Hardening is a system of procedures, under the influence of which the body's resistance to adverse environmental influences increases, according to Pannochka, an online publication for girls and women from 14 to 35 years old.. net The physiological basis of hardening is that a person constantly and systematically (and these are the main principles of hardening) develop conditioned reflexes that provide better thermoregulation - maintaining a constant body temperature.
Unprepared for sudden changes in temperature, the body responds to them with a reaction such as an unconditioned reflex. For example, in response to cooling, the vessels located on the surface of the body dilate in order to warm it due to the greater blood flow to the skin.. But this dramatically increases heat transfer, which further cools the body.. A hardened organism, in response to a cooling signal received from thermoreceptors, immediately increases the production of heat.. The vessels of the skin, however, expand only for a short time, increasing the flow of warm blood to the surface layers of the body, and then this heat is retained due to a sharp decrease in heat transfer - the vessels of the skin are reduced.
Hardening not only trains the thermoadaptive systems of the child's body. It also activates the immune system. Thanks to these two factors, hardening avoids many diseases, especially in physiologically immature newborns, in whom the immune system is not yet sufficiently developed..
Thus, hardening contributes to the normal physical and mental development of the child.. It is necessary to harden the baby from the first days of life - everyone agrees with this. However, there are diametrically opposed points of view on how to harden, and in particular during the neonatal period..
According to one of them, a newborn child is weak, requires careful treatment, and therefore special hardening measures can be carried out 1.5–2 months after his birth, and then very carefully.. And until that time, one should limit oneself to hardening episodes that arise in the process of caring for a child, and the creation of healthy living conditions for him.
What does it mean? First of all, the flow of fresh air into the room where the baby lives. To do this, you need to open the window more often in winter and ventilate the room.. In summer, it is better to keep the windows open so that not only fresh air enters the room, but also the sun's rays, under the influence of which anti-rachitic vitamin D is produced in the child's body.. In addition, the sun's rays kill pathogens.. Moderate air temperature is no less important - it should not be higher than 22 ° C for full-term babies. Walks, air baths that the baby takes when changing diapers, changing clothes, preparing for bathing, washing and hygienic baths with a final pouring of cool water - all these are the first tempering procedures in the child's life that supporters of this point of view allow during the neonatal period..
But is such hardening enough to really increase the resistance of the child's body to adverse effects, others ask.. Is the newborn so defenseless before them After all, the possibilities of its adaptive mechanisms are unusually high.. Otherwise it cannot be. Without this, he would have died immediately after birth, like a fish thrown out of the water - the child spent 9 months of intrauterine life in completely different conditions.
The rate of adaptive reactions in newborns is also extremely high.. The restructuring of the functioning of their body begins almost instantly - from the first cry, the first breath. That is why a child without harm to health could be born in a reindeer team at 30-40 ° C frost, at 50 ° C heat in a Finnish or Russian bath, he endured bathing in an ice font and wiping with snow. These are all the old customs that accompanied the birth of a person..
These customs were based on folk experience, according to which a short-term, but rather strong effect on a newborn of low temperatures has a beneficial effect on him - it seems to give an impetus to the body's defenses, after which the child develops well. Here is what the famous doctor V wrote in the past. Beetle: “Both a weak and strong child, baptized in winter in water straight from the well (plus 8 degrees Reaumur, plus 10 degrees Celsius. – ed. ), develops very quickly and almost immediately takes on a special, pleasant, vigorous, strong appearance... A quick immersion in cold water definitely enhances all metabolic processes... The skin turns red and is pleasant to look at: the child looks fuller, rosier, rounder, sucks harder and greedily,. After 4-6 weeks, a weak child is unrecognizable”. Often parents asked to baptize a child in warm water.. The results of baptism were completely different: “Children were compared after six weeks, when they were brought for prayer. Literally all the priests declared the advantage of cold water over warm; only the immersion should be complete and very fast”. “Out of 22 children baptized in warm water, 9 died (40.6 percent). Of 42 children baptized in cold water, one died (2.4 percent). In one case there were twins: a stronger child, baptized in warm water, died, and a weaker child, baptized in cold, remained healthy ”(quoted. by: Nikitin B. The first lessons of natural education, or Childhood without diseases. Lenizdat. 1990. 107).
