I often see babies like this in my life, who have colds and fevers at every turn, who have a runny nose within a couple of days of their last cough, and who cough all the time when the runny nose stops. Every time a child in kindergarten has a cold, he seems to be unable to avoid it and often goes to the hospital for three days. When he goes to the hospital, he is likely to be given fluids, and the baby suffers, while the adults are physically and mentally exhausted. Such babies belong to the category of recurrent respiratory infections. There is a clear medical definition of recurrent respiratory infections in children: “Children under 7 years old who have more than 7 colds a year and children over 7 years old who have more than 6 colds a year can be counted as having recurrent respiratory infections.” The infection will show cold symptoms if the infection is in the upper respiratory tract. In addition to the baby’s innate constitution, recurrent colds are also related to parents’ misconceptions about the daily care of their babies. The ancient saying “the doctor treats the disease before it happens” translates into the words of our people, “prevention is better than cure”. This phrase comes from an allusion. King Wen of Wei asked Bian Magpie, “Which of the three brothers in your family is the best doctor?” Bian Magpie replied, “The eldest brother is the best, the middle brother is the second best, and I am the worst.” King Wen asked again, “Why?” Bian Magpie replied, “The eldest brother treats the sick before the onset of the disease; the middle brother treats the sick at the beginning of the disease. But I heal when the disease is severe. People generally see me piercing the meridians, bleeding with needles, putting poison on the skin to fight poison with poison and other major operations, so they think my medical skills are brilliant, but they don’t know that elder brother’s prevention is more important.” If parents do the following in the daily care of their babies, they too can be the best doctors for their babies, just like the eldest brother of Bianchi. Some parents always give their babies more clothes and cover them tightly, so they are always sweating. When they sweat, their pores expand and they are easily attacked by cold air and catch a cold. So, don’t dress your baby a lot and overprotect your baby. As the saying goes, “If you want your child to be safe, you have to be hungry and cold”. If parents can often adhere to the baby cold exercise, so that the baby’s body slowly produce cold resistance, the probability of his cold will also be slowly reduced. The so-called cold-tolerance exercise refers to the use of the difference between the temperature and the body surface temperature as a stimulus to exercise the body, improve the body’s adaptability to temperature changes and enhance resistance. There are many methods of cold exercise, including cold baths, washing hands, face and feet with cold water, outdoor activities in winter, and so on. All of these methods are measured in terms of the baby not having pale skin or goose bumps. Studies have found that children who are overdressed often suffer from colds and coughs, while those who are underdressed rarely do, because they have acquired the ability to adapt to changes in hot and cold air. Therefore, it is beneficial for children to “always carry three parts of cold” to enhance their ability to fight diseases. In addition, some parents like to use Western ginseng and other supplements for their babies to supplement their bodies. This is actually not good, give the baby to eat nutrition indiscriminately, not only will not improve his body resistance, but also will increase his spleen and stomach burden, cause accumulation of food and induce colds. The proverb mentioned above, “To keep a child safe, three points of hunger and cold”, not only cautions parents not to dress their babies too warmly, but also cautions them not to overfeed their babies. For smaller babies, parents should also follow the principle of adding complementary foods from less to more, from thin to thick, from fine to coarse, from one to many. Now parents are afraid that their babies will not eat enough, as long as the baby likes to eat what, just let him eat more. Some parents, in the baby no longer want to eat, but still force the baby to eat. More food is prone to intestinal dysfunction and cause constipation or accumulation of food and flu. Therefore, the amount of food children eat every day as long as they can meet their metabolic needs, “often with three points of hunger” is still beneficial. Don’t use “gammaglobulin” and antibiotics for your baby at will Once a reporter interviewed me on the topic of cold prevention, during the interview she shared her personal experience with me, saying that when she was small, her grandfather used to take her to the hospital for “gammaglobulin” injections in the winter and spring when colds were high. “She asked me if this preventive measure was reliable. Before answering this question I would like to introduce what gammaglobulin is. It is an immunoglobulin product that is isolated