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FUTURE OF VITAMIN C

admin — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 12:49:15 +0000

The controversy still goes on between orthodox dietitians who regard ascorbic acid merely as a vitamin which in small doses will prevent scurvy, and the orthomolecular scientists and nutritionists who believe that to maintain health and resist disease every tissue in the body needs to be saturated with ascorbic acid — sufficient for the blood to contain 1 mg per cent and to spill over into the urine.

Over the last 50 years, since Dr Albert Szent-Gyorgyi identified and isolated Vitamin C as ascorbic acid, a tremendous amount of research has been carried out all over the world and thousands of papers published on the subject. But there has been no co-ordination in the research. Thus no firm conclusions can be drawn from the many controversial results as to how much is needed by the human body to maintain health, to resist disease and control poisons and pollution. How individuals differ in their requirements for ascorbic acid is not decided, nor optimum dosage in the stress of surgery, infections, injuries or in degenerative and malignant disease.

A great deal of co-ordinated research is still needed to resolve these questions.

However, research into vitamins and their practical value in clinical nutrition and therapy is going ahead, but is not popular in orthodox scientific circles, and there is little money forthcoming for such research.

Even Linus Pauling has had to turn to popular subscription to fund his research institute on the place of Vitamin C in cancer control — a most vital issue in the epidemic proportions that malignancy has reached in the ‘civilised’ world. National Institutions in U.S.A have refused to subsidies his research laboratories and sought to denigrate his work in every way, especially through the media.

The ridicule and disbelief with which Linus Pauling’s book on the common cold was received by the Establishment and orthodox nutritionists was, however, belied by the avidity with which the lay public received it; and, what is more, carried out his advice for scotching their winter colds.

The amazing thing is that Vitamin C works, if enough is taken; and it is now generally accepted almost as a normal practice, apart from all medical prescribing, to take Vitamin C daily as a supplement in far larger doses than the Recommended Daily Allowance. Thousands of people are taking 250 mg to 500 mg to 1000 mg a day — with up to 4000 mg to combat a cold, as recommended by Linus Pauling.

This practice is frowned on by some dietitians, who believe we can obtain our 30 mg to 50 mg of C in a good mixed diet and that is all we need. Indeed, the Commonwealth Pharmaceutical Board has reduced the dose available to pensioners from 500 mg to 50 mg doses as a pharmaceutical benefit.

Elderly pensioners who cannot afford to buy much fresh fruit will certainly not get frank scurvy on 50 mg to 150 mg ascorbic acid a day, but they will still suffer from bleeding gums, loose teeth and pyorrhoea, easy bruising and frequent colds, bronchitis and residual coughs, — which could all be prevented by a larger intake of Vitamin C as age advances.

There are a growing number of doctors, bio-chemists, nutritionists, dentists and other scientists who have seen and experienced the tremendous health saving — even life saving — effects of large or ‘mega’ doses of Vitamin C taken by mouth and/or by injection, intravenous or intramuscular. They have the courage of their convictions, and are proving not only through biochemical research but by their spectacular clinical results the, value of this simple harmless substance which we humans cannot make for ourselves.

The new orthomolecular dosage of Vitamin C is largely based on the amount of ascorbic acid manufactured by all animals normally and under circumstances of stress — all except man, monkeys and guinea pigs, who must take it in their food.

It is the fond hope of Dr Irwin Stone — expressed in his book The Healing Factor, Vitamin C Against Disease that ‘as further research is conducted on hyposcrobaemia, and the realization of its importance is confirmed, a National Megascorbic Authority will eventually be organized for Vitamin C with general aims and purposes similar to the proposed National Cancer Authority for cancer.

‘The main purpose of this agency would be to determine the optimum levels of ascorbic acid intake based on the genetic concepts, under normal and stress conditions, and the human individual variations and responses’.

Once the value of Vitamin C in clinical and preventive medicine is recognized, who, except the ultra-conservative, is going to wait for results to be ‘proven’ by double-blind trials to be ‘statistically significant’ in the face of its ability to cut short the lingering disability of hepatitis and glandular fever, the pain of shingles, the severity of infectious diseases (measles, mumps, chickenpox and rubella), to prevent the fatality of encephalitis and virus pneumonia, detoxify poison of carbon monoxide, mercury and lead and of the bites of snakes and poisonous insects; to hasten healing and finally to prevent and control the growth of cancer cells — and all in a reasonable, non-toxic form with no side effects.

