TORONTO, ONTARIO, MEDIA RELEASE--(Marketwire - May 13, 2010) - It's time to take a common sense approach to UVB light exposure primarily because moderate UVB light exposure year round will help solve Canada's vitamin D deficiency epidemic, says Dr. Zoltan Rona, a Toronto doctor specializing in complementary and alternative medicine.
"All cells, tissues and organs in the body have vitamin D receptors, meaning they await the arrival of the vitamin to perform various vital functions," said Dr. Rona. A recent Statistics Canada survey found 65 per cent of Canadians are vitamin D deficient. "I believe the actual number is much higher. In my own practice, over 90 per cent of my new patients are vitamin D deficient."
A study published last month in the peer reviewed Molecular Nutrition & Food research journal, An Estimate of the Economic Burden and Premature Deaths Due to Vitamin D Deficiency in Canada showed vitamin D deficiency is contributing to 37,000 deaths per year in Canada.
In his new book, Vitamin D, The Sunshine Vitamin, Dr. Rona recommends Canadians consider using a sunbed that emits UVB light during the winter months to maintain healthy vitamin D blood levels.
He says Canada must overcome its case of sunphobia - a condition imposed on the population by sun paranoid dermatologists who are paid to promote sunscreens and telling Canadians to spend too much time indoors due to the fear of aging from sun damage, as contributing factors to vitamin D deficiency. "The truth is that the benefits of ultraviolet light have been underestimated while its dangers have been grossly exaggerated", said Dr. Rona "It's not too late to return to some balance as it relates to our relationship with the sun."
Because of the country's northern latitudes, Canadians can't produce vitamin D naturally from the sun for four to six months of the year.
"We need to re-examine our current condemnation of all UV exposure. The health implications of vitamin D deficiency caused by anti sun messaging have put our health at risk. This needs to change. Due to its relationship with UVB light and its ability to produce vitamin D the skin could turn out to be the body's most important organ as it relates to disease prevention," Dr. Rona said.
Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to a number of diseases such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular diseases and adverse pregnancy outcomes.
"Human beings evolved under ultraviolet light. This is the way our bodies were biologically designed to produce vitamin D and it is a mistake to ignore this. In Canada we are unable to produce adequate vitamin D from sunlight six months of the year," Dr. Rona said. "For this reason, all sources of vitamin D need to be utilized. If you can't bask in the summer sun, then jump into a tanning bed or take a supplement to get your vitamin D levels up," he added.
IN: HEALTH, OTHER
For more information, please contact
Peter Turkington
Primary Phone: 905-901-9218
E-mail: pturkington@stratcommsolutions.ca
Article appears at http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/-1259681.htm
Friday, May 21, 2010
Win a free High Pressure tan!
Post your favorite tip for getting a great summer tan on the wall of our Facebook page by May 31, 2010! The most unique idea will receive a FREE HIGH PRESSURE TAN, a $25 value!
Ten Tanning Tips to Get that Flawless Summer Tan
1. Start Fresh – Exfoliate your skin to remove oils and fragrances and to expose the top layer of skin. Shave before rather than after tanning to remove dead skin cells so you tan evenly.
2. Choose Stand Up Tanning – Not all indoor tanning equipment is created equal. Vertical tanning booths are more hygienic than traditional lie-down beds, which can harbor germs from previous tanners, especially if beds are not cleaned frequently. In addition, stand up tanning booths have no “pressure points” so they give you a 360-degree flawless tan without tan lines.
3. Instant Gratification – It’s ok to want great color now. Boost your bronze quotient with a sunless spray tan by Mystic. Spray tanning by Mystic only takes about 90 seconds and will give you a rich, deep tan that will last for a week. Or try Hollywood Tans’ exclusive “Double Feature” to get both the instant tan and to build your base.
4. Build Your Base for Lasting Color – Before you head outside, consider several tanning sessions over three or four weeks to condition and help prepare your skin.
5. Pure Glam, All the Time, Naturally – Get a natural and sophisticated tan with lotions infused with organic extracts, essential moisturizers and antioxidants to pamper your skin and extend your tan.
6. Tan Fresh – For the freshest feeling, look for custom-designed fragrances and bronzer-free tan accelerators that combine shea butter, Vitamin E, and botanical extracts.
7. Take a Break Before Showering - If you use a bronzing lotion to enhance your tan, you may not realize that your lotion is working for up to four hours after application. So let your tan set in and your skin will take on a deeper, richer glow.
8. Maintain a Radiant Glow – Use a gentle body cleanser, like a fresh mint shower gel, that washes away impurities without drying, fading or leaving an unpleasant residue. Smooth the gel over your skin every day in the shower or bath instead of using ordinary soap or bath gel.
