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Cancer Prevention and Vitamin D
By Don Bennett, DAS

There has been a lot of buzz about vitamin D's role in cancer prevention. This has actually been known for a long time but only now are there studies to back it up. The statement that sunshine is a requirement of vibrant health is viewed by some as nonsense because we all know that sunshine causes skin cancer, right? Wrong! Sunshine is not only not the primary cause of skin cancer, but the vitamin D produced in your body from sun exposure helps your body to stay ahead of cancerous cells so that you never get a diagnosis of cancer. But these diagnoses make a lot of money for some very powerful and influential industries, and the burgeoning markets for cancer prevention drugs (that "may" help prevent cancer) only add to the importance of keeping the information on natural ways to prevent cancer away from the general public.

But the truth is out there for those open-minded enough to hear. Listen to what one of the researchers has to say about vitamin D and cancer, and about a "more rational approach to cancer screening".

Imagine, screening for disease by looking for nutritional deficiencies! This "pre-actionary" approach is in stark contrast to today's reactionary medicine which says wait until you find something – either through testing or symptomatic expression – and then manage it with medications, surgeries, and therapies.

Studies have shown sufficient vitamin D levels are linked to a reduced risk of a variety of cancers. Vitamin D is important for healthy cell growth and for cellular communication which reduce the risks for some types of cancer. The American Journal of Public Health reported that researchers searched the Pub Med database and found 63 observational studies of vitamin D status in relation to cancer risk dating from 1966 to 2004. Thirty of those studies focused on vitamin D and colon cancer, 13 on breast cancer, 26 on prostate cancer, and seven on ovarian cancer. After their review, the researchers concluded that the majority of the research demonstrated a protective relationship between sufficient vitamin D levels and a lower risk of cancer. The key word there is "sufficient". The amounts of vitamin D that are added to fortified foods are only enough to help prevent rickets (more on this in a moment), they are not enough to provide that protective mechanism described above.

If you are living in accordance with your biological imperatives – which means among other things that you are getting sufficient vitamin D – your chances of being diagnosed with cancer are dramatically reduced, often to zero. When the average American is tested for vitamin D, they come up short; they are deficient in this vital nutrient, even though many processed foods are fortified with vitamin D. Vitamin D is a nutrient that cannot be obtained from natural, unprocessed, healthy foods – the foods that we are designed to eat. This is because vitamin D was expected to come from sun exposure, and who knew that one day people would be living in geographic regions where this was not possible during a portion of the year, or that even during warm, sunny weather people would be spending a majority of their time indoors instead of outdoors, and that scare tactics would be used to discourage people from getting adequate sunshine during the warmer months. So if vitamin D plays an important role in cancer prevention, and most people are deficient in this nutrient, then the result would likely be a predisposition to cancer (and other diseases) which is exactly what we have today. This result has become big business for various industries, but it's bad news for those who suffer from it. Unfortunately in this country the bottom line is "profits before people" (not my words)*. The good news is: now YOU know about the benefit of vitamin D in the prevention of cancer. Put it to good use, and pass it on. (In a moment I'll outline a prudent vitamin D strategy.)

But what else is vitamin D good for? It's a well known fact that without sufficient vitamin D, all the calcium in the world wouldn't be enough to keep you from getting osteoporosis; vitamin D being necessary for good bone health. And vitamin D also plays a role in the prevention of other chronic, degenerative diseases. And that's something to think about: these conditions are all very slow in getting to the point where you become aware of them. A vitamin D deficiency is not like an oxygen deficiency, which you'd know about immediately. So we go through life slowly degenerating and assuming that it's simply part of getting older, and that it's nothing unique or personal because it happens to everyone. But if everyone is sub-clinically deficient in vital nutrients, and if everyone is not supporting their body's efforts in staying ahead of serious illness, and if everyone is doing the things that unknowingly cause these diseases, then it's only natural that everyone would degenerate over time and get that dreaded diagnosis of something serious at some point. So if vibrant health is something you'd like to invest in and experience, it's crucial that you trash any notion that serious disease is inevitable, because this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy for people who believe it.

It's interesting how all the recent health care reform discussions have shed light on the fact that we here in the USA are doing far worse than folks in other countries (who have a better health care system than we'll likely ever have). The U.S. is 19th in infant mortality, we're 35th in average life expectancy (out of 191), we're the most overweight country in the world, and not surprisingly we're the sickest people when it comes to the preventable diseases of lifestyle. And mostly you have a for-profit ill-health management system to thank for this, because a true health care system would include education that would make it perfectly clear that a high fat diet and insufficient exercise, sunshine, and sleep are public health enemy number one.

