As many reasons as there might be to hurry this step along, there are some very good reasons why you should wait until your baby is showing all of the signs of being ready and able to ingest and digest solid foods.

Babies are born with what is termed a “leaky gut.” This means that their intestines are quite permeable, and are thus perfectly suited to absorbing nutrients from their liquid diet. Both breast milk, and hydrolyzed formulas are composed of individual amino acids, sugars, fats, and nutrients. This “pre-digested” style of food means that baby can easily use the nutrients that they are ingesting.

Solid foods (even if pureed) are composed of nutrient complexes like proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Prior to approximately six months of age, baby is not equipped to easily break down and use these complexes. The risk is that some of these complexes may pass incompletely digested into the blood stream where they can potentially set up the development of a new food allergy that would have other wise been avoided. This “leaky gut” undergoes a period of “closure” somewhere around six months of age. At this point the intestines become less permeable and are better able to digest solid foods.

As attractive as a night of unbroken rest may be for parents, moments of waking are crucial to a baby’s well being. Babies use the breathing patterns of their parents as guides to their own breathing. It is important that baby experience frequent episodes of light sleep or waking during their sleep period, in order to maintain a healthy breathing pattern. Prior to six months of age, you are better off offering a breast milk or formula feed directly before bedtime as opposed to adding a cereal meal too early in baby’s development. While the cereal may digest slower, resulting in a longer sleep, it can also keep baby from those light sleep breathing check-ins with Mom and Dad.

Luckily, nature has set us up with some very easy to signs to know when your baby is ready for solids. These signs should start showing up around the six-month mark. Some babies are ready as early as five months, and others not until seven months. Don’t worry about the timeline. Just follow your baby’s lead.

• He can sit up in a highchair without support.
• He is interested in watching you eat.
• He may try to grab food off of your plate or out of your hand.
• He may mimic eating behaviours
  (such as opening their mouth when you eat).
• He is able to reach for things that they want, and push away things that they do not want.

Kim Niblett is a holistic nutritionist at Acorn Family Health & Wellness Centre. This article was featured in City Parent.

A Holistic Detox Diet can help!

• A Clear Mind & Increased Focus
• Less Anxiety & More Relaxation
• Better Sleep
• Clear Skin
• Weight Loss
• Better Heart Health
• Increased Energy
• Decreased Bloating & Gas
• And Much More!

Join Holistic Nutritionist, Kim Niblett, on a 3 Week Holistic Detox.

Package includes:

• Full Detox Program Information Kit
• Unique Daily Menus for All 3 Weeks of the Detox Program
• 3 Week Supply of Detox Supporting Supplements
• Weekly 1/2 hour Group Meetings for All 3 Weeks of the Detox Program,
• including Bonus Maintenance Program Information
• All for only $185 (+HST)

Come to our FREE information session to find out how a Holistic Detox Diet can benefit you!

Date and Time: Tuesday January 17th at 7pm

Date and Time: Tuesday November 29th, at 7pm

• Love holiday treats?
• Wish you could indulge without guilt?

Now you can!

• Learn how to adapt your existing recipes
  into healthier treats!
• Sample some new, delicious & nutritious treats!

Take home new recipes!

• Monday: 5:00pm to 6:00pm Beginner and Rehabilitative Yoga
• Thursday: 7:15pm to 8:15pm Intermediate Core Yoga

One-on-one Restorative Yoga sessions are available upon request

Join us for a FREE! Seminar, Presented by: Kim Niblett, Holistic Nutritionist

Date and Time:
Tuesday October 18, 2011 at 7:15pm

Location:
Acorn Family Health & Wellness Centre
250 Wyecroft Rd, Units 14 & 15
Oakville, ON

In this seminar you will learn how to take small steps or giant leaps from the most commonly consumed foods to healthier options.

Love bread, pasta, & pie? Think they can’t be healthy?
Come find out how they can be!
Eat delicious foods and be healthy!

