Children’s immune Systems
By Phillip Wade
When we consider what differentiates a child from an adult, several factors come to mind including:
- immune resilience to combat high exposure to germs to which their immune system has not been previously exposed
- high nutrient requirements to support rapid growth
- constant movement requiring suppleness combined with strength and
- heightened brain activity from the learning processes of lessons, language, evaluating peer behaviour and learning adult/family/teacher social customs.
Immune resiliance
Also, their immune system is relatively more capable than an adult’s to fight off disease – given a healthy nutritional status.
This capability is due to their highly-developed thymus gland – a key feature in the child’s lymphatic system that provides almost infinite supplies of “T-Lymphocytes”. These white blood cells will attack any “foreign body” that comes into contact with the cells without prior recognition.
That’s why they call it “innate immunity”.
This gland’s fighting power is partnered with the abundant concentration of white blood cell-rich lymphatic tissue in the child’s tonsils, adenoids and spleen.
The abundance and activity of these white blood cells can be greatly enhanced by a significant factor with added vitamin C and associated micronutrients. See this link.
The final chapter in the T-lymphocyte story is that some of them are specialised in presenting the “dead virus bodies” to cells of the “B” (bone marrow) cells so that they may create antibodies against the same virus or bacteria and remember this “invader” for long periods (acquired immunity).
So the next time the same virus or bacteria attacks, they are ready for it and attack it with antibodies (immunoglobulin).
High exposure to germs.
This means that they are susceptible to being exposed to a given disease because of continued, close contact in the classroom and playground, and to which their immune system may not have had prior recognition. So their additional, built-in infection fighting innate immune cells can better deal with this constant “novel” exposure.
By contrast, an adult may have been exposed to the same microbe in most cases and may have already acquired immune resistance.
That means that over time, the adult thymus gland is not as engaged as the child’s.
Childhood Diseases.
The epidemic diseases such as chicken pox and measles can affect children differently, depending on their nutritional status. That is because their thymus gland and tonsils require key nutrients to generate white blood cells – nutrients traditionally found in fresh whole foods and the water supply. These nutrients include vitamins, minerals, essential fatty and amino acids as well as anti-oxidants of various types found in hundreds of food plants.
That means to you that – given a healthy thymus/tonsil/spleen axis, your pre-schooler may laugh off a new virus that he encounters which may well affect you fairly severely.
Brain nutrients
As mentioned, children’s brains are abundantly equipped with “white matter” – another term for healthy nerves called “neurones” that are ready, willing and able to make connections with other parts of the brain to form and keep memories of sounds and language, images, touch, smell and taste.
So clearly they need an abundance of these nutrients in their diet. What are they?
Well omega-3 fats/oils come to mind. Whether or not mother’s milk can actually produce omega-3 fats or not, common sense says that they can, as this study imilies. https://www.mdpi.com/journal/nutrients/special_issues/breastfeeding_baby_mother
But hold on – there is said to be a sixth sense. What is it?
Proprioception – or the ability to sense limb location and balance. https://www.mdpi.com/journal/nutrients/special_issues/breastfeeding_baby_mother
But a seventh?
Russian (of course!) scientists have identified the ability of the fingertips to “sense” colour. To me, that means that some people have a sensitivity to the well-known phenomenon of “resonance” that is the abilioty of your cells to “tune in” to the natural electrical vibrational frequency that all cells and all matter emit.
Of course, migrating birds tune in to the earth’s magnetic field in much the same way.
Bees become confused and lose the “homing direction-finder” when flying through fields of high electromagnetic radiation such as power lines.
Some people are very sensitive to the effects of a mobile phone.
I really don’t know about number 7.
But I do know that your child’s brain requires every available nutrienyt known to become rally top notch – and be sheltered for as long as possible from fat soluble toxins in the environment – especially pesticides.
And so do you!
See link: https://www.beyondpesticides.org/resources/pesticide-induced-diseases-database/brain-and-nervous-system-disorders#:~:text=In%20addition%20to%20CNS%20effects,dementia%2Dlike%20diseases%20like%20Alzheimer’s.
Just thought I’d throw that in as food for thought!
Rapid Growth
The growth process also demands higher nutritional requirement that is plus or minus 80% of that of an adult from the age of two years and onwards despite the relative size difference.
Physical Resilience
This means that their bones are softer and so can survive a fall easier than an adult.
Tendons and ligaments require an abundance of good quality protein to provide the building links and blocks for their bodies to be able to produce these important suppleness elements.
Nutritional status.
Children may be at a disadvantage in this area, depending on their parents’ knowledge and attention to detail in providing a good-quality, nutrient-dense food platform.
This is because childrens’ high-calorie needs – due to the growth factor – often means that parents are tempted to “fill them up” with “empty calories”, especially given a busy work schedle.
