The vitamin D miracle: Is it for real?

[Celebration]

Long article about vitamin D.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080308.wxvitamin08/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/home

In the summer of 1974, brothers Frank and Cedric Garland had a heretical brainwave.

The young epidemiologists were watching a presentation on death rates from cancer county by county across the United States. As they sat in a lecture hall at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore looking at the colour-coded cancer maps, they noticed a striking pattern, with the map for colon cancer the most pronounced.

Counties with high death rates were red; those with low rates were blue. Oddly, the nation was almost neatly divided in half, red in the north and blue in the south. Why, they wondered, was the risk of dying from cancer greater in bucolic Maine than in highly polluted Southern California?

The two had arrived at Johns Hopkins a few days earlier, having driven their Mustang from their hometown of San Diego. Frank was about to begin graduate studies and Cedric his first job as a professor. It was July, and the trip through the sunny South gave them an idea as they studied the cancer maps: Exposure to sunshine varies dramatically depending on the latitude. What if that's what was behind the varying cancer rates?

Their hypothesis, painstakingly developed and published six years later in the International Journal of Epidemiology, was that sunlight has a powerful anti-cancer effect through its role in producing vitamin D in bare skin. Those living at northern latitudes, they theorized, receive less sunlight and make less of the vitamin, which in turn increases their risk of dying from cancer.

[ananda]

1. It doesn't sound like a miracle to me.

It sounds like part of organic nature.

[crispini]

2. Very interesting.

rec'd!

[kimmerspixelated]

3. It's free and it's always been there.

Corporate America still wants you to slather on their toxic sunscreen( which encourages skin cancer!). The latest guidelines for optimal health( from health sources that actually care about your health) include a good 10 or 15 minutes of daily UNBLOCKED sunlight to help squash a long list of illnesses. Of course you don't want to burn. There are viable alternatives to commercial sunblocks you can get at the healthfood stores, plus there are several nutrients, such as astaxathin that helps prevent sunburning. To think they always told us "STAY OUT OF THE SUN!"

[chicagomd]

14. Bullshit without source.

"Corporate America still wants you to slather on their toxic sunscreen( which encourages skin cancer!)."

Source for your assertion that sunscreen "encourages" skin cancer?

[Richard D]

4. MS

Has a similar distribution. Nearly unknown in the tropics with increasing frequency the farther north you go.



Makes you wonder about the sun-phobia that dermatologists are pushing.

[Donnachaidh]

6. Makes ME wonder about the toxins and pesticide levels found in the

northern hemisphere from agro-business and other polluters. That's the more likely culprit.

[Richard D]

8. Um . . .

. . . I doubt that there's a whole lot of pollution in Greenland and the Yukon Territories. But I may be wrong.

My vote goes to Vitamin D deficiency as a big cause. Maybe not the only cause, but a strong contributing factor.

[cosmik debris]

7. That map looks like the opposite of the map for the incidence

of malaria. It is almost unheard of outside the tropics. Perhaps we should conclude that malaria is caused by vitamin D and we should encourage people to stay out of the sun to avoid malaria!

:)

[Richard D]

9. That's silly

[cosmik debris]

10. I was just looking for a new way to say

CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION

It seems that message never does sink in.

[Richard D]

11. Of course it doesn't . . .

. . . but it certainly could point to important areas for more study.

On edit: One of the things to consider with the Vitamin D causation idea is that our species evolved in equatorial Africa, certainly a place where sunlight and vitamin D production would be hugely more prevalent than the northern and far Southern climes. I don't remember where I saw it, but a couple years ago someone posted a link to a talk about Vitamin D where studies were quoted that had serum Vitamin D in tropical dwellers being very much higher than in temperate zone dwellers.

So there's at least a few things going on that point to suspicion of causation.

[Donnachaidh]

5. Read the History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis

That study you mention sounds as *sound* as the search for a *philosopher's stone* to change lead to gold. :eyes:

One very SERIOUS question -- WHO FUNDED the study?

[applegrove]

12. I just read this article. It was really good. I'm on vitamin D. At least in the fall/winter

[JMDEM]

13. But melanoma is so deadly

I'm torn between getting more sun and the nearly always fatal melanoma factor.

Why do you think people from the tropics have so much more pigment? Probably because fairer-skinned people died off young from melanoma.