The new Standards are the result of an intensive study initiated by WHO in 1997 to develop a new international standard for assessing the physical growth, nutritional status and motor development in all children from birth to age five. WHO and its principal partner, the United Nations University, undertook the Multicentre Growth Reference Study (MGRS) which is a community-based, multi-country project involving more than eight thousand children from Brazil, Ghana, India, Norway, Oman, and the United States of America.

Since the late 1970s, the National Center for Health Statistics / WHO growth reference has been in use to chart children’s growth. This reference was based on data from a limited sample of children from the United States. It contains a number of technical and biological drawbacks that make it less adequate to monitor the rapid and changing rate of early childhood growth. It describes only how children grow in a particular region and time, but does not provide a sound basis for evaluation against international standards and norms.

The new standards are based on the breastfed child as the norm for growth and development. This brings coherence for the first time between the tools used to assess growth, and national and international infant feeding guidelines which recommend breastfeeding as the optimal source of nutrition during infancy. This will now allow accurate assessment, measurement and evaluation of breastfeeding and complementary feeding.

Please take time to look at the site and print out and share with other families, give as a part of a baby shower gift, as well as give a copy to your family practice doctor, pediatrician, nurse practitioner, etc. so that they can begin to utilize this more accurate and appropriate system for monitoring growth and development of our babies! For any of you who have been hassled about lagging growth of your healthy, happy breastfed baby, these standards will help equip physicians and other health care providers with the tools they need to more accurately track and assess growth and development!

(This information was taken from Geneva Press Release for WHO, April 2006)

To get more information or download a chart, please go to the following website: www.who.int/childgrowth If you would like more information on this or other family wellness issues, please e-mail Dr. Jenna at drdavis@acornhealth.ca or call 905-844-9355 and schedule a courtesy consultation for you and your family!

Natural childbirth has come to mean many different things, but for the purpose of this article let’s keep it simple and say that it is a drug-free, vaginal delivery. Even with no pitocin, no epidural, the mother walking regularly to help the contractions, and no extraction methods being used, childbirth causes stress to a still developing spine.

Add to this the improper lifting of the child out of a car seat or during a diaper changing; and minor spinal traumas are occurring that affect the spine and nervous system causing common newborn health complaints:

• Colic
• Unexplained crying
• Poor appetite
• Earaches or ear infections
• Colds
• Allergic reactions

Even a minor spinal trauma will affect the nervous system and interfere with your child’s normal healthy function.

When a child first learns to stand up they tend to use a coffee table, a couch, mom or dad’s fingers, whatever is in reach to pull themselves to their feet. Once they’re up there, how do they get down? That’s right; they plop down onto their bottom and crawl away.

When they’re starting to take their first few venturous steps toward walking they stand next to the table or couch, wobble back and forth a little bit, take one or two hesitant steps toward the middle of the room and, once again, plop onto their bottom. In some instances, the child doesn’t make it far enough away from the table or chair and hits their head on furniture.

These constant and repeated jars to the spine will not in themselves cause a major spinal injury, but as they accumulate repetitive stress injuries do occur.

During the first few years of life, children will develop from helpless infants into fearless adventurers. Bumps and falls naturally come with your child’s desire to learn everything about the world around them in the quickest amount of time possible, but these bumps and falls will cause trauma to the spine. When spinal bones lose their normal position or ability to move during this stage of tremendous physical growth, possible permanent deformities can occur. Left uncorrected, these small cumulative traumas can have far-reaching effects.

While a Doctor of Chiropractic doesn’t treat or cure illnesses, many common childhood disorders may be the result of nervous system interference or malfunction caused by spine related problems, such as:

• Hyperactivity
• Learning disorders
• Bedwetting
• Allergies
• Asthma

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but appropriate Chiropractic care can help locate and correct these problems and restore normal spinal and nervous system function.

