Generally speaking, elements such as iron, zinc, copper, manganese, chromium, selenium, molybdenum, cobalt and fluorine, which account for less than one tenth of the total weight of human body, are called trace elements.
Iodine, zinc, selenium, copper, molybdenum, chromium, cobalt and iron are essential trace elements for human body.
Lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic, aluminum, tin and lithium are listed as trace elements with potential toxicity, but low doses may have certain effects.
When the content of some trace elements in human body is abnormal, it will lead to diseases, such as iron deficiency will lead to anemia, zinc deficiency will affect appetite, and excessive intake of fluoride will lead to dental fluorosis, which is why mothers often worry that their babies will lack trace elements.
How to check trace elements? Trace element detection commonly used in medical institutions mainly takes baby's hair, fingertip blood and venous blood to detect trace elements.
Is it necessary to check trace elements?
There is no need to check the baby for trace elements! Because the collection method and environment of trace elements detection have great influence on the detection results, the detection values will be inaccurate.
1, hair detection
Hair growth and metabolism take time, so the hair used for testing is likely to be weeks or even months ago. Even if the results show that many elements are missing, it can only reflect the baby's previous physical condition, not now. Trace elements themselves are "trace" in blood! The whole environment in which we live is also full of these trace elements. To put it more directly, the shampoo left on the baby's hair will also affect the test results.
2. Fingertip blood test
Take the blood from the finger tip, prick a small pinhole, and then squeeze the blood out. In the process of extrusion, tissue fluid will also be mixed into the blood, and the blood will be diluted, and the test results will definitely be low. Therefore, by monitoring the content of calcium in blood, the actual situation of calcium in human body cannot be accurately reflected.
3, venous blood testing
Before blood drawing, iodine and alcohol used for disinfection contain trace elements. It seems to be dry and volatile after wiping, but iodine or alcohol will still be stained in the blood, which will affect the value.
Moreover, the current trace element examination can only be used for research purposes and monitoring the nutritional status of the population, and is not suitable for judging the nutritional status of individual trace elements. There is no clear and unified standard for the test results of trace elements in the world. It can't be said that a certain value must be problematic or normal, and the test results of trace elements can only be used as one of the doctors' references.
As early as 20 13, the national health and family planning commission informed that trace elements should not be examined as physical examination items except children's diseases, especially infants under 6 months old.
How to judge the lack of trace elements?
Clinically, if doctors need to diagnose whether a certain trace element is abnormal, they will not only look at a single test result, but also combine some indirect indicators to judge.
be deficient in calcium
To judge whether the baby is calcium deficient, besides symptoms, the most valuable clinical examination is wrist X-ray, and the level of vitamin D in blood can also be checked. Sometimes the calcium on the trace element test list is in the normal range, and it cannot be judged that the body is not short of calcium.
asiderosis
To judge whether the baby is iron deficient, the blood routine and iron are mainly tested. Blood routine mainly depends on the amount of hemoglobin, and the amount of hemoglobin of infants under 6 years old is usually not less than110g/L. The four iron items include a. Serum iron; B. serum ferritin; C. serum total iron binding capacity; D. transferrin saturation. Doctors usually need to combine the above examination, symptoms and diet analysis to determine whether there is iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia. It is impossible to rely solely on trace elements.
zinc deficiency
Baby's zinc deficiency will lead to stunted growth, poor appetite or pica, and poor immunity. If the baby has these symptoms, you can check the trace elements and serum zinc levels, combined with dietary survey to see if there is a risk of zinc deficiency. If the serum zinc is low, dietary investigation and analysis reveal that there is a risk of zinc deficiency, and zinc deficiency can be preliminarily diagnosed. After a period of zinc supplementation, if the symptoms really improve, it means that zinc is really lacking.
Therefore, if the baby has no symptoms, it is generally not necessary to check the trace elements for the baby. In fact, as long as you feed scientifically and add various complementary foods on time, your baby will basically not lack trace elements. Except that the baby needs to be supplemented with 400 units of vitamin D every day in the second week of birth, other elements can be obtained from the daily diet without additional supplementation.