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Irwin Stone's initial report of such benefit to a cancer patient from oral doses of ascorbate at 80 to 150 grams a day is striking; his report of such high measured blood levels of ascorbate is astounding. It is a clear and uncomfortable challenge to all physicians, dietitians, and governmental bodies that a sick human organism can in fact absorb quite a bit more than a few hundred milligrams of ascorbate ("vitamin" C) daily. -- Andrew Saul
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THE VITAMIN
Vitamin C Foundation
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Last Update: Thu Sep 24 10:27:48 EDT 2020



More info in Kalcker's book Forbidden Health.




Intravenous high-dose vitamin C for the treatment of severe COVID-19: study protocol for a multicentre randomised controlled trial.


Listen to world renowned vitamin C expert and cardiologist Dr. Thomas Levy talk about the science behind vitamin C and what it has been proven to do.

  • 1:13:15 - intro to nebulizer
  • 1:14:45 - hydrogen peroxide
  • 1:17:00 - nebulize 3% hydrogen peroxide - cold gone
  • 1:21:00 - "Usually you use 3% H2O2 straight" - dilute for babies


A health and wellness facility in Michigan that was treating potential Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) patients with intravenous vitamin C has been raided and shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for allegedly committing "fraud."

According to Dr. Charles Mok of the Allure Medical Spa, the FBI and HHS took issue with the facility's decision to offer "high-dose, intravenous vitamin C to all essential workers who are exposed to COVID-19," even though this is exactly what China, South Korea, and other countries have been doing to treat their patients.

The two federal agencies reportedly stormed the facility on 26 Mile Road and Van Dyke in Shelby Township just before 8 am on April 23, and proceeded to haul out boxes of medical records and other "evidence," sorting it into three makeshift tents. All of those involved with the raid were seen wearing full-body protective gear, including gas mask-type face coverings.



https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/bF2YhJKiOfe1yimBc4XwOA

http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v16n12.shtml
Vitamin C and treating the coronavirus
New York Hospitals are using Vitamin C to Treat Some Coronavirus Patients
Ascor™ – Ascorbic Acid Injection, USP


Owen Fonorow at the Vitamin C Foundation states that the cure for all viruses is to build up our own immune systems. Vaccines assist the immune system, but it's the immune system that's essential. People only die from a virus when their immune system is compromised.

Vitamin C is essential for the immune system. You must keep a certain level of Vitamin C in your body to have a working immune system. If you can't eat five oranges a day, or five other fruits high in Vitamin C, 250mg of Vitamin C supplements will give your body what it needs to keep an average person's immune system going strong. In cases of impaired immunity, caused by chronic diseases or poor nutrition, the foundation recommends higher doses of at least 3000mg daily.

Remember, the cure for all viruses is the immune system.

Shanghai Government Officially Recommends Vitamin C for COVID-19
Vitamin C Blood Levels can be Higher from Oral Intake than Intravenous Infusion in the Early Minutes

Collection of Vitamin C Therapeutics Against Covid-19


Indeed, Marik, who remains a strong proponent of this approach, rejects the findings of the study. He tells NPR that by his reckoning, patients in the study received treatment far too late in the course of their disease. "It's like giving it to a patient who's dead," he says. "It's of no benefit. The horse was out of the barn miles beforehand."

Marik, at Eastern Virginia Medical School, gives his patients the vitamin C infusion as quickly as he recognizes signs of sepsis. That's impossible to do in a study in which participants must be enrolled in a study and then randomized into one of the two comparison groups before treatment can begin.

"The question is, why does this study not replicate real-life experience and the experience of hundreds of clinicians around the world?" he asks.

Marik says in his experience, the treatment is only effective if given within six hours after someone has suspected sepsis. At the meeting in Belfast, Dr. Tomoko Fujii, on the study research team at Monash University, said they provided treatment an average of 12 hours after patients arrived in the intensive care unit. Patients came from a variety of locations, including the emergency room, and she said they have no information about how long they had been septic before arriving at the ICU.

Deathbed Scurvy By Bill Sardi


Greetings,
We are using your product at our clinic and having demonstrated clinical success in reversing atherosclerosis (dosage is in range of 5000-10000 mg/ day). We are confirming the results with a capillary retinopathy diagnostic.

"At least 70 pharmaceutical drugs are on the market after passing clinical trials based on fraudulent data provided by a California doctor," said Kurt Eichenwald, an investigative reporter for The New York Times...

