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Getting Good Food into Children

I have been asked many a times by my clients of what they should feed their children, how much they should feed their children and how to get more nutritious food into their children's diet.

Going on my own childhood experience, it was a difficult task for my mother to get any veges onto my plate.  I would either flat out refuse to eat my asparagus (where I would secretly throw them into the fireplace!)or when I was rarely served peas and carrots, I would be grudgingly blend them into my mashed potato so I could quickly gulp them down as fast I could and I never realized why I was always sick and tired as a child.

We didn't have the nutrition information available to us like we do today.  We never got the Jamie Oliver's "School Dinners" nor the "Super Size Me" movie to gross us out and educate us nor the countless books on the links between food and children's behavior that we do at our fingertips.  We now know sugar leads to diabetes and obesity and bad fats (trans fat) contained in biscuits and processed foods damage our body's cells and also lead to obesity. 

So I have been looking at the ways of getting healthy food onto children's plate AND into their stomach without putting them on a drip......More importantly, reduce (I say reduce because you are not going to stop them) the amount of  processed foods(What I mean by processed food is anything that wasn’t around 10,000 years ago) being digested by your child.

One way is to buy healthy and nutritious foods for the household and have recipes to make tasty food by your children, maid or yourself. Food like fruit, yoghurt, nuts, dried fruit, honey, pita bread, hummus, ham, pineapple, tomato paste, mozzarella are great ingredients to have so you can make things like fruit salad, fruit and nut mix, mini pizzas, dips.

Another way to get good food is to not have unhealthy food in the house.  The less processed food we have in the house the less they will eat it.  In Sweden, families nominate Saturday as "Candy Day".  The children are allowed a chocolate bar, hard candy and a soda and let them go nuts.  The great thing is when the child asks for candy we can calmly say " You can have it on "Candy Day" and because it is only once a week because your child is not unknowingly becoming addicted to sugar.

Feeling pain?  Why don't you try the following:

• Mobilizations
• Stretching muscles that are tight
• Strengthening muscles that are weak
• Drink more water
• Get more sleep

Mobilizations

Mobilizations are performed to improve the movement of the spine and provide the joints the proprioception to move more feely while in movement.

A great way to help mobilize the spine is use the Foam Roller

Stretching

Stretching muscles can release tension and ease pain in the fascia.  (The fascia is the sheath that surrounds the muscle).  The fascia can become tight and stick to the muscle if that muscle inside becomes tight.  This can cause pain and needs to be stretched or massaged to release the tension.  The body's musculature is all interlinked so try stretching the entire body first and find what is tight and begin there.

Strengthen Muscles

Where the muscles that are tight there may be muscles opposite to the tight ones that are weak, therefore, creating more tension than necessary.  For example, when muscles in the front of the neck are tight, this may cause lengthening and weakening of the musculature through the back of the neck.  This weakening allows the head to be pulled forward by the tight muscles in the front of the neck and in combination with gravity puts stress on the back of the neck and surrounding muscles causing discomfort and pain.  Makes sense, right?  First begin by isolating and strengthening the core or "inner unit" before moving on to the legs and arms otherwise known as "the outer unit".

Drink more water

The body is made up of 75% of water.  All joints contain water so the surfaces can glide over each other easily.  Muscles are full of water to allow smoother contractions.  Its only logical that you should be hydrated to move better.  Drink half your body wieght in ounces a day.

Get enough Sleep 

When you are tired.  Neural function from the brain to the body is lessened causing pure function and lazy habits as well as poor posture.  Get 7-8 hours of sleep a night.

Are you too busy for your own good?

I've yet to meet a woman who wouldn't like to have the fantasy body promised in such magazines that hail "The easy way to toning your Abs/Butt/Thigh" or "Great legs in 3 weeks" depicted in countless women's magazines.  But most women are too busy with real life to do more than just scan the headlines. Despite all of the known health benefits of exercise, only 15 – 20% of adult women exercise on a regular basis many of them do so for cosmetic reasons.  Why don't more women take advantage of the health benefits of exercise?

