Sheltered lifestyle could be causing childhood rickets

More pregnant women may be Vitamin D deficient than previously thought, putting their unborn child at risk of rickets.

A study of 90 pregnant women who attend Newtown Medical Health Services in Wellington has found 87 per cent vitamin D deficient, with 61 per cent severely deficient in the vitamin.
The study, which appears in this week's New Zealand Medical Journal, highlights the magnitude of vitamin D deficiency among pregnant women.

The study, authored by Wellington Hospital endocrinologist Dr Carl Eagleton and Newtown Medical Health Services GP Dr Annie Judkins, was prompted by anecdotal reports of an increase in childhood rickets in southeast Wellington. Newtown, a small primary healthcare organisation, has had 10 cases of childhood rickets over the past three years.
The PHO, which caters to a diverse population, found vitamin D deficiency to be prevalent across almost all ethnic groups, regardless of whether subjects wore veils, or were dark-skinned - two risk factors.

Even among pregnant women of European descent, vitamin D deficiency was found in 67 per cent of those studied.

Only 22 per cent of subjects wore veils, while just over a third of the subjects lived in apartments, limiting any links to sunlight exposure and their ability to sit outside for periods of time.

All the vitamin D-deficient women studied received supplementation in the form of a vitamin D2 tablet.

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/print.cfm?c_id=314&objectid=10400452
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Gary Moller comments
I live next to Newtown and go past the local school most days. Dr Judkins was a medical student at the time she went to the Commonwealth Games with my sister Lorraine. Ann was a walker. It has always amused me that the mostly non-European Newtown children are not allowed outside without wearing floppy hats. For them, the odds of developing skin cancer from sunlight are as good as nil!

So far, not a single person I have had tested, including me, has come anywhere near having optimum vitamin D levels. Such has been the success of the Sun Smart campaign. Avoiding the sun and the wholesale use of sunscreens is condemning the entire population to lives dogged by ill health.

While the focus of medical attention seems frustratingly fixated on rickets, this disease is the least of the horrific diseases associated with vitamin D deficiency - most cancers for example. Why, oh why, do they keep going on about rickets!!!

If you want to live a life full of beans and disease resistant then get regular exposure of your body to sunlight. During winter and the days that you get no sunlight, take a vitamin D supplement. These supplements are cheap and freely available which might be why you hear so little from medical and pharmaceutical quarters about this extremely important nutrient. This should be supproted by a diet that is generous in fats and oils which the supply the fat soluble vitamins (A, E, D & K). Ooops - like sunlight, these foods are forbidden!

This health message is as important for children as it is for adults.

Vitamin D deficiency linked to tuberculosis, flu and other respiratory diseases

"..the researchers point to studies showing that in winter, colds, flu, and other respiratory diseases are more common and more likely to be deadly than they are in summer. During winter, ultraviolet-light exposure tends to be low because people spend more time indoors and the atmosphere filters out more of the sun's rays, especially at mid and high latitudes.
Cannell's group cites a 1997 study showing that the rate of pneumonia in Ethiopian children with rickets, and therefore a likely vitamin D deficiency, was 13 times as high as in children without that disease. The researchers also point to five studies since the 1930s that have linked reduced risks of infectious disease to dietary supplementation with cod liver oil, a rich source of vitamin D."
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Gary Moller Comments:

It has always fascinated me why, in summer, there is less flu, why we are happier and why more babies are conceived.
A boys' school in Palmerson North. NZ, has suffered a terrifying outbreak of tuberculosis that has spread like wild fire through the pupils. Cases are now turning up in a nearby girls' school. Doctors in sunny Waikato have recently reported an upsurge in cases of rickets while doctors here in Wellington recently reported disturbingly low levels of vitamin D in immigrant populations. Is there a link? How could third world diseases like these be turning up in a country like New Zealand?
"Cold-weather wear and the sun's angle in the winter sky limit how much ultraviolet light reaches the skin. This can add up to a deficiency in production of vitamin D, which might explain why respiratory infections are common and severe in winter." (Quoted from the same report above).
I believe these Drs are dead right: Keeping our children swaddled head to toe in clothes and not allowing them to go outside to play in the sun is at the heart of the problem. Whether it be the flu, TB, meningococcal disease, rickets, osteoporosis or depression, our first defence is ensuring that we have adequate vitamin D levels.
Back in the old days, the sickly (including those with TB) were sent up to the fresh air of the mountainside sanitorium. Was the real health benefits from the exposure to unfiltered UVB?
To date, every person who has consulted me about a chronic ailment and subsequently had a blood test of vitamin D levels, has come up as deficient, or dangerously close to being so.
Note: If you have a blood test and your Dr prescribes a vitmain D supplements, ensure that your blood levels are closely monitored because it is easy to overdose. Getting D from the sun is safe because the production mechanism turns off once levels get high - the body is very smart!

technorati tags: vitamin+d, tuberculosis, influenza, sunlight, meningococcal, sanitorium

Rickets on the increase

Waikato Seeing An Increase In Rickets,10 Oct 2006
Doctors in Waikato say they are concerned about an increase in the number of cases of rickets in children.The disease can cause severe bone deformities, including bowed legs and is caused by a lack of vitamin D which is mainly obtained by sunlight.Although rickets is usually associated with poorer nations, Dr John Goldsmith from Waikato Hospital says the condition seems to be becoming more common in New Zealand.He says that could be because children are not regularly given vitamins and are staying out of the sun more, probably due to skin cancer campaigns.
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Gary Moller comments:
This report comes on the tail of a recent study here in Wellington showing an upsurge in rickets among South Wellington children. These are the very same kids that I published a picture of a few years ago because school policy did not allow them to go outside on bleak Wellington days without being covered up (Many of these kids are of Northe African descent, so sunburn is hardly and issue!). I have been going on about this for years and it is only now when disabling ailments are afflicting our kids that we get any kind of acknowledegement from these experts that running about without being covered from head to toe might be a healthy behaviour. The evidence has been out there for decades that raising our kids in dark caves and not allowing them to play and be active outdoors is not good for them.

Sunlight is essential for health; but professional myopia continues to predominate. For example; it continues to be ignored that exposure to sunlight during adolescence may reduce breast cancer risk by up to 50%. As I have said before, if a drug were invented that was as effective as sunlight, it would be a media and health profession sensation. But sunlight is free.

I was listening to Dr Goldsmith doing a radio interview about rickets a few minutes ago and, while he referred to the importance of sunlight and exercise, his parting comment was to suggest vitamin D pills for kids! This is both ridiculous and unsafe and further sets out to medicalise an entire generation of healthy people. It is easy to overdose with vitamin D medication; whereas production via sunlight is self-regulating. A person taking vitamin D pills needs regular blood tersts to ensure there is no overdosing.

Medicating kids normalises the taking of pills and this is highly undesirable for their futures especially when it does not deal with the underlying issues - lack of wholsome exercise outdoors.