Posted on 09/30/2021 6:20:46 AM PDT by Red Badger
It was wartime and food was scarce. Leaders of England’s effort to wage war and help the public survive during World War II needed to know: Were the rations in lifeboats adequate for survival at sea? And, among several experiments important for public as well as military heath, how much vitamin C did a person need to avoid the deadly disease scurvy?
In one experiment at the Sorby Research Institute in Sheffield, called the “shipwreck” experiment, volunteers were fed only what the navy carried in lifeboats. The grueling experiment resulted in more water and less food being carried in lifeboats.
One of the more robust experiments run on human subjects during this time in England, which has had long-lasting public health consequences, was a vitamin C depletion study started in 1944, also at Sorby. This medical experiment involved 20 subjects, most of whom were conscientious objectors living in the building where many experiments, including the shipwreck experiment, were conducted. They were overseen by a future Nobel Prize winner, and detailed data was kept on each participant in the study.
“The vitamin C experiment is a shocking study,” said Philippe Hujoel, lead author of a new analysis of the Sorby vitamin C experiment, a practicing dentist and professor of oral health sciences in the UW School of Dentistry. “They depleted people’s vitamin C levels long-term and created life-threatening emergencies. It would never fly now.”
Even though two trial participants developed life-threatening heart problems because of the vitamin C depletion, Hujoel added, none of the subjects were permanently harmed, and in later interviews several participants said they would volunteer again given the importance of the research.
Because of the war and food shortages, there was not enough vitamin C available, and they wanted to be conservative with the supplies, explained Hujoel, who is also an adjunct professor of epidemiology. The goal of the Sorby investigators was not to determine the required vitamin C intake for optimal health; it was to find out the minimum vitamin C requirements for preventing scurvy.
Vitamin C is an important element in your body’s ability to heal wounds because the creation of scar tissue depends on the collagen protein, and the production of collagen depends on vitamin C. In addition to knitting skin back together, collagen also maintains the integrity of blood vessel walls, thus protecting against stroke and heart disease.
In the Sorby trial, researchers assigned participants to zero, 10, or 70 milligrams a day for an average of nine months. The depleted subjects were then repleted and saturated with vitamin C. Experimental wounds were made during this depletion and repletion. The investigators used the scar strength of experimental wounds as a measure of adequate vitamin C levels since poor wound healing, in addition to such conditions as bleeding gums, are an indication of scurvy.
In the end, the Sorby researchers said 10 milligrams a day was enough to ward off signs of scurvy. Partly based on these findings, the WHO recommends 45 milligrams a day. Hujoel said that the findings of the re-analyses of the Sorby data suggest that the WHO’s recommendation is too low to prevent weak scar strength.
In a bit of scientific detective work, Hujoel said he tracked down and reviewed the study’s data, and with the aid of Margaux Hujoel, a scientist with Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, put the data through modern statistical techniques designed to handle small sample sizes, techniques not available to the original scientists. The results of their work were published on August 16, 2021, in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The Hujoels discovered that the data from this unique study — which has been a cornerstone used by WHO and other agencies for establishing healthy levels of vitamin C in humans — needed more than an “eyeball method” of data assessment.
“It is concluded that the failure to reevaluate the data of a landmark trial with novel statistical methods as they became available may have led to a misleading narrative on the vitamin C needs for the prevention and treatment of collagen-related pathologies,” the researchers wrote.
“Robust parametric analyses of the (Sorby) trial data reveal that an average daily vitamin C intake of 95 mg is required to prevent weak scar strength for 97.5% of the population. Such a vitamin C intake is more than double the daily 45 mg vitamin C intake recommended by the WHO but is consistent with the writing panels for the National Academy of Medicine and (other) countries,” they add.
The Hujoels’ study also found that recovery from a vitamin C deficiency takes a long time and requires higher levels of vitamin C. Even an average daily dose of 90 milligrams a day of vitamin C for six months failed to restore normal scar strength for the depleted study participants.
