Vitamin D from Tanning Beds

Just a few minutes in a tanning bed stimulates up to 5,000 IU of Vitamin D

The sun is a good thing. Dr. Michael Holick says that ultraviolet radiation helps the body produce Vitamin D.

The reason is that vitamin D increasingly seems important for preventing and even treating many types of cancer.

In the last three months alone, four separate studies found it helped protect against lymphoma and cancers of the prostate, lung and, ironically, the skin. The strongest evidence is for colon cancer.

No one is suggesting that people fry on a beach. But many scientists believe that “safe sun” — 15 minutes or so a few times a week without sunscreen — is not only possible but helpful to health.

One is Dr. Edward Giovannucci, a Harvard University professor of medicine and nutrition who laid out his case in a keynote lecture at a recent American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Anaheim, Calif.

His research suggests that vitamin D might help prevent 30 deaths for each one caused by skin cancer.

Sun’s rays make summer babies taller and stronger, study claims

Mothers who are pregnant in the summer have taller and stronger-boned babies because they benefit from sun’s vitamin-boosting rays, a new study has found.

Expectant mothers lucky enough to be blooming in the hot months should get enough sun to boost their vitamin D levels just by walking around outside or even sunbathing Photo: GETTY

Those born in the late summer and early autumn are around half a centimetre taller and have wider bones than their peers born in winter and spring, an 18 year project found.

Expectant mothers lucky enough to be blooming in the hot months should get enough sun to boost their vitamin D levels just by walking around outside or even sunbathing.

Sun exposure cancer warnings ‘lead to Vitamin D deficiencies’

Public health warnings about skin cancer have led to a rise in Vitamin D deficiency through lack of sunlight, according to a controversial study into the effects of ultraviolet exposure.

Vitamin D, produced by the body in response to sunlight, helps protect against cancer Photo: GETTYBut now, a controversial new study has blamed the same public health messages for causing growing numbers of people to suffer from vitamin D deficiency, because they are failing to get enough sunlight on their skin.

Vitamin D is produced by the body in response to exposure from ultraviolet radiation from natural sunlight. It helps protect against cancer and is also thought to be important in helping to prevent bone disease such as osteoporosis, as well as autoimmune diseases, asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, Parkinson’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis.

Related Articles

• Lack of sunshine not to blame for Seasonal Affective Disorder

• Vitamin D can help people live longer says study

• Genetic defect could trigger skin cancer

• Cancer patients with high levels of vitamin D more likely to survive

• Women ’should take vitamin D in pregnancy to stave off rickets’

The researchers are now calling for guidelines on sunlight exposure to be reviewed to ensure people receive enough vitamin D.

Dr Veronique Bataille, who led the study, said: “There has been so much effort put into telling people about the damaging effects of ultraviolet light from sunshine, many now take extreme measures to ensure they don’t get exposure by wearing moisturisers with factor 15 all year round.

“We don’t want to say that sunbathing is healthy as there is clearly a risk, but people do need a bit of sunshine to stay healthy.”

Dr Bataille and her colleagues measured vitamin D levels in the blood of 1,414 white women in the UK and compared this to their skin type and details about the number of foreign holidays, sunbed use and the number of times they had been sunburnt.

They found that those with the fairest skin, who usually have red or blonde hair, had the lowest levels of vitamin D.

Conventional scientific thinking suggests this should not be the case.

People with greater levels of melanin – which is the pigment which causes darker colour in skin – make less vitamin D and there is evidence to show that those with Asian and Afro-Caribbean backgrounds have trouble producing the vitamin.

Dr Bataille, a consultant dermatologist at Hemel Hempstead General Hospital and a researcher at Kings College London, also found that those with fair skin also had the lowest levels of sun exposure through the number of holidays they had abroad and sunbed use.

The researchers concluded that people with fair skin actively avoided sun exposure more, due to their increased sensitivity and so produced less vitamin D. They added, however, there may also be a genetic element that means people with fair skin metabolise vitamin D differently.

The findings come after another study by Dr Bataille’s group that showed sunlight may not be the main cause of melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer. Instead they concluded that the number of moles on the skin was a better indicator of risk.

“The advice on sun exposure needs to be reviewed,” said Dr Bataille. “It is potentially harmful if people are getting the message that they should completely avoid the sun. The advice needs to be better tailored to the differences in skin type and sun levels around the country.”

Experts claim that excessive avoidance of the sun has stemmed from confusing official guidance on sun exposure which has unduly raised fears about the risk of being outside in the sunshine.

Advice on the Health Protection Agency’s website states that people should limit unprotected personal exposure to solar radiation, particularly during the four hours around midday, even in the UK. It even warns that sunburn can occur when in the shade or when cloudy.

Cancer Research UK used to advice that people stayed in the shade between 11am and 3pm, the time when the sun is at its hottest and the best time for making vitamin D according to experts. They recently changed their advice to “spend time in the shade between 11am and 3pm” and “aim to cover up”.

Vitamin D can be obtained from food, including oily fish and eggs, but it is harder for the body to obtain enough from these sources and consumption of these products in the UK has dramatically declined.

Dr Bataille believes people can make enough vitamin D from just 15 minutes exposure to sunlight while wearing a T-shirt, but added that this would need to be increased for those with dark skin or during the winter months when sunlight is lower.

According to a separate recent study at University College London, 20 per cent of women and 12 per cent of men are now classed as being clinically vitamin D deficient, while levels of the vitamin in nearly two thirds of women and 57 per cent of men are “insufficient”.

Dr Vasant Hirani, who led the study, added: “The advice on sun exposure does need to be clarified.”

The British Association of Dermatologists has recently issued guidance with the National Osteoporosis Society that recommends people get 15 to 20 minutes of sun exposure a day.

Nina Goad, from the Association, said she doubted public health messages were responsible for causing vitamin D deficiency.

“Vitamin D deficiency is likely to be due to our lifestyles meaning we spend a lot of time indoors, to a lack of vitamin D in our diets, and to our climate meaning we have limited sun exposure for much of the year,” she added.

A spokesman for the Health Protection Agency said: “We are not saying that people should avoid all sunlight. Indeed a small amount can help to maintain vitamin D levels.

“Sunbathing incurs the potential hazard without adding to vitamin D levels.”

Let the Sun Shine In (Especially When Pregnant)

Are you shorter than you had hoped or expected to be? Well, although genes play a large role in a person’s final adult height, new research suggests that the amount of sunlight that a woman is exposed to during her pregnancy may have a lot to do with it as well.

Researchers note that: Several recent studies have reported a causal association between stature and month of birth. Perinatal exposure to sunlight has been suggested as the principal factor underlying this relationship, although the mechanisms involved remain a matter of debate.

They analyzed the association of perinatal sunlight exposure to birth size and height at regular intervals all the way up to age 26.

“The findings confirmed that pre-natal sunlight is one of the most significant determinants of height,” conclude the researchers, although they are unsure of the trimester of greatest influence.

Early Human Development November 1, 2000; 60: 35-42

Pre-Birth Vitamin D Levels Determine Your Health for Life

by Kerri Knox, RN, citizen journalist

In the nature versus nurture debate, scientists often talk about genetics versus environmental factors in health. One environmental factor that has been getting a lot of attention lately is Vitamin D- and with good reason. Vitamin D is turning out to be a major influence in heart disease, cancer, diabetes and many other health problems.

But Vitamin D is even MORE vital than was previously thought. New research is showing that even our Pre-Birth vitamin d levels are an important determinant of our future health. When we speak of disease and health, we often think that people who are healthy are ‘lucky’ and people who are unhealthy as ‘unlucky’. But the debate is beginning to tip towards the fact that environmental factors influence genetics more than we can ever imagine, and luck of the genes has less to do with health than environmental factors.

Vitamin D as an environmental factor in our health is not debated, only HOW MUCH of a factor in our health is what is debated.

“Careful attention to maternal vitamin D status could translate into diverse improvements in health outcomes for the following generation”

Professor John McGrath Queensland Centre for Schizophrenia Research, Wolston Park Hospital, Wacol, Queensland, Australia

Vitamin D deficiency has long been associated with osteoporosis, but most of us think of osteoporosis as starting in older age. Since women are particularly affected, it’s often that vitamin d and calcium supplementation is begun after menopause to help prevent the associated fractures of osteoporosis.

But women in their pre-reproductive and reproductive years need to be supplemented too, less for themselves, but more for the health of their offspring.

Several studies have shown that pre-birth vitamin d levels can determine bone mass and risk of fracture as an adult! Disturbingly, vitamin d deficiency is rampant among pregnant women and it could be having devastating consequences on the youngest generations.

“Vitamin D supplementation of pregnant women, especially during winter months, could lead to long-lasting reductions in the risk of osteoporotic fracture in their offspring.”

‘Maternal vitamin D status during pregnancy and childhood bone mass at age 9 years: a longitudinal study’

Bone strength isn’t the only health issue that seems to be already determined by a mother’s intake of vitamin D, our mental health is also affected. Schizophrenia has long been associated with vitamin d levels due to its odd characteristic of occurring more frequently in those born in winter or early spring.

This association is not just coincidental; vitamin D levels in the womb affect the health of the baby, even much later in life. Even a child’s lungs are affected by a mother’s vitamin D levels. Asthma, a common childhood problem, has been linked to vitamin D deficiency in mothers. The Journal ‘Clinical and Experimental Allergy’ published an article entitled, ‘Childhood asthma is a fat-soluble vitamin deficiency disease.’ which outlines this strong link between vitamin D and childhood asthma.

Low Levels of Vitamin D Tied to Numerous Health Ailments, Studies Find

Men with low vitamin D levels are more likely to suffer heart attacks than men with healthy levels of the vitamin, according to a study released this week.

The finding, interesting on its own, is also the latest drop in what’s become a steady stream of news about the health effects of vitamin D — the sunlight-produced vitamin once known mainly for helping to prevent the bone disease rickets in children.

A study released in May, for example, found that women with breast cancer who had low vitamin D levels at the time of their diagnosis were 73 percent more likely to die from the disease, and nearly twice as likely to have it recur.

And over the past few years, researchers have linked low vitamin D levels to prostate cancer, colon cancer, multiple sclerosis, influenza and chronic muscle pain, among other maladies. How can one vitamin be linked to so many disparate diseases?

“Activated vitamin D is probably the oldest hormone on earth, phytoplankton that have existed for 750 million years [contain] it,” said vitamin D research Michael Holick, of Boston University. “Every cell and tissue in our body has a vitamin D receptor, and all use it for different purposes.”

Vitamin D is found in small amounts in a few foods, including fatty fish like salmon, as well as in milk and eggs. But mainly the human body produces its own vitamin D, triggered when the UVB rays in sunlight hit the skin.

New study finds vitamin D can be lifesaver for cancer patients

Acedemic Fraud

IARC Report Declaring UV “Carcinogenic to Humans” ignored conflicting information JACKSON, Mich. (July 29) –

QUICK ANSWERS:

1. This list means nothing more than SUNBURN is harmful. There’s no research suggesting that non-burning exposure is harmful.

2. Many of the parties promoting this list have ties to the $35 billion sunscreen industry, which wants you to over-use their product.

3. Saying that ultraviolet light causes skin cancer and therefore should be avoided is just like saying water causes drowning and therefore should be avoided.

You need water in order to live and survive – just as you need ultraviolet light in order to live and survive.

4. By including UV light on a list of carcinogens without making the statement clear that overexposure, and not mere exposure, is the danger, the makers of this list have made a glaring and fraudulent omission.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer ignored conflicting information in its classification of ultraviolet light as ‘carcinogenic to humans’ – a one-dimensional conclusion that benefits the $35 billion sunscreen industry, which has strong financial ties to most of the dermatology community today, and forgets the fact that humans need UV light to live.

“If a pharmaceutical company sold you sunshine, we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now,” International Smart Tan Network Vice President Joseph Levy said. “Instead, we are dealing with a report that now has the press comparing Mother Nature’s most important creation – sunlight – to arsenic and mustard gas. It’s ludicrous.” “Saying that UV exposure is harmful and should be avoided is as wrong as saying that water causes drowning, and therefore we should avoid water.”

No data has ever been presented suggesting that UV exposure in a non-burning fashion is a significant risk factor for any skin damage, nor has a mechanism been established whereby UV causes melanoma, which is more common in indoor workers than in outdoor workers and which occurs most commonly on parts of the body that don’t get regular UV exposure. IARC cited its own report alleging “risk of skin melanoma is increased by 75 per cent when people started using tanning beds before age 30.” Ignored in this statement is confounding information pointing out that: * IARC’s analysis was flawed. When the palest individuals who cannot tan (called Skin Type I – people who are not allowed to tan in North American tanning facilities) were removed from the IARC data set, there was no increase in risk for the group being studied. *

In fact, 18 of 22 studies on this topic show no statistically signficant relationship between indoor tanning and melanoma – including the largest and most recent study. “Ignoring conflicting information in the publication of a report and elevating your conclusion without bringing confounding information to light constitutes academic fraud,” Levy said. “This report presents no new data, ignores confounding information and attempts to reach a new conclusion with no new information. While it remains prudent for individuals to avoid sunburn, it should be noted that there is NO RESEARCH suggesting that non-burning UV exposure is a significant risk factor for humans. None.” Levy continued, “Further, it is clearer now more than ever that humans NEED regular UV exposure as the only true natural way to make vitamin D. It is called ‘The Sunshine Vitamin’ for a reason: You produce more vitamin D by getting a tan in a non-burning fashion than you would from drinking 100 glasses of whole milk.

We are very concerned that the politics of profit-motivated anti-UV groups are misrepresenting the balanced message about sunlight that a true, independent evaluation of the science supports. The U.S. government in 2000 placed ultraviolet light on the federal government’s list of known human carcinogens. But the criteria to be labeled a carcinogen does not take into account the dosage of a substance required to increase risk – which means that the listing only indicts sunburn, not non-burning exposure.

According to that report, “The Report does not present quantitative assessments of carcinogenic risk. Listing of substances in the Report, therefore, does not establish that such substances present carcinogenic risks to individuals in their daily lives.”

This exclusion makes this listing meaningless. In doing so, ultraviolet light became the first item on that list that humans need to live and would die if they didn’t receive.

The Great Debate

Written by Dr.Gerald Lemole

HEALTH

When Earl came to see us at the Center for Integrative Health, he was ashen, gray and wheezing. After an extensive interview, we put him on a regimen for his symptoms. A week into his treatment he felt better but when his studies came back he was seen to have a severe Vitamin D deficiency and was immediately put on 5,000 IU daily of Vitamin D3. After one week, Earl’s wife called to report that not only had his wheezing stopped, the same receptionist didn’t recognize him and had to ask him his name because she no longer heard “Darth Vadar!” entering the suite.

Vitamin D or calciferol, actually a prohormone made from cholesterol, was until recently thought only to be involved in healthy bone production and maintenance. However, newer research has shown it to be necessary for balance, muscle and tendon health, immunity and prevention of infection, heart disease and cancer.

Most foods with the exception of fatty fish are poor sources of Vitamin D. Fortified food such as milk, soy products and cereal grains are enriched with synthetic Vitamin D2, which has to be metabolized to the active form of the vitamin. However, each quart of milk is fortified with only 100 IU of Vitamin D2 making the possibility of meeting the daily requirements from food intake highly unlikely. Most Vitamin D comes from the action of sunlight on the cholesterol in the skin. The sunlight’s ultraviolet B rays’ penetrating the skin, convert the cholesterol to the prohormone which is then transformed into the active form. The amount of Vitamin D formed in the skin depends on the latitude, pigmentation, age and health of the individual.

Mother’s sun exposure may affect kids’ bone growth

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Women who get some sun during the last trimester of pregnancy may have children with stronger bones, a new study suggests.

UK researchers found that among nearly 7,000 10-year-olds they assessed, those whose mothers were in their last trimester during sunny months tended to have larger bones.

The connection, the researchers say, is presumably explained by vitamin D, which is synthesized in the skin after sun exposure and plays a key role in bone health.

It’s possible that mothers’ vitamin D levels late in pregnancy have lasting effects on their children’s later bone development, the researchers report in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

No one is recommending that pregnant women bask in the sun. Too much UV exposure is a known risk factor for skin cancer.

However, the findings do offer “further justification for strategies intended to improve maternal vitamin D status to optimize skeletal health the child,” write researchers Adrian Sayers and Jonathan H. Tobias of the University of Bristol.

Milk and breakfast cereals fortified with vitamin D are among the main food sources of the vitamin. Few foods naturally contain vitamin D, though some fish, like salmon, mackerel and tuna, contain substantial amounts.

Currently, the official recommendation for vitamin D during pregnancy is 200 IU per day, though researchers are still trying to determine what the optimal intake is. A number of studies have suggested that vitamin D deficiency is common in pregnant women.

