With the Wind with Dr. Paul — Show 213: Pediatric Perspectives: Root Causes of Eczema, Seizures & Summer Health with Ben Edwards, M.D.

What's really driving the eczema and seizures showing up in kids today — and can real food, sunlight, and root-cause thinking change the picture?

In this episode of Pediatric Perspectives, I'm joined by Ben Edwards, M.D., founder of Veritas Clinic and Veritas Wellness in Lubbock, Texas. Dr. Edwards left conventional, pharmaceutical-only symptom management behind years ago, and I wanted to hear what he's seeing now that he's practicing root-cause medicine full time.

In this episode, we cover:

• How a mentor's challenge — reviewing Dr. Edwards's ten toughest, most treatment-resistant patients — changed the course of his career
• Why eczema is so often a gut problem, not just a skin problem
• The role of leaky gut, parasites, and candida in triggering the immune system
• What Dr. Edwards is finding when he looks at seizures through the lens of toxicity and inflammation
• Practical summer tips on sun exposure, sunscreen, hydration, and cooking oils
• Why screen-free family time still matters, even in the summer

From Conventional Medicine to Root-Cause Medicine

Dr. Edwards grew up watching both of his grandfathers practice family medicine in a small Central Texas town — delivering babies, setting broken bones, making house calls — and set out to do the same. After medical school and residency, he spent seven years as the only doctor in Post, Texas, practicing the same conventional, pharmaceutical-based symptom management I was trained in during my own years in pediatric practice: managing hypertension, managing eczema, managing asthma, managing diabetes, always treating the symptom. That changed when a mentor, the late Dr. Robby Mitchell — known as "Dr. Fitt" — spent nearly a year pushing back on Dr. Edwards's conventional training before finally challenging him directly: send me your ten sickest patients, the ones already referred to specialists in Lubbock or UT Southwestern who came back with no answers. Chronic urticaria that left a patient clawing herself bloody at night. Recurrent prostatitis. Uncontrolled diabetes. Fibromyalgia. Lupus. Every one of them, once a root cause was identified and addressed, came back symptom-free. That was the turning point that led him toward the practice he runs today.

Eczema, the Gut, and Hidden Triggers

Dr. Edwards explained that steroids calm the visible inflammation of eczema but don't resolve what triggered the immune response in the first place — he compares it to telling the immune system's "troops" to stand down and go back to the barracks, even though the foreign invader that called them out is still there. About 80% of the immune system sits along the gut lining, in what's called the gut-associated lymphatic tissue, or GALT. When the gut wall's tight junctions open up — "leaky gut" — foreign material crosses over and sets off that immune response. Dr. Edwards is finding parasite and candida overgrowth behind many of these cases; both are normally present in a healthy gut in small numbers, but overgrow and trigger inflammation when the surrounding microbiome loses its balance. From my own years in practice, I saw a similar pattern with food sensitivities: gluten, dairy, and eggs were very often the actual root cause once identified and removed, even in the most stubborn eczema cases. Dr. Edwards agreed, describing a recent case of Crohn's disease that resolved simply by removing gluten from the patient's diet — and noted that glyphosate exposure and antibiotic use can wipe out the roughly ninety-plus strains of good gut bacteria that normally help the body process gluten in the first place.

Seizures, Toxicity, and an Evolving Theory

Dr. Edwards described an uptick in seizures that he views, through the same lens of chronic inflammation, alongside toxin exposure — glyphosate and spike protein in particular. He's tracking elevated spike protein antibody levels, more often and more persistently in vaccinated patients with multiple boosters, though he has also seen elevated levels in unvaccinated patients following natural infection, or in those with ongoing environmental exposure. He described one recent case — a young boy who had been having seizures for months — who became seizure-free once his elevated spike protein was specifically addressed. He was careful to frame this as an evolving, individualized clinical judgment rather than an established protocol, describing it as "the art of medicine" and "educated guessing" in an area the published literature hasn't fully caught up to yet, and stressed that patients are given full informed consent — told plainly that a working theory, not a proven protocol, is guiding the approach — before trying it.

Real Food, Real Sun, and Real Rest for Summer

We closed with practical summer tips. Dr. Edwards explained that a nutrient-dense, real-food diet rich in saturated fats and minerals — rather than seed and vegetable oils — helps the skin handle sun exposure better through its own antioxidant defenses. He raised concerns about common chemical sunscreens and mitochondrial health, and prefers non-nanoparticle, zinc-oxide-based mineral sunscreens instead. On hydration, he favors water and electrolytes over sugary sports drinks, and encourages families to "eat their water" through hydrating whole foods like smoothies, cucumbers, and watermelon. For cooking, he reaches for tallow, lard, olive oil, coconut oil, and avocado oil depending on the heat, and avoids seed oils. And he closed with a reminder that still applies year-round: prioritize outdoor time, movement, and device-free family conversations.

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