Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 15 Issue 28 – Feeding Infants


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Food in Infancy
What do we know?

“Humans are the only mammals who feed our young special complementary foods before weaning and we are the only primates that wean our young before they can forage independently. There appears to be a sensitive period in the first several months of life when infants readily accept a wide variety of tastes and this period overlaps with a critical window for oral tolerance. As a result, infants should be exposed to a wide variety of flavors while mother is pregnant, while mother is nursing and beginning at an early age. There also appears to be a sensitive period between 4 and 9 months when infants are most receptive to different food textures. There remains debate about when it is best to begin introducing solid foods into an infant’s diet however, the available evidence suggests that provided the water and food supply are free of contamination, and the infant is provided adequate nutrition, there are no clear contraindications to feeding infants complementary foods at any age. There is emerging evidence that introduction of solid foods into an infant’s diet by 4 months may increase their willingness to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables later in life, decrease their risk of having feeding problems later in life, and decrease their risk of developing food allergies, and the early introduction of solid foods into an infant’s diet does not appear to increase their risk of obesity later in childhood.” (Borowitz S. 2021)

Food Introductions — What’s the best way to approach it?

As infants begin the shift from exclusive milk feeding to solid foods, a range of opinions inevitably emerge on how to navigate that transition. It’s tempting to get lost in modern guidelines, but an anthropological lens is often more revealing. Long before the age of purées in jars and puffed snacks in canisters, human infants ate what their parents ate. It was delivered in whole-food form and mechanically softened by chewing, cooking, or crushing. These early first foods carried important evolutionary advantages…Plus a piece on Hell Yeh or No by Derek Sivers

Enjoy,
Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #102: Jeremy Goldberg – Life Begins


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This weeks Guest is Dr. Jeremy Goldberg. He styles himself as a compassion cultivating day making change agent/empathy collecting not quitting word wizard/chief burrito appreciator aspiring to inspire/struggle overcoming ranter in charge/ferocious idealist/never giver upper/a love bombing kindness pirate. What he really does, in my mind, is write and teach the world to project love and kindness where it is not layered enough. On his website he writes: My mission is to make kindness cool, empathy popular, and compassion commonplace. As part of that purpose, I write articles, send emails, host retreats and workshops, give TEDx talks, coach clients, host a podcast, write books, and make spoken word poetry videos. My name is Jeremy, I founded Long Distance Love Bombs, and I am fucking stoked to meet you. Send me an email and let’s get going: LongDistanceLoveBombs at gmail dot com. We breakdown words, relationship, connection and being happy in a world of silly tribal divisiveness!

In this conversation we discuss his experience as a new father and the initiation of fatherhood. “I have been wiped out and annihilated by parenting and the initiation of fatherhood. Hands down, brutally, face dragged along the hot coals of the initiation….” There are so many real, honest, open truths dropped along the winding road of this discussion. If you are young and ready to understand the world of fatherhood, this is a conversation for you!

Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 15 Issue Thanksgiving


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THANKSGIVING THOUGHTS

Every year, as the leaves turn and the air gets that crisp bite, I’m pulled back to 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts where a group of English Pilgrims, religious refugees who had crossed an ocean to breathe free, and their Wampanoag neighbors sat down together for three days of feasting. No treaties, no agendas, just gratitude for a successful harvest and the simple miracle that two very different peoples could share a meal in peace. Food and friendship. That was the entire point. At least, that is what history tells us.

Fast-forward two centuries and Abraham Lincoln, in the middle of the bloodiest war this country has ever known, paused on October 3, 1863 to proclaim a national day of Thanksgiving.

His words still ring true: “The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God….

Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 15 Issue 27 – Immune Aging

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The Evolutionary Tug-of-War – Inflammation’s Double-Edged Sword

“Environmental factors, particularly infections, have fundamentally shaped human evolution by selecting for protective inflammatory response mechanisms that enhance survival. This evolutionary pressure has created a core biological paradox: inflammation is indispensable for host defense, yet its dysregulation significantly heightens disease and mortality risk. This fundamental tension raises three fundamental questions about human aging and immunity: (1) How have selective pressures driven the evolution of mechanisms to balance inflammation’s protective benefits against its harmful consequences? (2) Why does substantial variability in healthspan persist despite historically stable rates of aging? (3) Does evolutionary prioritization of reproductive fitness inherently limit longevity?” (Manoharan et. al. 2025)

Let’s talk about the fire inside us. Inflammation is our body’s 911 system: lightning-fast, life-saving when a bug invades or a thorn rips skin. But leave that alarm blaring 24/7 and the fire torches the house.

