Part 1: Healing chronic illness in our kids, and setting the stage for a healthy baby
Kids seem to be getting sicker and sicker. Or at least most kids do not seem to be 100% well.
What infant does not have some dry eczema patches on their body or bright red rough cheeks? Or what baby or newborn isn’t diagnosed with reflux! Eczema, asthma, or autism, or an auto-immune illness are all prevalent in pediatric health. And these are conditions that really should not be happening. But they are common, with estimates around 55%.
The scary thing is that if we keep going along this trajectory, it’s projected that by 2025, less than 10 years from now, statistics project that 80% of our kids are going to have some sort of a chronic illness. 50% with autism. This means 8 out of 10 kids, means that you will have a child, or a niece/nephew, or a grandchild who has a chronic condition.
Even psychiatric conditions are common within secondary school children. It’s sadly not uncommon for kids of 10 and older to be diagnosed with anxiety and be on medications. A huge concern is that these medications have not been tested for long-term use in children. So, when kids have been diagnosed from their early years, placed on medications, which can have devastating effects upon biological systems then there is no clear end in sight!
Infants as young as 6 months are not diagnosed with Chron’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Toddlers and middle school children are diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus.
Hashimoto’s is as common in teenagers as in adults but goes unrecognised. Then there is metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes and type 1 diabetes. There are shocking estimates of 1 in every 68 children have autism, which is a statistic from 2014. If we keep going by the same trajectory the numbers are expected to rise to 1 in every 4 children. How are we going to cope with these numbers.
Action needs to be taken, as well as an understanding of how our choices play a vital role in the lives of our children and grandchildren. We need to reverse this trajectory. And when we can’t, we need to know how to reverse the tide. To know how to heal them and not destine our children to a life of chronic illness or pharmaceuticals.
The Root Cause to Chronic Disease is Environmental Toxicity compounded by our children’s unique and Increased Susceptibility to toxicity overload
There is a great deal of information about how our genetic SNPs (single neucleotide polymorphisms) are affecting our health. And of course, there is relevance in this. However, we need to be clear that our epigenetic pre-dispositions are only the baseline when understanding our health, and how we are able to interface with various environments. The environments we find ourselves in are largely under our control.
It is worth highlighting this further. Understanding that our genes have not changed in the past decades. True, there has been an explosion in cross-cultural families, but the true changes have occurred within our environments, and therefore the Epigenetic expression of our genes have changed. Being the interaction of our environment with our genetic makeup. Therefore we can understand our genetics load the gun, but it’s the environment that pulls the trigger.
Taking control of our environment is key, as the total toxic load increases our children become sicker. Please do take the time to download my home-chemical-clean-up document by signing up for my newsletter within the opt-in bar on my Homepage.
I am an advocate of implementing detoxification strategies from an early age with children. Since children are mostly overloaded by toxicity, which then translates into biochemical and biomedical imbalances that are then detectable through Functional Medicine such as leaky gut and dysbiosis.
Leaky Gut and gut dysbiosis sets the stage for systemic, overall oxidative stress and inflammation, which in turn triggers immune system imbalances and chronic infections which, in turn, cause stress to the mitochondria and cellular energy production.
The end result, is that we sick children presenting differently depending upon their genetic make-up. One child may present with asthma, another with autism, another with ulcerative colitis. But it all starts initially with toxicity overload. And children are especially vulnerable to these toxic exposures since their livers are not as mature as adults and therefore not going to clear these toxins as efficiently.
Secondly pound for pound, children consume more. More water, more food. So they are getting a higher yield of toxin exposure as well as not being able to excrete them as efficiently as adults.
Toxic exposure does not suddenly begin once we are born either. It starts when our babies are in our womb, at conception. Therefore the BEST time to begin working on the health of your children is BEFORE they are born. Encouraging mum and dad to clear as much toxic loading as possible in order to minimise the amount of total loading transferred through the umbilical cord and through the placenta before the baby is born.
And if we do not think early enough, then the statistics are already there. Cord blood has an estimation of 20,000 different chemicals present in it.
Baby’s are born with a Leaky Gut
Baby’s are born with a porous illeum, which later seals over, with the correct nutrients including essential fatty acids. Prior to the natural maturation of the baby’s gut, the baby is more susceptible to absorbing more heavy metals, pesticides, stress hormones from mum, through mother’s milk or other food sources.
The baby’s gut mirrors the blood-brain barrier, therefore reflective of their vulnerability to the translocation of toxins into the brain.
Points of entry into the brain
Entry at the pineal gland, where we produce melatonin, impacts how our children will sleep..
Entry at the posterior pituitary, where hormones oxytocin is made, impacts how our children socialise.
Entry at the anterior pituitary, where other sex hormones are made, impacts puberty, and their sex hormones, and thyroid, as well as adrenal hormones.
The result of all this being that children are being born with an unfair advantage, mum and dad hosting a high toxic load, disadvantage clearance pathways, greater susceptibility than their parents and incremental loading with each generation.
