Vitamin C is fake

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Vitamin C is fake

Post by Ye Admin » Wed May 30, 2018 12:54 pm



Seems Dr. Berg has a very interesting opinion on Vitamin c, starting around 8:35 in the video.

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Re: Vitamin C is fake

Post by aeon » Wed May 30, 2018 7:44 pm

Linus Pauling said ascorbic acid was superior to plant sources because energy must be expended by humans to separate the vitamin C from the plant compounds. He stated few people eating only natural foods are likely to consume optimum levels of ascorbic acid. Even living in the tropics you would be unlikely to reach optimum levels consistently.

http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/linuspauli ... vitamin-c/

Vitamin C Supplements

I have read that vitamin C is not ascorbic acid, and that there are other components that make of vitamin C. Is this true?

Ascorbic acid is vitamin C because it can prevent and cure the disease that forms from its deficiency – scurvy. This is part of the definition of a vitamin.

Some people have postulated that vitamin C does not work alone in the body, i.e., that it needs to be present in a “complex” of other factors to work properly. This is contrary to all the scientific literature. At one point in time, the man who discovered the chemical structure of ascorbic acid, Albert Szent-Györgyi, thought he had found that bioflavonoids were necessary for the action of vitamin C and were found in a complex in plants, but this turned out to be a false lead.

Ascorbic acid, as recommended by Linus Pauling over 40 years ago, is sufficient to satisfy your body’s requirements for vitamin C.

Is there a difference between natural and synthetic ascorbic acid? Are there differences in bioavailability between natural sources and synthetic supplements containing vitamin C?

No. Unlike some vitamins, such as vitamin E, the natural and synthetic forms of ascorbic acid are identical. The chemical mirror image of ascorbic acid (an isoform called sodium erythorbate) is not the same as ascorbic acid because it does not have any vitamin activity. It is often used as a food preservative because it has antioxidant activity.

There is currently no evidence that natural source supplements have greater bioavailability than synthetic supplements, or straight ascorbic acid. There is some literature to support that there are differences in animal models (such as mice or rats) in bioavailability when ascorbic acid is presented in a mixture of food or plant-based material, but studies in humans have shown no differences. This is likely due the differences between many animal species (who can make ascorbic acid in the liver) and humans (who are dependent on ascorbic acid from the diet), but the reasons for these differences on a molecular level are not clear.

Should I take ascorbic acid with rose hip flavonoids or other bioflavonoids to increase its absorption or activity?

There is no evidence to suggest that taking vitamin C with flavonoids will increase the absorption or activity of ascorbic acid. On the contrary, there is a study that suggests taking a large amount of quercetin (a flavonoid in rose hips) inhibits absorption. This inhibitory effect is small and likely insignificant, but it certainly does not suggest any benefit to combining flavonoids with vitamin C.

The man who first characterized ascorbic acid, Albert Szent-Györgyi, thought of flavonoids as a vitamin that worked with vitamin C based on work in guinea pigs. However, after finding out that removal of flavonoids from the diet was not necessary for life (and not a vitamin) or the activity of ascorbic acid, the work did not progress any further. Unfortunately, some use that older work as evidence that flavonoids are necessary for vitamin C activity and absorption.


https://vitamincfoundation.org/NaturalC.htm

Mainly because of the words "natural" and "vitamin complex," adherents to the naturalist view have gained many followers, and their views are often repeated by respected nutritional authorities. It is understandable why naturalists distrust modern medical science with its orientation towards potentially dangerous prescription drugs, but this is no reason to ignore science altogether.

There is no scientific debate whether there is such a thing as a vitamin C-complex. Such a thing as a matter of human nutrition does not exist. The argument for ascorbic acid as vitamin C carries as much weight as any argument in any field of science. Its sugar-like molecular structure was first isolated by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, and the chemical shorthand is C6H8O6. Dr. Szent-Gyorgyi received the Nobel prize for this discovery.

No one who is engaged in conventional medical research believes there is a C-complex, nor are there any peer-reviewed papers accessible in the Medline medical database that support the idea that there is a C-complex, much less that it is the real vitamin C.

It is known that animals generally do not require vitamin C in their diets. Almost all mammals, and virtually all animals, synthesize ascorbic acid in the liver or kidney. While most animals synthesize ascorbic acid, there is no scientific evidence that any animal synthesizes the ill-defined C-complex within its body.

The previously mentioned book entitled Fourfold Path to Healing (2004), by Thomas Cowan, MD, with Sally Fallon and Jaimen McMillan, is remarkable for the number of false or unsupported assertions these authors make concerning vitamin C. Every sentence in the vitamin C section on pages 20 and 21 is either unsupported, or contains misleading or false information which they present as fact. The message these authors are trying to convey is that the natural vitamin C-Complex not only exists, but it is required, lest consumers risk clogged arteries and DNA damage.

Cowan et. al. begin their Vitamin C section on page 20 with the intriguing sentence, "Several recent studies have shown that taking synthetic vitamins can actually be harmful, thus challenging a practice suggested in virtually all other books written about health and nutrition over the past 40 years." (page 20) Unfortunately, one reason for their different advice is that they are wrong. The two studies cited made headlines, but both "studies" have been debunked scientifically by the Vitamin C Foundation. (See the Vitamin C Foundation on-line forum for our rebuttal to these two media reports, and for the complete description of the errors about vitamin C that have been published on pages 20 and 21 of The FourFold Path to Healing.)

The Real Vitamin C is the Ascorbate Ion (commonly Ascorbic Acid)

Any review of the scientific literature that spans 80 years and includes more than 100,000 published studies and reports, concludes that what is commonly called vitamin C, the ascorbate ion, or simply ascorbic acid, is the real vitamin C. Humanity is fortunate that Linus Pauling became interested, for such a review of the literature requires reading the equivalent of 400 bound books just to hold the abstracts. The genius Linus Pauling was probably the only person who could possibly digest and assimilate and then disseminate this much scientific research over the course of his 30-year study. It was his practice to read the body of every study paper, not merely the abstract, draw conclusions and test whether his conclusions matched the author of the study.

Linus Pauling made the vitamin C science understandable to the rest of us with his books for the lay public. His 1986 book How To Live Longer and Feel Better is an updated and expanded version of his earlier landmark Vitamin C and the Common Cold (1970) and is still one of the best references on the true nature of vitamin C.

In the early 1900s, the existence of a dietary factor that cured scurvy was named vitamin C before the substance had been isolated or its molecular structure had been identified.

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