Households everywhere will agree.
Doctors have their best-kept secrets for staying healthy, even amid consistent exposure to sick and contagious patients all day, every day. Even so, two social media fan-favorite doctors just revealed one patient population known to wreak havoc on physicians’ immune systems.
On a February 2026 episode of his podcast, The Checkup, board-certified family medicine doctor Dr. Mike Varshavski—often referred to as simply “Dr. Mike”—interviewed Florida pediatric emergency medicine physician with 9.2 million social followers, Dr. Meghan Martin—though she’s better known to her followers as @Dr.Beachgem10. As the two practitioners discussed insider healthcare wisdom, Dr. Varshavski asked Dr. Martin: “Why is it—and I’m going to give you a little complaint here—when we, as family medicine doctors, are on our pediatric rotations, where we essentially function as a pediatrician alongside other residents in pediatrics: why do we always get sick on the pediatric rotation?”
“It’s tough,” Dr. Martin replies. “Yeah, no—everyone does. You have to get through your compliment of pediatric illnesses. And once you get through, like, the 10 or 12 illnesses, then you pretty much never—you get like one or two a year, until you become a parent. As a parent, you will get sick with your child for the first year and a half of their life as long as they’re in daycare. If they’re not in daycare, then you’ll do it when they go to kindergarten.”
“It’s annoying though,” says Dr. Varshavski.
“It’s the worst!” replies Dr. Martin. “And it happens to all the [medical students] who come and rotate with us.”
“Every single one, right?”
“Yep,” Dr. Martin confirms. “It’s tough.”
Dr. Varshavski closes the discussion by saying that typically, providing care for children in the outpatient setting means the patient is only “mildly sick,” not admitted. In these cases, he often tells the parent that the illness can be good for the child because “it’s training their immune system.”
However, the two doctors agreed during the episode that the vaccination schedule before age two is essential. Dr. Martin says she used to see only a couple patients per every few weeks who were unvaccinated, whereas now only around 75% are vaccinated. Dr. Varshavski said that’s unfortunate not only for unvaccinated children (who Dr. Martin says are, in fact, experiencing higher rates of viral infection), but also for the general population—because 95% vaccination rates in communities are what create herd immunity.
For more wellness updates, subscribe to The Healthy newsletter and follow The Healthy on Facebook and Instagram. Keep reading:
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