What's Making Our Children Sick?
by Dr. Michelle Perro, MD, Pediatrician
Regenerating Our Health and Food
So many ill children reveal the ways we have outgrown our medical model and our predominant food production systems. The problems our kids suffer from most persistently today are complex, arising from a multisystem dysfunctional biological catastrophe, particularly in relation to immunity, autoimmunity, and the health sequelae that arise from these problems. These diseases suggest a body that is both confused and collapsing under the pressure of so many toxic exposures. If we are looking for evidence that our food systems have failed us, we should pay attention to these children.
We have a generation of children whose chronic illnesses do not resemble those of the previous generations. Our kids are sicker than their parents, and arguably sicker than their parents were when they were children, regardless of our agricultural and pharmaceutical “advances.” Clinical evidence indicates that we are doing something wrong. Quite possibly what we are doing wrong today started with the changes to our food production that began just before most of these kids were born. The vital question is: How do we get out of this mess?
Perro and Adams,
What’s Making our Children Sick?
Chapter 17
Since the writing of the book, What’s Making our Children Sick?, discussing the effects of industrial food-like products on our children’s health, planetary health has taken many unfortunate turns and looks very different from even just a few years ago since its publication. Despite nearly two years of health-based fear and anxiety emanating from individuals enduring two years of a global pandemic, there have been revelations regarding major gaps in the weave of the fabric of our healthcare system. However, these gaps and shortcomings can be the impetus and creation of a redirection towards a welcomed, positive change in both our healthcare model and practice.
The gold ring at the pinnacle of medical practice is evidence-based medicine, which is the judicious use of modern, best practice in coming to decisions about strategies in helping clients.
The goal is the integration of clinical experience in conjunction with patient directives based on excellence in science. What has become clear is that there are links between evidence-based medicine, the health of individuals, and of our ecosystem. Taken directly from our book, we called for the creation not only of Ecosystem Health, but a new direction in the formation of a broader and integrative practice: Ecomedicine. Patients are part of a medico-environmental ecosystem, considering food-related causes of ill health and achieving health of the food ecosystem simultaneously with its constituents. What is clear is that healthy soil, plants and people are all part of the same ecosystem.
How we grow our food is how we grow our health.
The running narrative that has predominated during the present global health crisis, supported by governments, pharmaceutical companies, and mainstream media, is focused on a very narrow view of what ultimately defines and supports health.