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Speaker 4: Yes. Welcome back to the show. This is the Weekend Collective.
Speaker 5: If you've just joined us on Tim Beverage a fascinating
Speaker 5: conversation with those well from our new guest from on
Speaker 5: the Property hour on the One Roof Radio show. If
Speaker 5: you've missed any of the previous hours, do go and
Speaker 5: check out our podcast or for the Weekend Collective wherever
Speaker 5: you get your podcasts, or on iHeartRadio or simple I
Speaker 5: used to go to the News Talks b website. And
Speaker 5: now we actually have another guest, a new guest joining
Speaker 5: us for the Parents Squad, and we're going to be
Speaker 5: having a chat about well, actually I'll introduce this straight
Speaker 5: up actually, because she's a new guest on the show.
Speaker 5: She's a pediatrician and author of Children's Health A to
Speaker 5: Z and she's joining us actually from Australia over the zoom.
Speaker 5: And her name is doctor Layla Mason get a chef
Speaker 5: suddenly having a panic that I might have used the
Speaker 5: wrong name.
Speaker 4: Layla.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hi, nice speaking with you.
Speaker 5: So tell us a little bit about yourself and how
Speaker 5: you got into what made you write a book for
Speaker 5: this thing?
Speaker 3: Well, I am a pediatrician, so I worked with children
Speaker 3: and I used to do that in Auckland for fifteen years.
Speaker 3: And just listen, you have moved to Australia. Well, actually
Speaker 3: I have moved eight years ago, a little bit longer
Speaker 3: when my kids moved over here for university, so I
Speaker 3: just wanted to be close to them. But I wrote
Speaker 3: this book as for my patients, first of all, because
Speaker 3: I always got lots of questions about what my child
Speaker 3: as a fever, what do I do my child has
Speaker 3: examine my child has an ear infection, you know, So
Speaker 3: I thought, if I give my book, I don't have
Speaker 3: to answer all those emails anymore. And then it's become
Speaker 3: quite popular for of course, people who are not my patients.
Speaker 3: And what I'm trying to do is really give parents
Speaker 3: practical information how to treat common childhood illnesses in an
Speaker 3: effective but also very natural way. And I want them
Speaker 3: to become their child's own health detective and kind of
Speaker 3: figure out what can they do to prevent their children
Speaker 3: from getting sick, what can they do so the children
Speaker 3: don't get one virus after there or you know, I
Speaker 3: know we're going to talk maybe also about some mental
Speaker 3: health issues.
Speaker 5: What are the biggest I don't know how long you've
Speaker 5: been practicing as a pediatrician. How many years is it
Speaker 5: that since you've started medicine.
Speaker 3: Been thirty years?
Speaker 4: Thirty years?
Speaker 5: So how much has children's health changed, not in terms
Speaker 5: of the remedies available, but in terms of what you
Speaker 5: see coming through the door of your surgery.
Speaker 3: Well, I think you know, the common childhood most common
Speaker 3: things are still infections, allergies, those kind of things, and
Speaker 3: that's what parents have to deal with mostly, you know,
Speaker 3: but pediatricians don't see that so much. As pediatricians were
Speaker 3: seeing more and more mental health issues given with anxiety, ADHD, autism, depression,
Speaker 3: those kind of things.
Speaker 5: Is that also because is it because we have more
Speaker 5: cases of it? Or is because we are diagnosing it
Speaker 5: more as well. How's the balance for how would you
Speaker 5: describe that sort of trend with autism and ADHD et cetera.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's a combination of both. I also
Speaker 3: think that there is a true increase because of our lifestyle.
Speaker 3: So for example, let's take anxiety. One in fourteen children
Speaker 3: now have a diagnosis of anxiety, and you know, many
Speaker 3: many children haven't gotten their diagnosis because I haven't been
Speaker 3: able to find a doctor to diagnose them. So it's
Speaker 3: become a huge thing, especially since COVID, and I think
Speaker 3: our lifestyle has changed quite a bit, so you know,
Speaker 3: I mean when I was a child, we were outside
Speaker 3: running around, there were no screens. There weren't as many
Speaker 3: packaged foods available there. So nowadays, you know, kids, there
Speaker 3: are so many studies out on that if children don't
Speaker 3: move and spend a lot of time on screens, it
Speaker 3: increases their risk of anxiety depression ADHD. All of those
Speaker 3: things that is happening.
Speaker 5: One is ADHD something that you can develop, because my
Speaker 5: lay person's understanding is that you would have it sort
Speaker 5: of as a result of just the way you're, you know,
Speaker 5: just the way you are, rather than can are you
Speaker 5: saying ADHD can be a result of your environment.
Speaker 3: So ADHD is a totally subjective diagnosis. You go through
Speaker 3: a checklist of twenty questions and those you know, if
Speaker 3: a child that doesn't pay attention as hyperactive, that could
Speaker 3: be due to so many different reasons. For example, if
Speaker 3: a child is iron deficient, they're not going to sleep well.