True Health-Care is Self-Care

When I find myself among those discussing the current health care issues, I'm often asked what I think is the best health care system. Knowing what I know about the health care system we've had and will likely continue to have*, and knowing what I know about disease avoidance and health creation, there is no contest: the absolute BEST health can only be had when you take responsibility for your own health care. And yes, that places the care of your health on you, but if you place your health, your quality of life, and your life itself in the hands of those not properly educated in health creation and disease avoidance, you will likely get what the average customer of the traditional health care system gets: a life expectancy less than your actual longevity potential, and a quality-of-life in the "winter" of your life that is far less than what it could be. And telling yourself that this is what most people experience isn't going to make it feel any better. When I'm in the last fifth of my life, I want to feel as great as I did when I was in the first fifth, and I'm willing to do what it takes to accomplish this. And the good news is, what it takes is both enjoyable and delicious.

And since death is inevitable, I want to die of non-specific organ failure, i.e. "natural causes", not some all-to-common serious disease accompanied by diminished quality-of-life. Natural causes or "old age" was once the major cause of death. You went to bed one night at a ripe old age, in reasonably good health, and simply didn't wake up the next day. That's for me! But we've been conditioned to believe that serious illness is the norm and is unavoidable. But this is simply not true.

Vitamin D "How To's"

How do you make sure your vitamin D level is providing optimal protection? Simple; live in the tropics. If you do, there's not much to think about regarding vitamin D. But for those who can't get adequate sunshine all year-round – sunshine strong enough to produce vitamin D – here's a sound vitamin D protocol for those times when you can't get your D from the sun via daily sunbathing.

1. Get tested.  See what your D level is currently. It's good to have a baseline, and not good to simply assume you are low. You don't want to supplement with vitamin D (or any nutrient) if you don't need to. The test to get is called a 25-Hydroxy-Vitamin D test, sometimes referred to as 25(OH)D or Vitamin D, 25-OH, Total. The test you don't want is 1,25-dihydroxy-vitamin D and, unfortunately, about 20% of U.S. doctors order this test thinking that by measuring the most potent steroid in the human body, calcitriol, they are getting useful information, but they are not. 1,25-dihydroxy-vitamin D is an adaptive hormone; it goes up and down with calcium intake. So if 1,25-dihydroxy-vitamin D is normal or high, these docs tell their patients that they are okay on vitamin D when in reality they may be vitamin D deficient, increasing their odds of cancer and other degenerative disease.

The test result range you are looking for is between 50-80 ng/ml. Unfortunately there are some docs who see a reading of 30 ng/ml as being "okay", but current research shows that this is too low. Some researchers have a more conservative range of 40-60 (this may be due to a concern that D is fat soluble, and therefore taking too much and having too high a level can result in vitamin D toxicity; more on this in a moment). But all my research suggests that if you keep tabs on your D level, the range of 50-80 ng/ml is a safe one to shoot for (and this does not require weekly or even monthly testing).

As Dr. Garland in the above video suggests, get tested through a health care professional, or get a self-test kit and do it yourself. I would add that if you are supplementing with a meaningful amount of vitamin D, since it is prudent to test every two months until you find what dose gets you in the 50-80 range while supplementing, it is important to get tested using the same lab or with the same test kit each time so you are comparing apples-to-apples. There is a through-the-mail test kit available at http://www.zrtlab.com/vitamindcouncil and this is the kit that I recommend to those I counsel (and I have no affiliation, financial or otherwise, with this company or the vitamin D manufacturer that I recommend).

Besides getting a baseline, a better reason to test for your D level before you start supplementing is to see just how deficient you are if you are deficient. If you're only a little deficient ("insufficient"), then the dose of your D supplementation could follow the guidelines in this article (maintenance dose). But if you are seriously deficient, you'd want to know this because your initial dosing of D should probably be more along the lines of a therapeutic dose which will taper down to a maintenance dose as your levels come up.

2. If low, raise it (enough but not too much)  If you are low in D and you can get out in the sun, do so. Just don't get burned.

If you can't get out in the sun because you burn very easily or the sun isn't strong enough, I'd consider supplementing with vitamin D3. The one I use can be seen here. It comes in drops too, but the oil used is often fish oil, and the size of the drops is affected by barometric pressure, so tablets provide a more accurate dose. (Email me to find out where you can get this D at a discount.)

