Linus Pauling May Have Been Vindicated - Vitamin C May Treat Cancer

[squanch]

I would guess that it wouldn't because it would be immobolized. And without any water, it would have no way of diffusing towards the iron. All fruits have low amounts of iron. Get the powder wet and the vitamin C might then find something to react with, somewhere.

But we don't need to get too theoretical, as this has been tested:

Santos, P. H. S., and M. A. Silva. "Retention of vitamin C in drying processes of fruits and vegetables—A review." Drying Technology 26.12 (2008): 1421-1437.
Fruit powder in a bag should mitigate all of these factors, besides temperature.
Be modest now Dr. Santos. He's assuring the readers that he knows calculus. Wait until you see the Thermal Death Time (TDT) integral equation...
There is a paradoxical effect that doesn't really matter to our topic, but it's interesting nonetheless. When drying, the ascorbic acid oxidation rate actually increases at first because the reactants become more concentrated with less water. Oxidation reaches its peak around 70% water. But after that it drops rapidly. This was done in tomatoes. Don't try to model the oxidation kinetics of tomatoes without a mathematician at hand. Only lychees can be modeled by first-order kinetics. He get's around to explaining the dilemma: If water content increases oxidation, then why doesn't pineapple come fully-oxidized at the store? Apparently fruit has internal structure that keeps things separated. Albert Szent-Györgyi talks about this when he talks about bruising. He's written an entire article on this:
Vitamin C is also a quinone.
Szent-Györgyi, Albert. "Steric, electronic and integrative factors in enzymic regulation." Advances in enzyme regulation 7 (1969): 5-11.Hidden on the bottom of this paper is a table showing references to other articles arranged by fruit. There were two cited for acreola:

Marques, Luanda G., Ana M. Silveira, and José T. Freire. "Freeze-drying characteristics of tropical fruits." Drying technology 24.4 (2006): 457-463.
View attachment 6503Click to embiggen
An insignificant reduction upon freeze-drying the Barbados cherry. The ascorbic acid content was determined using dichlorophenolindophenol titration. This is a redox technique so would be expected to measure full-reduced vitamin C only, the only form with spare electrons to donate to the titrant. The other common technique—ultraviolet absorption—would probably be less accurate in differentiating between the two forms.

Marques, Luanda G., Maria C. Ferreira, and José T. Freire. "Freeze-drying of acerola (Malpighia glabra L.)." Chemical Engineering and Processing: Process Intensification 46.5 (2007): 451-457.
So the Barbados cherry and and acreola berry are synonymous.
View attachment 6504
More losses here, but there is still quite a bit of vitamin C remaining. This is a high mega-vitamin berry!
You could do it, but it would be somewhat expensive. You would need a way to accurately measure the volume of dichlorophenolindophenol solution delivered the precise mass of the acreola powder to be determined, down to the microgram. A glass burette and an accurate scale would be necessary.

This is the method used Dr. Luanda G Marques:

Harris, Leslie J., and Mamie Olliver. "Vitamin methods: The reliability of the method for estimating vitamin C by titration against 2: 6-dichlorophenolindophenol. 1. Control tests with plant tissues." Biochemical Journal 36.1-2 (1942): 155.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this down Travis.

Found something else about the stability of ascorbic acid in freeze dried fruit:

The stability of ascorbic acid in freeze-dried acerola was studied by Leme et al. [16]. The authors verified an average loss of vitamin C of 5.0% after drying and a loss of 1.0% during storage for 4-9 months at ambient temperature.

Vitamin C Content of Freeze-Dried Tropical Fruits
Luanda G. Marques, Manoel M. Prado; José T. Freire

The study referenced is in Portuguese though unfortunately.

But it really looks like freeze dried fruit powder could be a viable option for a vitamin c supplement.

 

[BibleBeliever]

@Travis, I read somewhere that primates compensate for its inability to produce vitamin C by producing uric acid. And in one of the threads of haidut, it was mentioned that people with high amounts of uric acid, to the point of having gout, have little risk of getting cancer. I was talking to a friend who has breast cancer, and I mentioned this tidbit about uric acid and cancer, and she confirmed that she indeed has very low uric acid.

According to: Vanadium Molybdenum DRI/RDA, benefits, side effects, overdose, toxicity, requirements Also this on molybdenum and uric acid: Molybdenum
B-Vitamins: DRI/RDA, Overdose, Side Effects, Deficiency Symptoms

Low molybdenum can cause insufficient uric acidand that high niacin can cause high uric acid; interesting as niacin is known for being anti-cancer.

