How to boost your child’s immune system
The birth of a baby is the happiest event in your life. Young parents are exploring a new never-before-seen world, the world of the first tears and the first smile, the world of endless happiness, care and love. And of course,parents will cherishe this love and care for many years.
The main thing which parents keep an eye on is their child’s health. And it’s quite reasonable because the foundationof the health laid in the childhood will define the frequence of diseases the man will get in his future life. That’s why to strengthen your baby’s immunity and to know the ways to keep it strongis the most important task for parents. As a weakened immune system is the main reason for your child’s frequent colds which can bring you a lot of troubles and worries.
What is the immune system?
To learn how to build up your child’s immunity and find the answer to the question how to boost it you need to understand how it works. Knowing the necessary information it’ll be easier for you to choose the right way to strengthen your baby’s immune system.
The immunity is the way your body fighting with infectious agents which are carriers of foreign genetic information. As a rule, viruses, bacteria and fungi have such a kind of genetic information. That’s why we shouldn’t measure the strength of your immune system by the number of cold-related diseases which don’t turn into the inflammation. 
There’re several types of immunity:
- It’s, for example, an acquired immune system. Acquired immunity is produced when a man gets over a disease such aschicken pox or measles or anything like that. Such a kind of immunity can be temporary or for all your life depending on diseases you have.
- Innate immune system is also called inborn immunity, which begins to form in the fetus during the pregnancy.
- These two immune systems, in its turn, are devided into:
- Antibacterial immunity is a kind of immune systemwhich main aim is to fight with a causative agent of a disease and to destroy it.
- Antitoxic immunity fights with toxic products which a causative agent can produce or leave after its decay.
- Moreover immunologists give further devision of all the named kinds of immunity according to two characteristics.
- Natural immunity is produced by your body after the contact with causative agents.
- Artificial immunity is an immunity which your body requeris after vaccinization.
The role of vaccinization in building up your children’s immune system
We asked the professional immunologist with a great work experience how parents can boost their children’s immunity with the help of vaccinisation. Here’s his answer to the question: «People’ve recently become agure about whether it’s necessary to immunize your baby. Dispite the modern tendency to refuse vaccines, the statistics say that vaccinated children get colds more rarely.
Incidence rate of such diseases as diphtheria and poliomyelitis has lately increased. It can be explained by a great number of infected foregners which come to our country from countries with low degree of medical care.
If your child becomes ill, cure will do him or her more harm than vaccination. But if you do the vaccination for your baby, his or her body will produce an artificial immunity which will protect him or her from diseases.»
That’s way before choosing the ways to boost your child’s immunity you should get all the necessary vaccinations.
Signs of low immunity
Before you beging to strengthen your child’s immune system by all means you must be sure that it’s weak and requers boosting. As the fact that your baby can have a cold from time to time doesn’t mean his or her immunity is low.
Moreover any disease is the very thing which maked your immune system stronger. As in most cases during the very period of disease your body is taught to react to causative agents (different viruses and bacterias) in the right way. There’s no need to interfere with healthy child development if he or she has about 3-4 colds a year. But the weakened immunity can be quite difficult to identify. So the main parents’ task is to understand the very moment they should take care of their baby’s immune system. Parents should know cases when it’s necessary to recover their child’s immunity and how to take care of it later:
If your kid has such diseases as ARD, ARVI, flu or bronchitis more than 5 times a year.
If during the period of these diseases your child doesn’t have fever. It’s a very serious symptom which shows that the ummune system is too weak to attack viruses and bactiria.
Tiredness, skin paleness, livid rings under the eyes can indicate the problems with your child’s immunity. But it can also be symtoms of anemia and various blood disorders. That’s why you should visit a doctor in this case.
Have a crefull look at your baby’s lymphonodus. If his or her immunity is low, lymph glands on the neck or underarms will be constantly enlarged. They feel soft and painless.
Some children with a low immune system have an enlarged spleen.
Often allergic reactions can identify problems with your kid’s immunity.
