• What The News Media Isn’t Telling You About Vitamin C

    Posted May 22, 2013: by Bill Sardi

    One would think the news media with its army of biology-trained medical reporters would serve as a watchdog for breakthroughs that could dramatically improve the health of Americans who face challenging health problems.  But today the news media appears to be almost totally bought off by commercial interests.  The public hears about every newly approved FDA drug, but little about remarkable natural remedies that often work when existing medicines fail, remedies that are also likely to lower the cost of care significantly.

    While in recent months there has been an upsurge in published studies that demonstrate successful use of vitamin C for a wide range of medical applications, it is not likely the public has heard of even one of them.

    What the public did read about vitamin C was that it increases the risk for kidney stones when taken in high doses.  That assertion has been roundly rebutted.  If you consume high-dose vitamin C pill your increased risk for kidney stones in a year rises from 1/6h of one-percent to 1/3rd of one-percent.  That minute risk increase gained worldwide headlines as a doubling of the relative risk for kidney stones.

    Another recent news headlines is that supplemental vitamin C does not reduce uric acid levels involved in cases of gout.  But the researchers employed a single 500 milligram dose of vitamin C which is rapidly excreted and would not significantly raise blood levels.  Researchers measured uric acid levels, but not vitamin C levels.  Had they done that, it would have been obvious the study design was flawed.  Any sharp medical journalist could have spotted this flaw and called the results of the study into question.  None did.

    This suggests the news media not only beats the drum for Big Pharma, but intentionally undercuts any competition by reporting negative studies involving dietary supplements that are in direct competition with FDA-approved drugs.  Even worse, those biology-trained medical reporters are allowing scientific distortions to go unchallenged.

    By ignoring recent positive reports involving vitamin C, the public has missed major breakthroughs in cancer prevention, rescue from sudden hearing loss, reduction of adverse effects caused by smoking, treatment of leukemia, control of blood pressure and blood sugar among diabetics, prevention of premature birth, and as an agent that is required for the survival and maturation of regenerative stem cells.

    If it won’t raise the price of stocks on Wall Street, it seems it isn’t news these days.  Here are some notable developments involving vitamin C derived from recent published studies.

    Sudden hearing loss

    Remember when radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh suddenly lost his hearing?   It is a problem that strikes about 4000 Americans every year.  Researchers in Asia report the use of intravenous vitamin C, added to steroid, doubled the number of patients who completely recovered from their sudden unexpected event.

    Reversal of tobacco’s effects in the lung

    Researchers in India report that supplemental vitamin C counters the adverse effects of smoking tobacco in lung cells and could serve to prevent inflammatory lung diseases stemming from tobacco use.  Given that an estimated 1 billion people worldwide continue to smoke cigarettes which results in more than 6 million deaths annually, the discovery that vitamin C prevents lung inflammation is of no small significance.

    Reduction of blood pressure and blood sugar

    With the diabesity epidemic sweeping the world as processed food diets are adopted over traditional ones, any remedy that can significantly stave off the adverse effects of this disease would be welcomed.  But nearly eight decades after vitamin C was first synthetically produced so it could be used as a medicine, it comes as a late finding that the consumption of less than 300 milligrams of vitamin C combined with a near-equal amount of vitamin E elevates key internal antioxidant enzymes (superoxide dismutase and glutathione) which resulted in a significant drop in blood pressure as well as blood sugar (both fasting blood sugar and long-term blood sugar indicator hemoglobin A1c).  The study group size was small (170) but its impact stands large if this can be shown in larger groups.

    Premature birth and loss of pregnancy

    Another global health initiative is to reduce the number of preterm premature ruptures of membranes that normally hold babies until they reach full-term development.  The use of vitamin C alone (100 mg) or vitamin C (1000 mg) plus vitamin E (400 IU) generally doubled the numbers of babies being delivered at full-term.  This problem is still large in the US despite efforts to curb it.

    Cancer antidote

    Two striking studies report on the successful use of vitamin C among patients with cancer.  In the first study researchers added vitamin C to lab dishes with human leukemia (blood cancer) cells and observed markedly increased cell death via the generation of hydrogen peroxide while normal cells remained intact.  Vitamin C also strongly inhibits new blood vessel formation (angiogenesis) that feeds tumor cells.

    In the second report, vitamin C was found to inhibit growth of tumor cells by inhibition of a growth factor for new blood vessels that form to feed solid tumors.  The report notes that intravenous vitamin C has been shown to improve the quality of life of breast cancer survivors during chemotherapy.

    Stem cell survival

    In a remarkable report, researchers report that vitamin C favors the generation of internally-produced stem cells as well as their survival.  Stem cells grown in vitamin C-rich bath increase 10-fold.  The survival of either transplanted or internally-produced stem cells is a promising new application for vitamin C, especially since modern stem cell therapy has been disappointing.

    Heart and blood vessel disease

    While long-term controlled studies involving supplemental vitamin C for heart and blood vessel disease have failed to reduce morbidity and mortality, investigators in Europe note that most published studies have been flawed because they failed to remove patients who were already taking vitamin C in their multivitamins.  Patients who already have optimal vitamin C blood levels are unlikely to benefit any further from dietary supplementation.  So in the eight-plus decades since synthetic vitamin C has been available, not one randomized clinical trial has been launched that fairly evaluates the effect of vitamin C deficiency on cardiovascular morbidity and mortality!  This is one way modern medicine stacks the deck against natural therapies like vitamin C then smugly asserts it is a failure.

    It is a fact that 80% of mortal heart attacks stem from release of unstable plaque that then blocks arteries that supply the heart with oxygenated blood.  Vitamin C stabilizes unstable plaque, something no existing FDA-approved drug has been shown to do.

    The news media picks and chooses what it reports.  What it chooses to overlook results in needless suffering and loss of life.  © 2013 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc.

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