Episode 222: Mental Health and Living a Healthy Life with Teens Ft. The Holistic Kids Podcast Hosts

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Transcript

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Alopecia Angel podcast. I am so excited to be with you here today because today we’re gonna be talking to the Holistic Kids Let me just go ahead and introduce to you a little bit about the Holistic Kids and what we’ll be talking about here shortly. But before I do, I wanted to go ahead and give some kudos and some congratulations to a couple people that are inside the Hair N’ Heal program right now seeing hair growth.

We have Danielle with scarring alopecia, she has frontal fibrosing alopecia, and she’s seeing hair growth already in week 3 in the eyebrows and the eyelashes, and of course on her scalp and forehead, the inflammation, the itching, redness, the pain that was associated with her FFA, with her scarring alopecia on her scalp has gone away in just 24 hours. So for more inspiring stories, check out our website under success stories or listen to the podcast, and also on our YouTube for more inspiring stories because you too can heal. That is actually one thing that really bothers me, that people don’t realize they can heal. They don’t realize that healing is a choice, they don’t realize that what they’ve read on the internet or what they’ve been told is an actual lie.

They can heal. Anyone can heal, it’s a choice. Just like if you wanna choose to learn French, just like if you wanna choose to lose weight, just like if you want to choose to get healthy or choose to grow your hair back. Anyone can heal. And this is probably one of the biggest misnomers and myths is that there’s no cure, that you can’t do this, that it’s impossible. None of these things, all the options that are out there, are the only options we have. And that’s so not true. Just because we’re not given an option doesn’t mean we don’t have options.

And so it’s up to us to advocate for ourselves and to really know when we can be discerning and when we should be discerning in order to have a better life. And if it wasn’t for that little voice inside me that said: you can heal. You’ve always had big, curly hair, why all of a sudden would you stop having it? This is the situation. I’ve always had the big curly hair and I knew I could get it back and did. So it’s really up to you. The first step is believing you can heal, and then from there, all the pieces start to come together. You start finding the right people to help you on this path and on this journey. And lo and behold, you’re healing. Just like Jenny, just like Danielle, and just like so many others.

So going back to today’s guests, we have Abdullah, Zane, Emaad and Qasim, the Holistic Kids as they’re known. Abdullah 18, Zane 14, Emaad 12, and Qasim 10 are the hosts of The Holistic Kids Show podcast, national speakers and co-authors of the bestselling traditionally published book, The Teen Health Revolution: Lifestyle Secrets to Optimize Your Mind, Body, and Soul. As passionate advocates for youth empowerment, the Kids host The Holistic Kid show, a groundbreaking Kid run podcast with over 200 episodes featuring leading experts, including New York Times bestselling authors, Harvard professors, top physicians, actors, and national media figures.

This podcast ranks top 2% of all podcasts globally as a first youth speakers at major integrative and functional medicine conferences, including the International Institute of Functional Medicine in 2024, A4M in 2025, and the Health Business Growth Collective Summit in 2025. I’m so thrilled to bring these young people to the podcast so that we can talk about how they got into this and how and why this is so important for teens, for youth, and for that next generation.

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Johanna: So congratulations on writing this book and having it published now here recently in December. Tell me about your book and why you decided to write this.

Zain: We’ve been surrounded by the medical field ever since we were kids. Like our parents are doctors, our aunts and uncles are all doctors. But when we became sick, no one really understood why they gave us extra medications, and all the doctors said that it was just gonna continue. Like I suffered through uncontrollable rage and emotional problems.

Emaad: I suffered through sinus issues like a waterfall that impacted my sleep and life. I had eczema, patches all over my body.

Zain: Yeah, we all suffered through these chronic issues, but no one was really telling us the underlying root cause. All they did is just gave us a pharmaceutical drug and they said that maybe this will help. But we realized that what really did help, and our mom was also on this journey with us, we started changing our diet slowly. We started changing our lifestyle very, very slowly. And, and during COVID everyone was worried about their health. So we’ve been learning for so long about like diet and lifestyle that we decided that, you know, what, how about we interview experts around the world? World renowed experts and New York Times bestselling authors. And how about we like talk about like their experiences and our experiences.

