Of course, I am always – ahem – ahead of my time, but I just noted this study that came out very recently. It demonstrates that if you give Vitamin C (along with hydrocortisone and thiamine) for just over two days in patients admitted with sepsis (blood poisoning) the mortality rate falls from 40% to 8.5%. The mortality rate in low income countries is normally around 60%.
Now, this was a small study, but it seems robust. It represents an almost five-fold reduction in mortality, but I think it provides some pretty strong support for the benefits of vitamin C. The conclusions of the study, repeated below were that.
‘Our results suggest that the early use of intravenous vitamin C, together with corticosteroids and thiamine may prove to be effective in preventing progressive organ dysfunction including acute kidney injury and reducing the mortality of patients with severe sepsis and septic shock.’
Hydrocortisone, Vitamin C and Thiamine for the Treatment of Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock: A Retrospective Before-After Study
Paul E. Marik, MD, FCCM, FCCP; Vikramjit Khangoora, MD; Racquel Rivera, Pharm D; Michael H. Hooper, M.D., MSc; John Catravas, PhD, FAHA, FCCP
Author and Funding Information
Chest. 2016. doi:10.1016/j.chest.2016.11.036
Abstract
Background: The global burden of sepsis is estimated as 15 to 19 million cases annually with a mortality rate approaching 60% in low income countries.
Methods: In this retrospective before-after clinical study, we compared the outcome and clinical course of consecutive septic patients treated with intravenous vitamin C, hydrocortisone and thiamine during a 7-month period (treatment group) compared to a control group treated in our ICU during the preceding 7 months. The primary outcome was hospital survival. A propensity score was generated to adjust the primary outcome.
Findings: There were 47 patients in both treatment and control groups with no significant differences in baseline characteristics between the two groups. The hospital mortality was 8.5% (4 of 47) in the treatment group compared to 40.4% (19 of 47) in the control group (p < 0.001). The propensity adjusted odds of mortality in the patients treated with the vitamin C protocol was 0.13 (95% CI 0.04-0.48, p=002). The SOFA score decreased in all patients in the treatment group with none developing progressive organ failure. Vasopressors were weaned off all patients in the treatment group, a mean of 18.3 ± 9.8 hours after starting treatment with vitamin C protocol. The mean duration of vasopressor use was 54.9 ± 28.4 hours in the control group (p<0.001).
Conclusion: Our results suggest that the early use of intravenous vitamin C, together with corticosteroids and thiamine may prove to be effective in preventing progressive organ dysfunction including acute kidney injury and reducing the mortality of patients with severe sepsis and septic shock. Additional studies are required to confirm these preliminary findings.
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick 
Reblogged this on Lorraine Cleaver.
Most interesting, as always. As it is safe to self administer vitamin C, therefore possible, and recommended for people to do it, would that on it’s own provide sufficient protection against sepsis? Is there a mechanism that puts people at risk of sepsis even if they are taking significant daily doses of vitamin C?
http://drsuzanne.net/dr-suzanne-humphries-oral-intravenous-vitamin-c/
Thanks Dr. K and here’s some more information on Vitamin C.
Aha! Thank you Marjorie Daw and Suzanne Humphries for posting this. How do we get the NHS to take notice and try it?
Marjorie
Thank you for the link. I’ve passed it on to most of the sick people I know.
Worth remembering (for those relying on dietary vitamin C) that cooking and exposure to the air destroys vitamin C. Better not to chop things up long before eating and to eat them raw, if at all possible.
Marjorie Daw: The other interesting thing I recall from Dr. Humphries talk is that vitamin C reduces histamine. Seems I have less mucous in the morning when I awake since I started taking it.
Marjorie Daw
Many thanks for the link and sub-links. Generally medical advice and beliefs regarding vitamins are so dominated by Big Pharma phobias on competition from safe natural products that they are terrified of using them. One doctor told me that there was no way he would use Vitamin C IV at more than 2g/day. despite the fact that it has been used successfully at 50g/day as a drip
Reblogged this on The Tin Foil Hat Society and commented:
Surprise surprise. This is pretty much what I recommend to people when they’re sick with a cold: Turmeric or bromelian for anti-inflammatory, vitamin C and zinc, and B complex. Along with supportive care such as real chicken soup, eucalyptus steams, lots more clear fluids, nasal flushes, and rest. Imagine that, a study that basically verifies my thought processes on this. I know I’m talking about colds and this is talking about sepsis, but the greater part of my work is focused on keeping people out of the hospital and I take it very seriously.
Ah yes, if they’d added chicken soup the results would have been even more spectacular
Seriously though, in a world where tiny changes between intervention and control are lauded, you don’t often see numbers like that.
No question, this is a spectacular result. If it carries through to the real world, it will save many many people. Sepsis hits over a million a year in the US alone. 320,000 of a million saved who would have otherwise died, on those numbers.
Incidentally, I recall reading several years ago (here?) that the sepsis epidemic could be related to (caused by) the statin use epidemic. In which case, this is definitely not off-topic.
As I commented to my GP today~
It depresses me (no antidepressants needed) that the attitude of Big Pharma, the medical research establishment and charities seem to be intent on ignoring the cause and possible “natural cures” while concentrating on flogging pharmaceuticals, many of which are, in reality, ineffective.
Mike, I bet the people on here make an interesting group of patients. I now refuse all invitations from my surgery for ‘reviews’ and other so called ‘prevention’ that always seems to lead to more pharma customers.
Yet again, the final comment is need for additional research. As with the New Zealand flu case where the physicians stopped a successful vitamin C protocol because it couldn’t possibly be working, it appears that few allopathic doctors want to admit that Vutamin C is so powerful. None so blind as those who will not see.
This was i/v ascorbic acid not oral. I would suggest that taking vitamin c orally would result in saturation at 400mg, therefore unlikely to prevent sepsis. Also they gave thiamine and a steroid intravenously at the same time and it was to patients with severe sepsis or septic shock, which means they were very unwell with the beginnings of organ failure.
A person may exhibit symptoms of sepsis, for example high temperature, tachycardia and tachypnoea would be enough to consider a diagnosis of sepsis and prompt further investigations. If the condition could be due to infection then the patient could be septic. If the heart rate was above 130 or the respiration rate above 25 then this is considered a ‘red flag’ sepsis and requires prompt treatment, including fluids, I/v antibiotics and regular, frequent monitoring.
http://sepsistrust.org/
Click to access ED-adult-NICE-Final-1107.pdf
Click to access GP-adult-NICE-Final-2.pdf
I/v vitamin c and vitamin b are given to patients who are alcohol dependent, and to patients after acute infections; it is also given to patients after dialysis. http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/medicines/diet-and-nutrition/a7300/pabrinex/.
Hi John, could you talk more about oral saturation at 400mg. I’m trying to get my head around how much Vit C to take and currently take considerably more than 400mg, so I’d be interested to understand if I am just paying for expensive pee!
Nick Lane in his book ” Oxygen the molecule that changed the world”, page 188-190 suggests that less than 50% of a 1g dose of vitamin c is absorbed through the gut, and that the kidneys start excreting vitamin C at doses between 60mg and 100 mg and increase from there. He also suggests that all pools of vitamin c in the body become saturated at 400 mg, anything above this is excreted in urine. Pauling administered vitamin C intravenously. Lane furthere suggests that vitamin c alongside photodynamic therapy may be a more effective cancer treatment.
In previous articles I have given links in Youtube regarding oral Vit C. The belief that effective levels of Vit C can only be achieved by IV administration where it has been claimed that some modified forms of Vit C are more effective orally than I/V. Certainly Klenner over a period of decades from the 1940s used both oral (dosed to tolerance) and I/V successfully in the treatment infections, both viral and bacterial.
I was once told by a doctor that I/V dosing of more than 2 g was simply to dangerous. Unfortunately Big Pharma sees Vit C as a competitor to be denigrated by astroturfing and anything else they can use. even supporting flawed research to dissuade the use of Vit C and indeed anything else that competes with their patented drugs and with their money they are very good at it.
After all this is the era of post-truth and fake news.
Very interesting indeed. I had blood poisoning after a tree fell on me in Africa, badly wounding my leg and foot. Took months of antibiotics to get better, and it was extremely painful. It looks as if large amounts of IV Vitamin C, etc, would have done a quicker job. Streptococcal meningitis with following sepsis devastated a friend, who lost fingers and toes as a result; perhaps the Vit C treatment would help in such cases? Would doctors in the NHS be brave enough to try it?
diagnosing sepsis is not easy of course. My youngest brother was very ill last year, paramedics working on him in his drive, taken to hospital and sepsis diagnosed, a wound the probable cause. How wonderful to find such a combination can be so effective.
My brother recovered, but of course, other problems discovered, atrial fibrillation for one.and so anti coagulants. He is back to walking his dogs and busy as ever being a fabulous husband and father. Thank you again Dr Kendrick for your work in our beleaguered NHS and keeping this wonderful blog alive and kicking.
Thank you. I wonder if it’ll be taken up by hospitals as a matter of course.
Good
Can this procedure be stopped by Big Pharma? They succeeded with Paulings treatment of terminal cancer patients some years ago.
A crazy world indeed!
The signal of vitamin C on cancer is much weaker.
Someone has referenced below the Phase I trial by Fowler et alter. Phase II is already coming as a multicenter randomized controlled trial. I think vindication of Dr. Klenner is just a matter of little time now.
Not that we have to wait for intravenous vitamin C to be easily available. Dr. Levy’s clinical experience points towards liposomal vitamin C to be more effective on infections. Not that its workings has been elucidated yet.
Good news indeed. The sample size is certainly large enough to show a real effect. The SOFA score improved in all in the treatment group. I wonder how long it will take for this to become the standard of care. I, too, am curious about AH Notepad’s question. What causes sepsis, and can vitamin C deficiency play a causal role in creating the conditions which result in sepsis? Last year my GP told me about her husband, who had to have part of his colon removed and that it had turned into sepsis. A serious matter. He pulled through.
Malcolm,
What treatment did the historical control group receive and how can one tease out that Vitamin C was responsible for improvement in survival rates of the later group?
I think that oranges are being compared with lemons.
Morley
You could ask them Morley.
Hard to be sure from just an abstract, but the talk about pressors suggests standard sepsis treatment was used in both groups. I would be very, very surprised if it wasn’t, not giving standard treatment would be a huge gamble, and result in equally huge legal liability.
Paul Marik, btw, the lead author, is a well-respected physician in the US, and the author of “Evidence-based critical care”, in my humble opinion among the best available in the genre.
My understanding of what causes sepsis is that it is just like any minor bacterial infection such as a small cut which the body normally handles easily enough. When bacteria form a boil and this can drain, the body has successfully isolated the infection, but when the body is unable to do that the bacteria get into the bloodstream in sufficient numbers that the defenses are overwhelmed. A person might have a large enough wound that gets infected, or they may be debilitated and become septic where a healthier person might not.
Anna: Thanks. An infection which overwhelms and gets into the bloodstream.
This is quite amazing really. For decades we’ve been told that vitamin C, whether ingested (expensive urine) or given intravenously (waste of time) is useless against anything and at best reduces cold symptoms slightly over a couple of days. Together with Errett’s post in the previous blog describing the results of a study showing how intravenous vitamin C sensitizes cancer cells to radiation whilst activating the adaptive stress defense system in normal cells, and now this study showing an amazing survival increase when vitamin C was added to the treatment protocol of severe sepsis and septic shock, it would seem that Pauling, Stone, Rath et al were not just right but decidedly right, decades ago.
What do you imagine would be the newspaper headlines if this wasn’t vitamin C in the studies but some “new expensive drug with very sciency and impressive sounding name”?
Because it is vitamin C, I don’t expect any newspaper headlines. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the results were buried, together with all the people who could have otherwise been saved. Don’t expect this life saving protocol in any hospital near you anytime soon.
Mark Johnson
You really have hit a very large naill very squarely on the head.
