Healing, Hope, and Holistic Care: Supporting Adopted Children with Dr. Aaron Hartman

And one of my passions is actually for kids, especially foster kids, adopted kids, because they have like the double, triple whammy of chemicals in the environment, which all kids deal with. That stress, trauma, all the kind of stuff most kids deal with. But it's also just being adopted as a trauma, being given up as a trauma.And, and so how do you navigate that kind of stuff?Yes, and it's become a passion of mine because if you find the right things and implement them early, you can radically change the trajectory of this kid's life.

It's the Foster to Forever podcast. Happy stories of non traditional families born through Foster to Adopt. I'm your host, Rachel Fulgenetti.I'm so happy to welcome on the show today Dr. Aaron Hartman. He is a functional medicine doctor, holistic healthcare professional, and he is a father of adopted children. Welcome, Dr. Hartman.Nice to have you on.

Rachel. I'm excited to be here and I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

Yeah, so am I. I wanted to ask you first about your adoption of your children. As I understand you have three children. Two of them were adopted through foster care.

Correct. My first, first two girls were from. Through foster, actually. My daughter Anna, my first one was actually a patient.My wife, she's a pediatric occupational therapist, one of her patients. Um, and when her foster home was closing down, we brought her into our home.And then our second daughter was actually the therapy patient of one of her friends in the same practice who. Same thing. She was two years old and her home was closing down as well, and she needed a forever home.And so that's how we got our first two children.

Had you been certified to foster or did you need to do that in a hurry to make this happen?

It was more like, hey, this is happening. Okay? These are the hoops we jump through. And it was very mechanical for me. I was in the military at that point in time, a physician in the military.And my wife was kind of navigating all that stuff, but. But it wasn't very. It was. She needed a home.And we actually had acted as, what they call it when like you're home for a weekend when the parents, the foster parents took a rest. Like a rest. Rest. Yeah. So we did that for a little bit just to kind of get our toes wet.And, and that, that process was not for us in Florida, was not super. Of all. Everything. Everything that was difficult. That part was not.

Okay. Yeah. The two children were not related by blood. No.

Correct.

And how old were they when they came into your lives?

Anna was 12 months old, and Abigail was 2 years old. And then our son Khalil, when we first got him, he was six months old.

And he was also through foster care.

No, that was a random kind of thing. Some friends from church, from back in the day, there was a random child in the daycare that needed a home. And so I got.Got a random phone call in the middle of night, hey, would you all be interested in a. A little boy? And my wife and I actually been praying about, you know, finishing our family.And so literally the phone call came within minutes of us praying about it. And so we just kind of bombed into our house. And that was interesting because for five years, I was legally nothing.I was the random male role model while he was in our home. It was. It was a very, very much a Jerry Springer show where we had to give him back. And then I was accused of child trafficking in court.And there was. That was a very. That was supposed to be the easy one, and it was actually one of the more difficult ones.

Oh, wow. Wow. And so you were interfacing with the foster care system during that, or was it all private?

It was not. I don't know. What would you call it? It was basically a birth mom looking for a home for her child, but then changing her mind.And then a friend, then a friend wanting to get a child. And then the Costa got involved because the situation was weird.

And then.

So it was a little bit of a journey.

Right, so that was like a regular. It was a domestic adoption, not through foster care, Correct? Yeah, that sometimes, yeah, those. Those can go sideways as well.Had you and your wife discussed prior to this that you were going to or that you wanted to adopt children? Was that on the table for you?

We had talked about it, yeah. We. We first got married. We talked about it. You know, like, these are both things we're interested in doing.They're both part of, like, we kind of saw our future for. But as you probably know, most people who say they're going to adopt don't just because life is difficult. They get kids.And so we've been married for two years, and this opportunity just came up. And so it was more of a. Based on personal faith and beliefs where it's like, hey, this kid doesn't have a home.I say, I believe these things I should be willing to do. This was kind of very mechanical for me initially and brought her into our house. And then.Then the whole thing of fighting for Anna, like, that's when I fell in love with her. And then there's a whole story. But she has her birth mother did crystal method of pregnancy. So she had a stroke before she was born.She was born functionally blind. She had a pretty bad prognosis. And so there's the whole navigating the healthcare system with Anna.And that kind of as part of my career, I got into the functional medicine because the options, the healthcare system were pretty bad, surgeries and drugs. And so that was a whole navigating that as well. And all of the kids had different kind of issues.

Yes. Let's talk about Anna. So you said that your practice changed. So you were previously, you were a doctor anyway, but your practice really changed.Can you talk more about that, why that happened and how it changed?

Yeah, so I mean, I standard medical physician, you know, I was in the military, et cetera, et cetera, brought her into our home. And one of the things she was small for gestational age or failure to thrive. She was really small, less than the fifth percentile.And the GI doctor was like, hey, you need to feed her, get her, get some weight on her bones, meat on her bones.And so spent a couple hours a day trying to fly food in her mouth and get her to like, you know, engaging this child with brain damage basically to eat and chew and swallow, which it takes a lot of brain to chew and swallow. People don't realize how much it requires for brain integration. I mean, speech development.Like a lot of some kids have texture issues with food just because they don't have that time to like play with the food and they throw it, they put on their face. That's actually all good stuff actually for integration for kids, which people don't realize, like, no, don't do that.It's like, no, let them play with it, make a big thing so they can like make a mess because it's going to actually help their brain development. So we kind of realized all those things and did the best we could and follow up appointment. The GI doctor was like, yeah, not growing.Time to put a feeding tube in. And for those who are familiar with feeding tubes, you cut a hole in the stomach so you can just pour formula into the belly.And we knew that was bad for multiple reasons that affect, you know, speech, brain development. Anna was never supposed to walk, talk, or crawl.And so obviously if you're trying to crawl or practice with a plastic tube hanging out of your belly, kind of hard to do the army crawl or get up because you might pull the tube out. So. So we just said no because in our mind this was Just not the right thing for her, even if the specialist recommended it.And because of that, we reported Child Protective Services for medical neglect because we. We just want to give our daughter real food and work hard at it. We actually had got investigated by Child Protective Services, so. And.And that was its own journey. But that was like, inflection point number one, where I realized the health care system doesn't like it when you push back.They can actually be pretty hard.And for parents of kids with special needs, this happens way too often, actually, in that world, particularly with rare diagnoses and kids with a lot of health issues. But the other inflection point was six months later when Becky found a growth chart for kids with cerebral palsy.So Anna's diagnosis, and she was right in the middle, so she was actually normal for her diagnosis, and the specialist had no idea. And that was like the second flash point where the system doesn't like it when you say no. And then all of a sudden, the experts don't know.And so that became, like, my weight, my burden.I had to figure it out for this little girl who, at that point in time, I was falling in love with and would later adopt, and she'd become our daughter. So that led me down a pathway where I had to figure it out my own start researching, figuring out alternative treatments for kids with brain damage.And so that's in that over 15, 20 years, changed my entire practice of medicine.

