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Vitamin D in a New Light
by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD

There are thirteen vitamins humans need for growth and development and to maintain good health. The human body cannot make these essential bio-molecules. They must be supplied in the diet or by bacteria in the intestine, except for vitamin D. Skin makes vitamin D when exposed to ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation from the sun. A light-skinned person will synthesize 20,000 IU (international units) of vitamin D in 20 minutes sunbathing on a Caribbean beach.

A growing body of evidence indicates that that vitamin D can prevent a whole host of cancers – colon, breast, lung, pancreatic, ovarian, and prostate cancer among them. Colon cancer rates are 4 to 6 times higher in North America and Europe, where solar radiation is less intense, particularly during the winter months, compared to the incidence of colon cancer near the equator. People with low blood levels of vitamin D and those who live at higher latitudes are at increased risk for acquiring various kinds of cancer. Many epidemiological, cohort, and case control studies prove, at least on a more likely than not basis, that vitamin D supplements and adequate exposure to sunlight play an important role in cancer prevention (Am J Public Health 2006;96:252–261).

A Creighton University study has shown that women over the age of 55 who took a 1,100 IU/day vitamin D supplement, with calcium, and were followed for 4 years had a highly statistically significant (P <0.005) 75% reduction in breast cancer (diagnosed after the first 12 months) compared with women who took a placebo (Am J Clin Nutr 2007;85:1568–1591).

New research suggests that influenza is also a disease triggered by vitamin D deficiency. Influenza virus exists in the population year-round, but influenza epidemics are seasonal and occur only in the winter (in northern latitudes), when vitamin D blood levels are at their lowest.

Our species evolved in equatorial Africa where the sun, shining directly overhead, supplies its inhabitants with year-round ultraviolet B photons for making vitamin D. Our African ancestors absorbed much higher doses of vitamin D living exposed in that environment compared to the amount most humans obtain today. A single mutation that occurred around 50,000 years ago is responsible for the appearance of white skin in humans. It turns out that a difference in one rung, or base pair, in the 3 billion-rung DNA ladder that constitutes the human genome determines the color of one’s skin (Science 2005;310:1782–1786). White skin, with less melanin, synthesizes vitamin D in sunlight six times faster than dark skin. People possessing this mutation were able to migrate to higher latitudes, populate Europe, Asia, and North America, and be able to make enough vitamin D to survive.

The majority of the world’s population now lives above latitude 35° N and is unable to synthesize vitamin D from sunlight for a period of time in winter owing to the angle of the sun. At a large solar zenith angle, ozone in the upper atmosphere will completely block UVB radiation. In Seattle (47° N) and London (52° N), from October to April UVB photons are blocked by the atmosphere so one’s skin cannot make vitamin D. (The half-life of circulating vitamin D is approximately one month.) Making matters worse, even when UVB radiation is available in sunlight, health authorities, led by the American Academy of Dermatology, warn people to shield themselves from the sun to avoid getting skin cancer.

Except for oily fish like (wild-only) salmon, mackerel, and sardines and cod liver oil – and also sun-dried mushrooms – very little vitamin D is naturally present in our food. Milk, orange juice, butter, and breakfast cereal are fortified with vitamin D, but with only 100 IU per serving. A person would have to drink 200 8-oz. glasses of milk to obtain as much vitamin D as skin makes fully exposed to the noonday sun.

The U.S. Food and Nutrition Board in the Institute of Medicine puts the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for vitamin D at 200 IU for children and adults less than 50 years old, 400 IU for adults age 50–70, and 800 IU for adults over the age of 70. Most multivitamin preparations contain 400 IU of vitamin D. These guidelines are directed towards maintaining bone health and are sufficient to prevent rickets – but not cancer, cardiovascular disease, multiple sclerosis, or influenza. Without evidence to support it, the board arbitrarily set the safe upper limit for vitamin D consumption at 2,000 IU/day.

A majority of Americans have insufficient or deficient vitamin D blood levels. In veterans undergoing heart surgery at the Seattle VA hospital, I found that 78% had a low vitamin D level: 12% were insufficient; 56%, deficient; and 10% were severely deficient.

There are two kinds of vitamin D supplements: vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol), the kind our skin makes, and vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol), a synthetic variant made by irradiating plants. Vitamin D2 is only 10–30% as effective in raising 25-hydroxyvitamin D blood levels compared to vitamin D3, leading the authors of a recent study conclude, "Vitamin D2 should not be regarded as a nutrient suitable for supplementation or fortification" (Am J Clin Nutr 2006;84:694–697).

