eileen

Sept. 28, 2007, 9:50PM
Sunnier outlook may help fight against prostate cancer

By JOE ROJAS-BURKE

PORTLAND, ORE. — Men diagnosed with prostate cancer during the summer and autumn are more likely to survive than those diagnosed in the spring and winter, researchers in Norway and Oregon have found.
The findings provide more evidence exposure to sunlight may have a protective effect against cancer by increasing vitamin D levels. Sunlight stimulates the formation of vitamin D, and this is the main source of the vitamin for most people.
Researchers now at the University of California at San Diego were first to propose such a role for sunlight in 1980, when they noted significantly lower cancer death rates in southern compared with northern latitudes of the U.S.
Since then, researchers worldwide have found evidence that sunlight and increasing vitamin D may reduce the risk of 17 types of cancer. That has prompted debate about how to balance sunlight exposure to minimize skin cancer risk while getting the benefits of vitamin D production.
In the latest study, researchers at the University of Oslo tracked 46,000 prostate cancer cases in Norway from 1964 to 1992. Men diagnosed in the summer and fall were 20 percent less likely to die from the disease within three years of diagnosis compared with those diagnosed in the winter and spring. The study appears in the current issue of The Prostate, a medical journal.
Dr. Tomasz Beer, one of the authors and a professor at Oregon Health & Science University's Cancer Institute, said the study does not prove vitamin D is the determining factor, but it provides reason to pursue further studies.

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under-exposure to uv rays is as dangerous as over-exposure...This is "D" life! (eileen)