Vitamins and Cancer Prevention

The most recently hailed hero in the world of cancer and vitamins is Vitamin D. The role of Vitamin C in Cancer has been one of the most controversial topics in the history of cancer prevention and treatment.

It was not that long ago that any proposition that vitamins could be used in the treatment, and not just the prevention, of certain diseases, (cancer among them), was dismissed as total hogwash by the medical establishment.

Here's a rather simplified description of the evolution of "the daily vitamin" in health care:

Vitamins were generally viewed as a method of balancing out the diet to maintain general health — "one-a-day" was enough, and it was accomplished with a daily multivitamin.
Next in the evolution of the role of vitamins in health was the idea that certain vitamins might be used in preventing specific ailments. There's now a wide body of research supporting many of those claims, and new ones are being proposed all the time.
The next stage of evolution, one we're still moving through, is that certain vitamins can successfully treat and even reverse certain health conditions — even certain types of the most serious and life-threatening ones including cancer, heart disease and even HIV.

Scrutiny and debate lead to discoveries, and often solutions that greatly improve our quality of life in any number of ways.

Cancer Prevention and Vitamin D

A four-year long study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in June 2007 showed that supplementation of Vitamin D combined with calcium can reduce the incidence of cancer in post-menopausal women.

Also in June 2007, The Canadian Cancer Society recommended Vitamin D supplements to reduce the risk of colorectal, breast and prostate cancers.

Vitamin D is very difficult to get purely through the diet, since so few foods contain vitamin D (fatty fish and egg yolks). The primary natural source of vitamin D is through exposure to the sun's rays — which as we know, are also cancer-causing!

Canadians and others living in northern climates cannot generally get the recommended amounts, especially during fall and winter.

Vitamin D is already known to be essential for the absorption of calcium, and therefore the development and health of strong bones and teeth; most dairy and other beverages are fortified with Vitamin D. With the new recommendations about Vitamin D supplementation to prevent cancer, dairy food producers are now discussing fortifying more products, such as yogurt and cheese, with Vitamin D.

It's virtually impossible to keep up with, let alone present, all of the debates and new developments in vitamins and cancer prevention.

It's also important to remember that there are many types of cancer, with many different causes and body-targets, and there can be no one blanket statement about "vitamins and cancer prevention". Some general recommendations about diet may not be harmful (eg., an antioxidant rich diet can protect against many health conditions, including some cancers).

Perhaps it's most accurate, and acceptable, to say that some vitamins may help reduce the risk of some types of cancer.

Vitamins in Fighting Cancer

One of the 20th century's greatest scientists, Dr. Linus Pauling, (who was also a two-time Nobel Prize winner), was lambasted by the medical community for proposing that Vitamin C could cure the common cold. Imagine what happened when he published his book Vitamin C and Cancer.

Today, a healthy debate rages about the health potential of vitamins and other nutrients in fighting and treating many life-threatening illnesses.

As for this vitamins as treatment approach to Cancer, at a minimum, as Dr. Abram Hoffer says in Healing Cancer (co-authored with Linus Pauling until his death in 1994), it is worth at least exploring the possibilities of vitamin therapy as a complement to the conventional medical treatments, many of which have horrible and destructive side effects.

And even then, there will be many naysayers, but far fewer today than in Dr. Pauling's early days with vitamin c.

Whether you see the relationship of vitamins and cancer prevention or cancer treatment as quackery or gospel, we absolutely know that nutrition and diet are essential to health, and even more important when our health is compromised by a serious health condition such as cancer.