Mega doses of vitamin C and my 35 years of experience

[TreeFrogTrader]

Speaking of vitamin C, don't excessive quantities of it over a long period of time cause kidney stones?

It's complicated.

The info on magnesium here is of interest- I think.

And of course this is not a study that looks at megadoses but it is of interest anyway to do your own thinking about what might help with the risk- if there is one- and you are taking higher doses.

http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v09n05.shtml

 

[Pekelo]

I'd rather have 1000 stones than 1 clogged artery!!

Said the man who never passed a stone. Kindey pain is one of the most horrific easily bypassing child birth. Clogged arteries are painless...

 

[mlawson71]

I prefer natural sources of vitamic C to tablets because the tables give me digestion issues. But during the winter I do try to drink a lot of lemon juice, for example, because otherwise I get constant sore throat.

 

[learner2007]

Said the man who never passed a stone. Kindey pain is one of the most horrific easily bypassing child birth. Clogged arteries are painless...

Yes, the pain of passing a stone can be an hour of Hell. But a clogged artery will send me there for eternity!!

 

[maxpi]

It's complicated.

The info on magnesium here is of interest- I think.

And of course this is not a study that looks at megadoses but it is of interest anyway to do your own thinking about what might help with the risk- if there is one- and you are taking higher doses.

http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v09n05.shtml

I think that magnesium is best absorbed into the skin. The skin acts as a reservoir for it. Epsom Salts baths and magnesium oil used as a deodorant are both healthy and relaxing.

 

[piezoe]

I know that there are varied opinions and test results, recommended dosage etc. regarding vitamin C. And I don't want to debate that. This is just my experience during 35 years of taking mega doses of vitamin C, and two of my findings.

1. Up until about 35 years ago, like most people, I would catch a cold 2 or 3 times a year. I found that a friend was taking 500mg of vitamin c daily as a prevention against colds. So I decided to give it a shot. For reasons I can't remember I started out taking 2 grams. But then after reading Linus Pauling's books and through experimentation over the next few years I found that taking 10 grams daily was the ideal dosage for me. So, the result is that I now catch a cold only once every 5 years or so. In fact, last year was the first one in about 10 years!! And when i do catch one the symptoms are significantly lighter than those of normal colds. 10 grams of vitamin c is the equivalent of that found a 400 lemons as I remember. I take the dosage in powder form, 3 times a day.

2. I get a physical once a year and my cholesterol is always a little high at around 220 to 230. So 3 years ago the doctor suggested an exam to check my arteries where they exam the artery in your neck with ultrasound(don't know what the exam is called in English).The result of that exam was that I have the arteries of a young person (I'm now 71). So I guess that significantly lowers my chances of having a stroke or heart attack. Given my eating habits, I was very pleasantly surprised to say the least. But at the time I just thought I had good DNA or something. It wasn't until recently that I read about many studies that have been done showing the benefits vitamin c has on protecting the arteries against the buildup of plaque and even of cleaning the arteries to some extent. When I was around 35 my cholesterol
was over 300 and my triglyceride level was 5 times that of someone whose level is high. I took the necessary steps to return to a normal level, but if there was any buildup at that time, it's no longer there!!

I know that there are claims that mega doses of vitamin c can prevent or cure everything from cancer to pimples. All I know is the above, and also that I have none of the problems so often seen in people my age, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or anything else for that matter. Without the wrinkles you'd swear I was under 30!!


If you are interested knowing more, you may find Linus Pauling's books of interest.
Vitamin C and the Common Cold (1970), Vitamin C, the Common Cold and the Flu (1976), Vitamin C and Cancer (1979), and How to Feel Better and Live Longer (1986). However it was not these books that convinced me of the benefits of mega doses of vitamin C. It was my personal experience.

Please keep in mind that most of the studies that claim that vitamin C does not prevent colds etc. are done using dosages of only 250mg to 1 gram.

Hope you found this of interest.