How much to take? That is the million-dollar question. There is some controversy on this issue, which is why I highly recommend that if you supplement with anything more than the dose printed on the vitamin D bottle label, you monitor your levels until you discover the dose that gets you in the range you should be in (50-80 ng/ml). Unlike water soluble vitamins, like vitamin C, you can get symptoms of vitamin D toxicity if you take too much (a list of which I include at the end of this article). Obviously this is to be avoided, but avoiding it by taking only the dose recommended on the bottle or by the USDA or some other agency may not yield the amount of vitamin D that your body needs to effectively prevent disease, both chronic (like cancer and osteoporosis) and acute (like a cold or the flu). And emerging research indicates that current mainstream recommendations are indeed too low.

If you're not getting any meaningful sun (sun that could burn you if you over-did it), the current recommendation by the Vitamin D Council is "healthy children under the age of two years should take 1,000 IU per day; over the age of two, 2,000 IU per day; healthy adults and adolescents should take 5,000 IU per day. Two months later, have a 25-hydroxy-vitamin D blood test" (to insure you are in the 50-80 ng/ml range).

Keep in mind that sunshine can deliver 10,000 to 40,000 IU per day of vitamin D without the risk of side effects. If you feel that supplementing with 5,000 IU per day sounds too high being that the vitamin D bottle says 2,000, it would certainly be prudent to take 2,000 per day and see if that amount raises your level into the 50-80 range. If it doesn't, increase to 3,000 a day and test again in two months, etc. If you decide to follow the above recommendations of 5,000 per day for adults and adolescents, be sure to test no later than two months after starting supplementation. If you get a reading over 80 ng/ml, adjust your D intake down accordingly and re-test in two months.

Okay, all that being said, I will tell you that at doses of 5,000 per day, I have never seen any symptoms of vitamin D toxicity. But if you experience any (see below), discontinue D supplementation until symptoms disappear, keeping in mind that the long half-life of vitamin D – approximately 30 days – would result in the side effects taking a while to disappear after you stop supplementation. It is not uncommon for side effects to fade slowly over the course of a few weeks. A standard protocol in the case of vitamin D overdosing is to not only avoid vitamin D supplements, but also vitamin D fortified foods, sunshine, and calcium supplements for a few weeks, while increasing water intake and physical demands (through vigorous exercise). Remember that healthy, natural foods (fruits and green leafy vegetables) contain no vitamin D. Also, I'd advise getting an immediate 25-hydroxy-vitamin D test to see just where your levels were when you started experiencing symptoms. Besides being good data to have in cases of deficiency and excess, the test is an especially good idea if the symptoms you are experiencing are not actually being caused by vitamin D toxicity. This comes under the heading of being an educated consumer, and when it comes to symptom diagnostics, you don't want to be misdiagnosed, which happens more often than you might imagine (remember, some docs believe a reading of 30 is good, and some misdiagnose symptoms of low D).

One last word about over-doing vitamin D supplementation: If you become symptomatic, it may not be that you are getting too much D, it may be that you are not getting enough magnesium. There are other nutrients that need to be consumed in sufficient quantities for vitamin D to do its job, like zinc, vitamins C and K2, boron, a tiny amount of vitamin A and magnesium. Magnesium is the most important of these co-factors where it concerns D. In fact, it is common for rising vitamin D levels to exacerbate an underlying magnesium deficiency, increasing "neuromuscular hyperexcitability" of which its primary cause is the magnesium deficiency, not the increase in D. So if you're experiencing problems when you start supplementing with vitamin D, a magnesium deficiency could be the reason why. The best way to ensure that you are getting enough magnesium (and zinc and vitamin K2 and boron, etc) is to take a high quality multi.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but, a vitamin never works alone; it must have various relationships with other vitamins to work properly. And if you're deficient in magnesium, you could be taking an otherwise "okay" dose of D but still experience D deficiency symptoms such as headaches, insomnia, jitteriness, muscle cramps, anxiety, heart palpitations and/or constipation. Those who are eating a healthy diet that contains lots of uncooked fruits, non-sweet fruits, and green leafy vegetables may be getting enough magnesium (assuming enough was in the soil that fed those foods as they grew), but those eating a typical Western diet may not be getting enough. As I said, to ensure an adequate supply of magnesium, and the other D co-factors, a high quality multivitamin may be a good idea (I am not an advocate of buying a bottle of magnesium tablets any more than I advocate buying bottles of chromium, which is vital in the proper regulation of blood sugar metabolism).

