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Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

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Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#51

Post by vixen99 »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #14
Filligree wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway is to keep eating fish.

Overfishing is serious enough at this point that I'd rather take a small health risk than contribute to it.

I hope I've not misunderstood but if you are saying vitamin D deficiency is a 'small health risk' then that needs correction. Never mind the validity or not of the paper in question. Anyone reviewing the peer-reviewed literature on vitamin D for the last decade or so would conclude it's a very bad idea indeed to be deficient. For those who don't get much sun exposure, a blood test is recommended and will put people on the right track.

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#52

Post by hanoz »

Etheryte wrote: post #45
SoftTalker wrote: post #3

I've been taking a daily vitamin D supplement since COVID-19 broke out in the USA. I believe there's a lot of evidence that many people are deficient in vitamin D. I don't know if supplements are the best way to attack that but it's one of the easiest ways. Getting daily sun exposure isn't always convenient and not really possible for a good chunk of the year since we have real winter here.

Regarding deficiency, your GP can measure this for you for nearly no to no cost. No matter what your reasoning for taking some, it's always good to check what the baseline you're dealing with actually is before. For context, I'm from a country where low vitamin D levels are very common so I had a test done a few times throughout the year and turns out I've never been under the recommended levels.

Your high latitude health service must be better than mine. I can hardly imagine my GP's receptionist's reaction if I tried to book an appointment to check my baseline vitamin D levels!

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#53

Post by cscheid »

hannob wrote: post #2

"When all 14 studies were pooled, no statistically significant results emerged. However, when the studies were divided according to whether vitamin D3 was taken daily in a low dose* or in higher doses administered at longer intervals*, a large difference was seen." This sounds fishy. Sounds like their primary result was nothing, and then they looked for something else. Would require some checking if they had a prereg…

Yes, exactly. There's a real-life example of an author group who got sufficiently annoyed at a reviewer requesting an inappropriate subgroup analysis: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Reviewers asked for the subgroup analysis; authors said "no, this is statistically nonsense"; reviewers said "yes, but we'll reject the paper otherwise"; reviewers said "ok, but only if you let us also split on astrological sign".

Result: paper reports that aspirin has an effect, but only if you're not a Gemini or Libra. Too good.

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#54

Post by alejohausner »

The global distribution of many types of cancer is strongly related to latitude. The farther you are from the equator, the higher the rate of disease. The more sun you get, the less cancer. It's hard not to infer that sun exposure and thus synthesis of vitamin D helps prevent many cancers.

We've been urged to avoid sun exposure because it can cause skin cancer. But those cancers are squamous and basal cell carcinomas. Those carcinomas are easily cured, and don't usually kill you. Melanoma, the truly deadly skin cancer, is more prevalent in populations with less sun exposure.

There are lots of interesting graphs on Jeff Bowles' site [^1]. He's an absolute fan of vitamin D.

^1:https://jefftbowles.com/vitamin-d3-deficiency-causes-most-hu...

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#55

Post by _trackno5 »

oppositelock wrote: post #23
SoftTalker wrote: post #3

I've been taking a daily vitamin D supplement since COVID-19 broke out in the USA. I believe there's a lot of evidence that many people are deficient in vitamin D. I don't know if supplements are the best way to attack that but it's one of the easiest ways. Getting daily sun exposure isn't always convenient and not really possible for a good chunk of the year since we have real winter here.

I have some hard numbers on this in my own health. I'm a pasty north European living in California and I get plenty of sunshine, as I enjoy the outdoors. As I got older, I got increasingly more viral infections and strep throat was a twice a year affair. It didn't occur to me that I could be vitamin-D deficient, but I was, severely. For some reason, 10+ hours of sunshine a week isn't enough for me to make my own. Ove…

Just because you get plenty of sunlight where you live it doesn’t mean you get enough exposure to produce vitamin D.

You need to expose large areas of your body like legs, arms, and torso for several minutes to an hour. If those areas are covered, sunlight won’t do much.

The Sigma Nutrition podcast has an excellent episode on that: https://sigmanutrition.com/episode438/

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#56

Post by secondcoming »

belltaco wrote: post #28
ramoz wrote: post #9

> However, when the studies were divided according to whether vitamin D3 was taken daily in a low dose* or in higher doses administered at longer intervals*, a large difference was seen. In the four studies with the infrequent hogher doses, there was no effect on cancer mortality. In contrast, in the summary of the ten studies with daily dosing, the researchers determined a statistically significant twelve percent re…

If you read further they found that lower daily doses were better. > In contrast, in the summary of the ten studies with daily dosing, the researchers determined a statistically significant twelve percent reduction in cancer mortality > In the studies, daily low doses were 400 to 4000 IU per day, and higher-doses administered at longer intervals were 60,000 to 120,000 IU once per month or less.

I'm in the UK and the max dosage I can get for Vitamin D in my local supermarket pharmacy is 1000 IU

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#58

Post by tuukkah »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #10
hannob wrote: post #2

"When all 14 studies were pooled, no statistically significant results emerged. However, when the studies were divided according to whether vitamin D3 was taken daily in a low dose* or in higher doses administered at longer intervals*, a large difference was seen." This sounds fishy. Sounds like their primary result was nothing, and then they looked for something else. Would require some checking if they had a prereg…

D3 (animal-based) > D2 (plant-based) > D1 (synthetic), at least in humans if you read the literature, that is. The fishy thing is how actual scientists do whole studies using only D1 and then draw conclusions.

Plant-based D3 exists, extracted from seaweed.

Re: Reduced cancer mortality with daily Vitamin D intake

#60

Post by sateesh »

alejohausner wrote: post #54

The global distribution of many types of cancer is strongly related to latitude. The farther you are from the equator, the higher the rate of disease. The more sun you get, the less cancer. It's hard not to infer that sun exposure and thus synthesis of vitamin D helps prevent many cancers. We've been urged to avoid sun exposure because it can cause skin cancer. But those cancers are squamous and basal cell carcinomas…

Can you be specific about what kind of Cancer incidences is related to the latitude ? In general I don't think there is a good correlation between Cancer incidences and latitude, for example India gets plenty of sunshine year around, but Cancer incidences are no less.
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