Natural Is A Worthless Word

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Originally Published Here

Here is a common form of promoting Vitamin C where all or part of the source for the Vitamin C is the Acerola  Cherry.  There is no question that Acerola Cherries have a high concentration of  Vitamin C.  That, however, does not mean that it is a economical source!

Here is a famous Amway product -- Bio-C Plus, which contains 300 tablets, each tablet containing 250 mg of vitamin C.  That means that this bottle contains a total of 75 grams of Vitamin  C.  That means that THIS vitamin C costs $47.30 for 75 grams, or an astounding $629.00 per kilogram (about 2.2 pounds).  Remember that only 20 mg of this tablet is from Acerola Cherries and 230 mg is from "isolated Vitamin C." 

I can tell you that a wholesaler would purchase ascorbic acid (the most common form of artificial Vitamin C) at about $20 per KG.  This means that you are paying more than thirty times as much for this Vitamin C as you would for the same type of Vitamin  C which Dr. Linus Pauling used in his many experiments with Vitamin C and for which he received the Nobel Prize.

Since only 30 mg of the 250 mg is from Acerola Cherries, if we place a cost of $20 on the portion coming from "isolated Vitamin C" (ascorbic acid), and with some arithmetic, you find that the Vitamin C from  Acerola is being priced at about $45 in this bottle.  That means that you are paying $7.50 per gram, or about $7,500 per KG for vitamin C from Acerola  Cherries (compared with about $20 per KG for regular Vitamin C).  If you knew THIS, would you be willing to buy the argument that Vitamin C from Acerola Cherries is a good deal for you?

[300 x 230 mg x $20/kg + 300 x 20 mg x ??/kg = $47.30]

When these people sell this type of Vitamin C they are faced with a terrible obstacle.  When they try to market a product based on Acerola  Cherries, they have to pretend that the government suggested daily allowance for Vitamin C is plenty.  Since the Government only recommends 60 mg per day, a formula like this can say that they are at 833% of the RDI with two tablets per day.  That means two tablets, 500 mg total, divided by 60 mg is 833%!

So, this type of company has to mislead you into believing that the Government RDI is a good recommendation.  Amway vitamins are bad news for the consumer.

Our Life Glow Oral Chelation contains 4,500 mg per day of Vitamin C.  There are millions of Americans who know that 500 mg per day of Vitamin C is just not enough.  Unfortunately, there are MORE millions of Americans who still believe the government lies and who think that any formula which gives them 833% of the Government recommended allowance MUST be a good formula.

You see how misleading this promotional claim now is!!  If you hadn't recognized it, this is the form of Acerola Cherry Vitamin C which has been sold by Amway for many years.

As wonderful a reputation as Amway has, it is well known that MLM companies charge far more for the same products available through normal channels.  Click Here to see a page comparing Amway prices for about 50 products with prices for the same product at a local store.

Click here to read what Dr. Linus Pauling has to say about Vitamin C.

Bio-C Plus    The best of nature - the Best of Science  
Bio-C Plus contains 220 mg of isolated vitamin C, plus 30 mg from Acerola cherries -- one of nature's richest sources of vitamin C -- grown and harvested with care in Nutrilite's own orchards to assure quality from the ground up. 
 
Two tablets equal 833% of adult U.S. RDI -- 100% from Acerola cherry concentrate alone, so Bio-C Plus is a great way to make sure you're getting all the Vitamin C you need. 
 
Contains these exclusive NUTRILITE

• Acerola cherry 
• Biflavonoids from concentrated lemon pulp and peel 

[Click Here to go to the actual site offering this product]

Scientific Studies Of Vitamin C

Cancer and Vitamin C
Linus Pauling & Ewan Cameron

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I highly recommend the Book by Dr. Linus Pauling, along with Dr. Ewan Cameron, Cancer and Vitamin C.  Click on the books to go to Amazon.com to review that book.

Here is an excerpt from that Book:

Some years ago we developed the idea that regular high intake of vitamin C (ascorbic acid, or its several biologically active sales known as ascorbates) play some part both in the prevention of cancer and in the treatment of established cancer.