Disbacteriosis also goes together with weakened immunity. Disbacteriosis is characterized by such symptomps as lack of appetite, borborygmus, high aerogenesis,constipations and diarrheas without enteric infections and weight loss.
The first thing which parents should do when they notice their child’s weak immunity is to visit a doctor. Don’t try to cure it on your own. Vitamis doesn’t help in this case and special medicines for immunity boosting are very strong and can be taken only under the care of your physician.
Every child has its features of immune system and we’re going to speak about various age gropus of children below.
Features of small babys’ immune system
Unfortunately, most women begin to worry about their baby’s immunity on the first day of its birth. However, it’s quite wrong taking into account the features of babys’ immune system. In most cases babys’ immunity boosting can give you negative results.
The main feature of babys’ immune system is the presence of maternal immunity which is formed undermaternal antibodies during the pregnancy.
It explained the fact that such diseases as measles and chicken pox rarely occur in the first year of babys’ life. However, colds happen quite often and babys’ immunity is built up under the influence of such usual diseases.
However, if the baby is born with asphyxia, congenital pneumonia, bronchitis or others the question how to boost the baby’s immune system becomes very important. As such children have a bigger risk of infections than their healthy agemates.
Don’t give your baby any medicine for boosting its immunity if your doctor doesn’t prescribe them. Such medicines aren’t allowed for babys of one year old.
The accurate answer to the question can be given only by your doctor who has been supervising your child from the very day of its birth and knows all its health characteristics.
However, there’re some useful pieces of advice about how to strengthen the baby’s immune sustem and which will be good for any child.
Longtime breast feeding definitly gives a boost to children’s immunity. So feed your baby as long as possible. Perhaps, during the first month breast feeding may seem to you quite an unpleasant and difficult thing. It can be explained that a young mother doesn’t have a normal lactational process in the first month after the childbirth.
You may seem that you don’t have enough milk or on the contrary that there’s so much of it and your child chole with it. Don’t give up and switch your baby to bottle feeding. Your body will soon get used to it and meet your baby’s needs. You’ll appreciate all the advantages of breast feeding and you can be sure that your child won’t have a weakened immunity.
Tempering is one more way of strengthening your baby’s immune system. You can begin your child’s tempering on the first day of its life. However, don’t go crazy with it. Don’t bring your naked baby outside in the freezing weather or bathe it in cold water. Tempering should be done in a right way. Otherwise your baby will definetly get a low kind of immunity. For tempering take your baby for a walk in the fresh air and don’t put on it too much clothes. You can beging tempering after you and your baby come home form the maternity hospital. After every swaddling or changing nappies leave your child to lie for 5-10 minutes whitout clothes. Have a carefull look at the room temperature. It shouldn’t be below 18C°. Increase the time of everywalk in the fresh air for a minute until it lasts for 30 minutes. Pay your attention to the child’s clothes. Don’t put on your baby several sweaters and a hat when it’s plus 20 outside. Remember the simple rule: dress your child up as youself with one more additional thing. Besides tempering it can also help to avoid your baby’s perspiration during the walk and an illness as a result of it.
Many people think that the newborn doesn’t have immunity and that’s why it’s necessary to make its environment sterile. As we’ve alredy said it’s quite wrong. If you worry about you child’s immunity, you can use a lot of safe ways to boost it. Of course, you should follow simple sanitary rules. But don’t be afraid of kissing it once more or of taking it for a walk. There’s also no need to boil its clothes and iron them for hours because all the bacteria which your child meet strengthen its immune system.
Immunity boosting before going to the kindergarten
Time goes fast and your baby has already grown up. When it’s time to go to the kindergarten everybody thinks how to boost their child’s immune system. Surely everybody knows the story that the child goes to the kindergarten for three days and then stays at homefor a week because of its illness. And parents become crazy with the idea of boosting their kid’s immunity. That’s why you should think about it beforehand. As children’s immune system recovery is much more difficult and longer. Nowadays the topic about how to strengthen kids’ immunity is very popular and it’s important to take this theme seriously and have a close look at it.
