As a founding director of the Breast Cancer Natural Prevention Foundation, I’d like to personally invite you and your business to take part in Natural Breast Cancer Prevention Month this May — a totally unique breast cancer awareness program designed to make a real-world difference right now in your community.

The bottom line is simple: You don’t need to cure or detect what you can prevent. And the BCNPF is unique among cancer charities today because our mission is to teach natural and proven breast cancer prevention strategies that your friends, neighbors and customers can begin right now — today.

Where other cancer charities pour billions of dollars into detection and treatment programs, which are important, we feel those are secondary to what should be obvious: Detection isn’t prevention, and when you can prevent something, detection is a lot like closing the barn door after the horses are gone.

It all starts with this simple fact: Vitamin D deficiency is now recognized as one of the most significant and preventable risk factors for breast cancer. And the amount of vitamin D humans need to be healthy is only naturally consistent with getting regular sun exposure — the most natural, reliable, abundant and neglected source of vitamin D.

There’s enough research already in the bank to show us that maintaining natural vitamin D blood levels — levels achieved naturally by those who work outdoors — cuts breast cancer risk in half. That’s because hundreds of clinical, laboratory, case-control, epidemiological and ecological studies now show that “The Sunshine Vitamin” regulates proper cell growth in every system in the body, and that vitamin D deficiency compromises this natural system, allowing cancer cells to develop and spread. The mechanism is understood – particularly in breast cancer.

To prevent breast cancer here’s what else you need to understand: Vitamin D deficiency is sunlight deficiency. Because vitamin D is made most naturally and abundantly when skin is exposed to UVB in sunlight — and because humans today spend more time indoors and less time in the sun than at any point in history — vitamin D levels are declining and more than two out of three North American women are vitamin D deficient by natural standards, unnecessarily putting millions of women at an elevated risk for breast cancer.

That’s why it’s no surprise that a 2011 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that women who spend more than 21 hours a week outside have 26-50 percent lower breast cancer rates than those who don’t get regular sun. Nature had it right. We’re supposed to be getting regular sun — not working indoors all day in fluorescent-lit cubicles.

Natural breast cancer prevention also means proper diet and exercise — prevention strategies that are also widely under-appreciated despite being naturally intuitive.

• Women who consume high amounts of vegetables in their diet are 35-43 percent less likely to develop breast cancer, according to research.
• Women who get regular exercise are at least 25 percent less likely to contract breast cancer than those who do not work out at all, according to dozens of papers.

The common theme is that a natural lifestyle put our bodies in the correct position to operate as nature intended. When we deviate from our design, that’s when systems start to break down. Of course, there are no silver bullet solutions — no one is saying that any of these prevention strategies are cure-all, no-miss sure things. The point is that they put you in the lowest risk categories and give your body the best chance to perform as nature intended.

And that’s the kind of message worth spreading in your community. That’s why I’m asking you to get involved in Natural Breast Cancer Prevention Month this May. Call 866-650-6463 to host a BCNPF fundraising event in your community.

Dr. Marc Sorenson, EdD, is founder of the non-profit Sunlight Institute and is a director of the Breast Cancer Natural Prevention Foundation. For more information, and for research citations for this article, visit www.PreventBC.org.