Friday, December 14, 2007

Burqas Are Bad for Your Health

good way to induce rickets
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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Health facilities in the Netherlands, France, Algeria, Australia and Turkey all report a rise in rickets in the pediatric population.

The Australia report says:

…a new high-risk group for vitamin D deficiency in multicultural Australia. Grover and Morley report that 80% of dark-skinned or veiled women attending an antenatal clinic at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne who took part in the study had biochemical evidence of vitamin D deficiency, with values of 25-hydroxyvitamin D3, the major blood metabolite, below the reference range… In just over four and a half years, 55 children had presented with clinical features of rickets, including delayed walking, leg bowing, seizures and failure to thrive. Of those tested for parathyroid hormone levels, over 80% had secondary hyperparathyroidism. At the time of each child’s presentation, none of the mothers had volunteered symptoms of vitamin D deficiency in themselves, but over half had 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 concentrations measured, and 81% of these had values below the reference range (< 25 nmol/L).All except one of the mothers of the children presenting with rickets were from Africa, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East or southern Europe. The one mother of northern European descent was agoraphobic and depressed. [my emphasis -D]

And surprise: Fjordman was reporting on this back in 2003, regarding the British incidence of rickets. However, there are reports of rickets in Norwegian immigrants also.

You can never tell what rocks Google will overturn when you start searching.

In a Dutch article (registration required) reporting on rickets in adults, Muslim women in the Netherlands wearing a chador were shown to be at high risk for developing vitamin D deficiency, resulting in osteomalacia. The deficiency resulted from underexposure to sunlight. If these women breastfeed their infants, the children also are at high risk of developing vitamin D deficiency. This issue has also been addressed by other authors, from different countries (Wauters and van Soesbergen, 1999).

The disease has two factors: dark skin and insufficient sunlight. The darker your skin, the greater the need for sunlight in order for the body to produce sufficient vitamin D to avoid rickets or its more serious follow-up disorders if left untreated. As Western Resistance says:

… they later began to show typical signs of the condition commonly called rickets — bowed legs, caused by tiny “greenstick” fractures in the bone. This condition is caused by softening of the bone, a condition called osteomalacia. Once the child became an adult, the deformities and short stature were visibly apparent. But along the way, other side-effects could occur, such as seizures. These seizures (hypocalcemic seizures, brought on by an increase of parathyroid hormonal byproducts in the body) are common ways of detecting rickets in very young children, under nine months. They are less common in older children.

In severe cases, the distortions on bone in the pelvis caused women to be unable to deliver children, usually with fatal results.

In other words, no matter where you live, if you wear a chador all the time, chances are you’re deficient in vitamin D. There is a simple solution — aside from uncovering your arms, which is a good way to get killed — and that is to buy a sunbox and a bottle of vitamin D capsules.

And make sure you give them to your children.


Hat tip:1389

14 comments:

spackle said...

"There is a simple solution - aside from uncovering your arms, which is a good way to get killed - and that is to buy a sunbox and a bottle of vitamin D capsules."

Unless of course those sunboxes or vitamin D capsules are made by infidels then your just SOL. Oh, but wait. Products are OK, its just the minds and hands that CREATE said things for purchase that are the problem.

DP111 said...

This is the trouble we have we have. We are looking for practical solutions to problems that are not in the physical domain. Islam is a culture that is so alien to anything in the West, that it can be regarded as practically out of this planet. There are no practical solutions to "honour" killings, SJS, homegrown Jihadis etc., that will allow Islam to be at peace with us. The problem is not physical, and cannot be solved by throwing money at it.

1389 said...

Our struggle is not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers...

ZZMike said...

Within the last year or two, there was a photograph on the Web, a tourist photo (I don't think it was staged), of a man in a town square, photographing 6 or 8 Mulsim women, all burkha'd from head to toe. They were probably his wives, daughters, nieces, and aunts.

Wouldn't vitamin-D deficiency in women be ramapant in Muslim countries? In many places, you not only don't go out uncovered, you just don't go out.

livfreerdie said...

That's ironic. Remember the original "War of the Worlds" movie? Remember how the aliens were defeated? A bacteria that no longer affected humans but for which the aliens were not immune. So we got Muslims walking around all covered up and not enjoying God's sun (Son) and getting sick, even to the point of not being able to bear children. We should give thanks for the small things we never think about.

Tom

Dymphna said...

zzmike--

yes, vitamin D deficiency in womena and their children is rampant in majority Muslim areas where there are fundamentalist dress codes.

As a counter-example, I don't think Jordan has those draconian rules -- look at their Queen.

As for that picture, I put it up in a post once, because it was so funny. In the same way that the cartoon that heads this post is funny. They are amusing because they play on the individual in a photo vs. the total anonymity in a burqa. In other words, it's a reality that makes no sense.

But I think it's a set-up. If you look closely at the feet, these seem to be men -- those are not women's feet. Or at least not any woman that the husband would want
to make angry.

Ed Mahmoud said...

The Wahabbi insistence on head to toe covering is a fairly recent thing, and has been spreading outward from Saudi Arabia, if I understand correctly. So this wasn't always as bad a problem for Muslim women as it is now.


Besides being a blood-thirsty, vengeful and capricious deity, Allah is also not concerned about the females among his faithful.


Even if the Muslim view of woman is that they are breeding stock and not the equal of men, you'd think Allah would want them healthy for childbirth.

Allah isn't a very intelligent deity, either, it would seem.

DP111 said...

What a terrible picture, and yet it illustrates quite well what I posted - that Islam is a culture that is as alien as it can get - virtually out of this planet.

No disprespect of Islam is intended, it just is a statement of fact.

I have great sympathy for Muslims as individuals cuaght from birth in the prison of Islam. But before we can rescue them, we have to save ourselves. This is just good advice, in much the same way in airplanes, we are advised to put on our oxygen masks first before tending to children.

Foxfier said...

DP111 has a point-- Islam IS alien to the west, with our Judeo-Christian morality (even among those who reject Jewish faith and the Christ!) and lack of willingness to believe that there are folks who *don't believe the same.

((((Honestly...I suspect the problem is from those who are "rational" and "reject religion"-- but hold to the morality. If the Judeo-Christian is bad, and all rational folks will believe with the "rational" folks think, then everyone must think the same as the "rational" folks.)))

personalrep1 said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Baron Bodissey said...

personalrep1 --

I've asked you before: please do not leave excessively long off-topic comments on our posts. They are thread-killers.

I will continue to delete them.

Anonymous said...

Well, it could be worse I suppose. At least the women students in the School photo were lucky enough to be permitted to go to school.

Not all Muslim women are so fortunate.

Esther said...

There are some problems with your links. In any case, recent studies (2006) have shown that there is no major difference in Vitamin D deficiency between immigrant men and women, leading some researchers to believe this might be an issue of diet, rather than clothing. Since, as we know, Muslim men don't veil and don't wear a burqa.

Farooq said...

Well, there is no evidence found in literature so far.

Actually, skin color one can understand but burkhas causing Vit D deficiency is impossible.

Let me explain.

Vit D deficiency is found in every culture from those walk around naked to those who walk fully covered.

Dymphna ofcourse wants to find this as an excuse to make fun of Muslims. Women living in Burkhas are very much exposed to sun if they want inside their homes.

Moreover sunlight can penetrate burqas. But not thick clothing.

If Dymphna has some evidence talk clearly.