Concerns about vitamin D toxicity are overblown, along with those about sun exposure. As one researcher in the field puts it, "Worrying about vitamin D toxicity is like worrying about drowning when you’re dying of thirst." A person must consume 50,000 IU a day for several months before hypercalcemia (an elevated calcium level in the blood, which is the initial manifestation of vitamin D toxicity) might occur. Vitamin D in a physiologic dose (5,000 IU/day) prevents the build up of calcium in blood vessels. (Circulation 1997;96:1755–1760). If one takes 10,000 IU of vitamin D a day and spends a lot of time in the sun, it would be prudent to check vitamin D blood level to ensure that it does not exceed 100 ng/ml.

Sensible sun exposure should be encouraged, not maligned. If one avoids sunburn, the sun’s health-giving benefits far outweigh its detrimental effects. A large body of evidence indicates that sunlight does not cause the most lethal form of skin cancer, malignant melanoma. A U.S. Navy study found that melanoma occurred more frequently in sailors who worked indoors all the time. Those who worked outdoors had the lowest incidence of melanoma. Also, most melanomas appear on parts of the body that are seldom exposed to sunlight (Arch Environ Health 1990;45:261–267). Sun exposure is associated with increased survival from melanoma (J Natl Cancer Inst 2005;97:195–199). Another study showed that people who had longer lifetime exposure to the sun without burning were less likely to get melanomas than those with less exposure (J Invest Dermatol 2003;120:1087–1093.)

The rise in skin cancers over the last 25 years parallels the rise in use of sunscreen lotions, which block vitamin D-producing UVB radiation but not cancer-causing ultraviolet A radiation (UVA). (Newer sunscreen lotions also block out UVA.)

The U.S. government and its citizens currently spend $2 trillion on "health care," i.e., sickness care, each year. The cost of taking a 5,000 IU supplement of vitamin D every day for a year is $22.00. The cost for 300 million Americans taking this supplement would be $6.6 billion dollars. The number and variety of diseases that vitamin D at this dose could prevent, starting with a 50 percent reduction in cancer, is mind-boggling. If everyone took 5,000 IU/day of vitamin D, the U.S. "health care" industry would shrink. It would no longer account for 16 percent of the gross domestic product.

Source of information: Donald Miller is a cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and writes articles on a variety of subjects for LewRockwell.com. His web site is www.donaldmiller.com

Article Link: view link
Other Links:
Forbes.com September 10, 2007
Archives of Internal Medicine September 10, 2007;167:1730-1737
Lack of Sunshine Causes One Million Deaths a Year
Which Vitamin Will Improve Your Life Expectancy the Most?

Vitamin D Council - Dr. John Cannell
Cancer Society's Anti‑Sun Ads Decried as Deceptive

Cancer Society’s Anti-Sun Ads Decried as Deceptive
Studies point to omega-6 / omega-3 imbalance as a greater factor in skin cancer deaths; Excessive sun avoidance may raise overall cancer risk

There is no longer significant doubt that moderate sun exposure – short of suffering frequent, substantial sunburns –actually reduces cancer risk overall.

In fact, the reverse seems to be the case, as we report in elsewhere in this issue. New research affirms prior indications that many Americans – especially darker skinned people – lack sufficient vitamin D-generating (hence cancer-curbing) sun exposure.

The hypothesis that moderate sun exposure curbs cancer risks rests on abundant evidence that vitamin D probably ranks among the most powerful anti-cancer factors in the human body.

A summer-season ad campaign from the American Cancer Society defies the growing consensus concerning the causes of fatal skin cancers.

Sunscreen is certainly useful for preventing sunburn, which may be responsible for a small percentage of the relatively small number of fatal skin cancers that occur annually in the US.

Only fair-skinned people seem to run a substantial risk of developing skin cancer in response to the kind of daylong sun exposure hunting, gathering, and farming humans experienced throughout millennia of evolution, until very recently.

But it is not clear that sun exposure is a huge risk even for them, and there's much less that sun is a major risk factor among non-fair folks.

The latest outrage against reason comes in the form of an advertising campaign from the American Cancer Society (ACS) that’s sponsored … silently … by Neutrogena: a major sunscreen maker.

This regrettable venture – whose anti-sun, pro-sunscreen message is intended, ostensibly, to reduce the risk of fatal skin cancers – could actually increase its largely female targets’ overall cancer risk.

Under a headline that reads ““My sister accidentally killed herself. She died of skin cancer”, the American Cancer Society’s new public service ad shows a young woman holding up a photograph of a smiling blonde.