Evidence steadily accumulates to support this view.

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Cancer, of course, if the major unsolved health problem with strong emotional overtones.  Although not the major killer, it has become the most feared of all diseases and a major focus of biological research throughout the world.  The repeated statement of our views and clinical results in the scientific literature has given rise to much fruitful discussion with colleagues in the scientific and medical fields, and it has also involved us in a massive correspondence with desperate cancer patients seeking advice and help, as well as with their families, friends, and physicians.

For some years we have tried to write personal letters to these patients, family members, friends and physicians, but meeting this obligation is now beyond our resources.   It seems increasingly clear to us that many of these despairing patients lack understanding of (a) the very nature of cancer, (b) the value and the limitations of all conventional (and some unconventional) forms of treatment of cancer, and (c) our own views as to how vitamin C might help them.  This book is an attempt to answer these questions.

Cancer is an unpleasant disease.  death by cancer usually involves much more suffering than other ways of death, such as by a heart attack. The cancer patient may lead a life of misery for months or years before his suffering is brought to an end by death.   Much of his misery may be caused by the treatment that is given him in the effort to control the disease.

In the United States about 1.9 million people will die this year.  About 20 percent of the deaths, 395,000, will be from cancer.  Every day about 2,100 people in this country develop cancer and about 1,080 die of cancer.  if the incidence and mortality continues at their present rates, one adult in the United States in every three will develop cancer at some time in his life, and one in five will die of the disease.

During the last twenty years about ten billion dollars has been spent on cancer research, in the effort to get some control of the disease.  The budget of the National Cancer Institute for the year 1979 is $900 million and that of the American Cancer Society is $140 million.  Despite this great expenditure the corresponding great effort, not much has been achieved.  Some progress has been made in the treatment of some kinds of cancer, especially leukemia and Hodgkin's' disease, by new regimes of treatment with high-energy radiation and anticancer drugs.  for most kinds of cancer, those involving solid tumors in adults, which lead to 94 percent of the cancer deaths, there has been essentially no change in overall incidence and mortality during recent years.

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One of us (Ewan Cameron) is a surgeon who for over thirty years has been involved in the treatment of cancer patients.  During the early part of the period  he developed the idea that the most important factor determining the progress and outcome of any cancer illness is the natural resistance of the patient to his disease.  In his 1966 book Hyaluronidase and Cancer he pointed out that the resistance of the normal tissues surrounding a malignant tumor to infiltration by that tumor would be increased if the strength of the intercellular cement (also called ground substance) that binds the cells of the normal tissues together could be increased.  This intercellular cement contains very long molecular chains, called glycosaminoglycans, that give it strength, and it also contains fibrils of the protein collagen, which further strengthen the cement in the same way as the steel reinforcing rods strengthen reinforced concrete.  it is in fact known that some, and probably all, malignant tumors liberate an enzyme, hyaluronidase, that causes the glycosaminoglycans to be cut into smaller molecules, thus weakening the intercellular cement.  Moreover, some and perhaps all, malignant tumors also liberate another enzyme, collagenase, that causes the collagen fibrils to be split into small molecules, further weakening the normal tissues and making it easier for the malignant tumor to grow into them in the way characteristic of malignancies.

These facts indicate clearly that the effort should be made to strengthen the intercellular cement in the normal tissues of cancer patients and to inhibit the tumor enzymes that cause its breakdown.  Until 1971, however, no one had found a way of doing this.  Then in that year two new ideas, both involving vitamin C, were advanced. Cameron and Douglas Rotman, on the basis of some chemical arguments, suggested that an increased concentration of vitamin C in the body would stimulate the normal cells to produce increased amounts of the substance hyaluronidase inhibitor, which would combine with the enzyme hyaluronidase liberated by the malignant tumor and prevent it from attacking the intercellular cement.  AT the same time the other author of this book (Linus Pauling) pointed out that it is known that vitamin c is required for the synthesis of collagen; accordingly increasing the intake of the vitamin would cause more collagen fibrils to be made, further strengthening the intercellular cement.

