Pioneer Living Survival

http://www.naturalnews.com/028329_vitamin_D_rickets.html

NaturalNews) A clinical review paper published in the British Medical Journalis warning the public that widespread vitamin D deficiency isresurrecting the once-obsolete disease called rickets. According to Professor Simon Pearce and Dr. Time Cheetham, authors of the paper,people are getting far too little sunlight exposure which is necessary for the body to produce adequate levels of vitamin D.

Now  adays,children spend most of their time indoors staring at computer andtelevision screens rather than playing outside in the sunlight. On therare occasion that they venture outside, zealous parents are quick to apply UV-blocking sunscreen that prevents the sun's useful UVB rays from penetrating their skin and producing vitamin D. The result is anepidemic of vitamin D deficiency that is leading to all sorts of illness and disease.

Rickets, a disease in which a person'sbones do not properly develop and harden, results when a person is getting too little vitamin D and most likely not enough calcium. TheU.S. Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamin D is a mere 400 IU,an amount that is said to be adequate for preventing rickets.

o put this amount into perspective, however, exposure to the summer sun for about 20 minutes is enough to produce up to 20,000 IU of vitamin Din the body. At this level, far more optimal health can be achieved.Yet the fact that children are beginning to develop rickets suggests that they are not even getting 400 IU a day, an amount that should be relatively easy to attain through a moderately healthy diet or a few minutes in the sun every day.

In the U.K., there are several hundred cases of rickets reported every year. According to statistics,more than 50 percent of the adult population in the U.K. is deficientin vitamin D as well. During the winter and spring months, more than 15percent experience severe deficiency.

Researchers suggest thatpeople with darker skin pigmentation are at a higher risk for ricketsbecause they do not assimilate vitamin D from the sun's UVB rays aseasily as those with lighter skin do. Some experts believe that thechanging ethnic profile of the U.K. may play a significant role in theonset of rickets while others point primarily to an overall lack of vitamin D among all ethnic groups.

Either way, the changinglifestyles among all people are partially to blame as people are not spending enough time outside and, when they do they are using too muchsunscreen to obtain any sort of benefit from the sun. Overuse ofsunscreen can be blamed on government health authorities, regulatoryagencies, medical professionals, and main stream media outlets that continually exaggerate the threat of developing skin cancer fromsunlight exposure to the point that some people are afraid of getting any at all.