Episode 225: Latest Research on Children’s Health and Hair and How to Improve It!

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Johanna Dahlman: Hello everybody and welcome back to the Alopecia Angel Podcast. I’m your host Johanna Dahlman, and I’m so excited to be here with you today. If you are new to Alopecia Angel, please know that you can go to hello@alopeciaangel.com and you can find a whole host of free resources there, free trainings, consultations and PDFs, and information that you can find, download, and use for your journey for hair loss.

And I would also recommend that you take a look at our success stories because they’re on the website. You’ll be really inspired to see what is possible for you and your family in terms of healing from hair loss once and for all. So today’s podcast episode is. Really goes to my heart because I am a mom.

And for a lot of you out there listening, you are parents. And so this really drives home the importance of health today for our little ones, health today, for our children, health today, for the future. And it’s become more and more prevalent for me to see autoimmune cases for children. It’s been more and more prevalent for me to see this.

Not so much in adults. Yes, I do see adults, absolutely, but I actually see more prevalence in children. And this has been actually on the rise for the last nine years or so that I’ve been doing this. Helping people around the world heal naturally from alopecia various types of hair loss, but in children specifically, it’s alopecia areata, universalis, and totalis.

That’s what I focus on when it comes to children, when it comes to. Adult women, it’s all types. When it comes to men, it’s only alopecia areata, totalis, and universalis. And the thing is that what I hear a lot is that, oh, my daughter’s doing fine. She’s learning to accept it. She’s learning to be brave.

She’s learning to just embrace it. And in one part. I think that’s okay. And in another part, I actually think that’s not the whole picture. Meaning, yes, you can embrace a situation, but there should be an ends to a means. A means to an end, meaning there should be something we are going to do about it instead of just not do anything about it because.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous episode, it can actually hinder their health for the future, meaning it can open up a door for a second, a third, a fourth autoimmune disease. I’ve seen six year olds with four autoimmune diseases, and so this is the situation is that it doesn’t get better on its own. It’s actually much more than just hair loss, and there’s something more to do.

So for example, if you had a leak in the house, let’s say in the roof. Yes, you embrace the fact that you have a leak in the house, but there should be a next step. There should be an action step towards what we’re going to do to mitigate it, what we’re gonna do to rectify it, clean it up, and ensure that no other areas of the house are damaged.

Correct. So it’s in the same vein, it’s in the same analogy that I want to. Have you think about alopecia areata, universalis, totalis in yourself or in your children, because it’s something that truly begs for healing because I know that no parent would want to see their own child with a second, a third or a fourth autoimmune disease.

And for those of you who don’t know what autoimmune diseases could look like, it could be anything from lupus. To thyroiditis, to Graves’, to Hashimoto’s, to MS, multiple sclerosis. It could be anything like rheumatoid arthritis. It could be psoriasis, it could be eczema, it could be dermatitis. It could be so many different things.

Vitiligo, that encompass autoimmune diseases. And how would we know which one they would be subjected to? That’s all within their DNA. And so their DNA is the one who allows the expression of genes. We can turn these genes off and we can turn them on as well. So when you have a disease, an autoimmune disease, when you have hair loss, some sort of expression is happening where it’s turned on.

And so I would say that this is why we also offer the DNA test because the, this DNA test actually gives you, I wish I would’ve had it when I was like five years old. But the technology is here now, with this technology, you can actually see exactly what your child needs according to their DNA, for them to thrive, for them to be the healthiest possible.

But I wanted to share with you some research that I found in a book I was reading. Because this health crisis among our young children is very startling. Granted, I’m focused on the hair loss highway, and I have my head down, but there’s so many more situations that are happening for our children.

So let me go ahead and read this to you. This is by Dr. Anne Shippy, by the way. Okay. There is a health crisis among our youth in America. Every major illness and condition has been on the rise since the 1990s, including but not limited to diabetes, cancer, autism spectrum disorder, childhood obesity, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, depression, and more.