Wow. Going back just to the navigating, being investigated by Child Protective Services, how long did that take?And were you able to speak up for yourself in court and say, I'm a medical professional and this is my opinion and all of that? Like, how did that play out?

Yeah, for a lot of parents, it doesn't play out well. And that's an unfortunate reality. It's just so bizarre. Like, my wife was in the system. She actually worked with patients that saw this specialist.So it's kind of like, it was such a weird thing. Like, you kind of. You probably see my wife's name on, you know, OT reports. You've seen your office for swallowing studies and stuff, like.And you're reporting her to Child Protective Services. Like, it was just such a weird kind of like, almost like, really, seriously, really?

Right. Yep.

So for us, it was kind of like more like, this is weird. Like, let's just go through it. I wasn't concerned per se, though. It's crazy and can be super stressful, and sometimes parents will lose their kids.And the nurse came out, investigated us, and my wife actually Shared cases with the nurse. So they came out, they checked us out, you know, okay, you know, you should, etc. Etc.They kind of joked, actually that this GI doctor was known to put lots of feeding tubes in kids and they had a little parlay and then, okay, well, you need to see nutritionist now to make sure you do anything right. So she took anti nutritionist and they put this whole thing together for us, which basically was what we were doing. And it kind of went away.Yeah, it kind of went. And the problem went away, you know, but the thing with it is, like, many parents can't navigate that. Many parents, it freaks them out.They become defensive. And if you come defensive, that the system kind of rears its ugly head 100%.

Yeah.

And so it was one of those things like, and this happens so many times with us. And so our philosophy is we have the resources, we have the education. If they're going to do this to us, they're going to do. Who.Who else are going to do it to. And other people don't have the resources, the education, the time.So we kind of, every time we had, we hit like one of these choke points, whether it was with this place, La Casa, whether it was with our. We have a stipend for her in Virginia and we have to get checked out every six months by somebody.And there's another story about someone committing fraud against us in relation to that.We always just took things to the, to the end because we realized we weren't just fighting for us, we're fighting for every other family that probably doesn't have the resources who's probably, you know, hardly making it just because it's stressful having kids, Adopting kids is stressful. And adopting kids with special needs is like the stress. Stress. Stress.

Yes.

And so, but anyway, so it ended up working itself out.

Yeah. I want to just mention, because when you mentioned this about getting defensive is like, really bad. I totally resonate with that and agree with that.I'm not sure that every listener will understand what you mean by that. If you could just expand on that a little bit in regards to you working with the system within the system.

I mean, literally, someone said you are doing medical child neglect. Like, that's a big deal. That's like you put your kid in the corner. You don't feed them, you put them in the closet. Like you physically abuse them.Like, it's, it's, it's, it's the same kind of category. So it's a big accusation. And so, I mean, parents are Naturally defensive of themselves, their spouses or families.And so some people's responses, oh yeah, I'm gonna buck the system and I'm gonna. Or they get fearful and they kind of like don't answer questions, ignore or snowball. And those are all red flags to an investigator.

Right.

You know, it's like, it's like a. I've been ordered by IRS multiple times in my business. I've had the FDA check me out for my research company.And like whenever governmental things get involved, the people really are just looking for the bad players. They're not, they're really not. After you, there's fallen.They got jobs, they got their own families, they come out and check you out and, and if you give them any reason to question, like, why are you looking funny? Why are you shifty? Why are you scared? Why are you nervous? Why don't you ask questions? That's just going to encourage them to dig deeper.

Yeah.

And so just being front of, hey, you know, being forth. Forthwith or what do you say?

Being forthright.

Yeah, forthright. But a lot of people, their natural, Most people, the natural response is to attack or be defensive.When someone attacks you, the response is to be aggressive or defensive.

Yeah.

And when you do that, you actually are more likely going to cause more problems long term than if you just cooperate as best you can. Because if you do, they, they're not, they're looking for bad players.You know, they're not looking for the good person who didn't dot the I and then cross the T, or the good person who like, oops, I didn't, I missed that appointment. And because life is crazy, they're not looking for those people.

Yeah, you're getting at something that I used to say, even just with being a part of the foster care system in general, it's like, just meet everyone within the system with like love in my heart and just shine that love to them. Because it's a stressful system and they are, they. Their job is to find the bad actors. Right. Like, that's their job.So, yeah, I think not taking it personally is, is really difficult because it's human to like take things personally, but it's like it's not really personal. Maybe it can become personal after a while, but the initial inquiry I don't think is personal. It's just they need to do their job, you know.So thank you for, for clarifying. So you started getting into, once that was all cleared up, you started getting into alternate techniques, healing techniques.I think that where you're going with this. And can you tell me more about that?

Yeah. So, I mean, you know, to put things in perspective, let's fast forward. Anna's getting ready to turn 20.

Okay.

The average kid with her diagnosis at 20 years of age would have had 13 diagnosis, 13 surgeries by now would have had multiple hospitalizations and surgical procedures, multiple rounds of antibiotics for pneumonias and a bunch of stuff. She's turning, getting ready to turn 20. She's had no surgeries, no hospitalizations, had one round of Anabox since we've had her.

Wow.

