Taking vitamin D cut the risk of pancreatic cancer nearly in half, according to a new study that is being called the first to show such a benefit.
Hooray for vitamins! Mom always told us to take a vitamin before toddling off to school, which was her "Plan B" for good health. "Plan A," consisting of requests to eat broccoli, oranges, green beans, apples and other nauseating plant droppings was met with universal scorn. Why sit at the kitchen table, tears streaming down our face as a plate of brussel sprouts wafts its toad-like scent into our delicate snout when we can get the same Jack LaLanne benefit from taking a pill? Hooray for the previously-unheard-of-advances-in-modern-living-available-to-all-today!
Taking 450 international units (IUs) of vitamin D - about the standard dose in most multivitamins -reduced the risk of pancreatic cancer by 43 percent, according to researchers at Northwestern and Harvard universities who led the latest study
Excellent! We're ready to jump on the bandwagon, Professor! Can we run out to the local druggist and get our Vitamin D now?
Vitamin D is also found in salmon, tuna and other oily fish, and is routinely added to milk. Government advisers have suggested 400 IUs of vitamin D for people ages 50 to 70, and 600 IUs for people over 70, but lower levels for younger people.
Excuse us, but did we ask you to fix a tuna-fish sandwich? What, are you trying to induce a technicolor yawn? Salmon is okay, but what if we're allergic to it? C'mon, Doc - give us the pills!
"Multivitamins often package retinol with vitamin D to promote bone health, but it appears retinol has a diluting effect on the benefits of vitamin D against pancreatic cancer," Skinner said. "More research needs to be done into whether nutritional supplements that contain vitamin D alone are better cancer fighters than those that include retinol," he suggested.
Oh, for cryin' out loud - we just picked up a case of Vitamin D with retinol and now you're telling us we goofed? This is getting annoying. Say, just exactly what is our risk of getting pancreatic cancer anyway?
Pancreatic cancer is relatively rare, accounting for just 2 percent of new cancer cases in the United States. But it's also highly lethal - the fourth-deadliest cancer in the United States. About 33,700 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year, and 32,300 will die.
Why, that's nothing. We thought you were going to tell us that cancer of the pancreas was a common malignancy, like Hodgkin's disease.
Okay, so we're ignorant. We give up - just tell us where to get the stuff and we'll start taking vitamin D today.
Happy to oblige - just pick up a bottle of this fabulous supplement.
Oh, no! Not that! Anything but that! We're getting out of here while we can! We hear there's another way to get our daily dose of Vitamin D and we're going to test that theory right now!
- Log in to post comments
I've been reading about VD for months now. A half hour in the summer sun generates 10,000 to 12,000 units of VD and they recommend 400 units? Cut me a break.
I tried adding Vitamin D to my milk by leaving it in the sun. I do not recommend this approach.
Ted: don't they mean 400 units as an ongoing, daily dose? An hour in the "summer sun" may be well and good if you can get it, but is you're living in northern latitudes you won't get enough exposure during winter to produce vitamin D even if you'd be able to stay outside - without heavy clothing - for all the available daylight hours.
And of course, if you're working, getting an hour of sun is just not doable most weekdays, summer or not.
A previous poster wrote: "I tried adding Vitamin D to my milk by leaving it in the sun. I do not recommend this approach."
Do you think fish might work better?
Leaving dead fish in the sun?
Now, there's an idea!
My point was that half an hour in the summer sun generates 10,000 to 12,000 units of V/D. Recommending a measly 400 daily units seems ridiculous. Why aren't they recommending at least 5,000 units a day? I have read of studies that show the closer to the equator people live, the lower incidence of all cancer except skin cancer.
But right now skin cancer prevention is all the rage and tanning salons are demonized.
I can relate to that kid in the B&W pic getting dosed with a teaspoon of God-awful-tasting cod liver oil.
Squibb pharmaceutical company came out with a mint-flavored cod liver oil to mask the flavor. Unfortunately, that just tasted like cod liver oil with a bad mint taste!
Fortunately, drug companies have come up with many good ways to trick your taste buds from bad tasting liquid medicines over the last 50 years.
Fortunately, drug companies have come up with many good ways to trick your taste buds from bad tasting liquid medicines over the last 50 years.