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Prolonged Gaming Blamed For Rickets Rise
superapecommando writes "Too many hours spent playing videogames indoors is contributing to a rise in rickets, according to a new study by doctors. Professor Simon Pearce and Dr Tim Cheetham of Newcastle University have written a paper in the British Medical Journal which warns of the rickets uptake – a disease which sufferers get when deficient in Vitamin D. The study boils down to the fact that as more people play videogames indoors they don't get enough sunlight and this has meant the hospitals are now having to combat a disease that was last in the papers around the time Queen Victoria was on the throne." At least the kids are eating enough snacks with iodized salt that we don't have to worry about goiters.
Rickets is a softening of bones in children potentially leading to fractures and deformity. Rickets is among the most frequent childhood diseases in many developing countries. The predominant cause is a vitamin D deficiency, but lack of adequate calcium in the diet may also lead to rickets (cases of severe diarrhea and vomiting may be the cause of the deficiency). Although it can occur in adults, the majority of cases occur in children suffering from severe malnutrition, usually resulting from famine or starvation during the early stages of childhood.
If you spend so much time inside playing video games that you get a case of the rickets, you've got way more problems than just vitamin deficiency.
Wouldn't drinking milk resolved the Vitamin D deficiency. I do not know much about the Richet illness but what does sunlight have to do with Calcium.
Our wikipedia overlords report that the suggested daily supplementation for individuals at risk of deficiency is only 25 micrograms. Unless the risks of overdose are particularly hairy, or are encountered at a dose particularly close to the suggested one, this seems like a problem that could be fairly easily solved by slight modifications to the food supply.
Or, heck, just make console controllers whose plastics slowly leach vitamin D into the greasy, sweaty, hands of the gamer kiddies....
I'm going to take this with a large grain of salt here. Does the publication in the British Medical Journal actually blame the rise on gaming, or is TFA simply adding the gaming aspect to it to generate a sensational article to post on a tech site with a large demographic who plays games. TFA only has a link to the BMJ homepage.
Oh, and obligatory: correlation does not imply causation
This post may or may not contain cancer causing materials.
Bullshit.
More likely the result of fear-tactic news scaring people into keeping their kids indoors 24 hours a day except for school. Playgrounds are where perverts lurk, remember? Gotta keep little Billy safe!
Of course, indoors there are videogames - but there's also books, and television. Gaming is just one possible indoor activity - if you don't let your kids outside, don't be surprised if they end up fucked up.
Play your video games outdoors.
This has nothing to do with the media telling everyone that we shouldn't even risk a glimpse at the sunlight without a generous slathering with SPF 2 billion sunscreen and a hat.
Thats the thing though, Milk is great for Vitamin D - and Chocolate Milk is a favourite amongst gamers.
However, just having the D in your system doesn't get it to work, something in the sunlight "activates" it. I heard it from a girl one time.
You actually TALKED to a girl? Wow. That's just incredible
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
Why are video games exclusively targeted in this? Yes, they create a pretty attractive form of indoor entertainment but the problem here isn't video games. It's the people playing them or in the case of children, THEIR PARENTS. Send the kids outside. Heck, a good video game will make a lot of kids WANT to go play outside...if only so they can emulate their favorite fictional hero of the day. The same case could be made for television, really great sex, or pretty much anything else that makes staying inside an attractive option. Give the sensationalism a rest. And if you're doing this to yourself as an adult and not climbing out of the basement bat-cave and seeing the light of day once in awhile...well then you're making a choice about your health and lifestyle. Last I recalled, being an adult involved making choices like that.
Sunlight is photons. Energy. Vitamin D is matter. Vitamin D can't literally be in the sunlight.
7-dehydrocholesterol, a derivative of cholesterol, is photolyzed in the skin (mostly in the epidermal stratum basale and stratum spinosum) by ultraviolet light between 270-300 nm wavelength in 6-electron conrotatory electrocyclic reaction. The product is pre-vitamin D3.
Pre-vitamin D3 then spontaneously isomerizes to Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) in a antarafacial hydride [1,7] Sigmatropic shift. At room temperature the transformation of previtamin-D3 to vitamin D3 takes about 12 days to complete.
Unless the Wikipedia article is wrong, I think you're misinterpreting the flowchart.