9. Extend Your Glow – For advanced skincare protection and healthier-looking skin, use a daily moisturizing tan extender. A tan extender revitalizes skin with antioxidant vitamins that provide age defying, anti-wrinkle properties and give your skin proper hydration, vitamins, and nutrients that preserve, protect and extend your tan.
10. Brighten and Whiten – Nothing makes a tan look like a million bucks than a bright white smile. There are lots of options from your local drug store, and your dentist, or get your Hollywood Whites from your tanning salon. It’s the finishing touch to make you look summer ready and simply stunning.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
New Vitamin D recommendations for older men and women
Article appears at http://www.iofbonehealth.org/newsroom/media-releases/detail.html?mediaReleaseID=132
Nyon, Switzerland
May 10, 2010
IOF has released a new position statement on Vitamin D for older adults which makes important recommendations for vitamin D nutrition from an evidence-based perspective.
The International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) has released a new position statement on Vitamin D for older adults which makes important recommendations for vitamin D nutrition from an evidence-based perspective.
Vitamin D is important for bone and muscle development, function and preservation. For this reason it is a vital component in the maintenance of bone strength and in the prevention of falls and osteoporotic fractures.
The objective of this statement, published in the leading bone journal, Osteoporosis International (OI DOI 10 1007/s00198-010-1285-3), was to use and examine all available evidence to support new recommendations for optimal vitamin D status.
The best available clinical indicator of vitamin D status is serum 25OHD and vitamin D intake and effective sun exposure are the major determinants of this level. Serum 25OHD levels decline with ageing but the response to vitamin D3 supplementation is not affected by age or by usual calcium dietary intake.
Preventing vitamin D deficiency has a major impact on falls and osteoporotic fractures. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with decreased muscle strength in older men and women and supplementation improves lower limb strength and reduces risk of falling. Vitamin D affects fracture risk through its effect on bone metabolism and on falls risk.
Key recommendations:
•The estimated average vitamin D requirement of older adults to reach a serum 25OHD level of 75 nmol/l (30ng/ml) is 20 to 25 µg/day (800 to 1000 IU/day).
•Intakes may need to increase to as much as 50 µg(2000IU) per day in individuals who are obese, have osteoporosis, limited sun exposure (e.g. housebound or institutionalised), or have malabsorption.
•For high risk individuals it is recommended to measure serum 25OHD levels and treat if deficient.
The lead author of the statement, Professor Bess Dawson-Hughes of Tufts University, US, stated that, “Global vitamin D status shows widespread insufficiency and deficiency. This high prevalence of suboptimal levels raises the possibility that many falls and fractures can be prevented with vitamin D supplementation. This is a relatively easy public health measure that could have significant positive effects on the incidence of osteoporotic fractures.”
ENDS
ABOUT IOF
The International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) is a nongovernmental umbrella organization dedicated to the worldwide fight against osteoporosis, the disease known as “the silent epidemic”. IOF’s members – committees of scientific researchers, patient, medical and research societies and industry representatives from around the world – share a common vision of a world without osteoporotic fractures. Launched in 1998 with the merger of the European Foundation for Osteoporosis (EFFO, founded in 1987) and the International Federation of Societies on Skeletal Diseases, IOF now represents 195 societies in 92 locations. http://www.iofbonehealth.org
Related Article: Vitamin D: What We Know, What We Don’t, What We Need To Know
http://www.lookingfit.com/articles/science/vitamin-d-what-we-know-what-we-dont.html
Nyon, Switzerland
May 10, 2010
IOF has released a new position statement on Vitamin D for older adults which makes important recommendations for vitamin D nutrition from an evidence-based perspective.
The International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) has released a new position statement on Vitamin D for older adults which makes important recommendations for vitamin D nutrition from an evidence-based perspective.
Vitamin D is important for bone and muscle development, function and preservation. For this reason it is a vital component in the maintenance of bone strength and in the prevention of falls and osteoporotic fractures.
The objective of this statement, published in the leading bone journal, Osteoporosis International (OI DOI 10 1007/s00198-010-1285-3), was to use and examine all available evidence to support new recommendations for optimal vitamin D status.
The best available clinical indicator of vitamin D status is serum 25OHD and vitamin D intake and effective sun exposure are the major determinants of this level. Serum 25OHD levels decline with ageing but the response to vitamin D3 supplementation is not affected by age or by usual calcium dietary intake.
Preventing vitamin D deficiency has a major impact on falls and osteoporotic fractures. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with decreased muscle strength in older men and women and supplementation improves lower limb strength and reduces risk of falling. Vitamin D affects fracture risk through its effect on bone metabolism and on falls risk.
Key recommendations:
•The estimated average vitamin D requirement of older adults to reach a serum 25OHD level of 75 nmol/l (30ng/ml) is 20 to 25 µg/day (800 to 1000 IU/day).
•Intakes may need to increase to as much as 50 µg(2000IU) per day in individuals who are obese, have osteoporosis, limited sun exposure (e.g. housebound or institutionalised), or have malabsorption.
