What Are the Real Benefits of Taking Vitamin C?

So in the 1930s, from 1935 to 1942 or 1943, they did a series of studies. I think it was in Sheffield, England. I've got the study I can show you. And they had conscientious objectors to the war. And they had them take different amounts of vitamin C to see how long it would take to get scurvy. And doses as low as 10 milligrams of vitamin C per day could prevent scurvy. They experimented with conscientious objectors? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's kind of creepy. 10 milligrams a day. There it is. Yeah. The experience carried out in Sheffield on conscientious objectors to military service. Wow. And just scroll down to the next page, Jamie. That's kind of creepy. You'll see the doses. But yeah, there was 10 milligrams of vitamin C will prevent scurvy. Right. But obviously that's not an optimum level for health. Well, we don't know. No? Because if you look at the amount of vitamin C, they say there that between the 70 milligram group and the 10 milligram group, there was no difference in clinical outcomes. The prevailing thinking is that 10 milligrams is not enough for optimal health. But we don't actually know. There are roles of vitamin C beyond the formation of collagen, which is the main thing that gets broken when we see scurvy, or at least that's the physical manifestations. You get bleeding gums, your teeth fall out. This is all collagenous tissue. The connective tissue in the human body starts to break down because you can't hydroxylate proline residues on the collagen molecule. But when you look at it beyond that, there's actually some pretty good studies. I'll see if I can find one. I've definitely got one in here that shows that if you look at people eating, they did another experiment with excess fruits and vegetables. And they had one group that had small amounts of fruits and vegetables. And now we're going to skip up to 70 milligrams. So it's a little bit more than 10. There's no experiments with long-term 10 milligrams of vitamin C per day. But there's an experiment that compares 70 milligrams of vitamin C per day from low fruits and vegetables to 270 milligrams of fruits and vegetables. 270 milligrams of vitamin C from fruits and vegetables. And there were no clinical differences in those outcomes, in those people. So one group has low fruits and vegetables. One group has high fruits and vegetables. And how long is the study? I think it was eight weeks. I'll pull it up. Is that long enough to see a detrimental effect or a positive net benefit? Well, I think that if you're thinking about things in terms of oxidative stress, that happens pretty quickly. You would definitely, I think, begin to see increased DNA damage. We measure it with this marker called 8-hydroxy, 2-deoxy, guanosine, lipid peroxides, inflammation. I think you would see it. You start to see it pretty quickly when you get lower levels of vitamin C. The higher vitamin C group with more fruits and vegetables certainly had a higher level of vitamin C in their blood. But they didn't have any differences in terms of those markers. So this one is... What about the benefits of vitamin C in fighting off colds and infections? Right. So the interventional studies with that have generally failed. Really? Yeah. But the consensus wisdom is that if you have a virus, take vitamin C. Right. Take vitamin C. Yeah. I'll show you this one. So if you go to the vitamin C folder, Jamie, and then you go to the vitamin C from an evolutionary perspective study, you'll see a list of all the interventional studies with vitamin C. Scroll down to the table two. So one more table down. That one. So you'll see these are interventional studies with vitamin C and there's an RCT there for the common cold. It's a meta-analysis actually, which 11,306 participants and there was no effect on the incidence of the common cold. So this gets into the interesting conversation about epidemiology and I know you know about this, the way that epidemiology is so misleading for us. And if you look at the association of vitamin C in the blood, there's an association with better outcomes. But when we do interventional studies, we don't see it. In this table, you can see no effect on mortality, no effect on the incidence of the common cold, no effect on cardiovascular events, and essentially no decrease in systolic blood pressure with intervention. No effect on the incidences of the common cold, but what about once someone has a cold? That is like when emergency and all these different vitamin C supplements, this is what they're always claiming is that taking it while you have the cold is what's going to reduce the duration of the disease, concluded that vitamin C supplementation has no effect on the incidence of the common cold. However, a modest reduction of symptoms was consistently found in reviewed studies. Yeah, so maybe. So good while you have it. Maybe while you have it. So if you have something, then jack up the dose. Vitamin C is a complex one because there are many things which can lower vitamin C as well. Metabolic dysfunction decreases levels of vitamin C in our body. So the playing field is not always level, right? Okay, so if you have a cold, your vitamin C level is going to be lower. Could be lower. Or if you have a baseline of unhealth, something that's been super relevant with the current COVID conversation. If you have a baseline of ill health or baseline of metabolic dysfunction, sometimes synonymous with insulin resistance, per a given vitamin C intake, there's lower levels of vitamin C in the body. So if you look at animal foods, like if you eat nose to tail, if you're eating a couple ounces of liver per day and some meat per day and other organs, you can get pretty close to 70 milligrams of vitamin C a day, which is basically the RDA. I think the RDA might be 70 or 90 milligrams of vitamin C. Now, this expression nose to tail, a lot of people don't know what we're talking about. What you're talking about is organ meats. Yeah. Yeah, is eating organ meats because most people when they think of eating animal products, they think of just eating tissue, muscle tissue. Episodes of the Joe Rogan experience are now free on Spotify. That's right. They're free from September 1st to December 1st. They're going to be available everywhere, but after December 1st, they will only be available on Spotify, but they will be free. That includes the video. The video will also be there. It'll also be free. That's all we're asking. Just go download Spotify. Much love. Bye-bye. Bye.