Parents…there should be no negotiating over whether your children eat their greens and there should be no reward trade offs for sweet sugary treats if they do eat their veggies. You are actually damaging your children’s health more than you could ever imagine.

Did you know that people are finally waking up to the fact that the modern western diet promotes unealthy gut bacteria in children and that third world children’s guts are a whole lot healthier?

In the back pages of an article by “the Economist” a well respected publication in the mainstream media, a study is documented, revealing dreadful consequences of the typical Western diet on Aug 5th 2010. According to this study published in “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”,  a sugary, fat-laden Western diet wreaks profound changes on children’s gut bacteria, and could even promote the risk of asthma, allergies and other inflammatory diseases.

Rates of inflammatory disease have been rising for decades among adults and children alike. Puzzlingly, this increase has occurred largely in developed countries, bypassing poorer places. (Rural poverty brings many hardships; inflammatory bowel disease is not among them.) This has left scientists struggling to pinpoint exactly what about the rich world is making people sick. New data from Paolo Lionetti, of the University of Florence in Italy, supports the view that diet may be the culprit.

Dr Lionetti and his colleagues compared the diets and gut bacteria of 14 healthy children from a village in Burkina Faso with a group of 15 Florentine children. The differences were minimal at young ages, with breast-fed toddlers in both countries harboring similar populations of gut bacteria. But among children who had graduated to the local diet, the two groups diverged dramatically. In Africa fiber-rich meals of millet, legumes and other vegetables (enlivened by the occasional termite) fostered a diverse mix of bacteria. European children, who imbibed typically Western doses of sugar, fat and meat, had fewer microbial species.

On top of this overall drop in diversity, the researchers saw striking trends in the types of bacteria in the two groups. Though healthy, Italian children harbored more than three times as many species associated with causing diarrhea, leading the researchers to speculate that reduced intestinal diversity could permit unwelcome bugs to gain a foothold. The Italians also had bacterial profiles that indicate a greater risk of obesity. In contrast, African children had lots of bacterial species associated with leanness, and a higher proportion of microbes known to produce beneficial chemicals called short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). Such compounds have been associated with lower levels of allergies and inflammation. (Don’t you think that this could be why asthma and allergies are so rampant today in the western world?)

To show that these distinct bacterial populations could affect children’s health, the researchers measured SCFA levels. The children from Burkina Faso were found to have more than double the concentration of their Italian counterparts. This hints that healthy bacterial populations living in the gut may not just exclude disease-causing bugs; by pumping out beneficial compounds, they may actively help to suppress disease.

Though the researchers did not measure health outcomes directly, their findings arrive amid growing evidence that gut bacteria control important immune functions. In preliminary studies researchers are testing whether doses of beneficial bacteria could alleviate bowel disease and eczema.

While scientists puzzle out the details, parents should approach dinnertime negotiations with renewed determination. In other words…NO NEGOTIATING! Johhny eat your vegetables or go hungry!

So just what do you think is the cause of your ITP anyway?

Here is a small list of some of the things to consider that could possibly be triggering your ITP.

• Exposure to chemical toxins in our environment
• Exposure to pesticides
• Exposure to un-pure air
• Eating foods laden with high fructose corn syrup
• Eating foods with chemical additives and preservatives
• Eating highly processed food
• Not eating enough of raw fresh food
• Drinking and bathing in water that isn’t pure
• Exposure to viruses and bacteria
• Exposure to Parasites
• Prescription drugs
• Too little exposure to pure sunlight
• Taking the wrong kinds of vitamin supplements
• Undue stress and negative thinking
• Exposure to EMF (electromagnetic frequencies)
• Lack of exercise
• Undergoing certain modern medical treatments such as Chemotherapy etc.

Perhaps it might be only one of them, but what if it’s almost all of them? Do you think that maybe your body just reached the tipping point?

Any intelligent person with ITP would have to agree that they have been exposed to most of the items on the list…probably on a daily basis. It makes you wonder if it’s even safe to leave your house, eat or breathe for that matter. Unless we want to go live on a desert island, there really is no escaping exposure to these substances. But don’t despair. You just need to do your research and replace your un-natural lifestyle with a healthy one. And at least minimize the risk.

Where to start? Just start somewhere! Even the smallest steps of action can add up to amazingly big results when it comes to yourhealth (or other areas of your life for that matter). But if you don’t take any action at all and continue on the way you are going, you’ll find that your health will gradually slip through your fingers as easily and silently as grains of sand in the palm of your hand. Before you know it every grain of health is gone and it’s too late to do any thing about it. Take action now, you owe it to yourself!