Evil Mr Sunshine

What's the skin cancer rate among New Zealand Polynesians?  I could not find any figures so asked my dermatologist.  In his opinion the rate was negligible - no more than 1/50th that for Caucasians.

So, why do we force children of darker-skinned races to "slip-slop-slap!" when they go to school?  Are we not harming their health?  In my opinion we are.

Here in the Southern Hemisphere it is mid summer and the dire warnings about the sun are once again being broadcast from the parapets.

But I have a problem with these "one-size fits-all" sound-byte health warnings.  When it comes to sun exposure we must take account of skin type.  A dark-skinned person may need up to 50 times the sun exposure of a fair person in order to stay healthy.  So, the sun health messages that apply to "white" New Zealand may be doing enormous harm to our darker-skinned citizens.

When going out in the sun, the degree of protection needed is dependent on skin type.  So, my fair-skinned niece, Jasmin, takes considerable care not to get burned; whereas my brown-skinned son, Alama, can play all day in the sun without as much as a hat.  Both will be getting their vitamin D from different degrees of exposure to the sun.

You'll love this video:

Yet another example of big business pushing health products that may be harmful. Our very own Cancer Society has been captured.  Far from being an advocate on our behalf, it comes across as being an advocate for the "cancer industry".  One of its main sources of income is from the sale of sunscreen products.  In my opinion, this compromises its advocacy role.

So, let's get this right: Stay out of the sun and slap all of these chemicals over your body to hopefully prevent one form of cancer.  But, in so doing, you are increasing your risk of dozens of other forms of cancer, including breast, prostate, ovarian and bowel cancer, as well as many, many other diseases.

Not getting out in the sun risks developing vitamin D deficiency.  Up to 90% of the population now have low to deficient levels of vitamin D.  Vitamin D is essential for health for people of all ages, including children who the cancer industry spends a lot of effort targeting (It preys on parental fears for the safety of their child).

Here’s a list of diseases that are caused or made worse by vitamin D deficiencies. • Acute lower respiratory infection • Anaphylaxis • Anemia • Anxiety • Arthritis • Asthma • Atherosclerosis • Autism • Autoimmune diseases • Bipolar disorder • Brain damage • Breast-tissue density • Chronic fatigue • Chronic pain • Cognitive ability • Colds • Craniotabes • C-reactive protein levels • Crohn’s disease • Cystic fibrosis • Dental caries (cavities) • Depression • Diabetes • Dyslexia • Eczema • Epilepsy • Falls • Fibromyalgia • Flu • Fractures • Headache • Hearing loss • Heart disease • Heart failure • High cholesterol • HIV/AIDS • Hypertension • Immune system dysfunction • Infertility • Inflammation • Inflammatory bowel disease • Insomnia • Intermittent claudication • Kidney disease • Leprosy • Leukemia • Low-back pain • Low birth weight • Lupus • Macular degeneration • Melanoma • Meningitis (bacterial) • Metabolic Syndrome • Migraines • Multiple sclerosis (MS) • Muscle strength (low) • Myeloma • Myopathy • Myopia • Necrotizing fasciitis • Neuroblastoma • Neuropathy • Nonspecific muscle pain • Nursing home risk • Obesity • Osteomalacia • Osteoporosis • Parasites • Parkinson’s disease • Periodontal disease • Peripheral artery disease • Pneumonia • Polycystic ovary disease • Pre-eclampsia • Psoriasis • Retinoblastoma • Rickets • Schizophrenia • Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) • Sepsis • Septicemia • Stroke • Tuberculosis Source: Dr. Mercola

Of course, we must be sensible and be careful not to burn when going out in the sun.  So, get outdoors and enjoy the health benefits of sunshine!

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About this website

The advice in these articles is given freely without promise or obligation.  Its all about giving you and your family the tools and information to take control of your health and fitness.

The truth about skin cancer

Please take a few minutes to listen to this video by Mike Adams and then read my comments below.

This text will be replaced by the player

Mike Adam's comments are pretty much in line with my views about cancer and sun exposure.  Agencies such as the Cancer Society have no credibility on this subject because they have huge financial stakes in the sale of sunscreens.  They are not about to admit that sun avoidance causes masses of ill health including increased cancer risk across the board.

