Update: Vitamin D, Calcium, and Cancer - Amazing Study Results
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the cancer-vitamin D link and highlighted an excerpt from an article that hinted at the pending release of a study with extremely promising findings:
[P]erhaps 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-percent 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.
Well, the paper has just been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. And the results are nothing short of spectacular.
In the double-blind, placebo-controlled study, researchers randomly assigned postmenopausal women (age >55) to receive either 1400-1500 mg of calcium alone (Ca), the calcium plus 1100 IU vitamin D3 (Ca+D), or a placebo.
During the course of the four-year study, the calcium-only and calcium plus vitamin D groups had a reduced risk of developing cancer of 47% and 60%, respectively.
When the scientists only looked at cancers that appeared 12 months after the start of the study (to try to account for cancers that may have been present previously), the risk of developing cancer for the calcium plus vitamin D group was 77% lower.
Typo-like numbers indeed.
Bottom Line
If you aren’t keeping your 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels within the normal range, preferably the high-normal range (45-50 ng/ml or 110-125 nmol/l), you’re likely needlessly increasing your risk for cancer.
See the first “Related Links” post below for easy steps you can take to ensure adequate vitamin D levels. Test, don’t guess.
Related Links
Direct Link Between Cancer Prevention and Vitamin D Levels
Vitamin D Deficiency Common Among Pregnant Women, Newborns
Researchers Call for Increase in Vitamin D Levels
Higher Vitamin D Levels May Greatly Lower Breast, Colon Cancer Risk
Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D
(Image: Inhabitat)
____________________________
Discover How Nutrition Can Make a Difference in Your Life …
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:09 pm
[…] The organization even suggests an active conspiracy between the government and the pharmaceutical industry to discredit nutritional supplements. There’s not explicit evidence of that, but the recent barrage of negative reports (and the paucity of media coverage of positive reports, such as the amazing vitamin D / cancer study results just released) certainly raises questions. […]