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Dear Dr Stoll,
I read in the archives that you can take very large amounts of vit c if required (eg during a viral infection etc.) A few months ago there was something in the newspaper which indicated that large amounts of vit c can cause arteris to harden? My father who used to take vit c regularly stopped taking it after reading this finding. I read about this also but, I do not remember what the maximum amount indicated was. Did you read anything about this research? What is your opinion about it?
Thanks so much!
Avani.
In Reply to: Esterified Vit C posted by Avani on November 28, 2000 at 14:12:41:
Avani,
I read the same thing, I Think on WebMD.com and remember
reading that 500mg was the max you should take a day. I
take it when i think or feel like and usually take 1/2 a
500mg tab.
My dad used to take vitamins but I only remember a multi
and was told he had hardening but there was some confusion
since his Dr said he Didn't have any plaque so I wonder if
the Dr knew. He had a massiver heart attack soon after
cuting out salt and I blamed it on the Renin response.
VF
In Reply to: Re: Esterified Vit C posted by Vince F on November 28, 2000 at 15:13:46:
i have taken up to 10000 mg vit c a day. it comes in 5000 mgper teaspon powder. i have to see proof of arteries hardening,and not in just one person. i know many people who take at least 5000 mg a day for allergies,for 10 yrs
In Reply to: Esterified Vit C posted by Avani on November 28, 2000 at 14:12:41:
Perhaps, the following can help.
From www.lef.org/magazine/articles/vitc_damage2.html:
Life Extension Foundation's Updated
Vitamin C Rebuttal
April 14, 1998
THE MEDIA ATTACKS VITAMIN C
On April 8, 1998, a team of British scientists issued a report stating that vitamin C could cause cell damage by reacting with iron to produce free radicals.
This report was based on 30 human volunteers who were given 500 mg of vitamin C per day for six weeks. The scientists stated that while vitamin C produces protective effects, it also has a dual activity that could cause DNA damage.
In response to this study, newspapers wrote articles attacking the use of vitamin C. What follows is an example of what newspapers printed on April 9, 1998:
Based on a preliminary analysis of this report, here are a few scientific facts:
It is a well known in the field of molecular biology that vitamin C produces both antioxidant and pro-oxidant effects in the body. That's why no one should take vitamin C without also taking vitamin E.
After vitamin C is ingested, it functions as an antioxidant by transferring its own electrons to protect against free radicals in the body. Once it loses its electron balance, vitamin C degenerates into an oxidizing compound called dehydroascorbic acid. Vitamin E has been specifically shown to regenerate oxidized vitamin C by freely donating its own electrons to dehydroascorbic acid. There are other antioxidants such as cysteine that regenerate dehydroascorbic acid back into vitamin C (ascorbic acid), but vitamin E is the most well documented.
The Linus Pauling Institute's preliminary response was that the type of oxidative injury that the British scientists said that vitamin C prevents is ten times more dangerous than the type of damage the British scientists say that vitamin C causes. The Linus Pauling Institute also cited previous research showing that vitamin C prevented the type of oxidative damage that the British scientists say it caused.
Another preliminary rebuttal pointed out that their are twenty different types of DNA damage that could have been measured, but that the British scientists only looked at two of them. This health newsletter (The Nutrition Reporter) poked many holes in the British study including the following quote:
"A study was just reported that 500 mg of vitamin C daily causes breaks in DNA, the complex protein that forms your genes. Gene damage makes people edgy because it can lead to cancer. But the headlines could just as well have stated that vitamin C supplements prevent DNA breaks. That's because the study found that vitamin C also reduced DNA breaks."
The British scientists now want to do additional research to determine exactly what dose of vitamin C can be taken without causing this kind of oxidative stress. The Life Extension Foundation has written a letter to these scientists suggesting that the addition of a 400 IU capsule of vitamin E might eliminate any oxidizing effects that were seen when vitamin C was administered alone.
Study Validates LEF's Position
This small study helps to validate The Life Extension Foundation's long-standing position that vitamin C should be taken with other antioxidants such as vitamin E. Most vitamin supplement users take vitamin E and are protected against the type of damage observed by the British scientists. Antioxidants like n-acetyl-cysteine, grape-seed and green tea extract have also been shown to provide significant protection against the formation and cellular effects of oxidized vitamin C.
While the British scientists stated that the daily intake of 500 mg of vitamin C prevented more DNA damage than it caused, the media's frenzy to attack vitamin C caused this important fact to be overlooked by most people. This incident of "vitamin-bashing" will regrettably cause many people to stop taking a supplement that has been documented in thousands of studies to prevent degenerative disease.
The Life Extension Foundation has written this last-minute report to assure members that it is safe to take vitamin C. A more-in-depth article on the interactions of vitamin C and E in the body will be published in a future issue of Life Extension Magazine.
-------------------------------------------------
From www.lef.org/fda-museum/3suppress_truth_nutrients/lets_live_0593.html:
LETS LIVE, MAY 1993, PAGE 16
Vitamin C -- Killer Nutrient? Not!
By Burton J. Kallman, Ph.D.
Director of Science and Technology for the National Nutritional Foods Association.
