Episode 41: Boosting Your Child's Immune System

Episode 41: Boosting Your Child's Immune System

Hey there! Today, we're tackling an important topic that many of us in the Southern Hemisphere are dealing with right now—boosting our children's immune systems during the winter months. With all the viruses and illnesses going around, it's super important to keep our little ones healthy and happy.

In this episode, I'll be sharing some easy and natural ways to boost your child's immune health, focusing on dietary and lifestyle choices that can really make a difference. From the power of good gut health to the benefits of whole foods, we've got lots to cover.

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Links
https://nourishwithkarina.com/feedingbabies
https://nourishwithkarina.com/3-week-feeding-kids-reset

Highlights:

Introduction (00:00.00)
Winter Sickness and Immune System Enhancement (00:29.422)
Winter Sickness in Children in Daycare and Childcare (02:55.726)
Gut Health and Prebiotics (05:20.17)
Immune System Benefits from Nut Butters and Legumes (07:45.826)
Nutritional Support for Immune System (09:59.704)
Nutritional Guidelines for Children in Daycare (12:14.218)
Vitamin C and Immune System Supplements (14:36.6)
Improving Immune System during Sickness (16:48.652)
Supporting Immune System with Daily Practices (19:12.716)

Show notes

READ TRANSCRIPT

Show Notes

Discussion Highlights:

Gut Health and Immunity: Understanding the crucial role of a healthy gut in supporting your child's immune system.
The Power of Whole Foods: How fruits, vegetables, and whole grains can bolster your child's defences against illnesses.
The Benefits of Herbs and Spices: Incorporating immune-boosting herbs and spices into your child's diet.
Homemade Remedies: Simple recipes like chicken broth and lemon drinks that can provide comfort and nutrition.
Supplementation Tips: When and how to use supplements to support your child's immune health, particularly probiotics and vitamins.

Tune in and discover how to naturally boost your child's immune system so they can thrive even during the chilly months. And remember, if you need more personalised advice and support, join us in the Nourishing Kids community!

Don’t forget to check out my website for more delicious and easy kids’ recipes: Kids Recipes https://nourishwithkarina.com/kids-recipes

Introduction (00:00.174)
You're listening to the Easy Feed Podcast, episode number 41, Boosting Your Child's Immune System. Hi there, I'm Karina Savage and with over 20 years experience feeding children, including my own, I've learned all the secrets that busy mums need to get their children eating better and actually enjoying healthy foods. So a huge welcome to the Easy Feed Podcast.

Winter Sickness and Immune System Enhancement (00:29.422)
Hi there, I hope you're really well. hope you've had a great week so far. I guess it depends on what day you're listening to this, but today I want to talk about something that is quite a concern for many of us in the Southern hemisphere at the moment, because it's winter and there's a lot of sickness around, sickness everywhere. I just feel like there's so many more viruses these days. I don't know. It's just, there's just a lot of sickness, right? And I had one mum say to me yesterday that

Her kids are just getting one sickness after another, after another, and I think they're on their sixth sickness, which is hard, right? Like it's hard because your kids aren't sleeping. You're trying to pump them full of, do you know, medication. Well, if you, if that's the route you take, some people don't do medic, medicine, you know, sometimes the kids have really high temperatures and you're just trying to keep them happy and sleeping so you can get some sleep and

All we want is them to be healthy so that they feel good and you feel good and everyone's getting sleep and everyone's immune system is working as well as it can be. And everyone's happy and healthy and you can, you know, follow your normal day, whether it's, you know, work day or whatever you're doing, you can just get, on with it rather than having to care for sick children or sick adults. So today I want to talk about how we can boost our immune systems naturally.

Naturally, preferably, but sometimes, you know, you can have extra support through supplementation, but it's something that we need to look at, I think, really broadly and holistically and do what we can first through food. And then if we need a bit of extra support along the way through supplementation, then that's okay. So cold weather does tend to increase our chances of getting sick. Anyway, first of all, we spend more time indoors in winter.

And viruses spread more when people are in closer proximity. So when people are closer together, viruses also do better in cooler temperatures, they survive and reproduce more effectively. And often we have lower vitamin D levels during the winter months. And sometimes this can also contribute to our immunity. We get less sun exposure. Vitamin D is important in immunity. And so this can also potentially play a role.

