How many times have we not heard “don’t walk barefoot because you’ll get sickr”? At least this writer, who usually walks without shoes in his house, grew up with that phrase from his mother.
This and other myths They have been propagated throughout generations, being believed and replicated as irrefutable truths. And precisely these statements are those that the pediatrician Lucía Galan Bertrand pick up in your book Viruses do not enter through the feet to deny them with scientific data.
“Walking barefoot around the house is the healthiest way our children can walk for the development of the soles of their feet. Besides walking barefoot doesn’t make you get colds moredoes not lower the defenses and has no impact on children’s health. So, children of the world, you can walk barefoot, there is no problem,” the Spaniard who is known on social media as ‘Lucía my pediatrician’ and has more than a million followers.
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However, the doctor mentions that it is understandable that all these myths have been popular beliefs, since it was not until the arrival of the Internet that access to information became democratized.
“Until very recently the only information The one that the families had was the one that was being transmitted from generation to generation, from your parents, from your grandparents, from your siblings, from your friends, a little from the tribe and the community.”
In that sense, he explains that phrases like: “All my life has been done like this and nothing has ever happened”, are something that doctors have to deal with every day and explain to them that “really yes it has happened and yes it happens“What happens is that not everyone knows the data.”
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Planeta Editorial/CourtesyBook cover.
That is why the pediatrician is clear about something and that is that “it’s better to know” especially when it comes to debunking myths and that is the only way to break those misinformation circles in which we are sometimes involved.
“Knowledge is the most powerful weapon to combat the fear that parents have when they have a baby, to combat anxiety, ignorance and uncertainty”, he mentions.
This is how, from his experience as mother of two children, details that this state, being a mother or father, should be enjoyed and not fill your head with myth what will they be counterproductive in the long term.
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“We cannot let our children’s childhood pass between beliefs, myths, fears, insecurities and overprotection because in the end the excess fear What it leads to is overprotecting children, and we already know that this has a very negative impact on their future health. So, what can we do to live a calmer, more serene and happier motherhood and fatherhood? Well, reading, learning, having an open mind”.
On the other hand, although the title of the book refers to a myth of physical healththe pediatrician does not stop there, but addresses other beliefs in the mental health, bullying and so on, which will allow parents to understand their children more.
“I believed that it was absolutely necessary to address mental health because it is true that now more and more people talk about mental health in adults, but in children it is still quite taboo and they are still the children that we refer to the psychologist or even the psychiatrist, they are still quite stigmatized”.
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This is why, just as parents consider taking their child to the pediatrician when they have had a fever for five days and you don’t see them well, the same should be done when mental level He doesn’t have the best time.
“What families have to understand is that Children also have anxiety, They also have depression, children also self-injure, and children and adolescents they also commit suicide”.
