Posted on 09/10/2007 6:26:45 PM PDT by Pharmboy
Vitamin C can impede the growth of some types of tumors although not in the way some scientists had suspected, researchers reported on Monday.
The new research, published in the journal Cancer Cell, supported the general notion that vitamin C and other so-called antioxidants can slow tumor growth, but pointed to a mechanism different from the one many experts had suspected.
The researchers generated encouraging results when giving vitamin C to mice that had been implanted with human cancer cells -- either the blood cancer lymphoma or prostate cancer. Another antioxidant, N-acetylcysteine, also limited tumor growth in the mice, the researchers said.
Antioxidants are nutrients that prevent some of the damage from unstable molecules known as free radicals, created when the body turns food into energy. Vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene are among well-known antioxidants.
Previous research had suggested that vitamin C may stifle tumor growth by preventing DNA damage from free radicals.
But researchers led by Dr. Chi Dang, a professor of medicine and oncology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, found that antioxidants appear to be working in a different way -- undermining a tumor's ability to grow under certain conditions.
Figuring out how antioxidants impede tumors should help scientists figure out how they might be harnessed to fight cancer, Dang said. In addition to the cancer types involved in this study, others that might be vulnerable to vitamin C include colon cancer and cervical cancer, he said.
Dang said more research is needed and cautioned against taking high doses of vitamin C based on these findings.
"Certainly we would very much discourage people with untreated cancer to go out and take buckets full of vitamin C," Dang said in a telephone interview.
Linus Pauling argued in the 1970s that vitamin C, also called ascorbic acid, could ward off cancer, but the notion has proved contentious.
Pauling, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry as well as the Nobel Peace Prize, died in 1994.
"Pauling actually had some good evidence that under certain situations vitamin C can prevent tumor formation. It's just the mechanism was really not that clear then," Dang said.
"Now that, I think, we provide relatively compelling evidence of how this works, maybe Pauling is partly right. We shouldn't dismiss him so quickly." Dang added.
The dose makes the poison.
Or, an older version:
"The right dose differentiates a poison and a remedy." Paracelsus.
All Vitamin C now comes from China! No thanks!
random ping—this is NOT a ping list
Nah...they’re still making ascorbic acid in Switzerland and Germany. And here, too.
Toxicology of drugs and vitamins are two different things.
I've read this advice for 30 years now. There's never enough research for vitamins. If statins had similar results, there would be an advertising push starting tomorrow.
ping
“Another antioxidant, N-acetylcysteine, also limited tumor growth in the mice, the researchers said.”
Where can I get me some N-acetylcysteine?
Are you serious?I just bought a jar of crystal Vitamin C powder from Trader Joe’s today.I looked at the label and all it said was Distributed and sold by Trader Joe’s,Monrovia,Ca.
I don’t trust Chinese made products either.
Vitamin C is extraordinarily safe.
So go ahead, folks, load up! Take ten grams or so...
after you spend a couple hours on the crapper, you won’t do it again!
I’m usually in for 4-5 grams a day.
vitamin C should come from food. It’s one of the easiest vitamins to get. If you eat liver you can even get enough without eating any plants (for all you anti-vegetarians out there)
www.lef.org
This is not as simple as it sounds, because ‘a’ may not equal ‘a’. That is, some years ago when they were studying bioflavanoids for their anti-cancer effects, they discovered that for unknown reasons, while they worked in natural substances, when removed from those natural substances as pure bioflavanoids, they didn’t work.
There is a very good chance that what is having the beneficial effect comes not from the chemical being studied, but from a different chemical, or even a complex organic, like a protein, present in tiny amounts with the main chemical.
It may work in the body, but not in cancer cells in a petri dish, because it effects another part of the body that in turn acts upon the cancer cells.
This is really complicated stuff.
You mean it might stimulate the gene that stimulates a particular substance that might be envolved?
I like Ester C.
The Late Dr. Robert Atkins, the Atkins Diet creator, did extensive research into this years before he died. His research showed the same.
I'M CURED!!
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