Throughout my ongoing quest for wellness, one vitamin that continued to come up time and time again was vitamin C.

Sure, I knew the basics of vitamin C and why it was an important supplement to prevent scurvy (think ancient sailors). I tried to remember to supplement daily. I knew to always load up on it at the onset of a cold or flu. What I didn’t yet understand was that this was just the tip of the iceberg.

Some of the wellness bloggers I was following were increasingly starting to promote the benefits of vitamin C, advising their readers to take it in much larger amounts than the recommended daily amount (RDA) which is 60mg.(1) At the time, I read their posts half-heartedly feeling that the other supplements I had in my daily rotation were enough. None of their posts on the topic were resonating with me. They weren’t stating any facts compelling enough to make me stand up and take notice.

HOW MUCH SHOULD I TAKE?

I still didn’t take it all that seriously when my functional medicine doctor advised me to begin taking 1500mg twice per day to help keep my cholesterol levels down. This doctor was telling me to take 3000mg PER DAY – which is 1000mg higher than the government’s Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL) of 2,000mg/day. Why would I need to take so much? I certainly didn’t want to end up with diarrhea after all or simply pee out an excess of expensive vitamins which is what we are told will happen when we take high levels of vitamins. Who has time to sit on the toilet all day? Who needs expensive pee? I had never had anyone in the healthcare industry recommend I take so much before.

Unfortunately, even with my doctor’s  recommendation I was still only dosing once or twice a day when I remembered. I still didn’t comprehend this whole Vitamin C thing.

As more time passed, I began hearing rumblings about the benefits of doing a “Cflush” to improve the immune system at the start of a cold or flu. Even my 70-year old mother had listened to a podcast where she took down the instructions for a full day vitamin C flush to figure out what her daily dose should be. The amounts she was instructed to take were in the tens of thousands of mg per day. What was going on here?

THE CATALYST I NEEDED

I was at a local used book store on the hunt for books on essential oils. I was directed to the very back of the store and had to nearly lay on the floor to find the section. In amongst all the essential oil books there was a slim paperback titled Vitamin C, The Master Nutrient by Sandra Goodman, Ph.D. I thought, hey, why not grab this one and see if I can educate myself more on this topic. Maybe this is a sign that there really was something to this after all.

It would be too simple to say that this book blew my mind. It actually was somewhat upsetting and made me angry that I was only uncovering this depth of information now. What struck me was that this book had been written in 1991. In 1991!! I was in grade 12 in 1991. I took health class. Why was it just now that I was reading about all these incredibly well documented and scientifically proven studies about vitamin C?

Why was this information not being shouted from the mountaintops? Why weren’t these facts being shared among the masses? What gives?

Is it possible that because we all think of vitamin C as an “anti-scurvy” vitamin no other focus has been put on it?

IMMUNE BOOSTING

In reading Ms. Goodman’s’ book, I discovered that vitamin C is a master nutrient that boosts the immune system, is a fighter of heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, cancer. (2) In fact, from what I read, there is very little that supplementing with a good quality vitamin C in large doses does not seem to help with.

Ms. Goodman’s book was the catalyst I needed to start a deeper dive into vitamin C. I continued to read and research and continued to be blown away by what I was uncovering.

Way back in 1965, Dr. Irwin Stone published a theory that “humans generally suffer from a genetic disease called hypoascorbemia (which is a deficiency of ascorbic acid) that produces chronic health problems such as high cholesterol, heart disease, arthritis, colds and cancer”. (3)

In 1988, Dr. Robert Cathcart, a world-renowned pioneer of high-dose vitamin C therapy and who has treated hundreds of AIDS patients using large doses of vitamin C wrote; “ascorbate, by making short work of colds and other minor infections, and by reducing the duration and complications of major infections, reduces the activation of T-helper cells and thereby slows the multiplication of viruses”.(4)

WE ARE UNABLE TO PRODUCE OUR OWN VITAMIN C

Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, is necessary for the growth, development and repair of all body tissues. It is a critical nutrient that we need on a daily basis. Somewhere along the line, according to biochemist Dr. Irwin Stone, roughly 25-60 million years ago our ancestors (along with a few other animal species) lost the ability to make their own vitamin C. (5)

Since then, humans have had to rely on diet to provide the amounts we need to survive. In our current environment, with our nutrient depleted soils, polluted skies and our busy pace of life full of stress and disease, it is allegedly next to impossible to get the levels of vitamin C we need to thrive from food alone. This is why we need to supplement.

