An anti-infective therapy is truly preventive when it can act on the causes of infectious diseases and can remove them.
Given that the causes of all infectious diseases reside in an immune system disorder and since there are countless germs with which we come into contact, true prevention must be able to activate the non-specific defenses of our body which, when they are properly functioning, they are capable of activating us and of trying to defend us from all germs.
Importance of nonspecific immunostimulating therapy
Let’s ask ourselves some questions:
Instead of trying in every way to replace the defensive mechanisms of our body with some drugs, why don’t we make every effort to try to strengthen them?
It’s still:
Why don’t we use preventive therapies (such as natural ones) and take special care of our life hygiene, especially with proper nutrition?
Our children, but it seems that this also applies to many adults, in most cases they get sick because they ingest too many sugars, saturated fats, chemicals (dyes, preservatives, antibiotics, pollutants, etc.), with consequent relative deficiencies of vitamins and mineral salts that cause enzymatic alterations with pathological repercussion on the weakest points of the body. Especially in children, these biochemical alterations of the body primarily affect intestinal and then immune functions.
Our organism is much more complex than we can imagine and the immune system assigned to our defense, if well functioning, is able to protect us probably from any type of germ, virus, allergen or even cancer cell. The problem, however, is managing to keep it working normally today, with the countless destabilizing factors that threaten it.
The real anti-infectious protection, then, consists in providing something that protects us from ‘everything’ (and therefore also from the flu syndrome and winter pathologies), that is, something that enhances our natural non-specific defensive abilities: the only ones capable of adapting to any condition and to react to all that is harmful or extraneous to the self.
Therefore, our main task should be to safeguard and keep these defensive mechanisms functioning.
Therapy must always be personalized
In order to speak of true prevention, our intervention must be personalized, because the same causes of the diseases are personal, since they depend on our way of reacting to innumerable internal and external factors.
To personalize preventive therapy we must know the person, his constitutional characteristics, the weak points of his organism and his main behavioral errors, especially as regards the respect or not of the most common norms of life hygiene. It is therefore obvious that here I cannot give a suitable advice to everyone, but I can provide those generic tips that are always good for everyone, in the sense that they are the basis of the normal functioning (or stimulation of functioning) of the immune system of each child (in fact, such advice is fine even for an adult).
Main preventive tips for winter infectious diseases
I have divided the main preventive tips capable of strengthening the child’s immune system into 3 points, which I propose to follow for the duration of the winter.
1) Reduce the immune-balancing actions to the maximum:
– Avoid cow’s milk and its derivatives : this advice is almost mandatory for children subject to catarrhal forms of the upper airways or intestinal disorders.
– Reduce cereals containing gluten and their derivatives : it is very important for children subject to intestinal disorders (swelling or alterations of the hive); in this case, “reducing” means halving the dose.
– Reduce red meat and all its derivatives to no more than 3 meals a week and replace them with whole grains and legumes.
– To drastically reduce all simple sugars , cooked fats and all packaged foods prepared by the Food Industry: I am referring to sweets, candies, biscuits, snacks, etc.
2) Incentivize the immunorinforzanti actions:
– Increase the hours of sleep , either by making the child lie down earlier, or by promoting his afternoon rest, trying to reach at least 10 hours of sleep per day. Let’s not forget that “sleep is therapy!”.
– To facilitate sleep in children who have difficulties , I recommend giving them two fingers of a relaxing herbal tea (for example, based on lemon balm, linden and passionflower) sweetened with a teaspoon of honey and giving them melatonin as well (2-3 mg in the evening).
– Promote a trip to the mountains or to the sea : the choice depends on where the family lives. By mountain I mean possibly above 1,000 meters above sea level. But the sea is also fine, as long as the child is sheltered from the wind and does not get cold. The aim is to get away from the city or from the polluted environment of the cultivated plain (especially for those who live in the Po Valley or in notoriously polluted areas). The mountain is good for the pure air that characterizes it, while the sea is good for both the fresh air and the richness in mineral salts of the latter.
3) Supplement the diet with some nutrients:
The goal is to provide the body with all the essential nutrients capable of keeping its anabolic, detoxifying, defensive, immunostimulating, etc. enzymatic reactions well functioning. The most important supplements are:
– Multivitamin : if possible, choose a product of natural origin, because the vitamins of chemical synthesis are less effective and contain toxic residues deriving from their chemical synthesis.
– Further addition of vitamin C (250-300 mg per day), vitamin D (800-1.000 units per day), vitamin A (800-1.000 units per day).
– Multimineral : a product containing only 8-10 minerals is not enough, because in our diet there are especially microelements, that is, trace minerals. I therefore recommend buying a complete multimineral, such as that consisting of adequately purified ocean water.
– Further addition of magnesium (150-200 mg per day) and zinc (10 mg per day) especially in the most restless and / or nervous children.
– Probiotics : the proper functioning of the intestine is mandatory to obtain adequate immunostimulation. I also remember that probiotics, that is, what were once called “lactic ferments”, are intestinal bacteria that in order to multiply and live long in our intestines must be adequately nourished and a simple, cheap and effective nourishment is, for example, a pinch of brewer’s yeast per day, added to food.
Conclusion
Clearly there are many other tips that could be given and also many other useful substances for their nutritional actions, immunostimulants, antioxidants, etc. I chose these tips because I think they are the basic ones, in addition to the fact that we can’t even give too many supplements to our children.
Finally, I can not forget that the advice I have given should also be integrated with homeopathic therapy, which certainly performs a powerful preventive action, both specific and non-specific, against winter infectious diseases (colds, feverish forms, catarrhal syndromes and flu syndromes ), but for this I refer any interested people to my more specific publication
