Dr. Rahim Habib ND, Naturopathic Doctor
Unlike adult health screening tests, there is little testing for pediatric general health screening. Adults will get annual medical evaluations including blood and urine testing and recommendations for additional screening based on their age, family history and risk factors. However, consider the idea of screening our young patients. When I interact with the parents, it is very uncommon that there is any mention of preliminary screening tests from general medical practice. In my naturopathic pediatric practice, I commonly include hair analysis as an objective non-invasive way to screen for nutritional status and toxic metal exposures.
Nutritional screening value of hair analysis
As clinicians, we know that despite the diet or supplements we recommend for our pediatric patients, what is actually consumed and what is actually digested and absorbed can be quite different. Digestion-related factors commonly compromise the proper digestion and absorption of nutrients (eg: eating fast or while commuting or under stress, picky eating, food intolerances and intestinal hyperpermeability, dysbiosis, etc.). It is valuable therefore to have an assessment tool to reliably assess both the child's baseline and their treatment outcome. Hair is certainly much easier to obtain than a blood sample and helps with patient compliance in the young, as well as parental comfort.
Common nutritional & digestive challenges in children:
rushed meals → maldigestion
mobile meals → maldigestion
picky eating → nutritional deficiency
sensory challenges
inadequate chewing →maldigestion
antibiotic overuse →intestinal microbial imbalance (dysbiosis)
low diversity of intestinal microbes
constipation is commonplace
over-scheduled → maldigestion/deficiency
questionable quality/processed foods
tight grocery budgets
food intolerances → malabsorption
intestinal hyperpermeability → immune dysfunctions
Validity of hair analysis in children’s nutrition screening
To support the validity of hair analysis in the pediatric population, consider a 2017 study epublished in Biological Trace Element Research which compared the status of hair mineral and toxic elements in both undernourished and well-nourished children and found there was a significant (and expected) difference, validating the hair analysis usefulness. Another study examined the clinical correlation of night blindness in children. It is known for instance that selenium is a useful mineral for eye health. A 2015 study appearing in the journal Environmental Monitoring and Assessment found significantly lower levels of selenium in children with night blindness compared to children of similar age with normal night vision.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28861860
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25655123
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