Speaker 3: If they're not sleeping well, they're not going to be
Speaker 3: able to focus and pay attention. If they have low iron,
Speaker 3: they're going to be hyperactive, They're not going to be
Speaker 3: able to have a good memory. So there are there
Speaker 3: are genetic pedispositions for ADHD. It certainly runs on families,
Speaker 3: but it's not.
Speaker 5: Given because there is I think that's probably one of
Speaker 5: the things that one of the problems is that well given,
Speaker 5: because we all have access to the Internet and social media,
Speaker 5: people use words like aspergers and ADHD and autism interchangeably,
Speaker 5: don't they, and which is wrong?
Speaker 4: Correct?
Speaker 3: It's wrong? Yeah, I mean Aspridges doesn't actually exist anymore
Speaker 3: as a diagnosis because recently it's become clear that he
Speaker 3: was a Nazi, so his name is kind of canceled.
Speaker 3: So now we have high functioning autism for the kids
Speaker 3: who used to be diagnosed with aspridges and then we
Speaker 3: have other levels of autism that's very, very different from ADHD.
Speaker 3: You know, autism is more of a social you know, interaction.
Speaker 3: How do you interact as people? Do you make eye contact,
Speaker 3: do you read facial expressions? Do you have sensory issues?
Speaker 3: You know, do you get overwhelmed by too much sound
Speaker 3: and light? And do you have repetitive behaviors and obsessions
Speaker 3: with certain things like you know, wanting to know everything
Speaker 3: about trains and ADHD is really about focused concentration and behavior.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So let's talk about the anxiety thing, because that's
Speaker 5: I mean, I think every parent is worried about their
Speaker 5: children and anxiety and how they're coping with the environment.
Speaker 5: I've had a chat with obviously through the course of
Speaker 5: the show, with people and counselors and people who deal
Speaker 5: in the world of psychology, and how much of the
Speaker 5: increase in anxiety is down to just kids with their
Speaker 5: heads and their phone pinning their self esteem to how
Speaker 5: many likes they got of their last post and Instagram.
Speaker 4: And all that.
Speaker 5: It seems so easy to blame devices, but it also
Speaker 5: seems like they are possibly massive culprits in that and
Speaker 5: that side of things.
Speaker 3: I think they are. I think social media and screen
Speaker 3: time in itself are a huge contributor to anxiety. And also,
Speaker 3: you know, because they'd stop you from moving. So when
Speaker 3: you think about how we are involved as humans, we're
Speaker 3: above as hunter gatherers. So we were talking all day,
Speaker 3: we were moving, and when we had a stressful event,
Speaker 3: like if a light approached, we would get a surge
Speaker 3: of cortisol and adrenaline, and that was to get all
Speaker 3: our blood to our muscles so we could run away
Speaker 3: from the danger. And then when you run, your muscles
Speaker 3: actually break down the stress hormones, the adrenaline and the cortico.
Speaker 3: But nowadays kids get stressed, you know, whether it is
Speaker 3: because of what's going on in the family, or bullying
Speaker 3: or difficulty at school, or as you say, the you know,
Speaker 3: self esteem on social media, comparing yourself to someone who's
Speaker 3: totally unrealistic, and they get that those stress hormones, but
Speaker 3: they don't run, so the muscles can actually not break
Speaker 3: down the stress hormones, and then the stress becomes chronic
Speaker 3: and then you get that severe anxiety or you know,
Speaker 3: just stress. So I think that's a huge thing. And
Speaker 3: then also, on average, children lack about thirty seven minutes
Speaker 3: of sleep every single night, and that you accumulate the
Speaker 3: sleep deficit over time. It's like a bank account where
Speaker 3: every day you go thirty to seven minutes further down
Speaker 3: and down and down, and you can't really make up
Speaker 3: for that unless you sleep more. And that lack of
Speaker 3: sleep affects the brain because only if you go have
Speaker 3: enough sleep, you will go into the deep sleep where
Speaker 3: your brain goes through something like a washing cycle where
Speaker 3: it cleans itself of all the debris from the day,
Speaker 3: from all the thinking and stress and so on. And
Speaker 3: if you don't do that, your brain is not going
Speaker 3: to function, but it's going to become inflamed. And an
Speaker 3: unflamed brain again can be anxious depressed, you know, depending
Speaker 3: on where the inflammation is, it can cause mental health issues.
Speaker 5: Wow, there's so many questions that are coming to my
Speaker 5: mind about dealing with anxiety.
Speaker 4: Does that make I mean, when it comes to the
Speaker 4: lack of sleep, let's just look at that one.
Speaker 5: Is that what's the cause of kids get a lack
Speaker 5: of sleep and you will view and experience.
Speaker 3: Well, I think once again, the screens are a big thing.
