Episode 280 — We CAN Change The Neurodevelopmental Trajectory
Guest: Dr. Larry Palevsky • Date: November 6, 2025
Episode Overview
Dr. Lawrence Palevsky returns to the show to reveal why neurodevelopmental disabilities don’t have to follow a fixed path. With over three decades of holistic pediatric experience, he shares how parents can influence their child’s health in transformative ways. The secret this week is… We CAN Change The Neurodevelopmental Trajectory
About Dr. Palevsky
Dr. Lawrence B. Palevsky is a New York State–licensed pediatrician known for his holistic, integrative approach to children’s wellness and complex conditions. A graduate of NYU School of Medicine, he completed pediatric residency at Mount Sinai and a fellowship at Bellevue Hospital. He is a past president of the American Holistic Medical Association, a diplomate of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, and co-host of the podcast Critically Thinking with Dr. T & Dr. P. Learn more at www.drpalevsky.com.
You’ll Discover
Why 1 In 6 Children Have A Neurodevelopmental Disability And What That Really Means (1:44)
How Chronic Inflammation Is At The Core Of These Conditions (13:48)
Why Suppressing Acute Illness Actually Makes Things Worse Long-Term (17:45)
What Parents Can Do To Open Exit Pathways And Reduce Inflammatory Load (31:26)
How Confidence Grows When Parents Stop Fearing Symptoms (35:17)
The Truth About Fever And Why It’s Often Misunderstood (36:45)
How Acetaminophen Depletes Glutathione And Increases Risk (40:22)
Referenced in This Episode
Full Transcript
Len Arcuri (00:01.795)
Hello and welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets. This week's episode is about something that too many parents aren't told clearly enough. The truth is that neurodevelopmental disabilities are not fixed or predetermined. The trajectory can be shifted and parents play a much bigger role in that shift than we may realize. To help unpack this, I'm joined by Dr. Larry Pavevski. He's a New York State licensed pediatrician.who has spent over three decades redefining children's wellness through a holistic and integrative lens. He's a past president of the American Holistic Medical Association, a diplomat of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, and co-host of the podcast, Thinking Critically with Dr. T and Dr. P. If you've ever been told there's nothing you can do, this conversation will help you see a much bigger picture. The secret this week is we can change
the neurodevelopmental trajectory. Welcome, Dr. Poletsky.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (01:03.522)
Thank you, Len. It's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me again.Len Arcuri (01:07.289)
Absolutely, yes. You are a return guest. A few years ago, you were on the podcast and so grateful for your voice then and even now. So I appreciate you taking the time. And I know we saw each other a couple of weeks ago at the MAPS conference. You developed a pretty striking presentation. And I think for you to be able to share with our listeners some of what you shared with the MAPS practitioners, the MAPS family, I think would be really beneficial. So I'll hand it off to you when you talk about the fact thatparents can change this trajectory, how do you see them putting into action and making that possible?
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (01:44.59)
Well, thank you, Len. I'm just going to look over to my monitor so I can read the title and some information from that talk. So the title of the talk was One in Six Children Has Neurodevelopmental Disabilities. What can we do to reverse this trend? And what I did was in the very beginning of the lecture, I went through a list of all of what we currently know.are contributors to neurodevelopmental disabilities. And so when you think of neurodevelopmental disabilities, you're not just talking about autism. As we know, the CDC says one in 31 children now has autism, and in California, it's one in 12 and a half children with neurodevelopmental, with autism. But the picture is much bigger than that. And I wish that our leaders and many of our colleagues
would talk not just about autism, but the fact that one in six children has a neurodevelopmental disability, which means something much more significant than just autism is affecting our children's neurological system that doesn't just include autism. So I went through a list of all of what I found in the literature that contributes to a neurodevelopmental disability. And this is already documented.
