My child often gets sick in cold weather, what nutrients should I supplement from which foods to increase resistance? (Minh Lan, Hanoi)
Reply:
Cold weather, erratic rain and sunshine can easily cause children to lose resistance and get respiratory diseases. To prevent disease, you need to maintain a reasonable diet and supplement essential micronutrients for your child to increase resistance.
First is vitamin C - an antioxidant that strengthens the immune system, helping to fight pathogens. Vitamin C helps children prevent common colds, anemia, subcutaneous bleeding, bleeding gums, tooth loss and some infectious diseases.
Natural and safe sources of vitamin C for children are fresh fruits and vegetables such as oranges, tangerines, strawberries, guava, mango, papaya, tomatoes; dark green vegetables such as spinach, kale, Malabar spinach, and Malabar spinach.
Vitamin D helps children grow taller and affects their resistance. This micronutrient is abundant in meat, fish, eggs, milk, fatty fish... If daily food cannot meet the needs, children can supplement vitamin D with functional foods, drops, sprays or medicine as prescribed by a doctor.
Zinc is a substance that makes up enzymes and immune cells. Zinc deficiency often causes loss of appetite, slow growth, digestive disorders, especially decreased resistance, making children often sick, and poor physical and mental development.
Zinc does not exist in the body in reserve form. Therefore, you need to supplement zinc regularly for your child every day through food. This nutrient is found in beef, fish, eggs, milk, clams, oysters, snails, mussels, and oil seeds.
Selenium is a trace mineral that has the same effect on immune cells as zinc. Selenium is mainly found in red meat, seafood, eggs, milk or supplemented with multivitamins.
You also need to give your child probiotics to increase resistance, improve digestion, and prevent respiratory diseases such as common colds, coughs, and runny noses. In addition, substances such as beta glucan and thymomodulin also help boost children's immunity. Mothers should consult a doctor to supplement these substances for their children.
If parents are concerned that their child is lacking important micronutrients, they should take their child to the doctor for a specialized micronutrient test. Currently, Nutrihome uses a high-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) micronutrient test machine to help detect which nutrients the child is lacking or has excess of. From there, the doctor will develop a menu and prescribe appropriate supplements for the child to develop optimally.
Master, Doctor Nguyen Anh Duy Tung
Nutrihome Nutrition Clinic System
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