Disease-Proof Your Child
As parents, we want what is best for our children. We would never intentionally harm them—in fact, we make sure to get them the best possible care, read to them, play with them, and ensure their safety at home, at school, and at play. But when it comes to feeding them, somehow, we don’t know what’s best.
Our kids seem finicky and eat nothing but cheese or pasta or chicken fingers or milk and cookies, and we let them. At the same time, we notice that they are frequently ill—they suffer from recurring ear infections, runny noses, stomach aches, and headaches. We take them to the doctor, who prescribes yet another round of antibiotics. Because we also see it happening all around us, with friends and family, we assume that it is the right approach when bringing up children. It doesn’t have to be so.
This scenario may be “normal” for kids today, but it is not normal for humans or any other species of animal that eats nutrient-rich natural foods. “Scientific research has demonstrated that humans have a powerful immune system, even stronger than that of other animals, that makes our body a self-repairing, self-defending organism with the innate ability to defend itself against microbes and prevent chronic illness.
The system operates at its best only if we give it the correct raw materials to work with. When a young body doesn’t receive its nutritional requirements, bizarre diseases occur. Of late, there has been an increase in hundreds of new diseases that were unheard of in prior human history. Most of these can be linked to improper nutrition.
Despite our very best intentions, today there are health risks that well-meaning parents inflict on their children without being aware of it. Every day in small ways, we may well be causing harm to their precious little bodies through the choices we make about what we decide to feed them.
There is an issue of vital importance that most well-meaning parents are not aware of: the modern diet that most children are eating today creates a fertile cellular environment for cancer to emerge at a later age. Trying to prevent breast, prostate, and other cancers as an adult may not be totally possible because most risk factors cannot be changed at this late stage.
The bottom line is that in order to have a major impact on preventing cancer we must intervene much earlier, even as early as the first ten years of life. In other words, childhood diets create adult cancers and a host of other illnesses at a later stage in life. When our children eat junk food instead of fruits and vegetables, the groundwork is being laid for a variety of diseases to occur down the road.
Additionally, many children today are very often recurrently sick with ear infections and allergies and then, later in life, may develop autoimmune illnesses such as lupus, ulcerative colitis, and rheumatoid arthritis. The major contributor to the development of these illnesses is overuse of medications and suboptimal nutrition. Kids become ill not because they just naturally pass around germs or have bad genes, but because their diets are inadequate and their immunity is low. Medications cannot prevent these problems—only a diet of nutritional excellence can.
The most recent scientific evidence is both overwhelming and shocking—what we feed (or don’t feed) our children as they grow from birth to early “adulthood has a greater total contributory effect on the dietary contribution to cancers than dietary intake over the next fifty years. Most children eat less than 2 percent of their diet from natural plant foods such as fruits and vegetables.
Children move into adulthood eating 90 percent of their caloric intake from dairy products, animal protein, white flour, sugar, and oil. Amazingly, about 25 percent of toddlers between ages one and two eat no fruits and vegetables at all. By fifteen months, french fries, maggie and pasta are the most common vegetables consumed.
Childhood diets are unhealthy, but the issue goes beyond simple nutrition. Recent, compelling, scientific evidence over the past two decades has shown links between precise dietary factors and autoimmune illnesses such as Thyroid, Multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease and lupus, as well as later-life cancers. This means that we now know what helps to create an environment in our bodies that is favorable for certain to emerge later in life, and we understand how what they eat now can prevent their occurence in our children’s future.
While the scientific evidence is in, parents haven’t been informed that what their children eat during their growth years has such a profound effect on their later health and that the first ten years may be the most critical. Unfortunately, many parents are unwittingly feeding their children dangerous, disease-provoking diets. Informed parents can give their children the greatest gift of all: the opportunity for a long and healthy life.
Unfortunately, pediatricians and family physicians rarely discuss diet with parents, encouraging the perception that what a child eats does not matter. Parents also are uninformed that following a healthy diet can free their children from repeated trips to the doctor, endless courses of antibiotics, and the curtailed living that comes from being frequently sick.
While the scientific information may be alarming, the solutions are simple. Eating to prevent common illnesses as well as to prevent life-threatening illnesses in the future can be easy and taste good. You and your family will discover that the right foods can protect against obesity, autoimmune disease, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. It is my mission and my passion to get this vital information out to all parents, and you won’t believe how easy and tasty it can be.
When children are repeatedly or chronically ill, today’s doctors treat patients as they were taught to—with antibiotics and other drugs. I see things very differently. If a child is repetitively or chronically ill, with one infection after another, I see that there is a problem with immunity—a problem that likely comes from an inadequate diet.
I know that rather than antibiotics and other drugs, nutritional excellence must be the first choice in recovery and prevention. I have seen it work in my own practice. After seeing me and making dietary adjustments, almost every chronically ill child recovered and is able to maintain good health without resorting to more drugs and antibiotics.
I tell parents that if they follow my advice their child will no longer require frequent visits to the doctor. “With most frequently ill children, more medical care or medicine is not the answer. Constant and frequent trips to the doctor actually illustrate a serious failure of the Doctor-patient and Doctor-family relationship.
A doctor who is concerned about his patient community is not merely concerned with solving an acute crisis that may arise, but also considers it time well spent to teach prevention. I have found, and the medical literature supports what I have seen in my practice, that true prevention includes superior nutrition. Remember, over 70 percent of all Indians die from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer, which are all diseases of nutritional ignorance.
More and more evidence emerges each year that the diets we eat in our childhood have far-reaching effects on our adult health. Similarly, there is an abundance of scientific research that supports the need for a dietary lifestyle that protects our children from other serious chronic diseases.
Based on the available data, one can easily conclude, that food habits inculcated during childhood, will either help an individual lead a medicine free disease-free life or will result in frequent trips to a doctor for treatment of life-threatening ailments.