Vitamin c garden

What is vitamin C? Is there such a thing as a vitamin C complex? Why do so many people now believe in the complex?

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ofonorow
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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#16  Post by ofonorow » Tue May 25, 2010 12:57 am

"sj" I too have heard of Dr Thiel, and he is a fine naturopath. However, the issue is whether he is right about the superior nature of vitamins found in foods over the manufactured variety. (I think Steve Brown stated the case very well.) Even if Thiel's thesis was proven correct, e.g., with "organic" produce, or what-ever, most people do not get what they should be getting from their poor diets, nor do we have a good way to measure what they are getting, etc. Taking supplements is important insurance and I believe generally identical to the molecules available in the right foods. There are people, probably eating some kind of raw food diet, who could live to their 100s and be healthy without supplements, but they would be the exception, not the rule.
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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#17  Post by Dolev » Tue May 25, 2010 8:28 am

I've had a couple of clients who were damaged by staying too long on a raw foods diet. It's often good as a therapeutic diet, but it can overshoot. One lady was overweight with various problems, was helped by a raw foods diet. Then she started feeling weak, but the raw foods practitioner pushed her to stay on. Now she is in a state of malnutrition, her digestive system is ruined, and she has osteoporosis and a lot of other problems.
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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#18  Post by godsilove » Tue May 25, 2010 4:21 pm

Steve Brown wrote:Natural foods are good because they contain many nutrients and antioxidants besides vitamin C, not because the l-ascorbic acid they contain is any different from synthetic, pharmaceutically pure l-ascorbic acid.


I agree - as such there is no evidence that naturally occuring vitamins are uniformly superior to synthetic versions that are chemically identical. It may be true in the case of certain vitamins where there are synthetic analogues that are structurally different e.g. vitamin D2, but ascorbic acid is ascorbic acid.

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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#19  Post by ofonorow » Wed May 26, 2010 3:29 am

Dolev wrote:I've had a couple of clients who were damaged by staying too long on a raw foods diet. It's often good as a therapeutic diet, but it can overshoot. One lady was overweight with various problems, was helped by a raw foods diet. Then she started feeling weak, but the raw foods practitioner pushed her to stay on. Now she is in a state of malnutrition, her digestive system is ruined, and she has osteoporosis and a lot of other problems.


Interesting. Any theory why? (I was thinking enzymes when I used the term "raw")
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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#20  Post by Lemonaid » Wed May 26, 2010 6:19 am

Anecdotal but I once went to a raw food event with a friend and the organizer looked and me and said... "you look healthy".

I am definitely not raw, or vegetarian.

By what I saw from the people there... the "hardcore raw foodists" just didn't look healthy. They looked gaunt.

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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#21  Post by sweetjames » Sat May 29, 2010 7:50 pm

I agree, with you owen, most people dont eat nearly enough healthy foods, and that synthetic supplementation is needed to provide nutrients that may be missing from the diet. Having said that,--remember the question is, Are vitamins from food better in any way than synthetic vitamins? I find it very interesting that Dr Thiel says that an in vitro study found that food vitamin c has negative oxidative reductive potential (ORP), yet the Merck Index reveals that ascorbic acid has positive redox potential. This means that no quantity of USP ascorbic acid can ever match the ability of food vitamin c to clean up damage caused by free radicals. Negative ORPs indicate active reducing power, which is immediately capable of antioxidant activity where as items with positive ORPs are not.

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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#22  Post by ofonorow » Sun May 30, 2010 3:47 am

I find it very interesting that Dr Thiel says that an in vitro study found that food vitamin c has negative oxidative reductive potential (ORP), yet the Merck Index reveals that ascorbic acid has positive redox potential. This means that no quantity of USP ascorbic acid can ever match the ability of food vitamin c to clean up damage caused by free radicals. Negative ORPs indicate active reducing power, which is immediately capable of antioxidant activity where as items with positive ORPs are not.


First from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduction_potential
Although measurement of the reduction potential in aqueous solutions is relatively straightforward, many factors limit its interpretation, such as effects of solution temperature and pH, irreversible reactions, slow electrode kinetics, non-equilibrium, presence of multiple redox couples, electrode poisoning, small exchange currents and inert redox couples. Consequently, practical measurements seldom correlate with calculated values. Nevertheless, reduction potential measurement has proven useful as an analytical tool in monitoring changes in a system rather than determining their absolute value (e.g. process control and titrations).


Trying to understand the argument you - or Thiel - are making. An in vitro study means in a test tube, which may or may not have any validity regarding vitamin C intake in humans. If by negative reduction potential, one means oxidant versus antioxidant?, then they may have been measuring the breakdown product DHA in the solution. Otherwise, you are going to have to explain what is meant by "negative reduction potential" and why this is relevant to vitamin C, as it is one of the most effective antioxidants we know of. (You seem to be implying from your next sentence that "negative ORP" is desired, but that Merck considers vitamin C as "positive' ORP?!? And that because of this difference, these two facts imply that vitamin C in food is somehow different and better than synthetic vitamin C. I just don't get it. What connects that argument?)

I have read (was required to read) Thiel during my "naturopathic" training, but I did not unconditionally accept his teachings or what I was taught, esp. when they differed from what I learned from the writings of Linus Pauling. It is easy to believe that so-called natural foods are better or healthier, and that this line of thinking often extends to the vitamins, and naturopaths like Thiel feel compelled to make their views sound scientific. However, vitamins are usually single molecules, not combinations of molecules in foods, so the arguments usually fail w/r to the individual vitamins which are molecularly identical. But what about foods, could it be better to get the vitamin molecule in foods? Perhaps but not likely.

