Integrated health-building
Repetitive childhood illnesses affect every child. Because they make the child weak and feverish, the first impulse is to put pressure on your doctor for antibiotics (which can kill some germs) and analgesics (which reduce fever). Make no mistake – these medicines often save lives and so you should be glad to use them in times of acute illness.
However, you need also to plan on helping your child to regain long-term health and vitality. So there is another initiative that you can pursue especially if antibiotics and prednisone only offer short term solutions to a long term problem. And that is to enhance the performance of your child’s innately powerful immune system by delivering the nutrient that every child probably lacks.
Let me explain.
You see… Immune systems require certain nutrients – from the food and water supply – to perform at their peak. That means that they will falter if a deficiency of even one of a number of their essential nutrients becomes critical. A number of these nutrients are critical to the immune system. Such nutrients comprise vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and amino acids.
Not only that, but children’s’ chief immune gland – the thymus gland – is considerably larger than that of a grown adult. Yes, that’s right. Children have already been given an in-built germ-crunching gland to deal with the bugs that they are pre-programmed to encounter and defeat.
That puts a different light on the approach you need to protect your child’s health, doesn’t it?
I mean, you really have a great immune performance ability to enhance. And your child will respond when you set about the task of “feeding up” the thymus and associated immune-producing glands. *
Find out more about the Immune System
So, just what do you need to do to produce a healthier immune system in your child?
The first step is to place a Naturopath on your “health team” to assess the child’s overall health standing.
Once this has been done, we need to look at what particular deficiencies your child may have. Why should your child have any nutritional deficiency at all? After all, don’t we get all the goodness we need from good food?
To answer this, I urge you to turn to the Australian Dietary Surveys. According to the latest Australian Dietary Survey, up to 80% of adults are deficient in zinc and other micronutrients that are essential to health.
This is a problem, because children over the age of 2 years old require at least 80% of the vitamins and minerals of that of an adult, according to figures quoted by the World Health Organisation. What is a major task of these nutrients? They allow for rapid, healthy growth and enhance the child’s immune system.
Why is this a problem? The answer is that all of your and your child’s bodily chemistry depends on critical reserves of all of those micronutrients and they aren’t getting enough of them. (See our article on “Child Nutrition – The Growing Child”.
To find more about how to help your child, you need to provide us with some details about his daily dietary habits, what types of food and snacks you provide for him/her and what drinks they have. Please ask us for a diet diary and a “health assessment questionnaire”. Once we have specific information about your child, we can make broad recommendations on a good preventative regime. We may need to have a naturopath’s assessment also and are happy to provide that service.
If you are remote from us, we can recommend a naturopath near you who will perform an examination and provide a report which will enable you to still utilise our system.