Smitha Hemadri
Natural Healing - Leader & Influencer
05:16 PM | 20-04-2020
In Part2 of this series on adolescence, we understood the true value of a supportive community. In this article, we will learn of ways to make this challenging period a healthier transition.
Stepping into healthy adulthood
Although the timing differs from child to child, parents have to ensure that the following aspects are taken care of right from their birth or if not a few years before the onset of adolescence.
Nutrition – Exposing kids to a whole-food plant-based lifestyle will not only reduce the toxic load on the body but will also aid the needful hormonal, skeletal and muscular development.
Factors affecting rate of growth – Animal products such as dairy, eggs, meat, and fish increases the rate of aging because of extra hormones. These foods also increase body exhaustion and this leads to toxemia. Hence, the body does not get the opportunity to expel the animal protein efficiently. Reaching puberty before age 10, experiencing more than expected painful menarche is some of the symptoms of an unhealthy body.
Exercises – Encourage your child to spend a few minutes of outdoor playing sports or games with their friends. Kids who lead a sedentary lifestyle also have a sluggish lymphatic system and they tend to fall sick often.
Sun and exposure to natural elements
Sunlight is also known as the sunshine vitamin is very much needed for all human beings and teenagers need it more because of the growth of the skeletal and muscular structure that happens during this phase. Food plays a small role in supplementing what sunshine can help the body make. Hence, a minimum of 20 minutes of daylight exposure is very important on a daily basis to make sufficient Vitamin D for the growing body. Insufficient sunlight exposure also contributes to teenagers not getting enough night sleep as this is related to further delaying the melatonin secretion. Typically sleep onset happens after 2 hrs of melatonin secretions. Every teenager who gets lacks sunlight exposure also experiences a 6 min delay in the melatonin secretion as published in a research article “Lack of morning light keeping teenagers up at night” of Science Daily on Feb 2010.
Encourage children to spend some time outdoors on the weekends when they cannot spend time on school days. Talk to the school authorities to add physical training in the mornings.
Evening sunlight is also good when compared to nothing at all. Off late kids are known to get addicted to TV or gadgets after school. Encourage them to play and then slow down their activities with reading as the day ends. A teenager who is tired after playing daily also tends to sleep well and get a well-rested night.
Sleep – Teen brains need more sleep - more than what they got as children. Most adolescents are sleep deprived and average only around 6 hrs of sleep. Part of the blame can be an early start of schools. Most teens are used to sleeping late resulting in a considerable sleep-deficit. Teens are seen to be drowsy even upon waking and mostly tired during the day and wakeful at night. As kids enter teens, their body clock shifts forward and melatonin secretions are known to start later in the evening and end later in the morning. This switches back as they finish this phase. Sleep deficits can result in napping between classes, lack of focus, irritability, lack of interest in physical fitness, tasks that are competitive in nature leading to a dependency on caffeinated drinks to stay awake. This is known as the teenage night-owl syndrome
Encourage early sleeping habits, exercising, reduction of screen time after 8 PM. Sufficient raw food in the day also improves the sleep cycles and habits to a large extent despite the changes in the circadian rhythm.
Hygiene – During puberty the sweat glands also produce a lot of sweat which when exposed to bacteria can smell pretty bad. The first step for the kids to feel less stinky is to ask for a deodorant. Educate them that foul-smelling sweat is an internal reflection of the insides of the body. Making a habit of consuming fruits for breakfast, adding one fruit or vegetable juice in a day will keep the odor at bay. Encourage them to take a shower not just in the morning, but after returning from school, sports or exercising and before bedtime. Wearing clean clothes must become part of their daily lives. If they insist on a deodorant, look for eco-friendly products that do not have chemicals or essential oils that can be used too.
Hydration
Since the kids tend to sweat often during this period due to their activity levels or because of the body’s changes, ensure they are well hydrated. An early morning 500 ml – 750 ml juice after the assimilation cycle of the circadian rhythm helps in flushing the toxins to its right excretory channels during the elimination phase. Also, this drink helps hydrate the body after its long hrs.i of work at night. Over the day, ensuring they empty their 1-liter water bottles at school. The habit of hydration must be cultivated from childhood so that the children don’t get a feeling of being treated differently during this period. Constant reminders from the parents can sound like nagging if pushed more than necessary.
Supportive community – Until recently little attention was paid to the living settings such as home, friends, peers, social media, school, neighborhood, etc which influence their cognitive, emotional and physical development during these periods. Kids interpret and respond to these experiences through the lenses of their innate developing personalities. Hence it's important for the parents to help the child be raised in a loving, respected and safe environment.
Conclusion
Puberty is both an exciting and daunting time for youth and their caregivers. Tremendous and rapid changes occur that dramatically transform children's lives, exposing them to new dangers and new opportunities. Balancing these changes mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually will help both parents and children to sail through this seamlessly. I hope this series of articles on adolescence helped you as a parent or as a young adult to tide through this phase with ease and trust.
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