Lack of Vitamin D Causes Cancer?
Twenty-five years ago, Dr. Cedric Garland and his brother, Frank, proposed that many cases of cancer were caused by lack of vitamin D. The medical community treated these respected epidemiologists as if they were nuts. Vitamin D was discovered in 1922 as the vitamin that prevents and treats rickets, a disease that causes children and adults to have such weak bones that they bend. The Garland brothers showed that people who live in the northern parts of the United States have more than three times as many colon cancer deaths as those who live in the South. They explained that very few Americans meet their needs for vitamin D from the food, so we have to meet our needs for vitamin D from sunlight. Sunlight is less intense in the northern latitudes, and people in the colder climates often do not go out in the winter; therefore, they often suffer from lack of vitamin D. Forty-two percent of African American women have low blood levels of vitamin D, compared to only 4.2 percent in Caucasian