Scientific American: FDA Lets Drugs Approved on Fraudulent Research Stay on the Market




Vitamin C and hydrocortisone appear to be designed by nature to naturally interact with each other to optimize the antioxidant impact in diseased and infected tissues, and to directly promote the recovery of their normal functions while accelerating their healing.


Linus Pauling taught us in his 1970 and 1986 books how important vitamin C is to children, reducing blood levels of lead, and helping to avoid the associated mental decline.


The media is full of false medical news stories. Only you can hold them accountable for lies about prescription drugs, and lies about alternatives to conventional medicine.


In a final test, the researchers grew breast cancer cells in the lab and introduced a wide variety of FDA-approved cancer drugs. Several treatments, including vitamin C, suppressed lactate dehydrogenase production.

When vitamin C was injected into stressed mice, tumors shrank.










A recent phase I human trial (2018) published in the medical journal Cancer Research evaluated the effect of intravenous vitamin C and usual traditional therapy on advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma. The study demonstrated that intravenous vitamin C in combination with the usual chemotherapy (gemcitabine) and radiation therapy almost doubled survival time (21.7 months compared to 12.7 months) and the time of no progression of disease increased threefold compared to their control (13.7 months vs 4.6 months).

In addition, the intravenous vitamin C protected normal cells from the toxic effects of radiation therapy.






"Scientists from the University of Iowa have confirmed that high doses of vitamin C does selectively kill cancer cells without damaging normal cells: one study shows it to reduce mutations that cause cancer in mice, and another shows it can kill up to 50% of human lymphoma cells."






Vitamin C supplmentation may reduce the harms of smoking to a pre-born infant's lungs if the mother is unable to quit smoking during pregnancy, according to a new study. The findings proceed previous proof that daily supplemental vitamin C for pregnant women who smoke improved newborns' pulmonary functions.

Though vitamin C supplementation has been proven to preserve infants' airways, McEvoy emphasized that getting expecting mothers to quit smoking during pregnancy "has to be priority one."


After a year, all the studies have been confirming (See: Researcher's Confirm Marik's Sepsis Treatment)

The interesting aspect is that most doctors are not familiar with hydrocortisone, the bioidentical equivalent to our natural hormone cortisol. hey are much more familiar with the drug-analogs, such as prednisone. But this Sepsis treatment specifically makes use of hydrocortisone. ER doctors, at least, have some learning to do.


Owen Fonorow, founder and director of the non-profit Vitamin C Foundation, and author of the best selling Amazon book, Practicing Medicine Without A License, (2003), first established the web site PaulingTherapy.com in 1996 after watching a Linus Pauling video lecture: The Unified Theory of Heart Disease (Video released circa 1992). Pauling was age 92, lucid and described his invention that has turned out to be a way to completely control cardiovascular disease – exactly as 2-time unshared Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling thought it would. The story of the cure and suppression are at PaulingTherapy.com.

Owen has always thought the suppression of vitamin C was the greatest suppression of alternative medicine, and his now evolving second book, on that subject, is available online at no cost: The Great Suppresion

Turns out, it isn't. The suppression of vitamin C isn't the greatest. There is a much larger suppression, but that is the story to add to the book. THE CURE FOR EVERYTHING. Safer than vitamin C. Orthomolecular. Can and should be given to pregnant women. Yet doctors are told, and they believe, it is the most "dangerous" drug they prescribe. Stay tuned.

Owen was In the hospital a few days ago, preparing for a major major surgery to remove a large defective hernia mesh. The surgeon wanted an assurance Owen's heart was okay for the surgery. Owen "knew it was," but since he was in the hospital anyway, everyone agreed that it was a good idea to have cardiology evaluate his heart. (Lots of stress lately, so Owen didn't know what the result would be.)

The Cardiologist verbal report given to Owen was that even at age 64, NOTHING COULD BE FOUND WRONG WITH HIS HEART. EVERYTHING NORMAL, NO BLOCKAGES OR ENLARGEMENTS. NO FLUIDS. NO INDICATION OF A FUTURE HEART ATTACK. (Copy of the doppler report is the second post in the forum link)

Owen has been proselytizing the so-called Pauling Therapy for heart disease (a term he invented to honor Pauling, and even wrote the best selling Amazon book (in its category) PRACTICING MEDICINE WITHOUT A LICENSE (now available in Amazon Kindle format). Owen knew there were callers, FDA 'plants,' investigating what he was saying over the phone, so he stopped taking phone calls, in favor of recommending the book. He titled the book because he was carefully advising callers over the phone – heart patients and doctors – to ignore a specialist, their cardiologists, and listen to Linus Pauling instead.

