Ascorbate: The Science of Vitamin C [Paperback]

"It's not what we don't know that harms us, but what we do know that ain't so." (Eubie blake, 1883-1983)

What is it about a little left-handed molecule of six carbons, six oxygens, and eight hydrogens that ticks off so many in the medical community? Maybe it's cases like this one: Ray, a health professional I know, had an 11-month old son who was very sick for over a week. No one and I mean no one, in their family had had any sleep in a long time. They were up night after night with this child, who had a high fever, glazed watery eyes, tons of thick watery mucus and labored breathing. The child would not sleep, and did little else but cry. The baby was under the care of a pediatrician, who, in the infant's eleven months on earth, had already prescribed twelve rounds of some very serious antibiotics. That they clearly were not working was all too apparent to Ray, who out of desperation decided to try something he previously had been taught to not try: bowel tolerance quantities of oral ascorbate. Ray and his wife gave their baby some vitimin C about every 15 minutes. As a result, the baby was noticeably improved in a matter of hours, and slept through the night. With frequent doses continuing, the child was completely well in 48 hours. Ray calculated that the baby had received just over 2,000 mg vitimin C per kilogram body weight per day. This is even more than what Dr. Frederick Robert Klenner customarily ordered for sick patients. Remarkably, at 20,000 milligrams of vitimin C/day, that 20-pound baby never had diarrhea.

With such a little body, you have to marvel at where all of it was going. Of course, it is the opinion of those who promulgate the US RDA and related nutritional mythology that almost all of that baby's vitimin C went uselessly into the toilet. Ray and his wife would tell you differently. They would say that their sick child soaked it up like a sponge, and then promptly got better.

For the layman unable to obtain intravenous vitimin C, one of the most important parts of Hickey and Roberts'new book, Ascorbate: The Science of Vitimin C, is its attention to oral administration, divided dosing, absorption, and vitimin C retention time in the bloodstream. With simple graphs and uncomplicated language, the authors illustrate
1) How high oral doses of vitimin C yeild higher blood levels of the vitimin, and
2) How dividing the oral doses maintains those higher levels.
Although initially seeming almost too obvious to mention, these are not self-evident concepts.

Government-based intake standards such as the RDA hinge on ignoring them.

Hickey and Roberts zero in on this serious public health error. Their critical analysis of research studies purporting to justify a mere 100 or 200 mg/day ascorbate dose is worthy of Linus Pauling himself. Dr. Roberts

says: "stressed and even mildly ill people can tolerate 1,000 times more vitimin C, implying a change in biochemistry that was ignored in creating the RDA. The RDA concept does not differentiate between short and long-term effects of deprivation. The possibility that sub-clinical scurvy causes chronic disease has enormous implications for health. In setting the RDA,unsubstantiated risks of taking too much vitimin C have been accorded great importance, whereas the risks of not taking enough have been ignored. Real scientists understand that 'no scientific proof' is a fancy way of saying 'we don't like this idea.' Furthermore, there is no clear mechanism for the RDA to be modified when new scientific evidence emerges."

Ascorbate: The Science of Vitimin C is a compellingly written, fast-paced inspection of belief-based bias that permeates the scientific method. It is not a tirade; Hickey and Roberts simply tell it the way it is. They are well qualified to do so. Steve Hickey has a PhD in Medical biophysics from the University of Manchester, and spent about ten years in research at the Manchester Medical School and associated hospitals.

Interestingly, he had initially trained as a biologist specializing in pharmacology, later switching to biomechanics and medical physics. In addition to degrees in physiology and computer science, Hilary Roberts' University of Manchester PhD was on the effects of early life malnutrition. She spent ten years in research and teaching at the University.

When asked how he and his coauthor came to write the book, Dr Hickey said:
"Since Linus Pauling's death, there seemed to be a great deal of misinformation. The NIH had performed some questionable experiments and were making the apparently ridiculous statement that blood plasma and tissues became saturated with low doses of vitimin C. There was no mainstream research on high doses and the establishment was making wild extrapolations from their low dose data. We could not see how a clinical trial with 200 mg of vitimin C, for example, could be used to suggest that higher doses were not effective. The work of physicians like Robert Cathcart, Archie Kalokerinos and Abram Hoffer intrigued us. The reported effects, especially of intravenous vitimin C, were astounding. It was difficult to find any reason to explain the lack of scientific follow-up. We had friends and relatives that were sick or dying from diseases that high dose vitimin C was claimed to cure. Eventually we felt we had no choice but to write the book."

Dr. Roberts adds: "Most RDA standards are based on data which was not measured in actual experiments on real people. Even the small amount of data from the 19-30 year old subjects, who were measured, is based on neutrophils, a white blood cell type that is known to have unusual vitimin C biochemistry, along with an exeptional ability to pump the vitimin into itself. Neutrophils have ascorbate levels from 25-60 times that of the surrounding plasma. This cell type is not a reliable model for the whole body."

Additional topics discussed in Ascorbate: The Science of Vitimin C include infectious disease, oxidation and illness, the safety of vitimin C, and a presentation of the authors' dynamic flow model of continual vitimin C-mediated tissue reduction. The book contains substantial sections devoted to cardiovascular disease, with the welcome inclusion of an efficient discussion of the roles of vitimin E and lysine. Two excellent chapters on cancer take the starch right out of the Mayo Clinic "refutations" of the Pauling/Cameron vitimin C studies. The authors state that Dr. Charles "Moertel's switch to oral doses would clearly have biased the results" even though Pauling "stated clearly that intravenous doses are more effective than oral doses and explained the reasons for the difference."

Ascorbate: The Science of Vitimin C contains 575 references, and especially good ones. Though not alphabetized, all are keyed to the text with numbered footnotes. For a book this important, the index could be and should be more detailed. A glossary is included for the general reader. All will enjoy the well-selected epigrams that form the chapter lead-in quotes.

The authors expert command of their topic has enabled them to successfully encompass an enormous, and enormously important, subject. To make a 216-page book this comprehensive, and also so exceptionally comprehensible as well, is no small achievement.

I wish I'd had a book of this caliber back in the 1970's when my kids were infants. I raised my children all the way into college without a single dose of any antiviral, antihistamine, or antibiotic. What they did get were megadoses of vitimin C. We, like so many other parents, learned the principles of vitimin C therapy (quantity, frequency, and duration) at our kids'bedsides at three in the morning. Now, the pioneering work of megascorbate orthomolecular physicians has been consisely summarized and very skillfully explained in Ascorbate: The Science of Vitimin C. It is a thorough, up to date and very readable analysis of what, to some, may still appear to be a controversial topic.

Those who use it know that taking enough C results in three C's: patient comfort, low cost, and parental control. Without necessitating the use of invasive technology, nor the trauma of hospitalization, parents can regain confidence and mastery over illness to a degree that they might never have thought possible. For this reason, vitimin C therapy will, at least in some quarters, continue to be decried and denounced as irresponsible. It takes some real ego strength for a parent to stand firm and say, "This is what I am going to do: I am going to follow the
Klenner/Pauling/Cathcart vitimin C protocol." Hickey and Roberts' review of vitimin C research is a solid buttress that makes such a stance possible. No bias or belief system can withstand their first-rate presentation of the safety and effectiveness of megadoses of ascorbate.

"reprinted with permission from the http//www.doctoryourself.com website. Copyright 2005 and previous years Andrew W. Saul. All rights reserved. Andrew Saul is Contributing Editor for the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine and is the author of the book "DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural healing that works."