The answer to your question (What do you imagine would be the newspaper headlines if this wasn’t vitamin C in the studies but some “new expensive drug with very sciency and impressive sounding name”?) is simple.
There would be a massive press release with inflated relative rates created using fancy HRs with experts explaining the brilliance of their discovery.
Very good
Proud that friends of ours described us as addicted to Vitamin C inthe early seventies
Thank you very much for this interesting study, Malcolm. My veterinary surgeon brother used to give my sister in law Vitamin C intravenously for cancer. She made a full recovery and is still with us (and cancer-free) twenty years later. But that’s only anecdotal evidence, of course! Marion
MARION EATON 01424 755401 07804358815 mail@marioneaton.com http://www.marioneaton.com
From: Dr. Malcolm Kendrick To: mail@whisperwood.co.uk Sent: Saturday, 28 January 2017, 14:47 Subject: [New post] Vitamin C – an update #yiv0917109701 a:hover {color:red;}#yiv0917109701 a {text-decoration:none;color:#0088cc;}#yiv0917109701 a.yiv0917109701primaryactionlink:link, #yiv0917109701 a.yiv0917109701primaryactionlink:visited {background-color:#2585B2;color:#fff;}#yiv0917109701 a.yiv0917109701primaryactionlink:hover, #yiv0917109701 a.yiv0917109701primaryactionlink:active {background-color:#11729E;color:#fff;}#yiv0917109701 WordPress.com | Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “Of course, I am always – ahem – ahead of my time, but I just noted this study that came out very recently. It demonstrates that if you give Vitamin C (along with hydrocortisone and thiamine) for just over two days in patients admitted with sepsis (blood p” | |
Marion
There are several studies that show the benefit of Vitamin C in cancer.. A search on Pubmed
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=vitamin+c+cancer
found 5256 references. Vitamin C is cheap; Big Pharma drugs are VERY COSTLY. Need I say more?
Click to access 1479-5876-11-191.pdf
Clinical experience with Vitamin C
Conclusions: The data indicate that, while potentially therapeutic plasma ascorbate concentrations can be achieved with IVC, levels attained will vary based on tumor burden and degree of inflammation (among other factors). Evidence suggests that IVC may be able to modulate inflammation, which in turn might improve outcomes for cancer patients. IVC may serve as a safe, adjunctive therapy in clinical cancer care.
Interesting that you should mention vets. I was persuaded to take four 500mg tablets of Vitamin C over a day, by someone I lived next to when working in Cambridge (UK). Although he was working in a boring job at one of the the local bio-medical research sites, his real interest was in the health of great apes in captivity. I had not realised the huge difference to mortality in captive apes that resulted when (back in the 1970s), their diet was fortified with vitamin C to bring it up to the level that they would have consumed in the wild. Apes of course have exactly the same genetic missing link that we have in that they are unable to synthesise Vitamin c in the liver.
(Vets are paid by results. NHS doctors aren’t!)
I wonder what is going on in the world just now with the new US president.
He has recently jumped on Big Pharma twice on the vaccin issue and the last time about the nonsens of flue shots and now talking openly of the greatest medical scam ever. He is actually the president of the US.
http://yournewswire.com/trump-flu-shot-scam/
Although I am certainly very far from being a right wing person myself I truly admire the fighting spirit of this “controversial” president against the present day medical corruption. Is it without penalty to challenge the Rockefeller imperium?
Dr. Göran Sjöberg: Thank you for this link! I didn’t know about this. We Americans have to get our news from Sweden now! I’m not a right winger, either, or a left winger, for that matter. It is actually a novel thing for a U.S. president to tell the truth.
If this one ever tells other than “alternative facts” I will be living on a diet of head coverings.
Goran,
Is Trump ‘right wing’ in any conventional sense – for example he wants to get on better terms with Russia, and to stop the US military interfering all over the world.
If he finds a way to attack some of the medical scams, that will be fantastic!
David Bailey: I wouldn’t call him right wing. What would I call him? Unique! A breath of fresh air in many ways. The reaction of the media says it all. He’s a keeper.
Gary
This is 100% off topic but:
Trump is a populist
He does speak his mind, but if that is it, I wish he didn’t.
I’m not entirely sure if left and right has any meaning anymore. I used to consider myself left, but the new ‘progressive’ left does not represent me, so I guess I’m not left anymore. I’m not right either. I quite like some of Trump’s policies. I also like the fact that he speaks his mind, not the double-speak we’ve been hearing the last few decade. He might turn out to be wrong on one or two things, but so are most of us.
I’m very sceptical that Mr Trump is actually attacking Big Pharma. What he is attacking is flu vaccination; “anti-vax” is a strong theme in right-wing US politics.
He apparently has a good relationship with his doctor, and dutifully takes his low-dose aspirin and his rosuvastatin, the currently favoured juju against heart trouble.
can anyone tell me…..was Linus Paulings research into vit c intravenous?
The following link
http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/search/osu/vitamin%20c%20for%20virus%20infection/0/1/
has references/links that suggest the the IV route has been researched
Great conference on Vitamin C https://kirkspoweraging.com/uncategorized/sepsis-cancer-intravenous-vitc/
Did you know of this conference https://kumc.cloud-cme.com/Ap2.aspx?EID=655&P=1 It was on IV Vitamin C with speakers from around the world. Held at University of Kansas via Integrative Medicine via Dr Jeanne Drisko.
Jerry White jerrymwhite@outlook.com
Microcirculation. 2013 Aug;20(6):502-10. doi: 10.1111/micc.12047.
Ascorbate reduces mouse platelet aggregation and surface P-selectin expression in an ex vivo model of sepsis.
Secor D1, Swarbreck S, Ellis CG, Sharpe MD, Tyml K.
OBJECTIVE:
Compromised perfusion of the capillary bed can lead to organ failure and mortality in sepsis. We have reported that intravenous injection of ascorbate inhibits platelet adhesion and plugging in septic capillaries. In this study, we hypothesized that ascorbate reduces aggregation of platelets and their surface expression of P-selectin (a key adhesion molecule) in mice.
METHODS:
Platelets were isolated from control mice and subjected to agents known to be released into the bloodstream during sepsis (thrombin, ADP or U46619, thromboxane A2 analog). Platelet aggregation was analyzed by aggregometry and P-selectin expression by flow cytometry.
RESULTS:
Platelet-activating agents increased aggregation and P-selectin expression. Ascorbate inhibited these increases. This inhibitory effect was NOS-independent (LNAME had no effect). In contrast to the platelet-activating agents, direct stimuli lipopolysaccharide, TNFα, or plasma from septic mice did not increase aggregation/expression, a finding consistent with the literature. The results suggest a complex mechanism of platelet aggregation and P-selectin expression in sepsis, where generation of platelet-activating stimuli is required first, before platelet aggregation and adhesion in capillaries occur.
CONCLUSION:
The ability of ascorbate to reduce platelet aggregation and P-selectin expression could be an important mechanism by which ascorbate inhibits capillary plugging in sepsis.
Erret
https://www.medichecks.com/search/?s=Vitamin+C
This is a UK lab testing company does a lot of tests.
May be of use to UK readers
I love reading youre posts
This is a great lecture by Dr. Suzanne Humphries on Vitamin C. It’s almost 2 hours long but worth the time. Dr. Humphries uses vitamin C in her medical practice to lessen the severity and duration of whooping cough. On her website, are articles with links to studies on the effectiveness of vitamin C in treating infectious illnesses like measles. And on the flip side, vitamin C keeps you healthy.
Agree!
Marjorie Daw: Thank you very much for the link. Lots of good information. What struck me this morning as I woke up was remembering her speaking of improvements in bladder and urinary tract health from 1-2g/day of vitamin C. This may be the reason I routinely sleep through the night now, even after having coffee in the evening. More and better collagen?
Very good
Thank you.
I was on a strong IV antibiotic cocktail for five straight days after a very nasty appendectomy. Collapsed that vein, but it worked.
How much easier might it have been with C in that mix?
How much easier if I’d prepared with oral liposomal vitamin C?
(Is it true that liposomal C is absorbed – usefully – to a much greater degree than oral ascorbic acid??)
JDPatten: According to Dr. Humphries liposomal vitamin C is indeed absorbed at a much higher rate. The link to her post is well worth clicking.
I assume both groups in the study also got IV antibiotics?
Although I am not a medical worker of any description I find your articles fascinating and informative especially concerning statins.
Please continue your good work.
Regards
Roy Butler
Very interesting. Thank you Dr. K. I had sepsis and acute liver failure in April 2013. Initial treatment was IV antibiotics, Prednisolone and Thiamine. On discharge I continued with Prednisolone and Thiamine for one month but of my own accord added high dose Vit C and a B complex. The Consultant’s response at my September 2013 response was ‘a phenomenal recovery’, so something worked.
Geeze, it’s badly written. With what had the control group been treated?
Anna, thank you for your input on “what is sepsis?”. As well as Suzanne Humphries videos on vitamin C, she has a series on “Vaccines Disease and Health”. Needles to say there is plenty of overlap. Another expert who puts in plenty is Tom Levy https://youtu.be/e36ksTWzc8U. He deals with intravenous, liposomal, sodium and palmate compounds and the protective mechanism. Though I can listen to these videos and can understand a lot of the content, I know some people in the medical world who could floor me with a well chosen question, if i was in a discussion. I would not be wrong, and they would not be right, but they are used to dealing with rebels like me ;).
Mark Johnson, for a pseudo scientific name which would be accurate and not merely “Vitamin C”, how about something stolen from a shampoo (I think) advert? “Plenitude Active Liposomes”? Plenitude = lots of, (just what is needed) Active = does things, Liposomes = a delivery compound which happens to be remarkably efficient method to get the vitamin into the cells.
Having said that, I prefer “Vitamin C”. It is simple, accurate, and unpretentious. I have just ordered a monster stock of liposomal vitamin C, so I hope I feel better after taking it. Tom Levy points out that home made liposomal vitamin C is more likely to be an emulsion. While the emulsion is probably more effective than straight vitamin C, without the correct method, making it liposomal is unlikely to be a diy home exercise.
A big thank you to all who post on here. I would not have ventured so far alone. It’s a pity family members, one with MS and another with fibromyalgia, are treated by the restricted and hamstrung NHS. However, I’ll work on that one, it may take some time.
How do we know it wasn’t the hydrocortisone and/or thiamine that did the trick here? With what were the control group treated?
We can only say that this is due to vitamin C if the control group received the same treatment in all other ways i.e. IV hydrocortisone and thiamine.
Of course it was not a randomized controlled study. However, antibiotics were introduced on the basis that, without them, lots of ‘infected’ people died. With them, far fewer people died. Richard Doll’s seminal study on smoking and lung cancer was not randomized either – simply observational. There has never been a randomized controlled study on the use of parachutes to save lives. on exiting a aerospace plunging to the ground. either. My own view is that if you can see an effect whereby overall mortality is reduced by 500%, within 53 hours, it is possible that it was just a coincidence – I suppose. More likely, I believe, that you are looking at a real effect.
Ah yes the parachute rct
http://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459
A much longer and less sarcastic look at how science should be done and often isn’t
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/saving-science
Richard Doll’s study was huge (over 40,000 participants) and prospective. This study was tiny and restropsective. Even the authors call their findings preliminary. Yet you think it seems robust, presumably based on reading just the abstract alone? Such a quick appraisal is baffling and very unwise.
As others have said, without a detailed knowledge of the control group treatments (we need to know that vitamin C was the only difference between the groups) and, additionally, how patients were selected to receive the treatments (ultimately, we need to know that every important prognostic factor was balanced across groups) we can’t infer a thing.
