Gonneke van Veldhuizen-Staas wrestled with a keyboard and this
emerged:

> one could wonder if it is
> really a pro to increase bone mineral density in young girls by adding extra
> vitamin D in infancy. Could it not be so that young girls are supposed to
> have the bone mineral density they have if unsupplemented. One could argue
> that growing bodies need to be flexible and that increasing bone mineral
> comes later, when the body has finished growing.

My first thought was, "What exactly is considered to be the problem
here?"  Has there been an epidemic of little girls in Switzerland
falling on the playground and breaking their hips?  I can just
imagine the carnage during recess as these frail beings collapse,
bones breaking like matchsticks...oh, the humanity!

At any rate, I do believe that we have good research from other
fields that increasing demands on the bones by increasing the
strength of the muscles which are attached (i.e. weight training or
other substantial exercise), does as much or more than supplements
could in increasing bone density and has other benefits besides.  Are
Swiss girls becoming couch potatoes like our American ones?

Would increased bone density effect the growth zones at the ends of
the bones?  If they mineralized too fast, would the girls be short
and have joint problems?  This is seen in horses which are fed too
rich a diet as foals.  For a while there, some breeders were pumping
their babies full of "good stuff" so they'd be bigger and more robust
than their peers in halter classes.  Unfortunately, the growth rate
exceeded the rate at which quality growth could occur, with the
result that these halter stars never made it to the performance arena
because their knees closed too fast.

This leads us to a Taoist sort of philosophy:
Too little is not good.  Too much is not good.

Regards,
Beth
your Friendly Neighborhood Taoist

--
Beth Johnson, CBE, ICCE, Doula
Certified Breastfeeding Educator
ICEA Certified Chilbirth Educator (and Not Proud of it anymore)
Post-Partum Doula
http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/9235/

"If life is a bowl of cherries,
 why am I always in the pits?"--Erma Bombeck

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