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Vitamin D Deficiency Behind Many Western Cancers?
twilight30 wrote us with a link to an article in the Globe and Mail. If further study bears out the findings, new research into the causative agents behind disease and cancer may have a drastic impact on the health of citizens in Canada and the US. According to a four-year clinical trial, there's a direct link between cancer and Vitamin D deficiency. "[The] trial involving 1,200 women, and 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.'"
The cancers are different and have different risks. As the article says, by limiting exposure to sunlight you're trading skin cancer (which is easily detected, quite easily treated and often not fatal) for the scarier cancers like bowel cancer which are implicated in a lot more deaths.
OK. Skin cancer. The main source of vitamin D in humans is through exposure to sunlight. Increase that without being careful and your risk of skin cancer goes up. Also, vitamin D overdosing from supplements is entirely possible and does have nasty side effects, although it's not possible from natural production due to exposure to sunlight.
There we go, cynicism confirmed, and it wasn't as bad as all that. Now, let's get down to reality: as vitamins, the vitamin D group have been identified as essential for human nutrition. Not useful, essential. As in, we would die without it. There's strong evidence, in fact, that the reason people that moved away from the equator developed paler skin was to maintain high production rates of vitamin D. So, quite frankly, even if the intake of vitamin D killed us, we'd have to have it as if we don't take it we die anyway, therefore the entire point is moot.
Yep.
You also forgot to add that besides a number of major cancers Vitamin D defficiency also has clear links to obesity as well. Its defficiency in childhood results in soft tissue growth overtaking bone development and very quickly going down the fat kid spiral. Nearly every obese kid aged 7-14 has classic X legs which are a clear indication that he/she has gone through vitamin D defficiency at some point in their life (usually past the age of 2, earlier results in O-shape). For every 1 person the "Dip your child into factor 40 cream" cretins save from skin cancer tens will die of other vitamin D defficiency related illnesses.
Just look at Australia. It was the first to go into the "hide in the shade" overdrive and we constantly get Australian studies quoted about the dangers of sun onto us (without any corrections for the fact that the numbers should be corrected for different lattitudes). It now is the world leader in obesity overtaking the US.
It is proudly followed by surprise surprise - UK which has taken all AU studies and is applying them blindly despite being at way further from the Equator. It is quite funny, every time I get some "scary" number quoted I ask the origin and it ends up being Australia from the height of the Ozone hole period. In the UK there is a further complicating factor - GP incompetence. None of the UK GPs and health visitors carries out the standard checks for rachitis on children. Further to this, if you ask them they tell you not to worry. If a child in the age 3-18 months get an abnormal hair loss, they tell you to go get special shampoo for him instead of running blood tests (which the rest of EU does).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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Did you notice the link in the article to the vitamin D council?
Did you notice the doctor who did the study is part of the vitamin D council?
Although they are a non profit, they do provide links to lots of people who will be happy to sell you some vitamin D.
I work for a small biotech company that has been doing cancer research and we never put out a press release every time we think we are on to something interesting or promising. We do study after study not just to establish a link, but to understand exactly how a compound may stop or prevent cancer.
I wish people would take more time to ensure they have lots of data to go on before saying they have found a "direct link"
And on another note, I find it hard to believe that so many people are deficient in vitamin D.
We may spend a lot more time indoors than our ancestors, but I feel confident I am getting enough sunlight and enough D in foods i consume.
It's interesting to note that regardless of the type of cancer (save some of the forms of mesothelioma that you tie to chemical exposure) the majority of cancers can be traced back to oxidative stress. As a physician I've seen remarkable results with dropping the usual chemical approach and using super antioxidents such as Acai extracts and grape-seed extracts.) My fellow physicians need to get off of the chemical bandwagon and really do some research in this direction. Cheers, Nick
The reason I have heard cited for why people such as the Inuit, or Italians have darker skin is because of fish intake.
Coastal peoples, such as the Inuit, have a high intake of fish in their diet, and so get a lot of Vitamin D. Same goes for the Italians.
My guess for the Amazon natives having lighter skin would be that they live in the jungle? Not out in the plains, and so they would still be receiving less sunlight than people living in the Savannah. Just a guess, but it fits with the theory.