And then we can also help other kids because that’s what we wanted at the time. We were really young. Like I started when I was only like 8. And then after COVID happened. After the pandemic ended, we went to school and I really noticed how different these kids became. Like there are constant studies about like suicide. Everyone was so much like, they had so much more hate in themselves. It’s not only that like I was growing up, but like that the people around were really changing.

Everyone was stuck inside their rooms for so long. It really did something to their mental health.

Emaad: Yeah, like you are looking at the statistics like 1 in 2 kids have at least one persistent health issue. Like these statistics were just rising and so we wanted every team to hold something in their hand. So we took all the information of our podcast and turned it into our book.

Zain: That’s why the book became, is such like a guide. We added our own like our own thing. So like it could be more relatable for other teens and stuff. It just became like from our, our struggles into, yeah, into, and then us learning and then really putting all that tips from learning, make it very simple. Make it like very easy to understand for lots of teens.

Johanna: So in terms of your rage in terms of your eczema and in terms of your sinus issues, have these all resolved?

Zain: Yes, definitely. We all feel so much better, especially I can say by myself. I don’t deal with these sinus issues anymore from my side. So I was actually like around two, like five, five, around three, three I think. I don’t know. I was like young, but I know that like my mom, she would like take videos and then now I’m looking, I’m like: Whoa, that’s crazy. Why was I even like that? Like just constant tantrums upon tantrums for no reason.

I was just like crazy.

Emaad: When we were younger, when we had all these symptoms, we were doing everything decent, but again, the food we were eating were ultra processed food. And that really affected us and that caused these symptoms. But then when we switched to having real food and slowly but truly like took that step by step and learning and just continuing to do that for, again, years and years. These symptoms just are gone.

Qasim: I have no eczema, all patches all over my body anymore.

Johanna: That’s great. So was this at the same time that maybe your parents found functional medicine?

Emaad: Again, we were learning it together. Like when our mom would learn something, she would tell us, we’d all do it together at the same step.

Zain: I think we also did it step by step. Like once my mom learned about something, she didn’t like, okay, no ultra processed foods, no McDonald’s, nothing. So we really took a step by step. I know we started getting rid of dairy and then maybe gluten, we started going to fast food, less often. And then we just stopped going to fast food. And then slowly, let’s say we got rid of like different chemicals. It just became so much more

doable for us. Now we trained our like taste buds and we trained our like routines to go for that and it made it so much easier.

So now we are like really living it and people are like: Oh my God. How’d you do this? Like I know at school they’re like, this is impossible. I can never get rid of Doritos. Well then just find an alternative. Just take small steps or just let’s say like Doritos less often. I think it’s so important to really take things step by step because that’ll really build those habits that then we can create a better routine.

Emaad: And also at like school, they’re like: What? You can’t have candy? You can’t have all your pizza? You can’t have all this stuff? Like we still have them, but we take alternatives. Like we have substitutions. So like maybe for their candy, we have a brand called YumEarth, which is organic candy or just different substitutions, so we still value the same thing, but just we value healthier.

Johanna: So let me ask you, because as a mom, right, with a 4-year-old who does go to school, I personally talked to the principal because the food that they serve there is like very, very discriminatory. Like it’s not healthy in my opinion. And then, you know, as growing up here in the US they have a holiday, it feels like every month and every month there’s some sort of, you know, party inside the classroom, right? We just had Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s is coming up and then it’s like Easter and there’s always something to celebrate with chocolate or candy or sugar of some sort.

And then on top of it, you have all the birthdays, right? And everyone’s bringing cupcakes to, to school, right? So how do you guys do things differently? I’m assuming you guys all go to regular schools.

Zain: Yes.

Johanna: And not partake because for example, my child, he doesn’t partake. The whole school knows like that he can’t have the cupcakes, he doesn’t have the pizza. He doesn’t have the candy. And I teach him, I was like, we don’t eat chicken nuggets because it’s garbage. That’s not food. We don’t eat candy because that creates cavities. We don’t do this because it does this. And so I’m teaching him from now on since he’s, you know, since he was in my belly.

