How Parents Should Approach Nutritional Treatments For Children With Autism
Dec 8, 2008 Nutrition
Having a child with autism is often an emotional struggle. But more than the fact it is indeed emotionally challenging to raise a child with autism, what is even more straining is the reality that parents still have to deal with treatments used to treat or manage autism. According to various surveys and reports, a significant number of parents of autistic children are willing to try anything to treat their child’s condition, as long as it is guaranteed not to adversely affect their children (autistic children do have a lot to deal with, after all). So while an ineffective alternative treatment for autism may not adversely affect the child, it will definitely affect the parent-due to disappointment. Parents can’t help but expect the treatment they are using to work, or at least yield some positive effects. When it doesn’t, they will feel down and disappointment, due to many reasons, obviously.
So with this in mind, how should parents approach nutritional treatments for their autistic children?
First, they should learn the basis of nutritional treatments as a cure for autism symptoms. As any parent of an autistic child should know, medical experts have not fully determined the source of autism. Although the cause is generally acknowledged to be genetic, a number of experts believe autism is caused by biomedical factors, including gastrointestinal bacteria, weak immune system, vaccine and mercury, and chemicals produced by certain food substances inside the body. In any case, nutritional treatments serve as a cushion to soften the blow of the effects of autism, so to speak. According to the experts who say autism is caused by a biomedical disorder, autistic children do not get the proper nutrition they should be getting due to the factors listed above. Needless to say, the lack of such nutrients makes it hard for their body to fully develop.
Among the natural treatments being used today, nutritional treatments are perhaps the most accepted. Everyone needs proper nutrition, especially children with autism with their underdeveloped bodies. Parents should see nutritional nutrients as a necessity. After all, autistic children have weaker immune systems; it is only natural that parents give them supplements in order to remedy this potential problem.
Often times, nutritional treatments are used to supplement other existing treatments, naturally or otherwise. Since it is only imperative for parents to give their children nutritional supplements, it should be not considered as the be all and end all of autism treatments. Many use such treatment as an additional measure to help make other alternative methods more effective. For instance, people using the gluten-free, casein-free diet often supplement the diet with nutritional treatments.
The substances used for this treatment may vary, although there are certain nutrients that they suggest children with autism take. For instance, Vitamin D is often considered as one of the more important nutrients for autistic children. Besides this, other substances used for nutritional treatments include probiotics, colostrum, and melatonin. They act on different areas of the body that affect an autistic child most severely (probiotics works on the digestive track, while colostrums is for the body’s immune system).
It should be noted, however, that the effects of autism treatments vary from case to case. It may work well for some, while it may not work for others. Parents would do no wrong with nutritional treatments, but they should not expect too much from it.
Tags: Approach, Autism, Children, Nutritional, parents, Should, Treatments
Children and the Weight Factor
Dec 6, 2008 Nutrition
In the present day global society, particularly in the most developed countries, the number of children who are obese has escalated to critical proportions. The reason to this is that present-day society is highly dogged by the ills of poverty and the lack of appropriate education for the individuals and the societies as a whole on the dynamics of health and diet. Modern society has been plagued by various negative health conditions which enlist the likes of obesity, cancer and Coronary Heart Diseases, just to mention a few. The proliferation of various epidemics has spurred the search for meaningful and long-term solutions which has led to the importance of nutritional education for individuals and societies as a whole. Authorities have taken various significant thrusts at exploring the dynamics that characterize the importance and essence of nutritional education especially for children in present society.The compel on nutritional education for the young people has been to tap the opportunities that are presented to health practitioners as they face the capacity of the youth and the teenager to engage more into abstract thinking accompanied by the evolving psychological settings. Jamie Stang and Mary Story (2005) notes that adolescence presents an opportune time to drill the youths to examine their eating lifestyles as well determine goals for dietary transformation. Modern day nutrition education for the adolescents must take advantage of the social as well cognitive swings that characterizes adolescent development. The shifts can be the basis for the promotion and embracement for healthier lifestyles of the youths and teenagers.In the USA alone diseases related to inactivity and poor diet and eating habits cost the health care system about $830 million on a yearly basis (Jamie Stang and Mary Story 2005). Some of the diseases that top the list are the cancers, heart diseases and diabetes mellitus among a host of others. Recent researches on the dynamics of nutrition and health have indicated that obesity has escalated to phenomenal epidemic proportions across the globe. Hellmich, N (1992) presents research outcomes of the Australian community as a tip of an iceberg on what characterizes global communities in the dimensions of health and nutrition. The results of the studies cited by the scholar show that for the Australian adults the incidence of obesity as well as that of overweight is rapidly rising.Researches estimate that 20%-25% of the county’s children are either overweight or indeed obese. Researches also indicate that in the 1985-1997period the proportions of school children who are classifiable as obese had risen 3 times whilst the numbers of those categorized as overweight had doubled. The figures have driven authorities to the realization of; and response to the fact that the societal ills that pertain to the link between diet and health must entail the prioritization of children nutrition education. There have been calls from various quarters that the problems of health must be approached holistically with the sole object of extirpating the root causes and not just the symptomatic indications of the mother problem. Various researches conducted have indicated that eating habits are carved in the early stages of human development and have a way of carrying through across childhood through adolescence up to adulthood. What has been established is that the kind of food stuffs that constitute children’s diet will influence the state of their health in the years to come.