What causes anorexia in children?

If a child suffers from anorexia, he will eat very little, which will seriously affect the child's nutritional intake. At this time, many parents will scold the child loudly and force the child to eat with a strong attitude. In fact, this is wrong. The correct approach is to find out the reason for the child's anorexia, which may be a problem with the taste of the food, or it may be due to gastrointestinal diseases that cause anorexia, etc.

1. Zinc deficiency causes anorexia.

One of the components of taste buds in saliva is zinc. When zinc is deficient, it will affect the sense of taste and appetite. Zinc deficiency can affect the function of taste buds and reduce the sense of taste. Zinc deficiency can lead to mucosal hyperplasia and incomplete keratinization, causing a large number of shed epithelial cells to block the small holes of taste buds, making it difficult for food to contact the taste buds and the sense of taste becomes insensitive.

2. Improper feeding after birth causes digestive tract dysfunction.

During infancy, due to monotonous feeding, parents neglected to add and supplement complementary foods, and their diet was mainly based on dairy products and starch for a long time, resulting in a lack of fiber, vitamins and trace elements, which made the baby have dry stools, flat taste buds on the tongue, dull taste and loss of appetite. As they grow older, babies are often fed foods such as soaked rice and pickles. If things go on like this for a long time, it will cause the deficiency of nutrients such as zinc and essential amino acids, resulting in slow growth and development and decreased resistance. This is the most common clinical cause.

3. Poor parenting and improper feeding.

Some parents hope that their babies will grow stronger, so they feed them high-protein, high-sugar, and advanced nutritional supplements. However, they do not realize that the baby's digestive function is limited and the gastrointestinal tract cannot bear it. The result is contrary to their wishes, causing the baby to lose appetite, some to develop malnutrition and food accumulation, and some to become fat but have poor physical constitution. These parents don't know the old saying: "Poor families have their own way of raising children." It is natural to feed babies better food when economic conditions improve, but scientific parenting should be emphasized. Traditional Chinese medicine has a saying that "flow is valuable, stagnation is not valuable". Those high-end foods are greasy in nature. If you eat too much of them, not only will they fail to provide nutritional benefits, but they will also cause internal damage and lose your appetite. Some parents put their baby's eating first, and adopt the method of filling-feeding. Even if the baby really can't eat it, they still ask for another bite, which backfires and causes vomiting. Some babies eat snacks all the time, and force themselves to eat even if they are not hungry or have no appetite. Over time, this makes the baby develop anorexia.