I’ve had a very strict diet because of the alopecia. But in your case, as you were kind of going through it, as you were growing up, do you feel left out when people are having parties and you’re not eating the cookies and the candies and the this and the that?

Zain: So I think we brushed on it a little bit about something like alternatives and substitutions, because let’s say for any single brand, anything you want, there will always be luckily we live in a world that it’s so easy to get anything from across the country or across the globe. Amazon is really good for that. But like it’s so easy, I think now to get our hands on just better alternatives. The only things that you have to actually look for it and you have to read the ingredients.

So let’s say whenever we’re going to like a party or there’s like a school event, especially in elementary school, everyone knew that I wasn’t gonna have it and I don’t have it. And now when someone offers me, I’m just like: No, I don’t want it. Like I’m trying to help my own diet and they should too. And then that’s actually just like a way that I look at it. I look at, they’re eating the processed junk. Well, I’m trying to help myself. We live in such a free country that we’re allowed to eat whatever we want, right.

Emaad: Well also like we get, we have friends who understand, like we wanna make sense if we had friends that were just completely hated at food. Like so we get friends or value, value our friends that actually care for what we’re going to eat.

Johanna: So you guys take all your lunch and snacks from home every day.

Zain: Oh yeah,

Johanna: because that’s what I do with my son. I mean, I’m just wondering to see if we’re on the same page or not.

Zain: So we all like make the lunches and Yeah. And if I’m being honest, the school cafeteria food isn’t even that like appetizing.

Johanna: So talk to me about the mental health aspect, because I think that’s quite impressive from your standpoint with, you know, given your age and but also your experience with COVID of course. And then, you know, coming back to school, to the system and then seeing how everyone was different. Maybe you guys were different too, but maybe they were also very different.

And so how does this book or your perspective of mental health and teens, like what are some of the tips that you would recommend that a teen do if they start to realize that they’re slipping and sliding with their mental health and that, you know, maybe parents are too busy to notice, maybe parents are, you know underwater, with work and taking care of other things that they don’t see that their child is going through a mental health problem, or maybe their child is just really good at hiding it. So what are some of the tips that you would give for this teen?

Zain: So, before I start giving out tips, I just wanna like say that mental health, even though it might be like a completely different like feeling and symptoms and stuff it’s very interconnected with physical health. So the food you eat are is gonna directly affect also your mental health. But that’s like, that’s a bigger topic. I definitely do feel like I just did a TEDx actually talk on mental health, and I talked a lot about 3 points, mindfulness, gratitude, and community. Let’s just first start with mindfulness, being mindful is being fully present.

When I’m mindful, I focus on what I see, hear, and even feel. Anyone can do this either just by paying attention to themselves, either by like, just like journaling or just by being

alone with your thoughts, like in an intentional way. Gratitude is something that you have to like really find like a lot of people, like news is everywhere. The social media constantly we’re being surrounded by negative information. The news, whatever’s going around like people are dying in a specific area of the world or it’s about social media constantly like, I don’t have this, I don’t have that. Especially as teens, we’re not supposed to be like constantly around all that stuff all the time.

But now you’ve seen, ever since COVID specifically teens have been so much more addicted to their devices. They care so much more about like how people think of them because we can just press a button and usually what social media shows is a bunch of models. It only shows us the perfection, and that makes a lot of teens feel really, really bad. Second, it’s gratitude. We are constantly surrounded by people who like negativity and that makes us feel bad. So we’re not in a world, we’re like away from it and then now we feel bad about who we are. And we’re siloed in our rooms, and this is where community comes in. My last point, we’re siloed in our rooms not not interacting with anyone, not like communicating anymore only through our thumbs. We’re only communicating through our thumbs in a room all by ourselves.

Just 10 years ago, this is crazy to think about. 2015, I mean, I remember ish, like people were outside more. I feel like like technology wasn’t as as advanced. There was still technology, but right after COVID, what I noticed is that more and more studies are coming up that it’s like teenagers are really, really suffering.

