Your thoughts on nutritional supplements?

huntress · Post by **huntress** » Fri 23 Jun 2006 00:04

Oscar my dear, wouldn't it be more credible if you were to read it on your own instead of me telling you. Because if I do, I can 100% guarantee you'll end up questioning my comments. One thing I can do though is to guide you through to which articles to read and point out which one would be important. Good luck.

Love,
Huntress

Post by **Oscar** » Fri 23 Jun 2006 00:50

Hmmm, I'm sorry to hear you're so unsure of your explaining abilities and/or afraid of my questioning...

But in that case, I'll just read the articles.

huntress · Post by **huntress** » Fri 23 Jun 2006 01:07

Ahh Oscar darling, so sweet of you for understanding. Oh and, please read the article about artherosclerosis, the reason behind the build up in the arteries, the cause of it (here's a hint: Vitamin C) and take note of the levels of Vitamin C needed to erradicate the problem.

Kisses,
Huntress

Post by **Oscar** » Fri 23 Jun 2006 14:28

Well, it has been an interesting read. Finding "the" article about atherosclerosis proved to be difficult, especially since you gave two websites, and on both websites there are numerous articles about atherosclerosis.

It is interesting that you chose vitamin C as example, because of course Dr. Linus Pauling used to be the great advocate of taking extremely high doses of vitamin C. But more about that later.

This topic/discussion is about whether we can get enough vitamins through our (Wai) diet, or if we need supplements to get to the required amount (Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I thought).

First about atherosclerosis. From the Linus Pauling Institute site:

Although these hypotheses are not mutually exclusive, no "universal" theory explains every observation and predicts how we can defeat atherosclerosis.

One hypothesis proposed by Linus Pauling and a colleague suggests that an ascorbic acid deficiency underlies atherosclerosis.

Until recently, the results of most prospective studies indicated that low or deficient intakes of vitamin C were associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases...

The last quote is interesting, but unfortunately the article doesn't explain the "Until recently". Anyway, I don't want to prove/dispute this theory, so I'll just assume it's true. Of course this does not cover all possible factors for cardiovascular diseases.
So low/deficient intake of vitamin C might increase the risk of cardiovasular disease. I couldn't find what amounts they consider low though.

So what amount of vitamin C do they recommend?

Data from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) indicate that plasma and circulating cells in healthy, young subjects became fully saturated with vitamin C at a dose of about 400 mg/day.
-------------------------------
The Linus Pauling Institute recommends a vitamin C intake of at least 400 mg daily—the amount that has been found to fully saturate plasma and circulating cells with vitamin C in young, healthy nonsmokers.

Unfortunately it doesn't say anything about people who don't fall in this category, but okay. 400 mg/day.
I just checked my nutrient calculator, and apparently I'm getting 570.56mg vitamin C per day.

If we compare this 400mg/day to what Pauling himself took and recommended:

Pauling himself reportedly took at least 12,000 mg daily and raised the amount to 40,000 mg if symptoms of a cold appear.

Wow, 12,000 mg!

According to the Linus Pauling Institute, vitamin C apparently also decreases the risk for most types of cancer.
Dr. Linus Pauling died of prostate cancer in 1994 (bad luck!).

Something interesting I found was this story/anecdote (not sure if true or not):

A dispute between Pauling and Arthur Robinson, Ph.D., gives additional evidence of Pauling's defense of vitamin C megadosage was less than honest. Robinson, a former student and long-time associate of Pauling, helped found the institute and became its first president. According to an investigative report by James Lowell, Ph.D., in Nutrition Forum newsletter, Robinson's own research led him to conclude in 1978 that the high doses (5-10 grams per day) of vitamin C being recommended by Pauling might actually promote some types of cancer in mice [18]. Robinson told Lowell, for example, that animals fed quantities equivalent to Pauling's recommendations contracted skin cancer almost twice as frequently as the control group and that only doses of vitamin C that were nearly lethal had any protective effect. Shortly after reporting this to Pauling, Robinson was asked to resign from the institute, his experimental animals were killed, his scientific data were impounded, and some of the previous research results were destroyed. Pauling also declared publicly that Robinson's research was "amateurish" and inadequate.

johndela1 · Post by **johndela1** » Fri 23 Jun 2006 17:59

Oscar wrote:
Pauling himself reportedly took at least 12,000 mg daily and raised the amount to 40,000 mg if symptoms of a cold appear.
Wow, 12,000 mg!

check out: http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/mega_1_1.html

This site says animals that produce their own produce like this:

Goat 2,280 - 13,300 mg
Rat 2,737 - 13,902 mg
Rabbit 1,547 - 15,820 mg
Cow 1,099 - 1,281 mg
Mouse 2,352 - 19,250 mg
Sheep 1,736 mg
Cat 336 - 2,800 mg

Post by **Oscar** » Sat 24 Jun 2006 19:50

This vitamin C discussion made me wonder: was Man always meant to live without the capacity to produce vitamin C, or was it through evolution/mutation?

