Discover The Simple Reason Why You Should Take More Vitamin C

The government recommendations for vitamin C are about 60-75 mg a day. This is basically to prevent scurvy. The government doesn’t recognize the role of vitamin C in the prevention of chronic disease or arming the immune system when facing an acute infection.  A diet rich in fruits and vegetables might provide you with 300 – 400 mg of vitamin C a day. And that is great, but not enough. In this article you will discover the simple reason why you should take more vitamin C. After all, almost all animals make their own vitamin C. But we don’t. Why not?

How Much Vitamin C Do Animals Usually Make?

It turns out that almost all mammals and other animals make their own vitamin C, starting from glucose. Fruit bats, guinea pigs, monkeys and other primates, and humans do not make vitamin C. That’s the whole, very short list. The rest of the animals make grams of it a day in their own body. We have a genetic defect in the last enzyme in the synthetic process of making vitamin C, so our vitamin C synthesis is broken.

So, how much vitamin C do animals make?  Estimates are hard to verify, but Table 1 gives some ranges of vitamin C synthesis in animals. Rather than just giving gram amounts per day, I put the data together on a per weight basis to make comparisons between animals of various sizes much easier. It turns out that the data starts to make some sense when the comparison is done this way, and we might be able to help answer our question of how much vitamin C would we make if we could make vitamin C.

Table 1. An Estimate of the synthesis rate of vitamin C in animals.

Because of the functions of vitamin C as an antioxidant and anti-toxin, the amount of vitamin C an animal makes varies with their diet, state of health and environmental conditions like how much stress the animal is under.

How Much Vitamin C Would We Make if We Could Make Vitamin C?

Except for goats, which make a lot more vitamin C than other animals, the middle range for all these animals comes out to about 25 mg/kg body weight per day. So, for a 50-kg person (110 pounds) this would be 1,250 mg per day. For a 85-kg person (187 pounds) this would be 2,125 mg per day. So, people would probably make a gram or two of vitamin C a day under average conditions. And potentially a lot more than when under stress and sickness.

People would probably make a gram or two of vitamin C a day under non-stressful conditions.

How To Account For Low Absorption of Oral Vitamin C

Now, this vitamin C synthesis in animals is actually like intravenous vitamin C in people.  Absorption rates for large doses of vitamin C are around 20 percent, not 100 percent like intravenous vitamin C or tiny doses from food, or like what animals produce internally. So, a person would need approximately 5 times as much vitamin C to even come close to the effects of internal synthesis of vitamin C.  So, the amount a person needs every day becomes between 6 and 12 grams of oral vitamin C, with more required under stressful conditions. Liposomal vitamin C might help as well. It has been said to have higher absorption rates and to be more effective clinically at lower doses, so it appears to get to where the body needs vitamin C at a higher rate than regular vitamin C.

The amount you need every day becomes between 6 and 12 grams of oral vitamin C.

Vitamin C Pioneers Confirm This High Intake of Vitamin C

Dr. Frederick Klenner, MD

Dr. Frederick Klenner recommended children get 1 gram of vitamin C for each year of age, until 10 years old, and then 10 grams a day thereafter into adulthood. Dr. Klenner had great success with vitamin C therapy, both orally and intravenously. Perhaps more than anyone else he showed how vitamin C could be used as an anti-toxin against spider bites, snake venom, and deadly diseases like polio caused by a virus. In fact, he helped 60 polio patients in 1948 in North Carolina with vitamin C injection with no aftereffects of polio present in the subjects. His recommendations for vitamin C were not based on theory, but on clinical experience and healthy outcomes in his own patients.

Linus Pauling, PhD

Linus Pauling was a genius, winning a Nobel Prize in chemistry (1954) and a Nobel Peace Prize (1962). His laboratory was second in the race to decode the structure of DNA, only behind Watson and Crick’s work by days. But Linus Pauling is most famous for his advocacy of vitamin C. He claimed it would cure the common cold and help with cancer and everything in-between. His clinical trial with intravenous vitamin C did show benefit for cancer patients. When the trial was replicated with oral vitamin C the benefit disappeared, but the difference was not noted by other doctors, scientists or the public for many years.  Only in 2004 was Pauling’s clinical trial explained in the scientific literature.

Linus Pauling also recommended taking large amounts of vitamin C, and he himself took 18 grams a day in 1985 when he wrote his book How to Live Longer and Feel Better. He also recommended that people should increase their vitamin C intake upon the first cold symptoms.  Taking 1 grams of vitamin C per hour for every waking hour generally suppressed the symptoms as long as the vitamin C was kept up.

Now You Know The Simple Reason To Take More Vitamin C

All animals except for primates, humans, gerbils and fruit bats make their own vitamin C. To get the equivalent amount that animals make people need about 1,000 and 2,000 mg of vitamin C internally every day. But to absorb that amount of vitamin C, an oral intake between 6,000 and 12,000 mg is needed every day, taken in divided doses every few hours. This amount is the base level for many people in an unstressed environment.

Animals increase their vitamin C production when faced with stress, and clinical experience from Dr. Klenner indicated that much higher amounts of vitamin C can be curative for a wide variety of illnesses. So, one gram a day for every year of age up until the age of 10 and then 10 grams a day up through adulthood seems like great advice. And now you know why.