SunSeekers Supports D-Feat Breast Cancer Campaign

SunSeekers Tanning salon in Warrenton, Mo. is taking part in the effort to fund the continuation of research regarding the link between vitamin D deficiency and an elevated risk of breast cancer.

"The public deserves fully funded vitamin D research, and we are doing our part," says Damion Frederick, owner of SunSeekers.

The campaign, D-Feat Breast Cancer, is supported by the professional indoor tanning community across North America. Indoor tanners are being asked to donate $1 to $5 to support vitamin D-breast cancer research.

"It's not a situation where we want to start from ground zero to investigate whether or not there is a connection between vitamin D and lower breast cancer rates,” says Joseph Levy, campaign chairman. “We want to increase awareness of the solid research that's already been done, and fund it to its conclusion. The main source of vitamin D is sunlight, and because sunshine is free, there haven't been many sources of funding for this kind of work. But the potential impact is so profound, we are stepping up."

The research on vitamin D and breast cancer prevention includes:

• A 2007 study in the American Journal of Epidemiology reported that women with high sun exposure levels had half the risk of developing advanced breast cancer.
• A 2006 paper published in Anticancer Research established that women with higher vitamin D levels are 50 percent to 70 percent less likely to develop breast cancer.
• A 2002 paper in Occupational and Environmental Medicine established that women who received regular sun exposure were less likely to die from breast cancer.

Those specific studies stand out in their category and are on top of hundreds of papers that now establish the role vitamin D plays in cell growth regulation in the body—research that solidifies the mechanism by which vitamin D would prevent or slow the growth of dozens of forms of cancer in the body. In fact, a University of Oslo research team suggests that 10 times as many cancers are prevented by the vitamin D generated from regular sun exposure than are caused by overexposure to the sun.

Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in North American women today. In 2008, there will be 200,000 new breast cancer cases discovered in the United States and Canada, and 45,000 women will die from this disease—about 45 times more than will die from non-melanoma skin cancer.