Vitamin D Deficiency in Quebec and France in the 18th and 19th centuries

[Angela]

See:
http://www.archaeology.org/news/4660-160720-dentin-vitamin-d

"A team of researchers has developed a way to look for signs of vitamin D deficiency in teeth by examining the remains of people who had been buried in rural Quebec and France in the 1700s and the 1800s. Teeth begin to develop layers of dentin, which requires an adequate supply of vitamin D to mineralize, before birth. So, anomalies found in the dentin would indicate that the subjects were not getting enough vitamin D in the diet, or from exposure to sunshine, at the time it was formed. “We correlated the age at which the tooth was forming, with the location of the defect in the tooth,” Lori D’Ortenzio of McMaster University explains in a report by The Canadian Press. The scientists also compared the samples to teeth from modern-day people, and when possible, examined the skeletons of the subjects. Defects in the dentin suggest that all of the subjects suffered from an extreme vitamin D deficiency, and an examination of their skeletons confirmed rickets, or weak and deformed bones, in some of the cases."

I'm rather surprised that all of them suffered from it. Certainly, I could understand that French Canada might be problematic in terms of getting enough sun, but obviously their diets couldn't have helped.

We forget what life used to be like for so many people.

 

[LeBrok]

I would guess that the biggest problem of D deficiency showed during industrial era, when people started working inside 6 days a week. I can't believe that people from rural area could have been so deficient!

 

[LeBrok]

Teeth from four French women and two Quebec residents who died hundreds of years ago show the telltale signs of vitamin D deficiency, a new study says.
Lori D'Ortenzio, a PhD candidate in anthropology at McMaster University in Hamilton, came up with the idea to use teeth to detect vitamin D deficiency though people in her field usually deal with bones.
Unlike bones, teeth store a permanent record of microscopic abnormalities in layers of dentin, beneath the enamel, akin to the rings of a tree that begin to develop before birth, said D'Ortenzio, who led the study.
Researchers analyzed a total of 12 teeth from four women who were buried in a French cemetery between 1225 and 1798 and two people who were buried in rural Quebec between 1771 and 1860, a child believed to be three years old and a 24-year-old man.
An examination of three of the man's teeth showed he'd suffered four bouts of rickets before he turned 13, D'Ortenzio said.
"We correlated the age at which the tooth was forming, with the location of the defect in the tooth. For example, if it was under the crown, it was earlier in the formation of that tooth, if it was in the root it would have been a little bit later."
The researchers found that all the subjects had vitamin D deficiency, or rickets, which is a weakening of the bones caused by an extreme lack of the vitamin.
Their findings were published Tuesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
"We thin-sectioned the teeth and low and behold, there were these defects in the teeth," said D'Ortenzio, describing the severe cases as resembling bubbles.
Researchers also had access to some of their subjects' bones, which showed deformities.
"So we knew that these individuals had rickets or had cases of rickets episodes when they were children," she said.
Vitamin D deficiency can be detected with a blood test and most cases are caused by a lack of sun exposure, but some health conditions including celiac disease can also lead to rickets.
D'Ortenzio said the subjects would have depended on sunlight for their major source of vitamin D, which is fat soluable and available in food such as salmon and eggs. Milk and non-dairy beverages and some orange juice brands are fortified with vitamin D.
Out of curiosity, D'Ortenzio had her 19-year-old son tested and discovered he was deficient in vitamin D, as was a professor in her department, who also got tested.
Low levels of vitamin D, which is needed to absorb calcium from food, can increase bone loss, leading to a risk of fractures.
Health Canada’s daily recommended intakes for vitamin D are 400 international units for infants, 600 IU for children aged one through adulthood, and 800 IU for people over 70.
Stephanie Atkinson, a professor of pediatrics at McMaster University, where she is also a researcher in bone and mineral metabolism, said pregnant women need to ensure they get enough vitamin D because "even your permanent teeth start forming in utero."
Breast milk doesn't have enough vitamin D so babies should be given drops of the vitamin to prevent nutritional rickets, Atkinson noted.
On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration in the United States announced it has changed its regulations to allow manufacturers to increase the level of vitamin D in milk and add fortification to more plant-based dairy beverages and yogurt alternatives.
"I know for a fact that Health Canada is undergoing similar considerations to improve the vitamin D content of available foods in the marketplace," Atkinson said.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada...s-show-signs-of-vitamin-d-deficiency-mcmaster

I'm taking 3,000 IU daily all year round for last 10 years, and I like the results so far.

