User's Guide to Vitamin C
By Hyla Cass, M.D., Jim English and Jack Challem
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About this ebook
Hyla Cass, M.D.
Nationally acclaimed innovator and expert in the fields of integrative medicine, psychiatry, and addiction recovery, Dr. Cass helps individuals to take charge of their health. One area is in withdrawing from both psychiatric medication and substances of abuse with the aid of natural supplements. Dr. Cass appears often as a guest on national radio and television, including The Dr. Oz Show, E! Entertainment, and The View, and in national print media. She has been quoted in many national magazines, blogs for the Huffington Post, and is the author of several best-selling books including: Natural Highs, 8 Weeks to Vibrant Health, Supplement your Prescription: What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Nutrition, and her ebook, The Addicted Brain and How to Break Free. She has created her own line of innovative nutritional supplements. A member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Health Sciences Institute and Taste for Life Magazine, she is also Associate Editor of Total Health Magazine, she has served on the boards of California Citizens for Health and the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM). A native of Toronto, she graduated from the University of Toronto School of Medicine, interned at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, and completed a psychiatric residency at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center/UCLA. She is a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN), and of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine (ABIHM)
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User's Guide to Vitamin C - Hyla Cass, M.D.
INTRODUCTION
Today, vitamin C is one of the most widely used and highly valued vitamins in the world—and for good reason. Its popularity began in 1970, when Linus Pauling published his groundbreaking book Vitamin C and the Common Cold. Sales of vitamin C immediately skyrocketed, with some amazing results, such as the number of deaths attributed to heart disease plummeting by a staggering 40 percent in the next decade. Scientist now estimate that more than 250,000 lives are saved every year because of the efforts of Linus Pauling and other dedicated researchers to educate the public about the benefits of vitamin C. Based on these statistics, it has been estimated that if everyone in the United States took several hundred milligrams of vitamin C a day, more than 100,000 lives and $100 billion in healthcare costs would be saved each year.
In The Users Guide to Vitamin C, we will show you how vitamin C reduces heart disease, cancer, and many of the common diseases that plague the world today. We will also look at how a genetic accident that occurred untold millions of years ago robbed our ancestors of the ability to manufacture this vital nutrient. This problem has continued to trouble humankind throughout history, and even today, it contributes to the vast majority of human diseases, such as arthritis, cardiovascular disease, strokes, and cancer. We will see that these conditions, which are so common in humans, rarely occur in animals that still possess the ability to manufacture vitamin C—often in amounts thousands of times greater than those many health authorities consider to be essential to human health.
Not only can vitamin C help us to feel better and live longer, but it also has been proven to support numerous functions that can help us attain optimal health, including:
• Antioxidant Protection. This premier antioxidant nutrient protects us from the ravages of free radicals that, if left to destroy cell membranes and damage DNA, lead to the development of degenerative diseases and accelerated aging.
• Collagen Production. Vitamin C helps manufacture collagen, the basic cellular cement
that keeps muscles, tendons, bones, teeth, and skin healthy and strong, and aids in the repair of blood vessels and broken bones.
• Cardiovascular Support. Vitamin C benefits heart conditions of all kinds, normalizes blood pressure, reduces cholesterol levels, and aids in the removal of cholesterol deposits from arterial walls.
In the following chapters, you will also see how a nutrient that is so abundant in nature—and so necessary for all life—is constantly under attack from those who argue that all good nutrition begins and ends with a fork. Can we get all the vitamin C we need from food alone? It has been shown that even the best diet cannot begin to provide the higher levels of vitamin C (500–1,000 mg per day) that research has proven can help us fend off illness, degenerative diseases, and premature aging.
We will also address the safety of vitamin C—an issue that is often at the center of seemingly biased media reporting that ignores the overwhelming body of clinical and scientific research that attests to the safety and effectiveness of this natural nutrient.
So we invite you to sit back, pour a glass of orange juice (or take a good multivitamin), and come along to discover how this essential antiaging, anticancer, and antistress nutrient can help you live a longer, healthier, and more fulfilling life.
CHAPTER 1
THE HISTORY OF VITAMIN C AND SCURVY
Vitamin C, also called ascorbic acid, is a powerful water-soluble antioxidant that is vital for the growth and maintenance of all body tissues. Though easily absorbed by the intestines, vitamin C cannot be stored in the body, and is excreted in the urine within two to four hours of ingestion. Human history has been deeply influenced by vitamin C—or more accurately, by a frequent and disastrous lack of this vital nutrient. In his book The Healing Factor: Vitamin C Against Disease , the late biochemist Irwin Stone stated: … the lack of this molecule [vitamin C] in humans has contributed to more deaths, sickness, and just plain misery than any other single factor in man’s long history.
Written records dating back to ancient Egypt contain the earliest reports of scurvy, a dreaded human disease caused by vitamin C deficiency. In 450 B.C., Aristotle carefully described the symptoms of scurvy, which include muscle weakness, lethargy, extreme fatigue, depression, joint pains, swollen and bleeding gums, foul breath, loss of teeth, bleeding under the skin and orifices (hemorrhages), and, eventually, death.
Ascorbic Acid
Another name for vitamin C that derives from the Latin word ascorbic, which means without scurvy.
Scurvy has remained a constant threat to humans, causing death and misery whenever dietary sources of vitamin C became scarce. Outbreaks have been particularly devastating in times of extreme famine, such as during the Irish Potato Famine. And throughout history, scurvy often has been more dangerous than man-made weapons, decimating entire armies cut off from supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables. During the Crusades (1200 A.D.), untold thousands perished from scurvy, as did hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting in the Crimean, Napoleonic, and American Civil wars.
Outbreaks of scurvy have not been restricted just to the land. In the sixteenths century, the Renaissance saw the introduction of modern seafaring and a subsequent rush for global exploration. During this period, scurvy became the dreaded scourge of the sea, as sailors embarked on epic voyages that often lasted for two years or more. Frequently, captains would return from a voyage with barely a third of their crews still desperately clinging to life. Such appalling losses of life (and money) were unacceptable to European ambitions, and led to a desperate search for a cure for scurvy.
Dr. James Lind and the Birth of the Limey
In 1739, England was entering into a war with Spain. In a daring tactical move, the British Navy dispatched a fleet of ships to the Philippines to attack the famed Manila galleons that plied riches, men,