and extracted from healthy human plasma and treated with virus inactivation, and is a biological product of blood origin. Biologics are a class of drugs that can easily cause severe allergic reactions. In addition, once the plasma used to manufacture this drug is contaminated, the probability of contracting infectious diseases such as hepatitis B and C after injection is extremely high, and cases of infection due to injection of contaminated blood products are constantly found in the clinic. Therefore, modern epidemiology believes that gammaglobulin cannot be used clinically in large quantities and extensively for immunoprophylaxis, much less for the prevention of minor diseases such as colds. It is used very strictly in clinical practice and only for the treatment of certain serious diseases, such as immunodeficiency diseases, massive burns, severe traumatic infections, and sepsis. The application of any immune-enhancing drugs such as “gammaglobulin” to healthy babies will disrupt the normal immune function of the baby and not only prevent disease, but also suppress the baby’s own immune function or cause new immune disorder diseases. Immune enhancers are biological products. There is also a misconception among many parents that antibiotics are a panacea for their babies and that they can be used casually, and that they can even boost their babies’ immunity. As I said before, most of the baby’s colds and fevers are viral and do not require antibiotics, as long as you pay attention to rest and drink more water, you can usually be cured in a week or so. Only when the cold is diagnosed with a bacterial infection, you need to give your baby antibiotics under the guidance of your doctor. Moreover, using antibiotics in advance does not prevent the appearance of bacterial infections. When the body is not infected with bad bacteria, indiscriminate use of antibiotics will in turn kill the good bacteria in the body and cause diarrhea, thus delaying the recovery of the body. By doing so, the cold virus will become a paper tiger There is no way to prevent the common cold by vaccination because there are too many viruses that cause the common cold and there is no way to determine which one, there is no way to prevent it by vaccination, and usually the viruses that cause the common cold are not so virulent as to cause serious complications. However, influenza can be prevented by getting a flu shot. It is important to note that the strain of the flu vaccine is different every year, so a new flu vaccine is required every year to prevent the flu. The vaccination is given between September and December each year.
(Some hospitals may continue the vaccination until the following spring). The common cold is also a contagious disease, which can be spread by coughing or sneezing out droplets, and can also be contracted through direct contact with people with the flu or objects they have touched, so during the flu season, parents should take their babies to public places less often to avoid cross-infection; parents should not only wash their baby’s hands and disinfect their baby’s clothes diligently, but also pay attention to their own personal hygiene. When you come home, you should change your clothes outside, rinse your mouth, clean your nasal cavity and wash your hands before holding your baby. Not only should you keep your baby away from the cold virus by all means, but you should also try to prevent yourself or your baby from becoming a source of infection of cold germs. In other words, if you have a cold or your baby has a cold, put a mask on yourself or your baby to avoid spreading the cold virus. The Japanese do this very well. The Japanese patients I have contacted, if they have a cold, they will wear a mask to come to the pharmacy to get their medicine. Also, in kindergartens abroad, teachers often teach children that the correct way to sneeze is to hold their elbows over their mouths and noses, rather than holding them with their hands. This is because viruses are easily spread through hands, and elbows, compared to hands, have much less chance of touching people, and the probability of spreading diseases is much lower. Also, if your baby has a cold, don’t let him go to kindergarten. This seems to be difficult to implement in reality, as many parents are not able to take time off from work and do not have time to take care of their sick babies, so they look forward to sending them back to kindergarten as soon as their fever subsides. In fact, it takes about a week for a baby to recover after the fever has gone down. When a baby has a cold, he or she is weak and has a low ability to defend himself or herself against germs. If another baby in the kindergarten happens to have a cold, they may not be infected with the same virus, so if you let your baby go to kindergarten at this time, you may get a new virus when your baby is weak, making the cold recur. Therefore, it is better to let your baby rest at home when he/she has a cold, and not to send him/her to kindergarten in a hurry, so it is not too late to go to kindergarten when he/she is well rested and recovered.