Vitamin C – The Overlooked Miracle Drug

In medical school, there is little or no time spent on vitamins, and thousands of hours of instructions spent on pharmaceuticals (drugs).  As a result, most MD’s are “educationally handicapped” about vitamins.

In the days of “wooden ships and iron men”, the most dreaded disease was scurvy.  It was the result of a lack of vitamin C.  Captain Cook and others found that a little bit of lemon or lime juice every few days prevented it, and kept their sailors better able to do their duty to King and Country.  This is where the term “limey” came to be applied to English sailors.

THE MYTH:  At the beginning of the last century, the then US government became somewhat more worried about the public health than today’s government, and funded several cereal companies to research and find a minimum amount of vitamins that would prevent the deficiency diseases of scurvy, pellagra, and beri-beri.

Of course, the cereal companies were mostly concerned about pellagra and beri-beri, (deficiencies of niacin – then known as B3, and a deficiency of B2.  They already knew that a lime a day or so prevented scurvy.  So, they set up a MINIMUM DAILY ALLOWANCE (MDA) chart. It was (and is) designed to just be enough to prevent these three terrible deficiency diseases.  It has been modified and added to along the way.  Read the rest of this entry »