Vegan diet a factor in rickets
A vegan couple fed their child oats and rice milk as a staple. The diet included other items. Vitamin D levels were ‘undetectable’.
“The infant had fractures scattered throughout her tiny body and her bones were so brittle doctors believed they could have been broken by ‘normal handling‘” Daily Mail (Link)
The press reports I have read all focus on diet. Nobody mentions that the primary source of Vitamin D in humans is sun exposure. Mothers in Glasgow slums in the early 1900s were sufficiently aware of the need of their infants, if they were to avoid rickets, to have sun exposure, that they would risk putting their babies in a cage outside the window. (Link)
Equally there is no discussion of the fact vitamin in breast milk can be insufficient to support adequate growth if the mother herself is low in vitamin D. “Taken together, these studies showed that breastfeeding without adequate sunlight exposure and vitamin D supplementation are important risk factors for vitamin D deficiency rickets in breast-fed infants. It was also noted that mothers of infants with vitamin D deficiency rickets had a higher prevalence of vitamin D deficiency compared with mothers of nonrachitic children (1). There appears to be a relationship between maternal vitamin D status and the vitamin D status of the unsupplemented breastfeeding infant.” (Link)
Further and somewhat ironically Oats were used to induce vitamin D deficiency in dogs in the 1930s when they were looking at the impact of diet on bone growth and dental formation. (Link)
My great sadness is that hard won knowledge, that through public education programs had become widespread in populations by the second world war, has since been lost. There is huge focus on the risk of sun exposure, but little on the risk of absence of sun exposure, overuse of sun creams, and failure to suitably supplement with Vitamin D.
“The infant had fractures scattered throughout her tiny body and her bones were so brittle doctors believed they could have been broken by ‘normal handling‘” Daily Mail (Link)
Is they not a need for a more balanced message as to sensible sun exposure?
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