"My Mighty Quinn" - From Tics, Turbulence, Distraction and Disconnection to Calm, Confident and Connected"

S2 Episode 6: Healing Thousands: The Man Responsible for Transforming Children's Lives with Dr Robert Melillo

• Lucia Silver / Dr Robert Melillo • Season 2 • Episode 6

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Hi, I’m Lucia Silver, and welcome to 'My Mighty Quinn.' Today, we have the privilege of speaking with Dr. Robert Melillo, a pioneer in child brain health. We’ll dive deep into understanding neurological imbalances and the groundbreaking methods that have helped countless children, including my son, Quinn. This episode is packed with insights that can guide you toward meaningful solutions.

Episode Summary
Lucia Silver is joined by Dr. Robert Melillo, a world-renowned clinician, researcher, and author specializing in child neurological disorders. The discussion explores how the Melillo Method has transformed lives by addressing root causes of conditions like ADHD, autism, and dyslexia. Lucia shares her story of Quinn’s journey to health. Topics include brain imbalances, the role of primitive reflexes, and practical solutions parents can use at home. The episode also touches on misconceptions about medication and screens, emphasizing holistic approaches.

Key Takeaways

  1. Understand Root Causes: Addressing neurological imbalances leads to more effective and lasting improvements.
  2. The Power of Movement: Physical activity and sensory engagement are essential for brain development.
  3. Practical Solutions at Home: Parents can use strategies like primitive reflex integration and motor coordination exercises.
  4. Avoid Overmedication: Medications increasing dopamine may worsen issues; holistic approaches are often better.
  5. Family Resilience: Supporting a child can lead to collective growth and resilience.

Thank you so much for joining us today on 'My Mighty Quinn.' I hope this episode offered new insights and hope for your child's journey. If you found this conversation helpful, please share it with others and leave a review. For more on Dr. Melillo’s work, visit his website: www.drrobertmelillo.com and follow him on social media. 

You can also download a free guide from this episode here: www.thebrainhealthmovement.com/brain-balance-free-guide

Let's keep this movement growing together!

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My Mighty Quinn EP12

[00:00:00] Lucia Silver: Mother's Conversations with World Leading Experts isn't just a series title, it's a reflection of the journey that brought me here today as a mother and as the founder of the brain health movement. My mission to uncover the greatest minds in child brain health is personal, born out of the relentless search for answers that I desperately needed for my son Quinn.

[00:00:22] Lucia Silver: Quinn's life was impacted by a devastatingly extreme tick, and what made it worse was the lack of understanding and solutions. From GPs to specialists, psychologists, pediatricians, psychiatrists, none could tell me why. They treated symptoms, but I wanted to know the root cause. Why was my child suffering?

[00:00:43] Lucia Silver: And why were so many other parents facing the same heart wrenching reality with no answers? And then I found Dr. Robert Melillo, and I brought you many doctors and experts through this formidable series, but today is, for me, quite overwhelming. I want to bring this phenomenally empowering man and his insights to you.

[00:01:06] Lucia Silver: Those parents and carers who are also overwhelmed, lost, alone, and desperately seeking meaningful answers as I was. I found Dr. Melillo's book, Disconnected Kids. There it is. And this was the light that finally guided me towards the understanding I was searching for. His research and understanding made me see that my son's challenges were not hopeless.

[00:01:30] Lucia Silver: They were rooted in neurological imbalances that could be addressed and, most importantly, healed. And they did. It was through his groundbreaking drug free approach, the Melillo method, that I began to see the extraordinary transformation in my mighty quince. So today I am beyond honored to introduce you to the man who helped unlock the doors that no one else could, Dr.

[00:01:53] Lucia Silver: Robert Melillo. 

[00:01:55] Dr Robert Melillo: Well, thank you very much. It's very emotional when I listen to it and I hear about you talk about Quinn. It's emotional to me because, I relate to my own children and all the children. So thank you very much. I'm really honored to be here. Thank you. 

[00:02:09] Lucia Silver: Well, Dr. Robert Melillo, for those of you who haven't heard of him, and need to, he is a world renowned professor, clinician, and researcher in child neurological disorders.

[00:02:20] Lucia Silver: He's a pioneer, and I refer to him when I refer parents to him as the king of neurodevelopment. Whose work has changed the lives of countless families, just like mine. Dr. Melillo is not just a best selling author, however. His book, Disconnected Kids, is a seminal work in the field of child development. But it is his proven drug free program that has offered hope and healing to children with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, anxiety, ticks, Tourette's, and so much more.

[00:02:49] Lucia Silver: He's blazing a trail that shows parents, doctors, and practitioners how to treat the causes, not just the symptoms. And he's giving parents like me a roadmap to recovery. So I am standing here shaking in my thermal socks. It is with immeasurable gratitude that we're going to have a chat today. And get inside this brilliant mind and heart.

[00:03:08] Lucia Silver: As I've promised throughout this journey to bridge the gap between the science and parents, I have always wanted to bring men and women of brilliance in the field, but those that carry their heart with them as well. And sometimes it's not there. And in this case, we have a very big heart with us today.

[00:03:24] Lucia Silver: So Dr. Milo, you've worked with children suffering from a wide range of neurological disorders. We'd love to hear, and for you to share, what led you, first of all, to focus on this area and what kind of transformations have you seen over the years? 

[00:03:41] Dr Robert Melillo: Yeah, well, my my first love when I was in graduate school was really neurology and rehabilitation.

[00:03:49] Dr Robert Melillo: I was an athlete when I was younger and I was interested in a sports medicine type of approach. But while I was in school, I fell in love with the science, neuroscience and neurology. And so I wanted to find a way to bridge that. And so when I graduated, I continued my training. I got a diplomate in clinical neurology and then in also in rehabilitation and then another degree a few years later in clinical rehabilitation neuropsychology and also now PhD in cognitive neuroscience.

[00:04:21] Dr Robert Melillo: So I, I went through my education, but during the way I was really interested in what was happening, but it was really when my own son was labeled with ADHD that, for me, I was already teaching a postgraduate course in clinical neurology and rehabilitation, and I was starting to do some brain research.

[00:04:39] Dr Robert Melillo: This was 1995. And the first question when someone gave me that diagnosis was, well, what is it? I didn't work with children at the time a lot but you know, I wanted to know what's actually happening in his brain. That was the first logical question for me because I thought, okay, I can try to rehabilitate it.

[00:04:57] Dr Robert Melillo: I can try to change it in some way because that's what I did. And no one can answer that question for me. When I went to any, anybody that I thought would know, psychologists, neuropsychologists, neurologists, pediatric neurologists, pediatrician, whatever, I'd say, what is happening in the brain?