The best we get is ‘no significant differences in baseline characteristics between groups’ which is of little use without seeing further data.
http://www.statisticalmisses.nl/index.php/frequently-asked-questions/84-why-are-significance-tests-of-baseline-differences-a-very-bad-idea
Yes, I understand that Dr Kendrick. I am asking why your headline, all the discussion, and all these comments, talk about vitamin C only, when this highly impressive intervention was hydrocortisone, thiamin AND vitamin C. Of those three ingredients I would be most inclined to believe the hydrocortisone was key, as it’s a corticosteroid with powerful effects on a range of ailments, whereas numerous meta-analyses and SRs have found no evidence in support of various of the claims made in favour of VitC. Or maybe it’s 100% the thiamin. Why aren’t we all talking up the thiamin? Or maybe I’ve missed some other strong evidence about the specific powers of VitC in similar contexts. It’s a genuine question.
Thanks to Chris and Mark for their interesting links
Statistics can be used for many purposes and misused for even more . A very useful tool when properly used but often misused. Too often users forget that one starts with the null hypothesis – knocking down the difference between treatments.
From the previous blog entry: “glucose and vitamin C have some interesting interactions in the body. Mainly, it seems, that high levels of glucose prevent vitamin C from entering cells.”
Perhaps Dr Kendrick has explained something that was a bit of a mystery to me. A couple of years ago I started getting spontaneous nose bleeds. For no reason at all, my nose would start dribbling a small trickle of blood. I wasn’t picking it or blowing it.
At the time I was under a lot of stress and self-medicating with sugar. A cup of tea with milk and five spoons of sugar would give me the “warm fuzzies” as I called them (i.e. relaxed and slightly dizzy), and I was drinking eight cups of tea a day. Plus I was eating my usual diet with lots of wholewheat bread and brown rice, and adequate fresh fruit and vegetables so I wasn’t vitamin C deficient by RDA standards.
I had read somewhere that vitamin B was important in tubular structures, so I took brewer’s yeast tablets and cut down on the sugar for a while, and the problem went away, until the next time.
But maybe the problem was actually all the extra glucose blocking vitamin C, which led to leaky capillaries in my nose, and cutting sugar would have done the trick without the brewer’s yeast. (I’ll never know, because I no longer eat or drink anything with sugar in it.)
My pharmacy has 500 g vitamin C tablets on special, and I’m thinking of giving it a try, although I’m not a big believer in supplements. My question is, if you are only taking one tablet a day, when is the best time to take it?
My plan is to take the tablet at night with my evening meal, my reasoning being that you probably need maximum vitamin C while you are sleeping and the body is renewing itself. Does anyone see a problem with this logic?
Why do The Inuit get so many nose bleeds?
Because they rub noses too hard?
Seriously, cold dry air dries out the sinuses, causing nose bleeds. Also, I’ve read that in the high mountains of Afghanistan your nasal mucus freezes into little needle-like crystals and if you rub your nose carelessly you can stab your sinuses.
Also, perhaps the Inuit should try sniffing bacon. Although bleeding soccer players get a Tampax shoved up their nose, medically, pork products have been known to work.
I didn’t know they did. Perhaps it is all the fish oil? I had thousands of nosebleeds as a child. I had forgotten about it. I guess I outgrew it.
Martin Black
Re nose bleeds and pork. As you say it works – no logic no “science”
This is what I complain about with Govt and Charity backed research using public donations and tax-payer money to promote pharmaceuticals while there are “remedies” out there claiming all sorts of cures. My question is do they work? To be told by one charity that they knew nothing about a particular treatment but that it was useless is the sort of science that I find totally illogical and frightening.
Oops! 500 mg tablets. I wish to dose myself, not an elephant ;o)
Martin, best to look at the videos by Suzanne Humphries, Tom Levy et al.
A link between vitamin C and our old friend, nitric oxide:
Phase I safety trial of intravenous ascorbic acid in patients with severe sepsis
On the basis of this study and our prior preclinical studies, we speculate as to the pleiotropic* mechanisms by which ascorbic acid would be beneficial in sepsis. Ascorbic acid is rapidly taken up by endothelial cells in millimolar quantities where it scavenges reactive oxygen species and increases endothelial nitric oxide synthase-derived nitric oxide by restoring tetrahydrobiopterin content, thus, increasing bioavailable nitric oxide.” — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3937164/?report=classic
*pleiotropic — capable of producing more than one effect from a single cause. (I had to look it up.)
Yes, well. Of course. Cheers.
From the same study:
Conclusions
This phase I trial shows that aggressive repletion of plasma ascorbic acid levels in patients with severe sepsis is safe. This early work in septic patients suggests that pharmacologic ascorbic acid repletion reduces the extent of multiple organ failure and attenuates circulating injury biomarker levels.
ie it works.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the next step in the not too distant future would be for BigPharma to try and begin isolating individual steps of action and to synthesise a patentable molecule to mimic at least one of those steps to show a marginal benefit, which would of course be shouted from the metaphoric rooftops of an all too compliant press.
Martin Back: This is wonderful news!
What type of vitamin c are people taking and how much. vitamin c liposomal Is very expensive. Will it help to reduce high blood pressure
Charlie: Here is a meta-analysis of trials showing BP reduction with vitamin C supplementation: PubMed PMID 22492364 Juraschek, et al.
They used low doses (mean dose: 500 mg/day) and a short duration, so the question is, will higher doses and longer duration have a greater effect?
The half-life of vitamin C is about 1/2 hour, so it would be better to take smaller doses every couple of hours.
It’s mentioned in this article about how the RDA was based on a fallacy.
http://knowledgeofhealth.com/the-vitamin-c-fanatics-were-right-all-along/
Charlie
I take one gramme daily of Vit C
Blood pressure, untreated is within the Dutch average for my age (thanks Eugene)
It goes down nicely with daily walking, beetroot and L Carnitine.
Lipitor and thyroid deficient – caused by fluorination? http://suzycohen.com/articles/is-your-medication-making-you-sick/ The same bond makes fluorination a powerful lever for new drug design, allowing the tweaking of organic molecules in innovative ways, which has led to several blockbuster commercial successes, such as Lipitor and Prozac. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_aspects_of_fluorine
Thank you for this valuable informations! is there any study that can relay on it
At the time I was under a lot of stress and self-medicating with sugar.
Seriously? You used sugar as a “medicine”? (Unless someone’s hypo of course).
A cup of tea with milk and five spoons of sugar would give me the “warm fuzzies” as I called them (i.e. relaxed and slightly dizzy), and I was drinking eight cups of tea a day. Plus I was eating my usual diet with lots of wholewheat bread and brown rice, and adequate fresh fruit and vegetables so I wasn’t vitamin C deficient by RDA standards.
You were consuming 40 spoonfuls of table sugar a day, deliberately?! That’s at least 200 grams of sugar per day! And that’s on top of the “lots of wholewheat bread and brown rice”.
But maybe the problem was actually all the extra glucose blocking vitamin C, which led to leaky capillaries in my nose, and cutting sugar would have done the trick without the brewer’s yeast. (I’ll never know, because I no longer eat or drink anything with sugar in it.)
I think any problems you had and would have developed in the future would have been linked to the high sugar consumption on it’s own.
My pharmacy has 500 g vitamin C tablets on special, and I’m thinking of giving it a try, although I’m not a big believer in supplements. My question is, if you are only taking one tablet a day, when is the best time to take it?
My plan is to take the tablet at night with my evening meal, my reasoning being that you probably need maximum vitamin C while you are sleeping and the body is renewing itself. Does anyone see a problem with this logic?
The half life for vitamin C in the body is pretty high hence the advice to take it split dosed throughout the day. Having said that taking 500mg in the evenin following your logic seems OK.
High doses of sugar definitely have a “feel-good” effect. Rats e.g. find sugar more addictive than cocaine. I’m sure it’s one of the reasons why sugary foods and drinks are so popular.
According to Wikipedia, vitamin C has two half-lives. Once the blood is saturated, any excess is excreted via the kidneys with a half-life of 30 minutes. But at lower concentrations, the half-life varies with the concentration to as long as 83 days at very low concentrations.
Another question would be, how fast is vitamin C absorbed? If you take e.g. a 500 mg pill, does the concentration rise rapidly to saturation level with the excess being rapidly excreted, or is it absorbed slowly enough so there is no wastage? Does taking it with food make a difference? I haven’t found the answers to these questions yet.
The title you chose, well , I wonder. You could have chosen “Thiamine,an update”
This paper is authored by a respected CCM author.
Yet it doesn’t provide a “pretty strong support” to the usefulness of whatever, let alone ascorbic acid.
It is retrospective.
It’s a comparison of before vs after.
This is the bottom of evidence quality, likely similar to expert opinion.
It turns out that recent studies on sepsis trying to test the incredibly touted “early goal directed therapy” have failed , probably because of a continuous improvement in the way sepsis is treated, given the mephasis on “earliness” in fluid and antibiotic adinistration in severe sepsis / septic shock.
So this paper is hypothesis generating. Nothing less , nothing more and the hypothesis needs to be adequately tested in a prospective study no one will fund. Unless an orange/lemon producer chimes in.
Nothing more than a suggestion A “may improve ” (logically “may ” is equivalent to “may not”).
My grain of multivitamins
Umberto, a survival increase of about 500% and that’s the best you could come up with to rubbish the paper?! Tell me, should you ever be in the unfortunate position of being admitted to hospital suffering from sepsis, would you turn down the above IV vitamin C protocol or am I in danger of comparing lemons with oranges?
Yes Mark, without a doubt.
Not rubbish but hypothesis generating.
Small study , large effect that is all right but not a randomised controled trial.
Even small RCTs have been proven to usually not be confirmed (effect size usually exagerated) as shown by J. Ioannidis, someone Malcolm knows about.
Observational before and after study this is very low evidence.
And as I stressed , intensive care for sepsis has been improving these last few years. Which causes problems with the before / after sytudy type.
Next step should be animal experimentation, because a large enough RCT costs a lot of (in that case public) money, decication and work.
ANd it animal experimentation proves effectiveness then a human RCT.
I’d volunteer as a patient in such an RCT.
I’ve discussed this paper with EBM specialists and intensive care specialists.
No way you can trust this to start giving the 3 products tested .
They are surprised Marik was a bit bold in his conclusions.
Replace Vitamin C with Statin : would you accept this as a valid result ?
I would’nt.
Besides, it is not a 500 % increase in survival. You are using relative risk. This is not the truth.
Relative risk shouldn’t be used anymore but they are to make the drugs look better. In this case, the authors ere fair enough as to give us the absilute % of survival in the abstract ; Often you have to calculate it from the tables.
The real increase in survival is 31.9% “only”.
Which would be absolute magic bullet if this were an RCT.
If vitamin C is /were an effective adjunct to sepsis treatment , then it s important to prove it correctly so that the world of intensivists use it.
But the ‘ may be’ is certainly worth pursuing. Lots of small studies, collaboration with other countries. Of course the funding and the will is difficult, but shared expense. Is attractive. So much flux now in the world, altruism in short supply. How simple I am.
Did not mean my comments to be in a political sense. My lefty ideals have modified as I have got older.
Did not mean my comments to be in a political sense. My lefty ideals have modified as I have got older.
My favourite comment your post reminded me of is:
If you aren’t left wing whilst a youngster you don’t have a heart.
If you aren’t right wing by the time you get a bit older, you don’t have a brain.
(Not wishing to offend anyone – please take it tongue in cheek if you need to!)
Regarding Dr. Kendrick’s assertion that for the dietary hypothesis to be true (that diet affects CHD), one must explain how heart disease has gone down while obesity has gone up, Gary Taubes does a pretty good job here:
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2017/01/30/gary-taubes/case-against-sugar-isnt-so-easily-dismissed?utm_content=buffer088b0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
I believe diet affects heart disease, particularly that insulin resistance affects or causes heart disease, including cardiomyopathy. I also believe Dr. Kendrick has the best explanation I’ve seen of what causes heart disease. Are these mutually exclusive? I hope not; I think not; I believe not. But I don’t know. I hope these can be reconciled.