Example of a "Heart Healthy" diet - Yeah right!
Low fat - low everything.  This young person is
running on empty and vulnerable to
cancer causing free radical damage

The key to using the sun for improving your health is to get plenty of sunlight without getting sunburn.  Mike Adams talks about the nutrition factor and he is dead right.  The Heart Foundation's  "Heart Tick" foods are increasing cancer risk by encouraging people to favour processed foods that are lacking essential vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fatty acids.

Reduction of cancer mortality by 75% - Study

In a new study, researchers at the Moores Cancer Center and Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, UC San Diego used a complex computer prediction model to determine that intake of vitamin D3 and calcium would prevent 58,000 new cases of breast cancer and 49,000 new cases of colorectal cancer annually in the US and Canada. The researchers model also predicted that 75% of deaths from these cancers could be prevented with adequate intake of vitamin D3 and calcium.



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Gary comments:
In their Summer 2009 newsletter, the NZ Cancer Society stated that "There is no recommendation to change our existing sun protection messages". They also used the usual "get out of jail" catch-all statement: "Researchers believe that more research is required ...." Yeah right!

To my astonishment they also wrote: "Some are unsure if lack of vitamin D leads to poor health or whether poor health causes lack of vitamin D"! Duuh!

Vitamin D - Cheap as a supplement and not able to be patented. If it can not be patented it appears there is no interest from mainstream medicine or patient advocacy organisations like the Cancer Society.

Some doctors refuse outright to test for vitamin D levels. Some even deny the existence of a blood test for vitamin D. So far, in three years of reviewing vitamin D blood tests, not a single person has reported optimum vitamin D levels. This tells me that the Cancer Society's sun protection guidelines are misleading and may even be contributing to cancer risk.

Is it more important to protect sunscreen sales while encouraging donations of $$$$ in search of the "CURE" than to save lives through cheap and practical measures like boosting population levels of vitamin D?

A response by the Cancer Society to this article is invited.

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Here is the evidence that sunlight is essential for health

Sunlight on the bare body is a person's principal source of vitamin D (Cholecalciferol).  It is essential for immune health and for preventing numerous kinds of diseases such as multiple sclerosis, autism, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, depression, obesity and at least 30 different kinds of cancers.

Did you know that you can reduce lifetime risk of all cancers by about 60% just by boosting your vitamin D levels?

Did you know that the autism epidemic may be due to damage to the foetal brain from vitamin D deficiency in the mother?

Did you know that I have never had a client produce an optimum vitamin D blood test result?  

Did you know that rickets is now being reported in regions like Wellington and the Waikato?  

Vitamin D deficiency is epidemic within New Zealand.

In its failed attempt to reduce just one cancer (melanoma) the Cancer Society may be responsible for causing increasing rates of cancer overall!  All for the sake of revenue from the sale of sunscreens and related products it would seem.

If you do not believe what I am saying here, please read the evidence for yourself.  Here is the link to over 100 research articles about vitamin D and health by just one scientist (Veith).

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NZers still dying from preventable cancers: specialist

Wednesday August 13, 2008

Failure to diagnose and treat preventable cancers is killing New Zealanders, a Christchurch oncologist says.

In an editorial in the New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ), Christchurch Hospital radiation oncologist Chris Wynne said a 2005-2010 review of the Cancer Control Strategy showed it was failing to reduce cancer rates and deaths.

"Failure to implement New Zealand's Cancer Control Strategy according to agreed timelines will cost New Zealand many deaths from preventable cancer."

The review found that 15 per cent of the 150-plus strategy objectives had been met.

Dr Wynne told The Press that the Ministry of Health had to ensure better results in tackling cancer, and called for more funding.

The Cancer Control Council was responsible for making sure the strategy was enacted and advising the health minister who was ultimately responsible for tackling high cancer rates, he said.

However, Associate Health Minister Damien O'Connor said cancer control was a government priority and that since 2005, about an extra $80m a year had been spent on new funding for cancer and palliative-care initiatives.

He said progress had been made in implementing the strategy and cited the record low numbers of smokers.

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Gary Moller comments:
As per usual, all of the talk and all of the funding (Most of it anyway) is on detecting and treating after the fact. Better diagnosis is not prevention. Prevention is what happens before there is anything to detect and diagnose. Care needs to be taken not to confuse these.

