Do traditional systems of medicine align with modern understanding of disease? The one question on my mind has always been that a lot of the disorders and dysfunctions we see today are rather new, at least in their extent and prevalence. How do Ayurveda or Chinese Medicine provide us with answers?

Also, how far do we feel comfortable veering from traditional food practices, and moving away from foods like wheat and dairy, that were once considered nourishing?

KP Khalsa, herbalist, nutritionist, yoga teacher and educator answers these questions in this episode.

KP has an exclusive free gift for our listeners at

https://go.internationalintegrative.com/natural-solutions-for-autism/

Disclaimer: The information in this Podcast is for educational purposes only. Vaishnavi Sarathy, Ph.D. is an educator, not a doctor, specifically not your child’s doctor. Please consult your physician before implementing any supplement or diet recommendations.

Today's episode is about the secret art of finding 30 mins in your day - and what exactly to do with these 30 mins.

Did you know I taught the binary system of numbers to my son when he was maybe 9 years old. Not only that - at the time he could go back and forth between the binary and decimal system for small numbers. 

The twist is that my son has Down Syndrome, is Autistic and non-speaking. But I wouldn’t classify him as a genius.

Over years I have worked on and refined a process that I call Non-Linear Education - that I have used to help my son overcome barriers - both imposed by society and sometimes by his multiple diagnoses. 

In this podcast, I talk you through the 7 steps involved in teaching complex math (or science) to your child with Autism or Down Syndrome or other disability. 

Download / Print the 7 steps at www.functionalnutritionforkids.com/binary

If you have enjoyed this podcast, I would love it if you could leave a review wherever you are listening!

Disclaimer: The information in this Podcast is for educational purposes only. Vaishnavi Sarathy, Ph.D. is an educator, not a doctor, specifically not your child’s doctor. Please consult your physician before implementing any supplement or diet recommendations.

There is often a correlation between how a child eats and how they learn. Dr. Bill Sears in this podcast talks about 4 points that he teaches kids and parents to focus on:

• Go Fish
• Go Green
• Go Nuts, and 
• Go Blue

I am so excited to interview someone whose work I have followed so closely when my kids were younger. I am pretty sure I was on the “askdrsears.com" website all the time. In this episode Dr. Bill Sears talks about how he addresses growth issues in his practice, and does a special segment just for us on how to further help children with Down syndrome who have growth issues. 

Gut Health and Growth Ebook www.functionalnutritionforkids.com/guthealth 

Disclaimer: The information in this Podcast is for educational purposes only. Vaishnavi Sarathy, Ph.D. is an educator, not a doctor, specifically not your child’s doctor. Please consult your physician before implementing any supplement or diet recommendations.

How can your child progress beyond purees?

Today’s episode is part 2 in the series on Feeding Disorders in Down Syndrome - we are continuing on from Episode 92 with Dr. Kay Toomey who leads us a beautifully detailed explanation on the hierarchy of what feeding should like, especially in children with Down syndrome. 

This particular episode comes with several handouts that Dr. Kay Toomey references. I recommend that you have all of these opened while listening to the podcast - to give you the best experience. 

You can go to www.functionalnutritionforkids.com/feedingsos to get these handouts and my own set of notes that you can print out.

You can find Dr. Toomey at www.sosapproachtofeeding.com

CLICK HERE FOR THE HANDOUTS

Disclaimer: The information in this Podcast is for educational purposes only. Vaishnavi Sarathy, Ph.D. is an educator, not a doctor, specifically not your child’s doctor. Please consult your physician before implementing any supplement or diet recommendations.

This was the conversation I was not expecting to have!!

I invited my friend, Functional Nutritionist and Yogi - Deepa Kannan to lead me through a tough conversation about my 3 weeks on a vegan diet.

And believe me, the conversation was TOUGH!! If you are interested in hearing me be grilled, this is your chance. 

For those of you who didn’t know, my daughter and I explored a vegan diet for just 3 weeks.

It is just a vegan diet. This shouldn’t be a big deal, but turns out - it was for the 20+ people who unsubscribed after learning about this!!

Join me (and Deepa) as we explore the things I learned and unlearned during this brief journey, and why I may never do a vegan diet for my son. 

Since we talk a lot about gut health in this conversation, if you like, check out my free ebook on gut health at www.functionalnutritionforkids.com/guthealth

TWO biggest myths in nutritional interventions (and the reason most dietary changes don’t work).