Speaker 3: You know, kids want to take their screens into their
Speaker 3: bedroom and that they stay up because one thing is
Speaker 3: the blue light from the screen actually hits their retina,
Speaker 3: the back of their eye, and stops them from producing melatonin,
Speaker 3: the hormone that makes us sleepy. So the recommendation is
Speaker 3: to come off all screens two hours before bedtime. But
Speaker 3: which teenager is going to do that, you know, unless
Speaker 3: they're really reasonable. So my recommendation is always to as
Speaker 3: a family, from dinner time onwards, you put all the
Speaker 3: devices away. Some family even get a timed lock box
Speaker 3: where you put all your phones and whatever you want
Speaker 3: to not get into into the lock box and you
Speaker 3: put a time on and you cannot open that lock
Speaker 3: box for whatever, ten hours, twelve hours, however long you
Speaker 3: time it. And that makes a huge difference because then
Speaker 3: suddenly you just rediscovered that their board game, that they're books,
Speaker 3: that you could just sit together as a family and talk,
Speaker 3: you can write a journal, you know, all of these
Speaker 3: things help to reduce anxiety.
Speaker 4: Would you treat TV as the same sort of thing
Speaker 4: or is that different? So for instance, tonight, we're going
Speaker 4: I'm going home.
Speaker 5: And it's my daughter's bed and she wants to watch
Speaker 5: a movie together and have pizza. That is that different
Speaker 5: to being stuck on your phone.
Speaker 3: It's different if you're going to do it as a family.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a social time, you're going to discuss
Speaker 3: the movie. It's it's that's very different. But it's still
Speaker 3: that blue light. You still have that. So I wouldn't
Speaker 3: say that it's okay every night to watch commissionercasionally. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I mean I think it's like going to a
Speaker 3: movie once in a while or watching a movie together
Speaker 3: as a family on TV. That's that's different from that
Speaker 3: constant you know, having your phone in your pocket and
Speaker 3: the minute you have time you live it out and
Speaker 3: and and check what's happened on social media? What have
Speaker 3: you missed?
Speaker 1: So what now?
Speaker 5: And that's refer Sorry, there's so much to talk about.
Speaker 5: But by the way, if you're listening, we'd love to
Speaker 5: hear from you. If you've got any questions about your
Speaker 5: child's health or something you you know you want to
Speaker 5: head off at the past. And for every parent out there,
Speaker 5: everyone wants their kids to be free from anxiety or
Speaker 5: at least have the resilience to be able to deal
Speaker 5: with it. My guest is Lala Mason. She is a
Speaker 5: pediatrician and also author of the book Children's Health. Aight
Speaker 5: z I think it's It's for sale right around the
Speaker 5: country in New Zealand, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Leila, Yes, it is.
Speaker 4: It's just come out excellent.
Speaker 5: Look we we will take a break now, but if
Speaker 5: we'd love to hear from you, if you've got any
Speaker 5: questions around your child's health and question marks you've got,
Speaker 5: or if you simply want a bit of advice on
Speaker 5: trying to hit some of these problems off before they
Speaker 5: become something you really have to worry about, we'd love
Speaker 5: to hear from you. You can give us a call
Speaker 5: on eight hundred and eighty ten eighty. You can text
Speaker 5: on nine two nine two, and we'll back in just
Speaker 5: a moment.
Speaker 4: You jack my love too much, loved of a man sing,
Speaker 4: you broke my wheel. This is racious ball.
Speaker 5: You came along and I've changed my mind. Religious let's
Speaker 5: welcome back to the weekend collective of this is the
Speaker 5: Parents Squad. My guest is doctor Laila Mason. She's the
Speaker 5: author of Children's Health as that she's also a pediatrician
Speaker 5: with many years experience, now living in Australia but formerly
Speaker 5: in New Zealand. By the way, Layla, this is the
Speaker 5: second Is this the second edition of your book?
Speaker 4: Or where we are when? That's when was it first released?
Speaker 3: That's right, it came out eight years ago and I
Speaker 3: have now reworked it and added a whole staction on
Speaker 3: mental health because it has become so much more common
Speaker 3: and important.
Speaker 5: I've got you said, yeah, I've got a question from
Speaker 5: one of the texts says, what's your opinion on diet
Speaker 5: and mental health with children?
Speaker 3: A great question. I think it's super important. So you know,
Speaker 3: diet affects a lot of things in your body. Of course,
Speaker 3: how many vitamins, minerals, antioxidants you take in how inflammatory
Speaker 3: the diet is, so that affects your microbiome, the gut.
Speaker 3: Bacteria that live in your gut and are really really
Speaker 3: important because they can send messages to your brain. So
Speaker 3: the best diet, and all the research studies is kind
Speaker 3: of an anti inflammatory Mediditerranean style diet, So lots of
Speaker 3: fruits and vegetables and fresh salads and nuts and seeds
Speaker 3: and not a lot of processed foods. And that is
Speaker 3: because that you know, reduces inflammation and the brain and
Speaker 3: in the gut, which then improves mental health and also
Speaker 3: very importantly magnesium that only the majority of New Zealanders
Speaker 3: are low and magnesium because they just don't eat enough
Speaker 3: nuts and seeds and vegetables. You're supposed to eat five
Speaker 3: handfuls of vegetables a day, and if you do that,
Speaker 3: you get your magnesium, which is very calming, reduces anxieties.
