Information Landmine

"The Americans keep telling us how successful their system is. Then they remind us not to stray too far from our hotel at night." - An un-named EU trade representative quoted during international trade talks in Denver, Colorado, 1997.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Vitamin C

In 1953, at the height of the U.S.A.'s Polio epedemic a small town G.P. named Fred R. Klenner used ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to treat the disease. Klenner successfully treated not only Polio, but since the early 40's had used vitamin C megadosing to treat gum disease, pneumonia, chickenpox, mumps, herpes simplex, influenza and more. In spite of his tremendous results at a time of great suffering and loss of life, widespread publication of his results were suppressed and his practices were never widely implemented, although many doctors, including one Dr. Abraham Hoffer confirmed his method. Hoffer completely cured all those patients to whom he prescribed Klenners treatment. A vaccine was created two years later by Dr. Jonas Salk in 1955, though much doubt has been cast over the effectiveness of the Salk vaccine.

Whenever I suggest the use of supplemental Vitamin C I'm invariably met with umming and arring, followed by a string of misconceptions about the supposed negative side effects of ascorbic acid (Vit. C). What most people seem terribly concerned about is that vitamin C will give them diorrhea. This is an actual effect of a Vitamin C overdose, but that's it. It's the effect of an overdose, and a case of the runs is a very minor price to pay when compared to the physiological effects of commonly used, and commonly overdosed drugs like Ibuprofen. The magic number of 1000mg has been ascribed universally as the maximum daily dose; but this safe number takes no account of any of the factors governing an individuals capacity, or need to utilise ascorbic acid. If you're ill, if you smoke, if you excersise vitamin C is depleted. It's very easy to ascertain how much vitamin C you require, just keep taking it and once you've taken as much as your body can utilise you'll excrete it. It's not that terrifying a prospect, and unless you take an enormous dose all in one go your guts will give you ample warning to stop your ingestion long before you need to go running to the toilet.
Other fears of vitamin c overdosing include such myths as causing kidney stones, thickening of the carotid artery (an indicator of coronary artery disease) or that taking Vitamin C whilst pregnant can cause Vitamin C deficient babies at risk of scurvy. According to doctor Klenners paper, "In using vitamin C as an antibiotic no factor of toxicity need be considered. To confirm this observation 200 consecutive hospital patients were given ascorbic acid, 500 to 1000 mg. every four to six hours, for five to ten days. One volunteer received 100,000 mg. in a 12-day period. It must be remembered that 90 per cent of these patients did not have a virus infection to assist in destroying the vitamin. In no instance did examination of the blood or urine indicate any toxic reaction, and at no time were there any clinical manifestations of a reaction to the drug."
All tests that have shown negative results have since been refuted many times over and shown to have been based on flawed experiments, yet the myths about supposed negative effects of non-toxic nutrients persist. The question is who propogates them, and why? Not surprisingly it's in the interests of many politicians and drug companies to maintain a stranglehold on medical treatments, and that means regulating nutrients as drugs.
You may also want to trace it all back to the origin of the stonewalling against Vitamin C.

1 Comments:

Blogger Uncle Petie said...

If it's good enough for Linus Pauling...

20 December, 2006 14:11  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Support the Open Rights Group Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.