Looking into the future, I can see that Vitamin C in one of its injectable forms will be part of the medical equipment of all hospitals and casualty wards; every ambulance and every first aid post and every life-savers club will be equipped with ampoules of sodium ascorbate for injection and tablets to take by mouth; and every doctor’s bag will contain Vitamin C ready to inject as he now carries antibiotics — as a first line of defence in the many emergencies and infections that must be met in the course of a day’s practice.

Ascorbic acid in one of its easily assimilated and acceptable forms will form part of our daily diet — and be accepted as part of the preventive medicine programme which we all realize must be the next step in community health.

I believe that a well balanced diet coupled with ample ascorbic acid or ascorbate daily will overcome the menace of malignancy and, should it occur, that ascorbate will be used as the best non-toxic chemotherapy to help control the growth of tumours and to prevent metastacies (that is spread of the malignancy to other parts of the body).

Much research and many trials are still needed, but I believe that the realisation of the value and life saving properties of Vitamin C (in one of its forms) will be one of the most important medical breakthroughs of this century and will ensure better health to thousands and freedom from many of the diseases that now beset us.
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Pharmacy information ,side effects, interactions

VITAMIN C: BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CHEMOTHERAPY

admin — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 12:41:10 +0000

This Brisbane doctor has now, treated over 100 cancer cases referred to her in the last 11 months with Vitamin C injections followed by sodium ascorbate by mouth. Not all have carried out the full 10 injections. Some were terminals. Many had recurrent growth and all had run the gamut of orthodox treatment which had failed to control the disease.

However, every case, she says, benefitted greatly by the injections of sodium ascorbate given very slowly until the pain or distress ceased. There were few side effects. Every patient felt better and what is most important, had continuous cessation of pain.

In those cases which received the full course of intravenous ascorbate therapy, patients not only felt better but there was a reduction in size of the tumour.

A case of breast cancer is typical:

The cancer had metastasized in the spine so that the patient had continuous pain, could not walk and was deteriorating rapidly, even under radiation. After 10 injections of sodium ascorbate the patient lost her pain, was actually walking and was so greatly improved in general health that she was able to complete her radiation therapy without distress. She continued taking 10 to 12 grams of sodium ascorbate daily by mouth.

These cases do not constitute scientific proof of the efficacy of Vitamin C in controlling cancer, but the great pain-relief and sense of well being it gives the patient, without any toxic side-effects, makes it well worth using as an additional treatment in all cases of cancer.

Other doctors in various centres in Australia are trying out Vitamin C therapy in cancer. Their results are eagerly awaited by both doctors and cancer victims.

Those in the forefront of nutritional and vitamin research believe that as long as the body is maintained in positive Vitamin C balance, cancer cells cannot grow and spread; and that good daily doses in fresh fruits and vegetables as well as in synthetic Vitamin C is the best preventive measure against malignancy.

It is too early to assess the final outcome of the cancer cases treated by large doses of intravenous sodium ascorbate by injection and by mouth.

A careful, detailed follow up service is necessary to assess continued dosage and the possibility of further I.V. ascorbate to control the disease.

Vitamin C therapists are at present feeling their way, being guided by patient response, trial and error.

A great deal of truly scientific, unbiased research by nutritional biochemists, cancer experts and clinicians must be carried out to assess the role of ascorbic acid in the prevention and control of cancer.

Being non-toxic and therapeutically beneficial, there is no reason why the research should not be done directly with human patients, using it with, not instead of, present orthodox treatments as a first line of defence rather than as a last-stand ditch in cases already declared hopeless.
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FDA Approved Prescription Drugs.

MEDICAL PHILOSOPHY: CHANGES IN SIZE AND DESIGN

admin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:57:17 +0000

Shakespeare speaks of the seven ages of man, but from the medical point of view man has been considered in three periods: childhood, when we practice pediatrics on him; the grown-up stage, when we have no special term for our procedures; and old age, when we now say that he is a candidate for geriatrics. But as Sir Thomas Browne points out, and as we are told that the Chinese reckon, we are nine months old when we are born. In many respects these nine months are the most important portion of our life, for we are then being formed in a pattern which cannot change.

The best you can do for the child during the first nine months in the moist climate of the mother’s womb is to take good care of this parent. If all goes well with her, the chance of a satisfactory child developing is as good as is anything desirable in this world.

