Dr. Shields | 4. Guard Your Health Series | CHAZAQ

My name is Dr. Schmool Shields. I'm a nutritionist in private practice in Queens for approximately 30 years now. And I'm going to do a series on family health and specifically uh children's health. Um I'd like to suggest that we have some unfortunately a um a health crisis in the community when it comes to the health of children. Uh now when I use the word health crisis that often means different things to different people. So as um as a healthc care practitioner uh I want to just share um my clinical observations with you uh in terms of who I've seen over the years. uh specifically I I do work with a general population but I do see a number of children and um this is basically an unprecedented clinical observation. Um what what I think happens is sometimes we accept things as being the norm. Oh, it's usual for kids to get sick. It's usual for kids to have these kind of problems and those kind of problems. But what I'm going to um present to you uh for this first part of the series is not the norm. It shouldn't be the norm and we shouldn't accept it as the norm. Um but here's what I've seen over the years. Uh cavities, okay? children get cavities, but I've seen kids with numerous cavities, and I've even seen kids seven, six, seven, eight with root canals. Now, a root canal puts it into a different status. Usually, we think of middle-aged people getting root canals, but we now see them in children. And then we have a concern of childhood obesity, which is almost an epidemic, um, but it's gotten worse over the years. Um, childhood obesity is is a serious problem because the longer a child has excess weight and as he goes into adulthood or teenage years and so on with carrying excess weight, it leads to uh, you know, health complications down the road. Um, I've also seen a number of kids that are coming to me because they already have elevated uh, lipid levels. What I mean by that is elevated cholesterol levels. Um, and then I also have seen children with elevated glucose levels, some of them in the pre-diabetic range, uh, with A1C's, um, that put them pretty close to being pre-diabetic. Um, so these things we shouldn't see in children this age, and nevertheless, we are. So when I say a health crisis in the community amongst children, these are the types of things that I'm talking about. A lot of these conditions unfortunately we do see in adults, you know, middle-aged adults, you know, it might be more common to see some of these things, but to see them in such young children has to strike a chord and has to make us more alert to what's going on. So I I'm just trying to make us more aware of the health problems. So maybe we could address them in a different way. Uh also I just want to stress that I'm just giving you know health awareness, health education information. I urge you to work with your health care professionals before making any kind of lifestyle uh changes. Um I'm just going to continue my my list a little bit. strep, ear infections, cold, flu, and other respiratory infections are on the rise. And there are some children that are on continuous, I mean continuous rounds of antibiotic therapy. This is not the norm. It shouldn't be this way. Uh and we have to be very proactive in these areas. Uh we also see compromised physical activity. We do live in a technological digital electrical world today and electric scooters and things like that have taken over. The the pedaling bike has been you know pushed pushed aside. So there's very limited physical activity and um that also has you know health health consequences. Um, so what I want to do now is I just wanted to introduce some of the concerns, some of the issues, and we're going to continue with the next series on the detrimental diet that plays a very important role uh in some of these uh in some of these areas.