Surgeon urges women to take Vitamin D to lower risk of breast cancer

According to Professor Kefah Mokbel, a surgeon at the private London Breast Clinic, all women over the age of 20 should take Vitamin D to reduce their risk of developing breast cancer.

 

The professor is urging Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to make the vitamin free on the NHS saying it will save 1,000 lives a year.

 

Mokbel has already started handing them out to female patients at his private clinic and claims it will cost the NHS just 12p per woman per day.

 

Prof Mokbel claims that the simple vitamin could spare women the agony of developing the condition: “It is established science that women who have higher Vitamin D levels have a better chance of beating the disease. Studies also show that women with higher Vitamin D levels are significantly less likely to develop breast cancer in the first place.”

 

According to the professor: “Vitamin D works by encouraging cancer cells to change to normal cells and it also enhances the immune system. Another benefit is that it promotes the death of breast-cancer cells.”

 

After he conducted tests on his patients, Prof Mokbel discovered that half were deficient and a third were severely deficient in the vitamin. He has been giving women the vitamin “because the higher the levels, then the greater the protection from breast cancer,”

 

However, Jessica Kirby of Cancer Research UK says that while there have been a large number of studies about the vitamin and breast cancer “trials in which people took Vitamin D supplements have shown no effect.”