Reference: “Vitamin C and scar strength: analysis of a historical trial and implications for collagen-related pathologies” by Philippe P Hujoel and Margaux L A Hujoel, 16 August 2021, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. DOI: 10.1093/ajcn/nqab262
Ping!...................
I flood my body with NATURAL vitamin C. Maybe that’s what’s keeping me alive through my diagnosis of liver cancer. I make lemonade with either limes or tangerines and drink two quarts a day. Along with cigars and a few beers. At least I feel good.
From the time I was kid, I was told that the RDA for all vitamins & minerals is the minimum required. Therefore, I grew up taking supplements, and still do.
No, but an unproven vaccine that is forced upon millions of people is perfectly ok, now.
Correct...................
Neat trick. Do you change water into wine as well?.................
Brought to you by the Citrus Group….
Has sepsis met its match?
New treatment may save millions around the worldhttps://www.evms.edu/about_evms/administrative_offices/marketing_communications/publications/issue_9_4/has-sepsis-met-its-match.php
As a critical-care physician and head of the general intensive care unit (GICU) at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, Dr. Marik used to be locked in a life-and-death struggle with sepsis. Despite his efforts, one to two people under his care died each week from the disease. That all changed unexpectedly Jan. 5, 2016.
The breakthrough came as Dr. Marik struggled to save a woman dying from overwhelming sepsis. He had recently read about vitamin C as a potential treatment for sepsis, and he recalled that steroids, a common treatment for sepsis, might work well in concert with the vitamin C.
Aware that both were safe and would not harm the patient, he gave her the vitamin C and steroid combination intravenously.
Within hours, his patient was recovering. Two days later she was well enough to leave the ICU.
Dr. Marik and is colleagues were astonished. “We said, ‘What just happened?’”
In the following days they used the combination therapy on two more patients seemingly destined to die of sepsis. Twice more the patients recovered. Dr. Marik and his team quickly adopted the combination therapy as standard practice.
Despite the continued successes, Dr. Marik found that many colleagues were skeptical. For one thing, pharmaceutical companies have conducted more than 100 clinical trials and spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 25 years in an unsuccessful search for a sepsis treatment.
And then there is vitamin C. It has been purported as a cure or treatment for a wide range of conditions — with little scientific evidence of its effectiveness.
To strengthen his case and to allay his own apprehensions that this was too good to be true, Dr. Marik worked with colleagues to study the interaction in a lab setting. Two separate biological tests proved that vitamin C and steroids were effective against sepsis — but only when used together.
A year after Dr. Marik’s chance discovery, sepsis has become a controllable infection in his ICU. Other hospitals and ICUs are beginning to adopt the combination treatment.
Dr. Marik’s findings are published in CHEST, the journal of the American College of Chest Physicians.
“We haven’t seen a patient die of sepsis since we began using the combination therapy a year ago,” Dr. Marik said one year to the day after treating the first patient. “We have completely changed the natural history of sepsis.”
There's your answer......................
Black coffee, green tea, berries, and green veggies supposedly help liver function as well.
At some point (I think in the 1980’s) the FDA changed the standard from “Minimum Daily Requirement” to “Recommended Daily Allowance” and raised the daily dosage levels of most vitamins as part of that shift.
The problem with cancer is that too many doctors make it go away by killing you.
Mark
Dr. MARIK of EVMS, the Ivermectin guy?
I looked at my blood tests. They changed needs on a couple of items....making them stricter. I believe they changed the BP levels not too long ago.
Intravenous vitamin C will cure sepsis (Dr Paul Marik) and some cancers.
Paul Marik: COVID Quack or Pandemic Hero?
https://www.kerrydougherty.com/allposts/2021/5/29/paul-marik-covid-quack-or-pandemic-hero
HERO!
I noticed that I have been talking like a pirate lately, matey.
International Talk Like A Pirate Day - September 19th..............
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