Preventive medecine: vitamins as protectors against cancer

PREVENTIVE MEDECINE: VITAMINS AS PROTECTORS AGAINST CANCER

Vitamins À, Ñ and E have been shown to be valuable protectors against cancer. It has long been realized that vitamin A is vital for maintaining the integrity of cells that cover the body's internal and external surfaces. Animal studies have shown that a vitamin A deficiency causes an increased risk of lung, bladder and colon cancers-all cancers of the epithelial (body lining) tissues. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that rats so marginally deficient in vitamin A that there were no overt signs of the deficiency had an increased risk of suffering from colon cancer when exposed to cancer-causing chemicals.
Evidence from the Netherlands in a study of thirty-three patients with lung cancer found that those born in the winter months had twice the chance of developing the disease of those born in the summer months. Cows' milk has its lowest levels of vitamin A in the winter, so infants fed cows' milk formula could be getting less of the vitamin than they need. Scientists in Japan followed 122,261 men for ten years. Those who reported a low intake of green and yellow vegetables had death rates from prostate cancer over twice as high as those who ate plenty of these vegetables. The link between green and yellow vegetables was consistent across age, social-class and regional barriers. Recent experiments with vitamin A and its artificial derivatives have found that they block the effects of cancer-causing substances in the lung, breast, stomach, bladder, skin and reproductive system of laboratory animals.
Other research shows that vitamin A interferes with the conversion of cancer-causing chemicals into their active form. Many carcinogens are harmless in themselves but are converted into toxic forms in the body. In some instances, vitamin A prevents this conversion.
Vitamin Ñ may be protective against cancers of the reproductive system. A New York study found that in women the risk of developing cervical dysplasia (a pre-cancerous condition of the cervix) goes down when the vitamin Ñ consumption goes up. The women with positive cervical smears tended to be eating a diet low in vitamin Ñ. They concluded that women who ate less than 30 mg a day of vitamin Ñ had a tenfold risk of cervical dysplasia as compared with women whose intake was above that level.
The risk of breast cancer too can be lowered by using vitamin Ñ supplements, according to studies at Yale University. Researchers compared three groups of women: one group with a breast cancer; a second with healthy breasts; and a third without breast cancer who had recently been discharged from hospital. All the women were asked about their vitamin Ñ intake. Women who took more than 1 g vitamin Ñ daily for at least a year were 50-80 per cent less likely to develop breast cancer than those who ate less.
A US study found that radiation, heat therapy, and certain chemotherapeutic drugs worked better if vitamin E was given too. In a group of thirteen patients with cancers of the nervous system which had not responded to any cure, six improved when given vitamin E. Some of them were totally free from pain for the first time too. Research in Australia found that mice fed extra vitamin E had only one tenth as many malignant chemical-induced breast tumours as did control mice.

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GENERAL HEALTH

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