Vitamin C … What Woman Needs It?

This is a true story. It happened to a 48-year-old woman. It is the report by two reputable California doctors. It’s recent…released in America’s most prestigious so-called health publication, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The story opens with abdominal pain and bleeding. It led to six major, separate and distinct surgical procedures, requiring the opening of the abdomen, extending over a three year period of anguish, grief, and horror. By the way, all of her vital female organs (uterus, ovaries and tubes) were removed. Since no one still had determined the cause of all the recurring bleeding, hematologists (blood specialists) were called in. When all of the complicated, expensive, and appropriate blood tests failed to uncover the answer, exotic diagnoses were entertained. Fitting a TV scenario, it was finally concluded to be a well hidden, impossible to locate, cancer. Actually, the specialists ran out of answers. As Gertrude Stein might have humorously put it, “What is the question?” One of the superdoctors finally thought to ask, “What do you eat?” Lo and behold…the poor woman’s answer unraveled the four year medical mystery. Her diet was totally devoid of fresh fruits and vegetables (and her doctors confirmed a practically zero blood ascorbate level).

All the operations, all the drainage, all the tests and other medical procedures had been unnecessary. Our long-suffering, diagnosis-eluding, real life heroine had come down with scurvy!

The good news…the patient was placed on a simple regimen of 1000 mg of vitamin C each day (the equivalent of about 10-12 glasses of orange juice) and she lived happily thereafter…albeit missing lots of parts.

This is a true story…it sounds rare…what isn’t so obvious is that, even in this day and age, there are millions of such reports. What makes this account so unusual is only that it found its way into America’s major medical mouthpiece.

There is more than just these mind boggling tragic stories. Most of this vitamin C research is cool, collected and carried out under controlled conditions. And there are lots…from the womb to the tomb.

One of the single and biggest problems in young women is excessive menstrual flow. Two celebrated researchers looked at this problem in a group of presumably otherwise healthy young women. Each of the subjects in the experimental group received 600 mg of ascorbic acid/bioflavonoids on a daily basis in divided doses. The control patients were given an indistinguishable dummy pill. The results are clear. Thirty-two out of 37 women displayed decreased blood loss when treated with the test capsules for 2 months, while only one in the control group improved.

So, vitamin C…what woman needs it? Surely, it looks like it would be a good idea for young ladies with excessive menstruation.

In our present culture, anemia conjures up an image of a woman with iron-poor blood. If this turns out not to be the case, then more often than not, she’s pigeonholed with a psychiatric/psychologic label. Need this be so?

The unique task of ascorbate in metabolism is well established. Vitamin C is known to play a role in the formation and maintenance of certain essential blood components (hemoglobin and red blood cells). To test these relationships, two Nigerian researchers carried out a simple and well-supervised study of 32 apparently healthy female nursing students, aged 20-34 years. The subjects were randomly divided into three categories. Group A received 100 mg of ascorbic acid while the second subset (B) was given 50 mg per diem. Group C served as the control. The blood picture was examined initially, after eight weeks of supplementation and ten weeks after withdrawal. Following both levels of vitamin C administration, there was a significant and favorable response in the hemoglobin, hematocrit and red blood cell count. Ten weeks after withdrawal of the supplements, values for all parameters decreased significantly to the initial baselines.

So, vitamin C…who needs it? The millions of females with supposed “iron-poor blood” might give serious thought to trying vitamin C rich foods and supplements.

Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City were engaged in a study of vitamin A and its effect upon cervical dysplasia (a common precursor of a special type of female cancer). Quite by accident, they discovered some striking revelations about the ascorbates. It became obvious that women whose intake of vitamin C was less than 30 mg daily (only half the RDA and equal to about half a medium orange) had a risk of developing cervical dysplasia ten times greater than that of women whose intake was higher. The observations in this report are heightened by the fact that approximately one out of three women in their reproductive years have daily vitamin C intake below 30 mg. Secondly, it is well known that 10% of females living today will get some kind of cancer. Finally, add to this, only about one in ten Americans eat enough vitamin C rich fruits and vegetables.

So…who needs vitamin C? All those women who want more protection against some types of female cancer!

And what about the horrors of hot flashes? A total of 94 menopausal patients were studied for one month. Each subject received 1200 mg of both bioflavonoids and ascorbic acid daily in divided doses. For comparison studies, controlled drugs included calcium carbonate, the antipyretic salicylamide and even estrogens (presently the most popular treatment). The results…the bioflavonoid/vitamin C capsules beat out the rest. Actually, 88% of the participants had partial to complete relief of hot flashes.

And so, who should take vitamin C? Obviously, those with menopausal problems would be well served.

Finally, let’s take note of an ongoing eight year study on dietary intake of vitamin C and other nutrients and the exploding problems of cataracts. Imagine, here is an experiment involving more than 50,000 female registered nurses 45 to 67 years of age. And what did they find? Cataracts were approximately half as common in those who had been taking vitamin C supplementation for at least ten years or more.

 

Those and many more stories serve as a prelude to and justification for a just released book entitled Vitamin C…Who Needs It?…The text is designed to examine many obvious and other not-so-obvious vitamin C connections (by means ofdouble-blind experiments) to health and sickness from the womb to the tomb. Discussions begin with infertility and childhood problems like growth and allergies. Common difficulties such as bruisability, facial wrinkling, and skin disorders are analyzed. It ends with the terminal crises of cancer, diabetes and heart disease in the golden years.