A step-by-step guide with practical tips on how to strengthen your child’s immune system written by Evie Ryan (BHSc Naturopathy).
Learn how to improve your child’s immune system so that they can spend more days playing with their friends at school and less time at home being sick!

Food as Medicine

What your child eats builds the foundation of their nutrition. Their diet influences their digestive system health, microbiome and their immune function.
Lots of parents can find fussy eating as a challenge to helping their child eat nutrient rich foods. Seeing a Naturopath/Dietician or Nutritionist that specialises in children’s health can be helpful for 1:1 advice to help you enhance your child’s diet.
Using food as medicine is key to creating healthy children. Exposing them to a variety of different foods every week and introducing new foods from young childhood helps to build healthy eating habits.

Key foods that will support their gut microbiome and immune system include:

• Vitamin C rich foods – citrus, oranges, lemons, mandarins, raw capsicum, raw fruit/vegetables
• Vitamin A rich foods – beef liver, pumpkin, carrots, sweet potato, leafy greens
• Prebiotic/fibre rich foods – chia seeds, oats, buckwheat, quinoa, black/brown/red rice
• Probiotic foods – sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir
• Iron/zinc rich foods – red meat, seafood, chicken, eggs
• Antioxidant rich foods – dark chocolate (70% or more), pomegranates, red cabbage, beetroot
• Vitamin D rich foods – eggs, grass fed butter

Reduce Environmental Toxin Exposure

Choosing to swap cleaning products, candles, air fresheners, cookware, personal products/shampoo/soaps etc. to options that don’t include chemicals is important to reduce toxin exposure for their immune system health.
For convenience, you can buy all low-tox products at your local health food store as Naturopaths work there, so they’ve done the research for you!

Increase Prebiotics in Diet

Fibre and prebiotics are important to feed and strengthen your child’s gut microbiome. This will then have the flow on effect of enhancing their immune system function.
Use the list of prebiotic foods above to guide you when preparing your child’s meals. As prebiotic fibres ‘feed’ the good bacteria in their digestive system, it is important that they eat enough fibre daily to maintain and build their microbiome.
If your child is really struggling to get enough fibre in their diet, there are some great prebiotic powders you can buy from your local health food store to support them whilst working on their diet.
Some great fibres to incorporate into their food/meals can include PHGG, LSA mix and inulin.

Filtered Water – It Matters

Contaminated water can be a source of nasty bacteria and microbes that impact their gut microbiome and can impact their nutrient absorption.
Chlorine and heavy metals in some water sources can also impact their immune system. Opting for filtered water is best to support their health. I personally use Kyn & Folk’s ceramic water filter and love it.
It is important to filter your water and make sure tank water is free from parasites/bacterial contamination too.

Lean on The Support of Probiotics

We know how challenging it can be to get kids to eat well. Whilst eating well is the highest priority, we can also lean on the support of probiotics to help us out!
Probiotics are therapeutic and are different to probiotics found in food. It is important to use the right strain that has clinical research supporting it for a probiotic to be effective.
Whilst antibiotics are often necessary to protect against pathogens, they can also disrupt the natural beneficial flora in the body.
A disruption to the balance of this fragile ecosystem can often result in digestive issues and other health implications. So, it is vital to protect and restore the microbiome during and after antibiotic use.
Qiara Kids contains a probiotic strain originally isolated from human breastmilk with clinical research supporting its benefits for gastrointestinal system health (especially during and after antibiotic use), helps stimulate a healthy immune system response and for overall health and wellbeing.
Here is what parents are saying about Qiara Kids:

“Qiara has really helped my son maintain good digestion as well as a healthy immune system response. He takes it every morning with his milk, and I would say he's just stayed healthy!” – Verified Reviewer Reviews.io

“My kids love taking Qiara Kids. They feel better on it, have been able to spend less time sick and more time playing and at school.” – Aleisha Walden Reveiws.io

“I have had other mums ask what my secret is for keeping my son so healthy despite kids getting all the bugs! I can honestly say it is thanks to Qiara probiotics.” – Nikita Cameron Reviews.io

How Qiara Kids helps keep your kids healthy

Suitable for all kids from pre-school through to 12 years of age for everyday health and wellbeing and immune system support, Qiara Kids may be used for children who have been prescribed antibiotics or suffer from food intolerances, experiencing diarrhoea or constipation, respiratory cough or cold, or gastrointestinal health issues.

• Helps restore the balance of good gut flora during and after antibiotic use
• Maintains and supports gastrointestinal and immune system health
• Helps stimulate a healthy immune system response
• Maintains and supports general health and wellbeing
• Increases the growth of good bacteria
• Maintains and supports healthy digestive system function

For further information, seek the advice of your healthcare professional.

Get Further Support

If your child struggles with recurrent infections and low immunity, it is worth seeing a Naturopath that is experienced with working with children such as Maddison Auld.
Clinical Naturopath’s can do specific functional testing with gut microbiome testing and do a clinical assessment on what is impacting your child’s immune system and then create an individualized treatment plan with dietary, lifestyle, nutritional and herbal medicine unique to your child’s needs. We highly recommend considering this if your child continues to battle recurrent infections/low immunity.