vitamin c how often?

This forum will focus on the interesting topic of titrating oral vitamin C intake to so-called bowel tolerance, the point just prior to the onset of diarrhea

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Van Carman
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1982 Letter From Irwin Stone To Albert SzentGiorgy

Post Number:#16  Post by Van Carman » Sat Jun 03, 2006 2:55 pm

Please read this interesting letter about massive doses of vitamin C extending a terminal cancer patient's life.Sincerely, Van













Please read this amazing
cinnamon and scurvy

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Post Number:#17  Post by ascorbicjoe » Sat Jun 03, 2006 10:22 pm

I take about 6-7 grams 3 times a day. Once when I wake, once in the afternoon and again before I go to bed. I find that at this level I will occasionally have bowel issues.

My question, Would it be better to take 1 gram every hour and take the remainder before I go to bed? I would think this would provide higher serum levels since I would not be having such high spikes of AA in my gut.

With the 30 minute half-life much is elimated, for example my 6 grams would be down to .00009 grams over 8 hours. However, microdosing would mean I would be up .25 or more grams every hour. So, I would be getting more bang for the buck by having a sustained or increasing level compared to a high spike which drops pretty fast to near nothing. Obviously, even small doses very frequently may actually trigger BT more often, since you should really have a high level in your system. This is simplistic, I am sure, since your half-life is of what is in your bloodstream at the moment. How could we get a better calculation on this. From what I can tell with my calculator anything over 2 hours really diminishes your AA levels. 6 times a day is every 4 hours and that will kill almost any reasonable amount (10 g or less) you take to very low levels.

I could take tablets and take powder before I sleep and when I wake to help cover the time sleeping and to recover quickly in the AM. Is there anyone doing anything like this. Is it difficult to take pills that frequently. I have to think now to remember, but I will really need to buy a watch (I do not like wearing them) to chime every hour.

Ideas? Do time releases AA pills work? That could be useful during sleep.

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Convenience

Post Number:#18  Post by ofonorow » Sun Jun 04, 2006 9:19 am

This is a good question and interesting observation.

First, the Dynamic Flow half-life is the concentration in the blood serum. (Obviously the half-life in the body is not 30 minutes, or we'd all be dead of scurvy. According to the late Professor S. Lewin, the half-life of ascorbate in the body (by definition then, within cells), is around 3 weeks.

So the question becomes how often should we human beings supplement, versus the inconvenience of doing so?

Animals synthesize it continually 24/7. My simple example is that they make ascorbic acid at a 250 mg/hour rate (on average and adjusted for body weight) so that we'd have to take 500 mg/hr by mouth to be roughly equivalent to what animals are making.

The work of Hickey/Roberts indicates that an optimum blood level can be maintained in unsick humans with 500 mg every 4 hours.

On the other hand, for about 20 years (before the publication of the Hickey/Roberts ASCORBATE book) I followed Linus Pauling's example and consumed 9000 mg every 12 hours, or twice per day. Now I am more prone to take 1000 mg throughout the day.

Taking more frequently mimics nature, but is less convenient.
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Post Number:#19  Post by ascorbicjoe » Sun Jun 04, 2006 12:54 pm

So, what you are saying is that the real risk is when the ascorbate is just flowing around looking for a place to go. It has a chance to be excreted through the kidneys or just breaking down. So, our stores of C would be available for several weeks, if we dropped to a zero intake of AA.

Well, I am trying 1 gram an hour today, I will see if it creates BT problem. I started with 4 gram mixed with baking soda when I awoke and have been dosing every hour, with an exception on one missed and I made in up the next hour.

This could be useful for the cost for my tablets from Sam's Club is a 2/100ths of a cent cheaper per gram. Also, I believe I may be able to do with less overall, since any huge spike in serum levels from a 6-7 gram dose will disappear very quickly as if you never took it. The only exception would be catching a cold or flu and you dosed at the right time your body may really utilize it. However, this would be luck at best.

Any suggestions for time release while I sleep? I feel a big dose before you sleep may be needed, but a time released capsule may be a good bet.

Thanks for all the input.

johnor

Rate of dosage.

Post Number:#20  Post by johnor » Sun Jun 04, 2006 6:31 pm

AscobicJoe,
I have had the same difficulties with understanding what dose of Vitamin C to take. Also I don't understand what the words 'vitamin c breakdown' really mean. How much of the 'breakdown' is really just loss of potency and how much is due to uptake by the cells? I have noticed that if you leave a glass of liquified Vitamin C powder sitting that it will lose acidic potency by the hour and eventually tastes quite bland. Is that what the 30 minute half life is? What is the absorbtion of the Vitamin C through the stomach, through the intestines? Wouldn't a better overall serum level be achieved by evenly spaced doeses of slow release vitamin C. In the case of slow release a known substantial amount would continue to be released many hours later because the C is protected by the dissolution resistant tablet coating. Questions, questions!

