Dr Atish Laddad OPENS UP on how to boost immunity in kids

As parents, all we want is to guard our kids against falls, bumps and wounds or even from runny noses, continuous colds, recurring flus, gastrointestinal bugs any other unavoidable infections. Children of all age groups are definitely more susceptible to falling trap to persistent infections mainly due to their immature immune systems. To avert your kids from falling sick, it is vital that parents must encourage good habits in them coupled with taking appropriate steps to boost their immune system from a preliminary age itself.

Below mentioned are a couple of effective tools that will facilitate parents to effortlessly enhance their child’s immune system safely and functionally, which will promote speedy healing and above all will bestow them with an amplified level of wellness.

Help calm their levels of stress: 

In the present-day fast-paced world, parents are burdened and children are over-scheduled. These unwanted stress levels tends to affect the child’s health majorly. A child’s body has the same response to anxiety that adults’ do that is their levels of cortisol and adrenaline increases. When this rise in stress hormones is constant, the response of their immune systems’ is automatically lowered. Hence it is vital for children to have lots of downtimes, enough time for creative play, and plenty of time to rest. For the immune system to flourish, busy bodies must take a break every now and then.

Uphold your child's microbiota:

 Probiotics are the friendly and helpful microbes that naturally transpire in our guts. They guard our digestive tracts, aid us to in digesting food, facilitate in the clearance of toxins and safeguards us from attacking various harmful bacteria and viruses. When this bacterial stability gets disturbed in kids, we can witness changes in a child’s capability to fend off contagions and infections.

Follow a nourishing diet: 

A child’s immune systems can take a hit if they are continually being bombarded with unhealthy processed food, additives, preservatives, and sugar. When a child suffers from a food allergy, his or her digestion system tends to suffer, soreness tends to ramp up, which makes fending off harmful viruses and microorganisms all the more challenging. Sugar on the other hand has a major possibility to destroy immunity. In order uphold a child’s health, parents must ensure to limit their overall consumption of additives, sugar, and in fact must substitute these with healthy and nourishing foods like plenty of fresh veggies, whole fruits, seeds and nuts, legumes and proteins like cottage cheese, eggs, fish and meat.

Ensure your child is getting enough sleep: 

It has been researched that most children are failing to get the needed amount of sleep. Based on their age, children require between 10 and 14 hours of proper sleep every day. And most importantly it’s the quality of sleep that matters the most. For an appropriate secretion of melatonin which is our sleep hormone, children should be made to sleep in the dark. Ensure all the electronic devices are unplugged during your child’s bedtime.

Parents must remember that fever facilitates to fight infection: 

Although most parents tend to worry at the primary sign of an increase in body temperature on the thermometer, it’s vital to comprehend that fever is only a sign of and not an ailment in itself. Fever is nothing your kid’s body’s response to contagion and without it, a child’s body is not as effective at combating the illness. In reality, your child’s immune system functions better at a high temperature too, so he or she can recover quickly. But parents must always check with the pediatrician to be sure that fever is not an indication or any other ailment.

Newborn babies must be breastfed:

 It is advisable that newborn babies must be breastfed for at least six months. This is because the protective, immune-boosting antibodies that is present in colostrum—the “first milk that is produced by a nursing mother has countless benefits for your child’s immunity levels and also helps in reducing many infections and unwanted allergies.

By Dr. Atish Laddad, Founder and Director at Docterz.