[00:05:14] Dr Robert Melillo: They don't look at me like I was crazy. I don't know. I don't think anybody knows the answer to that. And then I, they said, why do you want to know? And I said, well, my son is labeled with it and I want to see if I can help him. And they said, well, there's nothing you can do about it. Nice shit. You just told me you don't know what it is.

[00:05:31] Dr Robert Melillo: So how can you tell me there's nothing I can do about it? So I realized after a while that I needed to really dive in and do it myself And that really got me into that. And fortunately this was the early nineties and Bill Clinton had declared the nineties the decade of the brain. So all of this new brain research came out and new ways of imaging the brain in real time and a new concept was emerging.

[00:05:57] Dr Robert Melillo: That there wasn't any specific lesions or physical anatomical damage to the brain. And the idea of chemical imbalances was kind of, not really being looked at as real. And the idea that there was a problem with what's called functional connectivity in the brain, the way the brain communicates, and especially looking at the two hemispheres of the brain.

[00:06:20] Dr Robert Melillo: And that was really fortunate because That's when I really started getting into this and looking at it. So it was an exciting time and it has been exciting ever since to really understand what's happening. 

[00:06:32] Lucia Silver: And in terms of this, the hemispheric approach very particularly Dr. Melillo, can you talk to us a little bit about that and what that really means in terms of remediation?

[00:06:44] Dr Robert Melillo: Yeah, well, one of the first concepts I came across when I really started researching this was a concept called unevenness of skills that kids with ADHD or with autism or with dyslexia, with any neurobehavioral issue, they weren't seen as, globally delayed. In fact, it was widely recognized that they were really gifted in certain areas, like exceptional.

[00:07:10] Dr Robert Melillo: In certain areas while at the same time struggling in other areas and so right from the beginning to me as somebody who really looked at it from a rehabilitation perspective, it sounded like some level of imbalance, which is so You know, what we deal with in rehab, we're always trying to balance things out in the body and in the motor system and in the nervous system as well.

[00:07:34] Dr Robert Melillo: And when I started looking at, what were some of the things that these kids were really good at, especially in ADHD and autism, it was, I noticed it was all left brain skills. And the things they struggled were all right brain skills. So I started understanding more and there was more research about the dynamics of this balance.

[00:07:54] Dr Robert Melillo: And again, the functional dynamics of how the brain works. And there were even people talking about possibly ADHD affecting more of the right hemisphere and autism. And so I started really looking at it from that perspective and it, every step of the way, it made sense when you looked at everything, not just cognitive and behavior or attention.

[00:08:19] Dr Robert Melillo: But when you looked at any aspect of the body, the way the brain regulates the immune system, the digestive system, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, everything is regulated differently within the right and left brain. And they're designed to coordinate and work together at all times, but they do different things.

[00:08:39] Dr Robert Melillo: And also, I had a real interest in the evolution of the brain. Where did brains develop and evolve? And it was pretty clear in evolution that all any species that had brain asymmetry going back, first of all, 500 million years to the beginning of brains were asymmetric. But the more asymmetric the brains were, the higher intellect of the animal.

[00:09:03] Dr Robert Melillo: So there was a relationship there in combining those things together, and then I looked at it from a brain developmental perspective as well, and it just all made so much sense. 

[00:09:14] Lucia Silver: Yes, which, which also sheds a little bit of light on the controversial issue of, my child is highly gifted. And I hear this a lot from our parents, it's absolutely not about criticism.

[00:09:30] Lucia Silver: It's not about anything being wrong with a child. It is about taking away those things that prevent them realizing their full potential. A child who has An immaturity in one side of their brain and a fantastic maturity in the other is going to enjoy wonders in certain areas, but will find their life potentially limited through anxiety, through certain learning difficulties, through Things that I always say to a parent, if you could take away, your child is apparently diagnosed with autism, they're brilliant in school, but they are highly emotionally dysregulated and deeply anxious every day at school and not making friends.

[00:10:14] Lucia Silver: And yes, it's absolutely wonderful that they're a genius at maths. But how about they were a genius at maths, because we're not going to be taking any of that away. But how about we also get them some friends and they start to feel more comfortable in their body. And I think there's a little bit of a confusion that's come about through the neuro diverse community where I always share my story with Quinn in this regard, Dr.

[00:10:39] Lucia Silver: Melillo, because Quinn had such an extreme tic. There's no way that I could simply say, Isn't that the fabulous new normal? Along with the other six children in his class who have got a tick because of this epidemic that we're seeing. Wouldn't those parents and wouldn't those children prefer to be free of that?

[00:10:59] Lucia Silver: And wouldn't we, let's find where this functional disconnection actually resides and let's see if we can mature, which is all we would be doing. maturing those pathways and creating some more connections where perhaps they're not there and slowing down and pruning away some of the areas that are moving too fast.

[00:11:15] Lucia Silver: We've got a lot of go going on and we got no stop.

[00:11:19] Lucia Silver: So I think within that it's to truly understand and come from a compassionate place where what would happen, and can I ask you this, if we didn't address any of it and we carried on, more maths. This kid's amazing at maths and we left the other side alone or a child who is deeply, I mean, you spoke about in your podcast the attention divide amazingly around what really is behind bipolar and depression and anxiety and some of the severe mental disorders.

[00:11:51] Lucia Silver: That can come about when we leave some of these imbalances or these functional disconnections unhelped. What can happen? 

[00:12:01] Dr Robert Melillo: Well, most likely they're going to the negative symptoms are going to get worse. And they may get so bad that they become completely dysfunctional. That's typically what happens.

[00:12:14] Dr Robert Melillo: Imbalances don't self correct. They typically get worse, especially if you're feeding into one side. And the strong side, right? I mean, just think about any imbalance. You have an area of the brain that is overactive, as you said, maybe more mature, but certainly overactive and hypersensitive and maybe hyper connected.

[00:12:35] Dr Robert Melillo: And then you have another area of the brain that's underdeveloped and under connected, both of them producing symptoms, right? Both of them creating dysfunction. And so if you feed into the strength, you make that even stronger And you may make those symptoms even worse and then you drop this side down making that side worse and so both symptoms so you know in something like autism and tics you look at tics or stimming behavior OCD behavior I mean You know, we have some children we're working on that are so OCD.

[00:13:14] Dr Robert Melillo: I mean, they can't do anything. It's really heartbreaking to watch them. They'll just sit there, stand there and scream and be like, do that again, do it again, do it. And they can't get themselves to break free of that. And it's horrible to watch, but. All we have to do is start stimulating their right brain in the right areas, and we see it immediately calms down, and it immediately changes.

