Archive for healthy children
The basics of healthy children: adequate source of water-soluble vitamins
Posted by: | CommentsFor the whole of human history, most people have obtained all the vitamins and minerals they needed without ever taking a Flintstones vitamin. Don’t get me wrong, I take my Flintstones equivalent every day for good measure, but if you follow the food pyramid guidelines, your children should be able to get all of the vitamins and minerals they need from their diets.
Here is a helpful list of important water-soluble vitamins and the dietary sources from which they are derived.
Thiamin, or vitamin B1: Needed for normal functioning of muscle tissues, including the heart, the nervous system, and the digestive system, B2 also serves an important role in carbohydrate metabolism and energy production. Lean meats, nuts and beans, and enriched and fortified cereals are great sources of vitamin B1.
Riboflavin, or vitamin B2: Needed for energy production, normal immune function, and healthy skin, B2 is easily obtained from foods like lean meat, eggs, cereals, green leafy vegetables, and dairy products.
Niacin, or vitamin B3: Comes from foods such as lean meats, nuts and beans, cereals, and yeasts and is needed for energy production, for maintaining normal skin, and as a digestive aid. It can be made by your body from the dietary intake of the amino acid tryptophan.
Folic acid: Needed for energy production, preventing anemia, and preventing birth defects such as neural tube defects, folic acid can be easily obtained from meats, beans, leafy greens, and whole grains.
Vitamin B12, or cobalamin: This vitamin comes only from animal-derived products, such as meat and dairy. B12 is important for energy production, anemia prevention, utilization of folic acid, and nervous system function.
Biotin: Needed for many of the intracellular reactions that lead to energy production, biotin is so widespread in the foods your kids eat that deficiencies of this nutrient are unheard of in developed countries.
Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid: Found in citrus fruits, berries, tomatoes, potatoes, and leafy green vegetables, among other foods, vitamin C is needed for normal growth, immune function, wound healing, bone and tooth formation, and efficient iron absorption.
As you can see, if your children are eating well-balanced diets that include foods from all of the food groups, they will get all of the water-soluble vitamins they need without the help of Fred or Barney.
The basics of healthy children: get off the bottle ASAP, but not too early
Posted by: | CommentsA very common pediatric issue is that of weaning from the bottle. You might be wondering, what’s the big deal? Why can’t your daughter suck on a bottle until she’s twelve? In addition to the social embarrassment and harassment she might face if she showed up for preschool with a bottle, there are a couple of other reasons to get off the bottle as soon as possible.
Some children who are not breast-fed develop a bottle dependency that can lead to cavities and malformed dentition. This is a particular risk for babies who are put to bed with a bottle. The longer you do this with your baby, the harder it will be when you pull the rug out from under him. The best thing is to never start the habit of going to bed with a bottle. Toddlers who spend the whole day intermittently sucking on bottles can also develop tooth decay and improperly formed teeth. One last problem is that children older than one year old are probably drinking cow’s milk. Too much cow’s milk can displace other nutrient-rich foods from the diet and can also lead to anemia.
The healthy alternative to letting your child have a bottle all day or when going to bed is to offer her the bottle only at the table and then only for a twenty- to thirty minute period. Your child will quickly come to expect that this is the time to drink her milk or formula and will indeed drink it at that time.
You’ll know it’s time to wean your child from the bottle when she is capable of drinking from a sippy cup. Your child will gradually signal that she is ready to drink from a cup. She should have the coordination to sit up unassisted and be tolerating pureed foods well. Start offering assisted sips at around six months. Initially she will still be getting most of her milk from the bottle or the breast, but by around eight to ten months she should be able to drink from a sippy cup alone. Sometime between ten and eighteen months your child should have mastered these tasks and be ready to get off the bottle.
When the day comes to let the bottle go, there is no looking back. Throw all of the bottles in the trash. You should expect anywhere from a couple of days to a week of crying. The longer you wait, the longer the outcry will last. For parents who have exclusively breast-fed without pumping, don’t introduce bottles at all. Go straight from mom’s breast to a sippy cup.
