Here are assorted notes I took when researching megadose Vitamin C in August 2011.
Caveats -- Everyone has a unique situation in w/d. Some people are super-sensitive to supplements. Others are not sensitive at all. I have been somewhere in the middle. I was 5 1/2 years out when I went up to about 6,000 mg Vit. C. And 6 1/2 years out when I went up further. Generally, the slower you taper up in dosage, the better. I found information on megadose Vit. C for many illnesses, but none for neurological disorders, and, therefore, none for dysautonomia. While you might find your bowel tolerance for Vit. C to be very high, you might find your dysautonomia limits how much you can handle. :(
If you're going to try high dose Vit. C, you have to take very many small doses throughout the day and night, or you'll pee it out unused. I'm using Trader Joe's "sustained release" pills, because I think that might help a bit with the problem of peeing out Vit. C before you can use it.
There is some research on Vit. C and neurological stuff. If you come across a good article, please post it.
My Vit. C history --
-- When I went up to about 2000 mg / day Vit C many years ago, my incidence of colds went way down to about one per winter. Stayed this way, until mid-w/d, when I decided to switch to whole food Vit. C, which was so expensive, that I went way down to 300 mg / day which is equvalent to about 600 mg / day of artificial ascorbic acid. Started to get colds.
-- Mid-2010, inadvertently went up to 6,000 mg Vit C only because it came attached to the Quercetin I was taking for severe hayfever. Got no cold winter of 2010. Also, saw improvement in w/d symptoms -- anxiety decreased, cognitive functioning improved.
-- 8 Aug 11 -- I got the brainstorm to try real megadose Vit. C. I went up quickly to 26,000 mg / day because I'm an impatient nincompoop. However, I tolerated it remarkably well. Some diarrhea and gas, but worth it if it was going to help me heal.
-- 18 Aug 11 -- I decided Vit. C was having a quasi-steroidal effect on me -- it works on cortisol and adrenaline -- I was having intense irritability, shoulders feeling stronger, muscle repair in legs, voracious appetite, difficulty sleeping. Barbara, who has never been exposed to psych meds, and tapered quickly up to 11,000 mg Vit. C, noticed very similar effects on her, but milder, and for her they abated.
-- 20 Sep 11 -- I have slowly backpedalled to 10,000 mg in response to the "steroidal" / dysautonomic problems. But, I am now way below bowel tolerance. So, whereas with other illnesses, you only have to consider bowel tolerance, with our ailment, you have to consider the activating effect. I may try tapering up more slowly again, because, really, I did it too fast for someone with dysautonomia. ;)
Assorted notes --
-- Linus Pauling was the only person to win two unshared Nobel Prizes, second awarded for 1962, but given in Oct 1963 on day nuclear test ban treaty signed.
-- ray34iyf and Mixter on pp experimented with high dose Vit. C -- second half 2010
-- Altostrata has reported noticeable anxiety relief from low dose Vit. C
-- The Mood Cure -- p. 111 -- Vit C counters adrenal depletion, very good at mega, even IV doses for detox, sometimes completely takes care of benzo w/d
http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/faq.shtml
http://www.orthomed.com/titrate.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C_megadosage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Hoffer
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=252375
http://www.heal-me.com.au/vitc-project.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy -- Vit. C not linked to scurvy until 1932!!! Wiki -- The knowledge that consuming foods containing vitamin C is a cure for scurvy has been repeatedly rediscovered and reforgotten into the early 20th century (Cegłowski 2010).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C
-- you need and can tolerate much more Vit C if you are sick or stressed
-- take Vit C to bowel tolerance
-- all mammals manufacture Vit C, except us
-- Pauling took 12,000 mg per day regularly; 40,000 when fighting a cold; lived to 93
-- Everything Pauling thought is being vindicated slowly, including recently
-- Vit C more important for brain and eyes than we realized
-- We are all chronically deficient; heart disease is the result of lifelong deficiency; people would die less of leukemia if they weren't dying of severe Vit C deficiency
-- Vit C counters excess hormones
-- mega-dose Vit C helps Alzheimers
-- People use Vit C to enhance drug trips, or mellow drug trips -- Erowid
-- Vit C helps with paranoia and adrenal depletion on LSD trips
-- Vit C reduces neurotoxicity and serotonin depletion caused by MDMA
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mdma...article3.shtml
-- More than 99.99% of animal species synthesize vitamin C (ascorbic acid) on average, adjusted for body weight, 5400 mg daily.