So, light skin is still associated with low Vitamin D levels. If there is strong sunlight, or a large amount of fish in the diet, darker skin is advantageous.
As an American I can only say this: focusing on Vitamin D (or any other single nutrient) as a factor in causing disease X or condition Y simply shifts our attention from the real problem. And that is the simple, undeniable, thoroughly-established fact that our diet sucks. Sucks on a Biblical scale. If more of us accepted that and made some (admittedly significant) changes to that dietary intake, there'd be one hell of a lot fewer people with cancers of any kind. Not to mention strokes, and heart attacks, and diabetes, and all of the other diet and obesity-related conditions from which we suffer. My mind is absolutely boggled by the sheer scale of health problems resulting from typical American fare, and I feel sorry for people in other countries that are adopting American food because they think it's better for them. Chances are, compared to their traditional diet ... it isn't.
... they're already seeing an increase in cancers, strokes, heart attacks and diabetes, but without the drugs and surgical techniques we use to try and compensate for the lifetime abuse of our bodies.
... or the outlook will not be good. So, I'm making those changes.
... that's fine so far as it goes. It doesn't go far enough for most of us. Not nearly far enough.
For example, my fiancee is North African, and her traditional meals are largely vegetarian with relatively few percent of calories from animal-derived foods. She's never had a health problem. Her grandmother is 103. Granted, the reason the average person from her country doesn't eat more meat is because they can't afford it, not because they have some inhibition about eating meat. Yet, the wealthier members of the population there are eating more and more American-style foods and guess what
Don't get me wrong: I'm glad they're researching the effects of insufficient Vitamin D reserves on cancer. We can just add that into our total body of knowledge about diet and health. But we really need to keep our minds on the big picture, which clearly says that we don't eat right. Too many people I know have suffered or died from what they ate over their shortened lifetimes. So here I am, now at the age where I have to take a good, hard look at my family history, and take stock of my future health. The conclusion I've reached is this: either I make some serious changes to what I eat, and the way I live
My father died of diabetic complications at the age of 62, and his doctor said to me "that's one possible future for you." It was an awful, painful, degenerative death that lasted several years. I don't want to go that way, and sometimes we have to accept that changing a few little things here and there aren't going to cut it. Taking some Vitamin D supplements, or getting some more Sun, or eating some more broccoli
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Okay, after reading the entire hysterical FA, I want that ten minutes of my life back. A sensationalistic article published on a slow-news Sunday in the Globe and Mail (where I always look for good peer-reviewed scientific evidence) says that a study "will be published" in June that will revolutionize the way that I, a practicing physician, view chronic disease.
Or maybe not. I can't tell whether the study was prospective, controlled, or blinded. I can't tell what cancers were examined. I CAN tell you that four years is ridiculously short for a study examining the emergence of cancer, which appears (we're not sure yet) to take decades in most cases. Since the journal is not named, I don't know its reputation or whether the study was peer-reviewed (and by what peers). In other words, I have no information that allows me to evaluate the claim, except that the claim itself was published in the newspaper. This in itself is not a good sign.
It is a violation of scientific ethics to pre-announce your results in the lay press without also revealing the details of your methods and the limitations of your study. In the case of a "miracle" result for a common supplement, it rises to the level of being truly suspicious. Extraordinary claims really do require extraordinary proof, and making such a claim in a Sunday supplement in the complete absence of accompanying evidence is the stuff of psychics and snake oil.
I am skeptical. I am willing to be convinced, but I'm also willing to entertain cash bets on the probability of this being true and clinically useful.
Well, you're only about 10 years behind the research with that description, which puts you even with most doctors. The revolution in Vitamin D research came with the discovery that D is "activated" (25OH-D3 turns into 1,25OH-D3) in a variety of different tissues of the body, not just the kidneys.
Which body tissues do we know can "activate" Vitamin D3? Here's some: prostate tissue, colon tissue, breast tissue. Where are some popular places that cancer likes to form? Same list. Hmmm.
You might be right, but I'm betting not. Here, things get interesting.
