In this episode of Roots of Healing, Dr. Siri Chand Khalsa sits down with integrative pediatrician Dr. Noemi Adame, known as the Veggies Over Pills Doctor, for a deeply grounded conversation about why healthy children cannot exist without healthy, resourced adults around them.

Dr. Adame shares her journey from growing up in a Mexican immigrant household shaped by matrilineal “kitchen table medicine,” through hospital-based and corporate pediatrics, to building a concierge practice that restores time, trust, and continuity of care. Together, they explore how moral injury in corporate medicine affects both clinicians and families, and why relationship-based models allow for true healing, especially for neurodivergent children.

The conversation moves beyond labels to examine how nourishment, sleep, nervous system regulation, spiritual health, community, and meaning shape children’s emotional and cognitive wellbeing. Dr. Adame also discusses her Veggies Over Pills framework, whole food plant-based nourishment, parent burnout prevention, healing from medical trauma, and why tending to parents’ inner lives is essential for children to thrive.

This episode is an invitation to rethink pediatric care as a family-centered, whole-person, and deeply relational practice rooted in compassion, presence, and sustainable change.

1. How matrilineal and cultural healing traditions inform modern integrative pediatrics
2. Moral injury in corporate medicine and what clinicians lose when time disappears
3. Why neurodivergence requires personalization, not protocols
4. Whole food plant-based nourishment as a foundation for emotional regulation and cognition
5. The role of sleep, movement, nature, and nervous system health in children’s behavior
6. Preventing parental burnout as a primary pediatric intervention
7. Spiritual health: meaning, values, inner peace, and community belonging
8. Healing from medical trauma through relationship-based, direct-care models
9. Retreats, food education, and community spaces that restore families

Dr. Noemi Adame, also known as the Veggies Over Pills Doctor, is a board-certified pediatrician, whole-foods, plant-based (WFPB) home cook and baker, writer, public speaker, and holistic wellness expert.

She is the owner of Culver Pediatric Center, a pediatric clinic that transforms the mind, body, and spirit health of children by empowering and educating their families, communities, and schools in holistic nutritional wellness.

In addition to her general pediatrics residency training, Dr. Adame has completed additional education in nutrition through the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and training in the integrative management of ADHD and autism through the Andrew Weil Institute for Integrative Medicine.

Dr. Adame writes a bi-monthly column for The Culver Citizen titled “Get Healthy with Dr. Adame,” hosts wellness retreats for parents to prevent parental burnout, and is currently working on a cookbook focused on nourishment for neurodivergent children.

She lived in Costa Rica from 2013–2014 in the...