Bob, Taubes response is excellent. Thank you for the link.
note that, in my view very significantly, the authors reported that “None of the patients in the treatment group died from complications related to sepsis… All these patients survived their ICU stay, were made “comfort care” on the hospital floor and died from complications of their underlying disease (advanced dementia, severe heart failure, advanced sarcoidosis and severe COPD).”
Am I wrong to believe this?
Nature loves a balance. If you persist in an extreme direction, things can turn about and the opposite effect to that desired might be achieved.
Nature doesn’t love a balance—–Nature loves obedience to law—–which leads to absolute relative chaos or complete disorder.
Thermodynamics: the study of heat power; a branch of physics which studies the efficiency of energy transfer and exchange.
1. Decaying buildings. Massive structures may appear to be capable of lasting almost forever, but they will not. The need for ongoing repairs stems, in part, from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics describes basic principles familiar in everyday life. It is partially a universal law of decay; the ultimate cause of why everything ultimately falls apart and disintegrates over time. Material things are not eternal. Everything appears to change eventually, and chaos increases. Nothing stays as fresh as the day one buys it; clothing becomes faded, threadbare, and ultimately returns to dust.2 Everything ages and wears out. Even death is a manifestation of this law. The effects of the 2nd Law are all around, touching everything in the universe. Each year, vast sums are spent to counteract the relentless effects of this law (maintenance, painting, medical bills, etc.). Ultimately, everything in nature is obedient to its unchanging laws.
2nd law of thermodynamics: Physicist Lord Kelvin stated it technically as follows: “There is no natural process the only result of which is to cool a heat reservoir and do external work.” In more understandable terms, this law observes the fact that the use-able energy in the universe is becoming less and less. Ultimately there would be no available energy left. Stemming from this fact we find that the most probable state for any natural system is one of disorder. All natural systems degenerate when left to themselves.
3. It is well known that, left to themselves, chemical compounds ultimately break apart into simpler materials; they do not ultimately become more complex. Outside forces can increase order for a time (through the expenditure of relatively large amounts of energy, and through the input of design). However, such reversal cannot last forever. Once the force is released, processes return to their natural direction – greater disorder. Their energy is transformed into lower levels of availability for further work. The natural tendency of complex, ordered arrangements and systems is to become simpler and more disorderly with time.4
Read more at: http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-thermodynamics.html
Verbose and IMO not entirely accurate article.
For example “3. It is well known that, left to themselves, chemical compounds ultimately break apart into simpler materials; they do not ultimately become more complex.”
Take iron and oxygen. Two simple compounds that will combine to form the more complex rust. Nowhere have I seen rust break apart to form iron and oxygen.
Chemical compounds do not break down to simpler components, they move to the form with the lowest energy, therefore water will stay as water, it will not spontaneously decay to hydrogen and oxygen as that requires energy usually in the form of an electric current in electrolysis. Hydrated Ferric oxide (rust) is also a similar low energy compound, and hence requires energy to reclaim the iron. For radioactive decay the most stable element is usually lead, for nuclear fission it is iron. To produce elements above iron requires a large amount of energy, usually in a supernova. The third law of thermodynamics states that entropy (disorder) of a closed system always increases. The zeroth law states that energy can neither be created or destroyed, i.e. the total energy within a closed system remains constant, this energy may be in the form of what we perceive as energy or, using Einstein’s matter/energy equivalence, what we perceive as matter. However, this does not take into account quantum effects, they are macro system laws.
TS,
I guess this is what is called homeostatis.
E.g., when we “extreme” LCHF addicts are exposed to the standard 75 grams glucose load diabetes test we are all diabetic. But if we make the test after a week adjusting on the carb-rich standard fare no one is “diabetic” any longer.
By the way, LCHF is a way to escape if you are trapped in the metabolic syndrome where diabetes T2 is one strong indicator of the trap.
Goran:
Yes, but I’m also thinking that one can sometimes get paradoxical reactions to drugs when they are overused.
My husband and I are both LCHF followers. I see nothing extreme in that.
I see nothing extreme in taking plenty of vitamin C by mouth. And huge IV amounts are safe because they tend to be one-offs.
No, I’m thinking aloud really, and a bit off topic.
Erret:
I followed your link and although I am an atheist and believer in evolution I have no problem with everything becoming “dust” again – and the disorder seems like order to me.
TS
Good to hear that you as me are struggling along the “narrow LCHF path”. I hope you have reaped some benefits. What keeps myself and my wife here on this narrow path is not “religious” or moral (as you we are both atheists believing in the natural sciences and the Darwinian evolution hypothesis) but the very fact that every time we fall off (too easy!) the path our health immediately suffers. It is thus more like a stick than a carrot where the carrots today still dwell in our dreams.
Thermodynamics is by the way one of my favorite subjects but it doesn’t really explain very much in the real world although it is a formidable predictive tool of the instrumental kind. It is more akin to philosophy as e.g. Karl Popper and other distinguished scientists so well understood.
More on Vit C
http://orthomolecular.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=72b32a1f754ba1c09b3695e0cb6cde7f.61
and
Vitamin C Prevents Side Effects from the MMR Vaccine
orthomolecular.activehosted.com/index.<…
… archive link http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index … 61-87. http://orthomolecular.org/library … orthomolecular.activehosted.com/p_v.php?l=1&c=44 …
and
Vitamin C Cures Pneumonia – orthomolecular.activehosted.com
orthomolecular.activehosted.com/index.<…
Medical Hypotheses 1985, 18:61 … http://orthomolecular.activehosted.com/p_v.php?l=1&c=45&m … OMNS archive link http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index …
And today’s orthomolecular news: Vitamin C and Metabolic Syndrome. http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v13n07.shtml
Frederica,
Thank you for this link – very informativ. This fits so well into my present view on this issue.
I regret that there was no means to get IV-vitamin C when I was hit by a nasty pneumonia in november and stuck in the bed for a whole month(!) on antibiotics. Well I didn’t know about the IV-C procedur anyway then and if I had I guess that my sentiments regarding our criminal health care system would have hit an even lower mark than they had before.
I wonder how low they can go?
Is it btw possible to safely administer IV-C on your own when you have an acute need? I mean that there are many drug addicts who do these sort of things every day. I have already orally “medicated” myself with vitamins for 17 years by now so why not take this a step further?
Dr. Goran – I just wanted to tell you that I have adopted your method of taking VitC; I’ve abandoned tablets and now make up a mixture from powder and sip through the day. It seems more sensible than taking an overwhelmingly large dose in one go. After the ‘shock’ of the sour it’s very refreshing.
Hi, how much do you take and where do you buy it from
Hi Dan – I buy mine from Holland & Barrett. It’s quite cheap, particularly as last month it was in the ‘penny sale’ – buy one, get another for a penny. I dissolve half a teaspoon on a glass of warm water and take sips whenever I’m passing.
I don’t know whether you’re in the UK but I understand that H&B to an online mail order service.
Cheers
J
Dan
Ascorbic acid you easily find in your grocery store though in parcels of ten grams. I buy it by the kilo at a fraction of that cost – search the net. In my glass of water I have approximately 8 grams today.
From maybe a negative side?
High Doses of Vitamin C Supplement Increase Blood Glucose Levels
https://www.diabeteshealth.com/high-doses-of-vitamin-c-supplement-increase-blood-glucose-levels/
I wonder if that was real or an artifact? I seem to remember reading (but it was long ago) that certain glucometer test strips reacted to vitamin C. Not sure if this is still the case.
@ chris c
Funny they didn’t mention if they tested they guy’s A1c. If V-C mimics glucose I wonder if it also affects A1c? The article does mention that 1,500-2,000 mg per day of V-C does lower both blood glucose levels and A1c.
Actually a good point – and fructosamine would also be worth a look, some people have high or low A1c compared to spot readings probably because their blood cells live longer or shorter than average for numerous reasons, and fructosamine (I believe used only by vets in the UK) can be more accurate. Theoretically if vitamin C affects the longevity of the blood cells it might also show on A1c. If it shows the same result on all three tests it’s probably real.
One man. When the New Zealander with swine flu, a “white-out” of his lungs to the point where the doctors wanted to turn off life support actually recovered following Vit C (IV and oral and two court cases supporting the family) there was a massive ignoring of the event.
Diabetes Care has been leading the field down the pharmaceutical route.
http://www.foodmatters.com/article/nz-farmer-beats-swine-flu-with-vitamin-c-60-minutes-report
I have just found the Wikipaedia entry for “Antioxidants” part of which reads:
“Antioxidant dietary supplements do not improve health nor are they effective in preventing diseases as shown by randomized clinical trials including supplements of beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E singly or in different combinations having no effect on mortality rate[1][2] or cancer risk.[3][4] Supplementation with selenium or vitamin E does not reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.[5][6] Oxidative stress can be considered as either a cause or consequence of some diseases, an area of research stimulating drug development for antioxidant compounds for use as potential therapies.”
Meanwhile the entry for vaccines shows they are very good, and if anything goes wrong it is the fault of the patient.
Could it be these entries were written by a slightly biased pharma company?
It is well to view Wikipaedia, now, as the last place to look for “facts” as it has been made the repository for “alternative facts”.
Bill Sardi at it again, this time some extra info, vitamin C plus sticky platelets and TMAO ( trimethylamine N-oxide). Identifies TMAO as the indicator and it is highly related to diet. certain foods affect certain individuals much differently, so we need to find out what type of diet/tolerant person we are and follow different diets depending on our TMAO! even certain fiber diets are bad for some individuals….sounds pretty good to me and might explain a lot because there are so many “special cases” or special populations that seem opposite the norms….any thoughts?
I would say the same for many cancers, meat eaters get different rates of different cancers and vegetarians get different types of cancers at higher rates as well. Pretty cool everything is now being linked to gut bacteria and diet compatibility.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/01/bill-sardi/preventing-heart-attacks/
A bit of topic but within the general area:
Taubes The case against sugar
https://aeon.co/essays/sugar-is-a-toxic-agent-that-creates-conditions-for-disease
A potent toxin that alters hormones and metabolism, sugar sets the stage for epidemic levels of obesity and diabetes
@ Dan
Just look on the numerous body building sites and compare prices as well as Amazon.
Powdered vitamin C is cheap and lots cheaper than buying tablets with fillers and binders. I’d suggest you sign up to the body building sites as they often email offers as well as going through a cashback site to buy.
How cheap? I paid £16/kg ebay.
I buy a kilo from amazon for £11.95.
How long does that last and how much do you take
Carol, I looked in depth at the prices on several sites, and the only £11.95/kg I could find was for ascorbic acid rather than sodium ascorbate.
AH Notepad: Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that ascorbic acid is what Dr. Humphries recommends, and what Dr. Göran dissolves in his water, rather than sodium ascorbate. This morning was the first time I noticed expensive pee, after accidentally taking 2g with supper.
I think this answers your point http://drsuzanne.net/dr-suzanne-humphries-oral-intravenous-vitamin-c/
Mine was in a plastic pot, refills can be had from other sources for around £11.
Oops I lied! (Must be a side effect of LCHF + Vit C). I paid loads, £28 for 16oz. How could I have got it so wrong?
My present vitamin regimen is certainly against what the “medical” profession advocates. And my present successful LCHF life style is equally in opposition to “official guidelines” (although not the Swedish exception) and as far as I am concerned it stands up to scientific scrutiny.
Then it is so distressing to note the inquisition presently going on against likeminded representatives of the medical profession, or rather the nutritional part of this profession, on the southern part of our globe.
http://foodmed.net/2017/01/30/daa-targets-dietitians-with-fake-news/
Hey!
Where is the science in this profession?
All gone?
True scientists are interested in outcomes. Pseudoscientists are more interested in incomes. HTH 😉
This is great information. Many doctors have written about the benefits of high dose vitamin C to help patients recover from a variety of ailments. Unfortunately, a news item a few days ago, 1 February 2017, reported the US FDA has recently and quietly banned the production of IV-C. This needs to be confirmed. Why would this be banned? Hmmm….to protect the profits of Big Pharma from the use of IV-C?