In general, significant (not the 200IU your doctor will tell you to take) levels of Vitamin D3 pretty much always correlate with "better outcome" when it comes to cancer. Even folks with skin cancer who have higher levels of D3 do better than folks who don't. But, there are a few puzzling instances where studies find a U-shaped curve. In other words, they find some instances where people with medium levels of Vitamin D3 do better than those with low -- but those with high levels of Vitamin D3 do as bad as those with low levels! What explains these contradictions?
There is a simple hypothesis (far from proved, but I'll bet my pill taking regimen on it for now) that explains this: local tissue conversion of 25OH-D3 to 1,25OH-D3 shuts down as soon as serum levels of 25OH-D3 start to decline, and doesn't start up again until serum levels stabilize.
If this hypothesis is true, then allowing your vitamin D3 serum levels to drop during the winter may be as bad for you as just having low levels of vitamin D3 all year round.
Evolutionary change can occur very quickly; we've seen this. Deer moved to an island shrank in size over the course of several generations. Insects change their colors to cope with soot. Outright mutations only take one generation, no matter what changes.
So wherever you got your "information", stop going there. They don't know how evolution works. It isn't just gradual change, though it encompasses that too.
All that aside from the circumstantial evidence.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
According to the Gilchrest article, 2 to 8 minutes of exposure to direct summer sunlight is all it takes for a light skinned Caucasian to reach a plateau in their manufacture of the precursor to vitamin D. It then takes several hours for this to turn into vitamin D. So hours of whole-body exposure doesn't actually produce more vitamin D than just a few minutes.
I'm not in this field, so someone else should comment on whether sunlight has additional benefits for psoriasis over oral vitamin D. It seems reasonable that very short (and regular) exposure causes only minimal long term damage.
I don't think you're being dishonest, but Dermatologists would disagree with you.
According to the Gilchrest article I cited, Dermatologists believe that no amount of exposure to summer sun is completely safe, since the UV needed to produce vitamin D is exactly the same range of frequencies that cause DNA damage and skin aging. Also, according to this article, not only is oral vitamin D just as effective as that produced by the body, but in fact all of the large studies that show benefits of higher doses of vitamin D have been conducted using oral vitamin D. To quote from the abstract of the study cited in the original post, "it was achieved with an over-the-counter supplement costing pennies a day".
The Gilchrest article also points out that you can get the full vitamin D benefit from sunlight even if you use a high SPF sunscreen, since you only need the equivalent of a few minutes unprotected exposure. Tans are pretty, but there is a cost that is paid later in life.
It's quite possible that we have different standards for obesity.
We definitely do have plenty of obese people here, but from a few short weeks in the USA, I'd say that an Australian "Obese" person would probably only be called "slightly overweight" in the USA.
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Humans are opportunistic scavengers. We are capable of chasing down the weak and ill animals, we have a greater natural stamina than wolves, horses, zebras, bison, deer, oxen, and many other animals. Our teeth have grown smaller because we cook our food, however humans are quite capable of killing many animals with our bare hands. We also have been tool users for millions of years, and our bodies have adapted to this as well. Indeed the most violent and sadistic tribes enjoyed killing animals. And they got significantly better nutrition than those that do not. The nearest related species to humans also is an opportunistic omnivore, though they do eat much more plant matter. Chimps hunt and kill birds, smaller primates, and even members of other chimp troops. They readily eat termites, and even make tools to get them. So, anyone who says that humans are herbivores is woefully lacking in their understanding of comparative biology, and usually blinded to the truth by dogmas of certain religions that believe that harming animals harms the soul. If you look at the way that food is prepared, you'll even notice that humans prefer their meat to be slightly decayed, such as aged beef. Also cooking accelerates non-biotic breakdown of the muscle tissues, making them easier to digest for fat and protein It also kills the very bacteria that we like to partially predigest our food for us. As to the constipation angle, we are omnivores. We do eat vegetable matter as well as animal matter, which cancels this out. And many of the organisms that live in rotting meat (which as I've stated, is what is preferred by humans) can cause dysentery, so it's not as big of a deal as you'd think. Anyway, I'm done with my rant, and I've got karma to burn. Respond or not. I don't really care.
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