Children are a very important group of the country’s population. During this period of their lives, parents from their children approach health, which will remain after maturity. Good health in childhood ensures healthy development in the future, which must be one of the greatest society goals in any country. Children’s health includes physical, mental, and social well-being. The healthcare basics for parents to ensure their children’s health include offering them healthy foods, making sure they get enough sleep, exercising, and ensuring their safety.
Nutrition
A child (from the age of 2) should eat 5-6 times a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two or three snacks). It is recommended that breakfast and lunch should receive more than two-thirds of the daily calories and dinner less than one-third. Children should eat regularly – at the same time each day because then the body is ready to absorb food in advance. Foods should be varied as much as possible, especially low in fats (especially saturated fatty acids). Children’s diet should include vitamin-rich foods. Thus, it is recommended to eat vegetables, fruits, berries, and grains as much as possible, and eat food containing salt and sugar as little as possible. Also, it is recommended to feed children according to the healthy eating pyramid and/or healthy eating plate. This pyramid is based on grains, bread, potatoes, and their products, which should be eaten the most usually during the day. Also, it is recommended to include nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) rich food in children’s diets. Nicotinamide mononucleotide is a precursor of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+). According to scientific studies conducted in China in 2018, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is an important compound in all living cells that is involved in metabolism, improved insulin sensitivity, energy production and muscle endurance, improved mitochondrial function, cell signaling, gene expression, and DNA repair. NMN is found naturally in foods such as edamame, broccoli, cabbage, cucumber, and avocado. Many more foods that contain NMN include shrimps, tomatoes, beef, and mushrooms.
Sleep
A study in New Zealand found that children who sleep too little tend to be overweight. Professor Ed Mitchell of the University of Auckland and colleagues studied 591 seven-year-old children. It turned out that children of this age sleep on average 10.1 hours per day. Seven-year-old children who slept less than 9 hours a day are overweight or obese, according to a study published in the medical journal Sleep. Lack of sleep even triples the risk of gaining more weight. In addition, researchers have found that children who sleep fewer hours than average children sleeping time are more likely to have behavioral problems. In this study, researchers prove the importance of sleep for children’s health – getting enough sleep is one of the most important conditions for healthy growth. It should be mentioned that at different ages children go to sleep at different times.
Physical activity
The child begins to move already in the womb. The unborn child moves instinctively, unconsciously, and strengthens the cardiovascular, respiratory, musculoskeletal, and nervous systems. The movement is the foundation of personality development. Physical inactivity also impairs mental capacity. When the body is inactive, the mind freezes and becomes lazy. Therefore, it is necessary to create conditions for free and meaningful expression. Restriction of movement causes physical, mental, nervous, and other illnesses, and currently obesity. Physical activity fully strengthens the child’s body and health. It is only unfortunate that we, as adults, involuntarily try to slow down our children from this physical activity.
Safety and emotional health
While the child is still in the womb, we spend most of our time thinking about how we will try to protect him from all the misfortunes of the world, and grow a happy and confident person. When babies are born, parents never lose sight of them, and grandparents, uncles, aunts, and other relatives work with parents in the team. We seem to be pursuing our goal so consistently: to ensure a happy, healthy, and unaffected world. When setting great goals, we forget the most important thing – health is not only the absence of illness or disability but also spiritual, and social well-being. A psychologist, A. Maslow, highlighted the idea of security by focusing on the spiritual well-being of people. According to the psychologist, there are five basic human needs: physiological, security, social, self-esteem and recognition, self-realization, and problem-solving. When we meet physiological needs, a person begins to care about personal safety: only when we feel safe, can we seek love for ourselves and the rest of the world. When we meet this need, we want to feel self-worth. Once we discover our value, we ultimately strive for self-expression, to be empowered. So, it is very important to build a foundation for a child’s mental health from the first day in this world.
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