•For high risk individuals it is recommended to measure serum 25OHD levels and treat if deficient.
The lead author of the statement, Professor Bess Dawson-Hughes of Tufts University, US, stated that, “Global vitamin D status shows widespread insufficiency and deficiency. This high prevalence of suboptimal levels raises the possibility that many falls and fractures can be prevented with vitamin D supplementation. This is a relatively easy public health measure that could have significant positive effects on the incidence of osteoporotic fractures.”
ENDS
ABOUT IOF
The International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) is a nongovernmental umbrella organization dedicated to the worldwide fight against osteoporosis, the disease known as “the silent epidemic”. IOF’s members – committees of scientific researchers, patient, medical and research societies and industry representatives from around the world – share a common vision of a world without osteoporotic fractures. Launched in 1998 with the merger of the European Foundation for Osteoporosis (EFFO, founded in 1987) and the International Federation of Societies on Skeletal Diseases, IOF now represents 195 societies in 92 locations. http://www.iofbonehealth.org
Related Article: Vitamin D: What We Know, What We Don’t, What We Need To Know
http://www.lookingfit.com/articles/science/vitamin-d-what-we-know-what-we-dont.html
Thursday, May 13, 2010
No causal link between sunbed-use and cancer
This article appears at http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8659/
Wednesday 28 April 2010
Basham and Luik
Let’s put cancerous myths to bed
There’s no causal link between sunbed-use and cancer, so why are politicians clamping down on teens tannning?
Ever since the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded, last summer, that ultraviolet (UV) radiation exposure from sunbeds is ‘carcinogenic to humans’, the British medical and health promotion establishment, along with the government, has been ramping up efforts to ban the use of sunbeds. Now, Gillian Merron, Britain’s public health minister, has said that the government intends to ban under-18s from using tanning salons after a study in the British Medical Journal reported that at least 250,000 children aged 11 to 17 use sunbeds.
The basis for the IARC decision and the government’s intervention is twofold: first, that there is a melanoma epidemic in the UK, and, second, that there is a causal connection between sunbed-use and melanoma. Both of these claims are scientifically suspect.
In a recent study about the reported incidence of melanoma in the UK, a group of scientists at the dermatology department of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital found that the increase in melanoma in East Anglia between 1991 and 2004 was ‘almost entirely due to minimal, stage 1 disease. There was no change in the combined incidence of the other stages of the disease, and the overall mortality only increased from 2.16 to 2.54 cases per 100,000 per year.’ According to the report authors, the claims of a melanoma epidemic are based not on a real increase in cases but rather on a ‘diagnostic drift which classifies benign lesions as stage 1 melanoma’. In the past these cases would have been diagnosed as benign melanocytic nevi, not melanoma.
Further weakening the claim that these early stage melanomas were the result of excessive sun exposure is the fact that most of the cases were in areas of the body not exposed to the sun. One of the report authors, Dr Nick J Levell, told Reuters, ‘The main message is to be cautious about overstating messages about a melanoma epidemic to the public and media. Such behaviour will tend to induce unnecessary anxiety and behaviour that may cause distress and harm.’
Yet the IARC claim about sunbeds and cancer risk does precisely what Levell warns against. In its press release announcing that it had concluded that radiation from sunbeds is carcinogenic, IARC implied that this finding was based on new scientific evidence. This was not the case. The basis for IARC’s conclusion is the agency’s 2006 report Exposure to Artificial UV Radiation and Skin Cancer. But this report provides no compelling evidence that sunbed-use is associated with an increased risk for skin cancer.
The report references 24 cohort and case-control studies on the association between use of indoor tanning facilities and melanoma risk. Of these only four show a small statistically significant relationship. None of the four have a relative risk greater than 1.50, indicating an extremely weak and unlikely relationship. Indeed, even the report authors admit that the evidence for a positive association between indoor tanning and melanoma is ‘weak’. It might be suggested that this statement is in itself misleading since the relationship is, in fact, practically nonexistent.
Despite the fact that there is virtually no scientific support in IARC’s report for the conclusion that ultraviolet radiation exposure from sunbeds is ‘carcinogenic to humans’, it is this very study that provides the sole basis for Gillian Merron’s move to ban adolescent use of tanning beds.
Finally, the largest prospective study of the risk of sunbeds for melanoma was by a team of researchers headed by Marit Veierød at the University of Oslo. They followed more than 100,000 Norwegian women over an average eight-year period and found no statistically significant association between sunbed-use and melanoma in those aged 10 to 19 who used a tanning facility more than once a month. Yet this is the target group for the UK government’s anti-sunbed campaign. Moreover, these findings correspond to a British study from 2004 which did not find a statistically significant association between use of sunbeds and melanoma.
