should be able to ask it. And you should be able to decide what’s right for you. And ultimately, if you choose to do it, so be it. And that’s what most people do. But, I think that we need to be having these discussions, and I just appreciate that you’re willing, to do it.
And it’s been nice to see that a lot of people are willing to do it. The last couple months since books come out, which has been surprising. And, you know, I wasn’t sure, like, if I was going to get in a lot of trouble or how it was going to be, take it. And, so far, so good.
I mean, you know, knock on wood, it’s been not too crazy. And people have been pretty, happy with it. And I haven’t seen a lot of craziness, which is good. So hopefully that continues. Yeah, I like your approach to it. And it’s more about getting educated and you’re not telling people what to do and even what you’re doing yourself.
You know, in your own family and stuff. And I did ask you about that.
and that’s why I said,
if you want to answer it, you didn’t have to. I was okay with that. I like your answer and your you’re doing it right. You’re doing a good job. Thank you. Until next time.
I might have some other follow up questions for you that I might send by email. And I have a feeling other people are going to have some comments to me that I might want to send to you. Would that be okay? That’s totally fine. Or they can, you know, message me also to thank you. Awesome. Yeah. Dr Joel, thank you so much.
Thank you.
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