Dr. A, a naturopathic physician, explains why humans need dietary vitamin C and how to supplement without side effects. Your body depletes stores fast during stress or illness. The main issue is osmotic diarrhea from too much at once, so divide doses across meals and increase gradually until you hit your personal bowel tolerance.
And if you look at the research, ascorbic acid or buffered ascorbate, Ester-C, liposomal, in different studies, they have different amounts of absorption. But the point is— Hey, it's Dr. A. Welcome to my YouTube channel. I've been involved in teaching and research in the naturopathic and integrative medical communities for 30 years. Been involved in seeing patients with cancer and chronic illness for a very long time. And we use this channel to help patients understand the treatments they're getting, especially in the integrative This came from a question, it's actually around oral use of vitamin C supplements. So I want to break that down real quick and just kind of get the multiple questions answered with one outline that I came up with. So the first thing is vitamin C is critical to get in our diet because we don't make vitamin C. Most other animals make vitamin C. Humans don't. We're missing one of the enzymes in order to do that. And so what do other animals do when they're under stress or they're sick or whatever? Their body makes more vitamin C. We don't make any. So that's That means it has to come from our diet. Now, you can look up on the internet, because we have the internet nowadays, and that is by far the best way to get your baseline vitamin C. But the other thing is we use it every day, and so essentially what we need has to come in within a day or so through our diet, or our levels are going to drop. What else causes our levels to drop? Any inflammation in our body does. Any illness can cause our levels to go to zero. Infections, etc. Anything that basically inflames our body will cause vitamin C levels to drop. So then we need more. So there's a difference between the maintenance dose we might get from our diet that we need regularly, and then the amount we might need when we're fighting off a cold or we've got a long-term illness or other stressors in our life that might be non-infectious, like a motor vehicle accident or physical, mental, emotional stresses. Everything depletes vitamin C. It's one of our primary antioxidants. It works with glutathione and vitamin E to form the base redox triplet that works for our antioxidants. And it's the only water-soluble one that we do not make. Glutathione is water-soluble, but our liver makes glutathione. We know vitamin E is fat soluble and hangs around longer. So when we supplement it, then we're going on top of what we get in the diet. And so let's break down a couple of things. One would be, are there any side effects to oral supplementation of vitamin C? Well, primarily it's going to be digestive upset or diarrhea. And why would that be? If I take too much vitamin C by mouth all at once, I'm going to have an osmotic diarrhea where I'm drawing fluid into my GI tract. And so it's going to loosen up my stools or make runny, you know, watery stools. That's too much. How How do we use that information to adjust dosing? First thing is we can divide the dose and decrease that. So if I'm gonna take 1,500 milligrams, I might do 500 milligrams at each meal. If I'm gonna take 5,000 milligrams, let me divide it up, you know, each meal and bedtime. The next thing though is a concept called bowel tolerance. And this is different amongst each individual. And in one individual, it'll be different between when they're healthy and when they're sick. So your bowel tolerance when you're healthy, you may not need much supplemental vitamin C. And your bowel tolerance when you're sick, you might absorb a whole bunch before you get loose stools. So how do you do bowel tolerance? First thing is divide the dose between the day and then increase the dose. And when you start to feel that your stools are loosening too much, that's too much vitamin C and you back off. Now, if you're healthy and you found it's 1,000 milligrams a day, great. But then if you get sick and you find it can change to be 3,000, 9,000, or higher milligrams, take that much while you're sick. And when your bowels start to loosen up, go back down. That's bowel tolerance. Quick plug here. If you're a healthcare practitioner working with patients with these issues, I have a CE website and I do webinars on this topic and others. So we're going to put a link in the description below to the CE website link and the particular webinar of interest. Thank you. Now, the other shade of questions that we got was around, well, forms of vitamin C. So I have plain ascorbic acid in a capsule. I've got plain ascorbic acid powder that I put in my juice. I've got buffered vitamin C. I have something called Ester-C. What's the difference in these? Is one better than the other, et cetera? Well, Ascorbic acid is an acid, and many people tolerate it very well. It's absorbed very well, and it doesn't give you digestive upset. Now, that's notwithstanding the bowel tolerance thing, but if it doesn't give you digestive upset or any other symptoms, ascorbic acid is just fine. It's usually the cheapest, etc. A buffered vitamin C would be ascorbic acid and then mineral buffers together to decrease the acidity of the ascorbic acid and increase the pH. So an increase in pH is less acidic. Acidity, so buffered vitamin C is often favored by people who do get you know burning in the stomach when they take it, or they're just real sensitive, or they're taking long-term vitamin C and they they have some digestive things. Buffered vitamin C is totally fine to use that. Ester C is a different form of vitamin C that's often used by people with extremely sensitive digestive systems. It absorbs really well. All of these absorb pretty well, pretty universally, and so you can use that also. Now what about, as another questioner asked, the lip Liposomal vitamin C forms. I've heard that that allows me to take more vitamin C. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Need to remember that liposomal nutrients are in a lipid capsule if it's made correctly. And the idea behind that is that the nutrient that's in this little liposome, little capsule, goes and the lipid part takes you through a different absorption pathway than the water-soluble part of the nutrient or the drug or whatever that's in the liposome. So liposomal preparations are supposed to make you absorb more. With vitamin C, they might, but also you've got all this lipid going in, and sometimes the lipid itself can be so much because you're trying to take so much vitamin C and you've got so much liposome. Some people get digestive symptoms just from all that lipid administration. So there's none of the forms of vitamin C that are bad. They all absorb pretty well. And if you look at the research, ascorbic acid itself or buffered ascorbate, ester-C, liposomal. They, in different studies, they have different amounts of absorption, but the point is they all do absorb. Now, if you're really going for the gold and you're doing really high doses, the first thing is you want to divide it up through the day. You want to watch for bowel tolerance. If you hit bowel tolerance, you might want to try with high dose, try liposomal. Some people, like I say, it works for and the bowel tolerance is not an issue. Some people it is. Well, I hope that answers all of the questions we got about orally administered vitamin C. That's what we do on this channel is answer your questions. Please like, share, subscribe, do notifications, comment, all that stuff. We really appreciate all of you subscribers, new and previous, current, and the community's growing. We're really happy about that. I'll see y'all in the next video.
