Scientific Bombshell: Sunshine Vitamin D and Cancer

"Vitamin D DEFICINECY is a MAJOR unrecognized health problem," according to Michael F. Holick, M.D.,at the Boston University Medical Center.

• Low levels of this vitamin are being linked to cancer as well as to a host of other serious ailments, including multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, influenza, osteoporosis and bone fractures among the elderly.

Researchers have long puzzled over why rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries, thinking that pollutants were to blame.

An answer to this medical puzzle, however, could be that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren't caused so much by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations.

• One of the world's top vitamin D experts, Reinhold Vieth, professor at the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto, says that the critical factor causing these higher rates of cancer and other diseases, "is more likely a lack of vitamin D."

Big New Bombshell for Simple Cancer Nutriton

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. This drop in cancer was so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typing mistake.

• Because we are used to new drugs costing a fortune, this cancer reduction seems even more remarkable because it was achieved with an over-the-counter supplement costing pennies a day.

One of the researchers who made the discovery, professor of medicine Robert Heaney of Creighton University in Nebraska, says deficiency of this vitamin is showing up in so many illnesses besides cancer that nearly all disease figures in Canada and the U.S. will need to be re-evaluated! Why?

Why Does The Sunshine Vitamin Affect So Many Diseases?

• "There is no better anti-cancer agent than activated vitamin D. It does everything you'd want," explains Dr. John Cannell, head of the Vitamin D Council, a non-profit, California-based organization.

Unlike other vitamins, D is turned into a hormone, making it far more biologically active. As well, it is "operating independently in and affecting hundreds of tissues in your body," expains Dr. Cannell.

• "We don't really know what the status of chronic disease is in the North American population," he said, "until we normalize vitamin D status."

Re-Thinking “Hide From Sunlight” Advice

• "Fifteen hundred Americans die every YEAR from skin cancers. But fifteen hundred Americans die every DAY from the serious cancers."

Those studying the vitamin say the hide-from-sunlight advice has amounted to the health equivalent of a foolish poker trade:

• Anyone practicing 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:

Big News for Cancer Prevention

• At that time, there was speculation that this vitamin had an anti-cancer effect, but more conclusive evidence has only emerged since then -- that low levels of D are contributing directly to the health disaster of unexplained chronic illnesses ranging from cancer, MS and Crohn’s, to Osteoporosis .

• Study after study has since found a protective relationship between sufficient levels of D and lower risk of cancer, including 30 of colon, 13 of breast, 26 of prostate, and 7 of ovarian cancer.

American Journal of Public Health, 10.2105/AJPH.2004.045260 Cedric F. Garland et al)

Reducing pancreatic cancer, for instance, is simply a matter of taking 450 international units (IUs)of D --- about the standard dose in most multivitamins --- according to researchers at Northwestern and Harvard universities who found a reduced the risk of pancreatic cancer by 43 per cent with this supplement.

The evidence is mounting that supplementation can reduce cancer -- all types of cancer -- at low cost, with few or no adverse effects.

Vitamin D Links

Scientific Bombshell: Sunshine Vitamin, Cancer and Disease Prevention