Supplements and Herbs

Oral Megadoses of Vitamin C and Cancer

Benefits of ascorbic acid supplementation in tumor treatment

excerpted from "The Health Revolution" by Phil Bate, Ph.D.

This book was previously made available for free on the internet as "a hypertext book covering the re-education of a behaviorist psychologist (Phil Bate PhD), who accidentally got involved in the 'Orthomolecular' or 'Holistic Health' movement, and remained deeply committed because these therapies actually work. And, they do no harm, and they have no side effects like all medical drugs.”

Vitamin C^[1] and Cancer

Some people just seem to be lucky all their lives. Happy coincidences seem to happen to them much more often than most. I seem to be one of the lucky persons with a lot of happy coincidences, both in my life and practice. Bob walked into my office the week after I had read "Vitamin C Against Cancer" by H. L. Newbold.

Dr. Newbold is an orthomolecular psychiatrist and a very astute observer as well as a good writer. In his practice, he has discovered several items of interest in the health field including the use of vitamin C to literally cure cancer in many cases.

Another item in particular, is the now proven fact that food allergy or sensitivity is a major cause of obesity and other forms of overweight. More on this later.

Bob had made the appointment in order to get a hypnotic tape made for his use at home. He had just been told by his doctor that his cancer had spread too far, and he was "terminal". Terminal is doctorese for 3–6 months to live.

Bob was a fighter who didn't want to give up so quickly. He had read Dr. Carl Simonton's book "Getting Well Again" about the power of positive thinking and hypnotic focusing of the mind's power in cancer cases. Several persons had actually been able to reverse the course of cancer using such positive mind techniques.

Compare Healing Cancer & the Power of Your Mind.

We discussed his case at length going over the hypnotic techniques involved. I taught him a basic self hypnosis technique. We also talked about the vitamin C therapy which I had just read about. We decided to try a subliminal tape to go along with the self hypnosis. He borrowed Newbold's book on vitamin C therapy.

The following day, he returned, not too happy with the subliminal tape. He wanted one that he could actually hear instead of having the message underneath the surf sound I had used. I made him another tape.

He had already read the book, and started on the vitamin C and supplements discussed. He had been very impressed by the research experiment conducted in Scotland by Doctors Linus Pauling and Ewan Cameron.^[2]

This experiment used 100 out of 1100 cancer patients. All the patients were terminal cases. The 100 patients were chosen at random to be as representative of the entire group as possible. They were given only 10 grams of vitamin C per day. This is not nearly as much as would be recommended today. The remaining 1000 cases were used as controls.

A year later, all of the 1000 control patients were dead. Half of the 100 were still living, and several of these had remissions of their cancer. Some of these were living 15 years later. It's interesting to note that this very important experiment was never reported in the US medical journals. Had it been a new drug with the same results, you would have seen banner headlines.

No, not a conspiracy — or not exactly. Realize that all medical journals depend on drug company advertising for their very existence. What drug company would place advertising in a journal that published articles saying that all those expensive drugs weren't as good as inexpensive (non-patentable) vitamins, or minerals, or amino acids?

So, few MDs are even aware of this experiment, and the tremendous potential of vitamin C in cancer treatment.

The research since that historic experiment indicates that 10 grams is a woefully short amount. In all such cases, vitamin C should be taken in much higher megavitamin amounts.

An interesting thing happens with vitamin C "overdose". If you are relatively disease/infection-free, and you start to take 10–15 grams a day, your body can't absorb this much, and the residue will irritate your intestinal tract. The result — simple diarrhea.

Surprisingly, this fact is of great use in this and other holistic fields. First, you literally can't overdose as the excess simply goes out of the body. You could become dehydrated if the diarrhea kept up too long, but that's rather unlikely.

Dr. Von did have one case that had been misdiagnosed by a physician. The patient had suddenly started taking 10 grams of vitamin C a day. Since he had no serious health problems, he started to experience diarrhea. His doctor did several expensive tests and tried several different drugs to stop the diarrhea — none of which worked.

The patient went to Dr. Von, and he diagnosed it immediately, lowered the vitamin C to 5 grams a day. The patient recovered immediately. Too little knowledge can indeed be dangerous.

