June 19, 2007
On second thought ...
About that staying-out-of-the-sun business, there's this report.
In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin [i.e., vitamin D]. Their results are nothing short of astounding.
A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-percent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn't take it, a drop so large—twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking—it almost looks like a typographical error....
Those studying the vitamin say the hide-from-sunlight advice has amounted to the health equivalent of a foolish poker trade. Anyone practising sun avoidance has traded the benefit of a reduced risk of skin cancer—which is easy to detect and treat and seldom fatal—for an increased risk of the scary, high-body-count cancers, such as breast, prostate and colon, that appear linked to vitamin D shortages.
Sun good! Sun bad!
I defer to my earlier post on the fickle bitch that is medical knowledge and the ever-changing list of health column "nevers" and "always."
Posted by Mike Lief at June 19, 2007 08:06 AM
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