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Vitamin C - any dangers?

SwanRonson

Senior Member
Messages
300
Location
Alabama
One of the staples in my supplement regimen for the last 6 months has been 1500mg of Vitamin C (solgar ester-c). Some days I do 2000mg. Everything I've read says that Vitamin C is super safe in these amounts. Is there anything I should be aware of long-term?
 

justy

Donate Advocate Demonstrate
Messages
5,524
Location
U.K
Dr Myhill suggest daily doses to bowel tolerance, which I have never reached, even taking 1g every three hours whilst awake!

BUT I know that Richvank, who did a lot of good work on methylation, talked about the dangers of high dose Vitamin C, but i'm not sure I can remember what he said or where he said it - you could try searching for methylation and Vit c on the search function of the forums.
I am also trying to find info on Vit c and Histamine - I have read its good and mops up histamine (im having mast cell issues at the moment) but other sources have suggested that after 750mg it may become problematic and cause extra mast cell degranulation - this issue also has not been resolved and im not sure what to do.

I always feel a little better with 2-3 g a day of Vit C, but am having a complete break for a week or so right now.
 

Gondwanaland

Senior Member
Messages
5,092
What I can remeber from the top of my head is that vit C
  • increases iron absorption (men and menopausal women, beware)
  • chelates some metals out (copper for instance)
  • has some endocrine implications that now I forget (sorry)
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
Vitamin C is fairly safe at most reasonable doses in most people. So far as I am aware the group that has to be careful is anyone with haemochromatosis. High iron and high vitamin C can combine effects to become high oxidant rather than antioxidant. I have not investigated this enough to be sure of the chemistry, but it would be an unnecessary risk.

However we are all different. One person's safe dose of something could be the next person's toxic dose. Some moderation is a good idea. For vitamin C though the safe limits are likely to be very high most of the time. I would not be too worried unless your iron levels (or ferritin if you don't know your iron, but a full iron workup is more reliable) are way above normal. There may be drugs it interacts with, I am not sure about that, but mostly its tolerated.

One possibility nobody has written about that I know of is that the amount of vitamin C stored might be too high over time if you stay on a higher dose. I did say stored. Contrary to popular medical textbooks vitamin C is stored. Where some vitamins have a preferred store, such as the liver, vitamin C is stored in every metabolically active tissue. Its needed everywhere. The cells hold onto it as long as they can, they don't like to release it if dietary intake is low. However I do not know if this is true if dietary intake is high. If it is then a high dose for long enough could turn a good dose into a bad one. I wish someone had investigated this.

For anyone with high iron, the antioxidant from milk thistle is said to be a problem as well, but I have investigated this even less.
 

jepps

Senior Member
Messages
519
Location
Austria
Paul Jaminet writes about the safety of Vitamin C:
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/category/nutrients/vitamin-c/
Safety
Vitamin C is extremely safe. Intravenous doses of 120 g/day given to cancer patients have been well tolerated. [10]

One of the reasons doctors give for avoiding vitamin C is fear that it might cause kidney stones. However, Cathcart believed vitamin C was beneficial for kidney stones:

It is my experience that ascorbic acid probably prevents most kidney stones. I have had a few patients who had had kidney stones before starting bowel tolerance doses who have subsequently had no more difficulty with them. Acute and chronic urinary tract infections are often eliminated; this fact may remove one of the causes of kidney stones. [5]

I take 2-3 g Vit. C. daily (liposomal and not liposomal) long term.
 
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Sushi

Moderation Resource Albuquerque
Messages
19,935
Location
Albuquerque
BUT I know that Richvank, who did a lot of good work on methylation, talked about the dangers of high dose Vitamin C, but i'm not sure I can remember what he said or where he said it
From Rich in 2008:
The idea is that the lower dosages supply
antioxidant support without placing too large a demand on glutathione,
which is depleted in many cases of CFS, mid-range dosages place a
demand on glutathione for recycling vitamin C (according to Dr.
Cheney, and I think he's right), and bowel tolerance dosages are able
to raise the vitamin C concentrations sufficiently that vitamin C
recycles glutathione, rather than glutathione recycling vitamin C, as
is normal.
 

Sushi

Moderation Resource Albuquerque
Messages
19,935
Location
Albuquerque
I am not sure if I get the quoted text right.
He seems to be saying the low dosages and very high ones are good but not the mid-range?
The idea is that the lower dosages supply
antioxidant support without placing too large a demand on glutathione,
I think this means simply that you get some of the benefits of Vit C with a lower dose, without depleting glutathione. Midrange doses do seem to deplete glutathione, wheras high doses (closer to bowel tolerance) help to recycle glutathione = more glutathione available.
 