As you can see, our children bump and jar their spine constantly in the first five years of life, and after that their normal everyday activities can cause the vertebrae that protect the spine to lose their normal motion or position. Each of these spinal traumas cause lasting effects: delicate nerve tissue can be damaged resulting in interference with the brain’s ability to send nerve impulses to organs, tissues and muscles; discs, blood vessels and other soft tissues can swell and become inflamed; the body may respond with bone spurs and other abnormal bone growth; and various systems through the body may malfunction.

In each of these examples, pain or other obvious symptoms may not be present at the time, yet optimum health and well-being have been compromised.

There are three windows of time in which your child’s spine will go through major stages of development. The first of these is birth through age five. This is definitely the most critical time since it is during this period that the child also has the most minor traumas and repetitive stress injuries to the spine.

The second window of development is five years to ten years of age. During this time your child will begin school and spend recess climbing on monkey bars, sliding down slides, playing organized sports and generally leaving themselves open to repeated falls and tumbles resulting in their own spinal injuries.

Finally, at age ten to fifteen-years-old, your child’s spine will go through its last stage of development. During this final stage, your child’s spinal growth will be greatly affected by most if not all of the following:

• Improper backpack loading and carrying
• Poor posture
• An inactive or sedentary lifestyle
• Repetitive sports movements
• Typical sports injuries

          o Being hit in the head with a ball
          o Tackled on the field
          o Falling off a skateboard or rollerblades

It may be possible that you missed the first window of opportunity for care, but it’s not too late; your child or teenager can benefit from Chiropractic care.

The Benefits of Chiropractic Care

Even as the public is becoming more aware of the benefit of early detection and care of the Vertebral Subluxation Complex, the odds are that you were looking for pain relief for yourself as an adult when you first went to see your Family Wellness Chiropractor. During your initial examination it’s possible that a certain Phase of Degeneration was detected. If you were informed that you are at Phase 1 then the original damage to your spine was likely ten to twenty years ago. If you were at Phase 2, the original damage to your spine was probably about twenty to forty years ago.

Basically, if you first saw your Chiropractor when you were in your late twenties and you’re at a Phase 1 of degeneration, then the damage to your spine originated when you were a child. So, the most obvious answer to the question of why your child may need Chiropractic care is: avoid having your child suffer the same pain that first brought you in to see a Chiropractor. Spinal problems that go undetected or neglected in children become more serious problems as adults.

In Summary

As a Chiropractic patient you’re already aware of the benefits of Chiropractic care. You’ve experienced for yourself the relief that comes from having a properly aligned spine. Give your child the opportunity that you weren’t given: to benefit from the body’s innate ability to heal itself and grow up with a healthy spine and nervous system.

Dr. Davis is dedicated to providing you with the absolute best in family wellness care. Take a moment today to ask your Family Wellness Chiropractor any questions you may have regarding your child’s overall health and wellness.

]]> http://www.acornhealth.ca/chiropractic-care-why-does-my-child-need/feed/ 0 http://www.acornhealth.ca/a-wellness-delivery/ http://www.acornhealth.ca/a-wellness-delivery/#comments Thu, 12 May 2011 09:50:44 +0000 admin http://www.acornhealth.ca/?p=870 One of the most exciting times in a woman’s life is when she finds out that she is expecting a baby. She’s so excited about the prospect of being a mom but there’s really only one thing on her mind: she wants the baby delivered safely and healthy.

Suddenly she’s not just making decisions for herself, but also for the still-developing person inside of her. Yet, the reality is that the decisions she makes during her pregnancy will probably not actually be hers.

OB/GYN or Midwife?

This is a decision that the mom-to-be must be allowed to make for herself based upon the most accurate information available to her. The truth is, many women don’t realize how available and accessible midwives are becoming and so they tend to immediately begin researching Obstetrician/Gynecologists (OB/GYN’s).

