Vitamin Information Center

Over the past few years the sun has gotten a bad rap. Too much sunshine can put you at risk for skin cancer. And an overdose of sun can also lead to nasty sunburns, or even heatstroke.

But the sun isn’t always bad for the body. Scientists have known for years that the sun is a great source of vitamin D. This vitamin naturally boosts the immune system, your body’s defense against disease. Now mushrooms bathed in ultraviolet (UV) light — like that from the sun — can help you get some of this valuable vitamin.

Each year there are more and more studies released that suggest if you want to be healthy, vitamin D is where it’s at. Vitamin D strengthens your heart and bones, and can prevent asthma and some forms of cancer and diabetes.

Some foods, like fish and eggs, are naturally brimming with the vitamin. And others, like milk and some cereals, are fortified with vitamin D. But you would need to consume a lot of milk and cereal to get your daily dose of vitamin D. Sunlight still reigns king as the best source for vitamin D.

Recently scientists have shown that specially treated mushrooms could give people a vitamin D boost. U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers in California treated portabella mushrooms to suntanning sessions of up to 18 minutes. The mushrooms didn’t develop a bronze glow or complain of heat stroke though. Instead each mushroom produced nearly 4 micrograms of vitamin D per gram of tissue. When white mushrooms were given similar sun treatments, these fungi boasted extra vitamin D, too. Now both kinds of vitamin-infused ‘shrooms are on the market. So if you like mushrooms, you could munch your way to a higher daily dose of Vitamin D.

Depending on a person’s age, people should get between 5 and 15 micrograms (or 200 to 600 international units) of vitamin D each day. Without these amounts, people are prone to get diseases like rickets, which causes distorted, soft bones. These numbers, though, are really just a minimum. Now some scientists suggest it’s better to get as much as five times the recommended vitamin D dose each day.

Having more foods with Vitamin D is a good thing, since there are also several factors that make it hard to get enough of the vitamin from just the sun.

One factor influencing elderly people’s vitamin D intake is that they often spend less time outdoors. Therefore, they need more vitamin D in their diet. And if you spend a lot of your time indoors, playing video games or on the computer, you may need extra vitamin D from your food, too.

Skin color and weight also help determine a person’s vitamin D needs. Darker skin filters out more of the sun’s UV light, so people with darker skin need more sun exposure to make necessary amounts of vitamin D. For unknown reasons, heavier people also need a greater amount of UV light to enable vitamin D production.

And latitude — how far north or south you live — can play a major role in the sun’s ability to help you get adequate vitamin D amounts. As you get farther away from the equator, the amount of UV-filtering atmosphere increases. This means that at higher, more northern latitudes, people get less UV rays. So, if you live in a state like Alaska, most of the year you can’t get enough sun to trigger the vitamin’s production by your skin.

Eating foods enriched with vitamin D or taking a daily vitamin may not be as satisfying as breaking out your bathing suit and lying in the sun. But the right foods and supplements can help keep you healthy until summer’s rays are here again.

A slew of recent books and studies have touted the benefits of vitamin D and the perils of not getting enough vitamin D; some even encourage lying in the sun and taking vitamin supplements in order to prevent depression. But dermatologists say more time soaking up the rays isn’t necessary—most Americans get all the vitamin D they need just by going outside in the course of their daily duties, and beyond that, it’s easy to get adequate levels of the vitamin through nutrients in food. “Sunlight helps us produce vitamin D, but the amount of sunlight you need is so low that you could walk outside for probably five minutes and have enough,” says Craig Austin, a New York-based dermatologist and founder of AB Skincare.

Vitamin D is important because it helps with calcium absorption; it’s found in foods ranging from milk and cheese to liver, beef, fish and eggs. Many cereals are now fortified with vitamin D, as well; most people who follow normal diets probably don’t need to take vitamin D or calcium supplements, Austin says. “Vitamin D deficiency, I don’t think, is really all that common.”

