VITAMIN C


 

 

Vitamin C has been an essential ingredient to life since before evolution made its split into the animal and plant kingdoms.  It is utilized throughout the body for so many things that it is probably not an overstatement to say that there are virtually no functions that it is not involved in.  To quote Dr. Emanuel Cheraskin, Dr. Ringsdorf and Dr. Sisley from THE VITAMIN C CONNECTION:

"There are more than ten thousand published scientific papers that make it quite clear that there is not one body process (such as what goes on inside cells or tissues) and not one disease or syndrome (from the common cold to leprosy) that is not influenced -- directly or indirectly -- by vitamin C."

By inference, tissues that maintain a higher concentration of vitamin C would be most susceptible to chronic problems as a result of chronic deficiency.  From Vitamin C in Health and Disease, "Plasma ascorbic acid concentration of a healthy person is 8-14 mg/L, while adrenal glands, pituitary, thymus, corpus luteum, and retina have concentrations more than 100 times higher.  The brain, spleen, lung, testicle, lymph glands, liver, thyroid, small intestinal mucosa, leukocytes, pancreas, kidney, and salivary glands have concentrations 10-50 times that of plasma.  The skeletal, smooth and cardiac muscle, and erythrocytes have concentrations about 10 times that of plasma."  Vitamin C supplementation would probably have a very positive affect on these organs particularly.

Among the most important areas where C plays a crucial role are building and maintaining our tissues and fortifying our immune systems.

 

Antioxidant

We here a lot these days about the antioxidant vitamins, C, E and A.  Oxygen is a highly reactive element.  We see the result of oxidation all around us.  Rust, brittle rubber, food spoilage, these are all the result of oxidation.  Now oxidation is not always bad.  The iron in your blood's hemoglobin oxidizes or "rusts" in order to carry oxygen to all the cells of the body.  But much oxidation is damaging, accelerating aging and contributing to tissue and organ damage.  Oxidation is also a contributor to heart disease (LDL oxidation has been linked to atherosclerosis) and cancer.  As research continues, the more free-radical damage appears to contribute to chronic conditions and the more we realize that antioxidant nutrition supplementation is essential.

Balz Frei, in his paper Vitamin C as an Antiatherogen: Mechanisms of Action published in Vitamin C in Health and Disease states

  • "Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) has been shown to be the most effective water-soluble antioxidant in human plasma."
 
"...that ascorbate is useful as part of the treatment of almost all diseases.  This almost universal benefit is because massive doses of ascorbate neutralize massive amounts of free radicals and free radicals mediate all inflammations.  Most acute infectious diseases can be cured if the free radicals are eliminated."

 

 

Homeodynamics

Homeodynamics is a fairly recent term that updates "homeostasis", defined in the Bantam Medical Dictionary as:

    "the physiological process by which the internal systems of the body (e.g. blood pressure, body temperature, acid-base balance) are maintained at equilibrium, despite variations in the external conditions."

Homeodynamics attempts to add emphasis to the dynamic, ever-adjusting nature of these processes.

When our body's are exposed to stress (stress means any influence which disturbs our calm balance, therefore all the physical and emotional pressures that we are exposed to make demands on our systems) our stores of Vitamin C are depleted, mostly by our adrenal gland (it takes a molecule of vitamin C to produce a molecule of adrenaline).  It is an old wives tale that getting soaked in the rain causes us to catch cold.  But, like so many of these, there is a basis of truth.  Being wet and cold is stressful.  It puts an additional strain on us to keep our body temperature up.  This reduces our "resistance".  Since vitamin C is vital to both our immune system and our natural balance, the day after coming in from a cold rain, we find ourselves with a scratchy throat and its downhill from there.  InSCIght magazine has an article of interest, Fortifying Against Stress that reinforces this topic.

Any trauma we are exposed to utilizes vitamin C.  Best to have as much as possible all the time.

 

Collagen

Collagen is a rigid, fibrous protein that is the principal constituent of connective tissue in animals, including bones, teeth, cartilage, tendons, skin, and blood vessels. Collagen's high tensile strength is due to the unique structure of its basic structural unit, tropocollagen, which consists of three left-handed helical polypeptide chains intertwined around each other in a right-handed triple helix (below).
 

