Boosting Baby’s and Toddler’s Immune System, NATURALLY!

Taken from http://www.safbaby.com/ by Maria
Please click HERE to read the entire article, it’s full of great information!

The Immune System of a Child

During childhood, the immune system begins to develop a system to recognize its ‘self’ versus ‘other’. Our immune system learns to protect and defend the body from disease producing organisms. Young children have an average of 6-8 colds per year, and that figure goes up to as high as 12 colds per year when children start school. (Adults have 2-4 colds per year.)
The majority of these illnesses come during the fall and winter months, when children play inside most of the day. In addition, many cold viruses thrive in low humidity. Thus, the dry air during the fall and winter months makes the nasal passages drier and more vulnerable to infection.

Building a Strong, Active Immune System

So, what can we do to help our children build a strong, active immune system?

• Healthy Diets!
  This is one of the hardest things to define, as there are so many beliefs as to what constitutes a healthy diet. However, whatever your food beliefs, it has been shown that sugar can decrease the effectiveness of the immune response by up to 50%! It also increases their risks for behavioral issues, diabetes, obesity, and many more health issues. Let’s get the kids off of the sugar!! This is much easier said than done, I know. Kids can be such picky eaters. But, they will learn by experience if we set a good example for them.
  
  • Increase veggie and fruit intake as well as foods with Essential Fatty Acids (EFA’s) (nuts, seeds and fish), decrease dairy, refined and processed foods and increase local/organic foods.
  • As 70% of our immune system is in our digestive system, it’s extremely important that we keep our digestion healthy and feed ourselves good foods! Go for lots of colorful whole foods.
  • Vitamin D. In the winter, we don’t get outside as much so our bodies don’t make as much Vitamin D. Vitamin D is very important in the immune system… so get the kids out to play as much as possible.
  
  

• Exercise!
  We all know that kids spend far too much time indoors these days! Let’s get them outside, running around. Again, we need to set the example. If we are spending all our ‘down time’ in front of the TV or computer, so will our kids. Get outside, in the fresh air, and take a hike, go for a picnic, play ball…

• Have you heard of the “Hygiene Hypothesis”? The basic gist of this is that some of us are living in a world that is too clean. Children who live in a super clean house, using anti-bacterial everything, with no animals, and no dust bunnies bouncing around are more likely to develop allergies, asthma, and auto immune disorders. Kids need to have the chance to get dirty in order to build a stronger immune system.  The immune system needs to be stimulated in order to work properly. It is OK for our kids to get sick. It may be inconvenient for us, and our own schedules, but giving our children permission to be sick and allowing them the time to heal helps them build a strong/healthy/active immune system. Ditch the “antibacterial” products. All we are doing is over exposing ourselves to antibiotics and building more resistant bugs that we can’t defend ourselves against, because our immune systems aren’t up to par. Besides, most colds and flu’s are viral – not bacterial.

• Herbal support – through syrups, baths, salves, teas, steams, tinctures, glycerites, herbal popsicles, powders, etc… A general rule for dosing children’s herbal remedies: divide the child’s weight by 150 (the average adult weight) and get the fraction of the dose to be administered. Ex: for a 30 pound child 30/150 is 1/5th of the adult dose.