Cancer and Vitamin D–Know How They Are Connected!

Dr. Dowd: And there now studies. in an aging study done in Boston, where they've also identified cognitive decline as correlating with vitamin D deficiency. And so cognition may be important uh or vitamin D may be important in not only capturing memories, but holding on to, unto them, later, later in life. what about malignancy? Okay there, there was a wonderful study done at Crichton University by Dr. Lapey (sp), and that study's initial design was to look at the ability of vitamin D to prevent fractures, broken bones in post-menopausal woman. and what they found as their secondary outcome, was that it actually reduced the likelihood of any reported cancer over four years of follow up, by some 70%, 76%.

Interviewer: Wow.

Dr. Dowd: So, and that was a prospective study, now it wasn't very large study, and some of skeptics said, 'well this isn't a large enough study, you need tens of thousands of women, and this was only, you know several thousand woman', so I, we don't even know if it means anything. But when you correlate that with data from Sedric (sp) Garland, and, and Dr. Grant and the Harvard, Harvard studies, the health profession study, the nurses' health study all of these databases are pointing in the same direction. Meaning the more sun exposure you get, or the more vitamin D you get, o the higher your vitamin D level, the lower your risk of just about every cancer that you compare that to, okay. The ones that seem to be most important, colon cancer, that's at the top of the list, that one is clearly related to vitamin D deficiency, low levels raising your risk for colon cancer. Normal levels perhaps your risk, cutting it in half, less so prostrate and breast cancer are associated with vitamin D deficiency, and then you can look at lymphoma leukemia and a whole host of other cancers. And so there seems to be a relationship between your risks for cancers of many types, and vitamin D deficiency, risk going up as D levels go down.