1

If you didn't see the other comment...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_c

My personal experience with 7 years of daily multigram intake has been 2 or 3 colds of such mild severity I barely noticed I was sick.  No flu (or too mild to notice at all).

At least 29 controlled clinical trials (many double-blind and placebo-controlled) involving a total of over 11,000 participants have been conducted into vitamin C and the Common cold. These trials were reviewed in the 1990s^[5][6] and again recently.[16] The trials show that vitamin C reduces the duration and severity of colds but not the frequency. The data indicate that there is a normal dose-response relationship. Vitamin C is more effective the higher the dose. The vast majority of the trials were limited to doses below 1 g/day. As doses rise, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep the trials double blind because of the obvious gastro-intestinal side effects. So, the most effective trials at doses between 2 and 10 g/day are met with skepticism. Reports from physicians have provided ample clinical confirmation.[17]

This is what's really fascinating though:

The fact that man possesses three of the four enzymes that animals employ to manufacture ascorbates in relatively large amounts, has led researchers such as Irwin Stone and Linus Pauling to hypothesize that man's ancestors once manufactured this substance in the body millions of years ago in quantities roughly estimated at 3,000-4,000 mg daily, but later lost the ability to do this through a chance of evolution. If true, this would mean that vitamin C was misnamed as a vitamin and is in fact a vital macronutrient like fat or carbohydrate.{Irwin Stone: "The Healing Factor"}

If you get really sick, very large doses (decagrams/day) may do wonders for you, according to some research.  The body's ability to absorb C seems to increase the sicker you are.

2

Oh, and the ability to cut and paste embedded links?  Very cool!

3

There isn't any doubt that our ancestors had the ability to synthesize vitamin C and that somewhere along the line we lost it.

Most mammals have the ability to synthesize vitamin C. Primates and, oddly enough, guinea pigs, do not have that ability. So it's plausible that our ancestors had a synthesis ability and lost it somewhere, but it happened a very long time ago, back before our ancestors branched off from the lemurs.

The simple fact that we lost it doesn't justify Pauling's speculation about what the original normal level was.

If you're trying to speculate about how much vitamin C is "normal", the way to find out would be to see how much other mammals create for themselves.

It may be that high levels of Vitamin C help with certain diseases, but the fact that our kidneys eliminate it rapidly tends to argue against a high level being "normal". Irrespective of whether the source is internal synthesis or dietary, if a high level was optimal we would be more parsimonious about excreting it.

But then, I tend to be extremely skeptical about nearly all diet fads. If chewing several Vitamin C tablets per day makes you happy, go for it. But don't expect me to take it seriously.

4 At least, unlike most vitamins, you're unlikely to poison yourself by taking too much Vitamin C.

5

Well, I think it's fair to say it's more than just a fad; there is some serious science behind it, as the wikipedia article notes.

My understanding is that Pauling tried to extrapolate from other animals to determine how much Vitamin C people would normally make.  I would be interested if anyone has tried to calculate that based instead on the precursors humans produce, but I haven't run across any such research.

Most animals do make C and excrete it despite the cost in energy to produce it.  That suggests there's a prophylactic benefit to having it around (nature usually isn't wasteful).

It's especially interesting that animals tend to produce more C when injured and sick.  It's been proposed there is a reducing equivalent effect, which some claim to have observed in humans, and the body even seems to absorb more when very ill.

The increased tolerance to ascorbic acid orally provides an interesting and somewhat useful measure of the toxicity of a disease. Probably it is somewhat a measure of the free radicals involved in a disease. I describe a cold that at its maximum makes it possible for a patient to just tolerate 100 grams of ascorbic acid orally without diarrhea, a "100 gram cold." Patients, appearing to be well, who have a tolerance over 20 to 25 grams per 24 hours probably have some subclinical condition which is being hidden by their own free radical scavenging system. 

Patients with chronic infections (and a normally strong stomach) can ingest enormous amounts of ascorbic acid. One of my chronic fatigue patients is functional only because of his ingestion of 65 pounds of ascorbic acid in the past 12 months. In 22 years, I, personally, have ingested approximately 361 kilos ( 797 lbs ) (4.3 times my body weight) of ascorbic acid because of chronic allergies and perhaps chronic EBV. 

Considering the reducing equivalents carried by such amounts of ascorbic acid, one can only guess at the turnover rate of the non-enzymatic free radical scavengers in a patient acutely ill with a 200-gram mononucleosis. However, one gains the impression that all the non-enzymatic free radical scavengers would have to be reduced many times a day. 

http://www.vaccinationnews.com/DailyNews/April2001/WhySickVitC-RC.htm

If I became extremely ill, I'd certainly have to give it a shot. 