Once the news gets out that they’re expecting, most women find themselves being encouraged or even pressured by friends and family to use a specific OB/GYN that once delivered the baby of someone in their circle of influence. While that practitioner may be more than capable, he or she might not be the best choice knowing all the wellness options available.

When studying negligence in the gynecological and obstetrical profession, despite the fact that obstetricians make up only 3% of all medical doctors, OB/GYN’s account for almost a third of all reports of negligence.

On the other hand, Suzanne Arms, an advocate for pregnant women and midwives, states that science has proven that “midwives are the specialists in normal birth and most women don’t need a doctor [for delivery].”

Home or Hospital?


An idea that was once thought archaic is becoming the recommended option for delivering a baby naturally. A landmark study by the British Medical Journal in 2005 shows that homebirth is as safe as hospital birth for low risk women, while carrying a much lower rate of medical interventions, including cesarean section.

In 2000, Canadian researchers Kenneth Johnson and Betty-Anne Daviss studied over 5,400 low-risk pregnancies in the United States and Canada where the decision had been made to deliver at home, and compared their results with the outcomes of 3,360,868 low-risk hospital births. The results were telling:

• Planned home birth carried a rate of 1.7 infant deaths per 1000 live births, a rate “consistent with most North American studies of intended births out of hospital and low risk hospital births”
• There were no maternal deaths
• Medical intervention rates were dramatically lower when compared to those in hospital births

           o Episiotomy rate of 2.1% compared to 33% in hospitals
           o C-section rate of 3.7% compared with 19%
           o Electronic fetal monitoring rate of 9.6% compared with 84.3% in hospitals

• 97% of over 500 participants who were randomly
  contacted to validate birth outcomes reported that they were extremely or very satisfied with the care they received during their home birth

There was a time when home birthing was considered old-fashioned, but women armed with the facts are choosing to have their babies at home, recognizing that it’s best for both them and their unborn child.
The Midwives Alliance of North American (MANA) recommends the following website for midwife referrals:

http://mothersnaturally.org/midwives/findAMidwife.php

Surgical or Natural Birth?

Despite the advancements in technology and the reported improvements in medical care, c-sections have risen to 1 in 3 deliveries for women in North America. About 1.3 million women gave birth via cesarean section in 2005, which is a 38% increase in just 10 years, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reported in 2008.

This increase is not surprising considering vaginal deliveries decreased by 3% during the same time span, with the sharpest decline being among women who had previously delivered via c-section. It was determined that vaginal deliveries among these women dropped by an astonishing 60% between 1995 and 2005.

The decision to have a vaginal delivery after a c-section is being taken out of the hands of the mother by hospitals requiring that the OB/GYN remain in the hospital for the entire labor. Since these practitioners refuse to do so, the decision is taken away from the mother and she is forced to have another c-section.

The truth is that vaginal deliveries are no more dangerous after a c-section than prior to one, and the fact that the decision is ultimately the mother’s are two pieces of information that hospitals don’t want pregnant women to know.

Induce or Wait for Nature?


This may not seem like it’s a choice that the mother can make, but it is, and the right choice is always to wait. Due dates have proven to be notoriously inaccurate and, according to Dr. Katz, et al, they should be eliminated entirely.

Dr. Vern Katz and her colleagues from the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene, Oregon reported that the calculations used to set a woman’s “due date” based upon her menstrual periods is “flawed”. The use of an estimated gestational period to determine the best care for the patient is causing confusion and the patient does not treat this date as an estimate. She, and her entire family, considers that date a very specific point in time that they are looking forward to quite anxiously.

As the “due date” approaches, if there have been no signs of labor, the mother begins to grow anxious and distressed. This typically leads to a recommendation by her OB/GYN to induce delivery, usually leading to further interventions in birth. The problem with this is that intervention in the delivery process frequently leads to trauma for both the mother and the baby.

Dr. Kats and her colleagues conclude that doctors should expand the concept of a due date to a “due week” and, in this way, “allow biology [or nature] to take it’s a course a bit more”.