He suggested to Cameron, for reasons discussed in Chapter 14, that an intake of 10 grams of vitamin C per day be given to the patients with advanced cancer.  Clinical trials were cautiously begun by Cameron in Vale of Leven Hospital, Loch Lomondside, Scotland, in November 1971.  The patients who were treated with vitamin C during the first year were those with advanced cancer for whom the conventional treatments had ceased to be of benefit -- patients considered in Scottish medical practice to be "untreatable."

Cameron soon was convinced that most of the patients who received vitamin C benefited from it and with each succeeding year a larger fraction of the cancer patients in this hospital were given the vitamin.  over 500 patients in this hospital with advanced cancer and many with cancer in earlier stages have received vitamin C, in conjunction with other therapy, during the eight years since this treatment was instituted.  The use of vitamin C has also spread to other hospitals in this region of Scotland, and to a smaller extent to other parts of the world.

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The first observation that was made is that for many cancer patients the administration of vitamin C seems to improve the state of well-being, as measured by improved appetite, increased mental alertness, decreased requirement for pain-killing drugs, and other clinical criteria.  this effect was described by Cameron and Campbell (1974) in their report on the first 50 ascorbate-treated patients in the following words:

We should now like to describe what we have come to recognize as the standard response to large-dose ascorbic acid supplements in patients with advanced cancer.  subjective evidence of benefit is usually apparently by about the 5th to 10th day of treatment, and in many patients this response can be very striking indeed.   The patient then enters a stage of increased well-being and general clinical improvement, and during this phase objective evidence accumulates to confirm that some retardation of tumor growth has been achieved.  The objective evidence of benefit varies with the individual clinical presentation, but may take the form of relief of particularly distressing pressure symptoms such as pain from skeletal metastases, a slowing down of the rate of accumulation of malignant effusions, a trend toward improvement in malignant jaundice, or relief from respiratory distress, and is accompanied by a slow fall in the erythocyte sedimentation rate and the serum seromucoid concentration.  This phase of clinical improvement may be very transient, or it may last for weeks or months, and in a few patients may be so prolonged and accompanied by such convincing evidence of objective benefit as to indicate that permanent regression has been induced.

An unexpected and potentially valuable relation of vitamin C to addictive narcotic drugs was also noted.  Many patients with advanced cancer, especially those with skeletal metastases, suffer severe pain because of the pressure developed by the growth of the tumor in a restricted space.  This pain frequently requires the use of narcotic drugs.  Cameron and Baird (1973) reported that the first five ascorbate-treated patients who had been receiving large doses of morphine or heroin to control pain were taken off these drugs a few days after the treatment with vitamin C was begun, because the vitamin C seemed to diminish the pain to such an extent that the drug was not needed.   Moreover -- they seemed not to experience any serious withdrawal signs or symptoms.   This observation was the basis of the recently reported successful use of massive doses of vitamin C in the treatment of narcotic addition  (Libby and Stone, 1976).

A careful study has been made of 100 of the first ascorbate-treated cancer patients in Vale of Leven Hospital, in comparison with 1,000 cancer patients who were matched (10 to 1) with the ascorbate-treated patients with respect to age, sex, type of cancer, and clinical state and who were treated by the same physicians, in the same hospital, and in the same way except that they did not receive the doses of vitamin C.  The results of this study were reported in two papers (Cameron and Pauling, 1976, 1978) and are discussed in detail in later chapters of this book, beginning with Chapter 18.  here we may mention that on the average the ascorbate-=treated patients survived ten months longer than their matched controls.  Twenty-two of the 100 ascorbate-treated patient (22 percent) lived longer than a year after being deemed to have reached the terminal stage, whereas only four of the 1000 controls (0.4 percent) lived this long.  the average survival time of these 22 ascorbate-treated patients after being deemed terminal has now (15 September 1979) reached 2.8 years, and continues to increase with the passing of time because five of these patients are still alive; all of the controls have died.

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