Sunshine May Protect Prostate

Vitamin D, Which Sun Provides, Seems To Prevent Prostate Cancer

(WebMD)  "Prostate cancer is more common in northern latitudes, in blacks, and in the elderly. That resembles essentially the same people who most often got what used to be called rickets, a bone-deforming disease linked to lack of exposure to sunlight," Schwartz says. "So I argued that if vitamin D deficiency causes one disease — rickets — there is no reason why it cannot cause another disease — prostate cancer — later in life."

People living in the north and elderly people tend to get less time in the sun than young people living in southern climes. Unlike other vitamins, a person's main source of vitamin D isn't food; it's sunshine. The body makes its own vitamin D, but only when it's exposed to the sun.

Vitamin D is made from sunlight acting on the skin," Schwartz says. "Eighty percent to 90 percent of vitamin D in the body is derived from sunlight, not from diet."

Additional evidence of a vitamin D-prostate cancer link came from laboratory studies. Schwartz and colleagues found that prostate cancer cells are less likely to behave like cancer cells when exposed to vitamin D.

Moreover, Schwartz notes that prostate cells are able to process vitamin D. In fact, the surface of a prostate cell bears a molecule called a vitamin D receptor or VDR. When vitamin D plugs into one of these receptors, it sets off a complex chain of events thought to protect the cell against cancer.

But when other researchers looked at whether sun exposure and vitamin D levels were linked to prostate cancer, they got mixed results. Some found a link. Others did not. Clearly, something else is going on.