Speaker 3: Like the most common mineral for anxiety is magnesium, and
Speaker 3: you can get it from your diet if you eat it.
Speaker 5: Does do you get enough magnesium if you you know
Speaker 5: it would take a multi vitamin or is that a
Speaker 5: waste of time?
Speaker 3: Magnesium there isn't enough in multivitamins, because I mean multivitamins,
Speaker 3: the good ones are very good. I think they're not
Speaker 3: a bad idea, especially if you have a charge with
Speaker 3: a picky eater and maybe not be getting enough sink
Speaker 3: or selenium things like that. Then a children's multivitamin or
Speaker 3: for adults the adult version is like a safety insurance.
Speaker 3: They're bad. Magnesium takes up a lot of space, so
Speaker 3: they're not going to put a lot in a multivitamin
Speaker 3: because it's you need actually your whole cups of just
Speaker 3: magnesium to get fifty minigrams.
Speaker 5: The reason I asked that is because often when people
Speaker 5: here that we need more magnesium, some people want to
Speaker 5: go and get a applement and your ants, I don't
Speaker 5: know what your aunts would be to that, because it's
Speaker 5: better to have it than not have it.
Speaker 4: But ideally you should just be eating plenty of fresh
Speaker 4: fruit and vegetables.
Speaker 3: And nuts and seeds, especially pumpkin seeds. But you can
Speaker 3: also get magnesium through your skin. That's actually very easily
Speaker 3: absorbed through your skin. So you can either put some
Speaker 3: epps and salts in your bath water, or you can
Speaker 3: get a magnesium cream and rub it into your feet
Speaker 3: or legs. But a lot of people get muscle cramps
Speaker 3: when they lower magnesium and then rubbing that cream and
Speaker 3: is almost as good as is eating it. But you know,
Speaker 3: eating a handful of nuts and seeds is definitely a
Speaker 3: good idea.
Speaker 5: What sort of muscle cramps do you get when you
Speaker 5: get long magnesium nesium? Is it sort of just a
Speaker 5: little bit of cramp in your hamstringth or something?
Speaker 3: What does it look like, Well, it's usually the calves,
Speaker 3: but it could be anywhere, so like a runner, you know,
Speaker 3: athletes know that when they train a lot they actually
Speaker 3: take extra magnesium because they're their muscles use up a
Speaker 3: lot of magnesium, so they get lower notch, and then
Speaker 3: they do use those creams. So you know, if your
Speaker 3: children complain of growing pains or you know, if they
Speaker 3: have pain in the evening, it's often said that they
Speaker 3: have growing pains, but growing doesn't usually hurt. It is
Speaker 3: usually low magnesium. So if they're in bed in the
Speaker 3: evening said, oh my legs are sore, I can't fall
Speaker 3: asleep by some magnesium cream or put a cup of
Speaker 3: Ebsen Saults in their bath water and see over a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks the cramps will go away and they'll
Speaker 3: be much happier and sleep better.
Speaker 5: Okay, how many, I mean, how common would magnesium deficiency
Speaker 5: be as as a general observation, So.
Speaker 3: There is you know, the idea of deficiency where you're
Speaker 3: really really really low insufficiency. So I would say sixty
Speaker 3: percent the set. Sixty percent in general of New Zealanders
Speaker 3: don't have enough magnesium in their diet. So that's the majority.
Speaker 5: Okay, and whatever it would taking us an oral supplement
Speaker 5: either be an answer for kids or not, it can
Speaker 5: help absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean, you there are lots of different magnesium powders
Speaker 3: and shoe bows and it can help. It depends a
Speaker 3: bit on what kind of makes magnesium you choose. So
Speaker 3: magnesium oxide, which is the cheapest type of magnesium to buy,
Speaker 3: is great if you're constipated, because it's not very well
Speaker 3: absorbed into the body. So magnesium also helps those constipation,
Speaker 3: which of course is a common issue in children and
Speaker 3: affects their sleep, affects their mental health and causes pain,
Speaker 3: all of those things. So everything is interconnected. But a
Speaker 3: magnesium glycinate or magnesium citrate would probably be better, and
Speaker 3: you can get those as powders that you know. Sometimes
Speaker 3: they even have a few extra herbs like passion, flower, lemon,
Speaker 3: balm and them, just to help you come get ready
Speaker 3: for sleep. I do recommend them sometimes.
Speaker 5: Because you mentioned that you move to Australia with to
Speaker 5: follow your children. Did do your kids grow up in
Speaker 5: the age of where there are any devices to worry about?