Collagen.gif 

 

Symptoms of scurvy include bleeding gums, easy bruising and a tendency toward bone fractures.  All these symptoms are a result of the requirement for Vitamin C in the development of the ground substance between our cells.  This ground substance, primarily collagen, is the cement that gives our tissues form and substance (see description at left).  Collagens are principal components of tendons, ligaments, skin, bone, teeth, cartilage, heart valves, intervertebral discs, cornea, eye lens, in addition to the ground substance between cells.

Some collagen forms in the absence of ascorbic acid, but the fibers are abnormal, resulting in skin lesions and blood vessel fragility, characteristics of scurvy.

Any tissue-related malady will have some basis in Vitamin C.  There is a long continuum between scurvy and optimum tissue integrity.  As most all of us suffer from sub-clinical scurvy, how is this evident from a tissue-integrity standpoint?  Let's look at the conditions that are tissue related.  Gum problems are an obvious first choice since they relate directly to scurvy, but there are many others.

A Japanese study concluded that most disc herniations are the result of Vitamin C deficiency.  This makes sense.  The discs in our spinal column are like donuts, with a tough, gristle-like exterior and a soft interior to provide cushioning.  Lack of proper amounts of Vitamin C will produce a disc with compromised integrity.  The tough exterior won't be so tough.  Over time and much wear and tear, this compromised exterior will wear down and a pinhole will result.  Moving just the right way (or should I say wrong way) will push some of the soft interior material out this pinhole. That is a disc herniation.  If this squished-out material touches a nerve in your spinal column, it causes pain and usually a lot of it.  I had this myself almost seven years ago and let me tell you the pain kept me from sleeping for three days!  Adequate Vitamin C will toughen up the outside portion of the disc and a herniation is much less likely.  By the way, laser surgery is now quite common to remove this balloon of squished-out disc material.   I did not have surgery and I can't tell that I ever had the herniation.  I attribute that, at least in part, to the better shape my discs must be in due to my increased C intake over the past six years.

Tissues under stress will suffer the most from vitamin C deficiency.  Please refer to the cancer and heart disease sections.  Both of these chronic conditions have a strong tissue-integrity component.

Similar to the example above concerning disc integrity, our blood vessels are quite susceptible to lack of Vitamin C.  My father died of a ruptured aorta.  This is all too common.  I firmly believe that that would not have happened if he had not been suffering from sub-clinical scurvy.

 

Immune System

Vitamin C is a requirement for the proper functioning of our immune systems.  It is involved in white blood cell production, T-cells and macrophages.  Without Vitamin C in adequate quantities, our own body's best defense against disease is left without ammunition.  This has a distinct bearing on how much Vitamin C to take (please see How Much to Take.)  A sickness such as a cold or virus is analogous to a brush fire.  Destruction in its path, just as an infection wrecks havoc to our own internal ecology.  If the sickness is the fire, then our immune systems are the fire department and Vitamin C is the water.  If I may take this analogy a little further, the fire department may use chemical fire retardents, which are loosely analogous to medicine.  Now we would all agree that these chemicals are sometimes warranted, but surely we also know that they will have some consequences to the environment or ecology.  This is similar to nutrition and medicine.  Nutrition is the natural bolstering of our own systems.  Medicine, on the contrary, is foreign and needs to be used with corresponding care.

Due to the strong relationship between C and our immune systems, it is not surprising that viral and bacterial infections can be dealt with by our own systems when adequate C is present.  Ascorbic acid is toxic to viruses, bacteria, and many types of cultured cells, because of its prooxidant activity.  It is particularly toxic to malignant tumor cells but much less toxic to nonmalignant normal cells, thus its therapeutic use in cancer.

No matter what medicine or other treatment you and your doctor may choose to treat your illness, Vitamin C should be part of the therapy.  As mentioned other places, Dr. Cathcart refers to disease by the Vitamin C levels needed for treatment.

Please see the AIDS and Colds and Flu sections for more information.

 
Why We Need to Supplement Our Vitamin C Intake
 

With very few exceptions, all animal species synthesize vitamin C in their bodies.  Man does not.  The generally accepted theory is that a mutation occurred some tens of millions of years ago to the ancestors of modern man that disabled this synthesis process (see the article C no Vitamin for additional discussion on this).  Natural selection dictates that there was adequate C from dietary sources to allow a reasonable level of health, otherwise the mutation could not have taken hold.  Indeed, natural selection favors those organisms with only the absolutely necessary machinery.  A reader from Arizona State University, Tatiana Covington discussed this in a letter to me thus:

    Scurvy is actually a species-wide enzyme deficiency disorder, exactly like Tay-Sachs, gauchers, or Niemann-Pick Type C. There are 4 enzymes which convert glucose into ascorbic acid--but we can only make the first 3. The gene for the 4th--gulonolactone oxidase--is massively damaged and totally useless. Thus we cannot make the last enzyme, and hence cannot turn gulonolactone, which is almost useless against reactive oxygen species, into ascorbic acid, which is the centerpiece of antioxidant, antiradical defense of essentially all air-exposed life on Earth. Without it, indeed, the biosphere would collapse and Earth would be a dead world within a century.

