I was listening to Business Talk Radio and some doctor came on trying to sell his product:
“Did you know humans, primates, and guinea pigs are the only animals that do not make their own vitamin C.”
wha?
“Your dog makes up to 4000mg of vitamin C a day! Thats why dogs never get cancer, heart attacks, or strokes”
Hmm…
“Doctors recommend 60mg a day, but why not take as much as a dog or even more!!!”
Is there ANY basis to this? Is Vitamin C the miracle nutrient.
Dogs get cancer, heart attacks and strokes.
Vitamin C has been promoted for an anti-cancer treatment before; even Linus Pauling got a little wacky about it but his research was discredited. It doesn’t help that he died of cancer.
Because it’ll end up in the toilet. Vitamin C is water soluble, and if you take more than your body needs it will just be excreted in the urine. 60mg a day is plenty. “Megadoses” of several grams of vitamin C are unlikely to do you any harm, although there is anecdotal evidence to suggest they might upset your stomach if you’re unlucky.
It won’t stop you getting cancer though - in fact (no cite) I’m sure I read somewhere that one study found that taking high doses of vitamin C actually *increased *the amount of harmful free radicals in your body.
haha what a quack , do you remember his name?
No.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Science
This is actually true! (with more or less accuracy about which non-humans can’t synthesize it)
This is not true. Dogs do get all of them.
Taking vitamin C will prevent scurvy. But unless you’re on a very very very limited diet, you’ll get plenty in your food.
There’s zero evidence that taking more vitamin C will do anything else health-wise.
I’d like to introduce that evil fuckwit to my still-broken heart and then beat him to death with a gross of his evil fuckwit product.
Knead
Yes, I still miss my little Puzzle
My only beef with this statement is that humans are primates.
I miss my dog that died of cancer as well.
60 mg is presently the “daily value,” but there has been discussion about raising it. The U. of Cal., at Berkeley *Wellness Letter * recently recommended raising it to 200 mg, but more recently has backtracked somewhat from that figure. Personally, I have found by following Pauling’s suggestions, I have minimized the effects from a cold tremendously. If you OD on vitamin C, you will get diarrhea, but that disappears as soon as you lower your levels. Vitamin C is an antioxidant, which is defined as decreasing free radicals. That newsletter is on line. I’ll see if I can find some cites soon.
The above quotes are from the April 5, 2011 issue of the Wellness Letter. This is from the subscriber’s corner and I am unable to copy the website, but you can go to WellnessLetter.com and search for other info there. I remember that not too long ago, it recommended an increase to 200mg daily, but they have backed away from that.
Me too! Normally a cold takes me a week to get over, whereas with vitamin C it’s only 7 days!
I didn’t say the duration of the cold is shortened.
Another interesting quirk of our evolution is that it’s only some primates, including humans, and marsupials, that have trichromatic vision (have colour vision with three different “channels”).
Other mammals have just two channels and most birds, fish and reptiles studied have four.
The theory is, I think, that mammals share a common ancestor which was nocturnal, and which lost some of its colour vision. Primates and marsupials later got one colour back through one of two mutations.
(the top dog for colour vision by the way is the mantis shrimp…16 different channels!)