Vitamin C - What Do You Need

REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News By Raymond Francis Vitamin C is one of the most important molecules you can put into your body. Unfortunately, modern living has increased our need for vitamin C so that most of us are deficient and need to supplement. Tragically, most people are taking the wrong vitamin C. A number of manufacturers produce vitamin C with varying degrees of purity, and as you will see, purity is critical. Most of the vitamin C on the market is not what you should be taking. Most of us don’t think about the fact that supplement manufacturers can purchase vitamins in a range of different chemical forms and degrees of purity. The correct chemical forms, the forms that the body actually uses, coupled with the highest purity will give you the best results. Vitamins that are less pure and/or in incorrect forms may give you few or no results at all. Some vitamins are even known to have negative effects. The correct chemical forms cost more to manufacture and numerous purification steps add even more to the cost. The irony is that these more expensive ingredients are your best value and cost less in the long run because they are more biologically effective and health enhancing. If you purchase a vitamin pill that costs $1.00, but is only 10 percent biologically effective, you have just wasted 90 cents. You would have to take 10 of these pills, or $10 worth, for your body to get the amount listed on the label. The same vitamin pill in the correct biological form may cost $1.50 or even $2.00, but it gives your body close to 100 percent of what is on the label. The more expensive pill is obviously the best value and your better choice. Vitamin C is almost a universal wonder drug. It is so basic to human biochemistry that obtaining adequate amounts of vitamin C must be the foundation of any wellness strategy. Vitamin C has many roles in the body. It is a powerful antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and anticancer compound. No matter what ails you, lots of vitamin C will help. Many “incurable” conditions have been cured simply by providing adequate vitamin C. Almost all infectious diseases can be both prevented and reversed by vitamin C. Toxicity is one of the two causes of disease, and vitamin C helps to neutralize the effects of toxins. Vitamin C is necessary for the correct synthesis of collagen, and it helps to maintain healthy collagen. Collagen is the glue that holds your body together, and without healthy collagen, you will begin to fall apart. Vitamin C removes toxic metals such as aluminum, mercury and lead from the body. Extensive research shows that adequate vitamin C reduces the risk of cancer, heart disease, colds, flu, cataracts, hypertension and even depression. It speeds wound healing, helps keep the body in good repair, slows the aging process and extends life itself. Vitamin C is also very safe; negative effects from overdosing have never been observed. Few people get enough vitamin C. We have created an oxidizing environment containing excessive amounts of toxins. This uses up vitamin C at unprecedented rates. I recommend that most people take 6,000 mg per day. I personally take 16,000 mg. Linus Pauling used to take 18,000, and I know one man who takes 100,000 per day to stay alive. Anyone with a chronic health problem would be wise to take an amount called “bowel tolerance.” When taking large amounts of anything it is essential to make sure that what you are taking is very pure. Otherwise, you may be taking large amounts of something your body shouldn’t be getting. This is why you cannot go out and just purchase vitamin C off the shelf at the health food store. Almost all of it contains something you shouldn’t be getting. Virtually all vitamin C is synthesized. Most of it is made in China, and does not come close to meeting my quality standards. While known to scientists like myself, the public and most doctors are totally unaware that synthesizing vitamin C produces two very different molecules. These are: D-ascorbate and L-ascorbate. Almost all the vitamin C on the market is roughly a 50/50 mixture of the two. Only the L-ascorbate is biologically beneficial to the body. D-ascorbate is an irritant to the body, and there are indications that a lot of D-ascorbate could be detrimental to health. Over the years that I have recommended vitamin C, many have complained that vitamin C irritates their stomach. Yet, when they take high-quality vitamin C, this doesn’t happen—it’s the D-ascorbate contaminant that’s the problem. Those who are supplementing with regular commercial vitamin C need to know that half of what they are paying for is biologically useless, a waste of money and perhaps even detrimental. Another issue is that even vitamin C from natural sources degrades. For example, a fresh orange is almost all L-ascorbate. Once extracted to make orange juice, it will, in a matter of days, degrade to become a 50/50 mixture of D- and L-ascorbate. Most vitamin C supplements contain oxidized forms of vitamin C. Unless manufacturers are scrupulous in excluding oxygen during the manufacturing process, oxidized forms of vitamin C will be produced. Some vitamin C products contain as much as 25 