The merits of Ascorbic Acid (Medline Plus)

[HysteryDiagnosis]

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/1001.html

Lowering high blood pressure. Taking vitamin C along with conventional high blood pressure medications appears to decrease systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure reading) by a small amount, but does not seem to decrease diastolic pressure (the bottom number). Taking vitamin C supplements alone, though, doesn’t seem to affect blood pressure.
Preventing sunburn. Taking vitamin C along with vitamin E seems to prevent sunburn. But taking vitamin C alone doesn’t prevent sunburn.

Reducing the risk of gallbladder disease. There is some evidence that taking vitamin C might help to prevent gallbladder disease in women. But vitamin C doesn’t seem to have this effect in men.

Slowing the worsening of osteoarthritis. Obtaining vitamin C from dietary sources seems to prevent cartilage loss and worsening of symptoms in people with osteoarthritis.

Treating an eye disease called AMD (age-related macular degeneration) when used with other medicines. Taking vitamin C in combination with zinc, vitamin E, and beta-carotene daily seems to help prevent vision loss or slow worsening of AMD in patients with advanced AMD. There isn't enough evidence to know if this combination helps people with less advanced macular disease or prevents AMD. Using vitamin C with other antioxidants, but without zinc, doesn't seem to have any effect on AMD.

Decreasing protein in the urine of people with type 2 diabetes (albuminuria). This might help to lower the risk of developing serious kidney disease.

[cleanhippie]

1. Great. Thanks.

Was there a point or was this just an informational post?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Let's consider it a puzzle, wrapped in an enigma. There is nothing for sale either. n't

[cleanhippie]

4. Uhm, yeah, okay...

[MineralMan]

3. I strongly urge people to read the information at the link

completely and carefully. It represents current scientific thinking about Vitamin C. You have to real the whole article, though, including the section on effectiveness for various things. The only condition for which Vitamin C is recognize as completely effective is for treating Vitamin C deficiencies, which can cause scurvy. For everything else, the effectiveness is rated as "likely effective" or "possibly effective" at the very best. Many uses for which people take Vitamin C are rated less effective than that. It's important to read the entire document.

Where it says "might," you should do further research.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

5. You can put Vitamin C powder in your hand lotion.

Put it on your skin.
It's an anti-inflammatory.

[Trillo]

6. half life of "C" and timed release forms don't seem mentioned at all.

Since the half life is 30 minutes or thereabouts, taking any dose of vitamin C, unless it is timed released, would seem to result in a single blood-level spike. Talking to pharmacists about whether their store's vitamin C is time released usually results in "I don't know", or "I've never heard of that".

I find it most informative that NIH page doesn't mention C's short half life, or discuss timed release forms of it at all. It strikes me that a number of C studies are probably flawed due to that, and since the people that do these studies are generally fairly bright, one wonders why that might be.

When running a spreadsheet that graphs half-life curves, it begins to explain why some folks want to take so much of it at once (the graphed valleys take a longer time to bottom, resulting in higher blood levels for longer). However, an alternate method is to raise the valley's bottoms by taking it more frequently throughout the day. With this method, very little daily C is required to keep the valley higher, but it is impractical to take, say, 5 milligrams every 1/2 hour.

So far the best cold rememedy I've found is to eat 4 oranges per day, but carefully sectioned to not break the natural pulp, and divided up and taken in intervals not longer than 2 hours apart from each other, and swallowed with a minimum of chewing (to hopefully extend the time it takes for the body to access the juice within the pulp).

I would suspect any vitamin C study that didn't have a strategy disclosed to attenuate C's short half life.

I'm glad to see health bureaus learning and disclosing more about vitamins, but believe the lack of information regarding half life and taking timed release forms of C is a major flaw.