Ingestion of natural vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) from oily fish, egg yolks, and other vertebrate tissue sources, ingestion of natural vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) from invertebrate (usually fungal) tissue sources like mushrooms, ingestion of enriched foods with versions of either vitamin, or skin exposure to ultraviolet (which creates D3) all put vitamin D into the bloodstream. Then, the liver performs the first step of processing the vitamin, hydroxylation of either into calcidiol. Then, the kidney performs a second and final hydroxylation, conversion into calcitriol. This is the vitamin used by the tissues.
In other words, sunlight is not involved with either hydroxylation reaction, only in one of the two sources (ingestion or skin synthesis) of the initial forms of vitamin D.
If sunlight were involved in either hydroxylation reaction, we'd need to expose our livers and kidneys to sunlight, and that sounds quite painful and messy to me.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
A healthy level of vitamin D in the blood should be around 60 ng/mL. In order to reach that, you'll have to supplement with the animal version of vitamin D, which is the liquid softgel Vitamin D3, and not the hard tablet D2 that's made from plant matter. If it just says "Vitamin D", chances are it's D2, and you should avoid that.
Take about 4,000 to 8,000 IU per day and you're golden. On top of that, your immune system will be able to fight off the common colds that everyone else gets each year due to D deficiency.
And don't bother trying to supplement with sun. Spending our lives in the shade has dramatically reduced our ability to convert sunlight into vitamin D.
Sources: this cardiologist and this neurobiologist
Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council site also calls these "Gilchrest Fractures" after a dermatologist: ...
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/2006-nov.shtml
"""
Your son had what I call a "Gilchrest fracture." About 30 years ago, dermatologists like Barbara Gilchrest at Boston University, began telling Americans, including children, to stay out of the sun, lather on the sunblock, and to "drink milk" if they are concerned about vitamin D. The problem is that your son would have to drink at least 40 glasses of milk a day to get enough vitamin D if he followed her sun-avoidance advice and it sounds like he did.
Gilchrest fractures are vitamin D deficiency fractures in healthy people that occur after normal activities. Two studies have clearly linked such fractures to low vitamin D levels. A recent Finnish study found Gilchrest fractures to be almost four times more likely in young soldiers with vitamin D levels below 30 ng/ml (75 nmol/L). An earlier study of Israeli soldiers showed the same thing. The surprising thing about both studies was none of the men were obviously vitamin D deficient, indicating—once again—that current lower limits of vitamin D blood levels are set too low and that serum 25(OH)D levels should be maintained at 50–80 ng/ml, year-round. [Ruohola JP, et al. Association between serum 25(OH)D concentrations and bone stress fractures in Finnish young men. J Bone Miner Res. 2006 Sep;21(9):1483–8. Givon U, et al. Stress fractures in the Israeli defense forces from 1995 to 1996. Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2000 Apr;(373):227–32.]
The rates of Gilchrest fractures, even in young people, have been steadily increasing over the last thirty years, since dermatologists have been handing out their pathological advice. For example, the incidence of fractured wrists in American kids went up 32% in boys and 56% in girls between the years 1970–2000. [Khosla S, et al. Incidence of childhood distal forearm fractures over 30 years: a population-based study. JAMA. 2003 Sep 17;290(11):1479–85.]
A study in Great Britain showed a clear latitudinal variation with the lowest fracture rates in sunnier southeast England and the highest rates in of Gilchrest fractures in Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. [Cooper C, et al. Epidemiology of childhood fractures in Britain: a study using the general practice research database. J Bone Miner Res. 2004 Dec;19(12):1976–81.]
The good news is that your son only suffered a broken foot by following Professor Gilchrest's advice. As you will see below, others have lost their lives.
All this leaves us with a question, "Are physicians responsible for their advice?" When dermatologists or other physicians subvert the vitamin D steroid hormone system by telling patients to avoid the sun, do they assume an affirmative duty to assess and maintain the vitamin D system they have subverted? Do they have a duty to inform their patients about relevant risks of sun-avoidance? Do they have a duty to inform their patients about relevant risks of vitamin D deficiency? How many dermatologists even bother to check vitamin D levels in their pale-as-ghost patients? How many bother to advise vitamin D supplements? If they do advise supplements, how many advise enough vitamin D to compensate for lack of sunlight? These are questions for tort lawyers.
"""
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Vitamin D in the human body is produced mostly by the effect of sunlight on the skin, which creates the version called vitamin D3 (which is the best version to supplement with, usually from fish oil in gelcaps).
