70% of American Children (over 50 million kids) have Insufficient levels of Vitamin D !

By on October 1, 2009 in Healthy Living

A new study has just been recently published in the prestigious journal Pediatrics. The study looked at the prevalence and associations of vitamin D deficiency in United States children from 2001 to 2004.

Like so much epidemiological research in the United States, this study was based on the NHANES studies, that I have mentioned many times.

The purpose of this study was to determine how prevalent vitamin D deficiency as well as associations between vitamin D deficiency and heart disease risk factors were in children and adolescents, in our country.

In this case they evaluated over 6000 children and adolescents. The authors defined deficiency of vitamin D as being less than 15 ng/ml.. They defined insufficiency of vitamin D to be 15 to 29 ng/ml. They also measured traditional cardiovascular risk factors in the blood.

The shocking findings were that over 9% of the pediatric population which is 7.6 million US children and lessons were vitamin D deficient. In addition 61% which is 50.8 million US children and adolescents were vitamin D insufficient. That totals 70% of all American children.

In addition they found that only 4% of the children had taken even 400 IU of vitamin D per day for the past 30 days.

The leader of the study Michal L. Melamed MD at Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University stated

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About soram.khalsa

Board certified in Internal Medicine, Soram Khalsa, M.D., is a clinical professor of medicine and past chairman of the advisory committee for the Environmental Medicine Center of Excellence at Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Tempe, Arizona. He is also a member of the Bureau of Naturopathic Medicine Advisory Council for the State of California and serves as medical director for the East-West Medical Research Institute. In 2007, Dr. Khalsa was chosen by his peers as one of the “Best Doctors” in America and serves in this capacity as a consultant for integrative medicine. Dr. Khalsa is a founding member of the American Holistic Medical Association, a founding member of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture, and was a member of the Outside Scientific Advisory Board for the NIH-sponsored Center on Botanical Studies at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In his private medical practice, he integrates phytotherapeutics, nutrition, homeopathy, acupuncture, and environmental medicine with traditional Internal Medicine.

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One Response to 70% of American Children (over 50 million kids) have Insufficient levels of Vitamin D !

  1. LindsayT October 1, 2009 at 2:58 am #

    Vitamin D is vital to us because without sufficient vitamin D, bones can become thin, brittle, or misshapen. Vitamin D sufficiency prevents rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults. Together with calcium, vitamin D also helps protect older adults from osteoporosis. Keep ourselves healthy even if it takes for a <a rev="vote for" title="The Best Place for an Online Payday Loan on The Internet Today!" href="http://personalmoneystore.com/Payday-Loans/ ">payday loans.