Cancer-proof your body

A study on how the body deals with colon cancer shows that getting enough of an important vitamin can help your immune system increase its vigilance against tumors.

The study at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston shows that having plenty of vitamin D can boost the immune system’s ability to wipe out colon cancer cells before they cause serious trouble.

“People with high levels of vitamin D in their bloodstream have a lower overall risk of developing colorectal cancer,” says researcher Shuji Ogino. “Laboratory research suggests that vitamin D boosts immune system function by activating T cells that recognize and attack cancer cells. In this study, we wanted to determine if these two phenomena are related: Does vitamin D’s role in the immune system account for the lower rates of colorectal cancer in people with high circulating levels of the vitamin?”

Vitamin D and colon cancer

To answer that question, the researchers looked at the health data of 170,000 people who took part in the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study. They compared vitamin D levels in blood tests taken early in these studies to see if higher amounts of the nutrient decreased the risk of developing colon cancer and if tumors in people with high levels of D elicited a stronger, more effective immune response.

They discovered that people with lots of vitamin D in their blood ran a below average risk of having colorectal tumors that were being unsuccessfully attacked by the immune system.

“This is the first study to show evidence of the effect of vitamin D on anti-cancer immune function in actual patients, and vindicates basic laboratory discoveries that vitamin D can interact with the immune system to raise the body’s defenses against cancer,” Ogino says. “In the future, we may be able to predict how increasing an individual’s vitamin D intake and immune function can reduce his or her risk of colorectal cancer.”

Carl Lowe

By Carl Lowe

has written about health, fitness and nutrition for a wide range of publications including Prevention Magazine, Self Magazine and Time-Life Books. The author of more than a dozen books, he has been gluten-free since 2007.

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