It’s Winter, Are Your Children Vitamin D Deficient? (Archived Pedcast)

  Our great grandmothers knew that vitamin D deficiency was a big problem for her children, hence the daily fight over giving your grandfather his cod liver oil. Great Grandma didn't know what vitamin D was or what was in cod liver oil, but she knew it kept her kids healthy. How did she figure all this out, long before the era of biochemistry? I don’t know. All I can figure is that she was truly a genius. But now this old fashion disease, vitamin D deficiency, and its many variants, are making a comeback. So in this pedcast, we are going to learn more about vitamin D and how you can avoid your children from becoming D-ficient in this important chemical of their bodies.   Musical Intro Pediatricians Catch on Faster than Adult Doctors I think it is fair to say that pediatricians catch on faster than adult doctors. First, diseases are recognized in babies, then in older people. That's the way it seems to play out. Remember toxic shock back in the 70’s that terrible deadly ICU type disease that adult women were getting. Eventually, that disease was pinned down to these women's use of super-absorbent tampon that promoted an overgrowth of a toxigenic staph aureus.  This germ was deadly. Pediatricians had recognized a similar disease in non-tampon using children years earlier and called it staph scalded skin disease. Oh, and what about in the 1980’s when the flesh eating strep made an appearance? Well, pediatricians have known about that for a long time as well. They called it erysipelas. Oh and shingles, don’t forget shingles. Well, shingles is nothing more than chickenpox, a baby disease, coming out in a localized way. Now old people get a chickenpox shot to make sure that they don’t get this dreaded old age disease. Well, the latest baby disease to make adult headlines is rickets and vitamin D deficiency. Rickets is a baby bone disease usually caused by vitamin D deficiency. And you know it; adult doctors have begun to recognize that many of adults are vitamin D deficient. Furthermore, many adult disease