Laraine C. Abbey R.N., C.N.S.1
Introduction
The British government sponsored Foods Standards Agency warns that vitamin and mineral supplement users should confine vitamin C intake to no more than 1,000 mg daily in order to assure a “safe upper level” and to avoid symptoms such as intestinal gas and diarrhea. The implication of this “upper limit for safety” warning is that we could damage or poison ourselves with anything above the stated “safe” dose. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Their recommendations are arrived at by eliminating any dosage at which anyone ever reported, including anecdotally, any problematic symptoms while they were taking a vitamin or mineral. This is like saying, if a person dies of a heart attack while wearing shoes, the heart attack was caused by the shoes!
I’m tired of being warned about the socalled dangers of vitamins, while pharmaceutical manufacturers and advertisers continue to encourage us to take medications to treat everything from bad moods, to acid indigestion, to sexual difficulties, despite long lists of serious possible side effects from these same drugs. Have you ever wondered why there is no government-sponsored agency issuing warnings regarding our heavy cultural reliance on pharmaceuticals with their serious and well documented side effects? Why aren’t government sponsored groups studying the reasons our population suffers from so many conditions requiring pharmaceuticals? What credibility is there in the “Say No to Drugs” campaign when everyone knows it’s really “say yes to drugs as long as they’re produced by pharmaceutical companies?”
We are asked to be fearful of how we might harm ourselves with vitamin C, when the reality is that vitamin C is extremely safe, as attested to by extensive research 1- 4 much of which was documented by Hoffman LaRoche researchers Adrienne Bendich and Lawrence Machlin and by voluminous documented LD50 safety data testing. Furthermore, the safety is attested to by the experience of a large group of Orthomolecular health practitioners utilizing massive doses with each of their thousands` of patients. Safety Information Data Sheets conclude that vitamin C is very safe even in enormous doses in animal experiments and that it is not mutagenic, or teratogenic. (Toxic Substance Division Department of the Environment, Roche Products Ltd)
The truth is vitamin C has the potential to vastly improve all kinds of chronic health problems and could actually save your life or the life of someone you love. Access to this miraculous substance must not be limited by false and misleading information. Special interests subtly manipulate people to create irrational fears about nutritional supplements. These same special interests have been lulling the public into becoming irrationally comfortable taking drug after drug to suppress the symptoms of all sorts of health problems.
I’d like humbly to add my voice in support of the many vitamin C pioneers who collectively have already proven both its safety and its efficacy in a wide range of conditions and circumstances. During my 16 years of private practice as an orthomolecular nurse-nutritionist, 3,000 mg of vitamin C daily was the starting recommendation for my thousands of patients and for my 3 year old son. In all those thousands of people, I’m unaware of any noteworthy negative reactions.
I think the medical underuse and promotion of fear of vitamin C ranks along with the underuse and fear tactics previously directed at folic acid. For years we were warned not to use high doses of folic acid...
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