Essentially, as people in industrialized countries have been spending more time indoors at home, work, or school, often at computer screens; and as people have been following well-meant advice from dermatologists to stay out of the sun; and as we all drive more instead of walk or bicycle; and as children are less allowed to roam freely outdoors through fears of stranger abductions or whatnot, we have ended up vitamin D deficient as a society. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked with a variety of issues, including cancer, depression, diabetes, obesity, schizophrenia, autism, heart disease, tooth decay, asthma, allergies, osteoporosis, and even influenza. Ironically, vitamin D deficiency may be causing even more skin cancers in office workers, because being vitamin D deficient cripples some of the immune response that prevents cancer cells from getting out of control. Modern window glass has also been "improved" to let through less UV-B rays to prevent carpet fading; so now we have faded people instead. :-(
Consider that vitamin D deficiency is related to behavioral issues like depression that can manifest themselves in different ways in children. If kids misbehaves in school, they are often denied going outside at recess into the sunshine. If kids misbehave more, they are denied being outside all summer in the sunshine because they have to go to summer school. If they are really bad eventually, then kids get set to juvenile detention and then prison where they may be mostly indoors for years. Sadly, that is a negative spiral of vitamin D deficiency. Homeschoolers at least have the option of being outdoors more and getting more sunshine.
I wrote some on that connection here:
"ADHD or lack of Vitamin D? Albany Free School connection?"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005083.html
"I have no doubt such a play-based curriculum is a good thing and better than compulsory school for most kids. I love learner-directed education, where public schools would become more like public libraries. But, what if some of the magic with the kids labeled ADHD at the Albany Free School is that, instead of getting Ritalin, that kids who have been labeled are allowed to play outdoors in the sunlight a lot? Especially African American kids in that more northern area of the USA who will struggle more with getting enough Vitamin D at that lattitude? The Free School has an outdoor courtyard at the school kids can use when they want, and they allow kids to go to the nearby parks, plus they have some rural lands they go on field trips too."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
...7-dehydrocholesterol...photolyzed...epidermal stratum basale and stratum spinosum..6-electron conrotatory electrocyclic...spontaneously isomerizes...cholecalciferol...antarafacial hydride [1,7] Sigmatropic shift...
Come on, he's not a child, you don't need to dumb it down :P
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Thats the thing though, Milk is great for Vitamin D - and Chocolate Milk is a favourite amongst gamers.
However, just having the D in your system doesn't get it to work, something in the sunlight "activates" it. I heard it from a girl one time.
You actually TALKED to a girl? Wow. That's just incredible
Whoa, don't jump to conclusions now, he was outside the alleged girls window without her knowledge when he overheard this sunlight gimmick. He might have heard further explanation if he hadn't dropped the video camera in the bush and made a bunch of noise trying to find it...
There's a very nice calculator for how much sunlight you need. You might find that 30 minutes sorely underestimates your needs.
Look for fastrt, by Ola Engelsen. There seems to be multiple versions, and I'm not sure which is the latest. Some leave out Skin Type, which an important factor, but here's one with it in.
http://nadir.nilu.no/~olaeng/fastrt/VitD-ez_quartMED.html
here's a more detailed version
http://nadir.nilu.no/~olaeng/fastrt/VitD_quartMEDandMED.html
There is also an associated paper, but I'm not sure if this is the latest version
http://www.nilu.no/index.cfm?ac=publications&folder_id=4309&publication_id=16084&view=rep&lan_id=3
or maybe this
http://www.nilu.no/index.cfm?ac=publications&folder_id=4309&publication_id=9024&view=rep
Parents, yet again, are the true problem. If these kids weren't gaming, they'd be chatting on the computer or watching tv or just playing in their bedroom because parents won't let them outside since there are paedophiles on every street corner. Having both parents working also stops kids from getting out because no one is there to watch them when they're out or even to ensure they go out rather than stay inside all day.
...because they live in England.
A Trip to the doctor recently found that my blood work was great, except for a SERIOUS vitamin D shortage. Now I have to take 2000Mg of Vitamin D a day. Considering my free time consists of "World of Warcraft" this isn't too surprising. But I'm 45 years old. When I was a kid I had an actual life and a decent diet. If my vitamin D levels had been this low at 12, my bones would have been like soft cheese. How hard is it to force some vitamins into your kid? We were raised by a single parent, and somehow she still managed to make us take a multi-vitamin. I can't get over the fact that there are people who would never dream of missing an oil change on their car who can't see to it that their kid gets a vitamin supplement every day.