Vitamin C

I have an arterial by-pass operation in a couple of days and in preparation I have been popping lots of time-release Vitamin C pills. It is necessary for the building of collagen the connective tissue between our cells and for ligaments and tendons. I figure it will be good for the body to have lots of it available for mending the surgical damage I will undergo.

The word ‘vitamin’ means something that the body does not produce itself but needs for its chemistry to work - so we have eat foods with the vitamins we need in them. Sometime in the distant past when we were evolving as a species, we must have lived in an environment where we ate foods that contained lots of Vitamin C so, we didn’t need to produce it in our body like cats and dogs and many other animals do.

Linus Pauling in his book on Vitamin C tested rats and he discovered that they produced so much of the vitamin that, if we could still make Vitamin C like they do, taking into the consideration the difference in our body weights, we would produce up to 18 grams [18,000 milligrams] a day. An orange contains around 10 mg so mostly we don’t get anywhere near that amount.

Pauling himself took 18 grams of Vitamin C for years but if you start supplementing with large amounts like that most of it will be expelled in your urine until the body develops the enzymes to handle the larger amounts. Taking time-release is the best way to make sure your body can handle what you take. There are many other benefits to getting enough Vitamin C. Pauling lived to a healthy 97 and was surprised and disappointed when he got cancer, which took his life. Rie