During the winter, people who live in northern climates might consider taking daily supplements, says New Jersey-based dermatologist Eric Siegel. But overdoing the vitamins has side effects, too, including nausea, vomiting, poor appetite and constipation. “You can also start suffering kidney disease, and, believe it or not, once you go past a certain dose of vitamin D, you can start clogging up the kidneys, because there’s too much calcium absorbed into the blood,” he says.

So don’t use vitamin D as a reason to lie in the sun that extra half hour, Siegel says. “Why not get [vitamin D] out of food or supplements?” he asks. “Why give yourself skin cancer?”

A friend recently told me about how his uncle had heard that garlic could help lower his high blood pressure. So the uncle generously added garlic salt to his diet.

A little knowledge can kill you.

A similar misunderstanding appears to be spreading about vitamin D. More and more people are realizing that they are lactose intolerant. So they eliminate milk from their diets.

People also are worried about sun exposure and skin cancer, so they slop on sunscreen whenever they go out or otherwise avoid direct sunlight. And mercury is scaring folks away from eating fish.

As a result, some people are losing all sources of vitamin D. For the first time in a century, doctors are seeing a resurgence in rickets, that bone-deforming disease once endemic to wobbly-kneed child laborers in the Victorian era who never saw the light of day.

Pediatricians in Philadelphia have reported more than 150 new cases in the past three years, up from about zero. Washington, D.C., and other areas with large African-American populations are reporting the similar increases.

No formal studies have found the precise cause of the rickets — be it less milk consumption, less sun exposure, or other factors — but it does appear that Americans in general aren’t getting enough vitamin D.

Vitamin Q and A

Vitamin D is a complicated essential micronutrient. The National Institutes of Health convened a panel of experts last September to establish nutritional guidelines. As revealed in the official meeting proceedings, published in the August 2008 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, they couldn’t come to any consensus. The published overview is essentially a collective shrug of the shoulders.

Vitamin D is crucial for calcium metabolism — namely, the making of strong bones — and likely for immune function, heart health, cell proliferation and cancer and diabetes protection, at a minimum. An independent study from Johns Hopkins University, published in the current issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, associated lower levels of vitamin D in the blood with a higher risk of death.

Yet the experts couldn’t agree to any details. The current recommendation is to get 400 IU of vitamin D daily. Many say this isn’t enough, but no one knows how much more is too much.

Complicating issues further is the fact that vitamin D is the only nutrient that can be made entirely in the skin upon exposure to sunlight, yet this varies greatly with skin color and latitude. It’s hard to assess your daily dose. Few foods other than fish contain vitamin D. Milk is fortified with it, but you need four glasses to get 400 IUs.

Out of Africa

Lighter skin is more efficient at producing vitamin D. So African-Americans are at a double disadvantage for synthesizing vitamin D from sunlight — in the United States. Their darker skin blocks the ultraviolet light that triggers this chemical reaction. In their native lands, closer to the equator where sunlight is more direct, their darker skins would have enough sun exposure to synthesize vitamin D.

Peoples in high northern latitudes, such as Europeans, slowly developed lighter skin over tens of thousands of years to adapt to the weaker sunlight to generate enough vitamin D to survive. African-Americans forced migration from Africa occurred over a period of only a few hundred years.

Also, most African Americans — and most of the world, actually — are lactose intolerant and cannot digest cow milk well. So many do not drink enough milk. Natural sources of vitamin D include cod liver oil (as if anyone can stomach this, let alone find it outside their great-grandmother’s cupboard) and salmon and mackerel (tasty, but expensive).

In Philadelphia many rickets cases involve children of Black Muslims, and the culture of conservative clothing likely played a role.

Yet doctors wonder whether the African-American communities are providing a warning call for all of America, as kids of all races drink less milk, the primary albeit artificial source of vitamin D for most clothed, non-farming residents of North America.