There is no great transformation when the baby is born. It just seems so because of the spectacular aspects of birth. He still needs to receive oxygen and give up carbon dioxide, but he uses his own lungs instead of his mother’s; he prepares his own food in his digestive tract from now on; and for the first time bacteria begin to grow in his intestine, which has previously been sterile. How difficult to distinguish our friends from our enemies! We view bacteria with fear, yet evidently these intestinal ones have rushed to our aid. Later in life we find that these beneficent inhabitants of our alimentary depths may be persecuted by the wonder drugs just as the wicked bacteria are. The balance of nature has to be maintained here as in the great outdoors.

The baby’s skin has been secreting a fatty waxy material and continues to do so after birth. The kidneys have already been secreting urine. Of course the muscles, including the heart, have been working. Whether the baby has been thinking I will not pass upon, but up-to-the-minute psychologists have suggested that he has been. In fact, the birth of the baby merely modifies, in a continuous sequence, his bodily functions. One of the chief wonders of our incredible body is the unostentatious way in which it adapts its activities as needs arise.

In our second age of man, a combination of Shakespeare’s infant, “mewling and puking,” and his schoolboy with “the shining morning face,” I would say that the emphasis is on growth rather than development, though, of course, there are changes other than mere increase in size. In my youth, for example, I had the pleasure of knowing a young woman who, presumably because of some change in her pituitary gland at the age of three, had ceased to grow in stature. Later she was a beautifully proportioned and unusually keen-minded adult, whose only lack of development was in her size. Otherwise she had progressed as all normal children do. It is our bones that largely determine our size. Not until a little over a half century ago, when Roentgen discovered the X-ray, did we realize how the bones grow from centers of cartilage which we often cannot see at first, and that some of these centers have not finished their work even when the person has reached puberty. Adolescence, the period between puberty or sexual maturity and the time when the individual has achieved the wisdom to vote, does not mark but accompanies the final change in stature. But this period signifies little, for Goethe said that man is a perpetual adolescent. The years from birth to the voting booth are the formative ones, but we are pretty well equipped before we start these, as the primitive functions necessary to keep us alive have been laid down, with the sympathetic nervous system in command.

Yet we learn to assume some partial control over even these primitive functions. Breathing we can stop for a while, or hurry up. Our bowels and bladder we learn to take charge of. On the other hand, the infant is born with the instinct to milk nourishment from a nipple, using for this purpose muscles in the cheek which will later waste away with disuse. Once lost, this valuable function cannot be acquired again.

The use of most of the voluntary muscles becomes automatic, particularly the ones with which we acquire skills. As age advances, the acquiring of new muscular skills becomes more and more difficult. However, a few people with inherent dexterity seem to belie this rule. We cannot generalize accurately about adolescence either of the body or of the mind. We see boys who are giants on their school football teams or precocious intellectuals like Thomas Babington Macaulay, who, when a few years old, could recite Scott’s Marmion and knew several languages. But a few exceptional cases prove little. The progress of the great majority of us can be charted in advance.

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GENERAL HEALTH

CHILDREN AND THERAPEUTIC NURSERY

admin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:56:36 +0000

Through his research, Dr. Jerome Kagan, a psychologist at Harvard University, found two types of children: One, by the middle of the second year, is timid and shy, fearful and wary. The other is outgoing, sociable, and not easily frightened. Both types can come from similar families.

By school age, half the fearful children Dr. Kagan had studied had lost their timidity; 10 percent of the fearless had become fearful. This, Dr. Kagan says, shows that although biology may produce a child who tends to be vulnerable (fearful), environment can push him or her into the other column. In short, if parents knew what to do, they could overcome biology.

Dr. Paul V. Trad, assistant professor of psychiatry and director of the Child and Adolescent Outpatient Department at Cornell University Medical Center in White Plains, New York, teaches the parents of his difficult infant patients how to deal with them. One, a 32-year-old mother who works outside the home, had given birth to a baby daughter who cried all the time. We’ll call them Diane and Maggie.

“Every time Maggie cried, I’d think she needed feeding,” Diane says. “I’d try to feed her, and she’d cry more. I’d try to play with her, and she would cry more. Then I’d get anxious, and it would get worse.”

Diane and Maggie had what psychiatrists call a poor mother-child fit. Just because you’re the parent doesn’t mean you and your baby are guaranteed to like each other from the start. Some parents have to learn how to play with and love their babies.

Dr. Trad took videotapes of Diane playing with and feeding Maggie and then played them back. “It became clear that I was overanxious,” Diane says. “I wasn’t watching her. I didn’t wait for her signal. I was doing too much. Watching the tape, you can see her turn away – that’s a signal telling you, ‘Don’t press it.’”

