eileen

Wow this a very long but informative article. I am curious if anybody has any information that tanning a lot will decrease your ability to produce vitamin D. This is the first I've seen it mentioned. I'll post my favorite paragraph of the article and the link to the full article.

<<<icon's view is that although excess and burning sunshine can give rise to skin cancer, the charities that scare people against sunshine are doing the public a huge and dangerous dis-service.
In our opinion the increasing levels of skin cancer and melanoma are largely due to increasing levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as pesticides in the body and particularly on the skin, together with low levels of protective, antioxidant nutrients such as vitamins C, E, and omega-3 oils. In fact very recent evidence indicates that high blood levels of vitamin D actually help to prevent burning by speeding up tanning of the skin!>>>

Entire Article: http://www.iconmag.co.uk/page.php?n=509

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Vitamin D - The Mega Anti-Cancer Vitamin

Written by Chris Woollams and Dr. Damian Downing

New Discoveries Demand A New General Medical Awareness

'Vitamin that cuts risk of cancer' was the headline on the front page of the Daily Mail, 6th April 2006. In fact it was the only story, dominating the front page. The sub-headline explained that, 'Scientists hail the benefits of exposure to the sun, eating oily fish and taking supplements.' What was the cause of this euphoria?
Two studies have been presented in the USA and both show that women with the highest levels of vitamin D were up to 50 per cent less likely to develop breast cancer. One study involved St. George's Hospital Medical School in London and US researchers at Harvard and University of California; the other was carried out by Canadian researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. Both were presented at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Washington. The doctors in the research concluded, 'Women with high exposure to the sun as teenagers may be protected against breast cancer in later life', and 'Boosting levels of vitamin D could be beneficial at a time when breast cells are developing'. So much for the charities who have been warning us against sun exposure!
Essential

What is becoming clear in all the recent scientific studies on vitamin D is that:

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a deficiency plays a crucial role in a great number of illnesses


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most people are deficient


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you can only obtain this vitamin through sunshine, fish oils or supplementation; take your pick!


First Discoveries

Let's go back to the beginning. In 1919 Sir Edward Mellanby was working indoors with dogs and concluded that if they didn't get sunlight they developed bone disorders (typically 'rickets' in children). He further concluded that the essential action of fats preventing these problems was due to a vitamin; and that cod liver oil was a strong preventative agent (see also icon: fish oils parts 1 and 2 - January and February 2003).
The chemical structure of this vitamin, which he named factor X, was identified in the 1930's by Professor A Windaus of the University of Göttingen, Germany. And thus vitamin D came about. Bone disorders had also been noted in humans - typically 'rickets' in children
The Vitamin That Acts Like A Hormone

As we shall see, it is now known that this substance is not technically a vitamin at all, but acts as a classic steroid hormone! The definition of a hormone is that it has DNA receptor sites on the nucleus inside cells, so able to control the "expression" of DNA to build molecules. Vitamin D is an essential part of the endocrine system as it controls the growth and differentiation of cells, the synthesis of key enzymes, several of the adrenal hormones and appears to have other direct DNA functions and even be involved in DNA repair.
A detailed study of the biochemistry was not possible until the 1960's when 'radioactive vitamin D' could be prepared. Over the last few years researchers have come to learn completely new things about vitamin D, not least that the RDA's originally set for the prevention of rickets are woefully inadequate. Sadly they are still in place today.
The Biochemistry of Vitamin D

Vitamin D is an umbrella term for a number of fat-soluble chemicals called calciferols. Vitamin D2, ergocalciferol, is produced when ergosterol in a yeast extract is converted by the ultraviolet component of sunlight. It is never naturally present in human blood, whereas vitamin D3, cholecalciferol, is produced by the same action of UV light on 7-dehydro-cholesterol, a precursor molecule of cholesterol present in our skin. If this does not happen, 7-DHC is converted into cholesterol instead, and then into the other steroid hormones.
Vitamin D3, once manufactured or ingested, is converted first into the 25-hydroxy-cholecalciferol - or 25(OH)D3 - form in the liver, then into 1,25-dihydroxy form - 1,25(OH)2 D3 - in the kidney. It was thought that only the final, 1,25(OH)2D3 form had any activity, but it's now clear, firstly, that the 25(OH)D3 form does have effects on cell metabolism, and secondly that several other forms are produced in the skin in lesser quantities that may also have their uses. 70 years after it was first described, our knowledge of vitamin D is developing with increasing speed.
Forget HRT - take vitamin D
'Forget HRT - Take Vitamin D'