Emaad: Also, like our subconscious governs 90% of our thoughts and actions. When you have a really negative subconscious, you are gonna be really negative and that can really have a huge effect on gratitude and your purpose in life.

Johanna: Very true. I will say, I will counter your argument about, about social media. I feel like it’s always been very prevalent. By 1998, I had my first cell phone. I was 16 years old and 16-17 years old, and I had my first cell phone then. And it’s just gotten so much more prevalent.

And as someone who’s now in her mid 40s, like my brother and my sister are older than you guys, they’re in their 20s late 20s And even for them, like, I remember seeing them in high school, they were glued to their phones. They love to see all the likes right from a picture that came up and if they didn’t have, a certain amount of likes, then they would just like feel bad the rest of the day. And I was just like: I didn’t understand that because I was a generation ahead and you guys are one below. And so that middle generation, I think they call it Gen Z, it was a totally different situation for them.

COVID was definitely a big thing, but they were already in college. You guys were in high school, elementary school. So that definitely did a number for everybody I think. You know, even if it was just 6 months or even 3 months, it all depends what state, right, what country you lived in at the time. But still, there are detrimental effects. So how are some ways that teens can be aware of what’s going on? Because sometimes you can be depressed and not know it. Sometimes you can be anxious and not know it. So how,

what are some things that you are letting people know or teens in this, in this way, or children that, is there a quiz? Is there a guide for them to see: Hey, if you have these top tips, this is your situation, or no?

Zain: I don’t think we have a specific guide, but in our book we do talk a little bit about some signs that might like influence it. But yeah, we don’t have like, because we’re not really doctors in a way, right? So we can’t diagnose anything specifically, but we can just look at the reality and look at around ourselves. Let’s say from any of my friends who may be feeling that way. But yeah, definitely I think Gen Zs and Gen Alpha specifically are like the first generation to be born with technology at the fingertips.

Johanna: So tell me how much screen time do you guys get? Zain: So we like to aim around like 2 hours maximum a day. Johanna: Wait, wait, wait,

Zain: Okay. You might be like: Okay, that’s actually a lot of screen time, you know? And I think it just depends on what you’re doing for that screen time. We really try to stay away from scrolling mindlessly. Like that is just something that’s really gonna hurt you. And also if you notice that you are like addicted to something, then you’re gonna have to take a bigger break. I think now our holy month of Ramadan is coming soon, so we’re now, we’re gonna stay maximum of an hour so we can spend more time on spirituality.

But 2 hours, I think it’s very doable for anyone, for us personally, it’s very doable. It’s also like, especially in the winter, it’s kinda just there, but in the summer obviously it’s a little different because then you can just play the entire day, in the winter over here where we live, it gets really, really cold. We really stay away from social media besides from using it with a purpose.

I do a lot of editing of our videos and I mean, we do podcasts and we’re on the screen right now. I wouldn’t consider this screen time because we’re on it with purpose.

Johanna: I do actually consider it screen time because the thing is the same effects are gonna happen, like the blue light into your eyes, you know, you’re still gonna be exhausted. If this was nighttime, you would still have the disruption of the circadian rhythm, right? So just things to think about, like screens or screens and just even if it had a purpose, still, this is why, you know, when people are in their 9 to 5 desk job, so I used to work for Apple. So let’s say if I’m on the screen, I would have like a massive headache by the end of the day because of the amount of just internet, like in my face, the amount of like radiation, like let’s not forget that the amount of radiation that’s coming off.

But then also like having to answer your cell phone, having to like be on the phone, talk to people and be online it’s a lot. And even though it’s not social media, it’s still work, right. As an adult. But still, it’s exhausting, mentally is exhausting. It, it, it, it, you know, it

bothers your eyes. It makes your eyes red and dry. Like there’s something to it beyond, just the screens, right? The screen itself is also damaging. So something not to disregard.

