In today’s often frightening world I think that it’s tempting to be overly cautious in various situations that simply require common sense and care. Our children’s health is one of these cases, with parents taking them to the doctor’s surgery at the first sign of natural symptoms of the healing process. I’ll attempt to explain why it’s good practise to allow the symptoms to run their courses and to adopt preventative measures, though I’m not claiming that children don’t require the medical profession under serious circumstances.
The reason we get infections and diseases is because our immune systems aren’t able to deal with unwanted foreign substances that invade the body. This is due to the fact that it’s in a weakened state from a lack of healthy living and good nourishment. These days we eat too much junk food in the place of vegetables and fruit and processed foods containing additives and preservatives are seen as perfectly acceptable to feed our children. Our immune systems require vitamins, minerals and nutrients in enough quantities to ensure that they’re strong enough to defend us.
Many of today’s illnesses weren’t around centuries ago when our ancestors roamed the earth, living on purely natural food, breathing in clean air and drinking water uncontaminated with various toxins. I doubt if they caught colds and the flu regularly or suffered from diabetes, asthma or allergies.
It’s not the fault of parents that the air isn’t as clean as it used to be or that traffic fumes are breathed in daily by little noses and that supermarkets don’t sell enough natural foods and stack their shelves with packaged foods/ Yet we can take responsibility for our own health and our offspring’s to a certain extent. We can become more educated in nurturing ourselves and our families.
Wrapping them in cotton wool isn’t healthy and it certainly won’t prevent them from catching colds or other illnesses. A friend told me that his mother used to send him out to play with any child that had the measles, a cold or any other illness. I found this very amusing but have realised that she was correct. The immune system is not unlike a person in that it needs to learn. Once it’s encountered and noted the attributes of an infection it will know how to fight it and stores this memory away for future reference.
The symptoms are simply the body’s response to infection and are part of the healing process; for example a runny nose is a way of releasing germs from the body. Doctors might prescribe drugs that suppress symptoms but can’t do the immune system’s job of cleaning the body and restoring it to full health.
Therefore I recommend good diet, sunshine, which provides the immune system with vitamins through the skin and eyes, clean water, fresh air wherever possible and laughter. The immune system is also akin to a person in that it thrives on happiness and is weakened in during sadness. Following my advice is child’s play and I wish you and your children the best of health from keeping it simple and natural.