Super Nutrition For Babies

[Lilly Solo]

Othergreat healthy-baby feeding books will tell you to choose organic produce, alert you to choking hazards, urge you to make your own baby food, encourage breastfeeding, and provide you with some developmental expectations for your child. We'll tell you all of this too, but we're also going to provide you with much, much more.

These feeding guidelines will not just provide your baby with the ability to survive but will ensure she thrives. We recommend feeding your baby in a way that coincides with how her body works, considering her unique nutrient needs as a growing baby.

Our Super Nutrition program builds super-healthy babies. And today a healthy baby is not a certainty, as evidenced by the increasing numbers of children with chronic health issues. But diet and nutrition can make a tremendous difference.

Chronic childhood illness has been on a steep rise over the last thirty to forty years. We call this scourge of Contemporary Chronic Childhood maladies "3C" conditions, and they include autism spectrum disorders; allergies, eczema, and asthma; attention deficit disorders and learning disabilities; emotional, mood, and behavioral disorders; recurrent pain disorders; metabolic syndrome, obesity, and autoimmune diseases; digestive and gastrointestinal disorders; tooth decay; and cancer.

We consider the 3C conditions contemporary because they are relatively modern illnesses that were exceedingly rare in past generations and, in fact, nonexistent in pre-industrialized populations. They are chronic because they aren't an acute problem, like pneumonia, but instead chip away at health every day and are often considered incurable. They are designated as childhood conditions because they affect children or are increasing in prevalence in childhood. For instance, type 2, or non-insulin dependent diabetes (formerly known as adult-onset diabetes), metabolic syndrome, depression, dental problems, heart disease, and high rates of cancer are new to childhood, as previously they predominantly affected adults.

In fact, not only are the 3C conditions on the rise in children, but many, such as obesity, autism, and diabetes, are increasing quickly enough to be called epidemics. Current, common baby feeding practices have not safeguarded our children. Children born today face the following unfortunate statistical realities:

* One in 10 people in North America and Europe have one of 80 autoimmune conditions; that's nearly 25 million people, with a 2012 study by NIEHS (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) showing that more than 32 million have autoantibodies, the precursors to full-blown autoimmune disease.

What's worse is that these disease rates have been progressively increasing over the years. "If these trends continue," fears William Sears, M.D., pediatrician and author of more than forty books on children's health, "America's children face a future filled with sickness rather than health, of weakness rather than strength, of sadness rather than happiness."

With this book as your guide, we will empower you to put the odds in your favor for preventing your baby from developing such 3C conditions, despite the statistics. Our way to do that is with Super Nutrition. Super Nutrition is the term we've coined to describe a purposeful way of selecting, preparing, and combining foods; using specific supplements; and purposefully avoiding other foodstuffs in such a way as to be protective of health. Ideally, these choices will result in the prevention of chronic and degenerative disease in your child. This means that by feeding your baby following our Super Nutrition method, you can protect her from the very real, very scary, and very tragic 3C conditions.

How does the same feeding program protect against such a wide array of illnesses? It turns out there are significant commonalities in the underlying causes of many of the 3C conditions. So even though they seem different, the 3C conditions actually have two very important things in common: They are caused or made worse by nutrient deficiencies, and they are caused or made worse by toxic overload.

This is great news! It means that you hold most of your baby's health in your hands because you have significant control over his environment. Even if he has "bad" genetics (or genetic susceptibility) that sets him up for autism, diabetes, obesity, learning disabilities, or emotional disorders, it is most often not his genes, but rather his environment that will determine whether he actually ever develops any of these conditions.

The impact of epigenetic changes, such as those caused by environmental changes on genes, can be passed down through generations. If a toxic exposure turns on genes that contribute to autism, those turned-on genes can be passed down to one's children. Additional contributing factors in subsequent generations, such as toxic exposure, stress, or poor nutritional status, might be enough to express these turned-on genes and thus explain the epidemic rise in autism. Unfortunately, unless these environmental factors are corrected, the trend will continue and/or accelerate.

