Can Supplementation Improve Child Behaviour

Alongside a good diet and good role models for a child, nutritional supplements can be helpful.

Researchers from California State University, designed a study to determine the effects of a low dose vitamin/mineral supplement in children aged 6¬12. This trial compared the behaviour of 468 children, half of whom were taking a daily multivitamin while the other half took a dummy pill.

After four months of the daily supplement, the children taking the multi were disciplined for violent and non-violent delinquency 47% less often than the placebo group. The lower rate of anti-social behaviour represented less threats, fighting, vandalism, disrespect, disorderly conduct, defiance, obscenities, endangering others, and other undesirable behaviours.

Look for a good quality kids’ multivitamin, preferably in a capsule to avoid unnecessary sugars additives, which can burden a sensitive or hyper-allergenic child.

Multivitamins for Children

A good diet, plenty of fresh air and exercise plus lots of love and attention will generally keep your child healthy, bright and happy. But a good diet isn’t always easy to maintain in a child and assumes that your child enjoys eating leafy green foods and oily fish on a regular basis.

No-one would suggest that stuffing your child full of vitamin pills is the solution either, but a balanced diet topped up with a good quality multivitamin and essential fatty acids can give reassurance to parents that their children are avoiding any obvious nutritional deficiencies.

There is a no-nonsense, no-nasties multivitamin complex which contain the Government recommended levels of nutrients for children, without the unnecessary additives contained in many other children’s vitamin products. These are also genuinely sugar-free with no hidden extras, no aspartame, saccharine or other sweeteners – not even fructose, just the vitamins and minerals your child needs each day in a tiny, easy-to-swallow, all-vegetarian/vegan capsule.

The multivitamin complex is seriously formulated for long-term daily intake during the early years, the all-important pre- and post-pubescent transition and onwards into adulthood.

NOTE: This information is not intended to replace the guidance of a health practitioner. Consult your doctor if your child is already taking medication. Do not alter medication without the strict guidance of a doctor or qualified practitioner.

Multi Vitamins – How do you select one?

Does my multivitamin meet my needs?

Few people eat as nutritiously as they should for lasting wellness. Nutritionists recommend eating five to nine servings of fresh fruits and vegetables per day to support health, but relatively few people meet this goal. Also, modern agricultural practices have reduced the nutritional value of many forms of produce from their nutritional content of only a few decades ago.

Do you know where your minerals come from? Some minerals are derived from rocks, others are taken from salts, the best are plant-sourced, making it easy for your body to absorb them.

New research suggests that natural, plant-sourced minerals may be absorbed better by your body-so it makes sense to get them from natural forms, like plants.

So ask yourself: Am I giving my body the natural nutrition it needs? Probably not.

These are some of the things to look for:

Appearance:

• Is the product labelled as food form/food matrix
• is it of uniform colour – probably coated – not good in many cases – bright colours also signify synthetic
• if the vitamin tablet you are looking at is small and of the one a day variety it is more likely that it contains synthetics
• any worthwhile multi vitamin/mineral tablet is likely to be on the large side and you may even have to take upto 4 a day

Content from the label:

• Vitamin A- derived from mixed carotenoids- to support bones and vision.
• Vitamin C- derived from tropical acerola cherries, with 30 times more vitamin C per gram than an orange-to provide enhanced immune support.
• Is the Vitamin D₃ or cholecalciferol present – the amounts should be 500IU or more
• there should be at least 10 additional essential vitamins- including a complete B-vitamin complex (the best comes from from natural yeast sources- to provide a great source of energy)
• How many of the additional vitamins are plant sourced – if the label doesn’t say it is from a plant then it will be synthetic – any your body doesn’t like synthesised vitamins
• are the ingredients standardised – if no then the quality can and will vary from batch to batch
• To ensure the vitamins and minerals work well together standardized phytonutrients – derived from foods such as broccoli, aloe vera, cranberry juice and grape extract are helpful.

Swine Flu – long term effects

At Natural Way Health we are very careful not to ‘make claims’ about what are effectively foods and herbal supplements but there are many who do make claims and the unwelcome and unjustified criticism can be quite drastic. Some dramatic things may be happening in the USA around the whole subject of the food supplement industry and although we are not seeing similar things in the UK yet – similar things have happened in Denmark only last year. Food supplements do not cure or heal swine flu but they do support a healthy immune system. However, the FDA and the WHO are inconsistent in some ways and if only they applied the same standards to the pharmaceutical industry as they are aggressively applying to the food supplement industry we might have a better healthier population. Consider:

• swine flu vaccines. We know they have had very limited testing and their efficacy over the short and long term has yet to be proven. We may look back at this time in our history and ask, with hindsight, did we really need to vaccinate all those children?
• Olive Leaf Extract or Garlic and other compounds have been used for hundreds of years to promote good immune health? Should we use them first?

One of the most effective means of maintaining a strong immune system is to eat foods raw and juicing is a great way to make eating fruit and vegetables easy.

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Vitamin D – More Evidence

The weight of evidence supporting the modern lifestyle deficiency of Vitamin D is so overwhelming that it can’t be glossed over. In the UK 80% of the population will be suffering from vitamin D deficiency and even if you take a good multivitamin with Vitamin D you are probably not getting enough. This Video is long but well worth the time as it adds weight to the compelling evidence. The video is longish and focusses on Cancer but the information in it is first class.
Please note we are having some technical issues with this video and if you want to download it and watch it click this link – it is a large file and may take a few minutes to download http://www.naturalwayhealth.co.uk/weblog/video/Vitamin D Prevents Cancer_ Is It True_.flv

The introduction to this video is below – the remaining videos are here Continue Reading…