Do you remember years ago learning about rickets? I seem to remember hearing that it was found most in children living in dreary tenement buildings in the early part of the last century who suffered from malnutrition because of poverty.
Well, now it seems that rickets is on the rise right here in the US. What causes rickets? Lack of vitamin d, found in fortified milk but naturally absorbed by spending time in the sun. We now have a generation of children who are spending most of their days inside on their computers, game boys, and watching tv. They aren’t getting any sunlight and they aren’t getting exercise. There are plenty of concerns I’ve had about this, but the concern about rickets is one that never occurred to me.
What is even more concerning is that many children who aren’t in bad enough shape to be diagnosed with rickets are still suffering from softer than normal bones – hence the increase in broken bones among kids nowadays. Since strong bones are formed as children and that’s what we take with us into our adult years, we should be concerned if a large number of children aren’t building their bones up when they are young.
Interestingly, I was just thinking about if broken bones are becoming more common last week – a 10th grader in my carpool just broke his foot playing basketball, and my son told me that it’s not uncommon in school for kids in his high school to break bones while playing. As a parent, I found this very alarming. I don’t remember it being common at any point in my childhood for my agemates to break a bone. In the article that I linked to, they state that exercise and good nutrition are strongly linked to strong bones (obvious, but a good point still), and that kids nowadays are significantly more likely to break a bone than in past generations. This also points to why in some families breaking a bone is common while it others it rarely occurs – because the nutrition and lifestyle practices of the families are very different and thereby support different kind of outcomes.
Check out this recent article on the topic of rickets.
Avoiding rickets and building strong bones isn’t rocket science – give your kids good quality food to eat and make sure they get outside regularly for some sun and exercise – how much easier could it be? Obviously for lots of parents, not easy enough.
Avivah