Speaker 3: Well? Luckily so they are twenty eight and twenty three,
Speaker 3: so when they were little there weren't any devices. But
Speaker 3: what they do come in, they did come in during
Speaker 3: their childhood. So as the older one kind of as
Speaker 3: a teenager and the younger one built his own computer
Speaker 3: when he was twelve because we wouldn't buy them one,
Speaker 3: so he saved up for the parts and then built it.
Speaker 3: And he's now a software engineer. So it did work.
Speaker 3: But we were quite strict. We didn't have TV in
Speaker 3: our house actually, so wow, I thought that wasn't a
Speaker 3: good idea. And because you know, we hadn't we had
Speaker 3: a TV and we had a VCR, so we would
Speaker 3: play videos, but we would choose them, so it was
Speaker 3: kind of curated. You know. On a Friday night, we
Speaker 3: would go together to the to the DVD store which
Speaker 3: doesn't exist anymore, and choose as a family movie we
Speaker 3: wanted to watch. And I think that's quite different from
Speaker 3: having a TV running all the time.
Speaker 5: So, as a pediatrician with anxiety, what's your role in
Speaker 5: dealing with children who have got anxiety? Because there's there'd
Speaker 5: be a point where there'd be a psychiatric component to it.
Speaker 5: How does your role interact with kids with anxiety?
Speaker 3: So I see my role as looking at what are
Speaker 3: the underlying contributors in this in this specific child. You know,
Speaker 3: if a child comes in and they're anglers, I go
Speaker 3: through all the things we've talked about do they sleep enough?
Speaker 3: Do they sleep well? You know, do they snore at
Speaker 3: night and have obstructive sleep ap near in which case
Speaker 3: you don't get enough oxygen at night in your brain,
Speaker 3: which can cause anxiety. Or do they breathe well? If
Speaker 3: they have breathing issues, I send them to an E
Speaker 3: and T or to someone who teaches them to breathe properly.
Speaker 3: Then I go through their diet. Are they eating? Are
Speaker 3: they drinking coca cola all day long? And you know
Speaker 3: that of course is another way of increasing your stress formonts.
Speaker 3: Do they you know, eat their five handfuls of vegetables?
Speaker 3: Do they eat fruits? And do they eat nuts and
Speaker 3: all of those things? Do they move? I recommend at
Speaker 3: least one hour of physical activity per day for a child,
Speaker 3: which isn't actually that much one hour, you know, but
Speaker 3: a lot of kids don't even get that. Ideally one
Speaker 3: to two hours a day of ideally in nature. Nature
Speaker 3: has a very calming effect on the brain. There's a
Speaker 3: huge amount of research on the positive effects of nature
Speaker 3: on the brain. So kids who spend an hour in
Speaker 3: the forest or in a park or on the beach,
Speaker 3: their brain actually calms down, they become calmer, they can
Speaker 3: focus better, they become more creative in their problem solving,
Speaker 3: so it has lots of positive effects. Now then I
Speaker 3: also look at nutrients, you know, I do check do
Speaker 3: they have enough zinc? If you zinc deficient, you're more
Speaker 3: likely to become anxious. And one of is zinc deficiency
Speaker 3: is quite common. And because our soils are so over used,
Speaker 3: you know, so the vegetables and the grains that we're
Speaker 3: growing on our sales sos don't have enough zinc in them,
Speaker 3: and then you get symptoms of zinc deficiency like anxiety, irritability,
Speaker 3: lots of infections, slow warn healing, white spots on the fingernails,
Speaker 3: So I always look for that.
Speaker 5: Do you actually do you get them blood? Basically, if
Speaker 5: you've got a child you're dealing with with anxiety, do
Speaker 5: you get them a blood taste basically to find that out.
Speaker 3: I do, Yeah, I do. I examine them and look
Speaker 3: for you know, the physical things. So I mentioned the
Speaker 3: white spots on the nails already. The other thing is
Speaker 3: if you have really bumpy skin on your upper arms,
Speaker 3: it's called caratosis pilaris, and that's usually due to low
Speaker 3: omega three and a lot of people don't get enough
Speaker 3: omega three in that diety then.
Speaker 5: Actually, so that I forgot to ask a really basic
Speaker 5: question I think is because we talk about anxiety, and
Speaker 5: we all have an idea what anxiety is, but is
Speaker 5: there a clear definition that you would lean on for
Speaker 5: what anxiety is?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there are, of course, you know, diagnostic
Speaker 3: criteria for anxiety. And it's children who worry all the time.
Speaker 3: So excessive anxiety and worry whether and it happens for
Speaker 3: more days than not for at least six months. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So they have more days where they're excessively worried, maybe
Speaker 3: don't want to go to school, maybe don't want to
Speaker 3: go to special activities, and then they find it really
Speaker 3: difficult to control the worry. They can't just you know,
Speaker 3: do a breathing exercise or get a cuddle and the
Speaker 3: anxiety goes away. And then there is part of the
Speaker 3: definition is that you have to have it associated with
Speaker 3: some symptoms, so that have to also be present for
Speaker 3: more days than not for six months. So restlessness or
Speaker 3: feeling kind of keyed up on edge all the time,
Speaker 3: or being easily fatigued, that happens quite a lot in kids.
