I know a girl, now three and a half years old, who has never had a symptom - not one colicky night, not a tummy ache, not one day missed from preschool for the flu, not one skin rash, not one ear infection.

Her healthy ears alone put her in an elite group, according to a pediatrician acquaintance of mine. In fifteen years of practice, he says he’s never seen one child who made it to that age without an ear infection.

Although a child like this could be seen frequently in some traditional cultures, she is certainly a rare case here. Her parents, both yoga teachers, have each been vegetarians for well over twenty years, and the father is a professional herbalist. They had prepared their bodies for the conception for many years with herbs and diet. The mother used herbal medicines to assist her pregnancy, the baby was breast fed, and as an infant, began using herbs and other dietary supplements.

Although she’s been seen regularly by her pediatrician, she’s never taken a drug, including antibiotics. Even though she attends preschool with other typically chronically sick children, she never brings home their colds.

She’s alert, curious, active, and very healthy. She’s living proof of the effectiveness of raising a child naturally - and a testament to the possibility of actually being able to accomplish it - even in the fast paced new millennium.

Children’s Special Issues

Children’s health issues are special. In some ways, they are little versions of adults, and can be treated similarly. In other ways, however, their developing bodies require selected methods of care to insure they develop strong bodies and remain healthy for a lifetime. After all, we all live in the body we grew as a child.

From the energy medicine perspective of Asian health systems, the first one third of life is when the traits of coldness and wetness predominate. In Ayurvedic science, the health maintenance companion to yoga, this tendency is called “Kapha”, and results in an overabundance of slippery mucus.

Children, obviously, are subject to a variety of cold and wet diseases, particularly in the respiratory tract. Croup, pneumonia, bronchitis, sinusitis, ear infection - every parent knows these well. Otitis media, earache, is particularly common in our culture at this time. Fundamentally, the strategy for helping children grow healthy and strong is to keep the body warm and dry, reducing mucus.The main focus should be to promote good digestion in the child.

Chronic Subclinical Everything Syndrome

Americans are at a crossroads in health care. Modern farming methods and contemporary dietary practices have created a culture which is in its third generation of chronic undernourishment.America today has a epidemic of degenerative diseases.While we’ve done well in controlling infectious disease, we suffer widely from what Dr. Alan Gaby has coined “chronic subclinical everything syndrome.”People feel sick, but they are superficially normal by laboratory standards.Even though they are not sick enough in one area to have an official disease, they are subclinically deficient in several areas.All this sets the stage for the syndrome we see repeated endlessly in our children - a syndrome of subclinical undernourishment leading to food allergy, immune suppression, ear infection, and attention deficit.

Fill the Tanks

Often what chronically undernourished children need is just a basic, broad spectrum supplementation and dietary improvement.When children are born to mothers who are undernourished, who themselves were born to mothers who were also lacking, we just need to “fill the tanks”.

The most basic supplement is a children’s’ “mega-potency” multiple, from the health food store, which will usually be chewable.Make sure it contains minerals, as well as vitamins, as many do not.Even the health food style multiples are pretty conservative in dose, so many natural pediatric nutritionists recommend double the label dose for the child’s age.

Dr. Lendon Smith recommends:

·Vitamin A 5,000 units

·Vitamin D 500 units

·Vitamin E 400 units

·Vitamin C 500 to 1,000 mg

·B-complex 50 mg of each

·Folic acid 1 mg

·Zinc 15 mg

·Copper 1 mg

·Calcium 400 to 1,000 mg

·Magnesium 200 to 500 mg

“Superfoods” are nutrients that are more concentrated than typical food, but less potent than specific medicines.Add them liberally to the child’s diet by stirring or cooking them into foods and drinks.

Superfoods include:

Wheat germ

Algae (spirulina, chorella)

Rice bran syrup (not rice syrup)

Bee pollen

Royal jelly

Molasses

Dried plant juice (barley green, wheat grass)

Lecithin

Chlorophyll

Essential fatty acids, found in good quality oils, are critical for children to build healthy bodies and nervous systems. Ghee (clarified butter), almond oil and sesame oil are good sources, and are rich in nutrients important to children.

Children respond quickly to nutritional therapy.Their bodies have had less time to degenerate than adults, and their small bodies fill up rapidly.Take care to use proper and practical forms for children.You will be pleasantly surprised at the results you will see with consistent effort.