Rickets (again).

I know that I posted the link to this article earlier, but this is a longer post on it.

Rickets is on the rise in America.

Yes, rickets, that "old fashioned disease." Rickets, the disease we've known how to prevent for a hundred years. Rickets, the disease of the ignorant poor who knew no better, who were cooped up in dark, airless tenement houses with no room to move around and no money for milk or milk based products.

Since we know how to prevent it, why, you ask, is it coming back? A couple reasons, some of them being... parents.

Parents who allow their young children to spend hours a day in front of a computer or T.V. screen playing games which require little or no exercise.

Parents who will not make their children eat or drink the foods God designed to help nourish growing bones.

Parents who will not see the dangers of not letting (or not making) their children play outside in the sunshine soaking in the vitamin D that is needed for healthy bones, and the exercise which promotes bone growth. Did you know that the dominant arm of a tennis player has 35 percent more bone density than his non-dominant arm? Exercise is just as important as calcium intake for building healthy bones.

And so, rickets is on the rise in a country where it has very little business being, and there are lesser, but perhaps more prevalent, dangers stemming from such bad parenting habits. Your bones start to break down in your 30s, and if you have not built up your bone mass in your younger years, you are at a much higher risk for osteoporosis. Children are breaking bones much more frequently than they did four decades ago, and *not* just because of riskier sports.

The Headgirl sees so many children dropped off at the library minutes after school gets out and stay there until it closes- long after dark. They have no chance to get any sunlight or more exercise than it takes to walk from the parking lot to the doorway and from computer to computer.

It's disgraceful. People ought to know better. *Make* your children get the sunlight and exercise they need, even if you must make time to take them to a park yourself. It's not fair to children to let them destroy their bodies like that.

Article here (hopefully this one will work for you, mother).

Rickets: "A disease of childhood, characterized by softening of the bones as a result of inadequate intake of vitamin D and insufficient exposure to sunlight, also associated with impaired calcium and phosphorus metabolism."