Colson and I have a lot going on at my blog over at Kids Living Longer and Colson has been YouTubing away with cooking videos and educational videos, so check it out. You can also follow along with us on our Kids Living Longer Facebook page.
Below is my most recent Kids Living Longer blog post:
Vox reports that More and more women are now dying in childbirth, but only in America.
Stunning.
And if more moms are dying, what is going to happen to their kids?
First, why are moms dying? Scientists think it is chronic diseases.
Which chronic diseases? Heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. These diseases are tightly intertwined, with often more than one present.
Heart disease, diabetes and obesity are cultural and lifestyle diseases with diet being a huge contributing factor. Humans are not meant to be sick with these diseases on a mass scale. Sure, disease happens for a variety of reasons, even back in the 1700s when our diets were pretty darn clean and low inflammatory. For example, as a country we ate on average less than a teaspoon of sugar a day in the 1700s compared to over 53 teaspoons a day now. In my opinion, sugar is at the root of our disease epidemic today. Here is a blog post I wrote on it a few years ago: Which “Food” Devastates Most? Sugar, Wheat or GMOs?
With so much junk food available to consumers and a corporate food culture creating addictive foods (sugar, salt and fat are the perfect trifecta for food addiction), it is understandable how American moms are in this predicament. We are encouraged to eat foods that addict us and can ultimately make us deathly sick.
Now here’s the kicker. For those chronically ill women who do give birth, you are potentially passing on to your kids the building blocks for the health problems that you are face via your body’s microbiome. Here is a quick explanation of the microbiome from our Kids Living Longer eLearning program: The Microbiome. Heart disease, diabetes and obesity are all inflammatory diseases rooted in the health of the mom’s microbiome, which is greatly influenced by what she eats. If she is sick, her microbiome is imbalanced, causing the same for her baby.
Natasha Campbell-McBride, MD, discusses the mother/baby microbiome connection in her book Gut and Psychology Syndrome Diet. In short, the baby’s microbiome is colonized at birth when traveling through the birth canal. If mom is healthy, her birth canal fluids are healthy and the baby is getting a good inoculation from mom. If mom is chronically ill, her birth canal fluids are less healthy, and baby is getting a less healthy inoculation. In the case of C-section, vaginal microbiome exposure obviously does not occur, but the baby will pick up imbalanced microbes from mom’s skin. Dr. Campbell-McBride discusses some of the ways gut imbalances can play out in this video: Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride -The importance of healthy gut flora.
With 54 percent of American kids chronically ill, the health of mom’s microbiome is critical. With 70 percent of Americans on medication, clearly some active efforts by moms and dads are needed to improve their health so that their kids will be healthy too.
Dads – don’t think you are exempt from influencing your baby’s health at birth. You have obviously contributed to mom’s vaginal fluid health when you fertilized the egg that became your child (and influenced her fluid all the other times before and during pregnancy). If you are unhealthy, the fluid you contribute is less healthy, further misbalancing the microbes your baby will acquire during birth. After birth, you touch your baby, further influencing the baby’s microbiome.
The bottom line is that if you are healthy before your baby’s birth, it is highly likely that your baby will be healthier, and if you stay healthy after birth, your child is more likely to grow up healthy and better able to resist the addictive and harmful food culture in America.
If you want a creative and cutting edge resource that could help you recover your family’s health, check out our Small and Powerful Steps to Wellness eLearning course. This is a self-paced, multi-media course unlike anything I have seen in my ten year health journey. It features Colson, now 13 years old, in an effort to help parents and kids understand that kids can heal without kid pushback and struggling. The program costs only $15, with 10% of our profits going to the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle to help kids who don’t have enough food.
Also be sure to visit our Kids Living Longer YouTube channel, where Colson is teaching how to cook some of the delicious foods that our family enjoys in hopes of inspiring kids and adults to take charge of their food and their health.
Finally, be sure to check back for blog post updates, as we have some more great content coming and we are not capturing people’s contact information via a sign-up requirement. Alternatively, you can like our Kids Living Longer Facebook page to be notified of blog updates.
Thank you for reading!
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