These latest findings are based on 6,995 British children who underwent bone scans as part of a long-term health study. The researchers used local meteorological data to estimate the mothers’ UV exposure during their last trimester.

In general, the study found, children whose mothers had greater sun exposure tended to have larger bones than those whose mothers had less sun exposure.

Bone mass acquired earlier in life is important to fracture risk in later years. If the benefits seen in this study persist into adulthood, Sayers and Tobias note, mothers’ vitamin D levels during pregnancy might affect their children’s bone health into old age.

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, March 2009.

Make every day a D-day by stocking up on all the sunshine vitamin your body needs

In this changeable weather it’s good to get outside and catch a few rays when the sun does shine.

It’s the best way for our bodies to produce the Vitamin D we need.

Here we explain how to make sure you are getting enough.

It is a fat-soluble vitamin, which means you do not need it every day as it can be stored by the body. It is present in certain foods and added to others, but is most commonly made by the body when ultraviolet rays from the sun hit your skin. Without sufficient Vitamin D, your body cannot absorb calcium.

It plays a vital role in keeping bones and teeth healthy. It assists with the transmission of nerves, and with blood clotting, and helps regulate the heart beat. Studies have also suggested it may play a role in reducing the risk of certain cancers, including breast, colon and prostate.

Soaking up the rays: Sunlight is the best way to get your Vitamin D

Where does it come from?

There are two ways the body gets Vitamin D. The best is from sunlight as the body automatically regulates how much it makes when the sun’s ultraviolet rays trigger Vitamin D synthesis.

The amount produced by the skin in a set time depends on age and skin type – pale, younger skin produces Vitamin D fastest. Dietary Vitamin D – sources include cod liver oil, oily fish, liver, eggs and fortified foods such as cereals, margarine and powdered milk – or supplements are also an option.
But Catherine Collins, chief dietician at St George’s Hospital, London, warns: ‘It’s almost impossible to get sufficient Vitamin D from the diet. A person would have to drink ten tall glasses of Vitamin D-fortified milk each day just to get the minimum levels. Sunlight exposure really is the best way.’

For those aged under 70 with fair skins, five to ten minutes of casual exposure – just face and arms –between 11am and 3pm when the sun is strongest produces about 250mcg of Vitamin D. The same amount is produced by darker skins in about 20 minutes.

What is Vitamin D?

‘Just sitting by a window isn’t enough,’ says Collins.

‘You have to be exposed to the kind of strong sunlight we get between May and September that would make your skin tingle if you stayed in it for more that 15 minutes.

‘We tell parents they need to get their kids out into the sun at least twice a week.’

How much do I need?

10mcg is the minimum recommended daily amount. Most of us will get enough from normal exposure to the sun and diet.

If I soak up the sun and get my Vitamin D quota, how long will my body store it?

Any excess is stored indefinitely in the fatty tissue and used by the body as needed.

Some studies have found it will take about two months for the body to become deficient.

Will sunscreen block out Vitamin D?

Sunscreens with a protection factor of eight or more block the UV rays that create Vitamin D and reduce production by up to 95 per cent.

‘Of course, you should always use a sunblock if you’re going to be out in the sun for more than 15 minutes,’ says Collins.

What happens if I don’t get enough?

Deficiency usually arises when inadequate sunlight exposure is coupled with liver or kidney disorders that limit metabolism of the vitamin.

It leads to the bone softening diseases – rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults – and possibly contributes to osteoporosis.

Muscle and bone weakness, and pain, can occur. In rare cases, supplements can be taken, but only under medical supervision as too much can lead to kidney failure.

‘No one should be deficient, unless they have specific medical problems,’ says Collins.

‘There’s nothing easier, and more pleasant, than getting out into the sun during the summer months to get your daily dose.’

WHERE TO FIND VITAMIN D
Cod liver oil, oily fish such as mackerel and salmon, liver, eggs and fortified foods such as cereals, margarine and powdered milk.

link

Sunny D needed for healthy babies

The vast majority of pregnant women in Ireland have low vitamin D levels, according to new research.

Scientists at University College Cork said this deficiency has implications for healthy growth and development in the child’s early life.

Many of us in this country are low in vitamin D because of the climate and long winter.

Severe vitamin D deficiency causes poor development of the bones in children and softening of the bones in adults.

Without vitamin D, calcium cannot be absorbed in the body, slowing bone growth and development.

Pregnant women need more calcium because the baby relies on its mother for its vitamin D stores. Good sources include fatty fish, fortified milks, cereals, baked beans, eggs, low-fat yogurt and supplements.

But the scientists stress that sunlight remains a critical source.

Vitamin D is made by the action of the sun on our skin therefore sunlight, seasons and skin colour are key factors that determine our vitamin D levels.

If you are pregnant or breastfeeding make use of the sunnier weather and try to get out for at least 20 minutes a day — but be mindful of skin cancer and ensure you use a sunscreen if exposed for long periods.

UCC scientists Mairead Kiely and her team are now looking at the potential of vitamin D as an ingredient in functional beverages for breast-feeding mothers.

Tanning is associated with optimal vitamin D status

Tanning is associated with optimal vitamin D status (serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentration) and higher bone mineral density^1,2,3

Vin Tangpricha, Adrian Turner, Catherine Spina, Sheila Decastro, Tai C Chen and Michael F Holick

¹ From the Vitamin D, Skin and Bone Research Laboratory (AT, CS, SD, TCC, and MFH) and the Section of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Nutrition (AT, KS, SD, TCC, and MFH), Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, and the Section of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Lipids and the Department of Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta (VT)

Background: Vitamin D is made in the skin on exposure to solar radiation, and it is necessary to optimal skeletal health. Subjects who use a tanning bed that emits ultraviolet B radiation (290–315 nm) are likely to have higher 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations than do subjects who do not regularly use a tanning bed.

Objective: The first objective of this study was to ascertain whether subjects who regularly use a tanning bed have higher 25(OH)D concentrations than do subjects who do not use a tanning bed. The second objective was to ascertain whether higher 25(OH)D concentrations correlated positively with bone mineral density.

Design: This cross-sectional analysis examined 50 subjects who used a tanning bed at least once a week and 106 control subjects. Each subject gave a blood specimen for measurement of serum 25(OH)D and parathyroid hormone concentrations. Each subject underwent bone mineral density testing of the hip and spine.

Results: Subjects who used a tanning bed had serum 25(OH)D concentrations 90% higher than those of control subjects (115.5 ± 8.0 and 60.3 ± 3.0 nmol/L, respectively; P < 0.001). Subjects who used a tanning bed had parathyroid hormone concentrations 18% lower than those of control subjects (21.4 ± 1.0 and 25.3 ± 0.8 pg/mL, respectively; P = 0.01). Tanners had significantly higher BMD and z scores at the total hip than did nontanners.

Conclusion: The regular use of a tanning bed that emits vitamin D–producing ultraviolet radiation is associated with higher 25(OH)D concentrations and thus may have a benefit for the skeleton.

Key Words: Vitamin D deficiency • secondary hyperparathyroidism • vitamin D • bone mineral density • bone mineral content • tanning

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Article HERE

Sun lamps help unborn babies beat osteoporosis

A major British newspaper this week published a story under the headline, “Sun lamps help unborn babies beat osteoporosis” — further evidence that the value of regular UV exposure is getting through to the press as part of the unfolding vitamin D story.

“Women due to give birth in winter should use a sun lamp during the final three months of pregnancy to protect their child from osteoporosis in later life, doctors have suggested,” Britain’s Sunday Times reported April 27. “They made their recommendation as research found that children born to mothers whose final three months of pregnancy included a summer month were 40% less likely to suffer the bone-wasting condition in adult-hood. A mother’s exposure to sunlight in that final period ensures the developing baby receives enough vitamin D to form strong bones.”

The Times quoted Dr. Marwan Bukhari, a rheumatologist in Lancaster who authored the study, as saying, “You only get good sunlight [when you make vitamin D] between May and September in this country. Pregnant women should have vitamin D supplements or should have lots of good sunshine in somewhere like north Africa or the southern Mediterranean [in winter].”

According to The Times, “Bukhari and colleagues studied 17,000 patients, mostly women and 95% of whom were white. They had all had scans carried out at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary between 1992 and 2004. … They found that patients under 50 were 40% less likely to have developed osteoporosis if their mother’s last trimester of pregnancy included a summer month.”

The study comes on the heels of heightened recommendations for vitamin D in North America for expectant mothers. The Canadian Pediatric Society this year recommended that expectant mothers get 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily to be able to pass any vitamin D onto children prenatally or while nursing. That’s 10 times the current government vitamin D recommendations, and some vitamin D experts have suggested the number should be as high as 6,400 IU daily.

Older patients were 20%-40% less likely to have osteoporosis if their mothers’ late stages of pregnancy were in the summer.

Doctors suggest that women whose last trimester of pregnancy does not fall between May and September should consider taking a holiday in the Mediterranean.

As flying is not advised in the late stages of pregnancy, however, they suggest that women may need to settle for a sun lamp or vitamin D supplements.

Bukhari added: “Sun lamps are an option. It needs to be the right kind of sun lamp to convert fat under the skin to vitamin D.”

Michael Holick, professor of medicine at Boston University in America, said a lack of vitamin D, caused by overzealous avoidance of the sun, was leading to thousands of unnecessary cancer deaths each year and increasing vulnerability to rickets.

“The vitamin D levels now being suggested are consistent only with levels one could get naturally through UVB exposure,” Smart Tan Vice President Joseph Levy said. “There is no way to get there naturally through diet, and the safe upper limit for vitamin D supplements — which, unlike sun exposure, are linked to the possibility of toxic overdose reactions – is still only 2,000 units a day. It is becoming more and more obvious that regular UV exposure isthe only real natural and intended pathway for natural vitamin D production and that high-dose supplements are, at best, a good second option.”

The North American tanning community generally suggests that pregnant women consult a physician before tanning during a pregnancy. UV exposure does not pose any threat to the fetus — it does not penetrate beyond the mother’s skin, contrary to urban legend, but any excessive heat and discomfort can be an issue for the mother.

Exposure position in the third trimester of a pregnancy can also be an issue. A pregnant woman laying on her back can put extra pressure on her spine.

“The study will revive the debate over whether excessive caution about exposure to sunshine is creating other health problems,” The Times reported.

To read The Times’ story click here.

CDC Finds 97% of Americans Contaminated by Sunscreens

by Ellen Holder (NaturalNews)

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) released a new study showing that nearly all Americans are contaminated with oxybenzone, a widely-used sunscreen ingredient.

This chemical so far has been linked to allergies, hormone disruption, and cell damage, as well as low birth weight in baby girls whose mothers are exposed during pregnancy.

Oxybenzone is also a penetration enhancer, a chemical that helps other chemicals penetrate the skin. So where has the FDA been on this?

Apparently in the back pocket of the sunscreen industry, The Food and Drug Administration, again, has failed in its duty to protect the public from toxic chemicals like oxybenzone.

Caving to the industry lobbyists, the agency has delayed final sunscreen safety standards for nearly 30 years. FDA issued a new draft of the standards last October under pressure from Environmental Working Group (EWG), but continues to delay finalizing them because of pressure from the industry.

In their online cosmetic safety database, EWG identifies nearly 600 sunscreens sold in the U.S. that contain oxybenzone, including leading brand names like Hawaiian Tropic, Coppertone, and Banana Boat, and many facial moisturizers as well.

On top of that, they also show many of these so-called sunscreens offer inadequate protection from the sun. In fact, they found that sunlight also causes oxybenzone to form free radical chemicals that may be linked to cell damage, which is the exact opposite reason many women mistakenly use the sunscreen – to protect them from damaging free radicals which lead to premature aging!

And interestingly, as sunscreen sales have risen, so has the rate of skin cancers. Go figure.

We’ve been pressured to believe that the sun is our enemy and we need to slather on loads of sunscreen to protect ourselves, when in actuality we need sunlight for our bodies to manufacture vitamin D.

For those of us who are either fair skinned or just plain vain and worry about age spots and wrinkles, limiting our unprotected sun exposure to 20 minutes a day is adequate for our daily dose of vitamin D.

For more fun in the sun, overexposure can be avoided by using a natural or organic sunscreen with a reflective barrier like zinc, instead of chemical sunscreens. Even a small amount of shea butter rubbed into the skin daily offers a bit of natural UV protection.

Whatever you do, don’t wait for the FDA to help you in your choice. Based on their history in this category, it could be another 30 years before safety standards are improved.

References:
1. Environmental Health Perspectives: Concentrations of the Sunscreen Agent, Benzophenone-3, in Residents of the United States: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003–2004
http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2008/1126…

2. Environmental Working Group: Comments from EWG on the U.S. FDA’s Proposed Amendment of Final Monograph for Sunscreens
http://www.ewg.org/node/25705

3. Environmental Working Group: Americans Carry ‘Body Burden’ of Toxic Sunscreen Chemical
http://www.ewg.org/node/26212

Summer Fitness!

by Scott Eric Barrett

When summer arrives we naturally gravitate toward the beaches, lakes and parks for outdoor activities. For most, this rite of passage usually involves packing away sweaters, parkas and boots and donning shorts, swimwear and sandals.

Wearing less clothing allows our bodies to soak up more healthy rays of sunlight; however, many people who don’t exercise or live healthy lifestyles are reluctant to shed their clothes and fully enjoy summer. Unfortunately, many out-of-shape people won’t even leave the house during summer.

Well, those days are over. Get with the program and set a course for a healthy, fitness- and sun-filled summer.

An Age-Old Friendship

Copernicus declared the sun the center of our universe more than 400 years ago. Throughout history, the human race has enjoyed a special relationship with the sun. Primitive societies in every continent worshiped it as a god for providing warmth and helping crops grow. Hippocrates and Pythagoras wrote extensively on the use of sunlight in the processes of healing. The Romans made use of the sun in training their gladiators, believing the rays strengthened and enlarged their muscles.

Greek physician Antyllus wrote the first positive review for sunbathing more than 2,000 years ago: “Persons expose themselves to the sun, some cover themselves with oil and others do not; some lie down and some are seated, while others stand or play. Those who lie down, rest on sand or a cushion. This sunlight exposure prevents an increase in body weight and strengthens the muscles. It makes fat disappear. It reduces, as well, hydropic swelling.”

Writing in modern times, Dr. Phil Maffetone, chairman and CEO of the Maffetone Report, an alternative health newsletter, says there’s nothing like a clear sunny day, whether it’s spring, summer, fall or winter.

“A bright sunny day makes people feel more healthy,” he says. “Too often we hear about how the sun is bad. The only time the sun is bad for us is when our bodies aren’t healthy enough to benefit from it or when we abuse it. Our skin actually was made for the sun.”

The catchword for taking advantage of the sun’s health benefits is moderation. When ultraviolet rays from the sun come in contact with ergosterol, a fluid found just under the skin, they convert it to vitamin D, which is absorbed into the bloodstream. Studies suggest sunshine may help with depression and ease anxiety.

Get your Kit Off, Get in the Sun and Live Longer.

Well, well, well! Yet another spectacular u-turn by the medical/scientific community. Yes folks, hang on to your hats, it now seems that they’ve finally come to realise that . . . drumroll . . . SUNSHINE IS GOOD FOR YOU!

Why the sudden change of heart?

What’s made them go from ‘cover up and stay out of the sun between the hours of 4am and 11pm’ to ‘get your kit off and enjoy a bit of sunbathing whenever you can’?

Ok, that’s not what they’re really saying but it does seem that the sun has been given a new lease of life. It has been turned miraculously from big bad cancer-causing bringer-of-death to all-encompassing ailment-curing giver-of-life.

Two very extreme extremes. Now, no-one can deny that over-exposure to the midday sun can damage your skin and also may cause skin cancers or melanomas. But it seems the medical profession now believes that under-exposure to sunlight can have just as disastrous consequences.

So which point of view is correct?

I have never subscribed to the ’stay out of the sun or die’ kind of scaremongering. The one basic fact that nobody can argue with is that ALL life on this planet depends on it. If the sun went out EVERYTHING on earth would die. Period.

So don’t you think that in the few thousand years of human habitation of this planet we might just have come to harness, rely on and adapt to it’s life-giving properties?

And that to try to hide from it or ignore its existence is kind of stupid? I’ve lived in southern Spain for the last four years so I know a thing or two about sunshine. Let me give you a little example of my personal experience of it.

Cell Defenses and the Sunshine Vitamin

Scientific American Magazine – January 7, 2008

Scientists now recognize that vitamin D does much more than build strong bones and that many people are not getting enough of it. Is widespread D deficiency contributing to major illnesses?