The toddler years can be messy and frustrating for parents, but instead of focusing on those negative aspects, take an understanding perspective. Toddlers lack the fine motor coordination to use a fork or spoon without making a mess. Sometimes they resort to using their hands to eat. They tend to spit, throw, or squash foods, talk with their mouths full, and fidget. Are they intentionally trying to thwart you? Not at all. Toddlers explore the world of food colors, tastes, and textures with both their hands and their mouths. Nevertheless, it is not a waste of time to begin teaching them how to eat healthy.
Plan for the mess by putting a plastic sheet under the high chair. When your child throws food, gently say “no,” but don’t pick up the food until the meal is over. Don’t turn food-throwing into a game where she throws and you fetch. Offer a variety of food at meals but keep the portions on her plate at any one time small. You are less likely to worry if a couple of small pieces of food hit the floor rather than a whole bowl of food. Sit your child down for meals at the table or in the high chair as a habit. Toddlers are inquisitive and would prefer to at and explore, making a mess in the process. You should e patient and understanding but firm, realizing that eating while walking and running can increase your small child’s risk for choking.
It’s better to not force your child to finish everything on his plate. It is better to waste a few leftovers than battle with your children or force them to eat when they’ve had enough. Keep in mind that toddlers can recognize their hunger and fullness signals and, unlike adults, don’t go on hunger strikes. For reassurance about your child’s development, however, ask your pediatrician to review his growth and height charts at your next visit.
Simple rewards may reinforce your child’s good behavior. I would suggest being effusive in your compliments when your children demonstrate appropriate table etiquette. You might also offer stickers or hand stamps as a reward, but never use food as a reward: that can lead to unhealthy habits in the future. As always, be a good role model. If your kids see you eating in front of the television between meals, they rightfully won’t understand why they shouldn’t.
Do children need to take vitamins? Yes! And no! Vitamins and minerals are vital for normal growth and development, but children who eat well-balanced diets usually get as much as they need from the foods they eat and therefore don’t require supplements.
That said, supplemental vitamins and minerals may be needed if your child is a vegetarian, if he eats poorly or has an unusual diet, or if he has an underlying medical condition that interferes with the body’s absorption of vitamins and minerals (for example, cystic fibrosis or celiac disease). Supplemental vitamin D is recommended for breast-fed infants. Infants who drink excessive amounts of milk may need additional iron.
Only about one-third of our children have enough calcium in their diets. This means that most of our kids are at risk for bone fractures and, later in life, osteoporosis. Children who drink too much soda and other carbonated beverages are also at risk for poor bone mineralization and osteoporosis.
So what’s wrong with just giving your child a multivitamin? Nothing necessarily, as long as you remember that it is a medicine, not a candy. More is not always better. Like all medicines, too much can lead to toxicity! Excessive consumption of some of the water-soluble vitamins probably does nothing more than the recommended amounts, but excessive vitamin C is associated with an increased risk of kidney stones. Fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) are not excreted in the urine, and consuming too much of these can result in severe toxicity.
The bottom line here is that your children probably don’t need daily vitamins if they are eating well-balanced meals. However, there is nothing wrong with a single daily vitamin if you really want to make sure they are getting all of their essential vitamins and minerals. Just limit it to one a day and keep the container in the medicine cabinet out of reach of smaller children. Furthermore, since iron poisoning is a leading cause of toxic ingestion among small children, you may want to choose a multivitamin without iron.
For a long time having a daily bowel movement was associated with being healthy. Now we know that some people are completely healthy even if they regularly have a bowel movement only once a week! The important thing is not quantity but regularity.
Is your child’s poop hard and rocklike? Does it hurt for her to have a bowel movement? Does your child have to strain? If you answered yes, then she is probably constipated. The most common causes of constipation in childhood are too little fiber in the diet, not drinking enough liquids, and stool withholding. Some kids delay having a bowel movement because they do not want to use the toilets at school. Others ignore the urge because of stressful toilet training or because they do not want to interrupt their play. Kids who ignore the urge to have a bowel movement may eventually stop feeling the urge, which can lead to constipation. Children can also become constipated from changing their exercise routine.
