Vitamin D

Optimal dose 600-2,000 IU/day

The importance of vitamin D deficiency is finally gaining increasing attention. This nutrient deficiency is critical, causing an estimated 85,500 extra cancer deaths in the U.S. each year. Because of this, and the deadly recommendation to avoid sunshine that people are given, I am going to cover the importance of this nutrient in depth.

Vitamin D deficiency is common. In fact, a review in the Mayo Clinic Journal showed that approximately 36% of healthy young adults and 57% of general medicine inpatients in the United States have inadequate levels of vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency is especially common in people with chronic pain.

This problem has increased since the horrible advice that doctors have given in telling people to avoid sunshine — and 90% of our vitamin D comes from sunshine. This misguided advice was given to decrease the number of dangerous skin cancers called melanomas. What doctors forget is that most of these melanomas are not in sun exposed areas (they are under our clothes). It is likely that the increase in melanomas is mostly occurring because of changes in diet, environment, and sleep which are resulting in weakened immune systems. The skin cancers usually caused by sunshine (e.g., basal cell cancers) are usually quite benign and easy to treat. Many other cancers increase in the face of vitamin D deficiency and, as 90% of our vitamin D comes from sun exposure, it is currently estimated that the advice to avoid sunshine is resulting in 85,550 unnecessary cancer deaths each year! Sunshine is healthy

Avoid sunburn, not sunshine!

To give more background about how avoiding sunshine (not sunburn) is counterproductive, two studies in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute shows that those with the most sunburns, the most beach vacations, and/or the most sunbathing were least likely to get lymphomas and leukemia (malignant white blood cell cancers). In addition, U.S. researchers report the surprising finding that people who get the most deadly kind of skin cancer — melanoma — are less likely to die of the disease if, in the past, they’d spent a lot of time in the sun. Researchers suggest that vitamin D has a lot to do with sunlight’s anticancer effect.

Optimal vitamin D is also important to minimize breast cancer risk. Research findings show that "higher intakes of vitamin D and calcium from food and supplements are related to lower levels of breast density among premenopausal women. They suggest that increasing intakes of vitamin D and calcium may represent a safe and inexpensive strategy for breast cancer prevention." Vitamin D also appears to lower prostate cancer risk. In a Harvard study, men with the highest levels of vitamin D had significantly lower overall risk (45%) of prostate cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death in men.

Dr. Edward Giovannucci, a Harvard University Professor of Medicine and Nutrition, suggests that vitamin D might help prevent 30 deaths for each one caused by skin cancer. "I would challenge anyone to find an area or nutrient or any factor that has such consistent anti-cancer benefits as vitamin D," Giovannucci told cancer scientists. "The data are really quite remarkable." About a dozen major studies are under way to test vitamin D’s ability to ward off cancer. An intake of 2,000 units of vitamin D a day (through a mix of sunshine, food and supplements) could decrease both breast cancer and colon cancer by over 50%. In addition, higher vitamin D levels may slow the progression of breast cancer.

Besides causing upwards of 80,000 unnecessary and tragic cancer deaths each year, vitamin D, deficiency is contributing to:

• Hip fractures and osteoporosis (weak bones)
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Diabetes
• Asthma
• Heart disease
• Inflammatory bowel disease

This leaves the question of what level of supplementation is optimal. I concur with Dr. Heike A. Bischoff-Ferrari, from the Harvard School of Public Health who notes "recent evidence suggests that vitamin D intakes above current recommendations may be associated with better health outcomes … An intake for all adults of (at least) 1,000 IU of vitamin D per day is needed … Given the low cost, the safety, and the demonstrated benefit of higher vitamin D concentrations, vitamin D supplementation should become a public health priority to combat these common and costly chronic diseases."

More Information Online

Nutritional primer

We have a 20,000 word primer on nutrition at our website that provides more detail with study references on each nutrient. Click here to visit the "Vitamin D" section of our primer.