Appearing this summer in more than a dozen women’s magazines, the ad says that “left unchecked, skin cancer can be fatal,” and urges its female targets to “use sunscreen, cover up and watch for skin changes.”

Medical reporters at many major media outlets interviewed leading skin cancer researchers, who disputed the misleading message being foisted on millions of women by the Cancer Society’s ads.

Ads paid by sunscreen maker distort reality Key Points

-Experts call Cancer Society’s pro-sunscreen ads unscientific and unrealistic.
-Excessive sun avoidance could raise overall cancer death rates, due to resulting drop in vitamin D production in people’s skin.
-Americans’ common omega-3/omega-6 intake imbalance may be a much greater risk factor in skin cancer.

But as The New York Times said about the ad, “The woman in the picture is a model, not a skin cancer victim. And the advertisement’s implicit message — that those who die of skin cancer have themselves to blame — has provoked a sharp response from some public-health doctors, who say the evidence simply does not support it.”

The two key points made by experts interviewed by The New York Times, ABC News, and others were these:

-While most cases of skin cancer (carcinomas) may be caused by sun overexposure, almost all of these cancers are innocuous and not life-threatening.
-Even obsessive use of sunscreen may not prevent the most dangerous kind of skin cancers, called melanomas.

In truth, by reducing blood levels of vitamin D, constant use of sunscreen outdoors could raise the risk of many common, dangerous malignancies, including ovarian, breast, kidney, and colon cancers. (Not to mention the possible cancer causing substances that are absorbed by the skin from the sun screens.)

These are the basic facts, gleaned from the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the World Health Organization (WHO), and leading academic researchers:

-Skin cancer is responsible for less than two percent of all cancer deaths, accounting for about 11,000 of the 565,000 American cancer deaths recorded in 2006.
-Nearly all skin cancer deaths stem from relatively rare malignant melanomas, which constitute only six percent of all skin-cancer cases.
-Sunscreen does not appear to prevent melanomas – the rarest but most lethal skin cancers by far – in which genetic and nutritional factors appear to play greater roles than sun exposure. Evidence for a cause-and-effect link between excessive sun exposure and deadly melanomas is weak.
-Among melanoma cancer patients, those who reported more sun exposure prior to their diagnosis enjoy higher survival rates, compared with patients who reported less prior sun exposure. (Schwartz GG, Skinner HG 2007)
-Only one in five melanomas is estimated to be related to sun exposure. This estimate comes from Howard L. Kaufman, M.D., co-director of the Melanoma Center at Columbia University.

How can the glaring discrepancies in experts’ estimates of the sun’s proportionate role in causing melanomas, which range from 20 percent up to 50 or 90 percent be explained? One possibility is that even if UV sunrays do not generally cause melanomas, heavier sun exposure among people with fair skin and those living in sunny climates could promote growth of melanomas initiated by other causes, thereby raising melanoma death rates in these groups.

We should stress that most deaths caused by generally non-fatal carcinoma-type tumors (only 20 percent of all skin cancer fatalities) appear linked to excessive sun exposure.

This is why research indicates that sunscreen can reduce the risk of this least-dangerous category of skin cancers.

But one must weigh the best sunscreens’ ability to reduce the already minuscule risk of death from skin carcinomas against three countervailing factors:

*The potential for increasing one’s risk of non-skin cancers, due to reduced vitamin D production.
*The unknown risks of the insufficiently safety-tested additives in sunscreens
*The substantial expense and hassle of doing what most dermatologists advise, which is to apply hefty amounts of sunscreen whenever one spends more than 20 minutes in the sun.

Dermatologists’ advice regarding sunscreen use and sun avoidance makes the most sense for fair-skinned folks, who lack UV-blocking pigment (melanin) in their skin, who can make extra efforts to get ample dietary vitamin D.

(Note: the most useful form of vitamin D is the D3 form found in animal foods like fish, not the D2 form found in most vitamin D and multivitamin supplements.)

Given Americans’ increasingly indoor-oriented, sun-deprived lives, most don’t consume enough vitamin D from foods or supplements. This is why most vitamin D researchers want to raise the US recommended daily allowance (RDA) from 400 IU to 1,000 or 2,000 IU, and urge people to eat fatty fish (the best food source) and take higher supplemental doses.

There is compelling evidence concerning the role of America’s all-too-common omega-6/omega-3 fatty acid intake imbalance in creating increased risk of skin cancers.

Researchers at the American Health Foundation (AHF) in Valhalla, New York reported the results of a study using human skin cancer cells.

