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Lack of Sunshine

Causes One Million Deaths a Year. If vitamin D3 levels among populations worldwide were increased, 600,000 cases of breast and colorectal cancers could be prevented each year Read More.

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Vitamin D Council

The high rate of natural production of vitamin D3 cholecalciferol in the skin is the single most important fact every person should know about vitamin D—a fact that has profound implications for the natural human condition. Read More.

Cancer Society’s Anti-Sun Ads Decried as Deceptive
Studies point to omega-6 / omega-3 imbalance as a greater factor in skin cancer deaths;
Excessive sun avoidance may raise overall cancer risk

There is no longer significant doubt that moderate sun exposure – short of suffering frequent, substantial sunburns –actually reduces cancer risk overall.

In fact, the reverse seems to be the case, as we report in elsewhere in this issue. New research affirms prior indications that many Americans – especially darker skinned people – lack sufficient Vitamin D-generating (hence cancer-curbing) sun exposure.

The hypothesis that moderate sun exposure curbs cancer risks rests on abundant evidence that Vitamin D probably ranks among the most powerful anti-cancer factors in the human body.

A summer-season ad campaign from the American Cancer Society defies the growing consensus concerning the causes of fatal skin cancers. Sunscreen is certainly useful for preventing sunburn, which may be responsible for a small percentage of the relatively small number of fatal skin cancers that occur annually in the US. Only fair-skinned people seem to run a substantial risk of developing skin cancer in response to the kind of daylong sun exposure hunting, gathering, and farming humans experienced throughout millennia of evolution, until very recently.

But it is not clear that sun exposure is a huge risk even for them, and there's much less that sun is a major risk factor among non-fair folks.

The latest outrage against reason comes in the form of an advertising campaign from the American Cancer Society (ACS) that’s sponsored … silently … by Neutrogena: a major sunscreen maker. This regrettable venture – whose anti-sun, pro-sunscreen message is intended, ostensibly, to reduce the risk of fatal skin cancers – could actually increase its largely female targets’ overall cancer risk.

Under a headline that reads ““My sister accidentally killed herself. She died of skin cancer”, the American Cancer Society’s new public service ad shows a young woman holding up a photograph of a smiling blonde.

Appearing this summer in more than a dozen women’s magazines, the ad says that “left unchecked, skin cancer can be fatal,” and urges its female targets to “use sunscreen, cover up and watch for skin changes.”

Medical reporters at many major media outlets interviewed leading skin cancer researchers, who disputed the misleading message being foisted on millions of women by the Cancer Society’s ads.

Ads paid by sunscreen maker distort reality Key Points

Experts call Cancer Society’s pro-sunscreen ads unscientific and unrealistic.

Excessive sun avoidance could raise overall cancer death rates, due to resulting drop in Vitamin D production in people’s skin.

Americans’ common omega-3/omega-6 intake imbalance may be a much greater risk factor in skin cancer.

But as The New York Times said about the ad, “The woman in the picture is a model, not a skin cancer victim. And the advertisement’s implicit message — that those who die of skin cancer have themselves to blame — has provoked a sharp response from some public-health doctors, who say the evidence simply does not support it.”

The two key points made by experts interviewed by The New York Times, ABC News, and others were these:

While most cases of skin cancer (carcinomas) may be caused by sun overexposure, almost all of these cancers are innocuous and not life-threatening.

Even obsessive use of sunscreen may not prevent the most dangerous kind of skin cancers, called melanomas.
In truth, by reducing blood levels of Vitamin D, constant use of sunscreen outdoors could raise the risk of many common, dangerous malignancies, including ovarian, breast, kidney, and colon cancers. (Not to mention the possible cancer causing substances that are absorbed by the skin from the sun screens.)