Zain: Yeah, I could definitely see that point, but like obviously when you’re doing this, you’re getting a purpose through, so I think it could also help others. But when you’re doing something mindlessly, like just scrolling for mindlessly, constantly on video games, it’s gonna have a bigger effect, because at the same time now you’re affecting your mental health even more.

Johanna: Yeah. So what are some other things that you would love to spread the word about you, you wanted to, in your book you talked about mental health, you also talked about what other aspects of health do you think teens need to be more aware of?

Zain: Toxins. They’re are everywhere and they’re so, they’re so like neglected. Like we don’t really notice that we are like sleeping with them, we are like constantly around them. We are constantly consuming them. They are everywhere. And especially when we’re home all day, we don’t notice how much toxins we’re consuming. Like I’m pretty sure that the average person spend, like the average person is exposed to over 60,000, 90,000 toxins a day. That is wild. And when you say toxins, they’re like kind of like a chemical that is not really supposed to be put inside your body. That is what a toxin is.

And if there’s something that’s not supposed to be put in your body, it’s gonna disrupt your body and it’s gonna disrupt things like your hormones, it’s gonna disrupt your sleep. It might even disrupt your skin. It’ll, and there are like so much different types, so a lot of people are like, you know what? Don’t, why are you so extreme? Like, I can drink this plastic water bottle, like what are these microplastics even gonna do to me? They do so much to you and it’s really, really hurtful. It’s such a big like effect, like factor of what’s hurting teens health too that we neglect a lot. Like part of physical health, let’s say health class, they might brush over a little bit about like how maybe vegetables are good for you, but a lot of people know that yes, your vegetables are good for you, but no one knows that you need to stay away from different types of toxins like plastics, heavy metals. EMFs are big ones too, any like endocrine disrupting chemicals also really big and it can also disrupt multiple generations.

Johanna: So how do you think this is preparing you to have a very successful four year term in high school, but then also beyond in college?

Zain: First of all, like taking care of my body. Now I’ve learned so much about how, how much I should be like on a for say screen or how much I should sleep or what foods I should eat. I’ve also learned a lot about how to cook. So now I can prepare my own foods for myself in college. And I think that a lot of teens, they think that they’ll just like magically once they turn at like 18, they go to college, they all know how to cook. That’s just not gonna happen. ’cause if you don’t start younger, like Gson knows how like he, he’s just made like cookies today, really good cookies. I think when you can learn how

to cook for yourself, you become less like reliant on these fast foods to constantly like give you their cheap chemicals that are just gonna destroy you.

So just taking care of my body is like a big one that I’m gonna need to use in college. And also just time management. I think a lot of the things that I’ve learned from let’s say like doing a lot of podcasts and doing a lot of like writing a book is I’ve learned how to manage my time and I think that can be really, really helpful during college.

Johanna: That’s huge. I was actually just gonna touch upon time management ’cause that’s a big one. I mean, there are so many kids, like not being so fruitful with their time and they have lots of time to learn things and I love how your mom, your, your dad too. I would probably should give him credit as well. Your parents and your family have kind of driven you in, not just you, but all 5 boys into this way of life. You know, being self- sufficient and dependent, and then also being very driven, ambitious, and then achieving a lot. I mean, you’re a freshman in high school, you’ve already done a TED Talk, you just published a book, what else have you done and what’s next for you or for you and what I mean you, I mean all of you.

Emaad: A course.

Johanna: Are you creating a course right now?

Zain: Yes, we are. So actually we have a course, but like we made it like so long ago that we need to like, actually, like professionalize it, make it a little better then put it out there. So yeah, we are doing a course, that’s definitely next, and giving more speaking engagements because we already do speak around the country and we’re looking at maybe even speaking globally like next year I think we’re looking at like Saudi Arabia, which is like very, very far. Maybe, maybe. We’ll see.

Emaad: And also like we, again, we’re trying to put this mission across the whole world, like you wanna spread this mission. So I think that’s what we’re gonna be working on, just trying to get the mission out to live healthier and to just remove these terrible things going on in our life.

Zain: So I think that our big mission is to educate and empower the next generation, because we realize that this is gonna be our generation. This is gonna be the next doctors, the next lawyers, the next police officers, the next firefighters. The next group of people who are going to build this society.

