Children are at risk of serious diseases

March 23rd 2010 Update:
latest reports

The action of sun on skin, and of vitamin D on the body as a whole, have been shown to elevate mood as well as protect against disease. So what about the children who are growing up without a good suply of Vitamin D? How will they get through next winter with what may be the lowest levels of D ever? (taken from Telegraph UK)

Children are at risk of serious diseases caused by insufficient vitamin D that not only protects against rickets and weak bones but also reduces the risk of multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and now, it is suggested, autism, too.

Canadian children deficient in omega-3?

A study published in the March, 2009 issue of the Journal of Nutrition found that most Canadian children are deficient in Omega-3 EPA/DHA. The study found that 78 per cent of the children trialed were not receiving adequate amounts of Omega-3 EPA and DHA in their diets. Researchers from the University of Guelph in Ontario found that the median daily consumption of Omega-3 EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) was only 31.5 mg, in a sample group of four to eight year olds. In this study researchers used the suggested daily intake recommended by the Institute of Medicine which is only 90 mg of Omega-3 EPA/DHA per day. Even using this low recommendation level, the study shows that 78% of the sampled Canadian children were well below the recommended level.

The study also notes that the recommendation by the American Dietician Association and the Dieticians of Canada is 351 mg of EPA/DHA per day. Based on this recommendation 90% of the children in the study were deficient in Omega-3 EPA/DHA.

United Kingdom
Cod liver oil (which contains vitamin D) was introduced as a "welfare food" in 1942 and virtually eliminated rickets. But now rickets is returning. Doctors in Dundee recently reported four cases occurring in children whose professional parents were of South Asian origin.

Their dark skin made them more vulnerable to vitamin D deficiency because exposure to sunlight is the major source of vitamin D, and dark skin makes the vitamin much more slowly than white skin.

But rickets is just the first disease to appear when children do not obtain enough vitamin D.

Babies with rickets are three times more likely than others to develop diabetes. Elina Hypponen, a distinguished young researcher at the Institute for Child Health in London, has shown that babies in Finland who are given vitamin D are much less likely to develop diabetes.

Over the past 20 years, the number of five-year-olds in the Oxford area suffering from diabetes (type 1) has increased five-fold, while the number of 15-year-olds suffering from the disease has doubled.

"The increase in diabetes in children is too steep to be put down to genetic factors," says Professor Polly Bingley of the University of Bristol, who led the Oxford study. "It must be due to changes in our environment."

Children with diabetes type 1 require regular insulin injections to stay alive and are at high risk of long-term complications, which include heart disease, serious damage to eyes, nerves and kidneys.

"If these children had been given a vitamin D supplement, this epidemic of diabetes type 1 might have been prevented," says Dr Hypponen. "Our research shows that an alarmingly high number of people in the UK do not get enough vitamin D - in winter, nine out of 10 adults have sub-optimal levels."

Sunlight is the source of 90 per cent of our vitamin D in the UK. And insufficient exposure to sunlight provides people with insufficient vitamin D, putting them at risk, not only of diabetes but also of multiple sclerosis.

The incidence of MS has also increased substantially over the past 20 years, during which period habits have changed.

People have been warned to avoid the sun and they also tend to spend more time in cars, or indoors watching television. Scotland, with its cloudy skies, has the highest risk of MS in the world.

The risk of MS may be reduced by mothers sunbathing for short periods without sun cream (taking care not to burn), by taking vitamin D during pregnancy, or by giving infants Healthy Start vitamin drops if these were available.

As if diabetes and MS were not worrying enough, it has now been suggested that autism may be caused by insufficient vitamin D during pregnancy and/or early years.

Autistic children have difficulty in forming relationships, but they also tend to have larger heads, changes similar to those found in animals that are bred with insufficient vitamin D.

Recent increases in the incidence of autism, which now affects one in 88 children in the UK, may have been caused by advice to avoid or restrict sun exposure, says Dr John Cannell, a California psychiatrist and founder of the Vitamin D Council, a non-profit advocacy organisation.

The theory will certainly be controversial, not least because it could lend support to the suggestion that some children are harmed by the MMR vaccine.

People who are autistic have been found to be more sensitive to poisoning by heavy metals, a condition that may be more likely to occur when the body has insufficient vitamin D.

Dr Cannell suggests that mercury present in vaccines may have caused brain damage in children who were vulnerable because they had low levels of vitamin D.

Dr Richard Mills, research director of the National Autistic Society, says: "There has been speculation in the past about autism being more common in high-latitude countries that get less sunlight and a tie-up with rickets has been suggested - observations which support the theory."

Other countries such as Germany, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, Canada and the United States all recommend a vitamin D supplement for babies from birth if breast-fed, and from weaning if bottle-fed, and for these to continue for up to four years or more.

In the interim, the DH advised mothers to use branded infant vitamins, ignoring the fact that these products are formulated with a form of vitamin D (ergocalciferol) that has a potency about quarter that of the natural vitamin D.

Mothers were led to believe they were doing the right thing, but infants given these brands obtained a completely inadequate dose of vitamin D. It has been a story of repeated bungling and incompetence that is not yet over.

ASIDE:
The current adult recommendations for vitamin D, 200–600 IU/d, are very inadequate when one considers that a 10–15 min whole-body exposure to peak summer sun will generate and release up to 20,000 IU vitamin D-3 into the circulation.

for more information:


Art