By Luz E. Tavera-Mendoza and John H. White

It was called the sunshine cure, and in the early 20th century, before the era of antibiotics, it was the only effective therapy for tuberculosis known. No one knew why it worked, just that TB patients sent to rest in sunny locales were often restored to health. The same “treatment” had been discovered in 1822 for another historic scourge, rickets—a deforming childhood condition caused by an inability to make hardened bone. Rickets had been on the rise in 18th- and 19th-century Europe, coinciding with industrialization and the movement of people from the countryside to the polluted cities, when a Warsaw doctor observed that the problem was relatively rare in rural Polish children. He began experimenting with city children and found that he could cure their rickets with exposure to sunshine alone.

Preventing Cancer through Sun Exposure

In Sub Tropical Environments You Can Be Vitamin D Deficient “If you live in one of these perpetually sunny environments but work the entire week indoors and don’t make a conscious effort to go outside during the weekends you will become vitamin D deficient.” Don’t fear the sunshine. Jergens^® Skincare in support of The Skin Cancer Foundation announces “Glow in the Dark,” a campaign to give up bad tanning habits in favor of alternatives. What is an alternative according to the maker of Jergens? No sun at all, or maybe the new topical drug version sure to be called “Nosunitol.” Goodbye Vitamin D, hello breast cancer. Hello skin cancer. They reference this sobering statistic:

“Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States. More than 1 million skin cancers are diagnosed annually.“

What they do not tell you is that more skin cancers are caused by a lack of sun exposure rather than too much. Without adequate Vitamin D and Selenium, you can practically guarantee a dangerous chronic disease of degradation. Unfortunately, most money directed at skin cancer research places undue focus on chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, as if skin cancer is a deficiency of anyone of those things. Our bodies are designed to deal with normal free radical damage caused by occasional overexposure to sunlight, but an apparent inability to look at nutritional deficiencies has condemned one million unsuspecting Americans to skin cancer every year. Healthy sun exposure and food grown selenium could prevent hundreds of thousands of them without wasting a dollar more on dermatological drug research. The truth only hurts drug companies and the politicians that they have lobbied.

You needn’t fear the sun. Learn about the UV Advantage by going here: http://www.uvadvantage.org/.

Lack Of Sunlight May Increase Lung Cancer Risk

ScienceDaily (Dec. 23, 2007) — Lack of sunlight may increase the risk of lung cancer, suggests a study of rates of the disease in over 100 countries. Lung cancer kills over a million people every year around the globe.

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See also:

Health & Medicine

• Lung Cancer
• Lung Disease
• Diseases and Conditions
• Mesothelioma
• Breast Cancer
• Cancer

Reference

• Vitamin D
• Sunburn
• Lung cancer
• Metastasis

The researchers looked at the association between latitude, exposure to ultraviolet B (UVB) light, and rates of lung cancer according to age in 111 countries across several continents.

They took account of the amount of cloud cover and aerosol use, both of which absorb UVB light, and cigarette smoking, the primary cause of lung cancer

International databases, including those of the World Health Organization, and national health statistics were used.

Smoking was most strongly associated with lung cancer rates, accounting for between 75% and 85% of the cases.

But exposure to sunlight, especially UVB light, the principal source of vitamin D for the body, also seemed to have an impact, the findings showed.

The amount of UVB light increases with proximity to the equator. And the analyses showed that lung cancer rates were highest in those countries furthest away from the equator and lowest in those nearest.

Higher cloud cover and airborne aerosol levels were also associated with higher rates of the disease.

In men, the prevalence of smoking was associated with higher lung cancer rates, while greater exposure to UVB light was associated with lower rates.

Among women, cigarette smoking, total cloud cover, and airborne aerosols were associated with higher rates of lung cancer, while greater exposure to UVB light was associated with lower rates.

The associations for a protective role for UVB light persisted after adjusting for smoking.

The link between cancer and sunlight is chemically plausible, say the authors, because laboratory research has shown that vitamin D can halt tumour growth by promoting the factors responsible for cell death in the body.

“Although cigarette smoking is the main cause of lung cancer, greater UVB exposure may reduce the incidence of the disease,” they conclude.

Journal reference: Could ultraviolet B irradiance and vitamin D be associated with lower incidence rates of lung cancer? J Epidemiol Community Health 2007; 62: 69-74.

Adapted from materials provided by British Medical Journal, via Newswise.

A few more Vitamin D Studies

Related Stories

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Deficiency In Exposure To Sunlight Linked To Ovarian Cancer (Nov. 2, 2006) — Using newly available data on worldwide cancer incidence, researchers at the Moores Cancer Center at UCSD have shown a clear association between deficiency in exposure to sunlight, specifically …  > read more

Lack Of Sunlight May Increase Lung Cancer Risk (Dec. 23, 2007) — Lack of sunlight may increase the risk of lung cancer, suggests a study of rates of the disease in over 100 countries. Lung cancer kills over a million people every year around the globe. The …  > read more

Deficiency In Exposure To Sunlight Linked To Endometrial Cancer (Nov. 16, 2007) — Using newly available data on worldwide cancer incidence, researchers have shown a clear association between deficiency in exposure to sunlight, specifically ultraviolet B, and endometrial …  > read more

More Sun Exposure May Be Good For Some People (Jan. 8, 2008) — A new study suggests that the benefits of moderately increased exposure to sunlight — namely the production of vitamin D, which protects against the lethal effects of many forms of cancer and other …  > read more

Vitamin D Backed For Cancer Prevention In Two New Studies (Feb. 8, 2007) — Two new vitamin D studies using a sophisticated form of analysis called meta-analysis, in which data from multiple reports is combined, have revealed new prescriptions for possibly preventing up to …  > read more

Global View Shows Strong Link Between Kidney Cancer, Sunlight Exposure

ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2006) — Using newly available data on worldwide cancer incidence to map cancer rates in relation to proximity to the equator, researchers at the Moores Cancer Center at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have shown a clear association between deficiency in exposure to sunlight, specifically ultraviolet B (UVB), and kidney cancer.

Map of renal cancer incidence rates in males, 175 countries. (Courtesy of Sharif B. Mohr, University of California, San Diego)

UVB exposure triggers photosynthesis of vitamin D3 in the body. This form of vitamin D also is available through diet and supplements. Previous studies from this core research team have shown an association between higher levels of vitamin D3 and a lower risk of cancers of the breast, colon and ovary.

“Kidney cancer is a mysterious cancer for which no widely accepted cause or means of prevention exists, so we wanted to build on research by one of the co-authors, William Grant, and see if it might be related to deficiency of vitamin D,” said study co-author Cedric Garland, Dr. P.H., professor of Family and Preventive Medicine in the UCSD School of Medicine, and member of the Moores UCSD Cancer Center.

There will be approximately 208,500 cases and 101,900 deaths from kidney cancer worldwide in 2006, including 39,000 new cases and 12,700 deaths in the United States, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the American Cancer Society.

The study, published in the International Journal of Cancer’s online edition dated September 15, is the research team’s newest finding relating exposure to the sun as a source of vitamin D, and estimated vitamin D deficiency to higher rates of several major types of cancer.

This paper used worldwide data only recently available through a new tool called GLOBOCAN, developed by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. GLOBOCAN is a database of cancer incidence, mortality and prevalence for 175 countries.

The researchers created a graph with a vertical axis for renal cancer incidence rates, and a horizontal axis for latitude. The latitudes range from -90 for the southern hemisphere, to zero for the equator, to +90 for the northern hemisphere. They then plotted incidence rates for 175 countries according to latitude. The resulting chart was a parabolic curve that looks like a smile (see accompanying images).

“The plot points created a curve roughly resembling a smile, with countries with high incidence rates at the left and right, and those with low incidence rates in the center, just a few degrees from the equator,” said Garland. “Countries with the highest cancer rates were places like New Zealand and Uruguay in the southern hemisphere and Iceland and the Czech Republic in the northern hemisphere. Clustered at the bottom of the curve with lowest incidence rates were Guam, Indonesia and other equatorial countries on most continents, including many varied equatorial cultures.”

In addition to UVB, the researchers analyzed cloud cover and intake of calories from animal sources for their association to kidney cancer. The scientists were able to determine the contributions of each independently. After accounting for cloud cover and intake of animal protein, UVB exposure still showed a significant independent association with incidence rates.

“Because the distinctive “smiley” parabolic curve is present for both sexes, it is unlikely that the international differences are due to occupational exposures, which usually vary according to gender, ” said co-author Sharif B. Mohr, M.P.H.

In the paper, the authors discuss and account for other possible variables such as ozone, aerosols and obesity.

“This was a study of aggregates, or countries, rather than individuals. Findings that apply to aggregates may not apply to individuals,” said co-author Edward D. Gorham, M.P.H., Ph.D.

“Since ecological studies may not be able to control for all relevant confounding factors, observational studies of the effect of vitamin D from sunlight, diet and supplements on the risk of kidney cancer in individuals would be desirable,” Gorham added.

The study was co-authored by Mohr, Gorham, Cedric F. Garland, and Frank C. Garland, Ph.D., of the UCSD Department of Family and Preventive Medicine and Moores UCSD Cancer Center; and William B. Grant, Ph.D., of the Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center, San Francisco.

Adapted from materials provided by University of California – San Diego.

Vitamin D, Calcium May Cut Cancer Risk

Nutrients Lower Cancer Risk by 77 Percent, Researchers Say

OPINION by JOHN G. SPANGLER, M.D.

June 8, 2007 —

Researchers say the benefits of vitamin D and calcium may be more far reaching than once thought.

(Photo Disc)

I’ll never forget my mother’s health advice to us as children: Drink your milk, eat your greens and get plenty of fresh air and sunshine.

When it comes to cancer prevention, it turns out mom was right.

Two new studies have uncovered exciting evidence of exceptionally strong cancer-protective effects of calcium and vitamin D from food or supplement sources.

The first study was published last week in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine by Dr. Jennifer Lin and colleagues from Harvard. They report that premenopausal women with high levels of vitamin D and calcium in their diets have a lower risk of breast cancer compared to women with lower intakes of these nutrients.

The second study, published in today’s issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by Dr. Joan M Lappe and colleagues at Creighton University, goes even further: Dietary supplementation of these nutrients reduces the risk of multiple types of cancer.

Together, these studies provide robust evidence of the beneficial effects that calcium and vitamin D can have on cancer prevention.

Exploring Cancer’s Nutrient Links

Research over the past half-century has pointed to a relationship between calcium, vitamin D and reduction of cancer risk, although the results have not been definitive.

In the 1950s, for example, scientists examined weather data and health statistics to show that areas of the country with the highest amount of sunshine, which stimulates the body to make vitamin D, had the lowest rates of colon cancer death.

Since that time, studies in both humans and animals have pointed toward cancer-preventive effects of both vitamin D and calcium, mainly for breast and colon cancers, but for other cancers as well, ranging from prostate cancer to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Lin and her Harvard colleagues focused on these nutrients’ effects on breast cancer by analyzing data from the Women’s Health Study, funded by the National Institutes of Health.

This study followed 10,578 premenopausal and 20,909 post-menopausal women 45 years or older who were initially free of cancer over 10 years, collecting data on diet, over-the-counter supplement use and subsequent development of breast cancer.

Amazingly, what they found was that calcium and vitamin D intake reduced the risk of developing breast cancer, but only among premenopausal women.

For these women, those with the highest intake of calcium were 39 percent less likely to develop breast cancer than those with the lowest intake. Those in the group with the highest intake of vitamin D were also 35 percent less likely to develop breast cancer.

What’s more, high intakes of calcium and vitamin D among premenopausal women seemed to reduce the most aggressive breast tumors, including larger tumors, those which spread to the lymph nodes and those with the most dangerous types of cancer cells.

Unfortunately, among post-menopausal women, there was no relationship between calcium and vitamin D intake and prevention of breast cancer. Nonetheless, when the two nutrients were taken together in high amounts, there was a suggestion of benefit.

Beyond Breast Cancer

In a second study, Lappe and colleagues followed nearly 1,200 women from a nine-county area in eastern Nebraska to see whether vitamin D and calcium supplements might reduce not just breast cancer, but all cancers.

Compared to those women taking a placebo, cancer risk of any kind over 10 years decreased by 60 percent in those taking both calcium and vitamin D, and by 47 percent in those taking calcium alone.

Moreover, when they excluded those cancers that occurred in the first year of the study  based on the assumption that these cancers were likely present at the start of the study  the benefit of calcium plus vitamin D appeared even more dramatic: a 77 percent decrease in cancer risk.

These are stunning results. Even if the authors could not definitively say calcium reduced cancer risk, a number of other studies bore out calcium’s protective effect. The authors can say with a strong degree of confidence that combining calcium with vitamin D is highly beneficial.

How It Works

Experimentally, calcium and vitamin D have been shown to exert their anti-cancer effect by interfering with the action of a hormone called insulinlike growth factor, or IGF.

The IGF hormone stimulates breast cancer cells  as well as cells of other types of cancer  to divide. Calcium and vitamin D interact with IGF to disrupt such cell growth; in fact, vitamin D can effectively block IGF’s effect.

Other factors might also come into play. In laboratory animals, for example, diets low in vitamin D and calcium increased the number of breast tumors. Amazingly, diets rich in these nutrients caused the disappearance of many worrisome breast cells, the types of cells that can eventually become cancerous.

While the Harvard study evaluated self-reports of usual food intake from dietary questionnaires, the Nebraska study actively gave patients calcium and vitamin D pills. This has important implications: Cancer risk can be reduced both by calcium and vitamin D in the diet, as well as by using over-the-counter supplements of these nutrients.

One should note, however, that both studies were carried out exclusively among women, and thus might not fully apply to men. However, given previous studies suggesting a reduction in male cancers (e.g., prostate cancer) by calcium and vitamin D, it is likely that this effect is not bound by gender.

Moreover, some of the cancers prevented among the women in the Nebraska study included cancers that also affect men, such as colon and lung cancers and leukemia.

Protect Yourself With Diet

Calcium is largely derived from the diet and is found in dairy products, leafy green vegetables, fortified juices and nuts. Many people, particularly women, also take calcium supplements to strengthen their bones.

Vitamin D is found in oily fish (salmon, sardines), as well as fortified foods such as milk and some cereals. Another major source of vitamin D for most people is exposure to sunshine.

Although the recommended daily allowance of vitamin D is 400 IU, some authorities suggest that up to 1000 I,U might be necessary to achieve optimal blood levels, especially when sun exposure is rare (e.g., during the winter or among home-bound individuals).

Of course there are other important benefits of adequate vitamin D and calcium intake: the prevention of osteoporosis, a thinning of the bones that increases bone fragility making bones more likely to break.

So follow mom’s advice: Drink your milk, finish your spinach and get plenty of fresh air and sunshine. And dietary supplements of calcium and vitamin D are also important. If you are a woman who has not gone through menopause, you likely will decrease your risk of breast cancer.

And no matter what your age, you will improve the health of your bones, and probably your overall cancer risk as well.

Dr. John Spangler is a professor of family medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

source

Vitamin D casts cancer prevention in new light

The main way humans achieve healthy levels of vitamin D is not through diet but through sun exposure.

MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT

From Saturday’s Globe and Mail

April 28, 2007 at 1:20 AM EDT

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 is suggesting both a plausible answer to this medical puzzle and a heretical notion: 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.

Those trying to brand contaminants as the key factor behind cancer in the West are “looking for a bogeyman that doesn’t exist,” argues Reinhold Vieth, professor at the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto and one of the world’s top vitamin D experts. Instead, he says, the critical factor “is more likely a lack of vitamin D.”

What’s more, researchers are linking low vitamin D status to a host of other serious ailments, including multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, influenza, osteoporosis and bone fractures among the elderly.

Not everyone is willing to jump on the vitamin D bandwagon just yet. Smoking and some pollutants, such as benzene and asbestos, irrefutably cause many cancers.

But perhaps the biggest bombshell about vitamin D’s effects is about to go off. In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding.

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.

And in an era of pricey medical advances, the 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 vitamin D deficiency 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. “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.”

Sunshine vitamin

For decades, vitamin D has been the Rodney Dangerfield of the supplement world. It’s the vitamin most Canadians never give a second thought to because it was assumed the only thing it did was prevent childhood rickets, a debilitating bone disease. But the days of no respect could be numbered. If vitamin D deficiency becomes accepted as the major cause of cancer and other serious illnesses, it will ignite the medical equivalent of a five-alarm blaze on the Canadian health front.

For many reasons, Canadians are among the people most at risk of not having enough vitamin D. This is due to a quirk of geography, to modern lifestyles and to the country’s health authorities, who have unwittingly, if with the best of intentions, played a role in creating the vitamin deficiency.