percent oxidized vitamin C, but oxidized vitamin C does not neutralize free radicals, does not support collagen synthesis and can actually promote free radical formation. This is not good! Oxidized vitamin C will also be formed in juices, such as orange juice, and other vitamin fortified products as they are exposed to oxygen. Most of the vitamin C on the market is made from corn. Corn is a major allergen; it is estimated that about half the population may be allergic to it. For those who are allergic to corn, corn-based vitamin C can damage their health. Making matters worse, virtually all of the corn in the U.S. is now genetically modified (GM) or contaminated with GM corn. There are indications that vitamin C made from GM corn can damage your health. Vitamin C pills are usually loaded with excipients. These can include rose hips, starch, sucrose, talc, povidone (synthetic polymer used as a dispersing and suspending agent) and a variety of other foreign substances used to bind the pills together. The average vitamin C pill contains about 25 percent fillers, just to hold the pill together. These fillers are, for the most part, made of products and chemicals not normally used by the human body as food. They are known to cause side effects in some people, and are most likely detrimental to overall health. If you take an ordinary 1,000 mg vitamin C pill that contains 25 percent excipients, you will be getting 250 mg of these filler chemicals. If you take 10,000 mg per day, you will be getting 2,500 mg per day of chemicals that are foreign to your body and it does not need or want. Further, the purity of these fillers is virtually uncontrolled by the FDA, and they may contain a variety of allergens and toxins. Fillers contribute to the degradation of the vitamin C in the pill, causing it to break down long before you take the pill. Fillers should never be added because they make the vitamin C chemically unstable, and in some people, cause side effects. Vitamin C can be purchased from a variety of sources, such as health food stores, pharmacies, discount houses and mail order firms, with many different brand names. The problem is they are not different. The vitamin C itself is purchased from the same suppliers whose products contain D-ascorbate and oxidized vitamin C. They usually contain fillers that make them subject to early degradation. Only the very purest vitamin C is chemically stable in storage, and only the purest vitamin C will give your body what it needs and wants. In general, whether in supplements or pharmaceuticals, products with the highest purity have the highest potency and stability. This is why I am a fanatic when it comes to purity. In searching for the highest quality vitamin C, I found only one manufacturer in the world who could supply the quality I expect. Naturally, it costs more to buy because it costs more to make. Only a tiny percentage of the vitamin C on the market is of this quality. What I was looking for was a vitamin C that was 100 percent L-ascorbate. This is the biologically active molecule; it is what your body needs and wants. Next, I looked for a vitamin C that was not made from corn. The vitamin C I found is made from organicallygrown potatoes. I also wanted a product that contained absolutely no oxidized vitamin C. Excluding all oxygen from the system during manufacture costs more, but you end up with a product that does only good and no harm. Lastly, the vitamin C had to be absolutely free of any other contaminants. I found what I was looking for and this vitamin C is sold by Beyond Health both in powder and tablet form. People around the world have taken these extraordinary products, including people who are highly chemically sensitive, and they often come back saying this is the only vitamin C they have ever been able to take. Indeed, it is the only vitamin C that I would consider taking myself. In general, the level of purity of an active ingredient is an indicator to its potency and stability. In other words, the purer the L-ascorbate the more effective the product will be. Unfortunately for consumers, most companies that sell vitamin C are cutting corners in their production process, and consumers are unknowingly getting cheap, watered-down versions of vitamin C. The fact that the average consumer is unaware of the difference or even existence of the L- and D- forms does little to help matters. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not require purity levels to be listed on labels of vitamins and other supplements. With these things in mind, consumers need to be more discerning when it comes to the composition of the supplements they purchase. Beyond Health doesn’t sell pills. We sell health. That’s why all of our supplements are of the highest purity and in the correct biological forms. Such products are more expensive, but when your health is concerned, quality should never be sacrificed. Raymond Francis is an MIT-trained scientist, a registered nutrition consultant, author of Never Be Sick Again, Never Be Fat Again, and Never Fearl Cancer Again, and an internationally recognized leader in optimal health maintenance. Reprinted with permission from: Beyond Health® News email: mail@beyondhealth.com Copyright 2011, Beyond Health