Outcome of Vit.C/ascorbic acid studies

[Guest guest]

Outcome of Vit.C/ascorbic acid studies-

 

I read an article the other day that really explained the negative

controversy over vit. C & ascorbic acid in the Pure Planet

newsletter. I couldn't find the article on their site at

 

www.pureplanet.com

and thought I'd share some of it with you.

 

.......Thousands of bottles of ascorbic acid are purchased everyday

under the misguided assumption that ascorbic acid is the same as

Vitamin C. In reality, ascorbic acid is an isolated nutrient that

is part of vitamin C but it is not the whole Vitamin C.

 

So you are getting cheated if you buy ascorbic acid thinking it

is Vitamin C.

 

But that might be the least of the consequences you

may suffer. Studies over the last several years have demonstrated

that people who take high doses of ascorbic acid actually put

themselves at risk for a number of health challenges.

 

One study demonstrates that doses of 500 mg a day or more of

ascorbic acid increases the incidence of arterial plaque buildup.

another study indicates that gallstones are more likely to appear in

those taking large doses of ascorbic acid.

 

Are these backlash studies against the health food industry? No,

they are legitimate studies.

 

Wait a minute, you may be thinking. What about all the studies

done by Linus Pauling and a multitude of other reputable researchers

who have proven the health promoting benefits of Vitamin C and

ascorbic acid?

 

Let us put a little perspective on the subject.

 

Back in the 1930's ascorbic acid was isolated out of little red

peppers.

 

 

The man who first performed this experiment was Dr. Albert

Szent-Gyorgyi who won a Nobel Prize for this work. What he also

found, which has mostly been ignored until recently, was that

ascorbic acid was far more biologically available and active, while

it was still in the red pepper.

 

 

Scientists of the era of " Better Living Through Chemistry and

Science " (which we have been experiencing for the last fifty years)

decided to take the discoveries about Vitamin C and " improve " on

Mother Nature.

 

 

First they found that extracting ascorbic acid from foods, such as

red peppers is expensive.

 

 

Ascorbic acid can be created in the laboratory much less

expensively (and of course much more profitably).

 

 

 

Scientists discovered that they could take corn syrup, mix it with

hydrochloric acid, and voila: ascorbic acid!

 

 

 

(By the way, the corn is more likely than ever to be genetically

modified.)

 

 

 

Later, scientists discovered what Dr. Szent-Gyorgyi had

discovered about ascorbic acid, it is not as effective when detached

from the whole food matrix!

 

 

So they went about trying to determine what other factors could be

in the whole food that would make the ascorbic acid work better.

 

First they discovered the importance of bioflavoinoids, so they

figured out how to produce these synthetically in the laboratory, to

be added to the ascorbic acid.

 

 

Then they found that fat-soluble ascorbic acid was superior, because

it went directly to the liver vs. water-soluble ascorbic acid.

 

 

In fact if you put 100 mg of ascorbic acid in the body, within a

few hours at least 90% of it will be excreted in the urine.

 

 

If you put 10 times more into the body to account for 90% loss it

may cause diarrhea.

 

 

Scientists experimented with various things and concluded

that if the ascorbic acid molecule was attached to a metabolite, the

ascorbic acid would stay in the body longer (they didn't seem to

care why it stayed in the body longer, but it stayed in the body

longer and hopefully that was a good thing).

 

Today there is a broad verity of ascorbic acid products with

various things attached to them.

 

With all this research, time, thought and dollars being put into

creating a synthetic Vitamin C, the fact remains that no scientist

can even come close to the potentials of what Mother Nature

created.

 

One important factor that science has been unable to

duplicate is the special kind of energy that holds living food

together.

 

Whether this energy is found in the enzymes or in the

energy patterns of whole food structure, it is unlikely that science

will ever be able to reproduce it in a laboratory.

 

This may be on of several reasons why studies have shown that the

body will absorb close to 100% of the Vitamin C that is consumed as

part of whole food, whereas barely 10% of the " stripped down "

ascorbic acid is absorbed.

 

 

Then the article goes on--

 

Ascorbic acid is an acid and acids stress the body

setting the stage for all kinds of malfunctions and disease.

 

I thought this article explained in simple terms why we

hear such conflict in the Vitamin C studies!

Thought you may have been as interested as I was.

 

Hugs, Katherine