I could find something about the FDA shutting down a compounding pharmacy, but nothing about an outright ban. Got a link?
Eric,
I found the original news item from December 2016.
http://www.naturalblaze.com/2016/12/fda-quietly-removed-access-life-death-hospital-equipment.html
The above references the organization below but the link is broken. See the following below at the same organization web site from a 2011 article. I have seen many news reports in health web sites of the FDA waging war against supplements and vitamins and compounding pharmacies. At one manufacturer, Intravenous vitamin C was classified as an unapproved drug by the FDA and ordered the company to halt the manufacture. At the FDA one has to pay lots of money to play in the game of approved drugs, even when the drugs are extremely dangerous such as Vioxx, Avandia, and others. Many small supplement and vitamin manufacturers cannot afford to pay the fee.
http://www.anh-usa.org/an-important-update-on-iv-vitamin-c/
Also see the pharma death clock http://pharmadeathclock.com/ and the FDA Death Meter. http://www.anh-usa.org/microsite/fda-deathmeter/
I was sent an interesting Google Trend link from friends comparing the development of the official low fat versus our high fat over the years.
https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F02wbd4f,%2Fm%2F02c3sn
These graphs give me hope for the future and probably makes the present vicious offical attacks on LCHF understandable – for sure a threat to Big Pharma/Big Agro.
I also noted on a similar Google Trend that the interest for butter in the US is now skyrocketing.
I just learnt that you with the cursor can scroll the map and note the interest per individual country.
I see here that in e.g. Sweden the interest is 100 for low carb while 1 for the low fat diet while in the USA I note 20 for low carb and 7 for low fat – a factor of three. UK though seems to be heavily stuck in the low fat trap with a meagre 11 interest in low carb and still 9 for low fat – roughly 1 to 1.
Seems all of the anglo world is stuck in a low fat time warp. UK, Ireland, NZ, Oz, US, Canada all between 59 – 100, and even South Africa, which is half anglo, sits at 43 (while NL, to which it has strong cultural ties, is at 5).
France and Italy, where media and people are more reluctant to take cues from English language publications, sit at 1 and 2.
From what I have seen, Italians may not be low fat but they aren’t low carb either: pasta, bread, bread with pasta… They’re definitely low on low quality food, though. And low on cutting corners in food production.
Sasha: Except for olive oil for export.
Olive oil within the country isn’t faring any better, from what I have read.
@ Dr Goran
I’ve copied your long established protocol of consuming vitamin C by dissolving a few grams in water and taking sips / gulps throughout the day. However, I now have a question: do you know what effect dissolving vitamin C powder in water and then storing it at, I assume room temperature as well as exposing the solution to light throughout the day has on the vitamin’s stability?
Mark,
I actually don’t know but I guess the oxidizing of vitamin C is a rather slow process at room temperature. And talking proportions without knowing the exact oxidizing reaction the amount of oxygen dissolved in my glass of water is probably extremely small compared with the eight grams of vitamin C so I don’t worry personally. But when you are cooking food it is well known that the vitamin C rapidly is destroyed. But then we are talking about the milligram levels in most foods.
Anyway, this is as I understand what Linus Pauling did and when it comes to chemistry and vitamin C I know of no one more knowledgeable.
PS
Today I have, as Suzann Humphries advocates, now a stronger brew, perhaps 15 grams, since I noticed in the back of my throat a cold attacking my compromised immune system. The upper limit is where your stools get uncomfortable and I haven’t noticed any troubles so far – perhaps I am well adapted to this “drink” – Pauling claims that you get adopted. I hope I will succeed since I have had more then enough of troubles in my airways this winter while having had none for seven years before this season.
Another reason why miners may risk heart disease:
I’ve been reading John Ott’s book ‘Health and Light’. Written donkeys’ years ago – but then Ott was another good person who was kicked into the gutter and whose work was largely ignored and unfunded because curing people is not profitable. (I purchased the book but it can be read in its entirety on line: https://www.ratical.org/ratville/AoS/HealthAndLight.pdf )
Having discovered that plant reactions to light spill over into the animal world, he describes an interesting experiment In Chapter 11 EFFECTS OF RADIATION ON BIOLOGICAL CLOCKS.
“I designed an experiment to determine if some of the wavelengths of general background radiation, beyond the range of human vision, might be directly controlling at least some of the so-called circadian rhythms.”
He placed “six sensitive-plants (mimosa pudica) at noon in a dark closet at the basement level of a three story residential building. The door to the closet was made of wood but the walls and ceilings were of concrete, approximately four to six inches in thickness. The outer walls of the building were of brick and the roof of slate; interior construction was of wood and plaster. The leaves of the plant remained open and the leaf stems, or petioles, in the upward daytime position until sunset. Then the leaves folded and the petioles dropped downward to the normal nighttime position. They remained in this state until sunrise, when both the leaves and the petioles resumed their normal daytime, open and upward, position.
As the only practical shielding against some of the general background radiation –
especially cosmic radiation – is a massive amount of earth, six sensitive-plants were
taken at noon to the bottom of a coal mine, 650 feet below the surface. The leaves and petioles of all six plants immediately assumed their nighttime position, not waiting for the sun to set. The area where the plants were placed was lit with regular incandescent bulbs.
This suggests that the day-night responses of the leaves and the petioles of the sensitive-plant react to some form of radiation capable of penetrating through the building material surrounding the “dark” closet at the surface of the earth, but not to the bottom of a coal mine, 650 feet down. This also suggests that these particular responses are not influenced by the wavelengths of light energy produced by an ordinary incandescent light bulb.
It was interesting to observe that after being down in the mine all night, the leaves of the plants would open just a little the following morning. Then, when they were brought to the surface, the leaves would open fully in the sunlight, but they would not respond to being touched, nor close in their normal way. (They normally respond to touch.) This suggests that they did not get “charged up” with some form of nighttime radiation while down in the mine.
It becomes apparent that some biological responses in plants react to certain
areas of the so-called general nighttime background radiation in a positive way, rather than merely to the absence of the visible light during the dark nighttime period.”
Ott was frustrated to find that, though people gave him respect for his plant experiments, they ignored his evidence suggesting similar effects occurring in the animal (including people) world.
Instead of money going to charities which fund research, wouldn’t it be good if someone (sorry, don’t look at me!) got a charity going that funded altruistic studies rather than those designed to make profit? Legacies, funeral collections….
Eating saturated fat is good for the arteries? CONCLUSIONS: In postmenopausal women with relatively low total fat intake, a greater saturated fat intake is associated with less progression of coronary atherosclerosis, whereas carbohydrate intake is associated with a greater progression. Quantitative coronary angiography was performed…. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15531663/
Gary has suggested that President Trump stance on vaccination is part of his commitment to protect the people from unhealthy relationships between government institutes and big business, while others and I have argued that it is more likely to be spurious and driven by the wish to enhance his populist cred.
I now want to take this post far from heart disease, but to another highly relevant public health issue
This is about an insecticide chlorpiyrifos that was used residentially but is now limited to professional agriculture in the US. It is also allowed for agricultural use in France, Austria and Switzerland, among others, but was completely banned in Germany in 2009.
The EPA was getting ready to have this pesticide banned:
“An E.P.A. report that came out right after the election, which was the product of this careful vetting, reflected Mr. Jones’s concern. The revised risk assessment relied on evidence of “neurodevelopmental effects in fetuses and children resulting from chlorpyrifos exposure” and drew on studies showing increased risk of delays in mental development, intelligence loss, attention problems and autism spectrum disorder in children who were exposed to organophosphates, the class of pesticides to which chlorpyrifos belongs. Based on this evidence and feedback from the scientific community, the E.P.A. calculated a new safety threshold for chlorpyrifos and found that in some cases children, who are most vulnerable to its effects, may already be exposed to much more than that amount.”
From the English language wikipedia article on chlorpyrifos:
” In rats, low-level exposure during development has its greatest neurotoxic effects during the period in which sex differences in the brain develop. Exposure leads to reductions or reversals of normal gender differences.[15] Exposure to low levels of chlorpyrifos early in rat life or as adults also affects metabolism and body weight.[16] These rats show increased body weight as well as changes in liver function and chemical indicators similar to prediabetes, likely associated with changes to the cyclic AMP system.[16]”
According to the German language wikipedia article, these two sources say that in children incomplete differentiation of sex typcial brain morphology was found:
V. A. Rauh, F. P. Perera, M. K. Horton, R. M. Whyatt, R. Bansal, X. Hao, J. Liu, D. B. Barr, T. A. Slotkin, B. S. Peterson: Brain anomalies in children exposed prenatally to a common organophosphate pesticide. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109 no. 20, 2012, S. 7871-7876. doi:10.1073/pnas.1203396109.
↑ Agrargift: Pestizid schädigt Gehirne Ungeborener. In: Spiegel Online. 1. Mai 2012.
In it interesting to note that organophosphates cause all kinds of neurological disorders in adults, such as sheep farmers exposed to sheep dip:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep_dip
or aircrew
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerotoxic_syndrome
http://aerotoxic.org/
(The English language wikipedia article seems to have been whitewashed by corporate interests so I have posted the opposing view for balance.)
Engine oil for jet engines contains organophosphates, which can seep into the bleed air (air taken from the first compressor stage of the engine) and hence contaminated cabin air. Apparently, there is a huge genetic varibiability to the susceptibility to organophosphates).
Organophosphates were also used in chemical warfare.
So we have something that has been shown to cause attention problems and autism (which happens to be the main reason for opposition to vaccination), and it may even cause transsexuality or homosexuality (which many on the far right consider unnatural). At the same time, the Trump administrations allows Dow, the maker of this pesticide, to lobby their policy:
“Over the past weeks, it has seemed increasingly likely that Dow might manage to save chlorpyrifos from further regulation. According to recently filed lobbying records, the Dow Chemical Company, Dow AgroSciences’ parent company, contributed $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee. The president began his first weekday in office announcing cuts in regulations at a meeting attended by Andrew Liveris, Dow Chemical’s chief executive, whom Mr. Trump appointed to head an advisory committee on manufacturing.” (also from the NYT article).
If he is serious about tackling causes of autims, this will be a litmus test!
Here’s one of the more balanced articles on fume events in aircraft. http://www.dw.com/en/scientists-expose-dangers-of-toxins-in-cabin-air/a-19078426
Lufthansa unions have been very vocal about this, and Lufthansa has even performed a study that analysed cabin air in situ rather than after the fact. While the only passenger aircraft that is completely immune is the Boeing 787 (which uses electric compressors rather than bleed air), certain aircraft types such as the BAe-146 and the B757 and certain engine types such as RR with it three-spool design) are much more prone to fume events. As a result, the problem may be bigger in the UK, which is probably why there is more PR mone spent in the UK to keep this under the lid.
The tricky thing is that > 99% of the population are fairy robust, while some people become sensitized by chronic low level exposure or one or two fume events.
As far as I know the neuropathic effects of organophosphates have been know for decades but these have been “hidden” by so-called “safety measures” for operators using them as animal dips. Sheep would not be exposed generally to many years of exposure and those that are are not exposed to cognition testing. They are very effective against sheep ectoparasites which can be serious. Most humans are rarely involved with sheep so effects in humans remain unstudied and as a result adverse effects in humans only recently have come to the fore. Money and status is the real problem just as it is with human medicine.
I like the idea of sheep being exposed to cognition testing…
This is interesting… Is there evidence that exposure to certain chemicals may affect sexual orientation?
Sasha: Yes. Endocrine disruptors. They feminize fish, amphibians, and humans. Yesterday’s post on greenmedinfo.com concerns this.
Gary: could you please talk about herd immunity based on your vaccine studies? Thank you.
