Episode 178 | Apr 30, 2026

Healing Childhood Chronic Illness, With Beth Lambert

What if a child’s diagnosis did not have to be the end of the story? This week on Health Coach Talk, Dr. Sandi welcomes author, educator, and Documenting Hope founder Beth Lambert to discuss the rising rates of childhood chronic illness and neurodevelopmental conditions, along with the root-cause approaches that may help children heal.

“Every child has a specific and unique pathway to healing that’s unique to them.”

Beth Lambert

Beth has spent nearly two decades tracking the increase in chronic conditions among children, from autism and ADHD to autoimmune disease, food allergies, eczema, PANS/PANDAS, and more. Through her nonprofit Documenting Hope, she has also collected stories of children who have experienced dramatic improvements, and in some cases full reversal of diagnoses once thought to be lifelong. In her conversation with Dr. Sandi, Beth shares the thinking behind the FLIGHT Study, a 12-month education and health coaching program for families of children with autism that explores total load, nutrition, the microbiome, brain inflammation, environmental stressors, and each child’s unique path toward healing.

For health coaches, this episode speaks directly to the power of education, accountability, and compassionate support. Families may feel overwhelmed when they first begin thinking about food, toxins, sleep, stress, sunlight, movement, nervous system regulation, and testing, but coaches can help them take realistic steps without fear or perfectionism. Beth’s 80/20 perspective is especially valuable for helping families balance healthy choices with real life, social connection, and emotional well-being.

Watch The Episode

Listen Now

Transcript

Dr. Sandi: When a child is diagnosed with a chronic illness, a developmental disorder in particular, it can be heartbreaking, it is very challenging to treat, but there is hope. And this is why I am so excited to bring to you the conversation that I had with Beth Lambert because she is literally Documenting Hope, which is the name of her program. So, let me tell you a little bit about Beth.

She’s an author, an educator, and a former healthcare consultant, who has monitored and documented the escalating rates of childhood chronic condition for 16 years. Her first book, “A Compromised Generation,” provides a thorough analysis of the origins of this modern health crisis, and documents how modifications to environmental and lifestyle factors can profoundly influence health outcomes, including full disease reversal.

She’s also the co-author of “Brain Under Attack: A Resource for Parents and Caregivers of Children with PANS, PANDAS, and Autoimmune Encephalitis.” She’s the founder and executive director of Documenting Hope, a nonprofit organization that focuses on root cause healing solutions. I know you are going to really find my conversation with Beth so valuable.

Welcome to the podcast, Beth. It’s great to be with you.

Beth: Thank you, Sandi. It’s great to be with you, too.

Dr. Sandi: So, let’s just start right in. Because you have been in this field for a long time, what are you seeing in terms of the explosion of chronic diseases and specifically neurodegenerative…or I should say not neurodegenerative. We’re seeing that, too. But for the pediatric population, the formal term is neurodevelopmental conditions.

Beth: Yeah. So, I have been documenting and tracking this epidemic for almost 20 years. And in that time when I started, I was actually…I published a book in 2010. And in that book, I think I had said that the rate of autism was 1 in 150, because that’s what the CDC had indicated at that time. So, we are now at 1 in 31 as a national statistic for autism. But I actually think that’s not even really a true number. There are some geographies like Utah and California have even higher rates, as much as 1 in 20 children with an autism spectrum diagnosis. Of course, we have ADHD also. Some people consider that part of the autism spectrum, but that’s counted separately. And you have at least one in nine children who have ADHD. So, those are the neurodevelopmental conditions that we’re seeing.

One in six children have some kind of learning disability. So, really, the number of children that are learning and functioning in the way that they used to, it’s completely different. It’s completely different from what it was like when we were growing up just a few decades ago. So, I think that that’s one of the most concerning pieces of this epidemic. And it’s a little bit controversial because those are typically subjective diagnoses. There’s no blood test for ADHD. There’s no blood test for autism.

But in parallel, you’re also seeing diagnoses that are objectively diagnosed. So, like life-threatening food allergies, for instance. You don’t mistake an IgE allergy that can cause anaphylaxis, or type 1 diabetes, you don’t mistake that. Those are all things that are on the rise. So, we have to be asking, why are we seeing so many kids that isn’t just better diagnosing? We just have more sick kids.

Dr. Sandi: I agree. And I have the perspective on that because in that comment that I frequently hear, well, we’re just better diagnosticians. We’re identifying more. No, that is absolutely not true. So, I was in this field way back. I got my master’s in learning disabilities. I trained Northwestern University in their learning disorders. Communication department was one of the top programs in the country. And we had a clinic. And kids would come from really all over the country to get diagnosed. And typically, this was more learning disorders.

