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Higher vitamin D cuts cancer risk
New research suggests that a significantly higher vitamin D intake than previously thought is required to reach blood levels that can prevent or lower the incidence of breast cancer and other major diseases, Newswise.com reports.
San Diego - New research suggests that a significantly higher vitamin D intake than previously thought is required to reach blood levels that can prevent or lower the incidence of breast cancer and other major diseases, Newswise.com reports.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine and the Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Neb., found that daily vitamin D intakes of 4,000 IU to 8,000 IU are required to maintain the blood levels of vitamin D metabolites needed to reduce by about half the risk of breast and colon cancer, multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes.
The study notes that these daily intake levels are higher than traditional recommendations, but are within the range declared safe in a December 2010 National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine report. The recommended minimum daily intake is 600 IUs.
The study reports on a survey of several thousand volunteers who took daily vitamin D supplement dosages ranging from 1,000 IU to 10,000 IU. Blood studies were conducted to determine the level of 25-vitamin D.
Newswise.com quotes Cedric Garland, Dr.P.H., professor of family and preventive medicine at UC San Diego’s Moores Cancer Center, as saying, “Most scientists who are actively working with vitamin D now believe that 40 ng/mL to 60 ng/mL is the appropriate target concentration of 25-vitamin D in the blood for preventing the major vitamin D deficiency-related diseases, and have joined in a letter on this topic.
“Unfortunately, according to a recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, only 10 percent of the U.S. population has levels in this range, mainly people who work outdoors.
“Now that the results of this study are in, it will become common for almost every adult to take 4,000 IU a day. This is comfortably under the 10,000 IU a day that the IOM Committee Report considers as the lower limit of risk, and the benefits are substantial.”
The findings were published Feb. 21 in the journal Anticancer Research.