I believe honey helps raise uric acid the most out of foods. ( a very small sample study, but interesting: Effects of daily consumption of honey solution on hematological indices and blood levels of minerals and enzymes in normal individuals. - PubMed - NCBI )

 

[Travis]

I believe honey helps raise uric acid the most out of foods.

Manuka honey also has methylglyoxal, the notorious classic cancer drug that is too cheap and effective to market.

It's produced in the body. I just had read a new study confirming that cancer cells have low levels or methylglyoxal. Cancer cells actually up-regulate the enzyme that destroys it: Glyoxylase I.

 

[yerrag]

I believe honey helps raise uric acid the most out of foods. ( a very small sample study, but interesting: Effects of daily consumption of honey solution on hematological indices and blood levels of minerals and enzymes in normal individuals. - PubMed - NCBI )

Would this be because of the high fructose levels of honey? Does honey have higher fructose levels than most fruits, or even cane sugar?

 

[yerrag]

Is there a form of Vitamin C that when taken lasts longer in the body? Supposedly regular Vitamin C stays in the body only 2 hours, while the "higher grade" stays for 9 hours. Could the higher grade be DHA? I came across this reading a guide on how to treat a cat with feline distemper, on the subject of Vitamin C. So I'm wondering if this is true or not. If so, what is this form of vitamin C?

There are two forms of vitamin C that's being sold. One is the L-ascorbic acid, and the other is D-ascorbic acid. When it's not specified, it usually is the D-ascorbic acid that's being sold. The D-ascorbic acid

Sorry this is the correct one.

It's interesting that this video narrator showed that the absorption of DHAA is dependent on whether glucose is ingested together with the DHAA. Glucose uses the same GLUT1 transporter that allows DHAA to be absorbed into the cell. So, in order to increase DHAA absorption, one must not take glucose together with this vitamin C. This is in line with what a biochemist I met in the Philippines, a PhD biochemist named Dr. Cua, who told me that in treating my friend of his lung cancer, in which vitamin C megadosing is involved, he advises sugar intake to be minimized. He drew me the molecular structure of glucose, and that of vitamin C, and because of their similarity, the absorption of glucose would impede the absorption of vitamin C.

Non-primate mammals can convert glucose into ascorbic acid, by the way.

Has anyone ever tried using the procedure outlined by the narrator to make DHAA? I plan to do this and have just ordered my l-ascorbic acid from Amazon. It looks pretty easy, as the video was very clear on the way to go about it. If I were to get such megadosing done by IV, it would cost a lot, lot more.

 

[Travis]

Nice video. But I would watch-out; he is trying to sell you something.

Around the 13 minute mark he admits that dehydroascorbic acid has "limited stability." This is a result of hydrolysis between carbon #4 and the cycloether:

"Dehydroascorbic acid also undergoes hydrolysis spontaneously to form 2,3-diketogulonic acid; this step is virtually irreversible." ―Dr. Washko
Click to embiggen

Ascorbic acid is more stable. This could probably be explained in a few different ways. My guess would be instability due to molecular oscillations caused by the loss of the π-bond between carbons #2 and #3, but it might have something to do with the mesomeric effect.

And his graph (of purported vitamin C levels—in which he didn't specify what measuring technique (this is important) was used—at time 11:42) runs counter to some serious data published previously:

These are total vitamin C values reported. Ascorbic acid, dehydroascorbic acid, and diketogulonate were all determined.

Either the ascorbic acid or the dehydroascorbic acid was delivered to the rats via drinking water.

[...] Here it is shown that the efficiency of DHA was almost 10% of that of ASC on a molar basis, based on animal experiments using the inherently scorbutic ODS rat, which is a convenient human model animal to investigate the metabolism of vitamin C. [...]
¶The tissue level of the oxidized form of ASC, namely, the sum of DHA and 2,3-diketogulonate, was always <5% of the total ASC in all groups (data not shown), in agreement with our previous works (12, 13). Therefore, the total ASC concentration was defined as the ASC level. These results indicate that absorbed DHA is reduced and utilized as ASC On the basis of these observations, we conclude that the antiscorbutic activity of DHA is almost 10% of that of ASC. ―Dr. Ogiri

Washko, Philip W., et al. "Ascorbic acid and dehydroascorbic acid analyses in biological samples." Analytical biochemistry 204.1 (1992): 1-14.
Ogiri, Yukako, et al. "Very low vitamin C activity of orally administered L-dehydroascorbic acid." Journal of agricultural and food chemistry 50.1 (2002): 227-229.