So it's not my information. So air pollution has been shown to contribute to certain numbers of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Environmental toxins, and that includes in the water, in the soil, in the air, in the food. Medicines, you know, we just heard in August of 2025, a beautiful paper came out.
actually demonstrating a retrospective look at the role that acetaminophen plays in neurodevelopmental disabilities. And there were hundreds of studies that were found. And a lot of these studies came out of Harvard. They came out of Johns Hopkins. They came out of Mount Sinai, which actually demonstrated an association between the use of acetaminophen in pregnancy and the development of neurodevelopmental disabilities in children.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (04:09.474)
and it was significant. These are no small institutions. And so, you know, President Trump and Secretary RFK Jr. were speaking in turn by knowing the literature. It's very difficult for the public to take responsibility and actually to recognize that we've been duped a little bit about this drug that's supposedly safe and effective, which is not safe at all.I've been saying it's not safe for over 25 years and I'm happy to see that current events are following suit. You know, even soil depletion, the loss of minerals, the loss of important nutrients in the soil and the way we farm and the use of glyphosate are all directly contributing to the starvation of the brain as well as the poisoning of the brain.
the neurodevelopmental disabilities. Food allergies and sensitivities. I can't tell you the number of kids I see who are diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disability. And most of their issues are related to food allergies and food sensitivities. Dyes, preservatives, additives, food colorings, the Feingold Institute did an amazing job years ago, decades ago, demonstrating the contribution of
these food dyes, preservatives, adenisms, and food colorings in the effect of neurodevelopmental status in children. And then of course, the casein protein and the gluten protein, the egg protein and the soy protein and the nut protein and the peanut protein, all of which have had significant contributions to kids having some degree.
Len Arcuri (05:59.481)
youLawrence B. Palevsky, MD (06:03.018)
of neurodevelopmental disabilities and watching their status change and improve when you make the necessary dietary changes. Vaccines. There's plenty of literature to show that there's migration of vaccine ingredients from the body into the brain, causing inflammation, causing changes in motor behavior, reducing tone, changing emotional behaviors, changing impulse and reactivity.and actually affecting speech areas in the frontal cortex. And these are well known already, and yet we're not catching up to the science that shows that vaccine ingredients do get into the brain and do target certain areas that contribute to low tone, poor coordination, impulse, reactivity, speech delay, and many of the behavioral problems that we see, even seizures, even involuntary movements, stims.
Len Arcuri (06:41.049)
Thank you.Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (07:01.198)
Unfortunately, we don't talk about it enough. Parasites, there's evidence that parasitic infections, some of which we've actually been able to treat in kids with neurodevelopmental disabilities and watch their neurodevelopmental status improve. Tick-borne illnesses, there's a huge, huge body of literature around Lyme and Borrelia and ehrlichiosis and rickettsia.and Bartonella, all these tick-borne illnesses that have been.
hidden as the contribution to these neurodevelopmental illnesses that we call autism. And then when we treat them, they actually get better. children get better. Mold. There's no literature that directly shows that mold gives you a neurodevelopmental disability. But there's certainly a lot being done with mold detection and mold treatment that does help children with neurodevelopmental disabilities.
And it may not be the cause, but it certainly may be a significant contribution. And I try to evaluate as many kids as I can for mold exposure as an etiology, as a reason for the development of neurodevelopmental disabilities. Metals. mean, there's a huge amount of literature going way back into the,
in the 20th century, mid 20th century, even into when I was training in medical school in the 80s at my residency, a lot of information, especially coming up in the 90s, where thimerosal containing vaccines were known to contribute to the development of neurodevelopmental disabilities. And for those of you who are interested and want to go down the rabbit hole, take a look at the Simpsonwood Conference.
Len Arcuri (09:02.52)
Right.Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (09:03.074)
You can even look at the documentary Trace Amounts, which goes over the information about the Simpsonwood Conference and Thomas Verstraten and his epidemiological study showing a direct correlation between the exposure of thimerosal-containing vaccines in children versus children who got non-thimerosal-containing vaccines and the increase in neurodevelopmental disabilities in those children.and it was statistically significant. And the criminality and the corruption that went on in changing the data to make it look that children who got thimerosal containing vaccines didn't have increased numbers of neurodevelopmental disabilities and how that 2003 study was published in pediatrics by Verstraten using the corrupted data so that the public would know.
that there was no association between neurodevelopmental disability and thimerosal containing vaccines. Thimerosal is still in vaccines. It's still in the flu shots. And don't be fooled. It's in some of the tetanus shots. And in 2004, we sort of saw the last numbers of vaccines being used that contain the full...
amounts of thimerosal that we saw in the 80s and 90s. And they reduced the thimerosal in the vaccines to trace amount. So that was their way of saying we took thimerosal out. But don't be fooled. When they put it to trace amounts, they actually then removed it from the label because it was in a low enough quantity that they no longer needed to report it.