And if we have a bunch of people who can’t even communicate with others who are constantly insecure about themselves because of what other people say. And if people who don’t know the life skills that let us grow as an entire civilization, I do believe that this will then create like a worse civilization if a bunch of teens and stuff aren’t gonna be able to learn those skills, so then we can have a better future. I’m gonna say this again, this is our future and it makes me really like, let’s just like emotional when I’m thinking that, you know, like the next generation is gonna be so much more unhealthy, mental

health is gonna be bigger. It’s a very shared goal of all of us is to just really educate and empower the next generation.

Johanna: One thing all, all of us have in common, like you yourselves and the me too, is that we almost took health for granted in a way because we didn’t make changes until the diagnosis came about. Does that make sense? Like the eczema, the sinuses, and the rage or the, the emotional tantrums. In my case, it was the alopecia. Like I thought I was already healthy, I was already running, I was already doing Pilates and yoga and doing all the things and thinking I was healthy. But what I see as somebody who helps people with hair loss all the time, is that it’s not that people don’t want to be healthy, it’s that there’s so much misinformation, right? There’s just so much, good and bad and awful, and it’s just like it muddies everything.

And so people are confused even when it comes to weight loss as something so simple as weight loss, but it’s not so simple. We think about it: Oh, losing weight should be very easy, and for many people it’s not because the chicken is no longer a chicken because the piece of meat is no longer the piece of meat because the vegetable is no longer the real vegetable. And you know what I mean? It’s like there’s just so much convoluted to it. It makes it hard for the regular person to really understand like, what’s really good for me? Like what is good for me in particular to my health situation, right? Because when you have eczema, maybe that looks a little different. A little different to the person who has, you know, constant sinus infections and maybe the diets differ ever so slowly of what you can’t eat and what he can’t eat, right?

As someone with, a previous autoimmune disease, that too, it looks a little different. And so I think the crux of this is that people wanna be healthy, but it’s only when they’re diagnosed with something, that’s when they start to like pick up the pace. And, and they’re in this desperation of like: Okay, now I’m at rock bottom of some sort. Whether it’s depression, anxiety, whether it’s like a bad addiction, whether it’s a diagnosis, whether it’s something, and what can I do now? What are my options now? Right? And so in the same vein, you all looked at doctors, I also looked at doctors, they didn’t give me the solution I wanted. They didn’t give you the solution you wanted, so you forged your own path and I did too. And so this is the thing, it’s like getting clear information out there is so key, not just to teens, but then also to the parents.

Zain: Definitely. And I think that’s also like kind of part of our mission. ’cause we’re, we’re doing this at a young age and even during the pandemic we tried to get to other kids specifically to start at a younger age, so then it , wouldn’t have been as hard o later on. It’s gonna be harder when once we build that habit of constantly eating like fake foods and our, and our lifestyles all outta place. So I definitely like the younger, like the faster you can change. The faster, the easier it’ll be to really like actually change.

Emaad: Most people they start caring with their health when they lose it. So really when to caring about health at a young age, like what we’re doing is very beneficial to many people because then they can use those decisions at a very young age and learn and use them when they get older.

Johanna: So what would you say to somebody, for example, I used to live in Europe and the teens that I would see there at lunch break, their lunch consisted of either a Red Bull or a Coca-Cola, like a bottle of Coca-Cola and a piece of bread. This was in the Netherlands and it was either that or french fries, that was their lunch. This was every day and it was awful. It was awful to see that these teens were doing this to themselves, but college students were too. One was because maybe budget, right? And 2 was easy access to a piece of bread, like a croissant or something and then Coca-Cola, easy. So maybe there’s a, a little bit of both, right? Where there’s a budget issue, but then also not, and eating real food doesn’t necessarily cost much more, but it’s the preparation.

But you guys are learning how to cook. So do you have tips on like where or how children can learn how to cook inside your book?

