4 Essential Ways to Help Protect Your Children From Pneumonia
Featured photo credit: langll via pixabay.com
Fall and winter bring chilling temperatures, less sun, and more rain.
You’ve probably heard that colds aren’t caused by rain or cold weather.
But believing this common myth may be better for you – and this becomes
critical if you have children.
Don’t worry, here are a few effective ways you can help protect your children from pneumonia during the cold seasons.
Is Catching a Cold When it’s Cold Really Just a Myth?
Is it just a popular myth that you’re more likely to catch a cold when exposed to cold temperatures? Maybe not — doctors found
evidence that cold viruses infect you easier during the colder seasons.
They found preliminary evidence that exposure to cold temperatures
suppresses your immune system. They also found that the rhinovirus
(major cold-causing virus) can multiply easier in your body when your
body temperature is lower (it’s most optimal for the virus when your
body is at 91 degrees Fahrenheit).
They ran studies on mice cells
and found that when the airways are exposed to cold air, the immune
cells are less able to send signals between themselves to coordinate
blocking the rhinovirus from replicating itself.
Don’t let your
guard down because you’ve heard the myth is wrong. In fact, you should
protect your children and yourself even more, when it’s cold out because
your immune system has a harder time fighting cold-causing viruses.
Why Cold Prevention is More Important for Children
Simple colds and flus can turn into pneumonia – and children are more susceptible to developing pneumonia from these and other respiratory infections. According to the American Lung Association,
children are generally at high risk for pneumonia. Pneumonia is the
leading cause of hospitalization among U.S. children. Worse, pneumonia
is the cause of 15 percent of worldwide deaths of children below 5.
Your
children most likely won’t die from contracting a cold this winter, but
being aware and proactive in protecting your children from colds and
flus during the cold seasons helps lower any risk.
Here are four things you should be doing:
1. Give Your Children Daily Vitamin C Supplements
What’s a famous go-to when you have a cold? Orange juice – because of its vitamin C content. Scientists
have now found proof justifying this traditional remedy. Researchers
found that vitamin C boosts your immune cell count and your immune
cells’ ability to capture invading viruses. It also boosts production of
virus-fighting molecules (called interferons) made by your immune
system. Vitamin C has also been found to directly lower virus
replication. When researchers gave animals vitamin C, it boosted their
defenses against both viruses and bacteria, which can both cause
pneumonia. They also found that your body uses up vitamin C when
fighting off pneumonia – so at the very least, keeping your vitamin C
stores up helps your immune system fend off pneumonia-causing germs.
How do these findings play out in the real world? Natural News
interviewed Dr. Andrew Saul, Ph.D. who advocates for finding natural
cures before seeing your doctor. He testifies that he was able to cure
his pneumonia within three hours of a non-stop vitamin C therapy. But,
his testimony is a bit biased since there’s some personal gain (in terms
of his self-cure books) involved.
Natural News also tells of
another patient using the same non-stop vitamin C therapy. The New
Zealand native was near death, being attacked by both leukemia and
pneumonia. The therapy reversed both diseases and he eventually walked
out of the hospital on his own!
But both “miracle cures” involved
non-stop intravenous vitamin C of very high doses. Unless you’re a
trained healthcare professional, it’s not a remedy you can easily resort
to whenever you get the sniffles. It also may be dangerous, and you
should ask your doctor before ever trying it.
Instead, bulletproof
your children’s and your immunity by taking vitamin C supplements with
them every day. It’s better to prevent colds and flus from taking hold
than resort to overboard remedies when you’re already sick in bed. (As a
bonus, taking vitamin C supplements before or after your daily workout
helps prevents oxidative damage and stress caused by free radicals
created when you exercise!) All you need to do is make sure your
children pop a vitamin C pill before you send them off to school and you
can rest assured they’re safer from colds and flus.
If your children find it hard to swallow pills, you can give them a glass of vitamin C-packed lemon water with their everyday breakfast instead.
2. Install a Chimney
If
you cook your children’s meals on a wooden stove, you could be
increasing their risk for pneumonia. But if you invest in a chimney for
your stove, you’ll help lower their risk. Researchers found
that households with chimneys installed to their wooden stoves have a
30 percent lessened risk of severe pneumonia in toddlers. The chimneys
also lowered carbon monoxide exposure (which can harm your children’s
nervous systems) by 50 percent.
Why? According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), open fires for cooking are a major cause of children’s pneumonia. Experts
found that smoke exposure can aggravate the condition of children with
mild pneumonia. In fact, in the study, the smoke exposure made it more
likely that medical intervention would fail, which led to 35 percent of
the infected children dying. But using a chimney helps keep indoor
pollution from cooking away from your children’s lungs.
Robert
Hanflig, the owner of Pellet Stove Parts, advises that choosing the
right chimney is vital for keeping smoke out of your home’s air. A
chimney’s draft (vacuum function) is drastically lessened if
it’s not 2 feet taller than any raised part of your roof that’s 10 feet
from the chimney. If you have a flat roof, the chimney must be at least
3 feet above it.
3. Get Your Children Vaccinated
Vaccination is unanimously recognized as the most effective way to prevent childhood pneumonia. The NIH reports
that vaccination prevents 1,075,000 child deaths by pneumonia annually.
They advise vaccination for Hib and pneumococcus in children, as these
are the two leading causes of children’s pneumonia deaths.
But vaccines can have staggering side effects,
which include thousands of medically recorded cases of seizures and
encephalitis. Although it’s unlikely that your children will experience
any side effects, the risk is still there. Instead, you can choose to
boost your children’s cold and flu defenses with vitamin C and other
immunity-boosting supplements, like antioxidant-rich green tea and
coffee bean extracts.
4. Give Your Children Hand Sanitizers
Touching
infected surfaces then touching your nose, eyes, or mouth later is one
of the most common ways cold-causing germs enter your body. Why? People
wipe their noses with their hands all the time then touch doorknobs,
desks, and other common fixtures. Cold-causing viruses usually survive
for 24 hours outside of a host, but depending on the surface, some
viruses can survive for a whole week!
If your children touch an infected surface, these germs are now on
their hands and only a nose-scratching or an eye-rubbing moment away
from entering their bodies.
Hand sanitizers can be expensive, but
teaching your children to use them often can help prevent these cold-
and flu-causing pathogens from entering their bodies. Researchers studied
the hands of participants after they used a hand sanitizer and found
greatly lowered numbers of infectious viruses on their skin. They
concluded that using hand sanitizers after your hands come into contact
with public objects can help protect you from exposure to these germs,
but since it doesn’t completely disinfect your hands of cold-causing
viruses, it’s not foolproof.
The cold seasons bring risk to your
children of developing pneumonia. While no method can assure your
children 100 percent protection, implementing these four ways
effectively lowers their risk significantly. According to Justin
Eichler, lead editor of Posta news, children of certain ethnicities are
more susceptible to dying from pneumonia (like Maori and Pacific
Islanders whose risk are about six times higher).
If your children are of these higher-risk ethnicities, you should
strongly consider getting them vaccinated, which offers the most
protection from pneumonia. More Info: lifehack.org