PeterPositive

Senior Member
Messages
1,426
I think this means simply that you get some of the benefits of Vit C with a lower dose, without depleting glutathione. Midrange doses do seem to deplete glutathione, wheras high doses (closer to bowel tolerance) help to recycle glutathione = more glutathione available.
That's an interesting concept.
If this is correct I have probably been depleting my glutathione pretty actively in the last 6-8 months or so! :D

My current dosage is 3-4 grams / day. Definitely the mid range your quotation is talking about.

Hmmm... :wide-eyed:
 

Gondwanaland

Senior Member
Messages
5,092
That's an interesting concept.
If this is correct I have probably been depleting my glutathione pretty actively in the last 6-8 months or so! :D

My current dosage is 3-4 grams / day. Definitely the mid range your quotation is talking about.

Hmmm... :wide-eyed:
I think it varies from person to person. I guess this would be high dose for me
 

PeterPositive

Senior Member
Messages
1,426
One possibility nobody has written about that I know of is that the amount of vitamin C stored might be too high over time if you stay on a higher dose. I did say stored. Contrary to popular medical textbooks vitamin C is stored.
I have found this information: The total body pool of vitamin C has been estimated using radiolabeled isotopes, to a maximum of 20 mg/kg body weight.

Source: http://www.exrx.net/Nutrition/Antioxidants/VitaminC.html

In my case it would be approximately 1500mg.
 
Messages
22
Location
Melbourne, Australia
You probably don't really want to know, having never met me before, that bowel tolerance for me was 19 grams. I took 18 grams the first day, and nothing happened. That felt like a lot until I read elsewhere online that some people can tolerate up to 30 grams :O
 

Daffodil

Senior Member
Messages
5,875
i thought you can take as much as you want as long as its liposomal or IV, and it wont affect the bowels at all?
 

pemone

Senior Member
Messages
448
One of the staples in my supplement regimen for the last 6 months has been 1500mg of Vitamin C (solgar ester-c). Some days I do 2000mg. Everything I've read says that Vitamin C is super safe in these amounts. Is there anything I should be aware of long-term?

I was on high dose vitamin C as well, but I cannot say it made me feel better. And in fact one of the great shocks for me was when an allopath had me go off all 40 of my supplements, I felt dramatically better.

The biggest problem is there is no *convincing* evidence that supplemental vitamin C either extends life or improves health. You will find studies on both sides of the issue, and it becomes pretty obvious at some point reading these studies that they split hairs either way. You will find very smart people like James Watson (nobel prize for discovering DNA's structure) who refuses to take any Vitamin C at all because he thinks that cancer benefits from Vitamin C more than healthy cells do.

I would feel very good about taking Vitamin C if an osteopath could measure some harmful level of oxidative stress and then prove to me that this goes away when I take Vitamin C. Apparently no osteopath is that invested to spend the time to do that.

Where Vitamin C gets much more interesting is in treatment during some active disease, like a viral infection. The ability to protect the body from massive amounts of oxidative stress might really improve the outcome. I haven't experimented with that, but there is a world of difference between using Vitamin C as a medicine during illness and using Vitamin C as a prophylactic for every day use to protect against oxidative stress.

Here's the bigger problem that I see: the body needs a certain level of free radicals in order to build its endogenous defense systems. When you use too many antioxidants, you mask this system. You are protected from the initial injury of reactive oxygen species, but you never then develop stronger defenses. If you are engaged in appropriate low-intensity exercise, you need hormesis and these interactions to get stronger. Vitamin C could result in people feeling better but then failing to get stronger as a result of exercise.

I'm getting cynical enough about supplements that I only want to take things that have remarkable proven benefits, or for which there is some real experimental evidence that my metabolism would benefit (and then some follow up that proves I did benefit). Taking Vitamin C just as an insurance policy, when the evidence is so weak, doesn't look like a smart bet to me.

Just a P.S. if you do take it: it has an extremely short half life. So if you want to take 2 grams, you are wasting the dose to take it all at once. You would want to spread it out over every three hours. But then of course you increase the risk that your are interfering with the body's ability to respond to free radicals by getting stronger in response to exercise.
 
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drob31

Senior Member
Messages
1,487
Dr. Lam loves vitamin C. I'm not sold on it just yet, however if excess free radicals are causing fatigue, Vitamin C might help. But I know some people said Lam had them up to 50 grams a day for "adrenal fatigue."

Your adrenals are tired. So while every other organ in the body just does what it's told based on signaling, the adrenal's are the only organ that gets tired. Damn those lazy adrenal glands! Get on the treadmill lazy glands!

:rolleyes:


http://midlifewithoutcrisis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/415-lazy-and-unmotivated.jpg