Enough vitamin D3 lessens prostate cancer....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 9-25-2012

The Vitamin D Council News email for today had a reminder that September is national prostate cancer awareness month.

We’ll list a summary of many of the ways to prevent ALL cancers at the end of this post from a recent post so it’s also here in this email.

Those actions by preventing all cancers also help prevent prostate cancer.  Some of them such as eating raw broccoli florets or raw cauliflower florets also cut the risk of aggressive prostate cancer in half.  (Doing this at least once a week cut the risk in half.  Eating these vegetables 5 to 7 days a week may be more effective.  I’ve done exactly that since I discovered this fact.)

But many men in their sixties or seventies get what seems to be slow growing prostate cancer.  Since the treatments most used for removing prostate cancer tend to ruin your sex life and cost a lot of money and have other obnoxious side effects, the new protocol is to leave these alone until or unless the slow growing prostate cancer shows signs of the aggressive kind that is actually life threatening.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an extra way to ensure the slow growing prostate cancer stays that way or even turns off somewhat?

It’s here.  You can go to the store and buy it.  And, it’s even relatively inexpensive!

Today’s email from the Vitamin D Council had this:

“Researchers from the Medical University at South Carolina administered 4,000 IU/day of vitamin D for one year to 44 men with low risk prostate cancer.

After 12 months, 60% of the men showed a decrease in the number of positive core biopsies or a decrease in their Gleason scores (cancers with high Gleason scores are more aggressive), or both.

34% of the men no longer had any positive biopsy cores.”  <<< A very nice result! 

The same email had separate information in a different article showing that people who took only 1,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 were still relatively deficient in vitamin D in their blood stream.

This is consistent with the new information that about 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 is the real minimum intake of vitamin D3 to achieve good health results.

One of the better supplement makers, Carlson, sells 1,000 iu capsules of vitamin D3 in bottles of 100 for less than $10.  So 4 a day comes to something like $12 a month to take or less.

(Taking 30 mg a day of lycopene has similar effects.  But it costs closer to $30 a month and unlike vitamin D3, it has fewer other health benefits.)

With a family history of prostate cancer, I take both the 30 mg of lycopene and more vitamin D3 than 4,000 iu a day and curcumin with black pepper each day and more.

But those other things we’ve known for a while.  Adding the large effects of taking at least  4,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 to those may make an essential difference for many men and the information is still less well known.

Also, last Thursday, 9-20-2012, we did this post: “Three ways to beat aggressive and metastatic cancers.”

You can stop here and go there and read the whole post. Or you can read the section from it on some of the key ways to prevent all cancers here that I took from it.:

(I did know when I wrote it to include taking 4,000 to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 based on what I’ve read from other research.  But the news today that is has such protective effects on slow growing prostate cancer found in a specific study is new to me.)

Here’s the list of preventing all cancers.  Most of these have significant other health benefits as well which literally makes each one worth doing.

1. Prevent all cancers.  (Here’s a brief summary.)

a) Tobacco smoke exposure or putting tobacco products into your blood stream by nose or mouth without smoke together causes 30 % of all cancers and something like 25% of all cancer deaths.

The smoke has many kinds of carcinogens and the tobacco itself has a radioactive element it puts into the blood so tobacco causes cancers everywhere in the body not just the lungs.

Don’t use tobacco products and be very focused and make a  very strong effort to avoid all tobacco smoke.  (See our post last week about quitting if you smoke.)

b)  Take 4,000 to 8,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 since this has many other health benefits and helps prevent many cancers.

c)  Take curcumin or turmeric supplements daily with black pepper.  Eat some curried foods that use turmeric in the curry.  Doing this not only helps prevent all cancers, it helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease and lowers LDL cholesterol.  And it lowers inflammation more safely than OTC drugs.

d)  Get regular exercise.  I found out in a talk recently that turmeric and exercise make the same genetic adjustment that helps prevent cancer in addition to their other benefits.

Aging increases the risk of all cancers.  But regular exercise slows aging by quite a bit!

e)  Eat as little animal fats from grain fed animals and poultry as you can.  Eat beans or wild caught fish, eat nonfat or lowfat dairy, eat only the leanest most fat trimmed meat and poultry.  Eat butter or cheese from cows fed only grass or use extra virgin olive oil instead.

Animal fats from grain fed animals have so much excessive omega 6 oils the inflammation caused helps cause cancers and heart disease.  AND, the herbicides and pesticides sprayed on the grain are bioconcentrated into the fat of  such animals.

f)  Use little or no herbicide or pesticides around your house.

g) To the extent you can find it to buy and afford it, stick to organic produce.

h) Eat virtually no packaged snacks or desserts or commercial baked goods or other foods made from refined grains and eat very little sugar.  Excess sugar and high blood sugar from eating these foods tends to help cause cancers.  So does the high omega 6 content in the grains.