Introduction
Here is a disease that twisted the bones of millions of children in the 19th century. It is called rickets.
A child with rickets has soft, weak bones. Their legs bend outward into a bow shape. Their wrists and ankles become thick and knobby. Their chest may cave inward or push outward like a pigeon’s breast. They are small for their age. They tire easily. And they often have seizures from low calcium.
In the crowded, smoky cities of the Industrial Revolution, rickets was everywhere. Doctors called it the “English disease.” But no one knew what caused it.
Some blamed bad air. Some blamed poor food. Some blamed the damp, dark housing.
What Causes Rickets? The Industrial Revolution Connection
Then doctors noticed something strange. Children who lived in the countryside – playing outside in the sun – rarely got rickets. Children in the city, who spent their days indoors in factories or dark tenements, got rickets very often.
The difference was sunlight. But how could sunlight affect bones?
It took decades of research to answer that question. Scientists discovered that human skin makes a vitamin when exposed to ultraviolet light from the sun. That vitamin was later named vitamin D. Without enough sunlight, children could not make enough vitamin D. Without vitamin D, their bodies could not absorb calcium from food. And without calcium, their bones grew soft and bent.
Rickets was not caused by a germ or bad air. It was caused by the absence of sunlight – and the absence of the vitamin that sunlight creates in your skin.
The Discovery of the Sunshine Vitamin
In the early 1900s, researchers showed that cod liver oil – rich in vitamin D – could cure rickets. Then in the 1920s, scientists proved that exposing both animals and humans to ultraviolet light also cured the disease. The active factor was finally isolated and called vitamin D.
This was a revolutionary idea. Your body could make its own vitamin – but only if you had enough sunlight. For children in dark, polluted cities, the sun never reached them. Their bodies could not produce what they needed. So their bones failed.
How Your Body Uses Vitamin D – The Calcium & Bone Secret
Now we know exactly why missing vitamin D causes rickets. Vitamin D acts like a master switch for calcium. It tells your intestines to absorb calcium from food. It tells your kidneys to hold onto calcium. It tells your bones to take up calcium for strength.
Without vitamin D, most of the calcium you eat passes right through you. Your body cannot use it. Your bones become thin, soft, and deformed. Your muscles become weak. Your nerves become irritable.
This is also why vitamin D deficiency in adults causes osteomalacia – a softening of bones that leads to pain, fractures, and muscle weakness. The same missing nutrient, the same underlying problem.
From Rickets to Chronic Disease – The Same Pattern
This pattern – a strange disease, blamed on living conditions, eventually traced back to a single missing nutrient – is the same pattern we have seen with beriberi, scurvy, and pellagra.
But here is where my work goes further. In my book Unraveling the Root Cause of Chronic Diseases, I explain that modern chronic diseases – heart disease, diabetes, arthritis – follow the same pattern. However, today we are not missing just one vitamin. We are missing multiple dietary factors that work together.
Rickets is a single deficiency: vitamin D. But heart disease involves vitamin C, lysine, proline, and other nutrients. When several are missing at once, the damage happens slowly, over decades. That is why we call them “chronic” diseases.
Yet the principle is identical. Identify what is missing. Put it back. Let the body heal.
What You Can Do Today
Rickets was conquered not by a drug, but by adding back what was missing – vitamin D (through sunlight, cod liver oil, or fortified foods). The same principle applies to your heart, your bones, and your long‑term health.
If you want to understand which nutrients are missing from modern diets and how to restore them, read my book Unraveling the Root Cause of Chronic Diseases. I will show you the science and the simple, practical steps.
For more articles on the root cause of diseases, visit my website https://lyproc.com
My Books
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Unraveling The Root Cause of Chronic Diseases:
Reverse Heart Disease: No Lifelong Suffering
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