    Our antioxidant protection is thus shot to hell. The correct vitamin C level for a human being--a mammal--is c. 2000-3000 mg/kg, and the correct production rate, typical for mammals, is 60 mg-kg/day. But we lack LO, and so our level is c. 25 mg/kg and our synthesis rate is 0. By the way, we are very poor absorbers of C, and thus find it almost impossible to get past 30 mg/kg. (see chart below, Rusty)

    Thus the correct path is obvious: reinstall the *gene* for GLO and be done with it, thus curing the universal scurvy. Mammals with the enzyme--which is almost all of them--can live 8-10 times their maturity age. Mammals without it have a hard time reaching 3-4 Ma. Thus this shows that reinstallation of the GLO gene would extend the human life span to c. 300 years.

    One mistake, one missing enzyme, one blocked pathway--and you are dead. Ask any hemophiliac.

Our diets have changed dramatically since then.  We live in much less hospitable climates.  We don't pick fresh fruits from trees or eat fresh, raw meat, both excellent sources of vitamin C, like our primate ancestors. Our diets are almost universally lacking in nutritional value.  Please see the Food Sources Chart.  For an excellent discussion of the value of supplementation in general, please visit Healthy.net.

Vitamin C is also not stored well in our bodies.  We use it constantly and yet our intake is meager.  Only with regular supplementation in quantities that fill our body's every need will we approach optimum health and the elimination of disease.

Dr. Cathcart talks about how C functions in our bodies depending on the level we are getting (i.e. enough to prevent scurvy, etc.) at the following link - The Third Face of C.

So then the question remains, how much should I take?
 
 
     
 
How Much to Take?

The amount of C an individual requires is not determined by the absence of scurvy but by the level that promotes optimum health. Simply put we need to take as much Vitamin C as our systems need to promote optimum health (please read my page C No Vitamin).  We have discussed the bowel tolerance limit, the amount you can take without diarrhea-like symptoms.  Dr. Cathcart discusses this at Vitamin C Dosage in Disease.  Since most animals synthesize vitamin C, how much they produce should provide a clue to how much we need.  An excellent article, VITAMIN C: How much is enough? about this is available on the Vitamin C Foundation page.  Animals vary widely, and they may not always produce enough for optimum health when under stress.  The chart below shows this large variance. 
Daily Production of Ascorbate in Animals

Animal

Milligrams/Kg Body Weight/per Day

Man's Equiv.
per Day
Snake
Tortoise
Mouse
Rabbit
Goat
Rat
Dog
Cat

10
7
275
226
190
150
40
40

700
490
19,250
15,820
13,300
10,500
2800
2800

 

Notice that dogs and cats are low producers (relatively) and that they are more susceptible to vitamin C deficiency related problems.  The column headed man's equivalent shows how much a 150 pound person would produce at the rate of that animal.  As you can see it is not totally out of the question that 20,000 mg per day may be required for optimum health, especially when exposed to significant stress.

 

"The medical profession itself took a very narrow and very wrong view. Lack of ascorbic acid caused scurvy, so if there was no scurvy there was no lack of ascorbic acid. Nothing could be clearer than this. The only trouble was that scurvy is not a first symptom of a lack but a final collapse, a premortal syndrome and there is a very wide gap between scurvy and full health. "
- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
Nobel-prize winner for his discovery of vitamin C

 

Looking at it based on our enzyme system deficiency as described above, a 150 pound adult would need about 4000 mg assuming 100% absorption.  If absorption is closer to 50% (still optimistic) then the basic nutritional requirement doubles to 8000mg.

Everyone is different.  Different foods don't agree with different people.  Some people get drunk after two drinks (me).  Others can tolerate much more.  That's why drug dosage is a tricky business.  These differences are referred to as "biochemical individuality". 

