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Vitamin C
If this topic already exists I'll cut-and-paste this entry and re-submit. Kudos to Grant for a significant new post. Appreciate ya!
The Vitamin C part of Grant's post took me back to a doctor I used to watch, Thomas Levy, MD. At the 13:30 mark of this video he has a slide with the bullet-point - Toxins Will Produce Scurvy When Enough Vitamin C is Oxidized and Not Replenished or Regenerated.
I found a Liposomal Vitamin C product on Amazon the other day. They claim 6x effectiveness. The ascorbic acid is made in the US and the liposomal portion is from sunflower seeds grown in Scotland. It's a dollar a gram, but dividing by 6 helps on that score, at least compared to cheap ascorbic acid powder, and I don't think ya get the runs with Liposomal, like when using the powder therapeutically. We'll see about that pretty soon. In the meantime, I've been taking 5 grams of powder every two hours all day today and I'm sure glad my computer is close to the bathroom. Almost nailed this cold in one day!
The thing that got me to order some Liposomal was watching a Thomas Levy, MD video where he states that it's as effective or moreso than Intravenous delivery, which I used to do at a chelation clinic. Those places were a hoot. You'd have ten Lazy-Boy lounge chairs in a circle and folks hooked up for an hour or two, doing different therapies. Heard a lot of wild stories, one from Jerry Jeff Walker. His was about EDTA and his heart, but there were even older guys at this particular place who swore by the Vitamin C drips, 50 or 100 grams at a pop. One 80-something dentist who came down from Dallas said it was keeping him healthy and productive.
I've been a Vitamin C fan since it rescued me from the worst sore throat I ever had, during a week where we were hot-tar roofing in minus-30 wind chill. Yeah, I know, my wife doesn't even believe me, but it's true. We even had to mop 500 degree hot-tar across the tips of our boots just to be able to stay on the roof a bit longer each spell. End of day was like a bunch of Lil Abner's, peeling off those laminated layers. Red Roof Inn hated to see us pull in. Anyway, if Liposomal C is as good as Intravenous, then the price is equivalent, and ya don't have to drive, get poked, sit around talking to strange people (grin), and such.
Do you think kidney stones are a problem with vC? I think someone here reported an issue after taking vitamin C supplements? I listened to a podcast interview with Dr. Seneff discussing glyphosate and cautioned against too much vitamin C. I wish there wasn't so much conflicting info on everything. I don't think Dr. Smith is a proponent of the liposomal C but likes ascorbic acid in some forms if it isn't GMO.
Only kidney stones I ever had were from dehydration. There may be a problem that I haven't run across and I don't doubt that Vitamin C isn't for everybody. That's what makes the quest interesting, eh? Part of it is finding reliable guides and part of it is relying on your own experience, plus some intuition. The reason I listen to cardiologist Thomas Levy, MD on this Vitamin C issue is that I already knew about Hal Huggins and George Meinig's contributions to the health of the world before I ran across Dr. Levy. All three are men who have really done great things. Hal repeated animal experiments from the 1920's to verify the toxicity of root canals. He got hundreds of people healthy again from serious, debilitating illness resulting from the mercury in their teeth and their root canals that harbored vile bacterial strains untouchable by the immune system. George, who was one of the founders of the Endodontic Association, and who performed root canal operations for decades, discovered the dental research of Dr. Weston Price through Hal and eventually wrote Root Canal Cover-Up, about the serious dangers to health those present. I've had work done at a dental clinic that understands the dangers of mercury amalgams and root canals and they use IV vitamin C and ozone to protect patients who are being worked on. These men put their shoulders to the wheel, against the system. They were very unassuming and took great responsibility for the health and well-being of their patients.
Plus, I've done more reading on Vitamin C in 40 years than anybody I know, and I'm still learning more. I just started looking at the molecule to see if there's any clues about why it does what it does. Hope that helps your thinking on the matter. It is confusing when there are many voices about. I can empathize with you on that, having been down a lot of rabbit-holes of my own along the way. Good luck in your journey. Read as much as you can.
Thank you John for your reply. The various trust worthy voices on vitamin C do tip mega doses in its favor though I do hold Dr. Seneff's voice as very high. Her focus is on toxins so maybe she hasn't done that much on vitamin C and vetted the lies told about it by popular medicine.