6 The evidence is dubious and the promotion of Vitamin C is rife with kookery, including many of Pauling's claims.

But it probably won't do you much harm.

7 Except, I should add, for the treatment of scurvy.

If you have scurvy, by all means, take Vitamin C.

8

Perhaps, but today's kookery sometimes becomes tomorrow's conventional wisdom, especially in medicine.  It was only a few years ago that the AMA reversed a 30-year policy of saying daily multivitmains were mostly useless. And most doctors thought Judah Folkman was nuts in 1971  (I like his quote "I had one advantage. I kept saying, 'I'm pretty sure they're wrong.'").

Of course Vitamin C is nonpatentable, so no one's going to spend billions promoting it.  But the high-dose studies on colds seem relatively unequivocal.

9

"...today's kookery sometimes becomes tomorrow's conventional wisdom."

But often it just becomes tomorrow's kookery.  When I had The Cardiac Incident, my mother wanted me to go see a herbalist/aromatherapist, saying that "it really really works." 

Uh-huh.  Thanks, but I'd rather trust a cardiologist before I go for the kookery.

10 I hope you feel better soon!  In other news, I've been noticing a dramatic increase (+15 seconds) in the time it takes to post a comment on some mu.nu bloggers.
  Is it because of your unwillingness to accept perl as your benevolent overlord?

I'm just askin.

11 I should mention that I have a scraper saying:

    $reply=s/.#$&%!/you are right, perl rocks./g;

It's more complicated than that, but you get the gist.

FREE PERL NOW!  Python is gay!  Psycho makes python psychogay!  Minx is ... well I have no idea, but it's probably gay!

(It's more important to have a message than an understanding... :)

12 In other news, I've been noticing a dramatic increase (+15 seconds) in the time it takes to post a comment on some mu.nu bloggers.

Is it because of your unwillingness to accept perl as your benevolent overlord?

No.

They're running Movable Type.

Which is written in Perl.

Perl sucks.

13 Why are you arguing about something trivial like Python-versus-Perl when there are really important things to talk about: Vi-versus-EMACS.

14 Never mind Emacs; if you install CPanel on a Linux box it defaults your editor to Pico.  Nobody, nobody uses Pico.

Fucking CPanel.

15 I've never even heard of Pico. Is that related to TECO?

16 They're running Movable Type.

Which is written in Perl.

Really?  It says 'powered by Minx' over at Ace's place.  Is Minx written in perl?

Perl rocks.

17 Ace's New Comments Thingy uses Minx.  So do Rusty's comments.  Those work fine.

Everything else is still Movable Type, which is written in Perl, which is the worst programming language, like, ever. (Though I admit MT is extra-special bad, and it's not all Perl's fault.  Just mostly.)

18 Now, there is an irritating lag here at Ambient Irony, when bringing up the main page of the blog.  It can take 15 seconds to load.

But once you get there, you see:

Processing 0.08 seconds.
50 queries taking 0.052 seconds, 171 records returned.

Acting all innocent-like.

Still trying to hunt that one down, but it's obviously Perl's fault.

19 Ah.  I think I found what was causing the slowdown - DNS.

DNS is still running on the old servers, and the new servers are resolving via our hosting company's DNS servers, which are kind of slow.

I hard-coded the minx.cc IP into the PHP redirector and the problem seems to have gone away.

I blame Perl.

20 <blockquote>Everything else is still Movable Type, which is written in Perl, which is the worst[sic] programming language, like, ever.</blockquote>

You mispelled 'best' as badly as you can possibly mispell it!

21 testYou have to type <blockquote> in the 'view/edit source' box for it to work. Is that a bug or a feature?

22 actually, it looked like it blockquoted before I clicked the 'post' button, but it was ignored, post post. hmm.

23 Blockquotey no worky at the moment.

24 Ooh, I just thought of another comeback to the anti-perl crowd.  "It is a poor craftsman that blames his tools."

Heh, just kidding.  I only know perl and c in any depth, and since I don't code for a living, I'll bow to your greater knowledge on the subject of languages.

25 I don't blame my tools.  My tools work fine.

I'm just opening the excuse to others. :p

There are times and places where Perl is the right language, but large applications written in Perl tend to devolve into utter nightmare - even when they are carefully modularised and commented.

26 Try walking a minimum wage store clerk ( over the phone ) through fixing a problem on a SCO server with vi ... and you will start to value pico.

27 LOL That is ungodly Kristopher.  You deserve some kind of medal if you succeeded with that.