Vitamin D Deficency Causing Rickets
Natural News
By E. Huff
A clinical review paper published in the British Medical Journal is warning the public that widespread vitamin D deficiency is resurrecting the once-obsolete disease called rickets. According to Professor Simon Pearce and Dr. Time Cheetham, authors of the paper, people are getting far too little sunlight exposure which is necessary for the body to produce adequate levels of vitamin D.
Nowadays, children spend most of their time indoors staring at computer and television screens rather than playing outside in the sunlight. On the rare occasion that they venture outside, zealous parents are quick to apply UV-blocking sunscreen that prevents the sun’s useful UVB rays from penetrating their skin and producing vitamin D. The result is an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency that is leading to all sorts of illness and disease.
Rickets, a disease in which a person’s bones do not properly develop and harden, results when a person is getting too little vitamin D and most likely not enough calcium. The U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamin D is a mere 400 IU, an amount that is said to be adequate for preventing rickets.
To put this amount into perspective, however, exposure to the summer sun for about 20 minutes is enough to produce up to 20,000 IU of vitamin D in the body. At this level, far more optimal health can be achieved. Yet the fact that children are beginning to develop rickets suggests that they are not even getting 400 IU a day, an amount that should be relatively easy to attain through a moderately healthy diet or a few minutes in the sun every day.
In the U.K., there are several hundred cases of rickets reported every year. According to statistics, more than 50 percent of the adult population in the U.K. is deficient in vitamin D as well. During the winter and spring months, more than 15 percent experience severe deficiency.
Researchers suggest that people with darker skin pigmentation are at a higher risk for rickets because they do not assimilate vitamin D from the sun’s UVB rays as easily as those with lighter skin do. Some experts believe that the changing ethnic profile of the U.K. may play a significant role in the onset of rickets while others point primarily to an overall lack of vitamin D among all ethnic groups.
Either way, the changing lifestyles among all people are partially to blame as people are not spending enough time outside and, when they do they are using too much sunscreen to obtain any sort of benefit from the sun. Overuse of sunscreen can be blamed on government health authorities, regulatory agencies, medical professionals, and mainstream media outlets that continually exaggerate the threat of developing skin cancer from sunlight exposure to the point that some people are afraid of getting any at all.
Click here for the full report.
Wine Helps Fight Cancer?
October 27, 2009
MSNBC
Reuters
Cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment may want to sip some red wine before treatment.
A study in women with breast cancer found that drinking red wine can help limit the toxic effects of radiation therapy.
“The possibility that particular dietary practices or interventions can reduce radiation-induced toxicity is very intriguing,” Dr. Gabriella Macchia, of Catholic University, Campobasso, Italy, noted in an email to Reuters Health.
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It’s already known that some wine components may protect against the harmful effects of radiation. These components include polyphenols in particular, and the tannins.
In the current study, Macchia and colleagues evaluated the potential protective effects of varying levels of self-reported red wine consumption in 348 women treated with radiation therapy after breast cancer surgery.
The findings were “interesting,” Macchia said.
The incidence of radiation-induced skin toxicity greater was 38.4 percent in non-drinkers, 31.8 percent in women drinking only half a glass of wine daily, 13.6 percent in those drinking one glass daily, and 35 percent in those drinking two glasses daily.
Women who drank only one glass daily had a much lower risk of suffering skin effects from radiation therapy. Specifically, their risk of significant skin toxicity was about 75 percent less than that in non-drinkers, the researchers found.
“If wine can prevent (radiation)-induced toxicity without affecting antitumor efficacy, as we observed, it also has the potential to enhance the therapeutic benefit in cancer patients without increasing their risk of serious adverse effects,” Macchia said.
“The possible protective effect of wine, which we assessed only in women with breast cancer, should also be evaluated in male and female patients with other types of tumors (e.g., prostate carcinoma) who are undergoing radiotherapy,” she concluded.
Click here for the full report.
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Study: Tanning Beds as Deadly as Arsenic
July 28, 2009
Breitbart
by Associated Press writer Maria Cheng
LONDON (AP) – International cancer experts have moved tanning beds and other sources of ultraviolet radiation into the top cancer risk category, deeming them as deadly as arsenic and mustard gas. For years, scientists have described tanning beds and ultraviolet radiation as “probable carcinogens.”
A new analysis of about 20 studies concludes the risk of skin cancer jumps by 75 percent when people start using tanning beds before age 30. Experts also found that all types of ultraviolet radiation caused worrying mutations in mice, proof the radiation is carcinogenic. Previously, only one type of ultraviolet radiation was thought to be lethal.
The new classification means tanning beds and other sources of ultraviolet radiation are definite causes of cancer, alongside tobacco, the hepatitis B virus and chimney sweeping, among others.
The research was published online in the medical journal Lancet Oncology on Wednesday, by experts at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization.
“People need to be reminded of the risks of sunbeds,” said Vincent Cogliano, one of the cancer researchers. “We hope the prevailing culture will change so teens don’t think they need to use sunbeds to get a tan.”
Most lights used in tanning beds give off mainly ultraviolet radiation, which cause skin and eye cancer, according to the International Agency for Cancer Research.
The classification of tanning beds as carcinogenic was disputed by Kathy Banks, chief executive of The Sunbed Association, a European trade association of tanning bed makers and operators.
“The fact that is continuously ignored is that there is no proven link between the responsible use of sunbeds and skin cancer,” Banks said in a statement. She said most users of tanning beds use them less than 20 times a year.
But as use of tanning beds has increased among people under 30, doctors have seen a parallel rise in the numbers of young people with skin cancer. In Britain, melanoma, the deadliest kind of skin cancer, is now the leading cancer diagnosed in women in their 20s. Normally, skin cancer rates are highest in people over 75.
Previous studies found younger people who regularly use tanning beds are eight times more likely to get melanoma than people who have never used them. In the past, WHO warned people younger than 18 to stay away from tanning beds.
Cogliano cautioned that ultravoilet radiation is not healthy, whether it comes from a tanning bed or from the sun. The American Cancer Society advises people to try bronzing or self-tanning creams instead of tanning beds.
Click here for the full Associated Press story from Breitbart.com