Killer rays

More sunlight isn’t the answer. Humans evolved to frolic naked in the sun but also to live about 30 years or so in Africa. Take your fair skin better suited for Scandinavia and place it in Miami for several summers, and you’re going to get skin cancer.

Regardless, for latitudes north of New York City, and considering how people bundle up during winter, there’s not enough sunlight year-round to satisfy the daily vitamin D requirement.

Milk fortification works well. But all vitamin D supplementation and fortification is essentially created equal. Look for new vitamin D recommendations later this year that try to make sense of the ambiguous NIH report.

Unalaska has many great things to offer, but intense sunlight is not one of them. Although the lack of powerful sun may be good for reducing our skin cancer risk, it is not good for our vitamin D levels. The body uses sunlight to make vitamin D from molecules in the skin. Many who live at northern latitudes, especially in the winter, have inadequate vitamin D levels. A study in the British Medical Journal estimates at least 1 billion people worldwide are vitamin D deficient.

Most tissues in the body have receptors for this important vitamin. All of its many functions are still being discovered. The primary role of vitamin D is maintaining normal blood levels of calcium and phosphorous. Long term vitamin D deficiency leads to rickets in children and a softening of the bones in adults.

Currently there is much research being done to discover the additional effects of vitamin D in our bodies. A recent study published in the journal Dibetologia suggests that vitamin D may play a role in preventing type 1 diabetes in children. Vitamin D deficiency has been associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, according to a 2008 article in the journal Circulation.

A 2007 article in the New England Journal of Medicine states that people who live at higher latitudes who have vitamin D deficiency, or lack exposure to the sun, have an increased risk of many cancers. The same article suggests vitamin D may also provide protection from hypertension, psoriasis, several autoimmune diseases (including multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis) and reduce the incidence of fractured bones.

Make sure that you are getting enough vitamin D. It is difficult to get enough from the sun in the summer in Unalaska and impossible in the winter. Check out this Web site from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research to calculate how much vitamin D you are getting from the sun based on your location, weather, skin color, and clothing: http://nadir.nilu.no/~olaeng/fastrt/VitD_quartMED.html.

Obtaining adequate levels of vitamin D from your diet is not easy either. Good dietary sources include fortified milk, eggs, and fatty fish. Some studies, such as one published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition last year, have shown that the vitamin D fortification of milk products is not adequate to prevent vitamin D deficiency.

Infants who are breast fed are at particular risk vitamin D deficiency according to a 2004 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Human milk contains little vitamin D, and women who are vitamin D deficient provide even less to their breast-fed infants.

There are differing opinions on the recommended daily intake, especially in light of new studies coming out every day. The USDA recommended daily intake is 400 IUs for a healthy adult. Some physicians recommend much more than that, particularly for those deficient in the vitamin. Because vitamin D can be stored in our bodies, there are high dosages available that can be taken only once a week or once a month.

A 2003 study published in the Journal of Pediatrics looked at the vitamin D levels of women and infants in Alaska. Based on this study, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a universal supplement for all infants not receiving vitamin D fortified milk. Talk to your health care provider about getting the right amount of vitamin D for your health.

Tiffany Kelly is medical student from the University of Washington who visited Unalaska for the month of July, 2008. She now lives in Anchorage.

Dr. Robert Heaney, professor of internal medicine at St. Louis University School of Medicine, says 40 percent of his patients get too little vitamin D. He fears the condition could result in health problems as people age.

That corresponds with the 40 percent of Americans and more than 500 million worldwide who get too little vitamin D to stay healthy, according to the World Health Organization.

Vitamin D is known as the “sunshine vitamin” because people normally would get most of what they need from exposing their skin to the sun. UVB rays turn cholesterol in the skin into vitamin D.

And that’s the snag. As scientists find that vitamin D helps conditions from bones to heart health, physicians are rethinking the guidelines for sun exposure — to the chagrin of doctors who believe that’s an invitation to more skin cancer.

Fish oils, fish and fortified dairy products are the main vitamin D sources in food. “But you can eat fish every day of the week and be deficient in vitamin D,” Heaney says. “Vitamin D is difficult to get from food.”

