As I wrote last week, osteoporosis is a concern for older parents. Toting kids may help build our bone density, therefore giving yet another reason why adopting later in life can be good for our health, but our worries shouldn't be limited to our own old bones.

With our kids coming to us after beginning and growing in another woman, we've had no control over what went into them right up until the time they entered our sphere of care, and unless our adoptions are open and honest there's no one to tell us about the prenatal care they did or did not receive.

The lifelong health of our children's bones begins before they are born, and lack of proper nutrition then can mean we need to take extra care.

A British study at the Medical Research Council's Epidemiology Resource Centre at the University of Southampton has proven that, " ... maternal vitamin D deficiency is associated with poor skeletal growth of children and therefore an elevated risk of bone fracture in later life."

Bone scans were conducted on 200 nine-year-olds whose mothers had been part of a nutritional study during their pregnancies, and it was found that the poorer the mother's vitamin D intake during pregnancy, the lower the child's bone mass was nine years later ... in other words, the possibility of osteoporosis in kids.

Vitamin D supplements and sunshine were enough to make the mothers less likely to have a deficiency, but diet, physical activity and whether or not the mother smoked were also factors.

The original maternal study began in 1998 and included 12,500 UK women, followed them through pregnancy and has been charting their children's bone growth ever since. Somewhat surprisingly, it has determined that it is the vitamin deficiency of the mother, rather than that of the young child, which has the greater impact on the child's bone strength in later life.

Other aspects of the research have already provided evidence on the effects of pre-brith conditions on lung function, allergies, pre-mentrual syndrome and depression, in addition to childhood osteoporosis.

For what we can do to help build our kid's bones, see the next post.