The more vitamin C pills we ingest, the more our bodies fight back, to apparently modulate that amount to an apparent maximum optimum level! It is amazing how Vitamin C, an essential and necessary vitamin, that is normally obtained from optimal nutrition, has remained controversial. The Vitamin C Paradox!
Personally, convinced the past invincibility of Britain’s navy, that became an emerging fact in the late 1700 century, was almost entirely because of the final ‘reluctant’ conversion and acceptance of the negative health reality of sailors being separated from fresh fruits and vegetables. This ‘acceptance’ was necessary in the British Admiralty bureaucracy, located at the foot of Buckingham Palace Mall, and adjacent to Trafalgar Square, in London. It was so difficult for these innately prejudiced, upper class, usually Etonian and Harrowvian type public school (meaning private school in their parlance) educated… ironically often without a higher ‘Oxbridge’ university education!..and almost insufferable characters they must have been!.. to accept (no doubt disdainfully and without the need to verbalize among themselves!)… the impact of the ‘reality’ reports of Captain Cook…a man who despite his sea title, rose through the merchant ranks from lower class origins. Cook learnt the hard way on his three epic voyages throughout the Pacific…and if the ‘limey’ (lemons administered to sailors… from a barrel on board!..hence the substitute name for the British sailor) remedy had been adopted earlier enough, the American Revolution would likely have been a complete and utter American failure. In addition the French fleet, then supporting the Americans, at that time would have been navally conquered earlier...rather than postponed by some several decades to the Battle of Trafalgar, after whom this ‘square’ was named. On it’s tall column Admiral Nelson is to this day immortalized after his tragic death!
As an explanation: the ‘health plus’ for the limeys was a relatively full complement of healthy crew, that combined with despotic discipline, was terrifying to both the French and Spanish. Their cannon realistically firing at least three accurate broadsides to one haphazard, with terrifying, bloody consequences! This digression demonstrates that ‘health’ concepts, are so often obstructed by similar bureaucracies such as the FDA, for whatever self serving interests may predominate..and all aided and abetted by inertia! Stem cells, the new health and longevity solution, will similarly take far too long!
Vitamin C remains controversial, it seems the Mayo Clinic may have even lapsed into useless follow up testing, over a controversial, some 40 year period since the mid 1970 ! Linus Pauling, a two time Nobel prize winner, always maintained that for some cancers Vitamin C was a panacea. But the problem is that follow up testing from the Mayo never demonstrated this fact! Why? It may simply be the reality that the vitamin was not delivered intravenously, as Pauling did.
You would think that someone at the Mayo would have enough influence to insist that their so called follow ups were relevant…ironically it would seem that internally there were issues, but squelched for what ever motivation one can speculate! As Michael Greger M.D. FACLM on
