What are the preventive measures for rickets in children?

Rickets in children is a common nutritional disease that occurs in children, and is generally more common in infants and young children. The child will show some symptoms that are different from normal children, such as abnormal walking, not growing taller, etc. So what are the preventions for rickets in children? I wonder if parents know about this. While educating their children, they should also learn about this knowledge. Here are the preventions for rickets in children.

1. Should high doses or low doses be used to treat rickets?

The traditional method of using large doses of vitamin D to treat rickets has been questioned by many experts. For example, intramuscular injection of 300,000 or 600,000 units of vitamin D once every month may cause vitamin D poisoning, causing calcium to deposit in internal organs and causing organ damage and other serious consequences. Even if vitamin D poisoning does not occur, large doses of vitamin D can suppress the immune system and reduce children's resistance. Therefore, low-dose vitamin D treatment for rickets will become a trend, such as taking 31,200 units of vitamin D orally daily. However, for those who cannot adhere to long-term medication or have other diseases that affect vitamin D absorption, high-dose treatment may be considered.

2. Can hair or urine calcium testing diagnose rickets? Can blood calcium and blood phosphorus determination diagnose rickets early?

It is absolutely unreliable to diagnose rickets by doing hair or urine calcium tests, which has been completely denied by the medical community. The results of a single urine calcium test are unreliable, and only a 24-hour urine calcium test has a certain value. The diagnosis of rickets should be based on a comprehensive judgment of medical history, clinical manifestations, laboratory tests, X-ray examinations, etc.

In the early stages of rickets, blood calcium and blood phosphorus generally do not decrease. Only in severe cases will blood calcium and blood phosphorus decrease. Therefore, blood calcium and blood phosphorus measurements are of little value for the early diagnosis of rickets. Determining the alkaline phosphatase content in the blood or the activity of bone alkaline phosphatase and taking X-rays of the wrist with a molybdenum target are reliable methods for early rickets.

3. To prevent rickets, should we supplement calcium or vitamin D?

Rickets in infants and young children is mainly caused by vitamin D deficiency. Infants who are breastfed or formula-fed, and young children who drink 400 ml of milk every day, generally do not suffer from calcium deficiency and do not need additional calcium supplements. The vitamin D in food certainly cannot meet the normal physiological needs of children. Sunbathing can increase the synthesis of vitamin D in the skin, but for various reasons, infants and young children often do not get enough sunlight, especially in winter and spring, including the rainy season in the south in summer. However, the current practice of adding vitamin D to various children's foods has caused concern among experts. First, it is impossible to judge the amount of vitamin D intake, and second, it is easy to cause vitamin D poisoning in children. In foreign countries, vitamin D is only added to formula milk to prevent rickets in children, with good results.

Every parent hopes that their child is healthy, so we must prevent the occurrence of this disease in children from an early age. We must supplement children with more vitamins and some nutrients, and insist on breastfeeding, because breast milk is rich in vitamin D, which can also reduce the occurrence of rickets.