Patient after patient with severe Heart Disease, AND NO OTHER CONVENTIONAL OPTIONS, quickly recovered. Almost no exceptions. See the tip of the iceberg correspondence from all these happy people whose pain went away predictably in 10 days, and who not only could start walking, but then started painting their homes after 30 days on Pauling's correct dose therapy! (The first three case reports are on the Pauling unified theory lecture video)

Can you believe there has never been a SINGLE study (outside of Pauling's associate Matthias Rath) published to test Pauling's invention and unified theory? Most cardiologists will tell patients there is no proven value in vitamin C for heart disease. They're right. There isn't any "proven" value, because no one has tried to prove it – or disprove it. It simply works like a miracle in days. When it doesn't, we analyze cases at our forum, so we find out what is wrong (perhaps high blood sugar) and forum readers can monitor in real-time. We never know what will happen. Very few cases are intractable.

One thing from Owen's 2018 doppler (and previous perfect Thallium stress test in 2010/2011), it doesn't prove Pauling was right (he was), but it does prove that taking Pauling's therapy religiously as Owen does HAS NOT HURT IS HEART.


Scientists have discovered that vitamin C promotes the repair of the myelin sheath surrounding neurons, making it a potential treatment for multiple sclerosis.

In this study, a research group led by Professor Xie Xin at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica of the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that vitamin C greatly enhances the differentiation of oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPC) to oligodendrocytes (OL). OLs form myelin sheaths by wrapping around neurons in the CNS. The researchers established a high-throughput screening system to identify small molecule compounds that may promote OPC to OL differentiation. They found that vitamin C facilitates the formation of myelin sheaths in a co-culture of OPCs and neurons. Furthermore, vitamin C promoted the repair of myelin sheaths in vivo, as well as provided significant therapeutic effect in an animal model of multiple sclerosis. Interestingly, vitamin C’s function in promoting OPC differentiation is not related to its antioxidant activity. Rather, the researchers suggested that an intracellular mechanism might be involved.


I was born and raised in a household where we used vitamins instead of medicines.

Consequently, I am very familiar with utilizing high-dose vitamin C to prevent and cure illness. Now that I have children of my own, vitamins help keep them healthy, too. I think you can do the same for your family.


Fasting Enhances Chemotherapy - Fasting Benefits May Exceed Any Cancer Drug

Starting around minute 40, the USC research is discussed that found fasting mice can survive 2 to 3 times the ordinary cancer chemotherapy dosage that is allowed in humans, while the mice on a regular diet all die. In other words, a fasting mouse can survive a high toxic load.

The major finding is that the gene expression makes cancer cells MORE susceptible to chemo, and fasting even kills cancer cells without chemo.

The documentary reviews 60-years of untranslated Russian research into the unexpected health benefits of fasting. The clinics in Russia and Germany use 25 to 30 days of fasting, and the film goes on to explain how the gene expression (that changes in 2 days) explains many of the benefits.




"Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common cause of chronic liver disease in children, and the prevalence of pediatric NAFLD has increased rapidly over the past two decades."



A retrospective study was conducted that compared 47 patients given the Vitamin C based treatment with a control group that received standard treatment. The results were astounding. In the Vitamin C group, only four patients died from sepsis, representing less than 9 percent of the experimental group, while 40 percent in the control group died. In a follow-up study treating 150 patients with Vitamin C, only one death from sepsis was recorded.


(Colon and Pancreatic Cancers)
The use of high-dose IV vitamin C is being studied in both colon cancer and pancreatic cancer. The way that vitamin C targets the KRAS-mutated cell is through the Warburg effect in which cells travel through a pathway where their energy metabolism is affected when they receive high-dose vitamin C. In a sense, it is a metabolic killing of the cell, forcing the cells into oxidative phosphorylation rather than the glycolytic pathway.



Vitamin E is particularly important to protect ourselves against dementia. Large studies in the US and Europe have found that elderly people who consumed more than 16mg a day of vitamin E had a 67% lower risk of developing dementia compared with those who consumed little to none. Dementia risk was further reduced by taking vitamin E in combination with vitamin C. Both these vitamins protect brain cells from the harmful effects of toxins and free radicals, while vitamin E has the added benefit of increasing oxygen delivery to the brain.



