Internet Generation at Risk of Rickets
January 23rd, 2010I really had to laugh at this:
“Fifty years ago, many children would have been given regular doses of cod liver oil, but this practice has all but died out,” noted co-author Tim Cheetham, also a professor at Newcastle.
The good professor should visit our home!
Rebecca, my wife, did a lot of research into cod liver oil. To cut a long and complicated story very short, there is exactly one brand of cod liver oil in the world that is done properly: Green Pasture’s Blue Ice.
The cost is breathtaking, but we order by the case and always keep a lot on hand.
Becky, Owen and I all take it daily. I take the capsules. Becky and Owen take it by the spoonful and chase it with butter or cheese.
Note: The only association that I have with Green Pasture Products is that I buy their cod liver oil. If they had an affiliate program, I’d definitely participate!
Via: AFP:
Bone-bending rickets can now be added to the list of ills linked to children spending uncounted hours before a computer screen, British researchers said Friday.
Youngsters with rickets, caused primarily by a chronic lack of vitamin D, develop painful and deformed bow-legs that do not grow properly.
The condition is linked mainly with extreme poverty and the 19th-century Victorian England of Charles Dickens, and can be easily avoided through a balanced diet and exposure to sunlight.
But doctors reported this month that cases of the debilitating disease have once again become “disconcertingly common” in Britain.
“Kids tend to stay indoors more these days and play on their computers instead of enjoying the fresh air,” said Simon Pearce, a professor at Newcastle University in northeast England and lead author of a new study on Vitamin D deficiency.
“This means their vitamin D levels are worse than in previous years,” he said in a press release.
Half of all adults in Britain — especially in the north — have Vitamin D deficiency in winter and spring, with one-in-six having severe deficiency.
The condition has been linked to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, several kinds of cancer and a soft-bone condition in adults called osteomalacia.
While the study focused on Britain, the same trend is likely elsewhere in the industrialised world, the researchers suggested.
The solution? Soaking up sunrays helps boost Vitamin D levels, but can also increase the risk of skin cancer.
The other option is adjusting diet. The rickets-preventing vitamin is present in oily fish such as salmon, mackerel, sardines and herring.
“Fifty years ago, many children would have been given regular doses of cod liver oil, but this practice has all but died out,” noted co-author Tim Cheetham, also a professor at Newcastle.
But if foul-tasting oils and expensive fish are not options, there is another ready mode of transmission: milk.
The study, published in the current issue of the British Medical Journal, called for new regulations recommending the addition of vitamin D to milk and similar food products, as has been done in several other countries.
Excessive time spent in front of a computer has also been linked to increased obesity, a jump in attention deficit disorder, and anti-social behaviour.
More: Cod Liver Oil:
Once a standard supplement in traditional European societies, cod liver oil provides fat-soluble vitamins A and D, which Dr. Price found present in the diet of primitives in amounts ten times higher than the typical American diet of his day. Cod liver oil supplements are a must for women and their male partners, to be taken for several months before conception, and for women during pregnancy. Growing children will also benefit greatly from a small daily dose.
Dr. Price always gave cod liver oil with butter oil, extracted by centrifuge from good quality spring or fall butter. He found that cod liver oil on its own was relatively ineffective but combined with butter oil produced excellent results. Your diet should include both good quality, organic butter and cod liver oil.
My family’s been taking cod liver oil for a couple years or more, but I didn’t actually know what brand so when I read this I thought “I should see what we’re taking, I know it’s a highly recommended one, and seems good…”. It’s Green Pastures.
And actually I’ll hype something they sell called Blue Ice Royal Butter Oil/Fermented Cod Liver Oil Blend “Chocolate Creme” flavor…it’s definitely funky, kind of like chocolate and sardines, but I really like it ’cause I couldn’t really stomach their X-Factor Butter Oil by itself (I’d hold my nose, then chase it with something strong like kombucha). So I find it a great way to get the butter oil and cod liver oil all at once. The kids hated it though…
I’ve been using Melrose because it’s supposed to have very low levels of lead, cadmium and mercury and because I was unaware of the advantages of fermented cod liver oil.
Do you know anything about Green Pasture’s purity, Kevin?
@ Dennis
Becky used Melrose before Green Pastures. Melrose is the best stuff that’s generally available in AU/NZ.
Re: purity of the Green Pastures oil, I found this unformatted text dump:
http://www.greenpasture.org/community/?q=node/136
Of course, we do the standard tests for pathogens, PCBs and heavy metals. We do this to every batch, and our batches are small, so the number of tests per gallon of product is substantially greater than typically carried out in the industry. The heavy metal levels are “not detectable” and the PCBs meet WHO .090 ppm standards, the limit to which these compounds can be measured.
Thanks for that, Kevin!
Will go for the fermented Viking stuff next time.