Lets consider the history of scurvy. Over the course of centuries, it was finally decided that something missing in the food caused this dreaded disease, although there were a myriad of theories of other possibilities. Yet, because vitamin C degrades so quickly, especially when they made it into juice or tried to powderise what worked as a liquid, it was very hard to decide what foods actually prevented and cured the disease. James Lind's famous "clinical trial" clearly showed that some things didn't work at all (remedies commonly thought to be effective at that time), and it was not all that clear that fresh fruits were the answer, but they did seem to offer some benefit. My point is that without knowing the properties of the particular molecule that cured the disease, it was nearly impossible to decide which foods were necessary to provide it. Now that science has triumphed, and the molecule has been identified and cheaply synthesized, frank scurvy is generally a disease of the past. And knowing what we know, and what foods contain the molecule, we have sufficient knowledge to avoid scurvy by eating the right foods, so long as they are fresh, etc. But to the Theil argument, there is no evidence that anything else in food is in any way important or even effective in curing scurvy.

Furthermore, the test of vitamin C is its ability to cure its deficiency disease, and we now know that ascorbic acid or its salts (the ascorbate ion) is what the body requires, no matter what the origin of that molecule. Basic chemistry tells us that no origin of the vitamin C molecule (natural or synthetic) is superior to the other.
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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#23  Post by Lemonaid » Sun May 30, 2010 5:51 am

Coma patients live indefinitely on synthetic ascorbate in the Ensure formula.

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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#24  Post by scurvyencounters » Sun May 30, 2010 2:51 pm

There seems to be two valid sides to this discussion. Many people need massive doses of orthomolecular molecules. Like my son, for example who has been averaging around 100 grams of vitamin C for a couple years!!! But the other side of the coin is that mercury toxicity which causes my son's huge demand for vitamin C is clearly abnormal. In a perfect world, we should all get our vitamin C from food! Raw milk direct from the cow is known to have more vitamin C than oranges. That would be more than enough for people in a world that wasn't so extraordinarily poisoned by our industrial foods, medicines, and other environmental toxins.

But we are a long way from the Garden of Eden right now! And if we all moved to the hinterland to grow our own veggies, berries, and raw milk, it would take generations before we got all the toxins out of our children and our children's children. So in the meantime, I guess I will continue to buy massive amounts of cheap synthetic vitamin C pills from Sam's Club.

(No offense Owen! I am sure your ascorbic acid is better!!!)

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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#25  Post by ofonorow » Mon May 31, 2010 1:31 am

No offense taken at all. Our sales include a fund raising stipend, but we recommend the cheapest vitamin C you can purchase for those who cannot afford ours. Now, two things:
1. In a perfect world, we should all get our vitamin C from food!

2. Raw milk direct from the cow is known to have more vitamin C than oranges.


In a "perfect" world, there would be no GULO genetic defect and we would be able to make our own ascorbate! (i.e. very few animals can get enough ascorbate from food. The evidence for this assertion is that vitamin C is ubiquitous in plants and animals, yet so few animals have lost the ability to make it,)

I wonder about cows milk. It is my understanding that human milk has more vitamin C than cows milk, and that children existing only on cow's milk risk scurvy. (Ah but you qualified it as "raw" cows milk :wink: )

This article seems to confirm there is vitamin C in cow's milk, and they found more vitamin C than other researchers
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1266916/
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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#26  Post by sweetjames » Sun Jun 06, 2010 1:42 pm

This has been a great learning experience for me, we will always love growing our garden and eating our home grown veggies. Ascorbic acid is a must also. I have been taking vitamin shoppee brand, it is a gritty white powder, pure ascorbic, my brothers wife gets a different brand, theirs is a more chalky powder, im wondering if theirs is better. I recently ran out and went to the drug store and bought some 1000 mg tabs, we went a few days taking these and i noticed myself feeling a little better, also i had lost some weight, i noticed im filling out a little again,just the fact that im feeling better temps me to keep taking the tabs, can anyone relate ascorbic intake to weight loss? Thanks for all

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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#27  Post by Lemonaid » Sun Jun 06, 2010 1:58 pm

Ascorbic acid is necessary for fat burning.

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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#28  Post by godsilove » Sun Jun 06, 2010 2:38 pm

ofonorow wrote:This article seems to confirm there is vitamin C in cow's milk, and they found more vitamin C than other researchers
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1266916/
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It also calls into question scurvyencouter's claim that raw milk contains more vitamin C than oranges. In the study you cite, the average seems to be around 2.5mg per 100 mL. So a 250 mL glass of milk would contain 5 mg of ascorbic acid, which is less than what you would get from a glass of orange juice.

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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#29  Post by sweetjames » Mon Jun 07, 2010 4:23 am

The raw milk idea dosent sound to good to me, the cows health comes into question, along with bacteria, and other possible negitives.

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Re: Vitamin c garden

Post Number:#30  Post by sweetjames » Mon Jun 07, 2010 2:02 pm

Vitamins that you get naturally from food help protect against cancer. Both the american cancer society and the american institute for cancer research emphasize that getting cancer-fighting nutrients from foods like nuts, fruits, and green leafy vegetables is vastly superior to getting them from supplements. Eating a healthy diet is best.


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