The Chiropractic Factor

Whether or not to see a Chiropractor during pregnancy is one of the most important decisions an expectant mother will make. Pregnancy is an important time for nerve impulses to flow uninterrupted from the brain to all the parts of the body.

A slightly misplaced vertebra (Vertebral Subluxation) can create nerve irritation, which can and will interfere with the body’s nervous system. By using special or modified techniques, your Family Wellness Chiropractor can restore the function of your nervous system and improve your overall wellness. This can help ensure a more quality labor and delivery.

In fact, research has proven that:

• 84% of pregnant women treated by Chiropractic care received profound relief from low back pain
• Women who received Chiropractic care had nearly a 25% reduction in the average labor time verses the “accepted average labor time”

          o With women who had given birth in the past, that number rose to 33%

• Postpartum pain was relieved in 75% of moms

Dr. Davis is dedicated to providing you with the absolute best in family wellness care. So take a moment today to discuss with your Family Wellness Chiropractor any concerns you may have regarding a wellness pregnancy and delivery..

]]> http://www.acornhealth.ca/a-wellness-delivery/feed/ 0 http://www.acornhealth.ca/addadhd-and-your-child/ http://www.acornhealth.ca/addadhd-and-your-child/#comments Mon, 09 May 2011 03:26:19 +0000 admin http://www.acornhealth.ca/?p=817 Did you know:
*Boys are 6-9 times more likely then girls to be diagnosed with ADHD
* In 2002, 1.6 million elementary school children have been diagnosed with ADHD in America (according to the CDC) and the standard medical treatment is drug treatment
* 95% of all Ritalin prescriptions are consumed in North America
Symptoms in Infants and Young Children
• Crying inconsolably
• Screaming
• Restlessness
• Poor or little sleep
• Difficult feeding
• Refuses affection and cuddles
• Head banging or rocking fits or temper tantrums
Symptoms in Older Children
• Impulsiveness
• Clumsiness
• Accident proneness
• Bouts of fatigue, weakness and listlessness
• Poor concentration ability
• Withdrawn behaviour
• Restlessness
• Poor sleep with nightmares
• Poor appetite and erratic eating habits
• Poor coordination
• Hypersensitive to odours, lights, sound, heat and cold
• Nose and skin picking or hair pulling
• Bed wetting (enuresis)
• Dark circles or puffiness below the eyes
• Red earlobes or red cheeks
• Swollen neck glands or fluid behind ear drums
What causes ADD/ADHD?



• We do not know exactly what causes it but we do know it runs in families

          * 5-8% of a random sample of children have ADD
          *If one parent has it, the chances of a child developing it shoot up to about 30%
          *If both parents have it, the chances leap to more than 50%

• ADD is genetically influenced, but not genetically determined
• Environment combines with genetics to create ADD
• Environmental toxins, watching too much television and/or excessive stimulation all may play a role
• Some nutritional deficiencies that correlate with ADD are calcium, magnesium, iodine, iron and zinc
• High levels of copper, lead, mercury, cadmium and aluminum levels have also been seen in learning disabled children
Foods as a Cause
• Artificial colours and preservatives are usually the leaders (79%) including red and yellow food colouring agents used in cherries and other fruits; preservative substances that cause symptoms include sodium, formaldehyde, pickles, and brine
• Processed milk and milk products (64%)
• Wheat products (49%) but only breads and cereals that are not whole grain
• Sugar (16%) but that most likely causes more problems
• Oranges and grapefruits (57%): suspect individuals who drink large amounts of those juices develop a resistance to them
• Eggs
• Monosodium glutamate (MSG)

Things that can contribute to your child’s ADD symptoms include

• Newly painted surfaces
• Perfumes (women’s and men’s)
• Chlorinated swimming pools
• Gasoline or petroleum products
• Pesticides
• Cut grasses or harvested crops
• Household chemicals, such as cleaners
• Gas stoves
ADD and Television