 

[Angela]

Your comment made me curious, Le Brok, so I looked it up....

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oa.2329/abstract

"Rural Rickets: Vitamin D Deficiency in a Post-Medieval Farming Community from the Netherlands"

1. Barbara Veselka^*,
2. Menno L.P. Hoogland and
3. Andrea L. Waters-Rist

"
Rickets is caused by vitamin D deficiency as a result of limited exposure to sunlight and inadequate diet. In the 19^th century, rickets was endemic in most northern European cities. In post-Medieval Netherlands, rickets is documented in low frequencies in a few urban samples, but has not been studied in contemporaneous rural populations. Beemster is a rural farming community in the Netherlands that was established in the 17^th century upon drained land, with the Middenbeemster cemetery in use until 1866 AD. Ninety-five individuals from the ages of 32 weeks in utero to 15 years were examined for rickets in order to understand factors that can cause vitamin D deficiency in rural, non-industrialized populations. To identify rickets in the Beemster sample, ten features were scored, with bending deformities of the lower limb and one other feature, or at least three non-bending features, having to be present in order for diagnosis. Nine individuals (9.5%) had evidence of rickets—a high prevalence, especially for a rural community where ample sunlight was available. The two and three year old Beemster infants were most heavily affected with an age-specific prevalence of 30.4%. Two three-month-old infants also had rickets. Some of the affected may have developed rickets secondarily, as a result of a different illness, but cultural practices including prolonged swaddling, occlusive clothing, and keeping the young indoors, are suggested to have contributed to this high rickets prevalence. Dietary variables including poor weaning foods and common episodes of malnutrition may have also contributed to vitamin D deficiency. This study demonstrates the value of careful analysis of pathological conditions in subadults and highlights that rickets was not only a disease of cities, but affected populations that would appear to have been at low risk, because of maladaptive cultural practices."

I think I've mentioned before that as late as when I was born, Italian parents were still trying to force feed their children cod liver oil; these articles mention that it was discovered that this would have a profound influence on infant health. Given that, I would think children from fishing villages along the north sea, for example, would have fared better.

Talking about maladaptive cultural practices, it couldn't have helped that women sought to have a milk white complexion and so didn't go outside without a parasol. Then they wound up with a malformed pelvis and had to have a C section. Amazing what we've done to ourselves without knowing.

Breast milk doesn't have much Vitamin D, as was pointed out. If mothers were relying heavily only on breast milk, this could have been part of the problem indeed. (The idea was to breast feed as long as possible, because it lowers fertility, so children were often spaced about three years apart.) Then, parents didn't really understand how important it was not to just feed babies and infants softened bread or porridge when weaning them. Even adding milk wouldn't have helped much as it doesn't have much Vitamin D. Then, because it was unpasteurized, the milk itself was a vector for all sorts of disease, particularly things like tuberculosis and cholera.

Fwiw, what the mothers used to do when I was growing up when they weaned their children was to make a vegetable broth out of whatever they had, but almost always the vegetables that go into the soffrito which is the base of so much of our food were included: carrot, celery, onion. When you could afford it you made meat broth from bones. Then you cooked pastina in the broth. When done you added a bit of butter and a bit of olive oil. You also made things that were sort of like fruit slurpies. As soon as they could chew you added solid food. These are little vegetable and bean balls. We served them in the broth in which the vegetables were cooked; we didn't bake them. It's a way of getting protein in them without always giving them meat. Now with all these gadgets I often just gave them whatever we were having, just putting some of it in the food processor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcCWNlQjZq4

Nowadays we're richer so you can make something like a potato and chicken breast puree for them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8dsRHFao00
I was a notoriously picky eater, which is why they worried about me. From the time I could eat solid foods apparently all I wanted to eat was bread, cheese, cured meats and fruit. Looking back, it wasn't so terrible, and it sure tasted good! Oh, and I never turned down "vino batizato", or a glass of water with about two inches of wine in it. I totally refused anything made with eggs because I hated the smell (even home made pasta), so my poor mother would make zabaglione most mornings: egg yolk, sugar, fortified wine of some sort.Straight bones, no rickets to report.
https://www.cuisinecompanion.com.au...80/public/recipe/Zabaglione.png?itok=qHeoEtg7
This book mentions a very high incidence in urban Warsaw, but a much lower incidence in the country. However, going by the Netherlands study and some of the data in the following one, in urban areas it was up to 90%, so something like 30% must have seemed a lot better.
https://books.google.com/books?id=S...rural Northern Europe in 19th century&f=false

 

[LeBrok]

When I said this:

I can't believe that people from rural area could have been so deficient!