The amount of C that you need will vary according to your body's need at any particular time.  You will become sensitive to how much you can take.  I also advise that if you start to feel sick, you start taking one or more 1000 mg tablets every hour (see the Colds page).  Again, you will need to judge for yourself.  I have just added an account of my own experience trying to balance the right amount of vitamin C to ward off  the flu.  It isn't easy.  Please check out "A Case of the Flu".

As a point of reference, I take about 14,000 mg per day in two doses when I'm feeling fine.  Also, visit Megadoses of Vitamin C , a paper done to analyze the usefulness and potential danger of taking mega-doses of vitamin C and the editorial Vitamin C, RDA's and Politics by Steven Wm. Fowkes from the August 1, 1996 issue of Smart Drug News, reprinted at the Cognitive Enhancement Research Institute website.

Generally, I tell people to try to take as much as they can, several times a day.  I get a powdered sodium ascorbate.  This is non-acidic, has almost no taste, and is easy tolerate.  I take it in a little water in the morning and at night. 

I very often hear people say that any excess C that one ingests is at best wasted or at worst dangerous.  First, let me assure you that vitamin C is completely nontoxic.  Except for some gastrointestinal distress, NO amount has ever been shown to be harmful (see the discussion of side effects below).  So what about the stories that taking over 250 mg (or some other relatively low level) is a waste?  Tom Matthews of The LIFE EXTENSION FOUNDATION recently explained it this way (edited for clarity, Rusty):

 

    [T]aking large doses of vitamin C is a bit like attempting to fill a pail to the brim where there are no holes in the sides at all below a certain level, but the density of holes grows as we get closer to the top. If you keep pouring it in fast enough, you will still be able to make the level rise. From this viewpoint, it looks very much like you are simply wasting a lot of water which flows out of the holes in the pail to no purpose. However, to carry the analogy a bit further, suppose that the ability of vitamin C to fight a disease, prevent free radical damage, etc. is analogous to the water pressure at the bottom of the pail. When some injury or disease strikes, it may be analogous to the pail springing a leak below the healthy level of holes - even right at the bottom, and again the pressure of the water may be analogous to the power of vitamin C to fight the injury or disease (and if such is the case it may be important to pour the water in even faster - take higher daily doses of vitamin C - under those circumstances). After the disease or injury is fixed/cured (low hole in the pail plugged), then it is reasonable to reduce the inflow back to maintaining a high level ready to fight off another attack.

 

So, the best advice is to take as much as you can short of any discomfort.  This would be like keeping the pail as full as is practical.  When a stress is added (pail springs a leak) much more C will be needed, so much more can be taken before discomfort starts.  Under severe circumstances, a knowledgeable physician will administer vitamin C intravenously.  This may be especially helpful for cancer patients.  Dr. Cathcart explains his Vitamin C for IV Use protocol.
 

Side-effects and considerations

 

The other side of this question is can you take too much vitamin C?  Can vitamin C become harmful?  This quality of a substance is called toxicity, the relative degree of being toxic or poisonous. Many substances are required for life a one level and life-threatening at another.  Drugs are quite often very helpful at one level and quite dangerous at a level not much higher.  To illustrate, look at the chart below.  This chart could be a diagram for iron.  Iron is required to carry oxygen.  Just the same you can die of iron poisoning if you ingest enough.  Vitamin A also gets a bad rap for being dangerous, although the width of the area marked "2" is quite wide.  Take ten times the recommended dosage of aspirin and you have quickly gone from "2" to "3".

 
Dosage chart.GIF

 
  The Safety of Aspirin

To emphasis the point about the relative safety of vitamin C, let's look more closely at the safety of Aspirin.  Most all of us feel Aspirin is "safe".  Certainly not worthy of concern at, or somewhat over, the recommended dosages.  We are deluding ourselves about this safety.  Quoting from the book The Miracle of MSM by Stanley Jacob, et. al.,

    "Data cited at the forum from the "Arthritis, Rheumatism, and Aging Medical Information System" indicate that approximately 76,000 hospitalizations occur each year in the U.S. from gastrointestinal complications produced by non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).  An estimated 41,000 hospital admissions and 3,300 deaths involving elderly patients are attributed annually to NSAIDs."

Aspirin and some of the other over-the-counter pain relievers are NSAIDS.  Thirty-three hundred deaths a year!  Seventy-six thousand hospital admissions!  This is serious, but no one seems to be alarmed.  On the other hand, no one has ever died from vitamin C.  No one!  Ever!  At any dosage.  Period.
 