And so we don't have thimerosal-free vaccines at all. Certainly not the flu shot, but even the childhood vaccines have less than trace amounts, which when combined with aluminum is still more potent than if you have thimerosal alone or aluminum alone. Dyes, preservatives, food additives, and colorings I already spoke about. Electromagnetic radiation, and I can't say enough.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (11:25.142)
If people are concerned about all the things that I just mentioned as contributors to neurodevelopmental disabilities, I would really recommend that you be more concerned about electromagnetic radiation. Because certainly if your children have metals in their body and metals in their head, certainly from the injection of vaccines and from geoengineering and from other drugs and environmental exposures.This electromagnetic radiation is going to light your children's brains up. And you're going to have increased swimming. You're going to have increased impulsivity. You're have increased involuntary movements. You're to have behavioral problems. You're going to have sleep problems. And electromagnetic radiation is a huge problem. I do not recommend kids playing with cell phones. Please turn your wifi routers off at night.
Don't let them play on devices. Get them away from cell towers as much as possible and ground them as much as you can. Dr. Martha Herbert, who is a pediatric neurologist, has written extensively and spoken extensively on the dangers of electromagnetic radiation and how it may really contribute to ongoing neurodevelopmental disabilities. And then...
I mentioned the idea that family emotional distress, not to blame or criticize or judge, but it is well known in the literature that women who undergo a lot of emotional stress during the pregnancy have an increased incidence of children who have developmental, neurodevelopmental disabilities. And so,
The thing is not to, I'm not gonna have any stress. The idea is to recognize how to de-stress and how to minimize stress during the pregnancy as much as possible. So that was the medical side that I introduced my lecture to the audience with. And then I went through an explanation of one thing that we don't necessarily pay attention to.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (13:48.354)
when we're treating kids in our pediatric offices and at home. And that is the definition of neurodevelopmental disabilities has as its underlying pathophysiology, its underlying chemical nature, chronic inflammation.and it's chronic neuroinflammation. Now it's chronic immune inflammation, chronic gut inflammation. There's inflammation all over the body, but especially in the central nervous system, in the brain. And the body deals with inflammation all the time. We inhale inflammation, we ingest inflammation, we put inflammation on the skin.
We accept inflammation into our nervous systems through our senses, what we see, what we smell, what we taste, what we hear, and what we feel. We inject inflammation into the body. And so by definition, inflammation is not bad. And the body works really, really hard, Len, to get rid of inflammation. How do do that?
Len Arcuri (15:07.289)
Mm-hmm.Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (15:09.176)
We exhale. We poop. We pee. We sweat and we smell.We sleep, we rest, we exercise. So we use our nervous system very well to help mobilize inflammation and get rid of it. Even a child screaming is a way of removing inflammation. And then we produce mucus. The immune system helps us to produce mucus to rid ourselves of inflammation.
So there are six ways in small children. Now, as girls get older, there's a seventh way, which is menstruation. Menstruation is one way for girls and women to detoxify, to get rid of inflammation. But for the sake of younger kids, we have six ways for them to remove inflammation. Exhale, urinate, poop, sweat and smell, sleep, rest, exercise, scream.
and produce mucus.
Len Arcuri (16:20.139)
Right. And again, the inflammation isn't necessarily the problem. It's the chronic inflammation, correct?Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (16:24.606)
correct. So we must get rid of that inflammation. We must. And that's why we do it so much. Right? That's why we exhale so much and we urinate and we poop and we sweat and we smell and we produce mucus and we sleep and we rest and we scream and yell and exercise.So we do all those things to get rid of inflammation without any symptoms.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (16:54.572)
And the fact of the matter is that we must get rid of inflammation because keeping inflammation in the body leads to reduction in function of cells, tissues, and organs. Okay?The unfortunate thing is that we always interpret an acute illness in children as an infection.
