Burqas Are Bad for Your Health
by Dymphna
As someone who takes Vitamin D3, especially in the winter, I was intrigued to find this information about the incidence of pediatric rickets in various sections of the UK:
Experts said vitamin D, which is unique in being produced primarily by exposure to sunlight, was a relatively common deficiency among Asian immigrants, because of their darker skin, and Islam’s requirements for clothing to cover limbs.
Until about 10 years ago, Government policy required that all health authorities gave out vitamin supplements to people from the Indian subcontinent, but then it was decided that it was no longer necessary.
Dr Ellis Friedman, director of public health for East Lancashire PCT, said: “It is caused by a combination of skin colouration, diet and dress, not poverty. We don’t, for example, find rickets in deprived white communities.”
I did a little research on the problem and found some interesting data.
For one thing, rickets is derived from wricken:
The term rickets is said to have derived from the ancient English word wricken, which means “to bend.” In several European countries, rickets is also called English disease, a term that appears to stem from the fact that at the turn of the 19th century, rickets was endemic in larger British cities.
No doubt it was endemic in the UK since children worked in factories twelve hours a day and any sunlight getting through the coalsmoke atmosphere was miniscule.
In America, black children were more likely to have rickets, since it takes six times the sunlight for someone with dark skin to absorb enough of the sun’s rays to allow the body to produce vitamin D. Breastfed by mothers who were low in vitamin D themselves, they had little access to vitamin D-rich foods.
With the passage of child labor laws, and children outside more, the incidence of rickets began to wane and then largely disappear in Europe. However, it is now on the uptick again, this time for Muslim women and their children.
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