Under-Nutrition in Children

Under-nutrition in children is a serious problem. Children not eating enough often suffer from poor growth, a weak immune system, and a feeling of chronic exhaustion.

Weight gain and growth is an important indicator of health in children. If your child is not gaining weight adequately, he may not be receiving the nutrition he needs to help him function to his potential. Under-nutrition in children impacts brain development and the immune system as well as growth.

When a child is not eating enough, the first thing to go is weight gain. Slowly but surely, he will drop percentiles on the weight for age and weight for length growth chart. This indicates a problem that needs to be fixed. If the problem is not rectified at that time, height begins to falter, and a decrease in percentiles on the height for age chart is seen as well. Finally, if both of these continue without being addressed, head circumference is affected, indicating a lack of brain growth. The body preserves the brain as long as possible; however without adequate nutrition eventually brain development slows. A chronically under-nourished child will suffer by not meeting developmental milestones and not learning as well as they should.

Under-nutrition in children also affects the immune system. A poorly nourished child is unable to fight infection as well as a nourished one, and it takes a longer amount of time for them to regain their health once they are sick. Many parents come to me complaining their children are never healthy. They seem to constantly jump from a cold to an earache to a stomach virus and back to a cold with very few healthy days in between. This is often the case in children with poor nutrition. Their immune system is weak, they get sick, they don’t eat enough to get the nutrients to fully heal and they get knocked down again with something else. Most young children going to school or daycare for the first time are often sick anyway, and having sub-optimal nutrition makes the situation worse.

Lethargy is another product of under-nutrition in children. Since these children are not eating enough they are constantly tired and do not have the energy to play as hard as other children. This can effect early development of social skills as well as impact learning.

So now that we understand the importance of good nutrition and continuous weight gain in children, how do we improve your child’s nutrition if he is a very picky eater and does not want to eat anything different from his regular 5 foods? See the article on calorie boosters and high calorie fluids. for options, and visit our store for high calorie foods and fluids you can give your child to help him gain weight. Also feel free to make an appointment so we can review different ways to get your child to accept different foods and how to make the foods he accepts as healthy and nutrient dense as possible.

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