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From: howard@metheus.UUCP (Howard A. Landman)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: Vitamin C
Message-ID: <262@metheus.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 9-Aug-84 19:43:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: metheus.262
Posted: Thu Aug  9 19:43:38 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Aug-84 00:49:19 EDT
References: <249@mako.UUCP>
Organization: Metheus, Portland Oregon
Lines: 25

The least anybody says you should get (these days) is 60 mg.  That's the
FDA RDA.  The most anybody says you should get is 12000 mg.  That's Linus
Pauling based on studies of how much C there is in the tissues of animals
that can synthesize their own.  One way to "play it conservative" would be
to take the geometric mean of these, or about 848 mg.  Myself, I lean toward
Linus a little bit, so I take 1000 to 1500 mg daily, spread out into two or
three doses (it works better that way).  It's also worth noting that both
the FDA and Linus have increased their estimates in the last five years (the
FDA used to say 30 mg, Linus used to say 10000 mg), so the high side seems
to be a little bit better bet.

There should normally be no real problems with 4 gm (4000 mg) per day, as long
as you drink enough water to handle the C that eventually gets eliminated in
the urine, and DON'T suddenly go back to not taking any.  Your body adjusts
to the amounts of various vitamins it gets, especially in the efficiency of
the digestive uptake.  You should taper up or down any time you are changing
your intake.

	Howard A. Landman
	ogcvax!metheus!howard	(till August 14th)

	"What in the world ever became of Sweet Jane?
	 She's lost her sparkle you know she isn't the same.
	 Living on reds, vitamin C and cocaine
	 All a friend can say is ain't it a shame."