What is effective in preventing, or reducing cancer risk will not necessarily fight or cure the cancer once it is a fact. Again, there is a lot of confusing of these.

It still astonishes and frustrates me that health experts still do not actively promote the single most important cancer prevention measure: Vitamin D.

• 60% reduction in all cancers among post-menopausal women!
• 50% reduction in lifetime breast cancer risk!

The list of health benefits from Vitamin D grows by the day. Just imagine how many millions of dollars would be freed that could then be fed into treatment regimes for the people who still get cancer!

If a drug was invented that had this power, there would be Noble Prizes awarded to all and billions of dollars in the bank. Vitamin D is free from the sun and one of the cheapest nutritional supplements about. It can not be patented. Sunlight is free. Is this why little attention is given to this natural nutrient powerhouse? Despite the wealth of evidence.

Of course there are many more cancer prevention measures that are mostly based around natural nutrition. There is enough collective evidence about what we can do right now to slash cancer rates.

Instead, we overly focus on melanoma (Not that we shouldn't be trying to reduce melanoma rates - of course!). Which the Cancer Society profits from through booming sales of their sunscreen lotions, hats, sunglasses, etc.

Perhaps, a representative of the Cancer Society or the Ministry of Health would like to write in and explain why they are not doing more to prevent cancer from developing in the first place?

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Email Gary: gary at myotec.co.nz (Replace the "at" with @ and remove spaces). Please include any relevant background information to your question.

Supplemental Vitamin D and Calcium reduces all cancers risk by 60%

"The study looked at almost 1,200 women, aged 55 and older, over the course of four years. Those in a group that was given supplemental calcium and vitamin D had a 60 percent lower risk for all cancers than those who received a placebo."
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 85(6):1586-91 June 2007
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Gary Moller comments:
I have been running a campaign some years now extolling the benefits of sunshine which provides 90% of our vitamin D (Go here to read my other articles). This has not been popular with the many Cancer and Health experts who have unwisely backed themselves into a very dark corner by linking melanoma and other cancer hysteria with sunlight exposure (A mostly incorrect association).

The Cancer Society has impossibly compromised itself by its huge commercial interests in sunscreens as a revenue earner. How can this "advocacy" organisation give us the kind of impartial advice on this matter that we so desperately need when it makes so much money out of keeping people out of the sun and the hysteria that goes with it? The same can be said of the Health Sponsorship Council which, together with the Cancer Society, has led the cavalry charge to save us from the demon sun.

Think about this: The sun that sustains life on this precious planet and which has been worshiped since the beginnings of humanity, is vilified nowadays by health authorites! How perverse is that?
If you want to prevent melanoma, then here is what you can do:

• Expose your full body to the sun for several minutes at midday (Rules: No tanning and no sunburn). If you are very fair, then reduce exposure appropriately; if dark skinned then increase exposure.
• Eat lots of vegetables and one cup of dark berries per day (Dark berries also reduce sunburn damage).
• Get plenty of omega 3 oil such as fish and cod liver oil daily and reduce intake of hydrogenated oils and preserved meats.On the days you do not get out in the sun, take 1-2,000iu of vitamin D daily.
• Calcium as per the study above? I am no longer in favour of calcium supplements. It is better to take a tissue salts formulation that is tailored to your special needs and which contains the exact kinds of calcium that are found inside your cells - nothing else. You can determine your needs with a free Active Elements Assessment.

So, why does this kind of research evidence of the amazing benefits of sunlight and vitamin D get so little media coverage? You tell me! The situation is both frustrating and appalling because thousands are dying needlessly. Is it because sunlight is free and vitamin D is a dirt cheap non-prescription nutrition supplement? There's no money in these while there are millions and millions of dollars to be made out of selling sunscreen and treating the resultant cancers with incredibly expensive drugs and machines? Do you have an explanation?




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Want to prevent most cancers? - go out and sunbathe!

I have been going on about this for years: The hysteria about sunlight is causing more health problems than it will ever prevent. And my position is overwhelmingly supported by burgeoning research evidence. That agencies like the Cancer Society continue to dish only lip service to the overwhelming evidence that their anti-sun policies are causing more ill health than will ever be prevented beggars belief!

