Is intravenous Vitamin C therapy for real?

[Matt]

Posted at: http://www.vitanews.net/Archives2008/IVVitaminC.html

Last week at the LATOC Forum, we were having a pretty interesting discussion on the benefits of intravenous Vitamin C. Forum member Rbrgs posted this excerpt from a recent BBC article about a study where intravenous Vitamin C was given to mice with cancer:

The dose [of Vitamin C] they employed - up to four grams per kilo of bodyweight - was far greater than any that could be achieved using diet or vitamin pills, as the digestive system does not absorb more than a fixed amount taken orally. The mice were bred to have malfunctioning immune systems, then injected with human cancer cells, which as a result, grew quickly into large tumours. The vitamin was then injected into their abdominal cavity. Tumour growth and weight fell by between 41% and 53%, and while in untreated mice, the disease spread rapidly to involve other body parts, no such spread was seen in the vitamin C-treated animals.

The researchers wrote: "These pre-clinical data provide the first firm basis for advancing pharmacologic ascorbate in cancer treatment in humans." The treatment works because a tumour cell is chemically different to a healthy cell. The vitamin C reacts with this chemical make-up, producing enough hydrogen peroxide to kill the cell, while leaving healthy cells unscathed.

Source: http://www.doomers.us/forum2/index.php/topic,22730.0.html

Forum member JAFU chimed in with the following recoungint his experience receiving a Vitamin C IV drip:

I had a bunch of dental work done in Mexico once and they gave me a Vitamin C IV drip. The next day I felt fantastic and my mouth healed up muy pronto.  I don't understand why the IV form works differently but I was shocked at how great I felt after sitting in a dental chair for 5 hours.  If you ever get a chance to get it in IV form go for it. It's awesome stuff.

This reminded me of something Charles Poliquin had mentioned a few years back in an interview he did with T-Nation:

I got bit in the ass by a brown recluse spider and I got mono-like symptoms, and I never felt so bad in my life. I talked to one of my reps, and she referred me to a doctor in Denver and I went to see this guy who treated me with intravenous Vitamin C. First they confirmed that it was a brown recluse spider bite, and I was in danger, basically, of losing my butt cheek.

I got treated with the intravenous Vitamin C and put in a hyperbaric chamber, and within 36 hours I was asymptomatic. I still had a lump of venom in there, and I kept doing the treatments and I got rid of the venom and all the effects.

When you get bit by a brown recluse, you get necrotic fasciaitis, so people who get bit in the nose can lose their nose, people who get bit in the arm can lose their arm, etc, so by doing the super-high dose of Vitamin C — I was getting 180 grams twice a day–by IV, I was able to save my tissue.

However, interestingly, the guy told me that he had to monitor my blood sugar every 20 minutes. He said that such a high dose of Vitamin C has a considerable glycemic response, so I actually had to drink a gallon of grape juice while getting this Vitamin C treatment because my blood sugar levels were just falling,

However, after doing the Vitamin C, and despite ingesting so many carbs, I was actually leaner when I left the clinic!

Then I went on-line and found the research that intravenous Vitamin C changes insulin sensitivity, so I started experimenting on myself. I was at 6% body fat when I started to do 180 grams of Vitamin C twice a week for a month, and I got down to 2.8% body fat without changing anything else. I asked the doctors on my staff to start using the procedure on my athletes and we figured out that in 4 weeks, we could get body composition changes in 4 weeks that we normally get in 10 weeks.

Source: http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=559121

If you're like me, probably one of the first questions that popped into your mind upon reading these articles is if oral administration offers similarly spectacular benefits. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case as Dr. Ronald Hoffman explains on his website:

Studies now suggest that even high dose vitamin C given by mouth is poorly absorbed. Blood levels "max out" at doses of 500 mg given several times during the day. But vitamin C given intravenously is another story. When delivered in a "drip" much higher concentrations of C can be attained. At these higher concentrations, vitamin C has different characteristics than if given orally. While oral vitamin C boosts immunity and assists tissue repair, it is too weak to do much to kill or inhibit cancer cells. But at high doses delivered directly into the bloodstream, it may act to increase levels of hydrogen peroxide deep in the tissues where cancer cells lurk. Peroxide-mediated killing is one of the white blood cells' key mechanisms for fighting cancer.

Source: http://www.drhoffman.com/page.cfm/783

It's worth noting that administration of intravenous Vitamin C is not new. Linus Pauling carried out successful experiments using it back in the 1970s:

In the 1970’s, Dr. Linus Pauling noted that the administration of vitamin C was beneficial for cancer patients, but researchers from the Mayo Clinic later debunked his theory after they claimed to have repeated his studies and noted no benefit. As a result, interest in the use of vitamin C in cancer declined. However, the Mayo Clinic had not actually repeated Pauling’s studies. In most of their studies, they administered vitamin C by mouth while Pauling had used intravenous vitamin C. So, in fact, the routes of administration were vastly different. And now, we know that oral and intravenous vitamin C are not absorbed the same.

Source: http://www.drmagaziner.com/vitamin_c.htm

Some recent studies on intravenous Vitamin-C I found via PubMed.gov:

Intravenous Vitamin C as a Chemotherapy Agent

A series of seven cases are presented in which intravenous vitamin C has been used as antineoplastic agent in the treatment of different types of cancers. The cancers cases reviewed are the following: Renal cell carcinoma (2), Colorectal cancer (1), Pancreatic cancer (1), Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (2) and breast cancer (1). Toxic reactions were not observed at these high doses of intravenous Vitamin C. All patients were prescreened for Glucose 6--phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency before administering intravenous Vitamin C in order to prevent hemolysis.

