Error: I'm afraid this is the first I've heard of a "trackback" flavoured Blosxom. Try dropping the "/+trackback" bit from the end of the URL.
Vitamin D and Cancer
It is reported that some researchers have found a startlingly large correlation between vitamin D deficiency and the incidence of cancer and other diseases including multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, influenza, osteoporosis and bone fractures among the elderly. It's suggested that Vitamin D is the reason people in developing countries, who are more likely to work outdoors and not use sunscreen, have a much lower incidence of many cancers and other affected diseases than Americans, Canadians and Europeans.
It's being investigated further, but in the meantime, making sure you have plenty of vitamin D in your diet (or taking supplements) is probably not a bad idea unless you spend a lot of time in the sun.
A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn't take it, a drop so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typographical error.
And in an era of pricey medical advances, the reduction seems even more remarkable because it was achieved with an over-the-counter supplement costing pennies a day.
One of the researchers who made the discovery, professor of medicine Robert Heaney of Creighton University in Nebraska, says vitamin D deficiency is showing up in so many illnesses besides cancer that nearly all disease figures in Canada and the U.S. will need to be re-evaluated. "We don't really know what the status of chronic disease is in the North American population," he said, "until we normalize vitamin D status."
I avoid sun exposure because I burn instead of tanning, and I'm lactose intolerant (though the article says you'd need to drink 3 liters of Vitamin-D-fortified milk a day to protect against cancer without sun exposure), so I should check the Vitamin D levels in my supplements, and start taking them more regularly again (I've gotten sloppy about it these past few months: one of my supplements seems to aggravate my swallowing problems, and I'm not sure which).
This data suggests that the official 'daily requirement' levels for vitamin D are much too low. I checked the toxicity levels: keeping cumulative dosage below 10,000 IU would also be a really good idea.
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