Articles
Vitamin D, the Sun, and Cancer Provention
For decades, researchers have puzzled over why rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries and many have laid the blame on dangerous pollutants spewed out by industry.
But research into vitamin D has shown: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren't caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non existent in poor nations.
The main way humans achieve healthy levels of vitamin D is not through diet but through sun exposure. (Eliseo Fernandez/Reuters) Only 10 or 15 minutes a day in the sun — are needed to make high amounts of the vitamin.
A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn't take it, a drop so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typographical error.
Anyone practising sun avoidance has traded the benefit of a reduced risk of skin cancer — which is easy to detect and treat and seldom fatal — for an increased risk of the scary, high-body-count cancers, such as breast, prostate and colon, that appear linked to vitamin D shortages.
"Fifteen hundred Americans die every year from [skin cancers]. Fifteen hundred Americans die every day from serious cancers."
The amounts of vitamin D received from food are minuscule compared to what is needed for cancer prevention. As it is, the 400 IU dosage included in most multivitamins is too low to be an effective cancer fighter.
Vitamin D, unlike other vitamins, is turned into a hormone, making it far more biologically active.
Excerpts from: Saturday's Globe and Mail - April 28, 2007
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