I didn't mean I don't believe in this research. I meant more like, I can't believe that rural people did this to themselves. In cultural sense.
Great job Angela finding the clues of cultural effect:

cultural practices including prolonged swaddling, occlusive clothing, and keeping the young indoors, are suggested to have contributed to this high rickets prevalence. Dietary variables including poor weaning foods and common episodes of malnutrition may have also contributed to vitamin D deficiency.

We should also mention that this was the time of Little Ice Age, of short summer and long winter, which affected how much sun people got on their skin. And happened mostly in Central/North Europe.
Plus this:

Talking about maladaptive cultural practices, it couldn't have helped that women sought to have a milk white complexion and so didn't go outside without a parasol.

Which also caused epidemic of tuberculosis.

 

[ΠΑΝΑΞ]

As far supposed we are all history enthusiasts, some prejudices from the past:


Herodot. It is from his 3rd book -"Thalia".
The Battle of Pellusioum; -Πηλούσιο. Egypt 532.bce. The persians with Cambysses attack to Egypt which that time king was the young Ψαμμήτιχος,-Ψαμμήνιτος, -Psamtik III son of Αμάσις-Amasis)
The tragedy story of Psamtic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psamtik_III
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambyses_II




vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv


Years after this great battle...




http://www.greek-language.gr/digitalResources/ancient_greek/library/browse.html?text_id=30&page=75




Anc.Gr.[3.12.1] θῶμα δὲ μέγα εἶδον πυθόμενος παρὰ τῶν ἐπιχωρίων· τῶν γὰρ ὀστέων κεχυμένων χωρὶς ἑκατέρων τῶν ἐν τῇ μάχῃ ταύτῃ πεσόντων (χωρὶς μὲν γὰρ τῶν Περσέων ἔκειτο τὰ ὀστέα, ὡς ἐχωρίσθη κατ᾽ ἀρχάς, ἑτέρωθι δὲ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων), αἱ μὲν τῶν Περσέων κεφαλαί εἰσι ἀσθενέες οὕτω ὥστε, εἰ θέλεις ψήφῳ μούνῃ βαλεῖν, διατετρανέεις, αἱ δὲ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων οὕτω δή τι ἰσχυραί, μόγις ἂν λίθῳ παίσας διαρρήξειας. [3.12.2] αἴτιον δὲ τούτου τόδε ἔλεγον, καὶ ἐμέ γε εὐπετέως ἔπειθον, ὅτι Αἰγύπτιοι μὲν αὐτίκα ἀπὸ παιδίων ἀρξάμενοι ξυρῶνται τὰς κεφαλὰς καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον παχύνεται τὸ ὀστέον. [3.12.3] τὠυτὸ δὲ τοῦτο καὶ τοῦ μὴ φαλακροῦσθαι αἴτιόν ἐστι· Αἰγυπτίων γὰρ ἄν τις ἐλαχίστους ἴδοιτο φαλακροὺς πάντων ἀνθρώπων. [3.12.4]τούτοισι μὲν δὴ τοῦτό ἐστι αἴτιον ἰσχυρὰς φορέειν τὰς κεφαλάς, τοῖσι δὲ Πέρσῃσι, ὅτι ἀσθενέας φορέουσι τὰς κεφαλάς, αἴτιον τόδε· σκιητροφέουσι ἐξ ἀρχῆς πίλους τιάρας φορέοντες. ταῦτα μέν νυν τοιαῦτα [ἐόντα εἶδον]· εἶδον δὲ καὶ ἄλλα ὅμοια τούτοισι ἐν Παπρήμι τῶν ἅμα Ἀχαιμένεϊ τῷ Δαρείου...


