Overview
Inside a healthy cell, ascorbic acid exists in its oxidized form as dehydroascorbate, where it functions as an oxidant, not as a reducing antioxidant. That oxidized form keeps glutathione, NAD and the rest of the cell's redox system in the highly oxidized state that defines a working, energized cell. Real food, including meat, fruit, milk and fish, supplies abundant vitamin C in this dehydroascorbate form, and a person eating no grains will routinely take in three to four thousand milligrams a day without ever touching a pill. Synthetic ascorbic acid in tablet form, manufactured cheaply since 1956, carries trace heavy metal contamination that produces a storm of free radicals when it meets the iron already present in the body, which is why many get sore throats, bronchitis and allergy symptoms from doses that should be harmless on paper.
Key Points
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Inside the healthy cell, ascorbic acid exists as dehydroascorbate and functions as an oxidant. Dehydroascorbic acid is around eight times more concentrated inside the cell than outside, is relatively hydrophobic, and concentrates in the oily parts of the cell. Its job is to keep glutathione in the disulfide form, which holds proteins in a stable anti-stress configuration. When the cell is injured or pushed into division mode, that oxidized state collapses, glutathione becomes reduced, and measurable ascorbic acid appears where it was not present before.
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Standard food analysis underreports vitamin C because it only measures the reduced form. Meat is extremely rich in dehydroascorbate, which laboratories ignore because they only test for ordinary ascorbic acid. As soon as food is metabolized, dehydroascorbate converts back into ordinary ascorbic acid in the body. Some say Britain's fish and chips diet prevented scurvy because both potatoes and fish contain substantial vitamin C, even though the fish reading would come back near zero on conventional tests. People who avoid bread, pasta and beans typically consume three to four thousand milligrams of vitamin C a day from fruits, meat, milk and fish without supplementing.
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Synthetic ascorbic acid produces free radicals equivalent to a killing dose of x-rays because of trace heavy metal contamination. A free radical chemist dissolved a 500 milligram tablet of reagent grade ascorbic acid, the purest available, in a liter of repeatedly distilled water and measured the result with electron spin resonance. The free radical concentration was equivalent to about 60 grays of x-ray exposure, a lethal dose. Iron alone, present as a contaminant from the manufacturing process, was enough to replicate the reaction. Other heavy metal contaminants were also detectable.
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Reductants like ascorbic acid become powerful oxidants in the presence of iron or copper. When vitamin C meets iron in the body, it reduces the iron from the highly oxidized form to the partly reduced ferrous form, which then transfers electrons to fats, proteins and DNA at random. This is the same mechanism that operates inside a stressed cell when oxygen handling fails. Prenatal vitamins, which combine large doses of iron with large doses of vitamin C, produce this reaction directly in the bottle.
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Manufacturing changed in 1956 and the product has not been the same since. Until 1953 or 1954, vitamin C was sold in 50 milligram tablets and was free of contaminants, which is when the classical results showing it could clear poison oak and prevent infection were published. The new cheap process oxidizes cornstarch with sulfuric acid that is contaminated with lead from the lead chamber manufacturing route. Successive cheaper methods over the following decades each introduced their own trace adulterants. Citric acid is manufactured by similar industrial methods and shares the same problem.
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Allergy and respiratory symptoms from synthetic ascorbic acid are common and reversible by stopping the supplement. Ray talks about how every allergy patient sent to him in the late 1960s was taking vitamin C, vitamin A and other supplements. When they stopped, their allergies usually cleared within a week. The mechanism appears to involve endotoxin in the gut combining with the chemical reductant to set up intestinal inflammation, with reflexes producing runny nose, watery eyes, sore throat and cough. He would personally react to two or three milligrams of the synthetic form added to bread or breakfast cereal, but could drink a gallon of orange juice supplying thousands of milligrams with no symptoms.
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Vitamin C accumulates in the adrenals and gonads and supports steroid synthesis there. The highest concentrations of vitamin C in the body are in the adrenal glands, the testicles in men, and the ovaries in women. It assists steroidogenesis in those organs, but only when present as dehydroascorbic acid. If oxygen metabolism is poor and the conversion to dehydroascorbic acid does not happen, supplementing plain ascorbic acid may actually impede steroidogenesis rather than support it.
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Vitamin C dramatically enhances the bioavailability of iron and other metals. Co-administering vitamin C with iron substantially increases iron absorption, which is one reason Ray Peat advised people with anemia to drink a glass of orange juice after eating liver to raise hemoglobin and ferritin. The effect extends to most metals, and recent studies suggest vitamin C also enhances magnesium bioavailability.