Here’re some pieces of advice about children’s immunity boosting from our immunologist:
Have a good look at your child’s food ration. All the food he or she eats should include necessary vitamins. As your child never gets a strong immune system until his or her body is provided with all the required vitamins.
It won’t be also useless to give your child a polyvitamin complex.
Keep regular hours. Find out what plan of the day your future kindergarten has. Train you child to follow this plan little by little. This simple trick can help you to boost your kid’s immunity. Besides it’ll help you to avoid medical remedies for strengthening the immune system which are so popular among many parents. It’s very easy to explain. The first visit to the kindergarten is a stress situation for your child’s psychic and the great change of the daily routine is a stress for his or her body. That’s why the immunity becomes weaker and as the result he or she gets cold very often. To avoid such an unpleasant situation you should know how o strengthen your kid’s immune system before the kindergarten.
Make your child ready for the kindergarten psychologically.Help him or her to get used to other children. Take your kids for a walk to the playgrounds to play with them.By the way it’salso a good way to teach your child’s immunity to resist various infections and strengthen it.
Recovery and boosting of your child’s immune system after the disease
Unfortunatly, after severe diseases or operations the baby’s organism often becomes weakened. And all the parents worry about how to strengthen their child’s immunity after its disease.
In this case your pediatrician who has cured your baby can be of great help. He knows exactly what to do to boost your child’s immune system after being ill.
Parents in their turn can use various natural remedies to strengthen their baby’s immunity. They often help to recover the immune system for a very shor period of time. Here’re some words about how to give a boost to your child’s immune system with the help of home remedies.
Nature is a best friend in strengthing your child’s immunity.
Looking for ways to boost the immune system parents often come across some natural remedies for strengthening children’s health. Home remedies sometimes can be more effective than various medicines. Morevore they doesn’t have any side effects on your body and aren’t as strong as many medicines.
As different medicines for immunity boosting often have negative effects on your child’s digestive tract and urinary system. Besides if parents decide to give their baby special medicines for strengthening the immune system and give the bigger doses than it’s recommended it can make the whole matter much worse. That’s why self-treatment should be out of the question for you.
Here’re some recipes of natural remedies for your baby’s immune system.
First of all have a good look at your baby’s food ration. Otherwise all the information about strengthening the immunity with home remedies will be useless. Exclude from his o her diet all the possible products with preservatives or colouring agents. French fries, chewing gums and lemonade don’t do any good for your children’s health. Every kid should get healthy wholesome food.
Rosehips are a good example of a natural home remedy for strengthening the immunity. Replace all your baby’s beverages except milk by prosehips infusion. To make such an infusion take 200 g of fresh rosehips or 300 g of its dry berries, 100 g of sugar and 1l of water.Cover all the berries with water and put it on the fire. Cook it until all the berries boil soft. Put the surgar and cook it for two minutes. Wrap the pan into the towel and leave it to get cold. In the end filter the infusion. Your child can drink it as much as he or she wants, but it shouldn’t be less that 100 g per every 10 kg of his o her weight. This infusion can cause a bit of urinary frequency. It’s quite normal and shouldn’t worry you. But if your child has any problems with its keydnes you should consult your doctor first.
Scientists say that children who often go barefooted have a stronger immunity. On humen’s foot there’s a great number of bioactive points and their stimulation can give a boost to your immune system. Going barefooted along the sandy or shingly shore does your health a lot of good. In winter you can go barefooted at home. To prevent your child from having a cold he or she can wear socks.
For children of 10-14 years old you can prepare the following home remedy to strengthen their immune system. Take a head of garlic and 100 g of white honey. Mince peeled garlic and mix it up with the honey. Leave the mixture for a week and then give a teaspoon of it to your child with eating at least three times a day. But if your kid has any kind of food allergy this natural remedy is out of the question.
The easiest and most useful way of immunity boosting is to go to the seaside. As a rule, severl weeks spent on the seaside gives your child a boost of energy and strengthen the immunity for the whole year.
We hope our article will be useful for you and we wish your children’s immune system to be strong and healthy all year round.