It has been established that high rates of adaptation are maintained in the child throughout the entire neonatal period, since at this time the baby adapts to new living conditions.. And then, if the adaptive mechanisms are not trained, their capabilities quickly decrease... as unnecessary, since the baby is in comfortable conditions. Parents protect him from the adverse effects of the external environment with warm clothes, which helps for the time being.. Because weakening, reducing the adaptive systems of the body to a low level of activity makes the child defenseless even before a slight draft and cooling.
The authors of a number of manuals for caring for a child emphasize that it is advisable to develop certain systems of his body only as they mature - readiness for functioning.. It turns out that at a time when the child's adaptation system works most effectively, he is practically not tempered.. And it is recommended to start careful hardening after the speed of its adaptive processes has begun to decline, when the body's capabilities have already been largely lost and they need to be restored..
Let's name two more serious shortcomings in this system of " Firstly, temperature drops during such hardening are much less than those that a child encounters in everyday life.. And even if only for this reason, they cannot give a hardening effect.. Even when the baby is swaddled, the temperature difference is 10-12°C, while the guidelines recommend lowering the temperature of the water during hardening by 0.5-1°C in 3-6 days. Secondly, the hardening effect on this system is short-term and incomparable with the duration of the effect on the body of comfortable conditions.. As B writes. Nikitin, “5-6 minutes are allotted for hardening, and for pampering... - the remaining 1434 minutes every day”.
According to Yu. Chusov, the author of a number of books on hardening, for a good effect, it is not enough just to systematically and gradually carry out hardening procedures - such effects must be quite intense and long.
Proponents of a different point of view on hardening believe that it is necessary: \u200b\u200bto increase the resistance of the child's body, use the unique opportunities that nature gave him in the neonatal period; take as a basis not hardening procedures, but such a way of life of the child, which would ensure the constant work of the adaptive systems of his body.
What it looks like in practice? Here is how B writes. Nikitin: “A child is naked or in one vest all the time until he sleeps or when his mother feeds. He freely moves his arms and legs, and we are not afraid if his heels turn blue. Ilya Arkadyevich Arshavsky says that this is the first thermoadaptive reaction of the baby to the cold. Rejoice, parents, that she works for him - cold feet give off less heat, the thermal balance of the body is restored.
In the first two or three days, the baby may sometimes hiccup, but this is also a process of getting used to the new thermal regime.. The hiccups go away on their own and stop when the baby is wrapped up for sleep in the room in one or two diapers. Sleep better with warm feet. To do this, mom needs to take her feet in her warm hands or even breathe on them... In the room we try to maintain a temperature of 17-19 ° C. If the baby is naked in it, then: his muscle tone is increased, that is, they are tense in order to generate more heat (apparently, this is the main way of warming), and the muscles develop at the same time; coolness always invigorates and makes movements especially pleasant; diapers and clothes do not restrict movement; the body's thermoregulators come into operation and transfer the entire body's defense system to another mode.
It is only important to remember: if the baby stops moving, relaxes, it means that he needs to be dressed or wrapped in a diaper to warm him up”.
Thus, the duration of the hardening procedure in this case is determined by the child himself, or rather, his parents by changing the state of the baby. At first, for a physiologically immature infant, this procedure can take only 5–10 seconds, and for a mature one, sometimes 60 seconds at once.. As the child gets used to it, the duration of the air bath increases, and soon the baby spends the entire period of wakefulness either naked or in one vest.. Such children are practically not susceptible to colds.. Such a way of life of a child is extremely useful for his psychomotor development.. The baby quickly masters various movements, begins to sit down, get up in the crib, crawl earlier...
It also has a beneficial effect on the condition of the baby's skin, which is especially important for immature children with a tendency to allergic diseases, in particular diathesis: “... the baby's skin in such conditions does not. The diaper rash, rash, redness he received in the maternity hospital disappeared in just a few days and did not appear again”.
A good hardening effect is the use of cold tap water to wash the child (water is drawn into the palm of your hand).
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