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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
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
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.