Longer, brighter days don't just mean a lift in our mood - the sun's rays stimulate our bodies to produce vitamin D, increasingly seen as key to our wellbeing and ability to fight disease, writes Roisin Armstrong
ISN'T IT fantastic? Spring has come and there's lots more light and even occasional warmth. It would be sensational if we could have a lovely summer like last year. Sunshine doesn't just make us all feel good - it is also vitally important for our overall health, physical and mental.
Over the past few years a huge amount of studies have been carried out around the importance of vitamin D. In fact by the end of 2012 there were nearly 34,000 published studies on its effects and there are well over 800 references in this medical literature showing vitamin D's effectiveness against cancer alone.
This protection may in part be due to its influence on about 10 per cent of all your genes including one which regulates our ability to fight infections and chronic inflammation. Vitamin D also produces more than 200 anti-microbial peptides within the body, the most important of which is cathelicidin, a naturally occurring broad-spectrum antibiotic.
Recent studies demonstrate how optimising your vitamin D levels may lower your LDL cholesterol levels and double your chances of surviving breast cancer. Researchers also claim to have discovered a causal link between vitamin D deficiency and autism spectrum disorder.
Brand new research suggests that not only does good blood-serum levels of vitamin D protect against a range of diseases, but a meta-analysis of five studies published in the March 2014 issue of Anticancer Research found that patients diagnosed with breast cancer who had high vitamin D levels were twice as likely to survive compared to women with low levels. The analysis included more than 4,500 breast cancer patients over a nine-year period. This study was from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine.
Vitamin D has a number of anticancer effects, including the promotion of cancer cell death, known as apoptosis, and the inhibition of angiogenesis (the growth of blood vessels that feed a tumor). "As long as vitamin D receptors were present, tumor growth was prevented and kept from expanding its blood supply. Vitamin D receptors are not lost until a tumor is very advanced. This is the reason for better survival in patients whose vitamin D blood levels are high," Cedric Garland of the San Diego School of Medicine said.
The researchers urge physicians to make vitamin D monitoring and optimisation part of standard breast cancer care, and recommend that breast cancer patients should restore their vitamin D levels to a normal range of 30-80 ng/ml.
According to the findings, you need at least 30 ng/ml of serum vitamin D to prevent cancer from spreading. Other research suggests you'd be better off with levels as high as 80 ng/ml.
In 2011 Dr Garland's team found that a vitamin D level of 50 ng/ml is associated with a 50 per cent lower risk of breast cancer.
According to Carole Baggerly, founder of Grassroots Health, as much as 90 per cent of ordinary breast cancer may in fact be related to vitamin D deficiency.
Grassroots Health, described as a 'public health promotion organisation', is a USbased collective of eminent physicians who specialise in all aspect of vitamin D. If you are interested in more information about the importance of vitamin D, and what appears to be very solid research, I suggest you Google Grassroots Health - definitely worth a read.
If you hope to use vitamin D therapeutically in order to achieve protective levels, you have to take far more supplemental vitamin D than previously thought, but only consider supplementing highly if you are working with a suitably qualified nutritional practitioner or GP who can check your blood levels. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin and therefore has the potential to be stored in the body and can potentially be toxic at high levels.
It's important to also be aware that it's virtually impossible to make a general recommendation on how much vitamin D to take as the amount needed can vary significantly from one individual to another. So, if supplementing, you need to have regular blood tests to monitor your levels and take whatever amount of vitamin D3 you need to maintain a clinically relevant level. Supplementing with vitamin D is a less efficient way of getting this vitamin than exposure to plenty of sunshine. Try getting 20 minutes of sunlight on 40 per cent of your skin as often as possible without sunscreen, before 12 midday and after 3pm. Obviously good sense needs to apply to protect your skin from burning, which is so detrimental. If we don't get a good summer this year, save your pennies and try for even a short break in a sunny climate.
* Roisin Armstrong is an acupuncturist and kinesiologist with clinics in Portglenone (028 2582 1333) and Holywood (0777 0862 637). r.armstrong@irishnews.com