Evolution faced this paradox: crank the immune dial high enough to survive infection and childbirth, yet install brakes so we don’t self-destruct by 40. Manoharan’s team just mapped those brakes in 17,500 humans and called it immune resilience (IR) or the ability to fight hard, clean up fast, and stay cool afterward… and linguistic aging associations…

Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #101: Sandy Newmark, MD; Elisa Song, MD; Leslie Stone, MD – Autism Etiology?

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Today’s conversation takes us upstream—to the source—of one of the most pressing and emotionally charged topics in modern pediatrics: the rise in autism spectrum disorders. Autism rates have continued to climb in 2025, but what if much of what we call “the epidemic” isn’t simply genetics or better diagnosis, but a reflection of deeper biological, environmental, and developmental changes affecting the human organism before birth?

To explore this critical question, I’m joined by three extraordinary clinicians who have dedicated their lives to understanding the roots of children’s health and disease.

Dr. Sandy Newmark, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at UCSF, has spent the past two decades at the intersection of conventional and integrative medicine—focusing specifically on children with autism and ADHD. His approach blends deep compassion with scientific rigor, examining how nutrition, toxins, inflammation, and the microbiome shape the developing brain.

Dr. Elisa Song, Stanford-, NYU-, and UCSF-trained integrative pediatrician and author of Healthy Kids, Happy Kids, is one of the leading global voices in pediatric functional medicine. As founder and Chief Medical Officer of Healthy Kids Happy Kids and Tiny Health, she’s pioneering microbiome-centered strategies to reverse chronic disease in children and reshape how we think about wellness from the inside out.

Dr. Leslie Stone, family physician, obstetrician, and co-founder of GrowBabyHealth.com, brings a lifetime of experience delivering and caring for over 5,000 babies. Her groundbreaking work in the science of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease—the DOHaD model—shows how what happens before and during pregnancy programs a child’s long-term health, resilience, and risk for conditions like autism.

Together, we’ll discuss the emerging evidence that the autism epidemic is not a mystery of genetics alone, but a story written in inflammation, metabolic disruption, environmental exposures, and the developmental stressors of modern life. We’ll explore how integrative and functional medicine are reframing prevention—not just treatment—and what it will take to truly turn the tide for the next generation.

This is a conversation about hope, science, and the possibility of rewriting the future—one mother, one child, and one generation at a time.

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 15 Issue 26 – Back To Sleep

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Back to Sleep and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is defined as “the sudden death of an infant under one year of age which remains unexplained after a thorough case investigation, including a complete autopsy, examination of the death scene, and review of the clinical history.”

During my time at the University of Virginia, I trained under neonatologist Dr. John Kattwinkel, a champion for newborn health and one of the leading figures in shaping national safe sleep policies. In the early 1990s, he chaired the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Task Force on Infant Sleep Position and SIDS, which laid the foundation for the landmark Back to Sleep campaign.

At that time, SIDS claimed roughly 14 infants per 10,000 live births in 1988. Following the campaign’s launch in 1994, the rate plummeted by over 60%, reaching about 5 deaths per 10,000 live births by 2006. Despite this dramatic improvement, recent data suggest that the decline has plateaued…..

Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #100 Wayne Koontz, MD – Vaccines and Disease over 50 years

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Today on Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast, we welcome Dr. Wayne Koontz, a founding partner at Salisbury Pediatric Associates in Salisbury North Carolina, where he has spent over 5 decades caring for generations of families with compassion, wisdom, and a deep commitment to community health.

Dr. Koontz earned his Undergraduate degree and his Doctor of Medicine from Wake Forest University, where his early love of science and service began to take shape. He went on to complete his pediatric residency at Dallas Children’s Medical Center, part of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, where he received outstanding training in both academic and clinical pediatrics.

As one of the founding physicians at Salisbury Pediatrics, Dr. Koontz helped to build a model of child-centered, family-oriented care that has served the Rowan County. His commitment to children’s well-being extends beyond the clinic, reflecting a lifelong dedication to preventive medicine, developmental health, and the nurturing of strong physician–family relationships.

It’s an honor to have Dr. Koontz with us today to share his clinical insights as they relate to infection and vaccination from a longevity based pediatric career. Dr. Koontz has a unique perspective to share as his 50 plus years of experience cover the prevaccine infectious disease based practice of pediatric medicine all the way to the current vaccine centric and reduced infectious disease burden reality. That is a timeline worthy of exploration.

So lets explore.

Dr. M

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