Quali-C Vitamin C Has Virtually No Heavy Metals

[Logan-]

I used to suffer from severe allergies, asthma, and chronic fatigue, even though I had been taking 500mg/day for years. When I read Cathcart's protocol, I increased my doses to 5g the 1st day, 10g the 2nd day and then felt well at 20g the 3rd day. I tried to increase a bit more but right away the soft stools came. I took that for 7 years and it kept my allergies under control and the differences in my energy were night and day. I tried hitting the gym pre vitamin C a few times and always felt like I was going to die. When I am on the bowel tolerance doses, I have so much energy I have to workout regularly or I can't sleep. I hardly take any days off. I'll be 48 in a few months and am in the best shape of my life. Interestingly, when I was injured in an accident in 2010 and could hardly move around, I put on 30 lbs over a year. Then I started working on classifying and organizing the content of my transcripts of 54 hours of interviews, and read Dr. Hoffer's advice on people with allergies. In the heat of the moment when filming I hadn't caught it... He advised a 2 week exclusion diet for lactose. I tried it and by the 3rd day had to cut my vitamin C dose from 20g a day to 10g a day (5-10g is normal). Plus I started breathing through my nose for the first time in my life! Doctors had taken x-rays of my skull and didn't know what was going on. Turned out to be a result of my body struggling against a food intolerance. Without any activity and eating and drinking the same (besides the lactose free) I lost the 30lbs over 6 months. Now I recommend people who need huge maintenance doses of vitamin C investigate whether or not they may have food or other allergies causing the need for such a high dose. Since starting 10K IU daily of D3 and also taking a bunch of other things, I'm down to 5g a day now.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Andrew Vajda]

I think the best way for a group to order a large batch from Bulksupplements, which someone, was it @tankasnowgod or was it @Queequeg, who reported that Labdoor found its vitamin C to have the highest score, and it showed its lead to be at 5 ppb. Before ordering, we have to ask Bulksupplements to give a guarantee that it is low in lead, with a COA. Upon receipt, we can order an independent COA. After that, we distribute the vitamin C to the members of the group. This way, there is buying power to allow the dealer to accommodate our request, and we can split the cost of paying for the COA.

But this may be impractical for obvious reasons. It would be nice if a supplier here could see this as an opportunity, and carry well-spec'd ascorbic acid to forum members, at a price that makes it worth his while and at the same time saving us from having to pay it at such a high premium.

Bulk supplements is Chinese powder. I've made my price basically wholesale to everyone from the get go. Trying to build enough volume to get good pricing and be able to withstand the pressure from the bigger players. I'm half the price of the Vitamin C Foundation for the same product. They wholesale to doctors at my retail price...

 

[Andrew Vajda]

Thanks for sharing.

My pleasure, there's a ton of good information on my omarchives dot org and I also highly recommend Andrew Saul's doctoryourself dot com website. That's where I learned about all this initially and still start my searches there for friends and family for whatever they have going on.

 

[Makrosky]

I used to suffer from severe allergies, asthma, and chronic fatigue, even though I had been taking 500mg/day for years. When I read Cathcart's protocol, I increased my doses to 5g the 1st day, 10g the 2nd day and then felt well at 20g the 3rd day. I tried to increase a bit more but right away the soft stools came. I took that for 7 years and it kept my allergies under control and the differences in my energy were night and day. I tried hitting the gym pre vitamin C a few times and always felt like I was going to die. When I am on the bowel tolerance doses, I have so much energy I have to workout regularly or I can't sleep. I hardly take any days off. I'll be 48 in a few months and am in the best shape of my life. Interestingly, when I was injured in an accident in 2010 and could hardly move around, I put on 30 lbs over a year. Then I started working on classifying and organizing the content of my transcripts of 54 hours of interviews, and read Dr. Hoffer's advice on people with allergies. In the heat of the moment when filming I hadn't caught it... He advised a 2 week exclusion diet for lactose. I tried it and by the 3rd day had to cut my vitamin C dose from 20g a day to 10g a day (5-10g is normal). Plus I started breathing through my nose for the first time in my life! Doctors had taken x-rays of my skull and didn't know what was going on. Turned out to be a result of my body struggling against a food intolerance. Without any activity and eating and drinking the same (besides the lactose free) I lost the 30lbs over 6 months. Now I recommend people who need huge maintenance doses of vitamin C investigate whether or not they may have food or other allergies causing the need for such a high dose. Since starting 10K IU daily of D3 and also taking a bunch of other things, I'm down to 5g a day now.