But then one of the jobs I had after graduation was at a local teacher’s college. And I would place practicum students. These were master’s people getting their master’s in special ed. They had to do a practicum. So, I went out to these schools to supervise them. And this was in the northern suburbs of Chicago. The special education district went all the way up to the Wisconsin border. So, we’re talking about a wide area.

And there were some of the people I was supervising who were doing their student teaching and program for autistic kids. Okay. They had one classroom. There were 9 or 10 kids in this classroom. It was part of a special program. In those days, they didn’t have aides who were keeping these kids in the classroom so that it was in self-contained. But imagine that for the entire Lake County of Illinois, which went from… it was, again, a huge area. There were 9 or 10 kids in that classroom who were identified. And we were great diagnosticians back in the day because I did a lot of those testing and testing processes. It was exhaustive testing and often included observing in the classroom where we’d have somebody go in and watch them in the classroom and interview their teachers and do all kinds of tests. So, yes, this is growing.

I want to talk about the FLIGHT study. And can you describe what that is, and what are you actually testing?

Beth: Yeah. So, my nonprofit organization, Documenting Hope, decided to embark on its own independent research studies because we felt like there was a lack of work being done in this area around looking at the root causes of what’s contributing to this epidemic of chronic illness and also what helps kids get better. So, in all this time that I’ve been studying and learning about this new epidemic, I’ve also been documenting stories of kids who’ve gotten fully better, who’ve lost their diagnoses. I mean, I’m talking about autism, but I’m also talking about autoimmune diseases and life-threatening food allergies, things that people are told are going to be lifelong.

So, we actually went out to design a study that roughly emulates what we’re seeing happening in the real world, which is that, again, in all these stories that I’ve documented of kids have gotten better, they have done a certain set of things. There’s a certain approach that they’ve taken, and it usually involves reducing their total load of stressors. So, that would be toxins in their environment, toxins in their food, in their diet. It involves getting rid of things in the home that might be stressful that people don’t even think about, like electromagnetic radiation. It might be about getting outside and getting sunlight and exercise. I mean, it’s really just health supporting practices. Right?

All the families that have gotten their kids better had applied these things to their child, but they’ve also done a lot of really specific detective work. Every child has a specific and unique pathway to healing that’s unique to them. So, we wanted to design a study that would see if we could help children and families overcome their diagnoses or their symptoms by teaching them about some of these things. We believe so much in the role of health coaching and education or getting families to a place where they can return to health.

So, the FLIGHT study is a 12-month-long program, and it involves an education and coaching program where we invite these families who have a child with autism into a structured and accountable program where they meet with a health coach once a week, and they have a certain educational program that they need to follow.

So, in this program, we teach them about total load, this concept of there’s too many stressors on our children and not enough health supports. We teach them about the many things in the environment that can either hurt their health or support their health. We teach them about nutrition. We teach them about things like brain inflammation, which is a prominent feature in autism. We teach them about the microbiome, which of course is central in autism. So, we walk them through this program. They’re supported the whole way with a coach, and we’re tracking and measuring the child’s progress and how the family’s stress level even comes down.

So, this study is enrolling participants right now, and we’ll do them in cohorts of four. So, they’ll be in a cohort of four other families or three other families, each one supported by a health coach. And again, we’ll be tracking things that you can measure at baseline and at endpoints. So, we will be taking some labs, but we’ll also be doing some assessments and validated instruments. So, things like the ATEC and the ADOS, which are measurements of autism severity that you can score.

So, this is a very exciting program because we actually piloted it in two other children in prior years, and we saw them make great improvements in their health by just through education, through coaching, and through looking at their child’s root causes, and teaching the parent to be a health detective and help them figure out what might be out of balance in their child. Because that’s really what’s going on with our kids with autism is that there’s physiological, biomedical imbalances that are absolutely treatable and addressable. It’s just not what we do as a standard of care in terms of autism treatment right now.

Dr. Sandi: I am so excited about this project and, really, the idea that you appreciate the importance of a health coach because, yes, it is education and this is a functional medicine approach. You’re really looking at some of the root causes, going underneath the hood and not just surface-level fixes. And a health coach really can provide that support as well as education because it can be overwhelming for parents. And it also involves the whole extended family. I have friends who have grandkids where they’re dealing with these issues, but it’s really remarkable in conversation that it is a solo approach. The only approach they’re doing is giving them some intervention through the school special speech therapy or occupational therapy. It is all about that, which is great, but unless you’re addressing the root causes, that’s not going to cut it.

