Yes I have a concern as to who to believe. Dr. Pauling stated that heart disease was a vitamin C deficiency. I have also heard Dr. Tom Levy state that all heart disease is because of people who have had dental root canal procedures. Who is right? I can't afford to go out and have all my teeth pulled! Will the mega doses of Vitamin C take care of this problem?
Good question! Actually, Dr. Levy wrote a stunning book, STOP AMERICA'S #1 KILLER (livonbooks.com) where he identified the cause of heart disease as a localized scurvy in the arterial tissues. So Dr. Levy is in full agreement that (low) vitamin C is the root cause of the problem. (Lack of ascorbate in the cardiovascular tissues.)
It is my understanding that the point Dr. Levy makes about dental work is that it can be so toxic as to literally drain the body of any and all vitamin C reserves, creating the shortage (focal scruvy) that leads to heart disease. He does not believe that vitamin C supplementation can be all that effective until this particular source of toxicity is resolved.
I must differ because in our, now 15-year experience, we have seen severe heart disease resolved quickly in almost all cases of end stage CVD -- using Pauling sized high dose vitamin C and lysine. There has rarely been a failure, and in theory, most of these people probably had dental issues. (It is true that the dosages required for symptom reversal are high, and compliance becomes an issue.)
Now thinking this over, thanks to Dr. Cathcart (http://www.orthomed.com/titrate.htm) we know that during infections, large areas in the tissues are depleted of vitamin C. Cathcart called this acute localized scurvy: ascorbemia. It leads to generalized malaise and various symptoms of the illness. (Those on high vitamin C regimens rarely suffer as many symptoms as those who don't supplement C.) If dental work depleted C, why wouldn't the same ascorbemia result? If anything it is a mild ascorbemia. I think Dr. Levy is correct that ordinary amounts of vitamin C can not counteract the toxicity they have found in dental work, but it is not so clear that dental work drains the body as a bad cold or the flu will. (If Levy is correct given our experience, then the dental toxicity is highly localized, while the cold or flu are much more widespread. But this still means that high vitamin C should still be able to help correct cardiovascular issues, even with a dental toxicity issue. We obviously do not know everything at this point.)
So yes, dental toxicity is probably a cause of all or most CVD because it drains the body of its usually limited ascorbate.
Bottom line - both are probably right. The entire problem of cardivascular disease is related to insufficient vitamin C. (And medicine refuses to study any connection between vitamin C and heart disease.)