I am sure that many of you remember the recent studies regarding Vitamin C actually inducing DNA damage. Here are two articles for your purusal:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20010615/03
The second article is obviously pro vitamin C and the first not so favorable toward the supplement.
[quote]ZEB wrote:
I am sure that many of you remember the recent studies regarding Vitamin C actually inducing DNA damage. Here are two articles for your purusal:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20010615/03
The second article is obviously pro vitamin C and the first not so favorable toward the supplement. [/quote]
I think the first article may be badly flawed, possibly biased. I think i read a rebuttal to that somewhere. I will have to dig it up for that. I will post it if I can find it. The internet is a big place…
[quote]crowbar524 wrote:
I’m a fairly high doser myself–about5-6 grams a day. Linus Pauling, the two-time Nobel Prize winning chemist, thought we should be consuming around 10 grams a day for optimal health–and he did so for many years until he died in his 90’s.
Crowbar[/quote]
Actually Pauling took 18 GRAMS a day!
As for the cancer stuff, Vitamin C has shown great ability to prevent cancer and tumors and has shown no tendencies to increase growth in tumors already present - this in animals NOT in test tubes. You wouldn’t believe how many unharmful substances can cause DNA damage in a test tube.
I think I remember, somewhere in my foggy memory, that excessive amounts of Vit. C can be bad for you. 1mg a day should be enough for anyone. Maybe double that if you’re sick.
Also, keep in mind how anti-oxidants work. This is very rough high-school science here, so forgive me if I mess it up. They bind to free radicals because they have an unbalanced positive or negative charge (don’t remember which), which binds to the negative or positive charge on the free radical (that’s pretty much what makes a free radical, this unbalanced charge, making it want to bind to stuff you’d rather not have it attach to).
A huge excess of anti-oxidants can actually have free radical effects. You’re putting a whole bunch of stuff in your body with an unbalanced charge, and there aren’t enough free radicals to bind with. So, your anti-oxidants start acting like free radicals.
This is my very rough understanding of the process, anyway.
Sorry, 1g per day, not 1mg per day, above.
I currently take a teaspoon of calcium ascorbate (about 1000mg) in water with 5g of glutamine 5 to 6 times daily. This is to try and heal micro ulcers caused by NSAID use (vioxx, actually).
Normally I still take about 5-6 grams of ascorbate, just in the regular acid form.
With a blender drink I add about 2000mg of ascorbic acid powder. My drinks always include blueberries & kiwis and some citrus including the white part of the rind. Then I also take supplemental zinc, selenium, vitamin E to go along with this and work synergistically together.
Actually, I’m considering trying intraveneous sodium ascorbate to reach 80 or 100g of ascorbate a day in order to see what affect it has on my psoriatic arthritis, similar to what Norman Cousins did for his crippling ankylosing spondylitis - which he cured. It would sure be nice to be able to get off the NSAIDs.
[quote]greatgro wrote:
crowbar524 wrote:
I’m a fairly high doser myself–about5-6 grams a day. Linus Pauling, the two-time Nobel Prize winning chemist, thought we should be consuming around 10 grams a day for optimal health–and he did so for many years until he died in his 90’s.
Crowbar
Actually Pauling took 18 GRAMS a day!
As for the cancer stuff, Vitamin C has shown great ability to prevent cancer and tumors and has shown no tendencies to increase growth in tumors already present - this in animals NOT in test tubes. You wouldn’t believe how many unharmful substances can cause DNA damage in a test tube.
[/quote]
Which animals? 99% of mammals have the ability to make their own vitamin C. Human can’t. Guinea pigs can’t either. Keep it in mind that vitamin C isn’t the only thing used. In fact vitamin C itself is useless against cancer unless several others are included. Proline, lysine, ECCG and one or two others but don’t remember what. This treatment is so cheap, it won’t make you rich. I think that’s why it isn’t part of conventional treatment in the hospitals everywhere. They proposed a wide study for this to show that it is effective but the US GOVT actually turned it down and it wasn’t even that expensive. Probably only 100K out of billions. Sounds like big time political BS to me.
I don’t really agree with everything Mecola preaches, but I think he explains most things in a logical manner - check out this article:
[quote]BluePfaltz wrote:
1,200 Mg Ester complex all day. If you eat plenty of fresh aminos with them, like oranges and citrus, thats plenty. Ive had success with this, so much so I never need coffee anymore. I dont know about all the different forms, but the Ester (calcified form) seems to work. [/quote]
aminos??
Awsome thread…I take any where from 2-6grams ed not including what I get out of all of the fruits I eat.
Also if anyone has anymore info about using it as an anti-cancer/tumor med please post on it. I have many tumors that are I was told were not cancer but I sure as heck would like to get rid of them before they have the chance to become cancer.
DA
I take about 2000 mg calcium ascorbate/day in divided doses when well.
My experience over the last 12 hours illustrates the benefits of large doses of vitamin c in acute illnesses.