 

[yerrag]

There are two forms of vitamin C that's being sold. One is the L-ascorbic acid, and the other is D-ascorbic acid. When it's not specified, it usually is the D-ascorbic acid that's being sold. The D-ascorbic acid

Please disregard this statement. I don't really know. I thought I deleted thisl

 

[BibleBeliever]

Would this be because of the high fructose levels of honey? Does honey have higher fructose levels than most fruits, or even cane sugar?

I think honey has relatively the same ratios of fructose/glucose as most fruits and sugar; about 50/50. Might have to do with the antioxidants or enzymes.

Manuka honey also has methylglyoxal, the notorious classic cancer drug that is too cheap and effective to market.

It's produced in the body. I just had read a new study confirming that cancer cells have low levels or methylglyoxal. Cancer cells actually up-regulate the enzyme that destroys it: Glyoxylase I.

I've thought about buying manuka before, because of the endless claims. Not sure how it compares to regular honey.
I wonder if there is a cheap man's version of manuka that contains that methyglyoxal compound, but at a much lesser price.
Will be interesting to research; thanks for information.

 

[BibleBeliever]

Pretty interesting about manuka honey and the methylglyoxal:

"MG and other dicarbonyls have been identified in a range of foods and beverages, including wine [39], beer [39], bread [40], soya [41] and honey [42]. MG in manuka honeys is derived from the non-enzymatic conversion of dihydroxyacetone which occurs at high levels in the nectar [42]. Freshly produced manuka honey contained low levels of MG (139–491 mg kg-1) but during storage at 37°C its content increased. The levels of MG in multi-floral honeys are low, ranging from 0.4 to 5.4 mg kg-1 [43]. In two studies, high levels of MG were reported in manuka honeys ranging from 48 to 743 mg kg-1 [27] and 189 to 835 mg kg-1 [44], respectively. It has been suggested that concentrations of MG above 150 mg kg-1 are directly responsible for the characteristic antibacterial properties of manuka honey [44]."

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2011/295494/
Methylglyoxal-infused honey mimics the anti-Staphylococcus aureus biofilm activity of manuka honey: potential implication in chronic rhinosinusitis. - PubMed - NCBI
Two Major Medicinal Honeys Have Different Mechanisms of Bactericidal Activity
Methylgloyxal in food and beverages: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf00066a018

https://www.quora.com/What-foods-are-high-in-methylglyoxal

Interesting:

"MG is also formed spontaneously in living organisms from processed foods, fermented foods, and the consumption of foods stored for prolonged periods of time. (1) (4). Roasted coffee is one beverage that is high in MG due to the roasting of the beans and brewing at high temperatures; add sugar or flavored syrups or whipped cream and you compound the effect. Other foods and beverages high in MG include; beer, whisky and other liquor, soft drinks, toasted breads, cakes,cookies, pies, pastries, donuts, soy sauce. Manuka Honey was up to 1,000 fold higher in MG than regular honey and explains its cytotoxic effects against bacteria and why it is used as a wound dressing. (8) (11). In addition, cigarette smoking and passive smoke such as in cigars and pipes and smoke from hot oil cooking are all high in MG. (15) (16)

High protein diets such as the Atkins diet produces a state of ketosis and increases levels of by-products that are potential precursors of methylglyoxal. Ketotic subjects had and increase of 2.12 times methylglyoxal levels as compared to noncompliant, nonketotic subjects. (6). Prolonged fasting which also switches the body into ketosis produces high MG levels.

Surprisingly, vegetarians have a much higher blood concentration of MG than healthy omnivores. The theory is that vegetarians consume less proteins and thus less carnosine. "

On the manuka honey readings: I want to buy manuka honey. What is UMF 16+, MGO 400+, Active?


Too bad manuka honey is extremely expensive. Many sites claim endless fraudulent manuka is sold too.
Wonder if anyone here has experimented with manuka?

 

[yerrag]

I've thought about buying manuka before, because of the endless claims. Not sure how it compares to regular honey.
I wonder if there is a cheap man's version of manuka that contains that methyglyoxal compound, but at a much lesser price.
Will be interesting to research; thanks for information

Isn't it the flower that bees pollinate that make manuka honey special? I've always thought there is a lot of marketing involved in making certain foods more than what they are. Like resveratrol, which the wine industry likes to tout. Still, it's good to know about methylglyoxal in manuka honey. Yet Travis says methylglyoxal is "too cheap and effective to market." I'm wondering whether he means that relative to pricey and ineffective chemo drugs, the methylglyoxal as found in manuka honey is a bargain. Even if manuka honey is still costly, as compared to other kinds of honey.