Hi, you're very welcome. I went to PubMed and searched on Vitamin C and Kidney Stones. Voila, there was a fresh paper.
Ascorbic Acid Supplements and Kidney Stones Incidence Among Men and Women: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30178451
They say it's controversial. Then they do a "meta-analysis" on 4 papers. I see the word "estimate". Then, after filtering out the blur of statistical text, I got the results down to this, with some bolds and punctuation for clarity. Tell me if it makes any sense.
RESULTS:
Four studies estimating the association between AA supplements and risk of kidney stones were included for meta-analysis
AA supplements (250-499mg/d) and (1000-1499mg/d) was remarkably correlated with the risk of renal stones among men.
However, AA supplements (500-999 mg/d) and ( >1500 mg/d) did not correlate with the risk of renal stones among men.
In addition, AA supplements (250-499mg/d), (500-999mg/d) (1000-1499mg/d) (>1500mg/d)
did not remarkably correlate with the risk of renal stones among women
CONCLUSIONS:
AA supplements was (sic) remarkably correlated with higher risk for kidney stones incidence in men, but not in women.
So, if that's the latest and greatest on the subject (no idea really), then I guess a male is good to go with between 500 - 999 mg/d, or if he wants to really rev it up, he needs to stay above 1500 mg/d. A female has no need to worry according to this analysis.
Basically, the study says there are two windows of danger (i.e. statistically increased risk - by some measure) for men. But, does that make sense? And how are women different across the dose-spectrum?
No wonder they say it's "controversial". The analysis didn't help too much on that score.
Is this why the former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine said something like 90% of all papers should go in the round file, based on scientific criteria? Makes it a real mine-field eh?
Here's a way to hit two birds with one stone. The Patent Paper Zac posted the other day, (thanks, great find) talks about the power of L-Methionine in ameliorating retinoid toxicity. So all by itself that would be worth supplementing it, but now there's a bonus because it reduces the risk of kidney stones too! And it's really cheap at around 15 cents a gram.
Effect of L-Methionine on the Risk of Phosphate Stone Formation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27521063
CONCLUSION:
The present findings show that L-methionine effectively decreases urinary pH and the risk of struvite and calcium phosphate stone formation in healthy subjects. Hypercalciuria is not expected to occur at physiological doses of L-methionine.
EDIT 2/16/19 - further reading on Methionine has convinced me, along with Zac's sage advice on another thread, that supplementing it is not a good idea at all. The search for silver-bullets continues.
Good stuff John, thanks again!
Vitamin C competes with Retinoic Acid
Mol Nutr Food Res. 2017 May;61(5). doi: 10.1002/mnfr.201600506. Epub 2017 Feb 15.
Ascorbic acid drives the differentiation of mesoderm-derived embryonic stem cells. Involvement of p38 MAPK/CREB and SVCT2 transporter.
Here we tested the hypothesis that ascorbic acid (AA) is a signaling molecule acting on stem cells via the differentiation of mesoderm derivatives, including myocytes, osteocytes, and adipocytes.Investigations used a murine embryonic stem cell line CGR8 able to differentiate into different cell types and treated or not with ascorbic acid. Differentiation was tracked mainly through cellular anatomy (including presence of beating cardiomyocytes) and expression of specific markers.
CONCLUSION: The study demonstrated that AA drives mesoderm-derived stem cell differentiation toward myogenesis and osteogenesis and also inhibits adipogenesis. Further experiments found that AA competes with retinoic acid (RA) to drive cell differentiation in a dose-dependent manner: AA inhibited neurogenic differentiation and stimulated myogenesis whereas RA did the reverse. The AA-dependent differentiation of embryonic stem cells was shown to involve a p38 MAPK/CREB pathway, probably stimulated by cAMP via adenylate cyclases. In addition, SVCT2, the intracellular transporter of AA, acted as a receptor. Finally, we showed that activation/repression of specific differentiation markers is associated with epigenetic changes in their associated promoters. We discuss the impact of these findings in terms of obesity and aging.
Not only do they compete, but it looks like they act as antagonists as well, at least according to this study. Do you know the outcome of the differentiations, i.e. the outcome of the AA differentiation and the RA one, as they are opposite. As in, what does it mean, result/effect wise (good/bad?) Or the authors does not bring it up in the discussion part at all?