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Is my Vitamin C level a bit bad, or really bad?

Research 1st

Severe ME, POTS & MCAS.
Messages
768
Hello everyone.

After testing nearly everything under the sun for immunity that came back normal ($$$) I thought of the most basic immune supporting nutrient we all need, Vitamin C.

To my surprise, the Vitamin C came back at under 5.7 umol/L with the reference range being over 11.4 umol/L not to be deficient. To my untrained eye, this makes my result look pretty bad, or in your view is it actually bad enough to tell a doctor and see what they think?

I ask, as what is freaking me out for a long time now, is even without an active inflammatory chest which is very common as I keep getting upper respiratory tract infections and burning lungs that trigger relentless daily Asthma for weeks, is my breathing muscles feel so terribly worn out, it's like they've given up working on their own. it's scary as I keep wanting someone else to breathe for me, especially when I get infections which then really makes me almost accept I'm going to collapse out of exhaustion (breathing), but of course that's not possible without being on a ventilator in hospital.

Since I had the test result back I've tried to be proactive and started taking 2000mg (2g) of Vitamin C but I wondered if this would be enough to correct my levels rapidly? I don't eat any fruit and only drink water. I live off meat & potatoes and spinach (for iron) that have some Vitamins in, but evidently not enough.

It just goes to show if you develop MCAS/food allergies and have to radically alter your diet you can end up in trouble thinking your symptoms are 'just' ME CFS. I'm sure we've all done this with many issues we end up having, especially when out treatment is said to be CBT/GET/Antidepressants, but doesn't work as we aren't depressed and working at our full cellular potential at rest, never mind marching around whistling motivational tunes to GET.

Thank you for any ideas and input and sorry in advance if it's a tricky question.
 

JES

Senior Member
Messages
1,320
Since I had the test result back I've tried to be proactive and started taking 2000mg (2g) of Vitamin C but I wondered if this would be enough to correct my levels rapidly? I don't eat any fruit and only drink water. I live off meat & potatoes and spinach (for iron) that have some Vitamins in, but evidently not enough.

Modern medicine only recognizes scurvy as vitamin C deficiency. I have never even had a blood vitamin C test done, even though I got checked for almost all vitamins and minerals when I was searching for my diagnosis. This tells me blood vitamin C testing is either not very important or not reliable. But seeing that you don't eat a very varied diet, I would say it's possible you get deficiency symptoms (the seamen who got scurvy ate the same diet day after day and had no access to fresh vegetables).

Regarding supplementing, I would be a bit cautious. The ascorbic acid form, which is in most supplements, isn't the form of vitamin C that occurs in nature and actually high doses have been found to cause more damage than good. One problem is that it depletes copper, so if you don't supplement with copper, I wouldn't recommend a dosage as high as 2 g in long term. The best way to get vitamin C is directly from food sources.
 
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justy

Donate Advocate Demonstrate
Messages
5,524
Location
U.K
Hi, I don't know anything about Vit C deficiency, but vit C is also a mast cell stabiliser so it might help you there.

Re breathing/lung issues. I found mine have largely gone awy once on Ketotifen for MCAS. I hadn't realised my daily asthma and constant infections and air hunger was related to MCAS mine were truly awful, like yours. Dr Afrin talks about this in his book - where lung infections seem almost constant but actually it is not an infection but is inflammation - it is also not asthma necessarily. I have been misdiagnosed with asthma most of my life when it was probably MCAS all along.
 

pamojja

Senior Member
Messages
2,384
Location
Austria
Since I had the test result back I've tried to be proactive and started taking 2000mg (2g) of Vitamin C but I wondered if this would be enough to correct my levels rapidly?

Just to give a different perspective, high dose vitamin C as recommended by Linus Pauling against CVD has really turned my health around again (with a PAD diagnosis and 60% walking disability, which since has been revoked), with none of the usually hypothesized bad effects (kidney stones, iron overload, copper depletion..). Only when taking more than my bowel-tolerance (at about 50 g/d) I get loose stools, which immediately resolve by lovering the dose only slightly again.

Only tested once how far up I could my serum levels, after reading one study which found, that with about 20 g/d orally even as high serum levels are reached as usually only thought possible with IV ascorbate. Well it showed my system uses vitamin C faster up then it accumulates. While taking about 36 gram in water the preceding 12 fasting hours, the serum Vitamin C came back 133 µmol/l only (23.4 mg/l; 5-15 range)
 

PatJ

Forum Support Assistant
Messages
5,288
Location
Canada
active inflammatory chest which is very common as I keep getting upper respiratory tract infections and burning lungs that trigger relentless daily Asthma for weeks

Nebulized colloidal silver is often very useful for chest (and other) infections (although I read one recommendation not to do this if a person is very weak because there may be a chance of respiratory arrest). Colloidal silver plus certain herbs can be useful for asthma.

High dose iodine has helped some people to control their asthma.

This comment about zinc from AnnaDove on another thread may be useful:
I have found zinc to be critical in holding infections at bay. The first of January, I discovered I was severely zinc deficient and began to restore it. Within a week the BV I had been battling for a year went away. I think I had been deficient for a very long time. It helps many things. Last week when my new asthma doctor tested me, I had gone from about a dozen environmental allergies to just one! It was hard to believe. I had those allergies all of my adult life. I had severe asthma and chronic respiratory infections. I believe it was the zinc. Nothing else had changed. draxe.com/zinc-deficiency
 
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ChrisD

Senior Member
Messages
472
Location
East Sussex
Based on Dr. Andrew Saul's work (as well as Klenner and Linus Pauling),they believe that there is really no upper limit of Vitamin C and that it can be used a therapeutic treatment for many inflammatory diseases. I have been taking anything between 2g and 50g a day for the past couple of months and it has helped my condition a lot, certainly it has reduced pain and anything related to inflammation - like tight chest and shortness of breath. My energy levels shoot up on around 20g but this treatment has to be maintained daily. I don't know how safe it is but I started on this protocol in a time that I was really quite depressed about the illness, and it has only helped me both physically and mentally.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
Scurvy is on a comeback for diabetics who eat vegetables but not fruit. Yet vitamin C is a tricky thing to test for. You need to know cellular levels. Contrary to common opinion the body stores vitamin C very well. Its just there is no storage organ. Every single cell stores its own vitamin C. In most cases it takes a year or so before we run out if we are not eating it.