Vitamin C Absorbtion

[brockw69]

Hi,

Apparently, the human body can only absorb about 65mg of vitamin c when taken orally, making mega dose (1000mg) tablets nothing more than a money spinner for drug companies. Vitamin C is an interesting vitamin to me and I am wondering if one were to inject via i.v. 1000mg of vitamin c, would more of it be absorbed and would it be dangerous to inject 1000+mg of vitamin c?
[vitamin c is available as a non prescription injection for horses]

Regards,
Warren

[John Cuthber]

Did it occur to you that there might be a good reason why the body doesn't bother to absorb more than 65mg?

 

Done carefully, you could probably inject 1000 mg safely (though you would need to talk to a medic about how to do so).

The effect would be that your urine would contain more vitamin C than usual for a day or so until it was excreted.

Why bother?

As you say "making mega dose (1000mg) tablets nothing more than a money spinner for drug companies."

[brockw69]

Thanks John,

I did consider your suggestion, however, I thought that the process may be similar in some way to the bioavailability of morphine, for example, where at least half of the drug is destroyed during 1st pass. Anyway, I appreciate your response, obviously I need to read more about how the body absorbs different vitamins.

Regards,
Warren

[jmcnell]

The body has many factors that effect absorption. You will have to look into the broad range of factors including water-solubility, mucoprotein produced in the stomach, and other intrinsic factors.

 

Also Vitamin C is absoric acid so throwing the pH balance off with mega doses could be bad, although I don't believe any serious cases have ever came about.

[brockw69]

Although I fail to be able to reference the experiment, I recall reading of an experiment with vitamin c where vit c was injected in to the main blood supply of a tumour. Doses where near toxic, whatever the toxic dose of vit c is, and the tumour was destroyed. unfortunately I have only ever heard of this one experiment. Perhaps it was so successful that it threatened the billions of dollars drug companies make from chemo drugs or it was simply never repeated.

[hypervalent_iodine]

Although I fail to be able to reference the experiment, I recall reading of an experiment with vitamin c where vit c was injected in to the main blood supply of a tumour. Doses where near toxic, whatever the toxic dose of vit c is, and the tumour was destroyed. unfortunately I have only ever heard of this one experiment. Perhaps it was so successful that it threatened the billions of dollars drug companies make from chemo drugs or it was simply never repeated.

 

 

As far as I know, there was a study in the 70's that could not be replicated. Later studies that used IV administration of ascorbic acid did not produce any significant results in human clinical trials either. More likely is that it just doesn't work in the way you suppose it might.

 

There is some evidence to suggest that consumption of foods in high in vitamin C helps in preventing cancer, but it's more likely that it is a result of overall health rather than a direct result of the vitamin C. There is no actual evidence to support the claim that megadoses of vitamin C help with anything, but this should not be that surprising.

[jmcnell]

That makes sense because a diet rich in vitamin c would basically mean a diet rich in fruits/veggies, or in cases now rich in actual OTC vitamins.