Andrew, welcome to the forum! Amazing experience. I would be very happy if you would stay around and share your points of view, please stay :)

One question : You say you were taking 20 grams a day. How were you splitting the doses ? The only possible way I can think of is diluting the 20grams in a water bottle and keep drinking small sips during the day. Is that right ?

 

[Andrew Vajda]

Andrew, welcome to the forum! Amazing experience. I would be very happy if you would stay around and share your points of view, please stay :)

One question : You say you were taking 20 grams a day. How were you splitting the doses ? The only possible way I can think of is diluting the 20grams in a water bottle and keep drinking small sips during the day. Is that right ?

Thanks Makrosky, very kind of you!
Exactly, I put my daily dose in a liter and a half of water (about 50 oz). It was fine for anything between 5 and 30 grams. (Facing dengue (and a chikungunya variant) in my travels, myself and 2 friends would do 30g a day to knock out the fever and symptoms.)
Now that I'm at a smaller dose (5g) I usually add 5g of glutamine and 4g of citrulline malate on workout days to help fuel muscles, energy, and recover without muscle cramps and soreness.
Sipping is the best way to keep your levels stable all day.

 

[Ras]

Why don't people just take a fruit powder like camu camu, acerola, or rosehips? The powders from Mountain Rose Herbs are reputed to be good.

 

[Makrosky]

Why don't people just take a fruit powder like camu camu, acerola, or rosehips? The powders from Mountain Rose Herbs are reputed to be good.

Because they have a much lower ammount of vitamin C. You will have to eat huge ammounts of the powder to reach 30gr. Maybe it is more bioavaliable, that I don't know. And also I thinknit is because the most famous researchers (Cathcart, Pauling, etc..) were not using the camucamu and stuff so people want to replicate exactly what those authors did.

 

[Ras]

Because they have a much lower ammount of vitamin C. You will have to eat huge ammounts of the powder to reach 30gr. Maybe it is more bioavaliable, that I don't know. And also I thinknit is because the most famous researchers (Cathcart, Pauling, etc..) were not using the camucamu and stuff so people want to replicate exactly what those authors did.

With higher doses, one would get also other vitamins and minerals.

Your latter point stands.

 

[Whichway?]

@Andrew Vajda Thanks for your contribution. Did you take your C as ascorbic acid, or sodium ascobate? Did you have any problems with your large doses un-masking or causing mineral imbalances? Did you have to take any extra magnesium or calcium to compensate?

 

[yerrag]

Bulk supplements is Chinese powder. I've made my price basically wholesale to everyone from the get go. Trying to build enough volume to get good pricing and be able to withstand the pressure from the bigger players. I'm half the price of the Vitamin C Foundation for the same product. They wholesale to doctors at my retail price...

Thanks for making us know about you and your company, Andrew. I was trying to think why I didn't order your Vitamin C, but now I think it was because Doctor's Best was selling a seemingly equivalent product for a much lower price. Isn't Doctor's Best guilty of unfair trade practices by misrepresenting its product and deceiving consumers? I would be like most people in assuming that they wouldn't blantantly lie. Wouldn't DSM sue Doctor's Best? What do you think is the reason DSM isn't doing so? Is there an industry practice that keeps it from doing so, or is this one of those insider secrets of the industry?

I'm happy that you have a product that sells for half of the Vitamin C Foundation. At the price, it is definitely a lot more affordable. I'm curious also as to why you aren't advertising this as low-lead vitamin C to the public. DSM also is tight-lipped about something that they should be boasting about but they're not. Seems like you both are trying to not rock the boat. Is there a sword of Damocles hanging over your head that you display this odd behavior?

I've stated before in this forum that for me, very low-lead is more important than being GMO-Free. If I have to choose one over the other, it would be the lead-free characteristic I'd be looking for. For one, synthetic vitamin C, after going through the production and refining process, comes out as pretty pure, save the ppm contaminants. It pretty much leaves any significant traces of its GMO roots. Thus concern of GMO in ascorbic is akin to taking advantage of the public's fears. There's more concern over GMO in soybeans, and in corn, yet people are generally overlooking these and instead are afraid of GMO ascorbic acid. People keep eating nachos, tortillas, and soy products and they don't care. The GMO effect is already there, and GMO ascorbic acid isn't going to significantly alter the balance.