Which is one. And it has had no cavities. If anybody knows what crystal meth does to teeth. Right. Let alone a mom being pregnant, using it the entire pregnancy.She had, you know, no cavities, a little tartar. We saw the dentist two weeks ago just to get some cleaning stuff done. But like that's, that's the end game.She's actually, she can do most of her own self care. She's actually going to be my first child who moves out of the house next year into a, a community for adults with special needs. Sure.It's an intentional community where she'll have like jobs there and they have. Right, they have a wedding venue there where the, the people can get involved and stuff.So like she's literally gonna be my first child moving out of the house. And she was never supposed to walk, talk, or crawl. So like that's, that's the outcome. But we didn't know that.Yeah, of course, when we first got her, it's like crud. Like they want to do all these surgical procedures. You want to cut her eye muscles, you want to cut her spine, they want to cut her heel cords.And so, so I have to figure it out. So I started researching gene based therapies. Autism was at that point in time the closest neurological issue to cerebral palsy that I could find.The literature. So I started researching like what causes the autistic brain to be autistic. And this is 18 years ago. Okay.This was long before people even knew what autism kind of sort of was.They realized you could do gene testing on a child, figure out these things called SNPs, which are like typos in your, your genes that mean you need way more nutrients. One of them is MTHFR gene that just basically means you, you're prone to B9 vitamin or folate vitamin deficiency.So those kids need a lot more folic acid, for example.

Yeah.

So did the gene testing, gave her a nutritional kind of thing. And then start that.Let me down the pathway of doing gut, advanced gut testing, you're learning about, you know, 75 of all neurotransmitters are made in your gut all of a sudden.Like if you have a brain issue, autism, pandas, pans, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, you know, adhd, dyslexia, you know, whatever they the brain thing might be. Actually gut health is a ridiculously important part of that.So and so started getting down these little rabbit trails that led me to a board certification and Holistic Integrative Medicine, another board certification, and Metabolic Regenerative and Functional Medicine, multiple other certifications. And ultimately I changed my entire practice.And now my entire practice deals with the most complicated patients, have been the multiple specialists, multiple doctors, been told nothing's wrong with them, it's all in their head or they can't be helped.And one of my passions is actually for, you know, kids, especially foster kids, adopted kids, because they have like the double, triple whammy of, you know, chemicals, the environment, which all kids deal with that stress, trauma, all kind of stuff most kids deal with. But it's also just being adopted as a trauma, being given up as a trauma. And it's. And so how do you navigate there's nerve, that kind of stuff.

Yes.

And it's become a passion of mine because if you find the right things and implement them early, you can radically change the trajectory of this kid's life.

Yeah, absolutely. My question is how do people work with you? Like do you take insurance or.Because I know a lot of people, such as yourself, they can't deal with the insurance. Like the insurance thing doesn't support what they do or whatever, it's too hard.But that always is such a barrier to a lot of people being able to afford this type of care that you're talking about.

Yeah. The way we have a membership model set up and where, you know, your insurance pays for about a 12 to 15 minute office visit.

Okay.

And so my intake evaluation is about two to two and a half hours of fault visits, an hour and 15 minutes. So insure if insurance is paying for 15 minutes of that, like how do you pay for the rest?So we have a membership model that wraps around it that pays for the rest of the time. You know, our current model pays for procedures, pays for hospitalizations, but doesn't pay for chronic care.So if you're a diabetic, for example, they'll pay for a 12 minute visit to get on medications.They won't pay for a 45 minute visit to talk about lifestyle, environment, to Talk about the five different types of diabetes and which type you might have. You know, it just doesn't pay for that. And so our system is geared around acute issues, not chronic issues. And so it's really funny.Our current healthcare system delivers care the exact same way as it does. My grandfather was in his 80s or 90s. It hasn't changed as far as the way we deliver care so big, our knowledge has radically changed. And so.So Rob creates a membership model that people pay. A membership that surrounds the insurance that allows you to do insurance for labs and imaging testing, stuff like that.But the time, I mean, you know, I have three board certifications. That's a lot of time. And, you know, I'll do an evaluation and spend an hour reviewing labs not paid for by insurance.You know, to put things in perspective, you know, when I was in the hospital, I just do use a lot of hospital care. I'd spend an hour and 15 minutes fielding calls from the hospital, seeing the patient, admitting them.And Insurance paid me $85 for that hour and 15 minutes of crime. The hospital made all the money. The hospital bill was like, you know, tens of thousands of dollars.And for me, it was like hospital care was my charity care.

Right.

And in my practice, I could do that because that's, you know, busy practice, but because I saw lots of patients in the day, in the day, in the hospitals, at night, in the evenings. But when I'm seeing, you know, eight people a day in my clinic, 10 people a day in my clinic, like, you can't make that up with volume.You have to make it up somehow. And that's where the membership model makes up the difference.

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. And you would. The insurance that would pay for the 15 minutes is like Medicare, Medicaid included in that.Because a lot of people, including myself, for my children, we have Medicaid for our kids. Because it came through the foster care system.

Yeah. Medicare. Yes. Which is older people. Medicaid is so difficult to deal with. Like, you literally have to hire a.Your own back office just to deal with Medicaid. So we. We don't work with Medicaid.

Yeah.

If someone like we've been working with transitions to Medicaid, we keep on working with them, but they take on Medicaid. It's just too restrictive. I mean, literally, with Medicaid, you have to be willing to see people for a couple free visits.And again, it's hard because, like, okay, like it's a time thing. So in my practice, Medicaid, that's cash. It's like you have Medicaid, great. Have it pay for your stuff.You'll see us paying cash because 100% because you can't, you can't figure out how to make it work the other way.

That's crazy. Yeah, that's really sad. What do you recommend for people that are in that situation?Maybe can't even afford what you're talking about, but want to do something. I so my daughter, just to give you a little background, my daughter is autistic. Adhd. She also had exposure, you know, prenatally.Mom had no, the birth mom had no prenatal care. Same with my son. And I think a lot of people are in that situation.Is there a way to deal with gut health specifically without doing like all of the testing and all of the stuff or is that like not a good idea? You know what I mean?