Speaker 3: Because they're just they're so anxious, they're not sleep. They
Speaker 3: get fatigued, then difficulty concentrating, irritability, muscle tensions, or in
Speaker 3: itself sleep disturbance.
Speaker 5: So sorry, a bit of a delay on the line.
Speaker 5: In terms of advice for parents on phones, what do
Speaker 5: you have particular views on when kids should access phones, ages, times,
Speaker 5: all that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the later the better. I think, you know,
Speaker 3: it was phones, I really would say a smartphone, ideally
Speaker 3: not before fourteen, but you know, it's becoming one more unrealistic.
Speaker 3: There are now coming out with really simple phones so
Speaker 3: you can track your child and they can call you
Speaker 3: in an emergency, but they can't go online. I think
Speaker 3: that's okay. You know, I would like to know where
Speaker 3: my child is if they're young and they're coming home
Speaker 3: alone from on the school bus or on the bus,
Speaker 3: you know. So I think just having a safety device
Speaker 3: is different from having one that gets into Facebook and
Speaker 3: social media and unless you watch anything on YouTube that
Speaker 3: you want to watch. I also think that you should
Speaker 3: put some safety measures on the phone so kids can't
Speaker 3: access everything. Yeah, I think that's really important.
Speaker 4: So the content itself is it all my secondary to
Speaker 4: the fact that they're just on the thing. That's the problem.
Speaker 3: I think the content is also quite disturbing.
Speaker 5: We know that we know what, we can imagine what
Speaker 5: the terror. But what I mean is in terms of
Speaker 5: most kids, obviously we want them to avoid. There are
Speaker 5: plenty of things where you can control content and things.
Speaker 5: But I was just wondering, sorry to jump in on
Speaker 5: you there, whether it's actually the main problem with phones
Speaker 5: is regardless of the content, as the time they're spending
Speaker 5: on them is probably the question I was after.
Speaker 3: I agree. I agree, that's that's that's the biggest thing.
Speaker 3: You know, just too much time spent sitting on a
Speaker 3: screen not good for the eye. Is either you know,
Speaker 3: more and more children and are becoming shortsighted because of that.
Speaker 4: What about in terms of ours?
Speaker 5: I mean, do you basically if you were, if you were,
Speaker 5: if parents were listening to us and going what sort
Speaker 5: of ours should I make sure my kids are not
Speaker 5: on their phone? It's basically like, well, once you get home,
Speaker 5: or once we've had dinner, or what's your advice do
Speaker 5: you give advice to patients on this stuff?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So the recommendation for children, for younger children is
Speaker 3: not under two is no screen time at all, because
Speaker 3: they don't really you know, I mean it's not good
Speaker 3: for their brain. You know, they need social input, they
Speaker 3: need eye contact, they need someone to talk to them,
Speaker 3: and brain if they're on screens, it really sets up
Speaker 3: their brain structure actually differently in the long term. And
Speaker 3: the more time a chart spends on screens before they
Speaker 3: are five years old, the higher their risk that they're
Speaker 3: going to be diagnosed with ADHD. And I think that
Speaker 3: actually goes into the you know, the brain is so
Speaker 3: plastic in the first five years, especially the first three,
Speaker 3: that any experience, especially repeated experiences, get kind of built
Speaker 3: into the brain. And then from three to eight or so,
Speaker 3: it should be no more than an hour a day.
Speaker 3: And then you know, once they come older, they will
Speaker 3: have to do homework on their screen, so I would
Speaker 3: say two hours a day. But you know that it's
Speaker 3: hard to support that there is a real problem with
Speaker 3: screen addiction.
Speaker 5: Well it's also a problem atic I guess because they
Speaker 5: live in an era where and once kids go to
Speaker 5: maybe their middle years sort of thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, most
Speaker 5: a lot of the work is on a laptop, of course,
Speaker 5: and that's a screen. I mean, some people some parents
Speaker 5: could see your phone is quite different to a laptop maybe,
Speaker 5: I mean, does what you're thinking around computer and educational
Speaker 5: use versus just watching the latest Instagram club.
Speaker 3: It's very different. So I mean, I think knowing how
Speaker 3: to use a computer and doing your work on it
Speaker 3: is one thing. And if you're at high school and
Speaker 3: you have to use it, that's separate. But you know,
Speaker 3: it is very easy to switch from one screen to another.
Speaker 3: And you know, so I think teenagers have to learn
Speaker 3: how to put on do not just driven their computer
Speaker 3: so they're you know, they don't get social media ads
Speaker 3: and they don't get oh my friend has just messaged me.
Speaker 3: So that they can actually concentrate on the work that
Speaker 3: they're doing. And then the extra two hours that they're
Speaker 3: allowed is you know, that's separate from the school work.