However recent research has shown completely new and crucial functions: Vitamin D is now known to also have a significant effect on nuclear receptor sites. Indeed large numbers of such vitamin D receptor sites have been shown to be present in our cells. Only recently, tissues other than the kidney have also been found to turn calcidiol into calcitriol and now this is known to help regulate localised, cellular gene expression.
This may be autocrine (inside the cell) and/or paracrine (surrounding the cell). These autocrine and paracrine functions are significantly diminished in vitamin D deficient people. Several studies show many Americans - up to 90% and especially Blacks - are vitamin D deficient, and this is being linked to, for example, a threefold higher level of prostate cancer in Black US city dwellers, over their white counterparts.
All this is a long way beyond those first views of vitamin D, where deficiencies were only associated with rickets in the young and osteomalacia in adults.
Vitamin D And Bones

Vitamin D is essential for maintaining bone density and preventing osteoporosis as it helps the absorption of the bone-building materials calcium and phosphorus. In this action it is helped by magnesium.
Vitamin D and cortisol (the stress hormone) have recently been shown in the USA to be the crucial determinants in osteoporosis. Not oestrogen.
Dairy gives you high blood calcium, but low bone calcium
Cortisol can bind with receptor sites on bone cells normally used for natural progesterone (not natural oestrogen) and this weakens bone structure. Apart from taking HRT many doctors will advice more dairy. But this is naïve too. Dairy foods provide high levels of blood calcium (and a tiny amount of vitamin D). However this calcium surge actually depresses vitamin D levels and the body's ability to absorb magnesium. Catch 22. Dairy gives you high blood calcium, but low bone calcium.
Much work has been done on the effect of vitamin D with bones. For example, in 1991 Tufts University, Boston showed that vitamin D was essential for improving bone density and supplementation was important in the winter months. This work was confirmed in Lyon, France (a thousand miles south of the UK!) in 1992 where a group taking 800 IU's of vitamin D and 1.2 gms of calcium per day had 43 per cent fewer hip fractures and 32 per cent fewer other, non-vertebral fractures.
Sources

Sunlight on our skin is now thought to be the main 'source' of vitamin D. Night shift workers have lowered blood levels of vitamin D. Heavily tanned, or black people have real problems making vitamin D through the effect of sunlight in their skin. On the other hand, people with Celtic, or Type I skin (ginger hair/ freckles/ burn easily but don't tan), could be said to have skin designed to pick up on any stray bit of UV light in their northerly natural habitat. These days, though, they do tend to avoid the sun, for good reasons, but this can land them with a vitamin D shortage.
Whilst a little is found in dairy foods, the major food source is fish liver oils (omega-3 fish oil supplements don't contain much, though). Cod liver oil is unfortunately a poor source of vitamin D compared to halibut liver oil, while most of the top brands actually contain an added D supplement. Unfortunately, in order to get a useful dose of vitamin D from fish liver oil, you would simultaneously be getting an even bigger dose of vitamin A, which then can interfere with the beneficial effect of vitamin D on bone density - catch 22. (Really this is a biological, practical system of checks and balances. But it's thrown out of balance by our near-universal vitamin D deficiency).
Kidney or liver disease (and alcohol) depress vitamin D levels; indeed anything that interferes with the digestion and absorption of oils and fats will - including any form of diarrhoea, diseases such as coeliac and Crohn's, and pale bowel motions for whatever reason.
D3 provides vitamin D in its most usable form
So also do antacids and acid-inhibitors like Zantac, cholesterol-lowering drugs (e.g. statins), mineral oils, anticonvulsants and toxic chemicals in the environment (e.g. smog). Cadmium blocks vitamin D production whilst pantothenic acid helps make it.
RDA