Winter Sickness in Children in Daycare and Childcare (02:55.726)
You know, we are more prone to getting sick in winter and especially children in daycare or childcare or, know, kids that are in very close proximity to each other indoors a lot. You know, they've got sniffly noses and they're coughing and they're spluttering. you know, I remember when my kids were young and my son was in childcare, I went there one day and the manager of the childcare center said to me, in their first year, you can expect 20 illnesses.

You know, and that's pretty much one of Fortnite. And I was blown away about that, but I think it's just their immune system getting used to a variety of different viruses that they may not have previously been exposed to because they're not exposed to other kids prior to going, well, they are exposed to other kids prior to going to childcare, but it's more just their siblings or your friends, not this whole group of different children that are thrown together in the same room all the time. So.

Yeah, I remember her saying that, that, you know, you're going to have at least 20 sicknesses in your first year of daycare or childcare. And that then extends through the whole family because, you know, you're all living together. And so the child brings it home from childcare and then you all get sick. And so can be a really tricky time, especially if you've got young kids in daycare or childcare, because they often pick things up. So I had a question actually from one of my mums in my membership on our, in our private Facebook chat this morning to say,

How can I improve my kids immune health? Because it's really hurting me at the moment. You know, they've, the baby's sick and the three year olds fussy and you know, what can I do? So I gave her a whole lot of tips inside the group just to, try and help in the short term, just to try and give them that boost. And then of course, you know, with fussy eaters, it's a long game, but absolutely there's things that we can do. So I'm going to talk about some of those things today. And then of course, if you want to, you know, have that.

extra TLC and support, then jump inside Nourishing Kids, you're going to get lots of support from me in there. But today I wanted to give you some top tips on how to improve your child's immune health. And really it starts with their gut health because most of our immune system is in the gastrointestinal tract. And that's where we want to have those nice tight cell junctions and a thick mucus layer in our gut so that the bacteria and the viruses, they can't penetrate through our cells.

Gut Health and Prebiotics (05:20.17)
into our circulation and make us sick. Effectively, we just poo them out. So we want tight cell junctions, we want a thick mucus layer. So those bugs and viruses cannot get through our gut cells into our circulation. Because when you've got a leaky gut, that's exactly what happens. And the bacteria and the viruses get through into our circulation and then we get sick more often. So we don't want a leaky gut, we want nice tight cell junctions. And really the way that we support our gut health first and foremost is through fibre.

Now the sexy name for this is prebiotics, but really it's plant foods, it's fiber. So we want to make sure that we're offering our children plenty of different colored vegetables and also fruits throughout the day to make sure that they are getting plenty of these antioxidants, these polyphenols, these phytochemicals and other bioactive compounds. So they are actually the plant's natural immune defense, the plant's actual immune system against other diseases and whatnot.

But when we eat plants, we get their beneficial immune events and we get their phytochemicals so they actually help us as well, which is incredible. So many of these wonderful nutrients that support our immune system are found just in and underneath the skin of the fruits and vegetables, such as in an apple, which is why I'm always going on about not peeling as much as possible so that you get these extra beneficial nutrients from the food.

from the fruits and vegetables that is going to help your immune system or your child's immune system. Pumping up the whole grains is also going to be beneficial from a gut health perspective and therefore an immune health perspective. So always going for a higher percentage of whole grains is going to help from an immune perspective because you're going to be giving your gut more fibre. It's going to be feeding those good bugs and that's going to in turn keep those cell junctions nice and tight, keep that immune system working really well.

Not only do whole grain products provide valuable fibre for your gut and immune health, but the nutrients in them are also really valuable. So whole grains are rich in iron and zinc. Two nutrients that fuzzy picky eaters often lack. And so it's very beneficial if you can increase the whole grains in your child's day. Giving them more nuts and seeds and legumes, they're also loaded with fibre, valuable protein, healthy fats and other nutrients, including iron and zinc. So.

Immune System Benefits from Nut Butters and Legumes (07:45.826)
They're all really good for the immune system. Using nut butters on breads and crackers, using almond meal or LSA, which is linseed, sunflower and almond meal in baking. I've got a great chocolate rocks recipe, which is chocolate coated nut, finely coated with chocolate. You can add chopped nuts into stir fries and curries. You can sprinkle nuts into salads.