Indeed, the American Vitamin D Council cites research that 10 to 15 minutes in the sun makes up to 12,000 IU (international units) of vitamin D. A sunburn can make up to 50,000. A multivitamin may have 400 IU, which is the recommended daily amount of vitamin D for adults, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. John Cannell, founder of the American Vitamin D Council, says vitamin D is much more valuable than a tool to build bones and teeth. Researchers say vitamin D affects more than 1,000 genes, including ones that resist illness such as colds and even cancer.

“We never put together before that we get colds in the winter and not in the summer when we get more vitamin D in the summer,” Cannell said.

THE SNAG

Doctors who fight skin cancer fear that young people will start sunbathing — and sunburning — again, or use tanning beds to up their dose of vitamin D.

Dr. Susan Bayliss, professor of dermatology at the Washington University School of Medicine, recommends food supplements over increased sun

exposure. UVB and UVA sun rays remain culprits for skin cancer.

“The dilemma is that if you have really fair skin and red hair and freckles, it’s probably better to take your vitamin D in by mouth and put your sunscreen on,” says Bayliss, who also is director of pediatric dermatology and practices at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and the Center for Advanced Medicine.

People with more pigment (melanin) in the skin can tolerate more sun, she says.

AUSTRALIA’S DILEMMA

Heaney says that Australians, who have the highest rate of skin cancer in the world, years ago heeded the word about skin cancer and got out of the sun. But in only a few years, the rate of rickets — a disease of softened bones and bowed legs caused by vitamin D deficiency — increased.

Physicians who advocate more sun say vitamin D made with sunshine never reaches toxic levels. “Vitamin D gets to the useful level, then the sunshine destroys the surplus,” he says.

ELSEWHERE

As health experts wonder what to do with the new findings, they are examining vitamin D intake standards.

For example, the one-size-fits all approach is obsolete. Vitamin D intake recommendations change the closer you live to the equator. People who live in St. Louis don’t get the same amount of sun as southern neighbors, but we do get more sun that our northern states.

The Canadian Cancer Society, for example, last year raised its recommendation for daily vitamin D supplement intake to 1,000 IU per day, more than twice the 400 IU recommended daily for U.S. adults.

SUNSHINE

For some, getting more sun is a back-to-basics measure.

Dr. John Morley, head of geriatrics at St. Louis University, says, “In our nursing homes, people are supposed to be on 800 IU a day,” he said. Still, “about 40-50 percent are vitamin D deficient by the criteria you have to measure the vitamin D. For people 25, that’s not so important and can be corrected. But at 60 or 65 you’re more likely to have falls and deterioration in your functional status, more injuries, hip fractures.”

Nursing homes where he consults now put residents in the sun about 30 minutes a day. The policy led to fewer falls and fractures as well as better health and mood.

“Even with lousy sunlight, if you get people out a half-hour a day, and they’re not covered up and they get some sun, they’ll do OK,” Morley says. “Since we’ve been doing that, we’ve noticed a marked decrease in fractures in the nursing homes, and we now have a rule in the nursing homes, you have to check the vitamin D and make sure the people get (the vitamin) and calcium at an appropriate level.

“But so many people don’t get any sunlight, and that’s particularly true with older people.”

SAFE STEPS

Physicians agree on some issues:

– Vitamin D is essential and needs to be maintained and monitored.

– Sunbathing for a long time in direct summer sun is still a bad thing. “You can get outside, even wearing a hat and expose the arms,” says Dr. Veronica McGregor, an endocrinologist with St. John’s Mercy Medical Center in West County. “About 10 to 15 minutes two or three times a week. It doesn’t take much sun to get adequate vitamin D.”

– Check food labels on supplements because not all vitamin D is the same, Heaney says. You’ll find two types. The best is “cholecalciferol,” the form that occurs naturally and exists mainly in fish oils. It can be synthesized. The second type, “ergocalciferol, is an inexpensively produced vitamin D but may be only 30 percent as effective as the other form. A label that doesn’t specify is probably the lesser form, Heaney says.