Beth: That’s right. I mean, one of the things that… You’re right that speech therapy and occupational therapy, these are wonderful strategies to help children, but a lot of times, we are spending all this time and energy on trying to get them to regulate from a top-down approach rather than from a bottom-up approach. Maybe if we looked at their blood sugar, for instance, and try and regulate that, or maybe if we looked at their nutrient status, if we looked at their microbiome and what’s happening in terms of the neurotransmitters that are being developed or not in the gut, if we can go from that sort of root cause place first and then those therapies, the speech language and the occupational therapy, that’s all going to work better.

If we get a body that’s healthier and more regulated, if the nervous system is regulated, everything else will fall in line. So, I think that’s just…it’s turning on its head, what we do for standard of care approach with kids with autism. And it’s looking, again, at let’s do the foundations first, the nutrition, the movement, the outside time, like really foundational basics, what makes a healthy human, and then we can do the more complicated therapies on top of that.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned the toxic load, toxic burden, and it’s just everything that is in the environment. And so many people are just unaware. They might be aware now of reading, for example, but they don’t think about personal care products. They don’t think about what’s in sunscreen they’re slathering on six times a day when kids are out in the sun. They’re not thinking about so many of the things that they…that might be contributing to this toxic soup.

Beth: Yeah. It’s so true. And I think that’s a cultural phenomenon. Basically, we were born into this world that is synthetic, that is chemicalized, and we don’t know anything different. If your mom fed you SpaghettiOs from a can, that’s what you know, and that’s your comfort food. Right? You may not know or care or understand that’s filled with additives, and colorings, and preservatives, and things that your body would find as toxic and would create inflammation. We don’t know that we know what we know. Right? So, we really do have to have a cultural revolution here in terms of how we’re living.

And then the good news is we’ve only been in this really synthetic world for about 75 years or so. It’s really that post-World War II industrial boom we had where everything became plasticized and chemicalized and we…better living through chemistry. Right? And so, we have time to unwind if we go back to how our grandparents lived. They weren’t surrounded with these 80,000 chemicals on the market that have never been tested for safety or that are unregulated. So, it’s like we’re a couple of generations back. We just need to reach back to how our great-grandmothers were living to know that there is a way to live that is more in sync with nature and that supports human health. It’s not that far off.

Dr. Sandi: Absolutely. This can seem so overwhelming for families because they’re thinking they have to change so many things at once. It can be a gradual process. And I think this is where the power of groups come in. Even years ago, I had a classroom for kids with learning and behavior… We call them disorders, like that. We didn’t talk about neurodevelopmental. That wasn’t a term or dysregulated kids. But I would lead parent groups, and they would support one another in terms of different parenting styles and management. Of course, we didn’t know back then what we’re talking about today in terms of toxins in the environment and brain-gut connection. Those were not heard of in the early ’70s. But what was important was that there were parents supporting one another. And do you see that as really critical?

Beth: It’s absolutely critical. Just as I was saying that this is a cultural phenomenon, if you have to change your diet and change the way you’re living, you’re basically all of a sudden living counterculture. It’s a very isolating feeling if you go to the birthday party and you’re like, I really don’t want my child to have the blue cupcakes. Or if you’re walking into a kid’s gym and you’re looking at all the mats that are around that are just covered with endocrine disrupting chemicals, and you’re concerned about that stuff, you feel like you’re the only one. It makes you feel like a little weird or a little off.

So, I think the most important thing is to know, A, if you’re concerned about toxins in your child’s environment and you’re concerned about feeding your child the nutritious diet, you’re actually ahead of the curve. And so, what you want to do is find the other people who are also ahead of the curve. And I think group coaching, support groups in whatever kind and whatever way are so, so empowering because then it feels normalized to you.