I just can't understand why you aren't selling Low-Lead Vitamin C as a companion product the GMO-Free Vitamin C. I can understand that going with GMO-Free sells the product more than going with Low-Lead, but couldn't you add Low-Lead as another quality aspect of the GMO-Free product? Are you or DSM afraid that your customers will hold you to the fire if you can't sell consistently a product with low lead levels?

It just dawned on me that the same thing can be said of any product being sold. Have you ever noticed anybody advertising their product as low in lead? It's either disallowed by the authorities or it is a negative positioning of a product that invites more questions from people. A hear no evil, see no evil approach seems to be the better part of practicality. For example, you don't see any Japanese hotel or airbnb advertising that they have low nuclear radiation levels in their premises.

 

[BastiFuntasty]

Can we not just use acerola powder as a vitamin C source?

 

[yerrag]

Can we not just use acerola powder as a vitamin C source?

You can but there are pros and cons. It's been discussed earlier in the thread.

 

[Andrew Vajda]

Because they have a much lower ammount of vitamin C. You will have to eat huge ammounts of the powder to reach 30gr. Maybe it is more bioavaliable, that I don't know. And also I thinknit is because the most famous researchers (Cathcart, Pauling, etc..) were not using the camucamu and stuff so people want to replicate exactly what those authors did.

I agree, the argument is that all the clinical studies as well as the clinical observations from mega-dosing used exclusively ascorbic acid. You can't get the doses of vitamin C required with the low content in the "natural" sources. Almost all animals produce ascorbic acid in their livers by converting glucose into AA. They don't produce their own flavinoids, nor cofactors that make up the non existent "C-complex"... Do I believe those other things can be good for you? Sure, we'll never know everything about what's in food. We should eat a varied diet and fresh fruits and veggies and I'm sure that will give us what we need of that. Would I mega-dose the other stuff? No. I believe like Stone and Cathcart and Klenner and Pauling that we have to mimic the functional mammal, by taking similar amounts that animals produce.
I'm not sure if I can post links yet but I made a FAQ page on my gmofreevitamins dot com site ( link to FAQ in menu on landing page). I posted Dr Levy's replies to all this and a summary from this and all the other questions I've gotten over the years. (a work in progress, I'm only doing this part time now.)

Here is the transcript from Dr Cathcart addressing the animal/glucose/AA subject from my interview with him.
(BTW, You can see the index of all the questions/topics he discusses at omarchives dot org forward slash video-cathcart )

"You see, these other animals don’t make ascorbate for free.
They make it from glucose, so may be 20% of the food that your dog or cat is eating goes into making ascorbate,
whereas humans don’t waste glucose on making ascorbate, so that in times of famine like in the ice age or so forth,
we humans can out starve most animals.
We don’t like to starve, but when you see the pictures of like the people of Dhaka,
we see how terrible the starvation could be and people just live on, and on and on without much food, whereas wild animals will eat themselves up making ascorbate.

They don’t get colds, like dogs don’t get colds, flu’s or things like that, but we can out starve them.

Anyway, that was the advantage for humans not making ascorbate
and now we are stuck with it. Now that the humans have come out of the trees and live in these large civilizations and can spread diseases around a lot, then it would be nice to have that ascorbate making mechanism back.

Actually when we start talking about naturalness, I want to point that we can fly higher and faster than birds in our machines.
We can also make more ascorbate with our machines than a dog can,
and so we just have to have the knowledge of how to take it
and we can take this ascorbate that is made in our chemical plants
and be actually more resistant to diseases than dogs are."

 

[Andrew Vajda]

@Andrew Vajda Thanks for your contribution. Did you take your C as ascorbic acid, or sodium ascobate? Did you have any problems with your large doses un-masking or causing mineral imbalances? Did you have to take any extra magnesium or calcium to compensate?

You're very welcome! I always take AA as Cathcart said it was twice as effective orally as SA. I have also taken a multi to have my basic needs assured. I have had a few blood tests over the years and the doctors always seemed surprised at how great my results were.

Once a doctor in France told me I had the blood of an 18 year old olympian! Not sure what that meant to be honest, but was happy to hear it! :) Meanwhile my brother has cholesterol medication and last Christmas had half his colon removed because a tumor obstructed it... (He started supplementing since and has had to cut out red meat now as it actually hurts him to digest it. I eat fish and eggs but no meats, avoid sugar and grains, and limit my carbs to occasional treats).