-- An indication of the importance of vitamin C to eyesight is the fact that the concentration of vitamin C in the vitreous humor (the clear liquid in the eyeball) is about twenty-five times our serum level (the level in our blood), the retina 100 times.
-- The adrenal glands use more Vit. C than any other part of the body.
-- Cathcart: "Maintenance doses are established by the patient taking bowel tolerance doses 6 times a day for at least a week. He observes if there is any unexpected benefit such as clearing of sinuses, decrease in allergies, increase in energy, etc. Should any chronic problem be benefitted, then the dose is decreased to the minimum amount producing the effect. Otherwise a dose such as 4 to 10 grams a day divided in 3 to 4 doses is recommended. "
-- Abram Hoffer, father of orthomolecular psychiatry, Wiki: "He hypothesised that schizophrenics may lack the ability to remove a hallucinogenic metabolite adrenochrome from their brains and speculated that he could decrease the concentration of adrenochrome in the brain by using vitamin C to reduce adrenochrome to adrenaline and using niacin as a methyl acceptor to prevent the conversion of noradrenaline into adrenaline. Hoffer called his theory the 'adrenochrome hypothesis'....Hoffer theorized that adrenaline, when oxidized to adrenochrome was an endogenous neurotoxin that could cause schizophrenia."
-- So, if depletion of vitamin C causes excess production of cortisol, then it stands to reason that supplementation of vitamin C can reduce excess cortisol production and its associated destructive effects. This connection between stress and cortisol, and vitamin C, has been the focus of a great deal of research.
-- You could eventually develop what is essentially scurvy of the adrenal glands from chronic anascorbemia (Cathcart). He thinks "chronic sub-clinical scurvy" is epidemic.
-- Vit. C is probably epigenetic (Cathcart).
-- Symptoms of Scurvy (Wiki) -- Early symptoms are malaise and lethargy. After 1–3 months, patients develop shortness of breath and bone pain. Myalgias may occur because of reduced carnitine production. Other symptoms include skin changes with roughness, easy bruising and petechiae [broken capillaries and lots of vein bumps] , gum disease, loosening of teeth, poor wound healing, and emotional changes. Dry mouth and dry eyes similar to Sjögren's syndrome may occur.
-- Saying you only need 10 mg of C a day to prevent scurvy and the rest of the C is useless is probably analogous to saying "junk DNA" is useless just because we don't know what it does, and dark matter and energy are useless because we don't know what they do. Failure of imagination.
-- Cathcart -- I think it is only that excess amount of ascorbate not absorbed into the body which causes diarrhea; what does not reach the rectum, does not cause diarrhea.
-- It is interesting to know, when one speculates on the exact cause of this diarrhea, that while a hypertonic solution of sodium ascorbate is being administered intravenously, the amount of ascorbic acid tolerated orally actually increases.
-- Cathcart -- Tolerance doses must be maintained until the patient senses he is completely well, or the symptoms will recur.
-- 99% of mammals manufacture their own Vit. C. We don't. "...animals that make vitamin C on their own, make enormous amounts. Rats, for example, produce 70 mg/kg each day, which for an average human adult would work out to be 5-15 grams (5000 – 15000 mg) each day."
-- Vit C can reverse cognitive dysfunction observed in rats with seizures as well as decrease neuronal injury in rat hippocampus. Arq Neuropsiquiatr. 2010 Aug;68(4):579-85.
Neuronal damage and memory deficits after seizures are reversed by ascorbic acid? Tomé Ada R, Feitosa CM, Freitas RM.
-- Vit C prevents damage from compression-type brain injury. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2010 Jun;30(6):1121-36. Epub 2010 Jan 6. Ascorbic acid prevents blood-brain barrier disruption and sensory deficit caused by sustained compression of primary somatosensory cortex. Lin JL, Huang YH, Shen YC, Huang HC, Liu PH.
