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A shortage of vitamin D can lead to type 1 diabetes and cancers of the breast, bowel and prostate. This was the stark warning from a Belgian scientist at the European Congress of Endocrinology, held in Scotland last week. Data collected over more than 20 years showed that 225 million people in Europe (30 million of them in Britain) had mild vitamin D deficiency.
Jo Revill, Health Editor for The Observer (02/04/06) discusses the comments made by Professor Bouillon in which he points out that optimal health requires a serum level of 20 ng 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D)/ml. Using this definition, half the population over 60 in Europe are already deficient in vitamin D. For British Pakistanis, this figure may be as high as 60%. Apart from the serious diseases mentioned above, a lack of vitamin D in the elderly can increase the risk of developing osteoporosis and suffering from falls and fractures. According to Professor Roger Bouillon, from the Catholic University of Leuven, this could be relatively easily fixed by increasing their daily intakes of calcium and vitamin D. Since vitamin D levels in many foods are low, except for oily fish, Bouillon believes that foods should be supplemented with vitamin D. Otherwise, vitamin D is formed in the skin on exposure to sunlight, a source not so readily available to elderly housebound people. Immigrant populations with darker skin are also at greater risk of vitamin D deficiency, as are teenage girls. One of the problems is that doctors are reluctant to encourage people to spend more time in the sun due to fears over skin cancer and accelerated aging of the skin.
Many news agencies also report on work at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, led by Julie Knight an epidemiologist, in which 10- to 19-year-old girls who were exposed to sunshine in an outdoor job, consumed cod liver oil or drank milk during youth were found to have fewer cases of breast cancer later on. Working outside between those ages led to a 40% drop in breast cancer , while those who took cod liver oil supplements had a risk reduction of 35 percent. Knight presented details of her work to a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Washington. Like Professor Bouillon, she would like to see people increase their intake of vitamin D. More details at ScienceDaily.com (04/04/06).
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