Human beings are creatures of the the light - not of the dark. We are adapted to dwell above ground. We are not worms. Sunlight does not cause cancer - sunburn does. Sunlight is healthy.

Please ask your doctor to test your vitamin D levels. If he/she refuses, then contact me and I will try to help. I can also help you with interpreting the blood test results which are often incorrectly interpreted by the doctor or practice nurse.

Vitamin D deficiency is rampant in New Zealand. The health of our children is being affected terribly. Watch this video and forward to your friends and family. On the days that the body (Not just the arms, face and legs) are not exposed to sunlight, especially during winter, it is advisable to take a vitamin D supplement. Vitamin D supplements are cheap.


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More sun is healthy, despite skin cancer risk, study says

"A little more sunshine might help you live longer, according to a study published on Monday suggesting that for some people health benefits from the sun outweigh the risk of skin cancer....

In Norway, Moan estimated that doubling the sun exposure for the general population would also double the number of annual skin cancer deaths to about 300 but that 3,000 fewer people would die from other cancers."

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Gary Moller comments:
So much about life is about making informed trade-offs. In the case of sunlight, medical evidence is such that one must conclude that the benefits of sensible exposure to sunlight far outweigh the risks.

For the best part of a decade, I have been extolling the benefits of vitamin D which is obtained principally via exposure of the body to sunlight. Current policies and guidelines are such that they are producing more ill health than is being prevented - terrible diseases including depression, diabetes, obesity, rickets, heart disease, infertility and at least 28 forms of cancer - all to prevent just one cancer - melanoma.

For health, we are talking about small exposures of full-body sun that causes nothing more than a slight pinking of the skin. For most people, this amounts to no more than about 10 minutes exposure to midday sun for about 10 minutes either side. The darker one's skin, the longer the requirement for health.

Sunlight is essential for good health - it is sunburn that causes cancer

On days that you do not get sunlight on your torso, you might like to take a vitamin D supplement. These are cheap and effective.

If you have melanoma, should you go out and sunbathe?

Marianne Berwick and her colleagues, at the New Mexico Cancer Institute, found malignant melanoma patients with evidence of continued sun exposure had a 60% mortality reduction compared to patients who did not. That implies a robust treatment effect from sunlight.

http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/97/3/195
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Gary Moller comments:
Here is my latest in a steady procession of articles over several years intended to present an alternative take on the campaign to have all of us be cave dwellers, fearful of the sun.

I have privately said to friends that the first thing I would do if I had melanoma is get it surgically removed and then I would go and sunbathe that same day! The immediate reaction of others is I must be nuts.

But let's think this through: People do not die from melanoma - they die from the secondary tumours that spread through the body. To prevent that, you first want to get rid of the cancerous melanoma cells, quickly and cleanly. Then you want to ensure that your body has the most robust immune system you can give it. Among other things, that means high levels of vitamin D which is essential for a robust immune system. The best way to quickly boost your vitamin D is to sunbathe. If any of those nasty melanoma cancer cells got past the amputation and maybe the chemotherapy and the radiation therapy, I want to be damn sure that my body is ready to fight them.

My experience, sadly, is that the first thing people with any kind of cancer go and do is they don a floppy hat, dark glasses, long sleeved shirt, trousers and slop on the SPF40 sunscreen.

There is now a ton of research evidence that high levels of vitamin D has a preventive effect on the development of many kinds of cancer and now there is a growing body of evidence that high levels of vitamin D may prolong life expectancy among cancer patients. It dismays me that I have never once come across a seriously ill person who has been tested for vitamin D deficiency. Where I have been able to get an ill person to obtain a blood test, their levels are invariably way too low.

If are ill and your doctor tells you not to take vitamin D, ask him or her three questions as suggested by Dr John Cannel of the Vitamin D Council:
1) How do you convert ng/mls to nmol/Ls?
2) How many IU in a nanogram?
3) How do you spell "cholecalciferol?"

If he or she doesn't know how to measure it, weigh it, or spell it, chances are he or she doesn't know much about it. Look after yourself - find a better informed doctor.

