Post
by glacier920 » Tue Jun 07, 2011 12:22 am
It's not quote for quote, but I was citing what Hickey and Saul was saying. The exact quote is "The absolute amount absorbed increased with dose, but only slowly: up to 80-90 percent of a single 180-mg dose is absorbed, reducing to 75 percent at 1 gram, 50 percent at 1.5 grams, 26 percent at 6 grams, and 16 percent at 12 grams." I think he was citing Dr. Levine's work.
The reason why I brought this up is because I kind of experienced what Hickey and Saul said in the book, and I kind of experienced what Cathcart was saying in his bowel titration thesis. I caught a bad cold from school. I usually never get colds, but I do have oral problems which affects my sinuses and that leads me to sneeze uncontrollably, so it actually sounds and feels like I have a cold all the time. Vitamin C has treated me very kindly on my oral health.
Anyways, I got a bad cold from school. The symptoms included sore throat and weariness, blocked nose, stuffy head etc. I started by taking 10 grams of Vitamin C powder every 30-60 minutes, and I got all the way up to 100 grams by the end of the day. Towards the end of the day, I did have lots of diarrhea and it kept me up a little too long throughout the night. The next day, I felt a whole lot better, but still had the symptoms. So, I took a lot of vitamin C, and by late morning, I took about 40 grams, and fell asleep. Next thing you know, I actually crapped while I was sleeping! Don't want to be too graphic, but yes, that was what happened. So, I stopped taking vitamin C for the rest of the day, and the following day (3rd day), I actually felt worse than the 2nd day! So, I took the vitamin C, but I could not get as high as the first day. I don't quite remember if I took over 40 grams the 3rd day, but I was feeling uncomfortable with the gas plus my cold symptoms.
So in this scenario, I took well over my bowel tolerance on the first day, but not the second. This would mean that Cathcart was right. However, I still had cold symptoms, and at the same time I had gas. What Cathcart said in the "Third Face of Vitamin C" was that he "believed that the loose stools of ascorbic acid ingested orally ingested is due to resulting hypertonicity of ascorbate in the rectum. Water is attracted to the rectum by the increased osmotic pressure and results in the loosening of the stools." So, the unusual amounts of Vitamin C I took on the first day of sickness would mean that this corresponds to Cathcart's titration argument. However, back to Hickey/Saul, the gas and loose stools I experienced corresponded with what they wrote in their book on page 45. The fact that I got worse on the third day would reinforce what Hickey/Saul said because apparently, a lot of the vitamin C did not get absorbed.
One way for me to tell how effective oral ascorbic acid powder is, is when I look at my gum. I have a red gingival line, and whenever I take oral ascorbic acid powder, I can see the red line turn pinker, but not quite pink. It would then turn back redder as the hours pass, and when I take more vitamin C, I would get gas and loose stools rather than it being absorbed. This would be a big disappointment for me until I ran into lypo-spheric vitamin C. Now it seems like my gum is improving everyday, with little turning back. It gets pinker, and my gum has become a lot less swollen. So with the lypo-spheric, it seems I can absorb most of the vitamin C, though it is much more expensive than the powder.
The conclusion with my experience is that Cathcart was partially right, and it seems that Hickey/Saul is more accurate in that much of the ascorbic acid powder is not absorbed. The impression that I got from Cathcart is that the illness is gone when you reach and maintain bowel tolerance, but this was not completely true for me. My gum line was also an indicator of how well ascorbic acid powder is absorbed. The result was that the redness goes away for a brief moment, and then it turns back red and if I continued ingesting ascorbic acid powder, I would just crap it out. With the lypo-spheric, it seems to be getting better. I hope it continues with the lypo-spheric, and I would report my results if I am ever cured. I believe with all the manufactured foods that I have eaten when I was a kid caused a huge deficiency in vitamin C, and I believe that I had something in between of sub clinical scurvy and frank acute scurvy. When the mouth bled, that was an indicator of scurvy, however, I did not get those lumps on my legs like people with frank acute scurvy.
This could be just me. Perhaps my body could not digest it as well which is why Pauling reminded us to be sensitive to bio diversity. What do you guys think?