We actually created an online program called Healing Together. It’s an online support group and community for parents to come together and actually just do that, heal together and feel not so alone and share resources, too. I mean, part of it is the not feeling alone and feeling like you’re…this is a normalized kind of thing to live healthy. But part of it is also to share resources. You know, as you’re learning, for instance, you might be dealing with something very mundane like constipation. Let’s say your child has constipation and you’ve tried all the regular things, the MiraLAX and the things that the doctors have told you to do, which is totally toxic, by the way. And nothing’s working. When you’re in these groups, you’ll hear from other parents who’ve already been down that journey and, oh, have you tried this, and have you thought about this? And when you increase the fiber, you’re going to see more regular stools. I mean, it’s the sharing, and the knowledge, and the learning that goes on in these communities, too. I think it’s an invaluable part of the whole healing process.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. And we have access to so much more information. But how do you filter out the noise? And also, who do you trust? Because, often, they might go to a pediatrician who is going to say one thing. And there are still people who are in the field of pediatrics who say, I don’t believe in supplements or they’re just very quick to prescribe a medication or they don’t believe parents. But is it possible also to swing too far in the other direction? I’ve seen examples of mothers of four or five-year-old kids and they’re at a birthday party and you can’t have that. You can’t have that. And the child is so upset. And I have seen that backfire. I mean, certainly, my own life. I raised my daughters. We had organic food. I belong to a food co-op and we didn’t have sugar. And as soon as they got to college, they would tell me, oh, I just…and they would be eating the worst junk food possible or when they went to a friend’s house. So, what are your thoughts on that?

Beth: Yeah. There’s extremes at either end. Right? So they call that orthorexia, that whole idea where you become obsessed with not putting anything toxic into your body. And that is also a pathology that also creates problems. So, it’s really about balance. I mean, all of health is about balance. I love the 80-20 principle. You do the best you can 80% of the time and you let the rest go because there’s only so many things you can control. You control what you can control that you know that’s going to be nourishing and supportive for your health and your children’s health and your family’s health. But then if you have to let the rest go and that’s going to create less stress for your family, that’s important, too. Think about that like stress alone. I know we always talk about that, like stress is kind of like this marginal thing that doesn’t really have anything to do with our health or our kids’ health. And sometimes it’s actually central.

And if you look at kids with neurodevelopmental issues, their nervous systems are so dysregulated and there’s ways to measure this now. We know this is true. So, what is one of the best ways to help a child regulate their nervous system? You regulate your own nervous system. It’s called co-regulation. And our children are these incredible sponges who pick up on every little thing going on with our bodies and our behaviors. And so, when we’re stressed because we’re afraid they’re going to eat something toxic, they’re picking up on that stress, and that isn’t helping either. So, it’s really the balance. The 80-20, I think, is the way to do it.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah, absolutely. Such a good point because, okay, so, they can have the cupcakes at the birthday party, but… Because they’re already…often because of their behavior, they’re already singled out and not the one invited to birthday parties or play dates. And so, then you might be making it worse. But then when you’re at home, you can have a water filter, you can have an air filter, you can not have less time on tablets or exposure to some of the EMFs. So, there’s so many things, you know, less plastics, natural products, personal care products. But when you’re out with other kids, that might be the time to say, okay, the enjoyment they’re going to have being part of the group is going to outweigh. It’s so much better than the stress, the tantrums, whatever is going to happen as a result of saying, no, you can’t have this. It has gluten, it has sugar, it has dairy, whatever it might be.

Beth: Exactly. And then there’s also something to be said for finding your people who are doing activities that are more health supporting. I mean, I remember when my kids were little, I had this really amazing friend group that emerged that all like to camp and they all like the… We did these camping trips where the kids would run around barefoot in the woods and just have the time of their lives. What a nourishing, wonderful kind of peer group for the kids. Find those people, too, and you’ll find it easier to navigate the social situation.

Dr. Sandi: And there are more resources and there are more products. When I was doing this, when my kids were little, there weren’t any. There were a few, but everything was really much more mainstream. It was harder to find gluten-free or products that were organic. And now, it’s becoming easier to have those resources. And as you’re saying, having that support group where you get ideas and that would be helpful because there are those kids with life-threatening allergies, with celiac and where they couldn’t have that cupcake at the birthday party.

Beth: That’s right. And you’re so right in saying there’s way more resources available now. I do feel very optimistic about the fact that we are closer than ever to turning the corner on this epidemic because, A, I think there’s so many people affected that it is more and more people are looking for a different path for different solutions. And then, B, there’s so many alternatives out there. You don’t have to do fast food anymore. Or let’s say you had to. There’s even better, healthier options for food that is fast. So, it’s changing. Culture is changing. It’s slow. But again, I encourage people to see themselves as the pioneers, the leaders on this, and bring everybody else along.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. I think another area where we’re seeing so much promise is the direct-to-consumer movement where people are becoming empowered to take charge of their health and the health of their kids. There are companies that are doing…Tiny Health is one, where you can get a stool test for your infant and you can order your own blood work. And this is all getting easier. The interpretation is better and you can be proactive in bringing this to your doctor. And if that doctor isn’t serving, you find another healthcare provider that will get you and help you or your child.

