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From: john@ur-tut.UUCP (John Gurian)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: How much Vitamin C is necessary.
Message-ID: <226@ur-tut.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Nov-85 17:56:35 EST
Article-I.D.: ur-tut.226
Posted: Thu Nov 14 17:56:35 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Nov-85 01:48:28 EST
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> 	So now I ask the question, "Why do people advocate megadoses of 1 to
> 10 grams DAILY (several months-years supply) in the absence of any real 
> evidence that it does any good?"
> 	From my point of view, the disadvantages of Vitamin C megadoses
> completely outweigh any demonstrated benefit.  It is not that they are that
> harmful - they aren't, but they are not totally risk-free in all people.
> And that the people who are deriving the most benefit from Megadoses of
> Vitamin C are the vitamin manufacturers.

First, I'd like to state that in general, I am dead set against the fad diets
and vitamin therapies of health-food nuts.  Having said that, I think that it's
important to keep an unbiased view of things (which is difficult considering
how many "health-food" vitamins, etc. constitute a big rip-off of the public).
As it concerns Vitamin C, certainly no good comes from taking 10 grams a day
for your entire lifetime.  But, taking a couple of grams during a cold, while
not proven to help, has not been proven to hurt, either.  So why not?
At least, if you believe in it, you could get a placebo effect.

More importantly, a treatment that is known to be benign and useless may turn
out to be helpful in the future.  A good example of this is the preventative
effect of normally dangerous intakes of aspirin in diabetics.  About 20 years
ago or so, it was noticed that if a diabetic ate about 10 grams of aspirin/day,
s/he would have a greatly decreased risk of acquiring cardiovascular and renal
disease, two big killers of diabetics.  However, this amount of aspirin can
knock out the liver & its host in the process.  This was not proved conclusively
until the past few years, but I know someone who started the aspirin routine
20 years ago before it was really proved and has reaped the rewards.  It turns
out that taking just one aspirin/day can help prevent atherosclerosis (this
is a good idea for all you non-diabetic red meat eaters, too), but the amount
necessary to prevent renal disease is still controversial.

P.S. This does NOT mean that you should make a quick trip to your local
vitamin-crazy health guru.

- John Gurian (seismo!rochester!ur-tut!john)
- Taking a short break from my Pediatrics clerkship at the Univ. Rochester