Imagine it was the year 1497, you were a passenger in Vasco Da Gama’s ship, invited to join him in his exploratory voyage from Lisbon, Portugal to India. The journey would take two years and include 300 days at sea. Imagine the fame you would receive when you returned back to Portugal, provided you survived the trip.
All went well in the beginning of your journey. But things started to get really bad when the ship was sailing around the Cape of Good Hope. Gradually, your ship mates started getting sick with symptoms that included weakness, sore arms and legs. Things took a turn for the worse and they started to get gum disease, and bleeding from the skin. People started dying due to infection or bleeding.
Unbeknown to everyone at that time, those people were suffering from Scurvy, a disease that was caused by a lack of vitamin C. As they sailed further up the east coast of Africa, they met local traders, who traded them fresh oranges. Within 6 days of eating the oranges, the crew recovered fully from Scurvy. Out of the original crew of 170 men, only 54 returned with him; the majority died of illnesses such as scurvy.
Isn’t the human body capable of producing vitamin C?
With the exception of insects, invertebrates, fishes, guinea pigs, monkeys, and humans, all animals can produce their own vitamin C. A typical 150 pound goat is capable of producing over 13,000 mg of vitamin C daily. If goats are capable of producing their own vitamin C, why not humans? According to research, we do not have an enzyme called L-gulonolactone oxidase (GLO). GLO is an enzyme that produces vitamin C.
Consider this…
If humans could make their own vitamin C in the same ratio that animals do, we would produce about 10,000 mg per day. That’s the amount that Linus Pauling (someone that did extensive research on vitamin C amongst other things) gave his cancer patients.
The US government’s recommended daily allowance (RDA) of 60 mg a day is hardly enough to protect you against the common cold.
Here are three ways you can get all the vitamin C you need:
Get vitamin C from food
Red and green chili peppers are two common foods with a lot of vitamin C (242 mg per 100 grams), and guava (228 mg). For comparison, oranges and strawberries only have about 60 mg per 100 grams. But the king of all fruits as far as vitamin C goes is camu camu. It has 2,700 mg per 100 grams — 45 times more vitamin C than an orange! However, this fruit can only be found in the Amazon rainforest in Peru and Brazil.
Because of modern farming techniques, the soil has become depleted of nutrients. This means that fruits and vegetables grown commercially and in non-organically certified farms and orchards contain less nutrients now than 10 years ago. Not only that, if a fruit is imported, the nutrients contained within would be less than when it was first harvested. Therefore, to be very sure that you are obtaining the appropriate amount of vitamin C, the best way would be to take a vitamin C supplement.
Take a supplement
Based on our experience, we recommend between 5,000 to 8,000 mg daily. For those with cancer, we would recommend to consume between 15,000 mg to 20,000 mg daily.
But can the body absorb such a high amount of vitamin C at one time? If taken orally, then most probably not. While there is no danger of toxicity through over-consumption of vitamin C, at such high doses, one may experience symptoms such as diarrhoea or nausea. Vitamin C is a water soluble vitamin, so any unused amount is flushed out naturally by the body within a few hours. Because the body is not able to store vitamin C, daily supplementation is very important.
The best way to consume vitamin C would be through a sustained release formula such as Nature’s Gift Vitamin C Complex and Nature’s Gift Vitamin C (500 mg). When taken, the sustained release formula is designed to release its contents over a period of 8 hours. Thus reducing the chances of the body receiving too much at one given time and providing the body with the necessary vitamins over a longer duration. In addition, Vitamin C Complex contains bioflavonoids which, when taken together with Vitamin C, help increase the body’s absorption rate of vitamin C.
If you are supposed to take 5,000 mg of Vitamin C Complex per day, then you can stagger the amount as follows:
- 2 tablets in the morning.
- 1 tablet in the afternoon.
- 2 tablets in the evening.
A bigger boost
If you have been lacking vitamin C, stressed or sick, you may require a bigger boost of this vitamin. When maximum dosage of oral intake is insufficient, you might want to consider intravenous vitamin C therapy which has a proven record in its healing properties.
You can safely get much more vitamin C intravenously than you can through supplements.
You can infuse vitamin C at 100 times the concentration of oral supplements safely. No matter how high the dose, vitamin C does not harm healthy cells.