[00:13:37] Dr Robert Melillo: And, if you were to then stimulate the left side of the brain, the area that's overactive, that's producing too much OCD, gets even more. It's like throwing gasoline on a fire, and then it makes their deficiencies even more pronounced. And we see this all the time. One of my main areas of research and I think one of the foundational most interesting questions in all of neuroscience is really, why don't certain kids with autism speak?

[00:14:08] Dr Robert Melillo: What literally is preventing them from speaking? No one's ever answered that I've ever been satisfied with. And the common thought is of course, well, there must be a left brain issue and there must be a problem in the language center of the brain or in the motor planning part of the brain. And it's not, those areas are actually overactive.

[00:14:30] Dr Robert Melillo: And the same area that does motor planning for speech is the same area that creates tics. And stimming behavior. So it's overactive. And so if you go and you stimulate that part of the brain to try to wake it up, you make it much worse. And we see this all the time. And it's a huge mistake. And so the idea of understanding this dynamic balance is critical.

[00:14:54] Dr Robert Melillo: And if you just feed into the child's strengths, which is really the typical behavioral approach, right? Meaning, okay, well, let's ignore their weaknesses. We don't want them to feel bad. And let's just feed into their strengths. Like you said math, math. And, they become so dysfunctional and, maybe have a psychotic break or, full blown schizophrenia.

[00:15:17] Dr Robert Melillo: They lose touch with reality. I mean, it can go many bad places really quickly. 

[00:15:22] Lucia Silver: Yeah. It's it is frightening, isn't it? And speaking to that Same idea, Dr. Mililovic. Screens and medication. I just want to touch on why, from the hemispheric point of view, both of those things also feed into Part of the problem in this over diagnosis to some extent very grateful that we've got an awareness around ADHD And we have an awareness of but in terms of the diagnoses that we get and people say to you I've got ADHD and my dad's got ADHD and we all got ADHD and it's just a thing within our family and they don't Even know what ADHD it is and they you know, and then the kids are on the Screens, and then they're talking about taking medication, they don't understand that there's already an overproduction of dopamine and they're going to be given more dopamine, and that's not going to help the problem at all, and sticking mum's screens to keep them still, or as some sort of evidence that is, my child can really focus on the screen, that's a completely different type of Focus, and it's built to hack their brains that way, right?

[00:16:23] Lucia Silver: That's what computer video games are supposed to be doing is keeping that nice short attention span fed with dopamine kicks. But why are all of these things truly unhelpful? Why are none of these things actually addressing, the drugs are not actually addressing the problem with ADHD? And screens are not actually calming the children at all, they are enervating and exacerbating the problem.

[00:16:49] Lucia Silver: Could you speak to that a little bit in terms of brain hemispheric and the melillo understanding specifically? 

[00:16:56] Dr Robert Melillo: Sure. Well, you make a very good point that I don't think most people realize. We hear these different neurotransmitters thrown out and most people think there's a deficiency of dopamine when actually ADHD, the right brain type of ADHD, the type 2, type 3, which is You know, the classic and autism and OCD, they're hyper dopaminergic states.

[00:17:20] Dr Robert Melillo: So there's too much dopamine and the left brain generate and responds more to dopamine. And when you're giving someone medication to boost their dopamine, first of all, again, if you always think in the concept of an imbalance, If you do something equal to both sides, the side that's more responsive is going to react differently than the side that's less responsive.

[00:17:45] Dr Robert Melillo: So if you do any sort of therapy bilaterally, equally, you're actually going to make the imbalance worse. And medication is like that. If you increase dopamine, so the networks that are involved in, tics or stimming or ADHD or OCD. They do involve dopamine pathways and there's two pathways in an area called the basal ganglia.

[00:18:11] Dr Robert Melillo: One is a dopamine one receptor, the other is dopamine two. One of them is excitatory and increases movement and emotions and eye movements and cognitive thoughts and ideas and motivation and the other one inhibits it and there's a delicate balance in there that's regulated by the brain and so there is an imbalance in these dopamine pathways.

[00:18:36] Dr Robert Melillo: It's not purely because there's a lot of Other neurotransmitters in this pathway and the right brain in particular really goes towards the dopamine 2 receptor and what's called the hyper direct pathway to really keep that balance. And so if you put dopamine into both sides of the system and there is an imbalance on both sides of the brain, what you do is you raise them up.

[00:19:02] Dr Robert Melillo: And so you do raise the deficiency up a little bit. And at a certain point, there may be some benefit and symptom management. But if you go, if you push it too far, you're actually going to create more hyper dopamine states and it creates tics and it creates stims. We know that with kids with ADHD, if you give them Ritalin and at a certain point, if you give them too much, you create Tourette's, you create tics.

[00:19:30] Dr Robert Melillo: Screens. Also, the way that most of the video games and even the social media networks, they design them to be addictive, right? They literally design them, and we know that these dopamine pathways are where addictions live. The same pathways that lead to tics or stimming or ADHD or OCD. And so if you're, doing a lot with screens and video games in particular, especially violent video games, first shooter games you're feeding that left brain and you're just feeding it.

[00:20:04] Dr Robert Melillo: This is why kids that are really in ADHD or autism. They're doing everything they can to feed that left brain, everything they do, running around, jumping up and down, stimming back and forth or screaming or yelling or, looking at technology or reading through a book and looking at, lining things up, everything they're doing is feeding their left brain.

[00:20:28] Dr Robert Melillo: And the video games and any of that social media as well feeds that left brain so much. And it's so hard. to bring that right brain up because that left brain is constantly being driven. And so that's why they make that much worse as well. 

[00:20:46] Lucia Silver: Yeah, and still so sensitive to it even now, Dr. with Quinn, when he doesn't go on screens, he really hardly ever does, but whenever even he watches his football, a little bit of Cobra Kai on the television, he gets up and it aggravates the stim still.

[00:21:00] Lucia Silver: So it's immediate. I can see it absolutely immediately. So it'd be very interesting just to wind back now because our, the course that we'll be doing together and the route that all our parents listening want to understand is so what can we do about it? That you talked about neuroplasticity. I talk about it all day long on the podcasts and we refer to your research papers and we refer to and teach about primitive reflex integration.

[00:21:25] Lucia Silver: But I want to go back to where this all begins, the true why. Not every child is necessarily born with a brain hemispheric imbalance or with, in Quinn's case, I believe basal ganglia encephalitis is sort of a true inflammation that has resulted in that area. in his brain.

