Here is a link to an item which aired yesterday on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. There are comments from individuals within this item that leave one with the distinct impression that many health professionals are unaware of the issue of vitamin D deficiency in children. A lawyer who represented parents who were wrongly accused killing their child (who after death was diagnosed with rickets) tells of how a senior radiologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital (generally regarding as the UK's 'best' children's hospital) failed to recognise rickets or the importance of vitamin D.
The item features Dr Marta Cohen (from Sheffield Children's Hospital) who has discovered vitamin D deficiency in 75 per cent of children who had died of sudden infant death syndrome. This does not mean that the vitamin D deficiency caused any or all of these deaths. Nevertheless, there are ways in which vitamin D deficiency might cause death, and it's clearly valid for vitamin D deficiency to be considered in children who appear to have suffered abuse or have died suddenly.
Recently, the BBC featured paediatrician Dr Benjamin Jacobs who is seeing increasing numbers of children with rickets where he works at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital here in the UK (video below).
Dr Jacobs makes the point that doctors are often failing to recognise and treat rickets appropriately. Dr Jacobs is quoted here as saying:
There are many other children who have less severe problems - muscle weakness, delay in walking, bone pains - and research indicates that in many parts of the country the majority of children have a low level of vitamin D.It's obviously not a good thing that so many children may be suffering from compromised health and possibly lose their lives as a result of vitamin D deficiency. What is good, though, is that this issue is getting mainstream attention, and that some dedicated individuals are doing what they can to raise awareness of this issue.
The arrogant view concerning infants and so-called "Vitamin" D is that somehow Nature has been remiss by putting a very low amount of "Vitamin" D in mothers' breast milk. (Recent research has more properly identified "Vitamin" D or 25(OH)D as a seco-steroid and not an essential nutrient.)
Consequently, infants need supplementation supplied by infinitely more wise doctors and other assorted health quacks.
Further it is surmised that anyone with a low level of 25(OH)D requires supplementation due to the many chronic autoimmune and other inflammatory diseases associated with such levels.
However, correlation does not prove causation. Very few stop to consider that it may be the disease process itself which causes the low 25(OH)D. Even fewer bother to test their patients for 1,25(OH)D which is the active hormone for which 25(OH)D (the "storage" form) is the precursor.
If they did test for 1,25(OH)D they would find that most people with inflammatory issues and a low 25(OH)D have, in fact, a high level of 1,25(OH)D, which has the potential to dramatically disrupt the immune system, the hormonal system and many of metabolic processes, such as bone remodeling.
So, although 25(OH)D may actually provide palliation for certain inflammatory issues, just like cortico-steroid prednisone does, it may be directly counter-production to supplement with 25(OH)D for a presumed "deficiency."
See [Link]
Based on the session with the C's in Sept. 2008, SOTT should be aware of this alternate perspective and quit making blanket recommendations for supplementation for perceived Seco-steroid D "deficiency."
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