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Acerola cherries and citrus fruit are the preferred sources. Whole citrus fruit already contains vitamin C bound up with the flavonoids and other cofactors needed to use it properly. Acerola cherries are particularly concentrated, providing about 80 milligrams of vitamin C per cherry. Bulk industrial ascorbic acid taken as a regular supplement is not something to rely on.
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Linus Pauling's intake target of 4,000 milligrams a day is correct, but it should come from food. Pauling pointed out that a goat the size of a person produces about 4,000 milligrams of vitamin C daily, and that chimpanzees, which cannot synthesize it, take in similar amounts from leaves and fruits. Humans, guinea pigs and primates are the animals that cannot make their own. The error is assuming that the supplement is the way to reach that intake. Eliminating grains from the diet and eating fruits, meat, milk and fish gets a person to four grams a day routinely.
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The whole antioxidant system is one piece, and isolated supplements typically push it the wrong way. Vitamin C, vitamin E, uric acid, coenzyme Q10 and the glutathione system are interlocked, energized by electrons from NADH derived from glucose. In the healthy cell the ratio of oxidized NAD to NADH is around 500 to one. In a cancer cell that ratio approaches one to one. A study found that men over 65 who took big supplements of vitamin E and vitamin C had almost double the rate of cataracts.
Notable Quotes
"Ascorbic acid inside the healthy cell exists as dehydroascorbate. That's why you can cure scurvy very easily by eating meat even though you can't find any measurable ascorbic acid that they speak of in meat."
[Ray Peat — Iodine, Spider Veins, Oxalates, Fat Loss and More Listener Questions Answered]
"A person who can get very sick on 2 milligrams of synthetic ascorbic acid can eat 4000 milligrams of natural ascorbic acid with no reaction at all."
[Ray Peat — KMUD: The Ten Most Toxic Things in Our Food]
"He said 500 milligrams of vitamin C contained enough heavy metals to oxidize the vitamin C into its free radical state, so that the free radical concentration was equivalent to a killing dose of x-ray."
[Ray Peat — Coronavirus, Immunity, Vaccines Part 2]
"All animals, except people, guinea pigs and primates, make their own. And so all of the animal foods are generously supplied with vitamin C because the animal makes it."
[Ray Peat — Coronavirus, Immunity, Vaccines Part 2]
"Vitamin C seems to accumulate most in the adrenals and the gonads, the testicles in males, in the ovaries, in females. And it's only capable of assisting there when it's in its oxidized form called dehydroscorbic acid."
[Georgi Dinkov — The ThermoDiet Podcast Episode 114]
Important Things To Consider
Synthetic ascorbic acid combined with iron creates serious oxidative damage. Any reductant, including vitamin C, will reduce highly oxidized iron into the ferrous form, which then becomes a major oxidant transferring electrons randomly to fats, proteins and DNA. This is why prenatal vitamins, multivitamins, and iron-fortified foods taken alongside vitamin C supplements are particularly problematic.
Allergy-like reactions to synthetic vitamin C can be triggered by amounts as small as 2 to 3 milligrams. After years of sensitization, a small amount of synthetic ascorbic acid added to bread, bacon, pretzels or breakfast cereal was enough to produce cold symptoms in Ray. The reaction is not dose-dependent in the normal sense once the system has been irritated.
Reducing agents are meant to be produced inside the cell only in response to stress, not eaten as supplements. Glutathione, NADH and ascorbic acid in their reduced form are signals of injury when they appear at high concentrations. Consuming them in reduced form, especially with any trace of copper, iron or other oxidizing metal, produces the same free radical formation that the cell would normally generate only under attack.
Citric acid carries the same manufacturing concerns as ascorbic acid. It is produced by very similar industrial methods and should not be considered equivalent to the natural citric acid found in fruit. This is relevant because both are added to many processed foods. Citric acid has been implicated in tumour growth because cancer cells overproduce fatty acid synthase and citrate synthase to use it as raw material for fat synthesis
Grapefruit juice should not be used as a vitamin C source despite being a citrus. It contains a chemical that causes the liver to increase estrogen in the body. Orange juice, other fruit juices, milk, meat and fish are the preferred sources.
Long term high dose supplementation of vitamin C and vitamin E is associated with increased cataract risk. Men over 65 taking big supplements of both vitamins had almost double the rate of cataracts compared to non-supplementers.
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