From my FAQ: (which summarizes what Dr. Cathcart told me):
Sodium ascorbate has a neutral pH but only half the anti-oxidant properties of the ascorbic acid molecule.

It is used essentially for intravenous application as much larger doses can be administered that way. Ascorbic acid has two donor electrons compared to sodium ascorbate’s single donor electron. (Free radicals steal electrons, Antioxidants give extra electrons away).

Sodium ascorbate however can be used intravenously to push past the limits of maximum quantities of oral administration. See Robert Cathcart’s MD Vitamin C Dosage Protocol "Titrating to Bowel tolerance" for proper oral dosage instructions on ascorbic acid. I reposted his paper on omarchives dot org and added a summary and a clickable index as it's quite long: Landing page menu, vitamin c dosage.
Actually Dr Cathcart answering this question was (surprisingly) one of my most viewed videos on youtube!
I'll post the link to it as a stand alone reply to this and see if it posts.

 

[Andrew Vajda]

You're very welcome! I always take AA as Cathcart said it was twice as effective orally as SA. I have also taken a multi to have my basic needs assured. I have had a few blood tests over the years and the doctors always seemed surprised at how great my results were.

Once a doctor in France told me I had the blood of an 18 year old olympian! Not sure what that meant to be honest, but was happy to hear it! :) Meanwhile my brother has cholesterol medication and last Christmas had half his colon removed because a tumor obstructed it... (He started supplementing since and has had to cut out red meat now as it actually hurts him to digest it. I eat fish and eggs but no meats, avoid sugar and grains, and limit my carbs to occasional treats).

From my FAQ: (which summarizes what Dr. Cathcart told me):
Sodium ascorbate has a neutral pH but only half the anti-oxidant properties of the ascorbic acid molecule.

It is used essentially for intravenous application as much larger doses can be administered that way. Ascorbic acid has two donor electrons compared to sodium ascorbate’s single donor electron. (Free radicals steal electrons, Antioxidants give extra electrons away).

Sodium ascorbate however can be used intravenously to push past the limits of maximum quantities of oral administration. See Robert Cathcart’s MD Vitamin C Dosage Protocol "Titrating to Bowel tolerance" for proper oral dosage instructions on ascorbic acid. I reposted his paper on omarchives dot org and added a summary and a clickable index as it's quite long: Landing page menu, vitamin c dosage.
Actually Dr Cathcart answering this question was (surprisingly) one of my most viewed videos on youtube!
I'll post the link to it as a stand alone reply to this and see if it posts.

Dr Robert Cathcart MD - Ascorbic acid VS Sodium Ascorbate - oral versus IV C
( I write Dr & MD in my links as it helps with google rankings)

 

[Andrew Vajda]

Thanks for making us know about you and your company, Andrew. I was trying to think why I didn't order your Vitamin C, but now I think it was because Doctor's Best was selling a seemingly equivalent product for a much lower price. Isn't Doctor's Best guilty of unfair trade practices by misrepresenting its product and deceiving consumers? I would be like most people in assuming that they wouldn't blantantly lie. Wouldn't DSM sue Doctor's Best? What do you think is the reason DSM isn't doing so? Is there an industry practice that keeps it from doing so, or is this one of those insider secrets of the industry?

I'm happy that you have a product that sells for half of the Vitamin C Foundation. At the price, it is definitely a lot more affordable. I'm curious also as to why you aren't advertising this as low-lead vitamin C to the public. DSM also is tight-lipped about something that they should be boasting about but they're not. Seems like you both are trying to not rock the boat. Is there a sword of Damocles hanging over your head that you display this odd behavior?

I've stated before in this forum that for me, very low-lead is more important than being GMO-Free. If I have to choose one over the other, it would be the lead-free characteristic I'd be looking for. For one, synthetic vitamin C, after going through the production and refining process, comes out as pretty pure, save the ppm contaminants. It pretty much leaves any significant traces of its GMO roots. Thus concern of GMO in ascorbic is akin to taking advantage of the public's fears. There's more concern over GMO in soybeans, and in corn, yet people are generally overlooking these and instead are afraid of GMO ascorbic acid. People keep eating nachos, tortillas, and soy products and they don't care. The GMO effect is already there, and GMO ascorbic acid isn't going to significantly alter the balance.