Sasha: Herd immunity is a concept from natural outbreaks of infectious disease. Basically, once a percentage of a community (60-80% for example) had contracted it, there would be no further outbreaks; essentially, the chain of transmission would be broken. The vaccine lobby has hijacked the term and used it to promote very high vaccination rates, but widespread vaccination has actually eliminated herd immunity. Herd immunity may explain why measles outbreaks occurred on a two- or three-year cycle; by then sufficient numbers of children had grown into the 5-15 age group which represented most cases. About 3-5% of people are non-responders to vaccination, so it truly will never be possible to have more than 95-97% of the population with sufficient antibody titers to a given disease. For another chunk of the population, primary vaccine failure occurs within a few years, as those high titers disappear from the bloodstream; this is the explanation for the failure of the acellular pertussis vaccine, despite five doses.
Sasha, a series of videos by Suzanne Humphries may give you further detail.
Vaccines – Honesty v Policy.
My view is if people are well nourished, and their systems uncompromised, there is little or no benefit in vaccines.
AH Notepad, thank you for the recommendation, I will watch her videos.
Thank you, Gary.
Eric: I don’t think the president’s “stance on vaccination is part of his commitment to protect the people from unhealthy relationships between government institutes and big business.” I’ve never read anything to indicate that he has thought about this issue sufficiently to offer an opinion or policy guidance. He appears to be surrounding himself with industry insiders, and this bodes ill for any progress in identifying and removing environmental toxic exposures from the public. We cannot trust EPA under any administration to do the right thing: see Dr. David L. Lewis’ “Science for Sale.” But specifically on the risks of vaccination he does have knowledge, and has stated his opinions publicly at least for the past ten years, since his son Barron was born; he knows employees whose children regressed after vaccination. Trump has a complicated mind and worldview, and we’re going to have to take the bad with the good. Dr. Boyd Haley, an emeritus professor of toxicology, calls this: medcravenonline.com/IJVV/IJVV-04-00072.pdf a “nuclear bomb dropped on the vaccine industry.” This is the first and only study of contaminants in vaccines, and it is horrifying. You are correct about the dangers of chioropyrifos exposure and the EPA’s recent move to restrict them.
Re organophosphates and brain disease:
Try these 2 links to the discussion about phosmet (applied to cows in the UK to kill warble fly) as a likely cause of mad cow disease (via Copper depletion/ changing Mn2+ to Mn3+ thus creating the conditions in which prions can develop and prosper.
Mad Cow Disease was not an issue in organic farms.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10790765
http://www.rense.com/general7/MCDchemical.htm
The second article is well written and discusses the association with New Variant CJD, and the finding in several places of nv CJD associated with Manganese toxicity.
MindBody: Thank you for the links. Fascinating. The chemical industry goes after people as viciously as the vaccine industry does. Interesting, too, that the toxicity to plants of glyphosate involves the binding of manganese. Are they still using phosmet? What about BSE and nvCJD today?
While off topic BP has been discussed in the past as I remember. You will not find these papers in the Directives fom NICE
https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2017/02/06/will-low-blood-pressure-increase-the-danger-of-dementia-in-older-people/?utm_source=The+People%27s+Pharmacy+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d04f06917f-This-Week-Email+2%2F7%2F17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_7300006d3c-d04f06917f-220371137&ct=t(This_Week_2_7_17)&mc_cid=d04f06917f&mc_eid=dd7a65b962
Will Low Blood Pressure Increase the Danger of Dementia in Older People?
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2173093
Conclusions and Relevance Low daytime SBP was independently associated with a greater progression of cognitive decline in older patients with dementia and MCI among those treated with AHDs. Excessive SBP lowering may be harmful for older patients with cognitive impairment. Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring can be useful to help avoid high blood pressure overtreatment in this population.
And
http://www.alzheimersanddementia.com/article/S1552-5260(16)32962-4/pdf
This paper is behind a PAYWALL (????)
Developing hypertension at older ages may protect against dementia. Understanding the mechanisms for this lower risk is important for determining ways to prevent dementia in the very elderly.
Makes sense, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be true.
Additionally can the MDs here say if there is any correlation between lower blood pressures and susceptability to falling?
At the end of my nursing career, What had been considered a quite normal BP was now hypertension. So it was the holy grail to reduce systolic and diastolic. How did we go down this route, expecting seniors to have the BP reading of a 25 yr old. Why don’t we age gracefully., or disgracefully for that matter. Who owns our bodies.
Going back to the start of my nursing career, we had Guinness and sherry on the wards and a tot could be given as we did our drug round. It was not thought unusual to dispense a little alcohol. This was in the 1970’s. not the Crimean war.
The (US) government’s real war on natural health
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/02/06/the-governments-real-war-on-natural-health/
Just about sums up the official attitude to Big Pharma and the monopolistic AMA and the 100,000 deaths a year in the US (and pro rata 20,000 in UK/NHS) from properly prescribed and properly used drugs without a proper safety policy. (Starbridge B JAMA, July 26, 2000—Vol 284, No. 4
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=JAMA+2000+284%2C+4+483). I suspect that these estimates relate to hospital records – primary care records are difficult to come by.
They prosecuted a young man selling “a substance that occurs naturally in the body”. I can think of a few naturally-occurring substances that I would not care to ingest ;o)
But seriously, I was interested to learn from Roger Blobaum, who has been reporting on US organic agriculture for years, that in the 1970s there was increasing interest in organic agriculture from big commercial farmers.
The problem was, regulations prevented farmers getting loans for non-chemical farming methods, in many cases they were required to use chemicals, and the cosmetic requirements were too stringent for them to meet. So the US Department of Agriculture commissioned a report on organic agriculture in 1979.
Then the Reagan Administration took over in 1981 and
Martin Black
Many thanks for your comments. There are many reports of problems with GM crops and their effects in cattle such as infertility when fed the products such as GM soy resitant to glyphosphate that are heavily contaminated by the weedkiller.
There are of course strong contradictions published but which are astroturfing and fake is the unanswered question. Monsanto is hardly a company accompanied by its integrity
A demonstration that the powers that be are able to conduct what are tantamount to criminal acts while escaping prosecution. In the 1970s frequently was touted BATNEEC – Best Available Technology Not Entailing Excessive Cost, whereas it was nearer to CATNAP – Cheapest Available Technology Narrowly Avoiding Proscecution.
Hi there
Just to give readers a heads up – Dr Mike Eades has just posted a great blog on Gary Taubes’ new sugar book. Great to have a new blog from Dr Eades! Check it out!
More evidence for very low carb—–sugar and cancer
A special spectrometry method that is normally used in analyses of computer chips, lacquers and metals has been further developed at the University of Gothenburg so that it can help researchers better detect harmful cells in the body.
‘The method may become important for example for future analyses of breast cancer tissue,’ says PhD student Tina Angerer.
The method can be described as first releasing molecules and atoms from a piece of tissue by shooting gas projectiles at it and then using so-called mass spectrometry to identify the released particles. The process is repeated many times until the entire tissue surface has been analysed and Angerer and her research colleagues have created a ‘chemical map’ of the tissue.
The method is normally used when analysing inorganic material such as computer chips, lacquers, rust, semiconductors and metals. In those cases, the process is destructive and destroys a great deal of the information. However, the University of Gothenburg has a unique instrument that is optimised for organic and biological materials such as cell and tissue samples.
‘What’s special about it is that with our instruments, the “bombardment” is softer so that large molecules can be analysed at the same time as the chemical pictures we take still have good resolution,’ says Angerer.
Lipids play a key role in the cell
The tested samples include cancer tissue, and the researchers have given particular attention to lipids. Lipids consist of fatty acids, which are interesting objects of study since they form important building blocks of cells and protect them against the environment. Lipids can change rapidly and reveal problems in the cell.
While most cells in the body build their lipids with fatty acids derived from the food we eat, Angerer’s mass spectrometry results show that cancer cells build their fatty acids by using various types of sugar, but also fat and protein to some extent.
Researchers have long known that cancer cells consume great amounts of sugar and have entertained the idea that cancer cells may create their own fatty acids. However, no evidence of this has been presented.
‘We have been able to show that fatty acids from food can be found around cancer tissue and in healthy cells, but that cancer cells consist almost exclusively of fatty acids that the cells have created by themselves. This means that cancer cells can grow and multiply as long as they have enough sugar, and this is one reason they are so dangerous.
The refined mass spectrometry method also revealed that the area where the cancer tumour was found displayed a variety of lipid profiles.
‘Those variations may be one reason why it is so hard to come up with a treatment that works for all cancer cells. The lipids are one of several keys to understanding cancer, at the same time as more research is needed in order to develop better treatments,’ says Angerer.
Thesis title: Interrogation of Biological Samples by ToF-SIMS Using New Primary Ion Beams and Sample Preparation Methods
Supervisor: John S. Fletcher
Contact:
Tina Angerer at the Department of Chemistry and Molecular Biology
tina.angerer@gu.se, TinaBerandette.Angerer@gmail.com
Tel.: +46 (0)739 44 88 29
BY: CARINA ELIASSON
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Guldhedsgatan 5
Page Manager: Erika Hoff|Last update: 3/8/2013
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Errett,
This is truly interesting!
The lipid composition in the mitochondria are crucial according to Prof. Seyfried and the break down of certain lipids in the inner membranes are also responsible for the break down of the final conversion to ATP which makes the cancerous cell “return” to a fermentation mode to survive and proliferate in line with the Warburg theory of cancer as a metabolic disease.
BTW the Gothenburg University/Chalmers University happens to be “my own” university at which I have spent some years as an “Associate Professor” although in the field of the material science.
We are very luck to have you on this blog—Professor—as well as the many other very learned individuals who post their thoughts—-All The Best
Errett, Charles, Martin
Interesting inputs!
Talking “low carb” or rather a very low carb ketogenic diet as a treatment for cancer I recently communicated with Prof. Thomas Seyfried after having reread his truly great book “Cancer as a Metabolic Disease”. To me there is an irresistible logic involved here. In response, he sent me some slides from a Turkish medical team; a conference contribution.
The results this team had accomplished on stage IV cancer patients using this calorie restricted ketogenic together with other “unconventional” approaches were really staggering when viewing the horrendous images before treatment. Seyfried is an optimist (and a good Nobel Prize candidate in my eyes) and he believes in a soon paradigm shift though I have my doubts being less optimistic about our medical establishment.
ChemoThermia Oncology CenterTreatment Protocol and Outcomes
The protocol:
Metabolically Supported Chemotherapy (MSCT)
Hyperthermia
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
Glycolysis Inhibitors (2-DG, DCA)
Ketogenic Diet
Supplements
Dr. Abdul Kadir Slocum, M.D.
Istanbul, Turkey
abdulkadirsl@gmail.com
Goran
Many thanks foryour comments. I too believe that cancer is a metabolic condition and the fact that a PET-CT scan regularly demonstrates mitochondrial damage in some 80% of solid tumours would tend to support that view. A well establihed US oncologist when asked told me that this hypothesis had not been fully confirmed. I asked why. The answer was simple: When there is no perceived profit there is no chance of getting research grants.
This attitude of the medical research (funded by Big Pharma) has poisoned the area to the point that even charities are prepared to use public money (donations) to promote research intended to inflate Big Pharma profits. Their attitude is that successful outcomes are a scam even though they admit to knowing nothing about the actual therapy – this “scientific based approach (???)” to results of which they no nothing would be hilarious if it were no so serious.
I have just posted a youtube presentation on astroturfing that confirms my view that FAKE news is standard practice in the pharmacological medical establishment/
MIke,
Funny!
How we agree!
When you for whatever reason have “opened your eyes” you see the corruption and the criminal activities “everywhere” in the medical field.
But how few we are who see this corruption and you may ask the question why!
Goran
My eyes were opened years ago by knighted doc and his “treat 3 million and save 10,000 lives” in reality 1 in 300 or a probability of NO BENEFIT = 0.997 = 1.00 to two decimal places.