Overdosing by doctors

If you have your 25-hydroxy-vitamin D test done by a health care professional, and the results are very low, he or she may prescribe 50,000 IUs once a week. This has been shown to be a potentially problematic dose, and is ill-advised in my opinion; it would be better to simply adhere to the above dosage recommendations of 5,000 a day and re-test in two months.

Enough D from Fortified Foods?

When it was discovered that rickets – softening of the bones – was caused by a severe vitamin D deficiency, it was mandated that sufficient vitamin D be added to processed foods to prevent this disease among our population. While those amounts that are added to processed foods will prevent rickets, it is now obvious that these amounts are inadequate to help prevent the more chronic, degenerative diseases that vitamin D insufficiency contributes to. And if you're like the many people who are discovering that processed foods are not a healthy part of the human diet, and are avoiding them mostly or totally, you need to be vigilant regarding the nutrients that you are now not getting from those processed foods, and that do not come from the healthier foods you are now eating, like vitamins D and B12. D is supposed to come from sunshine, and a healthy body is supposed to manufacture all the B12 it requires. These are the two "problematic" nutrients. (I address the B12 issue in my book.) And by-the-way, rickets is making a comeback! And you have computers and their social networks, Game Boys, and Play Stations to thank for this (kids are spending less time outdoors than ever). The fix? Government is recommending that the 400 IU amount added to fortified foods be raised to 600 IUs which may help to eliminate rickets once again but obviously does nothing to lower the risks for all the other diseases where insufficient D is a contributing factor.

In Conclusion

Get your vitamin D from sunshine when you can, and when you can't, keep your levels in the "sufficient" range.

This doctor sums it up nicely:

"Because vitamin D is so cheap and so clearly reduces all-cause mortality, I can say this with great certainty: Vitamin D represents the single most cost-effective medical intervention in the United States." – Dr. Greg Plotnikoff, Medical Director, Penny George Institute for Health and Healing, Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.

It is understandable that a doctor would see vitamin D as a "medical intervention". I see adequate D as simply a necessary part of normal human existence, and if we as a population would recognize adequate D, B12, and all the other nutrients as an important part of a healthy lifestyle (and would pay equal attention to all the other basics of health), the need for medical facilities would primarily be for emergency, poison, burn, and trauma care because the incidence of chronic, degenerative disease would reduce dramatically. And this starts by dramatically reducing the risk factors for you. Invest now for your future health!

 Don Bennett

P.S. I did think it ironic that the first video sports a photo of a woman drinking a glass of milk in the opening and closing graphics, because dairy products are a poor source for adequate vitamin D and they are a rocket-fuel for the very cancers that this research is hoping to prevent. More on milk's role in cancer here.

* Watch Bill Moyers Journal "Profits over People" where former insurance insider Wendell Potter speaks candidly about health care reform. A must-see video! http://video.pbs.org/video/1178899944/

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Symptoms of Overdose

Typically, initial vitamin D overdose symptoms can include headache, nausea, fatigue, and/or red areas on the face. What follows is a more comprehensive list. If you experience any of these symptoms after starting vitamin D3 supplementation, follow the recommendations above.

Early symptoms of overdose (emerge within days or weeks of starting vitamin D supplementation)

Mild sensitivity in teeth to hot or cold substances
Wheezing when breathing
Over-sensitivity to light in the evening
Bone pain
Constipation (especially in children or adolescents) *
Diarrhea
Drowsiness
Dryness of mouth
Headache (continuing) *
Increased thirst
Increase in frequency of urination, especially at night, or in amount of urine
Irregular heartbeat *
Eye twitching
Itching skin
Red swollen splotches on the face
Loss of appetite
Metallic taste
Muscle pain *
Nausea or vomiting (especially in children or adolescents)
Unusual tiredness or weakness
* Remember, this could be due to insufficient magnesium as mentioned above.

Late symptoms of overdose (emerge within weeks or months of starting supplementation)

Bone pain
Calcium deposits (hard lumps) in tissues outside of the bone
Cloudy urine
Drowsiness
Increased sensitivity of eyes to light or irritation of eyes
Itching of skin
Loss of appetite
Loss of sex drive
Mood or mental changes
Muscle pain
Nausea or vomiting
Protein in the urine
Redness or discharge of the eye, eyelid, or lining of the eyelid
Runny nose
Weight loss

High blood pressure
High fever
Irregular heartbeat
Stomach pain (severe)

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