William B Grant PhD, a vitamin D expert in the USA, believes that 80-90% of Americans are actually deficient in vitamin D. Vitamin D is commercially available as vitamin D2, (ergocalciferol - from plant products, although plants contain very low levels of the vitamin), and vitamin D3, (cholecalciferol - from animal products). The best supplementation to take is vitamin D3. D3 provides vitamin D in its most usable form.
The RDA was set at 5 to 10 micrograms (about 200 IU's) from that work over 50 years ago.
However, Dawson-Hughes (Am J Clin Nut 1995; 61) has shown that at that level it has no effect on bone status at all.
Reinhold Veith PhD, University of Toronto, has concluded adults need 5 times this level (Am J Clin Nut May 1999).
On a sunny summer day, a young adult exposing a fair amount of skin for 15-30 minutes will manufacture about 20,000IUs of vitamin D; this goes down with age to 10,000IUs or less. This makes a bit of a mockery of the official toxicity safety limit for supplementation of 2000 IU's. Veith proposed a level of 4,000 - 10,000 IU's per day and argued that toxicity doesn't start until about 40,000 IU's (Am J Clin Nut 1999; 69). And Harvard Medical researchers totally agree with him.
Anything Else?

We are finding out new, and often amazing, things about vitamin D all the time - not so amazing, though, when you remember that it is actually a hormone; the hormone we all forgot about, in fact. Some of the recent discoveries about vitamin D are that it may (bear in mind that this is mostly very new and emerging information, and proof takes a lot more work):

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benefit fertility problems by helping the fertilised egg to impant in the womb.


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help the body assimilate vitamin A and have a synergistic effect with both A and E.


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is crucial to the growth, maturation and normal functioning of the immune system.


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is important in both the prevention and treatment of auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and Type I (insulin-dependent) diabetes. In cases of vitamin D deficiency the body loses its ability to fully produce insulin.


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strengthen muscles as well as bones, improving athletic performance not only in the elderly but probably even in young athletes.


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have anti-inflammatory properties useful not only in diseases such as arthritis but probably even in arteriosclerosis and heart disease.


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help the body to produce natural antibiotic substances


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help to control obesity by, together with calcium, reducing overeating, and boosting fat metabolism. (Overweight is of course a risk factor for both cancer and heart disease)

It even seems to help to slow down hair loss!
Vitamin D And Cancer

As we said above the new excitement is the discovery that cells contain large numbers of receptor sites for vitamin D.
Vitamin D plays multiple roles in the regulation of animals' metabolism; Boston University School of Medicine (Rahul Ray) showed that it has a regulatory effect on plasma membranes affecting all sorts of carried hormones and chemicals, and also on gene transcription. They have conducted much work on these vitamin D Nuclear Receptors (VDR's). Vitamin D is bound in plasma and on nuclear sites and is very much part of the endocrine system.
Epidemology studies have argued that the levels of sunlight and cancer are inversely proportional. Studzinski and Moore (Cancer Research 1995; 55) talked about a 'belt' through America where there was less sunshine and 2-3 times higher rates of cancer.
Vitamin D can regulate cell differentiation and proliferation and even DNA repair mechanisms.
But where cancer researchers were really turned on was in the finding that vitamin D can regulate cell differentiation and proliferation and even DNA repair mechanisms.
For example, laboratory tests have shown that vitamin D inhibits the growth of the new blood vessels (angiogenesis) needed by tumours in order to satisfy their high metabolism (Shokravi et al Inv Cph 1995; 36).
Furthermore cancer cells are undifferentiated - they act like foetal cells, being young and dividing rapidly and, as yet, not differentiated into lung cells, or liver cells or breast cells. Vitamin D can switch these undifferentiated cells over to being 'normal'. And right now drugs companies are trying to patent drugs to do this! Why not just give people vitamin D supplements?!
Professor Michael Holick, an endocrinologist from The Boston School of Medicine has argued that 25 per cent of the women who die of breast cancer would not have even had a problem if they had maintained adequate levels of vitamin D throughout their lives.
Black people, who cannot photosynthesise vitamin D under their pigmented skins, especially in our sunless European cities in winter, are known to develop more prostate cancers than caucasians and Gross (J Urol 1998) highlighted the use of vitamin D in the treatment of recurrent prostate cancer.
Vitamin D is claimed to greatly enhance radiotherapy effectiveness on breast cancer treatment (Mercola June 2003) - it is being used by the Royal Marsden for this very reason - and vitamin D is known to inhibit the growth of pre-malignant cells in the lining of the colon and reduces cancer tumours (Somer). In May 2003 at the Howard Hughes Medical School they showed that vitamin D detoxifies a carcinogenic bile acid Lithocholic acid, and confirmed that vitamin D can reduce polyps in the colon which often ultimately turn into cancer tumours.
Vitamin D can reduce polyps in the colon which often ultimately turn into cancer tumours
Holick is clear that vitamin D reduces the risk of breast, colon and ovarian cancers, and named 13 others (from bladder to kidney to stomach) that he thought vitamin D could affect.
It seems, apart from these 16 cancers, scientists are discovering new health benefits almost daily for vitamin D with such illnesses as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, auto-immune disease and even some mental illness and so-called SAD syndrome.
So - Where Does That Leave Us?

Vitamin D is now thought to be a huge and vital ingredient in cancer prevention and cure, apart from ever more discoveries of benefits in other illnesses.
What Is The Situation With Skin Cancer?

icon's view is that although excess and burning sunshine can give rise to skin cancer, the charities that scare people against sunshine are doing the public a huge and dangerous dis-service.
In our opinion the increasing levels of skin cancer and melanoma are largely due to increasing levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as pesticides in the body and particularly on the skin, together with low levels of protective, antioxidant nutrients such as vitamins C, E, and omega-3 oils. In fact very recent evidence indicates that high blood levels of vitamin D actually help to prevent burning by speeding up tanning of the skin!
Meanwhile it is quite clear that more and more is being learned about vitamin D and every reader who is unable to achieve regular, gentle sun exposure would be well advised to supplement with a vitamin D3 supplement, at a dose of about 4,000IUs for a well person. Anybody with cancer, or at high risk of developing it, will do themselves no harm with a daily dose of 10,000IUs, and may very well help themselves greatly.
Worryingly, of course, we have new EU directives which are based on out of date research, subjectivity not science, and these have already set RDA's for vitamins and thus levels for supplements. In the case of Vitamin D these are simply way too low, and much lower than all recent research would indicate. Such research on vitamin D merely highlights the conflict that at the same time the bureaucrats are clamping down, the scientists are just discovering how these essential ingredients really work.
Dr Damien Downing

President, British Society for Ecological Medicine - www.ecomed.org.uk.
Medical Director, Alliance for Natural Health - www.anhcampaign.org.
Practises in London as part of the New Medicine Group - www.newmedicinegroup.org.

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Waiting list candidates 96,910
as of July 8 2007 at 4:23pm

mcguffy

So, with all these studies and information, why are we still not allowed to tell people the positive side of tanning?

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"We are not human beings going through a temporary spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings going through a temporary human experience."

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Tanning beds are class II medical devices as classified by the FDA.

Class I/II Exemptions shows the requirements for the classification and what the exemptions are.

Class I medical devices are items such as bandages, exam gloves, handheld surgical instruments, etc.

Class II medical devices include electric wheel chairs, surgical drapes, infusion pumps, etc.

Class III devices are usually those that support or sustain human life, are of substantial importance in preventing impairment of human health, or which present a potential, unreasonable risk of illness or injury.

If tanning beds were used to treat a medical condition or to maintain health, that is a class III medical device and those claims have to be substantiated and reviewed by the FDA. Then, if substaintiated, use of that equipment for those purposes are regulated and require a prescription from a medical doctor.

It is better for the tanning industry that tanning beds are used for cosmetic purposes only.

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Waiting list candidates 96,910
as of July 8 2007 at 4:23pm