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TwitThisD Deficiency and Certain Cancers
Some of the stunning findings: Getting 1000 IU (international units) of vitamin D from supplements or the sun may cut the risk of colon cancer in half, a change that would save many thousands of lives every year. Increasing vitamin D intake to 2000 IU would reduce the risk by two-thirds, says epidemiologist Cedric Garland of the University of California, San Diego. In 1980 Dr. Garland and his brother Frank, also an epidemiologist, published a groundbreaking study showing that rates of colon cancer were about twice as high in the sun-starved northeastern United States as they are in the sunny South.Since then, evidence of the connection between vitamin D deficiency and cancer has strengthened, prompting researchers to make some startling claims. Considering all types of cancer, insufficient vitamin D trumps the other risk factors, says Dr. Garland. Of course, for certain cancers some of those "other risks" are overwhelmingly powerful. For example, vitamin D won't stop some smokers from getting lung cancer or heavy drinkers from being at risk for oral or esophageal cancers.
But researchers have now identified at least 18 types of cancer that are more common among people who don't get enough vitamin D, including such common ones as breast, lung and prostate. (Other cancers that have been linked to vitamin D: bladder, esophageal, gastric, ovarian, rectal, renal, uterine, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, cervical, gallbladder, laryngeal, oral, pancreatic, Hodgkin's lymphoma and colon.) They've learned that prostate cancer typically strikes men who work indoors four years earlier than it occurs among men who work outdoors. And they suspect that higher rates, and more aggressive cases, of prostate cancer among African Americans occur because black skin doesn't efficiently absorb the ultraviolet B (UVB) rays that trigger vitamin D production. In Africa, black skin does a great job of absorbing UVB. The weaker rays farther north just don't make it through often enough, leaving African Americans more likely than whites to run low on vitamin D. The same thing may explain why breast cancer tends to be more aggressive and more frequently fatal among African American women than it is among white women.
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