Like yeah, it all depends on the kid.You know, you can have an autistic kid that's just kind of quirky and has sensory integration issues and just do gluten, dairy free, remove chemicals and toxins, get the carpet out of your house, remove the mold, give them some basic supplements and they'll do great. Yeah, you have, the kid has the self harming stuff that the ticks the head banging and they're like, they don't need some more intensive stuff.So autism is a big, it's a big thing. But my book incurable, that came out a month ago, it's incurable.From hopeless diagnosis to define all odds actually is my daughter's story like of us navigating the healthcare system. I have a couple of other cases in there. One is a young kid who had this thing called acute demodeling encephalomyelitis.His mom was actually a Medicaid mom back, back when I was still accepting that probably 15 years ago, however long it was ago. And she basically was able through some basic dietary interventions. One was a GAPS diet which is a very extreme and a few fancy tests.Um, within a year her son was quote unquote back to normal. So it's possible to do. But the purpose of my book All Incurable is to give people like basic tools like you know, this is how you need to think.And the book has, you know, a couple thousand dollars worth of free resources food sourcing guide. You know, one is actually home, like how you can tell if your home's healthy or not healthy.A lot of people don't realize that autism for example is a type of chronic inflammatory response syndrome where Part of your immune system and your brain gets inflamed. And a big trigger for that can be water damaged buildings or moldy buildings, and people don't realize that it was actually you living in a house.Mold, water damage. The baby was inside of you.Baby was born, maybe had a traumatic delivery, maybe had some antibiotics or inside of whoever, and then got a bunch of vaccines, a bunch of antibox, and then that's the trigger. But it was like the setup was all this stuff.And so we try to provide those and there's a free resources to the book and then for people who want to try to figure it out on their own. You know, on my website, I vetted over 300 different books that I've read and have about 70 books on the website for people to learn about this.I've done and done over 400 blogs and even. And even we have a podcast.So if people are like, hey, I don't have resources, but I have time, yeah, I want to get educated, then we, you know, my website has tons of stuff.

Oh, that's.

But ultimately it takes time, you know, to build, to walk through stuff.

So of course, of course. And it's a little bit of trial and error. You have to see what is working.You have to be like connected enough to your child and paying attention enough. I started a probiotics and multivitamin for my child and man, the difference was like unbelievable. With this really strong.It's made for people with autism and that kind of thing. And it is like been a game changer. Even her teachers were like, wow, she's so much more focused. And that was what changed.

Well, it's interesting, like, and this is not meant to be political speech at all. So this is just data information. But. And I'm not sure when this will get published, but it's November right now, but December. Yes, December.Sorry, wrong month.

It's okay.

That was crazy. Back in November of 2025, from the. From our government came out. Hey, there's a question. Because Tylenol related to autism. Da, da, da.Yeah, it was interesting with that they mentioned Leukovorin and no one talked about this in media. They're focusing on the Tylenol thing, right? Leukovorin is a. Is a form of folic acid that was specifically made to bypass folate receptors.And in the autistic world, there's actually a test. Some of these kids actually have antibodies to that receptor.So you can take all the methyl folic acid you want, all the natural, and it won't work because the receptors are blocked or not working, or you have this MTHFR gene. Leucavorin bypasses all of that and goes right into the cells and work.And so it's interesting because in my world, we've been using it for years, but it was interesting to hear that coming from the highest levels of the government. Like, hey, this might be a potential treatment.

Yeah.

I'm like. I'm like, finally someone's talking about that. But Tylenol got all the.It's kind of funny to me as well with the whole Tylenol thing, because when I check these kids for labs, they all have low glutathione levels. All the glutathione levels are low, which you can check through a basic LabCorp quest lab.And one of the things that Tylenol does is deplete glutathione levels. So there is biological plausibility that somehow that might affect these kids.But it's one of those things where, like, basic things, probiotic, basic nutrients. You know, all these kids have brain inflammation. So gluten, dairy, soy free. Removing trans fats, removing seed oils, putting healthy omega 3.And they all have really messed up. They all. Most of the kids I test have low cholesterol numbers, which is bonkers. Why would a kid have low cholesterol?Cholesterol is important for brain function. You know, if it's less than. It's less than 170. You can have low testosterone, it's less than 140. It can affect, like, neural function.

Wow.

And it's like, okay, great, we need more phosphatidylcholine. Need healthy fats. You know, if you have toxins in the environment, remove all the, you know, the scented candles, the burning candles, the plugins.You know, there's so many things that are like, basic, like, good for your health in general. Right. That you should be doing that. You know what I tell people? Do the foundational stuff, become an expert, the basics.And there are some kids, like, it sounds like your son, if you do the basics well, they can have amazing responses without fancy stuff.

Yeah, I agree. Do you know if that. What's it called? Leucavor. Am I saying that correctly? Is that now like a treatment? Like, could I go request that for my daughter?Or is that not really, like, is it covered or what?

It's a cheap drug that you can get from the pharmacy. It's like a buck a pill. It's not expensive. Problem is that originally was created to be a rescue for methotrexate. Which is a kind of chemotherapy.

Okay.

So people take methotrexate for whatever reason, you know, for cancer or for rheumatoid arthritis, and they actually develop a methyl folic acid deficiency in a whole bunch of things, including heart failure and whatnot. So they actually created a, a B vitamin that bypassed the cell receptors. That's specifically for these people would be helpful.So the problem is that when most doctors here leucovor and they're thinking methotrexate rescue or chemo or whatever, they're not thinking fancy B9.So it might be a little bit of a educational process with your provider to be like, hey, and you can get supplements of high dose methyl folic acid, which is another interesting fact. There's actually a drug called Deplin, okay. Which is a drug to treat horrible bipolar uncontrolled depression.And all it is is a high dose of methylfolic acid.

Wow.

So the idea that these methylated B vitamins might have a impact in mental health issues is actually not a new idea to pharmaceutical companies. It's just very laser focused on things we can commercialize and sell.And something like autism or these other, you know, neuroinflammatory conditions, because they usually have, you know, many roads lead to Rome. So usually there's multiple calls. It's not just one thing.

Sure.

It gets, it gets a little tricky, but you can, you can request it.I use a lot of low dose naltrexone in these patients with really good results, which is a, a repurposed drug that actually helps balance brain inflammation, that has great literature on it for autoimmune diseases or pain syndromes. All my autoimmune patients get it. For fertility issues. A lot of PCOs have a auto inflammatory or self inflammation part of it.And you can use low doses of naltrexone to actually help with fertility as well. So it's something that has a lot of utilities, but it's just now starting to become like the public consciousness. But it's been around for decades.

Thank you. Thank you for, for taking us through all that. Wow. That was all like so much great information.I want to say to the listener, listeners, don't forget, there's show notes. So if you are hearing something and you're like, because I know I will be going back over all this, it'll be in the show notes.

I'm gonna drop a bomb for you here.

Yeah, please do.