And by making that mistake, and this is what the lecture was about, we make the mistake of interpreting vomiting, diarrhea, cough, sneezing, sore throat, rashes, fever.
Len Arcuri (17:45.465)
Would you include seizures?Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (17:47.02)
seizures, we malaise, right? Tearing, increased urination. We mistake all of those symptoms as infection. When in fact, the actual literature shows us that those symptoms are merely augmentation of normal body function.to get rid of an increased load or an increased sensitized load of material that's accumulated in the body that can't get out with normal exhalation, normal urination, normal stool, normal sleep and rest, normal sweat and smell, and normal mucus production.
so that the body goes into high gear.
to have symptoms of what we call illness as a way to do what the body does when we don't have symptoms, which is get rid of wastes, toxins, impurities, and inflammation. And in my several decades of working with kids, both in the primary care setting and with kids with chronic illness, almost all of them have
as a history of their neurodevelopmental disabilities, a history of the suppression of their acute illnesses. Multiple over-the-counter medicines, multiple antibiotics, multiple steroids, multiple pharmaceuticals, multiple treatments to say every time they got sick, they got an infection that needed to be suppressed. The suppression of acute illness, and this was my
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (19:48.312)
talk, the suppression of acute illness with over-the-counter medicines and with pharmaceuticals increases the circulation of chronic inflammatory material because the acute illness in children is the body's way of removing inflammation that has gone pasta certain threshold that the body can just no longer hang on to and get rid of in normal ways. And so increased mucus is just, well, we have more wastes. We need more mucus because we have more wastes. And instead of exhaling, well, now we have to sneeze and we have to cough. And instead of pooping, now we have to have diarrhea. And instead of sweating, now we have to have a rash.
So we have to sleep more or we're more irritable because we need to get rid of it. And even the literature says that a seizure is a cough of the nervous system, right? If you have crap in your airway, that's more than you could get rid of just by exhaling, you're going to cough. Well, what if you have crap in your nervous system? It's a closed system. How does it get out? So when your brain gets inflamed,
If it's inflamed to such an extent that there's no room to shake it out, to cough it up, the kids can have tics or the kids can have seizures. And even the literature says that, but we don't practice that way. All we do is see a symptom and suppress it. And so the essence of my lecture was, if we can start to retrain ourselves,
to not suppress acute illness in children and recognize that these acute illnesses are ways that their bodies express a load of inflammation that can't stay in, that must come out. We can reduce the number of children who are susceptible to developing neurodevelopmental disabilities
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (22:15.106)
because they will have fewer materials in their body circulating that chronically inflame them.And then I went through a couple of ways in which we can treat some of the acute symptoms differently and not suppress them. And I remember when I was a medical student, well, this is back 40 years ago. And then as a resident, I remember my mentor saying that when they were practicing pediatrics in New York City from the 1940s on,
and the children in their practice would have their acute illnesses and the illnesses weren't suppressed.
the children almost always had growth and developmental growth spurts after the illnesses were over because there was a pruning, a cleaning out, a release so that things could come online more and they were always developmentally advanced.
Len Arcuri (23:21.4)
Yeah, a release.Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (23:33.75)
because of what medicine has become the fear-based medicine in the last 30 years since the mid 90s when evidence-based medicine became the way and then protocol medicine and algorithmic medicine and AI medicine became the way we forgot proper medicine. And so the goal is to teach parents because I think it's going to be parents first because doctors are going to bethe ones to take the longest to learn this. But the goal is to start teaching parents that these acute illnesses are due to an overload of inflammation in their children's bodies. And that one of the ways to help their children get better is to stop putting loads of inflammation in while they're sick, while their bodies are trying to rid themselves of loads of inflammation.
