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Scurvy
Quote from lil chick on July 9, 2019, 3:02 pm
God that makes a ton of sense. That is why those meat juices need to be taken, along with the meat! And they taste great.
Yeah it makes a lot of sense to me too.
Years ago I looked at this issue and even posted online asking about it but just got ignored except for one responder that told me that hydroxyproline degrades to proline in the gut so it wouldn't reduce Vitamin C requirements. Fig 3 in this paper would suggest otherwise: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3773366/
I'm surprised it doesn't seem to get talked about. I guess people just want to eat more broccoli instead of jelly, chicken stock or gravy haha. I know what I'd prefer. I saw it mentioned here though (https://zerocarbzen.com/vitamin-c/):
Additionally, an all-meat diet may reduce the need for vitamin C in completely different way altogether, as explained in the blog post Why Meat Prevents Scurvy:
“Meat [also] prevents [scurvy] because it bypasses the need for vitamin C. Vitamin C is required to form collagen in the body… Vitamin C’s role in collagen formation is to transfer a hydroxyl group to the amino acids lysine and proline. Meat, however, already contains appreciable quantities of hydroxylysine and hydroxyproline, [thus] bypassing some of the requirement for vitamin C. In other words, your vitamin C requirement is dependent upon how much meat you do not eat.”
I'm not sure about the hydroxylysine and hydroxyproline content of meat but foods containing gelatine are a very good source.
Reading about Vitamin C the majority seems to be used for the creation of hydroxylysine, hydroxyproline and carnitine so it strikes me as an important issue.
One of the good things that you learn from the WAPF is that people ate a lot of gelatin in the past and the importance of gelatin in the diet. Traditional diets were often low in Vitamin K1, carotenoids and Vitamin C. Gelatin possibly helped a lot with reducing their Vitamin C requirements.
My guess is that when someone has healthy levels of Vitamin A, iron and copper in the body and is consuming meat and gelatin regularly their Vitamin C requirements are probably quite low. We only need between 6 and 10 mg per day of Vitamin C to prevent scurvy and that is when we are not consuming regular gelatine.
interesting info here:
https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm
"This pattern of fresh meat preventing scurvy would be a consistent one in Arctic exploration. It defied the common understanding of scurvy as a deficiency in vegetable matter. Somehow men could live for years on a meat-only diet and remain healthy, provided that the meat was fresh."
their non-fresh meat is said to have been "preserved and salted meat". in another place "pemmican" (no gelatin/juices?)
the article goes on to say (and of course it makes you think about vitamin A):
"Finally, that one of the simplest of diseases managed to utterly confound us for so long, at the cost of millions of lives, even after we had stumbled across an unequivocal cure. It makes you wonder how many incurable ailments of the modern world—depression, autism, hypertension, obesity—will turn out to have equally simple solutions, once we are able to see them in the correct light. What will we be slapping our foreheads about sixty years from now, wondering how we missed something so obvious?"
On Grant's essay on scurvy, he mentions India and China. He commends their diets for being vA “moderate”. They, however, have the highest indexes of diabetes in the world. On that same essay he also attributes diabetes to vA toxicity. That is contradiction. Can someone explain it?
(I tried following the thread and posting there, but the system won't allow me to so I'm posting this here, the thread about scurvy).
scurvy Vitamin C from whole foods can also increase your copper level, since vitamin C contains an enzyme called tyrosinase, which contains 2 copper atoms. The acerola cherry is another excellent source. A single acerola contains about 80 mg of vitamin C. Ascorbic acid is a pro-oxidant and vitamin C complex is an antioxidant. Any compound containing copper will be an antioxidant.
However, don't make the mistake of taking ascorbic acid, as it is NOT the same as vitamin C from whole foods. If you were to compare the two to a car, vitamin C would be the entire car, fully functional, with an engine that is an enzyme called tyrosinase, while ascorbic acid is the chassis of the car, with no moving parts.
Importantly, ascorbic acid chelates copper from tyrosinase, which is just what proton pump inhibitors do. In my opinion, ascorbic acid is a "pharmacomimetic". Although it is a natural molecule, it has drug-like effects. It acts differently than vitamin C because it was extracted from the vitamin C complex. For example, ascorbic acid does not prevent or treat scurvy. Only vitamin C from whole foods does.