You can use legumes such as my black bean brownie, you use as a tin of legumes. So that's a really good high fiber snack for kids. You've also got fava beans and chickpeas, which are also great options. And you can do the dried versions of those. They're in the supermarket. So increasing the prebiotics, which is the sexy name for fiber, is a really great way to support your child's immune health.

Other really beneficial foods we have are things like chicken broth. Now chicken broth has actually been proven in the research to be beneficial from an immune enhancing perspective. It has anti -inflammatory properties, it supports the immune system. So cooking up a whole chicken with the bones, with some celery, carrot and onion.

maybe a little bit of some bay leaves and a little bit of oregano and just literally cook that whole chicken for hours. Cook it down, cook it down, cook it down, keep topping it up with water so that you're not running too low in overall fluid. And then basically, you might have half to three quarters of a saucepan left of broth after a few hours and then you remove the chicken, you strain it then you've got this beautiful broth which you can use for all sorts of things. So you can use it to cook rice, you can use it to make soups.

You can use it to make risottos. You can use it to make curries. You can use it, literally just put it on the stove with some rice vermicelli noodles in there and cook up for five minutes those rice vermicelli noodles. And then you can serve that in a mug to your child. So they can just have a little mug of soup with a few noodles in there. can also scramble an egg into that. nonna used to do that actually. My nonna used to cook up the chicken broth. It's actually called brodo in Italian, brodo. She would.

Nutritional Support for Immune System (09:59.704)
cook this up and then she would take some of the broth and she would mash up some of the carrots that had been boiled up in the broth. And then she would put, did she, I don't think she did rice over chili noodles. I think she just did the carrot and then I reckon she, actually she may have even done a little bit of rice maybe. And then she also would scramble an egg. And so you had the chicken broth with some egg, maybe a bit of the chicken.

So really it was almost like a complete meal and it was delicious and it was very, very good for you. So give it a go, cook up some broth and then use it whichever way you want. It can be really beneficial and very versatile to support your child's immune system. Other really important foods to support the immune system are herbs and spices. So very, very underrated, very rich in antioxidants and nutrition.

So whether it's parsley, whether you put some on eggs, whether it's oregano or basil on a pizza base or on a pasta sauce, whether it's cinnamon that you put in porridge or you put herbs in scones, rosemary on roast potatoes.

They're all really beneficial, very nutritious. Then we have things like turmeric and garlic and ginger, which are also very beneficial. Now, sometimes it's harder to get these into fussy eaters. So if you can, great. If you can grate it into things or if you can mince it up into things, then amazing. It's going to have really immune supporting properties. Now, another one to definitely not overlook is vitamin C rich fruits and vegetables.

Vitamin C is valuable to the immune system. supports the immune system. So we have things like citrus, so oranges, mandarins, grapefruit. What else do we have? We have things like kiwi fruit, passion fruit, rich in vitamin C, tomatoes. have red capsicum. We have parsley. We have rock melon. So a lot of foods that are rich in vitamin C, broccoli, broccoli with lemon juice and olive oil, delicious. If you have to add a bit of salt to get them.

Nutritional Guidelines for Children in Daycare (12:14.218)
on board to eat it, then amazing. That's totally fine. It's still a very, very, very nutritious, healthy option for you. So I'm not fussed about a bit of salt if they're having broccoli with lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. It's amazing. those are all very solid, strong, immune boosting foods. So if you can try to increase some of those, that vitamin C, rich fruits and vegetables are really useful. So if you can try to increase some of those vitamin C, rich fruits and vegetables, that would be great.

Now I get asked about probiotics at times and there is actually good evidence around the use of probiotics in little ones who are in daycare or childcare to reduce the severity and frequency of sickness in children. So probiotics do have their place with little ones going to day. So probiotics do have their place with little ones going to childcare.

And in this situation, I would make sure that I was giving my child a probiotic that included the LGG probiotic. So that's in long -terms, it's lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, or in short, it's LGG. And that one's been shown to be effective in helping to reduce the sickness that children experience when they're in a daycare environment or a childcare environment. For a four to five year old,

I would aim for about 10 billion CFU or 10 billion life bacteria per day. It would just say how many billion are on there. So I'd aim for about 10 for a four to five year old. What about other supplements? Look, supplements can have their place, especially if your child is repeatedly getting sick and you just can't see daylight. You just can't take a break. So I would consider something that had vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, maybe echinacea.

maybe elderberry, those are all the vitamins and the nutrients that can be beneficial to the immune system. One that I particularly like, and look, I have no affiliation with any of these supplement companies, but I do quite like the Armaforce Virginias. That's good for children aged three and up, and that's quite a nice immune support. It's a, like a berry powdered supplement that you can put into orange juice, and that's quite a good one for children.