So, not only is the public health minister failing, in the words of Levell, to be ‘cautious about overstating messages about a melanoma epidemic’ and tanning parlours - she has also proposed action that is clearly unsupported by the scientific evidence.
Patrick Basham directs the Democracy Institute and is a Cato Institute adjunct scholar. John Luik is a Democracy Institute senior fellow. They will be discussing the faux melanoma epidemic and other attacks on working-class culture on 29 April at the Institute of Economic Affairs. For more information about the event, click here.
Wednesday 28 April 2010
Basham and Luik
Let’s put cancerous myths to bed
There’s no causal link between sunbed-use and cancer, so why are politicians clamping down on teens tannning?
Ever since the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded, last summer, that ultraviolet (UV) radiation exposure from sunbeds is ‘carcinogenic to humans’, the British medical and health promotion establishment, along with the government, has been ramping up efforts to ban the use of sunbeds. Now, Gillian Merron, Britain’s public health minister, has said that the government intends to ban under-18s from using tanning salons after a study in the British Medical Journal reported that at least 250,000 children aged 11 to 17 use sunbeds.
The basis for the IARC decision and the government’s intervention is twofold: first, that there is a melanoma epidemic in the UK, and, second, that there is a causal connection between sunbed-use and melanoma. Both of these claims are scientifically suspect.
In a recent study about the reported incidence of melanoma in the UK, a group of scientists at the dermatology department of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital found that the increase in melanoma in East Anglia between 1991 and 2004 was ‘almost entirely due to minimal, stage 1 disease. There was no change in the combined incidence of the other stages of the disease, and the overall mortality only increased from 2.16 to 2.54 cases per 100,000 per year.’ According to the report authors, the claims of a melanoma epidemic are based not on a real increase in cases but rather on a ‘diagnostic drift which classifies benign lesions as stage 1 melanoma’. In the past these cases would have been diagnosed as benign melanocytic nevi, not melanoma.
Further weakening the claim that these early stage melanomas were the result of excessive sun exposure is the fact that most of the cases were in areas of the body not exposed to the sun. One of the report authors, Dr Nick J Levell, told Reuters, ‘The main message is to be cautious about overstating messages about a melanoma epidemic to the public and media. Such behaviour will tend to induce unnecessary anxiety and behaviour that may cause distress and harm.’
Yet the IARC claim about sunbeds and cancer risk does precisely what Levell warns against. In its press release announcing that it had concluded that radiation from sunbeds is carcinogenic, IARC implied that this finding was based on new scientific evidence. This was not the case. The basis for IARC’s conclusion is the agency’s 2006 report Exposure to Artificial UV Radiation and Skin Cancer. But this report provides no compelling evidence that sunbed-use is associated with an increased risk for skin cancer.
The report references 24 cohort and case-control studies on the association between use of indoor tanning facilities and melanoma risk. Of these only four show a small statistically significant relationship. None of the four have a relative risk greater than 1.50, indicating an extremely weak and unlikely relationship. Indeed, even the report authors admit that the evidence for a positive association between indoor tanning and melanoma is ‘weak’. It might be suggested that this statement is in itself misleading since the relationship is, in fact, practically nonexistent.
Despite the fact that there is virtually no scientific support in IARC’s report for the conclusion that ultraviolet radiation exposure from sunbeds is ‘carcinogenic to humans’, it is this very study that provides the sole basis for Gillian Merron’s move to ban adolescent use of tanning beds.
Finally, the largest prospective study of the risk of sunbeds for melanoma was by a team of researchers headed by Marit Veierød at the University of Oslo. They followed more than 100,000 Norwegian women over an average eight-year period and found no statistically significant association between sunbed-use and melanoma in those aged 10 to 19 who used a tanning facility more than once a month. Yet this is the target group for the UK government’s anti-sunbed campaign. Moreover, these findings correspond to a British study from 2004 which did not find a statistically significant association between use of sunbeds and melanoma.
So, not only is the public health minister failing, in the words of Levell, to be ‘cautious about overstating messages about a melanoma epidemic’ and tanning parlours - she has also proposed action that is clearly unsupported by the scientific evidence.
Patrick Basham directs the Democracy Institute and is a Cato Institute adjunct scholar. John Luik is a Democracy Institute senior fellow. They will be discussing the faux melanoma epidemic and other attacks on working-class culture on 29 April at the Institute of Economic Affairs. For more information about the event, click here.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
More reasons why tanning booths are better than laydown tanning beds: NYTimes article
One of the many benefits of stand-up booths are they are cleaner than typical lay-down beds. Hollywood Tans - Atlanta area salons feature all stand-up equipment, and for good reason! Why risk an infection? Try stand-up tanning instead!
(BTW, it's also faster than lay-down tanning!).
Check out this article from the NY Times from April 2010:
NY Times Article on Infections from Tanning Beds
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