However, I've used regular honey just to provide sugar as part of a concentrated food mixture to restore my mom's brain functions on the way to recovery. I used manuka honey at one point, as it had been sitting there unused. I just don't know if it made a difference, since my mom's problem was more of excitotoxic damage to neurons amplified by hypoglycemia, I didn't think the manuka honey would have made a great difference. If it were something involving infection, from either bacteria, fungus, or virus, it may make a more impactful difference. Speaking of that, I used a mixture of honey and crushed garlic on one digit of my cat, which had been severed in one of his nightly calls to mate. The honey and the allicin, the compound in garlic, did wonders, and it worked as well as that of the prescribed medication given by the vet, called Solcoseryl. I've since used it for other wounds, not just for cats. I just think that one could use lesser forms of honey, and combine it with other substances, and still have an effective antidote. Considering how pricey manuka is.

But manuka honey for cancer is another story. Still, since Vitamin C is also effective against cancer, I wonder if they can be used together. Maybe not taken at the same time would be good, since glucose competes with Vitamin C for cellular intake. And while honey has plenty of fructose, it also has plenty of glucose.

 

[yerrag]

Nice video. But I would watch-out; he is trying to sell you something.

Around the 13 minute mark he admits that dehydroascorbic acid has "limited stability." This is a result of hydrolysis between carbon #4 and the cycloether:

"Dehydroascorbic acid also undergoes hydrolysis spontaneously to form 2,3-diketogulonic acid; this step is virtually irreversible." ―Dr. Washko
View attachment 6552 Click to embiggen

Ascorbic acid is more stable. This could probably be explained in a few different ways. My guess would be instability due to molecular oscillations caused by the loss of the π-bond between carbons #2 and #3, but it might have something to do with the mesomeric effect.

And his graph (of purported vitamin C levels—in which he didn't specify what measuring technique (this is important) was used—at time 11:42) runs counter to some serious data published previously:

View attachment 6553

These are total vitamin C values reported. Ascorbic acid, dehydroascorbic acid, and diketogulonate were all determined.

Either the ascorbic acid or the dehydroascorbic acid was delivered to the rats via drinking water.



Washko, Philip W., et al. "Ascorbic acid and dehydroascorbic acid analyses in biological samples." Analytical biochemistry 204.1 (1992): 1-14.
Ogiri, Yukako, et al. "Very low vitamin C activity of orally administered L-dehydroascorbic acid." Journal of agricultural and food chemistry 50.1 (2002): 227-229.

Thanks Travis. I need to spend more time with the links. Can't absorb all of them, especially doing into the details.

I didn't think the presenter was trying to sell anything, although he made a plug on his products ReCVerin. He was saying it would be too expensive to use his products, hence he was making this video to get the same benefits using the blender with zucchini and l-ascorbic acid. I thought still it was odd that he wasn't pushing for his product at all. Still, your explanation would dissuade me from making DHAA with the blender as shown. The table you showed very well shows that ingesting ascorbic acid is still more effective than ingesting DHAA.

So, it IV infusion ascorbic acid the only way to go then if one were to megadose? If 500 mg were the upper limit of the body's absorption of vitamin C at any given time, would it be possible to take 500 mg of vitamin C multiple times during the day? Maybe every 2 hours? And what form of Vitamin C is preferrable? Is it true that all supplemental Vitamin C is synthetic and only available in the L-ascorbic form?

 

[Elderflower j58]

Linus Pauling Vindicated; Researchers Claim RDA For Vitamin C is Flawed

Yerrag I think you'll find this helpful.

Good info on half life and mega dosing

 

[yerrag]

Linus Pauling Vindicated; Researchers Claim RDA For Vitamin C is Flawed

Yerrag I think you'll find this helpful.

Good info on half life and mega dosing

That's very helpful. Thanks!

At some point, I'll try a daily dose of 2500mg spread out over 12 hours, or roughly 200 mg/hour from say 8 am to 9 pm. I won't take it with meals, since my carb intake would interfere with vitamin C absorption. So the schedule would be something like 7 am breakfast, 12 noon lunch with 4 doses of 200mg in between, and then 6 doses after lunch, dinner at 7 pm, and then two more doses after dinner. Does that sound like a good plan?