Dr. Trad took Maggie on his lap and played with her to demonstrate how to watch for a baby’s signals. “It’s an adventure, learning about your own child,” Diane says. “Now I am able to respond to her, and she has become a relatively easy baby.”

But the adjustment is harder for babies born into what Dr. Stanley Greenspan calls multi-risk families. Dr. Greenspan is clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University Medical School in Washington, D and C. In one study, he and Dr. Arnold Sameroff observed families without “difficult conditions” and others with problems that included one or more of the following:

• The father was absent.

• The mother had suffered from mental illness at least twice in her life.

• The mother was not spontaneous (i.e., didn’t smile at or touch the child).

• The mother was highly anxious.

• The head of the household was unemployed or unskilled.

• There already were four or more children in the family.

If a family had none of these “risks,” the average IQ for the child was 118. If more and more risks existed, the child’s IQ dropped steadily, reaching 85 with seven or eight family problems. Generally, the high-risk families produced children with emotional problems.

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GENERAL HEALTH

CHILD’S HEALTH/SKIN DISORDERS: ECZEMA PREVENTION

admin — Thu, 21 May 2009 07:25:02 +0000

When to see your doctor

• if you suspect that this is the first episode of eczema in your child;

• if the rash is weeping or bleeding;

• there is no significant improvement after a few days, despite the measures you usually take for your child’s eczema;

• if your child is having trouble sleeping due to excessive itching;

• if your child is generally unwell in addition to the rash;

• if you have any doubts that the rash is due to eczema.

Prevention

Avoid dressing your child in woollens and synthetics. Cotton garments are preferred for a child who has eczema. Avoid the use of soaps and bath preparations. Avoid overheating as this can make the itch worse. Avoid very hot baths or showers. If you suspect that your child’s eczema is due to a food allergy, but have been unable to find out which is the offending food, discuss the possibility and value of allergy testing with your doctor.

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YOUR CHILD’S HEALTH CARE: WATER SAFETY AND, SPORT AND SPORTING INJURIES

admin — Tue, 19 May 2009 06:11:06 +0000

WATER SAFETY

Drowning is almost always preventable. Always supervise your toddler or young child around water. There is no such thing as ‘drownproofing’ a young child. By all means, take your child swimming with you to get him used to water — most children can begin swimming lessons at preschool or early school age — but do not will not!

Make sure you can see your child all the time when near water. Do not rely on supervision by other children, or on the use of safety devices such as floaties — they will not prevent your child from drowning. Check all the gates and fences around your pool. Make sure that they are child resistant.

SPORT AND SPORTING INJURIES

The foundations of our fitness and well-being are established during childhood. Athletic activity provides children with the opportunity to develop self-confidence and interpersonal skills. Involvement in athletic events also exposes children to physical and emotional risks. Parents and sporting coaches have a vital role to play in preventing and minimising any sort of trauma or injury. Children who are involved with a sport often focus all their attention on participation and enjoyment. Fear seems to disappear as the game progresses. A child will often unwittingly go beyond the limits of safety. It is the responsibility of adults to anticipate potential hazards and enforce the rules.

Sporting injuries seen most often in children are bruises, cuts and grazes, as well as fractures of limbs. Head injuries can occur in children, but these are fortunately rare. Simple measures such as the wearing of protective clothing are often the most important in the prevention and treatment of sporting injuries in children.

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YOUR MARITAL HEALTH/FINDING OUT WHO’S THE MATTER WITH US: HOT SEXUALPROBLEMS – SHORTENING OF REFRACTORY PERIOD

admin — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:35:09 +0000

SHORTENING OF REFRACTORY PERIOD: I think I could go again and again. We don’t, but I can have sex and then go into the bathroom and masturbate and then come back and have sex.

I just stop because we stop. I can get ready in a matter of a few minutes, no, seconds. I could do it over and over if I had to, ïî, I mean, if I wanted to.

Can you tell which is the husband and which is the wife? The first is the wife. Both partners are experiencing shortened refractory periods in part because of hyperarousal and in part because of their “hot running, keep on going” style of living. There is less of a refractory period following a hurried, less intense sexual experience than following a mutually involving, prolonged, emotionally intense sexual interaction. One hundred eleven men and 44 women reported this type of problem as occurring often in their sexual relationships. Remember that the problems mentioned here are re-norted at a higher frequency when the question is changed to “Have vou ever experienced this problem?” instead of “Is this problem characteristic of your sexual relationship?” When the first question is asked, all of us have some or many of these problems sometimes, and discussing them even before they are experienced can be good preventive sexual therapy.