Vitamin C and Immune System Supplements (14:36.6)
But you can also get other gummies that like the Black Mores immune gummies that has vitamin C, D and zinc and that's quite a good one. So I would just look for something that had vitamin C, D, zinc and then if you could do echinacea or elderberry, those are other herbal extracts that have been shown to be beneficial for the immune system.

And digraphus is another one that has been shown to be beneficial. In terms of vitamin C supplements, I wouldn't give you a chart of vitamin C supplements all the time ongoing for months and months on end because that's not beneficial to the immune system. And sometimes you can actually down -regulate the immune system if you're giving too much from a supplement. So if you are going to supplement with vitamin C or any of these nutrients, I would do it.

short term for a couple of weeks. I would do it short term for a couple of weeks until they recovered and then have a break. You can then always restart later if needed, sort of have a few weeks on and then a month off. For a child who is low in iron though, then they may need iron every day or two, for three months at a time or longer. Or if there's a deficiency like iron or vitamin D deficiency, that's when you do need to take it consistently longer term based on professional advice.

If you are taking high dose vitamin C because of sickness, then I would just take it for a certain period of time and then stop. But always preferably get it from food. So make homemade lemonade. That's another one that my nonna used to do and my mom still does too. It's where you squeeze lemons and then you add some honey and regular sugar into hot water. So basically melt it.

And then you pour the lemon juice in. you probably for a serve do a couple of teaspoons of honey or sugar. Melt that down in hot, say half cup of boiling water. Then put the lemon juice in, probably half a lemon or one whole lemon. If you can get it in a whole lemon, great. It depends on how juicy the lemon is. Basically squeeze a lemon, add that into the water honey sugar mix, and then either top it up with cold water or put some ice cubes in there.

Improving Immune System during Sickness (16:48.652)
You will need to dilute it with water to make it less bitter. And then you may need to stir in a bit of extra sugar if it's too bitter still, but that's a really nutrient rich, but very high in vitamin C and very good for the immune system for when you're sick. And you can also make it a hot drink too. So you could squeeze the lemon and make it basically more hot water with honey. you could make probably pouring I'd say.

or three quarters of a cup of boiling water with the honey. And then you would tip in the lemon juice and see how that was. Again, it might be a little bit too bitter, so you might need to add a bit. Maybe then you would only add half a cup of, half a lemon, squeezed lemon. You might not even need to use a squeezer. You might just have to cut the lemon in half, pick out the pips and then with your hand, just basically squeeze it into the hot water with honey. And that could be a really nice soothing honey lemon drink as well. So you could sort of serve it hot.

or cold with ice cubes and really whether it's half a lemon or one lemon, it's up to you, but you'll just need to add the amount of honey and sugar and water to taste basically, depending on how bitter your child tolerated the drink. So obviously the less sugar, the better, but you also want them to get in the vitamin C from the lemon and you know, it's a way of keeping them hydrated as well because it's important for them to keep drinking when they're sick.

And of course us too, when we're sick, it's important to keep your fluids up. Okay. That's my little summary on immune boosting foods for when your child is sick. So I would definitely do the chicken broth. I would definitely do the lemon drink and try and get more vitamin C in. I would definitely try and get some more whole grains in if you can, but that's more of a long game in terms of fixing the immediate sickness. It's probably more things like your broth, your

lemon drink and maybe if you need a bit of those supplements like your Almaforce and whatnot. But really at the end of the day, it's about rest and fluids as well. So yeah, I hope that your little ones recover quickly if they are sick. Hopefully they're not getting sick too often, but hopefully that's been some helpful tips for you to support their immune system and those things like adding herbs and, and using more of those, you know, ginger and turmeric and garlic and

Supporting Immune System with Daily Practices (19:12.716)
spices, they're all going to support the immune system long term. Same with the whole grain, same with the fibre from the fruit and vegetables. These are all little things that you can do on a day to day basis that will make a big difference over the weeks and the months and the years and continue to support their immune system. Let me know if you've got any questions or comments about this episode. We'd love to hear from you and I will chat to you soon. Have a great week. Bye for now.