Sunlight, Vitamin D, Cancer
In this video, William B. Grant spends about 26 minutes speaking on "Sunlight, Vitamin D, Cancer" at the 38th Annual Cancer Convention held on Labor Day weekend by the Cancer Control Society.
About William B. Grant
WILLIAM B. GRANT, Ph.D. has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley (1971). He had a post doc position involving lasers at the Freie Universität Berlin (1971-73). He had a 30-year career in atmospheric sciences with an emphasis on developing and using laser radar (lidar) systems for remote sensing of atmospheric with positions at SRI International (1973-79), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology (1979-89) and NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia (1989-2004). In the position with NASA, he participated in many international airborne field expeditions to study the atmosphere, using a lidar system to measure the vertical profile of aerosols and ozone along the flight path.
While living in Virginia, he undertook a project with the Sierra Club to understand the roles of air pollution in reducing the health of the eastern U.S. oaks and hickories. During that project, he learned how to do ecological studies in which populations are defined geographically and both health outcomes and risk-modifying factors are averaged for each population unit, followed by statistical regression analysis.
He turned to health research in 1996, using the ecological approach to link dietary factors to risk of Alzheimer’s disease, resulting in the first paper linking diet to risk of Alzheimer’s disease (Grant, 1997). His next study, also an ecological study, found that while animal fat was an important risk factor for coronary heart disease for men, added sugar (sweeteners) was for women (Grant, 1998).
In 1999, he obtained a copy of the Atlas of Cancer Mortality in the United States, 1950-94 (NIH Publication No. 99-4564) and noticed that for many types of cancer, mortality rates were much higher in the northeast than in the southwest. Building on the work of the brothers Cedric and Frank Garland, he used NASA satellite data for solar UVB doses in July 1992 in ecological studies to show that 13 types of cancer (eight more than previously identified) had mortality rates inversely correlated with UVB doses (Grant, 2002).
After retirement from NASA in 2004, he moved to San Francisco and formed the nonprofit organization Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center (www.sunarc.org). He has published several additional ecological studies related to UVB on cancers, autism, and dental caries, and several ecological studies on diet and Alzheimer’s disease, cancers, and rheumatoid arthritis. He has also carefully examined how observational studies and randomized clinical trials are conducted regarding vitamin D, resulting in several publications pointing out limitations of such studies and how they can be improved. He also writes reviews and letters to the editor and reviews many manuscripts each year. He works closely with several vitamin D-advocacy organizations.
He has about 360 health publications listed at www.pubmed.gov, of which 260 are related to vitamin D, with 90 of these also on ultraviolet radiation and human health, and 43 on diet and disease. His works have been cited over 20,000 times according to Scholar.Google.com.
Email [email protected], website www.sunarc.org.
Transcription
So I'd like to thank Frank and Lorraine for inviting me.
And I'd like to thank Dr. Nozomi for the stage for talking vitamin D. I'm very passionate about vitamin D, I found it much more fascinating that atmospheric studies and so retired early from now, so to work on vitamin E full time.
Let's see how we go. Uh.
There you go. I do get funding from the movie foundation, the Sunlight Research found. These are both associated. The indoor tanning industry, biotech form account makes a very good water soluble vitamin D available on the Web and the Vanity Council, John Cannell's organization, which has a lot of very, very good information on vitamin D.
In fact, one things I'm doing for John is writing the evidence summaries about vitamin D for 100 types of disease. And it's it's really interesting to go through. You look at the literature on each disease and find out how strong it is.
And as a previous speaker said, there's evidence and there's evidence and a lot of the evidence comes from non randomized controlled trials. But that's appropriate because vitamin D has been part of our natural history forever. Why do D3 three or COLA calcifies all is made by the action of ultraviolet B radiation on a type of cholesterol in the skin, followed by a thermal process.
And the UVB that makes the vitamin D extends from two Nidhi to 350 nanometers and represents about three to five percent of the total UVB. The rest of the movie is called UEA Extensor, 315 of 400 animators. In the vitamin D three is converting the liver to the circulating form of vitamin called 25 hydroxy Fortum D. If you're going to get a blood test, that's what they've got to measure, is a 25 hydroxy vitamin D. Then this is converted into kidneys and other organs. To the what, twenty five die hydroxy vitamin D, which is the active or hormonal version of vitamin D. And that's what can activate the vitality receptors. The macrophages, et cetera. And they've known now for about. 10 or 20 years that the organs with cancer can take the circulating form of vitamin D. the 25 and make it into the 125. Now, these warrantee receptors are activated by the one five in affect gene expression up regulating perhaps a thousand genes downgraded, regulating perhaps 500 genes. The video ahs come in different Leal's so they can actually look at the genetics of people and correlate the different genes with whether they have a. Are related to a disease and see what it seems we've identified Sencer disease. The half life of vitamin D