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THE DESEXUALIZATION OF THE AMERICAN MARRIAGE/A SEXUAL-SYSTEM EXAM: THE SEXUAL “CONNECTION”

admin — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:12:30 +0000

We just don’t connect. When I say up, she says down. If I’m horny, she’s not, and if she is, I’m not. She says it’s because of my “period.” She says I have worse periods than she does.

DISCONNECTION:

SENSE OF HUMOR, TRAGEDY, VALUES IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

HUSBAND

CONNECTION:

SENSE OF HUMOR, TRAGEDY, FAIRNESS, VALUES IS THE SAME FOR BOTH SPOUSES

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TENDING TOWARD TENDING TOWARD

CONNECTION DISCONNECTION

Do you laugh and cry with your spouse about the same things, reacting in the same fashion and intensity to life events (connection)? Or do you seem to be at different emotional levels, out of sync, with few examples of shared emotional response (disconnection)?

The dinner couple scored too far toward disconnection. Remember that some disconnection, a tolerance for different emotional levels at different times, is necessary in marriage, but this couple is out of balance, too out of sync. The wife felt a lonely sense of tragedy at her marital situation, surrender regarding the children, and compliance in sexual interactions. Her emotional reaction was unshared by her husband, who instead felt boredom, disregard, or lack of involvement with the children. He was invigorated by activities that had little to do directly with the marriage. While the wife cried alone at the dinner table and felt sad, the husband drove alone to the softball game and felt frustrated.

Disconnection was apparent in their sexual life. “I’d love it if she would do oral love more. You know. Suck on me down here. She does it, but it’s not like she wants to or anything. It’s kind of a gift or a trade-off. A little sucking for a little hugging.” The husband hoped for but did not find in his wife a connection, a shared sexual arousal in an important part of his sexual life.

The wife felt quite differently. She performed fellatio because she perceived them as a couple of “high order,” and things always seem to get done. The wife reported, “I don’t mind doing it, you know. Going down on him, I guess it is. But he makes it more of a prostitute thing. I like to be stroked and touched. It’s like he wants me to do it ‘to him’; we don’t do it together or anything. He just lies there, pushes my head down, and humps at me. I’m afraid I’ll gag or throw up. Just because he likes me to do it to him, he assumes I should like it when he does it to me. Well, I don’t. I can’t stand it.”

Our highly ordered couple is disconnected, going through the sexual motions, with both partners disappointed. Their dinner-table situation reflected the same pattern. The entire sexual system is out of balance, leaning first to too much order, then to too much disconnection.

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PSORIASIS – TREATMENT

admin — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:52:58 +0000

It is hereditary and tends to run in families. It may be brought on, or made worse, by emotional factors, by injury or by infection. It may be mild or severe, be localised to one or two areas or generalised and affect the whole body. It may be stable and chronic or it may be unstable, rapidly flaring and active.

The treatment of psoriasis is well established although new treatments have been introduced for severe and resistant rashes.

Sufferers need to understand the aims and limitations of treatment, and the nature of their disease. The rash, being chronic and incurable, tends to come and go. It may be present unchanged for many years and the person comes to terms with it. Then it may suddenly clear, only to reappear months later.

Treatment may completely clear the rash but it will inevitably return as there is no permanent cure. But this shouldn’t discourage those who suffer from it, as control is possible.

It is uncommon on the face. Only one person in four with this condition will have it affect more than 5 per cent of the skin surface.

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NIGHT CRAMPS

admin — Fri, 15 May 2009 08:25:48 +0000

Many people suffer in bed at night from painful cramps, usually involving the calf muscles or the small muscles in the sole of the foot.

These cramps are not usually related to any underlying problem but are thought to be due to mechanical factors.

With normal muscle tone, each group of muscles has an antagonistic group which pulls the limb in the opposite direction. When the muscles are completely at rest, as can occur in bed, normal contraction of some muscles may occur without the antagonists being activated and so the extreme contraction leads to painful cramping.

When you lie flat on your back in bed, the weight of the bed clothes may push the foot down. The same thing can happen when you lie face down and the foot is forced down. Should contraction occur in the calf muscles, the foot is already in extreme flexion.

One way of preventing this cramping action is to keep the foot in a neutral position, by having a pillow at the bottom of the bed, so the foot is neither down nor up. One way of stopping cramp is to force the foot into the opposite direction so the contracting muscle is forced to lengthen.

Quinine taken at night can certainly reduce the frequency of cramps. How it works is unknown, but it is effective.

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