It's interesting. Vitamin C from foods has highly available copper. And if vitamin C helps because of the copper it has. Copper enters the liver and chelates iron. When chelating iron, it enters zin and chelates the vitamin to zinc. People on a carnivorous diet do not have scurvy. So it is impossible for it to be due to vitamin C deficiency.
@tim-2 we need only 6-10mg of vit C per day and yet we suffer from heart disease like no other animals. Look at how much are ingesting animals that don't make their own vit C and how much vit C are making animals that can make it. I don't see how they came up with the amount needed for humans FOR OPTIMAL HEALTH AND NOT FOR KEEPING YOU FROM DYING FAST!!!! You think that we as modern human doing all the shit we are doing to our body really don't need more vit C when some goat that is under stress can make 100 GRAMS A DAY? Are you kidding me?
Great question — vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is a crucial nutrient, and there's a pretty big difference between how much is consumed by animals that can't produce it vs. how much is synthesized by those that can.
🧬 Animals That Produce Their Own Vitamin C
Most animals can synthesize their own vitamin C from glucose in the liver (or kidneys in some species like birds and reptiles). The amount they produce depends on the species and body weight, but here’s a ballpark:
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Goats (often used as an example) make about 13 grams (13,000 mg) of vitamin C per day, scaled to a 70 kg (154 lb) human equivalent.
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Many mammals produce between 3,000 to 15,000 mg/day (human equivalent) under normal conditions.
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Under stress, production can increase significantly, up to 100,000 mg/day (human equivalent) in some species like goats.
🐒 Animals That Don't Produce Vitamin C (like humans, primates, guinea pigs, fruit bats)
These animals have lost the gene (GULO) needed to synthesize vitamin C and must get it from food. In the wild, their intake tends to be much higher than what modern humans typically consume:
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Primates (chimps, gorillas, orangutans): Consume 2,000–6,000 mg/day from raw fruits and vegetation, based on wild diets.
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Guinea pigs: Adjusted for human weight, they would consume 1,000–2,000 mg/day worth of vitamin C.
⚖️ Comparison Summary
| Group | Vitamin C Amount (Human Equivalent) |
|---|---|
| Wild chimps/gorillas | ~2,000–6,000 mg/day |
| Goats (self-producing) | ~13,000 mg/day (normal) |
| Goats under stress | Up to 100,000 mg/day |
| Guinea pigs | ~1,000–2,000 mg/day |
| Modern human RDA | 75–90 mg/day (very low) |
@el most animals make their own vit C from glucose. They only make ascorbic acid not some complex with tyrosinase and other plant compounds. Does it work for them? I think it does. So that right there tells you that just ascorbic acid is what vit C is and what the body needs. Of course that it is a good idea to eat whole food sources of vit C. But if you need grams to fix something you will not get there with eating oranges..
Quote from Eio on April 24, 2025, 8:51 am@jiri Your gums look great. Usually, if there is a vitamin C problem, the gums wouldn't look so good. Your eye looks good, too. I take 2 grams of vitamin C most days and don't have such clear eyes. I am twice your age, though.
I deleted those photos. I can't watch that shit myself lol.. You are probably right. Scurvy doesn't seem to by my main issue. I just simply wish that would be the case, took bunch of vit C and everything would start to heal in my body.. But I am simply in vicious cycle of depleting my body by doing stupid stuff and keeping my body in state of chronic/adrenal fatigue. So the body is not able to start dumping the excess of copper that I have for so long in the liver.. HIgh dose vit C(5+g a day) just stimulates the body like crazy and keeps ceruloplasmin down which is last thing I want right now due to my issues with collagen.. But studies show that up to 1000mg should be ok. So I will do 500mg from ascorbic acid + 500mg from acerola and also will try some L lysine to try lower Lpa that is ruining my cardiovascular system now.. I just need to stop sugar and even fruit. Just complex carbs and protein and more calming minerals. That will kill my desire to burn all my energy with exercise all the time and so the body can rebuild tissues..
I have a strong urge for pineapple and also sometimes citrus.
I use about 1,000 mg ascorbic acid a day lately. I just feel better with some. I do think it slows things down though (I mean it is an antioxidant and if you lean heavily toward slow oxidation this won't help in the long run) so I'm decreasing down to about 2o0-500 mg again.