New research published in the journal Aging finds a compound that stops cancer cells from spreading by starving them of vitamin B-2. The findings may revolutionize traditional chemotherapy.




Records Found in Dusty Basement Undermine Decades of Dietary Advice


MSM, Vitamin C as Magnesium Ascorbyl-Phosphate (MAP) and hair

There is a credible connection between MSM and hair growth. One study looked at the effect of Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) on hair growth in mice. The researchers combined MAP (a form of vitamin C) at 7.5% and MSM at 10% and concluded that results were “comparable to or better than the result in the group treated with minoxidil 5%”.

MSM/MAP study on mice


Drs. Passwater and Saul discuss the many known health benefits of high-dose vitamin C.


In the diabetic group, the levels of serum urea and creatinine, skin lipid peroxidation and nonenzymatic glycosylation levels increased, but skin glutathione levels decreased. Treatment with vitamin C, vitamin E and Se reversed these effects. The present study showed that vitamin C, vitamin E and Se exerted antioxidant effects and consequently may prevent skin damage caused by streptozotocin-induced diabetes.


Nutritional deficiencies resulting from insufficient intake or absorption of nutrients critical to human health are now a recognized risk factor for psychiatric disorders," the authors write.


Overall, our findings implicate tobacco-smoke oxidant(s) as the primary etiopathogenic factor behind both the noncellular and cellular damage mechanisms governing emphysematous lung injury and demonstrate the potential of vitamin C to accomplish holistic prevention of such damage.


These findings, published in Free Radical Biology and Medicine, suggest that vitamin C deficiency could contribute to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s through altered mitochondrial function and that avoiding deficiency through diet and supplementation could protect against disease onset.


In the middle-aged (MA) mice, oral administration of vitamin C significantly inhibited wrinkle formation, skin atrophy, and loss of elasticity through increasing collagen and elastic fiber. The increase in transepidermal water loss and the decrease in skin hydration were recovered by vitamin C treatment in the MA mice. Overall, vitamin C effectively prevents cellular senescence in vitro and in vivo suggesting it has protective potential against natural aging of the skin.


More support for the Sen et. al Vitamin C (and B3) findings (below).
This prospective cohort study with quantitative assessment of supplemental intakes suggests a potential protective effect of several antioxidants (vitamins C and E and Se) on digestive cancer risk, and a modulation of some of these relationships by alcohol consumption and smoking status.

The results in a cohort over 38,000 were so strong and compelling the authors stated: Healthcare professionals may promote intake of these antioxidants in healthy amounts in order to reduce the incidence of this type of malignancy


For the first time in the history of science a group of researchers found that higher doses of vitamin C and Niacin, or vitamin B3, destroy cancer stem cells.

Published in the journal Cell Biology International, the study investigated both low and high doses of vitamin C and Niacin on stem cells tumors of the intestine. Different dosages produced opposite effects.

Thus, it was found that when taking vitamin C to create a concentration of 5-25 micromole/L of vitamins C and B3, which is a low dosage, there is a process of active reproduction of stem cells tumors of the intestine. At high dosages (creating concentrations of 100 to 1,000 micromoles) these stem cells are destroyed.

Foundation Press Release

The Vitamin C Foundation calculates that continuous oral supplemental oral intakes of vitamin C can achieve the study's reported cancer-lethal concentrations in the blood. The normal lab range for vitamin C is 0.4 mg/dl to 1.5 mg/dl, (23 to 85 μM/L). The Indian study results indicate that a 100 μM concentration (1.76 mg/dl) is the low end of the cancer-lethal range, or just above steady state. Sustaining this level requires continuous vitamin C supplementation, as long advocated by vitamin C experts Steve Hickey and Hilary Roberts, PhDs. While intravenous vitamin C can exceed the 10,000 μM by 2.5 times (e.g. 440 mg/dl or 24,983.2 μM/L ) this is apparently suboptimal, and it is difficult to keep people on constant intravenous vitamin C infusions.

The low range (5 to 25 μM) that promotes the growth of cancer stem cells equals a lab range of 0.08 to 0.44 mg/dl which is below normal and can easily be raised through regular vitamin C supplementation.