Authorities are implicated because the main way humans achieve healthy levels of vitamin D isn’t through diet but through sun exposure. People make vitamin D whenever naked skin is exposed to bright sunshine. By an unfortunate coincidence, the strong sunshine able to produce vitamin D is the same ultraviolet B light that can also causes sunburns and, eventually, skin cancer.

Only brief full-body exposures to bright summer sunshine — of 10 or 15 minutes a day — are needed to make high amounts of the vitamin. But most authorities, including Health Canada, have urged a total avoidance of strong sunlight or, alternatively, heavy use of sunscreen. Both recommendations will block almost all vitamin D synthesis.

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

The sun advice has been misguided information “of just breathtaking proportions,” said John Cannell, head of the Vitamin D Council, a non-profit, California-based organization.

“Fifteen hundred Americans die every year from [skin cancers]. Fifteen hundred Americans die every day from the serious cancers.”

Health Canada denies its advice might be dangerous. In an e-mailed statement, it said that most people don’t apply sunscreen thoroughly, leaving some skin exposed, and that people spend enough time outside without skin protection to make adequate amounts of vitamin D.

However, the Canadian Cancer Society last year quietly tweaked its recommendation to recognize that limited amounts of sun exposure are essential for vitamin D levels.

Avoiding most bright sunlight wouldn’t be so serious if it weren’t for a second factor: The main determinant of whether sunshine is strong enough to make vitamin D is latitude. Living in the north is bad, the south is better, and near the equator is best of all.

Canadians have drawn the short straw on the world’s latitude lottery: From October to March, sunlight is too feeble for vitamin D production. During this time, our bodies draw down stores built by summer sunshine, and whatever is acquired from supplements or diet.

Government regulations require foods such as milk and margarine to have small amounts of added vitamin D to prevent rickets.

Other foods, such as salmon, naturally contain some, as does the cod liver oil once commonly given to children in the days before milk fortification. But the amounts from food are minuscule compared to what is needed for cancer prevention and what humans naturally can make in their skin.

Vitamin D levels in Canada are also being compromised by a lifestyle change. Unlike previous generations that farmed or otherwise worked outside, most people now spend little time outdoors.

One survey published in 2001 estimated office- and homebound Canadians and Americans spend 93 per cent of waking time in buildings or cars, both of which block ultraviolet light.

Consequently, by mid-winter most Canadians have depleted vitamin D status. “We’re all a bit abnormal in terms of our vitamin D,” said Dr. Vieth, who has tested scores of Canadians, something done with a simple blood test.

How much is enough?

Just how much vitamin D is required for optimum health is the subject of intense scientific inquiry.

Dr. Vieth has approached the matter by asking: What vitamin D level would humans have if they were still living outside, in the wild, near the equator, with its attendant year-round bright sunshine? “Picture the natural human as a nudist in environments south of Florida,” he says.

He estimates humans in a state of nature probably had about 125 to 150 nanomoles/litre of vitamin D in their blood all year long — levels now achieved for only a few months a year by the minority of adult Canadians who spend a lot of time in the sun, such as lifeguards or farmers.

For the rest of the population, vitamin D levels tend to be lower, and crash in winter. In testing office workers in Toronto in winter, Dr. Vieth found the average was only about 40 nanomoles/L, or about one-quarter to one-third of what humans would have in the wild.

The avalanche of surprising research on the beneficial effects of vitamin D could affect dietary recommendations as well. Health Canada says that, in light of the findings, it intends to study whether recommended dietary levels need to be revised, although the review is likely to be years away.

A joint Canadian-U.S. health panel last studied vitamin D levels in 1997, concluding the relatively low amounts in people’s blood were normal. At the time, there was speculation vitamin D had an anti-cancer effect, but more conclusive evidence has only emerged since.

“There needs to be a comprehensive review undertaken and that is planned,” says Mary Bush, director general of Health Canada’s office of nutrition policy and promotion.

But Ms. Bush said the government doesn’t want to move hastily, out of concern that there may be unknown risks associated with taking more of the vitamin.

Those who worry about low vitamin D, however, say this stand is too conservative — that the government’s caution may itself be a health hazard.

To achieve the vitamin D doses used for cancer prevention through foods, people would need to drink about three litres of milk a day, which is unrealistic.

If health authorities accept the new research, they would have to order a substantial increase in food fortification or supplement-taking to affect disease trends. As it is, the 400 IU dosage included in most multivitamins is too low to be an effective cancer fighter.

Dr. Vieth said any new recommendations will also have to reflect the racial and cultural factors connected to vitamin D. Blacks, South Asians and women who wear veils are at far higher risks of vitamin D deficiencies than are whites.

Although humans carry a lot of cultural baggage on the subject of skin hue, colour is the way nature dealt with the vagaries of high or low vitamin D production by latitude.

Those with very dark skins, whose ancestors originated in tropical, light-rich environments, have pigmentation that filters out more of the sunshine responsible for vitamin D; in northern latitudes, they need more sun exposure — often 10 times as much — to produce the same amount of the vitamin as whites.

Dr. Vieth says it is urgent to provide information about the need for extra vitamin D in Canada’s growing non-white population to avoid a future of high illness rates in this group.

Researchers suspect vitamin D plays such a crucial role in diseases as unrelated as cancer and osteoporosis because the chemical originated in the early days of animal evolution as a way for cells to signal that they were being exposed to daylight.

Even though living things have evolved since then, almost all cells, even those deep in our bodies, have kept this primitive light-signalling system.

In the body, vitamin D is converted into a steroid hormone, and genes responding to it play a crucial role in fixing damaged cells and maintaining good cell health. “There is no better anti-cancer agent than activated vitamin D. I mean, it does everything you’d want,” said Dr. Cannell of the Vitamin D Council.

Some may view the sunshine-vitamin story as too good to be true, particularly given that the number of previous claims of vitamin cure-alls that subsequently flopped. “The floor of modern medicine is littered with the claims of vitamins that didn’t turn out,” Dr. Cannell allowed.

But the big difference is that vitamin D, unlike other vitamins, is turned into a hormone, making it far more biologically active. As well, it is “operating independently in hundreds of tissues in your body,” Dr. Cannell said.

Referring to Linus Pauling, the famous U.S. advocate of vitamin C use as a cure for many illnesses, he said: “Basically, Linus Pauling was right, but he was off by one letter.”

Source 

Vitamin D Deficiency: An Epidemic?

by Neil Gonter, MD
Thursday, October 19, 2006 There has been a lot of blame thrown around for this recent, troublesome discovery. Vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency is the new hot topic in osteoporosis. Some have even gone as far as blamed the dermatologists for making us avoid the sun and making us apply sunscreen with extremely high SPF’s.

Let us see if we can clarify what vitamin D is, does, and figure out how we can help ourselves in getting the appropriate amounts.

What is it?
Vitamin D is a fat-soluble substance (it dissolves in and can be stored by fat deposits in the body). It is present in salmon, mackerel, sardines, and cod liver oil; fortified foods including milk, breakfast cereals, and some juices; and vitamin supplements. It can also be produced in the skin during sun exposure. Vitamin D (in its active form, which is created after several modifications by the body) functions as a hormone which means it binds to receptors in various tissues to influence the expression of genes, thereby affecting a range of processes, especially the regulation of calcium.

It has long been known that vitamin D is crucial for healthy bones. The presence of vitamin D in the small intestine aids in the absorption of dietary calcium—people with vitamin D deficiency are able to absorb only a third to half as much calcium as those with sufficient levels—and calcium is vital to the hardness of bone. The two diseases traditionally associated with severe vitamin D deficiency—rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults—are characterized by deformation or softening of bone. Chronic vitamin D deficiency is strongly linked to osteoporosis.

Deficiency
The common assumption has been that with the fortification of milk, instituted in the United States in the 1930s, and casual exposure to sunshine, most people get all the vitamin D they need. However, a recent resurgence of rickets has brought new studies. It has become clear that vitamin D deficiency (usually defined as blood levels of less than 15 ng/mL [or nanograms/milliliter]) and insufficiency (less than 20 or according to most experts probably less than 30 ng/mL) are far more widespread than researchers had expected. The elderly, who often receive little sun, are at particular risk, as are African Americans and other dark-skinned people, since skin pigmentation, which protects against damage by UV rays, also interferes with vitamin D production.

Perhaps the biggest surprise, though, has been the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency among women of childbearing age and among healthy children and adolescents. It is possible that chronic insufficiency early in life may prevent proper bone development and increase the risk of disorders, such as osteoporosis, later in life.

Benefits of Vitamin D
Laboratory, animal, and epidemiologic evidence suggests that vitamin D may be protective against some cancers. These include colon, breast, and prostate cancers. Deficiency has also possibly been found to be a source of chronic, non-specific musculoskeletal pain (2003 in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings). It is also been studied in autoimmune diseases to possibly prevent the occurrence of various diseases.

How much do we need?
Current guidelines established by the National Academy of Sciences currently recommend daily values of 200 IU (International Units) for children and adults up to age 50, 400 IU for adults ages 51-70, and 600 IU for adults over 70. However, many experts believe that a daily value closer to 800-1000 IU may be more beneficial.

Where can we get it?
Sunlight is an important way for our skin to convert vitamin D to its active form. Only a small amount of sun exposure, perhaps ten minutes a few times a week, is all that is needed to produce adequate amounts. However, this varies based on skin type, season, time of day, and location. It is important to note that UV light is a known carcinogen and it is difficult to make regulations for limited usage. This is because people will often abuse this thinking, ‘if a little is good, more is better.”

Diet is another important way. However, as with calcium intake, it is difficult to get enough from dietary amounts, especially with lactose intolerant individuals, calorie counting, and extensive drinking of soft drinks.

While the vitamin D story is not yet over, it is important, especially if one has osteoporosis or decreased mineralization, to get their level checked and discuss with their physician the proper way to maintain adequate levels.

Source 

Baby’s Soft Spot Linked to Vitamin Deficiency

(Ivanhoe Newswire) — A soft spot on the top of the head is common in newborns, but it might not be as normal as some people think. A new study out of Japan suggests the condition is linked to a deficiency of the “sunshine vitamin” — vitamin D.

Researchers arrived at those conclusions after assessing 1,120 newborns for a softening of the skull bones, known medically as craniotabes. Twenty-two percent of the babies were found to have the condition, and further analysis linked the occurrence of craniotabes with the season of birth. That could mean babies born in lower sunshine months are more at risk for the condition because they and their mothers received less sunlight.

The research also raises questions about the link between breastfeeding and craniotabes, finding breastfed babies, who were not receiving a formula fortified with vitamin D, were more likely to have lower blood levels of the vitamin.

Since vitamin D deficiency has been associated with lower bone density and other health problems, the researchers suggest supplements may be in order for mother and child.

“Until more research is done on the effects of perinatal vitamin D deficiency, we suggest treating breastfed infants with craniotabes with vitamin D, or preferably, treating all pregnant women with vitamin D,” study author Tohru Yorifuji, M.D., Ph.D., of Kyoto University Hospital, was quoted as saying.

To be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
Source

Sunshine and the Elderly

Peak performance isn’t just for elite athletes. While Vitamin D may make a difference in performance for those competing at the highest levels, it can also make a difference for the rest of us seeking to improve or maintain physical performance in our daily lives.

According to a recent New York Times article:

Last year, a 15-member team of nutrition experts noted in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that “randomized trials using the currently recommended intakes of 400 I.U. vitamin D a day have shown no appreciable reduction in fracture risk.”

“In contrast,” the experts continued, “trials using 700 to 800 I.U. found less fracture incidence, with and without supplemental calcium. This change may result from both improved bone health and reduction in falls due to greater muscle strength.”

A Swiss study of women in their 80s found greater leg strength and half as many falls among those who took 800 I.U. of vitamin D a day for three months along with 1,200 milligrams of calcium, compared with women who took just calcium. Greater strength and better balance have been found in older people with high blood levels of vitamin D.

Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council notes in his newsletter, Why Athletic Performance Matters, that:

Many people don’t realize how fatal falls can be in the elderly. In 2003, the CDC reported that 13,700 persons over 65 died from falls in the USA, with 1.8 million ending up in emergency rooms for treatment of nonfatal injuries from falls. Falls cause the majority of hip fractures which, if they don’t result in death, often result in admission to a nursing home. That’s 13,700 deaths, hundreds of thousands of surgeries, countless nursing home admissions, and tens of billions in health care costs every year—all from impaired athletic performance. That’s why it matters.

A Reuters report on how Vitamin D affects physical function in elderly, finds that “Older men and women who fail to get enough vitamin D — either from their diets or exposure to the sun — are at heightened risk for muscle weakness and poor physical performance, a study shows. This is troubling, researchers say, given the high numbers of older folks who are deficient in vitamin D.” According to research done by Dr. Denise K. Houston at the Wake Forest University of Medicine: “…physical performance and grip strength were 5 to 10 percent lower in people with low blood levels of vitamin D levels, compared with those with normal levels.”

However simply getting more exposure to the sun may not be enough without other lifestyle changes. Being overweight can reduce Vitamin D levels in the blood according to this Science Daily report:

It’s not yet clear why overweight elderly adults have low levels of vitamin D in their blood. However, researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University (USDA HNRCA) have found that lack of sun exposure may not account for low levels of vitamin D in elders who are overweight. … “The most likely explanation seems to be that vitamin D is sequestered in fat tissue, reducing its entry into the blood.”

Effects Of Vitamin D And Skin’s Physiology Examined

The benefits of moderately increased exposure to sunlight – namely the production of vitamin D, which protects against the lethal effects of many forms of cancer and other diseases – may outweigh the risk of developing skin cancer in populations deficient in vitamin D. (Credit: iStockphoto/Wolfgang Amri)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2008) — Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have found that previtamin D3 production varies depending on several factors including skin type and weather conditions. Excessive exposure to sunlight does not result in Vitamin D intoxification because previtamin D3 and vitamin D3 are photolyzed to several photoproducts. During the winter at latitudes above ~35 degrees, there is minimal if any previtamin D3 production in the skin.

Increased skin pigmentation, application of a sunscreen, aging and clothing have a dramatic effect on previtamin D3 production in the skin. It has been speculated that people living at higher latitudes may be able to more efficiently produce vitamin D3 in their skin because there is less ozone to absorb the UVB photons. Forty-five nursing home residents who were taking a multivitamin that contained 400 IU of vitamin D2 showed a dramatic decline in their 25(OH)D levels from the end of summer to the beginning of the following summer. Forty-nine percent, 67 percent, 74 percent, and 78 percent of the nursing home residents were vitamin D deficient in August, November, February, and May respectively

Fifteen healthy adults aged 20-53 received exposure three times per week from a commercial tanning bed that emitted five percent of its UV energy in the UVB range 290-320 nm to most of their body while in a bathing suit. 25(OH)D levels were determined weekly for a total of seven weeks.

Exposure of 7-dehydrocholesterol to tanning bed irradiation revealed -1 percent production of previtamin D after one minute and a linear increase to -10 percent at 10 minutes. After one week, there was a 50 percent increase in 25 (OH)D levels that continued to increase over a period of five weeks to -150 percent above baseline levels. The blood levels of 25 (OH)D plateaued after five weeks and were sustained out to seven weeks.

“Vitamin D deficiency is common in both children and adults worldwide,” said Michael Holick, PhD, MD, director of the General Clinical Research Center and professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at BUSM and senior author of this study. “Exposure to lamps that emit UVB radiation is an excellent source for producing vitamin D3 in the skin and is especially efficacious in patients with fat malabsortion syndromes.”

It has been observed that living at higher latitudes and being more prone to vitamin D deficiency markedly increases risk of many deadly cancers including cancer of the colon, prostate, breast, and esophagus, according to Holick, who is also director of the Bone Healthcare Clinic and the vitamin D, Skin and Bone Research Laboratory at Boston University Medical Center. Living at higher latitudes also increase the risk of having hypertension, type I diabetes, multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases, and infectious diseases including tuberculosis and influenza.

According to researchers, most experts now agree that a minimum of 1000 IU of vitamin D3 per day is necessary to maintain circulating concentrations of 25(OH)D.

The study will appear in the March 2008 issue of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

This study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health and the Ultraviolet Light Foundation.

Adapted from materials provided by Boston University.

Source 

Tanning is associated with optimal vitamin D status

 Conclusion: The regular use of a tanning bed that emits vitamin D–producing ultraviolet radiation is associated with higher 25(OH)D concentrations and thus may have a benefit for the skeleton. Am J Clin Nutr 2004;80:1645–9.

The use of tanning beds has been promoted to the public for the cosmetic purpose of tanning, but this study shows that a moderate use of tanning beds may also provide some medical benefit.