Yeah. Adopt the kids and, you know, foster, et cetera, et cetera, neurodivergence. All kinds.If your kid is hypermobile, okay, they have their elbows kind of flop back a little bit. They can take their thumbs and touch their fingers, go back. Yes, my son. You can literally turn 180, your knees flex back a little bit.You can do, you know, weird, crazy.You have a 400 increased incidence of neurodivergence, ADHD, etc, and part of these kids is they have a higher need for collagen, protein, rare earth minerals, vitamin C. They all have load vitamin D levels. And so if your kid's hypermobile and they're normal, typical, whatever, I don't care. They need more collagen, Bone, broth.

Yeah.

Protein. They need vitamin C, they need D, they need trace minerals.If you have kid has autism or other issues or was on the spectrum or has behavioral issues, guess what you need even more. And so many of these kids I've yet to see.I'm sure there's kids out there, but I feel like every kid I see in my clinic who's neurodivergent, I feel like they're all hypermobile. All of a sudden.Part of their treatment, part of that is like, okay, nutritionally, these kids have these deficiencies, increased need, and that becomes part of your. Whatever you're doing, it becomes a super important part of it. And that's 100% food.

Mm, that's great information. Point of clarification is that the same as low tone? Like, I was told from the time that my daughter was a baby that she had low tone.So she's very floppy and kind of like all over the place. Is that the same thing or is it different?

No, you can be different. You can be normal tone and hypermobile and lone tone hypermobile.I've not read any articles about this, but in my clinical experience, all the low tone kids are hypermobile as well.

Okay.

So sometimes they'll like conflate low tone with hypermobility. That's a different thing. But I mean, again, if your joints in your mic, again, I can't. My thumb. People hypermobile. You're touching it.Some people, it's going past, you know.

Yeah.

If you touch their skin, their skin has this bulgy, soft feel to it. Skin super stretchy, more prone to get stretch marks, but also more prone to chronic lyme disease, mold sensitivities, a bunch of things. And so.And all of a sudden, if you have that hypermobility, protein, protein, bone, broth, trace minerals, vitamin C, clean environment, those things are even more important than they would be for a standard child.

Got it. Got it. What is your feeling on vaccines? I know that can be really, like. It can be Pandora's box.And I'm not trying to go there, but I'm just curious, like, for the COVID vaccine, like, we got our children vaccinated and whatever, we got the initial booster shot, and now I'm kind of like, do I keep getting them booster shots or what? What is your feeling about that?

Well, I mean, the FDA just changed that, and they're not recommending it for anybody less than 65 unless they're high risk. So that government decided for us. So it's like. It's like.I'm just saying what the FDA says, which the kids we don't need anymore unless they have, like, cystic fibrosis or bad asthma or something.

Okay.

Anytime the government changes the recommendations, it usually takes us a while to figure things out. Yeah, like. Like smoking. You know, Smoking. It took us like, 50 years to figure out smoking was bad for us. Right. So it just takes a while sometimes.But as far as vaccines in general, you know, kids that have.On the spectrum, kids that have neurodevelopmental issues have their immune system is imbalanced, and they tend to have one part of the immune system jacked up versus the other. And so going in and poking that system with more stuff probably is not the best idea, you know?

Yeah.

So how do you do this in a thoughtful way? You know, does this newborn child need a hepatitis B vaccine that causes a fever in every kid that gets it?When we started doing it at the Medical College of Virginia, we would give the kids a shot and send them out that day because they all got a fever. If they got a fever while in the hospital, a newborn would get this crazy workup. Spinal tap, blood cultures that was 100% just because of vaccine.So does that kid need a hepatitis B vaccine? When do they plan on having sex with prostitutes? When do they plan on doing IV drugs? When I was in Ecuador. When I was in Ecuador. Yeah.When I was in Ecuador. Are they going to be warning Indians where they take shards of pottery and scrape parasites out of their skin? Right. And share that? Right.If the answer is no to all those, then maybe you wait till the kid becomes a health care professional or joins the military or goes in high school or something. You know, the polio vaccine, super important.You know, there's only two countries in the world that have active polio right now, Afghanistan and Pakistan. So if you have a bunch of refugees from there, maybe you do it. If you don't Maybe you wait till they're four or whatnot.

Right.

So some vaccines you can definitely wait on.

Right.

The question is, you know, hibbit revenue have literally eradicated pediatric meningitis.Like I literally had to go to a foreign country to see meningitis in a kid because it was that uncommon when I was doing my training because of those two vaccines. Pertussis, horrible can kill kids. We have a vaccine for that. So there's some things that we should do and some things we can wait.The problem is in our current system, like even the American Academy of Pediatrics is saying this conversation. Parents can't have this with a doctor. Like I can lose my license for discussing your options for vaccines with you.And they're talking about revoking religious exemption for vaccines like I want to my child not to do. You know, a great example is the HPV vaccine, which is for cervical cancer.There isn't a greater association with that vaccine in dysautonomia or pots, particularly in young women. And there's actually a gene associated, particularly in hypermobile young women, with an increased risk for pots.If you have this, you get the vaccine. So we can't have this conversation. We can't do the gene testing. It's like, do it or, you know, be ostracized.And so I feel like we've lost the ability. Like if you're a parent, you should be educated, you should be able to ask questions and we should be able to have a conversation.And for some reason we've decided like, this is a hill. We're all going to die on about parental rights and about children's rights and about, you know, your body, your choice.Well, like if it is your body, your choice, then why can't you choose not to put things inside of it? Right. It's just such a weird, like it doesn't make sense if you think about it, right?Why are we picking things that, like a hepatitis B vaccine or like. And with the Prevnar vaccine, which I could get potentially, you know, canceled for this, you know.Cervical cancer was the most common cause of death in middle aged women in the 1950s and 60s. I've had over a hundred thousand patient encounters. I've never had one of my patients die from cervical cancer. Why, you might ask.And the answer is a Pap smear.So the radical thing that's radically diminished young women's cancer, the Pap smear, you know, and so women should get that, you know, and so it's like just the realization that I don't know, it's kind of weird.The conversations become weird and we can't like, like this conversation right here could get, you know, potentially both of us like in hot water for. It's just bizarre to me.

Yeah, no, I, I understand.I, I think that like open dialogue should, to me, it ought to be a, a given just to be able to have a conversation that's, that's just the starting point. So, yeah, I'm not taking sides or saying what's right or wrong. I'm just, yeah, I agree that we should be able to talk about it.