For most of my life whenever I become ill, my experience is that without intervention, I get a sore throat for a number of days followed by a bad cold for a number of days before I recover. Today when I woke up I could feel a sore throad coming on (it was not there when I went to bed). I immediately took 1.5 grams of calcium ascorbate and have taken about a gram/hour (give or take) since. The sore throat never materialized (my throat stopped hurting sometime this morning) and I’m already on to the bad cold phase which would untreated have happened many days down the road.
Most of the time I am able to catch it early and if I take a large amount of vitamin C and rest, the illness never materializes as this one has, I jst feel tired for the rest of the day.
Disclaimer: I did also take some siberian ginseng today in addition to the vitamin C, but I know from recommending the regimen to people, that the vitamin C alone will work.
FitGeek,
Since psoriatic arthritis is inflammatory you might add at least a few grams of fish oil (e.g. 3 g combined EPA/DHA) and GLA (e.g. 500-1000 mg GLA from borage or black currant oil). Liver support e.g. milk thistle also might be in order (this part is just a hunch).
Tungsten,
You are correct about animals making there own vit. C, but that does not mean they always make optimal amounts. Two owners who had dogs with cancer gave their animals extra vitamin c and the animals improved (one was actually cured but that involved a lot more then just C).
Berner,
How much vitamin C did the person give to the dogs? I knew the amount of vitamin C varied but never really knew what makes them produce more or less. What would be the optimal conditions to maximize the vitamin C production in the mammals? Is it possible that with gene therapy, we can add one enzyme that’s missing (out of four)in the liver needed to convert blood glucose into vitamin C? I’ve always wondered about that.
I actually read about a study done on two persons who ate a completely carb free diet. They stayed in a hospital ward for this over the course of a year or more. How this relates is that, they did not suffer from Vitamin C deficiency. I’m not sure how they did it, and I will see if I can find the article, but, this would seem to suggest maybe we can develop the means to make our own Vitamin C(not saying an optimal amount though)
[quote]Tungsten wrote:
Berner,
How much vitamin C did the person give to the dogs? I knew the amount of vitamin C varied but never really knew what makes them produce more or less. What would be the optimal conditions to maximize the vitamin C production in the mammals? Is it possible that with gene therapy, we can add one enzyme that’s missing (out of four)in the liver needed to convert blood glucose into vitamin C? I’ve always wondered about that.[/quote]
Tungsten,
These were the first times I had really tried it so I think they only gave the dogs a few grams extra per day. If I ran across another friend with such a dog I’d recommend more agressive vit c, or just refer them to the alternative vet I ran across. The vet told me that one can get ascorbic acid dilute it in saline and inject it into…somewhere or other in the dogs’s body (forget the details) and it will be absorbed throughout the day.
Oh and PERHAPS in people with cancer ascorbic acid and not the ascorbate I usually recommend would be better (IF the metabolic typing folks are correct)
No idea the answer to your other questions but the gene therapy is an interesting thought.
Berner, forgive me if I’m skeptical your VitC regimen is completely responsible for you not developing a cold. There are SO many other factors.
Are you healthier now than you were in the past?
For me, colds (that actually develop, obviously) usually last two to three days for me. This is WAY shorter than they used to, just a few years earlier. Yes, I take some C. But, here is the key: I just live healthier.
I don’t shove symptom reducers into my system, left and right, trying to fight off the symptoms. I exercise and eat right. I take my vitamins, C being one of them, in moderation.
Although I’m sure C helps, I find it a little hard to believe that taking a bunch of it would stop a cold in its tracks. There are just way too many cases where that doesn’t happen for it to be the case. Your general health may actually be the biggest asset you have in this case.
michaelv,
Untreated, the natural history of my colds/sore throats is pretty fixed with the sore throat and cold each lasting about 4-5 DAYS. So to go from the beginning of the sore throat to the cold phase in <12 hours is impressive. There is absolutely no doubt why the duration was much shorter (other times I’ve been able to avoid illness altogether, but I because of work I have not gotten enough sleep this week). I’ve also recommended this regimen to >20 people who have experienced marked improvements also.
Oh I forgot to mention that I took some herbs also (siberian ginseng in this case, echinacea/goldenseal in previous cases of illness) but again I’ve used only the vit C as have other people and it works–and the vit c is doing far more then synptom reduction.
I do not post here often, and I really have no interest in vit c debates (if you search the archives you can find one with…I think Zeb).
I posted this because it can decrease illness time significantly. Try it during your next illness if you are so inclined (1000 mg ascorbate form vit c PER HOUR is my standard recommendation to start with decreasing if one gets loose stools).
I have personally used massive amounts of vitamin C (up to 7 grams per day for three days straight) at the outset of a cold. It has usually shortend the duration, or knocked it out all together. However sometimes it does nothing. Since there are so many different types of cold bugs, I wonder if it simply eliminates certain ones. I don’t think anyone knows for sure yet.