Higher concentrations of 25(OH)D throughout the year may have a significant effect in enhancing intestinal calcium absorption and improving bone health (7, 8, 42). Blood concentrations of 25(OH)D in tanners are  75 nmol/L, which is considered to be necessary for maximum intestinal calcium transport (23, 42).

This may explain why higher serum 25(OH)D concentrations are associated with higher bone density. There is mounting evidence that a healthy concentration of 25(OH)D (ie, 75 nmol/L) may reduce the risk of colon, breast, and prostate cancers, hypertension,
and autoimmune diseases (2, 3, 39–42).

In conclusion, the regular use of a tanning bed results in higher 25(OH)D concentrations and prevents increased seasonal prevalence of vitamin D deficiency during the winter.

The subjects who had used tanning beds for a mean of5 y had higher BMD
at the hip than did the nontanners (control subjects). Larger studies should be conducted to investigate the potential positive effect of chronic use of tanning beds on vitamin D status and bone health.

Source

Shedding light on skin color

APRIL SAUL / Inquirer Staff Photographer

Nina Jablonski, speaking in Philadelphia, says the key to skin color lies in the need for two kinds of vitamins – and in the sun.

By Faye Flam

Inquirer Staff Writer

 

At the beginning of anthropologist Nina Jablonski’s lecture yesterday at the Wagner Free Institute of Science, it appeared her audience of about 100 was composed of several different races. By the end of the free lecture, titled “The Evolution of Human Skin Color,” the Pennsylvania State University professor had made a case that we are all just people with varying levels of melanin.

As author of the book Skin: A Natural History, Jablonski has studied all aspects of skin, perhaps none more important than why it appears in such a puzzling array of hues. It all comes down to the planet’s uneven distribution of sunlight and the universal human need for two vitamins, she explained.

This knowledge was very recently acquired. “Only in the last decade or so has our data allowed us to crack open the mystery,” Jablonski said as she began her lecture at the 152-year-old science museum near Temple University.

Nature has painted human skin using one major brown pigment, melanin, which evolved in many species. “It’s a natural sunscreen,” she said, which is important because humans have a troubled relationship with the sun.

Since we are relatively hairless creatures, our skin gets bombarded by ultraviolet light, which can burn us, destroy the DNA in skin cells, and lead to cancer. Hence an advantage of dark skin.

But there is more to melanin than protection from skin cancer and sunburn. Scientists recently realized that ultraviolet rays penetrating skin destroy the B-vitamin folate. With too little folate, or folic acid, men cannot make adequate sperm and women cannot start healthy pregnancies. So in very sunny places, any genetic mutations that created light skin would likely die out with their owners.

But with melanin offering so many advantages, the question was why anyone would evolve light skin.

Lighter shades came about because humans need some sunlight to penetrate skin and trigger a chemical reaction that produces vitamin D.

To illustrate the devastating effects of vitamin D deficiency, Jablonski showed slides of children with badly bowed legs and softened bones. In women, a lesser deficiency can lead to a narrowed pelvis, making childbirth impossible.

The original skin color was almost certainly very dark, since scientific evidence points to sunny Africa as the cradle of humanity. But once some branches of the human family starting moving north to Asia and Europe, the need for vitamin D gave those with lighter skin an advantage in absorbing the meager sunlight in winter.

Because vitamins lie at the heart of our color differences, locally consumed foods also play a role. Whales and fatty fish can give people some vitamin D, Jablonski said, so diet may explain why the Inuit, who live in Alaska and Greenland, are much darker than people from Northern Europe.

Recent findings from genetics labs show that there are many roads to what we think of as white and black skin – both of which, or course, are really shades of brown. In 2005, for example, scientists found that Europeans became light-skinned through a different combination of mutations than did Northern Asians.

Last year, scientists scraped enough DNA from the bones of a Neanderthal man to show that this extinct branch of humanity carried genes associated with fair skin and red hair.

Currently, Jablonski said, researchers are seeking genetic variants that led to dark skin in far-flung peoples – those from Australia, New Guinea and southern India as well as Africa.

While Jablonski hopes that examining skin through science can help defuse racism and racial tension, she said, she is also concerned with what she calls colorism. Colorism has more to do with perception of beauty, she said. Its primary victims are women.

With a slide of people frying on the beach and an advertisement for bronzer, she explained that colorism has white women thinking they look sickly without a tan. More dangerous still, dark-complexioned women in some countries are driven to use dangerous skin-lightening products, many containing arsenic, mercury and other poisons.

“Why are we always trying to change the way we appear?” Jablonski asked. “Skin color is a beautiful product of evolution. . . . We should revel in it.”

Even If You Live in Sub Tropical Environments You Can Be Vitamin D Deficient

Vitamin D deficiency has been observed among many populations in the northern United States. But few studies have examined the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in areas of high sun exposure, such as Arizona.

A new study has shown adults in southern Arizona are commonly deficient in vitamin D, particularly those with darker skin who produce less vitamin D in response to sunlight.

More than a quarter of Arizona adults tested had dangerously low blood levels of the vitamin.

Sources:

• American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 87(3): 608-613 March 2008

Why Vitamin D Supplements Are NOT the Same as Sunlight

The assumption that vitamin D supplements will protect you against diseases associated with low vitamin D levels is incorrect, according to Australian researchers. The report found that vitamin D supplements are immunosuppressive and may actually make diseases worse.

Vitamin D Nuclear Receptor (VDR) influences the expression of over 1,000 genes, including those associated with diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis. According to the new study, supplemental vitamin D actually blocks VDR activation, which is the opposite effect to that of sunshine.

Instead of positively impacting gene expression, vitamin D supplements appear to suppress your immune system.

Vitamin D deficiency, the researchers pointed out, is likely not a cause of disease but rather is a result of the disease process. And increasing vitamin D intake may make the diseases worse.

The body regulates production of all the vitamin D it needs, the researchers said, and dysregulation of vitamin D by supplementation has been associated with many chronic diseases.

Sources:

• Science Daily January 27, 2008

• BioEssays January 2008, Volume 30, Issue 2, Pages 173-182

Tanning and Vitamin D: Is Shunning the Sun a Medical Mistake?

Debate is raging over how much sun you should get. For years, we’ve been warned that sunscreen is a must, but now some health professionals are saying some exposure to the sun’s rays is necessary. An American Academy of Dermatology survey finds that ten percent of Americans in their 40s, 50s, 60s and even 70s hit the tanning bed.

Sunlight, even artificial is a prime source of Vitamin D, a nutrient that helps the body absorb calcium and one a growing body of research suggests may also help prevent diseases from cancer to diabetes. Unfortunately, up to half of the population is not getting enough, according to the Duke Diet Center’s Elisabetta Polilti.

“Vitamin D sources are not very common,” she explained.

Oily fish like salmon and fortified milk are among the few dietary sources of Vitamin D. That leaves supplements and sunshine, unless you wear sunscreen.

“The skin lotion is preventing vitamin D from being absorbed,” Politi said.

While it’s doubtful we’ll ever say ’so long’ to sunscreen, the Vitamin D dilemma does have the scientific and medical communities taking a closer look at the safe sun message.

Boston University’s Dr. Michael Holick calls it “sensible sun exposure.”

“Typically maybe five to ten minutes of arms and legs, two to three times a week, followed by good sun protection is a good recommendation,” he said.

It’s a recommendation that has gotten heat from major skin and cancer organizations who’ve noted the rise in skin cancer. All parties do agree people aren’t getting enough of the sunshine vitamin.

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Sun and Skin

	There’s more fuel for the debate over the risk of skin cancer versus the benefits of vitamin D produced in our skin by sunlight. As this ScienCentral News video explains, it turns out that vitamin D might actually help the skin protect itself. Vitamin D and SunlightVitamin D has long been known to be important for helping our bodies absorb calcium and maintain strong bones, and a host of other benefits of vitamin D have been revealed in recent years. Our bodies’ main source of the vitamin is our own skin, which produces it in response to UV rays in sunlight. But, why? Stanford University pathology researchers have made two important discoveries about how vitamin D produced in the skin by sunlight can trigger a protective immune response in the skin itself. Hekla Sigmundsdottir and colleagues in Eugene Butcher’s Stanford University lab studied immune system cells called T lymphocytes, or T-cells, which circulate in our bodies and attack foreign or abnormal cells.
	Hekla Sigmundsdottir, Stanford University “In order for them to do their job, they have to know that there’s a danger, and that’s the job of another type of cells called dendritic cells,” Sigmundsdottir explains. “These dendritic cells scan the body and when they find something, they eat it up and then go to the T-cells and the T-cells then judge if this is harmless or something harmful that needs to be responded to. But the body is a big place and scientists have wondered, do they get some extra help to find the site more quickly. And that’s where the vitamin D would come in,” she says.The researchers isolated T-cells with dendritic cells and exposed them to different forms of vitamin D, including vitamin D3 from sunlight and vitamin D2, which is the type often added to milk and other foods. They found that, contrary to scientists’ beliefs, dendritic cells in the skin can convert vitamin D produced by sunlight into its active form. And they found that the active form triggers the protective T-cells to travel to the skin.
	Sigmundsdottir says the process was most efficient with vitamin D produced from sunlight. “Vitamin D that we obtain through the diet seems to be less effective than the vitamin that is generated in the sun,” she says.As they wrote in the journal Nature Immunology, the research could help explain why vitamin D is important to our skin’s immune system functions.“I think just the fact that the vitamin D can attract or draw T-cells towards the skin is a function that’s needed, I think that’s why we make vitamin in the skin,” says Sigmundsdottir. The researchers isolated T-cells, shown here in blue, with dendritic cells and exposed them to different forms of vitamin D. image: Hekla Sigmundsdottir It’s also a surprise that vitamin D can be activated in the skin. Scientists have long known that vitamin D produced in sunlight has to be converted by the body into its active form in order to be useful, but it was thought that that only happens in our liver and kidneys.
	“What we find in our study is that if you isolate these helper cells or these dendritic cells from the skin, they can do it themselves, indicating that it does not have to go through the liver or the kidneys to be converted to the active form,” explains Sigmundsdottir.Put together, the discoveries suggest our skin has evolved a clever trick to protect itself. While she cautions that her research is preliminary and the team is at work on further studies, “I think a little sunshine is good for you,” she says. “I think the reason we make vitamin D in the skin indicates that it’s there for a reason.”Sigmundsdottir also points out that it’s too soon to know if this process may protect skin from the harmful effects of sunlight itself. “We are now in the process of examining this further,” she says, “but there are many other reasons why we would need enhanced immunity in the skin. There’s infections, there is all kind of exposure to harmful substances in the environment …” And sun worshippers beware: Sigmundsdottir means it when she says “a little” sun exposure is good, because too much sun is still bad for you. How much? Sunscreen blocks out the UVB light that triggers vitamin D production in skin. But it only takes 10 to 15 minutes of unprotected sun exposure a couple of times a week to make enough vitamin D for your body’s needs.More sunlight than that doesn’t make more vitamin D, but it can increase your risk of skin cancer and other skin damage. Dermatologists also warn that a tan is evidence of skin damage– good reasons to use sunscreen if you are going to spend more time than that in the sun. This research was published in Nature Immunology, March 2007, and was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Veterans Affairs, FACS Core Facility of Stanford Digestive Disease Center, the Arthritis Foundation and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Scientists Admit — Sun Exposure Benefits Outweigh Risks

Moderate sun exposure offers more health benefits than risks, particularly for people who are deficient in vitamin D or who live in colder, northern latitudes, according to U.S. and Norwegian researchers.

The study found that vitamin D levels, which were calculated based on sun exposure, were linked to survival rates for cancer patients. Those who lived in sunnier, southern latitudes, and had higher vitamin D levels, were less likely to die from cancer than people in northern latitudes.

The researchers analyzed the amount of vitamin D generated by sun exposure at different latitudes, and cross-referenced it with data of cancer incidence and survival rates for people living in varying locations.

They found that people in northern latitudes produce significantly less vitamin D than people nearer to the equator. Specifically, they found Australians produce 3.4 times more vitamin D than people in the United States, and almost five times more vitamin D than Scandinavians.

Meanwhile, rates of major cancers such as colon, lung, breast and prostate increased from north to south, while survival rates decreased from north to south.

The researchers said the findings provide further support for sun-induced vitamin D on cancer prognosis.

Previous studies suggest that vitamin D may protect against cancer by discouraging out-of-control cell reproduction and hindering the formation of new blood vessels for tumors.

Sources:

• Yahoo News January 7, 2008

• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences January 7, 2008

Can Sunshine Fight Cancer?

Fighting cancer with vitamin D

Healthy levels of serum vitamin D provide significant protection against many types of cancers, according to University of Maine researchers, who did a literature survey of vitamin D studies conducted in the past 37 years.

“These studies find that the higher the UV exposure, dietary intake and serum level of 25(OH)D, the lower the incidence and mortality from cancers of the breast, colon, lung, pancreas, prostate, melanoma and Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” write UMaine researchers Betty Ingraham, Beth Bragdon and Anja Nohe in the journal “Current Medical Research and Opinion.“

Vitamin D, obtained from diet, supplements and sunlight, is essential in cell growth and function. In particular, calcitriol, an active form of vitamin D, has a critical role in regulating cellular mechanisms involved in cancer development.

But while epidemiological, preclinical and clinical trials provide overwhelming evidence that calcitriol can prevent cancers of the colon, breast, prostate, ovary and pancreas, as well as Hodgkin’s lymphoma, nearly all studies indicate that most people have below-normal levels of serum vitamin D.

The clinical research community is now revising upward recommendations for optimal serum levels and sensible levels of sun exposure.

The last time that the recommendations were set in 1997, the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine recommended daily adult dietary intake of vitamin D at 400 IU. Since then, most researchers in the field believe that, for optimal health, intakes between 1,000-4,000 IU would lead to a more healthy serum level of approximately 75 nmol/L.

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Catch some rays to get vitamin D

Nina Rao
For the News-Leader

This week’s expert: Dr. Lance Luria is an internal medicine physician and the associate medical director of St. John’s Health Plans.

Q. Over the past few years, vitamin D has been making headlines. Why is that?

A. Vitamin D was discovered in the early part of the 20th century when it was found that adding a fat-soluble factor “D” to the diet prevented rickets, a disease that results in defective bone growth and bowed legs.More recently, numerous large studies have raised questions as to whether the standard recommendations assure optimal vitamin D levels.

These questions come on the heels of mounting evidence pointing to the important role vitamin D plays in promoting bone health, in addition to preventing osteoarthritis, diabetes, cancer and mental, cardiovascular and neuromuscular diseases.

Q. Where does vitamin D come from?

A. Since our bodies have the ability to make vitamin D, it is not technically a vitamin, but falls more in the category of a steroid-like hormone that just needs a jump-start from sunshine. The problem is that most of us aren’t getting enough ultra-violet (UVB) rays to generate sufficient vitamin D.

Here are some interesting points:- During the summer, 10 minutes of exposure of your hands and face (without sunscreen) provides about 400 international units (IU) of vitamin D3. A young person whose entire body is exposed to simulated sunlight produces the equivalent of 10,000-25,000 IU of vitamin D taken orally.

- Don’t worry about getting too much vitamin D from sunlight. The same UVB rays that help make vitamin D will also destroy what is not absorbed quickly enough.

- Wearing sunscreen blocks your body’s ability to make vitamin D.

- People living north of the 37th degree-latitude line, which includes Springfield, don’t get enough UVB rays in winter. A good rule of thumb is that you don’t get enough during the seasons when your shadow at noon is taller than you are.

- Your ability to make vitamin D decreases as you reach old age.

- Darker-pigmented people have more melanin in their skin, and since melanin acts like sunblock, less vitamin D is made. In fact, a black person with very dark skin pigmentation will require about a tenfold longer exposure to make the same amount of vitamin D as a light-skinned white person.

- Vitamin D is stored in fat cells, which can act as a reservoir for the winter months. Paradoxically, obese people have about one-half the levels of circulating vitamin D levels as people of normal weight. It is thought that large fat depots act as a sort of sinkhole for vitamin D.

Q. How much vitamin D is needed?

A. Current recommendations call for 200 international units (IU) for children and adults up to age 50, 400 IU from age 51 to 70 and 600 IU for adults 71 and older. However, based on more recent studies, most authorities are now recommending at least 800 IU of vitamin D3 daily for children and adults if you’re not getting enough UVB exposure and at least 1,000 IU daily for those that do not get any UVB exposure.

A safe upper limit is 2,000 IU daily. Although a number of studies have shown that higher daily intakes do not result in toxic effects, these higher doses are not routinely recommended.

If you’re not sure that your intake is adequate, taking a daily supplement of 1,000 IU of vitamin D3 is currently recommended by a number of authorities.

Tests to show vitamin D blood levels are available but costly, but they can resolve those situations where there remains a question as to whether you are getting enough.

