What is Vitamin C?

Overviews

It is difficult to find authoritative web pages that do not have some misinformation about vitamin C -- the ascorbate ion or ascorbate for short.

In hopes of helping students at all age levels, we provide a links to overviews that were largely correct when we reviewed them.

• Vitamin C - Linus Pauling Institute (Oregon State Univ.)

• OVERVIEW OF STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION: Vitamin C...  

• Vitamin C Overview

The best lay source is still Linus Pauling's 1986 book How to Live Longer and Feel Better.

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C-Complex Hoax

The Nature of Vitamin C (html)

The official Vitamin C Foundation response to the "Natural Vitamin C" and "C-complex" arguments that are widely distributed across the Internet. The claim that Ascorbic Acid isn't the real vitamin C is false. Please print, read and distribute as appropriate.

The Nature of Vitamin C (PDF Suitable for Printing)

Forum Discussion of the Vitamin C Complex

Karl Loren's Discussion: Synthetic Vitamin C Versus "Natural" Vitamin C...

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THE NOBEL PRIZE LECTURE ON VITAMIN C
 

Our thanks to Vitamin C Foundation researcher Ralph Lotz for finding this reference.

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Example Science Project

Eight Year old Daniel Crawford's Science Project Contains a procedure for testing for Vitamin C content in foods.

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Flashback: 70 Years Ago...

SYNTHETIC VITAMIN PRODUCES STRIKING UNEXPECTED CURES
From the September 22, 1934, issue of Science News

Synthetic vitamin C, called ascorbic acid, in its first actual use on medical patients is producing very striking and unexpected disease conquests, the British Association for the Advancement of Science was informed by Prof. A. Szent-Györgyi, the Hungarian chemist who played a major role in the artificial manufacture of this important vitamin.

The mouth disorder known as pyorrhea, a certain kind of hemophilia, which is a disease of bleeding, certain forms of hemorrhagic nephritis, and several other diseases against which medicine was helpless are seemingly being cured by ascorbic acid. Ascorbic acid is not a cure for hereditary hemophilia.

"This is the more striking since these pathological conditions have not been thought to be connected with lack of vitamin," Prof. Szent-Györgyi explained. "These curative effects suggest that humanity is suffering much more gravely from a lack of vitamin C than has hitherto been supposed."

Disfiguring colorations of the skin brought on by illness are also made to disappear by ascorbic acid. Patients with Addison's disease, who have a yellow color, can be bleached out again by the use of this substance.

 

ASCORBATE WEB One of the largest collections of vitamin C research on the web.

New Mega C Educational Web Site...
 

Nutrition Journal Article on Vitamin C
 

Good overview. Excellent references. The authors make the common mistakes (e.g. they cites tissue saturation without explaining why animals produce so much more endogenous ascorbate past their own 'tissue saturation' levels, etc.).

The New Definition of Scurvy...

The Last Interview Linus Pauling's final interview with the Journal of Optimum Nutrition in 1994.

The genetic reason why we can't make our own vitamin C

Vitamin C Study Abstracts Amazing findings from the latest studies.

Vitamin C Content in Foods (Large file! Derived from the USDA database)

New technology for vitamin C production may end Chinese monopoly...

Dr. Saul's Vitamin C Collection

 

• VITAMIN C HAS BEEN KNOWN TO CURE OVER 30 MAJOR DISEASES FOR OVER 50 YEARS...
   
• VITAMIN C THERAPY II...
   
• VITAMIN C DOSAGE TABLE
   
• CATHCART'S TITRATING VITAMIN C...
   
• VITAMIN C I.V. USE...
   

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Vitamine VITAMIN. THE EARLY YEARS OF DISCOVERY...