Photo: mollypop

Is it runny nose season yet? In our house it sure is.

Kula Baby came down with a cold yesterday. In between battling to wipe his nose and hauling the fuss monkey around all day, I managed to come up with a wellness plan to get him feeling better.

Rest, fluids, and TLC are always good places to start when you have a little one sick at home, but believe it or not, there are a few additional principles that will send your child on the road to recovery even faster.

Let’s talk pH.

The body’s pH is a key factor in our overall health and wellness. Are your eyes glazing over with flashbacks to 10th grade chemistry class? Don’t worry, I’ll make this overview brief. The pH system in our body spans from 0 to 14, with 7 being neutral. The ideal pH for a body in optimal health is roughly 7.3. Below 7 is acidic and above 7 is alkaline. The more acidic your body is, the more prone you are to disease. To bring yourself back to health, you must bring your body back to an alkaline state.

Those are the basic pH facts. Are you still with me?

So how can you use the pH system to help your child feel better faster? Help him shift his body back to an alkaline state (and to keep him healthy, try to stay there).

When your little one is sick, avoiding acidic foods will help his body heal faster. Acidic foods create mucus in the body. Mucus clogs us up internally and makes a happy, sticky home for illnesses of all kinds. With the pH principle in mind, it is best to avoid the following foods when your child is acutely sick:

Acidic

Photo: chatirygirl

• Dairy (yes, this means MILK–a huge mucus producer! As is in yogurt, ice cream, cheese, all of them).
• Eggs
• Meat
• Sugar
• Refined and processed foods (you don’t need me to tell you that)
• Hydrogenated oils
• Soft drinks
• Vinegar

To encourage healing try adding as many alkaline foods as possible into your child’s diet.

Alkaline

• Almost all veggies are alkaline with kale, broccoli, cucumber and wheat grass leading the pack.
• Most fruits are neutral (some can be slightly acidic) but these swing alkaline: avocado, grapefruit, lemon, lime.
• Grains are usually neutral (some can be slightly acidic) but these lean alkaline: millet, buckwheat, spelt, lentils.
• Nuts and seeds: pumpkin, almond, sunflower, sesame, flax, anything sprouted.

Keepin’ the Ice Cream Away

The literature about acid/alkaline food lists can vary slightly because each food has a pH somewhere on the spectrum. That means every author can interpret the numbers differently for foods with a mid-range pH (again, they vary only slightly). For the purpose of getting your child better, I have listed “extreme” foods first in the lists above.

For instance, there isn’t ANY confusion about the pH of meat and dairy because they both are very, very acidic. When your child is ill, stick to fresh vegetables while avoiding fatty meats, dairy and sugar. I like the list from Dr. Robert O. Young if you are interested in learning more.

Photo: superbez

When Kula Baby came down with his cold yesterday, I ordered suggested my husband avoid feeding him dairy for the day. For lunch, I whipped up a batch of broccoli soup (I sound so domestic, don’t I?,) and by the next morning Kula Baby was nearly back to normal. Do I credit our forced “no dairy” day to his healing?

Well, I wouldn’t want to discredit his hard working immune system so I won’t go on record…..BUT….I don’t think it hurt to go dairy-free for the day while his nose was constantly running (why add to the mucus production?). I guess my mom’s lecturing about “no dairy, no sugar” when we were sick as kids finally sunk in. Kula Baby will have to send Grammy a BIG thank you for planting the sprouted alkaline seed the next time I forbid ice cream when he’s feeling icky.

Point is: eating an alkaline diet isn’t always popular with the kids, but it works.

After your child has kicked his cold to the curb, maintaining health is the number one priority. An ideal diet for optimal health is 80% alkaline, 20% acidic. Whew, you can breathe a sigh of relief…I’m not suggesting you become a VEGAN!

Just keep the meat and milk as a side dish, not the main course.

Reprinted with permission.