[00:21:46] Lucia Silver: I believe it began through a traumatic birth. I believe that he had a limited range of motion. He was yanked around. I think he had primitive reflexes very early on that weren't retained. He had a very little stim early on, but no signs of anything else. And then interestingly, during COVID, this enormous stim presented where he inverts his head, he puts his head down towards his feet.

[00:22:09] Lucia Silver: He lifts one leg. And he flaps behind him. I mean, it really is the most extraordinary spectacle of a tic. And yet with that, an extremely emotionally sensitive, engaged. empathic, loving, bright boy who found that devastating. Devastating socially, exhausting physically. We didn't know too much about certain dietary interventions.

[00:22:33] Lucia Silver: I didn't at that stage as a single mom, but he had a relatively healthy diet. But I don't know whether COVID was an exacerbator. I have no idea. But we then ran into a history of, hands with him, which has opened up a whole new field of interest from parents around autoimmune disorders. But just as a global picture of one child's story and how we looked back to it, I began with developing what was, he was very off balance.

[00:23:00] Lucia Silver: He was just sort of malcoordinated. And over a period of about five months following the program at home really found him from, you'd throw a ball at him, he'd be like this. He's like a ninja now, catching balls. He was, he sort of ran with two left legs. He's now the fastest runner in the school.

[00:23:21] Lucia Silver: Super, much more coordinated. I did a lot of sort of eye convergence work with him at home as well. And then, of course, the primitive reflex integrator found the ATNR, which won't mean so much unless everyone's been following all of our podcasts, but it's a primitive reflex that should go away earlier in life, and if it's retained, it can get in the way of many things.

[00:23:43] Lucia Silver: But Dr. Milo, talk to us, take us back, take us right back to where this all begins with children and the correct course of development, please. And with that Why we can do something about it at home through following the programs that we're going to create with you and with the Melillo Method to give parents hope that we can implement something at home as I did.

[00:24:08] Dr Robert Melillo: Yeah, if we go back to the very beginning, we may be talking about, epigenetic preconception factors and all of that. But the point is that there are things that affect, that can alter the way genes are expressed during the developmental stage. And in the womb, the right brain is developing first and for the first two to three years, I think more three years.

[00:24:31] Dr Robert Melillo: And then the left brain comes on for the next three years. And this is what literally creates this imbalance in the, in, in the brain itself, meaning that so that we have this asymmetry, how do we get a right brain and a left brain where it's not genetically programmed to do that. It's really more.

[00:24:52] Dr Robert Melillo: That the growth is genetically programmed, but the way the brain is experiencing its environment and the way it's interacting with it at different stages is what shapes the foundation of the right brain and then the left brain. So there's this from the very beginning, the human brain out of all brains on the planet is more susceptible.

[00:25:14] Dr Robert Melillo: And more responsive to its environmental influences. It's designed to be that way so that our brain is shaped by our environment more than any other brain. Our genes are more sensitive and that is a good thing because it makes our brain the most adaptable, but it also makes it the most vulnerable. And what we see is that often from the very beginning, we born with these, we need to move to build our brain, right? Our brain is built first and foremost by movement and then engagement with the world around us and sensory stimulation. And the more complex we move, the more complex we engage with the world, the more it builds a more complex brain and that's how it feeds on itself.

[00:25:58] Dr Robert Melillo: And it builds from the bottom up, like building a building, starting in the lower part of our brainstem. And so when we're born we see that, we need to be able to move. And even before birth, a baby has these reflexes that they're born with that can give them these automatic type of movements when they don't have actual control over their movements with their brain yet.

[00:26:21] Dr Robert Melillo: And even in the womb, a baby needs to position themselves to come out of the womb. And if they don't position themselves properly, or if they're in a breech position, it's probably already signifying that these programmed movements aren't happening and that the muscle tone and their ability to know where their body is altered so that they're not.

[00:26:44] Dr Robert Melillo: And then they need to literally help to push themselves out of the womb with using these reflexes that help them turn, that help them squeeze. that help them literally extend their body and push themselves out. And they need to use that. And then they need to roll over side to side at three to five months, and then they should crawl on their belly and the commando crawl.

[00:27:08] Dr Robert Melillo: And every stage they're using these reflexes, like the asymmetric tonic neck reflex. And then they get up and then they go and their hands start to open. And that open gets rid of the palmar grasp and they rock. And that's the symmetric tonic neck reflex, and that inhibits the tonic labyrinthine reflex, and that leads to crawling, and that leads to sitting up, and that leads to pulling up, and that leads to standing.

[00:27:33] Dr Robert Melillo: And then at 12 months, almost exactly, a child should walk and say three to five words. and be able to point and look somebody in the eye and all of that should happen and at that point the reflexes go away, right? And then what we see is that many kids don't position themselves in their breech and already there's an issue.

[00:27:56] Dr Robert Melillo: Many kids don't come out of the womb or and they have a c section and so they don't use those reflexes. One of the first milestones is that babies should be able to latch on and breastfeed. And we see about 90 percent of the kids we work with, especially the non speaking, they couldn't latch on perfectly.

[00:28:15] Dr Robert Melillo: And they may have a tongue tie or lip tie, but more often than not, they don't, or that's overdiagnosed. And right from the beginning, there's something with their muscle tone and their movement that is already off. And it most likely is going to impact the right brain development and cause that left brain to come online too early.

[00:28:33] Dr Robert Melillo: And so this is the beginning, I think, of what I believe of everything. 

[00:28:38] Lucia Silver: Absolutely. And it's, we sing this, sing from the same hymn sheet all the time on this one. And it's my poo again of the medical industry. Your health inspector comes and visits you when you're a pregnant mum and kind of If she knows anything, she might know he, she might know about the moro reflex and prod your child and check that it's there.

[00:28:58] Lucia Silver: But nobody talks to you about them. Nobody talks to you about the fact they shouldn't be there past a certain point. So they're absolutely, and for me, we would get this information into the hands of a woman or the teenagers before they're even thinking of conceiving, let alone as we're all finding out with, dysregulated teenage children where we missed a trick.

[00:29:19] Lucia Silver: So long ago, and yet we know tummy time, but we don't know why tummy time. Or we know, get them, we sort of know get them moving, but we don't really understand why. Because nobody explained, and I see myself as a pretty informed, intelligent woman, that movement was at the hub of it all. My child needed to move.

[00:29:41] Lucia Silver: That was the pivotal, way that his brain was going to build. I thought I just needed to nourish him, love him, cuddle him, but I didn't realize perhaps that I didn't get him down on the floor enough or out in the garden enough moving around or with a sensory stimulation. It's just the information astonishingly is not out there and cynically.