Second, and much more important, your body will actually absorb many times as much vitamin C, without diarrhea, if you have some disease/infection in your body. In particular, a virus in the bloodstream, such as a common cold or flu, will allow an uptake as high as 100 grams a day without any diarrhea. This amount is sometimes needed to knock out the particular disease/infection.

What happens if you take lesser amounts than are needed to kill the virus or bacteria invaders? Simple — you don't kill them all! Since both multiply at an amazing rate — actually doubling in about 20 minutes, they quickly get back to saturation strength within a short time. In about 3 hours or so, one virus or bacterium cell becomes 1000!

The RDA for vitamin C is only 75 milligrams (.075 grams). This is an example of the futility in using these RDA figures for any "health" amounts. The RDA or Recommended Daily Allowance used to be called the MDA or Minimum Daily Amounts.

This is much more truthful, but not as good for the cereal advertisers, so their lobby changed the name. Doesn't it sound like that's the amount needed for good health? Particularly when you hear the misleading cereal advertisements? Not so.

These listed RDA amounts are still only the MINIMUM amounts required to prevent serious deficiency diseases such as scurvy, beri-beri, and pellagra. The idea that it's the amount for good health is a result of Madison Avenue advertising.

Most of us in this field who have studied vitamins and actual health requirements believe that .075 grams of vitamin C is way too little. Most agree that 2 grams (2000 milligrams) of supplementary vitamin C is a minimum starting point.

Some experts in this field would increase that to 4–5 grams a day, and some even more than this. If you're a smoker or under a lot of stress, then 4 grams may be a minimum for you.

The rest of the vitamins are similarly low in the RDA. Only the mineral amounts are fairly close to what an "average" person might need. This ignores the tremendous variability between each individual human being in his/her requirements, not to mention where they live, their diet, what they drink, etc.

Now we can see a bit better why so many MDs say (and honestly believe) that vitamin C isn't effective against colds and flu? They recommend 500 or even 1000 mg — which to their mind is a megadose — after all, it's ten times the RDA. Some shortsighted experimenters have even gone very much higher, and used as much as 7–8 grams. Wow, a hundred times the RDA, that's a megadose — or so they think!

When it has little or no effect, they publish another learned paper in some medical journal (or popular magazine) saying that vitamin C has no effect on colds or flu, and they have "proven it".

Your doctor isn't an idiot, or even a bad guy — he's just the victim of his extensive (and expensive) education, and he believes the AMA dogma. He reads medical journals to keep up naturally. There's no reason for him to disbelieve the articles that appear in his journals about vitamin C not being effective. He must reason that if any such therapy was good, it would be reported in such journals.

The individual doctor is probably not even aware that the medical journals he reads are literally controlled by the drug advertising. Don't blame your doctor for his lack of knowledge. Blame the system.

In the case of cancer, the correct dosage of vitamin C has to be determined for each individual. It's not too difficult using a powdered vitamin C in the form of ascorbate. This is a "buffered" form which neutralizes the acidity of pure ascorbic acid (vitamin C). One teaspoon equals 4 grams.

The patient takes one teaspoon every hour until he just starts to experience diarrhea. If no diarrhea is experienced within 4–6 hours, then the dosage is doubled to two teaspoons per hour, etc.

A few grams below the diarrhea dosage is the amount required for that particular individual every eight hours. This is called the "bowel tolerance dosage". It can sometimes be amazingly high indeed! In a few cases of cancer, doses of up to 200 grams have been required. In one case in the literature of a schizophrenic woman, 50 grams a day was required to keep her stable and relatively normal.

Dr. Robert Cathcart, an orthomolecular physician, has been successfully treating AIDS patients for several years with doses up to 200 grams. It doesn't cure AIDS, but they don't die easily from other diseases, as do other AIDS victims.

By using bowel tolerance, Bob found that his correct dosage was 66 grams a day split into six 11 gram doses at four hour intervals. It is important to keep the blood saturated, and since vitamin C is gradually removed along with whatever it has "scavenged" over several hours, taking it every four hours is usually recommended.

Bob returned to my office about every two weeks for the next few months to have me change the wording on the tape. He wanted to keep it fresh and different — not so repetitive as to lose effect. Actually, this was probably unnecessary, but since he believed it, it was important to him. The patient’s beliefs are always important and contribute to the cure.

Compare Mind.

After some three months, his doctor was amazed to find that Bob's cancer was actually in remission. Bob was overjoyed when he reported this to me, and he also reported that he had to reduce the vitamin C to about 20 grams a day, due to bowel tolerance lowering. This, of course, is another indication that the cancer was reversing its course.

Another life saved. Very ego-gratifying of anyone in this profession. Although the tape probably helped, I'm convinced that the vitamin C was the real operative agent. This was my first cancer patient, but not the last. While I have only worked with 4 cases, all were successful.

The last one was the most significant to me. My nephew David was 28 years old and living in Maine at that time. He called me and told me he had cancer in his chest and lymph glands. I immediately outlined a supporting vitamin regimen and explained the vitamin C bowel tolerance dosage. He started on it immediately.

A few days later, he called, and said that his doctor wanted to start radiation therapy. I advised him to do what the doctor said, but to keep the vitamin regimen, even if they had to smuggle them into the hospital. His wife is a nurse, and she did just that. His reported daily dosage was just under 50 grams.

A few weeks later, he called and said, "I don't know why people make all that fuss about radiation therapy — it wasn't all that bad for me."

I replied, "Are you still taking the vitamins, including high vitamin C?"

"Yes, of course, Barbara won't let me forget."

"Well, there's your answer, the vitamin C alleviates most of the horrible side effects of radiation therapy. For other people without vitamin C, it's a very bad experience."

"Oh, I didn't know that. Well, anyway, my doctor wants me to start on chemotherapy."

"OK, but keep up the vitamin regimen, and that won't be bad for you either."

He promised to do so, and the next call I got was a couple of months later when he called to tell me that his doctor was flabbergasted to find that his cancer was completely gone. He had also suffered none of the horrible side effects of chemotherapy. He told the doctor about the vitamin C. Such is the brainwashing in the AMA that even that case didn't convince the doctor. Oh well... None so blind...

Don't overlook a major point here. It's possible to do all the standard cancer therapy from radiation to chemotherapy along with the vitamin C (and a good supporting vitamin/mineral supplement program). The vitamin regimen actually lessens considerably the usually horrible side effects of both.

Many "victims" of cancer treatment have been vehement in their refusal of further extremely painful treatments. Horror stories abound about both conventional treatments.

The vitamin regimen has proven over and over that it works, and in conjunction with standard treatment, it works even better. All we have to do is convince the medical profession of this fact. Unfortunately, there are still too many doctors whose attitude is, "Don't confuse me with facts — my mind's made up!"

Why does vitamin C work to cure cancer? We don't have all the answers to this question as yet. One theory is that "saturating" the blood with vitamin C kills off any invading bacteria, viruses, and yeast that may be present. This frees up more of the body's natural immune system defenses, and they are able to "concentrate" more on the cancerous cells.

There is also the probability that vitamin C actually improves the activity of the immune system, particularly the white blood cells which seek out and destroy cancer cells. Of course, the rest of the vitamins and minerals in balance are also helpful. If they aren't present, some cells of the immune system might not be produced at just the right time.

There were several other purely physical cases where vitamin C solved physical diseases actually caused by bloodborne viruses. One that illustrates vitamin C therapy well was Reggie's.

Reggie was a born-again fundamentalist/evangelist type of preacher. He arrived in my office accompanied by a couple of his followers, and informed me that he had heard me on a local talk show talking about vitamin C and viruses.

He had just been diagnosed with viral hepatitis. This is a very debilitating disease. His doctor wanted him in the hospital immediately, but he refused. He was seeing me as a last resort before the hospital.

I told him that I couldn't recommend anything except hospitalization for fear of "practicing medicine without a license." This is a very difficult area, and since I knew of a couple of cases where others (including Dr. Von) had actually been arrested on very little evidence, I knew that I was on shaky ground. However, I can't just ignore people in distress.

We discussed his problem, and I told him about vitamin C, and it's use against viral diseases in particular. Since his disease was definitely a bloodstream viral type, I knew that vitamin C could knock it out in a very short time. I gave him instructions as to getting up to bowel tolerance level quickly, and listed the other vitamins and minerals needed for supplementary use.

That was on Friday, and he came into my office on Monday, making an appointment (and paying for an hour) just to thank me. He had cured himself by Sunday, and had been able to give his usual fire and brimstone sermon! He complained that he had stomach pains, and some mouth canker sores. He thought that these might have been from the vitamin C.

He hadn't been able to get the ascorbate form I'd recommended, so he got a regular powdered vitamin C on the recommendation of a health food store. (They were probably out of the ascorbate form, and didn't want to lose a sale.) That much acid isn't kind to either the mouth or the stomach. He didn't really mind the minor pain and discomfort however, as he had cured himself of his major problem.

There have been many other friends, friends of friends, and relatives who have taken megadoses of vitamin C on my recommendation. Every case I've heard about was successful if they followed the directions carefully. (Unfortunately, not everybody does this!) The viral diseases susceptible to vitamin C therapy include colds or flus, mononucleosis, viral hepatitis, pneumonia, etc.

Note that all of these are viruses that are found in the bloodstream. There are many viral types such as AIDS and various types of herpes that locate themselves in some organ of the body. These types are not affected by vitamin C, simply because they are hidden from it by not being in the bloodstream. Also note that bloodborne bacterial infections are also affected by vitamin C. It is both a bactericide and a viricide.

As anyone who has had any experience with either mono or hepatitis can testify, these are very debilitating diseases with long lasting results, and slow recovery. In many cases, a patient will take 3–4 months, or even more, to fully recover. Contrast this to a couple of days using vitamin C! Vitamin C is truly a wonder drug overlooked by the medical community in general.

Almost all animals except the primate (ape) family, which includes humans, produce vitamin C as required within their own bodies. The production of vitamin C in all these other animals is dramatically increased when the animal is stressed with disease or other factors.

This is also why most animals can safely eat meat and other food that is "spoiled" for human consumption. The vitamin C that they produce in their body protects them from the bacterial overload in such foods.

What does this tell you about the human need for vitamin C when under stress of disease or other factors? We can't produce it in our bodies on demand.

As a further matter of interest, a 150 pound ape in a zoo requires a minimum of 4 grams of vitamin C per day just for health maintenance. Since this ape has exactly the same need for vitamin C as humans, isn't it amazing that the FDA and the AMA think we humans only need .075 grams a day? And apes supposedly aren't under as much stress as we humans. Who's correct? You be the judge.

The above article was found at a former site of the The Alternative Medicine Research Foundation, a non profit research group which published “remedies for common and catastrophic problems".

Note by Healing Cancer Naturally

Linus Pauling, ”father of Vitamin C (ascorbate)”, sadly contracted cancer and died of it (also compare the author of the above article’s own experience with prostate cancer, which sadly is no longer published on the internet).

So while it is true and wonderful that some or many people seem to get dramatically and even permanently cured of cancer by massive amounts of artificial Vitamin C and/or other supplements (possibly allowing the body to overcome some long-standing deficiency caused by mal- and overnutrition, stress etc. and to throw off accumulated toxins, not to forget the powerful placebo effect), generally speaking it might be wiser for the long term to rely on a more holistic and natural approach for health maintenance.

This would include seeing to the health of all aspects of one’s being — the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual — and relying on what our bodies are evolutionarily adapted to, which is natural untampered-with food and a natural environment, rather than supplements and an artificial and unbalanced, i.e. man-made environment.

Two interesting better-known examples of such a holistic approach to health maintenance and recovery are Dr. Hamer’s “German New Medicine” as well as Dr. Budwig’s diet & protocol. (Incidentally, Dr. Budwig cautions patients about the use of artificial antioxidants such as vitamin E and ascorbic acid in conjunction with her approach. See Budwig diet & protocol: tips & frequently asked questions: Antioxidants.)

Compare Healing Cancer ... Naturally!!!.

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after studying the subject for some twenty years, click here.

Footnotes

1 Please note that the vitamin C referred to in the article is a man-made substance called ascorbic acid and thus not fully identical with the vitamin C found in natural foods. On the other hand, the vitamincfoundation.org quite convincingly argues to the contrary. You decide.

2 This study by Ewan Cameron and Linus Pauling Supplemental ascorbate in the supportive treatment of cancer: reevaluation of prolongation of survival times in terminal human cancer (as well as an earlier study from 1976 by the same authors) was reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (75:4538-4542) in 1978.

Note that Robert F. Cathcart, III, M.D. pointed to Ewan Cameron's observation that starting cancer patients with extensive metastasis too rapidly on high amounts of ascorbate could sometimes lead to extensive necrosis or hemorrhage in the cancer which could kill the patient.