 

[Travis]

I found a patent on vitamin C production.

This all seems to be microbially-produced, so we should always get the L-enantiomer. The enzymes in living systems are created in such a way as to produce only one stereochemical cofiguration. The mirror image, D-ascorbic acid, can be produced non-enzymaticaly but this is not commonly done.* This is more complicated. It's cheaper to just let the enzymes—or the microbes with internal enzymes— to do most of the work.

I think this comment is worth reading.

*This would provide a racemic mixture, a 50/50 split of L- and D-enantiomers. The "L" comes from the word levorotary, or left-rotational. When in solution, plane-polarized light passed-through it will rotate counterclockwise. The polarization rotates, not the light ray itself.

 

[yerrag]

I found a patent on vitamin C production.

This all seems to be microbially-produced, so we should always get the L-enantiomer. The enzymes in living systems are created in such a way as to produce only one stereochemical cofiguration. The mirror image, D-ascorbic acid, can be produced non-enzymaticaly but this is not commonly done.* This is more complicated. It's cheaper to just let the enzymes—or the microbes with internal enzymes— to do most of the work.

I think this comment is worth reading.

*This would provide a racemic mixture, a 50/50 split of L- and D-enantiomers. The "L" comes from the word levorotary, or left-rotational. When in solution, plane-polarized light passed-through it will rotate counterclockwise. The polarization rotates, not the light ray itself.

Thanks for the link, Travis. It seems to me after reading through the whole thread linked, we really can't get much information regarding the purity of the ascorbic acid we're buying. By purity, I meant the percentage amount of L-ascorbic acid given that there are four enantiometers possible. I'm not even thinking about the lead contamination. I get the impression that with the Chinese manufacturers dominating the production of vitamin C with the enzymatic process using bacteria, it is a race to the lowest cost. This is troubling because there is no way to properly assess the purity of various manufactures of vitamin C. There is no incentive to tweak production so that the purest form of Vitamin C is produced, as any increase in cost to attain such purity without being verified just becomes a waste.

As I look at the various brands of ascorbic acid available at Amazon, labelled as l-ascorbic and not, I'm just as easily fooled to select the one that says "l-ascorbic acid" with a nice packaging, and a high price - just to be on the safe side of quality. How would I know if I'm just an unwitting and unwilling prey to the marketer who knows the psychology of a buyer fool like me? Still, I use the ascorbic acid I buy knowing that however imperfect the scheme of things are, it's still better to have than to not have.

 

[Travis]

By purity, I meant the percentage amount of L-ascorbic acid given that there are four enantiometers possible.

I have to make a pedantic remark because I had once read a wonderful book on organic chemistry (free .pdf click here!*): There can be an indefinite amount of stereoisomers—molecules with both the exact same chemical formula and bonding pattern—depending on the complexity of the molecule. Enantiomers are a subclass of steroisomers that are perfect mirror-images of eachother. Vitamin C has four stereoisomers†, but there are only ever two enantiomers.

This was one of the earliest proofs for the concept of the drug "receptor." Many drugs have only one active form, and the mirror-image basically does nothing. Enzyme-inhibitors are stereoselective. Consider this:

AMINOGLUTETHIMIDE (AG)¹ inhibits cholesterol side chain cleavage by forming a ligand with the terminal oxidase cytochrome P-450. The d- and l-enantiomers of AG have different affinities for the enzyme site as well as for the inhibition of cholesterol side chain cleavage. For both effects, the activity of the disomer in vitro was more than twice that of the l-isomer. In in vivo luteolytic assays, d-AG was 25 times more potent than the l- form in reducing the plasma progesterone level of superovulated rats.[!]‡

(I have no idea what a "superovulated rat" is, and I'm terrified to find out.) Only one enantiomer strongly works on an enzyme. People throw around terms like "lock-and-key" to describe this, but a more realistic analogy would be a footprint. I footprint in the mud could only accommodate either your right (D-form), or your left (L-form), foot. The molecule fits-in it's enzyme less deep than you would imagine from considering the "hand-in-glove", or "lock-in-key", analogy.

Conversely, one enzyme would be expected to make only one enantiomer in the same way a footprint can produce only one plaster cast. All microbially-produced vitamin C would almost surely be in the L-form. When synthesizing it without an enzyme, you would expect to get equal proportions of both enantiomers.

