By: Sally Squires
Tuesday, April 29, 2008; HE01

Imagine a nutrient that could help prevent cancer, heart disease and tuberculosis, preserve bones, and thwart autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile diabetes.

Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?

But that's the potential now being attributed to Vitamin D, whose usefulness was once thought to be limited to prevention of rickets in children and severe bone loss in adults. Known as the sunshine vitamin because it is produced when the skin is exposed to ultraviolet light, Vitamin D has been garnering increasing attention recently, because of what it may be able to do and because many people appear to be getting too little of it.

"There's a drumbeat about Vitamin D that is being played very loudly," says Mary Frances Picciano of the Office of Dietary Supplements at the National Institutes of Health.

Just this month, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a special supplement on Vitamin D highlighting widespread deficiencies "in various populations throughout the world, including 'healthy' people in developed countries where it was thought that Vitamin D deficiency was obsolete." ... read entire article ...

WASHINGTON – Today, the Indoor Tanning Association (ITA) launched an aggressive nationwide campaign encouraging the public to rethink sun-tanning and criticizing dermatologists and the sunscreen and cosmetics industries for scaring Americans away from the sun.

The advertising blitz begins with a full-page print ad in The New York Times and a television ad airing in major media markets throughout the country, including Boston, New York, Washington DC, Seattle, San Francisco,Chicago, and Pittsburgh. The ITA has also launched two new websites, www.TrustTanning.com and www.SunlightScam.com. The campaign highlights recent scientific evidence showing that exposure to ultraviolet light, whether from the sun or a tanning bed, stimulates the natural production of vitamin D – which protects against heart disease and many types of cancer. Unfortunately, 60% of Americans are now vitamin D deficient, due in part to the profit-motivated fear-mongering by dermatologists and the sunscreen and cosmetic industries.

Vitamin D deficiency is particularly common in cities north of the 37^th parallel, where it is impossible to get the vitamin in adequate amounts from the sun during the bleak winter months. The ITA’s campaign will focus on those cities, with commercials airing in New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, and Pittsburgh

Many experts are beginning to change their opinions about sun-tanning in light of the fact that there is no compelling evidence that UV exposure causes melanoma. One prominent dermatologist, Dr. A. Bernard Ackerman -- recipient of the "Master Dermatologist Award" from the American Association of Dermatology -- has published the most comprehensive report on UV light’s non-relationship to melanoma, "The Sun and the ‘Epidemic’ of Melanoma: Myth on Myth!"

“Both the sun and tanning beds have been unnecessarily demonized by special interests using junk science and scare tactics,” says Sarah Longwell, spokeswoman for the ITA. “While our campaign will be controversial, it’s time people learned the truth about sun exposure. Not only is moderate tanning completely safe, more and more it’s becoming just what the doctor ordered.”