Vitamins, minerals and supplements in the news
Cases of the crippling children's bone disease rickets are being seen in Cardiff.
Caused by a lack of vitamin D, the disease can lead to deformities like bowed legs and stunted growth, but it largely disappeared last century.
Eye on Wales has learnt that health professionals working in communities in south Cardiff are reporting incidents.
Dr Elspeth Webb, a reader in child health at Cardiff University, spends half her time working as a paediatrician within Splott and Tremorfa in the city.
She said: "We're still seeing rickets in children in Cardiff in the 21st Century - which a lot of people might be very shocked and surprised by, thinking of it as a Victorian illness. But no, it's not.
Vitamin D can naturally be produced by your metabolism when sun’s rays come into contact with your skin; however, "You get women living in certain communities that perhaps don't go out much because of religious, cultural traditions. They're covered up when they do [therefore] they don't get enough access to sunlight, so they get vitamin D deficient." Supplements such as Principle Healthcare's Vitamin D tablets can help to contribute to getting your recommended daily allowance of Vit D which is required for calcium absorption and for the maintenance of normal blood levels of calcium and phosphate that are in turn needed for several functions including the normal mineralisation of bone, helping this way to maintain healthy bones and teeth.
"Every pregnancy, you use up your vitamin D stores and if you're not making enough to replenish them, you gradually get more and more depleted.
"By your third or fourth child, that child is born already without enough vitamin D."
"So they'll be presenting with rickets at around 18 months."
"But then some of the remedies surrounding it are around that up-take of Vitamin D. So it's around diet, it's around lifestyle."
"The Local Health Board have this big drive around vitamin up-take. This has proved quite successful locally."
"As long as active promotion of where people can access vitamins, how they can maybe modify their behaviour in order to attract more sunlight into their lives then I believe this is something that can be reversed."