And producing D-ascorbic acid is far—far more complicated. It takes high temperatures:

When D-xylose is oxidized with cupric acetate a 50-55% yield of D-xylosone is readily produced and this upon condensation with potassium cyanide in aqueous solution immediately gives the corresponding imino-D-xyloascorbic acid. Formerly, the latter was converted into the corresponding D-ascorbic acid by hydrolysis with dilute mineral acid for 40-48 hr. at 40-50° [Celsius]. It is shown herein that when carried out at 95-100° the reaction is complete in 3 hours and good yields of D-ascorbic acid can readily be isolated.§

I don't think that any other process is economically feasible besides the enzyme method.


* For Volume II, click here!
‡ Graves, P. E., and H. A. Salhanick. "Stereoselective inhibition of aromatase by enantiomers of aminoglutethimide." Endocrinology 105.1 (1979): 52-57.
§ Hamilton, J. Kelvin, and F. Smith. "Synthesis of Ascorbic Acids by the Osone—Cyanide Method." Journal of the American Chemical Society 74.20 (1952): 5162-5163.
† The four stereoisomers
• L-xyloascorbic acid (ascorbic acid)
• D--xyloascorbic acid (erythorbic acid)
• L-araboascorbic acid
• D-araboascorbic acid

 

[yerrag]

have to make a pedantic remark because I had once read a wonderful book on organic chemistry (free .pdf click here!*): There can be an indefinite amount of stereoisomers—molecules with both the exact same chemical formula and bonding pattern—depending on the complexity of the molecule. Enantiomers are a subclass of steroisomers that are perfect mirror-images of eachother. Vitamin C has four stereoisomers†, but there are only ever two enantiomers.

Yes! Another book to read to make up for my inappropriate understanding of enantiometers. It was a new word and I had to use it!

Conversely, one enzyme would be expected to make only one enantiomer in the same way a footprint can produce only one plaster cast. All microbially-produced vitamin C would almost surely be in the L-form. When synthesizing it without an enzyme, you would expect to get equal proportions of both enantiomers.

This meant I overpaid for my l-ascorbic powder!

 

[Travis]

Not necessarily. Some brands may have higher stages of refinement and lower contamination, but they are all almost certainly producing L-ascorbic acid exclusively.

I heard someone say something about Ray Peat saying something about vitamin C. I found the quote, here:

The trace impurities in synthetic ascorbic acid can increase free radical production, and quite a few people have allergic reactions to it. The situation isn't as clear with citric acid, but I think manufacturing impurities could account for some of the effects I see. For many years, I have been seeing more symptoms relieved by stopping all the chemical supplements,..

So don't necessarily feel like you paid too much! You never know. Perhaps you got a very low-aluminum-contaminated batch for your money.

 

[yerrag]

Not necessarily. Some brands may have higher stages of refinement and lower contamination, but they are all almost certainly producing L-ascorbic acid exclusively.

I heard someone say something about Ray Peat saying something about vitamin C. I found the quote, here:

So don't necessarily feel like you paid too much! You never know. Perhaps you got a very low-aluminum-contaminated batch for your money.

I really don't know. To megadose say about 2500mg per day of vitamin C, I would have to be sure the product has little contamination, especially of aluminum and lead. Yet I can't find that information in the label.

Which is why Dan's toxinless.com site only lists one espensive product for vitamin C powder. And it's not even pure vitamin powder, but a powder made from acerola cherry, which if you were to megadose an equivalent of 2500 mg vitamin C, would mean ingesting roughly 12 teaspoons of that powder. It will come out to be very expensive.

Any ideas out there about sourcing synthetic l-ascorbic acid that is certified to be low in heavy metals?

I'm also curious why there is not a single vitamin C manufacturer that can't guarantee low lead contamination? Can't the production facility be simply made with stainless steel? Or do the enzymes require catalysts that are made of lead? Is there no alternative to using lead in the process? It just seems like there is some intent on the part of the manufacturers to poison you while providing you with a very beneficial product in vitamin C. It would be very sad to find oneself made better by vitamin C megadosing, only to find shortly that as a result of his treatment he needs to be treated for lead toxicity. It is like as if there is no one-way ticket to health.

 

[Travis]

I'm not sure if it's something to worry about. As far as I can tell, all we have going for that is one short Ray Peat quote. I have not been able to find any data on this.

But if there were trace heavy metals present, a tiny amount of EDTA – or maybe even phytic acid – would probably safely chelate most of them.