Vitamin D Helps Against Lung Cancer
May 2, 2005
Vitamin D looks more and more like a sharp weapon against cancer. An American study points towards high Vitamin D status being a great advantage, if you have lung cancer.
The belief that vitamin D counteracts cancer is strongly growing. It is based, among other things, on the known normalizing effect of the vitamin on cells and tissues, but also that the frequency of, for example, breast, prostate and colon cancer is considerably higher in countries low in sun such as Denmark, where the sun low in the sky from September to May, so low that No vitamin D is formed in the skin. In addition, the Danish diet completely lacks vitamin D, except fatty fish.
With regard to breast cancer, the hypothesis was substantiated almost a year ago when the English showed that women who, for hereditary reasons, make poor use of vitamin D have a doubled risk of developing breast cancer. At the same time, it was found that women with low vitamin D status have a quadrupled frequency of lumpy breasts, a known risk factor for breast cancer.
Now, an American study of 456 patients with early stages of the most common (non-small cell) form of lung cancer shows that the connection may also apply to lung cancer. Lung cancer patients who underwent surgery in the summer months, when vitamin D stores are highest, fared much better in the study than those who underwent surgery in the winter.
After five years, 70% of those operated in the summer were still disease-free, while the same was true for only 54% of those operated in the winter. When blood levels of vitamin D were also taken into account, the difference was even greater: 83% of those operated in the summer, who had high vitamin D status, were still disease-free after five years, compared to 30% of those operated in the winter with low vitamin D status.
It goes without saying that you shouldn’t wait six months to have surgery if you’re diagnosed with lung cancer in the winter. But the study naturally raises the question of whether lung cancer patients – and smokers – wouldn’t be wise to ensure they get more vitamin D than normal.
Much more vitamin D
Until now, it has been officially recommended that everyone get 5 micrograms of vitamin D per day in their diet. This is difficult for most people. It is even more difficult for older people to get the previously officially recommended 10 micrograms, which is still recommended for everyone over 60.
But it will be almost impossible for nursing home residents to meet the latest recommendations of getting 20 micrograms a day. It is almost impossible to do this without supplementation. In a regular vitamin pill there is a completely inadequate five micrograms, or what is found in 50-60 grams of herring. Very few nursing home residents eat half a pound of herring a day.
And yet, according to several vitamin D researchers, even this intake is not enough. The estimated upper limit for risk-free intake is 50 micrograms daily, while some recommend 100 micrograms as a cancer prevention measure for those at particular risk or for certain neurological diseases.
Significantly more people believe that an intake of around 25 micrograms – equivalent to the content in 10 ml of cod liver oil – should be the norm for all adults. Regardless of which one chooses, it cannot be achieved without supplementation.
For now, research is continuing at full speed. From the Japanese side, it has been shown that substances closely related to vitamin D inhibit both the spread of lung cancer and the formation of blood vessels in tumors.
Others have shown that vitamin D promotes cell death or normalizes abnormal cells in a wide range of tumors, both in the laboratory and in animal studies. Positive results have also been obtained in men with prostate cancer, where traditional anti-hormone therapy is no longer effective.
One thing seems certain: You should avoid sunburn, but you shouldn’t uncritically rely on dermatologists’ long-standing warnings against sunlight. You could risk getting cancer.
By: Vitality Council
References:
1. American Association for Cancer Research. Press Release 18 April 2005.
2. Trump DL et al. Anti-tumor activity of calcitriol: pre-clinical and clinical studies. J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 2004 May;89-90(1-5):519-26.
3. Nakagawa K et al. 22-oxa-1{alpha},25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 inhibits metastasis and angiogenesis in lung cancer. Carcinogenesis. 2005 Feb 17;[Epub ahead of print].
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