Q. Why is vitamin D needed?

A. Maintaining adequate blood levels of vitamin D is important not only for bone health but also in the prevention of a number of chronic diseases, including osteoporosis, hypertension and prostate, breast and colon cancers.

Q. Are there food sources of vitamin D?

A. Naturally occurring vitamin D is relatively rare in foods. Oily fish and egg yolks contain significant amounts, as do mushrooms.

Q. What’s the difference between vitamin D2 and D3?

A. Supplemental vitamin D comes in two forms: D2 (ergocalciferol) or D3 (cholecalciferol). Vitamin D2 comes from UVB-irradiated yeast and plants; vitamin D3 comes from UVB-irradiated lanolin from animal sources.

It was originally thought that vitamins D2 and D3 were pretty much the same, but now we know that the D2 form is only about 20 percent to 40 percent as effective as D3. Vitamin D2 also doesn’t last as long in our circulation and may even cause premature breakdown of circulating D3.

Fortified foods can contain either vitamin D2 or D3, but recent studies in the United States and western Canada noted that up to 80 percent of milk did not contain the advertised amount of vitamin D and half the milk tested contained less than 50 percent of the advertised amount. Remarkably, 15 percent of the skim milk samples contained no detectable vitamin D at all.

Q. How common is vitamin D deficiency?

A. It is estimated that 1 billion people worldwide don’t get enough vitamin D. That includes vitamin D deficiency among 40 percent to 100 percent of independently living elderly Americans and Europeans. Further, in the United States, half of women receiving treatment for osteoporosis, 73 percent of pregnant women (and 80 percent of their infants at birth) and between 48 and 52 percent of adolescent girls in the Northeast show vitamin D deficiency.

This is a problem because without vitamin D, only 10 percent to 15 percent of dietary calcium is absorbed, and bone mineral density is directly correlated with vitamin D levels.

Q. How can you get enough vitamin D?

A. If you believe you need to increase your vitamin D levels, here are some tips:

- During the spring, summer and fall, 5 to 15 minutes of sunshine between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., two or three times weekly, should do the trick. (But, if your skin becomes slightly pink, you’ve gotten too much sun. )

- Tanning beds, when used in moderation, provide ample vitamin D and may be particularly helpful in the winter months.

- Milk, cereals and bread products that contain vitamin D may be highly variable in their vitamin D content and should not be depended upon as a reliable source.

- Don’t forget that vitamin D2 (from yeast and plants) is probably only one-third as effective as vitamin D3 (from animals). So when you go shopping for supplements, remember that 1,000 IU of D3 is comparable to 3,000 IU of D2.

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Lack of Sunshine Causes One Million Deaths a Year

If vitamin D3 levels among populations worldwide were increased, 600,000 cases of breast and colorectal cancers could be prevented each year, according to researchers from the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).

This includes nearly 150,000 cases of cancer that could be prevented in the United States alone.

The researchers estimate that 250,000 cases of colorectal cancer and 350,000 cases of breast cancer could be prevented worldwide by increasing intake of vitamin D3, particularly in countries north of the equator.

The study examines the dose-response relationship between vitamin D and cancer, and is the first to use satellite measurements of sun and cloud cover in countries where blood serum levels of vitamin D3 were also taken.

Serum vitamin D levels during the winter from 15 countries were combined, then applied to 177 countries to estimate the average serum level of a vitamin D metabolite among the population.

An inverse association between serum vitamin D and the risk of colorectal and breast cancers was found.

Protective effects began when 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels (the main indicator of vitamin D status) ranged from 24 to 32 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml). In the United States, late winter 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels ranged from 15 to 18 ng/ml.

Previous research has suggested that raising levels to 55 ng/ml was actually optimal to prevent cancer, the researchers said.

To increase your vitamin D3 levels, the researchers recommended a combination of dietary methods, supplements and sunlight exposure of about 10 to 15 minutes a day, with at least 40 percent of your skin exposed.

Nutrition Reviews August 2007 Volume 65, Supplement 1, pp. 91-95(5) (Registration Required)
The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology March 2007; 103(3-5):708-11

Eurekalert August 21, 2007

Scientists Admit — Sun Exposure Benefits Outweigh Risks

Moderate sun exposure offers more health benefits than risks, particularly for people who are deficient in vitamin D or who live in colder, northern latitudes, according to U.S. and Norwegian researchers.

The study found that vitamin D levels, which were calculated based on sun exposure, were linked to survival rates for cancer patients. Those who lived in sunnier, southern latitudes, and had higher vitamin D levels, were less likely to die from cancer than people in northern latitudes.

The researchers analyzed the amount of vitamin D generated by sun exposure at different latitudes, and cross-referenced it with data of cancer incidence and survival rates for people living in varying locations.

They found that people in northern latitudes produce significantly less vitamin D than people nearer to the equator. Specifically, they found Australians produce 3.4 times more vitamin D than people in the United States, and almost five times more vitamin D than Scandinavians.

Meanwhile, rates of major cancers such as colon, lung, breast and prostate increased from north to south, while survival rates decreased from north to south.

The researchers said the findings provide further support for sun-induced vitamin D on cancer prognosis.

Previous studies suggest that vitamin D may protect against cancer by discouraging out-of-control cell reproduction and hindering the formation of new blood vessels for tumors.

Sources:

• Yahoo News January 7, 2008

• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences January 7, 2008

A Dermatologist Who ‘Sees the light”

Does Sunshine Really Cause Skin Cancer?

Dermatologist Dr. Bernard Ackerman devotes many hours of his time diagnosing cases of cancer. On a recent trip, he didn’t seem worried about the potential risk of the disease while he sunbathed without the use of sunscreen or a hat. Ackerman, an expert in the field of dermatology, said that the connection between melanoma and the sun is both inconclusive and inconsistent. Commonly Held Assumptions on the Sun and Melanoma If a person is badly sunburned, to the point of blistering at an early age in their life, they will develop skin cancer later on in life. Ackerman pointed out there were contradictions in the studies supporting this theory. Another common assumption is that sunscreen acts as a protection against melanoma. To counter this theory, Ackerman referred to a study completed in a dermatology journal on the subject that didn’t provide any factual evidence to support this theory. The more intense the exposure to the sun, the greater the likelihood of developing melanoma. Ackerman claimed that much of the epidemiological research is inaccurate and doesn’t evaluate cause and effect findings. Ackerman advised keeping out of the sun if you’re concerned about premature aging or if you’re very fair-skinned due to the increased risk of developing squamous cell carcinoma, a less dangerous form of cancer. Otherwise, Ackerman said it was not wise to hold onto the beliefs that included avoiding the sun and using sunscreen as ways to protect against melanoma. Ackerman further challenged the “epidemic” of melanoma by questioning why African Americans and Asians developed melanoma on their skin mainly on areas that haven’t been exposed to the sun such as the palms, soles, nails and mucous membranes. Another dermatologist who disagreed with Ackerman’s ideas stated that people who developed melanoma in areas that weren’t exposed to sun were a result of the way sunlight suppressed immune cells in the surface of the skin that normally kept cancer at bay. Ackerman explained that this “immune-system argument” lacked evidence and acted as a hypothesis to the sun-exposure-causes-melanoma hypothesis.

Vitamin D in a New Light

There are thirteen vitamins humans need for growth and development and to maintain good health. The human body cannot make these essential bio-molecules. They must be supplied in the diet or by bacteria in the intestine, except for vitamin D. Skin makes vitamin D when exposed to ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation from the sun. A light-skinned person will synthesize 20,000 IU (international units) of vitamin D in 20 minutes sunbathing on a Caribbean beach. Vitamin D is also unique in another way. It is the only vitamin that is a hormone, a type of steroid hormone known as a secosteroid, with three carbon rings….

Rest of the Story 

Donald Miller (send him mail) is a cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and writes articles on a variety of subjects for LewRockwell.com. His web site is www.donaldmiller.com

Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com

Which Vitamin Will Improve Your Life Expectancy the Most?

Vitamin D supplements may lower your risk of dying from any cause, according to a new European study.

Researchers from the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, reviewed 18 trials of more than 57,000 people.

The trials involved doses of vitamin D ranging from 300 international units (IUs) to 2,000 IUs. The average dose was 528 IUs.

After a period of six years, the data showed that people who took vitamin D supplements had a 7 percent lower risk of death compared to people who did not take the supplements.

Further, according to the nine trials that collected blood samples, people who took vitamin D supplements had a 1.4- to 5.2-fold higher level of vitamin D in their blood than those who did not.

Because vitamin D can reduce the proliferation of cells, which occurs in cancer, the researchers believe their finding could lead to new drugs to fight cancer and other illnesses.

Vitamin D also helps your body to uptake calcium for bone health.

The researchers recommend taking between 400 IUs and 600 IUs of vitamin D daily. Your skin can also produce its own vitamin D by getting moderate sun exposure each day.

Archives of Internal Medicine September 10, 2007;167:1730-1737
Forbes.com September 10, 2007

Experts Starting to Agree — More Vitamin D is Better

A new study indicates that at least 2,000 International Units (IU) of vitamin D3 — which is currently considered the upper limit of intake — are needed to ensure adequate blood levels of the vitamin for post-menopausal African-American women.

Over 200 women took part in this three-year, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, which adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that there is an urgent need to review current recommended daily intake levels of the vitamin.

Vitamin D3 is produced in the skin during exposure to sunlight. However, increased skin pigmentation reduces the effect of UVB radiation, meaning darker-skinned people are more at risk of vitamin D deficiency.

As much as 4000 IU per day may be required for individuals who are already deficient in the vitamin.

Sources:

• NutraIngredients.com December 12, 2007

• American Journal of Clinical Nutrition December, 2007; 86(6): 1657-1662

Study shows effects of vitamin D and skin’s physiology

Public release date: 20-Feb-2008

Contact: Michelle Roberts
michelle.roberts@bmc.org
617-638-8491
Boston University

Effects of vitamin D and skin’s physiology

Boston, MA— Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have found that previtamin D3 production varies depending on several factors including skin type and weather conditions. The study will appear in the March 2008 issue of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

Excessive exposure to sunlight does not result in Vitamin D intoxification because previtamin D3 and vitamin D3 are photolyzed to several photoproducts. During the winter at altitudes above ~35 degrees, there is minimal if any previtamin D3 production in the skin. Increased skin pigmentation, application of a sunscreen, aging and clothing have a dramatic effect on previtamin D3 production in the skin. It has been speculated that people living at higher altitudes may be able to more efficiently produce vitamin D3 in their skin because there is less ozone to absorb the UVB photons.

Forty-five nursing home residents who were taking a multivitamin that contained 400 IU of vitamin D2 showed a dramatic decline in their 25(OH)D levels from the end of summer to the beginning of the following summer. Forty-nine percent, 67 percent, 74 percent, and 78 percent of the nursing home residents were vitamin D deficient in August, November, February, and May respectively.

Fifteen healthy adults aged 20-53 received exposure three times per week from a commercial tanning bed that emitted five percent of its UV energy in the UVB range 290-320 nm to most of their body while in a bathing suit. 25(OH)D levels were determined weekly for a total of seven weeks.

Exposure of 7-dehydrocholesterol to tanning bed irradiation revealed -1 percent production of previtamin D after one minute and a linear increase to -10 percent at 10 minutes. After one week, there was a 50 percent increase in 25 (OH)D levels that continued to increase over a period of five weeks to -150 percent above baseline levels. The blood levels of 25 (OH)D plateaued after five weeks and were sustained out to seven weeks.

“Vitamin D deficiency is common in both children and adults worldwide,” said Michael Holick, PhD, MD, director of the General Clinical Research Center and professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at BUSM and senior author of this study. “Exposure to lamps that emit UVB radiation is an excellent source for producing vitamin D3 in the skin and is especially efficacious in patients with fat malabsortion syndromes.”

It has been observed that living at higher altitudes and being more prone to vitamin D deficiency markedly increases risk of many deadly cancers including cancer of the colon, prostate, breast, and esophagus, according to Holick, who is also director of the Bone Healthcare Clinic and the vitamin D, Skin and Bone Research Laboratory at Boston University Medical Center. Living at higher altitudes also increase the risk of having hypertension, type I diabetes, multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases, and infectious diseases including tuberculosis and influenza.

According to researchers, most experts now agree that a minimum of 1000 IU of vitamin D3 per day is necessary to maintain circulating concentrations of 25(OH)D.

###

This study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health and the Ultraviolet Light Foundation.

For more information on Boston University Medical Center, please visit http://www.bumc.bu.edu/.

Vitamin D Boosts Mood and Memory

We now know that vitamin D affects virtually all body tissues, including the brain. And a new study suggests that getting enough D can improve some mood and memory problems. In a group of older people, those with low blood levels of vitamin D were more likely to have mild depressive symptoms such as lack of interest or indecisiveness than people with adequate blood levels. Deficiency was also linked to poor thinking skills like memory, judgment and problem-solving. (Wilkins, CH et al: Am J Geriatr Psychiatry 2006; 14:1032-1040)Therapeutic Dosage: Leading experts now recommend 1,000-2,000 IU of vitamin D a day, and we concur. Some 25% to 54% of all adults over age 60 are low in vitamin D.

LINK TO THE FULL STORY 

Round-the-World News About Vitamin D

Research reports keep rolling in on the importance of vitamin D in our diet-beyond its familiar role in helping us to build strong bones. Here are some of the findings: Periodontal disease, in a dental study of 6,700 people from 13 to 90, the gums of patients with higher blood levels of vitamin D were 20 percent less likely to bleed.

“The evidence on gingivitis and tooth loss suggests that vitamin D influences oral health by decreasing inflammation,” said Bess Dawson-Hughes, director of the Bone Metabolism Lab at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.Cancer.

Studies by Reinhold Vieth at the University of Toronto have reported a substantial reduction in the rates of colon cancer as blood levels of vitamin D went up. Dr. Vieth suggests that vitamin D inhibits a mechanism by which cancer cells spread or it may boost the function of blood vessels or the immune system.

Diabetes. A number of studies have found that people with higher blood levels of vitamin D had a lower risk of diabetes than people with lower levels. Researchers have suggested that vitamin D seems to influence responsiveness to insulin.

Fitness. A study at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine found that people with low blood levels of vitamin D scored from 5 to 10 percent lower on tests measuring grip strength, balance and walking speed than those who had higher levels. Apparently vitamin D helps build and repair muscles as well as bones.

Longevity. People who take vitamin D supplements may also live longer, according to Sara Gandini, Ph.D., of the European Institute of Oncology in Italy, and Philippe Autier, M.D., of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France. “The intake of ordinary doses of vitamin D supplements seems to be associated with decreases in total mortality rates,” they reported.

“The results are remarkable,” according to Edward Giovannucci, M.D., ScD., of the Harvard School of Public Health, in an editorial on vitamin D research in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

What to do. Adults should try to get 800 international units (IU) daily of vitamin D-or 1000 IUs a day if you are 70 or older. The average U.S. adult intake of vitamin D is 230 IUs daily, according to a study reported in the journal Nutrition Reviews.

Vitamin D is available from sunlight, of course, and from foods such as fatty fish, eggs, fortified milk and fortified cereals as well as supplements.

-Sources: Bottom Line Health, CSPI Nutrition Action Letter, and Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter

11 Ways to Slow Aging

Sensible Sunlight

Vitamin D is one of the most underrated vitamins in the world.

Your body makes it, but only when you’re exposed to sunlight.

Vitamin D enhances performance, fights cancer and builds bones.

Older adults who don’t get enough are at increased risk for both poor physical performance and for disability.

It’s possible — but difficult — to get enough vitamin D from food.

We need the sun.

For most Caucasians who are living where there is sunlight, exposing 10 percent of your body a couple times a week is enough to get your vitamin D requirement.

Darker people or people who live in the northern latitudes need more.

Don’t be sun phobic.

Sensible sun could extend your life.

See the other 10 Ways to Slow Aging 

The Sunscreen Myth: How Sunscreen Products Actually Promote Cancer

Seven Important Questions About Sunscreen

The next time you see some public service advertisement urging you to smother yourself and your children with sunscreen chemicals, think hard before taking action. Ask yourself these seven commonsense questions:

1) Is the sun really dangerous to humans? If so, how did humans survive for the last 350,000 years on planet Earth?

2) Have the chemicals used in sunscreen products ever been safety tested or approved by the FDA? (The answer is no.)

3) Who financially benefits when you keep buying and using sunscreen products?

4) What is the environmental impact of sunscreen chemicals washing off into the ocean, a lake, a swimming pool or being washed down the drain in your shower?

