The Best Excuse For Taking A Holiday
The University of Sydney published a report
recently has just done me a huge favour
Having had Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma recently for
which I appear to have been successfully treated, my nose naturally twitches
like that of a hunting dog whenever NHL is mentioned. Usually it's because some
poor sod we all know and love from stage, screen or radio has been called to
that great audition in the sky because his or her sell by date just expired but
this time the news is pretty good as I'm sure you'll
agree.
The University of Sydney team headed
by Dr Anne Kricker investigated the possibility that high sun exposure was
associated with increased risk of NHL. They investigated nearly 1400 individuals
about half of whom had NHL the remainder being a randomly selected control group
and their findings were not what they expected. Instead of increasing the risk
of NHL, exposure to sunlight significantly reduced the risk of getting the
disease. Since there is increasing evidence that vitamin D may protect against
cancer and sunlight plays an important role in the body's synthesis of that
vitamin this is regarded as a plausible mechanism by which thee results may be
explained.
Be that as it may I am about to
book holidays in direct sunlight for the next ten years - or at least until
further research shows that sunlight makes your head explode. Ciao
folks.+
International
Journal of Cancer 10 December
2004
Posted: Sat
- May 21, 2005 at 04:54 PM