Spending too long indoors, applying excessive sun screen and the changing ethnic population is causing precariously low levels of Vitamin D in parts of the UK, warn Professor Simon Pearce and Dr Tim Cheetham at Newcastle University.
“More than 50% of the adult population have insufficient levels of vitamin D and 16% have severe deficiency during winter and spring,” they say. “The highest rates are in Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England. People with pigmented skin are at high risk as are the elderly, obese individuals and those with malabsorption.”
The research published in the British Medical Journal, has found that the most commonly affected are people of Asian and African descent who live in the North; a key part of the research focused on young Somalis who live in east Newcastle.
Other causes include consistent sun screen application instead of allowing 20 to 30 minutes exposure to the sun two or three times a weeks, staying indoors all the working day and children sitting in front of computer games rather than playing outdoors.
Pearce has written to the Department of Health proposing Vitamin D is added to milk. It is already added to artificial baby milk.
Rickets are associated with the 19th century and young workers in industrial cities. The disease causes softening of the bones and muscle weakness. When a child has rickets, there is not enough mineral in the bones, making them soft and weaker.
Some vitamin D is obtained from certain foods: egg yolk, liver, oily fish such as sardines, herring, tuna, salmon and mackerel. A diet low in these foods will contribute to a lack of vitamin D but the main cause of the problem is lack of sunlight on the skin.