Vitamin C is what’s called an antioxidant. An antioxidant donates or gives up its electrons. According to Dr. Levy who is a board-certified cardiologist, and author of six books on health-related issues, vitamin C quells oxidative stress. And oxidative stress is the only thing that makes a toxin toxic. Oxidative stress is really the only thing that makes an infection bad for you.

OXIDATIVE STRESS = DISEASE

When oxidative stresses overwhelm your body, and there is not enough of an antioxidant present like vitamin C to keep it in check, you start to develop diseases and ultimately start to develop symptoms. (6) The main point here is that toxins in the body eat up antioxidants which is why we need to make sure our bodies are loaded up with large amounts of all antioxidants, all antioxidants of course- not just vitamin C, but vitamin C is the star of this blog post.

VITAMIN C NEUTRALIZES TOXINS AND POISONS

Dr. Levy maintains that vitamin C is a master antioxidant and when taken in large amounts vitamin C will neutralize any toxin or poison you have inside your body. Dr. Levy states “Vitamin C is going to keep you healthy, it’s going to eliminate the possibility for so many diseases to ever get hold, it’s going to help with just about any infection you could possibly have”.(7)

My point in writing this article is not to tell anyone how much vitamin C one should take. What you decide to take should be unique to you. My goal is simply to shed light on a vitamin that we as humans used to produce but no longer do, yet we still need in order to survive. And we need it in surprisingly larger doses than what the majority of us are currently supplementing with. 

Everyday.

General Vitamin C Dosage Guide according to Dr. Thomas E. Levy

BE YOUR OWN HEALTH ADVOCATE

Be your own health advocate. Do your own research, run your own self-administered tests and be your own guinea pig (funny – guinea pigs also lost their ability to produce their own vitamin C as humans did). Ask more questions.

Find out what you need to do to be healthy and disease free. The Lancet published a Global Burden of Disease Study in 2013 that stated that over 95% of the worlds’ population has health problems, with over a third having more than five ailments. (8) That study was done 7 years ago. I would suspect the number of people with health problems has more likely increased in the time since versus decreased. If vitamin C has half the benefits that the individuals cited in this article maintain they do, why would you not embrace the possibility?

Like any “new” idea or therapy that comes along the naysayers will have their views and your medical professionals may push back. Bring copies of these publications to them – I do. Help open their eyes to new alternatives to medicine. Or in this instance, old alternatives to medicine. Many of these studies have been around for decades!

TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR HEALTH ‘DESTINY’

At the end of the day, my wish is for us all to embrace the possibilities that our health 'destiny’ lies in our own hands and to help shed light on different healing modalities and tools that are easy adopt and administer.

If you are interested in finding a doctor that focuses on integrative medicine in your area please check out the American College for the Advancement of Medicine. The website is ACAM.org.

(1) Recommended Dietary Allowances. National Academy of Sciences. Washington. Nat. Acad. Press 1980, p.75.
(2) Goodman, Sandra Ph.D. 1991. “Vitamin C, The Master Nutrient” Keats Publishing, Inc http://www.doctoryourself.com/titration.html
(3) Stone, Irwin. 1972. “The Healing Factor: Vitamin C Against Disease.” Gosset & Dunlap http://vitamincfoundation.org/stone/
(4) Cathcart, RF. MD.1988 “AIDS Treatment Using Ascorbic Acid.” Townsend Letter for Doctors.
(5) Stone, Irwin 1965. MD “Studies of a Mammalian Enzyme System fr Producing Evolutionary Evidence on Man.” Amer. J. Physical Anthrop., 23: 83-86
(6) Landsman, J. (Host). (2019, June, 30).“The most powerful vitamin to kill viruses” NaturalHealth365, {Podcast transcript}. www.naturalhealth365.com/wpcontent/uploads/2019/07most-powerful-vtimain-to-kill-viruses-transcript-06-30-19.pdf
(7) Landsman, J. (Host). (2019, June, 30).“The most powerful vitamin to kill viruses” NaturalHealth365, {Podcast transcript}. www.naturalhealth365.com/wpcontent/uploads/2019/07most-powerful-vtimain-to-kill-viruses-transcript-06-30-19.pdf
(8) Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 Collaborators. Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 301 acute and chronic diseases and injuries in 188 countries, 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013. The Lancet, 2015 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60692-4