Scurvy and Rickets

Mihai Negrean

Mar 8, 2022 — 1 min read

Scurvy and rickets are two serious diseases which are caused by unhealthy diets.

Scurvy, beyond the hilarious-sounding name is not hilarious in any respect. The above picture is the least-gruesome looking one I could find. If you need nightmare fuel, search "scurvy" in Google Images.

Scurvy is caused because of a vitamin C deficiency. Luckily, vitamin C is easy to get, all you need is to eat vitamin C-rich foods regularly.

Scurvy used to be a lot more common in the 1800s, mostly among sailors, pirates, and soldiers who lived on crackers and salted meat for long periods. Fresh vegetables were not easy to preserve, so they couldn't get vitamin C.

If scurvy becomes too serious, the victims would die, so did many sailors and passengers on board sailing ships.

During that time, many people tried to find a cure for scurvy, but the cause was unknown. Many navies were successful by adding lemon juice or vinegar to their sailors' diets.

Some symptoms of scurvy are: fatigue, spots on the skin, bleeding gums, and loss of teeth.

Another disease caused by an unhealthy diet is rickets. Rickets is when you have too little vitamin D or too little calcium.

Rickets makes victims have bowed legs, square skulls, and other misshaped bones. This disease usually occurs in poor countries with limited diets, but several cases have been discovered in England.

The rickets was caused by a lack of sunlight because of heavy sunblock overuse. If you don't get a few minutes of exposure to the sun each day, the vitamin D cannot be absorbed, and it will be useless.

Rickets can be avoided by eating foods rich in calcium and vitamin D and going outside in the sun regularly.

There are other diseases that come from unhealthy diets, like diabetes, obesity, and anemia.

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