– Cod liver oil is the best single source of vitamin D besides sunshine. One tablespoon can deliver 340 percent of the daily recommended vitamin D.

– Don’t rely on fortified dairy products. “Those levels were established (decades ago) to address problems with rickets in children,” Heaney says. “They don’t supply enough for an adult.”

– Tanning beds aren’t the answer. They may not be balanced properly between UVB and UVA rays. Too much UVA is not beneficial.

– Talk to your doctor about a vitamin D test. People most likely to have deficiencies are people who get little sun and anyone who has a family history of bone-density problems.
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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.”

ALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - The indoor tanning industry has launched a campaign blitz saying there is “no compelling scientific evidence that tanning causes melanoma.” It’s an ad campaign that has some health experts seeing spots over concerns about the dangers of sun exposure, including a doctor from the Huntsman Cancer Institute here in Salt Lake City.

On television and in print, the Indoor Tanning Association is trying to turn up the heat, challenging the medical establishment’s view of tanning.

“The dermatologists, the sunscreen and cosmetic industries have tried to say that somehow moderate tanning causes melanoma, which is just not true,” said the Association’s spokesperson, Sarah Longwell.

We showed the full-page ad claiming the tanning-melanoma link is just hype to skin cancer survivor Emily Konesky. “I don’t think they’re being honest at all,” Konesky said.

Two years ago, Emily fought off advanced stage melanoma – cancer she says her doctors attributed to her tanning salon habit. “Four times a week on average,” Konesky said. “It is not natural for a 19-year-old to be diagnosed with cancer that takes 30 to 40 years to develop.”

The Indoor Tanning Association cites at least one medical authority who questions whether exposure to ultraviolet rays from tanning can really cause melanoma. And the industry ads go on to say tanning is actually helpful because our bodies get vitamin D from sunlight. “It’s healthy to have moderate exposure to UV light,” Longwell said. “It produces vitamin D.”

But experts say you can get all the vitamin D you need from your food and just a few minutes of sun a week, and that the ad is misleading.

“The ad misrepresents scientific fact,” said Dr. David Leffell of Yale Medical School. “Ultraviolet radiation from the sun and from the artificial bulbs that are used in the tanning parlors can lead to skin cancer.”

Dr. Dirk Noyes of the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City agrees. “We know tanning or ultraviolet rays exposure is the most common cause why people get melanoma,” Noyes said.

But the tanning industry is still fighting back. “The benefits of moderate exposure to UV light far outweigh any potential risks,” Longwell said.

Doctors say there’s no question, the sun ‘can’ do damage. For Emily Konesky, the damage was almost fatal. “I wake up every single morning and think this could be the day that the cancer could come back,” Konesky said.

It’s still ultimately up to parents in Utah. The state passed legislation last year stating teens under the age of eighteen need parental consent to use a tanning bed.

The benefits of vitamin D have long been known. It’s central for healthy bones and preventing some cancers.

A recent study boosted D’s profile, saying people with a moderate vitamin D deficiency had a 60-percent increased risk of cardiovascular problems, and those with a severe deficiency a almost 100-percent risk.

Since we get vitamin D from the sun along with food, it seemed great news for those who like to catch some rays. But not so fast, says Judy Dowd, a physician’s assistant with Cotton-O’Neil Dermatology. She says one source says all you need is five to 10 minutes of sun exposure on the hands, arm and face, two to three times a week, to get enough sun exposure to get the vitamin D you need and metabolize it usefully.

That’s about a half hour total. Other health officials said up to two hours total a week is what’s needed. But you also get vitamin D from food. Dowd says it is milk, cereals, breads and other foods are fortified with it and it’s also in eggs and liver.

