San Diego Researcher Initiates Five Year Vitamin D Cancer Study
By: Cathy Sherman, B.A. Sociology
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock lately, you’ve undoubtedly read and heard the nutrition-conscious media singing the praises of the sun. As a free source of the powerful health properties of vitamin D, it cannot be beaten. If you indeed have been hiding under that rock to keep from getting the sun exposure that everyone said caused cancer, you can come out now, at least for 30 minutes a day between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and join a new study.
There are many studies that reveal a link between Vitamin D deficiencies and cancer and other diseases. But the mechanisms behind such links are yet to be determined. The D* action Project under the direction of Dr. Cedric Garland of the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine is a new five-year study getting under way soon which will help to prove or disprove Dr. Garland’s DINOMIT theory.
The letters in the acrostic - DINOMIT - stand for steps in a process of cell breakdown to the invasion of cancer. It all begins with a loss of Vitamin D, which causes a problem with cell communication, leading to mutations and the overgrowth of cells characteristic of cancer. Dr. Garland theorizes that introducing Vitamin D back into the cells through supplementation, diet or sunlight will arrest the development of cancerous cells.
This project is more that a study. In conjunction with GrassrootsHealth, directed by Carole Baggerly, a worldwide public health campaign to solve the vitamin D deficiency epidemic has been launched. Volunteers will have their Vitamin D levels monitored twice yearly and their health outcomes over the five years will be documented.
Volunteers are needed and everyone is invited to participate. The only obligations are to fill out a health questionnaire online, pay $40 for the test kit, submit your blood sample twice a year for the lab test, and work to increase your levels of this vital nutrient to those recommended. You will be notified of your D levels each time so you can improve or maintain them.
Says Ms. Baggerly: "We will be tracking the incidence of many diseases, from cancer to diabetes and muscular function as well as pain levels to see what effect the higher vitamin D levels may have. We expect to see a significant reduction in the incidence of breast cancer (and its recurrence), colon cancer, diabetes and myocardial infarction, compared with the general population. With the expansion of the project by individuals, we could substantially reduce this epidemic in a few years!”
It’s projected that two million cases of cancer may be prevented each year just by insuring adequate levels of Vitamin D. Please do your part by forwarding this article to everyone on your email list. Participants can live anywhere in the world, so include all of your contacts. Tell everyone to visit GrassRootsHealth.
This campaign is “grassroots” – it won’t be picked up by the mainstream media, since it’s not going to bring big bucks to Big Pharma. Its success, which could lead to new strategies for public health, depends on those of us who want to do our part to insure our own good health.