Beth: Yeah. We are, I think, in an information explosion. We had an information explosion moment when we had the Internet. We moved into the Internet age in the ’90s and we’re hitting that again with artificial intelligence. And you can even see all of these platforms emerging that are based in artificial intelligence that are around personalized medicine. So, there is this place where these new AI tools are actually going to make direct-to-consumer access to information about people’s own biometrics easier. There’s these wearables and these devices that people have that are giving them their own metrics on their bodies. So, this is the age that we’re moving into and that the doctor is no longer the gatekeeper to information. The doctor is now the partner.

So, I don’t mean this in any way to say that we shouldn’t be working with physicians. I think that’s still an important piece. And their clinical experience and their training is critical. But we now have so many tools that we can access the information. So, the direct-to-consumer labs, Documenting Hope is actually going to be offering direct-to-consumer labs, too, at a reduced cost. Because we know that’s such a barrier for parents, too, is how do you get access to your microbiome test or your genomics test or you’re wanting to know what your metabolome is looking, what does the metabolism in your body look like?

Those kinds of things are now going to become increasingly accessible. And I think it’ll take a little time before people shift their mindset about I don’t need to go to my doctor necessarily for that test. But I think the mindset shift should be get your information and then work with your health coach or your doctor, your nutritionist, somebody who has the deep knowledge in a partnership. I think that’s where we’re going.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. I think having a team approach and… Back when I was in special education, it was all about the multidisciplinary team. And we’ve had staffings where there would be all these specialists who were on board helping that child. And I think sometimes one of the dangers is that someone can go swing too far into the direction of holistic integrative health and not recognize there are times when acute care medicine is what you need.

My grandson, my daughter was noticing that he had a cough and fever, and then it kept spiking, and then he started saying his chest hurt. And so, she immediately… That was a case where you don’t mess around and went to the pediatrician and got put on a powerful antibiotic because with pneumonia, that’s the time for the big guns. And I think having that stance never antibiotics can really be harmful if you don’t see that there are times when that’s absolutely necessary.

But when we’re talking about all the things in the environment that you can do for immune health and then helping people or helping kids, as we’re talking about today with neurodevelopmental conditions, I want to get back to…you said that you believe this…many of these conditions are reversible. Can you talk about what that would entail, and maybe stories that you’ve seen that they have had a recovery?

Beth: Yeah. So, I mentioned that I’ve been documenting these stories for almost two decades. And inevitably, in every single story, you’re going to see patterns that are all different. Everyone’s path is different because the environmental inputs are different. Right? You’re having different set of exposures. One exposure might be mold in one home and another one might be like lead paint. I mean, there’s innumerable toxic insults that we face on a daily basis. So, anyone’s particular recipe of toxic insults is going to be unique.

But the common theme across all these stories is, number one, reducing the total load. So, reducing those toxic exposures. Number two, increasing health support. So, getting outside in nature, no sunscreen, and having more rhythms that are what we grew up over millennia with, that we evolved with. So, that’s the circadian biology piece, getting up with the sun and sort of winding down as the sun goes down. So, that’s foundational. Those are the basic things.

But then on top of that, nutrition. I have never seen a story where some…where a child overcame a “lifelong diagnosis” without having some kind of nutritional foundation. That’s in almost every story. We have a YouTube channel. It’s @documentinghope or on our website, documentinghope.com, where we have dozens and dozens of stories of kids who have reversed autism, PANS, PANDAS, severe eczema, severe constipation, OCD, autoimmune disease. I mean, the list just goes on. And then it’s…beyond the foundations that I mentioned, it’s that detective work where the parent figured out the detective work. And targeted functional or holistic medical approaches are always part of the story, too.

We just recently released a story of a young woman named Reese and she had severe OCD and PANDAS. And so, she basically had autoimmune encephalitis that was triggering these OCD tendencies where she had such a significant problem that her sister became the target of her OCD. So, she felt like her sister was germy. This is very common when you see in PANS and PANDAS or OCD. So, she couldn’t be around her sister. Anything her sister touched had to be cleaned and separated. They had to have separate silverware drawers. I mean, it was a very severe form of OCD.

Years ago, we would have had this young woman committed in a psychiatric ward. She would have been managed with psychotropic medication. But today, now we understand what PANDAS is. It’s an autoimmune encephalitis that happens because of an infection that crosses the blood brain barrier and it needs to be treated.

