170. What Vitamins Do Vegan Kids Need & A Plant Positive Lifestyle for Families with Dr. Shayna Smith
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Dr. Shayna Smith is a board-certified Lifestyle Medicine physician and pediatrician promoting a ‘plant positive’ diet and a healthy lifestyle.
A family history of illness is what first motivated Dr. Smith to learn more about medicine and the role of lifestyle on our health. While she always considered herself healthy and active, it wasn’t until she experienced her own health scare that she became interested in a plant based diet. She shares with me on the podcast how she was introduced to the idea of veganism when a friend who flew in for her surgery took her to a plant-based restaurant and mentioned The China Study.
If you don’t know, The China Study is considered the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted which explored the impact of diet on long term health. It basically concluded that the more animal products humans consumed, the higher the risk of chronic disease.
Dr. Smith shares how she was intrigued by the idea that eating vegan could reverse diseases and began researching on her own, then taking part in a 10 day plant-based challenge with her son that led her to realize she could do this full time.
We talk about what that transition looked like for her and her family, and how she learned that eating vegan isn’t about restricting foods but eating more new foods. She also talks about how her son (who was in 4th grade) felt about going vegan and what she makes for school lunches for a vegan child.
Of course, being a vegan doctor in the medical field comes with amazing expertise and interesting experiences, and Dr. Smith shares a lot about her life and career with me on this episode. While she once worked nonstop in the emergency department of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Dr. Smith opened up her own pediatric private practice a few years ago to focus more on the health and wellness of her patients.
We dive into so many valuable topics that you won’t want to miss. This episode includes:
How dealing with a health scare led to a vegan diet
Raising vegan children including tips on what to cook for them (keep it simple), and what supplements vegan (and non-vegan!) children need
How the medical field traditionally focuses on reactive vs proactive medicine and how a plant based diet can prevent and reverse chronic disease
Stress and the importance of self care as a physician and mother
Rest and movement as a form of self care
The lack of nutrition education in the medical field
Dr. Smith’s ‘plant positive’ approach and her goal of getting people to eat more plants
The importance of trying new foods and challenging your ideas of what you don’t like to eat
How modern food is designed to overwhelm your taste buds and your brain
The rise of preventable diseases in children and what we can do about it
Contact Dr Smith:
Flourish Peds in GA