I found this article (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/), which makes it clear that it is the latter option.

Guinea pigs and primates, including humans, get sick unless they consume ascorbic acid in their diet. For humans and guinea pigs, ascorbic acid is thus a vitamin (vitamin C), while most other species can synthesize their own ascorbic acid and thus do not require this molecule in their diet. The reason humans and guinea pigs cannot manufacture their own ascorbic acid is that they lack a functional gene encoding the enzyme protein known as L-gulono-gamma-lactone oxidase (GLO), which is required for synthesizing ascorbic acid. In most mammals functional GLO genes are present, inherited - according to the evolutionary hypothesis - from a functional GLO gene in a common ancestor of mammals. According to this view, GLO gene copies in the human and guinea pig lineages were inactivated by mutations.

Molecular geneticists who examine DNA sequences from an evolutionary perspective know that large gene deletions are rare, so scientists expected that non-functional mutant GLO gene copies--known as "pseudogenes"--might still be present in primates and guinea pigs as relics of the functional ancestral gene. In contrast, Creationists believe that humans and guinea pigs were each created independently of all other species and must have been "designed" to function without GLO. If this were true, these two species would not be expected to carry a defective copy of the GLO gene. In fact, GLO pseudogenes have been detected in both guinea pigs and humans (Nishikimi et al. J Biol Chem 267: 21967, 1992; Nishikimi et al. J Biol Chem 269:13685, 1994), consistent with the evolutionary view; presumably, related pseudogenes also exist in non-human primates that require dietary vitamin C.

A test of this prediction has recently been reported. A small section of the GLO pseudogene sequence was recently compared from human, chimpanzee, macaque and orangutan; all four pseudogenes were found to share a common crippling single nucleotide deletion that would cause the remainder of the protein to be translated in the wrong triplet reading frame (Ohta and Nishikimi BBA 1472:408, 1999).

Normally mutations will only prevail if it is advantageous, or at least not disadvantageous, to the species. Like the article mentions:

Presumably this occurred separately in guinea pig and primate ancestors whose natural diets were so rich in ascorbic acid that the absence of GLO enzyme activity was not a disadvantage--it did not cause selective pressure against the defective gene.

So I suppose that no matter how much vitamin C we would've produced with the GLO, we could get enough vitamin C from our diets without GLO.

What do you guys think?

huntress · Post by **huntress** » Sat 24 Jun 2006 20:38

Man initially had the capacity to produce Vitamin C. But when man started eating fruits, the mutations occured because we were getting abundance of Vitamin C from fruits that we did not require our own ability to produce Vitamin C. This is because fruits aeons ago, fruits then were sour and not sweet like our present fruits. Sour meaning contain alot of ascorbic acid.

So I suppose that no matter how much vitamin C we would've produced with the GLO, we could get enough vitamin C from our diets without GLO.

This is true long ago. Today's fruits do not contain as much vitamin C as before.

huntress · Post by **huntress** » Sat 24 Jun 2006 20:54

More over, with the addition of more and more sugars into our diet, it will result in a competitive inhibition with the Vitamin C molecule. This is because the Vitamin C molecule closely resembles the molecules of glucose and fructose. And when one ingests more and more sugars, glucose and fructose will prevail, and Vitamin C will not be absorbed into the system.

Post by **Oscar** » Tue 27 Jun 2006 09:57

huntress wrote:This is because fruits aeons ago, fruits then were sour and not sweet like our present fruits. Sour meaning contain alot of ascorbic acid.[...]Today's fruits do not contain as much vitamin C as before.

Interesting! Has this been proven, or is it still a theory? I think John Dela posted a link to an article about this, but they only compared fruit from 50 years ago to the fruit at present, and actually the present fruit contained a bit more vitamin C.

huntress wrote:More over, with the addition of more and more sugars into our diet, it will result in a competitive inhibition with the Vitamin C molecule.

Also interesting!

I'm looking into this, but maybe you have a/some specific link(s) to (scientific?) articles?

huntress · Post by **huntress** » Tue 27 Jun 2006 11:37

I'm looking into this, but maybe you have a/some specific link(s) to (scientific?) articles?

http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/pdf- ... ep2003.pdf

The link may take a while to load because it is a huge pdf file with lots of diagrams and illustrations. If it doesn't work, then take this long way:

http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/THE_ ... _book.html

Scroll down to the Diabetes chapter, download the section of the book. Then forward to page 154 of the book.

Here's another interesting read for you Oscar:

http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/THE_ ... k_2003.htm

Click on the "Business with Disease" and "Codex Alimentarius Commission" link.

Post by **Oscar** » Tue 27 Jun 2006 12:19

Thanks! I found one interesting article so far, and will check out your links.
I'll post my findings.