The answer to the question of what oral dosage is required is:

A 1 g oral dose of AA can raise plasma AA to 130 µmol/L within an hour and such doses at intervals of about two hours throughout the day can maintain ~230 µmol AA/L

Cheryl A Krone, John A Ely, Journal of the New Zealand Medical Association, 23-August-2002, Vol 115 No 1160, Glycohaemoglobin and ascorbic acid)

Note: The current government RDA for vitamin C, and the dosage recommendations currently from the Linus Pauling Institute, promote Cancer Stem Cell (CSC) proliferation that spawns malignacies. According to the findings of researchers Sen, et. al., the dosage for cancer patients needs to be much higher to avoid spawning new aggressive cancers.

(Forum Discussion)

The Sen study is published in the journal Cell Biology International. Note: Pauling and Robinson are vindicated! They were both right.

Read more on our Cancer page...

Facebook Video - Linus Pauling 1986 Interview: Cancer and Vitamin C


White Paper Press Release


We are pleased that many more people will now learn about Linus Pauling's non-prescription invention and therapy for heart disease.


Federal Death Administration (FDA) Attacks Vitamin C Foundation


Sign the Petition

Creating Our New Mission...

VitaminCFoundation.ORG's mission: Change FDA law that turns non-toxic vitamin C into a "drug" because we tell the truth and say that vitamin C prevents, mitigates and/or cures disease.

Why not let the tiny Vitamin C Foundation share the health benefits of vitamin C with the public? Sign the Petition

Government bureaucrats would rather see American's suffer and die than allow the Vitamin C Foundation tell the truth. The bureaucrats would probably counter that they are simply following the law. If so, the law is immoral and needs to change. Sign the Petition

The FDA law and its interpretation doesn't promote the general welfare, improperly regulates free speech, harms most Americans after draining their savings on dangerous and unnecessary health care, all the while feeding a corrupt medical system. Sign the Petition

In the spring of 2017, after more than 20 years online, the FDA sent us a warning letter. Our attorney's advised us that this web site cannot have links positive scientific studies about vitamin C if we also sponsor and have links to any vitamin C products.

Whose interests do you think the FDA is really protecting? Sign the Petition Maybe vitamin C does threaten the profitablity of medicine?



Attached is our recommendation for amending the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act so that food and dietary supplement products will not be regulated as drugs even if they make disease claims. If you find a Congressman or Congresswoman to introduce it, his or her legislative staff will format it for introduction as an amendment. Draft Amendment for the FDCA


Sign the Petition

Non toxic substances that make people healthier are not drugs. Telling the truth should never be against Federal law.

Drugs should be drugs because taking them might otherwise harm people without regulation.

Chicken Soup is not a drug, no matter what any company selling it says.

The Foundation hired Jonathan Emord and Associates to draft an amendmend to FDA law that alter the wording of the Federal Food and Drug act.

Draft Amendment for your US Representative

Sign the Petition

Read more about our new mission

Read more about the FDA attack

The beginning of the FDA attack against vitamin C (2017)


CBS News Consultant Explains How Special Interests Manipulate the Media


A new way of looking at scurvy we are not all alike and our requirements for vitamin C may differ...

"If the claims for vitamin C are correct, it might replace many lucrative and expensive medications. As they researched their book ASCORBATE, Steve Hickey, PhD, and Hiliary Roberts, PhD, began to wonder if Linus Pauling's offense had been to discuss openly the properties of a substance that threatens the profitability of medicine."


The GREAT SUPPRESSION: of American Alternative Medicine


No Deaths from ANY Vitamin

Zero Fatalities from Any Dietary Supplement, e.g. Minerals, Vitamins, Amino Acids, Herbs, Homeopathic Remedies

(OMNS Jan 16, 2015) There was not even one death caused by any dietary supplement in 2013, according to the most recent information collected by the U.S. National Poison Data System. The new 251-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, published in the journal Clinical Toxicology (1), shows no deaths whatsoever from any dietary supplement.

Additionally, there were zero deaths from any amino acid or herbal product. This means no deaths at all from blue cohosh, echinacea, ginkgo biloba, ginseng, kava kava, St. John's wort, valerian, yohimbe, Asian medicines, ayurvedic medicines, or any other botanical. There were zero deaths from creatine, blue-green algae, glucosamine, chondroitin, melatonin, or any homeopathic remedy.

