Did Linus Pauling Really Get It Right Regarding Vitamin C’s Healing Powers?
Vitamin C is well known for its healing powers having a multiple of health benefits. Health benefits include its ability as an antioxidant to mop up those electron hungry free radicals capable of doing much oxidative damage to the body in the long-term. Thus, Vitamin C has an effective role in disease prevention and reduces aging.
Vitamin C, a major co-factor involved in the body’s vital metabolic processes also contributes to wound healing, tissue repair, healthy teeth and bones, aids iron absorption, makes fat energy available through the manufacture of carnitine, is involved in the production of good connective tissue, promotes heart health and much more…
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Vitamin C as a cure for heart disease
One of the most respected scientists of all time twice Nobel Prize winner Biochemist Linus Pauling (1901-1994) was well aware of vitamin C and its involvement in the manufacture of good connective tissue and that it had been said to promote heart health.
He hypothesised that heart disease was the result of developing long-term scurvy (vitamin C deficiency). So, through experimentation, he devised a unified approach for the cure of heart disease; a therapy involving high doses of vitamin C (up to 6g a day) –40-60mg RDA is the guideline amount required to prevent scurvy.
In spite of Pauling’s claim to the therapy’s success mainstream medicine’s reaction was one of flat rejection, claiming that Pauling, although a great scientist, was outside of his field of expertise…
That was the end-of- story in terms of vitamin C getting recognition in mainstream medicine as a cure for heart disease, until recently:
Pauling regularly took vitamin C and lived till he was 93 years old. Now, some 20 odd years on after his death there’s been a recent explosive interest in vitamin C and its healing powers. Will this flood of interest eventually show that Pauling got it right after all?
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Research at the University Colleague of Los Angeles (UCLA) suggests that Pauling did get it right. Guided by Dr. James Engstrom in the UCLA a 10-year large study shows that men on 800mg daily doses of vitamin C (slightly over 13 times more than the RDA) had significantly lowered heart disease and lived 6 years longer than those on the guideline 60mg RDA.
Vitamin C and its anti-cancerous properties
Linus Pauling also claimed that vitamin C could destroy cancer. Another claim of his that was laid rest by conventional medicine, deemed as heresy, but let’s look at some of the research done by others on the anti-cancerous properties of cancer: Will Pauling be vindicated?
It had been established that cancer patients particularly those in the late stages were vitamin C deficient. However, through pioneering research Dr. Hugh Riordandiscovered that high-dose intravenous Vitamin C in patients had the effect of destroying cancer cells.
In short, high-dose vitamin C uptake by the cancer cells has the net effect of intracellular hydrogen peroxide build up which causes the cells to destroy themselves from the inside out.
The cancer cells can deal with this at low levels but this makes high-dose intravenous vitamin C an effective non-toxic chemotherapeutic agent.
Riordan’s research offers an explanation as to why the vitamin C levels were deficient in cancer patients. It suggests that the vitamin C levels were depleted due to uptake by cancer cells: During the uptake the cancer cells mistook vitamin C for glucose as both have very similar molecular shapes. The glucose molecule is needed by the cancer cell for metabolism.
This research has been supported by other researchers such as Dr. Ronald Hunninghake. Also, from research at the New York based Lewis Cantley of Weill Cornell where it was found that high-dose vitamin C helps kill cancerous colorectal cells.
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In spite of the success, as with heart disease, the FDA does not recognise the efficacy of high-dose vitamin C as a cancer cure. Some have accused the scientific establishment of corruption to discredit Pauling’s work on vitamin C’s curative powers because his cheap, natural, non-toxic treatment had been perceived as too much of a financial threat by the medical/pharmaceutical establishment. To stop it from getting world-wide recognition was there a deliberate and inferior misrepresentation of Pauling’s experimental protocol used to discredit it?
Of course, a good diet of vitamin C is always recommended.
Viva Pauling’s work and vitamin C!
Paul A. Philips writes thoughtful pieces like this over at his site, New Paradigm. He writes on Natural Health and other thought-provoking topics.
For the best form of Vitamin C, see our article: Things You Didn’t Know About Vitamin C
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