SOME FACTS ABOUT VITAMIN C
By Dr. Alby Ford
Did you know that human beings do not produce vitamin C but are reliant on this very important vitamin from food sources or supplementation? Of all the organisms on planet earth - humans, primates, guinea pigs, fruit bats and some birds and fish species cannot produce vitamin C. It is perhaps the most underutilized nutrient taken by man.
In all species that manufacture vitamin C this process takes place in the liver and is derived from one of the sugar molecules. The crucial enzyme, L-Gulonolactone oxidase, which is responsible for the conversion of the sugar molecule to vitamin C, is absent in humans. Vitamin C is required for well over 400 known chemical reactions in the body.
A goat for instance, on any one day just walking around and not stressed, produces approx. 5 – 15 grams (5-15,000 mg) of vitamin C. This required vitamin C aids the immune system to function at optimal levels, thus making sure the animal is in excellent health. However, if the same goat is severely stressed, it will now produce between 50 – 100 grams in a response to stress.
Credit should be given to Albert Scent-Gyorgi who discovered the molecular structure of vitamin C. Dr. Frederick Klenner, a practicing physician pioneered the use of vitamin C in a clinical setting. Dr. Klenner successfully treated thousands of patients with every diagnosis imaginable with mega-doses of vitamin C. It is of no use taking low doses of vitamin C when supplementing. Your daily intake should be between 4 – 6 grams.
Bowel Tolerance Dosing
The concept of bowel tolerance dosing with vitamin C is an important one as it can greatly reduce the severity of many, if not all acute disease processes. Start by taking 2 grams of buffered vitamin C powder in juice or water until you experience loose stools or a diarrhoea. In a healthy individual the tolerance level may be 7 – 10 grams. In the sick and stressed person this dose can be considerably higher. This is why it is easy to understand that the requirement increases in illness. A word of caution: vitamin C can cause an increase in the absorption of iron. This can be good or bad. People who have an iron deficiency, can benefit from it. However, there are some people who have a disease called Heamachromatosis with excess iron in their bodies. These people may be affected by excess vitamin C. Another group of people have a condition called Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency. When taking high dose IV vitamin C therapy, it would be wise to first test a patient for G6PD deficiency before commencing treatment.
Cancer has an affinity to vitamin C because a vitamin C molecule is very close to a glucose molecule. Linus Pauling, two times Nobel Lauriat, stated that if we could get enough vitamin C into the blood, that the peroxidation (vitamin C is metabolized into Hydrogen Peroxide) would be great enough to kill cancer cells.
The problem with orally administered vitamin C is that the kidneys easily get rid of the excess (water soluble vitamin) as fast as you can absorb it. To get the highest amounts of vitamin C into your blood stream, it must be administered intravenously, especially for cancer patients. Recent studies published in Canada (Canadian Medical Association Journal – March 2007) have shown intravenous vitamin C to be a very powerful alternative to chemotherapy. In a cancer clinic in the Bahamas they administer dosages of 100 – 300 grams vitamin C intravenously with excellent results.
In another study published in September 2005, Dr. Mark Levine and colleagues at the National Institute of Health (NHI) found that when administered intravenously, blood levels of vitamin C was 50 to 70 times higher than the maximum concentrations achieved with the oral dose alone. Furthermore, they concluded that the intravenous administration could selectively kill cancer cells without harming normal cells.
With this in mind, I can show you how vitamin C helps to battle cancer. We know that large doses of vitamin C are cytotoxic (kill cells), or deadly to cancer. Back to cancer’s affinity to sugar: the cancer cell draws in vitamin C thinking it is sugar. Cancer needs sugar, and lots of it, to metabolize, so it draws in the vitamin C hungrily and greedily. When an oncologist tells you that the vitamin C will begin to protect the cancer cells, s/he is speaking out of ignorance. At these levels, 400mgs/deciliter, vitamin C is no longer an antioxidant, it is a pro-oxidant. It causes oxidation or medically one would say: vitamin C is peroxidative. At this point, the cancer cell is in trouble. It needs to “quench” (neutralize) this peroxidation, but lacks the enzyme catalase needed to convert the peroxide, and an aldehyde is formed that is toxic to the cancer cells, and they die.
We should all be taking about 2000mg of vitamin C per day orally and when we are ill (flu, colds, all acute conditions) push the dose to 3000mg twice daily.
The practice supplies a buffered powdered vitamin C at 2,350mg per scoop.
Enquire at the reception for more details.