Many parents may notice that within a few months of the child’s birth, the back of the head loses all its hair in a circle, which is very bare and ugly. When the enthusiastic people in the community see it, they also say that your child lacks calcium. They need to supplement calcium and go to see a doctor.
In fact, the statement that occipital baldness is due to calcium deficiency does come from doctors, but doctors do not intend to deceive parents, but many doctors also believe that occipital baldness is a manifestation of calcium deficiency and rickets, because when we were studying in textbooks, occipital baldness was regarded as a symptom of rickets.
Therefore, when you go to see a doctor because the child has bald pillow, the doctor does not ask the child’s age or whether there are any other symptoms, and you need not be surprised to prescribe a pile of cod liver oil and calcium tablets for the child.
How is pillow bald return a responsibility?
As early as 1907, some doctors noticed the phenomenon of pillow baldness. However, this phenomenon does not affect the what of children except for its ugly appearance. Apart from China, not many doctors have paid attention to this problem, so the research is relatively few, but it is not without.
Because the pillow is the place where the pillow and mattress are contacted, However, children sleep more, so it is natural to infer that pillow baldness is caused by hair loss caused by scalp friction. Some experts in China believe that rickets children sweat profusely, and children like to dawdle their scalp when sleeping, thus forming pillow baldness. According to this inference, if children are not lying on their backs, they should not be pillow bald.
In order to reduce the risk of sudden infant death, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended children under one year old to lie on their backs since 1992. The adjustment of this guideline just provides a comparison between pillow baldness and sleeping posture. Some people have done this comparative study.
In 1985, before the recommendation of supine lying, Eighteen out of 200 children had bald pillows, After the recommendation of supine lying, 12 out of 101 children had occipital baldness in 2003. Although the proportion of occipital baldness in supine lying children was higher, there was no statistical difference between the two. Moreover, the author also noticed that some children’s hair loss was not concentrated in the occipital region but in the following situation, which obviously could not be explained by dawdling.
Is that what who caused the pillow baldness? In the animal kingdom, Hair growth is periodic, Hair continues to grow in winter, In summer, the hair stops growing and enters a resting period. Then began to lose hair, Long new hair. This phenomenon also exists in the fetus in the uterus. At 20 weeks of gestation, Hair appears on the scalp, These are unmarinated fetal hairs, At about 5 months of gestational age, The fetal hair of frontal bone and parietal bone enters the resting period from the growth period. However, the fetal hair in the occipital part did not enter this cycle. The fetal hair at the top of the forehead falls off between July and August of gestational age. Then began to grow a second batch of hair. However, the fetal hair in the occipital part remained until the labor period before entering the resting period. Then 8-12 weeks after birth began to fall off, which happened to coincide with the occipital baldness mainly appeared in 2-3 months of children. However, after the birth of the child because of more sleep time, occipital friction is inevitable, which just accelerated the occipital fetal hair fall off, so occipital baldness appeared.
However, the renewal process is not completely synchronized, As old hair falls off and new hair grows, some children’s occipital baldness is not obvious. Therefore, occipital baldness is a physiological phenomenon caused by children’s hair renewal rather than what’s disease, and occipital friction only accelerates the process of hair renewal. The above is the analysis of an article [1] published in the European Journal of Pediatrics in 2005.
Then in 2011, A Korean article [2] counted 193 children, About 20.2% of the children had bald pillows, Analysis of the causes also found no relationship with sleeping posture. On the contrary, occipital baldness is related to the mother’s delivery age, delivery mode and gestational age. The analysis of occipital baldness is higher in children whose mothers are over 35 years old, caesarean section and gestational age is over 37 weeks. This study further supports the view that occipital baldness is a physiological phenomenon rather than caused by friction.
Is pillow baldness related to calcium deficiency and rickets?
Occipital baldness is a manifestation of calcium deficiency and rickets. This statement is mainly popular in China. Looking through the latest edition of Nielsen Pediatrics, rickets chapter, I didn’t see any words related to occipital baldness. The person who tied the bell is still required to untie the bell. The viewpoint put forward by the Chinese people happens to have been studied in this field.
In 2004, doctors in Qingdao analyzed more than 400 children [3], The incidence of occipital baldness was 42.1%, The incidence rate was the highest at the age of 3 ~ month, Blood bone alkaline phosphatase (BALP) was measured in all cases, A reference index commonly used in the diagnosis of rickets), There was no significant difference in serum calcium between 40 cases in the occipital baldness group and 40 cases in the control group. Therefore, the author thinks that occipital baldness is a physiological phenomenon in children and has no obvious relationship with calcium and vitamin D intake. Of course, you may still think that the above are all the words of one family. Let’s look at the views of authoritative organizations.
Views of authoritative institutions
Healthchildren.org, a popular science website owned by the American Academy of Pediatrics, wrote about alopecia in children [4]: Almost all newborns lose part or all of their hair, This is a normal phenomenon that can be expected. Before mature hair grows out, Children’s original hair will fall off first, so hair loss in the first 6 months does not need to be paid attention to. It is very common for children to lose some hair when they dawdle on the mattress or have the habit of bumping their heads. When they move more, sit more, and no longer have the habit of grinding or bumping their heads, this hair loss will correct themselves.]
The Hong Kong Department of Health [5] wrote as follows: [The degree of thickness of children’s hair varies from person to person… The scarcity of children’s hair is not calcium deficiency, nor is it necessarily nutrition deficiency…] Unlike our treatment of pillow baldness as a disease to supplement calcium, people think that only obvious alopecia except the position of the posterior pillow needs to see a doctor.
Summary
Pillow baldness is a physiological phenomenon caused by children’s renewal rather than what disease, and has nothing to do with calcium deficiency. If it is only pillow baldness without other symptoms, there is no need to go to a hospital, let alone to have blood tests, radiographs and bone mineral density tests in what.
Unless it is a premature birth, a low birth weight child, Breast milk and formula milk can basically meet children’s calcium needs before the age of one, Normal children start to supplement 400 IU of vitamin D every day a few days after birth. After one year old, drinking more milk and other high calcium diets can prevent rickets. No additional calcium supplement is required. Even if calcium supplement is required, it is necessary to check whether the children’s daily diet is insufficient and whether there are signs of rickets before making a decision.
Excessive calcium supplement may lead to constipation in children, affect the absorption of iron and zinc, increase kidney burden, equate pillow baldness with calcium deficiency and rickets, and have already caused too many children to supplement unnecessary calcium. Calcium supplement for all is the disease.