If withholding a bowel movement isn’t an issue for your child, you can prevent constipation by ensuring that she is eating fruits and vegetables daily and getting enough water. Drinking plenty of water adds fluid to the colon and bulk to stools, facilitating the passage of stool through the bowels. Serve a salad with dinner or a fruit salad for dessert and be sure to have water available at meals and while traveling. Beware of beverages that contain caffeine such as sodas and coffee, yes, more kids than ever are drinking coffee these days. These have a dehydrating effect within the colon and can result in constipation.
Regardless of the reason for your child’s constipation, don’t give her laxatives or an enema unless you have your pediatrician’s okay. These methods are potentially dangerous: they can lead to irreversible damage to your child’s colon, permanently impairing its ability to coordinate contraction.
Bottom line: teach your kids to poop when they feel the urge, feed them a diet high in fiber, and give them enough water or sugar-free, caffeine-free beverages.
As one Joseph Hall said many years ago, “Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues” (Christian Moderation, 1640).
Sustainability is frequently overlooked by those making lifestyle changes. The key to sustainability is moderation, which makes it easy to sustain a healthy eating lifestyle because your kids won’t be deprived of things they like. They will simply learn not to overindulge in them.
Moderation needs to be applied to both your children’s eating habits and their activity levels. Moderation in eating means eating a variety of foods and eating them in the right quantities. Eating a few foods to the exclusion of the myriad food choices available makes it harder for kids to get the nutrients they need for growth and development. Eating too much of any food, whether broccoli or chocolate cake, is also not a great idea. Limit serving sizes and make your kids wait twenty minutes before offering a second helping. This will give them time to become full.
Ideally your children should be exercising thirty to sixty minutes a day at least three times a week. Whether that exercise comes in the form of participating in an organized sport or simply running around the yard or biking the neighborhood with friends doesn’t matter. Getting less exercise than this is clearly detrimental to their future cardiovascular and musculoskeletal health. However, what about the other extreme? Too much exercise can lead to dehydration, heat stroke, electrolyte imbalances, seizures, and even death. Even before these extremes are reached, muscle and bone injuries occur during prolonged exercise, and muscle breakdown occurs after one and a half to two hours of intense exertion.
If you encourage moderation when it comes to a regimen of physical activity and eating, you will ensure that your kids are able to sustain their habits throughout their lives, maximizing the health benefits of an active lifestyle while minimizing the complications of being overactive.
There is room for nearly every type of food in your diet as long as high-fat foods do not become the staple foods that are eaten daily. Too often children obtain far too many empty calories every single day from non-nutritious but high-fat sources such as fried snacks and sugar-filled drinks.
When educating parents, I’ve borrowed a slogan from one of my colleagues: limit the “-os” in your kids’ diets. This means cut back on purchasing and feeding your kids foods and snacks that end in “-os”: Fritos, Doritos, Tostitos, burritos, Spaghettios, Oreos, and Cheetos! It’s simplistic, but parents usually get the point. The “-os” rule isn’t meant to single out the products that end in “-os” but to remind parents to limit all fried chips, baked crackers, cookies, snack cakes, juices, and nondiet sodas in their children’s diets. Most parents wouldn’t serve a dinner of Pringles, and yet most of their kids’ calories may be coming from non-nutritive chips, crackers, cakes, and soda.
Unhealthy snacking will, at the extreme, lead to obesity. Fast food, unhealthy snacks, and sodas are the unholy trinity of childhood obesity and the arsenal of what one of my mentors calls “carbo-lipo-terrorism.” Childhood obesity, which can lead to heart disease, diabetes, strokes, and other problems for your kids later in life, has reached epidemic proportions. In the meantime, unhealthy snacking causes children to have poor appetites at meals. When kids fill up on snacks in between meals, they are less likely to try new, healthy foods at mealtime and more likely to become picky eaters.
Stock healthy snacks in the pantry and encourage your children to drink water. If you find it difficult to stop purchasing soda, switch to diet. Save chips, cookies, and cakes for weekends or special occasions. These few simple changes will go a long way to ensuring your children’s future eating health.