[00:30:03] Lucia Silver: The information you do get is around ultra processed creams and cereals and where the money is. There's no money in free movement in your garden, to be cynical, nobody tells you, move. And it's why we said the brain health movement matters. That's our, that's our strapline. But it's devastating in a way.

[00:30:25] Lucia Silver: How simple what is required is, but how incredibly challenging it has become in our socio economical circumstances. Dr. Miller, I'll say to some of my mums, they're single mums and they're, well, the only babysitting reprieve I get is sticking a screen in their hand or, the kid's two years old and there's a screen in their face.

[00:30:47] Lucia Silver: There's no sensory, there's no motor, there's no engagement, there's no feedback, there's nothing going on there. That child is literally being. Stunted at every level. But you try to tell that to a mother who's on her own, raising a child, has no support. It's not easy. It's not easy to do all the things that we now know we need to do including cooking home cooked meals, get them off the processed food, get them off the screen, get them out in the garden.

[00:31:13] Lucia Silver: It's so much easier, iPad for six, seven hours and off you go. Bob's your uncle. 

[00:31:20] Dr Robert Melillo: Yeah, my wife taught me a lot of this and she, in the beginning when my kids were fighting and screaming at dinnertime, and I thought it was supposed to be lovely, and she said to me, whoever told you it was going to be easy who, what made you think that?

[00:31:34] Dr Robert Melillo: I mean, What gave you the right to think that this was going to be easy? It's not. Parenting has never been easy. And that's the problem. One of our, the biggest lifestyle change as we talk about that has really propelled all of this is really our lack of movement. It really started with the development of computers.

[00:31:53] Dr Robert Melillo: In the early 80s, and since then, we have had a sharp decline and the lack of movement and the decrease in movement, which is increasing and has increased even more since COVID has really been the main, the number one lifestyle issue, and it's the number one change anybody can make is to try to do that.

[00:32:13] Dr Robert Melillo: But like you said, I think we've also been moving more and more into this kind of world where we're trying to make everything so easy for everybody. And what happens is we're losing resilience. When you talk about trauma, childhood trauma, adverse childhood experiences, or any trauma or any difficulty in the world what pulls some people through?

[00:32:38] Dr Robert Melillo: And what makes other people collapse and more and more, we're seeing that people just fold under any sort of pressure. It's what we call resilience and resilience is it is a is something in the brain itself that is grown and developed primarily in the right brain and it has to do with being able to emotionally regulate yourself.

[00:33:00] Dr Robert Melillo: And being able to, put yourself in a calm state in the face of chaos or danger. And what would the only way to build resilience is by challenges, right? It's just like the only way to build a muscle. is to push it. If you don't push the muscle, it's not going to get stronger. And if you do everything, normal, it's actually going to get weaker.

[00:33:25] Dr Robert Melillo: So the only way to push the immune system is to challenge it, not to sanitize the whole world and keep so many kids and make sure they don't eat anything when they're younger. And it's also not to protect them from any difficulty. And yes, resilience is what we're losing in kids and you're not preparing them for the real world.

[00:33:50] Dr Robert Melillo: And when you're just sticking a screen in the child's face, one is that you're actually making their problem worse. And I understand it, but again, nobody said parenting was going to be easy. And, there's nobody to, there's no blame or whatever it is, what it is. And there is ways to help your child, and I believe that every parent that has a child that's disabled was given that child for a reason, because that person is capable.

[00:34:17] Dr Robert Melillo: That person is able to do that, and they're, they can help their child, and they're uniquely qualified to do that. Bye. Also, if they just pass it off on a screen, they're not tapping into their potential and their resilience and their ability to overcome that challenge in their life that, I think that they were given for a reason.

[00:34:43] Lucia Silver: And that's such a beautiful way of seeing it. And I often talk about it. Dr. Malala is the whole family nervous system. It's all of our journeys together, collectively. And I think I really saw results with Quinn because I did the exercises with him. We did it together as a collective.

[00:35:02] Lucia Silver: We built resilience together. We challenged ourselves together as a family unit. We did the movements. We changed our lifestyle. We cooked together. We discovered life. We've never been big on the screen, particularly at home. But. But it's just me and my little boy. So we really learned how to do this journey together.

[00:35:21] Lucia Silver: And the beautiful thing that happens, he's definitely very left brain dominant, so he's very, he can be incredibly motivated and disciplined and sort of focused, is that as you're doing the work at home, as you're doing the primitive reflex integration, we're doing balance work, I'm giving him more and more complex stuff or we're throwing things at one another and catching it in different ways and we're feeling the benefit.

[00:35:45] Lucia Silver: And I think that's how I try to remind parents is that everything does get easier. It's not easy, it's not easy, but everything gets easier because you feel better and better. You feel more in your body, you feel more balanced, you feel more engaged, you feel more confident, you feel more alive.

[00:36:04] Lucia Silver: Your experience is becoming much more visceral and connected. I mean, my mighty twin, it's the story of, from tics, turbulence, disconnection, and what's our favourite? To confidence, connection, right? That was our journey. And I think rather than seeing it as the kid needs to do the work, there was no question for me.

[00:36:29] Lucia Silver: My really divine opportunity was to be in service to this little guy that I've brought in. And everything that he was reflecting back was my opportunity for growth. And I really feel that every day with us, what he's brought to me. Is the greatest gift I could ever have, not just because he's my son, but because of this growth to genuinely understand what I needed to understand for myself.

[00:36:57] Lucia Silver: So if you, the rewards are huge. What can I say? 

[00:37:01] Dr Robert Melillo: Yeah. And I think that, that's the idea is that. One of the reasons why we give a child a screen is because we want to use our screens. And that's something that we have to sacrifice something ourselves. To, and we need to get our child to sacrifice something so that we can get something better out of it and really that human connection.

[00:37:25] Dr Robert Melillo: And that's the way life works. I mean, you don't get anything for nothing. There's no, there's nothing free and everything takes some work. And, for a neurotypical family, it's a fight every day. Parenting is not easy for anybody. And many parents who have a child with a disability, They don't realize that.

[00:37:44] Dr Robert Melillo: They think, well, it must be so easy for No, it's not easy and it's hard and I'm not minimizing that in any way. But, again, the rewards are huge and it makes your child, a better version of themselves and it makes you a better version of yourself. And it just takes, some sacrifice.

[00:38:03] Dr Robert Melillo: Give up your phone, give up their phone, do the work, sit down with them, play with them, give them toys, interact with them, ignore social media. It's not easy, but it is something that, like you said, the rewards are great for it. 