  

Substances that are only poisonous would have no left side of the diagram, the green area, they would start at "2" and go down from there, sometimes very quickly (e.g. snake venom.)  Obviously, these should be avoided!  On the other hand, vitamin C doesn't have a red side to the diagram, it is nontoxic.  If you took enough vitamin C to cause diarrhea and continued to take this much, you could die of dehydration, but that's about as dangerous as C gets.  The other dangerous side-effects of vitamin C that are sometimes sited by "authorities" are theories and do not show up in the groups that take large amounts.  The potential problems most often brought up as a reason to restrict vitamin C supplementation include kidney stones, excess iron absorption, impaired vitamin B12 status, cellular damage (see the Editorial) or systemic conditioning, sometimes called "rebound scurvy". 

  • Side Effects of Vitamin C
Jerry Rivers of Cornell University (now with the Graduate Division of Nutrition, University of Texas) presented a paper to the Third Conference on Vitamin C entitled "Safety of High-Level Vitamin C Ingestion" where he investigated the potential safety aspects of C mentioned above.  I quote the conclusion: "An attempt has been made in this review to select papers that represent opposing views and to present a critical non biased interpretation of the results.  This has led to the conclusion that the practice of ingesting large quantities of ascorbic acid will not result in calcium-oxalate stones, increased uric acid excretion, impaired B12 status, iron overload, systemic conditioning, or increased mutagenic activity in healthy individuals."  Dr. Klenner discusses his experience with the dangers of massive amounts of vitamin C in his paper.  When Klenner says massive, he means it!  He gave individuals intravenous vitamin C treatments of one hundred grams or more per day.  Cathcart discusses the relationship between high-dose C and kidney stones in his article "Why Don't Massive Doses of Ascorbate Produce Kidney Stones?".  Additionally, a journal article published on Mediconsult, "A prospective study of the intake of Vitamins C and B6, and the risk of kidney stones in men" studied over 45,000 men for six years and states:
Indeed, about one man in 20 was found to consume over 1,500 mg average per day, and it was in this highest consumption group that a reduced risk of kidney stones (22% less than among those who consumed 250 mg or less of Vitamin C) was detected.  Apart from this risk reduction at one extreme of the spectrum, no other effect of Vitamin C on stone formation could be construed. (emphasis mine, Ed.)
Another study examining the link between vitamin C intake and kidney stone formation published in J Urol, 1996 Jun, 155:6, 1847-51 states:

 
A prospective study of the intake of vitamins C and B6, and the risk of kidney stones in men
 

PURPOSE: The association between the intake of vitamins C and B6, and kidney stone formation was examined.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a prospective study of the relationship between the intake of vitamins C and B6 and the risk of symptomatic kidney stones in a cohort of 45,251 men 40 to 75 years old with no history of kidney calculi. Vitamin intake from foods and supplements was assessed using a semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire completed in 1986.

RESULTS: During 6 years of follow up 751 incident cases of kidney stones were documented. Neither vitamin C nor vitamin B6 intake was significantly associated with the risk of stone formation. For vitamin C the age-adjusted relative risk for men consuming 1,500 mg. daily or more compared to less than 250 mg. daily was 0.78 (95% confidence interval 0.54 to 1.11). For vitamin B6 the age-adjusted relative risk for men consuming 40 mg. daily or more compared to less than 3 mg. daily was 0.91 (95% confidence interval 0.64 to 1.31). After adjusting for other potential stone risk factors the relative risks did not change significantly.

CONCLUSIONS: These data do not support an association between a high daily intake of vitamin C or vitamin B6 and the risk of stone formation, even when consumed in large doses.

 

It would appear that the theory of increased risk of kidney stones from high-dose vitamin C is not substantiated in the real world.  It seems from the studies done that high-dose Vitamin C may actually help prevent kidney stones! This subject of kidney stones and vitamin C is a little more complicated than a simple yes/no, even though the above evidence is pretty convincing. Pauling discusses this in his book How to Live Longer and Feel Better. I quote from that:

"It is well known that there are two classes of kidney stones, and that a tendency to form them should be controlled in two quite different ways. The stones of one class, comprising nearly one half of all urinary calculi, are composed of calcium phosphate, magnesium ammonium phosphate, calcium carbonate, or mixtures of these substances. They tend to form in alkaline urine, and persons with a tendency to form them are advised to keep their urine acidic. A good way, probably the best way, to acidify the urine is to take 1 g or more of ascorbic acid each day. Ascorbic acid is used by many physicians for this purpose and for preventing infections of the urinary tract, especially infection by organisms that hydrolyze urea to form ammonia and in this way alkalize the urine and promote the formation of kidney stones of this class.