Important: Don't get me wrong - I am not advocating you go out and fry yourself in the sun. Be careful and never get burned.

Does Vitamin D reduce cancer risk in women?

Abbas S, et al. Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D and risk of postmenopausal breast cancer - results of a large case-control study. Carcinogenesis. 2007 Oct 31; [Epub ahead of print] In the above study, 1,394 women with breast cancer were case-controlled with a similar number of women without breast cancer. The women with breast cancer were three times more likely to have low vitamin D levels.

Lappe JM, et al. Vitamin D and calcium supplementation reduces cancer risk: results of a randomized trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Jun;85(6):1586-91.

The above randomised controlled trial shows a 60% reduction in internal cancers in women taking even a modest 1,100 IU per day of vitamin D.

It still blows me away that health agencies - Government and non-Government - do not give this essential health measure the credit it deserves. If a drug was discovered that had the documented benefits of vitamin D, the discoverers would be both wealthy and famous. They would win the Nobel Prize for medicine.

So far, every person I have had blood tested for vitamin D levels has been either clinically deficient or much less than optimum. Cheap, quality Vitamin D is available from my website store.

Why is the importance of Vitamin D for preventing cancer as good as ignored? Is it because it is cheap? Because it is found in unprocessed foods? Is it because the sun is the principal source of Vitamin D? Is it because going out in the sun contradicts the huge investment by anti-cancer agencies in the Sun Smart message? Is it because Vitamin D cannot be patented and sold at exorbitant prices? Is it because Vitamin D threatens to undermine the profitability of the burgeoning cancer fund-raising and treatment industry? I don't know - you tell me what's going on because I am at a loss to explain the mix of silence and understatement.

Vitamin D supplements may lower your risk of dying from any cause

"Vitamin D supplements may lower your risk of dying from any cause, according to a new European study.
Researchers from the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, reviewed 18 trials of more than 57,000 people.
The trials involved doses of vitamin D ranging from 300 international units (IUs) to 2,000 IUs. The average dose was 528 IUs.
After a period of six years, the data showed that people who took vitamin D supplements had a 7 percent lower risk of death compared to people who did not take the supplements.
Further, according to the nine trials that collected blood samples, people who took vitamin D supplements had a 1.4- to 5.2-fold higher level of vitamin D in their blood than those who did not.
Because vitamin D can reduce the proliferation of cells, which occurs in cancer, the researchers believe their finding could lead to new drugs to fight cancer and other illnesses. Vitamin D also helps your body to uptake calcium for bone health.
The researchers recommend taking between 400 IUs and 600 IUs of vitamin D daily. Your skin can also produce its own vitamin D by getting moderate sun exposure each day."
Sources: Mercola

Archives of Internal Medicine

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Gary Moller comments:

Studies like this one help to explain why the health of Polynesians tends to deteriorate when they move away from their traditional lifestyles, moving into cities and colder climates and generally covering up with clothes. The traditional Polynesian diet is rich in the fat soluble vitamins, including vitamin D. This, along with an active lifestyle, explains why the bones and teeth of Polynesians raised on traditional foods are strong and why health deteriorates with Westernisation.

I encourage you to read my article here "Stroke Study Misses the Point" and my article here about the impact on the health of native populations when they move away from traditional diets.

Ghost Authors Common in Medical Research Papers: Study

Drug companies initiating clinical trials often use ghost authors and medical writers whose contributions are not credited in the research papers, Danish scientists said on Tuesday.
This practice could be reduced by greater transparency and stricter rules that insist everyone who has worked on or contributed to a medical trial is named.
"Ghost authorship is common but it is often kept secret because it is in the interest of both the industry and the academic authors who lend their names to papers they have had very little or, in some cases, nothing to do with," Peter Gotzsche, of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark, said in an interview.
The names of authors and researchers are omitted from the published research papers because this may serve the commercial interests of the company sponsoring the trial.
"We have seen again and again that the conclusions in trial reports and other types of articles are given a spin by industry so that the conclusions are too positive compared to the data presented," Gotzsche said.
"It is very important for the industry to get messages out that are useful for their marketing departments," he added.
Lending their name to a study can be beneficial for researchers because it raises their profile and the number of published studies they are linked to. Gotzsche and a team of international researchers believe that unless the role of all the authors is set out in the research paper, people reading the study will not be able accurately to judge or trust its conclusions.
The scientists analysed 44 trials approved by Danish ethics committees in 1994-1995 in the first systematic examination of ghost authorship. One of the studies had been initiated by a local company and 43 by one of 26 multinational drug companies.
The researchers identified 33 trials with ghost authors. In 31 of them the ghost writer was a statistician -- the person who analysed the trial data.
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Gary Moller comments:
These sorts of appalling practices help to explain why "research" that shows favourable results for commercial products always seem to be far more numerous than those reports that are less than favourable. Coupled with massive publicity machines behind them these reports of questionable repute then receive incredible publicity in the media - propaganda dressed up as news!

