Vitamin C megadosage

Vitamin C megadosage is a term describing the consumption or injection of vitamin C (ascorbate) in doses comparable to the amounts produced by the livers of most other mammals. Such dosages correspond to amounts well beyond the current Dietary Reference Intake. Oral dosages are usually divided and consumed in portions over the day. Injections of hundreds of grams per day are advocated by some physicians for the treatment of certain conditions, poisonings, or recovery from trauma. People who practice vitamin C megadosage may consume many vitamin C pills throughout each day or dissolve pure vitamin C crystals in water or juice and drink it throughout the day.

Historic advocates of vitamin C megadosage include Linus Pauling, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. Pauling argued that, due to a non-functional form of L-gulonolactone oxidase, an enzyme required to make vitamin C that is functional in most other mammalian relatives, humans have developed a number of adaptations to cope with the relative deficiency. These adaptations, he argued, ultimately shortened lifespan but could be reversed or mitigated by supplementing humans with the hypothetical amount of vitamin C that would have been produced in the body if the enzyme were working.

Vitamin C megadoses are claimed by alternative medicine advocates including Matthias Rath and Patrick Holford to have preventative and curative effects on diseases such as cancer and AIDS, but the available scientific evidence does not support these claims. Some trials show some effect in combination with other therapies, but this does not imply vitamin C megadoses in themselves have therapeutic effect.

The World Health Organization recommends a daily intake of 45 milligrams (mg)/day of vitamin C for healthy adults, and 25–30 mg/day in infants. Vitamin C is necessary for production of collagen and other biomolecules, and for the prevention of scurvy. Vitamin C is an antioxidant, which has led to its endorsement by some researchers as a complementary therapy for improving quality of life. Since the 1930s, when it first became available in pure form, some physicians have experimented with higher than recommended vitamin C consumption or injection. Certain animal species, including haplorhine primates (which includes humans), members of the Caviidae family of rodents (including guinea pigs and capybaras), most species of bats, many passerine birds, and about 96% of fish (the teleosts), do not synthesize vitamin C internally.

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