The kidney stones of the other class, which tend to form in acidic urine, are composed of calcium oxalate, uric acid, or cystine. Persons with a tendency to form these stones are advised to keep their urine alkaline. This can be achieved by taking vitamin C as sodium ascorbate or by taking ascorbic acid with just enough sodium hydrogen carbonate (ordinary baking soda) or other alkalizer to neutralize it."

I have several comments to add to this.  The most important is that vitamin C is inestimably safer than ANY drug.  C does seem to play a role in absorbing iron.  Perhaps there is a link between chronic vitamin C deficiency and anemia.  It seems to me that the first thing someone with low iron levels should do is increase their vitamin C supplementation.  And as far as "systemic conditioning" is concerned, this one really irks me!  Chronic vitamin C deficiency leads to a low state of health, no question.  To consider that taking supplementation should be avoided because it may make things worse if you stop is ridiculous. The important thing is to get adequate supplementation.  And not to stop!  The dangers aren't from taking C.  Indeed, the real dangers are all associated with inadequate dosages!

"Today, 290 people in the United States will die from the adverse reaction to prescription medicines."
- New England Journal of Medicine
1998:279: 1200-1205, 1216-1217

The most important thing to keep in mind regarding dosages of vitamin C is that the RDA levels of less than 100 mg barely gets you past the area marked 1 in the chart above.  While this will prevent scurvy, the vitamin C deficiency disease, and keep you alive in the short term, it won't get you close to optimum health, the area marked 2 in the chart above.

If you are convinced that vitamin C supplementation is a good idea, there are some things you should be aware of before you start taking 10 grams a day.

Taking too much C at one time will cause diarrhea ( it's not really diarrhea, but that point will be lost as you run to the bathroom.)  This level is refereed to as the bowel tolerance limit.  Cathcart  talks about this level at Vitamin C Dosage in Disease.   Since you've been suffering from sub-clinical scurvy since conception, your body is not performing all the enzyme reactions it would if it could.  As a result, your bowel tolerance limit will increase over time.  I recommend you take 1000 mg tablets once or twice a day to start and increase your dosage every few days, backing off a little if you have the above mentioned symptom.

Also, the stuff the manufacturers add to the C to make it a pill may disagree with you.  Try different types if this is the case.  Some people are very sensitive to the acidity.  Calcium ascorbate tablets are available for you if the ascorbic acid is troubling.  Vitamin C powder is what I take because I take a lot (big surprise) and it is very easy to take 8-10 grams at one time this way.

I do not recommend that anyone take lots of the chewable tablets.  These are full of sugar and the acidity of the C is hard on the tooth enamel if the exposure level is high.  I use the chewables for canker sores, but otherwise I rarely use them.

What about "natural" vitamin C vs. synthesized.  Pauling points out that the chemical make-up is identical.  If you made a 1000mg tablet entirely from rose hips, the tablet would be as big as a football!  Even these tablets are mostly synthesized vitamin C.  That is not to say that the natural sources don't provide nutritional elements not found in the non-natural tablets.  The most important thing is the C.  Get inexpensive C that agrees with your system and take a lot of it.

It would appear from the above that vitamin C holds a special place in the definition of a vitamin.  Inadequate synthesis is part of the definition of "vitamin", so while vitamin C is outside this definition for almost all plants and animals, it is still defined as a vitamin because man cannot synthesize vitamin C at all.  Might vitamin C indeed be a special case and not a "vitamin" at all?

Irwin Stone was a leading researcher concerning vitamin C.  Dr. Linus Pauling credits Stone for his (Pauling's) early interest in vitamin C research.  In his book The Healing Factor "Vitamin C" Against Disease, Irwin Stone discusses at length our biological ancestry and vitamin C.  If vitamin C is a necessary enzyme for almost all plants and animals and almost all plants and animals synthesize their required vitamin C, then it is truly not a vitamin because the definition of a vitamin requires that, if synthesis takes place at all, it must be "insufficient to meet body needs".  So what we have is two classes of organisms, one that makes C in sufficient quantities (most all) and those that have no ability, or have lost the ability, to make this essential nutrient.

