High Dose Vitamin C

Endorphins provide energy, not just pain relief

Dr. Coleman explains that endorphins do far more than relieve pain. They provide energy and motivation, which is why opioid users feel depleted after quitting and why exercise produces an endorphin high of vibrancy and aliveness.

"endorphins actually give people energy and it's probably even more important than their pain relieving effects and that's why people who are runners and people exercise they'll talk about getting endorphin high really what they're talking about is feeling vibrant and alive and energetic and motivated and ready to do stuff"

Opioid use depletes the body's natural endorphin system

When people use artificial opioids, the body stops producing its own endorphins. Low-dose naltrexone during detox can push the opioids out faster and help the brain recover, shortening the post-acute withdrawal period.

"drugs these opioids that go to the endorphin receptors the body stops making its own endorphins and so it's depleted"

Exercise and social support create a positive recovery feedback loop

Dr. Coleman emphasizes that exercising, eating well, sleeping, and socializing all rebuild natural endorphin levels. The more you push yourself to be active during recovery, the more energy you build, creating a virtuous cycle.

"the obvious thing is to exercise and to push your body to do things that build natural endorphins up and we know what that is it's exercising it's it's motivating it's getting getting around it's not sitting on the couch and complaining about how bad you feel"

70 years of physicians using high-dose vitamins to cure disease

Dr. Saul explains that medical doctors have been using high doses of vitamins to cure disease for 70 years, starting with Dr. Klenner curing polio with vitamin C in the 1940s, but this history has been obscured from public knowledge.

"For 70 years, seven zero years, medical doctors have been using high doses of vitamins to cure disease."

Bowel tolerance dosing and the 150,000 mg post-surgery experience

Dr. Saul explains the bowel tolerance concept where you take vitamin C until gastrointestinal saturation, and shares that after hernia surgery he took 150,000 mg in 23 hours without reaching bowel tolerance.

"Dr. Cathcart's message was when you take oral vitamin C, you take it to bowel tolerance. And that means exactly what you think it means."

Curing viral pneumonia with 2,000 mg every six minutes

Dr. Saul recounts curing his own viral pneumonia by taking 2,000 mg of vitamin C every six minutes while playing Scrabble, bringing his fever down three degrees in three hours and stopping his cough.

"I lined up my vitamin C tablets, and I had a big pitcher of water and a little timer, and every six minutes I took 2,000 milligrams. Six minutes, huh? That's 20,000 an hour. My fever came down three degrees in three hours, and my cough stopped."

Animals make far more vitamin C than the human RDA

Dr. Saul explains that animals produce 2,000-15,000 mg of vitamin C daily per human body weight equivalent, while the US government RDA for humans is under 100 mg, and even the USDA's own guidelines for lab animals recommend 10-15 times more per body weight than for humans.

"But just about every animal, from a flea to a ferret to a flounder to a blue whale, they all make vitamin C. And when you analyze how much a goat, a cat, a dog, a cow makes, it turns out that per human body weight equivalent, they make between 2,000 and 15,000 milligrams a day."

Vitamin C may protect lungs via ACE2 pathway

SARS-CoV-2 enters cells via ACE2 receptors. Acute lung injury downregulates ACE2, worsening damage. Vitamin C may help protect this cascade.

"The SARS-CoV-2 virus enters human cells via the ACE2 receptor. Viral particles bind to the ACE2 receptor, together they are internalized into the cell."

IV vitamin C kills cancer but raises oxalate risk

High-dose IV vitamin C acts as a pro-oxidant to kill cancer cells, but oral doses above 400mg can raise oxalate levels in some people.

"Oral doses of 2,000 milligrams of vitamin C per day raise oxalate levels in most people, and as little as 400 milligrams, possibly lower, raises oxalate in some people."

Linus Pauling's controversial vitamin C advocacy

The hosts discuss how Nobel laureate Linus Pauling fell down a vitamin C rabbit hole, promoting megadoses for lifespan extension and cancer prevention, which spawned decades of research but also set the field back due to controversy and poorly conducted studies.

"He became a major promoter of vitamin C for extended lifespan, extended healthy lifespan, and indeed to prevent the common cold."

High-dose IV vitamin C becomes a pro-oxidant

The critical scientific distinction is explained that vitamin C acts as an antioxidant at normal doses but transforms into a pro-oxidant at high intravenous concentrations, which can damage both cancer cells and healthy cells.

"They work in the body in small, relatively small doses associated with other compounds in food that almost certainly help those vitamins and other micronutrients to work. So vitamin C in doses that you would get in foods is actually an antioxidant. So the oxidative process is part of that aging process. It's the toxicity of oxygen, essentially rusting your tissues from the inside out. So the idea here is that you have these antioxidants, one of which is vitamin C, which help mop up this process, but not by themselves in association with other bioactive compounds. So, here's the weird thing, which Pauline never actually knew about, and it's only been known about recently. For reasons which are not fully understood, in high doses, particularly when it's given intravenously, it turns into a pro-oxidant."

Vitamin C supplementation has minimal cold prevention evidence

Randomized trials of vitamin C supplementation for common cold prevention show that at best it might shorten symptom duration slightly, contradicting popular claims about its immune-boosting properties.

"people have done randomized trials of vitamin C supplementation in the prevention of the common cold and found that at best it might shorten the duration of symptoms, but that's about it."