What are the precautions for children to supplement trace elements? What are the symptoms of children lacking trace elements?

A child's lack of trace elements may have a serious impact on the baby's physical health and development. Any trace element has an effect on the baby's body. However, there are many issues to pay attention to when supplementing trace elements for children. Excessive supplementation must not be done, otherwise serious side effects may occur and even pose a threat to children's health. In this regard, parents should not only understand the symptoms of trace element deficiency, but also know how to best supplement it.

1. Symptoms of children's lack of trace elements

Vitamin A deficiency: Experts say that vitamin A deficiency can cause damage to visual function. Even mild vitamin A deficiency can affect children's immune function, reduce children's resistance to infection, and lead to increased incidence and mortality of diseases such as respiratory and digestive tract infections. Vitamin A deficiency can also lead to slow growth and development in children and affect the growth of bones and soft tissues; it can also cause dry eyes and night blindness.

Iodine deficiency: Iodine is an important raw material for the synthesis of thyroid hormone. Iodine deficiency will inevitably lead to a decrease in thyroid hormone, causing the part of the cerebral cortex responsible for language, hearing and intelligence to fail to fully differentiate and develop during fetal development. After birth, the babies grow slowly, have slow reactions, stupid faces, big heads, flat noses, protruding tongues and drooling. Some are even deaf-mute or mentally ill. When they grow up, they are less than 1.3 meters tall.

Zinc deficiency: Decreased appetite is one of the early signs of zinc deficiency in infants and young children. Children who are zinc deficient have a decreased sense of taste and cannot distinguish sour, sweet, bitter and salty flavors; they have delayed growth and development, are short and do not gain weight; they have poor resistance and suffer from repeated colds or diarrhea; and are prone to recurrent oral ulcers. Zinc deficiency can also damage children's taste buds and cause anorexia.

Iron deficiency: Iron deficiency anemia has a very serious impact on the health of women of childbearing age and children. Severe iron deficiency anemia can increase the mortality rate of children and mothers. Iron deficiency can damage children's intellectual development, make infants and young children irritable and indifferent, and lack interest in the things around them. It can also cause abnormalities in attention, learning ability, and memory in children and adolescents. The incidence of lead poisoning in young children with iron deficiency is 3-4 times higher than that in children without iron deficiency.

Copper deficiency: In the early 1970s, people discovered a disease that could cause death in infants and young children. The main symptom of the disease was anemia, and the children often died due to mental abnormalities, movement disorders and systemic arterial tortuosity. Medical scientists have found that this is because the mother's blood copper levels are too low during pregnancy, causing copper deficiency in the fetus, resulting in a lack of adenosine triphosphate, which provides an energy source for the body's metabolism, making it impossible to meet the minimum energy for life. At the same time, it can affect the activity of certain enzymes in the fetus as well as the absorption and circulation of iron, thus causing anemia.

2. How to supplement the lack of trace elements

Food conditioning: If your baby really lacks certain trace elements, it is best to supplement them through food conditioning, and usually the normal indicators can be reached within a week. If you are iron deficient, you can eat more animal liver, blood products and meat, and pay attention to supplementing vitamin C; if you are zinc deficient, you can eat more animal liver and shellfish; iodine can be supplemented by eating iodized salt, kelp, etc. In addition, you should eat whole foods, that is, foods that are unrefined or only partially refined, to achieve food diversity.

Once a child lacks trace elements, appropriate medication can be used for supplementation, but it is best to start with dietary supplements. A scientific and balanced diet can be adopted, and iron supplementation should mainly come from green leafy vegetables, such as kelp, seaweed, black fungus, celery, rapeseed, etc. In addition, animal liver is also rich in iron. To prevent iodine deficiency, you can eat more iodized salt and more foods such as kelp, seaweed and marine fish.

3. Precautions for children to supplement trace elements

There is no need to supplement your baby with too much calcium, iron and zinc. A reasonable daily diet before the age of one year old and adding a pill of cod liver oil is enough. Many parents trust the report card of trace elements, but in fact, it can only be used as a reference. If something is missing, you should first supplement it with food. A small number of children who have been taking excessive calcium supplements for a long time may suffer from "ghost face syndrome": they have a big mouth, a protruding upper lip, a flat nose bridge, nostrils facing the sky, eyes far apart, and strange expressions. These children often also suffer from diseases such as emaciation, mental retardation, and heart murmurs.