We are at an age where antibiotics, painkillers, NSAIDs, steroids, vaccines, and other pharmaceutical drugs have become part and parcel of our daily diet. Though they cure diseases, they can also damage livers, kidneys, and digestive systems; decrease nutrient absorption; and destroy both “harmful” and “beneficial” intestinal bacteria (microflora) as well as enzymes, making immune systems impotent, systems defenseless, and bodies exposed to simple pathogens, viruses, yeasts, infections, and allergies.
They are definitely appropriate interventions for acute crises, but not for passing viral infections and minor health problems.
Because our children are constantly bombarded with antibiotics, medications, vaccines, food additives and preservatives, and pesticides that drain their immune responses, we should bolster their immune systems to protect their little bodies against microbes, viral, bacterial, and yeast infections, allergies, and environmental toxins. So what do we do to stop the depletion of their immunity and revive their innate defenses in order to regain healthy intestinal ecosystem?
Children’s health can be recovered through rebuilding their exhausted microflora. When a child becomes exposed to an infection, the health care practitioner hastens to prescribe an antibiotic course and/or other medication for the condition. Antibiotics wipe out the infectious bacteria as well as “beneficial” bacteria in the intestinal tract, which are there to protect against pathogens.
Healthy bacteria become depleted after the treatment and the body becomes exposed to recurrent colds, flu, earaches, sinusitis, tonsillitis, respiratory and yeast infections, diarrhea, and gastritis.
In the face of such consequential disorders, we should neither remain impotent nor passive. There are ways to revive depleted microflora and regain good health. By feeding children live culture yogurt (probiotics), “beneficial” bacteria will be stimulated to prevent the above-mentioned disorders. As probiotics are natural inhabitants of the gut, children benefit from them to reduce repeated yeast and bacterial infections.
Dietary or supplementary probiotics should not be taken simultaneously with the dose of antibiotics, as antibiotics wipe out “good” bacteria along with the targeted “bad” bacteria [read last week’s column: When Can Bacteria Do Us Good? Arab News, Oct. 24, 2007]. A nutrition rich in fresh fruits, raw or lightly cooked vegetables (heat destroys enzymes) and whole foods also helps improve intestinal health to ward off invasive micro-organisms and yeasts. Sugar, sweets, and soda drinks, too, revive yeast infections and deplete immunity.
Children and infants’ immune defenses should not only be strengthened immediately after birth through breastfeeding, but also before birth, in utero. How is that possible? Pregnant mothers should take probiotics and eat live culture yogurt to bolster their immune systems as well as their unborn babies’ immunities.
According to a Finnish study, mothers, who took daily probiotics for the last eight weeks of their pregnancies and six months after delivery and breastfed their infants, had babies with stronger immune systems, having less food and skin allergy incidents (skin conditions, eczema) than those whose mothers did not take them daily.
Other benefits, expectant mothers reap from probiotics, are that they become more resistant to bacterial vaginosis, vaginal yeast infections, inflammatory bowel diseases, and recurrent bladder infections. They also become less prone to preterm labor.
Dr. Gloria Gilbere, N.D., Ph.D., doctor in natural health and author of many health books, recommends a probiotic formula, containing multiple strains of cultures in a substrate of goat-milk plus natural vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and proteins. Why goat-milk? Because, goat-milk has a similar molecular structure to breast milk, hence more easily digested. So, it is our duty as parents to make smart decisions to protect our children’s health, before and after birth.
By preserving their intestinal microflora and bolstering their immune systems with probiotics to prevent diarrhea, intestinal disorders, skin and food allergies, respiratory disorders, and recurrent bacterial and yeast infections, we reduce risk of chronic diseases, requiring debilitating pharmaceutical drugs, and hospitalization. Please, don’t remain helpless. Help your child today and tomorrow they will enjoy good health!
(Mariam Alireza is a holistic science specialist. Send comments to [email protected]. Log on to arabnews.com for previous articles.)