[00:38:19] Lucia Silver: They're huge. And I wanted to touch a little bit on what your bestie, Dr.

[00:38:24] Lucia Silver: Peter Skyer, and you were talking about. He's he's a wonderful partner in crime and your podcast series Everything Brain is my It's my secret sauce, I love it. That I would like to just touch on. Dr. Peter Sky was saying, that there is comorbidity within a lot of the conditions, so you very rarely just see.

[00:38:41] Lucia Silver: We talk about attention constantly, don't we, with ADHD, but actually it often comes hand in hand with emotional dysregulation, with anxieties, with apparent learning difficulties and so forth. But he also talked about what comes downstream. You've talked a lot about building the brain from the bottom up, but there are a lot of connected challenges, further challenges that can arise when some of these fundamental foundational platforms are not in place, such as these autoimmune disorders, some of the gastrointestinal issues, some of the Yeah, I mean, so speaking to some of the many chronic health conditions that appear to be related, appear to come hand in hand with some of these conditions, and there is a field of thought that says that's because the gut was out at the beginning, not the brain.

[00:39:32] Lucia Silver: We need to look at diet, and diet alone will cure this. I can speak to huge improvements with Quinn's dysbiosis, which will mean something to some of our parents who have explored gut, the gut and immunity and how important it is. And we've certainly seen incredibly positive outcomes from removing.

[00:39:53] Lucia Silver: any processed foods. He didn't, he never had much sugar anyway. He's off gluten and he's off any inflammatory foods and he masters it brilliantly. I'm very fortunate that we do that well, but I would love you to talk to how these conditions are going sometimes hand in hand. Are they related to chicken and egg?

[00:40:13] Lucia Silver: Because the course we're going to be doing with you, Dr. Melillo, will be addressing things around the gut and diet as well as our primitive reflex work, as well as parenting screening, as well as. The nervous system and Good parenting and so forth. But can we speak to the gut a little bit and what's happening there?

[00:40:30] Dr Robert Melillo: Sure. Yeah. From a chicken and egg standpoint, I mean, from my perspective, clearly it's the brain that is the foundational issue. And I'll tell you why when a child is born they have a leaky gut to begin with because the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight, And there's a nuclei in the brainstem called the rostral ventral lateral medullary nucleus is fully on that point.

[00:40:57] Dr Robert Melillo: And and so the gut from the beginning, is it really designed to do much, but just kind of let breast milk go through, right? Or formula, but ideally breast milk. And so it's naturally open and leaky because the child really isn't producing their own antibodies when they're first born. So they get those antibodies through their mother's breast milk.

[00:41:23] Dr Robert Melillo: And those are large proteins that wouldn't get through a normal mature stomach lining. And again, the breast milk is pretty much predigested. There isn't a lot of digestion that needs to go on. So the gut doesn't produce at that point really much in the way of digestive enzymes or acid in the stomach.

[00:41:43] Dr Robert Melillo: There is some bacteria and flora that Again, it's supposed to be a lot of it comes from the mother's vaginal canal. And so if they don't come through that, but they're not doing all that much right there because there isn't a lot they need to do. And so most of the blood flow is being diverted from by the sympathetic nervous system to the motor system to move.

[00:42:08] Dr Robert Melillo: and to the brain to grow. And the brain is growing more than anything else, by far. It goes from 20 percent of the adult size at birth to 90 percent in the first three years. So most of the energy, especially in the beginning, in the first year is really towards brain development and not towards gut regulation.

[00:42:30] Dr Robert Melillo: But as the brain matures, and as the brainstem matures, Another nuclei in the lower part called the nucleus ambiguous, which is the parasympathetic nervous system over the first year as we start to eat solid food. Now, the baby is starting to produce their own antibodies and immune system. And as they're eating solid food, they need to now be able to break down that food.

[00:42:58] Dr Robert Melillo: And when that, comes in, There can be also bad things on that food like bugs or bacteria or viruses. So now we start producing acid and enzymes and the gut starts to close up under the direction of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is developing. is the last thing to mature in the brainstem as the primitive reflexes go away, which are also coming from that same area.

[00:43:27] Dr Robert Melillo: And then also as the vestibular system is starting to develop in that area as well. And so it, it's all led by the brain and the brainstem and the gut when it's first born isn't really designed to do all that much. Until we start eating solid food, which isn't really until six or seven months in. So it really is.

[00:43:49] Dr Robert Melillo: And if it's not doing that, if it's not progressing, if it stays open and leaky, it's because the brain isn't maturing, not because the gut isn't maturing. So it doesn't start in the gut. It starts in the brainstem and ultimately then the brain, which is supposed to come down and regulate all of this. And so that's where You know, healing the gut is important and it's helpful and all of that is good, but it does not start in the gut.

[00:44:18] Dr Robert Melillo: And that's where a lot of practitioners who don't really know anything about the brain, they're taught that it all starts in the gut. And listen, healing the gut and working with the gut is never going to be a bad thing. It's always a good thing. But if you think that's the root cause, you're wrong and you're missing the root cause and you're never going to fully heal the gut.

[00:44:40] Dr Robert Melillo: Until you actually get the brain to work properly. 

[00:44:43] Lucia Silver: So if I'm looking at a trajectory like Quinn's, we have done a lot of that foundational brain. We've gone back, we've done it in the order that we're supposed to. We're getting those, the vestibular and eye convergent, the primitive reflexes, the postural reflexes.

[00:44:56] Lucia Silver: We're building. And then we realize that there is further down the road an autoimmune condition that is presenting. And we have started now to look at gut. Is that the right order of play? I mean, simply put, parents say to me, well, where do I start?

[00:45:14] Lucia Silver: I always say, you've got to go back. You've got to build the foundations. And then yes, if there are foods that are inflammatory and there is a leaky gut, and there is an issue I kind of put it simply, if there was an immature brain somewhere, there was going to be an immature gut, or there was going to be issues, there were going to be knock on effects on the gut.

[00:45:31] Lucia Silver: So we missed a trick early on. So in the same way that you can see huge reparations, huge rehab through the work that you do from a motor sensory point of view. I believe you can then move on and look at the gut as well and see further change. And the sweet spot is between those disciplines that you bring together.

[00:45:55] Lucia Silver: It is functional neurology and functional medicine, as Dr. Peter Sky was talking about. And well, and that connects of course to immunology and the immunity. A lot of parents don't even understand that the gut is also directing a lot to do with the immune system, right? So there's an interrelationship there.