Dowd advocates minimal sun exposure, so that you get enough vitamin D without adding to the risk sun exposure poses. She says it can cause early signs of aging, like wrinkles. It can also impact the immune system and cause skin cancers.

Dowd says it’s projected there’ll be 1.3 million new cases of skin cancer in the next couple years. She says many health experts attribute this to the increased use of tanning beds. As for tanning beds and vitamin D, she says we get vitamin D from UVB rays, not UVA rays, and most tanning beds use only UVA rays.

The number of skin cancers continues to climb and successful treatment means catching it early. The Cotton-O’Neil Cancer Center will have free skin cancer screenings Saturday, April 26th. It’s free, but you do have to register for an appointment by calling HealthConnections at 785-354-5225.

By Helen ChickeringNBC News Channel

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.

©2008 NBC News Channel. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten, or redistributed.

It sounds too good to be true… a little inexpensive pill that could block the development of some cancers, strengthen bones, prevent multiple sclerosis and alleviate winter depression.

But it’s not science fiction. The “new aspirin” could be Vitamin D. Just as we discovered that aspirin can guard against heart disease, Vitamin D could become a useful weapon in the fight against MS, osteoporosis, mild depression and one of the most devastating diseases of our time – cancer.

“As time has gone by, Vitamin D has raised its head as a sort of ambrosia for cancers,” says Dr. Louise Parker, an epidemiologist and a world expert in the environmental exposures that can lead to cancer. Or, in the case of Vitamin D, the lack of exposure.

“One of the most important sources of Vitamin D is from the sun and through your skin,” says Dr. Parker.

“Many parts of Canada don’t get much sun in the winter. We’ve also been telling people to cover up and use sunscreen to prevent skin cancer. Sunscreen actually impairs your (skin’s ability) to make Vitamin D.”

So the Canadian Cancer Society recommends that during the winter, Canadians take at least 1,000 units a day of Vitamin D, dubbed “the sunshine vitamin.”

Dr. Parker says 1,000 units a day is well beyond what you can obtain from your diet. Vitamin D is a bit of a rare vitamin, appearing only in fatty fish, cod liver oil and egg yolks. Even if you were to sunbathe in southern climates, you would not take in 1,000 units.

“If you were to lie naked on a beach in the Bahamas, and I don’t recommend that because of skin cancer, you cannot get up to the equivalent of 1,000 units of Vitamin D a day,” says Dr. Parker.

She notes Vitamin D as a factor is turning up in study after study. It turns out people with lung and colon cancer are Vitamin D deficient. And it helps the body absorb calcium. In a study examining whether women who took Vitamin D had a lower risk of osteoporosis, it was found the women taking Vitamin D had stronger bones than those who did not take the vitamin. Years later, researchers went back to that study and found that the women who took Vitamin D also had fewer cancers.

But before Vitamin D becomes the “new aspirin,” more research needs to be carried out.

Vitamin D works in very complicated ways, she says. It changes the way cells work. In fact, there is medical speculation that it may block cancer cell proliferation or improve immune system functions. But its role is not fully understood.

Lifestyle also has to be part of the equation. Dr. Parker is looking at how obesity, which we know can cause cancer, and exercise, which we know prevents cancer, could interact with Vitamin D. “At the population level, I am trying to understand how all these things fit together,” says Dr. Parker. “It’s very complex.” Dr. Parker describes it as looking for a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. “We know some of the jigsaw pieces, but not all,” she says.

Meanwhile, there is very little evidence that taking Vitamin D can harm you. Perhaps in huge doses it could cause kidney stones, but that has not been proven.

“On the average, 1,000 units a day is safe and is probably effective in reducing the risk of colon cancer, and maybe other cancers as well,” says Dr. Parker.

So does she take Vitamin D and recommend it? Absolutely. “I take 1,000 units of Vitamin D – one day on and one day off,” she says.

Source:

Dalhousie University via (http://www.newswise.com)

Dalhousie University (2008, February 16). A Ray Of Sunshine In The Fight Against Cancer: