Curing the Incurable - Vitamin C - Book Notes

Book Summary: Curing the Incurable by Thomas Levy MD JD

I'm typing this quickly so forgive typos, I see by a quick reread of the above message that my brain is only partly functional this morning. Anything that follows is a paraphrased-edited-condensed-quote unless it has my initials before it like pjg: or after it like -pjg in which case it's my own comment.

 * The only absolute requirements are that vitamin C be given
1. In the right form
2. With the proper technique
3. In frequent enough doses
4. In high enough doses
5. Along with certain additional agents, and
6. For a long enough period of time.

 * pjg: Levy gives the example of his own experience in the year 2000 on a completely different topic:

That year, Meryl Streep starred in a made for TV movie based on a true story about a mother whose young son had developed a progressively worsening "incurable" epileptic seizure condition. He was on a cocktail of drugs which were having miserable side effects one life-threatening. He was getting worse daily... he was dying. The doctors could do nothing.

The mother went to the library and read medical journals and discovered that for nearly 70 years there had been known a treatment for this: a ketogenic diet. It was in the literature going way the hell back, but it was even in the modern literature as well. It basically cured the condition completely in a large % of patients, and reduced its severity by 90% in an even larger %. So, a big huge deal. The mother found that the john hopkins hospital did that diet and wanted to transfer her son there to try it.

The child's neurologist, the specialist in charge of the kid, ridiculed her, insisted any such reports were merely anecdotal, and even threatened legal action to keep her from moving her kid to the other hospital. I'm sure you know the ending, she eventually did, the diet was a miracle for him, happy ending.

The next day after that aired, Levy was in a Colorado hospital doctor's lounge and some docs (mostly neurologists) were talking about the movie. One young doc said he wanted to look into that, and all the others basically did this huge negative review which not only nearly quoted stuff the doc in the TV show had said (predictable I guess), and insisted any such reports were "merely anecdotal," and this was despite that it was apparent most of these people had never even HEARD of it before the movie so it's not like they were experts obviously.

They talked about the internet and concluded it was like the national enquirer and the public was only deluded by thinking they could read stuff on it that was valid. One older doc said he'd need "a full bibliography" of medical references before he'd even consider the ketogenic diet. (Interesting, since you'd think doctors would WANT to hunt-down-and-find solutions for their patients, vs. having them forced down their throat unwillingly.)

Levy went home and went to the internet, to MEDLINE (National Library of Medicine database with 11 million citations and abstracts from over 4,000 biomedical journals around the world from 1966 to present). He searched "ketogenic diet" and found 180 journal references including one in the journal "Pediatrics" from only three months prior, and nearly all of these in various neurology and epilepsy journals.

It took three minutes.

The research dates back at that date over 70 years (it'd be more now). It was published publicly in the journals specific to that industry and a variety of them. But it was still unknown and disputed and scoffed at. And the mother was considered ridiculous for having found this info on her own, like if the info didn't come from a doctor, but from a layman, it must be superstitious quackery or something.

*

Ascorbic acid has a somewhat similar situation. It's been known and documented for a long time but it had heavy funded-resistance to its use as not just competition but the *only* solution to killer illnesses early on, and at this point is not even mentioned, which will be noted later.

Levy points out that the many research papers on keto diet for seizures were current, as well as past, but that if you can't even trust a doctor to know what is being published in his own time, it isn't surprising that most don't know the details of what was published in 1980, 1960, 1940 in medical journals -- such things are seldom if ever going to get attention.

Especially since our science has a paradigm that anything older than a few years is no longer applicable, as it's assumed that people from any previous era are as stupid as people who read the internet or something like that.

The book is written a little differently than most. It only has an intro and four chapters. The first chapter is some history and a sort of theory, the second is a list of conditions it's been used for and how, the third is a list of ways it's been used as an antidote, and the fourth talks about high dosing, issues or side effects and so on. Going to go through each section separately.

•  AA being ascorbic acid in all that follows.
• Cecil Textbook of Medicine (CTM from now on) is considered standard reference. 21st edition, copyright 2000 in refs that follow.
• Klenner is often referred to, a clinical doc who published a couple dozen papers from 40's and later which is when AA first became affordably available, as he was the first and primary one to use large dosing. Much of the research since, even if successful, was not using anywhere near the doses. But everything listed here, Levy has a variety of evidence and examples he lists for it. Sometimes from other countries. Klenner is often a featured example (because of his dosages and related results) but nearly everything noted has multiple examples, papers, etc. -- except just a few things where something extremely related (same family of virus) was done and a given thing was done in test tube but no trials on paper yet to use as evidence.
• Levy notes that he has personal case studies from doctors in the hundreds that he couldn't use because they were afraid to have their names used publicly.
• Note that when other drugs are not the funded 'competition' to AA, vaccinations often are. 

VIRAL:

POLIO - Curable. Preventable. CTM says "no specific treatment is available."
Even survivors are often horribly crippled or paralyzed for life. Aside from vaccination , if a person gets polio it's felt it just has to run its course and it is what it is. Outbreaks still occur. Sometimes caused by the vaccination.

ACUTE VIRAL HEPATITIS - Curable. Preventable.
Over 1 million a year in USA. If not better in 6 months is considered 'chronic' hepatitis.

[Unrelated to this book I recently read that up to 2% of population may have chronic hep and not even know it as the symptoms are so under-the-radar. - pjg]

CHRONIC HEPATITIS - Although it's known it can have symptoms reduced by C nobody has specific done C (high enough or long enough) to test whether it's curative for this version.

MEASLES - Curable. Preventable. CTM says "no specific antiviral therapy" and recommends bed rest.
This is one of the common USA vaccinations.

MUMPS - Curable. Preventable. CTM says there is "currently no established role for antiviral drugs, corticosteroids, or passive immunotherapy."
This is one of the common USA vaccinations. If you get it, get some bed rest.

VIRAL ENCEPHALITIS, VIRAL MENINGITIS - Curable. Preventable.
VE can be caused by up to 50 different virii. Rabies and AIDS caused are fatal. Most others are 10-50% fatality at least. Not only tons of cures documented but even on patients already comatose and about to die.

CHICKEN POX, SHINGLES, HERPES, MONONUCLEOSIS - Curable. Preventable.
All these virii are related to each other. Note: he includes sexually transmitted herpes in this which I think is considered to have no cure. Klenner's daughter got chickenpox. 24g orally by day did nothing. 1g intravenously stopped itching and rash, so that route was used for cure. He hadn't wanted to stick a needle in his little girl is why, but it was one of many examples where tons of oral-intake AA did nothing but IV AA was curative.

VIRAL PNEUMONIA - Curable. Preventable.

INFLUENZA - Curable. Preventable.

ANIMAL DISTEMPER - Curable.
No animal studies keeping them dosed on C have been done to see if it's preventable.

AIDS - Reversible. Preventable.
You can wipe out symptoms and prevent secondary infections.
Nobody's tried high enough/long enough dosing to know if it's curable yet.
AA kills it in test tube and kills cells infected with it though.
1997 study showed dead AIDS patients had major depletion of C in affected parts of brain.

COLDS - Reversible. Preventable.
Many virii fall into this category. Nobody's done high/long AA dosage to test for cure.

SMALLPOX, EBOLA -
No published trials on these, let alone in super high/extended doses to know.
The virii are related, "hemorrhagic" fevers are many, ebola is merely the african strain. Most are deadly.
AA kills it as efficiently in the test tube as it does everything else though.

* pjg - This is a good place to take a break and talk about one of the three things in the book I thought were the most important observations of all. Well this is two, kind of, tied together.


First, part 1: it turns out that any illness, stressor, but especially a viral or bacterial kind of 'attack' on the body is accompanied by a drop in AA in the body's tissues. Sometimes a very HIGH drop. The drop actually begins in the tissues affected by the illness, prior to the blood level reflecting this. Getting sufficient AA back to the tissues fast enough and in high enough quantity to deal with the onslaught attack of certain fast-killer illnesses such as hemorrhagic fevers is not easy. Even with intravenous use, having it in the blood is not having it in the tissues, and the virulence of these illnesses are so extreme that it's hard to compete with. I think it was Cathcart (who did a lot of bowel-tolerance tests on different kinds of illnesses and how it affected the amount of AA a person could ingest before flushing it) who said bowel-tolerance AA with a mega-virus condition like the hem fevers is reported to be like 300g/day -- that's crazy -- but that's basically what is fighting the sheer quantity of toxins that are multiplying in the body.


First, part 2: Most killer illnesses are probably not killing us from the illness. They're likely killing us through extremely acute sudden scurvy. The symptoms are even the same, the ones that have time to develop before the person's dead anyway. And AA is hugely related to veins/blood -- capillary fragility, bleeding both chronic internal and massive in hemorrhage -- anything where that's part of the symptom leading to death is a clue that AA is probably being mega-depleted in one or more parts of the body.

* NON-VIRAL

DIPTHERIA - Curable. Preventable.

TETANUS - Curable. Preventable.

TUBERCULOSIS - Reversible. Preventable.
No studies done on humans at high/long dose to test if it's curable.

STREP - Curable. Preventable.
Lots of versions of these. Rheumatic Fever's a form of strep.

LEPROSY - Reversible. Preventable.
No studies done on humans at high/long dose to test if it's curable.

TYPHOID FEVER - Reversible. Preventable.
No studies done on humans at high/long dose to test if it's curable.

MALARIA - Reversible.
No studies done on humans at high/long dose to test if it's preventable or curable.
This is a protozoa type infection.

BRUCELLOSIS - Reversible.
No studies done on humans at high/long dose to test if it's preventable or curable.

TRICHINOSIS - Reversible.
No studies done on humans at high/long dose to test if it's preventable or curable.
This is a parasitical infection.

AMEBIC DYSENTERY - Reversible. Preventable.
No studies done on humans at high/long dose to test if it's curable.
This is a protozoa type infection.

BACILLARY DYSENTERY - Curable. Preventable.

PSEUDOMONAS INFECTIONS - Curable. Preventable.
These can happen with things like severe burns. Not only cures but often leaves no scarring.
This is used topically as well as internally in this case.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN SPOTTED FEVER - Curable. Not sure about preventable.
This is a tick-borne disease. Such a large dose of microbes can be injected with the bite it's not sure if it's preventable.
They also used PABA in some treatments for this.

STAPH INFECTIONS - Curable. Preventable.

TRYPOSOMAL INFECTIONS - Reversible. Preventable.
No studies done on humans at high/long dose to test if it's curable.
This is a protozoa type infection.

 pjg- I'm sure I don't have to point out that nearly everything in this post so far is considered incurable, irreversible, and non-preventable, by modern medicine. People survive or they don't.

 * pjg - OK this is a place to talk about the second thing I find most interesting. Two points to start:

1. Being classified a vitamin is possibly the worst thing ever to happen to the substance. It was called a vitamin because we obviously need it and we obviously can't make it. However, much like vitamin K for example, it is possibly better considered akin to a hormone, the effects in the body are so diverse and profound. Our cultural paradigm about vitamins is that a) if you 'eat right' you shouldn't need them and b) when you need them it's only a little extra. We do not have these kind of cultural assumptions on hormones. We easily look at hormones and say "Wow, we don't produce jack for this hormone after age 50 compared to age 20, and look at all the bad effects it has." It could almost be thought of as the stress-defense hormone, it has SO many different affects in the body related to this. Although many other hormones CAN be used for that, AA in various forms is quite specific to that role. Except...


2. Being classified a massively powerful antioxidant is probably the second worst thing ever to happen to the substance. Because although it is probably this function that allows it to directly combat, like molecular warriors, all the viral, bacterial, protozoan/parasitical issues noted above, there are many things AA is known to do, demonstrated in research, that mere antioxidants can NOT do, and which might be part of why it succeeds with all the above (IF in sufficient dosage, delivery, timing, and duration). Any one of these -- let alone all of these combined -- has huge implications for the human body.

{pjg - Personally I suspect that the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D3, E and K) as well as C, are so closely tied to hormones that our entire categorization of them and way of thinking about them is probably inappropriate.}

 A vitamin is a super limiting definition. Lack of C leads to nearly every degenerative disease that affects man, and deficiency of C in relevant body tissues, whether subtly chronically or suddenly acutely appears to be greatly responsible for most of what man ends up suffering from in the first place. In other words we would not be susceptible to most things -- for more than a few minutes while the body killed it off -- like virii, bacteria, invasive things of various types.

* Here are lab-tested research-published examples of some of its other effects that other antioxidants do NOT have. 

Note that some of these are animal studies not human at this point.

1. Enhancement of Interferon production. Interferons are antiviral glycoproteins that get produced naturally by cells that get virally infected.
2. Enhancement of phagocytic function. A phagocyte is the kind of white blood cell that ingests micro-organisms and infection-related cellular debris.
3. Increases the 'selective' concentration of AA in white blood cells. "Some" white cells concentrate AA up to 80x higher than the rest of the plasma and they travel to sites of infection.
4. Enhancement of cell-mediated immune response. This relates to T-lymphocytes and how active they are in attacking infectious agents.
5. Enhancement of cytokine production by white blood cells. Cytokines are non-antibody proteins that serve as "intercellular mediators" in the generation of immune response. 
6. Inhibition of multiple forms of T-lymphocyte death. These are part of the immune system and they die off as they fight problems.
7. Enhancement of Nitric Oxide production by phagocytes. N.O. is produced in white blood cells and is used (among other things) to kill invading microorganisms.
8. Enhancement of T-lymphocyte proliferation.
9. Enhancement of B-lymphocyte proliferation.
10. Inhibition of neuraminidase. Mucus is one of our natural lines of defense. Some invading virii/bacteria utilize the enzyme NM to keep from being trapped in mucus.
11. Enhancement of antibody production and complement activity. Antibodies deal with infections and toxins. The complement system is a complex group of protein that interact to kill targeted cells and mediate other functions of the immune system.
12. Enhancement of natural killer cell activity. Small lymphocyte snipers not dependent on antibodies.
13. Enhancement of prostaglandin formation. These are powerful mediators of many different body processes, including the regulation of T-lymphocyte function.
14. Enhancement of cyclic GMP levels in lymphocytes. Cyclic GMP is kind of a huge thing, it "mediates" lots in the body, even normal cell proliferation, and differentiation, the action of a lot of different hormones, relaxation of smooth muscle, modulation of immune responses...
15. Enhanced localized generation of and/or interaction with Hydrogen Peroxide. This is used to kill microorganisms and can be used to rip open the protective cells of some bacteria.
Note that one of the interesting things about C is that it is an oxidant in SOME cases and an antioxidant in OTHER cases. This would be an example where it is an oxidant -- on purpose, not against healthy tissues but for helping kill bad things. 
16. Detoxification of histamine. AA is a major antihistimine.
17. Neutralization of oxidative stress. Basically stomping out the free radicals that help further promote/entrench the infective process. Some of this is covered by other anti-oxidants as well.
18. Nonspecific immunopotentiation. It can improve the immune response given with a vaccination, resulting in a more effective vaccination (antibodies) but also minimal harm from (and cleanup of toxins resulting from the body's interaction with)) the vaccinating substance.
19. Mucolytic effects. Helps liquefy thick secretions, increasing immune access to infection.
20. Possible alteration of bacterial cell surface. This was slightly covered above but this one's specific to helping antibiotics fight things normally resistant. There are several examples given separately where if an invader is normally resistant to a given antibiotic, AA can basically wipe out that resistance, then allowing the antibiotic to do its job.

 Note: although Levy mentions AA working for fungal issues, I didn't actually notice any specific fungal things mentioned in the book that I recall. However this might be in part because
a) most are not "incurable" which is what the book is dominantly about -- in other words it isn't about treating athlete's foot -- and
b) many likely fungal things are not very publicly recognized as such or not until somewhat recently and this book was written in 2002.

 And, he doesn't mention parasiticals at all, but at least one of the 'incurable curables' he mentions is a parasitical illness, and several are protozoans. I'd be prone to try AA with pretty much anything whatever -- it wouldn't hurt.

* pjg - AA is an "antitoxin" and this is critical because many of the illnesses listed generate massive toxins in addition to the rest of what they do. Antibiotics have this problem, that they do a massive kill-off and often the things they're killing are also generating massive toxins while they're at it, but the anti-B's don't do anything about the toxin element of it all. AA works on the toxins just as it works on the virii, bacteria and protozoa.

AA also helps restore cellular glutathione stores. AA is also an excellent chelator of many toxins such as halides and heavy metals. This is actually one of the arguments some use against it: that if you superdose with AA, you are flushing many loose minerals out of the body, good things like calcium. This is true, and it is suggested that a humic-fulvic supplement be constantly used when doing superdosing AA to compensate for this.

(pjg - Yes he actually said humic-fulvic, this is not just my personal obsession with that form of supplement...)

AA also stimulates the activity of several enzymes in the liver which are used for detoxifying the body.
AA is the only known 'antioxidant' that can completely protect lipids in the blood from peroxidation. 
(There is probably a whole 'nuther category of illness related to this effect which sufficient C helps with. -pjg)
AA is also a slight diuretic, which has positive effects in some areas, but is also the reason for the bowel tolerance issue. When superdosing AA you MUST keep the subject well hydrated.

Off-time (meaning, not at the moment you're doing the AA) dosing with minerals (H-F), lots of water, and sometimes other elements (such as PABA in some cases, Glutathione [another antioxidant] in some cases, or even medications) is common. AA often works on its own but it's not really being promoted as being stand-alone; using it that way without any other considerations can create issues, such as with the minerals and dehydration.  This is no big deal if you just know about it to compensate, but is often used as attack material for why superdosing AA to cure 'incurable' issues should not even be tried.

* Moving on to chapter 3 which is specific to toxins. 

There are three ways AA functions as an antidote.

1 - It can interact directly with many toxins, to render it less or nontoxic (killing or neutralizing). That's called a chemical antidote effect. Maybe it's because it can be a pro/antioxidant at will apparently but it interacts with a really wide/diverse array of stuff.

2 - It can help undo or repair damage caused to the body by a certain toxin. That's called a physiological antidote.

3 - It can interact with endotoxins and ectotoxins which are a side-effect of internal conditions.

AA and other "vitamins" (possibly E) have been studied with half a dozen different cancer cytotoxic drugs. It increases the effect of the drug's action upon the cancer cells but without increasing the damage the drug does. --- There are substances that are known to be carcinogenic which AA addresses. This isn't a list of all of them, just a list to example the diversity it covers:

* Some chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides and organophosphate insecticides
* Toxic elements (often 'trace' in the body but toxic in quantity) such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, cyanide, fluoride, lead, mercury, selenium, silica, tellurium * Industrial hydrocarbons such as benzanthrone, benzene, chloroform, glycerol, hydrazine, polychlorinated biphenyls, trinitrotuluene, vinyl chloride
* Gaseous pollutants such as carbon monoxide and ozone

Toxic assaults of all kinds cause the body (particularly in affected tissues) to deplete AA; the body uses it to fight things naturally. However, in Animals which produce AA, the same kind of toxic insults actually cause a massive ramp-up of how much AA their body generates, which fights it. Note that animals vary in how much they can produce. Dogs and cats resist and heal better than we do (although a lifetime of eating what we tend to feed them is destructive of course), but not as well as some other animals that produce more AA naturally under stress. Many illness of dogs and cats that are too virulent or extreme for them to fight off, if they are just given an injection or a few of AA, they do fine at fighting it off.

Drugs given to animals which caused the stimulation of AA synthesis, metabolic breakdown of it and excretion (treating it like a toxin in other words) -- those which have been studied so far anyway -- included: 

1 - Hypnotics: chloretone and barbital
2 - Analgesics: aminopyrine and antipyrine
3 - Muscle relaxants: orphenadrine and meprobamate *
4 - Antirheumatics: phenylbutazone and oxyphenbutazone
5 - Uricosuric agents: sulfinpyrazone
6 - Antihistaminics: diphenhydramine and chlorcyclizine
7 - Carcinogenic hydrocarbons: 3-methylcholanthrene and 3,4-benzpyrene

* this reminds me of a trivia: many report that substantial C intake eg. lipo version made them far more relaxed and cheerful in traffic and stressful situations. Already above it can help relax smooth muscle. - pjg

Specific toxins that C has been investigated and successfully worked against. Note that these studies vary and many didn't do the kind of study, or dosage, related to 'cure' but merely to 'reduction' or 'improvement' in the body.
- Alcohol (ethanol)
- Barbituates
- Carbon Monoxide
- Endotoxins
- Methemoglobinemia - this is a potentially fatal condition caused by the increase of methemoglobin in the blood which cannot transport oxygen and which binds with it. (It's a type of hemoglobin.) Oxygen starvation throughout the body happens in accordance with the % of this in the blood. This is caused by a variety of different toxins.

Many drugs and chemicals can actually cause or be associated with this, and C has been studied in treatment/prevention of the disorder in relationship to them, including:
Drugs: Acetaminophen, Dapsone, Flutamide, Metoclopramide, Nitroglycerin, Paraquat, Phenacetin, Phenazopyridine (pyridium), Primaquine, Sulfamethoxazole
Chemicals: Acetanilide, Aniline dyes, Nitric oxide, Nitrites, Amyl nitrite, Isobutyl nitrite, Sodium nitrite, Nitrates, Nitrobenzenes / nitrobenzoates, Nitroethane (nail polish remover), Nitrofurans, 4-amino-biphenyl
The condition is often treated with Methylene Blue, which shouldn't be given to patients with a G6PD deficiency, but AA can substitute for it in treatment.

Note that anesthesia can induce the condition in babies (affected by the mother's drugs) and in patients undergoing surgery.

MISC TOXINS
Most of these cause liver damage.
 Acetaminophen is commonly overdosed.
Acetanilide, aniline, antipyrine
Acrolein (breakdown of air pollutants like burning gasoline or tobacco, affects bronchial cells)
Aflatoxin (toxic to liver and causes cancer, from molds contaminating ground nut seedlings).
Allyl alcohol
Amphetamines.

• A 17 year old boy who overdosed on Ecstacy had a grand mal seizure and was in a coma when he reached the hospital. They gave him 1g of C over 30 minutes. Within 20 minutes he was wide awake and talking. The C lowered urin pH from 7.5 to 5 which likely accelerated urinary excretion of the drug as well.
• AA has anti-dopamine effects on the brain. Which reminds me that I saw someone say on a forum that they were a previous drug addict who'd tried taking methadone to kick the habit -- that has its own problems -- and whose health was wrecked -- and they felt that lypo-C had changed their life, finally helped them truly kick it all and radically improved their health. - pjg

Aromatic hydrocarbons
Benzanthrone
Benzene
Carbon Tetrachloride
Chloramphenicol
Chloroform
Cisplatin
Cyanides
Cyclophosphamide
Cyclosporine
Digoxin - commonly used for treatment of heart arrythmia but is toxic in quantity. This one is made from digitalis, a plant which is poisonous, as I recall.
Dopamine - this is an essential neurotransmitter. However when out of balance it becomes a neurotoxin, it can increase oxidative stress and cell death in nervous tissue. Levodopa is used in treatment of Parkinsons and is known to cause toxicity in nervous tissue as well as increasing levels of quinone (also toxic in dose).
Doxorubicin (a chemo agent)
Hologenated ethers (many kinds, common in industry, genetic damage in workers)
Hydrazine sulfate (germicide)
Iproniazid (and Isoniazid)
Isoproterenol (airway relaxant and cardiac stimulant)
Methanol (methyl or wood alcohol)
N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)
Methylmalonic acid (can also be a symptom of B12 deficiency)
Morphine
Nicotine
Nitrates and Nitrites
Nitrogen dioxide
Ochratoxin (a fungal toxin found as contaminant on corn, peanuts, grains, cottonseed, animal feeds, and decaying vegetation).
Oflatoxin (an antibiotic)
Ozone
Paraquat (an herbicide)
Polychlorinated biphenyl compounds (PCBs)
Porphyrins
Quinone
Rubidium
Selenium - an essential mineral that is a component of the enzyme glutathione peroxidase. Excessive exposure is poisonous to fatal however.
Strontium - this element is not all that toxic but will replace things like calcium in tissues such as bone that will gradually harm them.
Sulfa drugs - antibacterial drugs (now mostly replaced with antibiotics).
Tetracycline - an antibiotic, can cause kidney damage
Thallium - an element with toxic salts.
Thioacetamide
Valproic Acid - used to treat epilepsy, causes a drug-induced hepatitis, which can lead to death.
In a few of the studies related to the above, Vitamin E was also shown to have positive results.
Mushroom poisoning.
By the way, NAC was also found to be very helpful in one of these studies. 
Pesticides - a whole list of 'em it's been shown to greatly help with

RADIATION - AA can help prevent some of the damage of ionizing radiation, and can even help repair damage caused by previous radiation exposure. Klenner (the superdose guy from the 40s-70s) claimed that superdosing C would make it possible to use major chemo in last-stage cancers. AA increased the 'maximal tolerated dose,' plus assisted with the effects of whatever dose was given, plus helped prevent and repair damage from the chemo itself. (Vitamin E was in a couple of these trials too.) Note that one sign of radiation sufferers (chernobyl) was serious deficiency in vitamins B1, B2, B6, C, and folic acid (so all should be added).

