Rickets
Many kids don’t get enough vitamin D, and that is not great for their little, growing bodies - Melinda Wenner Moyer
image by: BBC Stories
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Vitamin D needed to fight comeback of childhood rickets
For most people, our standard diet provides all the necessary vitamins we need. However, childhood vitamin D deficiency in the UK – something that should be a headline from the distant past – has made a comeback.
And with that has come a rise in cases of rickets, a disease in which the bones become soft, weak and can become deformed without essential calcium. Sally Davies, England’s chief medical officer, has called for all children under five (not just those from low-income families) to be offered free supplements.
We need vitamin D to effectively absorb calcium and phosphorous and to move these chemicals around the body and provide such essential elements for bones and teeth.…
Resources
Another Reason Not to Take Cod Liver Oil
A study suggests that if taken in childhood, cod liver oil may lead to decreased bone density in women due to its ultra high Vitamin A content. Medical expert Dr. Sydney Spiesel discusses what types of cod liver oil are worst.
Down with the Dickensian disease of rickets
WAS it rickets that ailed “Tiny Tim” Cratchit, the waif who stirred Scrooge’s conscience in A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens’s 1843 classic? His symptoms certainly fit with the disease. So does his milieu; rickets, caused by a lack of vitamin D, was rife among those who toiled from dawn to dusk in the dingy factories of Victorian Britain. Now, astonishingly, vitamin D deficiency is again becoming a significant health concern in rich countries.
Nutritional Rickets and Osteomalacia in the Twenty-first Century: Revised Concepts, Public Health, and Prevention Strategies
Nutritional rickets and osteomalacia are common in dark-skinned and migrant populations. Their global incidence is rising due to changing population demographics, failing prevention policies and missing implementation strategies.
Rays of hope: light therapy through the ages
Beginning in the late 1800s, it wasn’t unusual to go to a hospital and see small groups of children and babies, wearing little more than protective goggles, sitting around under or in front of what was essentially a giant sunlamp. The ultraviolet light was meant to treat a condition called rickets, which causes the bones to soften.
Rickets Plagued Children of the Medicis
The bone disease, resulting from vitamin D deficiency and typically associated with the inferior diet and living conditions of the poor...
Rickets–vitamin D deficiency and dependency
Rickets is an important problem even in countries with adequate sun exposure. The causes of rickets/osteomalacia are varied and include nutritional deficiency, especially poor dietary intake of vitamin D and calcium. Non-nutritional causes include hypophosphatemic rickets primarily due to renal phosphate losses and rickets due to renal tubular acidosis.
When Sunshine and Milk Aren’t Enough
Many kids don’t get enough vitamin D, and that is not great for their little, growing bodies.
Vitamin D needed to fight comeback of childhood rickets
For most people, our standard diet provides all the necessary vitamins we need. However, childhood vitamin D deficiency in the UK – something that should be a headline from the distant past – has made a comeback. And with that has come a rise in cases of rickets, a disease in which the bones become soft, weak and can become deformed without essential calcium. Sally Davies, England’s chief medical officer, has called for all children under five (not just those from low-income families) to be offered free supplements.
HealthyChildren.org
Rickets is a condition of softening of the bones that occurs in growing children. It happens when the bones can not take up enough calcium and phosphorus to make hard, healthy bone. Although there are genetic and metabolic causes of rickets, the most common cause is a lack of vitamin D. This is also called nutritional rickets.
MedicineNet
Regardless of the type of rickets, the cause is always either due to a deficiency of vitamin D, calcium, or phosphate. Three common causes of rickets include nutritional rickets, hypophosphatemic rickets, and renal rickets.
MedlinePlus
The signs and symptoms of vitamin D-dependent rickets begin within months after birth, and most are the same for all types of the condition. The weak bones often cause bone pain and delayed growth and have a tendency to fracture.
NORD
Rickets typically manifests in infants and toddlers, but can also happen in older children. Symptoms of vitamin D deficiency rickets include restlessness, lack of sleep, slow growth, a delay in crawling, sitting or walking, soft skull bones (craniotabes), swelling of the skull (frontal bossing), bead-like nodules where the ribs and their cartilages join (rachitic rosary), and a delay in the closing of the skull bones.
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