Vitamin C

[[File:Lemon.jpg|top right|thumb|165px|Feel free to make lemonade with the lemons that life gives you. Just don't go around selling it as a cure for cancer.]]
{{Biology}}
[[File:Sample of ascorbic acid.jpg|right|thumb|165px|What vitamin C looks like in powdered form.]]
[[File:Ascorbic acid structure.svg|right|thumb|165px|Chemical structure of vitamin C.]]
'''Vitamin C''', also known as '''ascorbic acid''' (chemical formula '''C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>8</sub>O<sub>6</sub>'''), is a micronutrient, and likely the most common in supplements. Humans require it in small doses to promote normal bodily functions and to prevent the onset of pirate disease.<ref>[https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-c/ Vitamins and minerals - Vitamin C] ''National Health Service of the United Kingdom''</ref><ref group=note>Or scurvy, if you want to be all boring about it.</ref> It is found in fruits, vegetables and the artificial supplements obnoxious [[woo]] peddlers force on the unsuspecting masses in order to get their hard earned [[money]].

==The facts==
Every human needs vitamin C in their diet, since it cannot be produced by the body. It's necessary for the production of collagen (a type of structural [[protein]]) and certain hormones. It also facilitates the body's natural responses when it comes to blood clotting and infections. Since vitamin C dissolves in [[water]], the body can't store it for later use — the body absorbs what it needs and any excess is peed out. This is why it has to be consumed every single day.<ref>[https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002404.htm Vitamin C] ''MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia'' 2 February 2019</ref> 

The amount that a person needs depends on factors like age, biological sex, [[pregnancy]] and [[smoking]]:
<center>
{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="6"|Recommended daily intake of Vitamin C
|-
|Infants 0 to 6 months
|40 milligrams
|-
|Infants 7 to 12 months 
|50 milligrams
|-
|Children aged 1 to 3 
|15 milligrams
|-
|Children aged 4 to 8 
|25 milligrams
|-
|Children aged 9 to 13 
|45 milligrams
|-
|Females aged 14 to 18
|65 milligrams
|-
|Males aged 14 to 18
|75 milligrams
|-
|Females aged 19 and over
|75 milligrams
|-
|Males aged 19 and over
|90 milligrams
|}
</center>

Pregnancy and [[breastfeeding]] require an increased intake (as high as 120 milligrams for a breastfeeding adult) and smokers need an ''additional'' 35 milligrams everyday on top of their recommended daily intake.<ref>[https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/vitamin-c/ Vitamin C - The Nutrition Source] ''Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health'' March 2020</ref> Seeing as how an average orange has around 53 milligrams of vitamin C in it,<ref>[https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/169097/nutrients Oranges, raw, all commercial varieties] ''FoodData Central (U.S. Department of Agriculture)'' 1 April 2019</ref> it's not particularly hard to hit the necessary targets without taking artificial supplements. 

There ''is'' such a thing as an upper limit, though it's quite high, because of the whole water soluble thing. It's about 2,000 milligrams a day. Excessive consumption can lead to side effects, none of them positive (unless one considers stuff like vomiting, headaches and diarrhoea a positive).<ref>[https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/vitamin-c/faq-20058030 Is it possible to take too much vitamin C?] ''Mayo Clinic''</ref>

==The nonsense==
{{Cquote|75% of all [[cancer]] can be prevented and cured by vitamin C alone.|||[[Nobel Prize]] winner [[Linus Pauling]], [[PIDOOMA|pulling numbers directly out of his ass]]<ref name="Gorski">[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/high-dose-vitamin-c-and-cancer-has-linus-pauling-been-vindicated/ High dose vitamin C and cancer: Has Linus Pauling been vindicated?] ''Science-Based Medicine'' 18 August 2008</ref>}}

The promotion of vitamin C as a cure for various ailments has been going on for decades, but the most prominent advocate of the supplement was one Linus Pauling. From 1968 until his death in 1994, Pauling claimed that taking doses of vitamin C multiple times above the recommended limit set by medical authorities had numerous health benefits, such as the slowing of aging, the curing of the common cold and the treating of cancer. The doses that he advocated were in the ''thousands'' of milligrams; he claimed that he took around 12,000 milligrams a day when he was healthy and 40,000 milligrams when he had a cold.<ref name="Barret">[https://quackwatch.org/related/pauling/ The Dark Side of Linus Pauling’s Legacy] ''Quackwatch'' 14 September 2014</ref> 

Considering that he aged normally like the rest of us mere mortals, had regular colds and eventually ''died of cancer'' one might think that his claims shouldn't be of relevance to anybody. And yet, because of his prestigious academic background, Pauling was regularly held up by hacks as an authority on the subjects of nutrition and medicine.<ref group=note>He had no qualification in either of the fields, however. His Doctorate was in chemistry, as was his [https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1954/pauling/facts/ first Nobel Prize. His second one was for Peace.]</ref> He was invited to give talks at events organized by health-food companies and practitioners of [[CAM]] treatments, published numerous books and articles on the powers of vitamin C and even set up his own "scientific institute", which spent most of its resources on producing [[pseudoscience]] and silencing his critics.<ref name="Barret"/> 

The popularity of vitamin C didn't die with Pauling; his ideas are still widely circulated by well known sources of [[woo]], such as [[NaturalNews]]<ref>[https://www.naturalnews.com/042541_vitamin_C_natural_cures_Andrew_W_Saul.html Vitamin C proven to cure over 30 major diseases] ''NaturalNews'' 17 October 2013</ref> and {{wpl|Patrick Holford||,}}<ref>[https://www.patrickholford.com/advice/why-we-all-need-to-supplement-vitamin-c Why We All Need to Supplement Vitamin C] ''Patrick Holford'' 28 February 2010</ref> as well as the small army of [[naturopath]]s,<ref>[https://www.torontonaturopathicmedicine.ca/vitamin-c-more-than-you-care-to-know-about-it/ Vitamin C – More than you care to know about it!] ''Toronto Centre for Naturopathic Medicine'' 14 Sepetember 2018</ref> [[Chiropractic|chiropractors]]<ref>[https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/health-care/article242040291.html KC chiropractor publicizing IV Vitamin C for coronavirus. Doctors say it’s ‘dangerous’] ''The Kansas City Star'' 16 April 2020</ref> and other assorted [[cranks]]. Are any of their claims backed by factual evidence?

