Dear Health Conscious Reader,
With summer just a couple of months off, I’ve got some great news. You can completely ignore the medical establishment’s war on sunlight and go outside without fear.
It just got harder to argue that the sun is bad for you. The evidence of sunlight’s cancer-fighting power keeps mounting.
Researchers at the University of San Diego recently looked at rates of breast cancer in 107 countries.1 They found a direct link between amounts of sunlight and breast cancer risk.
If you’re a woman living far the equator, your chances of developing breast cancer are much higher. The data also show that sunshine protects women who live closer to the equator.
This is true regardless of other risk factors like smoking or being overweight.
The reason? Vitamin D: The “sunshine” vitamin. Your skin makes it automatically when sunlight hits your skin.
It also happens to be one of Nature’s most potent anti-cancer agents. (Women who live closer to the equator also have a lot more vitamin D in their bloodstreams.)
So if you’re a woman, consider sunshine one of your best friends.
For men, the news is just as good . . .
Cancer researchers in Sweden wanted to see if it was true that the vitamin D sunlight protects against prostate cancer.
This led to a remarkable discovery. Even if you already have prostate cancer, you’re still 7 times less likely to die it if you get enough vitamin D.2
In other words, sunlight can slow the progress of prostate cancer—and increase your chances of survival.
This only adds to what I’ve said over the years. Sunlight has the unique ability to prevent or even halt cancer of all kinds. The science has consistently backed this up.
Take a landmark 2007 report out of a university in Nebraska. Scientists there found that vitamin D has the potential to lower the risk of all cancers in women by 77 percent.3
That same year, another amazing study came out in Anticancer Research. It showed that sunlight exposure alone — about 20 minutes a day for fair-skinned folks and two to four times that much for those with dark skin — can reduce the risk of 16 types of cancer in both men and women.4
If you find that you can’t get out in the sun that often, you can ramp up vitamin D through diet.
Fish are a great source. Here’s a list, including amounts of vitamin D:
Selected Food Sources of Naturally Occurring Vitamin D5
| Food Source |
Amount |
Vitamin D |
|
Cod Liver Oil |
1 tablespoon |
1360 IU |
|
Salmon (cooked) |
3.5 ounces |
360 IU |
|
Sardines (canned) |
3.5 ounces |
270 IU |
|
Tuna (canned) |
3 ounces |
200 IU |
|
Egg (yolk) |
1 egg |
25 IU |
|
Beef Liver (cooked) |
3.5 ounces |
15 IU |
|
Swiss Cheese |
1 ounces |
12 IU |
Go wild-caught for fish, cage-free for eggs, or grass-fed for meats whenever possible.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
- Mohr et al. “Relationship between low ultraviolet B irradiance and higher breast cancer risk in 107 countries.” The Breast Journal. 2008. 14(3):255-60.
- Tretli et al. “Association between serum 25(OH)D and death prostate cancer.” British Journal of Cancer. 2009. 100, 450–454. doi:10.1038/sj.bjc.6604865
- Lappe et al. “Vitamin D Status in a Rural Postmenopausal Female Population.” Journal of the American College of Nutrition. 2006; 25(5):395-402.
- Grant WB et al. “The association of solar ultraviolet B (UVB) with reducing risk of cancer: multifactorial ecologic analysis of geographic variation in age-adjusted cancer mortality rates.” Anticancer Research. 2006. 26:2687-2700.
- http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamind.asp#h1