Rickets returns as kids' bones weaker

WASHINGTON -- Too little milk, sunshine and exercise: It's an anti-bone trifecta. For some kids, shockingly, it's leading to rickets, the scourge of the 19th century.

But cases of full-blown rickets are just the red flag: Bone specialists say possibly millions of seemingly healthy children aren't building as much strong bone as they should, a gap that may leave them more vulnerable to bone-cracking osteoporosis later.

''This potentially is a time-bomb,'' says Dr. Laura Tosi of Children's National Medical Center in Washington.

Now scientists are taking the first steps to track kids' bone quality and learn just how big a problem the anti-bone trio is causing, thanks to new research that finally shows just what ''normal'' bone density is for children of different ages.

Already there's evidence that U.S. children break their arms more often today than four decades ago, according to a Mayo Clinic study.

And last year, government researchers found overweight children were more likely to suffer a fracture.

Strong bones require more than calcium alone. Exercise is at least as important.

Yet childhood exercise is dropping as obesity rises. The body also can't absorb calcium and harden bones without vitamin D. By some estimates, 30 percent of teens get too little. AP

I’m concerned about one of my grand daughters, she’s 13 years old, eats nothing that I can tell that contains calcium, is over weight and gets little excercise. I have tried to educate both my g/d and my daughter about osteoporosis but what do they care about something that may happen 40-50 years from now.

Even taking a calcium supplement might help.

I thought this was pretty good:

Rush Limbaugh: This is a flat-out joke. Of course there's too little milk, and there's not enough sunshine and exercise, because cows -- we have been told for how many years -- cause global warming, and we've gotta get rid of cows. Exercise makes us exhale carbon dioxide. Sun gives us skin cancer!" So we're telling the kids, "It's immoral to drink milk because cows and methane cause global warming. Exercise is not really all that necessary because you put more carbon dioxide out there than you otherwise would, and the sun causes cancer." Now, after telling us to avoid all of these "dangers," now they're saying avoiding all these dangers is creating the possibility of rickets in kids.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_112707/content/01125104.guest.html

Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’

August 4, 2007
Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes...

...What if, instead of beef, the walker drank a glass of milk? The average person would need to drink 420ml – three quarters of a pint – to recover the calories used in the walk. Modern dairy farming emits the equivalent of 1.2kg of CO2 to produce the milk, still more pollution than the car journey.

Cattle farming is notorious for its perceived damage to the environment, based on what scientists politely call “methane production” from cows. The gas, released during the digestive process, is 21 times more harmful than CO2...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2195538.ece

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