Neo Gr.
[3.12.1] Λοιπόν, χάρη σε πληροφορίες των ντόπιων είδα ένα πράγμα πολύ παράξενο· δηλαδή, τα κόκαλα των σκοτωμένων σ᾽ αυτή τη μάχη ήταν σκορπισμένα (χώρια κείτονταν των Περσών όπως είχαν χωριστεί από την αρχή, και αλλού των Αιγυπτίων), και των Περσών τα κρανία ήταν τόσο φτενά ώστε αν ήθελε κανείς, χτυπώντας τα και μ᾽ ένα πετραδάκι, μπορούσε να τα τρυπήσει, ενώ των Αιγυπτίων ήταν τόσο γερά ώστε και με μεγάλη πέτρα να τα χτυπούσε κανείς, ζήτημα είναι αν θα έσπαγαν. [3.12.2] Όσο για τον λόγο που συμβαίνει αυτό, μου είπαν ότι είναι ο εξής, και με έπεισαν εύκολα: οι Αιγύπτιοι αρχίζουν αμέσως να ξυρίζουν τα κεφάλια τους, από παιδιά ακόμη, και έτσι το κόκαλο χοντραίνει από τον ήλιο. [3.12.3] Για τον ίδιο λόγο δεν κάνουν και φαλάκρα· πραγματικά, ανάμεσα στους Αιγυπτίους βλέπει κανείς τους λιγότερους φαλακρούς παρ᾽ ό,τι ανάμεσα σε όλους τους άλλους ανθρώπους.[3.12.4] Αυτός λοιπόν είναι ο λόγος που έχουν γερά κεφάλια. Όσο για τους Πέρσες, ο λόγος που έχουν αδύναμα κεφάλια, είναι ο εξής: τα έχουν σκεπασμένα από μικροί με τις τιάρες που φορούν, τα καπέλα από πίλημα. Τα είδα λοιπόν αυτά και έτσι ήταν· είδα όμως και άλλα παρόμοια με τούτα στην Πάπρημη, σ᾽ εκείνους που σκοτώθηκαν μαζί με τον Αχαιμένη, τον γιο του Δαρείου, ...


Transl. Google. panax
[3.12.1] Well, thanks to information of the locals saw a very strange thing; that is, the bones of the killed in this battle was scattered (apart lay the Persians as they had been separated from the beginning, and elsewhere the Egyptians), and Persian skulls were so thin that if one wanted, flapping and with a pebble, could pierce them, while the Egyptians were so strong that even with large stone to one beat, is whether if it broke. [3.12.2] As for why this happens, I was told that it is the following, and easily persuaded: Egyptians begin immediately to shave their heads, even by children, and so the bone thicken cause from the sun. [3.12.3] For the same reason, do not and baldness; indeed, among the Egyptians you see fewer bald despite what among all the other people. [3.12.4] So this is why they have strong heads . As for the Persians, why they have weak heads, the reason is:that they have them covered, from small to tiaras to wear the hats of felt. That I saw them and so it was, but I saw other similar therewith in Papreme, to those who were killed along with Achaimenae the son of Darius..,


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So, it is safe to conclude, how good is to read Herodot on the beach...

 

[vcovaci]

I'm taking 3,000 IU daily all year round for last 10 years, and I like the results so far.

I take D3 supplements too. Just two years ago, during wintertime, I suddenly began having some severe sleep problems. Also my immune system was so low that I got very bad colds once every two months. Something must have happened to my health but for a while I simply couldn't figure out what was. Then I realised I had vitamin D deficiency. I began taking fish oil and other supplements with this vitamin at the right moment of the day. The result? Not only that all my insomnias were gone but last year I hardly got any common cold.

What I mean through at the right moment of the day:

Are You Taking Vitamin D at the Right Time?


Vitamin D is inversely related to melatonin, your sleep hormone, so it makes sense that taking it at night disrupts sleep. I’ve noticed this effect personally. For this reason, there is no reason to take vitamin D at night.

An n=1 experiment done by gwern.net also concludes that taking vitamin D in the morning is best. Using a ZEO, his morning dose of D increased REM, deep sleep, and number of hours increased. He looked at taking the same dosage at night, and his sleep quality plummeted. (11)
My biohacking experiments have similar results. When I’ve taken D in the morning I had my usual great sleep. When I’ve taken D at night, I had a restless night.
In our busy worlds, healthy sleep is gold. If we do not receive the right amounts of vitamin D, sleep suffers. If you live a stressful life, sleep is even more important.
There are other reasons to take it too. In a study with chronic pain patients, vitamin D helped reduce pain, improve quality of life, and increase sleep.(4) Having adequate levels of D may protect against cancer, control inflammation, heart disease, poor mood, and may help regulate the immune system. Most people are vitamin D deficient, and do not know how it can help improve their lives.

Source: https://www.bulletproofexec.com/bulletproof-your-sleep-with-vitamin-d/

So, what I want to say, both from my experience and from what I see in others is that nowadays, with all the excessive time we spend indoors, we are still prone to being deficient of this nutrient and that we definitely mustn't underestimate it's importance. We should learn from historical cases like the ones in Canada and France and try to avoid the issues they had.

For further reading:

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-oil-supplements/


Just notice how "high" vitamin D tends to be when it comes to general health and all-cause mortality.