Furthermore, there were zero deaths from any dietary mineral supplement. This means there were no fatalities from calcium, magnesium, chromium, zinc, colloidal silver, selenium, iron, or multimineral supplements. Reported in the "Electrolyte and Mineral" category were two fatalities from the medical use of "Sodium and sodium salts." These are not dietary supplements.

The U.S. National Poison Data System is "the only comprehensive, near real-time, poisoning surveillance database in the United States. In 2013, poison professionals at the nation's 55 poison centers managed about 2.2 million human poison exposures, with children younger than 6 accounting for about half of all poison exposure cases."

Over half of the U.S. population takes daily nutritional supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet daily, that makes 154,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of over 56 billion doses annually. Since many persons take more than just one vitamin or mineral tablet, the numbers are considerably higher, and the safety of nutritional supplements is all the more remarkable

by Andrew W. Saul, Editor

Read the story at Orthomolecular News



The New Standard of ER Medical Care

When Dr. Thomas E. Levy, MD, JD wrote the book Primal Panacea in 2011, he informed us..

"that not a single hospital in the United States utilized Intravenous Vitamin C."

The Cure for Sepsis - Vitamin C


After Dr. Marik's Vitamin C Cures Sepsis discovery was shown on television it created a new standard of medical care. According to Dr. Levy,

"" The Vitamin C genie is now out of the bottle since the mainstream press inadvertently gave this publicity. Any patient can demand Vitamin C now, or tell the doctor/hospital to face the legal consequences. “It’s all a question of when critical mass is reached, and I think the TV report pushed the issue to that point… ” – Dr. Thomas E. Levy. MD, JD


"That vaccine is killing more African children than diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (Whooping Cough) combined." - Robert F Kennedy, Jr.




In 2007 alone the U.S. Consumer Product and Safety Commission recalled 338 products from China (NPR, 2007b).


Foundation Press Release

Rising costs of sterile vitamin C solution may have unexpected benefits as doctors return to earlier practices.


(PDF)

Holistic Doctor Death Series: Over 60 Dead In Just Over A Year

60 Dead Doctors

Press Release July 2015

Feds raid famous autism researcher Bradstreet's office in Buford, GA just before his death

2 More Doctors Go Missing, after 3 Alternative Doctors Found Dead in 2 Weeks


Vitamin C Foundation

Looking for Dr. Robert Cathcart's ORTHOMED Web Site?

After Dr. Robert Cathcart, III, MD passed, his web domain was purchased by a firm in Germany. Fortunately, Dr. Cathcart had the foresight to ask the Foundation to copy his entire domain to our web site.

Dr. Cathcart's original web site now starts from www.orthomed.com/. In other words, prefix this website's domain to the old web addresses/links.

For example, Dr. Cathcart's famous TITRATING TO BOWEL TOLERANCE paper now located www.orthomed.com/titrate.html

Vitamin C Dosage in Disease Cathcart's Bowel Tolerance paper in PDF suitable for printing.


What if All Vitamin C Isn't Created Equal?

Vitamin C comes in many forms. The most common form of vitamin C is Ascorbic Acid (Hydrogen Ascorbate). Vitamin C does not have to be acidic. It is also found in various alkaline forms; the mineral ascorbates: e.g. Sodium Ascorbate, Calcium Ascorbate, Magnesium Ascorbate, Potassium Ascorbate, etc.
Note that all forms are "ascorbates." It is really the "ascorbate" portion of each molecule that has vitamin C activity. Chemists refer to vitamin C as the ascorbate ion, but the ascorbate fraction rapidly attaches to some other ion (e.g. hydrogen, sodium, calcium, magnesium potassium, etc.). Usually, vitamin C is referred to as the most common form: Ascorbic Acid.

(Note ascorbic acid is a weak acid, having about the same acidity as a cola soft drink)

Vitamin C also comes in different shapes in three-dimensional space. The different shapes of the ascorbate fraction have the same atoms, but the atoms are arranged differently, much like the right hand is the same but different than the left hand. This is called chirality in chemistry; Linus Pauling explained that there are exactly four different shapes ("sterioisomers") of the ascorbate ion, and they are L-ascorbate, D-ascorbate, LD-ascorbate and DL-ascorbate.

Thanks to Linus Pauling we know that only the L-ascorbate shape has vitamin C activity, i.e. only the L- shape can cure the vitamin C deficiency disease scurvy.

Read more at our vitamin C Basics page.


Vitamin C Foundation

FDA Disclaimer
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.