AA given even 20 hours after irradiation is still able to reduce 'mutation frequency' in human cell studies. Both AA and VitE and VitA (as beta carotene) reduced damage to bone marrow from gamma radiation. Also helped with intentional radiation such as from radioactive iodine. AA helps lessen radiation damage to skin/eyes from UV. I skipped a lot in this section because it's long. Suffice to say, 'helps with radiation issues.' Strychnine and Tetanus.

Trivia: Klenner felt that the tetanus antitoxin is damaging and unnecessary after one or more people actually died after receiving it -- and some survived when they also got AA but it took longer to turn them around -- whereas they survived just fine with only AA. 

Mercury. Detoxes in general. In specific, doses of AA from 35-50g lessened and often blocked acute toxic effects of mercury when amalgam fillings were being removed. Lesser doses though (25g) sometimes had some symptoms of toxicity still emerge. When AA treatment was started before, carried on during, and after, the dental work, patients often felt better after than they had before despite the dental work and the normal toxic overdose from it.

Lead. Lowgrade exposure to lead causes a variety of symptoms. Parts of body most commonly affected are gastrointestinal tract, blood and nervous system, often kidneys. Trivia: the incidence of dental caries is associated with higher levels of lead in the blood. AA was comparable in result to EDTA, a common chelator. However it was found that combining them had far better results than either of them alone, for detox.

Chromium
Arensicals
Cadmium
Vanadium. Contradictory findings. Positive on mice, negative on rats, so efficiency of AA is unclear here.
Nickel
Aluminum
Fluorine/Flouride

VENOMS
Black Widow spiders
Puss Caterpillar
Highland Moccasin snake

Klenner theorized that 12-50g of C venously provides a "flash oxidation" effect that quickly restores the oxygen content in blood. Klenner in '71 insisted that quick reversal of body-insults required .35 to 1.2g per kg of bodyweight and had to be given venously -- that's for when the situation is dire and death is near; otherwise, a gradual venous drip infusion is considered more optimal.

* So now getting to the third and last thing that I thought was 'most amazing' about the review of AA in the body. It was actually a sort of "concept" explained in the intro of the book. This is actually, basically, what Szent-Gyorgyi won the Nobel Prize for in '37. ("the discovery of AA/vitamin C in connection with biological combustion")

I'm going to type -- but editorially condense -- the page that talks about this because I don't think I can explain it properly in a paraphrase.


A Theory of Life


Szent-Gyorgyi proposed that the essence of the living state is that organic molecules such as the proteins in the tissues of the body must be maintained in a state of electron desaturation. All matter has varying proportions of electrons, protons, and neutrons, but S-G held that dead tissue had a full complement of electrons, while live tissue maintained a deficit of electrons.


Ascorbic Acid interacts with a wide variety of basic chemical substances in the body. It literally appears to be one of the primary substances assuring that a vigorous, continuing electron exchange takes place among the body's tissues and molecules. AA is both an antioxidant and a prooxidant (depending) and it plays a significant role in the electron mechanics of the body.


S-G asserted that energy exchange, arguably life's most important form of cellular communication, can only occur when there is an imbalance of electrons between and among molecules. This imbalance of electrons causes the natural flow of electrons, a biological form of electricity, throughout the body.


All of the body's functions are directed, controlled, and regulated by this physiological flow of electricity. Further, this flow of electricity through the body establishes and maintains the subtle magnetic fields in the body that appear to be involved with good health.


AA, although possessing other important qualities, appears to be a most important stimulus to this flow of electricity. A greater amount of AA in the body enhances the flow of electricity in the body, thereby optimizing the ability of the cells in the body to maintain their health-sustaining communications.


One definition of life, then, is that it is a state in which an optimal degree of electron interchange among cells can take place. Health exists when electrons flow freely and fully, illness exists when this flow is significantly impaired, and death occurs when this flow stops.


When the electron flow is impaired, there is a need for more AA to help remedy the impairment. Since poor electron flow throughout the body's tissues appears to cause or be associated with disease, this also means that there is typically an AA deficiency whenever the body is diseased. Because of this interrelationship, AA should always be a part of the treatment of virually any disease state. Just as dehydration requires water, poor electron flow -- a primary characteristic of the disease state -- requires Ascorbic Acid. This will virtually always apply, even when a deficiency of AA was not necessarily involved in the development of a certain diseased state.

That is a much, much bigger deal body-wide then "try to get a few milligrams of the stuff per day in an orange."

PJ