These are the basic facts, gleaned from the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the World Health Organization (WHO), and leading academic researchers:

Skin cancer is responsible for less than two percent of all cancer deaths, accounting for about 11,000 of the 565,000 American cancer deaths recorded in 2006. Nearly all skin cancer deaths stem from relatively rare malignant melanomas, which constitute only six percent of all skin-cancer cases. Sunscreen does not appear to prevent melanomas – the rarest but most lethal skin cancers by far – in which genetic and nutritional factors appear to play greater roles than sun exposure. Evidence for a cause-and-effect link between excessive sun exposure and deadly melanomas is weak. Among melanoma cancer patients, those who reported more sun exposure prior to their diagnosis enjoy higher survival rates, compared with patients who reported less prior sun exposure. (Schwartz GG, Skinner HG 2007) Only one in five melanomas is estimated to be related to sun exposure. This estimate comes from Howard L. Kaufman, M.D., co-director of the Melanoma Center at Columbia University.

How can the glaring discrepancies in experts’ estimates of the sun’s proportionate role in causing melanomas, which range from 20 percent up to 50 or 90 percent be explained? One possibility is that even if UV sunrays do not generally cause melanomas, heavier sun exposure among people with fair skin and those living in sunny climates could promote growth of melanomas initiated by other causes, thereby raising melanoma death rates in these groups.

We should stress that most deaths caused by generally non-fatal carcinoma-type tumors (only 20 percent of all skin cancer fatalities) appear linked to excessive sun exposure.

This is why research indicates that sunscreen can reduce the risk of this least-dangerous category of skin cancers.

But one must weigh the best sunscreens’ ability to reduce the already minuscule risk of death from skin carcinomas against three countervailing factors:

The potential for increasing one’s risk of non-skin cancers, due to reduced Vitamin D production.

The unknown risks of the insufficiently safety-tested additives in sunscreens

The substantial expense and hassle of doing what most dermatologists advise, which is to apply hefty amounts of sunscreen whenever one spends more than 20 minutes in the sun.

Dermatologists’ advice regarding sunscreen use and sun avoidance makes the most sense for fair-skinned folks, who lack UV-blocking pigment (melanin) in their skin, who can make extra efforts to get ample dietary Vitamin D.
(Note: the most useful form of Vitamin D is the D3 form found in animal foods like fish, not the D2 form found in most Vitamin D and multivitamin supplements.)

Given Americans’ increasingly indoor-oriented, sun-deprived lives, most don’t consume enough Vitamin D from foods or supplements. This is why most Vitamin D researchers want to raise the US recommended daily allowance (RDA) from 400 IU to 1,000 or 2,000 IU, and urge people to eat fatty fish (the best food source) and take higher supplemental doses.

There is compelling evidence concerning the role of America’s all-too-common omega-6/omega-3 fatty acid intake imbalance in creating increased risk of skin cancers.

Researchers at the American Health Foundation (AHF) in Valhalla, New York reported the results of a study using human skin cancer cells.

The AHF scientists introduced their findings by noting the growing consensus that prompted their revealing test tube research: “Epidemiological, experimental, and mechanistic data implicate omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) as stimulators and long-chain omega-3 PUFAs as inhibitors of … a range of human cancers, including melanoma.” (Albino AP et al 200)

Omega-6 fatty acids predominate in America’s most common vegetable oils (corn, soy, canola, safflower, sunflower, cottonseed) – thus in most packaged and prepared foods – and in grain fed meats and poultry.

Long-chain omega-3s – the most beneficial kind – are abundant only in fish and fish oils, while the valuable but less beneficial short-chain kind is abundant only in leafy green vegetables and flaxseed or flaxseed oil.

Source of information: Vitaminal Choices, Craig Weatherby view link
You should read the rest of this article. This is a summary at best of the full article.

Other Links:
Forbes.com September 10, 2007
Archives of Internal Medicine September 10, 2007;167:1730-1737
Lack of Sunshine Causes One Million Deaths a Year
Which Vitamin Will Improve Your Life Expectancy the Most?
Vitamin D Council - Dr. John Cannell
Cancer Society's Anti‑Sun Ads Decried as Deceptive

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