As parents, there are fewer things we are more focused on than the health of our kids. But knowing what is best or getting access to solid, science-driven advice can be tough. Social media can make that even harder, with lots of misinformation floating around. That’s why we love following Dr. Mona Amin of Peds Doc Talk, a board-certified pediatrician, IBCLC and also mom of two. If you follow Dr. Mona (and if you don’t, we highly recommend it!), you know she is a wealth of information and inspiration, with no hint of judgement.
Demetra Ganias—host of MomCast (the Local Moms Network’s podcast!)—sat down with Dr. Mona, recently appointed the Chief Medical Officer to Poppins, Inc., to discuss some of the topics we all want to know more about, from vaccines to precocious puberty.
Here is an excerpt of that conversation; for more, listen to the episode on MomCast.
How did you become “Dr. Mona,” aka the voice of reason for so many parents?
I was working at a very busy practice where I had maybe 10 to 15 minutes max with patients before someone was knocking at my door to see the next patient. I needed more time to explain the things that I wanted to explain. Or a family would say “Wow, nobody has ever explained what you explained to me. Is there anywhere I can go online that I can get that same information?”
So you started sharing…
I started an Instagram account in March of 2019, and I just started posting based on what I was seeing in my office. I would do car chat videos on IGTV, which was like the oldschool form of reels. It really blossomed through the pandemic.
One of the biggest questions we hear in our mom group is about vaccines. What do you tell people who have questions?
There is a small group (of anti-vaxxers), but then a larger group of the vaccine hesitant families are the ones that are like, I’ve heard these things about vaccines. I’m not sure; I don’t know if I want to get them on schedule. That is the large majority of people that are coming to me for questions. And I think one of the huge disservices that a lot of pediatricians do is think vaccine hesitant families are automatically anti-vax.
So how do you talk through these issues with this vaccine-hesitant group?
These are families that are not pro, not anti, but just want answers. And so that is how I’ve changed. I will be honest, I am very pro [vaccine]…and my [preference] is giving the routine schedule, I have created random schedules for my families to appease them. Because in my mind, I’d rather have a family vaccinate on their own schedule than not vaccinate at all.
Once and for all, tell us, is there any connection between vaccines and autism?
So I want to be clear that we have no research between MMR and autism in the very good research that we have. The reality is autism presents itself in that toddler years…And people started to say, well, yeah, my kid got the one-year vaccine. And then six months later, they were diagnosed with autism. That wasn’t the vaccine. It was the fact that in the toddler years, that is when we see autism start to present itself. Do we have a good study that shows the entire vaccine schedule in the infancy period does not cause autism? No, but the data we do have shows that we’re not concerned about that—that autism [has] a genetic link [and some] families have a mutation that can be passed down…
I also want to ask about precocious puberty. There are so many headlines about girls getting their periods sooner…
We are seeing a rise in precocious puberty because of increased childhood obesity. In the general population, I’m talking non-obese population of children, there’s not been an increased rise of precocious puberty. So there’s not this weird epidemic.
Do we have enough data to support microplastics does not cause precocious puberty?
We do not. How much is too much? We don’t know that answer. Obviously, I don’t want my daughter and my son to go through precocious puberty if they don’t have to, right? And so when I look at plastics, I’m going to reduce my plastic threshold maybe using non-plastic food containers. So we use a lot of glass bowls versus plastic. I use stainless steel plates and cups now instead of plastic, because those are things that my kids are using every day.
Any other tips for parents navigating changing health guidelines?
I think my advice here would be always to zoom out in any decision that you’re making. [You can say] I want to do my research. But at the same time, you have to also respect that you may not be an expert at everything. Who can help me make a decision so that I’m not carrying that mental burden, that emotional burden, the physical burden of all that it takes to raise a child?