What is the one thing, Glenn, that parents complain about when their kids are sick? he won't eat. That's the body saying, I don't want any more inflammation. I don't want any more information because I'm busy getting rid of too much. So all the body needs is hydration. And when you slow down what comes in, you rest more, you sleep more, you
Do less, you eat less, you drink more, you quiet the lights, you reduce the schedules, you reduce the stimulation, you reduce the activity, you go skin to skin, you hold your kids, you will see they will get better faster. And when you use over-the-counter medicines to suppress their symptoms,
What you end up seeing is the symptoms take longer to go away or the symptoms come back even stronger because you tried to do something against what the body needed to do or the symptoms go away completely. And to me, that's the most dangerous because that means that you weaken the body in its attempt.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (25:58.68)
to remove all the wastes. And so that's why a lot of times you'll see kids who get suppressed with these acute illnesses are sick two to three weeks later. Because number one, the parents suppressed it with all the medicines. And number two, nobody recognized what the input was into the children that was creating the inflammation in the first place that got them sick.first place. And so the piece that I don't think people know, and you know that, you know, Tom Cowan has written a book about contagiousness, and I would love to have a conversation with him because there is such a thing as contagiousness, but this is the way I look at it. We are always contagious.
Len Arcuri (26:30.137)
Okay.Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (26:54.542)
But contagiousness does not equal getting sick. And what I mean by we are always contagious. There is never a second in our lives where we aren't exposed to germs. Constant breathing makes you exposed to germs. Whether it's your germs, other people's germs, or just germs in the air. You're always breathing in germs. So...You're always contagious. You're always exhaling germs. So you're always contagious to others. You're touching people. You're shaking their hands. That touching is contagiousness. But as we know, most of the time, contagiousness does not equal illness. And so it's not enough to be exposed to germs.
for us to get sick and there's this unfortunate, know, I'm gonna use the word thinking because it's not thinking. There's this unfortunate mindset, but it's not even a mindset because it doesn't make sense, that we only get sick when we're exposed to germs. Well, newsflash, there isn't a second in life that we aren't exposed to germs. And so the exposure to germs,
is insufficient to get us sick. Now that doesn't mean that we aren't picking up other people's poisons, that they're exhaling or excreting out their skin.
or giving off their nervous system.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (28:41.88)
But to think that the only reason you get sick is due to infection is very short-sighted and incomplete and may not even be true.Len Arcuri (28:53.763)
Doesn't it come down to your own susceptibility, which is why all those things you mentioned at the outset are so important to play defense against.Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (29:00.398)
Correct. But again, you know, we're all exposed. I mean, if you look at this, we're all exposed to air pollution. We're all exposed to environmental toxins. We're all exposed to certain farming practices unless we're, you know, using organic farming and regenerative farming and doing our own farming. We're all have some food allergies and sensitivities. You know, most people are exposed to vaccines and parasites. Most people are exposed to tick-borne illnesses.Right? Most people, you know, if you live in the Southern States or in the hot States or in an island, you're exposed to mold. I mean, you can't stop. mean, Florida is a mold capital. You can't not be exposed to mold. We're all exposed to metals. You know, we're all getting dyes, preservatives, additives, and food coloring unless we're eating 100 % organic, homegrown food. Right? Anytime you take a food out of a package, you're getting some kind of chemical.
Even if it says natural flavors, you know that's not real. You know, we're all exposed to electromagnetic radiation and we're all exposed to distress and emotional distress. So, but we're not all sick and we're not all chronically sick. But if we're looking at a larger number of children and adults who are chronically sick,
we know that they've been overloaded with these contributing factors. Plus, they may have a history of having their acute symptoms consistently suppressed, which then makes their body build up chronic materials that inflame them all the time. And so when I work with a child with neurodevelopmental disabilities or any child with
chronic illness. I have to assess three things Len. One, how well are they exhaling? How well are they urinating? How well are they stooling? How well are they sweating and smelling? How well are they sleeping and resting and grounding and getting exercise? And how much mucus are they producing? So I look at all six.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (31:26.23)
of the exit points. And I have to make sure that those points are open, right? Because I need to make sure that if these kids are chronically inflamed, that those six areas of release of material are open to more removal of inflammatory material. Then I have to look at what's coming in. Because if you don't look at the chronic material,that's chronically inflaming them, that you're putting in their air, their food, their water, their beverages, their skincare products, their shots, their electromagnetic radiation, their sleep environment, their emotional environment, their school environment, any of the other mold and other toxins that I described. If we're not looking at what is continuously coming in to inflame them, then we can't help them. And so once you open up the areas
of the body's elimination and excretion. And once you reduce, minimize, or remove the materials that are coming in that are inflaming them, you then watch. Because there's a third layer of material that's chronically circulating, that's chronically poking at them and causing all sorts of chronic symptoms.
