Hi, I’m Dr. Jared Nielsen here in Heber City, Utah. I’d like to talk today about the importance of allowing your child, your infant child, to actually have developmental milestones in their mouth. I’m talking about teeth and what teeth are best prepared to introduce foods.
When your infant is born, the best food for that child is, of course, mother’s milk. As the teeth begin to develop, you’ll notice that the bottom two and the top two, will come first. A lot of people will just start to introduce foods because the child wants to chew on something or suck on something.
But really, those teeth are indicators of what enzymes and what stage of preparation the body is ready to receive nutrients. For example, the front teeth represent the body’s ability or preparation in receiving vegetables. So your first for babies should actually be vegetables, followed by then as they develop canines, meat. As they develop their molars, grains.
Most of our baby food preparations though are quite the opposite. Rice, cereals, for example, are introduced for children. Soy-based formulas and soy-based products that actually prematurely introduced into the baby’s dietary system and gastrointestinal system, a nutrient that may not be prepared yet in the body to enzymatically break down. So, we may develop a myriad of food sensitivities.
When we start to see the correlation between the teeth and eczema, we’ll often see eczema beginning to develop in children with prematurely introduced foods. If you see this in the infant and the pre-toddler, we’re usually looking at eczema on the wrists in the tops of the feet as an allergy to strawberries and bananas.
Then, we start to look at eggs and cheese. These really are prematurely introduced and the baby will start to then have skin afflictions. When we look at toddlers, we see an addition to those primary food sensitivities, grain sensitivities.
Gluten sensitivities including wheat, rye, barley, oats, and spelt, as well as then, corn, and sometimes, rice, because these have been developed or introduced in the child prior to the development of the gastrointestinal system, which you can really see again the window of that maturation or maturity by the teeth.
Again, the front teeth are best prepared for vegetables. Don’t prematurely introduce dairies and sweets. Your baby really doesn’t have a sweet tooth when he has two front teeth. Then looking at canines for meats and heavier proteins like eggs.
Then as the canines pass into molars, and the molar teeth actually come in for those larger grinding surfaces, think grains. If we prematurely introduce those foods before the teeth are indicating the body’s preparation for enzymes to break those nutrients down, we may actually create a multiplicity of food sensitivities.
I’m Dr. Jared Nielsen. I hope this is help to you and your family.