Winter weather is cold, and some children catch colds and coughs at every turn, in large part because of poor immunity. It is said that the immunity is poor and it is easy to get sick. So, if you want to strengthen your child's immunity, what should you do, you know?
Your child's immunity
The higher the better
To figure this out, we must first understand what immunity is.
Immunity refers to the body's ability to resist the invasion of various external factors and maintain the stability of the internal environment.
Immunity is a biological function of the body's immune system to non-specific or specifically recognize and reject all foreign bodies or antigenic substances.
Immunity includes nonspecific immunity (innate immune system) and specific immunity (acquired immune system). Innate immunity is innate to individuals, such as phagocytes and some bactericidal substances in the body, which have a defensive effect on a variety of pathogens, so it is called non-specific immunity. Acquired immunity is gradually acquired by individuals during growth, only for a specific pathogen or foreign body, so it is called specific immunity, such as infants in the maternal placenta or colostrum to obtain immune substances, injection of some vaccines and so on.
For human beings, the human body relies on immunity as a function to recognize and eliminate foreign bodies such as foreign invading viruses and bacteria, to deal with aging, damaged, and dead cells, and to recognize and process mutant cells and virus-infected cells in the body to maintain human health.
In layman's terms, immunity is like a soldier in our body, specifically to identify enemies that are harmful to our body, and to eliminate these enemies, while removing apoptosis cells in the body, so as to maintain the stability of the human body.
People with low immunity, there are not enough soldiers in the body, can not resist the invasion of the virus, more likely to get sick than normal people, so the key to preventing disease is to enhance immunity.
At the same time, immunity is like blood pressure, blood sugar, low is not a good thing, but too high is also a disease. If the immunity is too high, abnormalities may also occur, and it may overreact to substances outside the body. For example, there are too many soldiers in the body, once they encounter the enemy, everyone rushes up, there will be an overreaction, self-injury may occur, causing allergic reactions, autoimmune diseases, etc., such as allergic rhinitis, allergic eczema, allergic asthma and other symptoms. Therefore, immunity is not as high as possible.
Destroy your child's immunity
What are the reasons
Parents are particularly concerned about their children's health, but there are some practices that tend to destroy their children's immunity. The following are common:
Caesarean section: The intestinal immune system is a particularly large immune system in the human body. The child is born from the mother, and through the birth canal will be exposed to some probiotics in the mother's birth canal, which can colonize the child's intestines and give the child a good immunity. Children born by caesarean section are born in a sterile environment and have no opportunity to obtain probiotic colonization, so their immune function is weak. A large number of studies have found that children born by caesarean section have a higher incidence of some infectious diseases than children born vaginally.
Over-disinfection: Over-disinfection can also damage your child's immunity. The human immune system needs to be trained, if it is too clean, the child does not have the opportunity to contact microorganisms, the immune system will not be exercised. Soldiers like our bodies also recognize these microbes through the body's exposure to a small number of non-pathogenic microorganisms, and judge which are beneficial and which are harmful. When the body is exposed to a large number of harmful microorganisms in the future, these soldiers can immediately fight to remove them. If parents are over-disinfected, the children's living environment is too clean, and these soldiers in the body are not exercised, they will lose their combat effectiveness and cannot protect their children. Some scholars have found that children living on farms rarely get hay fever (allergic rhinitis induced by pollen). These children are rarely allergic because the lifestyle on the farm protects them, such as working in the fields, milking cows, cleaning stables, etc., which is summarized as the "farm effect".
Misuse of antibiotics: It is a mistake to use antibiotics whenever a child is sick. It is common for children to be sick and parents to be very anxious. When your child is sick, it is necessary to diagnose what the disease is before taking the drug, and not all diseases require antibiotics. When the body is infected by bacteria and the human immunity cannot cope with it, antibiotics can effectively kill bacteria. The invention of antibiotics saved a lot of lives. However, if it is only a viral infection, it is not right to use antibiotics, and the virus can be eliminated through immune function. If abused, there will not only be a danger of drug resistance, resulting in no antibiotics available in the future, but also destroy the body's immune function. It's like, originally these enemies, the soldiers can deal with, you have to send special forces to sweep, the result of the soldiers can not be trained, leave it alone, the combat effectiveness will be weakened.
