Every parent knows kids get sick a lot — not just at summer camp and the start of school, but year-round.
Your paramount concern is for your child’s health. But when they’re sick, their latest bug can be inconvenient for you and certainly uncomfortable for them.
Why do kids get sick so much? Well, it’s mainly to do with hygiene. Although you keep them as clean as possible, they’re often too young and inexperienced to practice good hygiene themselves. So, when they head to daycare, school, or soccer practice, they immediately share germs with other kids.
It’s natural for you to want to do everything you can to prevent the germ swap, short of enclosing your kid in a protective bubble.
What about a multivitamin? Can multivitamins help your child fend off infections and stay healthy? If so, what are the best vitamins for kids’ immune systems?
The Best Vitamins for Kids’ Immune Systems
We recommend giving kids one high-quality multivitamin each day. A multivitamin provides the reserves of nutrients kids need to stay healthy, supporting the growth spurts they experience and resisting the infections they encounter.
Be sure to purchase your child’s multivitamin from a nationally reputable retailer. Also, before buying, check that the brand is NSF– or USP-approved, verifying that it meets strict standards of potency and safety and is well tolerated by children.
Focus Your Kids on Healthy Habits
But let’s be frank: You can’t rely solely on a multivitamin to protect your child from disease and infection. Encouraging healthy habits keeps a kid’s immune system stronger than a vitamin pill alone does.
Here are some important habits to teach your child:
- Eat Healthy: The carbs, fats, and sugars in our diets supply macronutrients to the body. But also important are micronutrients, essential dietary elements our bodies need to function well. These micronutrients are especially critical for kids, who are frequently exposed to infection-causing germs.Beneficial micronutrients come from a varied diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts, meats, and dairy products. We all know what picky eaters kids can be, but a diet of chicken nuggets and mac and cheese won’t provide the micronutrients that boost their immune system. That’s where a multivitamin can step in to offer balance and support.
- Get Outdoors: Remember when your mom used to shout, “Go play outside!”? It was good advice when you were a kid, and it’s good advice for your kids now, especially if they’re prone to hunkering down with video games.Playing outside helps your child absorb sunlight, which is converted into essential vitamin D within the body. Plus, movement during outdoor activity can flush out inflammation and promote healthy blood flow — all keys to fighting infection.
- Wash Hands Regularly: We’ve come a long way from the Middle Ages, before people discovered that unsanitary conditions caused plagues.Yet there’s no getting around it: modern-day kids are still dirty. They forget to wash their hands after using the restroom and before they eat. They never seem to wash fruit before eating it.It’s critical to teach your kids proper hand hygiene. Monitor them until you see that it’s become a habit.
- Get Dirty: Yes, we just told you to have your kids practice good hygiene. But it’s also okay to let them get a bit dirty.Occasional exposure to microbes helps strengthen a child’s immune system. Without this exposure, your child’s body will have a tougher time fighting infections if and when they occur.Of course, while occasional exposure to dirt is okay, it doesn’t exempt kids from following up with great hand hygiene!
We Take Kids’ Care Seriously
At Priority Physicians, our goal is to have a close and trusting relationship with your family in which you feel comfortable discussing everyone’s health, down to the youngest family member. If you’d like, we’re happy to talk directly with your child as well.
Always remember that we take our commitment to your family seriously and that we have your kids’ best interests at heart.