Did you know that 10-30% of children with ADHD don’t respond to medication, or worse, experience adverse effects to these medications?

It is high time to try easier and more effective strategies such as dietary changes for brain health. If Food is Medicine, there should be nothing that can go wrong when you enter the area of Nutritional Interventions, right?

No, there are two huge areas where people slip up over and over again, and this is the reason "healing" diets don't work for many many people. 

MYTH 1: Everything is OK in moderation.

If you are trying to make active change, it is important that the areas that are healing are significantly higher than the areas that are inflammatory. In fact, at least for a short time, you may need to shut off the inflammatory foods.

This is of course hard, because inflammatory food is usually addictive. But taking every food that causes inflammation out of the diet is almost impossible. 

That is why, in my signature course offering R.O.A.R [Roadmap to Attention and Regulation] - which is open for enrollment now, I take care to not stress the parent with too many factors to control and remove. R.O.A.R.  [Enroll or Waitlist] Psychiatric Times Article

Disclaimer: The information in this Podcast is for educational purposes only. Vaishnavi Sarathy, Ph.D. is an educator, not a doctor, specifically not your child’s doctor. Please consult your physician before implementing any supplement or diet recommendations.

What if you had a toolbox that told you exactly where to start with your child’s health? Honestly, if we could all just find a place to start, just that one foothold over the seemingly rocky cliffs of food and nutrition, the next foothold is often apparent. Sometimes after years of a healthy, fantastic diet, you might hit a plateau again, and that is when a handy toolkit, right in place can help you find your foot hold yet again.

In this podcast, Dr. Sachin Patel leads us through a 9 step toolkit of changing your child’s health and energy, starting with my favorite step 1:

1. Taste is important. Find out what your kids love. From there we want to make our foods as healthy as we possibly can. 
2. Don’t give up after the first time. 

You can find Dr. Sachin Patel here.

To know more about your child's diet and how to get it to do some heavy lifting for their brain health, sign up for my FREE training this week : 3 signs that your child’s diet is NOT working for them

Disclaimer: The information in this Podcast is for educational purposes only. Vaishnavi Sarathy, Ph.D. is an educator, not a doctor, specifically not your child’s doctor. Please consult your physician before implementing any supplement or diet recommendations.

If your child has trouble falling asleep, moving from a state of distress to a state of calm, if they have trouble with digestion, they likely have something called low Vagal Tone. The Vagus Nerve is the longest nerve in the body and touches so many aspects of our functioning and is known to be a factor especially in children with digestive, neurological and inflammatory concerns, and I think that accounts for most of us kids with disabilities.

Dr. Navaz Habib, the author of “Activate Your Vagus Nerve” and host of “The Health Upgrade Podcast” talks to us about thing you can do, even if your child is apraxic / dyspraxic. 

Check out this podcast to get 3 things you can implement right away to upgrade your child’s digestion, sleep and mood.

More on Gut Health at www.functionalnutritionforkids.com/guthealth

Disclaimer: The information in this Podcast is for educational purposes only. Vaishnavi Sarathy, Ph.D. is an educator, not a doctor, specifically not your child’s doctor. Please consult your physician before implementing any supplement or diet recommendations.

Can you change your genetic expression based on what you eat? Conversely, if you are one of those people that are chronically deficient in say, Iron or Vitamin D, are your genes to blame? And what can you do about it?

How can this apply to factors that affect Autism/ADHD symptoms?

In this episode, Amanda Archibald, pioneer in genomic nutrition, explains to us how - not only do genes affect how you can process food, but you can actually fine tune the food you eat to optimize your genes?

Whether you need help with Omega-3 supplementation, or whether you need to USE Omega-3s to modulate some “slacker” genes, nutrigenomics is the field you have been waiting for.

You can find Amanda Archibald at www.genomickitchen.com In the meantime, we are using nutrigenomics practically in our 5-day dosa challenge. Sign up at www.functionalnutritionforkids.com/dosa to find out how to make a dosa over 5 days and why a Dosa is the perfect breakfast for your child.

Disclaimer: The information in this Podcast is for educational purposes only. Vaishnavi Sarathy, Ph.D. is an educator, not a doctor, specifically not your child’s doctor. Please consult your physician before implementing any supplement or diet recommendations.