Source:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15377059

Intravenously Administered Vitamin C as Cancer Therapy

Early clinical studies showed that high-dose vitamin C, given by intravenous and oral routes, may improve symptoms and prolong life in patients with terminal cancer. Double-blind placebo-controlled studies of oral vitamin C therapy showed no benefit. Recent evidence shows that oral administration of the maximum tolerated dose of vitamin C (18 g/d) produces peak plasma concentrations of only 220 micromol/L, whereas intravenous administration of the same dose produces plasma concentrations about 25-fold higher. Larger doses (50-100 g) given intravenously may result in plasma concentrations of about 14,000 micromol/L. At concentrations above 1000 micromol/L, vitamin C is toxic to some cancer cells but not to normal cells in vitro. We found 3 well-documented cases of advanced cancers, confirmed by histopathologic review, where patients had unexpectedly long survival times after receiving high-dose intravenous vitamin C therapy. Tumour pathology was verified by pathologists at the NCI who were unaware of diagnosis or treatment. In light of recent clinical findings and in vitro evidence of anti-tumour mechanisms, these case reports indicate that the role of high-dose intravenous vitamin C therapy in cancer treatment should be reassessed.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/3er74n

Continuous Intravenous Ascorbate in Terminal Cancer Patients:

Case studies suggest that vitamin C, given intravenously at doses of 10-100 grams/day can improve patient well being and in some cases, reduce tumor size. While ascorbate is generally considered safe, clinical data on high intravenous doses is limited. Twenty-four late stage terminal cancer patients were given continuous infusions of 150 to 710 mg/kg/day for up to eight weeks. Blood chemistry and blood count profiles were obtained at roughly one-week intervals while patient health, adverse events and tumor progression were monitored. The majority of patients were vitamin C deficient prior to treatment. Intravenous infusions increased plasma ascorbate concentrations to a mean of 1.1 mM. The most common adverse events reported were nausea, edema, and dry mouth or skin; and these were generally minor. Two Grade 3 adverse events 'possibly related' to the agent were reported: one patient with a history of renal calculi developed a kidney stone after thirteen days of treatment and another patient experienced hypokalemia after six weeks of treatment. White blood cell counts were stable while hemoglobin and hematocrit levels dropped slightly during treatment, consistent with trends observed prior to therapy. Blood creatinine, BUN, glucose, and uric acid concentrations decreased or remained stable during therapy, suggesting that ascorbate infusions did not adversely affect renal function. One patient had stable disease and continued the treatment for 48 weeks. These data suggest that intravenous vitamin C therapy for cancer is relatively safe, provided the patient does not have a history of kidney stone formation.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/3uh48g

[Matt]

BTW, I sent this to my mom last night and it turns out she got an IV infusion of Vitamin C back in the 1980s and thought it was great stuff! (But the doc was a total asshole.) Now I really want to try it if I can find a doc who A) is super reliable and B) reasonably affordable.

[Matt]

Was doing some more googling and found this, an account of one terminally-ill patient's battle to get the hospital to give the vitamin C IV and the (great) results once they did:

After two weeks, the patient was strong enough to take high doses of I.V. vitamin C. Her physician ordered 30 grams of vitamin C given I.V. in Ringer's Lactate solution. One of the nurses said that she had never heard of such a high dose and she would not administer it "because it would kill the patient." She was assured by the author (NR) that patients at The Center and other clinical sites had been given 100 grams and more of I.V. C without any ill effects, and that he had personally taken 60 grams I.V. with no side effects. The nurse was still not convinced. To prove the safety of the I.V. C, the author started an I.V. infusion of 30 grams of vitamin C in Ringer's Lactate on himself. He was seated next to the nurse with the I.V. pole between them. The infusion lasted an hour and all the time the nurse was saying "you are going to die" and wanted witnesses to the fact that she would not be held responsible. As expected, there were no side effects and after further observation for ill effects by the head nurse for several hours, she finally agreed to give the I.V. vitamin C to the patient.

The patient received 30 grams I.V. vitamin C on the first day, 40 the next day and 50 the following day. After the third dose her right arm was completely without swelling and the swelling in her left arm was greatly decreased. Most notably, the infection in her left hand began to resolve, and she did not need to take sublingual morphine for pain. All, including the physician, nurses and patient were very impressed. The physician ordered additional shipments of vitamin C to continue the infusions. Infusions of vitamin C were increased to 100 grams per day, administered over five hours.

Within one week of starting the increased vitamin C infusions, the patient was walking around the halls of the hospital, looking like a new person. As the clinical rotation came to an end, the patient invited everyone connected with the vitamin C treatment to her room for a pizza party. The patient had her hair done and makeup on, something she had not done in the recent past. It was a wonderful pizza party, especially for a terminally ill cancer patient, once bedridden with intractable pain due to disseminated bone metastasis who, previously, was given a few weeks to live. After leaving the hospital, telephone calls were made to the physician to follow up on this patient. He said that she was discharged from the hospital one week after the vitamin C treatments were began. She continued to take high dose I.V. C treatments three times a week at home. Three months after she began the I.V. C treatments she was surviving with resolution of metastasis to the skull as shown on the bone scan.

Source: http://www.healthy.net/scr/Article.asp?Id=699&xcntr=1