Note From Jim  

I don't know if you have seen any press releases recently about some very exciting partnerships we have entered into with my consulting company, Integrative Health Resources (IHR), but if not, I would like to brag a little bit. For the past couple of years, my IHR team and I have been working with Life Time Fitness, one of the largest fitness chains in the world, to help them roll out more effective nutrition and weight loss programs for their members. (Some of you may even be members at the local Life Time center in Mason, Ohio.) I am extremely excited about this partnership because Life Time realized that to address weight and health most effectively, people need to address underlying metabolic issues, which of course has been my life's work, and is what our doctors at LMI continue to carry out with their patients every day. Most importantly, Life Time Fitness shares the same passion we have in reaching everyone with these messages, from the oldest to the youngest of their members' families.  

Secondly, IHR has entered into an extremely exciting joint venture with Thorne Research, one of the most respected supplement companies in the world. Thorne Research has maintained an unparalleled commitment to making pure untainted dietary supplements as well as to furthering research on various nutraceuticals and the roles they can and should play in health care today.   Thorne chose IHR as their partner in educating health professionals on how to integrate nutritional products into their practices, and we have our team at LMI involved in these initiatives as well. And finally, one of my partners in IHR, Dr. Andrew Heyman and I were recently asked to lecture on nutritional topics at a world congress for men's health being held in Vienna this October.   We are very excited and wanted to share these developments with you because it shows our commitment to helping more and more people have better lives through nutrition. With these types of alliances we can and are literally reaching the world.

Fast forward to our topic today - Children's Nutritional Intake.  (Continued in center column)  

Taking a multivitamin around the time of conception, was found to reduce the risk of autism by half. 

Taking a multivitamin before becoming pregnant and early in pregnancy reduced a child's chance of autism by 50%. (Schmidt, et al. Epidemiology, 2011.)   How dreadfully important that piece of information is, but have you heard about it? This is truly an area where I can use the quote, "my people parish for lack of knowledge." Everyday at LMI we see parents struggling to care for autistic children or children with attention deficit or mood disorders. A few years ago a colleague of mine wrote a book called The Crazy Makers.   It's an excellent book that goes into how nutrition (or lack of good nutrition) affects children's minds and ability to focus.  

Think about it so many of our foods marketed to children are sugar laden, dye laden, and so processed it's, well, crazy. From their sugary cereal in the morning to their juice drinks and chewy snacks, to the chicken tenders and fries, children aren't getting many "real" whole unprocessed foods or fruits and vegetables. Today we see more autistic children, more children with ADHD, more children with mood disorders. We even see growing numbers of children with heart disease! (Something that used to only be seen in adulthood.) On the other hand, at LMI we have seen very simple nutrition programs make a huge difference for children. So whether you are young and haven't started a family yet or are a grandparent or simply an aunt, uncle or mentor to children, I urge you to read this month's article. Anyone who has ever had a problem with an, unhealthy, unruly or unhappy child has a lot to gain by understanding how poor nutrition is influencing our children.

-Jim LaValle 

Nutrition - Making a Difference for Kids

Katherine Wight, RD, LD

Poor nutritional habits and intake is affecting our children's weight and future disease risks. (Shocking statistics from the World Health Organization reveal that worldwide nearly 43 million children under the age of five were overweight in 2010[1], and studies show being overweight before puberty drastically increases a child's risks for heart disease and stroke in adulthood[2].) But this is not just about having healthier weight children and preventing disease.

I am not a parent yet, but I hope to be. As you can see from Jim's information above, even for someone just hoping to become pregnant one day, simply taking a multivitamin before and early in pregnancy could make a huge difference for the health of a child. Nutrition doesn't only affect a child's growth and development, it affects his or her's mood, digestion, sleep, temperament, and ability to focus in school. Before working with children at LMI, I would never have guessed that a few simple nutritional changes could make such a big difference, but I see it happening every day. So I wanted to pass this information along to all mothers, soon to be mothers, fathers, grandparents etc, because helping improve a child's nutritional intake is a very practical way to not only help your children feel better, it can make your job raising them a lot easier. In addition, the health of our children, affects our society as a whole. So this is a topic for everyone, parents or not.

Nutrition for children is important at every stage of life, and it starts in the womb and from the time a child is born. To give a child the healthiest start possible, ideally, a child will be breastfed. From the immune boosting colostrum to it's just-right proteins, better-absorbed minerals and it's higher lactose human milk is far superior to any man-made infant formulas. At a recent conference I heard a PhD dietitian, who studies breast milk in order to improve infant formulas, talk about how many of the beneficial components in breast milk cannot be provided in infant formula because they are still discovering all of breast milk's protective, anti-inflammatory growth factors. These components are biologically active and provide passive immunity to the baby and help 'prime' the immune system to defend against pathogens and unfavorable bacteria.

The type of feeding has a huge influence on the microflora (bacteria) of an infant's digestive tract (gut). Breastfed infants generally have more bifidobacteria and lactobacilli (good bacteria) whereas formula fed infants have more unfavorable populations such as E. coli and Clostridium[3]. This difference in species has been identified as key to breast-fed infants' superior immunity to many infections, and therefore, has spurred much interest in probiotics, good bugs found in the gut.

To continue reading this article click here.