Vitamin C has been necessary for life before the evolutionary tree separated into the plant and animal kingdoms more than 600 million years ago. Since the inability to synthesize vitamin C is only present in a very few species and man possesses most of the mechanisms to synthesize vitamin C, it makes perfectly good sense that this could have developed from a genetic mutation. See another discussion of this genetic mutation on the Why Take C page.

If vitamin C requirements were viewed in the context of this genetic mutation rather than as a nutrient required in trace amounts (i.e. a "vitamin"), dosage takes on a whole new meaning.  Type I diabetics learn to utilize insulin to produce the best state of health.  Likewise, those of us suffering from the genetic mutation concerning vitamin C synthesis (i.e. everybody), should use vitamin C dosage in terms of its contribution to a higher state of health and homeostasis.  This paradigm shift would open our eyes and our research to utilizing vitamin C in amounts more in line with what our bodies might synthesize if we still had that ability.

Indeed, much of the research that shows vitamin C to be only marginally effective was conducted based on this misconception of vitamin C's status and consequently dosages in those studies were most always very low.  The conventional wisdom is that vitamin C will not prevent colds but that it will help shorten their duration somewhat.  This, I believe, is entirely due to the colds and vitamin C research being done with much too low a dose. When taken in adequate amounts, vitamin C's effectiveness is dramatically better than this (see my Colds & Flu experiences page).

Convincing people of the requirement for high doses of C for optimum health is the hardest struggle for me.  While I can often convince someone that vitamin C supplementation is advantageous, once I start talking about dosage I usually lose them.  This is when, in their minds I think, their opinion of me changes from informed to kook.  If vitamin C were viewed differently, as I have suggested above, perhaps this could change.

Nutrition
 
Like most people in the U.S. during my adult life, I have had a mild interest in nutrition.  It is intuitively obvious that eating is important!  The popular media produce a constant flow of articles discussing various aspects of nutrition and its possible effects on our health.  Indeed, the "average American" diet has changed somewhat as a result of this long-term devotion to the topic - there is a definite interest in a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet (we will discuss this in the heart disease section).

 
Doctors
 
While I am encouraged by the fact that these subjects are of interest, I am dismayed by the lack of basic understanding there is in nutrition generally.  I have had a number of "family" doctors over the years and not a single time has a single one of them even mentioned nutrition unless I brought it up!  And when I do (I won't stop) it becomes apparent that doctors in general know very little about nutrition.  As it turns out, the medical establishment does not study nutrition any more than the average person (probably less, since they are so busy keeping up with the medical literature).

The discoverer of vitamin C,

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, M.D., Ph.D., Nobel Laureate stated:

  • "All the same, I always had the feeling that not enough use was made of it [vitamin C] for supporting human health. The reasons are rather complex. The medical profession itself took a very narrow and wrong view. Lack of ascorbic acid caused scurvy, so if there was no scurvy there was no lack of ascorbic acid. Nothing could be clearer than this. The only trouble was that scurvy is not a first symptom of lack but a final collapse, a pre mortal syndrome, and there is a very wide gap between scurvy and full health. But nobody knows what full health is!"

 
My Awakening
 
In 1991 I was visiting a new local bookstore (I had a coupon).  I spotted Linus Pauling's book, How to Live Longer and Feel Better.  I had heard of Pauling and since living longer and feeling better sounded desirable, I bought the book.  I was captivated.  Pauling presents the case for Vitamin C supplementation so well and with so much evidence that this is the first book I now recommend. I found it amazing that something so important and so basic to our well-being is virtually unknown to the general public.

I have been taking about 14,000 -18,000mg of Vitamin C everyday (more if I feel sickness coming on) for over a decade.  I now have a large bookshelf devoted to health and nutrition.  I talk to anyone who will listen.  This is why I have started this web site.  To try to improve the level of knowledge about nutrition for as many people as possible so that they will make more informed decisions about their diet and health.

 
Why Vitamin C
 
While it is somewhat of a disservice to discuss one nutrient exclusively since our body's chemistry requires a long list of nutrients working in unison, Vitamin C stands out due to its importance and almost universal shortage.  My own experience has convinced me of the importance of much larger quantities of Vitamin C than I was getting in my diet.  I have had one cold since starting on my C regimen (1991). 

Vitamin C has been linked to longevity.  Read Epidemiology Shows That Vitamin C Helps Us Live Longer: An Interview With Dr. James E. Enstrom.
 

 

 

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