Vitamin D, black American women, and fibroids
Sunday, May 18, 2008

It has been a mystery to the American medical establishment why black American women got fibroids at rates far higher than white American women– some estimates run as high as 70%. It’s also been a mystery why black American men get higher rates of prostate cancer.

It’s the Vitamin D (or lack thereof). Unsurprisingly, the amount of Vitamin D one gets in a multivitamin is formulated for white people, who have far more ability to generate vitamin D in parts of America outside the South, where there’s less sunlight per day. And while many black Americans live in the South, there are plenty not living in the South, some so far north that they can’t make their own vitamin D (and the multivitamins don’t contain enough). Additionally, black Americans are concentrated in urban areas where pollution also affects how much sunlight can get to them to absorb and make vitamin D from.

Vitamin D is the precursor to hormones women and men need to avoid fibroids and some cancers.

There’s a mythos among fibroid sufferers (esp. black American fibroid sufferers) that the reason African women and men don’t get fibroids and prostate cancer at the crazy rates of American blackfolk is because of ‘traditional diets’. No, it’s primarily that African immigrants come from countries where they lived at a latitude to generate enough Vitamin D. Secondarily, it may be that their preferred ethnic diet is heavy in Vitamin D– but there are a lot of African ethnicities that immigrate over, and there is a fair variety in all the different diets.

There is finally starting to be a bit of research done (will update this post with the link as soon as I can find it) grudgingly suggesting that yeah, getting little black American girls vitamin D might help them not have fibroids, which is one way to avoid the disproportionate hysterectomies the medical establishment loves to inflict on black women. Plus, black men might not be dying at 55 from ‘stress’, but from not having enough vitamin D as little boys, putting them at higher risk for various cancers and even high blood pressure– possibly more so than ‘bad diet’ or ‘stress’.

I do think black Americans have more stress exposure in their lives and that it affects the health negatively, but it is quite appalling how ‘stress’ is used as a catchall to avoid investigating root causes (like this vitamin D issue, which involves some very cheap solutions to help people be healthier) when it comes to blackfolk.

Just an increase from 500 IUs of vitamin D per day to 2500-5000 IUs per day could be the key to saving a lot of black American women from unnecessary surgery and outright saving a lot of black American men. It would be bitterly excellent if millions could be helped by something so cheap as a bottle of vitamin D tablets.