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medpundit |
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Tuesday, May 01, 2007But perhaps the biggest bombshell about vitamin D's effects is about to go off. In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding. 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." We'll need to see the numbers to know how jaw dropping that 60 percent reduction is. However, here's some food thought. Cholesterol is the building block for Vitamin D. And what have we been preaching - and doing - to patients even more emphatically than sun avoidance? Lowering cholesterols to very low levels. It hasn't been studied for long, but so far there's no evidence that cholesterol lowering medications (i.e. statins) cause cancer. (Although there may be a greater risk for the elderly.) posted by Sydney on 5/01/2007 09:00:00 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:I think Vitamin D will be the miracle drug of the next decade. |
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