[00:46:11] Lucia Silver: Is that sequencing? It's a big question. Sequencing. What goes when? And I know we'll take them through in our course, but yeah, just talk to sequencing there and from a remediation point of view. 

[00:46:23] Dr Robert Melillo: Yeah, I like the way you put that because, that's important. The brain builds in sequences as the body builds in sequences, right?

[00:46:31] Dr Robert Melillo: You don't get a child that comes out of the womb and all of a sudden stands up and starts running and can recite Shakespeare. Doesn't work that way. There's a developmental blueprint that I refer to. There's a blueprint of the ideal way that a person's brain is built. And what happens in those first six years sets the foundation for your whole life.

[00:46:53] Dr Robert Melillo: So the the fate of the adult brain is in those first six years. So we know that, all, virtually all adult mental health issues really start in childhood, and they may not show up until, autism shows up usually by three or four, ADHD shows up by five or six, dyslexia shows up maybe around ten, eleven, twelve, schizophrenia shows up in the twenties, bipolar may show up in the twenties or the thirties, and then dementia is kind of the end of the spectrum.

[00:47:23] Dr Robert Melillo: The end result of that, right? So it all is developmental. And all of it starts with that. And so there is these stages and it starts with the body and the posture and the muscles and the spine, which is the foundation of all movement. That's what it centers around. And then it goes, as we're moving, we're also building the inner ear, and then we're also building our oculomotor system, and this is all related to an area called the cerebellum.

[00:47:50] Dr Robert Melillo: And that is the foundation, basically, of the two hemispheres of the brain, and the whole, and we build it from the bottom up, and then we build the brain, and then it comes down, and it regulates everything. And the balance of the immune system from the very beginning is really regulated by this sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.

[00:48:10] Dr Robert Melillo: which starts in the lower brainstem, but then ultimately the brain comes down and says, all right, now I'm going to take over and make sure that this is working in the most proper and most refined way. And that is a great advantage. And so from the beginning, we have to look at the developmental trajectory.

[00:48:29] Dr Robert Melillo: That's why doing eye exercises first with a child. doesn't make sense, but down the road, it's a really great tool. And also, I think we can work with the gut early on, but again, there's not that much that the gut is really doing in the first six, seven, eight months, really. But then as the gut starts to come on, we want to be able to give them.

[00:48:53] Dr Robert Melillo: And one of the biggest problems from the beginning is, whenever there's any dairy sensitivity, which is, where kids aren't supposed to be getting really cow's milk from the beginning. And there, there is usually a sensitivity right from the beginning with the development of eczema.

[00:49:12] Dr Robert Melillo: And the brain ultimately regulates the balance of that sympathetic and the balance of the immune system so that it's either hyperactive or underactive. And so it all comes down to that. But I think working with the gut, working with the diet and nutrition, as we're building the brainstem, as we're building the brain, these are the different stages, but we can do all of it.

[00:49:33] Dr Robert Melillo: We don't have to wait too long, but we, doing everything from the gut, from an infant or early on is really, not the number one focus in the beginning. 

[00:49:45] Lucia Silver: No, absolutely. I think if you see that in some cases with teenagers. The access point.

[00:49:50] Lucia Silver: It's like, where do you begin? Parents will say to me, look, I can't even get in the bedroom door with my teenage without them going, Oh, I've got a hangover, how am I going to begin with primitive reflexes? How am I going to begin with changing diet, getting them off? Where do I start? Ask Dr.

[00:50:06] Lucia Silver: Malini that. What's the, how do I step in with the technology? And I'm like, well, vagal tone, maybe mum, we can get you, calm first, let's get you breathing, then maybe Kitty can, some, I don't know whether you consider, once again, your interactive Tomatis method, or any, or the lasers, anything to, you're at home, you've got a rampant teenager, you can't get in the door to start the program, what's your calm with your with the program, what are we going to be saying on our course to parents who are, this is great, I get it, now, thank you for educating me, My teenager hates me.

[00:50:44] Lucia Silver: I can't even get in the door. How do you begin? 

[00:50:47] Dr Robert Melillo: Well, that's where, when they get to teenage years, it's harder only because, you need some level of buy in from them, right? And that speaks to the work you've done as a parent up to that point, right? Can you get your child, do they have enough respect for you?

[00:51:06] Dr Robert Melillo: Even in teenage years to where when you say you have to do this, they're going to do it. And, that's why starting early and, again, if you get a teenager, there are ways to start there. But with children especially with young children, even in the most difficult case, and even in, older kids, We can do it, but it can get, sometimes it needs to get a little bit more aggressive unfortunately, but that's part of it.

[00:51:35] Dr Robert Melillo: Meaning that, you mean a parent may need to be more, stronger and say, you have to do this, or literally, kind of force them to sit down and you're going to do this. Because, it's If a child's drowning and they're pushing you away, you may have to do things like grab them from behind to save their life, right?

[00:51:56] Dr Robert Melillo: But really, the way it starts is that we start with using reflexes. We don't ask the child to really do almost anything on their own. Because we have kids that can't do anything, they have no control over their own body. They're stimming like crazy, they don't have any control, and so we need to do it to them.

[00:52:16] Dr Robert Melillo: And stimulating the reflexes, not doing primitive reflex exercises first, but learning how to stimulate them properly, is something that I think I've developed that really has changed, I think, the face of looking at primitive reflexes, because up till I started talking about just really stimulating them, the only way to work with them was either to make them do exercises or passively put them through this movement, and neither one of them, is really a good option with certain kids.

[00:52:48] Dr Robert Melillo: We also use different reflexes, so we're not requiring them to do much, and the idea is to get their brain to change. And then as it changes, they become more compliant. They become more willing to do it. They're capable of doing more. And then we get them to do more. We get them to do more in the way of building their body and moving and, strengthening their body and increasing their feedback to their brain and their awareness and their self awareness.

[00:53:16] Dr Robert Melillo: And then again, they become more. They want to do more once they start feeling that they want to engage in it. And we get kids that, they scream and yell and cry and fight in the beginning. And then, within a week, they're not. And then within two weeks, they're asking the parent to do it to them, right?

[00:53:33] Dr Robert Melillo: They're saying, can you do this? Can you do, or they're coming up with a. saying, stimulate my reflexes, or they do some of these things on their own because they know it helps them. So the point is, we just need to get a foothold and the way you start is by stimulating the reflexes and that starts everything on its trajectory.

[00:53:55] Dr Robert Melillo: And then from there, the more you can add. As you go down the road, the more you're going to gain momentum and the more change you're going to get, the more the child is usually going to buy in. And and then we, we build on that success and it breeds more success until we get. To where we want to be, which is optimal, the optimal version of that child or adult.