Speaker 3: But it less is always better.
Speaker 5: Okay, look, we're going to take it right now, but
Speaker 5: if you if you'd like to give us a call
Speaker 5: and you've got any questions about your kids. We're with
Speaker 5: Lala Mason, doctor Leila Mason, who is a pediatrician and
Speaker 5: author of the Children's Health at Z and that is
Speaker 5: available at all good booksellers in New Zealand right now
Speaker 5: if you've got any and she has updated it with
Speaker 5: a with a chapter or is it a chapter on
Speaker 5: anxiety or how do it now?
Speaker 3: It's a whole new part of the book on mental health,
Speaker 3: so that includes anxiety, ADHD, sadness, I didn't want to
Speaker 3: call it depression. And then iritable children, you know, the
Speaker 3: challenging ones that are always difficult in oppositional and autism.
Speaker 5: Okay, we'll come back with a bit of a chat
Speaker 5: about that in just a moment.
Speaker 4: It is twenty one minutes to six. News Talks.
Speaker 5: Heb you want to give us a call, We'd love
Speaker 5: to hear from you. I've got lots of questions for
Speaker 5: later as well, so we'll be back in just a moment.
Speaker 5: News Talks a b weekn Collective. It's twenty one minutes
Speaker 5: to six. That's welcome back to the parents Squad. This
Speaker 5: is the weekend Collective. I'm ten Beverage. My guest is
Speaker 5: doctor Layla Mason, who is a well she's not only
Speaker 5: an author, she's a pediatrician, but she has written a book,
Speaker 5: or she's updated her book which is called The Children's
Speaker 5: Health at Z and there's an expanded edition. You can
Speaker 5: get at all good booksellers, and it's been expanded to
Speaker 5: cover mental health issues, which are seen to be increasingly common.
Speaker 5: Layla just before the break something about oppositional, just rude,
Speaker 5: stubborn kids.
Speaker 4: Is that are you?
Speaker 5: Is that something that is more common or are we
Speaker 5: just talking about teenagers have always been unreasonable?
Speaker 3: Well, I wouldn't call them route stubborn. I would call
Speaker 3: them challenging. Okay, okay, So I think it's quite common.
Speaker 3: I have to say that one of my boys was
Speaker 3: quite challenging, but he's amazing now, so there's hope. There's
Speaker 3: always hope. And what I realized actually didn't know that
Speaker 3: when he was little, he was lic deficient, so he
Speaker 3: had the white spots on his nails. He would get
Speaker 3: lots of infections and pull one wound healing and lower
Speaker 3: zinc makes you very easily frustrated and angry, so you
Speaker 3: know you cannot cope with things not going your way.
Speaker 3: And also you're really more sensitive to centry and put
Speaker 3: like loud noises, bright lights, even the tags in your clothes, smells,
Speaker 3: so anything kind of can be more overwhelming than to
Speaker 3: children who have enough sink in that diet. And I
Speaker 3: think zinc is very very important to remember.
Speaker 5: So I mean most of these things I imagine can
Speaker 5: be made up with just by a healthy diet. Or
Speaker 5: do we need extra supplements because I know that there'll
Speaker 5: be every couple who've been looking at conceiving children will
Speaker 5: be told that New Zealand is deficient in selenium in
Speaker 5: our soils. Are there certain things that are country specific?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the specific ones usually are selenium, iodine, zinc,
Speaker 3: and they are so there are areas in the world
Speaker 3: where you have too little iodine, and it's really important
Speaker 3: to take iodine in the pregnancy, especially but also in childhood.
Speaker 3: So that's why we've either salt, we either supplements for
Speaker 3: pregnant women. But you know, eating seaweed, getting those little
Speaker 3: seaweed snacks is a great way for children to get
Speaker 3: their iodine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sushi, Does sushi cover that one off? Or not enough?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, So the norri sheets, the green stuff that's
Speaker 3: around the sushi that is seaweed, that's perfect. And for selenium.
Speaker 3: Brazil nuts are quite high in selenium. That's why you
Speaker 3: shouldn't eat too many of them. But one or two
Speaker 3: a day is really healthy to get your selenium.
Speaker 5: Because too much if anything can be I don't know
Speaker 5: what you correct me, but I'm not sure if toxic's
Speaker 5: the right wad. But too much of selenium can be
Speaker 5: make you a bit sick.
Speaker 3: Count it very very much. So yeah, so you have
Speaker 3: to be careful not to get too much. So you
Speaker 3: wouldn't want to eat a whole handful of brazil nuts
Speaker 3: or whole bag every day. Definitely not. And you wouldn't
Speaker 3: want to take too much ID either, but you know
Speaker 3: you need the right amount. So I think for zinc
Speaker 3: it's more difficult because there aren't that many foods that
Speaker 3: are high ind zinc. So oysters are very high and zinc.