So, when she actually worked with a functional PA who used herbs and some of the detoxing methods that we talked about, getting rid of that total load and supporting the health of her, generally speaking, she began to overcome this diagnosis. Now, she and her sister, who she couldn’t be in the same room with her sister before because of this OCD, they’re now best friends. All that OCD behavior is gone. This young woman, Reese, just got married, has a job and is just living her best life. But this was a debilitating condition for her, debilitating. So, this is just one of many stories that we have. But again, it takes that same kind of approach to find out what is in your environment that might be harmful to your health and what are you missing from your health supporting practices that you can implement.

Dr. Sandi: That is an amazing story. And I know it’s one of many that you’ve witnessed. And I love Documenting Hope because in positive psychology, hope is overcoming anything. And when you don’t have hope, that is…it’ll always be this way. It’ll never get better. That is the definition of depression and not thriving, and causes inflammation. So, just having hope and having that support. So, what you’re describing is all the factors that…functional medicine, we look at modifiable lifestyle factors. And often people will say, it’s so expensive. I can’t afford it. All the supplements are so pricey. Interventions are pricey. But what you’re describing are really basic things that we had as kids. Go out and play, and roll…get in the dirt, and so many things that are available and at no charge.

Beth: Yeah. And I think the thing is that people don’t believe it. Because it’s simple, people don’t believe it. And simple doesn’t mean easy. Changing lifestyle habits can be difficult, but it doesn’t…it’s not complex. So, as an example, that…I know you know about the Japanese forest bathing, the shinrin-yoku, this idea of going into a natural green space, walking in a forest, for instance, has been measured and studied quite a bit where they find things like reduction in inflammation, reduction in blood pressure. It regulates the nervous system. It actually stimulates immune function. I mean, actual physical, medically positive things are happening to your body when you’re walking through a forest.

So, it’s until you read the literature…and I’ve read some of the papers before, you’re like, wow, walking in a forest is powerful. But until you read that paper, you don’t really believe it. You’re like, really? How can walking in a forest actually help me overcome my OCD or help me overcome my anxiety or my depression? But the science is there now. I mean, we’ve had enough time to prove that these things really matter. So, I encourage people to think about the simple things and really make sure you’re incorporating them. And we all know what is healthy. You know, we all know the basics. We just don’t believe enough to actually take the steps to incorporate them into our lives.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. And the beauty is that as you see these as interventions for your child, they’re effective for everybody, even extended family.

Beth: It’s so true. And we see this happen, too. Most of the stories we have on our website and our YouTube channel are stories of children who have recovered. However, what you don’t always see, but we hear on the back end because we’re collecting these stories, is that dad’s cardiac metrics improved. Mom’s anxiety went away. Dad’s depression went away. Grandpa’s Parkinson’s improved. I mean, the benefits to the whole family when everybody does it together are innumerable.

And I will tell you that when a family goes all in together for one child, the benefits are just mind blowing. I have this one story that’s on our YouTube channel for a boy named John, who had ADHD. And the whole family decided to make drastic diet changes when the youngest brother in the family who suddenly developed type 1 diabetes. All three of these children had ADHD, were on ADHD meds, were really struggling in school. Then the family, upon the type 1 diabetes diagnosis, decided to go ketogenic or low carb. And they got rid of the toxins in their diet, and they decided to do a nutrient dense family meal plan. Everybody got on it. And what happened as a byproduct, not only did it help the child with type 1 diabetes in terms of managing blood sugars and the highs and lows and all those scary things, the whole family improved their health. And all three of those children came off their ADHD meds just by making that diet change. I mean, it’s incredible when families go in together. It’s so much more powerful.

Dr. Sandi: Together is so important because it can also be the opposite. I’ve seen so many instances where a child was singled out. Oh, you have your special diet. And the other kids are like, oh, that one’s for Johnny. This is your regular food. And that always backfires for so many reasons. This has been a fascinating conversation. I’m so excited for your work, for the study. Beth, where can people find you?

Beth: All of our information is on documentinghope.com. We have an online practitioner directory where you can find functional medicine practitioners and health coaches. And people who practice different kinds of holistic therapies are on that website. You can also find our Healing Together community. We have a conference in November where people can come together in person, talk about the value of being together in person. It’s really wonderful. So, all of those resources are available on our website, documentinghope.com.

Dr. Sandi: Well, I applaud you for the wonderful work you’re doing. You are one of the people that are…you are truly making a difference in a world where this is so necessary. Well, thank you for being with us.

Beth: Thank you, Sandi.