Pauling's clinical studies were done in England using massive does of Vitamin C. I heard him speak when he came to Los Alamos to present the data from these studies. Pauling himself took 2 grams with each meal. At the very onset of rhino virus symptoms he would take 12 to 20 grams in twenty four hours. I have used this remedy for years and it works for Rhino virus! It is not nearly so effective for flu virus as for Rhino virus. Pauling always stressed that you had to do it at the first sign of symptoms for best results. Pauling was very active well into his nineties and eventually died of prostate cancer. He won two Nobel prizes and narrowly missed wining two others. He had DNA right except he had the phosphate groups on the inside rather than the outside. Had he access to Rosalind Franklin's x-ray diffraction results at Cambridge, as Crick did, he undoubtedly would have got it right. (He also narrowly missed getting another Nobel when he tried reacting Xenon with Fluorine -- a catalyst was needed which hadn't yet been discovered. His idea was correctly based on ionization energies. Bartlett later, when the idea that a Nobel gas could form a compound was not so startling, won the Welsh price for the reaction Pauling had attempted years earlier, but by then Bartlett had the catalyst needed to lower the activation barrier. )

I heard Pauling say that the American diet was woefully low in folic acid. Years later it was discovered that lack of sufficient folic acid is the cause of scoliosis. Today pregnant women are routinely prescribed folic acid supplements!

Pauling always said that the reason the U.S. clinical trials did not show any effect of vitamin C on the common cold was because the dosages used in the U.S. study were far too low.

Among the many interesting details of Pauling's life was his protest against "having to learn useless things" which led to his quitting high school his senior year. Many years later, after he had won two Nobel prizes, one for Peace and the other for his work on the nature of the Chemical Bond , his high school awarded him an honorary degree.

 

[TreeFrogTrader]

Years later it was discovered that lack of sufficient folic acid is the cause of scoliosis.

.

Yup, moreso to prevent spinal bifida rather than scoliosis in pregnant women although both are in the same spinal neighborhood.

 

[piezoe]

Don't you get diarrhea from so much vitamin C? It usually causes loose stool at least....

That's a common side effect of mega doses greater than ~ 10 grams in twenty four hours. It seems harmless and is preferable to having your nose drip for three days and the mild sore throat that comes from all that post nasal drip due to Rhino virus. Ascorbic acid is one of few vitamins that can be tolerated at surprisingly high dosages. You need to increase your oral intake approximately ten-fold to double your blood level. Ascorbic acid in high doses is also a good emergency palliative for urinary tract infections until you can get on the proper antibiotic. Vit. C , in large doses, lowers urine pH.

 

[piezoe]

Vitamin C in the presence of moisture and air readily oxidizes to dehydroascorbic acid. Your body can make use of both and has a cell mechanism for reducing dehydroascorbate back to ascorbate. But there is also an irreversible path from the dehydro- form to diketogulonic acid. For our purposes we want to take ascorbic acid and not the oxidized dehydro- form. The former is pure white the latter is amber. When you look at ascorbic acid tablets they usually have an amber tinge. Typically all of the components used to manufacture the tablets should be colorless (tablets should be pure white) , This is seldom the case however and one never knows, without analysis, whether the color is do to partial oxidation of the vitamin C or impure technical grade auxiliary tablet components. If you can find a pure white Vitamin C tablet (you probably won't be able to) take that in preference to one with an amber cast. When fresh orange juice is shaken in the air the Ascorbic acid is oxidized to the dehydro- form to varying extents. Eventually you will notice this in the taste of the orange juice. Orange juice stored in air for a while tends to have mostly dehydroascorbic acid and little ascorbic acid.

By the way there is no difference between synthetic ascorbic acid and "natural" ascorbic acid other than the former is usually of higher purity.

If you are taking reagent grade, crystalline ascorbic acid powder, watch your teeth. You don't want to be making calcium ascorbate using the enamel on your teeth as one of the reactants!

 

[TreeFrogTrader]

If you are taking reagent grade, crystalline ascorbic acid powder, watch your teeth. You don't want to be making calcium ascorbate using the enamel on your teeth as one of the reactants!

Indeed, but if that and stomach acidity from ascorbic acid are a concern for some, you can take vitamin c in the form of calcium ascorbate to begin with- which is commercially available. So you are starting out with lower acid.