Salud,
John :D

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Post Number:#21  Post by Dolev » Sun Jun 04, 2006 7:49 pm

I never really trust the enteric-coated supplements. I'm sure there is some delay, but it's hard for me to believe that vitamin c will neatly release for six hours. There's also a serious price difference that I don't think is worth it.
Dolev

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Re: Convenience

Post Number:#22  Post by zucic » Tue Jun 06, 2006 5:39 am

> The work of Hickey/Roberts indicates that an optimum
> blood level can be maintained in unsick humans with
> 500 mg every 4 hours.
I take about 3 grams every two hours, at odd hours, starting from 7:00
to 23:00, if possible to keep this schedule. Reasons:
(1) Some liquid every two hours sounds reasonable.
(2) Figure 2. from Padayatty et. al., Vitamin C Pharmacokinetics ...
Annals of Internal Medicine Vol. 140. No. 7 (2004).
(3) Hickey and Roberts arguments.

More frequent dosage might be better, I guess, but it is not very practical.

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Post Number:#23  Post by rider » Mon Feb 12, 2007 3:07 am

We don't agree on the practicallity issue.. We put 10-15 grams in a half liter bottle and just take it with us to work or where-ever and sip it through the workingday.. It means less coffee or tea (with sugar) and it tastes really refreshing.
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Post Number:#24  Post by w6nrw » Sun Apr 15, 2007 9:26 am

The 30 minute half-life for Vitamin C in the blood has been well
established for some time. But I wonder whether this is a
linear function. That is, if one takes 2 grams of C it is down
to 1 gram in 30 minutes. But is it also true that if one takes
100 milligrams it is down to 50 milligrams in 30 minutes? And
how does stress, or non stress and/or prior condition influence
the decline?

As generally stated, we must be in a sorry state after 8
hours of sleep. Strictly based on inferred logic it seems
to me that the half-life figure could be a wild variable.

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Post Number:#25  Post by Cis4me » Tue Apr 17, 2007 6:12 pm

Everything I've read suggests that the 30-minute half-life is based on the blood levels being above the kidney threshold, the point where the kidneys send the vitamin c to the urine rather than back into the blood. Once your blood levels drop below that amount, the kidneys are no longer actively excreting vitamin C and the half-life becomes considerably longer (on the order of weeks).

I have not seen any studies that prove or disprove this (I wonder why? ), but I've suspected that when under stress, the half-life is considerably shorter due to the Vitamin C being used as well as being excreted.

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Interesting

Post Number:#26  Post by ofonorow » Wed Apr 18, 2007 8:14 am

Cis4me wrote:Everything I've read suggests that the 30-minute half-life is based on the blood levels being above the kidney threshold, the point where the kidneys send the vitamin c to the urine rather than back into the blood. Once your blood levels drop below that amount, the kidneys are no longer actively excreting vitamin C and the half-life becomes considerably longer (on the order of weeks).

I have not seen any studies that prove or disprove this (I wonder why? ), but I've suspected that when under stress, the half-life is considerably shorter due to the Vitamin C being used as well as being excreted.


This idea is interesting, and it may be true, but I don't really think so. Various substances and drugs have different pharmakinetic half-lives, even though the kidneys regulate blood levels. Certainly spillage into the urine has something to do with this, but any measurement with 200 mg or less of ascorbate would have little or nothing to do with kidney spillage. I think the work in Sherry Lewin's lab showing the half-life of vitamin C as ascorbic acid in water offers a better explanation. The vitamin breaks down to 50% of its original value after 4 hours in tape water.

Scurvy doesn't set in for 3-5 weeks or so without vitamin C intake, and the "half life" of vitamin C in tissues (already inside cells) is around 27 days. So this "half-life" in cells is different than the half life of ascorbate traveling through the blood.
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Post Number:#27  Post by w6nrw » Wed Apr 18, 2007 8:36 am

I wonder whether the observation that C's half life in water is 4 hours vs 30 minutes
in blood would be influenced at all by the idea that the blood is at around 98
degrees and the water (I'm assuming here) was at around 70 degrees.

Makes me wonder whether adding C to water that is near freezing in a
thermos would extend its half life.

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Measurements are infrequent and not precise

Post Number:#28  Post by ofonorow » Wed Apr 18, 2007 9:19 am

The body/blood measurements are infrequent and not necessarily precise and the very same curve may be present in both cases, but exptrapolated in the NIH data, I can't say. However, there is also the issue of absorption into the trillions of cells from the blood.
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