Diet taboos for children with pneumonia

High-sugar, high-salt and heavy-fat foods, fine/sticky foods that can easily cause coughing, foods with known allergies, and whether the "hair-raising foods" that are the most popular among people should be banned depends on the baby's constitution and condition. There is no unified standard.

Believe it or not, last week I encountered a troubled child in the pediatric clinic: 5-year-old Haohao had bronchial pneumonia and had been infused with fluids for three days. His temperature has stabilized and his cough has become much lighter. My grandma said that her neighbor said steamed oranges with salt can relieve coughs, so she specially made a large cup of stew with a lot of salt for the baby to drink. As a result, Haohao couldn't stop coughing in the afternoon, spitting out two mouthfuls of thick phlegm, and couldn't sleep at night. The reason is that high-salt food stimulates the airway, which is already in a high-response state, making the secretions more thick and sticky, and the symptoms that were finally suppressed will rebound again. In addition to high-salt foods such as pickles, candied fruits, and salty soups, you should also try to avoid high-sugar milk tea, cakes, and canned juices. Clear clinical studies have proven that excess sugar will inhibit the bactericidal ability of white blood cells, slow down the recovery of inflammation, and increase the viscosity of phlegm, making it more uncomfortable for babies who cannot cough up. Many parents are afraid that their children will get sick and lose their appetite, so they buy their favorite cakes as snacks, but they do bad things out of good intentions.

Speaking of which, I have to mention the question that parents ask most often, "Can we eat food?" In fact, there are indeed differences in the views of Chinese and Western medicine on this issue. There is no need to say who is right and who is wrong. There is no concept of "eating things" in the Western medicine system. Pneumonia is an infectious disease, and the body needs a lot of high-quality protein to repair. As long as the baby has no history of allergies to eggs, milk, fish and shrimp, these foods should be arranged in more quantities to help repair the respiratory mucosa. I have seen many parents who listened to folk remedies and gave their children only white porridge every day. After a week, the baby lost two pounds, and the follow-up CT scan showed that the absorption of inflammation was faster than that of the baby eating a normal diet.

However, the relevant experience of traditional Chinese medicine is not without reference. If the child has wind-heat pneumonia, which is characterized by coughing up yellow and thick phlegm, red lips, thick yellow tongue coating, and dry stool, then the warm and dry tropical fruits such as mango, lychee, and durian, as well as braised lamb, and fried hot foods should be avoided. Otherwise, it will easily aggravate the internal heat and increase the amount of phlegm. If your baby has wind-cold pneumonia and coughs up white and thin phlegm, and his hands and feet are cold, as long as he is not allergic, it will be fine to eat some steamed fish and shrimp, and there is no need to blindly avoid the food.

Another point that many parents tend to overlook is that during pneumonia, they need to be extra vigilant about foods that may cause choking and coughing, especially for babies under 3 years old. When a baby has pneumonia, his cough reflex is much weaker than usual. Try not to give whole nuts, jelly, grapes, sticky glutinous rice cakes, glutinous rice balls, etc. to your baby. Two years ago, I met a one-and-a-half-year-old patient who was about to be discharged from the hospital due to pneumonia. My grandfather felt sorry for the baby because he hadn’t eaten anything delicious for a long time, so he fed him half a pistachio. The baby choked and sucked the nut directly into the trachea. He was transferred to the ICU for a bronchoscopy to remove the foreign body. He suffered a lot for nothing.

To be honest, I have been in pediatrics for almost ten years and have seen too many parents worry about taboos. In fact, it doesn’t need to be so complicated at all. When your child is sick, he or she has a poor appetite. Don’t force yourself to eat this or that. Just avoid the minefields mentioned above. If your child wants to eat some tender steamed eggs, cooked lean meat porridge, or even two bites of warm steamed apples and pears, just go with it. Only when the nutrition keeps up, the body will be strong enough to fight viruses and bacteria, and it will be more effective than any other folk remedies.