Which methods work
May strengthen your child's immunity
To enhance your child's immunity, you can start from the following aspects:
Vaccination uses vaccination methods to prevent infectious diseases for a long time. Vaccination, similar to the body to import some specific soldiers, these soldiers after training, will not have a bad effect on the body, but can be specifically to remove a certain type of germs that invade the body, when the body is infected by such bacteria, soldiers against such bacteria immediately come out to fight, remove germs, maintain good health.
Smallpox once became a killer of human beings, and Sun Simiao, a famous doctor in Chinese history, applied pus from smallpox sores to the skin to prevent smallpox. After the Ming Dynasty, the human pox vaccination method became popular. In 1796, edward Jenner, an English village doctor, discovered a less dangerous method of vaccination, and he successfully injected an 8-year-old boy with cowpox, which is mostly the same as the antigen of smallpox virus, but does not cause disease to the human body, allowing humans to eliminate smallpox.
Taking sugar pills has eliminated polio, vaccination against hepatitis B has reduced the incidence of hepatitis in China, and vaccination against DTP has reduced the risk of pertussis, diphtheria, tetanus disease in children... Therefore, all kinds of immunization vaccines after the birth of the child must be vaccinated on time! For non-immunization vaccines, parents should also consider vaccinating their children.
A balanced diet at every stage of life should follow a healthy dietary pattern to ensure all the nutrients the body needs, so as to strengthen immunity.
Exclusive breastfeeding is advocated for the first 6 months of life. Breast milk, especially colostrum, contains many immune substances that can strengthen your child's immunity. Vitamin D supplementation should be given immediately after birth.
Infants and young children aged 6 to 24 months, while scientifically adding complementary foods, encourage mothers to continue breastfeeding, while increasing the intake of nutrient-rich complementary foods. When infants can eat complementary foods, there is no need to avoid foods that are prone to allergies in infants, and pay attention to providing them with foods rich in iron and zinc, especially for breastfed infants.
Throughout the life cycle, follow healthy dietary patterns to meet nutritional needs, achieve a healthy weight, and reduce the risk of chronic diseases. At the same time, pay attention to ensuring the diversity of food. Reduce your intake of foods and beverages that are high in added sugars, saturated fatty acids, and sodium, and limit your intake of alcoholic beverages.
Ensuring sleep is a very important way to let the body rest adequately and improve immunity. Children between 3 months and 13 months of sleep are guaranteed; children aged 4 to 11 months are guaranteed to sleep for at least 12 hours; children aged 1 to 2 years are guaranteed to sleep for at least 11 hours; children aged 3 to 5 years are guaranteed to sleep for at least 10 hours.
Moderate exercise Early physical activity levels in children are closely related to their bones, cardiorespiratory health, motor and cognitive development, social mental health, and overweight and obesity, and will continue to affect adult health throughout life. Whether it is medical experts, exercise experts, or education experts, the consensus formed by everyone is that children should strengthen physical activity, preschool children should exercise at different intensities of no less than 3 hours a day, moderate intensity and above exercise time should not be less than 1 hour, reduce sedentary time, try to ensure eating and moving balance, prevent and reduce children's overweight and obesity. In particular, it is recommended that when the weather is sunny, take your children to outdoor activities, which can not only expose children to the outdoor environment, improve physical immunity, but also have benefits for children's vision development.
Knock on the blackboard to draw the focus: to strengthen children's immunity, in addition to vaccination, exercise, diet and sleep are the three elements of natural parenting of children 24 hours a day. That is to say, to improve the child's immunity, we must start from the child's daily life.
Source: Healthy China
Editor: Meng Fanjin