Nutraceuticals and nootropics for anti-aging

Vitamin D’s anti-cancer protection found to include lymphomas

Vitamin D was discovered and characterized in the 1920s and 1930s, and its role in bone metabolism was appreciated even then.¹ But its role in preventing cancer and its other benefits were only realized much later.

By 1980 enough indirect evidence had come to light, implicating vitamin D deficiencies as cancer promoters, to prompt researchers to suggest that vitamin D is a protective factor against colon cancer.² Since 1980 much more evidence has been amassed supporting this connection between vitamin D and cancer prevention — not only for colon cancer but for many other types of cancer. Nevertheless, despite 30 years’ accumulation of very convincing evidence, the vitamin-D/cancer hypothesis hasn’t been followed up with action by public health agencies. Why not? Presumably because of the medical community’s traditional foot-dragging³ combined with the habit of medical bureaucrats to avoid doing anything new if they can possibly avoid it.

Fortunately, in some countries at least, individuals have the ability to decide for themselves to take actions on behalf of their own health. The necessary information is readily available and so are vitamin D supplements — one has only to read a little about vitamin D to see that it makes no sense to rely on the vagaries of climate, diet and skin color to get an adequate amount.

So... which kinds of cancer can vitamin D provide protection against? The list grows longer every year. As of 2009, strong, indirect evidence shows that this list includes:⁴

• breast cancer
• colorectal cancer
• bladder cancer
• esophageal cancer
• gallbladder cancer
• gastric cancer
• ovarian cancer
• renal cancer
• uterine cancer
• Hodgkin’s lymphoma
• Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma

One of the latest additions to this list was reported very recently: diffuse large B-cell lymphoma — the commonest lymphoma.^5,6

Vitamin D has health benefits that go far beyond cancer prevention. The prevention of osteoporosis is, of course, the best known one. Others include bolstering the immune system against viral infections, preventing gum disease, and improving cardiovascular health.⁷

It is long past time that the medical community should have awakened the public to the need for daily supplementation with vitamin D in amounts much larger than the current “official” recommendation. Studies should long ago have been undertaken to determine the optimum daily dose. Instead, there has been just one clinical trial to study the effects of modest doses of this vitamin on cancer rates — and even this one was just an afterthought to a study of osteoporosis.⁸

Current thinking suggests that doses of about 2000 i.u. of vitamin D3 should be considered a minimum daily dose. Considerably larger doses are known to be safe, and may well provide even more protection.

LifeLink carries two vitamin D products:

• D3ZO is a high-potency vitamin D3 supplement with zinc orotate as a bioavailability enhancer.
• Formula CS Plus is a medium-potency vitamin D supplement that also aims to protect against osteoporosis by supplying a variety of bone enhancers.

References

[1] History of Vitamin D Website of the University of California at Riverside

[2] Do sunlight and vitamin D reduce the likelihood of colon cancer? Int J Epidemiol. 1980 Sep; 9(3):227-31

[3] Current impediments to acceptance of the ultraviolet-B-vitamin D-cancer hypothesis. Anticancer Res. 2009 Sep; 29(9):3597-604

[4] How strong is the evidence that solar ultraviolet B and vitamin D reduce the risk of cancer?: An examination using Hill's criteria for causality. Dermatoendocrinol. 2009 Jan; 1(1):17-24

[5] Patients with vitamin d deficiency fare worse in battle with lymphoma Science News, 177 (1), 15. 2010.Sep.2

[6] Vitamin D Deficiency Is Associated with Inferior Event-Free and Overall Survival in Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma Presentation #1952 at American Society of Hematology, 51st Annual Meeting, 2009

[7] Vitamin D deficiency increasingly common San Francisco Chronicle, January 9, 2010

[8] Vitamin D and calcium supplementation reduces cancer risk: results of a randomized trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Jun; 85(6):1586-91