Let’s look at diabetes for a moment. A cross-sectional study. Looking at the incidents, mortality and disability adjusted life, years of childhood diabetes from 1990 to 2019 found a 39.4% increase in childhood diabetes over that period. So from 1990 to 2019, there’s been an uptick of around 40% in childhood diabetes.

Childhood diabetes. Think about that. That’s your insulin. Sorry. Your pancreas. Not creating the insulin, the sufficient insulin that it needs to regulate blood sugar. This means that your diet and lifestyle, but diet primarily is really at the forefront of what’s happening here. Just in the diabetes section.

I can take my kid to the park, or right now he’s actually playing soccer and I can see that. There’s a percentage of children who are already obese, even when they’re five years old, six years old. This is not, this is not just being big boned, and me, for me, in the 1980s, we would call them big boned, but they were actually big boned and maybe just on the thicker side, but now it’s actually obese.

Now they’re really, they can’t even fit into their own clothes. That’s how obese they are. And this is a problem. This is a huge problem. According to the CDC, autism spectrum disorder was diagnosed at a rate of one in a 150 children in the year 2000. So in the year 2000, one in a 150 children were diagnosed with autism.

Then in 2006, it was one in 110. By 2010 it was one in 68. And in 2022, it was one in 31. That’s an alarming trend to say the least. And so she shows a chart of this uptick and it’s really prevalent, and it’s really sad to see this as if that’s not unsettling enough. Childhood obesity is also on the rise.

The World Health Organization reports on its website that while just 2% of children and adolescents age five to 19 were obese in 1990. That’s 31 million young people. By 2022, 8% of children and adolescents were living with obesity. That’s over 160 million young people. If you do the math, that’s a 300% increase over 32 years.

It’s heartbreaking. Really? She says, but I’ll tell you it’s mind boggling for me. This is mind boggling. A 300% increase. Just in childhood and adolescent obesity. That’s crazy. Another childhood disorder that has been experiencing a shocking increase over time, and that’s ADHD, Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

National surveys reflect an increase in the prevalence over a 20 year period. It went from 6.1% in 1997 to 10.2% in 2016. This represents a 67.2%. Increase. Just imagine the challenges that represents for families, not to mention teachers in classrooms, and the trend continues to escalate during 2020 to 2022.

14.3% of children ages 12 to 17 were diagnosed with ADHD. Interestingly, there is a higher prevalence of boys at 17.9%.

So the unfortunate thing too that I wanted to also talk about here on this podcast episode is the rise in childhood cancers. This, for me is quite astonishing because when you, at least for me, when I was a child, growing up in the 1980s, I thought that. When you heard the word cancer, that this was for old people.

Old people, anywhere aged 50 and over. And now look at me, I’m like five years away from being 50. But the thing is that now it’s happening more and more in our children, and this is this saddens me enormously and. It says, approximately one in 285 children in the US will be diagnosed with cancer before their 20th birthday.

Between 1975 and 2019, the number of children diagnosed with leukemia increased by about 35%, and in America, cancer is the most common cause of death by disease for children. Let me read that again In America. Cancer is the most common cause of death by disease for children. And so the thing is, it’s not just about the diagnosis itself.

It’s not just about the disease itself. All these. Health issues stem from diet and lifestyle. And if you start looking at this, there’s so much more to do when it comes to diet and lifestyle. Not just for the children, not just for the family and not just for the parents as well, but it’s really for the whole entire unit.

And I think many times when I have clients come to me and they’re like, oh here’s my son, here’s my daughter. They have. Alopecia, they have this, they have that. Can you help them? Yes, I can absolutely help them. However, we also need to get everyone else involved. That’s mom, dad, that’s, whoever lives in the house, that’s, wherever they go to school, wherever they go, let’s say to grandma’s or anywhere else, everyone needs to be on board.