Emaad: Yeah, in our book, we actually do have recipes at the very end to use like maybe like, because use almond flour. So our recipes are different than the casual recipes. Mm-hmm. And it’s organic, so we put that in our book to teach people and to get teens to start learning how to cook.

Zain: And then we also have free PDFs that people can book, that people, people can get when they buy our book, like specifically on their website. And that has like like a grocery store list, all these different types of things that like teens can easily do. And if you follow us on like social media, we also have like lots of things, like specifically our mom, she does a lot of like cooking videos. I know we used to do a lot more cooking videos, now we do a little less. If I’m being honest, like we started like cooking at like a pretty young age. It’s really not that difficult. So, yeah, anyone can do it.

Johanna: Do you have any statistics on children’s health or teen health right now as we see it in the US? And if so, do you, can you share that with us?

Zain: Definitely, and we have like a list here.

Johanna: Yeah, bring it.

Zain: So 1 in 2 kids have at least one persistent health issue. CDC says 1 in 3 teens have pre-diabetes.

Emaad: 1 in 10 US children have ADHD or a behavioral problem. 3/4 of adolescents experience depression and anxiety. 1 of 3 teens have seriously thought of suicide.

Zain: The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association issued a joint declaration of a national emergency in child and adolescents mental health. The 2025 Lancet commission on adolescent health and wellbeing found investment in adolescent health doesn’t match the scale of the problems faced by young people. In 2005, the NEJM predicted that for the first time in history, the kids have expected to have shorter

lifespans than their parents. Well, 20 years later, when nearly 1 in 2 kids have a chronic, chronic condition and mental health struggles on rise, the time to revolutionize the future is now. So that’s just like some of them. We do have more, but it’s just constant, just depression.

Johanna: In my opinion, it seems that a lot of these chronic conditions, even today chronic diseases, is all stemming from diet and lifestyle. And the more we’re aware, the better we are for it. So thank you so much for bringing this book out to light and for publishing it and making it very easily digestible for teens and for children of all ages. And do you think you’ll be coming out with a new one or a second one here shortly? Maybe one for college?

Emaad: We’re thinking about it, probably not.

Zain: It was a lot of work, but definitely we did consider it. And we’re gonna leave that option open if we do wanna make another one.

Johanna: What do you think are the top 3 hacks that teens can do today, starting now, right now and improve their mental health or their overall health right now?

Zain: Right now, take deep breaths. I think that the, taking deep breaths, like there’s so much different types, but you don’t even have to complicate it.

Qasim: And there’s like, there’s a lot of them.

Zain: And there’s so much more, so much different types. All you need to do is just take a deep breath and I think it’s really gonna change how your brain like works and how your attitude towards things is gonna be. And I think that along with that is also just changing how you look at the world. If you look at the world in the way that you’re only gonna see the darkness, then you’re only gonna get the darkness out of it, and when you can look at the world and see light, you’re gonna get the light out of it. And a lot of teens we found, we lost hope maybe in our world, but we didn’t and that’s why we really wanna push this out. And we’re not stopping anytime soon to get this out because we know that there’s always hope and there always will be hope.

Emaad: Also I wanna add in that eating real food, that food is power, food is information, and. We wanna also read labels because a ton, there’s tons of ingredients on the most simplest things. Like 19 ingredients on french fries and the McDonald french fries, which is kind of crazy. So just read ingredients. And then we like to say, if you can’t read it and you don’t know what it is,

Qasim: if you can’t pronounce it.

Emaad: If you can’t pronounce it, then don’t eat it.

Johanna: Anything else that you’d love to share with our listeners before we go?

Zain: Check out our book.

Emaad: Check out our podcast.

Zain: Our podcast, the Holistic Kid Show, as well as our course, which is coming out soon. And definitely follow us on The Holistic Kids Show on all socials.

Johanna: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. You guys are adorable and I love speaking with you guys and I love that you guys have this mission too, because I’m sure that’s giving you a lot of purpose, a lot of work, but a lot of purpose too. So thank you so much for your time and for sharing your knowledge and your next projects with us and everybody be sure to check out their book and follow them on social media. Thank you so much. Bye.

Zain: Thank you.