And once you open up the exit points and reduce the material coming in that inflames them, you can then address this third area, which is material that's stuck in their bodies. It's stuck to the cells. It's stuck to the mitochondria. It's stuck to the brain. It's stuck to the liver. It's stuck to the immune system. It's stuck and it's causing chronic symptoms.
And sometimes we can figure it out by going through that list that I just went through. And sometimes we don't know. We really don't know. But our goal is to figure out how to recognize what the contributions are and remove them. Because once you remove them, the body knows how to heal itself. But it can't heal itself if it's so overwhelmed with material coming in. And so overwhelmed with material that's stuck.
Len Arcuri (33:26.787)
Thanks.Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (33:52.672)
in the body that's continuously circulating to cause inflammation. And these kids get better if you reduce the inflammatory material coming in while increasing the ability for them to get rid of, excrete, and eliminate through those six exit points. They get better. Now, again, each kid is different, and that's how we can start to...address this trend and actually maybe even, you know, slow it down by recognizing the contributors to neurodevelopmental disabilities, by recognizing the importance of acute illness and the fact that it's not infection almost all the time. And this is where, you know, the discussion gets bigger because people are sitting there going, what do you mean? You mean, what about an ear? What about a throat? What about a...
What about congestion? What about a cough? Well, again, that's right. Well, that's the next level of discussion, right? Because I'm just introducing it. But, you know, to recognize that one and in my experience, Len, when I work with families where they learn not to suppress the acute symptoms, number one, parents build confidence. Number two, they realize I can do this.
Len Arcuri (34:51.681)
It's a big paradigm shift.Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (35:17.41)
Number three, they overcome their fears. Number four, they develop skills because I teach them how to recognize when something is really concerning in their child's presentation. And number five, they watch their kids explode in their neurodevelopmental progression. And so they get it. And once they have the experience, I can do this.This isn't so hard. I'm skilled at this. They watch their children fly. And then I see the kids in the office for regular checkups and I can see how confident the parents are and how brilliant the kids are because they got through the fears of the parent. You know, because you hear all this, but what about the fever? No, no, no.
Like, well, if we actually look at fever, it's not a dangerous thing. And even the literature says so, but we instill a fear into parents that actually makes them lose all thought and all perspective. And once the parents in my practice start to have the experience of what riding it through can do, these kids are unbelievably strong, Glenn, unbelievably.
Len Arcuri (36:45.649)
Well Dr. Polevski, that was very eloquently put. You covered so many concepts and we can go deep on so many of them. But I think we can leave it at that. And again, at the end, you beautifully demonstrated how a parent can play a huge role in changing this trajectory. And I love that you focused on fever as the example, because that's where I keep going in terms of the concept that you introduced in your presentation you're sharing now. If you just use fever as that example, right?
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (36:52.558)
Yeah.Len Arcuri (37:13.751)
Do we need as parents to be afraid of fever and to vilify it? No, because if you look at it very differently, you can welcome it, know that the body's doing its job. Now, of course, if it gets incredibly high, sure, you may have to do something about it, but overall, the principle here is that the body has that innate ability to heal. So the last thing we wanna do is automatically suppress it, the first sign of something.Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (37:39.448)
Yeah, great.Len Arcuri (37:40.215)
So this concept of fever, which I even Donald Trump and RFK Jr. talked about in the press conference earlier this week, that example of fever, what you're suggesting is that applies in so many, that concept applies in so many other areas. And it's a very powerful perspective shift a parent can make.Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (37:58.926)
Correct. And on my website, Len, I have a whole section of called If Your Child is Sick. And then I have a checklist which I advise parents to review as to when to be concerned if your child is sick and then any of these issues become a problem. And parents come up to me at conferences, they write to me, parents I've never met before.my God, Dr. Poliski, thank you. That section really helps me. And it's there to actually hold the hand of parents so that they can build their confidence. Now there are guidelines as to when to be concerned. And, you know, I'm a clinician first, right? But I also want parents to understand that the chemicals that give you 102 fever are the same chemicals that give you 98.6.