The AHF scientists introduced their findings by noting the growing consensus that prompted their revealing test tube research: “Epidemiological, experimental, and mechanistic data implicate omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) as stimulators and long-chain omega-3 PUFAs as inhibitors of … a range of human cancers, including melanoma.” (Albino AP et al 200)

Omega-6 fatty acids predominate in America’s most common vegetable oils (corn, soy, canola, safflower, sunflower, cottonseed) – thus in most packaged and prepared foods – and in grain fed meats and poultry.

Long-chain omega-3s – the most beneficial kind – are abundant only in fish and fish oils, while the valuable but less beneficial short-chain kind is abundant only in leafy green vegetables and flaxseed or flaxseed oil.

Source of information: Vital Choices, Craig Weatherby view link
You should read the rest of this article.

Approximately 2 years ago, I had read about the lack of Vitamin D - especially in the northern US. Testing for this is not generally included in routine lab tests - so I asked to have it done. The nurse practitioner had no clue what to order, (however, was generally recommending 800IU per day). I provided the information from the below practitioner site.

view link
site owner Krispin Sullivan, CN

I was tested and found to be extremely low at 21ng - so was advised to increase to 1000IU and make sure it was D3 (previously was using 400IU D2 included in a supplement). Within 3 months I was able to increase my levels to 38ng with a little help of the summer sun. I have not had it tested since last summer.

Although I think this is a very important vitamin, I really didn't notice any change in overall feelings of wellbeing and just felt my continued "blah".

While looking for a better supplement that contained the required D3, I discovered the concept of nutritional cleansing and full spectrum nutrition. In cleansing the cells and tissues of accumulated impurities, the body just seems to wake up and begins to function better. We are lacking much more than D3, in my opinion.

My research says the human body needs a full range of vitamins and minerals. And these should be at optimum levels not RDA minimums. Your body needs all of these on a daily basis. They work together. Taking just one or a couple is not as effective as a full range of them.
For example Vit E and C are powerful antioxidant combination. You can't get the optimum level needed from your food. The RDA for Vit E is 30 units, the optimum level is 400 units. You would have to eat 33 lbs of spinach a day to get 400 units of Vit E.

Another main factor in getting these vitamins is using a pharmaceutical grade supplement. Almost all vitamins are based on the RDA and the contents are food grade level. Food grade means the bottle must have a label of ingredients. But tests show that only the pharmaceutical grade supplements contain what is on the label. Many food grade supplements do not contain levels shown on the label, it might be too much, too little or not at all. And many have contaminates in the product. Most are made synthetically. Not all synthetic vitamins are equal. There are ten different synthetic Vit E's. Only one is the natural form. The others are less effective for the human body, but they do qualify as a Vit E for the label. It is buyer beware.

The products I use come from a company that does their own testing. So the level of each vitamin is based on their independent research. They also work with the Linus Pauling Institute and help fund their research. Their approach is your body needs different levels of each vitamin every day. Take an optimum level and your body will use what it needs and discard the rest.

I have full confidence in their recommendations. I have seen the results. My mother has taken their supplements for 3 years. At 76 years old she is not on ANY prescriptions. Her arthritis has gone away. She was scheduled for cataract surgery on both eyes. The cataracts went away. In fact her eyes have improved to the point she needs them only to read now. Every winter she would fight bronchitis and/or pneumonia. She was in and out of the hospital. She hasn't had bronchitis for three winters. The latest though takes the cake. About two years ago she has an X-ray on her left hip. It showed pretty serious damage and deterioration. I finally convinced her to join the local health club which happens to be at the local hospital. The first week those folks decided based on her hip condition that she should be checked out by a Hip/Bone MD. In his office he showed her how bad her hip was based on that 2 year old X-ray. He wanted a new X-ray to make his determination of the next step. She said he had a smile on his face with dollar signs in his eyes. She brought the new X-ray back to him. He looked at it and was puzzled. He told her these X-rays can't be of the same person, but they were. He suggested he must have had them backwards, which he didn't. Her hip damage was gone. The new X-ray showed a perfect hip socket with no damage. In fact the new bone was white on the X-ray showing new dense bone. A miracle for sure. He told her to leave his office. So do these work? I am even more convinced of the power of proper supplementation. My mother is an excellent example. I couldn't be happier. I also could add on the treadmill they are keeping her on an EKG and testing her O2 levels. They are perfect for someone much younger than she is. And my mother is a long term smoker. I'm a believer. I have had results myself but nothing like she has experienced, but then again she has 20 years of degeneration on me.