Giving your child a combination of protein sources is the optimal way to raise a healthy eater. Your children need to consume 10% to 15% of their daily calories from protein sources to ensure adequate growth and tissue repair, but the typical child’s diet provides twice the amount of protein needed. Regardless if your child eats too many calories from protein, carbohydrate, or fat, extra calories are stored as fat by his body. The key to healthy eating is understanding that protein is available from sources other than meat, which, in addition to being high in protein, is often high in fat
So what’s the difference between animal-derived protein and plant-derived protein? Both are made up of the same set of twenty amino acids. Animal-derived proteins are called complete because they contain all of the needed amino acids in each bite. Plant-derived proteins are incomplete because they do not. However, by combining plant protein sources, such as rice and beans, you are providing your child with all of the needed amino acids!
As parents struggle to lower cholesterol and improve their families’ cardiovascular health, they are faced with the challenge of meeting their children’s protein needs while at the same time reducing saturated fat and cholesterol in their diets. Natural and convenient alternatives are readily available in the form of beans and soy protein. The American Heart Association has proclaimed that dietary soy protein can lower LDL, or so-called “bad” cholesterol. Not only are beans affordable and great sources of protein, but they also contain needed B vitamins, iron, and calcium. Furthermore, they are rich in fiber and cholesterol-free.
Feed your kids a healthy, well-rounded diet centered on the principles of variety and moderation and obtain the benefits from both meat and nonmeat sources of proteins.
The basics of healthy children: healthy eating starts during pregnancy
Posted by: | CommentsIn addition to the nutrients they need for themselves, expectant mothers also need to take in the essential vitamins and minerals they are providing to their developing child. This task seems daunting, yet a varied diet based on the principles of the food pyramid will ensure that both mother and child get all of the nutrients they need.
Nonetheless, you and your doctor may feel that you would benefit from taking a prenatal vitamin daily. Such supplements are designed to ensure that you get the calcium, iron, zinc, iodine, and folic acid that you need. They usually also contain the needed amounts of vitamins A, C, and E. It should be noted, however, that vitamin A in excessive doses can cause birth defects. The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that pregnant mothers should limit their consumption of vitamin A through foods and supplements to less than 3,000 micrograms a day.
Expectant mothers should avoid all alcohol consumption during pregnancy. The potential harm to the fetus is not as clear where caffeine and aspartame are concerned. In high doses, caffeine leads to birth defects in animals, but the jury is still out on moderate consumption. Most physicians would tell moms-to-be to consume caffeine in moderation, meaning fewer than two to three cups of coffee a day, if at all. Aspartame is a modification of the amino acid phenylalanine. With aspartame, the concern is that high circulating levels of phenylalanine could lead to fetal brain damage, as can happen when the mother has the disease PKU. However, healthy moms should be able to break down the aspartame without much of a rise in their serum phenylalanine levels and probably don’t need to worry about consuming diet beverages that contain aspartame. Nonetheless, common sense, moderation, and concern for your future child should prevail in all your dietary decisions during pregnancy.
The basics of healthy children: foster a healthy self-image in your children
Posted by: | CommentsThough this tip seems obvious, many children I see daily suffer from low self-esteem. Sometimes the source of their low self-esteem is the ridicule they endure at school or the images they compare themselves to on the covers of magazines. Sometimes they never had much self-esteem instilled in them from the start, and sometimes the source of their low self-esteem is clear when I see their parents spending our entire encounter criticizing their appearance or behavior.
No matter where the attacks are coming from, it is imperative to build and rebuild your child’s confidence. A healthy self-image is like a high-walled defensive barrier that gives your child enough confidence to explore the world. If her walls are high enough, nobody will be able to fling rocks over them. At the end of a long day, take time to replace some of the damaged stones by emphasizing the positive things about your kids.
Starting the lessons when your children are young is crucial, since kids are developing eating disorders at younger and younger ages. There are many things you can do to encourage a healthy self-image. Teach your child that people come in all shapes and sizes. Involve him in sports. Teach him to incorporate exercise into his daily routine. Start by setting a good example. Let him know that you work out to stay healthy, to be strong, and to have more energy and stamina. Praise him, praise him again, and always keep criticism constructive.
Children with self-confidence have a strong sense of themselves and the values their parents have instilled in them. They are not as likely to be moved by peer pressure or flattery and are therefore less likely to experiment with drugs or alcohol or use sex to boost their self-worth. Your most important job as a parent is to be your kids’ biggest cheerleader, not their toughest critic!