And I really feel that this is the best way to support the child, but then also the best way to support the whole family. Clearly the way you’ve been living, the way you’ve been eating, the way you’ve been doing things is not necessarily in the best interest for for the child. And I will say that having lived in Europe for six years, having lived in Japan, having lived in a Argentina and in Brazil, I’ve seen a lot of the world and I’ve seen how other moms, other families, other parents.

Deal with children, especially when they’re, let’s say out and about doing grocery shopping and these types of things. And I also come back to the US and it’s frightening to see how convenience foods just really take over for everyone’s day to day. Because it’s a quick snack here because it’s a quick.

Something here, it’s a quick this, it’s a quick that. And then of course you have all the holidays, all the birthdays, all the this, all the, that, all the school activities. There’s ways to put limits to this. There’s ways to mitigate that. And I gotta say, if there’s if there’s one thing that we can control that is our diet and lifestyle, but that same diet and lifestyle that we control can either.

Increase our health and wellbeing and help us thrive, or it can tear us down or and bring upon us a lot of health consequences and health issues. And even though maybe from the outside, you, yourself, your child are not obese and still have alopecia, there’s something more there to

it. I’m the first to admit it, I wasn’t obese.

I wasn’t, I was very healthy when I was diagnosed. I looked like the poster child. I was at my fit weight. I had a personal trainer. I was in my thirties. I thought I was on top of the world until my world came crashing down because of this diagnosis and because of all the shedding and all the hair loss and losing over 50% of my hair, it was a lot, it was a lot for me, but it also made me realize that it’s just more than the outside.

It’s more than just a lipstick job of, of a house. The house is so much more than just the outside, just as a car is, it’s more than the outside. You have to look at the engine. You have to look at the miles. You have to look at all the things that go into the car. And the same for the house.

The floor, the ceiling, the pipes, the HVAC system, all the things are part of the house. It’s not just the outside. That makes it look good with the curb appeal, right? And so it’s the same thing here. You have to look at all the things and really this is what’s led not just to my success, but to the success of thousands of people who I’ve worked with across the world.

So if you are interested in healing, if you are wanting to heal naturally and know that this is that next step, I welcome you and invite you to. Reach out to us, email us at any point at hello@alopeciaangel.com. Come take our free training, understand a little bit more, get inspired with our success stories and let’s get your hair and health back, because literally it’s waiting for you.

It wants you to heal. Your body wants to heal. We just need to support it. And once you understand and learn how to support it, then the sky’s the limit. It really is. So I hope this helps, and I hope this also brings a different perspective for you, that, that health is so much more than just hair. Hair is the byproduct of being and looking and feeling healthy.

But really at the end of it, there’s so much more to it. And this is why in many ways, if I even look back in my own story. Healing the alopecia not only upgraded my fertility and allowed me to have my first baby at 40, but it’s also allowed me to be a better mother for my child because now whenever he says, oh, my tummy hurts, or, oh, this or oh, that, then I know exactly what to look for.

I know exactly what to do. I know exactly, for example, any testing that I may need to do. And my whole point is in my whole job for as a mom, is to protect him. To educate him. To help ’em understand that chicken nuggets are not a food, that extra sugar is not a good thing that we say no to candy because they cause cavities and so on and so forth.

And so this is the thing. If we’re not educating our kids, if we’re not protecting them from the harm, then there are consequences to pay that. That’s really I don’t know how else to say it. There’s a, there’s decisions and then there’s consequences. We all know that, and in our health, it adds up quickly.

And apparently in children it adds up a lot quicker than it does in adults. And so I really encourage you to heal. Heal your children as soon as possible, heal them from alopecia because again, you don’t want that door to open up to a second or third autoimmune disease. And if this is for you with hair loss, if this is for you with an autoimmune disease.

Heal it. The sooner the better because literally the whole body works in conjunction. It works all together. Everything’s connected, so we need to heal in order to thrive. Thank you so much. Take care. I look forward to talking to you next time.