The typical child may then experience a dependence on “fast food” and sugary/starchy foods. So we designed our complete nutritional supplement that is tasty and easy to prepare that may help to “make up the difference, because these choices may contain too little protein, essential fats, and vitamins and minerals (known as micronutrients).
Yes, I did say fats! Check this link to see that 30% of your calories should include fats, and that half of those fats should be omega-3 oils! And the can be yummy, and not be made from fish!
But how does the immune system work?
Pus
Part of the immune response is for killer white blood cells (WBCs) to attack germs. In the process, they kill themselves, then group together to form pus. So, pus is good.
White Blood Cells
We mentioned that the activity of the thymus/tonsil/spleen axis depends on adequate nutritional status. Well, so does the activity of the WBCs. Medical researcher Emanuel Cheraskin, in his lecture Down Under at Manly in the early eighties, stated that – using live blood analysis – you could detect the activity of a WBC.
He claimed that a “sick” WBC could only kill a third of a germ very slowly and a healthy WBC could kill 13 germs very quickly. That is a potential 39 times turnaround in activity (read “germ-killing power”).
We already know that the rate of manufacture of WBCs in normal health can vary by as much as ten times.
That means that – whether for a child or adult – your overall WBC activity can vary by as much as a very significant 400 times in a “normally healthy” child or adult.
400 times is not 400% or even 4,000 % but 40,000%.
What influences White Blood Cell activity?
Adverse effects on protective immune cells
- Stress
- Sun-exposure
- Alcohol
- Cigarettes
- Fatty, sugary food.
- Physical exhaustion
- Mental exhaustion
- Emotional exhaustion
- Poor nutritional status, or insufficient dietary intake of:
- Vitamins, especially vitamin A and Vitamin C
- Zinc and other minerals such as chromium, selenium, molybdenum, calcium and magnesium
- Sufficient fatty acids such as EPA, DHA, linoleic and g-linolenic acid.
- Glycoproteins and specific sugars such as arabinose
Achieving optimum white blood cell protection
- Strive for an optimal nutritional intake including:
- 500mg of vitamin C complex daily
- Balanced and complete daily dietary intake of all 70-odd essential micronutrients and 12 vitamins
- Adequate bio-available protein intake
- Regular intake of fresh or freeze-dried greens and other natural elements like mushrooms
- Prebiotics
- Probiotics
- plus:
- Fresh air
- Balanced diet
- Exercise
- Adequate water
Nutritional intake
Altogether, there are about 50 such essential nutrients needed in the diet on a daily basis to ensure the optimum health of your child and most of them are needed to either make or activate a white blood cell from food AND WATER.
Why do I keep saying water? After all, isn’t that just stuff that fish do funny things in?
Well, there’s a bit more to it than that.
Water
Water is not only essential to all life, but it is also needed in relatively large quantities daily by your child. In fact, should a child develop vomiting or diarrhoea, she can dehydrate in a matter of hours and actually die if this is allowed to go unchecked for over a day.
But it doesn’t stop there. Water is traditionally a great source of nutritious minerals. Consider Europe, with its average of 5 feet (about 1.5 metres) of micronutrient-rich topsoil. Rainwater works its way down through the soil, glaciers melt through the limestone caves and the spring-waters join to make a mineral-rich river system. And that’s what they drink.
Contrast that to Australia’s water supply, where we have an average of a few centimetres depth of soil largely leached of its micronutrients over the eons of time.
Add the fact that our dam systems have been enlarged to cater for growing cities and we are drinking mineral-depleted water, leaving young bodies starving of vital nutrition which water used to give them.
In fact, pre-Warragamba, Sydney’s water has declined in its mineral content by roughly 300% and its organic toxins have increased by about fifteen times (1,500%). This organic material provides a beautiful growth medium for annoying organisms (such as cryptosporidium and giardia) which give our immune systems a constant challenge.
Just to top it off nicely, we have the added cocktail of added chemicals (such as chlorine) and pesticides.
Pollution
Pesticides from water, air, fabric, cleaning materials, household pesticides and food additives pose further challenges to young bodies. In fact, American researcher, Dr John Lees, has pointed out that the toxic nature of these “petrochemical” pollutants has a serious cumulative effect on humans and animals. They are thought to be the cause of the global decline of animal species and human fertility. (Water-dwelling animals such as frogs are the most susceptible and have been virtually wiped out of existence in the wild. Birds are the next to go, feeding off farm crops and copping gobfuls of pesticide).
Animals higher up the food chain are eating steadily accumulating amounts of pesticide – animals like us.
Is it affecting our children? D’r Lees said in the early nineties that – if the trend continued – the last fertile male child in the U.S.A. could well have been born by the year 2,000. Time will tell.