That and Prof Goetzsche’s book “Deadly Drugs………….” and our host’s “Doctoring Data” would have concvinced any intelligent CEO not blinded by profit. But then we are now in the fake news, astroturfing, agnotological era. Even Goebbels would be amazed at how PR developed his system of propaganda to its present level and extent
I have commented on astroturfing before. The following may be of interest. It is by Sharyl Atkinson, a leading investigative journalist in the US
Maybe the protocol for pre-opt heart surgery should include large doses of Vit.C
Int J Surg. 2017 Jan;37:58-64. doi: 10.1016/j.ijsu.2016.12.009. Epub 2016 Dec 9.
Efficacy and safety of vitamin C for atrial fibrillation after cardiac surgery: A meta-analysis with trial sequential analysis of randomized controlled trials.
Hu X1, Yuan L1, Wang H1, Li C1, Cai J1, Hu Y1, Ma C2.
Author information
Abstract
OBJECTIVES:
Antioxidant supplement is an option in preventing postoperative atrial fibrillation (AF) after cardiac surgery. However, the benefits and adverse effects of vitamin C have not been well assessed. We aimed to systematically evaluate the efficacy and safety of vitamin C in preventing postoperative AF in adult patients after cardiac surgery.
METHODS:
PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane library databases from inception to September 2016 were searched. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluated the efficacy and safety of vitamin C in preventing postoperative AF in adult patients after cardiac surgery were identified. The primary outcome was the incidence of postoperative AF. Secondary outcomes included the length of intensive care unit (ICU) stay, length of hospital stay, and stroke events.
RESULTS:
Eight RCTs incorporating 1060 patients were included. Compared with placebo group, vitamin C treatment was associated with a substantial reduction in postoperative AF (OR, 0.47; 95% CI, 0.36-0.62; evidence rank: moderate), with no significant heterogeneity (I2 44%; P = 0.09). Trial sequential analysis showed that the cumulative Z-curve crossed the trial sequential monitoring boundary for benefit, establishing sufficient and conclusive evidence. In addition, vitamin C administration was not associated with any length of stay, including in the ICU (evidence rank: low) and hospital (evidence rank: low), respectively.
CONCLUSIONS:
Short-term treatment with vitamin C is safe, and may reduce the incidence of postoperative AF after cardiac surgery. Future studies as well as more high quality RCTs are still warranted to confirm the effects of different durations of vitamin C on cardiac surgery.
Copyright © 2016 IJS Publishing Group Ltd. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
KEYWORDS:
Meta-analysis; Postoperative atrial fibrillation; Trial sequential analysis; Vitamin C
PMID: 27956113 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijsu.2016.12.009
[PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]
Mark Johnson
Loose stool. You are indeed lucky to be free of this. Liposomal Vit C is reputed to reduce the problem.
Errett
Many thanks for the reference. It can be downloaded in full from Pubmed
A quick calculation on the totals indicate that the real efficacy rate is 0.17 %, the relative rate is 64% and the simple odds ratio is 47% (CI 37% – 62%)
and
Fisher’s exact test
The two-tailed P value is less than 0.0001
In my book better than a self-effacing “may”
Another reason to use Vit C
Mike you’re my inspiration—-I’m learning how to interpret the results (statistically) as you always do—-thanks much
So what does anyone think is happening here then?
http://bmccardiovascdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12872-017-0478-5
“We identified 15 trials about preventing AF in high-risk patients, with 2050 subjects. Fourteen trials examined post-operative AF (POAF) in cardiac surgery patients and one examined the recurrence of AF in cardioversion patients. Five trials were carried out in the USA, five in Iran, three in Greece, one in Slovenia and one in Russia.
There was significant heterogeneity in the effect of vitamin C in preventing AF. In 5 trials carried out in the USA, vitamin C did not prevent POAF with RR = 1.04 (95% CI: 0.86–1.27). In nine POAF trials conducted outside of the USA, vitamin C decreased its incidence with RR = 0.56 (95% CI: 0.47–0.67). In the single cardioversion trial carried out in Greece, vitamin C decreased the risk of AF recurrence by RR = 0.13 (95% CI: 0.02–0.92).
In the non-US cardiac surgery trials, vitamin C decreased the length of hospital stay by 12.6% (95% CI 8.4–16.8%) and intensive care unit (ICU) stay by 8.0% (95% CI 3.0–13.0%). The US trials found no effect on hospital stay and ICU stay. No adverse effects from vitamin C were reported in the 15 trials.”
Looks like “vitamin C” in America isn’t.
This may seem a question to which the answer’s obvious but could those who may have experience please answer. What exactly is meant by “bowel intolerance” when it comes to taking vitamin C?
The reason I’m asking is that no matter what quantity of vitamin C I take, bowel movements (consistency / frequency) are unaffected therefore by that definition my bowels are tolerant. But I’ve recently begun to have intestinal cramps. I’ve never had intestinal cramps in my life ever before. On one occasion the only way I could alleviate the cramps was to stand up and straighten up as quickly as possible. I could physically feel with my hand the “alien squirming” about in my abdomen!
Has anyone experienced anything similar?
Yes, Mark, I am getting the cramps too, though my husband (who has taken more vitamin C than I) is not. I am also light-headed as anything that upsets my intestines seems to tell my head to send its blood off to help the gut, emergency-mode (wish it wouldn’t!)
We’ve only been taking vitamin C for about 3 weeks. We don’t ask much – only that it cures my husband’s deteriorating normal tension glaucoma and my osteoarthritis, peripheral neuropathies/paraesthesia, muscle cramps, Dupuytren’s Contracture (hands and feet – You see, Goran, like you, I might be of Viking stock!)
Incidentally, we are going to vary our method of intake – sometimes slow release tablet, sometimes vitamin C powder. This is because we like the slow release idea, but not the list of ingredients that accompanies the vitamin C in tablets – especially if we are taking large doses.
We aren’t going to go down the sodium ascorbate route partly because we like salt in our meals and don’t want to feel we might be overdosing on it.
This is all new for us as we don’t normally take pills and potions. Ah, the power of this website…
TS and Dr. Goran, Yes, I found that magnesium works a treat on cramp, though I had it for many years before I went low carb. I appear to come from a ‘crampy’ family as my mother and grandmother both suffered. I take 2 Mg. Citrate tabs daily plus an application of Mg. oil to the offending knots should breakthroughs occur, usually and inconveniently in the middle of the night. The ten years of statins made my life a misery because of excruciating and ever-worsening cramp in feet and ankles and it was because the cramps stopped when I forgot to take my statins pill (and then repeated the ‘experiment’ 3 or 4 times) that I stopped taking the beastly things. I still have to take magnesium daily but it’s nothing like the problem it was.
TS
You mention galucoma.
My wife was diagnosed with glaucoma and had lost her night vision. When she realized she was DT2 we turned strict LCHF and in one year her night vision was restored her eyes are now “perfect” with no traces of any glaucoma. Also her sever peripheral neuropathy resolved in a year. And no medicine at all .
Just the “Viking diet” with the pig as a favorite 🙂
JanB,
Are you one of us who have “swallowed” the idea that sodium is evil and we should not salt our food?
I am crampy as well.
As a matter of fact, I don’t think anyone knows what agony is who hasn’t been seized with thigh cramps. Those are the largest muscles of your body. Magnesium helped . . . a bit.
For decades I did not add salt to any of my home cooking. I was a good boy – in agony.
Well, sodium is one of the essential electrolytes. Throw one out and the rest are out of balance.
I got the epiphany, started salting everything (yummy), and my cramps have . . . reduced. Markedly.
I salt my food quite generously and if I don’t have it, for example on Tuesdays, which is my fasting day and therefore no salt intake, I know I’ll be up and down all the following night with cramps in feet, ankles, calves, hamstrings and even quads. Horrible. I know people who won’t take salt AT ALL which strikes me quite mad, for surely without it we can become ill. I sometimes feel tempted to break my Tuesday fast with a nice salty bone broth.
TS: I have the Viking disease, too, but only in the hands. I had cramps only once, but this happens on occasion, so I don’t think it was the vitamin C. I take 1g in the morning, and 1 in the evening, although I’ve taken as many as 4 in one day. A miracle drug it is. I also pay attention to my vitamin E intake from food, particularly nuts, greens, red palm and olive oil, egg yolk and butter.
Salt.
I searched Pubmed on this subject and while for specific patient with salt intolerance due conditions such as kidney disease in the general healthy population I found little evidence of benefit. Indeed it seems that in Japan higher salt intake results in longer life as pointed out by Dr Kendrick in a blog “Cholesterol goes up heart disease goes down”
Some of my findings that did not support the advice for everyone to reduce salt intake
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2011; 7:CD009217
AUTHORS’ CONCLUSIONS:
Despite collating more event data than previous systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials (665 deaths in some 6,250 participants), there is still insufficient power to exclude clinically important effects of reduced dietary salt on mortality or cardiovascular morbidity in normotensive or hypertensive populations. Further RCT evidence is needed to confirm whether restriction of sodium is harmful for people with heart failure. Our estimates of benefits from dietary salt restriction are consistent with the predicted small effects on clinical events attributable to the small blood pressure reduction achieved.
Hypertension 1983, 5:790-795
In a trial of the effects on blood pressure of salt restriction in normal healthy individuals at the Indiana University Center for Research in Hypertension, the dietary salt intake of 36 men and 46 women was reduced progressively over a two-week period. They aimed to get from the average American salt intake of 9 grams per day to about half of that and to keep it there for the three months of the study. The average daily salt intake was actually reduced from 9 to 3.9 grams during the trial and the average blood pressure, which had been 107.3/71.7 millimetres of mercury at the beginning, was, after the twelve weeks on the salt-restricted diet, down by a negligible 1.7/1.9 mm. A WASTE OF EFFORT
Can J Cardiol. 2016 Mar;32(3):319-26. doi: 10.1016/j.cjca.2015.06.020. Epub 2015 Jun 25.
CONCLUSIONS:
Sodium consumption in these Canadians is within a range comparable to other Western countries, and intake in most individuals is < 6000 mg/d, with only 5% at higher levels. Within this range, sodium or potassium levels were not associated with BP.
Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2003;(1):CD004022.
The magnitude of the effect in Caucasians with normal blood pressure does not warrant a general recommendation to reduce sodium intake
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/02/08/salt-intake-heart-failure.aspx?e_cid=20160208Z2_DNL_art_2&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art2&utm_campaign=20160208Z2&et_cid=DM97586&et_rid=1348261994
A search on PUBMED founde 10 studiea
“All 10 studies indicate that, among the general population, lower sodium diets don’t produce health benefits. In fact, not a single study has ever shown improved health outcomes for broad populations on reduced sodium diets.”
A search on PUBMED failed to provide any causal evidence relating salt to CHD! However, in a study in 1995, of the relationship between dietary salt intake and heart attacks among men with high blood pressure, Michael Alderman and colleagues followed up 2,937 subjects for an average of nearly four years. The frequency of heart attacks was LOWEST in the group with the highest salt intake.
Hypertension. 1995 Jun;25(6):1144-52.
Low urinary sodium is associated with greater risk of myocardial infarction among treated hypertensive men.
Alderman MH, Madhavan S, Cohen H, Sealey JE, Laragh JH.
Since 1995, 10 studies have reported on whether lower sodium diets produce health benefits. All 10 studies indicate that, among the general population, lower sodium diets don’t produce health benefits. In fact, not a single study has ever shown improved health outcomes for broad populations on reduced sodium diets.
J Gen Intern Med. 2008 September; 23(9): 1297–1302..
“These data are consistent with the hypothesis that lower sodium intake is associated with increased CVD and all-cause mortality”
Conclusion
Observed associations of lower sodium with higher mortality were modest and mostly not statistically significant. However, these findings also suggest that for the general US adult population, higher sodium is unlikely to be independently associated with higher CVD or all-cause mortality.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt/
It's Time to End the War on Salt – The zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science
By Melinda Wenner Moyer | July 8, 2011
I’ve read elsewhere that only about 25 – 30% of hypertensives are sodium-sensitive. Far more are sensitive to low potassium.