Right? those chemicals, because if it's 60 degrees outside, how does your body temperature stay at 98.6? Well, the chemicals that produce fever are the ones that keep you at 98.6 when it's 60 degrees outside. But those are the same chemicals that are active even more when you have an increased amount of inflammatory materials that the body must burn out.
So it's not necessarily a germ because you're always germ. You're never not germ. And so the fever comes to burn out the increased amount of inflammatory material that's accumulated. And instead of you needing 98.6 to do it, now you need 102. And so it's just an increase in the chemicals that are already there.
to burn out the inflammatory materials. And I don't want to suppress the fever. I want to make the child more comfortable. And there are many ways to do that. But I don't want to take the chemical nature of what the body's doing to get rid of the fever away from the child. And that's where you get danger. And I'll finish with this.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (40:22.23)
Most people are not aware of how poisonous acetaminophen is.And I've been saying this for several decades. There's a very important chemical in the body called glutathione. And glutathione is very low in the fetus. It's very low in small children.
and it accumulates as children grow in utero and then as they go from infancy to toddlerhood. But glutathione is one of the most important antioxidants.
and detoxifying chemicals in the body. It is produced inside our cells, very much so in the liver, but inside our cells. And we need glutathione when we are sick, more than when we don't have symptoms. We need glutathione.
because it is one of the major chemicals that must step up to help our body detoxify when we are sick.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (41:42.316)
When you give acetaminophen.the liver breaks down acetaminophen, and then the second to last chemical byproduct of acetaminophen breakdown is toxic to the liver and the brain.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (42:05.644)
The body can't let that toxicity overcome the liver, the brain, and the body.So the body uses its stores of glutathione to prevent the liver from getting chewed up, to prevent the brain from getting inflamed, and to prevent the body from being exposed to this toxic byproduct of acetaminophen breakdown. So essentially what you do is you give a drug
that takes from Peter and gives to Paul. You use your glutathione in order to prevent toxicity of the liver, the brain, and the body. And then you deplete your body's glutathione to clean you out, to detoxify you when you're sick. And that reduction of glutathione and the potential
that not all the byproduct of acetaminophen metabolism is removed is what contributes to chronic inflammation, neurodevelopmental disability, and worsening health of our children and ourselves. And it's very simple. I don't need a study. I mean, I'm grateful for the studies, Len, but I don't need a study because the...
actual biochemistry of it, the pharmacology of it, pharmacokinetics of it, explain it just the way I explained it. So why would I want to use a drug that's going to pull at my ankle and pull me back when if I don't go forward, I'm going to get crushed by something that's coming from above?
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (44:11.948)
And so we're foolish if we use this medication because it is a poison and the regular use of this drug, acetaminophen, creates more liver failure.than actually anyone who overdoses on acetaminophen for a suicide attempt. So just the regular use of it creates more overdoses and more liver toxicity and more liver failure. And what is the treatment for acetaminophen overdose? N-acetylcysteine, which is the amino acid that's used to make glutathione.
Len Arcuri (44:59.758)
Yep.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (44:59.79)
So don't deplete your body of glutathione and you won't have to make more.
Len Arcuri (45:10.051)
Great, nope. I'm nodding along because what you just described, it's so incredibly relevant for my son and his journey and what happened with him. And diving deeper into acetaminophen, I think that was very helpful for people to really better understand exactly why this does pose a problem. And with more information, and again, you're not.You're not offering your opinion. This is all very well established. The only difference now is that it's all of a sudden okay to talk about it and have it be something that's more widely discussed and understood. But again, you've been at this for decades. So Dr. Polevsky, I really appreciate you again taking the time. So many important concepts you really revealed in a very digestible way. So thank you for what you do. I'll include all your links in the show notes so people can go and find out more about
what you mentioned in terms of when to let it go, when to be concerned, what parents can help them to get into that better seat to navigate what makes sense. But again, I truly appreciate you sharing your voice today. Thank you so much.
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD (46:18.51)
Thank you, Len, appreciate the conversation.
