May 2007: Is Melanoma a Vitamin D Deficiency Cancer?

TO: All melanoma researchers, doctors, and patients.

The last few months of posts utilized studies from the 1980's to not only reveal the precise cause of melanoma but also predict its exact location. In summary, it seems there is a negative feedback loop that adjusts the amount of vitamin D (cholecalciferol) coming from the skin depending on the circulating 25D, which is the vitamin D prehormone produced in the liver. A larger amount of 25D--even from dietary sources--would decrease D3 production in the skin, and a smaller amount of 25D would increase D3 production in the skin. If the body is not getting sufficient D3, then the skin makes an all-out, last-ditch effort to produce more via uncontrolled skin growth, but if it still cannot do so, then melanoma spreads throughout the body and there is a catastrophic failure--just as there should be from a vitamin D deficiency.

Breast cancer and prostate cancer therefore cannot possibly be vitamin D deficiency cancers, because melanoma would kill the person first. (Of course, this conclusion was already evident from merely realizing that a vitamin D deficiency cancer should be diagnosed in all ages of both genders, yet breast cancer affects primarily women and prostate cancer only men.)

I am very interested in further questions or comments about my discovery that melanoma is a vitamin D deficiency cancer but breast, prostate, and colon cancers are not. Thank you for carefully considering these novel ideas.

James Semmel
Albuquerque, New Mexico