Vitamin D & Sun

       Multivitamins typically contain only small amounts of D-2 and include vitamin A, which offsets many of D's benefits. As a result, pills might not raise vitamin D levels much at all. But too much of the pill variety can cause a dangerous buildup of calcium in the body. The government says 2,000 IUs is the upper daily limit for anyone over a year old.

      "I am advocating common sense," not prolonged sunbathing or tanning salons, Holick said. "The problem has been that the American Academy of Dermatology has been unchallenged for 20 years," he says. "They have brainwashed the public at every level."

      Some wonder if vitamin D may turn out to be like another vitamin, folate. High intake of it was once thought to be important mostly for pregnant women, to prevent birth defects. However, since food makers began adding extra folate to flour in 1998, heart disease, stroke, blood pressure, colon cancer and osteoporosis have all fallen, suggesting the general public may have been folate-deficient after all.


Sunlight Lowers Prostate Cancer Risk

       Spending lots of time in the sun seems to increase a man's vitamin D levels and lower his risk for prostate cancer, a new study finds. The findings appear in the June 15 issue of the journal Cancer Research. Researchers from three cancer centers compared 450 men with advanced prostate cancer with a control group of 455 men without the disease.

       They found that the men with high sun exposure were at half the prostate cancer risk of men with low sun exposure. The risk of prostate cancer was as much as 65 percent lower in men with certain gene variants plus high sun exposure. "We believe that sunlight helps to reduce the risk of prostate cancer because the body manufactures the active form of vitamin D from exposure to sunlight," research team leader Esther John, of the Northern California Cancer Center, said in a prepared statement.

       According to previous research, the prostate uses vitamin D to promote the normal growth of prostate cells and to impede the invasiveness and spread of prostate cancer cells to other areas of the body, the researchers said.

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