Owen,

It was a bit of an understatement when I described myself as having chronic sinusitis. In fact, I got another sinus infection about three months ago -- but much worse than any I'd ever experienced. I was dizzy for days with headache, fever, and barely functional with the fatigue. I would start to get better, then get worse.

I think my immune system had gotten compromised, so I was getting sicker. I developed symptoms that matched Candida -- rash starting in lower back, then sides and upper chest and worsening athlete's foot. I also had night sweats and waves of nausea through the day. And it felt like I had caught a cold too - sore throat, cough. Checking the Internet, I noticed that my symptoms were not unlike the immune-compromised Chronic Fatigue patients. I had started living in a thick fog, and could only concentrate for short periods during the day.

Then I started reading your site, and so I took a couple of grams of Vitamin C when I felt nausea coming on. The nausea dissipated within about 5 minutes -- and that had never happened. So I started taking about 35 grams/day of Vitamin C -- without hitting bowel tolerance - but lots of gas and a gurgling stomach. Within 36 hours it made a big difference -- it stopped the downward spiral, leaving me with just the sinus infection and candida symptoms and with only a slight "fog". It was also about this time that I experienced my first "herx" reaction. After a couple of stable days, I felt like I had a mild flu - aching muscles, headache, fatigue - it lasted overnight then disappeared. I was again relatively stable.

When I recieved the Livon Lipo C I started on 3g/day, and I now hit bowel tolerance on my 35g/day oral. I quickly ramped up the Livon Lipo C to 5g/day, and oral down to 20g/day, and had a second "herx" reaction. This time, an old sprained ankle felt as though it was resprained and another old injury became painful as well. That lasted less than 24 hours, and then I was stable again.

I added in Dr.Wong's "Candessence" for Candida, and I had a 3rd herx reaction, itchy bottom and upset stomach and flu-ish symptoms. But I've been reacting less each time I take "Candessence" and have almost no reaction now. I'll probably need to keep taking it for another month.

As I write this I have a barely detectable sinus infection, and I've been taking my homemade Lipo-C for the past few days -- close to 1 1/2 cups/day (<15g VitC/day). It may not be equivalent to Livon product, but at this dosage, I can actually tell that it is effective. I'll probably keep up the extreme dosage for another week or so. (I can actually tell the difference when I don't take it.)

This is my current maintenance plan:
Wake
1/2 cup homemade lipo-C, 3g of Vitamin C
"Vitamin Code" multiVitamin + 1gm MSM + "Let's Talk Health" lipo-B-Complex
5 virastop (for perhaps 12 days)

Breakfast Smoothy that includes:
Scoop candesence, 3000IU Vitamin D
hand full of walnuts (omega3 to balance lecithin)
tsp green superfood raw reserve, coconut oil tbsp
Afternoon
glass of AscorbAide (4g VitC) + 2g lysine + 2000IU Vitamin D
A gulp of homemade lipo-C

Before bed
smoothy with 2 tsp turmeric, 1/2 cup homemade lipo-C,

Night (2am or so)
1/4 cup homemade lipo-C
Meals: Fish 2x/week Meat 2x/week soups almost daily
no sugar, no bread

I should add that I've found making Lipo-C to be trivially easy. I got a "New Trent" ultrasonic cleaner and add 1 1/2 cup water into the cleaner, stir in 1 tbs powdered C till it dissolves, then stir in 3 tbs powdered lecithin using an egg whip. Since the lecithin is powdered, there is no need to soak or blend first. Then I use two 8 minute cycles and it is done with just a few stirs during each cycle. I am glad that I've got the Livon product, though. I can take it with me anywhere I may go, so both the homemade and the livon are essential to me at this point.

I will be a fan of mega-dosing Vitamin C for the rest of my life.

Owen,

When I last wrote I'd had a great initial improvement, but still had a lingering sinus infection that I could feel in my head. And, while not "debilitated", I was sleeping two extra hours each night and still felt fatigued during the day. And after three days at high dose Vitamin C with my "maintenance plan" that I described, there was no improvement in this "steady state" that I seemed to have achieved.

It seemed to me that my body had adapted to, and accepted, my chronic, low grade infection, even though it kept me tired as a result. So, while my immune system may have adapted, my life was still not back to normal.

I'd recently read about how the body can be injured, but you sometimes need to "amplify" the injury in order to get the body to respond to the injury. (Perhaps some variation of the "counter-irritant" idea?)
Inflammation Blog: http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.com ... ptors.html
Apparently, some consider this to be the same reason that Acupuncture works (and, in China, the more that the acupuncture needle hurts, the more effective the treatment is considered. In contrast, in the US, Acupuncturists use the thinnest possible needle without "twisting it in".)

So, as someone who knows absolutely nothing about medicine, my new plan was to go back to low dose Vitamin C for perhaps 4 days to give the infection time to grow beyond the simple "chronic" that my body had adapted to, and then, when my body re-recognized it as something worthy of a fresh attack, go back on high dose Vitamin C, in the hopes that my body would direct the Vitamin C against the infection.

So, after about 4 days of almost no Vitamin C I could feel the infection was now getting a foothold again, and I was feeling noticeably worse (as opposed to just the usual not quite well). I had stopped taking the virastop, and I now started with 25g oral C through the day, then 10g LipoC in the evening before bed followed by some food including coconut oil & local fermented root beer.
day 4 night: 5g LipoC at about 3am
day 5: 4g LipoC in the morning, 8g LipoC lunchtime, 8g late afternoon(6pm), 4g evening
The next 7 days were similar - about 12g to 20g/day of LipoC each day

Now I'm back to my regular sleep schedule and almost back to my prior energy level (it will probably take months to slowly get over the fatigue completely.)

And since this is clearly inflammation related:
In addition I took adaptogens daily: Ginseng 1" root and eleuthero 2tsp
In addition I tried to get probiotics via fermented homemade root beer (not brewed from extract.)
root beer: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012 ... ecipe.html
I plan to start making a lacto-fermented variation soon:
http://wellnessmama.com/2261/how-to-mak ... efir-soda/
I also inconsistently took Dr.Wong's Armored Acidophilus, AscorbAde, and MSM.

In the end, I don't know if my "protocol" helped or hurt -- but I'm better. And I had been essentially disabled for three months, and wasn't sure that I would ever get better. So I want to thank you again for your blog. While it might sound like an exaggeration, I actually believe that my life was in danger before I started taking the Vitamin C.

Tony