In recent months, there has been a flurry of charges to the effect that vitamin C (ascorbic acid) supplements are extremely dangerous and that warning labels should be required on their containers. Going further,-the author of these charges has demanded that vitamin C should be available by prescription only, and that the RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowance) should be lowered from the present 60 mg to 45 ma. So who is saying all this and is he right?
His name is Victor Herbert, and he is a physician and a lawyer. For years, he has been an outspoken (very outspoken) opponent of supplement use-quick to call any advocate of supplements a "vitamin huckster." Herbert has also consistently opposed the concept of diet as an important component in cancer development or prevention. At one point, he even inaccurately reported that a leading biostatistician had reversed his own opinion, dropping his estimate of the percentage of diet-influenced cancers in humans from 35 to an insignificant three.
On what basis has Herbert attacked vitamin C use? He claims that it promotes cancer when taken in megadoses, which he defines as more than 500 mg a day. He is quoted in Food Chemical News (Feb. 1, 1993) as saying, "[I]n megadoses it is one of the most potent oxidants known to humankind. In megadoses it promotes a number of cancers." Is there evidence that vitamin C is an oxidant, rather than an antioxidant? Perhaps in aqueous solutions under some conditions, but not in biological systems. Is there evidence that vitamin C promotes cancers? If there is, it is not very strong compared to the evidence for its protective effects against cancer.
The evidence for protection is impressive. It includes population studies whose review by Gladys Block of the University of California at Berkeley was published (Nutrition Reviews 50 207-213, 1992) under the title, "The Data Support a Role for Antioxidants in Reducing Cancer Risk." Dr. Block reviewed 130 studies that examined vitamin C, E or beta carotene or their food sources and found that some 120 reported statistically significant reduced risk
Further evidence was provided by Enstrom and co-workers, whose research was recently cited in this column. That work, based on dietary and health statistics of over 11, 000 individuals, found that deaths from cancer, cardiovascular disease and from all causes were reduced by higher intakes of vitamin C-from both diet and supplements.
And finally, as evidence that vitamin C is not the killer supplement, there is the close call by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on allowing health claims for antioxidant nutrients. Although the FDA has not yet decided to allow anticancer claims for these nutrients, in either food or supplement, the agency's extensive analysis, published in the Federal Register does not raise the specter of toxic supplements striking down unsuspecting consumers.
Victor Herbert has also attempted to cast doubts about vitamin C because of its possible role in iron-overload diseases. He is described in the same Food Chemical News as claiming that by enhancing the absorption of iron, vitamin C "... is going to further increase the already above-normal iron stores of ten percent of Americans." He further stated that for people who carry only one copy of the gene for iron-overload, vitamin C supplementation in effect converts them into the equivalent of those with two copies of that gene (homogyzons)-and thus assures death from iron overload. For people with iron overload, according to Herbert, injections of vitamin C can be immediately lethal. These charges can be found in an article by Herbert in the December, 1992 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. He is somewhat more circumspect in this article, stating, for example, that intravenous vitamin C is only "occasionally lethal."
How valid are these iron-related charges? As in many of his charges, one wonders where the confirming data are. There is no doubt that iron-overload diseases exist and can be serious. For most American males and postmenopausal women, there is no need for iron supplements, but also no need to avoid vitamin C supplements.
Bendich and Cohen discussed the potential problem of vitamin C and iron in a paper titled, "Ascorbic Acid Safety: Analysis of Factors Affecting Iron Absorption," (Toxicology Letters 51 189-201,1990.) They cite statistics of evidence for iron deficiency in one to three percent of adult females in the US., with the potential for iron-overload disease in about one percent of the general population. (Herbert, in his JADA article, gave figures of about six percent for negative iron balance, ten percent for a single gene for iron overload and one percent for iron overload.) But in their analysis of 24 published articles on the vitamin C-iron overload absorption relationship, Bendich and Cohen found that C did not markedly increase iron stores in individuals with already high levels of iron. They also reported that clinical studies describing the effects of large amounts of vitamin C on iron reserves in iron overload disorders are largely anecdotal, and that the limited experimental data on this topic suggest that such amounts of C do not have a marked effect on iron reserves.
As to the lethal potentials of intravenous ascorbic acid, I know of one report in which a man was hospitalized with second-degree burns and given 80 grams of ascorbic acid intravenously on each of two consecutive days. Due to deficiency of an enzyme in his red blood cells he suffered massive red cell breakdown (hemolysis), kidney failure and died. If this extreme case is one of Herbert's reasons for objecting to vitamin C use, it hardly appears to be germane.
As a footnote, there is a potential danger for children in iron supplements. Deaths from ingestion of large numbers of candy-like iron tablets are all too frequent and these materials must be carefully stored away from young children's access.
In Reply to: Articles from www.lef.com posted by R. on November 29, 2000 at 20:59:20:
Thanks, R.
The forces of the monopoly are dead set against ANYTHING a person can do for themselves. Everyone can expect many more attempts at disinformation to be used.
Namaste`
Walt
In Reply to: Re: Articles from www.lef.com (Archive in vitamin C.) posted by Walt Stoll on November 30, 2000 at 10:35:54:
Thanks so much R. and Dr Stoll. The article is very
interesting. I will send it to my Dad also.
Thanks,
Avani
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