So I've had patients who literally got a vaccine and their kids speech development stopped. They stopped interacting. They literally started gazing off at like 18 months old and stopped working on speech.After a vaccine, it's like, okay, let's stop this, let's do some stuff. Let's push this off a little bit. Like just that small observation. All of a sudden people are calling the state board of medicine on you.I'm like, no, this is, we, something's happened here. We need to personalize individualized care.And there is the reality that in order to vaccinate, you know, however many millions of kids every year, you have to like template everything. But there has to be still a space for individualizing care for kids who need individualized.And that's why I feel like public health, we should not compromise public health, but we shouldn't compromise the health of individuals. We shouldn't sacrifice their health for this. Public health, presume public health, which, you know, we've done this in recent history.

Yeah, it's like when we were adopting our children through foster care. Those guidelines, they weren't guidelines. They mean they were like requirements. Basically you had to get all of it and you had to do everything.So there wasn't really a question. That was just the way that it was. Now I did request that they separate the vaccines and they did do that for me. So that was good.But yeah, again, I think that it is one of those things that you mentioned before.It's not that the vaccines necessarily cause autism or whatever it is, but if your system is already overloaded, it can be like the trigger is what I'm hearing from you. Is that correct?

100%. I mean, it's really interesting. There's, you know, I remember studying different vaccines. One again, HPV vaccine.And one of the things about it was it actually creates a robust immune response. You'll see a 20 fold increase in the antibody levels. Recovery vaccine, another great example.I do antibody testing on patients they come back with the titers. A thousand, fifteen hundred greater than two thousand.You know, when I got Covid, because I got it before all that stuff, my antibodies levels went up to 80. I had a fever for like 10 days straight. I had chest pain for like almost two months. I had anxiety for, for like. Yeah, I got.I got pretty sick when I got it. And it was interesting. Like, my antibody levels went up to like 80. Now have immune, still have immunity. Levels are now in the 50s or 60s.But to see people after the vaccine have levels of 1500, 2000, like, it works really well, but it jacks that thing up. So the question is, do I need to give that person the vaccine every six months? No, because this is where I was in my clinic.I was checking people's antibody levels. If it's still a thousand, like, why would I poke that bear more? Just, you don't need any more vaccine.Like, and what's funny to me, because, you know when you go into college, right, Your kids lose the vaccine record. And so you check titers. Like, do you have. You need chickenpox, do you need measles, do you need polio? You check titers. Like, why is it okay?Why has it been okay to do that for decades? But now we check titers here, it's like verboten. We can't do this. Like, so many intellectual, you know, so much intellectual income groovity.That was. Yeah, it's kind of weird. Yeah, another weird thing.

But it is.What you're getting at though, or what I'm sort of hearing and putting together is that, I mean, you have to be so on top of things as a parent to be able to navigate and to be able to ask for what you need and to try different things. And this is not only for your kids, it's for yourself as well. I mean, it's like you have to advocate for yourself. And it's. It's difficult.It's difficult for people who maybe aren't educated or don't have like a particular interest in this kind of thing. Everybody's taxed and, you know, overworked and we're not making enough money. And it's like just, it's so. It's just a lot to navigate and deal with.I wanted to bring up something else that I see a lot on a lot.I'm in a lot of like, adoption and foster care forums and I'm hearing all the time about people who are struggling with their child having attachment disorders and because maybe they adopted their children, you Know, as a toddler or later, and they, they had severe trauma in their past. Is there something that you can recommend for that type of thing? Because I'm hearing a lot of these people saying, like, it's.There's nothing you can do. Like, it's basically just like this poor child is. There's is hopeless.

It's part of the story I talk about with my daughter and incurable is never to give up hope. There are all those answers, maybe just haven't found them yet.And this is one of those ones that I just kind of wonder, have we just not found all the eggs, so to speak, for the basket?I mean, you know, we have literature that if you are the kids in the icu, the kids separate from mom for a couple days after birth, that induces a form of trauma. Like, it's amazing how much bonding occurs between the mom and a baby. Now we know, hey, guess what?When the baby's born, whispering the baby away from the mom for like the next 12 to 14 hours, letting mom rest is bad for the baby. It's bad for mom. That was standard protocol for how many decades?You know, taking the baby and washing the baby and getting all the gooey, nasty stuff off. They don't do that anymore. We're not supposed to, at least, because all it's actually healthy for the baby's gut, the baby's bacterial flora.So if these small things can be consequential, could the baby, you know, going from the hospital to a foster home to another foster home, these are all micro traumas. And so it's one of those things that 100%, you can have attachment issues and it can be devastating.It can result in you not feeling safe in the house with the child. And so the thing is, like, how do you create attachment? And we had that with my daughter Abigail for a while. She's 18 now. We got her when she was 2.And I'm, you know, military, I'm a guy. I'm kind of very like, you know, going down this pathway. My wife is like, my daughter, she's not there, I've lost her, etc. Etc.Because she just wasn't engaging with us. And I was kind of, you know, ignoring it because I'm, you know, doing my thing, whatnot, she'll be fine when she's older kind of thing.But my wife was right. She wasn't really engaging with us. I mean, she'd been to multiple homes and she was 2.We got her and some potential something may have happened to her before you at least don't know. You know, you don't know. You don't know what you don't know. And right. I remember when we. We got to a point, it's just probably khalil.She's probably 4. 18. Yeah, about 3 or 4. We got my son and we had him for two weeks and we had to give him back. And that was a whole other thing. But it's interesting.When we gave him back, she started. Her behavior, like, went down. She started misbehaving. She started, like, pooping her pants and just a whole bunch of stuff.And it clicked with us that because she was adopted, that point in time, she doesn't realize we're her forever home. So we started saying to her, abigail, we love you. You're never going anywhere. This is your forever home. And it was weird.I saw in her eyes this change, like, oh, this is. And I realized for her, she needed to hear, every day, we love you. You're not going anywhere for the next, I don't know, 12 to 15 years.Every day we tell her, abigail, we love her. Love you, hug her. We have to tell her, this is your forever home.And it was kind of like, you know, a mercy that we lost Cleo and went through all that trauma because it helped us realize with our daughter what she needed to attach to us. And that doesn't always happen. People don't all don't always have that aha moment. Like, what does this child need? It needs safety.It needs to feel like it has a home. It needs to feel closeness. And so the younger you start, the better. If you get a kid, when the seven or eight or nine, it's.It is 100% more difficult. And that's when it's hard. Because if you get these kids that are older, they have attachment. How do you rewire a brain?It's never felt safe or rewire our brain. It can be done. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it's going to be a lot of work.And sometimes it's just investigation, trying things, never giving up. And sometimes there'll be some family event that you realize the kid needs this. And I'll just encourage people not to give up. But, yes, it's hard.Yeah. And, yeah, it's hard.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.Another thing, getting back to what you mentioned before about doing the things that you can do at home, and you mentioned food and how it's all food and cutting out gluten and all this stuff, which in a perfect world, would be wonderful. But there's a lot of children, my daughter included that if I cut out gluten and dairy, I don't know what she would eat.She has a lot of food sensitivity and sensory issues.And I know there's a lot of children like that and they just will not eat anything except for like dino nuggets and, you know, whatever it is, peanut butter and jelly and grilled cheese and that's like all they eat. What do you recommend in that situation? Like, how do we handle that?