• A study by the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that watching videos as a toddler may lead to ADHD in later life.
• TV watching rewires an infant’s brain and the damage shows up at age 7 when children have difficulty paying attention in school
• Exposing a baby’s developing brain to videos may overstimulate it, causing permanent changes in developing neural pathways.
• One of the main problems is that when a infants sits mesmerized by the video/TV, neural paths are not being created compared to when they for example play with their fingers and bend, flex, stretch and grasp. This crucial brain development stops by age three.
• In the study of more than 2,000 children, Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, lead researcher and director of the Child Health Institute at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Centre, Seattle, Washington, found that for every hour watched at age one and age three, the children had almost a ten percnt higher chance of developing attention problems that could be diagnosed as ADHD by age 7. A toddler watching three hours of infant television daily had nearly a 30 percent higher chance of having attention problems in school.
Does ADD ever go away?
• The symptoms of ADD disappear during puberty in 30-40 percent of children, and the symptoms stay gone
• ADD persists into adulthood 60-70 percent of the time
• As the brain matures, it changes in ways that may cause the negative symptoms to abate
• ADD becomes a trait rather than a disorder
• Sometimes the child learns how to compensate so well for his ADD during puberty that it looks as if the ADD has gone away but if you look closely, the symptoms are still there but the child has learned to control them.
Nutritional Approach



• A 1994 study at Purdue University found that boys diagnosed with ADHD had lower levels of the omega-3 EFA DHA (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition)
• A 1997 study found that 95% of ADHD children tested were deficient in magnesium (Magnesium Research 10, 1997)
• A 1996 study found that ADHD children had zinc levels that were only 2/3 the level of those without ADHD (Biological Psychiatry 40, 1996)
• 100 mg B-complex to nourish the nervous system
• 100 mg B6, which is essential for the synthesis of seratonin, a hormone important for causing a calming effect
• Good quality multivitamin/multimineral, taken as directed on the label provides basic nutrients for proper brain function
• Taurine, tyrosine, tryptophan may be helpful in encouraging the body to relax
• 500 mg Calcium and 250 mg Magnesium 2 times/day
• 300 mg phosphatidylserine a day (found in high concentrations in brain cells and helps them function properly)
• Chamomile tea: take 2-3 heaped tsp of chamomile flowers and pour boiling water over and allow to steep for 10 minutes

          *Helps to calm the nervous system and digestive tract

• Antioxidants like Vitamin C – this is a potent anti-oxidant and helps to clean the dirt and junk from the blood. This will enhance the way your brain functions.
• Probiotic – the normal and essential flora or bacteria in your digestive system which aids in your digestion, immune function and overall health.

*please check all dosages with your healthcare provider before beginning treatment

Chiropractic Care
• Patients and parents of children diagnosed as ADD or ADHD have reported dramatic improvement after beginning chiropractic care
• Musculoskeletal imbalances can create or lead to irregular brain activity, causing many symptoms commonly associated with ADHD. Chiropractic adjustments can help correct these imbalances and help improve or eliminate these symptoms.
• Motor activity is the baseline function of brain activity-which explains the effectiveness of chiropractic treatment with ADHD patients.
Advice
• AAP advises no child under age two should watch television at all.
• Limit how much television older children watch as well since their brain continues to develop
• Intense, prolonged visual stimulation of the brain during such a vulnerable stage of life interferes with the development of the central nervous system.
• Avoid sugar, refined and processed foods, dyes, additives
• Focus on family time, exercise, exploration and experiential learning
• When seeking help for you or your child, schedule an appointment with your family chiropractor to discuss treatment options for ADHD


Dr. Jenna Davis is dedicated to providing you with the absolute best in family wellness care. So take a moment today to discuss with your Family Wellness Chiropractor any concerns you may have regarding your family’s overall health and wellness.

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