Vitamin C: The Real Story

Quantity, frequency, and duration are the keys to effective orthomolecular use of vitamin C in infections. Many people hold a philosophical viewpoint that “I shouldn’t have to take so much of a vitamin.”

You need the amount of vitamin C that your body indicates it needs—not the amount you think you should take, but the amount that does the job.

Importantly, sugar prevents the absorption of vitamin C into cells.

Many people think the orthomolecular claim is that you should take a gram or two as a treatment. This is a myth. The actual recommendations for vitamin C in treatment of illness are larger. Typically, the dose is increased tenfold or more. The Vitamin C Foundation recommends taking at least 8 grams (8,000 mg) of vitamin C every twenty minutes for 3–4 hours until bowel tolerance, and then smaller dosages every 4–6 hours to prevent recurrenc

This difference is even greater for people who are ill. The official position is that levels of vitamin C higher than the 90 mg are not beneficial in illness. However, physicians such as Robert F. Cathcart III, a pioneering vitamin C researcher, have been using doses of up to 200 grams (200,000 mg) per day to treat disease, an intake over 2,000 times the RDA.

By comparison, the corresponding discrepancy for vitamin C is huge. The RDA for vitamin C in the United States is 90 mg per day for an adult male, whereas scientists such as Dr. Pauling have recommended values of 2–20 grams (2,000–20,000 mg) per day.