5) Sunscreen manufacturers say the skin doesn’t absorb their chemicals. If that’s true, then how do nicotine patches work? How do transdermal drugs get absorbed through the skin if sunscreen chemicals don’t? (Answer: ALL these chemicals get absorbed through the skin. The skin is not selective about what it chooses to absorb.)

6) If the sun is so dangerous, then why is the vitamin generated by sunlight (vitamin D) so healthy for humans? Why would humans evolve a mechanism for generating a vitamin from sunlight if we weren’t supposed to be exposed to sunlight in the first place?

7) If sunlight is so dangerous, then why is virtually every living creature on planet Earth dependent on sunlight for survival? Plants use sunlight to generate their nutrition, too, and most animals eat either plants or other animals that originally ate plants. Nearly all life on planet Earth is powered by sunlight. Why does the cancer industry believe sunlight causes death when, in reality, sunlight delivers life?

Once you answer these questions, the reality of the situation becomes obvious: Sunlight is good for you, and sunscreen is a hoax.

The idea that sunscreen prevents cancer is a myth. It’s a myth promoted by a profit-seeking tag-team effort between the cancer industry and the sunscreen industry. The sunscreen industry makes money by selling lotion products that actually contain cancer-causing chemicals. It then donates a portion of that money to the cancer industry through non-profit groups like the American Cancer Society which, in turn, run heart-breaking public service ads urging people to use sunscreen to “prevent cancer.”

The scientific evidence, however, shows quite clearly that sunscreen actually promotes cancer by blocking the body’s absorption of ultraviolet radiation, which produces vitamin D in the skin. Vitamin D, as recent studies have shown, prevents up to 77 of ALL cancers in women (breast cancer, colon cancer, cervical cancer, lung cancer, brain tumors, multiple myeloma… you name it). Meanwhile, the toxic chemical ingredients used in most sunscreen products are actually carcinogenic and have never been safety tested or safety approved by the FDA. They get absorbed right through the skin (a porous organ that absorbs most substances it comes into contact with) and enter the bloodstream.

Vitamin D Deficiency Widespread During Pregnancy

“This study is among the largest to examine these questions in this at-risk population,” Marjorie L. McCullough, Sc.D., senior epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society, wrote in an accompanying editorial. “By the end of pregnancy, 90 percent of all women were taking prenatal vitamins and yet deficiency was still common.”

PITTSBURGH, February 27, 2007 — Even regular use of prenatal multivitamin supplements is not adequate to prevent vitamin D insufficiency, University of Pittsburgh researchers report in the current issue of the Journal of Nutrition, the publication of the American Society for Nutrition. A condition linked to rickets and other musculoskeletal and health complications, vitamin D insufficiency was found to be widespread among women during pregnancy, particularly in the northern latitudes.

“In our study, more than 80 percent of African-American women and nearly half of white women tested at delivery had levels of vitamin D that were too low, even though more than 90 percent of them used prenatal vitamins during pregnancy,” said Lisa Bodnar, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH) and lead author of the study. “The numbers also were striking for their newborns – 92.4 percent of African-American babies and 66.1 percent of white infants were found to have insufficient vitamin D at birth.”

A vitamin closely associated with bone health, vitamin D deficiency early in life is associated with rickets – a disorder characterized by soft bones and thought to have been eradicated in the United States more than 50 years ago – as well as increased risk for type 1 diabetes, asthma and schizophrenia.

“A newborn’s vitamin D stores are completely reliant on vitamin D from the mother,” observed Dr. Bodnar, who also is an assistant investigator at the university-affiliated Magee-Womens Research Institute (MWRI). “Not surprisingly, poor maternal vitamin D status during pregnancy is a major risk factor for infant rickets, which again is becoming a major health problem.”

Lack of milk, sunshine and exercise hurts kids’ bones

 

U.S. children break their arms more

often today than four decades ago —

girls 56 percent more,

and boys 32 percent more,

according to a Mayo Clinic study.

 

 

Too little milk, sunshine and exercise: It’s an anti-bone trifecta. And for some kids, shockingly, it’s leading to rickets, the soft-bone scourge of the 19th century.

But cases of full-blown rickets are just the red flag: Bone specialists say possibly millions of seemingly healthy children aren’t building as much strong bone as they should — a gap that might leave them more vulnerable to bone-cracking osteoporosis later in life than their grandparents are.

“This potentially is a time-bomb,” says Dr. Laura Tosi, bone health chief at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington.

Now scientists are taking the first steps to track kids’ bone quality and learn just how big a problem the anti-bone trio is causing, thanks to new research that finally shows just what “normal” bone density is for children of different ages.

Dr. Heidi Kalkwarf of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital led a national study that gave bone scans to 1,500 healthy children ages 6 to 17 to see how bone mass is accumulated. The result, published last summer: The first bone-growth guide, just like height-and-weight charts, for pediatricians treating children at high risk of bone problems.

Next, the government-funded study is tracking those 1,500 children for seven more years, to see how their bones turn out. Say a 7-year-old is in the 50th percentile for bone growth. Does she tend to stay at that level by age 14, or catch up to kids with denser bones? If not, is she more prone to fractures?

Ultimately, the question is what level is cause for concern.

 

The National Institutes of Health lists sunlight as “the most important source of vitamin D

In recent years, several groups have launched smear campaigns against the sun and tanning, blurring the line between overexposure—a very real threat to our heath—and any exposure at all. The sunscreen industry constantly warns the public to “cover up” before venturing outside. Store shelves are flooded with products promising increasingly higher sun protection factors (SPFs), and the latest children’s swim trunks cover more skin than a nun’s habit.

As a result, the Centers for Disease Control estimates that more than 180 million Americans—60 percent of the population—are not getting enough vitamin D.

.” Our bodies produce the aptly named “sunshine vitamin” when ultraviolet (UV) rays reach our skin. In order to produce the amount that most experts now agree is the minimum daily requirement (about 1,000 to 2,000 international units), some individuals would need to bare it all for about 20 minutes in the sunshine every day. Most of the United States doesn’t even come close.

Without vitamin D, our bodies cannot build strong bones or maintain a healthy immune system. New research indicates that the sunshine vitamin plays a vital role in the prevention of many deadly illnesses, including multiple sclerosis, tuberculosis, schizophrenia and heart disease. Health officials estimate that as many as 47,000 cancer deaths could be prevented each year in the United States if adequate vitamin D levels were attained.

Vitamin D deficiency is contributing to hundreds of thousands of cases of chronic and terminal diseases. That means the sunlight myths perpetuated by the skin care industry aren’t only misleading—they’re deadly.

Most are largely unaware that spending five to seven minutes in a tanning bed a few times a week provides people with the necessary amount of vitamin D to stay healthy. In fact, most people aren’t even aware that they could be at risk of vitamin D deficiency.

 

Sunlight May Save Kids’ Sight

Exposure to sunlight may boost kids’ dopamine levels, which reduces their chances of myopia, scientists say

Wednesday, 05 December 2007

Dani Cooper ABC

Exposure to sunlight could be a critical factor in stopping children from becoming short-sighted, Australian researchers have found.

The findings, presented to the Australasian Ophthalmic and Visual Sciences Meeting in Canberra this week, appear to overturn the long-held view that education and close work are the key drivers of myopia.

Instead they suggest the ability to develop myopia is strongly influenced by environmental factors.

They will also be a boon to public health officials in the region as myopia is reaching epidemic proportions across urban Asia.

Dr Ian Morgan, of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, says there has been a dramatic escalation in myopia rates in East Asia during the past 30 years.

Morgan says 90% of conscription-aged males in Singapore are now myopic.

This compares with figures from the 1960s to the 70s when only 20-30% of 17-year-old males had myopia.

During the same period, rates of myopia in Australia have increased from about 15% to 20-25%.

Morgan says it has been suggested there may be an East Asian genetic susceptibility to environmental risk factors associated with intensive education and urbanisation.

But he says this can be discounted because those of South Asian, or Indian, ethnicity growing up in Singapore are as myopic as the Chinese and Malay populations.

“This phenomenon cannot plausibly be explained in terms of changes in gene pools,” the Australian National University researcher says.

“A gene pool doesn’t change that fast.”

Playing outside

Instead Morgan and colleague Dr Kathy Rose, of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney, have found the time children spend outdoors is the critical factor.

A comparison of children of Chinese origin living in Singapore and Sydney, which matched the subjects for age and parental myopia, shows the rate of myopia in Singaporean children is 10 times higher.

But Morgan says the Sydney-based children spend significantly more time in near-work activity, reading twice as many books per week.

The key difference in their weekly activities was in time spent outdoors with Sydney-based children outside almost four times longer than their Singapore counterparts.

“What children are doing in Australia at the moment seems to be right,” he says.

Dopamine

Morgan believes the exposure to sunlight cuts myopia rates by encouraging the release of dopamine.

Dopamine is known to inhibit eye growth and myopia is a condition caused by excessive eye growth.

Morgan says while they will begin experiments to assess this theory, the findings are concrete enough to inform public health policy.

“The findings provide a means of prevention and are enough to start authorities thinking about time outdoors as a public health strategy.”

Morgan says a prevention strategy is needed because severe myopia increases the risk of retinal detachment, which can lead to blindness.

He says Singapore faces the serious public health threat of having as much as 10% of its population developing a serious retinal problem later in life.

Source Link : http://www.abc.net.au/science/articl…m?topic=health

Vitamin D Important for Brain Function

(Ivanhoe Newswire) – Not only does vitamin D help build healthy bones, it may also help build strong minds.

In a new review of vitamin D researchers from Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute find there is plenty of evidence to suggest vitamin D is important in brain development and function. And they say people at high risk of not getting enough of it need supplements.

Scientists have recently become aware that vitamin D is good for more than just bones – evidence shows it protects against autoimmune diseases including multiple sclerosis and type I diabetes as well as some forms of cancer, especially colorectal and breast.

This review shows vitamin D can affect proteins in the brain known to be directly involved in learning, memory, motor control, and perhaps maternal and social behavior.

Vitamin D can only be found in a few foods such as fatty fish. It is also added to fortified milk. But we get most of our vitamin D from exposure to ultraviolet rays from the sun. People with light skin absorb vitamin D six times more efficiently than those with dark skin which is why dark-skinned people in the Northern United States or European latitudes with little sun exposure are at risk for rickets, bone fractures, and possibly other diseases.

Even though more research needs to be done on the health risks of not getting enough vitamin D the authors recommend people with exceptionally low levels of it – especially nursing infants, the elderly, and African Americans – take supplements.

SOURCE: FASB Journal published online Dec. 13, 2007

Skin Colour Linked to Vitamin D Deficiency

Updated Tue. Dec. 18 2007 11:08 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

A new study has confirmed that people of colour — those of African and east Asian background — may be dangerously low in vitamin D — so low it surprised researchers.

Esteban Parra of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto conducted his study last winter by testing the blood of students on the Mississauga campus at the University of Toronto from a variety of ethnic backgrounds.

Esteban Parra, Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, discusses results of the study with CTV News on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007.

Dr. Reinhold Veith, a nutritional researcher at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto says he was impressed with the study.

He asked 106 healthy young adults to report their ancestry and to keep a diary of everything they ate and all the supplements they took for a week. He then tested their blood for vitamin D, which are measured in 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OHD) levels.

Anything above 75 nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) of 25-OHD is considered optimal. Anything less than 25 nmol/L is considered seriously deficient, a level that would put one at risk of developing rickets, a condition in which the bones grow soft. A level between 25 and 50 nmol/L is considered insufficient but not yet low enough to lead to a deficiency.

His first surprise was just how many of the otherwise healthy students were seriously deficient in vitamin D during the winter months, when the number of daylight hours is shortened and when people are less likely to absorb sunlight through exposed skin.

“We found a very high prevalence of insufficiency,” Parra reports.

Lung Cancer ‘Link to Lack of Sun’

Some sun can be a good thing

Lack of sunlight may increase the risk of lung cancer, a study suggests. Researchers found lung cancer rates were highest in countries furthest from the equator, where exposure to sunlight is lowest.

It is thought vitamin D – generated by exposure to sunlight – can halt tumour growth by promoting the factors responsible for cell death in the body.

The University of California, San Diego study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Experts warn that exposure to sunlight is still the major cause of skin cancer – a disease which is on the increase around the world.

Lung cancer kills more than one million people every year around the globe.

The researchers examined data from 111 countries across several continents.

Cell glue

They found smoking was most strongly associated with lung cancer rates – accounting for up to 85% of all cases.

But exposure to sunlight, especially UVB light, the principal source of vitamin D for the body, also seemed to have an impact.

We know that vitamin D is essential for good health, but the time in the sun needed to get enough vitamin D is much less than the time it takes to tan or burn Dr Kat Arney Cancer Research UK

Vitamin D Dose Study Adds Weight to Intake Increases

By Stephen Daniells

12/12/2007 – Doses of vitamin D3 of 2,000 International Units (IU) – the current tolerable upper intake level (UL) in Europe and the US – are needed to ensure blood levels of the vitamin amongst post-menopausal African-American women, says a new study.

Over 200 women took part in the three year study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which adds to an ever-growing body of science suggesting an urgent need to review current daily intakes of the vitamin.

Vitamin D is produced in the skin on exposure to UVB radiation and can also be consumed in small amounts from the diet. However, increased skin pigmentation reduces the effect of UVB radiation meaning darker skinned people are more at risk of vitamin D deficiency.

Vitamin D deficiency can lead to a range of health problems, including rickets, poor tooth formation, convulsions, general ill health, and stunted growth. It has also been linked to an increased risk of certain cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis.

Researchers from Winthrop University Hospital, Mineola, New York performed a dose-response experiment with 208 healthy African-American postmenopausal women. Half the women were assigned to the vitamin D intervention arm of the trial and received daily supplements of 800 IU D3 (20 micrograms) for two years, and 2,000 IU (50 micrograms) for the final year.

VITAMIN D SEES THE LIGHT

‘Sunshine’ nutrient may have key role in halting disease

By Suzanne Bohan STAFF WRITER
Article Launched: 01/20/2008 02:59:56 AM PST

Inside a laboratory at Stanford University, researchers are confidently pursuing evidence that vitamin D plays an important role in breast and prostate cancer prevention.
At Children’s Hospital Oakland, a famed scientist is convinced that widespread deficiency of vitamin D in the U.S. population leads to poor immune system and brain functioning, among other conditions.

Also, scientists at UC Davis this month were awarded $600,000 by the federal government to study the link between vitamin D and major diseases of the day.
For decades, most people paid little attention to vitamin D, called the “sunshine vitamin,” since sun rays absorbed by the skin synthesize the nutrient.

Vitamin D’s historic claim to fame has been its role in building and maintaining strong bones and teeth by regulating calcium levels.

But to their surprise, scientists in recent years discovered that vitamin D appears to play an under appreciated role in preventing just about every major disease afflicting Western societies, from cancer and cardiovascular disease to multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes.

Vitamin D as Cancer Fighter?

Big doses showed promising results

Evra Taylor Levy and Eddy Lang

Sunday, January 20, 2008

CREDIT: Dan Janisse / Windsor Star / Canwest News Service Vitamin D.

Most vitamins have proven disappointing in the area of cancer prevention when subjected to rigorous scientific evaluation. There appears to be one important exception, however, and this edition of HealthWatch takes a look at one of last year’s hottest health topics.

Vitamin D has long been espoused as important in maintaining bone health, particularly in climates like ours, in which sunlight is scarce during winter. Last year, a landmark study on Vitamin D took a different slant by indicating that taking larger than usual amounts of it can actually prevent cancer. However, conclusions drawn were confusing as different organizations issued conflicting recommendations.

What exactly is Vitamin D?
Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin found in fatty fish, egg yolks and milk, but sunshine is the main source for most people. Ultraviolet (UV) rays from sunlight trigger Vitamin D synthesis in the skin, while the liver and kidneys convert it to an active form.

Vitamin D maintains normal blood levels of calcium and phosphorus and promotes calcium absorption from the intestine. In severe deficiency conditions, the bones become brittle and misshapen; milder deficiencies promote and worsen osteoporosis.

What about the connection to cancer?
For decades, population studies suggested a lower cancer incidence in regions with greater sun exposure, and that people with inadequate Vitamin D intake are at greater risk of developing cancer.

Vitamin D Plays Role in Fighting Diseases

By Suzanne Bohan, MediaNews
Article Last Updated: 01/21/2008 09:15:37 PM PST

For decades, most people paid little attention to vitamin D – called the “sunshine vitamin,” because sun rays absorbed by the skin synthesize the nutrient that regulates calcium and helps build strong bones and teeth.

But to their surprise, scientists are learning that vitamin D appears to play an under appreciated role in preventing just about every major disease, from cancer and cardiovascular disease to multiple sclerosis and Type 1 diabetes.

“There are so many things that vitamin D may do that are beneficial,” said Dr. David Feldman, a professor at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, who has studied the health effects of the nutrient for 25 years.