Speaker 3: Every oyster is five milligrams of zinc, which is a
Speaker 3: large But which child wants to eat oysters?
Speaker 4: Well, that is kind of a luxury item. I think
Speaker 4: that as well. Exactly, Can you just tell me what's
Speaker 4: it like?
Speaker 5: What was it like or is it like, well, all
Speaker 5: your kids have grown up now, but when you are
Speaker 5: practicing in the field, and must have been at a
Speaker 5: time also when you were becoming a pediatrician, what's it
Speaker 5: like as a studying that area of medicine and being
Speaker 5: a mum at the same time, did it sort of
Speaker 5: did you have to kind of switch off a few
Speaker 5: things because otherwise you just go a bit nutt that
Speaker 5: you'd go a bit paranoid or just with all the
Speaker 5: things that knowing too much should I say?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, you know, I did my peneatic training before
Speaker 3: I had children, so my view of children's health was
Speaker 3: very stewed. Everybody was sick because I had only see
Speaker 3: kids who had major elms, so that was kind of scary.
Speaker 3: But then when I had healthy children, life seemed very
Speaker 3: easy because you know, they didn't have anything major to
Speaker 3: worry about. So I am really grateful that I got
Speaker 3: interested in the nutritional and environment environmental health and that
Speaker 3: kind of more holistic medicine because I learned so much
Speaker 3: that I could then use on my own children. For example,
Speaker 3: I've mentioned the zinc deficiency. Had I known that when
Speaker 3: my son was young, it would have helped me a lot.
Speaker 3: Because peple biome.
Speaker 5: When people hear the word holistic, they sort of think
Speaker 5: it's a bit too sort of what I mean is,
Speaker 5: I think there's a misconception that people hear the word holistic,
Speaker 5: and I think it's all sort of age of Aquarius
Speaker 5: and hippies and eating lots of vegetables and no meat
Speaker 5: and all that sort of thing. But it's not that,
Speaker 5: isn't it. It's more about just remembering about the basics
Speaker 5: of good nutrition and fresh air and exercises. Would that
Speaker 5: be a fair way to sum it up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it really looking at lifestyle, you know, exercise, nutrition, sleep,
Speaker 3: and also environmental toxins trying to avoid those. So that's
Speaker 3: very much part of holistic or integrative medicine and then
Speaker 3: looking at specifics underlying causes that can contribute to health issues,
Speaker 3: you know, trying to figure out why is this child depressed?
Speaker 3: You know, are they get them indeed deficient because they
Speaker 3: don't get enough sunshine because they're on their screen all
Speaker 3: day instead of being outdoors. That would cause depression right
Speaker 3: them in deed deficiency in itself or anxiety. Yeah. So
Speaker 3: so every child you have to look at them, and
Speaker 3: that's what I love doing. I love being a health
Speaker 3: detective and figuring out, you know, this child has this problem.
Speaker 3: This child is just not getting enough sleep because they
Speaker 3: have you know, allergies and they can't breathe properly and
Speaker 3: they don't get enough oxygen at night. And another child
Speaker 3: just eats junk food all day and they don't get
Speaker 3: any real nutrients.
Speaker 5: One of my t this is just asked about bananas
Speaker 5: when it comes to magnesium and cramping and things like that.
Speaker 5: What is there anything in that? What's banana's nutritional value?
Speaker 3: Bananas are good. They have a lot of potassium as well,
Speaker 3: which is also important for not getting muscle cramps. So
Speaker 3: bananas are good. I think we sometimes all a few.
Speaker 3: Dot it's bananas. It's not great if your child it's constipated, know,
Speaker 3: so if they're constipated, then I would give them different
Speaker 3: kinds of fruit because bananas can help with that. So
Speaker 3: if your charts diarrhea, bananas are great. But bananas are fine.
Speaker 3: I mean they're totally unprocessed food, right, you just peel
Speaker 3: it and eat it. That's perfect.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Hey, look we've time flies when having fun, we've run
Speaker 5: out of time. I hope we're going to have a
Speaker 5: chat another time. But if people want to get hold
Speaker 5: of your book, it's been released in New Zealand, doesn't
Speaker 5: it And it's Children's Health A to z A to
Speaker 5: z depending whether you're American or not, doctor Layla Mason,
Speaker 5: and you're good.
Speaker 4: Good luck with the book. And thanks for so much
Speaker 4: of your time.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Jim really appreciate it. That was Dr Lanna Mason there.
Speaker 5: And as I say, if you want to check your
Speaker 5: book out, and she's expanded the audition now to cover
Speaker 5: mental health issues, anxiety, ADHD, etc.
Speaker 4: Yeah, go and check it out at your local bookseller.
Speaker 5: We'll be back in just a moment with Elliot Smith
Speaker 5: to rap sport It's tend Tocy.
Speaker 1: For more from the Weekend Collective, listen live to News
Speaker 1: Talks EDB weekends from three pm, or follow the podcast
Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio.