eileen

http://www.topcancernews.com/news/10...st-cancer-risk

Vitamin D is one of the latest, greatest hot cancer topics. Why?

Well, it seems many of us women are vitamin D deficient. Such a deficiency might be linked to breast cancer risk so it's in our best interest to make sure we get a healthy dose of this vitamin. It's not as easy as adhering to the Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) guidelines, though. Follow them and you'll still come up short -- the Food and Nutrition Board, responsible for setting the DRIs, have not yet updated guidelines in light of cancer concerns. So what's a girl to do?

For starters, we need to understand that for overall health benefits, 1,000 IU (International Units) per day are necessary. The outdated DRI recommends 200 to 600 IU. This is based on preventing only bone diseases like rickets. Second, keep in mind it's safe to take up to 10,000 IU each day. Third, up your intake of this important vitamin. Here's how:

Fatty fish is the best source of vitamin D. But watch out for high mercury levels. Fortified milk is also good. It has 100 IU of vitamin D per eight-ounce serving, but cow's milk been linked to breast cancer risk as well.

The sun allows our bodies to create vitamin D but in most parts of the country, it's hard to get enough in the winter. Plus, those with dark skin and those who use sunscreen don't get reliable amounts of D. Of course, without sunscreen, we must be ultra careful about getting too much. The same sun that feeds us health can also increase our risk of skin cancer.

Most of us will need a supplement in order to reach 1,000 IU per day. If you take a multivitamin, see how much D is it has. Most have 400 IU, based on the DRI, but you can increase accordingly. Make sure your supplement contains D3 and not D2, which is not utilized as well by the body.


Source: Good Housekeeping, July 2007

eileen

Today (August 4, 2007) the Drudgerport is headlining a link to the article below.

From The Times
August 4, 2007

Sunshine helps in the fight against breast cancer
Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor

Women who stay out of the sun are increasing their risk of developing breast cancer, a new study suggests.
The safe-tanning messages that are drummed into women each year may help to reduce their risk of skin cancer – but at the cost of increasing their risk of breast cancer.
The majority of vitamin D comes from exposure of the skin to sunlight but many women – exposed less in winter and reluctant to bare themselves in summer because of the dangers – are deficient.
There has been anecdotal evidence to suggest that breast cancer is less common among women who live closer to the Equator, where the sunshine is stronger.
However a new study provides evidence that the lower the levels of vitamin D in a woman’s blood-stream, the greater the risk of her developing breast cancer if she has passed the menopause.
Of more than 1,000 women who took part in a trial, those who were given both calcium and vitamin D supplements had less than half the chance of developing breast cancer than those given a placebo (13 cases among 446 women compared with 20 cases among 288 women.
A team from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, enrolled 1,179 women all 55 or older, who had no history of cancer. The women were divided randomly into groups and given either supplements of calcium alone, calcium plus vitamin D, or a placebo for four years.
The researchers were interested primarily in the risk of the women suffering from osteoporosis, but they also looked at cancer risks.
The team, whose study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that calcium alone also had a protective effect against cancer but it was not as strong.
When the researchers repeated the analysis for those women who were free of cancer after the first year of the study, the results were even more striking. By doing this, the team excluded any cases that would have been present, but undetected, before the trial began.
In this second analysis, the risks were reduced by more than three quarters.
“Our findings of decreased all-cancer risk with improved vitamin D status are consistent with a large and still growing body of epidemiologic and observational data showing that cancer risk, cancer mortality, or both are inversely associated with solar exposure, vitamin D status, or both,” the researchers said.
The findings underscored the value of achieving and maintaining a high concentration of the vitamin, they added.
The Creighton University study follows one published in May in Archives of Internal Medicine that reached similar conclusions.
This earlier one used data from the Nurses’ Study at Harvard, which followed more than 30,000 women for up to 15 years. Their dietary intake of both calcium and vitamin D was calculated from dietary questionnaires. The team, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, found that high levels of the two nutrients were linked with a 40 per cent lower risk of breast cancer in younger women.
The difference was more marked for aggressive cancers. But this study, unlike the Creighton trial, did not find a link among older women.
“Findings from this study suggest that higher intakes of calcium and vitamin D may be associated with a lower risk of developing premenopausal breast cancer,” the authors concluded.
Vitamin D is present in foods including milk, eggs, oily fish, green vegetables and fortified margarines. But a significant part of the vitamin D need is manufactured in the skin by exposure to sunlight.
Earlier studies have linked high levels of vitamin D to reduced risks of other cancers, including of the colon and prostate. But the advice of Cancer Research UK has long been that the risk of skin cancer from overexposure to the sun exceeds benefits achieved through higher vitamin D status.
Not all experts agree. Cedric Garland, of the University of California at San Diego, claimed in the British Medical Journalin 2003 that sun avoidance would increase the risk of cancers overall, especially among those who live at latitudes as far north as Britain.
He recommended 10-15 minutes a day of sun exposure, without sunscreen, to allow adequate synthesis of vitamin D. But this alone is not enough, he suggested, because vitamin D is not stored for long in the body and there is not enough sun during the winter to synthesise it.
He therefore recommended the use of supplements, as in the new trial, to boost levels. But the risks from overdosing are such that these must be taken with caution.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle2195614.ece

eileen

Exposure to the sun could be bad for the skin, but can help prevent breast cancer

Exposure to the sun could be bad for the skin, but can help prevent breast cancer by Mary Carter
Published Yesterday in Breast Cancer , Environment , Vitamins and nutrients | Unrated




Though spending time in the sun is generally considered a bad thing as far as skin cancer goes, it can help prevent breast cancer.

A study shows that women who stay inside more often are at a high risk for breast cancer than those who spend time outside. What's more, breast cancer is less prevalent closer to the equator, where sunlight is more common. The key ingredient is the valuable Vitamin D that exposure to the sun provides, though I would be interested to know if it makes a difference whether people get natural vitamin D from the sunlight or if similar health benefits could be derived simply from staying inside and taking vitamin D supplements. I tend to think that people who get outside are generally healthier overall than those who are housebound.

This isn't the green light to spend your days cooking your skin under the hot sun in the hopes of achieving that golden brown glow, though. While sunlight in important, it's also important to take precautions in the sunlight, like covering up and wearing sunscreen.


The main source for this article is TheCancerBlog
http://www.topcancernews.com/news/11...-breast-cancer

TED HUTCHINSON

I have been following the Breast Cancer Vitamin D association for some time now and logging the research [url-http://brain.hastypastry.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2890]here[/url] I am convinced that having optimal vitamin d status, over 125nmol/L -130nmol/L is associated with 50% less incidence and a better prognosis for those with the higher status.

How this is achieved is a matter of choice but if you live in the UK it really isn't sensible to rely on sunshine. That will be fine for 30 days a year but not for 365. We just don't have a sufficient number of days when it's practicable to lay naked in the sun and soak up UVB even for the mere 20minutes that is necessary to achieve our 4000iu/daily requirement.
The choice is then between sunlamps and supplements. While supplements are effective they don't allow your largest organ (skin) to function as nature intended. 85% of our Vitamin D isn't metabolised by our liver/kidneys it's processed by the skin and other 50+ tissues on-site, where needed, when needed.

Our bodies evolved with a feedback mechanism that rewards us for spending time under UVB. The more I think about it, the more I understand the importance of Vitamin D, the more convinced I am that regular limited UVB exposure is necessary for optimal health.