School holidays are over and I’m sure if you’re a parent the last week has been busy organising uniforms, school bags, lunch boxes etc. However, you may have missed something even more important - have you thought of topping up your child’s diet with a multivitamin and maybe a fish oil supplement in readiness for the school year. The first supplement I would look at would be children’s fish oil as omega 3 fatty acids can be helpful for healthy brain function. Most children (and adults for that matter) have a diet low in fish and I believe it is therefore important for everyone to supplement with Omega 3 Fish Oil. Nutritional deficiencies in good fats ie Omega 3 are thought to be linked to slow learning and conditions such as ADHD, ADD and Dyslexia. These good fats make up 60% of the brain and are responsible for messages between the cells of the brain. By experiencing this deficiency, the transmission of these messages may be slowed down which can lead to such learning difficulties. Supplementation of Omega 3 may also help improve children’s concentration and reading ability. The children’s fish oil supplement I particularly like also contains iodine. There have also been studies indicating iodine to be also beneficial for children’s IQ levels and healthy brain and cognitive function. This fish shaped capsule comes in a delicious vanilla-berry flavour and is sweetened with xylitol. Of course in a perfect world our children would eat fresh fruit and vegetables picked straight from our garden instead of maybe food which has been processed or sitting in a cold room in a supermarket for months. Supplementing with a multivitamin can help compensate and top up on those vitamins and minerals they may be missing out on. Often children are fussy eaters and as hard as you try to feed them healthy food it just isn’t going to happen! Giving your child a multivitamin means they are going to receive the key nutrients they need for a healthy body. The children’s multivitamin I prefer has a strawberry-vanilla flavoured tablet. It tastes good but more importantly it has also been sweetened with xylitol instead of sugar or an artificial sweetener. Xylitol is a low GI natural sugar substitute derived from either birchwood or corn fibre and tastes and looks just like sugar. The bonus is xylitol is also beneficial for your child’s dental health. How often do you just get the children back to school and they then come down with a cold or some other illness. Quite often children are susceptible to colds, flu and upper respiratory tract infections as they don’t yet have a developed immune system. This happens more often when children are just starting day care, preschool or school and then of course in the midst of winter when everybody seems to come down with a cold or flu. I suggest always keeping an immune formula in the cupboard. As soon as your child looks like they may be coming down with an illness, or if they are in contact with someone who has an illness, start them on the immune formula immediately. My favourite children’s immune formula once again is a chewable strawberry-vanilla flavoured tablet sweetened with xylitol. I particularly like the formula because it contains Echinacea which not only helps to relieve the symptoms of cold and flu but also more importantly helps to maintain a healthy immune system. Vitamin C, D, Beta carotene and Zinc also help maintain a healthy immune system. For more information on children’s health or any other health issue call to see Bev and the team at Go Vita your health shop in 5 North St, Batemans Bay or phone on 44729737. Don’t forget to tune into Bev and Marianne on Go Get Healthy on 2EC every Wednesday at 12.15pm. In health, Bev Dunne Go Vita Batemans Bay