[00:54:19] Lucia Silver: Absolutely. I mean, I can speak to that with full colors that it really does happen that way as your child is feeling happier in themselves, more regulated in themselves, that's exactly what happens. Dr. Mililu, just as we're rounding off, it would be great to hear some success stories, but specifically from those parents who, like me, and like our parents listening, are going to be following our course and doing this at home, because I know that so much of what you are doing is to support children.

[00:54:48] Lucia Silver: As many people as possible. I know that we're both in service to as many people as we can reach with what we're doing. And this is very much what the Brain Health Movements course is going to be about and what all our free guides that we put out and all the information that we try and disseminate. But I really would love you to encourage our parents to understand that medication is not the preferred route, that really this is getting to the root cause.

[00:55:14] Lucia Silver: And what have you seen with at home therapy? work with mom, with dad, with mom and dad, with carers, whoever might be your primary caretaker. What's happening at home with this course and what success are you seeing? 

[00:55:29] Dr Robert Melillo: Our success is really amazing. I mean, every day I'm doing and my staff, we're interacting with people literally from around the world.

[00:55:37] Dr Robert Melillo: I'm sitting in my newest office here in New York City and we have people that fly in. We have a family that's here from New Zealand this week and this is the third time they visited us, but they started as a home program about three years ago. And this was a child who was five years old, a young girl, and she literally had never even really been able to sit up.

[00:56:00] Dr Robert Melillo: She just crawled on the ground and literally dragged her leg, her legs like a snake behind her. And her legs were all withered and they didn't, they really didn't move. And nobody knew why. No one could understand anything. And they didn't know what to do. And they were doing all these things to try to get her to stand up and when she didn't have any ability to do that, and we just started with simple, foundational work of building some core activity and getting the parents to start working with the primitive reflexes and starting the process going and and now this little girl is not only standing.

[00:56:39] Dr Robert Melillo: She can stand on her own but she's on the verge of walking, which everybody said was completely impossible. And now she's starting to speak because once you stand up and walk, then you're going to talk. You're not going to really talk before you walk. She's We had to start with the foundation on the ground of building strength and getting some strength into her legs and, removing whatever was blocking it, which was predominantly these reflexes that wouldn't go away because she didn't progress to her next stage of movement.

[00:57:10] Dr Robert Melillo: And, to me, the biggest inspiration is the mom. And she has her older sister who's here and, they are just unbelievable. They're incredibly positive and they're constantly, celebrating every little gain and they never give up and they never get frustrated and they're like and this is as hard as it can get, but they've rallied their family together and all the children and the parents are like one big team working towards this little girl in it.

[00:57:39] Dr Robert Melillo: It's really miraculous and beautiful to watch and it's, and they have every right to have frustration or to complain or say, why me, or, and they never do that. And they just inspire so many other people throughout the world. That's one example of that, but you know every day we're interacting with our patients.

[00:58:01] Dr Robert Melillo: We're reevaluating our patients every day and we just get incredible results and that's why I know what we do works better than anything because I see people that have come from all over the world that have tried everything and I hear their stories. I mean we'll do You know, 10, 15, 000 visits in our offices this year alone.

[00:58:21] Dr Robert Melillo: We hear a lot. We see a lot. We have a big sample. And I know what we're doing is working and it really is getting incredible results. And, there's nothing more, and I'm always looking at how we can make it better. And that's why we're always doing the research as well. 

[00:58:39] Lucia Silver: Yeah. And there is formidable research, which we'll be sharing as well in the footnotes, which we've shared throughout in our.

[00:58:45] Lucia Silver: In our posts as well, I think it goes without saying that this is. This is peer reviewed, double blind. It's everything that it needs to be. It's from established institutions. Cambridge, Harvard. There's been publications in the British Medical Journal. Astounding work, which is, as I say, paving the way for not just parents and children, but for other doctors, for goodness sake, to get on board and read and start to really follow everything that, that Mr. The fine Mr. Malone here is creating for us. Honestly, I am beyond today. It is really amazing to be face to face and I'm going to be showing this to Quinn later, he's been asking all about you. Hope that this is something that really resonates for our parents. We will definitely speak to you again and we will be working on the course, which we're releasing later this year.

[00:59:36] Lucia Silver: We'll be producing a free guide from today's session as well. And if anyone has any questions, let us know. But for today, Dr. Melillo, thank you for your inspiration. Thank you for your dedication. And you've just put a whole nother bit of dynamite up my, I'm ready to go again. I'm so excited. Thank you.

[00:59:56] Dr Robert Melillo: Well, thank you because it's really moms like you that have motivated me and keep me going in this fight. And it has been a fight, but the good news is that We're starting to win. I mean, I am getting pediatricians, pediatric neurologists, people around the world, doctors around the world are now reaching out to me.

[01:00:15] Dr Robert Melillo: I just had a family that was referred to me from the Middle East. There is a doctor in the middle of this war right now in Palestine, and he referred this family to come to see me in New York. And he's a pediatrician and It's just unbelievable that this is starting to change and it's, again it's a fight that's being led by parents.

[01:00:38] Dr Robert Melillo: I'm just trying to supply you with the information and the help, but you know, it's something that we are starting to win and we're making a big impact and it's thanks to people like you, so thank you. 

[01:00:48] Lucia Silver: We're starting to win. We're starting to win. And actually, funnily enough, it's from the bottom up.

[01:00:53] Lucia Silver: It's like the groundswell experience of what is really happening. For our children, for our parents, swelling up back to, I'm a governor at my kid's school, getting that information back into the governing body, getting it into local government, getting it into education. And I'm really proud, I've got two GPs who have asked me to come and speak.

[01:01:14] Lucia Silver: And these are GPs whose hands are usually shackled and tied, because they don't talk about root causes. They talk about, we're an allopathic, we treat illness, we don't treat health, certainly in the UK. We're not into integrative medicine, we just want to give you something that's going to mask, medicate or manage.

[01:01:32] Lucia Silver: And so for me, these are little victories. Every single time we get a conventional doctor, a primary care doctor on board, who knows nothing and is Willing to ask why. Curiosity is everything. Curiosity is humility. Curiosity is power. And ultimately, as I say on the Brain Health Movement, information is the mothership.

[01:01:53] Lucia Silver: Arm yourself. Educate yourself. And you will have what you need to move forwards. Just get some guidance from the right people. And you're going to be okay and your kid's going to be okay too. Just fight on, please.

[01:02:06] Dr Robert Melillo: Great message. 

[01:02:08] Lucia Silver: Well, thank you so much.