Vitamin D Deficiency Explains Disparities Between Blacks and Whites

By David Liu, Ph.D.
Jan 27, 2008 – 4:26:04 PM

SUNDAY JAN 27, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) — Vitamin D insufficiency among African-Americans in the southeastern United States may be responsible for the cancer disparities between blacks and whites, according to a new study published in the Jan 25, 2008 issue of Cancer Causes Control.

Studies found there are disparities in incidence and mortality of cancer between African-Americans and Caucasians and news media has attributed the disparities to the poor healthcare or treatments blacks receive.

The new study led by Egan KM at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt-Ingram in Nashville, IN and colleagues showed hypovitaminosis D prevalence was 45 percent among blacks compared to 11 percent among whites.

In the study, hypovitaminosis D was defined as serum 25(OH)D levels </=15 ng/ml.

For the study, the researchers analyzed serum 25(OH)D levels using baseline blood samples from 395 Southern Community Cohort Study participants age 40 to 79 between 2002 and 2004.

Vitamin D – a “D”Lightful Story

Dr Michael Holick presents “a ‘D’Lightful Story”

The History of Vitamin D in Nature

Click HERE for the Video

Tanning May REDUCE Risk of Melanoma

“Guardian of the genome” protein found to underlie skin tanning

May also influence human fondness for sunshine

David E. Fisher (right) with Rutao Cui

A protein known as the “master watchman of the genome” for its ability to guard against cancer-causing DNA damage has been found to provide an entirely different level of cancer protection: By prompting the skin to tan in response to ultraviolet light from the sun, it deters the development of melanoma skin cancer, the fastest-increasing form of cancer in the world.

In a study in the March 9 issue of the journal Cell, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report that the protein, p53, is not only linked to skin tanning, but also may play a role in people’s seemingly universal desire to be in the sun — an activity that, by promoting tanning, can reduce one’s risk of melanoma.

“The number one risk factor for melanoma is an inability to tan; people who tan easily or have dark pigmentation are far less likely to develop the disease,” says the study’s senior author, David E. Fisher, MD, PhD, director of the Melanoma Program at Dana-Farber and a professor in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston. “This study suggests that p53, one of the best-known tumor-suppressor proteins in our body, has a powerful role in protecting us against sun damage in the skin.”

In a study published last year, Fisher and his colleagues found that ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun causes skin cells called keratinocytes to make and secrete a hormone called α-MSH, which attaches to nearby skin cells called melanocytes and spurs them to produce skin-darkening pigment called melanin. The chain of events within keratinocytes that leads to α-MSH production, however, was a mystery.

Grab a Glass of Milk and Sit in the Sunshine

The annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research held this month featured reports by two groups of scientists who used statistical analysis to determine whether vitamin D, which our bodies make from exposure to sunlight, can help protect against breast cancer.

Studies conducted by researchers in Toronto show that the risk reduction was most apparent among subjects exposed to the highest levels of vitamin D when they were young.The studies involved interviews with 576 patients who had been diagnosed with breast cancer and 1,135 women who had no cancer.

The scientists found significant reductions in breast cancer among those who had worked an outdoor job, had taken part in outdoor activities when young, or consumed cod liver oil or milk.Working an outdoor job between the ages of 10 and 19 resulted in an estimated 40 percent reduced risk of breast cancer.

Frequent outdoor activities between ages 10 to 29 lowered breast cancer risk by an estimated 35 percent.As far as dietary habits are concerned, the researchers also found that taking cod liver oil between ages 10 and 19 reduced breast cancer risk by about 25 percent, and consuming at least nine glasses of milk every week between the ages of 10 and 29 reduced the risk by 35 percent.

Tanning Beds Help Vitamin D Deficiency

By David Liu, Ph. D.
Feb 22, 2008 – 2:27:23 PM

(Foodconsumer.org) — Researchers at the University of Boston found that vitamin D deficiency was common among the elderly people during non-summer days and exposure to UV rays from a commercial tanning bed could effectively stimulate production of this essential vitamin that now is believed to provide a potent anti-cancer activity among others.

The study of 45 nursing home residents by Michael Holick, a heavy weight vitamin D researcher and senior author of the study, and colleagues showed the rate of 25(OH)D deficiency among the subjects raised to 49, 67, 74 and 78 percent in August, November, February and May, respectively. The participants took a vitamin D supplement containing 400 IU vitamin D2 during the study.

Vitamin D is naturally synthesized in the body while exposure to sunlight. Full exposure of both hands and the face for 15 to 20 minutes to the sun would render production of enough vitamin D3 in a person. Overexposure would not lead to overproduction of this vitamin.

In regions where exposure to the sunshine is not intense, people are more likely to develop a range of cancers including the colon, prostate, breast, and esophagus, according to Holick. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to increased risk of having hypertension, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and other autoimmune disease and infectious disease including tuberculosis and influenza in addition to cancers.

For the study, Holick and colleagues exposed 15 healthy adults aged 20 to 53 in a bathing suit three times per week from a commercial tanning bed that emitted five percent of its UV energy in the UVB ranging 290 to 320 nm. The 25(OH)D level in the blood was determined weekly for seven weeks.

February is “Vitamin D Deficiency Month”

MCLEAN, Va., Feb. 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Today, the UV Foundation dubbed February “Vitamin D Deficiency Month” in a nationwide effort to raise awareness about vitamin D deficiency and its negative health effects. In addition to increasing the risk of many types of cancer and heart disease, vitamin D deficiency is also linked to many common wintertime complaints such as fatigue, depression and aches and pains.

A Harvard Medical School study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has reported that 60% of Americans are vitamin D deficient. This is particularly troublesome since vitamin D is proven to ward off many types of cancer including colon, prostate and breast cancer and is further shown to guard against heart disease, MS, and other chronic health problems.

Moderate exposure to sunlight or UV light is the absolute best way to help the body manufacture the vitamin D it needs. Unfortunately, during the bleak winter months it becomes harder to get the necessary amount of vitamin D. In fact, it is impossible to get the requisite amount in cities north of 37 degrees latitude for as many as 6 months out of the year. That includes cities like Richmond, VA, St. Louis, MO, and Sacramento, CA, and all cities farther north.

Vitamins: D is for Disease-Free

Vitamins: D for disease-free

By SANDI DOUGHTON The Seattle Times

Soaking up sunlight, even in winter, is the most efficient way to boost the vitamin D in your body.Dreary winters are infamous for inducing depression. But being starved for sunlight can do more than kick you into a psychic hole.

A growing body of evidence suggests it can raise your risk of cancer and increase susceptibility to heart attack, diabetes and multiple sclerosis.The reason is vitamin D, an essential nutrient produced in abundance by skin exposed to the sun’s rays. Long dismissed as being important mainly for strong bones, the so-called sunshine vitamin is now recognized as a key player throughout the body, including the immune system.

Increased use of sunscreen has turned a seasonal shortfall into a year-round condition for many people. A recent survey in Britain found 87 percent of adults tested during winter, and more than 60 percent in summer, had sub par vitamin D levels.

Doctors in many parts of the world report a resurgence of childhood rickets, soft bones caused by lack of vitamin D. Supplements offer a cheap and easy solution.But Bruce Hollis, a leading vitamin D researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina, and other researchers argue the recommended intake is too low to provide many health benefits.A Canadian medical organization advises that pregnant and nursing women take 10 times the amount suggested in the U.S.

“You’re more likely to live longer, and you’re less likely to die of serious chronic disease if you have adequate vitamin D on board,” said Michael Holick of Boston University School of Medicine. “It may well be the most important nutrient of the decade.”When Lisa Hill, 54, went to her doctor complaining of joint pain, she was surprised to get a diagnosis of vitamin D deficiency. “I had never heard of it,” she said.

Many doctors once scoffed at the notion of vitamin D deficiency, but testing has become more routine and is covered by most insurance.

TIME mag – Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs 2007

#10. Benefits of Vitamin D

Researchers have long known that the “sunshine vitamin” boosts bone strength by encouraging the body to absorb calcium. But a slew of new studies published in 2007 suggests that the vitamin has a lot of other benefits: Diets high in D may ward off diabetes, gum disease and multiple sclerosis — and maybe even cancer. Though some findings linking vitamin D and cancer showed questionable benefit, the news on colon cancer was promising. In one large trial, men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study and women in the Nurses’ Health Study with the highest blood levels of vitamin D were half as likely to develop colon cancer as their peers with less circulating vitamin D. To squeeze the most value out of vitamin D, aim for taking a supplement with 1,000 IU daily.

Source Time Magazine

Can Vitamin D Save Your Life?

New studies highlight the importance of the forgotten vitamin.

by Mariana Gosnell

For years doctors believed that vitamin D, sometimes called the “sunshine vitamin” because sunlight triggers the body to produce it, was important primarily in preventing rickets (a softening of the bones) in children. Once milk became fortified with vitamin D, rickets pretty much disappeared, and the problem of vitamin D deficiency seemed to have been solved. But according to Michael F. Holick, director of the Vitamin D, Skin, and Bone Research Laboratory at Boston University Medical Center, who has spent 30 years studying the vitamin, “rickets can be considered the tip of the vitamin D–deficiency iceberg.”

Today a lack of the vitamin has been linked to a host of other maladies, including cancers of the colon, prostate, and breast; tuberculosis; schizophrenia; multiple sclerosis; hip fractures; and chronic pain. How can one vitamin play a role in so many diverse illnesses? The answer seems to lie in the fact that most tissues and cells in the human body (and not just those in the intestine and bone that help fix calcium) have receptors for vitamin D, suggesting that the vitamin is needed for overall optimal health. In addition, some cells carry enzymes for converting the circulating form of vitamin D to the active form, making it available in high concentrations to the tissues locally.

A recent laboratory experiment at Boston University revealed that by activating the circulating form of the vitamin, prostate cells could regulate their own growth and possibly prevent the rise of cancer. Directly or indirectly, Holick points out, “the active form of vitamin D controls up to 200 different genes,” including ones responsible for cell proliferation, differentiation, and death.

MSNBC Video – Sunshine May Lengthen Your Life

A little more sunshine might help you live longer, according to a study published on Monday suggesting that for some people health benefits from the sun outweigh the risk of skin cancer.

Link to the Video

Lack of Sun Could Put Your Health in Danger

SEATTLE — The Northwest’s dreary winters are infamous for inducing depression. But being starved for sunlight can do more than kick you into a psychic hole.
A growing body of evidence suggests it can raise your risk of cancer, increase susceptibility to heart attack, diabetes and other disorders, and at least partly account for the region’s sky-high rates of multiple sclerosis.

The reason is vitamin D, an essential nutrient produced in abundance by skin exposed to the sun’s rays. Long dismissed as being important mainly for strong bones, the so-called sunshine vitamin is now recognized as a key player throughout the body, including the immune system.

Experts say vitamin D deficiency is much more common than previously believed — especially in northern climes like Washington, where solar radiation from October to March is too puny to maintain healthy levels.

“You’re in a dark, gloomy place,” said Bruce Hollis, a leading vitamin D researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina. “In the winter, you could stand outside naked for five hours and nothing is going to happen.”

We Need to Spend More Time in the Sun

BOSTON — Life on our planet requires sunlight to survive. And most organisms work hard to get it. Jungle reptiles often compete with each other to find the highest, warmest surfaces for sunbathing. Rain-forest plants race to fill rare, sunny openings in the thick canopy left by fallen trees. And some flowers even bend their stems to follow the sun’s movement across the sky.

Humans also need sensible sun exposure. But unlike the rest of life on earth, we actively work to avoid the sun.

In recent years, several dubious groups have launched smear campaigns against the sun, blurring the line between overexposure — a very real threat to our health — and any exposure at all. The sunscreen industry constantly warns the public to “cover up” before venturing outside. Store shelves are flooded with products promising increasingly higher sun-protecting factors (SPF). And the latest children’s swim trunks cover more skin than a nun’s habit.

This frantic obscuration has hurt us in an unexpected area: nutrition. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 180 million Americans — 60 percent of the population — are not getting enough Vitamin D.

Though certain foods contain trace amounts, it’s virtually impossible to get enough vitamin D through diet alone. The National Institute of Health lists sunlight as “the most important source of vitamin D.” Our bodies produce the aptly named “sunshine vitamin” when ultraviolet (UV) rays reach our skin. To produce the amount that most experts now agree is the minimum daily requirement (about 1,000 to 2,000 international units), one would need to expose 25 percent of one’s body for around 10 minutes at least two to three times a week during spring, summer and early fall.

We don’t even come close.

The Latest Word on Vitamin D

SEE WHY MOST OF US ARE MISSING AN ADEQUATE DAILY DOSE

Over the past few years, vitamin D has gained long overdue respect for the vast health benefits it provides, yet many of us continue to fall short of adequate intake of this vital nutrient. Why? Though it’s important to use it, sunscreen is one culprit because it blocks the skin’s ability to make vitamin D during sun exposure. And adding to the shortfall is the fact that we need even more of this vitamin than previously thought.

So while the need for vitamin D is higher than ever, the general population’s compliance with the valid advice to stay out of the sun or apply sunscreen when outside has inadvertently contributed to 65 to 85 percent of American adults having a vitamin D deficiency.

In fact, diet and sun sources of vitamin D are so inadequate that Robert P. Heaney, MD, a bone-mineral specialist and professor at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., urges all adults to supplement with 1,000 to 2,000 IU of vitamin D per day.

What’s the big deal if you run a bit low on vitamin D? Well, for starters, a vitamin D shortfall puts your bone health in danger and increases your risk of rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, cardiovascular disease, glucose intolerance, high blood pressure, multiple sclerosis, and type 2 diabetes.

And vitamin D is under appreciated for its crucial role in preventing osteoporosis, says Heaney. “This vitamin is necessary for the efficient absorption of calcium, which is the principal bone mineral,” he says. “If you’re going to get enough calcium in your body and keep it there, you have to have enough vitamin D.”

Vitamin D – Boning Up on the Sunshine Vitamin

Tourists soak up the sun while walking along Patong Beach in Phuket, Thailand, in December 2005. Recent studies indicate that vitamin D, which is produced naturally in the body through exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays, can extend and improve people’s lives.
(David Longstreath/Associated Press)

Imagine incorporating an inexpensive, single supplement into your life that forces you to get a little sunshine and promises to strengthen your bones, thwart different forms of cancer, stave off multiple sclerosis and autoimmune disorders and fight infections.

New research into the preventive benefits of vitamin D has raised hopes that the sunshine vitamin, which is produced naturally in the body through exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays, could extend and improve people’s lives.

In September 2007, an analysis of 18 randomized controlled trials involving people over the age of 50 found that people who took at least 500 international units (IU) of vitamin D daily had a seven per cent lower risk of death compared with those given a placebo.

Lead researcher Dr. Philippe Autier said it was not clear how the supplements lowered risks of mortality, but he suggested that Vitamin D may block cancer cell proliferation or improve blood vessel and immune system functions. The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, reviewed research involving 57,311 participants.

Exposure to lamps that emit UVB is an excellent source for producing vitamin D3

Effects of vitamin D and skin’s physiology

Boston, MA— Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have found that previtamin D3 production varies depending on several factors including skin type and weather conditions. The study will appear in the March 2008 issue of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

Excessive exposure to sunlight does not result in Vitamin D intoxification because previtamin D3 and vitamin D3 are photolyzed to several photoproducts. During the winter at altitudes above ~35 degrees, there is minimal if any previtamin D3 production in the skin. Increased skin pigmentation, application of a sunscreen, aging and clothing have a dramatic effect on previtamin D3 production in the skin. It has been speculated that people living at higher altitudes may be able to more efficiently produce vitamin D3 in their skin because there is less ozone to absorb the UVB photons.

Forty-five nursing home residents who were taking a multivitamin that contained 400 IU of vitamin D2 showed a dramatic decline in their 25(OH)D levels from the end of summer to the beginning of the following summer. Forty-nine percent, 67 percent, 74 percent, and 78 percent of the nursing home residents were vitamin D deficient in August, November, February, and May respectively.

Fifteen healthy adults aged 20-53 received exposure three times per week from a commercial tanning bed that emitted five percent of its UV energy in the UVB range 290-320 nm to most of their body while in a bathing suit. 25(OH)D levels were determined weekly for a total of seven weeks.

Exposure of 7-dehydrocholesterol to tanning bed irradiation revealed -1 percent production of previtamin D after one minute and a linear increase to -10 percent at 10 minutes. After one week, there was a 50 percent increase in 25 (OH)D levels that continued to increase over a period of five weeks to -150 percent above baseline levels. The blood levels of 25 (OH)D plateaued after five weeks and were sustained out to seven weeks.