Dr. Philip Landrigan, pediatrician and researcher, reviewed biological, genetic, and environmental factors as contributing factors to autism in Current Opinion in Pediatrics (April 2010). A summary of his conclusions states, "Expanded research is needed into environmental causation of autism. Children today are surrounded by thousands of synthetic chemicals.

We also know that nutrients combat toxins, either helping to clear them or reducing their ability to do harm. A diet that is nutrient rich, therefore, can directly protect your child from toxins in his environment. This is empowering information and is critical in the hands of concerned and caring parents. For more on how nutrients remove and deactivate toxins, see chapter 5.

For babies, diet is one of the most important environmental factors when it comes to influencing health. The foods selected, their source, their preparation, their timing of introduction, their quality, and their combination are all important in the protection of health ("good" gene expression) or the development of disease ("bad" gene expression). Simply put: Good food keeps good genes turned on and keeps bad-disease genes turned off.

Truth be told, we see modern food and conveniences as an attack, or veritable war, against children's health. In this war, we have identified "Allies" and "Enemies." Your Allies are the diet and lifestyle choices you make. They include not just what you choose to put into your baby's mouth but also what you include in her life to bolster her internal defenses, such as good bacteria, sunshine, clean water, fresh air, and loving embrace.

PROPER DIGESTION AND DIGESTIVE AIDS. Children with the 3Cs often have digestive problems (including allergies). Therefore, it is critical to aim for complete protein digestion as well as adequate stomach acid to ensure proper nutrition is obtained from foods; it's also essential to prevent a variety of tummy troubles, from constipation to diarrhea.

HEALTHY GUT ECOSYSTEM AND INTESTINAL WALL. Proper nourishment will ensure that your baby's intestinal tissue is healthy and capable of protecting her from undigested proteins and pathogens that could otherwise gain access through a weak intestinal lining to the bloodstream and brain.

CLEAN WATER. Your baby's growing body is, in part, built based on the caliber of water you provide. Using filtered water, when your baby is ready, will help ensure that the water functions appropriately as a cleanser and source of alkalizing minerals, rather than a source of toxins.

VITAMINS AND MINERALS. Trace quantities of certain minerals enable the body to run complex biochemical processes. Vitamins and minerals are also called coenzymes and act as critical helpers in making most processes in the body function effectively and efficiently. In addition to ensuring the body "works" properly, nutrients are the building blocks for your baby's tissues, bones, and organs. Small nutrient deficiencies can cause big problems. Whole foods are your best source of nutrients.

DETOXIFICATION. Toxins are more likely to overwhelm a body that lacks nutrients; a well-nourished body fortunately can cope far better. By providing nutritious foods, you will support your baby's ability to detoxify and thus minimize the effects of these toxins.

HEALING ("SUPER POWER") FOODS. Certain foods provide optimal nutrition to support immunity, detoxification, and the formation and function of organs and of many systems in the body. These foods have been shown to protect and preserve pristine health. When abandoned in the diet, their absence has been associated with an increase in chronic disease, deformity, and degeneration. When replaced, these foods have the power to actually restore health. Thus, we have categorized these protective, nutrient-rich, healing foods as Super POWER foods.

SUPPLEMENTS. Supplements are ideally just that: "supplemental" to a nourishing diet. Food provides nutrients in their most absorbable form, acting synergistically to provide the best support for the body. However, supplements are often beneficial to fill a nutrient void or to support a metabolic blockage.

ANTIOXIDANTS. Antioxidants are nutrients that protect your cells against free radicals, which cause damage to the body, resulting in inflammation and other problems. Antioxidants reduce the damage of today's free-radical onslaught from processed foods (predominantly from plant and seed oils) and our toxic environment.

PROBIOTICS.Probiotics is another term for beneficial bacteria, which serve untold health functions in the body. Maintaining healthy gut flora will protect against a damaged or "leaky" gut, thus minimizing the risk of allergies, mood alterations, nutrient deficiencies, digestive distress, and illness from infection.

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