Rickets is “calcium deficiency”, many parents give their children blindly a lot of calcium supplements to prevent and treat rickets, such as this situation, outpatient clinics can be encountered every day, no calcium supplements instead of rare, part of the advertising inappropriate propaganda, further deepening the misconceptions of some parents, often buy some calcium supplements for their children to take, so that the disease In fact, the full name of rickets is rickets. In fact, the full name of rickets is “nutritional vitamin D deficiency rickets”, is one of the common chronic nutritional deficiencies in children under 3 years of age in China, some data show that its incidence is about 20-30%, some areas can be as high as 60% or more, so the active prevention and treatment of this disease can not be taken lightly. The essence of rickets is due to insufficient or lack of vitamin D in the child’s body, resulting in impaired calcium absorption and imbalance of calcium and phosphorus metabolism. Vitamin D must be synthesized in human skin by ultraviolet radiation in sunlight, and daily food contains very little vitamin D. Without the participation of vitamin D, oral calcium supplements are not well absorbed, and infants and young children grow fast and have few outdoor activities, so they are prone to vitamin D deficiency, and tall buildings in big cities can block sunlight, and atmospheric pollution such as smog and dust can also absorb some ultraviolet rays. The disease is mostly seen in infants and young children under 2 years old, especially those born in autumn and winter, and calcium supplementation alone will not treat the disease fundamentally. Although rickets is rarely life-threatening, it is easy to ignore because of its slow onset, and once the obvious symptoms occur, the body’s resistance is low, and it is easy to complicate other diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhea, and anemia. The main manifestations of rickets are lesions in the growing bones, muscle relaxation and changes in neuroexcitability, such as irritability, worry, crying at night (often referred to as nocturnal crybaby), sleep disturbance, sweating and stimulation of the scalp and shaking the head to appear occipital baldness, etc. In severe cases, there will be late teething fontanel enlargement, head softening or deformation, sternal deformation (chicken chest, rib edge outward), leg deformation (rotund legs, X-leg), etc. etc. …… Children with severe rickets may also have digestive and cardiopulmonary dysfunction, and may affect intellectual development and immune function. To prevent your baby from getting rickets, you can take the following approaches: 1. Starting with the mother-to-be Don’t forget the child to be born when you are going to be a mother, you should do more outdoor activities during pregnancy, and your diet should be rich in vitamin D, calcium and phosphorus and other nutrients. 2. As a newborn, 400 international units of vitamin D should be given daily from 2 weeks after birth to effectively prevent rickets. 3, more sunshine: even if the baby is wrapped all over and only the face is exposed, 1 hour of sunshine per day can produce 400 international units of vitamin D, which can meet the needs of the child. It is recommended that after the child is full term, the daily sun exposure slowly increase from 10 minutes to 2 hours (note not through the glass sun), but be careful to prevent direct sunlight on the baby’s eyes. If breastfeeding, the mother more sunlight can also increase the content of vitamin D in breast milk. 4, timely addition of complementary foods, if not breastfeeding, can be given fortified milk powder containing vitamin D, necessary is to give a certain amount of calcium supplements. If you want to give your child vitamin D supplements, you should use safe and effective vitamin D preparations under the guidance of a doctor, do not blindly over-apply vitamin D, and should not only supplement “calcium”. The majority of the drops have a ratio of A to D of 10:1, that is, the A content is 10 times that of D. To prevent and control rickets in infants and young children, it is mainly necessary to supplement vitamin D. Therefore, it is not advisable to use cod liver oil of this ratio. These drops often cause vitamin A poisoning due to the high A content. Children need 1000-1500 international units of vitamin A and 400 international units of vitamin D. The ratio of A:D to cod liver oil for children is 4:1 or 3:1.