I just can't understand why you aren't selling Low-Lead Vitamin C as a companion product the GMO-Free Vitamin C. I can understand that going with GMO-Free sells the product more than going with Low-Lead, but couldn't you add Low-Lead as another quality aspect of the GMO-Free product? Are you or DSM afraid that your customers will hold you to the fire if you can't sell consistently a product with low lead levels?

It just dawned on me that the same thing can be said of any product being sold. Have you ever noticed anybody advertising their product as low in lead? It's either disallowed by the authorities or it is a negative positioning of a product that invites more questions from people. A hear no evil, see no evil approach seems to be the better part of practicality. For example, you don't see any Japanese hotel or airbnb advertising that they have low nuclear radiation levels in their premises.

You're very welcome! Doctor's best is not claiming it's the ultra-fine but I suspect they're cheating beyond that, as I mentioned in a previous post. First their price (which they just raised from 16$ to 20$ for 250g) on vitacost and iherb, means they're selling to those sites at 1/3 retail. I complained to my sales rep at DSM that they were shutting me down by unfair competition after I publicized their product for 5 years. DSM confirmed to my by email that DB doesn't buy from them but might be obtaining from a larger reseller. I don't know what company out there would buy enough to sell DB a cut big enough to supply world wide on all these sites, but it remains a possibility.

Then there's the issue that customers have left reviews on their amazon page saying it didn't dissolve completely. Which led me to suspect it's being cut. I was tempted to accuse them of selling counterfeit Quali-C but honestly was afraid to start a battle I couldn't survive. I was accused of that on Amazon UK and it was a nightmare proving to the cheap foreign support agents at Amazon that my receipts matched all my sales. (Because my sales were divided between Amazon US & UK and they were too incompetent to check the totals and do the math from the summaries I sent them. Left me without sales in the EU for over 2 months until I literally lost my composure. Insulted them profusely in a ticket and threatened immediate legal action...

I don't want to throw stones I can't survive getting back. DB wouldn't blink an eye at losing sales of the Quali-C on Amazon for a few months. Amazon is really the only venue I have at the moment. So I decided to lay low and let customers read the reviews, try them and decide for themselves...

DSM is a juggernaut. tried to have my sales rep shave an extra couple of dollars off a kilo at 2.5 Metric ton purchases. (55K lb). She responded by raising my price and ignoring me since. I may not even be able to resupply. Waiting on a hail Mary play from a personal contact to a VIP at DSM to try and save my company. If DB is caught with counterfeit, it will be between them and the courts. DSM won't feel concerned, especially since they aren't selling to DB directly. although they might, I suppose, sue DB if they ever were proven to have misrepresented their Quali-C product family.

As for the low lead advertising, to be honest I didn't know it was an issue. This forum is the first time I've seen people discussing it. I guess I would agree with the statement I read saying low lead would probably scare more people than it would help. By the level of questions I receive most of the time, (#1 being "where's my scoop")... I wouldn't risk scaring off too many customers. I guess I should be proactive and seek out forums like this were there are clusters of more informed people with more specific questions and post to them directly the COA details.

I have been seeing DSM's COA's for 5 years now. There's no concern of fluctuation. It's very minor. Really guess it's to avoid scaring people that haven't even though of it, or like me, they haven't yet realized it's becoming a shopping criteria.

 

[ecstatichamster]

no other reason to pay so much for vitamin C except the benefits of low heavy metals, in my opinion. I agree this is somethign that needs to be made into a mountain instead of a molehill @Andrew Vajda

 

[oldfriend]

Just wanted to say that I’ve been taking it for almost a year and feel great on it

 

[InChristAlone]

I also only care about heavy metals in the Ascorbic acid. But won't pay double the price of good China made. I have been paying about $17 a pound when it's on sale.

 

[Andrew Vajda]

no other reason to pay so much for vitamin C except the benefits of low heavy metals, in my opinion. I agree this is somethign that needs to be made into a mountain instead of a molehill @Andrew Vajda

Thanks @ecstatichamster, and @yerrag, I will give it some thought about how to get that info out more. Maybe I should post the COA on my website outright and not worry about other companies copying it? I guess People will then just have to decide for themselves which companies COA's they can trust after actually trying the products...