Menawhile, the free or cheap, self-help methods for keeping healthy, or regaining health are largely ignored. For example, if a drug was discovered that was shown to reduce cancer risk by as much as 50% it would be a news sensation. The discoverers would not only become incredibly wealthy, they would also be Nobel Prize winners. Or would they?

Well there is a drug that has been discovered that does just that - sunlight. Sadly, because sun is free it receives little in the way of recognition for its cancer preventing qualities. In fact, we are taught by the establishment to fear the sun. Some might think there is some kind of conspiracy going on here. Or is it just a case of willful neglect aided and abetted by powerful commercial interests?

Sunlight reduces the risk of 16 types of cancer

Tuesday, August 1, 2006: "A study published this week in Anticancer Research confirms that solar UVB irradiance is associated with reduced risk of 16 sites of cancer, apparently through production of vitamin D. These cancers include 6 sites of gastrointestinal cancers, 3 cancers of female sites, 3 urogenital cancers, 2 types of lymphomas, and 2 upper aerodigestive tract cancers.

....According to co-author Cedric Garland, Dr.P.H., “Enhancing vitamin D status appears to be the single most important single simple thing that people can do to reduce their risk of cancer, apart from avoiding tobacco and moderation in intake of alcohol.

According to William Grant, Ph.D. “Other recent studies recently found that it takes 1000 to 1500 International Units (I.U.) of vitamin D per day to reduce the risk of cancer incidence and death by 30-50%. In the U.S., dietary sources provide only 250 to 300 I.U. per day. People with fair skin living in the sunnier regions of the country can make 1500 I.U. of vitamin D in about 20 minutes near solar noon with 10-20% of their body exposed, i.e., arms and back in women and back or chest in men. Those with darker skin require 2-4 times as much time or body exposed for the same vitamin D production. This may help explain why black Americans have higher cancer incidence and mortality rates than white Americans, which was described recently in the Journal of the National Medical Association.”

Cedric Garland added, “Briefly exposing a large enough area of skin for adequate vitamin D synthesis is more effective than increasing the amount of time spent in the sun. Protracted exposures to the sun are counterproductive after the 20-30 minutes at most when vitamin D synthesis for the day is complete. People of all ages should wear a hat whenever spending more than a few minutes in the sun, and should spend the time walking or otherwise in motion.”
William Grant added “The public receives a steady barrage of public service messages to avoid the sun and wear sunscreens in order to reduce the risk of skin cancer and melanoma.

Unfortunately, such messages do not mention that these risks are counterbalanced to a substantial degree by the advantages of producing vitamin D from solar UVB irradiance. Insufficient UVB irradiance and vitamin D costs society about 10 times what excess solar UVB does, and excess UVB irradiance is not required for optimal vitamin D production.” Cedric Garland said “vitamin D in the appropriate dose is giving society new hope in the fight to prevent cancer.”
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Gary Moller Comments:
This article is a wonderful summary of the situation, as I see it, and shows how far out of step public health messages are getting with where research is heading. It is time for change.

30-50% reduction in cancer incidence just by getting a little sunshine!!!

If a large pharmaceutical company were to develop a drug with the power of Vitamin D (at the cost a billion $$$), the news would surely be sensational. Is there hardly any publicity and reluctance to change because there is no money to be made? If the news got out might it hurt some pockets by undermining the sales of outrageously expensive drugs like Herceptin - a drug that only improves survival rates by 2-4% while causing heart damage in 28% of users?

Something is very wrong and needs to be put right urgently.