I mean, you have to be, you know, Sherlock Holmes for your kid to figure things out. You have to be willing to try a lot of different things.But part of this neural inflammation is the kids are looking for stimulation, looking for sensory stimulation. And they get that through sugar, carbs and chemicals. Like, you know, the dyes.The dyes, you know, blue dot, these petroleum based dyes are actually neurostimulants. And so it gives them a little, a little kick, a little high.You know, when you consume a large amount of sugar, for example, you'll get an insulin spike. It goes down, you get an adrenaline spike. Like you might get your, get your caffeine and sugar right, and you feel like, better.It's like the kids, it's like, it's like speed for them. It like activates dopamine.And so they're getting, they're getting a stimul, they're getting something out of it, but it makes brain inflammation worse. And so you know what I tell people is you want to hear?I've been thinking about doing this Halloween challenge where it's like, hey, wake up to Halloween. Give your kid all the candy they want, give them the bags and then on November 1st, remove all the sugar from the diet and see what happens, right?And we all know it's going to happen. The kids are going to lose it, they're going to not be mentally stable.And so that's one of those things, I think, like when you give them carbs every four, six hours, if you don't get it, they crash. You're looking at a withdrawal phenomena.Irritability, mood swings, sometimes they'll activate behaviors, tics, etc, sleep problems, like these kind of sound like withdrawal stuff. And it is, it's actually a sugar, a dopamine stimulating withdrawal. And so what do you do?You know, when we got my son Khalil, and I'm not recommending this for everybody, but he was fed on basically formula and donut holes when we got him and he had horrible eczema and asthma. And my wife slept with him on her chest at night because she thought he'd stopped breathing.And so for the first couple weeks, you know, it's like, you give him breakfast, he wouldn't eat it. Give him breakfast for lunch, he wouldn't eat it. There's a couple times he got breakfast for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and breakfast the next day.And he realized, hey, I'm like anything else. And he, you know, we were able to. Which is a little hardcore, I know.And for some kids that have these sugar addictions, they'll have really bad behavior. But feeding them what they want, give your kids everything they want, is not a good parenting.

Sure.

Style. And it can cause issues, particularly in kids that are neurodivergent and neuroinflamed.And so in the GAPS diet, which is a gut associated psychiatric syndrome diet, which was developed by Natasha Kimmel McBride, she was actually a Russian neurosurgeon, I believe, a neurologist who had a kid with autism that developed this diet specifically to repair the gut and brain of autistic kids. And it's basically crock pot, simplified food that's basically cooked to simplify digestion that actually resets your gut bacteria, gut microbiome.So there are diets and things out there, but on the front end, it's gonna be a ton of work.

Right.

And it might for us, for our family, a lot of times it meant being ostracized because you go to parties and like, oh, they're the Hartmans. They don't. They bring their own candy, they bring their own food, they don't eat our stuff.You know, you might be the weird one, but, you know, if you want your kids to. If you want your kids to have atypical outcomes, then go down the atypical route. You have to be willing to do things that no one else is doing.

Yeah.

And it's hard. It's hard being different. It's hard, you know, not getting invited to stuff because you're not going to eat anything and say or whatnot.And sometimes it makes other parents feel guilty because they're not willing to do that stuff for the kids. And so there's a lot of other things that play there as well.But you have to figure out what you're willing to do and what you're willing to sacrifice for your kids and. And do it. And everybody's at a different level.

Yeah. Yeah.

We've taken things to extreme. We have a. We live on a farm. We have our own cows out there and our Own chickens. We're a little crazy.

That's awesome. Talk to me about dirt. That reminds me that I had done some reading research on you and you were talking about how dirt is a good thing.Tell me about dirt.

So it used to be the average kid by the age of 12 would have consumed about a pound of dirt and now we need none. So one thing you've learned with high end science, right? I love that word, high end science.We've learned that the bacteria that are in healthy soil will have bacteria and yeast and a bunch of dumb stuff. It actually gets on plants.If you take, you know, if you ever fermented, you know, taking cabbage and make sauerkraut, like where's the bacteria that ferments it come from? It comes from the dirt. When you take cow milk raw, raw cow milk let sit and it's.And it turns into curds in a whey, it ferments and that's where we get whey and curds from. You know, Little Miss Muffet center tuffet, right? That, that is just from taking raw milk and letting it sit.The bacteria from that come from grass and the dirt that the cow eats that then puts into its milk.And we've learned with, with humans, like mom goes in the backyard, pulls some lettuce out of her garden or whatever eats it, she will literally secrete certain bacteria from the soil in that area that she got on her food into her breast milk to give to her baby. And so all of a sudden we've learned that there's a close correlation with soil health and human health.And a entomologist, Sir Albert Howard wrote a book that I probably got here somewhere, might be up there. It's called Sorel and Health.And he wrote this in the 1940s and literally it's about in the British Empire when they're trying to basically feed the whole empire. So they had to figure out how to make lots of food in different places.He was in India, he realized and did cool studies on if people use traditional farming methods which used natural compost versus chemical fertilizers, that the soil was had different mineral composition, the plants had different mineral composition, the animals that ate that were healthier and the humans that ate those animals ate those plants were healthier. So all of a sudden we realized there's a correlation between soil health and human health. And that was kind of the point of that.You know, you are what you eat, but includes you need some dirt as well. And sterilizing the soil with chemicals making acidic will impact the nutrition in the plants.But even more important we're learning now is if you don't have the healthy bacteria in the soil, you won't get on the plants that gets in your fermented food that ultimately gets in your body.

