Public Health, England (PHE) has made a simple recommendation: Go in the sun to ensure you have enough vitamin D. And if you can’t, supplement because there is simply not much vitamin D found in any foods.
Vitamin D is primarily made by the action of sunshine on the cholesterol layers under your skin. Apart from that there is a little in oily fish, and that’s about it, which is why this major Public Health Authority has broken ranks and told people to supplement.
They did so after the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) in the UK, issued a report on Vitamin D and Health. The primary concern was over the need for vitamin D in bone formation (along with magnesium, vitamin K and calcium). Rickets has been making a comeback amongst kids and osteoporosis is an ever-increasing problem in the elderly.
The recommendations did not refer to cancer and other chronic illnesses although vitamin D is crucial in prevention. CANCERactive recently covered research showing that cancer risk was inversely linked with low blood levels of vitamin D, and if you had cancer, plasma vitamin D levels were predictive of survival times.
Go to: Vitamin D - are you getting enough?
Vitamin D has also been shown to calm inflammation in the gut and good levels are associated with less diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Although it is called a vitamin, it acts in the body more like a hormone.
“At CANCERactive we are very pleased with this announcement,” said founder and former Oxford University Biochemist Chris Woollams. “We have been saying exactly the PHE statement for over a decade. Harvard Medical School have been researching vitamin D and cancer for over 20 years and Professor Holick there concluded that about 25 per cent less women would die from breast cancer if they had adequate levels of vitamin D in their blood. They recommend that every person with cancer should take 5,000 IUs a day. To put this in context, one week on a beach holiday, provides about 70,000 IUs”.