The elephant in the room as usual is insulin – hyperinsulinemia affects sodium excretion.
Mark,
I have never heard about cramps connected with vitamin-C.
Magnesium is the usual culprit connected with LCHF and affecting about a third of us. When I “converted” 7 years ago I did experience cramps at night and a search revealed magnesium as a remedy – works fine. I guess I have got adjusted since today without magnesium supplements I do not have any problems.
Nowadays I have turned to a lot of truly unrefined sea salt and I guess I now get enough of magnesium this way.
Goran
So good to hear of your wife’s wonderful improvement re. glaucoma and neuropathy.
We are keeping the eye surgeon at bay while we carry out a home experiment. We’ve noted all we can find about large quantities of vitamin C lowering intraocular pressures and, hoping the ascorbate effects also act to protect the visual fields, we are experimenting with it. We have arranged with a local optician to have eye pressures checked at the same time once a week. We are also forgoing the sunglasses and taking some Ginkgo Biloba. Glaucoma runs in my husband’s family so it’s a big ask but we are happy there is vitamin C to try. We know we shall have to be patient and that small doses of ascorbic acid don’t work. Even came across a study using vitamin C solution eyedrops!
TS
My own “informed” guess is that the capillary degeneration you experience in all part of your body when you have entered the metabolic syndrome is basically caused by the built up insulin resistance over many (20?) years and compensated homeostatically for by an excessive production of insulin through stressed beta-cells in the pancreas until they ultimately fail. Then it is due time for medication with external insulin! This is in my eyes an insane practice since, as far as I understand, it is actually the high levels of insulin in the arteries which are causing the havoc or the pathological states associated with this metabolic syndrome and especially for DT2 as my wife.
What restoring health is then all about in my opinion is to cut the downhill race by restoring the insulin sensitivity best done by cutting all carbs at once. This was actually what we did ourselves those 7 years ago and actually overnight. BTW my wife didn’t take any supplements just cutting out the “evil”!
Myself I am though a strong believer in supplements.
According to Dr. Jason Fung periodic fasting of different kinds may help as a break through for his patients to restore the insulin sensitivity. He has written a book about that.
JanB
Thank you!
If vitamin C does have a lot to do with heart disease, might not the past different rates of heart disease in men and women partly result from intake of fresh fruit and vegetables being similar in the sexes despite higher body weights in men? Men tended to be filled up with carbohydrates, including potatoes with their vitamin C boiled out of them. Yet the men didn’t get an extra orange or more salad on their plates.These days women tend to be heavier of course.
For good health think eggs, meat (especially organ meat, not just liver, heart and blood, but minor organs too), butter, but not modern-fruit (green veg is probably OK or neutral – take it or leave it, most nutrients are more effectively extracted from meat). This is particularly true for those of us like me whose genes show signs of being through ice ages*.
Marketing by fruit and veg associations (etc) have turned truth upside down. We need to relearn the truth. I suspect that more people have significant choline deficiency than have scurvy, so would benefit from egg yolks and liver.
For those who avoid processed foods, there is probably enough vitamin C in adrenal (and other) glands of ruminants, of which we sons and daughters of the ice ages should probably eat plenty – nose to tail.
http://www.dsm.com/markets/anh/en_US/Compendium/ruminants/vitamin_C.html
This should not even be controversial.
* I’ve been looking at some of the relevant polymorphisms and they are very common in many of the reference genomes, well over 50% in NW Europe/USA.
Ken
Ken, do you have any information on how minor organs should be cooked or even if they should be cooked at all? I know how to prepare liver, kidneys, and heart but not “minor organs” or glands, like adrenal.
Thank you
sasha: I have prepared sweetbreads (thymus). Two or three soaks in water with a bit of vinegar, followed by simmering and cooling, followed by removing the membrane, slicing, pan frying with mushrooms, then a reduction sauce of white wine and creme fraiche. I’ve cooked pancreas, but I don’t remember how, possibly similar to the above. Brains are lovely to eat, but hard to get since the mad cow scare; I’ve eaten them, but never prepared them. In my mother’s 1936 cookbook it suggests a similar process as for sweetbreads.
Thanks Gary. Sounds delicious!
Cramps
For those of you discussing cramps, you may like to read about Dr Mike Eades cramps and how the situation was resolved:
https://proteinpower.com/drmike/2011/06/25/tips-tricks-for-starting-or-restarting-low-carb-pt-ii/
Charles Gale -Thank you for that link. A really good read.
I guess I initially started off posts on cramping but my question was quite specific to vitamin C and stomach / intestinal cramps, not the well known muscle cramps related to going low carb.
Has anyone else other than TS had experience of quite painful intestinal cramping after a month or two of taking daily multiple grams of vitamin C? I guess my intestinal cramping could have been coincidence but having never had such a quite shocking and painful experience it would seem to be related to the vitamin C. I could physically feel (with my hand) my intestines painfully writhing and cramping.
I know that this blog post was regarding vitamin C only, but Linus Pauling’s unified theory also demanded supplementation with lysine, particularly for atherosclerotic plaque reversal:
Linus Pauling’s specific therapy for cardiovascular and heart diseases are high dosages of two essential nutrients; vitamin C and the amino acid lysine.
Vitamin C is required to strengthen arteries so that the body does not try to patch arteries with “plaster casts” (atherosclerosis).
“Lysine is an Lp(a) binding inhibitor, meaning at sufficient dosage it can reverse the plaster cast build-up (atherosclerotic plaques.) Lp(a) is the sticky form of LDL cholesterol that Pauling/Rath identified as the primary risk factor.
“Knowing that lysyl residues are what causes Lp(a) to stick to the wall of the artery and form atherosclerotic plaques, any physical chemist would say at once that to prevent that put the amino acid lysine in the blood to a greater extent than it is normally.” – 92-year-old Linus Pauling.
Does anyone here add lysine to their vitamin C?
Yes and I add Poline also
YES, I aim for near-equal (gram) amounts. Average C intake is 5 to 10 grams -div- per day, and at least 6 grams Lysine. Check Pauling Protocol. Also a dash of proline if I remember when making up capsules. I uses non-GMO ascorbic acid, looking at making liposomal C when I get around to it. Absorbsion rates of liposomal C can get close to IV levels and without th bowel disruption of high/rapid dose oral ascorbic.
I’m not sure where to start with this response. Vitamin C can be an anti-bacterial agent, and that is likely to be why it is significant in the reported result (end of?).
I read an interesting review of the normal action of vitamin C in the body (E. M. Baker et al., Am J Clin Nutr , 1971) which says a great deal about the pool of vitamin C in the body and its growth on supplementation and decay at times of deficiency. Even skipping over the material on avoidance of scurvy (for which 6.5mg/day after ~100 days of depletion suffices to restore the pool, remove disease and allow repair within a couple of months), there is a lot to learn from this carefully-researched paper. My (strong) impression is that doses beyond say 60mg/day offer advantage if and only if the excess vitamin c acts as an antibacterial (or some other function that it may have as a simple solute without transporters or protein binding – i.e. not acting on human tissue but on something exogenous).
Dr Sarah Myhill emphasises vitamin C as a means of controlling gut bacteria. I have not researched evidence for IV vitamin C as a blood antibacterial, but its inclusion in a treatment for sepsis implies that such action has been hypothesised.
I think this has *very little* to do with CVD except to the extent that lipopolysacharides from bacteria are implicated, or as an emergency measure to override normal mechanisms of endothelial action. That’s OK, and high doses could be helpful, but I suspect most people who think they are postponning a serious CVD event by this means are deluded.
As regards the focus of attention, C is likely one letter too far – Try B – some of the B vitamins have much more direct connections to eNOS, NO and CVD (particularly with respect to those of us who have particular genetic makeup post ice age). Unfortunately it would take me about 10 pages of text to explain even the little I know about that.
Ken
Concerning LP(a), in looking at my records, my LP(a) has decreased from 310 nmol/L in June 2014 to 253 in June 2015 to 226 in October 2016. I was not taking vitamin C or l-carnitine during this time. I was eating a low carb diet, then transitioned to paleo (a bit higher carb), then back to low carb, then finally to a ketogenic diet. That’s about a 27% decrease over about two years. Now, I’m trying vitamin C and l-carnitine too. I’ll see if I can post when I get my next test done.
What is the best kind of vitamin c to take for hgh blood pressure. I was told the powered buffered but it is really expensive. Is the normal powered kind ok to take and how much should I take. Where is the best place to buy it.
What were the dosages of Vitamin C and thiamine used in the study? I assume these were administered intravenously, but I would like to see delivery method addressd in addition to doses.
It has been a little less than 2 months since the start of this blog. I have been reading more about the vitamin C work of Linus Pauling and Edward Klenner and others. I have been through the videos of Suzanne Humphries and Tom Levy which are referred to earlier in the blog. Today I watched for the nth time a video by Andrew Saul https://youtu.be/W5Bgdqsorg0.
I now have stored as a contact on my mobile phone:
“Sepsis”
“http://europepmc.org/articles/Pmc3937164”
“PMID 24484547”
(As I hope have the rest of my family in case I am unconscious at the time).
It is a reference to Fowler’s et al paper of 2014 which was the phase 1 trial of treating sepsis patients with high dose vitamin C. This is on my phone as a reference should i be unfortunate to need it, to get a physician to stop worrying, and to start treatment with vitamin C, while they ponder over what is causing the problem. By the time they have found the problem, it will have been dealt with if the dose is high enough. In the UK, NICE do not approve vitamin C treatment as far as I know, and this reference could be used in court to defend against accusations of malpractice. (If needed)
An easily read document is http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.de/2009/06/vitamin-c-facts.html which gives further support to treatment.
Either Pauling or Klenner stated the only mistake when using vitamin C was failing to use enough.
An effect of too much vitamin C is diahorrea, but very high doses given to treat a disease is unlikely to give that effect since much of it is used dealing with the disease toxins. It is a simple chemical reaction, toxins steal electrons, vitamin C donates electrons.
I take 1 sachet of liposomal vit C a day, and about 4 doses of 2.5g of sodium ascorbate together with 1 of the 1g fizzy drink tablets in water just to.mask the salty taste. Since I don’t drink tea or coffee, this just becomes the normal required fluid intake when included with a mug of water occasionally. I have just ordered some size 0 capsules to load with ascorbic acid powder, as that will be easier to take in higher doses when treating ailments. I’m doing this as it’s more convenient (and cheaper) than buying ready made capsules.
I now use the sodium ascorbate instead of toxic flouride toothpaste. Salty taste, but is a topical application of vitamin C to the gums.
All this information is available from repeated watching of the Cathcart, Humphries, Levy, Saul videos.
The National Avoid Health Promotiing Therapy Service, oops sorry, got carried away, I mean NHS continues to ignore work done decades ago by Linus Pauling and Frederick Klenner.
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/02February/Pages/Vitamin-C-not-proven-to-boost-chemo.aspx
As Winston Churchill said, “What we learn from history is, we don’t learn from history”.
I suppose one day someone will be honourable enough to make an honourable decision in the medical heirachy. Meanwhile it’s enough to make you weep.
You might have seen this? https://now.uiowa.edu/2017/03/high-dose-vitamin-c-proves-safe-and-well-tolerated-brain-and-lung-cancer-trials
The paper often ridiculed has published an article. While probably not wholly accurate, it looks to be a good starting point. First of the MSM to venture into the swamp.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4367416/High-doses-vitamin-C-help-battle-cancer.html
Exactly WHICH blog post do you mean? You could have provided a direct link to the post instead of what looks to have been an general advert for your blog. The one I saw as the “latest” was “Embarassing Moment” which, frankly, was rubbish.