The truth is that women who exercise:

• Sleep better
• Have increased energy
• Have better posture
• Lower the risk of cancer
• Decrease their risk of osteoporosis
• Are less likely to smoke
• Report better sex lives
• Have clearer, smoother skin
• Drop their cholesterol levels
• Spend less money on health care
• Have healthier pregnancies
• Improve their mental alertness and concentration
• Report lower levels of stress
• Slash their risk of developing daibetes
• Experience less depression
• Are less likely ever to need prescription medicines
• Are less likely to suffer a heart attack

No matter what your age, you can reap these benefits from exercise and even more so if you are 30 and above.  This is because the human body's functions needs a boost after 30 or so years.  Even the most sophisticated machinery eventually needs an upgrade and the human body is no different.  And while women turn to the expensive and (sometimes risky) option of plastic surgery to retain a youthful appearance, it can't do a thing to make us  feel younger and live healthier for longer.  Exercise, however, will age-proof us from the inside out.

WATER – How important is it?

We tend to talk about what type of food we should eat to gain the most energy and foods we should avoid to keep healthy.  But we don't tend to talk too much about what water has to offer us in the way of health benefits, vitality and weight loss for us

According to F. Batmanghelidj in his book “Your body’s many cries for Water,  needs atleast half your body weight in ounces a day.  In other words, if you are 150lb you need 75oz per day.  If you measure in kilos:

75kg x .03 = 2.25ltr/day

Dehydration

The body can show a number of signs that it needs water.

Tiredness or chronic fatigue is one sign of dehydration.  So when you feel tired or fatigued try having 3 glasses of water before you reach for the coffee.

Did you know if you are 2% dehydrated, your performance will drop up to 10%? If you are dehydrated by 5% can lead to loss of consciousness and the loss of 10% of your fluids can lead to organ failure and possibly death.  By the way, when you have a dry mouth, you are already dehydrated by 3%!

Hunger is another sign of dehydration. This doesn't mean that if you can satisfy your hunger pangs by drinking water!  However we do sometimes mistake our thirst for hunger. This can happen only 1 or 2 hours after eating.  Try having 1-2 glasses of water and see if this wards off those hunger pangs.  If it doesn't, then you might look to see if you are eating too much carbohydrates.

Other signs such as Asthma, Heartburn, Rheumatoid Pain, Back Pain, Angina Pain, Headaches, Leg Pain when walking can be alleviated by increasing your water intake. Drink 1 -2 glasses every hour to help. 

The inability to think straight and even depression can be alleviated by water.  So if you are not alert in the morning try having 3 glasses of water first thing.  If you really think about it, you haven't drunk any water for atleast 7 hours so you will be dehydrated.

How do you know you have drunken too much water?  You will notice that your urine will be totally clear.  If it is yellow, you are dehydrated and if it is a hay colour, PERFECT!

The best water to drink is mineral water served in glass and containing dissolved solids of more then 300micrograms.  This usually says it on the bottle. 

Getting a very good tap filter and adding a pinch of sea salt to the water is also ideal in this day and age of minimizing our wastage. By adding sea salt, you place the electrolytes in the water.  You won't even taste it!

Distilled water is dead water and will act in reverse osmosis on the body and may leech vital minerals and vitamins from the body.  It's perfect for car batteries but not for us.  Don't microwave water either.  It destroys the molecular structure of the water.

What about sparkling mineral water? Its ok but sodas are a definite NO!  Super sodas may seep calcium from the body and cause accelerated osteoporosis whereas Diet Sodas not only will make you fat but recent research indicates it could increase the chances of brain damage in women and children!

Be wary of water bottled in plastic as it has been shown plastics can be deposited into the water especially if they are heated and when the bottle is crushed.  Some plastics leech more than others.  These are plastics containing 3, 5, 7, 9 in the recycle triangle on the bottle.

There was an article recently of what type of bottled water is best and they found that the mineralized water to be the least contaminants yet we still do not yet know if this new mineralized water does until it has been proliferated in the mass market for a numbers years and research has been followed through.

So what do you do to REHYDRATE?

• Drink mineral water, filtered water(with added sea salt), mineralized water (for now)
• Drink water at room temperature NOT cold
• Drink 3 glasses in the morning, it will awaken you.
• Drink 1 -2 glasses of water around 20 -30 minutes before you eat. It will lubricate your large intestine and flow back into your stomach as HCL acid.
• Don't drink water during your meal as it will dilute the acids in your stomach.
• "Eat" your water, do not gulp it down.
• Avoid caffeinated and sugar drinks.  These will make you even more dehydrated and may cause an upset stomach.
• If you are thirsty, you are REALLY dehydrated.  So drink now!

And one last thing - Nothing replaces water!  Not juice, not soda, not coffee and not alcohol, NOTHING!.  So to get the benefits water has to offer, drink it like Mother Nature had intended it to be drunk.  Straight up!