===Cure for cancer===
No high quality evidence exists that would prove that vitamin C cures cancer. This isn't for lack of trying to find [[evidence]] though; there have been numerous studies carried out to examine the effects the vitamin might have on tumours.<ref name="Gorski"/> It's just that all the properly-designed experiments found that it's completely worthless<ref name="Mayo">[https://quackwatch.org/related/cancer/c/ High Doses of Vitamin C Are Not Effective as a Cancer Treatment] ''Quackwatch'' 3 October 2011</ref> and the dodgy experiments that the media occasionally makes a big song and dance about don't even have results that are all that impressive.<ref>[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-return-of-the-revenge-of-high-dose-vitamin-c-for-cancer/ The return of the revenge of high dose vitamin C for cancer] ''Science-Based Medicine'' 10 February 2014</ref>

In the 1970s, Pauling and his colleague Dr Ewan Cameron published reports about two groups of cancer patients — the test group, made up of 100 cancer patients under the care of Dr Cameron, received 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C daily. Then the records of 1,000 cancer patients who were ''not'' treated with vitamin C were dug up from the hospital records — this was their "[[control group]]". Upon comparing their test group with their [[cherry-picking|cherry picked]] control group, they concluded that (drumroll, please): in the patient group receiving vitamin C "there is a 3-fold increase in survival time, measured from the date when the cancer was pronounced untreatable." Oh. So they weren't cured? How disappointing… but, they lived longer than the control group, right? Well, no, actually. "The date when the cancer was pronounced untreatable" varied ''hugely'' between the test group and the control group, because they were done by different doctors. Dr Cameron's 100 hand picked patients were declared untreatable at much earlier stages of their cancers, compared to the 1000 control patients. The fact that test and control patients were not matched by the stages of their diseases was a big design flaw, to say the least. Three subsequent studies carried out by the Mayo Clinic sought to test Pauling's claims and concluded that when all interfering variables are eliminated, vitamin C does ''nothing beneficial'' to patients suffering from terminal cancer.<ref name="Mayo"/>      

===Cure for the common cold===
Claims of vitamin C preventing or curing the common cold have also been rejected by high quality, [[Peer review|peer-reviewed]] scientific papers.<ref>[https://theconversation.com/health-check-should-i-take-vitamin-c-or-other-supplements-for-my-cold-98309 Health Check: should I take vitamin C or other supplements for my cold?] ''The Conversation'' 5 August 2018</ref> There have been dozens of studies examining the efficacy of vitamin C, given before a cold as a preventative measure or during a cold as a treatment. Some studies looked at taking vitamin C intravenously via injection, some orally in pill form. Regardless of timing, dosage or method of administration, vitamin C performed no better than the [[placebo]]s and in the cases where the vitamin C group ''did'' see differences, the change in symptoms and reduced duration of sickness was so minuscule as to be [[Statistical significance|statistically insignificant]].<ref>[https://quackwatch.org/related/DSH/colds/ Vitamin C: Do High Doses Prevent Colds?] ''Quackwatch'' 18 May 2002</ref>
  
===Cure for COVID-19===
[[File:Clinic offering 10000 JPY covid-19 antibody testing and same price Vitamin C.jpg|thumb|right|165px|Japanese clinic selling both COVID tests and vitamin C]]
In early 2020 as [[COVID-19]] was starting to sweep the globe, vitamin C was being touted as a cure for the scary new disease. These claims, made by people with PhDs in [[bullshit]] quickly went viral on [[social media]],<ref>[https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-coronavirus-vitaminc-idUSKCN21X2PV False claim: Vitamin C cures the new coronavirus] ''Reuters'' 15 April 2020</ref> but luckily debunking them isn't particularly tedious, mostly because they have provided [[Logical razor#Hitchens.27 razor|no credible evidence to back up their claims]]. Although the claim of "vitamin C is necessary for the immune system and the immune system fights COVID" is harmless enough, the idea that ''extra'' vitamin C will give someone an ''extra'' powerful immune system capable of fighting off a new viral disease is unfounded<ref>[https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-its-time-to-debunk-claims-that-vitamin-c-could-cure-it-132803 Coronavirus: it’s time to debunk claims that vitamin C could cure it] ''The Conversation'' 9 March 2020</ref> — even if the person making such a claim is [[naturopath|cosplaying as a real doctor]] and offers to inject the damn thing directly into your bloodstream.<ref>[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/naturopaths-exploit-covid-19-with-unproven-treatments-and-self-promotion/ Naturopaths exploit COVID-19 with unproven treatments and self-promotion] ''Science-Based Medicine'' 9 April 2020</ref>

==See also==
*[[Vitamin D]]
*[[Megavitamin therapy]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

{{foodbox}}

[[Category:Alternative medicine]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Chemicals]]
[[Category:Diet woo]]
[[Category:Food supplement woo]]

Categories: Alternative medicine, Biology, Chemicals, Diet woo, Food supplement woo