Study Finds Internet Generation At Risk of Rickets
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. The condition has been linked to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, several kinds of cancer and a soft-bone condition in adults called osteomalacia.
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.
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