So what do you do about that? Do you eat organic? Is that the way to go or what? How do you ensure that, that that's happening?

Yeah. Depends on where you live. I live in central Virginia, which is for us is fortunately pretty easy. We can get local produce really, really easy here.Depends on where you live. Organic is like the, the lowest standard in my book.

Okay.

It's not, it's not your goal. It's like, okay, someone's tried to do things better. But organic is not the end all, be all. You can get organic milk that's still ultra pasteurized.They still, it's still homogenized. They still use recombinant bovine growth hormone in the cows. So you're getting, you know, cow hormone, like at high levels in the milk.And people don't realize that homogenous, you know, oil and water don't mix unless it's homogenized milk. You're literally changing food chemistry by making fat and water mix.And then when you ultra pasteurize it, you heat it up, you actually burn the milk proteins. So you actually make milk more inflammatory and more irritating. So you might have something that's organic milk. Right. That's still bad for you.So you have to be educated and learn what you know. The environmental working group has a clean 15 dirty dozen. And avocados, for example, don't need to be organic. Like, they're low sprayed.Not a lot of stuff's used for them. Strawberries, 100 have to be organic.And so sometimes you don't have to spend the extra money on stuff, but organic becomes like your lowest, your lowest hanging fruit, so to speak.

Okay.

But it's like the beginning, it's not the end, you know, because you can buy organic stuff that's horrible for you, right? And you can get. And you can get conventional stuff that's amazing if you know how it's being sourced.And so there's just a big disconnect in today's world between us and food. And when one of my.I'm actually was interviewing Joel Salatin, who's like a big farmer here in Virginia, and he was talking about having kids out to his farm from the city. One of the kids come off the bus and comes out, Mr. Salton, where's the salsa tree? And he had to explain, well, salsa doesn't come off tomatoes.That's how disconnected we are with food. And because of that, we don't know, like, bread is supposed to be four ingredients, you know, the grain, salt, water culture, not.Not a paragraph of 50 different things. And so one's real and one's not real. And so being educated about food is part of this health journey.

Yeah. Okay. I've actually heard that for kids to play in the dirt, that's also beneficial. Do you share that view?

I mean, yes.

Like, I mean, I guess it would depend on which kind of dirt it is. If it's like clean dirt or if it's like, you know, I mean, I.

Mean, don't have to play in dirty construction site. Right, Right. Well, there's so many benefits to playing outside. I mean, kids are natural scientists.I mean, take a little kid that's 2 years old, 3 years old, put them outside. I remember my son, he would just watch ants crawl, he collect frogs and put them in thing. He would just look at stuff and watch it.They're natural little scientists. It's kind of like one of the impacts of modern education is we take these natural scientists that inquisitive.By the time they're in sixth or seventh grade, they've lost curiosity. And it's like, how do you go from being these, why, Mommy? Why Daddy? Daddy?Like, how many times they ask you questions and you're like, stop freaking asking me questions. Like the little, the little scientists.

Yeah.

By the time they're sixth or seventh grade, they're like, do they still ask you questions? You know?

Right.

So part of this natural education development is being outside nature. Nature is very stimulating.

It's.

You take an autistic kid, you take a ADD kid that's inside with screens, it's overstimulated. Put them outside, what happens? It actually calms their nervous systems down.There's an interesting book called Last Child of the woods and talks about how, like, part of our issue with our kids is that we are. We have nature deficiency syndrome. We literally aren't in nature enough.

Yeah.

And there's a calming impact. You can actually get a PhD in forestry medicine in Japan. And it just studies how being in nature affects your brain development, cortisol levels.And so I would take what you said to the next level and say, yes, play in the dirt, but just get outside.

I love that.If you could only share one or two things just right now, at the end of our time here, for parents of kids, particularly who are coming through foster Care, what would your advice be? Where do they start?

I mean, these kids need to know they have unconditional love, period. Because they're coming from a place they don't have safety, they don't have security.Like, how do you develop a healthy relationships if you're not safe and secure? And so you know when you're getting a kid, I'll foster adoption.Even if you're adopting when they're like a month old, a week old, there's still a degree of separation. They're still going to have a degree of trauma. Not as much as a 2 year old or 12 year old or whatever, but lay them in.There's nothing they can do that you always love them. There's nothing they can do that's going to make you not love them. And they need to hear that over and over and over.They need lots of touch holding them. It's amazing how calming it can be to a dysregulated brain. I mean, what is, what is, what is? I'm too many years after this.Not you wrap the kids up swaddling. Swaddling, yeah.You know, it's interesting how many kids that with sensory issues, you take them and tie them up really tight, you swallow them, put them on a washing machine, they chill out. Right. So, yeah, kidney content. You actually make more oxytocin. So oxytocin is an interesting neurotransmitter.You make it when you have sex, moms make when they breastfeed and you make it when you hug. And it's the bonding neurotransmitter, the closest neurotransmitter. You don't have to have sex, you don't have to breastfeed. You can also just hug.And with kids it's amazing how just that closest hugging you and them are both releasing oxytocin. It'll help bonding and just they need to know they have a safe, secure place and that just needs.They need to hear it over and over and over and over and over and over until you feel like you've done it too much and then you keep on doing even more.

Wow, that's a great piece of advice. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. Where can people find you and find your book and what is your podcast?

I have a new website called Aaron Hartman MD that basically takes you to my podcast and to my practice website into my book. So it's like the hub for everything.My book is UncurableBook.com so that you can also type in UncurableBook.com and then my podcast is made for health and it's where I interview experts. I interview my people in my practice.Dr. Jinsky is one of the main doctors in the practice that we talk with about different topics and just try to educate people about stuff. And so again, you know, Aaron HartmanMD UncurableBook.com and then podcast is made for health.

Wonderful. Dr. Hartman, thank you so much for your time today. This was really helpful and great conversation.

You're welcome. I really enjoyed our conversation.

This has been the Foster to Forever podcast. Happy stories of non traditional families born through Foster to adopt, produced by Aquarius Rising. Original music composed by Joe Fulginetti.For more information or to stay in touch, visit from foster to forever.com that's from foster the number2forever.com and stay connected with us on Instagram at foster2forever podcast. That's foster the number two forever podcast. We'll see you next time.