Vitamin C – Nature’s Superhero

The History

It starts, as all good medical horror stories do, in antiquity. A withered scroll, the Ebers Papyrus, circa 1550 BC, details a disease we now recognise as scurvy. The cure? Onions. Which, as it happens, do contain vitamin C – though not enough to ward off certain death if you happen to be a sailor without citrus.

Hippocrates, the father of medicine, scribbled down the symptoms of scurvy around 400 BC: rotten breath, gums that wave the white flag, spontaneous nosebleeds. Delightful.

Fast forward to 1747, when James Lind, a British naval surgeon, conducted one of history’s first clinical trials aboard HMS Salisbury. He divided his scurvy-ridden crew into six groups and gave them different dietary supplements. The citrus-fed men were practically dancing jigs while the rest languished. It took another fifty years for the British Admiralty to take the hint and start rationing lime juice, hence the nickname “Limeys.”

In 1928, a Hungarian biochemist named Albert Szent-Györgyi isolated what he poetically dubbed ‘hexuronic acid,’ which, in 1932, was renamed ‘ascorbic acid’ – vitamin C to you and me. By 1937, both Szent-Györgyi and Walter Haworth had bagged Nobel Prizes for their work. A happy ending? Hardly.

In 1970, Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel laureate and professional thorn in the side of orthodox medicine, published Vitamin C and the Common Cold. It became a bestseller, catapulting vitamin C into public consciousness and pharmacies worldwide.

By 1990, Dr. Matthias Rath made a connection between vitamin C and heart disease. He and Pauling, the Lennon and McCartney of micronutrients, tried to convince pharmaceutical companies to take their findings seriously. The response was a collective shrug. Too much money in cholesterol meds, perhaps? It all sounds eerily familiar.

The Basics

These days, we instinctively reach for vitamin C at the first sign of a sniffle, hoping to stave off colds, scurvy, and the creeping existential dread of modern life. Its benefits are legion: skin, tissue repair, immune support, heart health, and more.

Vitamin C deficiency, on the other hand, reads like the side effects of a horror film – bruising, bleeding gums, fatigue, and in extreme cases, death by scurvy. Since humans, unlike most animals, don’t produce their own vitamin C, we’re forced to get it from our diet.

What is Vitamin C?

A water-soluble vitamin, vitamin C is primarily found in fruits and vegetables. Most animals make their own. Humans, gorillas, orangutans, and guinea pigs do not. A cruel evolutionary joke, if ever there was one.

The Strange Thing About Vitamin C

The story of vitamin C is less a scientific triumph and more a bureaucratic farce. Buying a supplement? Fine. But woe betide any doctor who suggests intravenous vitamin C for a serious illness—they risk professional ruin, censorship, and accusations of quackery. Strange, given that vitamin C has been used to treat viral infections since the 1930s.

Linus Pauling and the Battle for Vitamin C

Fifty years ago, Pauling claimed that intravenous vitamin C improved cancer survival. The Mayo Clinic attempted to replicate his findings but used oral doses instead of IV. Surprise! No benefit. The result? Decades of medical orthodoxy dismissing vitamin C as quackery.

By 2000, oncologists like Dr. Ping Chen were revisiting vitamin C’s pharmacokinetics (movement of drugs within the body). Research since then has been a tug-of-war between those embracing its potential and those keen to bury it.

Meanwhile, studies show that high-dose IV vitamin C has been used effectively against COVID-19. In China, doctors administered 10,000-20,000 mg IV to patients. Fifty patients with moderate to severe cases recovered. One received 50,000 mg over four hours and dramatically improved. The findings were published, but social media giants deemed them “misinformation” and deleted them.

Because, obviously, we can’t have that.

The NHS recommends a paltry 40 mg of vitamin C per day. A single kiwi fruit has more. Gorillas consume the human equivalent of 4,500 mg daily. Do they know something we don’t?

Oral vs Liposomal vs Intravenous Vitamin C

Oral vitamin C works well enough for prevention. Liposomal vitamin C, a clever trick involving fat molecules, increases absorption. But for serious conditions like cancer or COVID-19, only IV administration delivers the necessary high doses. The difference between eating an orange and getting IV vitamin C is like quenching your thirst with a rain droplet versus a fire hose.

The RDA for Vitamin C

The US recommends 90 mg a day. Britain, ever the minimalist, suggests 49 mg. Meanwhile, wild animals naturally produce between 2,000 and 10,000 mg daily. Who’s got it right?

Vitamin C and Cancer

Vitamin C doesn’t just kill cancer cells – it disrupts their energy metabolism, effectively starving them. High doses create oxidative stress in tumours, generating free radicals that cancer cells can’t tolerate.

Vitamin C and Dentistry

With all our surgeries and SMART treatments, we offer 25 gr of i.v. Vitamin C.

What Happens When You Use Vitamin C?

In April 2020, Dr. Charles Mok of Allure Medical Clinic was raided by the FBI for offering free high-dose IV vitamin C to frontline workers and COVID-19 patients. His crime? Treating people.

The government accused him of “profiting illegally” off pandemic fears. This, despite global hospitals using the same treatment. The real issue? Vitamin C isn’t patentable.

Key “fruit and vegetables containing high doses of vitamin C” into your browser, and you’ll see a list of recommended items. For some reason that list usually omits Moringa, a scrappy little upstart of a tree, growing naturally in India and a smattering of other sun-baked locales. It’s a botanical overachiever, stuffed to the gills with proteins, vitamins, and minerals – nature’s own multivitamin, its fresh leaves containing approximately 220 mg of vitamin C per 100g. its nutrient-rich bounty for those in need.

The absolute winner is Kakadu plum (Gubinge) with 2300 mg of Vitamin C per 100g, closely followed by Camu Camu berries 2.000 and Acerola Cherries 1600. Red bell peppers often beat oranges in vitamin C content! And light cooking can reduce levels – so raw or lightly steamed is best if you’re chasing C.

Final Thoughts

Aren’t doctors supposed to act in their patient’s best interest? Shouldn’t they be free to use evidence-based treatments without fear of persecution?

I leave it to you to decide.