Building a Happy Future: Introducing Growing Strong Healthy Eating for the Whole Family
If your home was smoldering with smoke billowing from the windows. Who would you run into to save without thinking? Over broken glass, barefoot?
For most of my patients, the answer is our children. Our grandchildren.
What would you do to save your children and your grandchildren? A lot I am sure.
Let me give you a suggestion. It is time to begin giving our children and grandchildren a better path forward. Change the story in your head and in theirs.
I have just the thing to help change the story in our children’s heads. But more about that later in this blog.
There is a better path for our children and for ourselves. As parents and grandparents, we must help show them the path. But too many are not doing enough. Too many of our children and grandchildren are in trouble. They deal with terrible things that are gnawing at them and their sense of self. Things like worsening anxiety. Depression. Social anxiety. Loneliness. Rage. Suicidality. Too many children are now obese. Have high blood pressure. Autoimmune disease. Even type 2 diabetes. All these things were once very rare in children. Now they are commonplace. I see them in the playgrounds. in the schools. In the news.
Do you see it in the children in your life? Are your children or grandchildren healthy, and taking no medication? Or are they being evaluated for symptoms and issues? Now literally a majority of the children are taking medication for some symptoms. Shocking, isn’t it?
So many of us watch our children struggle not knowing what to do. We don’t want to deprive our children of treats. We don’t want the pushback. The tears. The fights. With our children. Or our spouse. We are paralyzed. We are allowing them to continue to eat breakfast cereals that are mostly sugar. Too much candy. Too much white flour, pastries, and too few vegetables. We don’t know how to change it.
But our children need our help. They need us to teach them why it matters. What should we eat? What we should do to be healthy. But it feels too hard. So we don’t. Hoping it won’t matter. That our kids won’t become chronically ill. The problem is that the majority of our children have symptoms that are deeply troubling. Either mental symptoms or physical symptoms.
Our children need our help. We must begin talking to them about the connections between food and health. We need stories to help us know what to say to our children. We need books. We need parents and grandparents to lead the way. That is why I asked Zeb to create a children’s book.
I worked with her to create a children’s book about the connection between the foods we eat and the health we have. Growing Strong Healthy Eating for the Whole Family is a children’s book that can help you explain why healthy eating matters. It is a colorful, fun children’s story about healthy eating. It is a perfect book for parents and grandparents! Our children receive continuous marketing from television to eat sugary foods and beverages daily. It is time for us to do our own messaging.
We need to read books like Getting Strong to our children. Starting when they are toddlers. Babies even. And we need to keep reading to them and talking about food. Why we need to eat vegetables. Why have we stopped eating sugary breakfast cereals? Why have we stopped having sugar-sweetened beverages? Why have we chosen to reduce or eliminate some foods even though they are super tasty and are in all those commercials on television? Why in our home everyone helps with making meals and cleaning up after the meal is finished.
Growing Strong is a beautiful children’s book. Nearly every page has an Easter Egg or several. An Easter Egg is a link back to someone or something that Zeb loves. See how many you can find as you read and talk to the children in your life. Purchase the book here.
Our children are our future. The big corporations are marketing products that drive overconsumption of foods that are associated with worsened mental health (anxiety, depression, social anxiety, learning disability, suicidality, and rage) and worse physical health (obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and autoimmunity). I am very pleased to offer Growing Strong as a first step in taking back our children’s lives. We need to teach them why what they eat matters.
Supercharge your success with improving your diet
I have observed that one of the best ways to get the family on board with improving diet and health behaviors to have one of the parents join a clinical trial that is study diet. You have access to more support, more education and support for adopting and sustaining your new, healthier diet. In our studies, parents tell us that their children are doing better. Fewer meltdowns. Better behavior. Better grades. Better athletic performance. Spouses have better moods. Better blood pressure. Better blood sugar. Fewer headaches. Less pain. If these benefits appeal to you, come sign up for one of our clinical trials. We have several that you can consider joining.
We are recruiting people with Fibromyalgia, post-acute sequela of COVID 19 (Long Covid), and relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis for two clinical trials that I will discuss next. If someone in your family has one of these conditions, please consider participating in one of our clinical trials. You will complete a short survey to see if you are eligible. If you are eligible, a member of my team will reach out and go over the study in details to explain what is entailed and you can decide if you wish to participate in the research. We would love to include you!
Evaluation of an online wellness program.
While the study of MS patients is complete, we have added two new populations to the trial (NCT05057676): fibromyalgia and post-acute sequela of COVID 19 also known as Long Covid. This study evaluates whether access to an online wellness course leads to reduced symptoms and improved quality of life in these two conditions. You must be an adult and live in North America to participate in the study. You will be asked to complete a short survey to determine if you are eligible to participate in the study. If you are, a member of the study team will contact you and go over the study details and ask if you wish to enroll in the study. The links for the two studies are provided next.
If you have fibromyalgia, complete this survey to see if you are eligible to participate in the fibromyalgia study.
If you have post-acute sequela of COVID-19 or Long Covid, complete this survey to see if you are eligible to be in COVID study.
Participate in an MS Diet Study
If you have relapsing-remitting MS and are between the ages of 18-70, live in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico, you may be eligible for our current study, Efficacy of Diet on Quality of Life in Multiple Sclerosis (NCT05007483). This study compares ketogenic and Paleolithic diets to the usual diet. Learn more about the study here. The study lasts two years. Participants must travel to Iowa City, Iowa, at months 0, 3, and 24. Complete the screening survey here to see if you are eligible. Our team will reach out to you for the next steps is you are eligible for the study.
Get notified for new opportunities to be in a Wahls research study!
We write proposals for new trials every few months. Once they are approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB), we email our participant registry to tell them about the new study and invite them to participate. If you are not eligible for the current study but would like to learn about our future studies, complete the survey to join our Participant Registry for Future Studies.
If you have fibromyalgia
Our children are our future. Pick up a copy of Growing Strong for the children in your life. Consider being part of a clinical trial and jump start improving the diet for the whole family today.
