Description

Children engaged in sports and athletic activities need to be aware of their need for fluid intake. Additional liquids are often overlooked, both by children engaged in sports and by their coaches. Yet during exercise, perspiring youngsters lose fluid tha

Transcript

Female Speaker: Sandy Jabr is a busy lady. She has four of her own children and takes care of her niece after school. And when these kids get home from school, they're hungry, thirsty and looking for a snack. Sandy Jabr: In the afternoon they can have their bananas or the apples, juice, water, milk if they want. Dr. William Cochran: Fruit juice is a good and it's a healthy beverage and I drink juice every morning with my breakfast. But we have to be careful is giving too much juice to kids. So, we recommend that children between a year and about six years of age get four to six ounces of juice a day as a maximum. And then the older kids go ahead and get eight to maybe twelve ounces of juice a day. Female Speaker: And in addition to milk, calcium-fortified juices can be a simple way to help children get the calcium they need to build strong bones. Dr. William Cochran: We now know especially for females, the more calcium you take in as an adolescent female, the better off you're going to be with more calcium in your bones later on when you start decreasing the amount of calcium in your bones after you hit the ripe old age of about thirty five. Female Speaker: What's not healthy is soda. According to the experts, children today are simply drinking too much soda, possibly setting themselves up for a battle with obesity. Dr. William Cochran: It's very, very common for me to see kids drinking three, four cans, you know, or two liters of soda a day and it's a major problem in contributing to they're being overweight. Female Speaker: Soda is not really an issue in the Jabr household. Sandy Jabr: My children don't ask for soda because they're used to it from when they were little, they were not allowed to have it. They just have their water, their juice, that's it. Female Speaker: After the children do their homework, they're allowed to go outside and play for a while. Mom keeps plenty of water on hand to keep them hydrated. Children's bodies are about eighty percent water and that's why they need to keep their water supply at a healthy level and they need a greater amount of water than any other nutrient. The other best thirst-quenching beverages are milk and 100 percent fruit juice. Dr. William Cochran: When you get more significant diarrhea and you're starting to get dehydrated, then it's our recommendation you go ahead and take an oral rehydration solution or oral electrolyte solution. And these are specifically designed for infants and children who do indeed have diarrhea and dehydration to give them extra fluid. Female Speaker: If your baby has fewer than six wet diapers a day, has few or no tears when crying, has sunken eyes, it's time to call the pediatrician. He can be severely dehydrated and that's a medical emergency. Sherry Metzger's sixteen-month old son Hutson has a medical condition that makes him very susceptible to diarrhea and dehydration. In fact, he's been hospitalized twice for that. A cold can bring it on in her son, so Sherry knows what to do if Hutson starts getting sick. Sherry Metzger: If he has a cold, he's going to get hit double harder than the normal child, so we have to keep an eye out for that, he has to have double fluids what the normal child would have. So if I catch a cold coming on or a virus, anything out of the norm, I'll start pushing the extra fluids. Female Speaker: Sports and outside activities can make a child more thirsty than usual. Pediatricians recommend that young athletes take in four to eight ounces of fluid every fifteen to twenty minutes. And the best fluid to keep future soccer stars kicking is water or fruit juice that has been cut in half with water.