d-feat breast cancer

Sundays Blue Box Supports Vitamin D-Breast Cancer Research

APRIL, 2008 – Sundays Blue Box Tanning Resort is taking part in a North American effort to fund the continuation of research which now shows that vitamin D deficiency is strongly linked to a significantly elevated risk of breast cancer.

The campaign — called D-Feat Breast Cancer — is being supported by patrons of the professional indoor tanning community across North America. Indoor tanners are being asked to donate $1 to $5 to support vitamin D-breast cancer research.

“It’s not a situation where we want to start from ground zero to investigate whether or not there is a connection between vitamin D and lower breast cancer rates. We want to increase awareness of the solid research that’s already been done, and fund it to its conclusion,” says Campaign Chairman Joseph Levy. “Because the main source of vitamin D is sunlight, and because sunshine is free, there haven't been many sources of funding for this kind of work. Because the potential impact is so profound, we are stepping up."

The research on vitamin D and breast cancer prevention to date is impressive:

A 2006 paper published in Anticancer Research established that women with higher vitamin D levels are 50-70 percent less likely to develop breast cancer.
A 2007 study in the American Journal of Epidemiology reported that women with high sun exposure levels – the most natural and abundant source of vitamin D – had half the risk of developing advanced breast cancer.
A 2002 paper in Occupational and Environmental Medicine established that women who received regular sun exposure were less likely to die from breast cancer.

Those specific studies stand out in their category and are on top of hundreds of papers that now establish the role vitamin D plays in cell growth regulation in the body – research that solidifies the mechanism by which vitamin D would prevent or slow the growth of dozens of forms of cancer in the body.

So why vitamin D and breast cancer research? Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in North American women today. In 2008 there will be 200,000 new breast cancer cases discovered in the United States and Canada, and 45,000 women will die from this disease – about 45 times more than will die from non-melanoma skin cancer.

And that too is a comparison that is coming to light. A University of Oslo research team showed this year that 10 times as many cancers are prevented by the vitamin D generated from regular sun exposure than are caused by overexposure to the sun. And those figures likely are underestimated. The authors did not differentiate non-burning from burning levels of sun exposure – a confounding mistake. Adjusted for this error, the benefit-to-risk ration of regular non-burning UV exposure could be much greater.

Promoting a Healthy Lifestyle
Indoor tanning’s roots in Europe in the 1970s were therapeutic. People visited solaria to combat seasonal depression and elevate vitamin D levels. The cosmetic tan was simply a side effect of what was originally conceived as a therapeutic exercise. And while North American indoor tanning historically has been cosmetic, the therapeutic underpinnings exist, whether facilities promote them or not.

“The public deserves fully funded vitamin D research, and we are doing our part," said Dennis Ligon, owner of Sundays Blue Box Tanning Resort.

For more information on vitamin D, visit:
www.vitaminDcouncil.org
www.sunarc.org
www.vitaminDsociety.org
www.healthresearchforum.org.uk