Main Presentation: “What’s Making Our Children Sick And What We Can Do About It” by Dr. Michelle Perro, MD and Dr. Vincanne Adams, PhD
In their book, Dr. Michelle Perro, MD and Dr. Vincanne Adams, PhD provide both insight and guidance, showing that, in their combined experience, hard-to-diagnose and hard-to-treat chronic health problems in children are rooted in diet and environment.
Their book provides clinical case studies illustrating how the health problems of many children – allergies, asthma, rashes, gastrointestinal issues, autoimmune disorders, and cognitive malfunction – can be successfully treated through the gut with a fresh, organic (and therefore non-GMO and pesticide-free) whole foods diet.
The crux of the practice of holistic care is that it is individualized and requires taking a significant amount of time sorting out each patient’s history and working out a unique treatment plan. Dr. Perro became concerned regarding the chronic conditions she found in her pediatric patients and the health of the multitude of children that she could not see. It is important for patients to have access to the type of practitioner that looks at toxic food and environmental poisons as being potential culprits in the decline of kids’ health. This contributed to the motivation to write their book. After a serendipitous encounter with Dr. Vincanne Adams, an extraordinary, brilliant medical anthropologist and author and together, they married the fields of clinical medicine and anthropology to create their book, What’s Making our Children Sick?
The book covers how and why medicine tends to seek pharmaceutical over food-based health solutions; how new biomedical research on things like the microbiome, leaky gut or dysbiosis are still a long way from being incorporated into standard practice guidelines and how integrative doctors are breaking the mold; how agrocorporate investments in scientific research have made it hard for insights about the potential harms of GM foods and their associated pesticides to reach the light of day; and how we might think of a future medicine in relation to our ecosystem health – what is called ‘ecomedicine’.
The key take-home point is that when patients change their diets to organic food, they get better. My patients are also receiving herbs, supplements, and homeopathic Eating non-organic food is potentially dangerous. Toxins from non-organic food contribute to the total toxic load which further impairs health. The pesticides associated with genetically modified foods contribute to this toxic load.
About Dr. Michelle Perro, MD and Dr. Vincanne Adams, PhD
Dr. Michelle Perro, MD is a veteran pediatrician with over thirty-five years of experience in acute and integrative medicine. More than ten years ago, Dr. Perro transformed her clinical practice to include pesticide and health advocacy. She has both directed and worked as attending physician from New York’s Metropolitan Hospital to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. Dr. Perro has managed her own business, Down to Earth Pediatrics. She is currently lecturing and consulting as well as working with Gordon Medical Associates, an integrative health center in Northern California.
Dr. Vincanne Adams, PhD is a professor and vice-chair of Medical Anthropology, in the Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Adams has previously published six books on the social dynamics of health, scientific knowledge and politics, including most recently, Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina (2013), and Metrics: What Counts in Global Health (2016). She is currently editor for Medical Anthropology Quarterly, the flagship journal for the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association.
Their new book is What’s Making Our Children Sick?: How Industrial Food Is Causing an Epidemic of Chronic Illness, and What Parents (and Doctors) Can Do About It (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018).
Short Presentation: “Are You Dying In The Dark” by William B. Grant, PhD
Is sun avoidance nearly as hazardous to your health as cigarette smoking! Will there soon be a Surgeon General’s warning about staying indoors or putting on too much sunscreen? Is the new book “Embrace The Sun” by Marc B. Sorenson, Ed.D and William B. Grand, Ph.D based on science or pure science fiction?
The book is based on both science and research. Together, Dr. Sorenson and Dr. Grant have worked 62 years studying and practicing health, nutrition, and the proper relationship with sunlight. A mountain of evidence exists showing that sunlight can promote weight loss, reduce depression, and profoundly decrease the risk of today’s common diseases including most cancers, heart disease, autism, diabetes, osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, infertility, preterm birth and psoriasis.
About William B. Grant, PhD
Dr. Grant has studied the roles of nutrition, ultraviolet radiation exposure, and vitamin D in the risk of disease starting in 1996 when he was working as an atmospheric scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia. He does research using the ecological study approach in which health outcomes for populations are averaged either for geographical units such as states or countries or by temporal variations which are compared statistically with risk-modifying factors such as UVB doses or dietary factors. He has made pioneering findings regarding the role of nutrition in the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and the roles of UV radiation exposure and vitamin D in the risk of many types of cancer, influenza/pneumonia, and autism. He has studied a wide range of diseases and health outcomes. His talk will present information on the role of UV exposure, vitamin D, and dietary factors in maintaining optimal health and reducing the risk of adverse health outcomes at all ages and conditions including pregnancy. He has over 300 publications listed at pubmed.gov (search Grant WB), of which a number are open access.
For more info, read the newsletter.
NOTE: Meeting starts promptly at 7pm. Main speaker presentation begins at 7:20 p.m.
