Many young children seem to have colds and fevers all year round, and they need to see the doctor several times a month, so parents can’t help but worry.
Where does resistance come from? The body must rely on a complete range of immune defenses and functions to fight against foreign pathogens, namely white blood cells, antibodies, and unblemished skin and mucous membranes.
There are two main sources of immunity.
1, after illness, the body produces special antibodies against such pathogens, when such pathogens come to invade again, the antibodies can combine with white blood cells to kill the pathogen, and avoid illness. This immunity, some can last a long time (such as measles antibodies), some are temporary (such as cold antibodies). After the vaccination, the body receives stimulation will also take the initiative to produce immunity, such immunity, in general, has a longer effectiveness.
2, the second source of immunity is “passive” and born. For example, newborns (infants within one month of birth) receive many antibodies from their mothers and become immune; for example, after the injection of immune serum proteins (i.e., antibodies to certain diseases), they may have a transient suppressive effect on a few disease conditions. The multinucleated leukocytes in the human body have an innate instinct for phagocytosis, and lymphocytes can also produce a variety of antibodies, some of which are present in significant amounts at birth in infants, while others do not reach standard amounts until young children are about 6 years old.
Resistance increases with age.
Although newborns have some antibodies given by their mothers to protect them from certain diseases, they have very little resistance because their white blood cells do not function well and their “complement” (which is stored in the blood serum and increases the role of antibodies) is very low and cannot work with antibodies to stop the invasion of pathogens. People think that newborns have antibodies given by their mothers, so they can not get sick, but this is actually an incorrect concept. Newborns are less likely to get sick because they are more protected and have fewer opportunities to come into contact with pathogens, but once they are attacked by pathogens, they will not only get sick, but they will get very sick.
After 4 to 6 months of age, the antibodies the infant received from the mother will gradually disappear and the infant will begin to be able to produce antibodies on its own. The white blood cells are also maturing, but because the exposure to life is gradually expanding, there are more and more opportunities for infection with pathogens, and they become sick from time to time. As the age increases, due to the repeated stimulation of disease, the body’s antibodies increase, resistance is slowly increasing, after the age of five or six, the number of illnesses will begin to slowly reduce.
Frequent illness is not a lack of resistance.
Some young children repeatedly catch colds and fevers, not because they have no resistance, but because they have more exposure to pathogens than others. For example, the air and the crowded crowd are full of pathogens, especially there are so many kinds of cold and flu viruses that as long as they have not touched them, they have the chance to get sick. Other things such as: many siblings, small living space (family, neighborhood, school) also increase the chances of getting sick. A simple example is that when an adult comes back from outside and picks up a child before washing his hands, it is likely that the virus on his hands will be transmitted to the child. Each child’s constitution and environment may be different, some people are sick less often, while others are more often. However, in general, “small illnesses are constant and big illnesses do not occur”, and parents will no longer have to worry about this when they grow up without any risk.
Most of the frequent pediatricians are young children between the ages of half and four, and the number of illnesses decreases from about 10 times a year to once or twice a year for most people after that. Very few have truly poor resistance.
A child with a really bad resistance is one who repeatedly has more serious, septic infections, such as otitis media, pneumonia, abscess chest, septic skin, severe bronchitis, or frequent hospitalization and stunted growth, all of which are caused by more “virulent” bacteria. If a child has a cold, fever, or cough that passes in a few days, it is mostly caused by a common filtration virus, not an immune deficiency.
How to avoid frequent illness in young children.
Many parents think that allowing their young children to take more supplements, tonic, healthy foods or vitamins will increase their resistance. Some physicians and parents also think that they can protect their children from colds by giving them “immune serum protein”. In fact, these are not very useful, because vitamins have nothing to do with resistance. Resistance comes from white blood cells and antibodies, and the vast majority of young children do not have immune deficiency problems. It’s just that once exposed to an untouched pathogen, and the body does not yet have antibodies to fight that pathogen, the infection will naturally develop. Therefore, the question is how much exposure to the pathogen is possible. However, if you maintain a good nutritional status, you can heal faster than others once you get sick.
It is more important to pay more attention to the diet and nutrition of children, to take them less often to crowded places or public places, to wash hands frequently for both adults and children, to avoid direct face-to-face contact with children when adults have colds, to feed newborns with mother’s milk as much as possible, and to pay attention to the cleanliness of all kinds of eating utensils, to have regular vaccinations and to seek early diagnosis of illnesses than to wear more clothes, to cover more blankets, to take more supplements and vitamins, etc.
Personal summary of a few jingles.
”If you want to be healthy, don’t eat too much at night” (you can’t eat too much at night, and you should eat lightly)
”Do not eat bed-pressure rice, do not drink bed-pressure milk” (that is, before going to bed do not eat, do not drink milk)
”Eat more rice and vegetables, less meat, eggs and milk” (balanced diet, in the past the elderly often said “children need to eat a hundred families of rice to grow up”, in fact “a hundred families of rice” refers to a balanced diet)
In addition, there is a classic proverb in Chinese pediatrics: “If you want your child to be safe, three points of hunger and cold”.