Strategies For Protecting Your Child's Immune System: Tools For Parents And Parents-to-be (ePub)

Strategies for Protecting Your Child's Immune System is the first book to focus on prevention of environmental damage to the immune system of embryos, babies and older children. It provides expecting and existing parents, their families and physicians with science-based information to protect and proactively manage their child's immune system. Environmental exposures (pollutants, allergens, drugs, diet, physical factors) in the home, school and community can damage the developing immune system and increase the risk of lifelong chronic diseases such as allergies, asthma, type 1 diabetes, celiac disease and neurological problems. This book imparts specific tools to parents and their physicians to help keep the early-life immune system out of harm's way and minimize environmental health risk. Contents:The Basic Science:Toxicology 101What's the RiskThe Risk ExercisesIntroduction to the Immune SystemHow the Immune System DevelopsThe Special Conditions of Pregnancy and the Immune SystemThe Healthy Immune System at WorkThe Dysfunctional Immune System and Its FeaturesAvenues for Immune ExposureDiseases Stemming From Prenatal and Early Life Toxic ExposuresThe Disease Progression MatrixCategories of Environmental, Physical and Psychological FactorsSpecific Strategies:Prenatal Strategies for Preventing Immune System DamageStrategies to Use During the First Few Years of LifeUndoing the Damage of the Past in AdulthoodSpecific Factors:Top 25 RisksOther Risk FactorsPostnatal Triggers of Disease — InfectionsPostnatal Triggers of Disease — VaccinationsDietary Factors That Affect the Immune SystemHygiene and PetsSafety Testing:Developmental Immunotoxicity Testing — Past, Present and FutureReadership: Parents, family members, pediatricians, obstetricians and gynecologists, nutritionists, family doctors, complementary health providers, teachers, college and medical students, and general readers.